Constructive feedback

[Anonymous]

Hi,
Hoping you can help me to understand why my post regarding "Jack's Brain, Jill's Brain" Workshop on Gender Differences in Brain Research was deleted.

If this a taboo or offensive topic within the trans community, I am unaware of it and I apologize. But if emerging brain research that shows concrete developmental, functional, and structural differences between the male and female brain, it would be interesting (and really useful to the aim of gaining broader acceptance/understanding) to know if a transgirl has a "girl brain" that is responsible for her self-identifying as female and vice versa. Thought it would be an interesting discussion.

Or was there something in the way that I worded my post that was offensive or suggested trolling? I am not attempting to troll and will drop it if you don't want it discussed, but would appreciate helpful feedback, as I'd like to be able to discuss.

[jsteele]

Your threads were reported to me because a poster felt that they called into question the legitimacy of trans people. In this post, you phrase it as possibly a way to legitimize trans people by demonstrating that they have brains to match their genders. But, if the research doesn't show that, it could be used to delegitimize them. Because that forum is meant to be supportive of LGBTQ people, its members are sensitive to anything that might be anti-Trans.

Others can explain this better than me, but the argument generally made is that "sex" refers to physical characteristics which which you are born and, I assume, would include brain characteristics. "Gender" refers to an individual's identity and can be completely separate from physical characteristics. So I am not sure that physical differences in brains would be as important to gender as you suggest.

[Anonymous]

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Really didn't mean to cause offense, but I also get that sometimes my ignorance of perspective just makes me not realize when even a question is viewed as challenging or pejorative in some way.

Still learning (A LOT) here, and I have a family member who recently came out (in her 20s) as a trans girl and she is very open about how she doesn't fit the usual stories of "oh that explains it!" when she comes out to people simply because there is/has never been anything "feminine" about her. As a "little boy" she did typical boy things, never wanted to to "girl" things, etc. (which are all really more gender behavior/norm STEREOTYPE than an actual gender-defining trait) so there is not that "aha!" moment that some people react with when they learn that a very stereotypically-feminine child who was born biologically male identifies as a girl. She does not intend to cross-dress or "present" in any "girly" way, but simply identifies/feels like a girl. She is very open about wishing she knew WHY or how to explain it. And right now, her answer is "I just know that I'm a girl and nothing else matches that!" So my thought when I saw this workshop advertised in FCPS is that maybe the brain actually accounts for this in development, structural nuance, functionality???

But you are right...I guess that if there is NOT that link (as in, if a transgirl is shown to have a "boy brain") then that would just end up being used as "evidence" against the cause rather than helping trans people in clarifying the why through science.

Wonder if it's worth bringing that to the attention of the well-meaning person leading that FCPS workshop though. Because I would think the way that paragraph is written to advertise the workshop definitely conflates gender and sex and seems to imply that "boys" think/learn/develop a certain way due to "male brains" and "girls" a different way b/c of "female brains" which is very odd of FCPS.

Anyway, kind of talking to myself here...but thank you for addressing my question. I won't repost.