Jennifer Finney Boylan

Jennifer Finney Boylan (born James Boylan, June 22, 1958) is an American author, political activist, and professor of English at Barnard College of Columbia University (since 2014) and a fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She was formerly professor of English at Colby College in Maine from 1988 until 2014. She is a trans woman.

Quotes

• In the past decade, there has been some fascinating research on the brains of transgender people. What is most remarkable about this work is not that trans women’s brains have been found to resemble those of cisgender women, or that trans men’s brains resemble those of cis men. What the research has found is that the brains of trans people are unique: neither female nor male, exactly, but something distinct.
• But what does that mean, a male brain, or a female brain, or even a transgender one? It’s a fraught topic, because brains are a collection of characteristics, rather than a binary classification of either/or.
• And yet scientists continue to study the brain in hopes of understanding whether a sense of the gendered self can, at least in part, be the result of neurology. A study described by author Francine Russo in Scientific American examined the brains of 39 prepubertal and 41 adolescent boys and girls with gender dysphoria. The experiment examined how these children responded to androstadienone, a pungent substance similar to pheromones, that is known to cause a different response in the brains of men and women. The study found that adolescent boys and girls who described themselves as trans responded like the peers of their perceived gender. (The results were less clear with prepubescent children.)
  • "To understand biological sex, look at the brain, not the body" The Washington Post (May 1, 2023)

She's Not There (2003)

• Gender is many things, but one thing it is surely not is a hobby.
• You know, don’t you, that no amount of wishing that this were not the case can make it not the case. No amount of praying that you are not transgendered will make you something other than what you are. No amount of love from anyone will make you fit inside a body that does not match your spirit.