Maybe this is related to the people-not-knowing-the-best-arguments idea.
It surprised me because I’ve watched/read plenty of discussion, including reactions, debates, text analysis. While I have heard the claim that their brains are literally different, I’ve never heard any evidence for it, and moreover, I think that there are contradictory brain studies too (which I will try to check now).
Thinking more about it, there are issues with finding meaningful differences, it involves arguing that men and women have biologically distinct brains in ways that affect everyday life. This might present challenges for traditional feminism if these are differences in everyday life that influence one’s affect, emotional state and expression, interpersonal relationships (eg in the workplace), etc. [Maybe controversial] I think most feminists will resist ceding any ground on principle with matters like this.
Another problem is that identifying differences doesn’t actually support the modern TRA position that trans women are women. Rather, we end up with a list of binary factors that are (or are associated with) sex phenotypes. This suggests a natural (in the mathematical sense) way of defining gender which is as a collection of binary flags (similar to the way that enums are sometimes used in C if you’re familiar). So if we have two signals for gender that typically coincide but don’t always, we can construct a table mapping all values. Note: the exact signals don’t matter, just that they can be distinct. Also I just picked gender labels to be illustrative, we can call them A/B/C/D etc but doing it like my example doubles as an example of the kind of classifications TRAs (and trans-inclusionary LGBT+) would reject.
Gender
Sex/Gamete
amygdala thing size
Woman
female/large
big amygdala thing
Man
male/small
small amygdala thing
Trans Man / Trans-identified Female
female/large
small amygdala thing
Trans Woman / Trans-identified Male
male/small
big amygdala thing
Also, this obviously conflicts with the whole non-binary thing and says non-binary is wrong, gender is not a spectrum, but yes there are more than two genders. This would be the principled opinion IMO. It also works much better than the common ideas put forward by either the left or the right. It also means we can use male/female to just mean sex again, and it maintains the etymological origin of ‘gender’, that being ‘type’ (as in a category of a common kind, eg north/south/east/west/in/out, red/green/blue, etc).
So this seems clearly superior to me (probably controversial), but it is not at all “trans affirming” (probably not controversial). It also has consequences that probably no one likes, such as simultaneously backing additional pronouns and arguing against the singular they/them usage that the left has adopted/pushed (since there’s no need for it anymore).
gpt 5.5 thinking standard; answer about brain differences
If it enabled views like what I expressed above, would they?
IME the amount of technical detail has been basically zero. Maybe that’s a me-problem though.
This might be irrelevant but why did you put this in scare quotes? Would you put TERF in quotes too? Do TRAs object to being called trans rights activists? I thought this would be fairly uncontroversial that TRA is accurate and neutral. Is it just because the out-group(s) use it?
Yeah, good point. This possibly contributes to post-by-post fatigue/overwhelmedness (each post being longer and more effort to write, assuming I want to include reasoning).
Yeah okay that makes more sense. I think part of the reason I was frustrated was that it felt like arguing with someone with no views except for selectively applied arguments/rationality. It makes more sense now and I think I’d react differently, particularly with the above context.
Yeah that’s fair. I kind of feel like this with conservatives. I think i’ve brought up that I think people should criticize their own side more. eg I like separation of church and state, am pro-choice, leaning more anti-trump (though this seems to be becoming a more popular position on the right for US politics at least), against teaching ideology in school including religion/CRT/wokeism (except in a sociological sense).
I’m also pro-capitalism but anti-corporatocracy or whatever it is that trump and other US billionaires overwhelmingly support (overwhelming if weighted by their net worth, at least), etc. I’m anti coporatism too but didn’t realize that was already a different thing. That said, I suspect lots of right-leaning people are opposed to or unhappy with current billionaires’ actions/views/behaviors/etc.
Anyway that was a bit of an aside again. Maybe not so controversial though.