Gender Roles

[Jarhyn]

A person whose cognition is 3% of the way from male-typical to female-typical might well perceive himself to have "a more female-like cognition" because he's comparing his cognition with those of typical males, and has precious little understanding of how people whose brains are 100% female think.

Possible. Also, in case that was unclear, I didn't want to imply that the description above fits all trans women, just that it is biologically entirely plausible that such people exist at rates well above the rates for trivially visibly identifiably anatomically intersex individuals.

Fixed.

Cognition is an emergent property of neural and endocrine anatomy, sure. But then again, the features of neural and endocrine anatomy are an emergent property of the weak nuclear force, the the strong nuclear force, and electromagnetism in an environment modified by gravity

I think what you mean to say that there may be aspects of brain anatomy in transgender individuals that are detectably more like those of the sex they identify with, or at least significantly different from the mean of the sex they display down there. That may well be so, but I feel those are less relevant than differences and similarities in cognition itself (except maybe as an argument to convince detractors who will brush away psychological data saying they're faking it, whether or not that's plausible given the method).

Well, my point is that... Well, I'm one of those wonks who is particular about saying that cognition is a physical phenomena so all differences in cognition ARE anatomical, but the anatomy is so fine and particular that it is largely inaccessible.... Even if that anatomy forms sometimes due to experiences rather than exclusively genetics.

As you note, the distribution of the data suggests that "pink brain" and "blue brain" are developmental phenomena associated with more basic chemistry more than perceptual phenomena, and as I have noted there is a stronger selective pressure than is widely acknowledged for some subset of a social species to form some third bucket of expressions in the form of non-reproductive behavioral modes

 

[Jokodo]

A person whose cognition is 3% of the way from male-typical to female-typical might well perceive himself to have "a more female-like cognition" because he's comparing his cognition with those of typical males, and has precious little understanding of how people whose brains are 100% female think.

Possible. Also, in case that was unclear, I didn't want to imply that the description above fits all trans women, just that it is biologically entirely plausible that such people exist at rates well above the rates for trivially visibly identifiably anatomically intersex individuals.

Fixed.

Cognition is an emergent property of neural and endocrine anatomy, sure. But then again, the features of neural and endocrine anatomy are an emergent property of the weak nuclear force, the the strong nuclear force, and electromagnetism in an environment modified by gravity

I think what you mean to say that there may be aspects of brain anatomy in transgender individuals that are detectably more like those of the sex they identify with, or at least significantly different from the mean of the sex they display down there. That may well be so, but I feel those are less relevant than differences and similarities in cognition itself (except maybe as an argument to convince detractors who will brush away psychological data saying they're faking it, whether or not that's plausible given the method).

Well, my point is that... Well, I'm one of those wonks who is particular about saying that cognition is a physical phenomena so all differences in cognition ARE anatomical, but the anatomy is so fine and particular that it is largely inaccessible.... Even if that anatomy forms sometimes due to experiences rather than exclusively genetics.

As you note, the distribution of the data suggests that "pink brain" and "blue brain" are developmental phenomena associated with more basic chemistry more than perceptual phenomena, and as I have noted there is a stronger selective pressure than is widely acknowledged for some subset of a social species to form some third bucket of expressions in the form of non-reproductive behavioral modes

I don't know that to be true. It's true in bees, but we're not bees, even if none other than EO Wilson has suggested that humans can be analysed as an eusocial species.

It reeks a bit if hyperadaptationism to me. A lot of things just are what they are (even if they are maladaptive in isolation) because given our evolutionary history and deeply ingrained biochemical networks and developmental pathways, there isn't really any way to make them otherwise in production without breaking stuff that's even more important, and evolution doesn't do feature branches.

The giraffe doesn't have exactly 7 vertebrae in its neck because that's the ideal number for a neck of its length, but growing 7 of them is what mammals do, and so far in its history, every mutation that produced 8 or 9 was accompanied by deleterious effects elsewhere in the system. The giraffe doesn't have a nerve that goes all the down into the abdomen, crosses underneath the aorta and runs back up to the larynx because that helps keep the aorta from sagging, but because the analogous path was a fairly straight line in our fish ancestors, and it hasn't been enough of a problem since for any land vertebrate to do something about it. A pregnant woman's immune system isn't tuned down because getting sick with infectious diseases while pregnant is adaptive, but because it'd otherwise attack the foreign tissue that's growing inside the body. And when it does attack the fetus (probably the underlying cause of most complications during pregnancy involving an otherwise viable embryo or fetus), it doesn't do so to prevent the mother from having a pregnancy that's going to mess up her CV, but because the system of checks and balances failed.

 

[Jokodo]

And when [a pregnant woman's immune system] does attack the fetus (probably the underlying cause of most complications during pregnancy involving an otherwise viable embryo or fetus), it doesn't do so to prevent the mother from having a pregnancy that's going to mess up her CV, but because the system of checks and balances failed.

I'm not actually making that up, not entirely at least. I remembered after writing the above post that, many moons ago, I'd run into a paper or such that argued pretty much just that, and I managed to dig it up (minus "prevent the mother from having a pregnancy that's going to mess up her CV", add "enable females to unwittingly terminate pregnancies that were not in their long-term reproductive interests", potayto potahto). Turns out it was a book chapter, and fulltext is available via researchgate.

I considered it then, as I do now, a prime example of hyperadaptationism, a prime example of a certain brand of evolutionary psychology that's so bad it's giving both "evolution" and "psychology" a bad rep, and indeed a prime example of bad science. I can only hope it was published on April 1, but have found no indication that it was. Cambridge University Press isn't what it used to be either.

The book chapter is titled "Preeclampsia and other pregnancy complications as an adaptive response to unfamiliar semen", and it only goes downhill from there. There are probably people in this thread better qualified in immunology and/or procreative medicine than I am, but very coarsely, preeclampsia is a condition that arises when the placenta (which is made up of embryonic tissue, ie tissue that is alien to the mother) "invades" the uterus and receives a stronger-than-usual immune response. It's a fairly common complication during pregnancy in humans, rare in other apes, and unknown in other mammals. Common wisdom has it that the "invasion", that is the formation of a higher surface area through appendices extending into the uterine tissue, becomes necessary in humans specifically to achieve a higher nutrient flow needed to develop our babies' oversized brains. It has been observed for quite some time that preeclampsia is more common in first pregnancies, and more recently that that's a simplification, as it also common in subsequent pregnancies of the mother in those cases where the father is a different one. Then there's some stuff about barrier contraception and sperm donors etc., and the statistical data appears to be fairly solid: Prior exposure to the father's semen significantly reduces the risk of preeclampsia. Which is perfectly explained by the immune system doing what it's best at: attacking foreign antigens, but with room for desensitisation reducing the response.

Instead, they come up with the speculative idea that preeclampsia is an adaptive response targeted at minimising the chance of bringing to term a pregnancy where the father is unlikely to contribute to child-rearing. Occam would turn in his grave, never mind that preeclampsia causes about one maternal death for every seven fetal deaths and is, in developing countries, responsible for 1/5 to 1/4 of all maternal deaths.

Sure, if you have reason to believe that the mechanistic explanation is insufficient, go ahead and propose an additional factor. If you did the math and found that the maximal plausible effect size of the expected immune response to fetal tissue literally, physically, invading the uterus is insufficient to explain the immune response, and/or that everything we know about immune system desensitisation is insufficient to explain the "familiar sperm" effect, it's your turn. You'd still need to demonstrate that it's worth it, given the high cost in maternal mortality, but it's a start. However, they aren't even trying to show any of that. The paper doesn't contain a single formula. Sure, there are many aspects in life, and many strands of scientific research, that don't require formulae. Postulating an evo-psych explanation for something that is, on the face of it, sufficiently explained by immunology, however, isn't one of those.

If anything, I find the exact opposite scenario much more plausible: Our mating patterns and hidden ovulation as an preeclampsia avoidance strategy, rather than preeclampsia as a strategy to avoid (births resulting from) matings that don't fit our pattern. Starting from the high nutrient demands of our oversized fetal brains which necessitate a more "invasive" implantation of the placenta into the uterus, and taking into account vertebrate-universal properties of our immune system such as how it generally reacts to foreign tissue and how it can be desensitised by constant low level exposure to antigens, the peculiarities of our mating system and the abnormally low fecundity of our females might very well be "preeclampsia-avoidance strategies", rather than preeclampsia being "one-night-stand pregnancy avoidance strategies". If you look compare homo sapiens with most other extant mammals, two things are very evident (and others, but those are the ones relevant here): Our females don't show when they are receptive, and more often than not, they don't get pregnant even after having unprotected sex at just the right time. Ask any cattle breeder: he'll now when his cows are in heat, and if he matches one with a bull while in heat and she doesn't get pregnant, he'll likely consider her to suffer from some disorder. Human women, in contrary, don't show when they are are ovulating, and more often than not don't get pregnant even after having unprotected sex while they are. In that particular respect, even female chimps are very much like cows and unlike human females. And that human state of affairs doesn't come for free: it's basically what causes regular menstruations. If you are a man and think that's a fair price: ask any woman. It does, however, make it so that most women's immune system will be fairly familiarised with the father's sperm by the time they do get pregnant, assuming most of her sex is repeatedly with the same small set of men. Here's a paper that discusses just that: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11900595/

There are some things evolution can easily change without deleterious effects. The fact that our immune system is hostile to foreign tissue just isn't one of them.

 

[Jokodo]

I'm probably Europeansplaining as much as mansplaining here, but granted, I need to tread lightly here. I'm not saying doors remove all points of contention, but that they will take out much of the heat from that particular argument, and I fail to understand why anyone would think not having them is a good idea. I'm no social historian of bathrooms by any stretch of imagination, but if I have to take a guess, the original motivation was probably, perversly, puritanism: to minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults.

I wouldn't be surprised, but I can see a practical use for having a bit of space: It allows figuring out whether a stall is occupied or not even if something has happened to the occupant. I think the doors could be bigger and still serve this purpose, but I can see merit in a way to check.

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

 

[TomC]

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

That doesn't make as much sense to me as the US norm of leaving about a foot of space "(.3 metres for the measurements impaired) between the bottom of the stall and the floor.
Not only is it easier to mop the floor, but if you are looking for someone you know well enough to recognize their shoes you can find them.
Sorry dude, that is better.
Tom

 

[Jokodo]

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

That doesn't make as much sense to me as the US norm of leaving about a foot of space "(.3 metres for the measurements impaired) between the bottom of the stall and the floor.
Not only is it easier to mop the floor, but if you are looking for someone you know well enough to recognize their shoes you can find them.
Sorry dude, that is better.
Tom

Sure, and if there were no door at all, you could find them if you don't remember their shoes. It's the only way to find someone too, calling their name is obviously out of the non-existing door because that would be un-American, and who remembers names anyway!

If you were looking for evidence that people will justify and rationalise literally anything when you start the indoctrination early enough, look no further than Tom's post. Good thing he didn't grow up in Somalia, or we'd have to read his rationalisations for FGM here!

Being able to tell who's inside without their cooperation is actually yet another downside I didn't even think of. If you don't know why, ask anyone who has ever been the victim of bullying.

 

[Jokodo]

If you want to critique the red-green doorlatch thing, a valid criticism would be that it is hard on the colour blind. I could agree that red and white is superior for that reason, and that we should switch to that as our default. It already is a common alternative, I'm not actually sure which one is more common.

 

[Bomb#20]

I'm no social historian of bathrooms by any stretch of imagination, but if I have to take a guess, the original motivation was probably, perversly, puritanism: to minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults.

I wouldn't be surprised, but I can see a practical use for having a bit of space: It allows figuring out whether a stall is occupied or not even if something has happened to the occupant. I think the doors could be bigger and still serve this purpose, but I can see merit in a way to check.

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

That doesn't make as much sense to me as the US norm of leaving about a foot of space "(.3 metres for the measurements impaired) between the bottom of the stall and the floor.
Not only is it easier to mop the floor, but if you are looking for someone you know well enough to recognize their shoes you can find them.
Sorry dude, that is better.
Tom

Sure, and if there were no door at all, you could find them if you don't remember their shoes. It's the only way to find someone too, calling their name is obviously out of the non-existing door because that would be un-American, and who remembers names anyway!

If you were looking for evidence that people will justify and rationalise literally anything when you start the indoctrination early enough, look no further than Tom's post. Good thing he didn't grow up in Somalia, or we'd have to read his rationalisations for FGM here!

... says the guy who just said "minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults". Occam would turn in his grave indeed. To all explanations besides "easier to mop the floor", Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.

 

[Jokodo]

I'm no social historian of bathrooms by any stretch of imagination, but if I have to take a guess, the original motivation was probably, perversly, puritanism: to minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults.

I wouldn't be surprised, but I can see a practical use for having a bit of space: It allows figuring out whether a stall is occupied or not even if something has happened to the occupant. I think the doors could be bigger and still serve this purpose, but I can see merit in a way to check.

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

That doesn't make as much sense to me as the US norm of leaving about a foot of space "(.3 metres for the measurements impaired) between the bottom of the stall and the floor.
Not only is it easier to mop the floor, but if you are looking for someone you know well enough to recognize their shoes you can find them.
Sorry dude, that is better.
Tom

Sure, and if there were no door at all, you could find them if you don't remember their shoes. It's the only way to find someone too, calling their name is obviously out of the non-existing door because that would be un-American, and who remembers names anyway!

If you were looking for evidence that people will justify and rationalise literally anything when you start the indoctrination early enough, look no further than Tom's post. Good thing he didn't grow up in Somalia, or we'd have to read his rationalisations for FGM here!

... says the guy who just said "minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults". Occam would turn in his grave indeed. To all explanations besides "easier to mop the floor", Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.

If it were the French, or the Swedish, or the Germans, who leave a gap large enough to crawl under for anyone who isn't morbidly obese, sure, such a pragmatic explanation would make perfect sense. But we are talking about the Western nation with the most unrelaxed attitudes about nudity, the one where breast feeding in public is a controversial topic, where "nipplegates" become affairs of national interest, where regulars of nudist beaches are basically treated as cult members and/or potential predators, where CPS can be called on parents who take pics of their own children playing with the garden hose in the summer, whose nationals will stare in disbelief when I tell them the showers in city council run public pools are open (there may be a couple closed cabins for those more timid than the rest of us) and frequently unisex, or that if you don't take off your towel in the (usually unisex) sauna, you're the weirdo, where majorities or large minorities of social workers and pediatricians feel a father taking a bath with his four year old daughter warrants at least a stern conversation, and which gave us facebook's nipple rules.

Methinks that inconsistency is sufficient grounds to discard the null hypothesis, though we agree what that would be.

 

[Jokodo]

I'm no social historian of bathrooms by any stretch of imagination, but if I have to take a guess, the original motivation was probably, perversly, puritanism: to minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults.

I wouldn't be surprised, but I can see a practical use for having a bit of space: It allows figuring out whether a stall is occupied or not even if something has happened to the occupant. I think the doors could be bigger and still serve this purpose, but I can see merit in a way to check.

In other countries, they have a little hole in the die itself that's covered by the latch, and the back of the latch painted in red and green such that it'll show as read when someone has locked it from the inside. Works like a charm

That doesn't make as much sense to me as the US norm of leaving about a foot of space "(.3 metres for the measurements impaired) between the bottom of the stall and the floor.
Not only is it easier to mop the floor, but if you are looking for someone you know well enough to recognize their shoes you can find them.
Sorry dude, that is better.
Tom

Sure, and if there were no door at all, you could find them if you don't remember their shoes. It's the only way to find someone too, calling their name is obviously out of the non-existing door because that would be un-American, and who remembers names anyway!

If you were looking for evidence that people will justify and rationalise literally anything when you start the indoctrination early enough, look no further than Tom's post. Good thing he didn't grow up in Somalia, or we'd have to read his rationalisations for FGM here!

... says the guy who just said "minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults". Occam would turn in his grave indeed. To all explanations besides "easier to mop the floor", Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.

If it were the French, or the Swedish, or the Germans, who leave a gap large enough to crawl under for anyone who isn't morbidly obese, sure, such a pragmatic explanation would make perfect sense. But we are talking about the Western nation with the most unrelaxed attitudes about nudity, the one where breast feeding in public is a controversial topic, where "nipplegates" become affairs of national interest, where regulars of nudist beaches are basically treated as cult members and/or potential predators, where CPS can be called on parents who take pics of their own children playing with the garden hose in the summer, whose nationals will stare in disbelief when I tell them the showers in city council run public pools are open (there may be a couple closed cabins for those more timid than the rest of us) and frequently unisex, or that if you don't take off your towel in the (usually unisex) sauna, you're the weirdo, where majorities or large minorities of social workers and pediatricians feel a father taking a bath with his four year old daughter warrants at least a stern conversation, and which gave us facebook's nipple rules.

Methinks that inconsistency is sufficient grounds to discard the null hypothesis, though we agree what that would be.

Or, to phrase this in comparative biology lingo: the selection pressure on toilets to be easy to mop and/or hose down is universal to all human subpopulations. The counteracting selection pressure to ensure body parts that are usually covered by clothing not be revealed is probably also universal, the variation is mostly in what those body parts are. The latter pressure is however demonstrably stronger in the US than in many nations that do have full doors, as demonstrated by a series of US- specific adaptations that are in some cases rare anywhere else in the world, in others at least absent in large swaths of Europe. If those were the only two relevant selection pressures in the evolution of the American toilet stall, we'd thus, if anything, predict a more complete door than what is typical for European subpopulations.

A cop-out might be that the 1ft door gap requires such a rare and specific mutation that it just hasn't happened yet in other populations. My counterargument to that would be that the idea pools of different subpopulations are far from isolated - the very fact that you're having this conversation with an Austrian in the first place demonstrates as much. More specifically even, recent American admixture is very evident in all European populations. If the American style non-door were adaptive in the European environment, the prediction is clear: it should have long taken Europe in a selective sweep even if it's the product of an excessively rare or improbable mutation of the wild type toilet door. The sharp edge in its distribution despite rather freely mixing populations shows that it was, and likely continues to be, selected in the US due to selection factors beyond the ones we've discussed so far. If you have a better suggestion what that might be instead of puritanism, I'm all ears.

tl;dr: you know other countries mop their toilets too?