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

This is wrong, isn't it?

It's related to this part of embryology, long since discredited:

www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530041-200-how-fudged-embryo-illustrations-led-to-drawn-out-lies/

This is nuts. Either Forbes had a DSD or he was trans. Not at all the same thing.

Having looked at the Wikipedia entry, the medical evidence of the time seems to have been inconclusive, and of course they wouldn't have been able to do any chromosomal tests. I suppose we'd have to look at the medical testimony the 12 experts gave to the court to have an idea of what they were basing their views on.

Here's the legal article about the case referenced in Wikipedia, but you have to pay for it:

www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/elr.2007.11.2.162

I really don't think Professor Playdon took advantage of her excellent connections to the medical profession to check her facts.

at one point she reminds me that we all start out as biologically female in the womb, and “then if you’re unlucky you get to be male”.

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

This is wrong, isn't it? I say this with some trepidation, as my highest qualification in this area is Biology O level, Grade B, 1977, but here goes, and I hope to be corrected if this is wrong. My understanding is that for the first few weeks after conception there is no obvious difference between a female embryo and a male one except in their chromosomes. Then the embryo makes a huge amount of testosterone, it reaches every cell in the embryo's body and if there's an SRY gene present (almost always on the Y chromosome) then the testosterone gets taken up and the body starts to develop as male. If there is no SRY gene the testosterone just washes through and the body develops as female. That isn't the same as saying we're all female to start with.

This is what tras are doing though.

Pretending trans is a dsd.

I need to listen to this but there will be some extremely upset people with dsds listening to this.

I saw a post on twitter from a woman with turners who pointed out she'd give anything to be able to change sex to escape the issues her dsd causes.

I see from her Twitter feed it's going to be turned into a TV miniseries. Oh dear.

Listening now. Astonishing this got through her publisher's review process. She has totally conflated transgender identity with having a DSD. How can she be unaware that the vast majority of people now identifying as trans are unequivocally male or female?

'back then, what we now think of as trans people were viewed as intersex. Now we see/treat those things as the same'

I could be remembering this wrongly as I's just put the radio on so got it with no context whatsoever, causing me to nearly drive into a hedge.

The interviewer was Amol Rajan.

We have George Orwell's oeuvre ever before us to confirm that extended marination in lies, half truths, propaganda and gobbledegook can bamboozle even good minds. Once we lose precision of language, we endanger precision of thought. We are well on the way to losing precise definitions of a whole raft of really important words.

We all use words for logical thinking, analytical thinking, and if words go fuzzy we think fuzzily. We think with our feelings instead of our brains, just like small children.

Who was the interviewer? Usually both Justin and Nick are on top of this.

The Christina Patterson review doesn't say anything about intersex or DSD, which suggests to me it's not mentioned in the book either. So who brought up intersex/DSD in the interview? Was it Playdon or the interviewer?

I would surmise that Professor Playdon is actually pretty bright, or she wouldn't have the academic CV she has, given her age. However, it's entirely possible she has developed tunnel vision on this issue and her medical colleagues have not felt able to be brutally direct with her about the problems of conflating gender identity and physical medical conditions, for all the obvious reasons, which sadly are even affecting medical schools.

If I'm reading Zoe Playdon's LinkedIn page rightly, she has no medical or scientific qualifications whatsoever.

BA Hons English, History, Archaeology
PGCE
MA Modern Literature
PhD Contemporary Irish Literature
MEd Management and Communication
DBA, Health Service Management

Professor of Medical Education
Now Emeritus Professor in Medical Humanities, which is a facet of medical education trying to ensure that medical students do something interesting outside their core studies but complementary to them, e.g. film studies, photography, creative writing. Very worthwhile but not requiring any scientific or medical knowledge to organise and teach.

Apologies, OP! And I suppose I should have guessed that the BBC just didn’t do its homework before using the wrong term.
They shouldn’t be conflating DSD with trans anyway - they are utterly unrelated, and patients with DSD have repeatedly asked not to be involved in trans wars.

What a fascinating case. I wonder what the medical diagnosis was, and what it would be these days. The Wikipedia article refers to Ewan being described by one expert as a 'hermaphrodite', which I doubt very much is a term that would be used now.

I heard it too. The contributor was the author.

It seems to be deliberate appropriation of DSD as being trans. This from the publisher's website:

"This hugely important case would have changed the lives of trans people across the world—if it hadn’t been hidden. .... The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes is a singular contribution to trans history and the ongoing struggle for trans rights."

www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Hidden-Case-of-Ewan-Forbes/Zoe-Playdon/9781982139469

From the radio interview it sounds as if the book covers trans history, not just the Ewan Forbes case, so it might be an interesting read.

How can someone so educated be so dumb?

Well, given that she decided to go into a "meta" subject like "medical humanities" rather than something actually technical like medicine itself, it's fair to assume that she wasn't that bright to start with.

And if you're not terribly bright, or good at logic or critical thinking, so unable to distinguish sense from nonsense, then further education in a squishy subject could just end up exposing you to more nonsense, rather than overcoming your critical thinking problems.

Especially if it's in an institution which has decided ideology ("Social Justice") trumps Truth.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who heard this, thinking 'Eh??'

Oops sorry DSD not intersex

If Ewan were a transman rather than intersex the Gender Recognition Act wouldn't allow Ewan to inherit the title:

16
^Peerages etc.
The fact that a person’s gender has become the acquired gender under this Act—
(a) does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour, and
(b) does not affect the devolution of any property limited (expressly or not) by a will or other instrument to devolve (as nearly as the law permits) along with any peerage or dignity or title of honour unless an intention that it should do so is expressed in the will or other instrument.^

OP, you might want to edit your title. Nobody is “intersex” and the term is not used in medicine. People with DSD (disorders of sexual development) are all very definitely either male or female.

The interviewee has 5 degrees, 2 doctorates and is an Emeritus Professor of Medical Humanities!

How can someone so educated be so dumb?