Using AI to analyze MRI brain scans of thousands of children, researchers could predict a participant’s sex or gender based on how brain regions interacted with one another.
Sex is a biological variable, shaped by our body’s hormones, anatomy, and genetics, whereas gender is a cultural construct, shaped by both our sense of self and interactions with others.
Isn’t the study implying that gender isn’t purely a cultural construct if there’s a neurological component to it?
Maybe there are actually three potentially independent elements (biological, neurological, and cultural).
Yeah, but we can distinguish between neurological components that are conditioned on biology outside the brain like chromosomes and hormones (what the article calls “sex”), components that are conditioned on learning (“cultural constructs”), and components that are conditioned on neither (what the article, apart from the quoted sentence, calls “gender”).
By “biological” I mean the neurological component that correlates with biological sex, and by “neurological” I mean the component that’s purely neurological and doesn’t correlate with anything outside the brain.
Sex is a cultural construct as well. It’s founded in a biological reality, but it’s a cultural construct that someone with my intersex conditions would’ve been assigned male at birth and someone with my cousin’s was assigned female. Other cultures might look at intersex people as one or multiple sexes and treat us distinctly and differently from endosex AMAB and AFAB people. Additionally where the line of intersex is is part of that cultural construct
Isn’t the study implying that gender isn’t purely a cultural construct if there’s a neurological component to it?
Maybe there are actually three potentially independent elements (biological, neurological, and cultural).
Everything has a neurological component to it, because you’re a brain thinking about it, right? At least that’s what I’m getting from that.
Yeah, but we can distinguish between neurological components that are conditioned on biology outside the brain like chromosomes and hormones (what the article calls “sex”), components that are conditioned on learning (“cultural constructs”), and components that are conditioned on neither (what the article, apart from the quoted sentence, calls “gender”).
I’m not sure what you mean by separating the biological and the neurological. Isn’t neurology a component of biology?
By “biological” I mean the neurological component that correlates with biological sex, and by “neurological” I mean the component that’s purely neurological and doesn’t correlate with anything outside the brain.
Sex is a cultural construct as well. It’s founded in a biological reality, but it’s a cultural construct that someone with my intersex conditions would’ve been assigned male at birth and someone with my cousin’s was assigned female. Other cultures might look at intersex people as one or multiple sexes and treat us distinctly and differently from endosex AMAB and AFAB people. Additionally where the line of intersex is is part of that cultural construct
Don’t forget fashion. I look great in heels.