"Well, I'm no expert on brains, but as far as I understand things, our current scientific understanding of how the brain works at that level is still in it's infancy. So, I wonder how effective it would be. Even if it were possible to tell someone is transgender by scanning their brain activity (and I have no idea whether it is) it would probably take several years to develop that kind of procedure, considering that it would be a new way of doing things. "
- Sorry, I thought you were an expert on this, since you have brought it up quite a bit.
"One issue is that being trans isn't necessarily the same thing in all cases. For instance, some trans women want to get genital surgery because they want a vagina while others like to keep their penises. At the very least this suggests that there's at least two different bits of brain wiring at work here."
- couldn't it be less "different kinds of gender dysphoria" and more "different degrees of gender dysphoria" i.e. the later case being satisfied enough with chest, frame and face fitting the gendeer identity and willing to ignore the non-fitting gentials (after all, how often does anyone look at their genitals compared to their face?) while the first one isn't feeling comfortable until itwould take a dedicated examination to tell that they weren't born with their physiogonomcal sex matching their gender identity.
"Then factor in the various kinds of non-binary identities, which may motivate the people who have them to take similar steps in terms of body modification as binary trans people but which probably manifest in many ways in terms of brain structure then it seems like trying to work out a way to test for being trans with a brain scan might be an extremely messy and complicated affair."
- 1.) have non-binary people engaged in body modification to get their physiognomy in line with their gender identity? Not saying, it couldn't happen, but I have never heard about such a thing.
- 2.) non-binary identitys may be more an in-between to the binary identitys rather than something entirely different. Kind of like gentilia in intersex persons tend to either resemble the binary ones or an ambigious in-between.
"Perhaps it may even be more of an effort than it is worth. After all, my self-reported feelings about my gender-identity and my sense of whether my body's sexual anatomy is correct should be good enough. Someone trained to understand issues of gender identity should be able to determine that I am sincere, and of sound state of mind to be able to make the decision to transition. Maybe there's some subjectivity involved but as long as we steer away from the kind of strict old-school "this is how you have to be trans" gatekeeping and embrace a true appreciation for the full diversity of human gender possibilities then I think we're on the right track. "
- I think an objective, physiological test for a transgender identity would help a lot. For one, the already mentioned potential of cutting down on gatekeeping by substituting psychological evaluation with physiological measurement, for antoher a lot of transphobic argumentation relies on painting transgender identity as a choice, psychological problems or the person in question just being confused. If there were a clear, objectively present physiological indicator for the gender identity and this was actually part of the diagnosis for transgender identity this argumentation would become untenable.
Admittedly, yes, to get this on solid ground it may be necessary to perform a large scale study. Maybe something along the lines of about a thousand suspected cases of transgenders undergoing a brain activity scan, followed by the regular psychological evaluation procedure. With such a high number of cases, it should then be possible to pick out the corrolations between the scan results and the results of the psychological evaluations. This should then be weighted such to keep the number of false-positives (i.e. the scan suggesting a transgender identity, without the scaned person actually being transgender) low, with the false negatives (i.e. the scan not showing a transgender identity, despite the scaned person actually being one) being able to go though the old style procedure (i.e. the current one) to prove their transgender status.