Sex personality differences

[Darat]

Not on my part. I have been saying "on average" all along as far as I know.

I am not sure what point you think you are making, you seem to disagree with me and then clarify that you are saying the same thing that I am saying.

If the differences I am suggesting were unique to each sex and not on average then they could hardly be candidates for the brain states underlying the state of being transgender.

I don't know why you think I am suggesting that people who are transgender have brain characteristics that are never, ever found in their own sex.

So we are definitely *not* looking for something that would correlate with sex 100% of the time.

The suggestion here is that people who are transgender might have the brain characteristics that are usually (I keep emphasising the "usually") found in the opposite sex.

So clearly "on average" is just exactly what we are looking for.

Thanks - that explains your position to me clearly.

We are in agreement!

But - of course a but - we don't have the evidence from research to be able to rule out or rule in that idea, and it is made even harder because we don't seem to have an agreed upon definition for the behaviours we are looking at explaining by way of differences in brains.

 

[Robin]

The issue is more that no brain starts out identical to any other, they will vary even amongst identical twins, just like many other organs do, identical twin studies have given us a lot of hints of the plasticity of the brain.

What we can say is that by the end of puberty and early adulthood (approximately 20) there are only "on average" differences between the brains of females and males.

And let me stress again, "on average" is just exactly what I have been saying all along.

A perfect correlation would contradict what I would be saying because it wouldn't allow the possibility of someone having most of the brains characteristics usually associated with the opposite sex.

An imperfect correlation is just exactly what this thesis requires.

 

[Darat]

People keep saying things that are perfectly consistent with what I am saying and acting as though they contradict what I am saying.

If these brain characteristics were perfectly correlated to sex then it would contradict what I am saying.

The fact that there might be brain characteristics that correlate to sex, but not perfectly is just what I have been saying all along.

You wouldn't get a spectrum with perfectly correlated characteristics, you would get a binary. You need an imperfect correlation to get a spectrum.

I blame my inferior olivary nucleus' lack of caffeine in a morning.

 

[Robin]

That's a serious misinterpretation.

I am not sure in what way a question is an interpretation or a misinterpretation. I hadn't made any interpretation at all, I was just looking for an answer.

I was told that I was arguing for transsexuality, which was a surprise to me and somewhat puzzling because I am not even sure what "arguing for transsexuality" would even mean.

Also, I had not brought up the term "transsexual" and I am unsure if it is the same as trans gender, which is what I had been hitherto talking about.

I had assumed that even most of those who would baulk at the proposition that a trans man was a man or a transwoman was a woman, nevertheless would accept that being transgender is a genuine experience and not a pose or a fashion statement.

I have not known any trans men, but I have known a few trans women over about 4 decades and "wishing to live as a woman" would seem like a statement by someone who had not even tried to understand them.

 

[Robin]

I blame my inferior olivary nucleus' lack of caffeine in a morning.

Possibly my remarks were the result of the same thing.

 

[lomiller]

Isn't that the whole point of this conversation, for the most part we are really only guessing at how much of the difference between masculinity and femininity is biological vs sociological?

Behavior, appearance, and social roles differ from culture to culture so the very definition of femininity\masculinity can also change from culture to culture. This is above and beyond how much conformance to these standards is socially created or enforced.

 

[lomiller]

Brains are sexed, not gendered. So if you look at the chromosomal makeup of brain cells, you can tell which is male and which is female. Barring that, the only other observable difference is directly related to hormone exposure that differs between males and females.

As you say, all of the other claims to "man brain" and "lady brain" are inconclusive and not predictive.

They may not be apparent just by looking at the physical brain, but IMO there likely are less obvious differences. There are different evolutionary imperatives for each sex and this will almost certainly result in different strategies wrt meeting and treatment of offspring. While many of these may be chemically triggered it would be unusual for evolution to use that as the only mechanism for influencing this.

Again though, defining a male vs female brain using these differences seems a little unlikely.

 

[lomiller]

People keep saying things that are perfectly consistent with what I am saying and acting as though they contradict what I am saying.

If these brain characteristics were perfectly correlated to sex then it would contradict what I am saying.

The fact that there might be brain characteristics that correlate to sex, but not perfectly is just what I have been saying all along.

You wouldn't get a spectrum with perfectly correlated characteristics, you would get a binary. You need an imperfect correlation to get a spectrum.

If it's a continuous spectrum why are breaking it up into genders in the first place? If the goal is to discard gender norms where they are obsolete, irrelevant or unnecessary then great, but I get the sense you think gender norms are explainable by the type of "brain" someone has. This would tend to re-enforce existing gender norms instead of doing away with the ones we don't need.


As a thought experiment, what happens if you identify male\female traits and you find:

a) People who self identify as belonging the other gender but don't cluster with the opposite sex on your spectrum of traits?
b) People who do cluster with the opposite biological sex, but do not identify with belonging to that gender?

Do you force the a gender on these people that they don't identify with just because they cluster that way on the spectrum you've described?

 

[Emily's Cat]

Nope. The evidence is that there is no such observable difference that allows us to determine if the brain is female or male, all we can do is say “on average”.

My understanding, which is certainly not expert, is that both testosterone and estrogen have observable effects when present in the brain.

Whether that's enough to be predictable (without actually measuring the presence of hormones) is a different question.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So he is claiming that there is clear evidence of a gendered brain, not just in humans but in other animals.

Let's be very clear here: Wright is talking about sex-based behavioral traits. They are NOT talking about "gendered" brains. When the discussion comes around to this topic, we need to keep a very clear distinction between sex and gender.

"Blank Slate" rhetoric for humans is, well, wrong. There are sex-linked variances in behaviors and instincts in humans, just as there are in any other sexually dimorphic species. But they are SEX-linked. They're not "gender" linked.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Disagree, at best he is describing the “phenotype” of the brain of animals but even then I’d say he is going beyond the evidence we have. We only have research into the brains of very few animals and as we now know interpolating animal studies to humans is difficult to get right even within narrow fields like biochemistry.

Wright isn't actually talking about brains at all. They're talking about sex-linked behavioral differences. They're an evolutionary biologist, not a neuroscientist.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Yes it is in regards to structural or unique differences between female and male brains.

This is one of those areas that significant new research is happening “as we speak” so it can be difficult to be up to date when writing opinion pieces.

As I said earlier any significant or unique differences between male and female brains are not caused by having differently structured brains, it is going to be the chemical soup and the rest of the body and how that influences our - as Worzel would put it - “thinkings”. I would also be very wary of only looking at the brain for understanding our behaviour, the brain itself is only part of a system and excluding the rest of the body strikes me as a reduction too far.

Yes, exactly. And some portion of it is not intrinsic at all, it's social conditioning on our very plastic brains.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So if this is what he is arguing against then clearly he is arguing for the position that the male and female brains in humans don't start out identical.

No. Wright is not talking about brains specifically, and they're definitely not talking about the structure of the brain - anything that would be observable.

Look - female lions and male lions are physically different, and they exhibit different behaviors. They're sexually dimorphic. But there's not a region of the brain you can cut open and say "See, here's the part that makes the male lion lay around and be lazy, only keeping a lookout for threats... and here's the part of the female lion's brain that makes them the primary hunters".

That behavioral difference is not due to a structural difference in the brain.

 

[Darat]

Wright isn't actually talking about brains at all. They're talking about sex-linked behavioral differences. They're an evolutionary biologist, not a neuroscientist.

Which is why I introduced the term "the “phenotype” of the brain of animals".

The science does not support (nor of course contradict) his opinions.

 

[Darat]

There are some interesting wrinkles in the science of neurology, for instance female rats (and mice) have often been excluded from studies because it was thought they would be more variable because they were female and their reproductive cycle.

However, it is interesting to find that despite the distinct physiological differences in their bodies, in terms of neurology they are no more variable than the variability we see within the male population of rats. (https://bsd.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13293-016-0087-5)

 

[Louden Wilde]

It isn't, but go on.
.
and genitalia), their brain will become more like those of people who function as the gender they were assigned at birth.

Sorry - I don't want to derail the thread, but I can't let this argument (conflating deleterious with neutral/healthy variation) slide. Sex is binary in mammals and almost always genetically determined (there are a few rodent species that lack a Y but otherwise have similar development). People with DSDs do not indicate additional sexes or that 'sex is a spectrum'. Moreover, it's some serious cherry-picking to apply it to sex and not other characteristics. Humans have 46 chromosomes, 5 digits per limb, are (like other primates) visually oriented, have a well-developed pre-frontal cortex, etc. However, there are pathogenic mutations (or accidents) that can alter any of these (or virtually any) characteristics in an individual.

Bottom line: If a person is fertile at any point in their life, it's because they are able to produce oocytes or sperm. If not, they are not relevant to a definition of sex.

Here's a definition I use:
Sex is a biological concept. Asexual reproduction (cloning) is routine in microorganisms and some plants, but most vertebrates and all mammals have 2 distinct sexes. Even single-cell organisms have “mating types” to facilitate sexual reproduction. Only cells belonging to different mating types can fuse together to reproduce sexually (2, 3). Sexual reproduction allows for exchange of genetic information and promotes genetic diversity. The classical biological definition of the 2 sexes is that females have ovaries and make larger female gametes (eggs), whereas males have testes and make smaller male gametes (sperm); the 2 gametes fertilize to form the zygote, which has the potential to become a new individual. The advantage of this simple definition is first that it can be applied universally to any species of sexually reproducing organism. Second, it is a bedrock concept of evolution, because selection of traits may differ in the 2 sexes. Thirdly, the definition can be extended to the ovaries and testes, and in this way the categories—female and male—can be applied also to individuals who have gonads but do not make gametes.

Note that there are a lot of differences between the two mammalian gamete types besides size (e.g. many features of chromatin organization and epigenetic marks).

Also sex is observed at birth - Yes, there are awful cases of those with DSDs getting incorrectly characterized, but that's not what this thread is about (or what trans issues are about). I'm not aware of 'gender' being formally assigned, but one could argue that that it's the socialization according to sex-specific stereotypes (which I'd like to see eliminated).

That being said, in non-monogamous mammalian species you'd expect to see greater sexual dimorphism in behavior (given that mammalian females bear nearly all of the reproductive costs) and there's data to support that. I did some research that bore on this- I can go back and find refs if there is interest.

 

[Robin]

Let's be very clear here: Wright is talking about sex-based behavioral traits. They are NOT talking about "gendered" brains. When the discussion comes around to this topic, we need to keep a very clear distinction between sex and gender.

"Blank Slate" rhetoric for humans is, well, wrong. There are sex-linked variances in behaviors and instincts in humans, just as there are in any other sexually dimorphic species. But they are SEX-linked. They're not "gender" linked.

What is gender, if it is not the mental characteristics that are linked to sex?

Can you be specific about what you mean by "gender"?

 

[Robin]

No. Wright is not talking about brains specifically,

Here is what he says:

Evolutionary explanations for human behavior challenge their a priori commitment to “Blank Slate” psychology—the belief that male and female brains in humans start out identical and that all behavior, sex-linked or otherwise, is entirely the result of differences in socialization.

So if he is critiquing this view then he must be saying that male and female brains don't start out identical.

and they're definitely not talking about the structure of the brain - anything that would be observable.

I have already said that if there are brain characteristics that underlie sex linked personality traits then they would probably be a lot more subtle than the kinds of structures we have been talking about.

But are you saying that these differences would not be observable, even in principle? If so then you would be talking about some sort of dualism.

Look - female lions and male lions are physically different, and they exhibit different behaviors. They're sexually dimorphic. But there's not a region of the brain you can cut open and say "See, here's the part that makes the male lion lay around and be lazy, only keeping a lookout for threats... and here's the part of the female lion's brain that makes them the primary hunters".

That behavioral difference is not due to a structural difference in the brain.

Again, he is talking about heritable differences between the brains of males and females. I don't know what kinds of things you classify as "structure" in the brain but it seems completely irrelevant to me.

Wright was suggesting heritable differences between the brains of males and females from the start.

 

[theprestige]

What is gender, if it is not the mental characteristics that are linked to sex?

Gender is a social construct. It's a perception other people have about you. As such, it's entirely agnostic about your mental characteristics. Other people cannot perceive your mental characteristics. All they can perceive is your outward presentation of the construct.

Anyway, the whole push of modern society is away from coupling gender to specific social constructs. Men don't need to act a certain way to identify as men - or be identified as men. Women likewise.

And I don't think anyone is in favor of having to "think like a woman" in order to identify as a woman. So I'm not sure this study tells us anything useful. Unless we're hardcore TERFs looking for science to support the proposition that transgenderism is largely an affectation that does not need to be acknowledged or accommodated in public policy.

 

[Darat]

Here is what he says:


So if he is critiquing this view then he must be saying that male and female brains don't start out identical.


I have already said that if there are brain characteristics that underlie sex linked personality traits then they would probably be a lot more subtle than the kinds of structures we have been talking about.


...snip....

That sounds suspiciously like a "difference of the gaps" argument. We can now go down to the level of neurons, where else could this subtle difference in structures be?