i’m not really here representing a viewpoint other than “if someone wants to identify in a way that makes them happy, they should be allowed to, regardless of the basis they claim for it”
i specifically asked in this case because, especially nonbinary people, but also gnc trans people are sometimes invalidated because of the biological argument, so i wanted clarity on the commenter’s position. of course, i don’t know everything, and consider my experience to be fairly gender normative for a trans person, so i’m open to learning something new, as well
Hopefully you can see that I’m not making “the biological argument” you probably had in mind, i.e. a biological essentialist account of gender. The biology totally supports non-binary people, and in fact the current evidence is that brain sex is largely “non-binary”, with very few people having brains that fit into binary boxes.
Our study demonstrates that although there are sex/gender differences in brain structure, brains do not fall into two classes, one typical of males and the other typical of females, nor are they aligned along a “male brain–female brain” continuum. Rather, even when considering only the small group of brain features that show the largest sex/gender differences, each brain is a unique mosaic of features, some of which may be more common in females compared with males, others may be more common in males compared with females, and still others may be common in both females and males.
The lack of internal consistency in human brain and gender characteristics undermines the dimorphic view of human brain and behavior and calls for a shift in our conceptualization of the relations between sex and the brain. Specifically, we should shift from thinking of brains as falling into two classes, one typical of males and the other typical of females, to appreciating the variability of the human brain mosaic.
Only around 1% of brains fit consistently with the binary “male” or “female” characteristics.
I think their point is more that if gender is socialization, then why would anyone ever have a strong and persistent sense that they are a gender other than they one they were socialized as? Gender is socialization means you are what your gender is what you were raised as. The idea is that it was the way you were raised that makes you a boy or a girl. This view absolutely has problems accounting for trans people, since trans people are generally claiming to be something other than the gender they were assigned at birth and then raised as.
A common anti-trans response would be: if gender is a social construct, then perhaps people are influenced by social media into becoming trans. This is the debunked notion of “social contagion”, it assumes gender identity is subject to social influence.
If gender is just a social contruct, why do trans people want to change their gender?
i’m not really here representing a viewpoint other than “if someone wants to identify in a way that makes them happy, they should be allowed to, regardless of the basis they claim for it”
i specifically asked in this case because, especially nonbinary people, but also gnc trans people are sometimes invalidated because of the biological argument, so i wanted clarity on the commenter’s position. of course, i don’t know everything, and consider my experience to be fairly gender normative for a trans person, so i’m open to learning something new, as well
Hopefully you can see that I’m not making “the biological argument” you probably had in mind, i.e. a biological essentialist account of gender. The biology totally supports non-binary people, and in fact the current evidence is that brain sex is largely “non-binary”, with very few people having brains that fit into binary boxes.
EDIT: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4687544/
Only around 1% of brains fit consistently with the binary “male” or “female” characteristics.
Why wouldn’t they? if being withing a specific social construct makes you uncomfortable best thing to do is to change the social construct.
I think their point is more that if gender is socialization, then why would anyone ever have a strong and persistent sense that they are a gender other than they one they were socialized as? Gender is socialization means you are what your gender is what you were raised as. The idea is that it was the way you were raised that makes you a boy or a girl. This view absolutely has problems accounting for trans people, since trans people are generally claiming to be something other than the gender they were assigned at birth and then raised as.
A common anti-trans response would be: if gender is a social construct, then perhaps people are influenced by social media into becoming trans. This is the debunked notion of “social contagion”, it assumes gender identity is subject to social influence.