posted on February 21, 2021 09:21 PM by
u/200fifty
73
u/titotal27 pointsat 1613982192.000000
Honestly, even thinking of “untitled” makes me blood boil, and it’s
even worse to think that somehow people think it was an “empathetic”
piece. It’s blatantly obvious from the malicious bad faith towards
feminists that Scotts empathy extends to people in his social club and
nobody else.
I really liked Elizabeth Sandifer piece linked in the thread. Special
spotlight to one of the motte/schism mods in the comment sections going
to bat for Aaronson
(and while you're working on providing us sources, the rest of us might want to read [this essay](https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a).)
Fine you can find her definitions of it on her blog here. http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html
She also has a medium post where she references that section of her book.
no, that won't do. you made a vague, yet very specific claim and decline to provide anything that supports it. put some work into your argumentation, do.
mostly this:
>**Subconscious Sex**: a term I coined in [*Whipping Girl*](http://www.juliaserano.com/whippinggirl.html) (pp. 26-29, 77-93) to describe an unconscious and inexplicable self-understanding regarding what [sex](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#sex) one belongs to or should be. I felt the phrase was necessary to distinguish between these unconscious experiences and the more conscious way we make sense of such feelings (i.e., what we typically call [gender identity](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#genderidentity)). I purposefully used the word “subconscious” (which is ambiguous and rarely used in academic/research settings) to capture the vagueness of such feelings (at least as I experienced them) and to avoid making it sound like I believe that they resided in a specific gene or region of the brain. And I intentionally used the word “sex” (rather than “[gender](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#gender)”) to reflect the fact that for many [transsexuals](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#transsexual) (including myself) the desire to [transition](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#transition) is often driven by [sex embodiment](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#sexembodiment) (i.e., aligning our subconscious and physical sexes) more so, or in addition to, a sense of sex/gender affiliation (i.e., belonging to and being recognized as a member of that sex/gender). I also argued (in the cited passages) that [cissexuals](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#cis) also likely have a subconscious sex, but they tend not to notice or appreciate it because it is concordant with their physical sex (and therefore they tend to conflate the two); this helps to explain the strong knee-jerk negative reactions some cis people exhibit toward transsexuals and the very notion of physical transition. See also [intrinsic inclinations](http://www.juliaserano.com/terminology.html#intrinsicinclinations).
Because you're so pedantic and dishonest, I went ahead went to my computer, opened up my copy of her book and found the passage:
>Perhaps the best way to describe how my subconscious sex feels to me is to say that it seems as if,
on some level, my brain expects my body to be female. Indeed, there is some evidence to suggest that
our brains have an intrinsic understanding of what sex our bodies should be.
1 For example, there have
been numerous instances in which male infants have been surgically reassigned as female shortly after
birth due to botched circumcisions or cloacal exstrophy (a non-intersex medical condition). Despite
being raised female and appearing to have female genitals, the majority of such children eventually
come to identify as male, demonstrating that brain sex may override both socialization and genital
sex.
2 There have also been studies that have examined a small, sexually dimorphic region of the brain
known as the BSTc. Researchers found that the structure of the BSTc region in trans women more
closely resembles that of most women, while in trans men it resembles that of most men.
3 Like all
brain research, such studies have certain limitations and caveats, but they do suggest that our brains
may be hardwired to expect our bodies to be female or male, independent of our socialization or the
appearance of our bodies
I examined this nonsense in an article a while ago.
so am i now showing my dishonesty by *(checks notes)* literally quoting the definition you wanted me to read? good to know.
anyways, i would really appreciate if you could point me to the article where you, as you write, “examined this nonsense”. i mean it.
Are you sure you actually disagree with serano that much? In the quote above, she isn't really talking about inherent "female" or "male" brains (besides the one tiny region thing, which is fine to disagree on), but about what body sex a brain thinks it "should" be attached to. Isn't this just talking about dysmorphia? How would dysmorphia happen if there was no disconnect between brain conception and body?
This article argues against essentialist notions of male/female brain differences, but is it arguing against the more fuzzy notion of statistical clustering of brain traits by sex? That hypothesis would not be contradicted by the point mentioned in the article that *individual features* are never reliably correlated with sex:
>Most often cited is a 2015 study done by Daphna Joel (who is very trans-affirming: see my post here) that purported to show that brains are not ‘sexed’, they are intersex. In her study, she demonstrated that most brains are not ‘extreme’: they don’t have all of the ‘male’ or ‘female’ characteristics on each side of the ‘dimorphic’ spectrum. Most brains are a heterogeneous composition of differently ‘sexed’ portions: someone may have a ‘male’ amygdala, but a ‘female’ hypothalamus.
And I think there is some decent evidence for such statistical clustering, see for example [this article](https://www.thecut.com/2017/04/heres-the-biggest-study-yet-on-sex-based-brain-differences.html) showing overlapping bell curves with slightly different male vs. female peaks for a large number of brain features, or [this study](https://www.pnas.org/content/113/14/E1968.long) where they trained computer learning models to predict sex based on brain scans and got a 93% success rate.
The way I read it she's not saying everyone has a definite subconscious sex, her description seems compatible with a more grayscale view that people have varying levels of subconscious pull towards one or another, so it wouldn't be incompatible with people having a mix of subconsious pulls, some having little or no subconscious pulls, people having context-dependent and varying subconscious pulls etc. Is your view that gender preferences are 100% cultural, with nothing in anyone's brain biology biasing them at all towards one or another?
>Is your view that gender preferences are 100% cultural, with nothing in anyone's brain biology biasing them at all towards one or another?
What in the world is a gender preference?
EDIT:
I have separate disputes with her concept of subconscious sex and why it's a poor description of gender/sex, but that's besides the point. It's her insistence that "subconscious sex" is biological, per se.
Anyways I have to sleep as I work in 5 hours
> What in the world is a gender preference?
As long as there are average behavioral differences between genders, people may feel that one pattern fits them better than the other. Those average behavioral differences may largely be products of culture, but there may also be elements of them that are at least partly rooted in biology--there are at least some behavioral differences between males and females of every other mammal species and we assume those are rooted in biology, it seems unlikely humans are the lone exception.
For a concrete example consider the case of [David Reimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer), who was born a typical male baby but had a horribly botched circumcision and his doctor decided to give him surgery to reassign him as female, and he was raised as a girl without being told about this (he was also given regular hormone shots without being told their purpose). Starting around age 9 he developed a strong sense he wasn't "really a girl" and at age 15 his parents finally told him the truth, at which point he started living as a boy. More on his story [here](http://movies2.nytimes.com/books/00/02/20/reviews/000220.20angiert.html) and [here](https://sites.psu.edu/245spring2015/2015/03/06/as-nature-made-him-the-boy-raised-as-a-girl/). So, doesn't it seem likely that sex-linked biological traits of his brain played a role in this strong subjective sense that he was meant to a boy? And if so one could sum it up by saying his brain biology gave him a subconscious pull towards thinking he was really a boy even if it didn't cross his mind that he hadn't been born with a typically female body.
Doesn't that link prove you wrong?
>Essentialism, Essentialist: the belief that all members of a particular category (especially those categories that are presumed to be natural in origin) must share a particular set of characteristics, qualities, or “essence” with one another. One relevant example would be the notion that all women are genetically XX, or are attracted to men. **While essentialism fails to account for the naturally occurring complexity and heterogeneity exhibited by humans** (and other organisms), people routinely rely on, or resort to, essentialist explanations of how the world works. People often mistakenly conflate essentialism with biology -- I debunk such misconceptions in Excluded, pp. 138-168. Additionally, I outline the differences between essentialism, identity labels, and umbrella terms in Excluded, pp. 11-14.
>Gender Determinism: the belief that gender differences arise in a natural unadulterated manner from biology (i.e., solely from our genes, physiology, anatomy, etc.). It is the most commonly accepted view of gender in our culture, perhaps because it seems to provide support for essentialist beliefs about women and men. **Despite its popularity within the general public and amongst certain biologists, the scientific evidence does not support such an overly simplistic view of gender development (as I detail at length in Excluded, pp. 138-168)**
No, because despite nominally eschewing essentialism, she manages to spout it. It's a trick a LOT of people use. It doesn't matter if she says she isn't essentialist if she uses the concept of "subconscious sex"
listen gorg, you've shown one source and it literally contradicts you.
you say it's only "nominally" against you. but you had the opportunity to cherrypick from ANYTHING she's ever written, and you chose this.
your claim is so far totally unsupported
No biggie. It happens. That said, I saw the original comment before anyone had replied and said to myself, "Oh look! A can of worms -- I hope no one opens it."
Honestly, even thinking of “untitled” makes me blood boil, and it’s even worse to think that somehow people think it was an “empathetic” piece. It’s blatantly obvious from the malicious bad faith towards feminists that Scotts empathy extends to people in his social club and nobody else.
I really liked Elizabeth Sandifer piece linked in the thread. Special spotlight to one of the motte/schism mods in the comment sections going to bat for Aaronson
I hate Julia Serano (despite her following me on twitter before my account got suspended), but I guess this is unrelated