A transgender thought experiment
Both of my dogs are mutts, and as anyone with any interest in dogs can attest to, you learn to look at them and categorize different features and body parts under their respective breeds. It's basically like looking at a Frankenstein experiment.
My male dog has a husky tail and coat but a mastiff head and body. My little girl has a pit bull chest but a beagles face and snout. I could go on in detail, but the point remains that they are clearly an amalgamation of their progenitors.
Likewise, people can look at someone's child and say that they have their mother's hair or their father's jaw or so on and so forth. In most cases, people look like a roughly even combination of both. In some cases, people inherited far more of their looks from one parent than the other. It's not always 50/50.
Regardless of how genetic material is ultimately distributed, it is always a mix of genes from both the mother and the father. This includes the genes that form our brains, the basis for our behaviors and beliefs and everything that constitutes our sense of identity.
The literature regarding human neurology comes to the fairly unanimous conclusion that there are differences in structure between the male and female brains. A conclusion people can reach rather intuitively just by talking to and observing enough men and women to realize that there are some obvious differences between the sexes.
But, what if the genes that formed a person's brain came more from one parent than another? And what if those same genes differed from the ones governing their anatomy?
What would you call a male-bodied person had a female-leaning brain, or vice versa?
If I were to take a hamburger, for instance, and I keep the outside the same - buns, toppings, condiments - but removed the quintessential hamburger patty and substituted a T-bone steak, would this creation still be called a hamburger?
Or to give another example, assume I take the engine out of a Toyota and put it inside of a Lamborghini, and assume it could still run, if I sold it as a Lamborghini would that be an inevitable false advertisement lawsuit?
One could argue that beef is beef and that it doesn't matter what's inside because it's the outside that matters. Or that the little logo on the hood tells you everything you need to know about the car in question.
I don't have a definitive answer here. The research on transgender brains is so far inconclusive. I just thought it was worth considering that maybe it would be reckless, among other things, to dismiss trans people without resolving questions like these
My male dog has a husky tail and coat but a mastiff head and body. My little girl has a pit bull chest but a beagles face and snout. I could go on in detail, but the point remains that they are clearly an amalgamation of their progenitors.
Likewise, people can look at someone's child and say that they have their mother's hair or their father's jaw or so on and so forth. In most cases, people look like a roughly even combination of both. In some cases, people inherited far more of their looks from one parent than the other. It's not always 50/50.
Regardless of how genetic material is ultimately distributed, it is always a mix of genes from both the mother and the father. This includes the genes that form our brains, the basis for our behaviors and beliefs and everything that constitutes our sense of identity.
The literature regarding human neurology comes to the fairly unanimous conclusion that there are differences in structure between the male and female brains. A conclusion people can reach rather intuitively just by talking to and observing enough men and women to realize that there are some obvious differences between the sexes.
But, what if the genes that formed a person's brain came more from one parent than another? And what if those same genes differed from the ones governing their anatomy?
What would you call a male-bodied person had a female-leaning brain, or vice versa?
If I were to take a hamburger, for instance, and I keep the outside the same - buns, toppings, condiments - but removed the quintessential hamburger patty and substituted a T-bone steak, would this creation still be called a hamburger?
Or to give another example, assume I take the engine out of a Toyota and put it inside of a Lamborghini, and assume it could still run, if I sold it as a Lamborghini would that be an inevitable false advertisement lawsuit?
One could argue that beef is beef and that it doesn't matter what's inside because it's the outside that matters. Or that the little logo on the hood tells you everything you need to know about the car in question.
I don't have a definitive answer here. The research on transgender brains is so far inconclusive. I just thought it was worth considering that maybe it would be reckless, among other things, to dismiss trans people without resolving questions like these
31-35, M
