DNA can tell you whether someone is male or female

[Shadow Wolf]

In short, research supporting this claim must undermine the research it rests upon is necessarily self-defeating.

In short, you made a wall of text complaining about things that have been covered. Asking questions rather than jumping to long winding conclusions would have helped avoid such a blunder (such as, yes, they have studied the brains of cis men and women as well).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The simplest thing DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female. Apart from some very rare cases, that doesn't even involve looking at their DNA sequence - all you need to know is whether they have X and Y chromosomes (making them male) or a pair of Xs (which makes them female).

XY/XX aren't the only combinations and aren't 100% accurate.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

So it's mental issue. Like it always was.

It opens a can of worms though. A criminal brain looks different than a non criminal brain as well.

An era of predetermined status.

If you want to make that leap then being having a male or female brain is a mental issue.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

In short, you made a wall of text complaining about things that have been covered.

Ok, I’ll simplify. Finding that people born male can have brains that “look” female or vice versa challenges the very idea that brains can “look” either male or female at all.

Now, I’ll attempt to explain, in greater depth but hopefully still simply, why this is so.

You wrote that “transgender people…have a brain that looks more like the sex they identify as than the sex they were born with”. So, for example, a person who identifies as male but was assigned female at birth (whose “biological sex” at birth was female) would have a brain that “looks” male (and the same for someone born with/assigned the sex “male” at birth but identifies as “female”). In order to make a scientific claim that ANDYBODY can have a brain that “looks” female or male (regardless of what they identify as), one must first accept that there is sufficient scientific evidence supporting the claim that brains can “look” female or male.
Now, let’s say you are a researcher in cognitive neuroscience or some other relevant field here, and you’ve read a fair amount of the research on sex-based differences in the brain. You are more than aware, then, that one of the primary assumptions (perhaps THE FOUNDATIONAL assumption) behind this research (at least the research that supports the validity of claims that differences exist) is that sex is an independent variable. That is, all the research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, medicine, etc., claiming to have found differences between male and female brains take biological sex as an unproblematic, binary classification from the start. So, for example, when claims are made that males have larger brains, the studies supporting this rely on participants whom they classify as being either male or female using biological sex.

Let’s say further that you find issue with the validity and interpretation of many of these findings (as various researchers from a variety of fields have). What would be one way to invalidate or challenge this body of research, from your perspective as a researcher in this hypothetical situation?

One method would be to find a decent number of individuals who were born with the biological sex “male” but whose brains “look” to be “female”, or vice versa.

In other words, you would greatly invalidate or challenge this body of research if you could find individuals with “brain{s} that looks more like the sex they identify as than the sex they were born with”.

Asking questions rather than jumping to long winding conclusions would have helped avoid such a blunder (such as, yes, they have studied the brains of cis men and women as well).

I know. I worked on some of that research (albeit not much, and most of the research I was most involved with here was back when I was still hoping to transition from physics to neuroscience and working alongside neuroscientists; since then its been mostly in a much more technical role regarding statistical methods and/or the physics of the neuroimaging methods used). I’d be happy to point you to some of the research relevant here, both with respect to the problematic claims underlying much if not all of the research on sex-based brain differences and with respect to how it is necessary for neuroscientists and those in related fields to move beyond these distinctions (or at least take into account less binary classifications for foundational assumptions and guiding principles).

What most of the studies that take into account perspectives from LGBTQ research or more generally research across fields that isn't based on a binary classification of sex that is all too often automatically reduced (in the main) to gender have found is that previous research was...faulty. In part for the very reasons I outlined: if you take as given that your participants can be classified as "male" or "female" according to biological sex, then you will be necessarily limited only to finding differences (or failing to) along these lines.
Any neuroimaging study that finds individuals whose brain "looks" to be other than their biological sex would be evidence against the validity of sex-based brain difference findings (of course, another set of issues emerges when one takes into account the brain-based changes among individuals who have underwent e.g., gender reassignment procedures, and there are other nuances, of course, but you already called me long winded so I'll spare you more details here).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Any neuroimaging study that finds individuals whose brain "looks" to be other than their biological sex would be evidence against the validity of sex-based brain difference findings (of course, another set of issues emerges when one takes into account the brain-based changes among individuals who have underwent e.g., gender reassignment procedures, and there are other nuances, of course, but you already called me long winded so I'll spare you more details here).

You keep saying neuroimaging, but they've done more than just that, such as examining the brains of dead people.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Ok, I’ll simplify. Finding that people born male can have brains that “look” female or vice versa challenges the very idea that brains can “look” either male or female at all.

No, it doesn't, as it has been found men's and women's brains look different. It's not known how the brains of transgender people develop as they do, but it's strongly believed it has to do with exposure to prenatal hormones that shifted to cause the body to go one way but the brain the other.

 

[Revoltingest]

No, it doesn't, as it has been found men's and women's brains look different. It's not known how the brains of transgender people develop as they do, but it's strongly believed it has to do with exposure to prenatal hormones that shifted to cause the body to go one way but the brain the other.

I wonder what fraction of the condition is due to chimerism?

 

[wellwisher]

Concerning the OP, should we go with science or what we think?

Now before you answer that think about it... If people can go with what they think, then a god is as real as anything else to billions because they believe it, feel it, some say they have experienced it, talked to it, etc.. So it should be accepted as correct right?

Science is being used to defend a position it cannot defend. Consider the theory of evolution and what it claims according to science. The mechanism involves changes in the DNA, then sexual reproduction to forward these changes to the next generation, and then natural selection to pick these changes, so the DNA is further forwarded to the future, by more reproduction.

The problem with transsexual and homosexual is it can not reproduce by its very nature. It breaks the chain of evolution that science has created and therefore cannot, by default, be engrained on the DNA. Science cannot have it both ways. If the critter naturally selected does not reproduce the chain is broken.

Here is scenario; Joe who decides to become Jane, goes on to become very popular and very successful. He/she has many selective advantages in culture and is chosen as a top person by her peers. However, science is not advanced enough, so Joe/Jane cannot reproduce anymore and therefore all her genetic advantages are lost to the future. Her DNA does not go to the future via offspring, due the nature of her gender choice. We may never see the influences of Jane in the gene pool. The only genes that will pass forward require both male and female; practical considerations.

However, Jane who was a very special human, had an impact on local history, in her own unique way. Although this is not recorded on the DNA of the town's future, it is recorded by culture in books and can be learned by others; from the outside. Some who admired Jane, may think the path to success will require being cross gender like Jane. Or parents, who remember Jane, may think this and help cast the die for their child. It has to come from the outside, since the clan DNA does not reflect her.

An interesting addendum to this evolutionary analysis is connected to the religious taboo against this type of willful and learned behavior, that cannot be passed forward into the DNA of future generations. Under the taboo, people who would like to make such choices, had to pretend to be male or female; biological sex, and even have children, to satisfy the facade and avoid any social backlash. This use of forced choice and will power, allowed the genes of homosexuality, to be passed forward. This may have resulted in some genetic transference of homosexual DNA, but not because of classic evolution. There are loopholes in human evolution that forced choice and willpower can induce.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I wonder what fraction of the condition is due to chimerism?

I'm not aware it's ever been linked, and one actual sex/gender therapist (who does his job right) informed my mom it's a no because she had the same question.

 

[Revoltingest]

I'm not aware it's ever been linked, and one actual sex/gender therapist (who does his job right) informed my mom it's a no because she had the same question.

There's your PhD thesis subject!

 

[Twilight Hue]

The simplest thing DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female. Apart from some very rare cases, that doesn't even involve looking at their DNA sequence - all you need to know is whether they have X and Y chromosomes (making them male) or a pair of Xs (which makes them female).

Or look at their skeleton. Skeletons don't lie.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Or look at their skeleton. Skeletons don't lie.

Actually, one of the oldest burial sites we've found, people were buried next to each other, suggesting they were couples. One pair is of two male skeletons, however, one of them is buried like the female skeletons.
And, yeah, skeletons lie to. For example it's normal and somewhat common for females to not develop the "normal" female hips. Sometimes males don't get that big. Sometimes forensic anthropologists even have a hard time telling.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

There's your PhD thesis subject!

I think I'd rather explore where arselings get the confidence to speak with certainty on things they clearly know nothing about.

 

[Revoltingest]

I think I'd rather explore where arselings get the confidence to speak with certainty on things they clearly know nothing about.

That's a rich field, likely already fully explored.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

That's a rich field, likely already fully explored.

Likely, but I can be a *****. Just as an experiment variable I wouldn't mind seeing what happens when a test subject is told "but you sound stupid, like you're saying 5+5=gizmos or telling us Ohm's Law is a Hindu thing."

 

[Revoltingest]

Likely, but I can be a *****. Just as an experiment variable I wouldn't mind seeing what happens when a test subject is told "but you sound stupid, like you're saying 5+5=gizmos or telling us Ohm's Law is a Hindu thing."

Some conversations are unproductive.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Some conversations are unproductive.

But poking and prodding at things is partly how I figure stuff out. Amd since I can't really take humans apart and open them up to do that part of figuring things out, I just have to settle for poking and prodding.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

Actually, one of the oldest burial sites we've found, people were buried next to each other, suggesting they were couples. One pair is of two male skeletons, however, one of them is buried like the female skeletons.
And, yeah, skeletons lie to. For example it's normal and somewhat common for females to not develop the "normal" female hips. Sometimes males don't get that big. Sometimes forensic anthropologists even have a hard time telling.

And I've definitely seen my share of cis men with huge butts and childbearing hips.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Actually, one of the oldest burial sites we've found, people were buried next to each other, suggesting they were couples. One pair is of two male skeletons, however, one of them is buried like the female skeletons.
And, yeah, skeletons lie to. For example it's normal and somewhat common for females to not develop the "normal" female hips. Sometimes males don't get that big. Sometimes forensic anthropologists even have a hard time telling.

That's true and fine, but I'm talking about individual identity of one's actual physical sex.

 

[Saint Frankenstein]

That's true and fine, but I'm talking about individual identity of one's actual physical sex.

What does it matter? I was born female however that's not how I live my life and no one knows until I tell them. Who cares. It's only relevant if I'm going to have sex with someone or they're my doctor, in my life.

Same with DNA, chromosomes and the other stuff people blather about as if it's relevant to daily life. I'm sure you're not thinking about those things in regard to yourself.