Forum:Transgender neuroscience bunk removal

< Index | RW Article discussion

greetings all. i am a trans woman pursuing medical transition, so please do not assume my having bad faith here

i have noticed that these two studies are being used to prop up paragraphs on the Transsexualism and Gender dysphoria pages

let us note that the first has a sample size of 19, while the latter says it sampled "42 brains of patients were analyzed (for an overview see Table 1). The brains of 34 reference subjects (9 presumed heterosexual males, 9 homosexual males, 10 presumed heterosexual females, and 6 male-to-female transsexuals) ranging from 20–53 yr of age, together with six brains (three males and three females) of patients with sex hormone disorders were obtained at autopsy"

i do not believe 19 is a valid sample size, nor do i believe the small sizes of the hodge-podge mix in the second study indicate anything remotely close to scientific rigor

i suggest that we stop promulgating this nonsense, as there is good work being shown in Delusions of Gender that there is no scientific basis for any difference whatsoever in cis women and men's brains, which would seem to need to be a well defined result before we can even make the claim that trans women have cis women's brains in a cis man's body (seriously people)

autie girl (talk) 05:01, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

You need to sign your comments. Four tildes like ~~~~. Not rocket science! LlamaPastor31 ^{Don't bother with religious nonsense} 04:50, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

thanks, i had not found out how to do that yet autie girl (talk) 04:56, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

Also I gave you autopatrolled, so those annoying red exclamation marks won't appear near your edits in Recent Changes. I'm a sysop here. LlamaPastor31 ^{Don't bother with religious nonsense} 04:56, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

So when you say there is no evidence for the difference between male and female brains I think what you mean to say is that the evidence is poor or flawed correct? Is this an opinion based solely on reading The Gender Delusion and your persnal experiences, or is there some sort of scientific basis for this? Tielec01 (talk) 07:37, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

i will certainly own that i come into this with my own motivations. as an autistic person and a trans women, i have found myself running up against the exact same kinds of frustrating world views that Fine tackles in her book. however, i think it is a little unfortunate to dismiss her work as unscientific. you can find a great deal of journal articles of hers here, although regrettably they appear to be behind paywalls (i'm a computer scientist and continually astonished that people pay for papers, as that is outmoded in my field). even the book itself, though it is a work of popular-science for sure, is chock full of in depth research (she took two years to write the thing) that draws on a bunch of great meta-analysis. i am going to bed for the night, but tomorrow will try to track down some non-pay-walled studies. if you just want a quick look, there is this video that at least tears apart specific research, although i acknowledge it takes more than just a few bad apples as it were autie girl (talk) 08:15, 16 July 2015 (UTC)

More studies

1. White matter microstructure in female to male transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A diffusion tensor imaging study
2. The microstructure of white matter in male to female transsexuals before cross-sex hormonal treatment. A DTI study.
3. A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality.

There are differences in brain structure between the genders (even if minor). These differences can be detected. Trans* people tend to have brains that are more towards their identified gender than their assigned gender. αδελφός ΓυζζγςατΡοτατο (talk/stalk) 17:00, 16 July 2015 (UTC)