Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

penntoday.upenn.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 257 posts

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#71

Post by undoware »

spicyramen wrote: post #65
_hngt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they…

"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement. https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender

Trans activist here. What we've shut down, basically, is the lengthy history of medical abuse and trauma that cis supremacists have inflicted on our people.

Have a nice day. Stay in your lane.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#72

Post by wayoutthere »

bonerman69 wrote: post #45
wayoutthere wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can describe my own (FWIW I went the other direction). Best way I can say it is that my own understanding of emotion was rather black-and-white when on testosterone. I intellectually knew that other people had emotions beyond anger or sadness, but had no frame of reference for what that meant. I tended to see major challenges as obstacles to be overcome through force of will. On estrogen it's like seeing the world…

Increasing estrogen blood levels will literally cause any male-sex person to become more empathetic via oxytocin...

Probably better to say "assigned male at birth" -- I'm not genetically male, but everyone assumed I was until I got tested after transitioning. The best medically relevant definitions are "person on testosterone", "person on estrogen" etc. There is a lot of suspicion that things like estrogen/androgen receptor binding affinity play a big role in gender identity and brain development, and we haven't even scratched the surface of that level of genetics.

There is no medically or legally significant difference between "gender" and "sex". You can get the sex/gender (different states use different terms interchangeably) on your drivers' license and birth certificate changed.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#73

Post by sysbin »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #70
sysbin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That study is worthless based on the small sample size. I'm also a trans woman and I hate when this study is brought up. I think brain development could be a reason but I also think how a person is raised could play into being transgender for some people. Our generation will likely never know for certain. I just don't think there is an all encompassing answer for everyone.

I don't understand the matter of it either. If you badly feel you're in the wrong body and you want it changed, I'm ok with that. I don't see any other reasons are needed.

I think your accepting outlook of the situation will be the popular approach for the new generation from what I've observed. The "other reasons" have been pushed because of non-transgender people rejecting transgender people. There is a culture of God made you whatever sex and that's how it must be in your life. These people have had a very negative impact on transgender people and resulted in accepting/ trans people seeking "other reasons" in an attempt of more justification that's really unnecessary.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#74

Post by geofft »

nailer wrote: post #66
daenz wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>trans women and regular women Side note observation, "regular women" can be perceived as insensitive to trans women. I'm not sure what the best term to use is either though, when differentiating between trans and non-trans of the same gender. "Biological women"?

'non-trans' works fine and is clearer to most people. 'cisgendered' is also correct, but it has political connotations, eg 'cishet scum'. WikiPedia has some good references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cisgender

I think the insulting part of "cishet scum" is "scum." I definitely see "cis" and occasionally "cishet" as entirely denotative self-identifications in spaces where it's relevant and trans and non-heterosexual folks are at least more visibly represented than in the world at large, and it's neither positive nor negative, it's just what one is.

The phrase "male chauvinist" doesn't mean there's an intrinsic negative connotation in calling someone "male," nor does the phrase "nasty woman" mean it's intrinsically negative to call someone a "woman." (Of course, both terms might be used as insults in context / with tone / etc.)

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#75

Post by jrochkind1 »

_hngt wrote: post #19
daenz wrote: post #4

>Prior to this work, the strongest evidence for a link between testosterone exposure and reduced cognitive empathy came in 2011 in a study that found administering testosterone to healthy women reduced their performance on a test of reading emotions. The results suggested the testosterone impaired their performance. That's interesting. Adult males typically have 7-8 times the levels that females do, and females are m…

Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they…

> Cisgender men and women have different brain structures,

I'm skeptical of this to begin with.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/feb/24/meet-the-neu...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00677-x

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/confirmed-theres-n...

When it comes to brains, there is far more variation, on pretty much anything you choose to measure, within the group of 'men' or 'women', then there is between the groups.

As far as cognitive empathy, sorry fellow men, we can't blame our lack of cognitive empathy on biology, it's probably pure socialization/education. And we can get better at it by trying/learning/practicing.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#76

Post by zwkrt »

sverona wrote: post #54
TheOperator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as I hear this claim a lot but I've never actually understood what "resembles" actually means. The brain structures that transgender people have don't match typical male or female brains but how do you determine which brain transgender brains resemble the most? What is the criteria? To me to determine which brain trans brains were more similar to you would have…

Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks. We're women because we say we are - and that's really…

> Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered.

Also mirrored by the fact that other cultures do not experience this issue so acutely.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#77

Post by dang »

spicyramen wrote: post #65
_hngt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans woman here. Cisgender men and women have different brain structures, and transgender people's brain structures tend to resemble that of the gender that they identify as[1]. So, for example, a trans woman like myself who was born male will have a brain structure that resembles that of a cis woman, not a man. > I know a trans man who, after a few months of testosterone, claimed it was "night and day" in how they…

"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement. https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender

It breaks the site guidelines to post shallow dismissals of other people's experience, so please don't. Taking HN threads into ideological flamewar is even worse, so please don't either.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Knowing a person is a perfectly cromulent reason to say something in a conversation. Conversations is all HN threads are. Anecdotes are great for conversation (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#78

Post by dang »

undoware wrote: post #71
spicyramen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I know a person" is a typical response from the noveau pseudo scientific trans movement, no one really understands this condition yet, and hopefully science can figure it out, although science around this topic has been shut down by the "progressive" movement. https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender

Trans activist here. What we've shut down, basically, is the lengthy history of medical abuse and trauma that cis supremacists have inflicted on our people. Have a nice day. Stay in your lane.

Please don't respond to a bad comment by taking the thread further into flamewar. Down that path lies wreckage, regardless of who's right and who's wrong. And it breaks the site guidelines as well. As they say, the thing to do with egregious comments is to flag them and/or to email hn@ycombinator.com—not to feed them by replying.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#79

Post by pessimizer »

zwkrt wrote: post #76
sverona wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans woman here. I agree that the neuroscience feels kind of flimsy. I would further argue that neuroscience shouldn't be used as an argument in favor of "accept trans women as being women" because, among other things, it can just as quickly be turned around by people who seek to pull the You're Not Really Trans Unless A Doctor Says So card on other trans folks. We're women because we say we are - and that's really…

> Amazingly, it turns out that in a vacuum, the activity of programming a computer isn't actually gendered. Also mirrored by the fact that other cultures do not experience this issue so acutely.

Including US culture 50 or more years ago, when most programmers were women.

Re: No evidence that testosterone reduces cognitive empathy

#80

Post by tomlock »

ve55 wrote: post #9

>In the largest study of its kind, results challenge the notion of autism as reflecting an “extreme male brain.” I don't see how this is related, unless you think the only 'maleness' that can exist in a brain is testosterone levels. There are so many things that could be tested and analyzed here besides testosterone levels.

What's cool is that if people take a more nuanced view of gender and sex than saying it can be measured by one test with only two options, it means they can't take the narrow view that either of those things are binary. Here's hoping!
Post reply on HN