Confusing statement about treatment for intersex being a victory for trans community

Just seen someone on Facebook claiming that c.5% of people are intersex, and suggesting that an exceptionally tall woman should count as intersex.

It's nothing to do with trans.

But she thinks it is.

In the longer article, she says she had surgery and hormones because she felt at odds with her gender presentation, and I therefore surmise that she is one of those less than 2 in 10,000 people who are born with a disparity between the gonads and the genitals. And that she elected to get rid of the gonads rather than grow up as a man with female genitals.

I know lots here think gonads are key, but what law of nature or logic dictates that she had to show more loyalty to her - invisible and previously unsuspected - gonads than to the genitally based gender identity she'd had all her life? And she now doesn't benefit from the thing that gives men power and privilege - a body shaped by male puberty.

It's nothing to do with trans.

Klinefelter Syndrome, Turner Syndrome

These are just rolled out because TRA think they are a gotcha because they are not XY or XX. Their oversimplistic thinking is that XXY is somehow a middle position between XX and XY.

This. I am very sceptical whenever a transactivist claims to be intersex.

Thank you, good to know. And I'm glad I asked the question as possibly helpful for other newer readers/lurkers to know this as well.

Yes, I thought at first, why mention it at all? And having mentioned it, why be so cryptic about what the condition is, because it will just lead to lots of speculation.

But she's got a book to sell, so that's why.

I can think of at least two posters who have been on this board over the past couple of years who have discussed their experiences of having a DSD. They, unsurprisingly, expressed a wish that the gender ideology lot would stop weaponising their experiences of what can be some very difficult medical issues in order to present the nonsense of a 'third sex'.

Do we hear much directly from people with DSDs on this board? There are lots of posters who seem knowledgeable about the science but I'm always a bit uncomfortable with the act of speaking about other people's experiences for them (my gateway criticism of trans ideology was men telling women what womanhood meant).

Thinking about the trans man poster a few weeks ago (I'm sorry I can't remember your name off the top of my head) and how insightful their comments on their own experiences were - some had been said by others on the board already of course or shared from other sites, but the dialogue itself was really valuable I thought.

To clarify - I'm not suggesting anyone out themselves or anyone else as having a DSD.

@PermanentTemporary Which post are you referring to? But in terms of testosterone in PCOS:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42000-020-00210-0

and serum total testosterone level (2.34 ± 0.58 nmol/L vs 1.57 ± 0.60 nmol/L, p < 0.001) compared with women without PCOS.

Most women with PCOS have testosterone levels that aren’t as high as one might think. Of course there will still be women higher.

Off the top of my head normal levels for women are 0.2-2 and for men are 8-28. A woman with PCOS might go as high as 5 I think? A woman with a testosterone level at normal levels for a man is seriously unwell with a pituitary tumour.

@NotBadConsidering I’ve never read any figures remotely like that. I have PCOS (and have never had my testosterone levels checked but my silverback hairiness and high sex drive certainly suggest they are on the high side) but the figures I’ve seen show a big gap even between levels for women with PCOS and men with testosterone so low that medical treatment might be considered in some countries.

Anyway, I'm pretty confident "hormonally intersex" is bollocks. It reminds me of the folk medicine you get on trans reddit, where people claim that, after being on CSH for a year, all the male cells in your body will have been replaced by female ones or vice versa.

Which isn't to say this woman doesn't have a DSD, or maybe just some hormonal condition that wouldn't be classed as a DSD, but she's been pretty obscure about it, and I suspect deliberately so.

Females can get their testosterone levels above 10. Gender doctors target the lower male range, 10-15nmol/l. There was the case of the female whose levels were 40 or something crazy.

Meanwhile trans women wishing to compete in women's sports must get their testosterone levels below 10mmol/l, a level which no female person can ever achieve even by doping. A female athlete who raised her testosterone levels to 5mmol/l by doping would be banned from competing (not just in the same category, but at all).

It’s not trans related but I watched a really interesting ted talk from a person who found out they had no uterus and internal testicles at age 10. Initially at the time surgeons were very much of the whip ‘em out perspective which does seem to have changed as knowledge has grown.

https://www.ted.com/talks/emily_quinn_what_i_ve_learned_from_having_balls

Lots of medicine has a convoluted history, Are diabetes patients expected to be grateful to those having weight loss injections as lots of money/,research pouring in?

The ‘hormonally intersex’ grift is used to prop up the ‘I’m hormonally female’ claim.

Since the SC ruling, there has been frothing about the use of the term ‘biological sex’ without provision of a definition of ‘biological sex’. This is often paired with claims that when taking cross sex hormones in quantities that match natural production for the opposite sex, this results in being classifiable as the opposite sex.

IW and DU have both publicly claimed that they are biologically female because they are biological (not robots) and identify as female, so biologically female.

Michael Foran has written some great posts explaining that the definition of ‘biological sex’ has been established through case law (he cites 3 cases). The definition refers to gonads, chromosomes and external genitalia. Hormones don’t even get a mention!

Am I right in thinking some women will PCOS have elevated levels of testosterone too?

Hyperandrogenism is essential to a diagnosis of PCOS. You don’t actually need cystic ovaries. So yes, all women with PCOS have elevated testosterone. The average is around 2.4mmol/l, at the upper limit of the normal range for women, so not excessively above, but can be higher than that.

Which would mean every woman who's ever been pregnant with a boy (or two or three) would be 'hormonally intersex' because of the slightly raised levels of testosterone in our bodies while we're carrying said boys.
Am I right in thinking some women will PCOS have elevated levels of testosterone too?

I'm not sure that Swyer Syndrome fits with the "some things happening too much" comment.

Sorry, I see a few PPs have already made this point.

The description of being "hormonally intersex" sounds like BS to me. What does that actually mean?

Those studies fail to control for high comorbidity of other mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety, OCD, and self harm practices such as anorexia, bulimia, and cutting. When these factors are controlled for THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN SUICIDE RATES. “Gender affirming care” is NOT “life saving”. Correlation does not equal causation. Please stop using bad research to justify these sorts of extreme, fear mongering statements.

The age she became aware of an issue suggests it’s not CAIS. If I remember correctly, they don’t investigate the absence of periods until 17 or so.

So something happened around 13 that raised concern. That’s not going to be female puberty beginning.

I think people talk about hormones because, when a girl's periods don't start, the first thing you can do is look for circulating T. Its presence if high is indicative of being gonadally male.