I think probably gender identity is more complex than a 2D plot, too. Even this complex brain-sex mosaic model doesn’t adequately capture it.
A common model I’ve seen for talking about gender is using the Gender Unicorn:
It is of course inaccurate and problematic, as any theory is going to be for something as complex as gender.
What is useful about the Gender Unicorn is that it gives you that intensity scale that on one extreme would be agender, which is what I think your drawing is trying to represent.
Yes of course it is. But thanks for the links, will read.
I’m not presenting anything absolute or probably new. Just a personal take on a correlation between where my gender is and how strongly I feel it, at the different points of my fluidity.
and no worries, I suck at my delivery - I don’t mean to come across with such refutation vibes 😅 Maybe I’m just excited to share these articles and connect the dots between the current science on “brain-sex” and the ways we conceptualize or think about gender identity. I like your drawing, esp. the way it is plotted in angles rather than on a Cartesian plot - it’s just fun and quirky.
analyses [of MRIs of more than 1,400 human brains from four datasets] of internal consistency reveal that brains with features that are consistently at one end of the “maleness-femaleness” continuum are rare.
most evidence to date reveals a much larger contribution of sex-related hormones compared to sex-related genes to the sexual differentiation of the rodent brain and behavior
…
studies revealed that feminization and masculinization are independent processes rather than two poles of a continuum
…
And adding to the first link:
[brains whose features align clearly at either male or female end are] low (0% to 8%) and much lower than the number of mosaic brains (23% to 53%), that is, brains in which at least one feature was at the “femaleend” zone and one feature was at the “male-end” zone…
Considering we all start the same for the first few weeks and then differ after that, it makes sense it’s not 1 spectrum of differences. It should be 2 at least.
yes, I think it’s quite surprising to find most people have a mix of sexed traits, the whole concept of a strict binary doesn’t apply at all to the brain it seems
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26621705/
https://people.socsci.tau.ac.il/mu/daphnajoel/files/2019/10/Joel2019Neuroscientist.pdf
I think probably gender identity is more complex than a 2D plot, too. Even this complex brain-sex mosaic model doesn’t adequately capture it.
A common model I’ve seen for talking about gender is using the Gender Unicorn:
It is of course inaccurate and problematic, as any theory is going to be for something as complex as gender.
What is useful about the Gender Unicorn is that it gives you that intensity scale that on one extreme would be agender, which is what I think your drawing is trying to represent.
This looks crazy similar to the gender bread person
!
Yes of course it is. But thanks for the links, will read.
I’m not presenting anything absolute or probably new. Just a personal take on a correlation between where my gender is and how strongly I feel it, at the different points of my fluidity.
and no worries, I suck at my delivery - I don’t mean to come across with such refutation vibes 😅 Maybe I’m just excited to share these articles and connect the dots between the current science on “brain-sex” and the ways we conceptualize or think about gender identity. I like your drawing, esp. the way it is plotted in angles rather than on a Cartesian plot - it’s just fun and quirky.
Love this statement.💜
Extracts from 2nd link that stood out to me
…
…
And adding to the first link:
Considering we all start the same for the first few weeks and then differ after that, it makes sense it’s not 1 spectrum of differences. It should be 2 at least.
yes, I think it’s quite surprising to find most people have a mix of sexed traits, the whole concept of a strict binary doesn’t apply at all to the brain it seems