If only bigots cared about science that didn’t agree with their bigotry.
Sex is a biological variable, shaped by our body’s hormones, anatomy, and genetics, whereas gender is a cultural construct, shaped by both our sense of self and interactions with others.
Isn’t the study implying that gender isn’t purely a cultural construct if there’s a neurological component to it?
Maybe there are actually three potentially independent elements (biological, neurological, and cultural).
Don’t forget fashion. I look great in heels.
I’m not sure what you mean by separating the biological and the neurological. Isn’t neurology a component of biology?
By “biological” I mean the neurological component that correlates with biological sex, and by “neurological” I mean the component that’s purely neurological and doesn’t correlate with anything outside the brain.
Sex is a cultural construct as well. It’s founded in a biological reality, but it’s a cultural construct that someone with my intersex conditions would’ve been assigned male at birth and someone with my cousin’s was assigned female. Other cultures might look at intersex people as one or multiple sexes and treat us distinctly and differently from endosex AMAB and AFAB people. Additionally where the line of intersex is is part of that cultural construct
Everything has a neurological component to it, because you’re a brain thinking about it, right? At least that’s what I’m getting from that.
Yeah, but we can distinguish between neurological components that are conditioned on biology outside the brain like chromosomes and hormones (what the article calls “sex”), components that are conditioned on learning (“cultural constructs”), and components that are conditioned on neither (what the article, apart from the quoted sentence, calls “gender”).
Oh good, you can do a scan of my brain to tell me I’m actually a bi woman in a man’s body, right? Hahaha.
Ha
Does sound easier than self reflection was
Well, evidently…
It’s good to hear that there’s some more scientific studies showing that gender and sex are distinct facets of our biology. Sadly, I’m skeptical it will do much to sway the bigots, but any good news is positive news!
I always get a little antsy around this kind of stuff because eventually, it’s going to get to a point where it either gets treated as a diagnostic tool or insurance requirement for trans people accessing healthcare.
All my homies hate trans-medicalism, this will inevitably lead to a “cure” or something bullshit like that, we don’t need medical validation in the first place
Agreed!! Biological determinism is eugenics. And it’s not true, with neuroplasticity we can change. Also, there are multigender and agender people
Maybe we should try to “cure” all of it. If there was a pill that would “cure” my cisgenderness and make me trans, maybe it would be worth a try. Maybe I’d be happier as a woman even if I didn’t identify as one before.
Sexual preference too. Maybe I’d be happier being gay. If I could “cure” my heterosexuality, maybe my life would be more fulfilling.
It would be worth a try anyway.
Bring on the pills! Better living through chemistry!
(Obviously I’m being flippant. Any sort of “cure” would be designed to only go one way and we all know which way.)
If we assume that it’s useful as a diagnostic tool (very iffy if there), that’s not a bad thing.
There are people who regret transitioning and currently there’s no way to reliably tell which trans kids are actually trans and which have been manipulated or are just in a phase, thus denying early intervention for many. If it could be reasonably reliably tested for, that’s great.
The insurance part is 100% an American issue. Civilized societies have socialized healthcare.
It’s not a bad thing if we decide bodily autonomy isn’t the highest standard and that it’s significantly more accurate than self decision.
The trans community is rightfully nervous about diagnostic criteria because they’ve been used really badly against us. Like 15 years ago it was common to not be allowed to transition if you had the wrong sexual orientation (we’re pretty evenly split between straight, bi, and gay, so between 1/3-2/3 were rejected) as well as real life experience which didn’t help anyone but was/is extremely uncomfortable. And going further back you get stuff like transition being denied because a psychologist doesn’t think you’ll be attractive enough.
I get the sentiment, but I could use the same arguments against HRT, which isn’t exactly what you want.
Bodily autonomy is fine, as long as it’s not harming anyone (including oneself). If this tool is accurate (again, big if), it could actually increase bodily autonomy, since you could distinguish between real cases and those who really have other problems. That takes the burden of proof away from trans people.
Think about how long it takes today from the first visit at a doctor’s office until actual treatment or legal processes can start. Using diagnostics like this, this could be shrunken down to one MRI.
Who decides what is “real” though, if it’s not the person in the body? So someone says they are a boy, but the MRI says nope, you are wrong, you are a girl through and through.
What if I am a cis woman and have a mind that works more like a guy’s mind? But if I still am comfortable and happy in my woman’s body, who cares how my mind works? Nobody, that’s who. Why would trans people not get the same consideration?
I just don’t think it makes sense to use tech to invalidate someone’s experience, and it’s just not anyone’s business if someone wants a different body. My sister got big fake boobs, nobody said “well, you don’t have a body that matches the boobs” they just gave her what she asked for and paid for. Why can’t a man do that if he wants? Why does he have to prove he’s a woman first?
None of that makes sense to me.
As long as it isn’t a requirement for legal or medical procedures and is only used as a diagnostic tool to better understand oneself, it shouldn’t be too problematic, I think. If it’s used to diagnose someone without their consent is a different story, and I would hate to see medical science advancements used to perpetuate abuse rather than improve our lives.
Or insurance requirement for trans people accessing healthcare.
I’m hoping private healthcare and health insurance will be a thing of the past by the time your concerns become a reality, but that’s an extremely valid concern nonetheless.
Agreed, also, focusing on the differences becomes divisive at some point. The truth is, women and men think extremely similarly, as we are all human and humans think alike. But we ignore the greater similarities to instead push for tiny divisions. While it’s great to provide validation, neuroplasticity means that a “girl” brain can become a “boy” brain and vice versa through someone’s lifetime. Gender is also not a strict binary anyway, so how it’s determined who’s a girl and who is a boy and who’s agender or multigender - like it’s so much more complicated than a study like this.
We’ve known for a while that the brains of trans women more closely resemble those of cis women than cis men, and vice versa. Bigots don’t give a shit about the science, they just use their 4th grade understanding of it to attack “others”.
They give a shit about the “science” they think supports their point. Even if it’s something like phrenology.
This is a neat study. It looks like they are able to predict one’s sex more than one’s gender and they have a decent sample size (4757).
Does anyone have any insight on reading the data from the report directly? https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adn4202
