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Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#81

Post by nkrisc »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #4

In the past 12 months I’ve gone from having normal male levels of testosterone and estrogen to having normal female levels of both. It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act toug…

> I hope that more people do this and share the experience. Everyone needs to hear this story.

Surely you meant people who desire to transition? If I could have that experience in a completely temporary way without messing up my hormones, I might. But I like being a man and don’t want to mess up my health just to experience that. It’s not the same as recommending more people try meditation or volunteering with disabled children. Those things can change your worldview without totally altering your body chemistry.

It’s great that you want to do this and are able to. But I think most people don’t want to.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#82

Post by iiioii »

dragonwriter wrote: post #78
implements wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s a real shame that people get so bent out of shape about trans people. Well, there’s now a conflict of rights between sex-based and gender-based identities. When you say “It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this,” you’re expressing a kind of euphoria [1] over becoming more feminine, but to many female people being feminine isn’t particularly what they want to be or to them what makes someone a woman…

> Well, there’s now a conflict of rights between sex-based and gender-based identities. Nothing in your post supports, or is even suggestive of, any such “conflict of rights”. At most, it demonstrates a conflict of preferences for how gender is ascribed to other people with other people's gender identity, but imposing gender on other people is not a right.

I think they're alluding to the conflict over whether the various different types of sex-segregated spaces should be kept as-is, be separated by gender identity instead, or have any such restrictions removed entirely to become gender neutral.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#83

Post by thaumasiotes »

082349872349872 wrote: post #76
thaumasiotes wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That won't help you understand the mechanism. The reason the first digit of a binary number is 1 is just the anthropic principle. ("You can only observe things that exist.") That same observation will tell you that, just as the first nonzero digit of a binary number is zero 0% of the time, the first nonzero digit of a decimal number is zero 0% of the time. That is what it means to be a nonzero digit! But it won't tel…

those leading digits are suspiciously like looking at equal portions of the scale on a slide rule...

I assume you're aware of this, but that's exactly the same thing.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#84

Post by Veen »

moonchrome wrote: post #32
ravel-bar-foo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably just met someone from a non-English culture. The sex/gender distinction is an invention of the past 20 years, and outside of the English world has probably only been picked up by people who interface with English speakers a lot (i.e. academics). I can assure you that Korean makes no distinction: the dictionary translations of the English terms are "sex" and (the full phrase) "one's feeling of one's sex."

My primary language is Croatian - there is a word for sex (spol) and gender (rod). First is biological second is used for grammar. But I'm just making silly comments because it read to me like he's an alien (or maybe GPT is becoming self aware and posting on forums :) )

That's how the terms sex and gender were used in English until a couple of decades ago. Gender was later coopted to refer to social and cultural factors, as opposed to biological factors, of sex.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#85

Post by amanaplanacanal »

cjcyehdusjxyehx wrote: post #72
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #4

In the past 12 months I’ve gone from having normal male levels of testosterone and estrogen to having normal female levels of both. It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act toug…

> It’s a real shame that people get so bent out of shape about trans people The issue which people react so allergic to is the complete lack of tolerance by the transgender community. If someone points out that a man who really wants to be a women is in principle still a man then they get instantly labelled a bigot. It completely misrepresents the definition of tolerance. Tolerance can only exist in a state of disagr…

> The vast majority of people have no issue with transgender individuals. They just know that a man with a mental health condition is in principle still a man and we shouldn’t be ostracised to state truths like this.

Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#86

Post by nigerianbrince »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #4

In the past 12 months I’ve gone from having normal male levels of testosterone and estrogen to having normal female levels of both. It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act toug…

https://gfycat.com/remorsefuljampackeddiamondbackrattlesnake...

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#87

Post by danielscrubs »

ambicapter wrote: post #26
luplex wrote: post #5

You can take a gender-based personality test here: https://programs.clearerthinking.org/gender_continuum_test.h... (30 mins with explanations) I found it really interesting and fun.

As a warning, this page spends multiple pages teaching you about their gender findings before giving you your results. I had to go through 20+ pages of teaching before getting a prediction on my gender.

And they make value judgements on the results they don't seem to like:

"The biggest correlation we found between gender and any one personality trait was r=0.42, which means that gender explains 18% of the variability in that trait. Another way to put this is... if you knew a random person's score on that one personality trait, and you tried to guess that person's gender using just that score, you'd mispredict that person's gender 31% of the time!"

They think that's low! That's crazy high for just one trait, it would be called "Highly significant" in any paper.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#88

Post by toxik »

hawski wrote: post #28
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #4

In the past 12 months I’ve gone from having normal male levels of testosterone and estrogen to having normal female levels of both. It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act toug…

I think at least some part of the effect for you is placebo for sure. I'm sure not all of it or even the most of it. My wife has lower then normal for women testosterone levels, but she always have been a bit less girly then other females (in behavior, not looks). She felt for example that she had little to no maternal instincts after giving birth to our child.

> She felt for example that she had little to no maternal instincts after giving birth to our child.

Do “maternal instincts” exist in the first place, and how do they differ from just parental instincts?

Explaining a failure to bond with your child through gender seems very questionable to me.

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#89

Post by PartiallyTyped »

cjcyehdusjxyehx wrote: post #72
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #4

In the past 12 months I’ve gone from having normal male levels of testosterone and estrogen to having normal female levels of both. It’s truly amazing and wonderful that we can do this, and I’ve learned so much from the experience. It’s hard to describe the changes precisely, but I’m finding that women make more sense to me and are more interesting to talk to, while I have a lower tolerance for men trying to act toug…

> It’s a real shame that people get so bent out of shape about trans people The issue which people react so allergic to is the complete lack of tolerance by the transgender community. If someone points out that a man who really wants to be a women is in principle still a man then they get instantly labelled a bigot. It completely misrepresents the definition of tolerance. Tolerance can only exist in a state of disagr…

[flagged]

Re: Taking Sex Differences in Personality Seriously (2019)

#90

Post by ekleraki »

iiioii wrote: post #59
Wolfenstein98k wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with this, although I suspect most of what Taylor reports is true and not "placebo", as it matches other reporting from people who are chemically transitioning. The "monthly cycle" thing is not usually reported. Not that I'm saying that isn't truly your experience :)

> I agree with this, although I suspect most of what Taylor reports is true and not "placebo", as it matches other reporting from people who are chemically transitioning. Certainly I do not doubt that they have recently started enjoying romantic comedies, human interest stories, sewing, cooking and not getting into arguments about racism, but I am skeptical that these are caused by externally-induced hormonal changes…

It is well documented that hormone levels affect activation patterns [1-5], so I am not sure why you are skeptical about it. Using references from another commenter.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19789167/

[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17117339/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25505380/

[4] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29544637/

[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18842345/

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