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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   36582 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Estrogen has pretty profound cognitive effects (though of course hormones aren't literally everything). For example, transitioning MTFs often describe feeling way more emotional, crying more often, etc., while transitioning FTMs describe the same thing in reverse.

Anecdotally, from the perspective of a cis woman who doesn't have a problem with trans women*, the ones I'm familiar with read to me as nerdy girls in terms of affect and personality.

*my own problems with transness / gender ideology / whatever are all about <18yo children transitioning — the adult trans people I know don't bother me (regardless of when they themselves began transition, which I rarely even know)

For example, transitioning MTFs often describe feeling way more emotional, crying more often, etc., while transitioning FTMs describe the same thing in reverse.

I do wonder about that. While there is indeed a very strong hormonal effect, I also have the feeling that people transitioning, particularly male to female, have an exaggerated sense of gender roles to live up to, so they think "women are more emotional, cry more easily and more plentifully, express emotions more easily" and so on, thus they expect to feel a heightened sense of emotion and play up to that. A sort of placebo effect, if you like; 'to be a Real Girl means to be very emotional and now that I'm becoming a Real Girl by taking hormones I should also be very emotional'.

There's this thing called 'brain development'. Affected by hormones. It's the reason gay men seem feminine - there is an epigenetic mechanism that protects the embryo's brain from too strong effects of cross sex hormones. When it fails you get homosexuals, or that's one of the current theories.

There's a good number of ex-men as Sailer calls them who still behave like .. men. You are surely familiar with the plight of Alice Dreger. That predates world war T.

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