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Post by Maria on Jul 1, 2021 19:17:50 GMT
One of Woori's posts earlier made me think of something I came across a while ago that is quite interesting, although more for fun than anything I think. Obviously gender identity is in the mind, but it does seem that there may be some physical characteristics that tend to occur more often in transgender people than in cisgender individuals. The one of these I've seen the most about is called the 2D4D ratio, which is to do with the ratio between the length of the first finger and the ring finger. I've seen a couple of others though, which try though I might, I now cannot find anything about them at all now One speculated that trans women's hips were statistically on average slightly wider than you would expect on a natal male (and therefore more towards what you would expect on a natal female). The other is to do with elbows! If you stand with your arms out in front of you, palms facing the ceiling, and then lower your arms towards the floor (so your arms are by your sides with palms facing forwards), then normally cis male arms will go straight down, and cis female arms will bend out to the side slightly (in order to accommodate the extra hip width as well as to make it easier to carry a child with their head supported). However, a lot of trans women also have that angle in their elbows (certainly I do!) The possible explanation they offered was that that gets formed at the same time as the hormone burst that they think may be involved in gender identity happens. So if that will make the brain female, it will also make the elbows female! So more for fun than anything else - do your elbows have an angle, and how do the lengths of your fingers compare? 😂
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Post by Lily on Jul 1, 2021 19:57:09 GMT
I could not get my head around that ratio stuff. I measure what, where, how? The pages I looked at were too full of scientific terms, mind you have just woken up from a nap. The palms and elbows, it is physically impossible for my arms to go straight down, my hips just get in the way, so I have to bend my elbows slightly. This is not for fun Maria, it proves everything!!!
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Post by Maria on Jul 1, 2021 20:10:36 GMT
I could not get my head around that ratio stuff. I measure what, where, how? The pages I looked at were too full of scientific terms, mind you have just woken up from a nap. The palms and elbows, it is physically impossible for my arms to go straight down, my hips just get in the way. This is not for fun Maria, it proves everything!!! The simplest method I saw was to either photocopy your hand or draw around it, and then measure on the paper from where the base of the finger joins the hand, up to the tip of the finger, on both fingers, and then do the calculation. That is pretty much how I felt when I did the elbow test, despite all the things saying "you can not have this and still be trans, or you could have it and not be trans, it is just more common for it to be that way round". "No thank you, I'll just be taking this as definite physical proof of something for which it's impossible to have definite physical proof" 😂
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Post by Lily on Jul 1, 2021 20:47:12 GMT
"Never mind my gender euphoria and gender envy, it is the fact that I have to bend my elbows at my sides that proves I am trans"
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Post by Maria on Jul 1, 2021 21:08:23 GMT
"Never mind my gender euphoria and gender envy, it is the fact that I have to bend my elbows at my sides that proves I am trans" I just spat my drink out laughing at this 😂 Honestly it's surprising they don't just change the definition of trans to "person with bendy elbows" 😝
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Post by Lily on Jul 1, 2021 21:23:32 GMT
I wish someone had told me that when I first came here, it would have saved me a lot of bother
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Post by Lily on Jul 1, 2021 21:47:35 GMT
I may be measuring incorrectly but I'm pretty sure my 2D is larger than my 4D, which means I have a high ratio. Whenever I explain this to anyone I will use this and my bendy elbows as solid irrefutable evidence
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Post by Maria on Jul 1, 2021 22:10:04 GMT
When I did the 2D4D thing, my number came out as higher than 1... which I suspect means I did it wrong lol. Although females tend to be closer to 1 than males, so maybe if I'm higher than one then it means I'm extra-female 😂
Well, we couldn't let you have the top-secret easy definition of what it means to be trans before you were initiated 😜 This reminds me of the definition of someone who is bisexual: someone who doesn't know how to sit in a chair properly. (This is an actual stereotype, and someone actually invented a special chair for bisexual people. It looks very weird lol)
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Post by Lily on Jul 1, 2021 22:59:31 GMT
I figured I probably measured it a bit wrong, but not that wrong. I compared what I was measuring with a guide and it pretty much matched. As if it really matters.
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Post by Jessica on Jul 2, 2021 2:07:33 GMT
One of Woori's posts earlier made me think of something I came across a while ago that is quite interesting, although more for fun than anything I think. Obviously gender identity is in the mind, but it does seem that there may be some physical characteristics that tend to occur more often in transgender people than in cisgender individuals. The one of these I've seen the most about is called the 2D4D ratio, which is to do with the ratio between the length of the first finger and the ring finger. I've seen a couple of others though, which try though I might, I now cannot find anything about them at all now One speculated that trans women's hips were statistically on average slightly wider than you would expect on a natal male (and therefore more towards what you would expect on a natal female). The other is to do with elbows! If you stand with your arms out in front of you, palms facing the ceiling, and then lower your arms towards the floor (so your arms are by your sides with palms facing forwards), then normally cis male arms will go straight down, and cis female arms will bend out to the side slightly (in order to accommodate the extra hip width as well as to make it easier to carry a child with their head supported). However, a lot of trans women also have that angle in their elbows (certainly I do!) The possible explanation they offered was that that gets formed at the same time as the hormone burst that they think may be involved in gender identity happens. So if that will make the brain female, it will also make the elbows female! So more for fun than anything else - do your elbows have an angle, and how do the lengths of your fingers compare? 😂 Thank you for sharing this. I found it fascinating. Especially the part about the gender identity horemone burst. Is that really a thing?
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Post by Maria on Jul 2, 2021 10:47:25 GMT
www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-some-people-transgender/The whole article is quite interesting (and not that long), but the relevant part is: Everything is set before birth and in sequence. Sexual anatomy happens first, in the first six weeks of development. But once anatomy is settled, there’s a big time lag—until about six months gestation—before the brain masculinizes or feminizes. At that point, if exposed to a testosterone surge, a fetal brain’s nerve cells develop in a male direction—a male gender identity. In the absence of such a surge, the brain develops in a female direction—female gender identity. And last but not least, sometime between six months and delivery, sexual orientation is set in the brain through an as-yet unknown combination of genetics, hormones, and the uterine environment.
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Post by Lily on Jul 2, 2021 11:18:30 GMT
That's absolutely fascinating Maria.
I just looked up what might cause that absence of the surge. There have been studies of rats that suggest that this is caused by stress.
...
...
Well everyone that could explain so very much. My mother got very stressed and worried during her pregnancy with me. She was very worried about the financial situation of having another mouth to feed, as my father wasn't working due to ill health. She was stressed enough for other members of the extended family to be aware of it. She had a minor accident at about three months, and later told me she had this doubt that others would think she was somehow trying to terminate the pregnancy.
OK I'll be here processing that information for I don't know, the rest of my life maybe, or perhaps just today who knows.
xox,
Woori-Mei
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Post by Maria on Jul 2, 2021 12:52:31 GMT
I didn't know that stress could cause it. I think I found out about the hormone surge and that was as far as I delved. So thank you for doing the extra research That's really interesting as well how the timings line up on what you know to have been the timeline during the pregnancy!
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Post by Lily on Jul 2, 2021 13:00:08 GMT
I'm glad I discovered that after I did all my soul searching, I think that this would have clouded things far too much. I don't want to jump to conclusions either, but it does seem to fit. She was undoubtedly hugely stressed while she was carrying me. I haven't been wondering why I am the way I am, because this all fine there's nothing wrong with it. It may mean though I need to reframe this though, I'm not sure. That I've always been like this, that it wasn't triggered by anything, that it didn't start at a certain age. Here's the link to what I found. It's from a scientific paper from 1980. Maternal stress alters plasma testosterone in fetal males
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Post by Maria on Jul 2, 2021 14:13:04 GMT
Yes, to quote Lady Gaga, we were born this way! That's why I find all the hidden signs that people have fascinating. Because it isn't a case that one day you're not and then something happens and one day you are. It really is who you (as a general you, not you specifically) have always been, just it's been so well hidden that it was even hidden from yourself!
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