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

Are all their mice nonbinary or something?

Hah! That must be it.

They shouldn’t be working with them then.

I agree. When he made that comment I had to bite my lip to avoid saying something to that effect.

The logic of this just does my head in.

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.

If there is no female or male sex differentiated form - and it's just an internal sense - then why are people trying to change their physical form to the other form which definitely can't be described as a sex??

What am I missing that makes this logic - supported by allegedly intelligent people - makes sense????

A pure psychology journal (not necessarily science) or a biology/neuro journal (should be science)?

The former.

his colleagues don't know how to tell the difference between male and female mice.

They shouldn’t be working with them then. Accurate sexing was part of the home office licence holder training we all had to do before were allowed to work with mice.

dis Missed your post about the mice! So he's an animal psychologist then? Mind-blowing if so.

Are all their mice nonbinary or something?

disrespect A pure psychology journal (not necessarily science) or a biology/neuro journal (should be science)?

Luckily mice don’t have that difficulty.

Damn right. 😁

I should also add that my acquaintance claims that his colleagues don't know how to tell the difference between male and female mice.

Luckily mice don’t have that difficulty.

Or stupid.

I’ve dealt with an awful lot of lab mice in my time.

Males are obvious. Ruddy great balls, differently shaped genital area entirely. You’d need to be a very un observant person to not tell.

I should also add that my acquaintance claims that his colleagues don't know how to tell the difference between male and female mice.

Tuner syndrome can be catastrophic. Many miscarriages are due to Turner syndrome and a family member of mine died in her twenties due to complications from having Turner syndrome - infertility was not her most pressing health concern and she spent a lot of time under health care due to it. Chromosomal disorders are complex and effect individuals with varying degrees of severity.

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!

Trying to find a gender gene is like trying to find the gene for using chopsticks.

Sure, there will be correlations: brown eyes, black hair, hard earwax.

But those correlations reflect the most common phenotypes where chopsticks are more widely used.

There isn’t a chopstick gene.

You can trace the man’s ancestry through the Y chromosome because it isn’t shuffled during meiosis. A man basically inherits his dad’s Y chromosome largely intact.

You can trace men and women’s maternal line back through the mitochondria. Mitochondrial DNA isn’t shuffled either; we, male or female alike, inherit it from our mother.

geeka, said psychologist-acquaintance works for as an editor for an academic journal.

Gah, should have said:
and now female university students outnumber male.

I know a psychologist who describes himself as a "scientist" and uses the appeal to authority logical fallacy to defend his virtue-signalling sjw misogyny.

Tbf, some psychologists are scientists, particularly those working in areas that overlap with biology, neuroscience, etc. and use regular experimental methods. I'm an academic in a STEM field and have collaborators in psychology departments who publish in biology journals, for instance.

Clinical psychologists in practice: not scientists (closer to medics). Psychologists who hand out questionnaires or use qualitative methods: not scientists (social scientists, maybe).

Sex is binary. We literally would not exist if it weren't as two distinctly sexed gametes are required for sexual reproduction. Like all biological mechanisms, sex development sometimes goes wrong and intersex conditions (disorders of sexual development) can result. We are no different to any other mammals in that regard.

Gender is whatever behaviour society wants it to be. Looking for a biological basis for gender is like looking for a biological basis for politeness: sure, you'll probably find some correlates, but you're chasing a phantom as the target behaviour is subjective. A polite behaviour in one society is a rude behaviour in another; a male behaviour in one society is a female behaviour in another. Say someone claimed they had isolated a gene that was correlated with liking soccer: in British society, that would be interpreted as a male behaviour; in American society, it would be interpreted as a female behaviour. Ditto for studiousness, which was considered a male province up to the 20th century and female university students outnumber male. Would any such gene say anything about the biological basis of gender? Absolutely not. But it would be spun as such.

Back in the real world, genetics is becoming more and more specific. Not only is the presence of a Y chromosome used to determine male sex, it's also used to track male criminals:

"A Y-chromosomal gene fragment is applied for inferring the biological sex of a crime scene trace donor. Haplotypes composed of Y-chromosomal short tandem repeat polymorphisms (Y-STRs) are used to characterise paternal lineages of unknown male trace donors, especially suitable when males and females have contributed to the same trace, such as in sexual assault cases."

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5418305/

I find the bad science used to justify TWAW fairly boring, but I do find interesting bits of other stuff along the way.

The interesting think about the X chromosome is that while everybody has one, and most women have two, only one can be active within a cell.

So if you are a woman with only one X chromosome (X0 karyotype, or Turner’s Syndrome) that’s not catestrophic because that one X chromosome will carry all the weight. You’ll probably be shorter because the X chromosome carries the SHOX gene responsible for bone growth at the top (the pseudoautosomal region) that isn’t switched off and you only get one copy but that’s not going to kill you.

If you are a man with Klinefelter’s Syndrome you have an extra X chromosome (XXY karyotype). Again, that’s not going to kill you, but the extra SHOX gene will make you taller.

It can make you infertile though. During meiosis (the formation of gametes) the chromosomes line up into homologous pairs. If there aren’t an even number they can’t pair off.

I should actually thank TRAs for inspiring me to learn this stuff. I took physics at school because I thought biology was too gooey.

I’d strike through gender if it wasn’t for the fact most forms I have to complete are now electronic.

If anyone thinks there are more than two sexes I challenge them to tell a man with Klinefelters Syndrome that the reason he is unable to get his wife pregnant is that he’s not a man, he’s something else we don’t actually have a name for.

Since that man is likely to tower over the Doctor (that’s the most obvious phenotypical difference) they might think twice before saying ‘Dude, you’re not a dude.’

Most of the polysomies that are cited as exceptions to the male/female binary leave the subject infertile. It’s fucking insulting to say that they are not real men or women.

I consistently strike through gender on forms and write sex above it. I presume the Breast clinic wants to know what genitals I have not what type of clothes I’m supposed to wear

I’ve never used ‘gender’ as a euphemism for sex. It’s just not in my nature. People who know me are used to me not beating around the bush.

The article pissed me off because there is one reason, and one reason only, that we are talking about ‘intersex’ conditions today, and that has nothing to do with ‘intersex’ people.

It’s a smokescreen for trans.

What Kittens and Bowl said much better than me!