In the interest of open debate I present this video that YouTube decided to put on my sidebar. This guy, Robert Sapolsky, appears to be quite legit. Of course, my first response to his claims about trans brains (with or without hormones), the absence of phantom penises in transwomen who have had vaginoplasty, etc., is how large were the studies, how honest were the people who wrote the papers (I recently read a good critique about a recent study widely advertised in the media about the lack of regret of TIMs n’ TIFs who had SRS that actually confirmed nothing of the sort.)
If we take what he’s saying as valid, then we can see why some people might take offense at those who are denying transpeople’s reality and causing them to suffer.
But even still, that’s Meghan Murphy trying to speak. She’d been banned from Twitter for going up against the ridiculous, creepy, Jonathan Yaniv. Even if the studies about trans-brains are valid, is it the case that everyone claiming trans-status today is wired that way? Even if what he says is true, there are still de-transitioners who (if one reads Eliza Mondegreen) had clearly been enticed into a cult. Even if what he says is true, does that mean that a transwoman with the brain structure he describes is 100% mentally female with none of the predatory traits [unfortunately] so pervasive in men? How does he account for the numbers of TIMs in prison because they’ve been convicted of sexual assaults? Even if what he says is true, it doesn’t change the fact that “puberty blockers” can cause osteoporosis among other things. That children are even more vulnerable to the cult-like arguments of genderism and parents have every right to be concerned about this. Finally, there IS such a thing as AGP. There are so many TIMs celebrating their “euphoria boners” on reddit clearly advertising that they have a fetish.
For all those reasons, even it what Sapolsky is saying is robustly valid, there is still room for debate that allows the views of GC feminists to be heard.
Me, there’s another problem with what he said. I’m surprised Sapolsky is in that brain thing (yes, he’s legit; he studies primates). The brain studies that determine ‘male brain, female brain’ are themselves questionable. The majority of women tested show the pattern for “male brain”. What the hell does that mean? Most of us are male, not female? Even if we don’t think so? It means one thing, and one thing only: we all have human brains. Some of them tend to be wired a little differently, which could be the result of upbringing instead of genetics, because WE DON’T KNOW.
Even the books that report the ‘male brain, female brain’ differences note that more women have male brains than female brains, though they don’t word it that way. Somehow they take a number under 50% of women and convert it into a woman’s brain…which means that the percentage of males with the so-called ‘female brain’ are all women. Some people think those males must be gay, but there are two problems with that. The percentage of males who have ‘female’ brains is higher than the percentage of gay males. And since when are more than 50% of women lesbians?
Me @1, I’m not inclined to watch YouTube videos, but I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. If my information is out of date and Sapolsky has some new information on the subject, please let me know.
The neuroimaging studies that show reliable differences between the gender dysphoric/transsexual patients and controls have compared same-sex attracted patients with straight controls. If Sapolsky doesn’t mention sexual orientation as a confounding factor, he can be dismissed right off the bat.
Those studies do show some sex atypical brain patterns. They’re not identical to what’s “typical” for the other sex in this or that, but they’re “moved in that direction” (that’s the phrase I remember.) Homosexual people who don’t identify as trans have also tended to show some atypicalities, in other, unrelated studies.
But the few (one or two?) studies that looked at non-gay males who identified as trans showed very different results.
So–there’s no evidence to be found here that “trans folks” are a monophyletic group (as the biologists would say.)
We don’t know how much of this is innate, how much may be due to brain plasticity (rumination actually changes your physical brain,) or whatever. Nor to my knowledge has anyone compared MRIs of gender non-conforming people who don’t identify as trans to those who do.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that most biologists understand statistics better than the average person. Pro tip: by and large, they don’t, Sapolsky included. (Although scientists that DON’T study natural populations do seem to be even worse at the population-statistics-understanding business… I’m looking at you, NDT :-/)
Statistically significant differences between population means (which more often than not are themselves estimated by proxy via sample means, and not actually measured directly) say nothing about any given specific individual in isolation. The vast majority of published research fails to emphasize that, and we’re thus left with all sorts of patently stupid statements about male and female brains, homosexual vs heterosexual brains, nevermind all the gender woo nonsense. Drives me nuts :-/
Thank you, Ibbica. Well said. You saved me from saying it, though I may say it anyway. Too many scientists are too enamored of the mean, and not enough take statistics. I was fortunate that both the colleges where I did my advanced degrees required graduate students to take statistics, and because of my specialty in Ecology, multivariate statistics was also required by my committee. I love statistics, by the way, and I’m with you: drives me nuts the things I hear people saying when statistics are involved.
The male/female brain thing is a great example of misuse or misunderstanding of statistics, sample sizes, importance, variation around the mean, range, etc etc etc.
I only mentioned you because your writing does such a good job of conveying the ephemeral benefits and the grasping at straws rationalizations with which TIF’s try to rationalize their transitions, as well as the circular reasoning of professional groups such as WPATH to justify their opinions.
Anyway, the video appears to be from some time ago since he appears much younger than his present age of 66 in it.
It starts off in the middle of Sapolsky talking about stuff like homosexual women having the “same auto-acoustical thingy going on there” as straight men.
Then he spends a few seconds joking about 40 million homosexual men and women being cured of mental illness overnight when their sexuality was removed from the DSM, going on to infer that the same thing will happen for transexualism, because of reasons.
For transexualism he says “a handful of studies” say something similar about transexuals vis-a-vis homosexuals.
“Average sizes” is a typical brain sex difference. Eg.) Where the amgydala sends its projections into the hypothalamus.
One type of neuron with a neurotransmitter is “very reliably” twice the size in males as in females.
Next he says it’s the number of these neurons that is different. That simply by looking at that you can “pretty confidently” tell if it’s a male brain or a female brain.
That this was seen by some neuro-anatomists doing post-mortems on a “large sample size” of transsexual brains showing the difference in this type/number [?] of neuron[s] as being not of the sex they were born but of that which they had always insisted they were.
This difference was seen whether or not the men (the study was apparently of male/TIM brains) had undergone cross-hormone treatments or had simply lived their lives claiming to have been born in the wrong body..
Furthermore, post-mortems of non-TIMs who took the same hormones for testicular cancer didn’t show this particular brain difference.
And then their was the stuff about the study of how TIMS who had vaginoplasty didn’t report phantom penises the way men who had penectomies for cancer did.
iknklast and ibbica have already spoken to Sapolsky’s use of statistics. I am not proud of my mathematical incompetence and will have to take their word that these studies have missued statistics.
In the interest of open debate I present this video that YouTube decided to put on my sidebar. This guy, Robert Sapolsky, appears to be quite legit. Of course, my first response to his claims about trans brains (with or without hormones), the absence of phantom penises in transwomen who have had vaginoplasty, etc., is how large were the studies, how honest were the people who wrote the papers (I recently read a good critique about a recent study widely advertised in the media about the lack of regret of TIMs n’ TIFs who had SRS that actually confirmed nothing of the sort.)
If we take what he’s saying as valid, then we can see why some people might take offense at those who are denying transpeople’s reality and causing them to suffer.
But even still, that’s Meghan Murphy trying to speak. She’d been banned from Twitter for going up against the ridiculous, creepy, Jonathan Yaniv. Even if the studies about trans-brains are valid, is it the case that everyone claiming trans-status today is wired that way? Even if what he says is true, there are still de-transitioners who (if one reads Eliza Mondegreen) had clearly been enticed into a cult. Even if what he says is true, does that mean that a transwoman with the brain structure he describes is 100% mentally female with none of the predatory traits [unfortunately] so pervasive in men? How does he account for the numbers of TIMs in prison because they’ve been convicted of sexual assaults? Even if what he says is true, it doesn’t change the fact that “puberty blockers” can cause osteoporosis among other things. That children are even more vulnerable to the cult-like arguments of genderism and parents have every right to be concerned about this. Finally, there IS such a thing as AGP. There are so many TIMs celebrating their “euphoria boners” on reddit clearly advertising that they have a fetish.
For all those reasons, even it what Sapolsky is saying is robustly valid, there is still room for debate that allows the views of GC feminists to be heard.
Me, there’s another problem with what he said. I’m surprised Sapolsky is in that brain thing (yes, he’s legit; he studies primates). The brain studies that determine ‘male brain, female brain’ are themselves questionable. The majority of women tested show the pattern for “male brain”. What the hell does that mean? Most of us are male, not female? Even if we don’t think so? It means one thing, and one thing only: we all have human brains. Some of them tend to be wired a little differently, which could be the result of upbringing instead of genetics, because WE DON’T KNOW.
Even the books that report the ‘male brain, female brain’ differences note that more women have male brains than female brains, though they don’t word it that way. Somehow they take a number under 50% of women and convert it into a woman’s brain…which means that the percentage of males with the so-called ‘female brain’ are all women. Some people think those males must be gay, but there are two problems with that. The percentage of males who have ‘female’ brains is higher than the percentage of gay males. And since when are more than 50% of women lesbians?
iknklast,
Thanks for the reply. I was skeptical but I’m vulnerable to confident claims from someone with credentials.
Me @1, I’m not inclined to watch YouTube videos, but I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. If my information is out of date and Sapolsky has some new information on the subject, please let me know.
The neuroimaging studies that show reliable differences between the gender dysphoric/transsexual patients and controls have compared same-sex attracted patients with straight controls. If Sapolsky doesn’t mention sexual orientation as a confounding factor, he can be dismissed right off the bat.
Those studies do show some sex atypical brain patterns. They’re not identical to what’s “typical” for the other sex in this or that, but they’re “moved in that direction” (that’s the phrase I remember.) Homosexual people who don’t identify as trans have also tended to show some atypicalities, in other, unrelated studies.
But the few (one or two?) studies that looked at non-gay males who identified as trans showed very different results.
So–there’s no evidence to be found here that “trans folks” are a monophyletic group (as the biologists would say.)
We don’t know how much of this is innate, how much may be due to brain plasticity (rumination actually changes your physical brain,) or whatever. Nor to my knowledge has anyone compared MRIs of gender non-conforming people who don’t identify as trans to those who do.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4987404/
My opinion is, none of this is surprising, but at the end of the day, being sex-atypical in one (or several) respects doesn’t make you the other sex.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that most biologists understand statistics better than the average person. Pro tip: by and large, they don’t, Sapolsky included. (Although scientists that DON’T study natural populations do seem to be even worse at the population-statistics-understanding business… I’m looking at you, NDT :-/)
Statistically significant differences between population means (which more often than not are themselves estimated by proxy via sample means, and not actually measured directly) say nothing about any given specific individual in isolation. The vast majority of published research fails to emphasize that, and we’re thus left with all sorts of patently stupid statements about male and female brains, homosexual vs heterosexual brains, nevermind all the gender woo nonsense. Drives me nuts :-/
Thank you, Ibbica. Well said. You saved me from saying it, though I may say it anyway. Too many scientists are too enamored of the mean, and not enough take statistics. I was fortunate that both the colleges where I did my advanced degrees required graduate students to take statistics, and because of my specialty in Ecology, multivariate statistics was also required by my committee. I love statistics, by the way, and I’m with you: drives me nuts the things I hear people saying when statistics are involved.
The male/female brain thing is a great example of misuse or misunderstanding of statistics, sample sizes, importance, variation around the mean, range, etc etc etc.
Lady Mondegreen,
I only mentioned you because your writing does such a good job of conveying the ephemeral benefits and the grasping at straws rationalizations with which TIF’s try to rationalize their transitions, as well as the circular reasoning of professional groups such as WPATH to justify their opinions.
Anyway, the video appears to be from some time ago since he appears much younger than his present age of 66 in it.
It starts off in the middle of Sapolsky talking about stuff like homosexual women having the “same auto-acoustical thingy going on there” as straight men.
Then he spends a few seconds joking about 40 million homosexual men and women being cured of mental illness overnight when their sexuality was removed from the DSM, going on to infer that the same thing will happen for transexualism, because of reasons.
For transexualism he says “a handful of studies” say something similar about transexuals vis-a-vis homosexuals.
“Average sizes” is a typical brain sex difference. Eg.) Where the amgydala sends its projections into the hypothalamus.
One type of neuron with a neurotransmitter is “very reliably” twice the size in males as in females.
Next he says it’s the number of these neurons that is different. That simply by looking at that you can “pretty confidently” tell if it’s a male brain or a female brain.
That this was seen by some neuro-anatomists doing post-mortems on a “large sample size” of transsexual brains showing the difference in this type/number [?] of neuron[s] as being not of the sex they were born but of that which they had always insisted they were.
This difference was seen whether or not the men (the study was apparently of male/TIM brains) had undergone cross-hormone treatments or had simply lived their lives claiming to have been born in the wrong body..
Furthermore, post-mortems of non-TIMs who took the same hormones for testicular cancer didn’t show this particular brain difference.
And then their was the stuff about the study of how TIMS who had vaginoplasty didn’t report phantom penises the way men who had penectomies for cancer did.
iknklast and ibbica have already spoken to Sapolsky’s use of statistics. I am not proud of my mathematical incompetence and will have to take their word that these studies have missued statistics.
Thanks, Me.
(And I, too, leave the math/statistical stuff to others.)