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Gender isn't real: it's just an idea (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 9 months ago by hellfire103@sopuli.xyz to c/lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org

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cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/6893359

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[-] Kamirose@beehaw.org 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Gender expression and gender stereotypes are societal constructs. A person's sense of their own gender is (probably) not. There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population. There have also been studies of identical twins where if one twin is trans, the other twin often is as well, at a much higher rate than fraternal twins.

There is a genetic component and a constructed component to gender.

Edit: wording.

Edit 2: See my comment below with sources on the twins study - it's possible I was misinformed on this. The results of studies are mixed.

[-] cumberboi@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago

This is really interesting if these stats are true. Just to comment on the raising child as different gender, I personally would put this down to wider societal influence as the parents of course dont have full control of what their child is exposed to - they can only control so much. This could be things like bullying, advertisements, minor subtleties present in society (such as the signs used on gendered toilets) and probably others. But just want to be clear that i dont think your conclusion is invalid by any means, just wanted to give my viewpoint on that specific stat in case you hadn't considered it already and maybe we can learn from each other :)

The identical twin study specifically sounds really interesting and I'd love to read about it if you get the time to link it, thanks!

[-] Kamirose@beehaw.org 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I was actually repeating what was said in a video I watched yesterday so I went to look at their sources - here is a relevant study that supports this conclusion - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1743609515339060

However while looking it up in google scholar I did find another study that concluded the opposite, that there's no significant difference between identical and fraternal twins. That study is here. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-17749-0

So it's possible that I was misinformed.

As a bonus, here's an interesting analysis about what even is gender and gender identity in an academic setting. https://academic.oup.com/analysis/advance-article/doi/10.1093/analys/anad027/7204699

[-] RadioRat@beehaw.org 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I searched pubmed and I’m pretty sure this is anecdotal, unfortunately. Hard to say how much of the volume of non-straight/trans and trans/trans twins on social media is selection bias since the trans/cishet twins aren’t eye-catching. There seem to be a lot but gosh do folks love to hear about twin similarities. It’s worth noting most are fraternal but that’s consistent with the general population.

I understand where Kamirose is coming from, but it’s not empirical (unless there’s a study that used some really weird terminology and I missed it).

Edit: I found a review and its citations do not converge well due to small sample sizes (hard with trans + twins - two rare things for births).

[-] crank@beehaw.org 1 points 9 months ago

I did a websearch for trans twins and found the following 2 links. I did not read them just sharing as it seems you didn't have good luck searching.

[-] RadioRat@beehaw.org 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the extra legwork! These are cited by the review. I’m hopeful that there will be more research and data available on gender dysphoria as time goes on with more people being able to seek gender affirming care. 🤞 the horrific backlash doesn’t scare too many into staying in the closet or stymie funds/grants to these efforts.

[-] FaeDrifter@midwest.social 1 points 9 months ago

There have been many times where people have tried to raise their child as a different gender than the child was assigned at birth, and the child 99% of the time identifies with the gender assigned at birth, at the same rate as the general cisgender population.

How many is "many"? 100? 1,000? 10,000? Where is the study on this?

[-] crank@beehaw.org 5 points 9 months ago

I wonder if @Kamirose@beehaw.org might be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

Reimer was an identical twin AMAB who was raised female due to his penis being mangled during circumcision. The gender was then reassigned as female and the infant had surgical procedures done to align the body with the new female gender. The case was overseen by John Money who made a lot of hay over it, publishing all about how this proved gender was a purely social construction. It was a very famous case study. Ultimately Reimar he felt himself to be male and transitioned to male as an adult. However he was very screwed up by the whole thing and my understanding is his death by suicide is attributed to this whole series of events. There was a lot of weird stuff.

[-] Kamirose@beehaw.org 3 points 9 months ago

That portion is anecdotal. These stories come from either before there were ethics guidelines in psychology so people were studying their own children, or reviews of child abuse cases where the parent was forcing a different identity on their children. This is not something that is possible to (ethically) run an empirical study on, unfortunately.