Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Boudicca90]

I agree that differences are largely due to brain plasticity - the effect of experience and environment on the patterns developed by the brain. I agree that there are no meaningful differences between male and female brains.

So I'm at a bit of a loss as to what you think is extreme about my post?

You seemed to reject all of that that I said before and started talking about specifically male and female brains like I was advocating that view, when I wasn't.

And the "extreme" part are the slippery slopes you seem to gravitate to. Making so many minor things into Chicken Little situations.

 

[d4m10n]

I agree that there are no meaningful differences between male and female brains.

This hypothesis doesn't seem likely to me at all; evolution would have had to mold our species to be sexually dimorphic^WP while somehow preventing the same underlying selective pressures from influencing the brain. I don't think it's mere coincidence that the androgen known to increase muscle mass also happens to increase aggression.

 

[p0lka]

That's your personal compromise, not a compromise position for public policy. So it solves your personal problem, but doesn't actually address the policy problem we're discussing.

Let's ignore your personal preference. What's your public policy compromise?

I would go back to the reply I gave to Rolfes' scenario about shared spaces

It wouldn't make anyone happy. The females who value single-sex spaces would be unhappy, and the males who get their kicks from "exisiting" in female-only spaces would also be unhappy. They absolutely don't want unisex facilities, they want segregated facilities so that they can glory in being in the wrong one. Look at the reaction if a third unisex space is suggested. They don't "just want to pee", they want to be in the female spaces as of right and a unisex space doesn't satisfy them.

...

It wouldn't make the people at either extreme happy, i'll shed a tear.
everyone else might be cool with it though,

compromisation is key.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I've heard it said, though, that there are measurable differences between certain brain characteristics in men and women, and that transgenders are generally more like their adopted gender rather than their biological sex.

If the first part isn't true, i.e. there are not observable differences between men and women, then the second part can't be true.

If the "observable differences" are more like the shoe size thing, ie strongly bimodal in some characteristic that can be measured, then I would find it significant if the transwoman distribution was more like the women's distribution than the men's distribution. At the very least, it would be worth looking into. However, if it was the weakly bimodal thing, like test scores, I would say that it's not significant if transgenders were closer to their chose gender than their biological sex.

The differences are measurable around the mean, but they're weakly bimodal. Additionally, the differences occur in a very few dimensions of an organ that has thousands of dimensional attributes. "Dimension" here referring the set of measurable or definable characteristics, not space-time dimensions.

So yes, it's true that the means and distributions of transwomen in isolation more closely resemble the mean and distribution of ciswomen. But the mean and distribution of ciswomen and cismen are only weakly bimodal in the first place, and the sample sets of transgender brains are necessarily small, as it's a very small cohort of the population.

 

[Emily's Cat]

You seemed to reject all of that that I said before and started talking about specifically male and female brains like I was advocating that view, when I wasn't.

I was objecting to your claim that research is not politicized. It is politicized, and politics drives a lot of the framing of the research in the first place. Whether you personally adhere to the idea of sex-differentiated brains has little to do with the fact that politics plays a role in gatekeeping research.

And the "extreme" part are the slippery slopes you seem to gravitate to. Making so many minor things into Chicken Little situations.

Given that for thousands of years, women have been pigeon holed into second-class status, and were treated as if they weren't fully actualized humans in their own right... and given that arguments were common a mere 30 years ago that "women just aren't suited for x kind of work, they don't have the minds for it"... and given that some people today *still* make the argument that women are just "naturally" drawn to caregiving jobs, and just "naturally" averse to leadership roles with lots of responsibility... I'm struggling to see the "slippery slope" as a fallacy here.

These things are NOT minor things to women.

 

[Emily's Cat]

This hypothesis doesn't seem likely to me at all; evolution would have had to mold our species to be sexually dimorphic^WP while somehow preventing the same underlying selective pressures from influencing the layout of the brain. I don't think it's mere coincidence that the androgen known to increase muscle mass also happens to increase aggression.

It's the distinction between innate differences in the brain versus differences in plasticized development and hormonal effects.

There's no innate difference in male and female brains, just like there's no innate difference in male and female feet. There is, however, a difference in the sizes to which our feet grow as a result of testosterone interacting with the pituitary and the adrenal glands. There's also a difference in how our feet develop as a result of conformation to gendered footwear.

There are also evolutionary behavioral tendencies that are sex-linked, and are predominantly hormone-driven. Risk tolerance is one, and is closely tied to testosterone levels. As a result of being a sexually dimorphic species, we of necessity have a division of behaviors as they relate to the skills necessary for bearing and rearing offspring. Males and females are biologically different.

 

[Meadmaker]

The differences are measurable around the mean, but they're weakly bimodal. Additionally, the differences occur in a very few dimensions of an organ that has thousands of dimensional attributes. "Dimension" here referring the set of measurable or definable characteristics, not space-time dimensions.

So yes, it's true that the means and distributions of transwomen in isolation more closely resemble the mean and distribution of ciswomen. But the mean and distribution of ciswomen and cismen are only weakly bimodal in the first place, and the sample sets of transgender brains are necessarily small, as it's a very small cohort of the population.

Well if that's the case, then there's nothing of any significance, so all this talk about ladybrains and any variation thereof is, let's be generous and call it speculative.

 

[Boudicca90]

Given that for thousands of years, women have been pigeon holed into second-class status, and were treated as if they weren't fully actualized humans in their own right... and given that arguments were common a mere 30 years ago that "women just aren't suited for x kind of work, they don't have the minds for it"... and given that some people today *still* make the argument that women are just "naturally" drawn to caregiving jobs, and just "naturally" averse to leadership roles with lots of responsibility... I'm struggling to see the "slippery slope" as a fallacy here.

These things are NOT minor things to women.

No, I recognize none of that is. But letting us have the same legal rights as you is. It's a minor thing for you, but it is a major thing for us.

I don't like playing the Oppression Olympics since I think intersectionality is important for everybody. I could just as well argue that the discrimination we face is much worse than what cisgender women face these days.

We not only have to deal with being treated like a woman and face all of these same attitudes that you do (although you are correct that I didn't grow up with it like you did), but if we are found to be trans, we are treated far worse. But i'm not going to say that my experiences make me entitled to more rights, just that we should be treated the same.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Well if that's the case, then there's nothing of any significance, so all this talk about ladybrains and any variation thereof is, let's be generous and call it speculative.

Pretty much, but it also gets a lot of headline space, and is referenced as supporting evidence for the claim that transwomen are women full stop.

I genuinely don't care how people present themselves, what they enjoy as hobbies, what they want to talk about, etc. I think most gender roles are baloney, and as far as I'm concerned they're a cause of great harm to both men and women. And genuinely, if person has distress over their body, I 100% support them getting the help they need to live a successful life. I will happily and without a second thought make a lot of concessions in order to help another person be comfortable in their lives.

But a lot of women, including myself, feel as though our identity as women is being erased. Our lived experience and the struggles we continue to try to overcome are being dismissed and shunted to the side. We're being asked, once again, to place our needs as subordinate to the desires of males. And I'm not okay with the de-humanizing language that is stealing away women's progress. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a female", that's a term you use for livestock, not for humans. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a person with a uterus" or a "cervix haver", because I do NOT want to be reduced to my reproductive organs.

The word "woman" is being redefined to a tautological impossibility, a feeling that is incomprehensibly divorced from my sex as well as my lived experience. It has become a mind-body duality that defines itself in terms of an ephemeral feeling that defies description. And in this process of redefinition being put forth by the opposite sex... the very term "woman" is becoming meaningless. Which in turn makes women as a whole less meaningful.

 

[Emily's Cat]

No, I recognize none of that is. But letting us have the same legal rights as you is. It's a minor thing for you, but it is a major thing for us.

I don't like playing the Oppression Olympics since I think intersectionality is important for everybody. I could just as well argue that the discrimination we face is much worse than what cisgender women face these days.

We not only have to deal with being treated like a woman and face all of these same attitudes that you do (although you are correct that I didn't grow up with it like you did), but if we are found to be trans, we are treated far worse. But i'm not going to say that my experiences make me entitled to more rights, just that we should be treated the same.

And in *most* situations, I completely agree. Where I don't agree is when it comes to spaces and services that are intended for females, either to provide for safety or to level the playing field and foster equality. I think your view on most of it is in alignment with my own. I think our views are not very far apart at all.

I doubt that anyone would support having black scholarships and programs to support black communities and foster equal opportunity for black people being made available to people who were born white but who identify as black. Let's completely side-step the question of whether that even makes sense, and look at the concept and the principle involved there. Black people have equal rights on paper, but in reality they don't - there is a lot of systemic racism and a lot of racial bias in the US. If Affirmative Action were to be extended to allow white people who identify as black to count toward the minority benchmarks, wouldn't that raise some eyebrows? Wouldn't you expect that the black community might be a bit put-out by that? If they truly had equal rights and didn't face deeply embedded biases and stereotypes, I don't think anyone would have much of an objection to extending AA and opening up scholarships. But they don't... so extending those services that are intended to address inequities would end up harming the black community, and reducing the progress they've fought for.

 

[Elaedith]

The differences are measurable around the mean, but they're weakly bimodal. Additionally, the differences occur in a very few dimensions of an organ that has thousands of dimensional attributes. "Dimension" here referring the set of measurable or definable characteristics, not space-time dimensions.

So yes, it's true that the means and distributions of transwomen in isolation more closely resemble the mean and distribution of ciswomen. But the mean and distribution of ciswomen and cismen are only weakly bimodal in the first place, and the sample sets of transgender brains are necessarily small, as it's a very small cohort of the population.

Its a bit more complicated than that even. Although some studies have shown that the some brain characteristics of those identifying as transgender are shifted slightly in the direction of the sex they identify with, it's usually only in some and not all the dimensions that typically show sex differences. In addition, some studies show that gender-nonconforming individuals who don't identify as transgender and people with homosexual orientation can show similar brain differences (although again, usually only in some characteristics, and not in all samples). There is a big overlap between these populations, because most children with gender dysphoria are also gender-nonconforming and more likely than average to be gay in adulthood. Not all reviews that pool smaller studies confirm these differences. On top of that, autism is over-represented among those identifying as transgender or with gender dysphoria, and that is also associated with some neurological characteristics.

 

[GaughEyad]

Ignoring the rest of that borderline MRA rant...

Men get raped... by other men.

Both men and women are victims of rape.
Which are the vast majority of perpetrators of rape?

And women get raped by... OTHER WOMEN!

Did you know that rape happens more often in women's prisons than in men's? I was surprised the first time I heard that. Interesting that women are more likely to rape other women in prison than men are to rape other men even though the media only likes to push male rape in prisons.

Also, men get raped by women as well. Didn't you know that? Yep. It happens. "But is can't be rape if he got an erection!" And it wasn't rape is she was sexually aroused. That's the argument that you're going for here. Care to back that one up? Or are you all of a sudden going to change your tune? According to you women raping men is an illusion so...

Look, you're still pretending that rape is completely a male endeavor when there is plenty of proof that women engage in it as well. Rape is not the sole domain of men. Women also rape, but we simply don't talk about it as a culture. We don't talk about women rape in prison and we sure as HELL don't talk about women raping men. It's simply off limits. As such, there's no way to know how prevalent it is. If we were to care to extrapolate from prison rapes, woman rape would happen far more often than male rape in the general population. But, I wouldn't be silly enough to do that without more evidence. Then I'd be you. *shudders*

Don't try to use rape to back up your claims. It makes you look foolish and weak. Using an argument that is an automatic discussion killer like that. "You wouldn't want women to get raped, would you?" How childish. And insincere!

But, since you're the one using that card, let's take it to its logical conclusions shall we? You're afraid of women getting raped and or perved on. Okay, so we absolutely have to keep facilities gender segregated. Fine. But how about we take it further. I mean, it's all in order to protect women. I think the middle east has some good ideas in that regard. Women aren't allowed outside without a male family member. Sounds good to me. That way a male family member is always around to protect them. And that whole burka thing? Sure! Head to toe. Better not let any men see you lest then uncontrollably start raping you. Or how about we simply keep women inside all the time and never let then go out? Better safe than sorry, right?

But you wouldn't agree with that, would you. No, you think that simply segregating facilities by gender is enough. It's not, and you know it, but that's the hill you're willing to die on strangely enough.

You want equality, right? Well equality means treating everyone the same. Segregated facilities is not equality, especially when people talk about them as "women's special places". That's sick and it's sad. And it's not equality. If you don't want equality you can see where that leads in the paragraph before this one. Go on, continue fighting equality if you want, but don't pretend that's not what you're doing.

As for being an MRA? I don't know much about them. I do know that it stands for Men's Rights Advocate. And what's the problem with that? There are a lot of places where men have far fewer rights than women, namely involving the legal system. What's wrong with demanding equal rights? Is it simply because it's men doing it? Why? Women do it all the time. They say they want equality but when men point out the unequal treatment of the prison system or family court, that's somehow bad? Please, enlighten me on how that works. I mean, you're making it sound like only women's right matter. That's couldn't be what you meant, could it?

Stop hiding behind being a "weak" woman in order to demand that you continue to receive special treatment. You're debasing all women as well as the very concept of equality with that attitude.

 

[d4m10n]

There's no innate difference in male and female brains, just like there's no innate difference in male and female feet. There is, however, a difference in the sizes to which our feet grow as a result of testosterone interacting with the pituitary and the adrenal glands. There's also a difference in how our feet develop as a result of conformation to gendered footwear.

There are also evolutionary behavioral tendencies that are sex-linked, and are predominantly hormone-driven. Risk tolerance is one, and is closely tied to testosterone levels. As a result of being a sexually dimorphic species, we of necessity have a division of behaviors as they relate to the skills necessary for bearing and rearing offspring. Males and females are biologically different.

I think we're basically in agreement, except that I'd consider any differences caused by endogenous hormone levels to be innate differences, more-or-less by definition.

But letting us have the same legal rights as you is. It's a minor thing for you, but it is a major thing for us.

In the U.S. we've been struggling for generations to equalize legal rights between men and women. Which legal rights do I have as a cisgender male which you lack, at present? Which rights ought you have which I lack, at present?

 

[Meadmaker]

Pretty much, but it also gets a lot of headline space, and is referenced as supporting evidence for the claim that transwomen are women full stop.

I genuinely don't care how people present themselves, what they enjoy as hobbies, what they want to talk about, etc. I think most gender roles are baloney, and as far as I'm concerned they're a cause of great harm to both men and women. And genuinely, if person has distress over their body, I 100% support them getting the help they need to live a successful life. I will happily and without a second thought make a lot of concessions in order to help another person be comfortable in their lives.

But a lot of women, including myself, feel as though our identity as women is being erased. Our lived experience and the struggles we continue to try to overcome are being dismissed and shunted to the side. We're being asked, once again, to place our needs as subordinate to the desires of males. And I'm not okay with the de-humanizing language that is stealing away women's progress. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a female", that's a term you use for livestock, not for humans. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a person with a uterus" or a "cervix haver", because I do NOT want to be reduced to my reproductive organs.

The word "woman" is being redefined to a tautological impossibility, a feeling that is incomprehensibly divorced from my sex as well as my lived experience. It has become a mind-body duality that defines itself in terms of an ephemeral feeling that defies description. And in this process of redefinition being put forth by the opposite sex... the very term "woman" is becoming meaningless. Which in turn makes women as a whole less meaningful.

Much truth there.

 

[smartcooky]

But a lot of women, including myself, feel as though our identity as women is being erased. Our lived experience and the struggles we continue to try to overcome are being dismissed and shunted to the side. We're being asked, once again, to place our needs as subordinate to the desires of males. And I'm not okay with the de-humanizing language that is stealing away women's progress. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a female", that's a term you use for livestock, not for humans. I do NOT want to be referred to as "a person with a uterus" or a "cervix haver", because I do NOT want to be reduced to my reproductive organs.

The word "woman" is being redefined to a tautological impossibility, a feeling that is incomprehensibly divorced from my sex as well as my lived experience. It has become a mind-body duality that defines itself in terms of an ephemeral feeling that defies description. And in this process of redefinition being put forth by the opposite sex... the very term "woman" is becoming meaningless. Which in turn makes women as a whole less meaningful.

So I have to ask, how do you want others to refer to you? How do you want your "honorific" characterized... by gender or not.

I guess what am asking is, do you think we ought to drop honorifics altogether - no more Mr or Mrs or Miss...so you would never be known as Mrs E. Cat, or Miss E. Cat or Ms E. Cat - just E.Cat? Is there any necessity to know what a person's gender is? Does it matter if Dr. Jamie Smith is a man or a woman? (note: I don't think it does except in certain circumstances).

ETA: Please note, I'm not trying to take the mickey here, these are genuine questions.

 

[cullennz]

Kind of easy for me and most people to be fair

There are women and there are trans women when talking about people whose gender choice is women

 

[Aber]

I have just stated my views on gender previously in the thread, that it is biopsychosocial in nature.

And yet you failed to articulate what you see the differences were.

 

[Darat]

But research that 'demonstrates' that females have different brains than males couldn't possibly be used to reinforce misogyny and sexism?

Just a note on this. You are right in a sense regarding the differences in brains but there are some differences which are female linked and some that are male linked. There are some brains that can be identified as female or male however for the vast majority of us it appears there is as much variation between say two female brains as there are between a female and male brain. Like many claimed different characteristics between the sexes there are outliers at either end but much more overlapping. The way to think about it is akin to height, males as a group are taller than females, but that doesn't mean if you have two people and all you have is their height you can say the shorter one is female. However if you are looking for the tallest person in the world, in other words the extreme outlier of human height they are more likely to be male than female.

The world keeps insisting on being messy no matter how much we want it to be neat and tidy.

 

[Darat]

I've never looked deeply into the studies. To my way of thinking, you can't say, "The differences are too small to matter." because we don't know enough to know what matters. If you can see it, maybe it matters.



However, if what you are saying is correct, then you can't see it anyway. If a researcher can't look at a scan and say that this brain is female and that one is male, then how could they possibly say that this one is more like a female brain than that one?

See my post above, there are some brains which are "definitely" male and some that are "definitely" female however in the general population there is much more overlap and as much variation between any two female brains as there are between a female and male brain.

ETA : Couple of short articles

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x


https://www.sciencemag.org/news/201...significant-differences-brains-men-and-women#

 

[Roboramma]

You seemed to reject all of that that I said before and started talking about specifically male and female brains like I was advocating that view, when I wasn't.

And the "extreme" part are the slippery slopes you seem to gravitate to. Making so many minor things into Chicken Little situations.

You're making vague accusations. What specific slippery slopes did Emily's Cat gravitate to in the post that you claimed was extreme, and in what way are those specific examples extreme?