"There is no genetic test that can conclusively determine a person’s sex or gender."

I'm confused. In that case, why do we (rightly) fork out extra to get the chromosome results rushed through when a baby is born with difficult to determine genitalia? If it matters so little, maybe we could save the NHS some money... Or maybe actually biology does matter.

Sorry FWR there you go ;)

“Sorry FWR. Posting in the early hours with a baby stuck to me. Your initial point was valid - my bad”

Hey no problemo. I would do the cookie/flowerthing but don’t know how... ;)

If there is no biology to it then why do all these people want to change their physical form?? Can ANYONE explain that to me.

Perhaps so people will stop chucking them out of bathrooms?

This seems like a bit of an upside-down argument to me. Someone physically male tries to use the women's toilets (I assume that's what you mean), and they get thrown out, because they are clearly male.

Surely the answer there is to use the men's toilets, with all the other male-bodied people. Not to go to enormous lengths to try to make their body resemble a female body.

So can you think of any other reasons, NonExistentFox?

A lot of identity politics is imported directly from the US. It’s why students obsess over the ‘cultural appropriation’ of Mexican food and sombreros rather than, say, Polish food and fashions. Mexicans aren’t an oppressed minority in the UK but these people are too fucking dumb not to follow the American lead.

Yes I love the way British transactivists and their allies parrot the same old dog whistling crap about "bathrooms" as the American ones do.

Some people believe the earth is flat. Fair enough, they're entitled to believe that if they want, but if they demanded that maritime navigation charts be amended to show spots where a stray ship might fall over the edge of the world I think the rest of us would be fully entitled to A. point and laugh, and then B. tell them that no, we will not be amending the charts.

Literal violence!

Had her church asked her to sign a ‘scientists for the belief in the creation as per genesis ‘ letter she probably would have. what she wouldn’t have had is any evidence to support her belief.

I knew someone who admitted that the main reason for her applying for her PhD student place (in a structural biology group) was so she could defend creationism with the authority of a PhD from one of the top Scottish Universities behind her. She was a Wee Free, or a Wee Wee Free, not sure. Weird.

"Bathrooms..."

Perhaps so people will stop chucking them out of bathrooms?

In the U.K. a bathroom is a room with a bath and you won’t find one outside a hotel or a house, so you are very likely to be chucked out if you are there without permission.

There are no laws to prevent anyone entering any public toilet, although people are usually warned when an opposite sex cleaner may be present.

The issue is the ability of women to enforce their rights under the Equalities Act if biological sex can’t be recognised.

The existence of two sexes in mammals is pretty well established. Ask a farmer.

If gravity was nice it would stop and ask whether you identified as a corporeal being or whether you'd prefer to be able to zoom around like you were in the Matrix.

You mean...you mean..gravity is an ally?

You may not believe in gravity, but it believes in you!

But OMG don't you see how transphobic that is, Angry? I mean, I am sure that there are some navigators / seamen who are trans and denying them their belief in a flat world is denying their existence and is literal violence and OMG the feelz.

Some people believe the earth is flat. Fair enough, they're entitled to believe that if they want, but if they demanded that maritime navigation charts be amended to show spots where a stray ship might fall over the edge of the world I think the rest of us would be fully entitled to A. point and laugh, and then B. tell them that no, we will not be amending the charts.

Sorry FWR. Posting in the early hours with a baby stuck to me. Your initial point was valid - my bad

Oh - and bowl - I always appreciate your posts on this subject.

Perhaps so people will stop chucking them out of bathrooms?

Yes, I was vague in my statement “study sex”. I was referring both to a colleague who studies sexual selection and one who studies genetic basis of sex. I really don’t want to get more specific for extremely obvious reasons... not sure why you wouldn’t realize that.

The tests for conclusively determining sex based on external observation of genitalia are FAR more accurate than the tests to determine if, for instance, you have breast cancer.

Does that mean we can all skip our breast exams and ignore lumps, since after all, the test for breast cancer isn't 100% conclusive and there are sometimes false positives and negatives?

People believe unusual stuff. And that’s ok, but if they want me to believe it too I need data, evidence.

When I did my PhD, there was a young woman in an adjacent lab working on how a specific protein evolved who believed in the literal truth of the bible. So she believed that the world was created in a week, a few thousand years ago. Yet she was working on a protein that had been evolving for millions of years. She didn’t seem perturbed by this.

Had her church asked her to sign a ‘scientists for the belief in the creation as per genesis ‘ letter she probably would have. what she wouldn’t have had is any evidence to support her belief.

So I’ll beieve there are extra sexes, or that sex is a spectrum when I see sufficient, coherent, replicated, peer reviewed data that presents extra gametes.

Until then, I will believe that there are two sexes, Male and female. That intersex conditions are where normal Male/female development goes awry. That intersex conditions are defined, medical issues and are nothing to do with trans. And that gender is a set of social behaviours based predominantly on societal expectations of each sex.

I'm pretty sure amniocentesis can accurately predict the sex of the baby. Counting pairs of genes and all that.

In addition to CVS and Amniocentesis, NIPT (non invasive prenatal testing) like Harmony or Panorama can also tell you the sex of the baby as early as 10 weeks

It's the same technology used for chromosomal testing on the POC (products of conception ie fetal tissue) after a miscarriage. I have several friends who weren't warned that the results would include the sex of the embryo, and found it very very distressing to discover their baby's sex through what is essentially an autopsy report.

I'm a cell biologist and I don't know any biologists who "study sex". Biologists don't "study sex", their careers are way more niche than that.

This. I spent years looking at how a single gene and it’s products worked in two different tissue types.

If that is true then all IVF clinics should stop offering gender/sex selection because no genetic test can determine the sex of an embryo!

Sex selection is illegal in the UK, except to screen for specific genetic diseases that are carried on the X or Y chromosome

We did pre implantation genetic aneuploidy screening (due to prev mc) - cells from a 5-day embryo are analysed for chromosomal abnormalities. In doing so this identifies the sex of each embryo - however in the UK embryologists cannot legally record this information (except in the licensed cases above). In the US the same genetics report would detail the sex of the embryos as standard, unless requested otherwise. Sex selection is also legal in Cyprus and Dubai - so a couple with no fertility issues may choose to try IVF purely to try for a child of a particular sex. There was a daily mail exposé a couple of months ago about UK fertility specialists trying to get around UK law by sending patients abroad for sex selection. I seem to recall the article mentioning mainly Asian couples wanting a boy but white British couples wanting a girl.