Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
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Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#2I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes.
To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm low.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#3I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes. To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm…
Often people want things to be 'equal', and often they don't really think about where that equality applies and what it really represents. I suspect many of them only want fairness but the inability to articulate that means they contort many statements into metaphysical absurdities to avoid having to be empathetic.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#4I have MtF friend. We knew each other when we still we're both officially men. We became roommates for a year when she was mid transition.
I thought that would be cool, because I might understand women better now that I had somebody who had seen the both perspectives. How it is to be a man and how it is to be a woman.
I was wrong. She had never understood anything about manhood. Now she didn't even pretend anymore. I think there are some real and big differences between the sexes, but I still don't have good grasp about them.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#5I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes. To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm…
The way I see it is that, as often when it comes to differences due to sex, you have two wide Gaussian distributions that overlap a lot. Sure, there are behavioral differences (due to testosterone or other reasons), but the variation in behavior within one sex is probably larger than the distance between the means.
The problem is, that in casual speech, we can only easily express black-and-white: either men and women are different due to testosterone, or they are not. Neither statement is really correct.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#6Beautiful example of politics driving research. They only studied something they knew was a disadvantage for males, while the first thing everybody is curious about is how the IQ changed, if it changed: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/higher/dr-paul-i...
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#7I mean sure, yeah, but...
https://hn.algolia.com/?query=changes%20brain&sort=byPopular...
so does meditation, walking in nature, inactivity, porn, drugs, focus, menstruation, Alzheimer's, cellphones, the iInternet, The Knowledge, programming, football...
changing it's structure is how the brain reacts to basically any regular stimulus. Thats how it works.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#8I mean sure, yeah, but... https://hn.algolia.com/?query=changes%20brain&sort=byPopular... so does meditation, walking in nature, inactivity, porn, drugs, focus, menstruation, Alzheimer's, cellphones, the iInternet, The Knowledge, programming, football... changing it's structure is how the brain reacts to basically any regular stimulus. Thats how it works.
Agreed. Also, I've not read the paper yet, but I'll be very interested to see the effect size. Lots of sex differences neuroimaging papers rave about significance while ignoring the minuscule scale of effects.
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#9I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes. To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm…
Did your colleague know about mental rotation tests?[1] Men perform significantly better than women at these. And among men, mental rotation ability is correlated with testosterone levels.[2] I could see your buddy arguing that culture was responsible for behavioral differences such as violent tendencies, but the same dismissal can't be made of this test.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_rotation
2. http://www.academia.edu/3118000/The_relationship_of_male_tes...
Re: Research: testosterone changes brain structures in female-to-male transsexuals [pdf]
#10I had a (male) colleague once argue with me that men and women had no differences in mentality due to testosterone. The desire to believe in equality is weird sometimes. To be clear, I don't think there is any difference in generic mental abilities due to gender / sex, but it seems clear that brains would be affected by hormonal differences - for instance I have a thyroid deficiency, and I can really feel it when I'm…
The way I see it is that, as often when it comes to differences due to sex, you have two wide Gaussian distributions that overlap a lot. Sure, there are behavioral differences (due to testosterone or other reasons), but the variation in behavior within one sex is probably larger than the distance between the means. The problem is, that in casual speech, we can only easily express black-and-white: either men and women…
With mental rotation, there is practically no overlap. See the graph from the original study.[1]
It's a similar story for physical strength. Nobody denies that men tend to be stronger than women, but most people vastly underestimate the disparity. In a study that measured grip strength in 2,000 people[2], the weakest 5% of men were comparable to the top decile of women. Even elite female athletes were only as strong as the median untrained male.
There are more examples (propensity for violence is another big one), but it takes time to find citations. Suffice it to say that most people think the sexes are more similar than they actually are.
1. https://brothersdiamond.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/menwoman... (For more on mental rotation and testosterone's effects, see my comment downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10443021)
2. http://egitim.judo.gov.tr/Dosyalar/makaleler/-ENG-Hand-grip-...