[Controversial] The Scientific Evidence Regarding HBS

[phoenixvtam]

The HBS movement cites recent research on the hypothalamus as definitive "proof" of their assertion that transexuality is a physical intersex condition. Divorcing myself from the issue and speaking purely as a scientist, this is either ignorant or dishonest because the papers they cite are in fact only preliminary pilot studies.

The 1997 study by

Comments

[leoevans]

I don't know about you all, but I'm terrified if they can point out smoking gun signs of transsexualism, or for being gay, or anything along those lines. It's asking for a eugenics program.

Mistakes of research

[laura_seabrook]

It makes the initial assumption that transsexuality is a "single condition". Maybe it's not, maybe it's more like epilepsy. I used to have epilepsy when young, and the wikipedia gives a classification as:

1. By their first cause (or etiology).
2. By the observable manifestations of the seizures, known as semiology.
3. By the location in the brain where the seizures originate.
4. As a part of discrete, identifiable medical syndromes.
5. By the event that triggers the seizures, as in primary reading epilepsy.

[tinamou]

I think the greatest flaw in the HBS platform (other than the lack of research thus far) is their assumption that gender variation is an all-or-nothing phenomenon. These studies focus on neuron counts in areas of the brain about the size of a grain of rice, where the male and female averages are relatively separate, but there are is also considerable variation within genders. What we think is sexual dimorphism may actually be a continually variable trait, like height--males tend to be taller, but there's a lot of variation, not just one 'tall' height for men and one 'short' height for women. Moreover, there's no evidence thus far that trans people who are straight, binary identified and whatnot have 'trans-er' brains than other trans people. The existing study made no attempt to rank the level of gender conformity of subjects; it just classified them as trans or not.

[transgressor]

excellent points!

[phoenixvtam]

Yea, that's the other big issue. Every HBS advocate I've yet seen insists that all real transexuals have HBS and that anyone who doesn't have HBS isn't a real transexual.

[phoenixvtam]

Overall, I would say that it is reasonable (although still unproven at this point) to say that there is probably a physical basis for some or even most cases of transexuality. However, I utterly reject the idea that there must be a physical basis for all cases of transexuality and that any case of transexuality for which a physical basis cannot be identified is not legitimate.

[transgressor]

one piece that seems to be missing from all of the discussions on this subject is what I understand (from my armchair) to be a growing body of literature suggesting that *experience* can effect neurological change.

if that's so,, then it could conceivably be the case that simply living in the female role in society causes the BSTc (or whatever its acronym is) to change.

my rule is that anyone who claims to speak truth as to the causes of 'transness' is speaking out of their ass and invariably pursuing a political agenda, be it oppressive or liberating.

correlation does not establish causation, no matter how desperately some wish to believe it can.

[transgressor]

just a quick follow up:

I'm not a scientist, which I freely admit. But to me, the strongest indicator that there is a bio/neuro/endrocrine ("physiological") basis or partial basis to transness is the fact that there is such an overwhelmingly consistent and positive response to the elimination of "birth sex" hormones and their replacement with "self-understood sex" hormones. It's still only a correlation of course...but a pretty enticing one, suggestive that "something" physiological is going on, somehow, somewhere.

[phoenixvtam]

To really test that theory, you'd have to find several sets of identical twins, of which one is transexual and one is not, give them both the same HRT regimen, and see which one it's more effective on.

[transgressor]

if the one twin is not TS, can't it be pretty much assumed that they will not tolerate the HRT well? or at least assumed that the possibility is so strong of them not tolerating it well, that methodologically, the experiment makes no sense and has a huge bias problem in favour of suggesting the HRT is effective on TS folks? what'm I missing?

again...not a scientist, so i might be missing the incredibly obvious.

oh wait...did you mean more effective *physically* at feminizing/masculinizing? 'cause up 'til this moment I was thinking we meant effective psychologically, at relieving gender dysphoria and its typically-related psychological symptoms (depression, anxiety,..)

if you meant physically...then yeah, I see how that would be the perfect experiment, though perhaps unethical. :)

[spoonless]

What tinamou said. I wouldn't be too surprised if it's true what these studies seem to be indicating--namely, that there are neurological differences between someone who identifies strongly as female and someone who identifies as male. But the main problem with the HBS platform seems to be that they think gender is binary. In my opinion, gender is mostly a social construct and only loosely based on certain clusters of neurological traits that happened to be weakly correlated with certain genitals. Some people tend to have a lot of the traits recognized by society as "female" while others tend to have a lot of the "male" traits but most people are somewhere in between and many are even nowhere on that spectrum. No doubt you can find many trans people whose brains work more like the gender they identify with rather than the gender people assign to them based on chromosome type or genitals.