The Future of Sex and Gender in Psychology: Five Challenges to the Gender Binary (original) (raw)

Deconstructing sex: Strategies for undoing binary thinking in neuroendocrinology and behavior

Hormones and Behavior, 2023

The scientific community widely recognizes that "sex" is a complex category composed of multiple physiologies. Yet in practice, basic scientific research often treats "sex" as a single, internally consistent, and often binary variable. This practice occludes important physiological factors and processes, and thus limits the scientific value of our findings. In human-oriented biomedical research, the use of simplistic (and often binary) models of sex ignores the existence of intersex, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people and contributes to a medical paradigm that neglects their needs and interests. More broadly, our collective reliance on these models legitimizes a false paradigm of human biology that undergirds harmful medical practices and anti-trans political movements. Herein, we continue the conversations begun at the SBN 2022 Symposium on Hormones and Trans Health, providing guiding questions to help scientists deconstruct and rethink the use of "sex" across the stages of the scientific method. We offer these as a step toward a scientific paradigm that more accurately recognizes and represents sexed physiologies as multiple, interacting, variable, and unbounded by gendered preconceptions. We hope this paper will serve as a useful resource for scientists who seek a new paradigm for researching and understanding sexed physiologies that improves our science, widens the applicability of our findings, and deters the misuse of our research against marginalized groups.

Sex and/or gender? Some Neuroscientific Approaches

Traditionally, Gender Studies differentiates between the term “sex”, indicating sex differences from the biological point of view, and the term “gender”, indicating that sex differences are social and cultural constructions. In this paper I discuss some recent neuroscientific theses concerning sexual differences to sketch a path of inquiry that goes beyond the logic of the separation of biological and cultural studies.

Hardwired for Sexism? Approaches to Sex/Gender in Neuroscience

Neuroethics, 2012

Evidence has long suggested that 'hardwiring' is a poor metaphor for brain development. But the metaphor may be an apt one for the dominant paradigm for researching sex differences, which pushes most neuroscience studies of sex/gender inexorably towards the 'discovery' of sex/gender differences, and makes contemporary gender structures appear natural and inevitable. The argument we forward in this paper is twofold. In the first part of the paper, we address the dominant 'hardwiring' paradigm of sex/gender research in contemporary neuroscience, which is built on broad consensus that there are important 'original' sex differences in brain structure and function, organized by sexdifferentiating prenatal hormone exposures. We explain why this consensus is both unscientific and unethical. In the second part of the paper, we sketch an alternative research program focused not on the origins of sex/ gender differences but on variability and plasticity of brain/behavior. We argue that interventional experiments based on this approach will address more tractable questions, and lead to much more satisfactory results than the brain organization paradigm can provide.

Brain Sex Differences Related to Gender Identity Development: Genes or Hormones?

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

The complex process of sexual differentiation is known to be influenced by biological and environmental determinants. The present review has the aim of summarizing the most relevant studies on the biological basis of sexual development, and in particular, it focuses on the impact of sex hormones and genetic background on the development of sexual differentiation and gender identity. The authors conducted a search of published studies on Medline (from January 1948 to December 2019). The evidence suggests that the sexual dimorphic brain could be the anatomical substrate of psychosexual development, on which gonadal hormones may have a shaping role during prenatal and pubertal periods. Additionally, according to several heritability studies, genetic components may have a role, but a promising candidate gene has not been identified. Even though growing evidence underlines the primary role of biological factors on psychosexual development, further studies are necessary to better explain ...

Biological aspects of gender disorders

Minerva endocrinologica, 2011

The scientific community is very interested in the biological aspects of gender disorders and sexual orientation. There are different levels to define an individual's sex: chromosomal, gonadic, and phenotypic sex. Concerning the psychological sex, men and women are different by virtue of their own gender identity, which means they recognize themselves as belonging to a determinate sex. They are different also as a result of their own role identity, a set of behaviors, tendencies, and cognitive and emotional attitudes, commonly defined as "male" and "female". Transsexuality is a disorder characterized by the development of a gender identity opposed to phenotypic sex, whereas homosexuality is not a disturbance of gender identity but only of sexual attraction, expressing sexual orientation towards people of the same sex. We started from a critical review of literature on genetic and hormonal mechanisms involved in sexual differentiation. We re-examined the neuro...

Of the sexes and their brains: The neuropsychology of sex differences

This book, Of the sexes and their brains: The neuropsychology of gender differences, is an essay in scientific popularization. Its’ subject matter covers several topics pertaining to differences between men's and women's brains and behavior. We are accustomed to thinking that sex differences are culturally determined and thus conditioned by experiences of life after birth. However, stringent and extensive scientific analysis of the causes of sex differences in behavior compel us to recognize and understand that our genetic legacy and our hormonal and brain development before birth are extremely important causes of sex differences in behavior. Though intellectual and other mental abilities are equivalent, on the whole, in adult men and women, each sex presents some relative advantages and disadvantages. New medical research techniques are now helping us observe fine-grained differences in men's and women’s brains, and many such differences have been found. These differences are beginning to explain why men and women are at differing risk for various psychiatric disturbances as well as certain disorders of immune function. Sexual identity, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior are very different in men and women. A wide ranging and detailed neurobiological account of these differences is provided in this book. Sex hormones continue to have important and complex effects on sex differences in brain function and non-reproductive behavior and mental life right up until death. Such effects are observed, for example, in relation to the arrival of puberty, of childbearing, and of menopause. One of the fascinating differences between men and women is that the two sides of their brains are anatomically and physiologically organized and connected in a sex-specific manner. This may in fact be a major key to understanding the hidden causes of sex differences in behavior.

Sexing the Brain: The Science and Pseudoscience of Sex Differences

The Kaohsiung Journal of Medical Sciences, 2010

It is undeniable that sex differences in behavior exist and that they can be measured using a range of psychophysical tasks and questionnaires. We can't deny either that we tend to forget that those measured differences are differences between the mean values of the scores that, although significant, are always of very small magnitude, and importantly, that the distributions of the scores for women and men overlap greatly . Attention to the differences between means, while ignoring the amount of overlap of the distributions, leads to exaggeration of sex differences and oversimplifies the scientific evidence. Furthermore, any differences might depend merely on differences A recent upsurge in unitary biological explanations for gender differences in behavior (i.e. that they are "hard-wired" in the genetic code), put forward not only in books written for a general audience but also in scientific papers, makes it important to examine the fallacies of these ideas. Such genetic and hormonal explanations of human behavior, formulated with little consideration of the influences of experience, and often without taking experience into account at all, are part of a new wave of genetic explanations for a broad range of human behavior, as explained in the paper. These ideas are far from new; moreover, they are pseudoscientific and are used for political influence under the guise of science. They are a conservative social force that maintains social and educational inequalities between women and men. This paper explains that causal explanations of differences between the sexes are of two completely different types: unitary (genetic determinist) versus interactive explanations. The false reasoning used to support genetic determinist explanations of sex differences in behavior is discussed. To illustrate what biology really tells us about gender differentiation, the paper discusses the interactive roles of genetic, hormonal and environmental influences on the development of gender differences. These interactions are illustrated using two model biological systems (e.g. the intertwined influences of genes, sex hormones and experience on the development of sex differences in behavior in rats, and sex differences in neuronal connections in chickens). There is plenty of scientific evidence to show the complex interactive, and ever changing, influences of experience and genes that take place as an organism develops and throughout its life. Malleability of brain and behavior can be shown clearly using animal models, and the processes involved apply also to the development of brain and behavior in humans. We diminish our understanding of the functions of a host of contributing factors to gender differentiation by parceling out the largest portion of control to the genes. The biology and behavior of humans is dynamic and flexible and need not restrict women to inferior positions in society.

VARIATIONS IN SEX DIFFERENTIATION: THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF GENDER DYSPHORIA

VARIATIONS IN SEX DIFFERENTIATION: THE NEUROBIOLOGY OF GENDER DYSPHORIA, 2017

The aim of this review paper was to investigate variations in sex differentiation, and also, examine what neurobiological underpinnings there are to gender identity and gender dysphoria. In addition, the most extreme form of gender dysphoria, transsexuality, will be described from a neurobiological perspective but also discussed in terms of the classification from DSM-5. One theory considered on how gender identity originates is the fact that the sexual differentiation of the brain and the differentiation of sexual organs develop during different time periods. Alterations were displayed in a demonstration of male-to-female (MTF) and female-to-male (FTM) transsexuals that showed reversed results in cell number in a part of the hypothalamus, acronymized INAH-3 and reversal volume results in another region, acronymized BSTc. Likewise, differences in grey matter in the right putamen depended upon their natal gender. It can be concluded that there is biological evidence for sex differentiation and indications that lead science into considering biological components for gender dysphoria. This conclusion suggests for future research questions focused more on the possible genetic factors of gender identity, also, consider larger sample sizes and more replications. There is still incomplete knowledge of what exactly constitutes an individual's gender identity.

Neurohormonal Wars: Old Questions and Dubious Debates in the Psychology of Gender

A review of six books involving the debate in psychology (and, secondarily theology) regarding the degree to which gendered psychological traits are biologically driven or socially constructed. The first two books are historical treatments of the history and place of eunuchs in the early Western and Eastern churches. The next two are critiques of brain organization theory (BOT), which leans towards biological essentialism in its understanding of the origin of gendered traits. The final two support a more social-constructionist view of gendered personality traits. Both theories do acknowledge the interaction of biological and social forces, though in differing degrees. However, the review criticizes BOT for being the more unacceptably reductionistic in this regard.