Page 2 | Biological knowledge

BlooDeBloop · 2023-03-18T11:10:18+00:00

I know this is not a biggie compared with all the trans business going on for our children in schools at the moment (not to mention elsewhere) but as a biologist, I was taken with a minor note in Hannah Barnes' excellent Time to Think. Clinicians reported some children accessing cross sex hormones thought they would start making sperm/developing uteruses of the opposite sex once on the hormones. I find this level of biological understanding shocking especially in children who were seeking to 'realign' themselves. How could they not understand the basic biology having clearly spent so long thinking about and researching sex and gender?? The mind boggles. Add this to the recent primary school poster thread where there is a deliberate, biologically illiterate attempt from No Outsiders to replace 'sex' with 'gender' to make it easier to discuss 'gender reassignment' later. What is happening in biology lessons? How is it being taught? Are we going to see a generation of kids not knowing that females make eggs and get pregnant and that no male, however they present, whatever they do to their bodies, will ever give birth??

DemiColon · 19/03/2023 10:51

maryannedemasi.substack.com/p/exclusive-lead-author-of-new-cochrane?fbclid=IwAR0uPFTGsEM8_2Qi2a4ZVkKAlMnqkSFYskxBWg_Q0xNC7x0VqTWIeMGIr6A

DemiColon · 19/03/2023 10:50

I think it's much more mainstream than all of that. I don't know if anyone here saw the interview given by the lead author of the new Cochran review on masking, where he talks also about what happened with the review that came out in 2019/20. It's totally shocking and it's clear that not only the political leaders but doctors and researchers were choosing to believe what they wanted or felt they were supposed to.

I really feel something ha gone very wrong in medicine generally. And that being the case, of course they have lost the trust of many patients.

borntobequiet · 19/03/2023 10:30

When I think of all the complete nonsense my childhood religion required me to believe, and how it was stated as the absolute truth by the otherwise intelligent and sensible adults around me, I can understand why even educated people are taken in by these cognitively dissonant fairytales, let alone those with limited knowledge and understanding.

FannyCann · 19/03/2023 10:27

Sorry, also included a screenshot from the previous article I linked.

FannyCann · 19/03/2023 10:26

A study discussion of rejection of surgery for breast cancer and the associated risks.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1357734/

MissLucyEyelesbarrow · 19/03/2023 10:25

Tinysoxxx · 18/03/2023 19:40

I am an ex biology teacher and used to teach all the sex-Ed. I can well believe these stories. It is quite frightening how little adults understand too. I would love to do a survey on what politicians understand about biology. All this spouting about ‘a woman is not just a person with a cervix’. I very much expect they would have no idea what or where a cervix is. I am desperate for a journalist to actually call this out.

Agreed. I spend a lot of time consenting patients for various medical treatments (not including transition!). Most people have a vary hazy understanding of their own bodies generally, and that's without the overlay of embarrassment/shame that tends to accompany talking about sex organs.

FannyCann · 19/03/2023 10:18

BlooDeBloop · 19/03/2023 08:12

The Progressive movement needs to be relabelled as Regressive. We're shooting back to the Middle Ages in terms of scientific understanding. FFS. It's a wholesale dismantling of the enlightenment values and progress.

You are so right OP.
There is an extremely concerning combination of general ignorance and anti-science which goes far beyond the nonsense spouted around gender and transition.

The anti-vax movement - not just covid or MMR but refusal to have tetanus or diphtheria or other serious and previously rare (thanks to vacccinations) illnesses.

The snake oil alternative treatments for cancer.

This young woman rejected conventional treatment for her breast cancer and died within three years when she may have been cured or at least have enjoyed a considerably longer period of good quality life if she had been properly treated. There have been quite a few similar cases in the news.

archive.ph/2023.03.19-101007/www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/young-mother-dies-refusing-chemotherapy-social-media-fuelling/

Original poster

BlooDeBloop · 19/03/2023 08:12

The Progressive movement needs to be relabelled as Regressive. We're shooting back to the Middle Ages in terms of scientific understanding. FFS. It's a wholesale dismantling of the enlightenment values and progress.

OP posts:

picklemewalnuts · 19/03/2023 08:03

I can accept that DC may fail to connect information they get at school with real life applications. Many people do.

I can't accept doctors prescribing for them, without checking their full understanding.
"This drug mimics female/male sex hormones, and will trigger some superficial changes in your body. The underlying structure will remain the same . Your sex will be unchanged, but your fat content and the distribution of hair and muscle will change."

Igmum · 19/03/2023 07:46

Yes this is so scary. My DD refused to believe me when I told her at age 15 that testosterone doesn't magically turn you into a boy. This is the problem with affirmation and TWAW. Kids (and adults) believe what they are told. They are then utterly betrayed when it turns out not to be true. The psychological impact of lying about this all day everyday is immense

raspberrywine · 19/03/2023 07:10

Doesn't mumsnet like links to archived articles?

It's a Telgrapgh piece on "Sex education means gender dysphoria is new anorexia for girls, says …"

"The mother, who lives in West Sussex, believes her child’s gender dysphoria was influenced by <a class="break-all" href="https://archive.is/o/LxBjw/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/09/ofsted-chiefs-warning-explicit-sex-education-lessons/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sex education lessons in school."

Bloody SRE lessons undoing Biology lessons again.

raspberrywine · 19/03/2023 07:03

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This reply has been hidden until the MNHQ team can have a look at it.

raspberrywine · 19/03/2023 06:50

I also taught biology and yes understanding is generally very poor. That's why teachers must be crystal clear and 100% factual. The gingerbread people know this at some level or why are they attempting to simplify sex into one gender category for primary school children? Imagine trying to teach that nonsense...

Worse is trying to unteach the nonsense. Children (and adults) can cling to their misconceptions pretty stubbornly. It must be hard to get the facts through, especially if they are being told by other adults that men can become women, women men, or you can be both or neither.

HootyMcBooby76 · 18/03/2023 22:26

Quite believe the ignorance.
My (intelligent, got 5 As at higher level and now at Uni) niece thought that FTM trans people got "penis transplants" from donated penises. Truly. That somehow it was possible to graft a human penis onto a woman and it work magically work in every way.

She was soon set straight about the horror of gender surgery from her terfy aunty.

They're so indoctrinated in gender nonsense that they don't know the horror of all this crap, too busy watching the Dylan Mulvaney's and their ilk.

Tinysoxxx · 18/03/2023 22:06

myveryownelectrickitten · 18/03/2023 21:45

I’ve been on mumsnet for over ten years now, and I’ve seen a fair few threads over that time in which many female posters genuinely thought they urinated from the vagina 🙁

Show quote history

Yep. My Dds cringe when people say vagina on tv or radio as I usually shouting ‘vulva’ back. Unless of course, they have used the term vagina correctly. Which is rarely.

AutumnLeaves23 · 18/03/2023 22:00

Minds are immature for some time, and in teenagehood it takes a while to fully acquire knowledge, it’s not just being taught, it’s having some perspective and experience.

This is why I think taking hormones or surgery before 25 is so fraught with risk.

I heard some 20 year olds, at a really good University, talk openly about how ‘well we all come from a woman anyway, from her egg, so we are all female’ - it’s all batshit pseudo no fact speak. Which wouldn’t be so worrying until you realise that this transfers into making life changing decisions for some.

myveryownelectrickitten · 18/03/2023 21:45

nepeta · 18/03/2023 19:50

Agreed. The Canadian Cancer Society/Association recently discussed cervical cancer screening for those transwomen who had had genital surgery, as if the neo-vagina might also include a neo-cervix.

But the lack of knowledge is much wider than just in this area. I have seen men and boys assume that women urinate from their vaginas, for instance.

When I was at school we were taught sex education twice, in age-appropriate stages (before the onset of puberty and a couple of years later), but both of those included clear pictures of what is inside the pelvis in male and female people, and there were basic quizzes afterwards which the teacher graded, including such questions as what the foreskin does, what the clitoris is, where the prostate is located etc. These were sex-segregated sessions, by the way.

Show quote history

I’ve been on mumsnet for over ten years now, and I’ve seen a fair few threads over that time in which many female posters genuinely thought they urinated from the vagina 🙁

BluebellBlueballs · 18/03/2023 21:44

nepeta · 18/03/2023 19:15

I read about a young woman who had detransitioned after having her breasts removed who supposedly inquired if/when her breasts would grow back.

The discussion of sex within the transgender debates in social media reveals abominable lack of biological knowledge by many, though some probably know the facts but pretend otherwise for propaganda reasons.

This may be due to such things as some popular science journals publishing opinion pieces on how gender is a spectrum, and perhaps sex is a spectrum, too, and might even be socially constructed entirely, without offering others space to explain why those opinions are incorrect.

But some of it must be due to what's happening in schools, and that part will get much worse in the future, what with the gingerbread person etc. being included in many schools' gender education.

Oddly enough, I have now read two different transgender women argue that they are almost entirely biologically female because female hormones will transform every part of their bodies (with the possible exception of their bones) into female ones over a period of some years. They appear to believe this.

That nobody argues back (perhaps for reasons of kindness) will allow these beliefs to become more generally supported. The assertion that transwomen also menstruate, except for the bit about shedding the uterine lining, has become much more common because it wasn't addressed much earlier.

Seeing as they so easily changed the definition of woman I guess it's only natural that they can just change the definition of menstruation too- no uterus required.

If woman can be just a feeling ( in genderwoo land) then if someone feels like they are menstruating, this must be true. And if they feel like a bio female this must also be true cos feelings= reality.

Until they don't and some poor kid grows up to realise they've mutilated their body, reduced their dating pool and become infertile.

Original poster

BlooDeBloop · 18/03/2023 21:39

AlisonDonut · 18/03/2023 19:52

Did I see that one teen was given puberty blockers because s/he thought s/he was a different race than s/he was?

I just wonder what the fuck those doctors thought they were trying to treat. I'm sure we will find out in court one day.

Yes this. The GIDS clinicians were seeing a variety of disordered identification issues in some individuals. But the only thing they were there to treat was the gender one so that's what they focused on.

I also taught biology and yes understanding is generally very poor. That's why teachers must be crystal clear and 100% factual. The gingerbread people know this at some level or why are they attempting to simplify sex into one gender category for primary school children? Imagine trying to teach that nonsense...

OP posts:

turbonerd · 18/03/2023 21:39

I’m not surprised at all.
Like Nepeta said, I’ve had people helpfully «explain» to me that when people discover their true gender the body will change accordingly. They can’t quite say why or even how, but are convinced the «right» biology is somehow dormant within the body.

The mind boggles.

One marine biologist was on telly and explained that to change sex (and/or gender, my language only has one word for it) was completely natural - after all shrimps do it!!

So I guess initially you must identify as a shrimp/prawn, and then - once that is settled - you can change sex like others change socks.

It is very strange how even biologists have addled their brains with this.

MrsOvertonsWindow · 18/03/2023 21:38

EnfysPreseli · 18/03/2023 21:06

Didn't David Lammy think that transwomen could "grow a cervix"? He said it on live TV.

I think there's considerable ignorance, but also that many children and adults aren't curious about how bodies actually work. They assume that deluded zealots are experts. Young people even win awards for telling other troubled young people that there are 6 sexes, you have a gendered soul and that your sex can be changed, literally. How adults supporting them let them get away with such nonsense, unless they believe it at some level themselves, is hard to fathom.

It says a lot when a leading politician who's apparently a father of 3 children evidently doesn't have a clue about what or where the cervix is in a woman, let alone its function during pregnancy & child birth. Yet he feels empowered to lecture everyone that men can apparently grow a cervix
The true definition of arrogant stupidity.

DemiColon · 18/03/2023 21:34

When people are taught a lot of contradictory things, they try and fit it together as best they can. And people tend to assume experts are being honest in how they are talking too. I noticed this with some of the issues around athletes with DSDs - when someone said, this person is a real women who happens to have high testosterone, they just assumed it was mean in the relevant, biological sense.

People hear so many crazy but true facts, so are willing to accept new ones from "experts" pretty readily.

Pondweed · 18/03/2023 21:30

It's definitely taught but no guarantee that knowledge is retained. So xx is female and xy male. The role of oestrogen and testosterone in the development of secondary sex characteristics. Then the menstrual cycle is taught. Also contraception. That is just part of the science curriculum so compulsory. But they get taught loads of stuff and it's not like they all get full marks on every exam so clearly much is forgotten.

EnfysPreseli · 18/03/2023 21:06

Didn't David Lammy think that transwomen could "grow a cervix"? He said it on live TV.

I think there's considerable ignorance, but also that many children and adults aren't curious about how bodies actually work. They assume that deluded zealots are experts. Young people even win awards for telling other troubled young people that there are 6 sexes, you have a gendered soul and that your sex can be changed, literally. How adults supporting them let them get away with such nonsense, unless they believe it at some level themselves, is hard to fathom.

AnneWhittle · 18/03/2023 20:42

you can kind of see how kids might end up believing this sort of thing, people have organ transplants after all
as a pp said some men (and some women) believe we urinate from our vaginas
the understanding of lactation is woeful