HughRistik comments on Gender Identity and Rationality - Less Wrong

35 Post author: lucidfox 01 December 2010 04:32PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (111)
Tags: gender identity introspection lgbt

Comments (111)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: HughRistik 03 December 2010 08:40:35AM 3 points [-]

What are the problems with digit ratio research?

From Gender, Nature, and Nurture by Richard Lippa:

Research has tried to infer people's exposure to prenatal testosterone levels indirectly by measuring body characteristics thought to be related to prenatal testosterone. One such characteristic is the ratio of the lengths of the second and fourth digits of the hand (i.e., the index finger and the ring finger; Manning et al., 2000). Women tend to have shorter ring fingers relative to their index fingers, whereas men tend to have longer ring fingers relative to their index fingers. Index-to-ring-finger length ratios correlate with people's occupational choices, fertility levels, dominance, and sexual orientations (Lippa, 2003a; Manning, Scutt, Wilson, & Lewis-Jones, 1998; Williams et al., 2000). These findings suggest that prenatal testosterone levels are linked to adult gender-related behaviors.

The Wikipedia article on digit ratio also cites a ton of research showing correlates.

Comment author: lucidfox 03 December 2010 08:58:12AM -1 points [-]

I myself lack the experience to present a coherent argument against it, but ask any trans community and you'll get dozens of replies.

There are some objections that I can present on the fly, though. For one, there is no evidence that sex hormone level or this unobservable "brain gender" is the most important factor contributing to digit ratio. The very Wikipedia article you linked claims, among other things, that there is more ethnic variation than gender variation.

And while this is not an argument against the validity of the research, we must be wary of drawing backward inference between observable physical phenomena and correlated social phenomena. As I mentioned, I know transpeople who were depressed when their digit ratio "didn't match the expectation", irrational as it may be. It should be considered, at best, weak evidence.

Comment author: [deleted] 23 October 2011 04:47:33AM 0 points [-]

Well, my digit ratio should have me squarely in the cisgendered heterosexual male category.

I'm trans, female identified in day to day life, queer (not especially picky about gender of partners, even less picky about what they have in their pants)... it's one anecdote, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest that the digit length criteria failed bigtime where I'm concerned.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit