I've just been called "unscientific" for saying that you cannot change sex

Personally I love the way that people can play with stereotypes of male and female.

And yet they so rarely play with them when it comes to boring, everyday, non self-expressive stuff like the big shop, the bulk of domestic shitwork even when both people have jobs, childcare, or caring for elderly relatives.

Ooh. Mic drop 😁

I agree with both points here - as human shields, however, "intersex" seems to be the 'gotcha' term. I was left baffled by this footnote posted but now deleted from Twitter (sorry if the screenshot ends up in the 'quoted post' - I don't understand what happens with these).

The NHS here in the UK seems to currently define it as differences in sex development. As you say it seems to change a fair bit, and also depending on where you are based.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/differences-in-sex-development/

According to a support type website I looked at, some now prefer the term VSD, Variation in Sexual Development.

Personally I love the way that people can play with stereotypes of male and female. I also love that people can dress more how they want, have long hair, short hair, wear skirts or jeans. I absolutely will strive for a more tolerant society. I also want a fair society, and one that sticks up for the vulnerable.

I really like that being kind, or strong, or wearing make up or not, being graceful, being caring and nuturing, or assertive and brave - that all the myriad of being human can be expressed by any of us in any way we like. Love it! The more the better. A man who loves to cook and feed the baby. A woman who is brave and fearless, and also takes out the bins. A man who wears a skirt or whatever.

Being a woman or a man should not define us, isn’t that the point? I think it’s very simple and doesn’t need to rewrite biology truths.

We are always a woman or a man, biologically, however how we are can take so many different ways and forms. Without harassment.

I’d like to see a world where men who feel like a woman in whatever degree or form can happily use the male toilets, compete in male sports, in male single sex wards in hospital and be recorded as male. And yet be able to call himself Mary, wear a dress every day, be as feminine as he likes. Why not? Should this even need a label such as trans? As a label just pigeon holes you again to a particular stereotype doesn’t it?

It is a bit of an aside, but when I did my clinical genetics training 12 years ago there was a real push to use DSD (which we understood as standing for disorders of sex differentiation), recognising the limitations and inappropriateness of the term 'intersex'. I believe this came from consultation with people with those disorders, but appreciate not everyone will feel the same, and things may have changed again since then anyway. Also, this may be UK-specific - in my experience, medical terminology is often very different in the US and a lot of the current debate derives from there.

I think part of the problem over the years has been the terminology used to describe the chromosomal disorders of sexual development.

Using terms like 'inter sex' suggests that there is some 'othering' or 'alternative' or 'middle ground' to male and female, or that it is possible to hover somewhere on a spectrum.

I know I am guilty of still using the term, but I am endeavouring to use the term disorders of sexual development or difference of sexual development when talking about these things.

What do those with DSDs who are here on this forum feel? What kind of terminology do you prefer?
Although I keep saying it is unfair to drag these people into the trans debate, it WILL keep happening, as it is one of the fall back arguments when they have no other.

@NecessaryScene and then there is infra red... I read the article and liked it! Particularly as there is a link with autism and trans and fluid identity - and yet there is a view in many young autistic people that ‘it is NOT a spectrum - there is a tribe and it is called autism and it is distinctly different from neurotypical people’ - so saying ‘on the spectrum’ is now considered offensive in some circles. It is ironic as many of those I’ve read saying that are trans and autistic.

Personally I think differently! I think I have many autistic traits and that this is fluid, but I am also a woman which is not fluid. IMHO!

"Spectrum"? Even if not a discrete "binary", no.

Well the Earth is round.

However it is not perfectly round.

It will probably change at some point.

Doesn’t make it any less round. Science is complex however it builds on knowledge - even if we discover for example that we are all really aliens with no sex connected to the matrix - at the moment we know that XX and XY produce different sexes for the lifetime.

Reading the Wikipedia article is a really low bar to pass

Is someone suggesting that we are not real scientists if we don't believe the trans ideology?

Have they redefined the word scientist as well as woman ?

It's the only thing that make sense

This thread has a link to an essay about the common male tactic of appropriating the struggles of others to justify something that puts them at the centre:

“It’s really hard to put into words what it feels like to have your complex and quite traumatic medical history paraded to validate someone else’s identity. The questions I see being asked; “Which toilets should intersex people use then?”, “If we accept women without wombs as women, then surely someone born male can be?”, “Where do intersex people fit into your regressive binary?”, “How do we know this child molester, with a beard, isn’t intersex?”.
The implication being that we’re not real women and that our medical histories can be used like a prize in a game show. It’s like being back in the Victorian era where intersex people were exhibited like freaks in a side show for the edification of others. In answer to those questions; we use the toilet that corresponds with our birth sex; yes, a woman without a womb is female and; no, she isn’t just like a man that was born with a fully functioning male reproductive system.
We fit into the binary fine, we’re male or female like everyone else, and to answer the last one; why is it so hard for people to believe that male pattern abuse and criminality exists that they’d rather blame women with a medical condition? To say this is offensive is an understatement. My inbox is full of intersex people talking about how the current debate, and our unwilling place in it, has reopened trauma they have spent years repairing and coming to terms with. The social stigma we have always avoided and feared is now a fun talking point for people that have never met us, never talked to us, never taken the time to learn about us and our conditions. It’s abusive and nasty. Apparently the womanhood of transwomen isn’t up for debate but mine is being put up for sale by people that do not care about me and apparently do not care to learn.”

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3400673-intersex-and-trans

“ Cause it is not clear cut. That's what trans and scientific people find funny”

Debbie Hayton is both a transwoman and a scientist. Debbie doesn’t believe humans can change sex.

I’m uncomfortable with the amount that ‘intersex conditions’ are used as an example of sexual not being binary. Rarely do I hear people with intersex conditions suggesting they believe themselves to be a separate/alternative sex.

You can't modify your phenotype. It's how you present without alteration. You can hide or obfuscate it but it's still there. If I dye my hair or tattoo my skin or get a boob job, I've changed my appearance but I haven't changed my actual phenotype.

The genitals that are created with reassignment surgery aren't real genitals. They are body modifications to resemble genitals.

You might alter your appearance drastically, you might even pass and be very attractive, but you still haven't changed your sex.

Have you ever seen this?
The fact that they all exist does not make sex a spectrum though

II'd stop now Tibtom Even when still trying to refute the science @GoldenSun1 is posting links to data that justcnfirms what we are saying.

" None so blind as those who will not see" No point arguing with ideologues. If the facts don't suit they'll make them up.

I'd stop now Tibtom Even when still trying to refute the science @GoldenSun1 is posting links to data that justcnfirms what we are saying.

Either they assume the writer is male and so must be much more clever than us; they assume the author is NOT one of us - as I pointed out a few years ago, that isn't always a safe thing to assume ; or they think that because we carefully remove all the multi syllable words in an attemot to clarify, we ain't got it right.

All they show is that they don't understand what they are linking to!

There seems to be so much clutching of straws by the TRAs, they will soon have enough for a straw man.