151–160 of 199 posts
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…
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I hope more people do this because for me it feels really right, and I find it beautiful. It’s also helping me understand women more. I think our society would benefit from a better understanding of the experiences of the opposite sex, and people who do this can help share this with others so we all have a better understanding. I don’t see any downsides to more people doing this.
Norah Vincent basically broke her psyche trying to live as a man, and the story has barely left an impact on the status quo. Similar stories exist among transmen rather than women going incognito, even if in their case it would be to pick their poison. The idea that there are no downsides doesn't mesh with reality.
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> 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.
What? Of course maternal instincts exist and are distinct. The differences in reproduction are the most fundamental basis of sex differentiation in animals. In some mammals, fathers have literally no contact with their offspring while mothers care for them for years (eg, bears). In others, the mother and father both remain as part of a pack, but the mother does all of the direct care and the father is doing hunting o…
So, it is simply not true “across all” anything. I will forego badly parroting what actual experts say, so instead I recommend Robert Sapolsky’s lectures on this in his biology courses at Stanford. They’re available on YouTube.
I also notice you just vaguely referred to various animals in instead of humans, which is curious.
My position here, to be clear, is that there are gender differences in personality and phenotype, but they are mostly inconsequential for child rearing in a resource-rich society, ie, both genders are equally competent parents. Individual variation outweighs gender differences.
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> Trans people want to use the bathrooms and compete on athletics teams corresponding to their identity. I know I'm not the first person ever one to bring this up, but it's unclear to me how letting someone with (largely) the physique of a man compete against women is acceptable. There's a reason why (competitive) sports are usually divided by male/female, and that reason still overall holds for someone who is trans.…
> There's a reason why (competitive) sports are usually divided by male/female This division is arbitrary. The reason for this is the premise of fair competition that identical people should compete. Yet white males dominate male swimming whereas black males dominate male sprinting. There have been physiological explanations based on center of mass things afaik. Knowing that, why don't we split the competitions accor…
No, actually the reason is that it makes both watching and competing more interesting. A competition where women never got anywhere near first place would mean women would simply stop showing up (or vice versa). A boxing championship with no weight classes would mean no lightweight boxers would sign up.
On the other hand, with enough subcategories you can get to the point where some competitors win by default, or where you have championships of one or two matches.
So no, it's not arbitrary to separate competitors by some physical characteristics and not others. There are practical reasons to do so that are unrelated to the whims of organizers.
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You can take a look at the abstract and then look for related articles in English. You are dismissing articles that contradict your beliefs on the basis of lacking the capacity to read them, not of their content. No comment on the other 3 references, thus that response does not contribute to the discussion, except for showing that you do not care about reaching some truth. But then again that account is only a few mi…
It is not my responsibility to fill in the blanks of what you want your argument to be. If you would like to make a point about why you believe that enjoying romantic comedies, sewing, cooking, etc. are driven by hormonal changes rather than some other factor, please lay out your case. Citing a random selection of papers that you haven't read does not help to achieve this. It just gives the impression that your viewp…
Changes in activation patterns affect our perceptions, our senses, and literally the medium by which we experience the world. They may not affect our personality instantaneously, but our personality is malleable, and depending on feedback, it changes.
If our brain's activation patterns change s.t. certain things are more enjoyable, then these new patterns integrate in our personality.
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. 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…
So I apologize but your questions don’t really fit with what I meant. I don’t personally like the idea of rigid gender roles.
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've also started experiencing monthly cycles where for about one week a month I feel more tired and weepy like I could cry very easily This sounds like wishful thinking to me. In women, the periodic mood changes happen during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, and coincide with the rise in progesterone that is triggered by ovulation. Males don't have ovaries, so do not ovulate, and thus cannot experience the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've also started experiencing monthly cycles where for about one week a month I feel more tired and weepy like I could cry very easily This sounds like wishful thinking to me. In women, the periodic mood changes happen during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, and coincide with the rise in progesterone that is triggered by ovulation. Males don't have ovaries, so do not ovulate, and thus cannot experience the…
I also note the part about "I’ve felt like my emotions have gotten stronger except for anger." So far as I'm aware, there's zero evidence that women's emotions are stronger (what would that even mean?), and certainly not that while the other emotions are stronger, anger is excepted. I'm pretty certain that women experience anger just as strongly as men. As mentioned down-thread, this could be placebo. But there are a…
For my part, I had a sharp change two months ago when my estrogen dosage increased and we added progesterone to my routine. (One effect of these meds was to reduce my testosterone levels.) So that was not an aging or maturation related change because it happened in a month. I found it easier to cry and harder to get angry.
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 disabl…