Comment by xist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xist | Hacker News Reader

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Gender identity is something that is nuanced and complex. I'm not looking for an argument but I would invite you to think of the opposite:

- What is the proof that this person is not what they claim of? (ie, what ideology of yours makes you convinced of this?). This ties into deeply philosophical questions - what makes you "you"? Do you have a conscience? A soul? Is your brain the source of your identity or is your loins? Does your loins control your brain and thus your existence?

But on a more direct reply - anthropology has made some significant discoveries about the history of people - including trans people. I would encourage you to look into that for more information - assuming you wish to learn more about the subject.

I would also encourage you to google (or bing) terms such as "trans people brains" where there's a lot of neurological research being done. First google hit i find is https://health.clevelandclinic.org/research-on-the-transgend...

There's lots of information out there, and more is being discovered every day so it's very useful to keep your eyes open on evidence - and not personal beliefs.

Agreed, there is a lot of information out there. Some of this can be examined through scientific research, I agree, but the rest is ideological. I think it is important to distingush between the two.

The brain research aims to answer the question of whether there is any fundamental neurobiological reason that some people experience strong feelings of gender incongruence. That link you found is somewhat out of date, by the way - more recent studies that control for homosexuality show correlations between this and some sex atypical brain structures and activation patterns. The only significant correlation with gender dysphoria found so far is in brain regions known to relate to body perception. And even then, researchers don't know if this is innate or due to post-natal experiences. Much more research needs to be done.

This is fascinating, but, it doesn't answer any of the questions on the extent to which society, law and policy should be reorganized to accommodate people who say they have a gender identity that doesn't match their sex. There's no objective, empirical measurement to support anyone's claim of an alternative gender identity. Nor is there any scientific backing for ideas such as "male woman" or "woman's penis". Choosing to believe such claims, and the manner in which they are acted upon - often controversially in modern times, e.g. by housing males in women's prisons, letting males compete in women's sports, and so on - is an ideological stance.

So I think it's very reasonable for the Science Museum to reject this particular exhibit, seeing as it included no scientific research, and only promoted a specific ideological viewpoint regarding gender identity.

I'm surprised that this was an exhibit in the first place tbh with that limited information. My comments were related to the hyperbolic comparison OP did.

Trans people exist. Full Stop. Anything more than a 5 min scan of our history and scientific back to recorded times show they do exist. And there's lots of research being done today that was not done decades ago when people started to formulate their opinions. We obviously don't know everything yet but like I mentioned I expect in 50 years a lot of questions will be put to rest.

> There's no objective and empirical measurement to support anyone's claim of an alternative gender identity. Choosing to believe such claims, and then acting upon them (e.g. by housing males in women's prisons, letting males compete in women's sports, etc.) is an ideological stance.

^-- That also is an ideological stance whether you intend it or not. I don't believe the harm in the claims. The amount of people that are affected by your 2 examples seems to be in the hundreds, maybe thousands world wide so I'm perplexed why people spend so much time worrying about such edge cases.

That feels quite controlling and oppressive and I expect you would hate others to do the same to you.

What I don't understand is how this personally affects you, and why this matters so much to yourself. Were you in a prison with a trans person? Did a trans person beat you in a swimming competition last night? What did a trans person do to you?

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