Transgender

[ZoeB]

It always seems odd to me that cis people fixate on surgery rather than hormones.  You do realise that hormones give you facial hair, breasts, sex-specific body odour, baldness, all those things, right?  Like, trans men don't have an operation to remove their hair.  Surgery's just about the least important thing after switching hormones.  They even affect how you think, and being on the wrong ones is really bad for your brain.

 

As far as the way your brain's wired and how you can't change that, yes, which is what being trans is, when your brain's already the opposite sex from the rest of your body.  I could cite a whole bunch of white papers you wouldn't read, but instead, I'll recommend a good talk by Veronica Drantz that you can watch over lunch, or a snippet of a Robert Sapolsky lecture.  Both are good starting points, and easier to digest.

 

 

 

(I'm not sure if that timecode gets missed with the embedding; the relevant bit starts at 1 hour 23 mins 52 seconds, but the whole lecture's interesting.)

[goDel]

O, I'm certainly not unbiased. And didn't think I was pretending to be either. Bias is a human condition. Can't escape it. Also counts for transgenders. Not trying to stab you. Just a sober observation if you will. We're all biased snowflakes and all that.

 

I think you're making a lot of assumptions. Even in your earlier post where you mentioned lesbians are more common in media than gays. (because cis male and all that). That still surprises me actually.

 

Don't know the statistics, so I might be wrong. Or biased if you will. But gay men in media, from my experience, are way more present than lesbians. Hell, a sit-com without a couple of gay men is a rare thing nowadays. You could make a comment about the way gay men are portrayed and all that. But regardless of that, I can hardly think of any lesbians in the media. Well, in the sense of being explicitly lesbian. There are a number of female actors who have come out of the closet. But that's another matter. Statistically speaking though, I find it hard to believe lesbians roles in media are more prevalent than gay roles. It's rather the opposite, imo. 

 

Same holds for the thing about women and computers. Although it might indeed be the case that computers were marketed towards men from 1984 onwards, I find it hard to believe that it was marketing discouraging the women who earlier on even dominated computer science. (not sure if they dominated, but that's irrelevant, imo. fact is they were way more present than later. which i can totally get on board with) It might be that from 1984 onwards, the men crowded out the women. And additionally to that, that the field of computer science became a bit, how shall i say it, too socially awkward for women to feel safe in studying it. Might be. Don't know. But there's more to it than that. Because, since 1984, it's certainly not the case women became less active in work. It's the other way around. So what has happened there? And might that relate to that 1984-effect? Could be. You could argue, for instance, that from 1984 onwards, women got to do more work which was more in line with the work which they want to do than previously. Don't know. But could be, right?

 

And this is exactly what is so difficult about this subject. Or as you basically say, it's pretty easy to fall in the trap of believing your own biases/perceptions. It is easy. It simply is.

 

Another thing about 17% being perceived as 50%. I'm not sure what that means. I mean, does it mean that people tend to focus on women and therefore believe to see more in a crowd than there actually are? They stand out better in a crowd, if you will?

 

As a transgender, I'm sure you've experienced walking down the street as a man going about completely unnoticed. And now as a woman, being noticed more often. (i read a book written by a crossdresser describing this effect, btw) The thing a struggle with in discussions such as these, is that people can put any interpretation on this as proof for their own beliefs. You could argue that women are more targets of harassment. Which almost seem to imply that any form of attention is an harassment. But at the same time it completely sidesteps the opposite. Namely, that the man-experience is that you're almost invisible. (and that might be a good thing, because if you're not invisible, you might be perceived as a threat. you could ask the black lives matter movement about this one.)

It's the interpretation of stuff like this, which in my eyes tend to be problematic and biased. It's rarely objective. And almost always tend to carry some political/ideological agenda. Which of itself doesn't have to be a bad thing. Politics is a necessity. But not if it presents itself as objective or unbiased. Because it isn't. By definition.

[dingformung]

R u a trans woman?

[YangYing]

As a transgender, I'm sure you've experienced walking down the street as a man going about completely unnoticed. And now as a woman, being noticed more often. (i read a book written by a crossdresser describing this effect, btw) The thing a struggle with in discussions such as these, is that people can put any interpretation on this as proof for their own beliefs. You could argue that women are more targets of harassment. Which almost seem to imply that any form of attention is an harassment. But at the same time it completely sidesteps the opposite. Namely, that the man-experience is that you're almost invisible. (and that might be a good thing, because if you're not invisible, you might be perceived as a threat. you could ask the black lives matter movement about this one.)

It's the interpretation of stuff like this, which in my eyes tend to be problematic and biased. It's rarely objective. And almost always tend to carry some political/ideological agenda. Which of itself doesn't have to be a bad thing. Politics is a necessity. But not if it presents itself as objective or unbiased. Because it isn't. By definition.

This is great, thanks.

[goDel]

check your `tism bro, it was just a general example of controlling for the biological factors. the degree of generalization is irrelevant here, you can still know that biology had zero effect because it was completely controlled for.

 

or i don't understand you. or my tism is not your tism. or sociology is simply upside down science. (also, thanks for the tism diagnosis bro.)

 

could you help me with the following example. let's say you doing research in cancer treatment. and we're doing it the "sociology"-way. as far as i understand here, obviously. (that's whats the example for. to find out what the hell you're trying to argue here) so we have found twins with the exact same cancer. and all other conditions, from the sociological point of view, are also equal. or corrected, if you will. and one of the twins gets the new treatment and the other the standard treatment. The outcome of this research is that one of the twin dies and the other survives for at least 12 months. (if you prefer the disney example: she magically cured) Given your sociological method, would you consider this as proof that one treatment works better than the other? Even if all possible predictors are equal. Treatment is blind (don't ask how, just assume it is). But the outcome of the treatments is obviously different. Would you consider this proof of effectiveness? Strong proof?

 

Help me out here, please. Because my tism is triggered.

[zaphod]

what the fuck is this thread about

[dingformung]

It always seems odd to me that cis people fixate on surgery rather than hormones. You do realise that hormones give you facial hair, breasts, sex-specific body odour, baldness, all those things, right? Like, trans men don't have an operation to remove their hair. Surgery's just about the least important thing after switching hormones. They even affect how you think, and being on the wrong ones is really bad for your brain.

 

But even with estrogenes your brain won't be that of a woman if you were a man before that wants to be a woman. Because there are structural differences that can't be affected by hormones. You can get close though

[hoggy]

This argument about physical differences is so boring, there are trans people, there have been forever, they should be free to be themselves. Nitpicking the differences... I mean what is the point?

[auxien]

Darreichs what's your fixation on the brain? There are differences, yes, but there's some suggestion that they are at least partly due to hormones (not seen anything suggesting long term hormone therapy can alter an adult brain tho)...and the similarities between the female and male brains are obviously FAR greater than any slight differences that come up when studying.

This argument about physical differences is so boring, there are trans people, there have been forever, they should be free to be themselves. Nitpicking the differences... I mean what is the point?

Yes this too of course.

[YangYing]

what the fuck is this thread about

postmodernism

[eugene]

 

check your `tism bro, it was just a general example of controlling for the biological factors. the degree of generalization is irrelevant here, you can still know that biology had zero effect because it was completely controlled for.

 

or i don't understand you. or my tism is not your tism. or sociology is simply upside down science. (also, thanks for the tism diagnosis bro.)

 

could you help me with the following example. let's say you doing research in cancer treatment. and we're doing it the "sociology"-way. as far as i understand here, obviously. (that's whats the example for. to find out what the hell you're trying to argue here) so we have found twins with the exact same cancer. and all other conditions, from the sociological point of view, are also equal. or corrected, if you will. and one of the twins gets the new treatment and the other the standard treatment. The outcome of this research is that one of the twin dies and the other survives for at least 12 months. (if you prefer the disney example: she magically cured) Given your sociological method, would you consider this as proof that one treatment works better than the other? Even if all possible predictors are equal. Treatment is blind (don't ask how, just assume it is). But the outcome of the treatments is obviously different. Would you consider this proof of effectiveness? Strong proof?

 

Help me out here, please. Because my tism is triggered.

 

i don't understand where are you going with this, and it has nothing to do with sociology and its methods. 

logically if you control for ALL possible factors and only change one then the outcome is the result of that change. but that's pretty much impossible to do and not really your example anyway because if i nitpick i can allege that the treatments themselves might work differently, one may work properly if admitted on sunday and the other one only works if admitted on monday or whatever.

[dingformung]

This argument about physical differences is so boring, there are trans people, there have been forever, they should be free to be themselves. Nitpicking the differences... I mean what is the point?

Nobody in this thread is questioning that they should be free to themselves. Point got lost long ago but that's how discussions often go. Nothing wrong with that

 

Darreichs what's your fixation on the brain? There are differences, yes, but there's some suggestion that they are at least partly due to hormones (not seen anything suggesting long term hormone therapy can alter an adult brain tho)...and the similarities between the female and male brains are obviously FAR greater than any slight differences that come up when studying.

 

I was talking about brain as an example for differences between men and women as an answer to someone saying other than reproductive organs trans women and natural women are the same which isn't exact. Even after hormones and surgeries and what not a man can't be transitioned into a woman and vice versa, biologically spoken. Which must suck if you want to be the opposite biological gender, so my condolences there. As for social gender there aren't only two, are there? At least a lot of sociologists think that. So why even talk about male and female when talking about social gender?

[goDel]

edit: @ eugene:

the point was, if you control everything besides the outcome. even if you can control for all possible/knowable factors, and there's a clinically significant difference in outcome, and use the methodology you presented (research on a pair of twins), your results won't be statistically significant such that it proves anything. simply because of coincidence. you can't prove the effectiveness of a treatment on a pair of twins. not even in theory. or logically.

 

coincidence is essentially the reason why this research-on-twins-method you presented doesn't prove anything. it just doesn't. it's up-side-down science. it pretends to be science. but if it truly is what i understand from you, it's simply bogus. 

 

also, you need volume to control for all possible factors. and the more factors you want to control for, the more observations you'll need (or twins, in your example). Even if you use twins. You just can not say: well, i used twins, so I covered this set of factors and now I can study a pair of twins and prove this or that hypothesis. A pair of twins is not a valid way to control any factor at all. 

 

Again though, I'm not sure whether this was your argument. But it still looks to me that way. So you're either arguing something completely different and I'm a tistic idiot and all that. Or you need to do a better job at explaining what you're trying to argue.

[eugene]

@godel

if you're controlling for everything, like really totally everything (hypothetical and unrealistic), then there's no room for coincidence. statistical significance becomes irrelevant. anyway, i was only saying that controlling for biological factors is way easier than controlling for social ones, your `tism took it somewhere else.

 

 

for you darreichungsform:

https://qz.com/1057494/the-biggest-myth-about-our-brains-is-that-theyre-male-or-female/

[goDel]

@godel

if you're controlling for everything, like really totally everything (hypothetical and unrealistic), then there's no room for coincidence. statistical significance becomes irrelevant. anyway, i was only saying that controlling for biological factors is way easier than controlling for social ones, your `tism took it somewhere else.

 

 

for you darreichungsform:

https://qz.com/1057494/the-biggest-myth-about-our-brains-is-that-theyre-male-or-female/

 

 

and my tism was triggered by these remakrs of yours:

 

 

it puts a serious burden of proof on the people claiming the existence of direct biological effects. social scientists do have it easy in a sense, they can simply take two identical twins, throw them into different social environments and see what happens. and you get a relatively clean (there's a whole complication in the form of environmental epigenetics) social effect, the reverse is obviously much more difficult.

 

which in my eyes says something totally opposite - namely that social scientists have it easy - than what you're currently saying - controlling for biological factors is easier than controlling sociological ones. long live my tisms and all that.

 

also, that point wasn't particularly relevant to the one i was making (when your outcome can be explained >95% by biological markers you don't need to bother controlling social factors) but whatever.

 

can we please have bobbie martin back? i feel like a cheated customer.

[goDel]

also, that's a good article!

[eugene]

also, that point wasn't particularly relevant to the one i was making (when your outcome can be explained >95% by biological markers you don't need to bother controlling social factors) but whatever.

 

it's beginning to go in circles, the point is is that you you don't know what that variance is really explained by because you can't disentangle the two. your biological sex variable can be highly correlated with social experience of gender. that neuro lady from the article mentions the same thing.

[auxien]

 

Darreichs what's your fixation on the brain? There are differences, yes, but there's some suggestion that they are at least partly due to hormones (not seen anything suggesting long term hormone therapy can alter an adult brain tho)...and the similarities between the female and male brains are obviously FAR greater than any slight differences that come up when studying.

I was talking about brain as an example for differences between men and women as an answer to someone saying other than reproductive organs trans women and natural women are the same which isn't exact. Even after hormones and surgeries and what not a man can't be transitioned into a woman and vice versa, biologically spoken. Which must suck if you want to be the opposite biological gender, so my condolences there. As for social gender there aren't only two, are there? At least a lot of sociologists think that. So why even talk about male and female when talking about social gender?

A woman who greets you or I on the street is going to be approached exactly the same. Whether or not she was born a female, born male, or is at some other place: if she chooses to present herself as a woman to me, I'll treat her as one. I'm not likely going to be inspecting her genitals at that moment, so why does her biological history matter in this social interaction? It doesn't is my point. It really doesn't at all unless I'm a scientist studying sexual dimorphism (I'm not), or I'm planning on reproducing with her, at which point I imagine we'll be comfortable enough with one another to discuss the particulars that are relevant. Beyond that, a trans woman or a since-birth woman are 'the same' as far as it matters to me, you, and anyone else really. And even that really isn't much, I'll say ma'am and refer to the person as a her...just semantics really. I guess I might be somewhat surprised if she's a woman who's also a rodeo clown since they're mostly males, last time I checked, but it's not like it would matter? That's just getting to know someone....and that gets into the social gender thing, which is I'm sure complex but I know nothing about. I assume the same ideas carry over as far as I'm concerned, so I really don't care how someone is presenting themselves/identifying/etc. 

[goDel]

we're talking past one another. similar to what is talked about in that article btw. which is, again, a good article. to me, the article, nor our methodological issue was about explaining variance, btw. but why bother going in circles. 

 

that article especially, is - to me - about interpreting results. and less about methodology, or correcting for social factors, or explaining variance. The good thing about it, imo, is that they're being blatantly attacked on being driven by ideology, even though they're careful to do exactly that and are trying to interpret results in the most neutral way possible. which is admirable. in the end the discussion seems mostly semantic though, as the most credible critique on their research - from what i can tell - is on how they defined "internal consistency".

 

 

 

Cahill also asserts that, yes, the brain is plastic, but only within certain limitations, and that the reason Joel’s study did not find two categorical genders was because her definition of “internal consistency” was extreme, an assertion that was also made by a different group of researchers in a study described in a letter to PNAS. “It’s a joke,” he says. “I wish people would read the two papers and come to their own conclusions.”

 

so besides interpretation, there's also a semantic thing going on. which is something completely different to "the ability to explain variance" btw. that's a methodological thing. but the article is less about methodology and more about frame of interpretation. perhaps i havent read it properly, but i can't tell where this variance issue popped up. at least not in the sense that i interpret that issue. (again, lets stop going there and leave it at communidistortion)

 

imo, it's perfectly reasonable what they're trying to do. even if the criticism would have a point of truth. as long as Popper would be happy, they're doing good science, imo. not only that, it's incredibly useful to research from a different hypothesis. or frame of reference. if there was such a thing as male or female brains, trying to prove the opposite and failing is the best way to prove it. or at least a good way. 

 

their results are more interesting anyways. simply because it creates even more nuance in the gender discussion. which is something different to argue that there isn't a male or female brain, btw. it's more nuanced is all they're arguing. from what i can read, at least. which to me looks like an obvious outcome. it always is, right?

 

anyways, good article. and lets just conclude it's pointless to argue. your tism is totally not mine! and vice versa ;D

 

not sure why i bothered to respond to the article. but it's just that. its interesting and all that. please just ignore.

[Zephyr_Nova]

Transgend 'er?  I barely knew 'er.

[goDel]

lol

 

also, good vid yalls

so can we please put this to rest now? ;D

[Salvatorin]

i dont get why pppl cant just be cool w others, if someone considers themselves female or male why dont people just be coolwith it instead of being all "oh actually im an expert in chromosomes and biology let me tell yo why youre a bloke in a dress" etc etc

trance is awful tho

trance: awful or not awful?

[YangYing]

 

i dont get why pppl cant just be cool w others, if someone considers themselves female or male why dont people just be coolwith it instead of being all "oh actually im an expert in chromosomes and biology let me tell yo why youre a bloke in a dress" etc etc

trance is awful tho

trance: awful or not awful?

 

 

I recommend having this on full blast constantly while reading this thread

[ZoeB]

But even with estrogenes your brain won't be that of a woman if you were a man before that wants to be a woman. Because there are structural differences that can't be affected by hormones. You can get close though

 

Watch those videos, by people who know the science.  A trans woman's brain is closer to a cis woman's brain than a cis man's brain regardless of whether she's switched hormones or not, and vice versa for trans men.  That's why it's technically true but disingenuous to say that switching hormones won't make a trans woman neurologically female: she already is.  That's what being trans is.

[ZoeB]

...gay men in media, from my experience, are way more present than lesbians. Hell, a sit-com without a couple of gay men is a rare thing nowadays. You could make a comment about the way gay men are portrayed and all that...

 

I think we might be talking at crossed purposes a bit here, and also have different film and TV libraries...

 

Say I want to watch a film, and I don't specifically care about the sexuality of any of the characters.  Maybe I want to watch The Social Network, for example.  That has straight couples making out and having sex in toilets, and it has two presumably-straight women kissing for the benefit of the men watching them at Harvard, and it has no men kissing each other.  (Yes, I know it's based on a true story, art imitating life and all that.)  You pick any film or TV show in your collection, and you'll probably find it has straight people making out and/or having sex, maybe also two women, though possibly just for the male gaze, and pretty much never two men.

 

The only example I can think of, of a show which has two guys in it who are partners and very much in love and they kiss and they even have sex, and that's not what the show is about, and it's not aimed solely at gay guys, is Sense8.  In a rather bizarre mirroring of what you usually get, they're even fetishised for the female gaze of another character.  There's similar mirroring in Jessica Jones, where a male character is a pretty idiot who one of the female protagonists has sex with, but she doesn't care about his opinion.  Those two shows have objectified men for the benefit of their female characters, and I can only imagine their assumed female audience, the same way almost all others objectify women for the benefit of their male characters and assumed male audience.

 

There seems to be this general assumption that if two women kiss on screen, it won't deter female audience members, or if it will, no-one cares.  There doesn't seem to be such an assumption about two men kissing on screen.  It seems to be implied that that would squick straight men who are apparently so insecure they'd immediately stop watching, presumably lest they accidentally enjoy it and start questioning themselves.

 

But hey, I don't watch many sitcoms (Silicon Valley, I guess?) so maybe most of them feature gay guys who kiss their partners just as often as the straight characters do, and who are the leads just as often.  Otherwise "gay" here sounds like it might mean "camp, funny, and single, basically celibate on camera", which doesn't sound like the same thing.  They should be gay not just in theory, but in practice, just as often as the straight characters are.