"The Science of Being Transgender" (Thoughts on this video?)

submitted by Kai_Decadence from self.GenderCritical

The Science of Being Transgender

So I got around to watching this video and I was finding most of it to be BS with the whole "people have been historically identifying as trans for centuries" claim but then it gets up to the brain sex theory and the study claims to have used 2600 participants in the experiment where they saw that trans-identified men's brains looked identical to women's brains.

One red flag that I kept in mind with this study is that it didn't account for homosexuality which some studies have shown can play a part in the development of the brain where a gay man's brain might look different than that of a straight man's brain and vice versa with lesbian women vs hetero women. Another factor that they didn't seem to factor in was environment and potential disorders that have to do with personality, mental, and/or developmental conditions.

And then the guy talks about the studies that Dr. Julie Bakker did on 160 "transgender children and teens" and saw the same results with the trans-identified boys' brains matching girls brains and trans-identified girls brains matching with boys brains. But again, I really don't think they're taking into consideration environment in this situation. When I hear "trans-identifed children", I'm thinking of gender nonconforming children who more than likely participate in activities and interests that are stereotypical of the opposite sex which socially constructed and for all we know, could be playing a part in the similar developmental structures of the brain i.e gender nonconforming boy liking things likes dolls and dresses like that of your typical little girl and a gender nonconforming girl liking things like playing sports and liking to get dirty like that of your typical boy.

I'm really trying to learn to be more critical of these theories. The only thing that this study did was that it did have a sample size of 500+ with replicated results. However if my observational skills are accurate, it failed to take in other factors like developmental, behavioral, and/or personality disorders, social environment (including upbringing as far as the kids are concerned especially), homosexuality (or even bisexuality), and in the case of the adults, at least showing what the brains looked like before taking hormones though if they were gender nonconforming children, it probably wouldn't make much of a difference.

Anyway I'm curious what you all think here. This is being used as an irrefutable notion that transgender science is valid. But I know there is more than meets the eye.

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[–]odius 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I tried to find those two studies, but the links he provides don't even cite them. For the Sjoen MRI study, there's one about Sjoen which doesn't even talk about MRIs, and another about MRIs in general which doesn't mention Sjoen or transgender people. I'm not even convinced the MRI study he talks about even exists because when I googled it the only references I could find were citing his video. As for the one with 160 participants, he has a link, but again, not to the original study. This time it's an article from LGBTQ Nation. I tried to look for the study myself, but the best I could find is an abstract. Supposedly it was presented at the European Society for Endocrinology in 2018, but if it was published I can't find it.

But let's be real. Did this guy read any of these two "completely authoritative" studies? No, of course not. The study by Bakker with 160 participants, he quotes from that LGBTQ Nation article. That's probably all he's read. And do you suppose he could explain what a male brain is, what a female brain is, and how they're different? No, of course not. He's blathering on about science, science, science, but this guy has no idea what he's talking about. That's why he keeps asserting it's PROVEN and SCIENTIFIC FACT. He knows he has no real facts to back him up. And then at the end he says they did 6 hours of research. Ask any academic, that's absolutely nothing. Most scientific books can't even be read in 6 hours. He knows nothing.

Now when I was younger, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I started to become critical about transgenderism, and I started to become critical about brain sex. I remember wondering, what is a male brain? What is a female brain? How do we know which is which? Besides, if a brain is in a male body wouldn't that make it, by definition, male? And why stop at sexed brains? Are there female livers? Male kidneys? Why not? And if someone had a "female brain in a male body," how would you even know? What does being a female feel like? And how should someone who by any reasonable definition is male know he's feeling female? How can you feel like something you're not? And that's not even to mention "nonbinary" people. Do gender fluid people's brains change? Are agender people missing part of the brain? Do bigender people have two brains? It makes no sense.

So, I did research. More than 6 hours I'd reckon. He's actually completely lying when he says there were "no studies without bias before 2015." There were a number of "transgender brain" studies starting in the mid 1990s with Zhou et al. They were all debunked because they either had small sample sizes, or didn't account for sexual orientation or hormone use. Factor those in and the "transgender brain" disappears. My guess is these two studies he mentions have just the same problems as the ones I read, if they exist at all.

After reading the trans brain studies (there aren't very many), I stumbled on the book "The Man who Would be Queen" by J. Michael Bailey. It's about the idea of Blanchard's typology, that there are two kinds of MTFs: homosexual, who transition because they're naturally feminine and transitioning makes their lives easier, and nonhomosexual, who are not naturally feminine and transition due a fetish for being a woman called "autogynephile."

Read that book and tell me which idea makes more sense.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Ah the plot thickens I see. I didn't look into the sources to see if those studies actually existed because I was too focused on mentally debunking the video because I already was seeing red flags in the supposed "study" that weren't being taken into account like homosexuality, the effects of HRT on the brain (in the adults), and the aforementioned personality, mental, and/or behavioral disorders as well as environment.

And do you suppose he could explain what a male brain is, what a female brain is, and how they're different?

Personally no but I'd gather he's just blab on about the grey matter vs white matter argument but it's pretty meaningless because there could be all kinds of developmental phenomenon that could cause that from the other aforementioned factors I questioned above.

Now when I was younger, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, I started to become critical about transgenderism, and I started to become critical about brain sex. I remember wondering, what is a male brain? What is a female brain? How do we know which is which? Besides, if a brain is in a male body wouldn't that make it, by definition, male? And why stop at sexed brains? Are there female livers? Male kidneys? Why not? And if someone had a "female brain in a male body," how would you even know? What does being a female feel like? And how should someone who by any reasonable definition is male know he's feeling female? How can you feel like something you're not? And that's not even to mention "nonbinary" people. Do gender fluid people's brains change? Are agender people missing part of the brain? Do bigender people have two brains? It makes no sense.

See this is a very good rebuttal and whenever would see other gender critical people pose these questions, they usually never get responses or in one instance I remember one saying that the brain is different because it's the system that controls the whole body. Though I think this is why some trans-identified people dislike the whole non-binary, genderfluid, agender, and greygender concept because it just puts further spotlight on the whole trans ideology and making people question why they're critical of those concepts but not so much transgender once they start to realize that the concept is reliant on socially constructed gender roles.

So, I did research. More than 6 hours I'd reckon. He's actually completely lying when he says there were "no studies without bias before 2015." There were a number of "transgender brain" studies starting in the mid 1990s with Zhou et al. They were all debunked because they either had small sample sizes, or didn't account for sexual orientation or hormone use. Factor those in and the "transgender brain" disappears. My guess is these two studies he mentions have just the same problems as the ones I read, if they exist at all.

Right, the study the studies he cites are from like 2018 and even though i haven't really read up that much about the brain sex theory, I'm aware that there have been a good many that span more than just 2-3 years but like you said, they still don't factor in sexual orientation or hormone use (or environment and potential disorders). At the most they'll say that "they're not the same as homosexuality" but they never explain why.

After reading the trans brain studies (there aren't very many), I stumbled on the book "The Man who Would be Queen" by J. Michael Bailey. It's about the idea of Blanchard's typology, that there are two kinds of MTFs: homosexual, who transition because they're naturally feminine and transitioning makes their lives easier, and nonhomosexual, who are not naturally feminine and transition due a fetish for being a woman called "autogynephile."

Right I've heard of this book many times how it was inspired upon the research of Blanchard's typology and the outrage it caused towards a lot of trans-identified men to the point where he received a ton of harassment. As for the book itself, I actually just started reading it and I am 2 chapters in and I've gotta say as a feminine gay man myself, this is hitting WAY CLOSE to home and I'm kicking myself for not reading it sooner but it explains a lot, a lot of which I figured out on my own but still, it's nice to know that these this type of literature has existed for a long time and gets everything right when it comes to the treatment of feminine boys and how it can play into one developing GID not from some mental interference but from society's treatment at large (including the treatment of gender nonconforming women).

[–]odius 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

As for the book itself, I actually just started reading it and I am 2 chapters in and I've gotta say as a feminine gay man myself, this is hitting WAY CLOSE to home

I had the same experience when I read it. The part that really got me was when he talked about a study which looked at dancers and found something like around half of the straight dancers pursued dance because they wanted to, whereas for gay dancers, the vast majority did. That's what happened to me as a child: when I was a little boy, I remember going to my sister's dance recitals and really wanting to dance, but my parents wouldn't let me. Before I read that I was a bit skeptical about the notion that sexuality was innate, but that convinced me.

I should also point out that any neuroscientist will tell that we don't really know how the brain works. We don't know how moods are created, how thoughts are created. We can't point to the memories or visions or sounds in the brain, nothing. The West has a real fetish for materialism but there's just no evidence that the brain even contains our minds or anything like that. I once read about a woman whose brain was basically missing (IIRC she had a small bit of it) and she functioned more or less normally. We know so little about it. And yet people would have you believe that sex is in the brain, somehow, whatever that means.

It makes so much more sense when you realize that transgender people transition because they want to. If they didn't want to, they wouldn't, and for all the talk about dysphoria or whatever, if that was really the issue they would seek to end the dysphoria. People with OCD don't go to psychiatrists asking for help getting rid of germs. People with a fear of snakes don't go to psychiatrists asking for help eradicating the world's snakes. And if you hated your penis, as transgender people claim to, would your thought be "let's cut it off?" They do it because they want to. And I think Blanchard's typology is much more coherent than any notion about "brain sex."

Also, the more I think about the Sjoen study the more I realize it doesn't exist. When I googled the other study, I found tons of links from popular news sites interviewing the author and talking about how she proved trans brains are real. But I can't find a single article about this 2600 person study. You'd think that would be a big news story no?

edit: I also found it funny when he talked about "nonbinary brains." He was correct in quoting that scientist who said that most people's brains are "in between." But she wasn't talking about "nonbinary" people, but rather non-transgender men and women's brains. I wonder how Mr. Science would explain that? Should those people be informed that they've actually been nonbinary all this time?

[–]SnowAssMan 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Brainsex":

The fact that some neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, and neurometabolic features in transgender individuals resemble those of their experienced gender despite the MAJORITY resembling those from their natal sex means that binary transgender identity is impossible. Even a non-binary gender identity conclusion would be a stretch, since the evidence is still weighted in favour of "their natal sex".

"Historical transgender":

Outside the modern day West all these global & historical supposed "transgender" males are all homosexuals. Historical "trans-identified males" are appropriated gay men. In most cultures & throughout history there has been a distinction between gay male "bottoms" & "tops". "Tops" could include gynandromorphophilic men & pederasts, who were otherwise straight. Most cultures have a term for gay men, which they often only use to describe the "passive" ones. These have been appropriated by the trans movement to refer to "third gender" & "transgender".

[–]LilianH 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

There is no science of being transgender. It's all made up.

The only study on "brain sex" that has around that number of participants was one by Daphna Joel that concluded that there is no male or female brains and that all brains were a mix of characteristics, some more common in males and some more common in females, but none exclusive to one sex.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Right I totally understand that it's a bunch of nonsense. I pointed out the problems I found with the video and another commenter actually pointed out that there is a lot of clouded information on the supposed studies this guy cites including one that only refers back to the LBTQ+ site and I mean, of course the later would push that... The only thing that the "study" did was have a big sample size (160 children and 1600 adults) but when not accounting for various other factors, it's meaningless.

[–]Mermer 2 insightful - 3 fun2 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 3 fun -  (2 children)

Transphobes are stupid This proves trans people are valid

Definitely smart person words

[–]odius 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

As someone who watched the video, I can confirm that this is a good summary.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Haha right?

[–]FlippyKing 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Human brains do not reproduce, human people do. Brain studies are pointless in dealing with sex. Its like classifying baseball players according to what they do when they play soccer, or classifying Rugby players by what they do when they play quidditch for those in the British Isles. Gender is bullshit, if we accept this bullshit then we would have an additional way to classify some people, but sex would remain immutable. I don't need to dig through the studies to draw these obvious conclusions.

[–]Kai_Decadence[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Believe me, i totally get it and what you said is true that trying to diversify brains in this way is a fools quest because no brain is one and the same and many other factors can affect the brain's development. But I feel like tackling these things can be beneficial because it's the one prominent thing being used to indoctrinate people into the belief as the average person may not understand this stuff.

[–]FlippyKing 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think the best thing to do for someone who is lost in their own delusions is to tell them they are lost in their own delusions. If the store you want to go to is just down the street from where you live, but you drive the other way, get on a hiway, pay a few tolls and over-complicate the simple, then the best thing we can do is not suggest "EZ Pass" for the tolls but say "you are over-complicating this."

You see this in the arts, and you see it all sorts of other areas. You can get so enamored with details and complications, crazy techniques or obscure patterns, that the simple truth of things is forgotten. This is why I take zero steps away from Men and Women as defined by the reproductive function of the genitals.

To the question of DSDs I ask those posing the question to answer it and point out it has nothing to do with gender. To the notion that someone feels like a man or woman or they always "knew" they were not what their sex is" I say none of us do and none of us are. We are fully human with all the same feelings and insecurities and the same sense of lacking.

The one thing I realized most recently, and am perhaps more insistent on than the trans idea, is that there is really no such thing as "cis", that is pure projection, if not envy or groundless disdain. At best there are those who are blissfully unaware of all this bs, but they might be dudes who write poems or like figure skating, or cooking, or any presumably girly things, or women who like rugby or football, or carpentry, or The Three Stooges, or what ever else guys are supposed to like.