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Male & Female Brains Are The Same

I think that you should add "a different mix of hormones affecting the embryonic brain." Based on the theories I've heard, this seems to be essential. Nowadays, both male-to-female and female-to-male transsexuals describe what happens to them emotionally and mentally when they undergo sex-change hormonal therapy, but they are already at the outset the opposite gender of what we would expect them to be based on their bodies and genetics. The hormones of the amniotic fluid seem to contribute to gender identity and sexual orientation.

That may be true, although it isn't what I meant. I think that your brain and mine are being affected by hormones right now, not just in the past. That is not to say that we are ruled by our hormones (although some people may be) but we are influenced by them at least.
 
I suggest that one lack of sameness between the brains of males & females is the type of woo they go for. Have a look at a John Edwards show and see the percentage of women in the audience. Go to a show and take a peek at the person reading the tarot cards or other such tosh, and who is the paying customer.

Men go in for woo also but different flavours. Divining may be one of them.
 
...combined with past experiences and current environment.

Nope. Just anatomy.

That anatomy may have been shaped by past experiences and current environment, but all thoughts, feelings, emotions, needs, wants drives and everything else we human being experience is a result of our anatomy. Nothing more, nothing less.
 
OK, but how was any of that a response to the quote from me that you quoted?


Your objection was that what was being referred to was a feeling, not anatomy.


They're pretty much the same thing. Every feeling you ever have is the result of your biology.
 
One thing resulting from another does not make them anywhere near "the same thing".

Do you even know what the subject was that I was responding to? There's really no way at all for this weird little fixation of yours to make a speck of sense in context. What you're saying could be completely right or completely wrong without the slightest effect on my comment or the one I was responding to in any way. You might as well be giving a lecture on the life cycle of sea turtles. It's just odd.
 
One thing resulting from another does not make them anywhere near "the same thing".

Do you even know what the subject was that I was responding to? There's really no way at all for this weird little fixation of yours to make a speck of sense in context. What you're saying could be completely right or completely wrong without the slightest effect on my comment or the one I was responding to in any way. You might as well be giving a lecture on the life cycle of sea turtles. It's just odd.

What he is saying is that feelings come from the physical state of the brain.

Like I said before "Where does feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body come from? Does this not require their brain to be different from a man who identifies as a man?"

Perhaps people have thought too often that we are very much different than we really are, but whatever part of the brain deals with feelings regarding sexuality, it is clearly very different between male and female populations.
 
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What he is saying is that feelings come from the physical state of the brain.

Like I said before "Where does feeling like a woman trapped in a man's body come from? Does this not require their brain to be different from a man who identifies as a man?"

Perhaps people have thought too often that we are very much different than we really are, but whatever part of the brain deals with feelings regarding sexuality, it is clearly very different between male and female populations.


I'm not really sure that it's a feeling. It might be more of an idea. I feel cold, I feel warm, I feel comfortable, but I can't really say that I walk around feeling like a man in a man's body. I know that I am, I'm quite content with the condition. I feel sexual attraction to the opposite sex, and I would hate to be one of those men who need to stress their masculinity all the time in order to feel that they are real masculine alpha hemales.
Is identifying with a certain subset of humanity a feeling or and idea? Ideas very often give rise to feelings, which is why we tend to confuse them: 'I feel that you don't respect me,' for instance, isn't actually a feeling. It's an idea that makes you feel all kinds of things: angry, sad, embarrassed etc., but it's not a feeling.
 
Never had much time for the idea myself.

Physically men and women have significant differences but the brains are identical?

Sort of conflicts with evolutionary theory also. I mean our brains evolve to fit the tasks required and the tasks for men and women are often different. Childbearing is one example of this.

Sounds hard to believe that both sexes have different hormones, which specifically act to alter behaviour, but somehow they're not different.
 


I may have confused the evidence for a biological cause of the two conditions, gender dysphoria and homosexuality.

In another thread, I referred to an article about the correlation of homosexuality with childhood behavior. It mentioned a group of women who as young girls had had ...

... several diagnostic indicators of gender identity disorder. They might have strongly preferred male playmates, insisted on wearing boys’ clothing, favored rough-and-tumble play over dolls and dress-up, stated that they would eventually grow a penis, or refused to urinate in a sitting position.


In this context, it is interesting that only a minority of them were gender dysphoric as adults:

As adults, however, only 12 percent of these women grew up to be gender dysphoric (the uncomfortable sense that one’s biological sex does not match one’s gender identity). Rather, the women’s childhood histories were much more predictive of their adult sexual orientation. In fact, the researchers found that the odds of these women reporting a bisexual/homosexual orientation was up to 23 times higher than would normally occur in a general sample of young women. Not all “tomboys” become lesbians, of course, but these data do suggest that lesbians often have a history of cross-sex-typed behaviors.
Is your child a "prehomosexual"? Forecasting adult sexual orientation (Scientific American blog, Sep. 15, 2010)


And it doesn't mention a biological cause of their behavior as children.
 
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Male and female brains don't even taste the same, for crying out loud.
 
I may have confused the evidence for a biological cause of the two conditions, gender dysphoria and homosexuality.

In another thread, I referred to an article about the correlation of homosexuality with childhood behavior. It mentioned a group of women who as young girls had had ...

In this context, it is interesting that only a minority of them were gender dysphoric as adults:

And it doesn't mention a biological cause of their behavior as children.

Since gender identity does seem to be more of a purely social construct than sexual orientation, that makes sense.
 
I'm not really sure that it's a feeling. It might be more of an idea. I feel cold, I feel warm, I feel comfortable, but I can't really say that I walk around feeling like a man in a man's body. I know that I am, I'm quite content with the condition. I feel sexual attraction to the opposite sex, and I would hate to be one of those men who need to stress their masculinity all the time in order to feel that they are real masculine alpha hemales.
Is identifying with a certain subset of humanity a feeling or and idea? Ideas very often give rise to feelings, which is why we tend to confuse them: 'I feel that you don't respect me,' for instance, isn't actually a feeling. It's an idea that makes you feel all kinds of things: angry, sad, embarrassed etc., but it's not a feeling.

I would say both, we're beings of experience, both feeling and conceptualizing. And both of those things can affect the other one.

As a thought experiment, imagine if you were put into a female body. How would you feel about it?
 

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