Is there evidence for this?

[FlyPassed]

I enjoy the Triggernometry and Benjamin Boyce podcasts but have seen two this week that left me a bit

Triggernometry had Blaire White on who asserted that trans IDs are caused by in vitro hormone wash.

And BB had someone on with CAIS (Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome), who said [paraphrase] we all start out female and that the inability of those with CAIS to use testosterone means sufferers are female.

As far as I'm aware hormone wash is an unproven theory, not a proven fact. CAIS is a DSD only found in genetic males. And no, we don't all start out female. While there is no visible* sex differentiation initially, sex is determined at conception and is a result of the sperm carrying a Y chromosome (or not).

The comments on both videos were largely gushing when I looked, and it makes me think about how this kind of thing impacts the discussion.

*this is not a value judgement

Some people believe water is medicine (homeopathy), so I'm never surprised when people believe all sorts of nonsense. Remember, they want to believe and desperate to find evidence to justify their ideology.

I saw the 'all female' discussion on twitter today with Dr Hilton.

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1420652337597648897?s=20

She says: 'Genetically, around half carry info that will direct female development. Anatomically, embryos are neither male nor female until about seven weeks.'

A slight tangent, but I've recently started following a GC instagram account. Some of the comments are a little nasty. Nothing like rape threats from trans activists, but nasty and unnecessary nonetheless.

The point... I think people who are GC should try to call out misinformation, nastiness and unproven "science" when they see it, really make sure that as more and more people open their eyes they don't find much from the GC side which is objectionable.

CAIS and any other DSD is nothing to do with transness. If They want me to believe it is then They need to be logical about it.

As it is They are co-opting the research into DSDs to medicalise transness - having fought hard to have it de-medicalised.

I'd have far, far more respect if They said They were gathering funding to look closely at transmen and women to see if there is a genetic, biological precedence.

But no, They choose to piggyback someone else's reality instead!

It doesn't really make sense to look at causes when the definition of trans is now so wide as to include just about everyone. There is no single explanation that could account for a predilection for cross-dressing in males, a dissatisfaction with sex stereotypes in girls, a feeling of not being either sex, a sexual preference for being read as the opposite of one's birth sex, a feeling of unease with one's body...and yet we are told that all of these are signs of being trans. How can that be true?

Unfortunately people with DSD (disorders of sexual development) are also poorly served by the TRA movement. DSD (or intersex as it used to be known) covers a BROAD range of developmental differences of varying degrees and is entirely different to “transness.” People with DSDs have somehow been force teamed into the trans community, even though transness is a feeling and DSD is physiological/biological. Totally different groups with different biology and different medical needs, and I wish that the TRAs would stop conflating the two.

@Battleneck

A slight tangent, but I've recently started following a GC instagram account. Some of the comments are a little nasty. Nothing like rape threats from trans activists, but nasty and unnecessary nonetheless.

The point... I think people who are GC should try to call out misinformation, nastiness and unproven "science" when they see it, really make sure that as more and more people open their eyes they don't find much from the GC side which is objectionable.

That's not just a slight tangent, that's irrelevant. What's your point?

I wanted to challenge what I thought was misinformation, in the comments, but the interviews really made me doubt myself! No probing by the interviewers, just nodding along. It feels like pushing piss uphill

And BB had someone on with CAIS (Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome), who said [paraphrase] we all start out female and that the inability of those with CAIS to use testosterone means sufferers are female.

I was actually taught in biology class that all foetuses start off looking female, because the Y chromosome doesn't kick in until after a certain time. It's why the sex scan can't be done until after a certain time, you basically can't tell from looking initially (only from a chromosome test).

However, if the Y chromosome is present, it's present and you can't undo that, so it doesn't matter if when you were a foetus you looked a bit female for a while.
Also yes, only males can have androgen insensitivity because only humans with a Y chromosome produce androgens. They won't develop a full penis but they won't develop full female organs either. They will have high testosterone levels. Hence overrepresented in female sport.

And you know what else happens in the womb, as a foetus we develop gills like a fish for a certain amount of time too. Oh no we really are clownfish after all.

@Battleneck

A slight tangent, but I've recently started following a GC instagram account. Some of the comments are a little nasty. Nothing like rape threats from trans activists, but nasty and unnecessary nonetheless.

The point... I think people who are GC should try to call out misinformation, nastiness and unproven "science" when they see it, really make sure that as more and more people open their eyes they don't find much from the GC side which is objectionable.

If you hand around FWR for a while you'll see reams of us GC women posting gold standard research, explaining the tricky bits and generally being informative.

We get monitored for it, ban hammers fall. And those who dislike MN FWR troll us for out of context quotes to Twatter.

Outside of MN we risk jobs, violence, membership of book clubs etc etc.

But we do what we can. As we have been for a fair few years now!

@ChickenpoxQ

Thanks, that's how I understood it, minus the clownfish!

Thanks for the comments, all. The interviews honestly felt a bit gaslighty, although I can understand why the interviewees would want such claims to be true it really doesn't help

Curious - I agree that there is lots of good work being done on this board and elsewhere. And there is very little nastiness.

Clymene - my point is that GC people need to (continue to) call out misinformation and nastiness on their own side - try to make sure that the GC side of the debate is as kind and honest as possible to make sure that it is exceptionally hard for a fair-minded person to criticize it.

Obviously the GC side of the debate could be considerably nastier and more dishonest whilst still being incredibly kind and honest compared to the TRA side... but I think it has to try to (continue to) take the moral high ground

I think I see what you mean @Battleneck. We can avoid slurs and personal comments about appearance, for example, but I think that when facts are framed as mean/nasty/bigoted we're somewhat stuck.

There are plenty of bad actors who will never listen, so I just try to remember the lurkers.

IIRC, genetic females can have androgen insensitivity - it just doesn't lead to any problems, so isn't then classed as a DSD. (would stop T working on them if they wanted to dope or trans though)

Many DSDs are like that - the same condition leads to drastically different symptoms depending on your (still binary) sex. Maybe no symptoms for one sex.

my point is that GC people need to (continue to) call out misinformation and nastiness on their own side

This is a bit of a derail now, (as I haven't seen anything "nasty" on this thread) but Battleneck out of curiousity, seeing I've no idea the GC person you're referring to who you follow, would a comment such as "men aren't women though" or "transwomen are a type of man" be deemed "nasty" in your opinion?

Lots of clutching at straws going on out there to try to get an "explanation". The one about hormone washes is particularly popular.

16:59NecessaryScene
I recall about Androgen insensitivity in women is that there is not enough evidence to support it's existence....

I think you make a common mistake @Battleneck by talking about "sides"

In particular the "GC side".

"GC" is just another label, it's not relevant to most people who are supportive of normal sex segregation in certain circumstances.

There's lots of abusive people on Twitter. There's no need to describe them as being on a "side".

The WI Spa chaos in LA was indicative of the many reasons people have for either objecting to inappropriate male exposure or supporting it. Who could tell which of the many "sides" they were on?

There aren't "sides" and "GC" is a sweeping generalisation in the same way t**f is.

"GC" is just another label, it's not relevant to most people who are supportive of normal sex segregation in certain circumstances.

Agree. ‘Gender critical’ just means somebody who criticises gender. There aren’t clear ‘sides’, unless you want to view everything through the lens of a culture war.

Oh look, a man on the thread telling us to be kind.

@ChickenpoxQ

16:59NecessaryScene I recall about Androgen insensitivity in women is that there is not enough evidence to support it's existence....

That's talking about androgen deficiency (ie low testosterone), not insensitivity.

Although you did make me go back and double-check about insensitivity.

Wikipedia's text says "the insensitivity to androgens is only clinically significant when it occurs in individuals with a Y chromosome or, more specifically, an SRY gene.", which is what I originally said.

Ah, another bit of Wikipedia clarifies - it's offset by the more robust set of female chomosomes...

Genetic females (46,XX karyotype) have two X chromosomes, thus have two AR genes. A mutation in one (but not both) results in a minimally affected, fertile, female carrier. Some carriers have been noted to have slightly reduced body hair, delayed puberty, and/or tall stature, presumably due to skewed X-inactivation. A female carrier will pass the affected AR gene to her children 50% of the time. If the affected child is a genetic female, she, too, will be a carrier. An affected 46,XY child will have AIS.

A genetic female with mutations in both AR genes could theoretically result from the union of a fertile man with AIS and a female carrier of the gene, or from de novo mutation. However, given the scarcity of fertile AIS men and low incidence of AR mutation, the chances of this occurrence are small. The phenotype of such an individual is a matter of speculation; as of 2010, no such documented case has been published.

Which seems to suggest that CAIS is not really a thing for genetic females (needing a double genetic failure).

"Triggernometry had Blaire White on who asserted that trans IDs are caused by in vitro hormone wash."

Meh. That theory was suggested decades ago. Pretty sure I was still a teenager the first time I read of it, so we're talking four decades. If there was anything in it, would they not have found some evidence by now?

"And BB had someone on with CAIS (Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome), who said [paraphrase] we all start out female and that the inability of those with CAIS to use testosterone means sufferers are female."
We all start out female - wait, what, something flips us from XX to XY in vitro? Oh, sorry, my mistake - a male is mistaking appearance for substance (again). 'No visible penis' is not the same as 'female'. Similarly, a male with CAIS might look / be raised / be socialised as females would be, but all this still does not mean that they "are female".

@Lonel

It doesn't really make sense to look at causes when the definition of trans is now so wide as to include just about everyone. There is no single explanation that could account for a predilection for cross-dressing in males, a dissatisfaction with sex stereotypes in girls, a feeling of not being either sex, a sexual preference for being read as the opposite of one's birth sex, a feeling of unease with one's body...and yet we are told that all of these are signs of being trans. How can that be true?

Precisely. This is why we need to separate the T, from LGB and from itself.

[As an aside, this thought in my head always follows the rhythm of the 'I bind you, Nancy' quote from The Craft.]

We also need to separate the trans people with gender dysphoria from those without - they don’t seem to have anything in common at all.

Battleneck
my point is that GC people need to (continue to) call out misinformation and nastiness on their own side - try to make sure that the GC side of the debate is as kind and honest as possible to make sure that it is exceptionally hard for a fair-minded person to criticize it.

The problem is the 'be kind' mantra seems to be a cover for 'be passive and accepting of nonsense, and override your own boundaries'. No thanks.

I think the time for being kind is over - it has gotten us nowhere. Pushed aside, shouted down, trodden on. Being kind isn't working anymore, we need to be calm, assertive and unwavering and not worry about whether people like us or not.

There's no point in worrying whether we appear to be the most reasonable of all, that should not be our focus, especially when those who would seek to destroy us will just steamroll over everything we say/do regardless.

They are not interested in playing fair. They don't need to worry about being kind or honest, as has been demonstrated very frequently.