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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22077 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 22, 2025

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The question of "how would you feel if you woke up in a female body?" doesn't make sense - I am my body as well as my brain, and the person who had a female body (complete with different musculature, menstruation, gonads that secrete oestrogen etc.) would be a different person.

You can imagine a sci-fi scenario where your brain is transplanted into a female body. You’d still be you. Exposure to oestrogen would change your personality to an extent, but it wouldn’t be instantaneous, and it would be a lot more limited than if you had been exposed to it in the womb or during childhood.

Now of course brain transplants are currently purely theoretical but cross-sex hormone therapy isn’t. Cis men who have taken oestrogen (more common in the past to treat testicular or prostate cancer) report higher incidences of depression, anxiety, body image issues from feminisation, loss of libido and sexual dysfunction, and emotional volatility.

Meanwhile trans women usually report the opposite and their mental health is improved from the exact same hormones. Weirder anecdotal reports are cis men complaining of brain fog from taking oestrogen, while trans women saying the hormones actually lifted their brain fog.

You’d still be you.

It's actually very much in doubt to what extent "you" resides in your brain specifically -- the nervous system is much more complicated than that.

Cis men who have taken oestrogen (more common in the past to treat testicular or prostate cancer)

You don't think that those symptoms could be related to, y'know -- having cancer at all?

Meanwhile trans women usually report the opposite and their mental health is improved from the exact same hormones. Weirder anecdotal reports are cis men complaining of brain fog from taking oestrogen, while trans women saying the hormones actually lifted their brain fog.

Would you mind providing a link to this study? I've heard the opposite from the recent controversy over the "mermaids" charity and Cass review, so I'd be interested to see the other perspective on it.

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