If Gender Is Not in Our Private Parts, Is It in Our Brains?

Here’s a TED Talk about transgenderism that is worth a look. It’s given by a transgender woman who is also a neurobiologist with very impressive credentials. In her presentation, which she is obviously uncomfortable giving, she presents a very interesting case for a “natural” explanation for transgenderism. In a nutshell, her theory is  that gender is determined in the uterus in two stages. First, the genitals are developed. Then, about a month later, the brain goes through the changes that make it male or female. A transgender person, according to her theory, is someone whose physiognomy is one gender and whose brain is another.

Putting aside the political problem of suggesting that there is, in fact, a difference in the brain structures of males and females, it’s a fascinating idea. And it may be true. Among other things, it would explain why transgender people say they “felt” like they were one sex or the other from an early age.

Unfortunately, her talk doesn’t fulfill its early promise. After introducing the theory with some intriguing charts and data, she pivots to make a pitch toward compassion and understanding by bringing up the oft-quoted datum that 40% of transgender people contemplate suicide. This, of course, suggests a point that is verboten to even contemplate: that transgenderism is, fundamentally, a mental problem, even if it is biologically rooted.

So, this TED Talk is ultimately disappointing. But the theory may be right. It deserves further study. And another TED talk. I’ll be looking out for it.

Click here… and let me know what you think. 

I’ve told you about these videos from “The Wine Explorers Letter.” (Disclosure: I have a small interest in the company that publishes it: the Bonner Private Wine Partnership.)

I enjoy them immensely. They are designed perfectly for the amateur wine drinker like me. And they are very helpful for learning the essentials of what makes wine drinking an activity that is unique and uniquely pleasurable.

Here’s a recent example – a quick introduction to California wines. Click here.

Leonard Bernstein was, without a doubt, the most famous American conductor in the second half of the 20th century. In addition to conducting the New York Philharmonic, he was a composer, a pianist, a Harvard lecturer, and an author. He won seven Emmys, two Tonys, and 16 Grammys. In this clip, he gives his opinion of an up-and-coming rock ’n’ roll group, The Beatles. Click here.

Click here to read a fascinating essay that suggests why humans help and cooperate with strangers.

And click here for eight feel-good stories about strangers helping people they didn’t know.

I usually eat my unfinished pizza the next day. Cold. I don’t heat it up because, whenever I did, it didn’t taste very good. I didn’t know that there was a correct way to do it. (Also, a worst way.) Click here.

John Maynard Keynes on the Destructive Power of Inflation

From his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace 

“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the capitalist system was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security but [also] at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth….

“As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into gambling and lottery….

“The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

The last time I was in Tokyo, I had a sushi meal with two of my business partners there. It was a good, working lunch. And the sushi was excellent. One thing that I suspect was NOT good was my table manners. I was unaware at that time that there is a decorum involved in eating sushi. Click here and here.