Interesting response MT and I liked how you used science a lot to make your point about people in urban areas being less religious and more progressive.
Simply based on the data from the ABS 2016 census. These wealthy urban areas have an above average non-religious population compared to the average national and respective state percentage.
No Religion %: Fed. Electorate State AustraliaWentworth 33.0 NSW 25.1 29.6
North Sydney 36.7 NSW 25.1 29.6
Kooyong 36.6 VIC 31.7 29.6
Goldstein 34.8 VIC 31.7 29.6
https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/search-by-areaIn regards to biological science, how many genders are there?
Short answer is sex, gender and sexual orientation aren't the same thing and there is a spectrum of genders.
Long answer:
Biological sex relates to genetics/chromosomes: In Humans that's Female (XX), Male (XY) & Intersex (other combinations). Animals can have more via a mixture (eg: snails are hermaphrodites)
Gender on the other hand is more complex than that. Depends also on other factors including your brain morphology (how your brain was wired while in the womb). A "male" brain and a "female" brain are different and develop independently from the sex organs.
Sex Hormones and Gender Role Relate to Gray Matter Volumes in Sexually Dimorphic Brain AreasBelinda Pletzer1,2,*
Front Neurosci. 2019; 13: 592.
In adults, larger regional [grey matter] volumes in males compared to females are consistently reported in subcortical areas, including the hippocampus, amygdala, basal ganglia and nucleus accumbens, in parts of the parahippocampal gyrus, in the cerebellum and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). Larger regional volumes in females compared to males are consistently reported in frontal areas, including the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
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Accordingly, most measures assessing masculinity and femininity include personality dimensions, like expressivity on the femininity scale and assertiveness on the masculinity scale (e.g., Eagly and Koenig, 2006). It is thus possible, that a person’s perception of how masculine or feminine they are, depends in part on their brain morphology and chemistry. A recent fMRI study has assessed brain activation in men and women during the processing of gender-related attributes (Hornung et al., 2019), as are used to assess gender role (Gruber et al., in press). They found stronger activation for gender-congruent attributes in the amygdala and putamen (Hornung et al., 2019).
Sexual differentiation of the human brain in relation to gender identity and sexual orientationIvanka Savic 1, Alicia Garcia-Falgueras, Dick F Swaab
Prog Brain Res. 2010;186:41-62
It is believed that during the intrauterine period the fetal brain develops in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. According to this concept, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation should be programmed into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in transsexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no proof that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21094885/A review of the status of brain structure research in transsexualism.Guillamon, A., Junque, C., & Gómez-Gil, E. (2016).
Archives of Sexual Behavior, 45(7), 1615–1648.
The present review focuses on the brain structure of male-to-female (MtF) and female-to-male (FtM) homosexual transsexuals before and after cross-sex hormone treatment as shown by in vivo neuroimaging techniques. Cortical thickness and diffusion tensor imaging studies suggest that the brain of MtFs presents complex mixtures of masculine, feminine, and demasculinized regions, while FtMs show feminine, masculine, and defeminized regions. Consequently, the specific brain phenotypes proposed for MtFs and FtMs differ from those of both heterosexual males and females. These phenotypes have theoretical implications for brain intersexuality, asymmetry, and body perception in transsexuals as well as for Blanchard’s hypothesis on sexual orientation in homosexual MtFs. Falling within the aegis of the neurohormonal theory of sex differences, we hypothesize that cortical differences between homosexual MtFs and FtMs and male and female controls are due to differently timed cortical thinning in different regions for each group. Cross-sex hormone studies have reported marked effects of the treatment on MtF and FtM brains.
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-28018-001-------------------
And I'll finish with a little anecdote from long ago.
I met a transgender person for the first time by coincidence when I was 8 years old (1981). My late Mum would take me into the city to do some shopping once a fortnight and our last port of call was always McEwans (forerunner to Bunnings) in Bourke St between Elizabeth and Queen Sts. If it was around lunch time then we would pop into McDonalds across the road before going to McEwans. Back then the Maccas was a large ground floor area for seating with a couple of extra tables & booths on the first floor.
Prior to this day we had always got a table on the ground floor but this day it was packed and so Mum said we'll have to try upstairs. As we're climbing the stairs, I look up and see a 'guy' in a dress (8 year old mind remember) sitting at a 4-panel table in one of the yellow metal swing seats. Now it wasn't him wearing a dress that I thought was weird at the time but that he was wearing his grandmother's old clothes from the 1920s. A long black dress with old fashioned lace and that went down to his ankles with a slip.
The next thing that grabbed my attention was these three teenagers (two girls and a boy around 14 years old) sitting across from him in a booth calling him every name under the sun: p******, f*****, queer, etc. Worst still they were chucking their food at him including taking out the pickles from their hamburgers and piffing it at him. My Mum seeing this told me to wait at the top of the stairs while she walked over and placed her tray of food on the 4-panel table opposite side of the transgender person acting as a human shield. She then turned around and faced the teens.
Now my late Mum was barely 5-foot tall but when she got going she could peel paint off the walls like a footy coach. And boy did she let these three little pricks have it. "You've got nothing better to do than pick on someone else" .... "You pack of cowards three against one" .... "What a disgrace throwing and wasting food. There's starving kids in Africa you know!" Anyway long story short the teens left their mess and left in a huff walking past me down the stairs and out of the store.
So Mum walks back to the table and sits down and calls me over to sit next to her. Next thing Mum asks the transgender person about his life and all. He tells us ever since he was young he felt he was a girl trapped in a boy's body and now he wanted to make the change. He had only just begun hormonal treatment and was waiting to get the op. which was at a minimum a year away. Hence the long old dress to cover up his body all the way down to the ankles. By the time the chat was over we had finished our lunch and left first. Mum wished him best wishes with it all and as we got walked down the stairs and out of ear shot Mum gave me the old lesson: "You don't truly know someone until you walk in their shoes".
To this day this remains in my mind the most bravest and proudest moment of my late Mum
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For the record, meeting a transgender person at an early age didn't make question who I was. I can remember knowing I was a boring old straight male since I was six when I pestered a girl in my class to have a photo together with me. The Western Suburbs makes you grow up fast
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ps. Oh I forgot one thing to tell you about my Mum ........................................ She was a Christian. A real one! A heart full of kindness and understanding; not one of judgement and hate. Do unto others whatever you would have them do to you.
pps. I've got my own commandment for the faux religious out there who try to dress up their archaic social and political views as "faith". If you want to believe there's some omnipotent creator of all things out there called "God" then you don't get the right to ignorantly and arrogantly tell this "God" how he did things
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