The Gene - An intimate history - Swyer Syndrome and David Reimer

It's true that we don't know why. But in that case, 60 didn't transition. And the opposite seems to the case with Swyer sydrome, where genetical males who don't go through puberty, seem to (as I understand) retain a female gender identity

Yes, because unlike the other condition, swyer syndrome individuals cannot and do not experience a masculinizing puberty because their SRY gene does not work. Thus they are and will always be female phenotypically there is no “transition” needed.

Meanwhile for the penile disgenesis they often have active testes and a testosterone fueled puberty so it becomes

All of this makes Sense if you view it through the lens of people accepting their physical bodies as they are for each individual condition rather than the lens of gender woo feelings.

Of these, 311 had been brought up as male. Not a single one ever transitioned to women. Of 77 brought up as girls, 17 transitioned to male.

This is because the ones “brought up as female” later experienced a masculinizing puberty, thus realizing they are male. Or they got tested after not menstruating as expected and found out they are male.

Realizing that one is actually male would be a reason to “transition” in fact it is not transition. It is detransition after a forced childhood transition if anything.

Meanwhile the ones “raised as boys” there is no truth about actually being female to discover.

I have had a look through the reviews, and it would seem that the book is a bit long winded and dull (who knew!) and not the best introduction to genetics.

Which is a shame because he won the Pulitser Prize for the last book.

Here’s my opinion as a geneticist

How much one identifies with masculine or feminine interests/ways of being has genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

How much one likes or dislikes the sexed parts of ones body has genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

How much one is willing to force others to lie to you has genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

How much one gets sexually aroused by thinking of oneself as the opposite sex has genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

How androgynous ones body appears has genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

Even if it somehow turned out that we determined all of the above had large well defined genetic components, how would it be useful to redefine sex as one of the above things rather than the definition that is already apparent to everyone and has a specific known genetic cause and trigger, apart from a handful of well defined and understood intersex conditions?

Also, the scientist in the original post is implying in their work that intersex individuals are “less female” or “less male” than individuals without intersex conditions. It is insulting and actually dehumanizing to these people to imply that the fact their development has gone awry means they are somehow unsexed.

Without knowing all the individual cases if the syndrome we can't judge why some changed back to Male. They may have discovered their actual sex via investigations for lack of periods etc.

Even if we're sloppy with the terms sex and gender, it would seem that sex/gender identity is more than 0% innate, and not 100% socially constructed.

I don't think it's possible to argue for or against this without a definition of 'sex/gender identity'.

I'm sure that Mukherjee is a brilliant scientist. But he is also quite keen on theories which don't have much basis in science but are hunches he's yet to prove or that are not actually right. Have a look at his Wikipedia page.

Incidentally, he is not a ' specialist on genetics', he is an oncologist. Most of the criticism of this book come from geneticists.

I’ve looked up Swyer syndrome. As you say OP an individual with XY chromosomes develops more female looking external genitalia and is usually brought up as female. This seems to me to be an argument that ‘gender identity’, if it exists, must be socially constructed as it isn’t linked to chromosomes but to to upbringing and environment.

I'd love to engage properly, OP, but to argue for the possible biological existence of a concept, you HAVE to be able to explain the concept, not rely on other people substituting a myriad of their own definitions for it.

You said "it would seem that this doesn't quite match the evidence".

And I don't know what you, or he, mean by either 'it' or 'evidence'.

Can you try to articulate exactly what you think he is trying to argue?

And I'll properly engage, if we can only define all disputed terms so we clearly understand one another

But every argument I see is logically circular, even from geneticists, and they don't examine their own fallacies.

Eg scientist finds evidence for where is described as the inner sense of oneself as .

If you don't define sex/gender/male/female/woman/man and also 'identity' then there is no argument to be made, at all.

I'm up for engaging, if explanations for the concepts behind the claims are forthcoming.

I'm really not sure what it is the appalling case of David Reimer is supposed to prove about 'gender identities'. All it proves is that sex is innate and even if you remove a small boy's penis and tell him he's a girl he will, eventually realise he is male. It's about sex, not gender.

Furthermore anyone claiming there is a gene for 'gender identity' would need to explain why it is the vast majority of people have no sense of 'gender identity' as opposed to sex at all.

If twins are identical then they are biologically exactly the same. So a generic condition that affects one will affect the other. So not having 100% congruence in trans identity is strong evidence that this doesn’t have a biological root. It does strike me that when Transgender people talk about their childhood there often seems to be abuse there - for example detransitioners such as Walt Heyer or Jamie Schupe first non-binary person to be legally registered in the USA, who says he was suffering from PTSD. So twins brought up together will probably have experienced the same environment.

But this is all still stereotyping.

There's no actual female identity. Or male identity.

To be fair, scientists use self-reported data on a whole load of things that we accept (I've been following social psychology and its travails for a while, but they certainly use self-reported data to study happiness. Erm... they use self reports for anything that is subjective - mainly as such studies want to know how people feel about something. But that is never the only measure in a wider context.

Such studies are usually part of a wider research remit which will include objective measures to show what the feelings are illustrating. I know this as all of my studies included a subjective measure, often identifying areas of further research required.

Quantification, in context, requires an agreed set of terms, or it is meaningless!

Environment also includes each other - Identical twins have a huge influence on one another - it is their primary relationship, sometimes more important than their mother...….

Given that it has only been 19 years since the human gene map was completed it is hardly surprising that the number of scientific "We just don't know yet's" is increasing with every question asked of it!

But Swyer syndrome is a DSD and therefore is not a matter of choice.

We may find that AGP has some genetic predisposition - some have already claimed that pedophilia has - but it won't be the same as DSDs and will necessitate differing approaches. None of which will include declaring a male body to be female, or vice versa.

There isn't a gene for gender identity. No one can say what it is without resorting to social stereotypes. How can you find evidence for something you cannot quantify?

But Swyer syndrome is a DSD, I mean. It's no suprise to me that someone with an outwardly entirely female physiology assumes themselves, from the circumstantial evidence, to be a girl/woman (or has a female 'gender identity' in newspeak).

I think the role of hormones in 'feeling' male or female should be explored as much as genes.

Either way, I'm about what affects women's rights safety and that's male physiology in our spaces, whatever is causing them to think/feel/wish otherwise.

Intersex is a medical condition and has nothing to do with trans which is about individuals clearly male or female wanting to be the opposite sex/gender. Gina Rippon makes the excellent point that our world is so gendered that teasing out nature vs nurture is almost impossible. Girl and boy babies are treated differently from birth and as our brains are plastic and respond to our external environment they do therefore become different as a result of being treated differently. If there was a biological basis for transgenderism identical twins would have identical rates of transgender identification. But they don’t - if one is trans about 28% of the time the other is, higher than chance but they have been brought up in the same environment. A good article in Quilette - ‘No-one is born in the wrong body’ makes the point that there are large areas of overlap between men and women in the characteristics they have. With a bell shaped distribution men at the extreme ‘more feminine’ end will be ‘more feminine’ than most men and ALSO most women. So it’s easy to see why they might think they have a female gender identity. I can see this for myself, I have more stereotypically male traits than some men I know. Doesn’t make me a man.