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"Closer to the opposite sex here" doesn't mean they are closer to becoming the opposite sex, rather that they are just closer to the opposite sex. Green is closer to blue than yellow, but green is not blue. It is certainly true that some seek (and believe in) total sex change. IMO that's nonsense. Until transsexuals are able to make the gametes of the opposite sex, they are not the opposite sex. Chromosomes technically are irrelevant here, an XY individual with a huge beard and muscular shoulders, a dropped voice, etc, would still be female if they produced egg cells. Re: intersex, it's just anything that is not cleanly male or female, or that somehow complicates such a categorisation, and is inborn. It's not that sex is a spectrum per se, biological sex in terms of gamete production is pretty well defined, but rather that sex characteristics are part of sex in sexually dimorphic animals, and these characteristics are then malleable. So, strictly, a trans woman is male. However, if she has undergone medical transition to some extent, it's reductive to only call her a male. It ignores her phenotype (how genes are expressed), which is female overall. Think of dyed hair, I suppose. If someone's hair colour is naturally brown, but they have it dyed blonde, is it correct to say their hair colour is brown? To an extent perhaps, in the sense that it's the unprocessed colour, but if you were to record it as just brown, it misses that it is processed and therefore not just "brown", you flatten some nuance. The inverse is also true, though, simply recording it as "blonde" would miss the nuance. For brain studies, from what I have seen of the meta-analysis, it's fairly comprehensive. If sexual orientation is accounted for, the results are consistent, from what I know. It's a bit strange, but there are differences between trans women who are strictly or primarily attracted to only their natal sex, and every other sexual orientation. Ray Blanchard's theories about AGP and HSTS are nonsensical, but the distinction he makes between the two groups has validity, even if his explanation of it does not. |