Radio 4 just now (8.47) bonkers conflation of intersex and trans

Conflation is absolutely deliberate
There is nothing stupid about Professor Playdon. All of her words were very carefully chosen and here arguments were very carefully constructed to highlight trans issues and call for changes to the GRA whilst ignoring any possible affects on women. What I found particularly galling was the example Prof Palydon gave of unfair treatment received by some trans people convicted of trivial crimes like non-payment of parking fines being sent to wrong sex prisons where trans women were raped. This is exactly the kind of thing that self-id is facilitating now in women's prisons: unscrupulous male-bodied prisoners some of whom have been convicted of sexual assault and other violent crimes against women are claiming to be trans women in order to serve their sentences in women's prisons. This is putting women in those prisons at grave risk and could be very traumatising for those who have been victims of such crimes.

@nauticant
Thank you for finding the review.

Might it be worth writing to the Tiday programme? If so how would put it so as come across in such a way as they would listen.

I had the impression the presenter was fully taken in somehow.

I've always respected Amol, but today, even the introduction had me yelling at the car radio.

Here's a fascinating bit of social history. Ewan Forbes was born Elizabeth Forbes to a wealthy land owning family in 1912. It quickly became clear that the gender applied to him at birth was not correct, and from the age of six he began to see specialists in Europe for help thanks to his family's financial means, Ewan was able to procure synthetic hormones. and live as a man he was even able to correct the gender on his birth certificate and marry.

Why does the Beeb pussyfoot over using the word Sex?

There was a review in The Sunday Times ScrollingLeaves:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-hidden-case-of-ewan-forbes-by-zoe-playdon-review-the-remarkable-story-of-the-lord-and-a-secret-transgender-test-case-2c9kcrsbl

Yes I heard it.
By the way there was also a review of the book last weekend somewhere if any one else saw that?

I was shocked by the conflation going unchallenged. In the original case Ewan Forbes was granted the status of a man on the basis that that was what he really was but for the fact that DSD had caused him to be mistaken for a girl at birth.

On the today programme it was presented as though all trans gender people are in the same position.

With the financial means to procure synthetic hormones pre-puberty, and the ongoing support of his remarkably progressive mother Gwendolen, Ewan Forbes proceeded to live his life as a man, quietly and without scrutiny, just as he wished.

This is from this article about Playdon's book:

www.thebookseller.com/profile/zo-playdon-i-think-i-m-probably-hopeless-optimist-i-believe-ultimately-goodness-people

Ewan Forbes was born in 1912, so 'pre-puberty' would be the early 1920s.

I found this article about the history of hormones:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1369102/

It says that the first successful synthesis of a hormone was carried out in 1926. (This hormone was thyroxine, not a sex hormone.)

Also:
"In the 1920s and 1930s, Adolf Butenandt, Tadeus Reichstein and Edward Adelbert Doisy discovered and characterized various steroid hormones, including oestrogen, testosterone and progesterone."

So Playdon is claiming that a child was given opposite sex synthetic hormones at a time when those hormones were yet to be discovered, let alone synthesised.

.

If Ewan is a man he gets to inherit.
If the author conflates with Trans it sells more books.

nowhere does it mention the possibility of Ewan Forbes having a DSD.

I'm not convinced that Ewan Forbes had a DSD. From the review in The Times:

There are so many twists and turns in the tale that follows that it sometimes reads like a thriller. The case Ewan concocted to prove he was male is almost literally cock and bull, involving the sudden appearance of a testicle. The miracle is that his medical witnesses went along with it, although they were careful not to perjure themselves. “Medicine of the day,” says Playdon coolly, “was clannish as well as autocratic.”

The Tatler article is interesting, but I wonder what the source was - nowhere does it mention the possibility of Ewan Forbes having a DSD.

Obviously the legal situation is fascinating, even though it only affects a very small number of people. An aristocratic trans man who has a younger brother can't inherit, though that hasn't been tested in the courts.

However, if it was determined that the eldest sibling had a DSD and had been wrongly assigned female at birth, then they could probably legally challenge it. I think these days scientists are pretty clear that the vast majority of people with DSDs are either male or female - that hermaphroditism or intersex is not an accurate description of any medical condition.

Conflation is absolutely deliberate.

I emphatically believe that it's purposeful conflation/confusion to facilitate forced teaming and appropriate the narrative and the research funding that exists (see above link with ClareCAIS).

We had an 'Intersex and Trans Awareness' thing recently at work. I didn't attend. Someone also posted that the genderbread person was a useful resource. Lots of email pronouns. Not one trans person here, though lots of out gay men who run all the LGBT stuff

I was trying to listen whilst getting DS ready for school & planned to look it up afterwards as it seemed odd. Thanks for the thread.

I can't tell if the person described on the program was actually trans or had a dsd; unfortunately wiki is edited by people to suit their agenda.

Conflation is absolutely deliberate.

The author of the article I linked to used this to correct and educate some podcaster (scrubious pip?) who did a whole programme grovelling about their lack of education around trans, being re educated to believe that intersex conditions means trans.

It takes something to make Amol Rajan look like a twit but this did.
Tatler featured it yonks ago

www.tatler.com/article/trans-toffs

This is a particularly bad article about pretending that trans = a dsd.

blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/. Obviously the author is trans. Also apparently a neuroscientist,

This is a twitter thread breaking it down, although really the below table is enough. The author isn't even a biologist . Which you'd think means he doesn't qualify but IMO it illustrates its not rocket science. He links to all the papers by scientists.

However it's still basically that there's only 2 sexes.

twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1280971658719789060?s=21

I suspect the conflation was deliberate and would be justified by having a very broad definition of what constitutes 'trans'. What seems to be being ignored by all sides here is not how well or otherwise Ewan Forbes was treated as a trans man but the undisputed discrimination he would have been subject to had he remained a woman. In my view, Ewan should have been able to inherit regardless of his sex at birth.

This may be useful re dsds.

It's disgusted that this has to be discussed to be honest. None of it is to do with trans.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4386401-Brilliant-piece-on-intersex

Is there not a DSD society or something that can fight back against all this, If I was DSD I would be pretty pissed off at having my medical condition dragged into all this. its forced teaming again like they did with the LGB.

In Prof Playdon's case this belief is of very long standing. Here's a letter to Stephen Whittle from 2012 saying explicitly that transsexualism should be considered an intersex condition of somatic origin.

library.transgenderzone.com/?page_id=2274

I am increasingly convinced that TRAs use the term ‘intersex’ deliberately so imply that sex is a spectrum.

Thanks, @nauticant.

Have gone down a deep and winding rabbithole now. I had assumed that Professor Playdon had just got the wrong end of the stick and nobody had tried to correct the scientific side of the story for all the obvious reasons. I now see from the professor's Twitter feed and a Google search that this is not a first foray into writing about gender issues. Playdon has been active in this area for a very long time and I surmise has a direct personal stake in the issue.