Views on Siddhartha Mukherjee’s writing on sex, gender and biology

[champignonhill]

I'm surprised not to have seen any discussion on here about Siddartha Mukherjee's views on sex/gender. I'm a big fan of his writing and read The Gene recently (which was written in 2016 so a bit before the current debates heated up).

This 2019 article, Why Sex is Binary but Gender is Mostly a Spectrum, which is an excerpt from the book, argues that biological sex is largely determined by genetic mechanisms that produce two main reproductive categories, while gender and gender identity arise from a more complex interaction of biology, brain development, and social experience. He traces the history of sex determination genetics, and explains how genes such as SRY influence physical sex, but suggests that the brain’s response to these signals can vary, helping explain the diversity of gender identities.

Below is a quote that sums it up, although the article (and the whole book, although this is just a few pages in a much broader exploration of genetics) is worth reading.

I was just wondering if anyone more intelligent than me had read this and had any views! I get lost in the science but found it an interesting view, especially since it comes from a biologist.

"The existence of a transgender identity provides powerful evidence for this geno-developmental cascade. In an anatomical and physiological sense, sex identity is quite binary: just one gene governs sex identity, resulting in the striking anatomical and physiological dimorphism that we observe between males and females. But gender and gender identity are far from binary. Imagine a gene—call it TGY—that determines how the brain responds to SRY (or some other male hormone or signal). One child might inherit a TGY gene variant that is highly resistant to the action of SRY on the brain, resulting in a body that is anatomically male, but a brain that does not read or interpret that male signal. Such a brain might recognize itself as psychologically female; it might consider itself neither male or female, or imagine itself belonging to a third gender altogether. These men (or women) have something akin to a Swyer syndrome of identity: their chromosomal and anatomical gender is male (or female), but their chromosomal/anatomical state does not generate a synonymous signal in their brains. In rats, notably, such a syndrome can be caused by changing a single gene in the brains of female embryos or exposing embryos to a drug that blocks the signaling of “femaleness” to the brain. Female mice engineered with this altered gene or treated with this drug have all the anatomical and physiological features of femaleness, but perform the activities associated with male mice, including mounting females: these animals might be anatomically female, but they are behaviorally male."

Are we back to the female brain again? 🙄🙄🙄🙄

It has not been discussed because it is utter twaddle. HTH

Do you mean it's a widely disregarded view? I know him mostly for his writing on cancer which I found life changing at the time, and I'm not a scientist myself, so I'm not sure how respected his work/views are.

Sorry, I'm not sure what that means?

Sounds like he's trying to ret-con trans identity into biology.

The experiment he describes near the end of that quote indicates that, in mice, homosexual behaviour can be induced via genetic engineering. Seems like a huge stretch to try to apply this to transgenderism in humans.

Another thing is, how could the hypothetical human male also mentioned in that quote know that he is "psychologically female"? He has no personal experience of being female. At best he is imagining what he thinks this might mean and assuming this applies to himself. The concept itself is probably based on sexism.

Well there’s absolutely no evidence that there is such a gene, or that the genes and brains of trans people is any different to that of others who are the same sex.

Pity, cos if there was a physical cause it would be possible to test for, and then we could recommend hormone or surgical treatment only for those who tested positive.

Weirdly TRAs don’t like this possibility.

You're not talking to people who are prepared to consider anything other than their predecided opinions, OP.

Sex is binary, gender ID is... something else. Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, even back in 2019.

A brain is part of the body, it's not separate from it, so a female body has a female brain, a male body has a male brain.
A brain in a female body can't 'recognise' itself as male, or vice versa.
It can only recognise itself for what it is.
The human 'owner' of the brain may have all kinds of thoughts and feelings and opinions - even pre-decided ones about sex and gender - but that doesn't mean that their brain is somehow of the opposite sex to everything else in the body.

A woman's brain is not 'male' because it does non-traditionally-womanly things - at least half of the posters on here would be male, if that was the case😄

What's your opinion, suggestionsplease1, and had you decided on it before or after you read Siddartha Mukherjee's article?

This is like seeing a black swan or an albino crow, and instead of saying "wow! I thought all swans are white but turns out sometimes swans are black!" or "I thought all crows were black but turns out sometimes crows are white", you conclude "wow! Some swans are crow-shape and some crows are swan-shape!"

This.

He's a reputable writer with interesting ideas. I also enjoyed his work on cancer (as a fellow traveller).

But you're addressing an audience largely ideologically opposed to any view that recognises transgender identities as anything other than perversion or delusion. It would be more productive to strike up a discussion on the subject with a brick wall.

That’s spot on - love a creative analogy.

As always, do feel free to explain why women should accept that any men who say they are women are women.

Notably Mukherjee does not say anything about "female brains" or "male brains" as those in bad faith are interpreting it, but rather talking about how the brain receives and interprets signals from the body. MRI scans do show physiological differences between trans people's brains and cis people's brains which, regardless of the mechanism, demonstrates at the very least that there is a real phenomenon that people are experiencing.

London taxi drivers also show distinctive brain scans.

I'm sure the researchers studying trans brains are aware of this. I'm equally sure they're far more knowledgeable than you are when it comes to how to interpret evidence from brain scans.

Not knowing anything about the writer, but as "gender" not anything biological, how can anyone have a theory about how that is part of a human body in the same way that the brain or the heart is.

The mere fact that he is proposing this, is just absurd.

Gender is a social construct must widely seen is sexist, ie limiting both men and women to behave and conform to societies "rules" about what is male and female.

This social constrains we all experience impact individuals differently. And how we each as individuals react to those social constraints.

So hard to engage with a concept that thinks "gender identity" is a real thing.

The much more revolutionary, and strangely just as much dismissed by the male backlash of the 80s and 90s, as women's liberation was the idea of being "gender bender".

Because this said that even if your bodies sex was male, you didn't have to change it to adopt "female" clothes, etc., and the same for women.

Unlike the reactionary trans narrative that to like or want the things that society says are either male or female, means that you are that sex, being a gender bender meant you totally rejected the conformity that society but on you. This required no use of drugs, or aggressive surgery, let alone the preposterous notion that you could demand someone of the opposite sex should accept you as being the same sex as you.

If anything the notion of "gender" as a think rather than a word used to categorise things, is yet another example of how successful the male backlash has been against the sex based rights of women's liberation.

A Butlerian response might be:

The proposition that SRY-driven, variable brain responses explain gender identity constructs an inaccurate causal model that treats the body as a passive, pre-discursive fact and internalizes gender within the brain. This framework relies on a binary foundation, treating gender as a fixed, neurological essence while reinforcing heterosexual norms and erasing non-conforming realities.

But why didn’t they test people who are not involved in gender ideology? I mean, if they’re only testing people who call themselves trans or cis, surely they’re excluding a lot of people? It’s only those who believe in gender ideology who use those terms.

Who are not stopping you from telling the OP your unpredecided opinion, do share.

Over many many years a very large number of scientific studies have been carried out to gather definitive evidence on the differences between male and female brains. Although there is a marked difference in average weight of brain which obviously follows fromthe known differences in average body size, this is largely irrelevant to structure and functional parameters. In study after study the pattern is clear - if the scientists are rigorous in compensating for environmental and cultural biases and careful to eliminate selection bia, there are virtually no differences in male and female brains. Real differences are only found by the less rigorous studies that don't adequately compensate for such biases. Obviously there are differences but they are explained fully by the cultural and social effects of being brought up.in a sexist society - brains are highly plastic and respond and adapt to such external pressures. Each brain develops a unique personality which may or may not fall roughly within the boundaries of cultural sexist expectations for that person's sex. Where it doesn't in the vast majority of cases the individual will either succumb to sexist pressures and conform to cultural expectations by repressing their natural tendencies or will have the courage to live true to themselves, rejecting the boundaries of sexist expectations. A small but vocal minority conclude that the sexist expectations are true and reliable for everyone else but that they as an individual are a special exception and are therefore "trans" rather than the more obvious conclusion that the sexist expectations are wrong. So when I read anything by someone who starts talking about a male brain in a female body or vice versa I know that they are speaking from a position of bias and ignorance so generally not worth paying any attention to unless as part of an effort to debunk such junk science which is a never ending game of whackamole.

I’m a neuroscientist and agree with @RareGoalsVerge In humans, you can’t clearly distinguish male and female brains - there is too much overlap. And the biggest study of gender and brain including trans people found no effect of gender (but some small effects of sex).

Imagine a gene—call it TGY—that determines how the brain responds to SRY (or some other male hormone or signal).

He is proposing a hypothetical gene in humans based on some rat studies. The rest of the paragraph contains an awful lot of mights and coulds. We would be able to check for this hypothetical gene, it would involve a lot of sequencing but this is doable with the current sequencing and data analysis capacities, I'm happy to supply a sample of my DNA for the no-gender identity control group but somehow these hypothesists with books to sell never seem to want to do the actual work.

"Imagine a gene—call it TGY—...." imaginary genes now, and what's with the big dashes, are they a tell-tale sign of AI.

I'm not a scientist but I know Woo when I read it. This sort of claptrap has been around for donkey's year, it's just getting a new lease of life because it's been re-packaged as 'trans'.

Yes, it's totally speculative and doesn't reckon with the fact that transgender identification has massively increased over the last 10-20 years, meaning that even if there is a contributing gene (totally unproven) it can't account for most trans people.

What has always interested me is the long-running link between same-sex attraction and interest in activities typically associated with the opposite sex. Obviously this doesn't apply to all same-sex attracted people but it does apply to quite a few. Has this ever been explained, does anyone know?