this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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The neural circuitry must exist for people to think like this, so naturally every human behavior is neurological.
But what they were referring to is that gender dysphoria is likely (some evidence has been produced) a condition with an innate genetic cause. Some chemistry related to hormones being different makes it very "easy"/logical that a born man may feel like a woman (and vice versa), the genetic code is almost completely identical. However it's much harder, if not impossible, to make the link to feeling like a completely different species, thus it is more akin to religion, "just" a culture-based belief system.
All conditions have an innate genetic cause: ever seen a diabetic rock?
I get what you're saying, but this isn't one of those things where allele X causes phenotype Y. At best, there's genetic predisposition.
Mammal brains are quite generic. Perhaps the body map is hardcoded, but not even the visual system is hardcoded, and humans with >5 fingers or tails rarely have problems using them, so that would surprise me. If it develops from body feedback, a “disruption” to that could cause all sorts.
I'm not sure what you're talking about/what point you're trying to make. I understand that all our behavior is genetic in some way, since that's what we're built based on. However there is still a qualitative difference between an innate condition that is not majorly affected by the individual environment/circumstances (gender dysphoria), and a condition that only manifests through a specific environment/circumstances (identifying as a fox). One you can do something about, the other not really.
That dichotomy is non-exhaustive. What about innate conditions that are majorly, but not entirely, affected by circumstance? What about conditions that present identically, but are "really" multiple different things, each with distinct causes?
When we don't know, I don't think it's useful to try to talk about things as though we do.
You don't know enough to classify those things the way you've classified them – or if you do, please share the research because I'm interested in this topic!
We always work with incomplete information. We know nothing for certain. It seems to me like you're essentially arguing to just throw our hands up in uncertainty and say "we can't know so nothing we can do".
But even with incomplete, weak, non-95%-statistically-significant data we can make better decisions than without any data. If there is a 51% chance for the one thing being right instead of 49% chance for the other thing, it makes rational sense to act 51% like the one thing is true and 49% like the other thing is true, so in other words, lean towards the 51% thing. On average, you're going to make better decisions this way. You should look into Bayesian epistemology if you want to know more.
I obviously don't know the exact percentages for the things I claimed. But there is decent evidence for gender dysphoria not being entirely environmentally (still acting on our genes of course) caused, but relatively independent of the environment.
One, of course, is the mass of reports of transsexuals that they've "always in some way felt like this". While not being scientific data, as a rational person you should not ignore this evidence. Of course you don't weigh it as heavily as a peer-reviewed scientific study with proper methods, but it should still have some weight.
Then there are a few studies that have found differences in genes responsible for sex hormones, specifically androgen which seems to reduce its effectiveness in binding testosterone. I've heard of other such studies on sex hormones.
There are also twin studies done. They have found that identical twins have a much higher likelihood to both be trans than dizygotic (non-identical, i.e. different genes) twins, further pointing towards significant innate genetic predisposition towards gender dysphoria.
Of course, the topic of identifying as a fox has not been studied this deeply. However, based on all I know on human behavior, it is extremely likely that this condition has nothing really to do with foxes or fox-based genes somehow causing this behavior. From the way I talked to the person that identified as a fox, if I were to take it seriously, I would say that they have a deep feeling of not belonging anywhere and having found companionship with other people of similar interests. But I would be pretty sure that this interest could have been something else, filling the same need for companionship, without much friction, thus my claim that it is solely culturally/environmentally-based.
These studies show that the measured effects are statistically significant; that doesn't mean it's universal, only that it's prevalent enough in the population to be detectable. It doesn't mean that this is *the* reason: only that it's part of the puzzle.
Loads of trans people have “always in some way felt like this” – and loads of trans people haven't particularly noticed anything for decades. Academic explanations are very much incomplete: many don't even know what they need to be explaining.
You seem to not understand the reasoning I'm applying. Just because something is incomplete does not mean we can't work with what we have. But I'm pretty sure I will not be able to explain this to you.
@Azzu We can work with what we have: but what we have cannot be used in the way you're trying to use it. It is very much early days: what we're discovering is barely more than trivia, and our conclusions routinely get overthrown when we figure out we were looking at the data wrong.
You're saying "some studies try to apply the ‘it's innate’ model, and get results, therefore it's innate", and I'm saying "there is as yet insufficient evidence to support that reasoning". Why do we disagree here?
Because it is relevant to people and what they should be doing right now. Life can not stop or stay in limbo until we have more evidence. Most often it is better to act on the best guess than to do nothing.
It's fine if stuff changes and one thing turns out wrong later.
I'm confused. What action are you proposing? As far as I'm aware, the state-of-the-art treatments for trans people have precisely zero to do with the origins of transness. (That's one of the reasons I reckon the research in the area is understudied: as with autism, when the actual experts turn their hands to practical matters, they tend to focus on adapting things to better suit people in question, rather than trying to eliminate the development of non-conforming traits.)
I mean a "treatment" that has been suggested and applied is trying to help trans people be not trans anymore, through some form of therapy, mostly because it was believed that it's "unnatural" and a mental illness, a way that people shouldn't be like. The treatment now is the polar opposite effectively, not treat it like an illness at all, instead letting trans people embrace their preferred gender, because it's generally believed that it's not a mental illness that should be worked against.
Like idk, social anxiety disorder, while probably for some people having an innate component, is mostly believed to be caused by trauma during development. Twin studies have also been conducted for social anxiety disorder, however the risk increase was only 30-50%, while for gender dysphoria it was an increase from absolute values of ~2% to ~30%, so an increase of something like 1500%. As such, it is treated much differently, trying to figure out the triggers of the social anxiety disorder and doing some kind of therapy to continually lessen its effects.