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The Causes of the Masculinization or Feminization of Our Brains

Ellen Harrell
21 February 2019

Recently, discussions about the differences in male and female brains have surfaced. The

differences in structure and activity in male versus female brains are becoming increasingly

understood. Research around male and female strengths and weaknesses in certain tasks is

adding to this understanding. These strengths and weaknesses are nearly always attributed to sex

at birth; however, this attribution is harmful in the sense that it overgeneralizes the cause of these

different brain developments to sex, when in actuality it is the sex hormones themselves that

impact brain development. Even though hormones levels are rooted to one’s sex at birth,

hormone levels do not always completely align with one’s sex at birth. Such is the case with

transgender people. Varying levels of sex hormones may account for many of the differences

between men and women’s brain structures and their abilities in certain tasks.

Undeniably, cisgender men and women do tend to have different brains. As noted by

author Catherine Loveday, men and women tend to have different brains in terms of their

structures. For example, men are known to have “generally larger and heavier [brains] than

women,” weighing 130 grams more (Loveday, 2001). The language centers between men and

women tend to be differently located; it is thought that females may have language functions

“spread more evenly” between the hemispheres of the brain than men (Loveday, 2001). Research

also attributes emotional and memory-related differences between men and women to

differences in limbic regions, like the amygdala and hippocampus, as well as the frontal lobes

(Loveday, 2001). Accompanying these structural differences are skill differences. Men tend to

have better spatial reasoning skills and mathematical skills, while women tend to be better at
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reading emotions, multi-tasking, and linguistic tasks, which which are attributed to structural

components (Loveday, 2001).

Attributing all of these differences to our sex assigned at birth is particularly constricting.

Loveday acknowledges this in her novel, stating that there is “a massive overlap” between male

and female brains, “meaning that any particular female may well have a more “male” brain…

and vice versa” (Loveday, 2001). In a study that examined 1,400 brains to establish male and

female brain differences, “fewer than 8 percent of brains fell into the category of being “all

male” or “all female” (Loveday, 2001). This is where the idea of hormone levels becomes

important; because the majority of brains do not fit into a specific gender binary the way sexual

organs do, it is not our sex that is shaping our brain, but rather the hormones that accompany sex.

Studies on transgender individuals are particularly helpful in showing how hormones,

rather than sex at birth, influence our brains. While studies of transgender brains are scarce, they

are quite useful in showing the ways hormonal imbalance can influence an individual’s brain

from birth, as well as how the introduction of hormones can modify that person’s brain. Some

studies suggest that prior to transitioning, transgender men’s brains actually resemble male

brains more than they did female brains, despite these individuals being labeled female at birth

(Burke, 2017). Testosterone treatments, too, change the brain; after four months of treatment,

transgender men experienced “an increase in total brain volumes” (Burke 2017). Transgender

women undergoing estrogen treatment also experienced brain changes; when estrogen was

introduced, their “ventricle volumes increased” (Burke 2017). The studies that show how the

introduction of hormones modify brain tissues are useful as they show that an individual’s sex at

birth does not simply determine their brain’s structure, and thus not their linguistic, emotional, or

mathematical strengths and weaknesses.

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Authors like Loveday and other scholars are not completely wrong when they attribute

brain differences to sex; after all, sex is largely responsible for an individuals varying levels of

estrogen and androgens. It is simply an overgeneralization to say that certain characteristics, such

as increased emotional intelligence, are due to an individual being a certain gender, such as being

female, rather than for them having an increased amount of a hormone, estrogen. While this

review does not provide a comprehensive analysis of how specific hormones lead to specific

brain structures and skills, the studies of transgender people’s brains throughout their transitions

provides an understanding of how hormones themselves are responsible for such differences.

This clarifies why many males may have more “female” brains and vice versa, eliminating the

ambiguity that often accompanies this research.

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References

Burke, S. M., Manzouri, A. H. Dhejne, C., Bergstrom, K., Arver, S., Feusner, J. D., and

Savic-Berglund, I. (2017). Testosterone effects on the brain in transgender men. Cerebral

Cortex, 28(5), 1582-1596. Retrieved from https://doi-org.proxy.wm.edu/

10.1093/cercor/bhx054

Loveday, C. (2001). The secret world of the brain: what it does, how it works, and how it affects

Behavior. London, United Kingdom: Andre Deutsch.