Oh, of course. Don’t get me wrong. 
It’s just the idea that science is quick, clean, decisive, and reliable – that’s what I’m talking about.
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It was bound to happen eventually. Ensler could rewrite part of it to include a transgender woman talking about her experience having a penis.
Saying the word “vagina” in the presence of a trans person is literal violence. 
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Kinda makes me think Monty Python are right up there with Nostradamus.
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It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them.
Awesome article. Thanks for the link.
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I initially thought, “this has to be a joke”, but then looked it up, and it is for real!!!
There are too many special snowflakes who get offended at anything/everything! Art is officially dead and I just want to run away from Canada and the U.S. to get away from this complete and utter nonsense.
It is like we are living in a Social Justice version of Orwell’s 1984 …
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In has no foundation in science? Really, Nature?
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think it makes sense to speak of “gender” as something that is not necessarily aligned, in an individual, with their “sex.” Words have no inherent meaning and change, but the distinction that is now widely made between “sex” (XY or XX chromosomes) and “gender” is a useful one and allows us to speak more accurately about not only psycho-social realities, but also about scientific realities. The word “gender” is used to mean different things and its use in a specific context may therefore need to be clarified further: it seems to me, however, that this is preferable to simply stating sex = gender, which leaves us with no terminology to talk about phenomena like female minds in male bodies.
Let’s take a clearcut case where the idea that sex = gender seems obviously inadequate. People with XY chromosomes can be born with a “female brain” in a male body. The female structure of their brain is as much a biological reality as their XY chromosomes and their anatomically and physiologically male characteristics. Take a post-op trans woman. She has XY chromosomes and certain typically male anatomical/physiological features. To be accurate about this, we speak of her sex as male. But she not only presents as/looks like/identifies as a women, but was most likely born with a typically female brain. To speak of her, except in the sense covered by the term “sex”, as anything other than a woman seems inaccurate. There’s nothing scientific about insisting that this person is “really a man” just because certain (but not other) aspects of her biology were typically male at birth.
For an accessible scientific textbook that explicitly rejects the sex = gender argument as “prescientific” and argues that there are at least four main gender categories in mammals, I’d recommend Jaak Panskep’s classic textbook Affective Neuroscience. It offers a fascinating overview, at a neurobiological level, of the ways in which brain masculinization and body masculinization can become decoupled in mammals.
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With nearly zero (surviving) exceptions, every cell in a male has both an X and a Y chromosome. That includes all brain cells.
What is the scientific evidence that a living male can have a brain with no Y chromosomes? That all his brain cells are XX, while all other organs and tissues are XY?
You had me up till here, we are dealing with semantics which is why when you equate gender to biological sex you have people mocking the idea. But then that is the whole point of the gender debate.
However you then point out a biological man can have a “female brain”, I get that you don’t mean this quite literally as you add quotation marks, I’m guessing this is for lack of a better word and then we get into semantics again and bojack points out the biological reality. Yet it seems you are talking past each other, thanks for the book recommendation @jinyu I might give that a read.
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When that had to be a question it means there are already too many…
Is the brain not part of the body? And if the body is male, presumably the brain would be as well.
Yes, there are XX and XY brain cells, but this doesn’t mean that a brain with XY brain cells is exposed to the normal chemical processes at the normal time and thereby develops a male structure. At the risk of oversimplification, the XY chromosome combo causes the production of testosterone in the fetus. Brain tissue contains enzymes whereby the testosterone is converted into estrogen. This exposure of the brain to estrogen at critical moments in the development of the fetus structures the brain as masculine. Other tissues in the body contain enzymes that convert testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. It is possible for different reasons, for instance, that the body tissue is able to create sufficient DHT for the development of male anatomy but that there is some glitch so that the brain is not sufficiently exposed to estrogen (and therefore does not develop masculine characteristics).
How does gender fluidity work in neurological terms?
Is this a theory or has a physiological mechanism been proven?
FWIW, I recall a childhood friend, a guy, who behaved like a girl in all the time I knew his family. This is many years ago, long before gender made its way into politics. Played with dolls, language inflection, and overall just seemed very feminine. He was a year or two younger than me, and I never saw him again after I left high school. His behavior was remarkable, though. Definitely acted like a girl in a boy’s body.
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I’m not an expert and my knowledge is limited to standard textbooks in the field, but I don’t think the basic outline I gave above is in any scientific doubt (although this is an emerging scientific and there’s still much uncertainty about details). Here’s a simplified diagram of the process from the textbook I mentioned above:
I tried to give what I thought was a clear-cut case just to focus the discussion somewhat. I mean if you think that even in a case like that sex = gender, male body = male mind etc, then it’s clear that you’d also reject the validity of gender fluidity etc. I should point out that the neurobiological principles I mentioned above don’t sit easily with the narrative that the human mind is a tabula rasa or that gender is merely a social construct.
Gender fluidity is the most conservative thought process possible IMO. The fact that if you grow your hair, wear make up and a dress you become a female is counterproductive to what the left aims for. Definitions of masculinity and femininity are the problem. How one acts, who they have sex with, how they dress should have zero bearing on how much of a man or woman they are percieved to be.
Edit: P.S. there is zero scientific reasoning in the “emerging science” you present above. Just since there are textbooks on the subject by academicians doesn’t nake it scientific.
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