Intersex

I'm sorry. here's that link again: Byrne on gender identity .

My understanding from my immersion into DSD facts earlier this year is that the root cause of Swyer is the lack of an actively functioning SRY gene. In every case.
I don’t think so. Not according to NORD anyway but I’m not an expert.

One thing. You say:
'I see it similar to religion because it all depends on what someone believes, or doesn't: to me god doesn't exist but to a Christian he does. Neither of us is "correct".'

Perhaps neither of you is "correct" (whatever that might mean); however, one of you is certainly correct (in the ordinary everyday English sense). Either god exists or he doesn't.

Same is true about gender identity: either there is such a thing or there isn't. (Actually, there is no such thing as gender identity. See, e.g., Byrne on gender identity )

I understand where the 'neither is "correct"' comes from: an entirely laudable concern for tolerance. But it's important not to throw away the baby of facts and truth with the bathwater of intolerance.

As one of my favourite philosophers used to joke, "I know where you're coming from; it's just that relativism isn't true for me." (Think about it: do you see how that points up your mistake?)

[Edited to fix link.]

This ⬆️

@Rainbowandgrey I realised after posting that it looks like I'm disagreeing with you. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing as I have no knowledge of the majority of what you said in your comment. However, I think it's much simpler to understand it as a lack of active SRY, regardless of the root cause of that inactivity.

My head nearly exploded with too much information during the Olympics stuff and this was my sanity saving takeaway re the difference between males and females i.e. all males have an active SRY, all females don't have an active SRY. Hence me saying above that this ruins Mr Menno's song: "you're male because of that active SRY gene" wouldn't scan in the lyrics at all. It's still a great song though, with lots of excellent points about gender identity...

As you say, people who have Swyer Syndrome are all XY but as always it’s complicated.

Edited to add what is hopefully the right YouTube link. No idea how I ended up with a random video about donkeys when I copied it the first time. Odd.

Streak gonads are neither testes (no SRY function) nor ovaries (two Xs are needed), so OP could be described as without a sex. But, in reality, she has all the other female characteristics, and no male ones. Attaching significance to the Y is arbitrary.

Just to add, it’s not always the SRY gene that has a mutation or deletion to give this condition. That’s the gene affected in 15 - 20% of cases but there are others in different cases.

My understanding from my immersion into DSD facts earlier this year is that the root cause of Swyer is the lack of an actively functioning SRY gene. In every case.

From Emma Hilton's info on X:

"sometimes the SRY gene is missing/broken, or sometimes other genes that SRY hooks up with are missing/broken."

https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1819697582647484898?t=I5Ur_aJabFIUkK4bFC52IA&s=19

In the tweet, she comes close to saying that someone with Swyer is male but doesn't actually do that (my bold):

"Swyer syndrome doesn’t include the typical aspects of male development that are relevant for sport. Babies don’t masculinise in any hormone-driven way (although people with Swyer are a little taller than females)."

If she had said "typical females" or similar, her whole explanation would have been neutral on the question of what sex someone is when they have Swyer.

Thanks @Ingenieur, @BonfireLady and @dementedpixie, much appreciated.

I’d always have considered people with Swyers to be women but was unsure of the medical or scientific classification of the DSD if you see what I mean.

Just to add, it’s not always the SRY gene that has a mutation or deletion to give this condition. That’s the gene affected in 15 - 20% of cases but there are others in different cases. Not all are on the Y chromosome either, they’ve been found on the X chromosome (and show X-linked inheritance) as well as on autosomes (ie the chromosomes other than the sex chromosomes). Some are unidentified. In some cases the woman with a SRY mutation has a father or brother with the same mutation, so in those cases it’s thought a combination of genes must be involved. So people who have Swyer Syndrome are all XY but as always it’s complicated.

Not sure where I screenshotted this from but it gives a lot of DSDs and whether they are associated with being female or male. With Swyer syndrome you could in theory carry a pregnancy but couldn't get pregnant naturally.

When I was on X during the Olympics, it frustrated me no end that Emma Hilton wouldn't categorically say whether Swyer was a female or male DSD. She just described it as "a DSD".

Eventually someone helped me out and explained the equivalent of the diagram that has been posted above by flowchartnotrequired

I now also see Swyer's as a female DSD because of the impact of the missing SRY. I think I can also see why Emma Hilton doesn't categorically say male or female, despite her saying that every DSD is sex-specific. I'm assuming it's similar to my pronoun avoidance in that it's going to provoke a reaction either way: if she said it's a female DSD there will be people who disagree (because the body hasn't been organised around the production of eggs) and if she says it's a male DSD there will be people who disagree (because the body hasn't been organised around the production of sperm).

As I understand it, it's the only DSD which comes close to making sense of the false statement that "all foetuses start off as female". The default pathway is to develop female reproductive organs if there is no active SRY. (Unfortunately it ruins Mr Menno's brilliant song "Y chromosome" because being male is about the action of the SRY gene, that sits on the Y chromosome the vast majority of times).

Unlike 5-ARD, with Swyer there will be no testosterone boost at any time. Meaning there will be no development of any male secondary sex characteristics.

If I put myself in the shoes of a person with Swyer (or a child, pre-puberty, with 5-ARD) I can fully understand why they say they are female. I do too. However, I would have been mistaken regarding the child with 5-ARD as when puberty hits, this child's actual (male) sex would become clear. The testicles were there all along and the penis will naturally grow at this point. That must be a horrible experience to go through. But for someone with Swyer this will never happen and their physical development pathway will remain as it started. To develop any secondary sex characteristics, they'll need to take hormones. Logically, anyone who has grown up with Swyer will take oestrogen. Whether I'm "correct" that someone with Swyer is female becomes a matter of opinion, which will be divided.

Swyer probably also helps to explain Kirsty Blackman's ridiculous statement in parliament that she didn't know her chromosomes but was "probably XY". She has children and she has breasts. More importantly, if she had Swyer, she would have been told her chromosomes were XY at the time of diagnosis and that in order to develop breasts she would need to take oestrogen (and she would need to have IVF if she wanted to try for children). Surely she'd remember going through all that 🤦‍♀️ So of course she knows her chromosomes... although her grasp on biology is evidently very shaky, even without the complexity that Swyer adds, so maybe not. That doesn't stop the rest of us knowing them though from the facts that we know about her.

Until I saw the diagram again, I had forgotten that people with Swyer had a uterus, so I'll take back my earlier suggestion of spotting this DSD on an ultrasound. D'oh. (But it would still be possible to identify 5-ARD as I suggested above, because there would be no uterus and no penis/scrotum, which should flag as an anomaly).

Edited for clarity.

While Swyer himself did refer to the condition as a disorder of male anatomy, it is current practice among medical practitioners to refer to it as a disorder that women have.

Understood.

I just prefer to focus my efforts on the impact of it all. There will be people who believe that we all have a gender identity. There will be people who believe that it's possible to be intersex (between the sexes). There will be people who believe in God/Allah.

That's all fine, as long as they don't impose their belief on everyone else and force them to accept it as true.

I don't use preferred pronouns (except in limited circumstances e.g. I have occasionally done so to keep a conversation going), I just avoid third person pronouns altogether if someone has a gender identity that differs from their sex. I also avoid saying things like "correct pronouns" because one person's version of correct is different from another's. I see it similar to religion because it all depends on what someone believes, or doesn't: to me god doesn't exist but to a Christian he does. Neither of us is "correct".

So if someone with a DSD is happy saying "intersex" and isn't demanding that everyone accepts that sex is a spectrum, fair enough. I won't use the term intersex myself but I'm not going to worry about that person's choice of word. It's also interesting to hear it's not considered offensive, although I'm aware that there are people with DSDs who do consider it so.

Hi OP, I really hope I’m not being offensive but I’m wondering why you describe Swyer syndrome as a female DSD. I believe people with Swyer’s have a female body but XY chromosomes. Is it the convention to call the syndrome a female DSD? Sorry, just genuinely curious about how DSD conditions are formally categorised. I’d have probably just said a DSD myself, without specifying male or female, but I don’t know the usual conventions.

You’ve indicated yourself that it’s a meaningless term, seeing as it supposedly includes you and the bloke you were deriding for being excited at the prospect of him being a special third sex.

I don’t really care what made up terms people use to describe themselves, as long as they aren’t appropriating terms that refer to something they aren’t (eg ‘female’ ‘girl’ ‘woman’) or calling me something dehumanising (eg ‘menstruator’ ‘womb haver’ ‘body with a cervix’).

But if you want a conversation (and I’m presuming that you do, or why are you here?) you need to use words with understandable definitions.

Were you and the people you know diagnosed as intersex OP? I wonder if that is why you find it's usage prevalent. In the same way I use Aspergers for my DC's condition despite it no longer being used and considered outdated by some or even many.

This article explains my understanding of people with Swyer syndrome - which I think is now called gonadal dysgenesis and means you are biologically male but with an outward female appearance.

novonordiskfonden.dk/en/news/more-women-than-expected-are-genetically-men/

Intersex is one of those things that didn’t used to be an issue but has been weaponised by transactivists. If you like the term to describe your condition then get angry with them.

I disagree. Especially around pronouns. Gender ideology cannot change reality so this is a battle around language. Stealing women’s pronouns is violence against women. ‘Intersex’, like pronouns, matters because it is designed to obsfucate reality. On one level it might seem innocuous how people refer to themselves but then more and more forms appears asking whether you are male, female or intersex/other and suddenly data is corrupted. Suddenly you are faced with people saying you can’t have male/female toilets because what about intersex? People wonder what your issue is recording rapists as female when you called another trans-identified man she.

I think a lot of people don’t, which precisely why ‘intersex’ is pushed by gender ideology. People think it means they are somehow between sexes, that sex is somehow spectrum.

Agreed. But I'm with the OP on why the term "intersex" isn't the battleground. Prior to this thread, I thought it was (and I'll continue to use the term DSD instead) but IMO it's more important to focus on the fact that DSDs are sex-specific.

I see it as similar to how I don't fight the pronoun "battle". If someone is using opposite sex pronouns in a conversation with me IRL (i.e they are using the preferred pronouns of someone with a transgender identity), I don't pass comment. I just listen and respond to the points that they are making e.g. if they say "Barbra Banda shouldn't be BBC women's footballer of the year because she isn't a woman, she's a man with a DSD", I engage with the main talking point: obviously the evidence on Barbra Banda's sex isn't in the public arena, but what we do know is that Banda has been found ineligible to compete in the Africa Cup of Nations on the grounds of sex (or "gender eligibility" as it's called). In other words, I let the "she" pronouns slide by.

I assume the OP has a similar feeling about the term "intersex". If so, fair enough.

but I think most people have a rough idea what intersex means

I think a lot of people don’t, which precisely why ‘intersex’ is pushed by gender ideology. People think it means they are somehow between sexes, that sex is somehow spectrum. This is purposeful to try and undermine the male/female distinctions so can be replaced with genders.

Do you have a variant of sexual development?
If so, are you self diagnosed and have you told my odious work colleague that you have two working reproductive systems, one male one female? And that you are her "friend" despite having only interacted with her online in text or with heavily filtered photos?

I find your stance rather odd as presumably you don't appreciate people telling you what to call them (i.e. dictating pronoun use) and you don't think a person can change their biology with language.

Why? I said upthread that intersex as a term is meaningless so anyone can identify as it (whereas ‘female’ and ‘male’ have actual definitions),

I can identify as a flarf if I want but it doesn’t change my biology or mean anything to anyone except me. I can even campaign for flarf acceptance and flarf spaces if I feel like it, but I have to accept that most people will just momentarily wonder what the fuck a flarf is and then dismiss me.