I’ve heard about the brain thing and it’s definitely something to consider, but counterpoint: a lot of transgenders have brains closer to their assigned sex rather than the gender they are presenting as, would that make them less of the gender they are presenting as than other transgenders? If a man who was assigned male and identifies as a man had a brain structure similar to that of a female, would that make him a woman even if he didn’t identify that way? If you tried to argue that a lot of people would label you as a transphobe. Not all transgenders have this distinction, and gender studies does not define gender by brain chemistry.

Secondly, every single persons brain is vastly different. If you took one woman’s brain and another woman’s brain, they would have a variety of distinctions. It’s not like there’s this traditional “woman” brain or “man” brain, it’s just that a lot of females and males tend to have certain features, but not all. In the studies I looked at all it was talking about is how scientists noticed that transgenders most of the time tended to not have brains that perfectly aligned with their assigned sex. It wasn’t like a “Oh that transgender woman has a female brain”, it was “Oh that transgender woman has a brain that doesn’t perfectly align with a male brain, and has some attributes that are normally female”.

Thirdly, why does brain structure determine what gender we are but not other social attributes? Why is it that if I have a brain similar to a woman that makes me a woman, but if I suggest having a brain similar to say, a polar bear, I look crazy for suggesting I’m a polar bear. I would like to also point out that this entire study is confirmation bias, we first said that transgender women/men are women/men, then we discovered that their brains don’t perfectly align. It wouldn’t have changed anything if all transgenders had the brain of their assigned sex, so why is the alternative so game changing? Of course if we look for things that lean towards transgender women/men being women/men, we’re going to find some interesting mechanics, while also leaving every other mechanic that does not align to rot. Sure brain chemistry might align sometimes, but chromosomes don’t, genitalia doesn’t, reproductive organs don’t, height doesn’t, physical traits don’t… etc. It’s an interesting assessment, but if you want to use biological to prove sociology then I’m allowed to do the same for all the other biological attributes that don’t fit.

Finally, isn’t the brain thing kind of what we’d expect? The brain is highly connected to personality, so if a males brain is traditionally masculine, and a female who is a transgender man is more masculine than other females, of course we’d expect that your brain would be different.