The Historical Jesus

[Ferrocyanide]

Second, this throws a monkey wrench into a belief which used to be common among atheists. We used to say that the mind is what the brain does. That there is no mind independent of body. That mind is not in fact some separate thing, trapped in the physical dross of a body. Yet the idea that a person can have a mind of one gender and a body of the other contradicts this. If there are truly brain (anatomical) differences between male and female brains, and the mind arises from what the brain does, then the physical anatomy of the brain would inevitably determine what kind of mind occurs. If there are differences in male and female anatomy, and yet this does not affect one's gender, then the mind and the body are in some way separate. 

We're getting close here to a kind of Cartesian mind/body dualism, in which mind and body are separate substances, which may be imperfectly mixed. In fact the whole argument sounds very Gnostic -- the idea that mind is not an emergent property of physical structures, but some other thing. Such an idea could explain how the mental (gender) could be unaligned with the physical body.

I don't think it throws a monkey wrench.
If a person has a mind of one gender and the body of another, it simply means that the brain is of one gender and the body of another. It is like having a mermaid: part human and part fish.

Of course, there is a lot of assumptions that I am making. There isn't good scientific evidence.
I am claiming that a person might have a female brain and be inside male body (the brain is part of the body but I am not including the brain).

If someone is born male, do they automatically have a male brain?
Do all babies start with a female brain and as they interact with the world, they develop new preferences?


I remember an experiment that went on for years. They gave a baby boy girl toys and a baby girl boy toys.
Over the years, eventually, they exchanged toys. The boy prefers to play with cars, trucks, soldiers, jet fighters.
The girl prefers a tea set and baby dolls.

But I find that that is superficial information.
We still don't know what is going on inside the brain.