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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

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Original poster

How accurately do humans identify biological sex?

161 replies

Acorninspring · 09/06/2018 09:53

I often see the claim that people are very good at identifying biological sex, regardless of what gender someone is presenting as. I agree with this. However, I did wonder if we actually had any empirical evidence to back it up? Any research studies etc? It would also be interesting, if for example, men and women were significantly different in their ability to identify biological sex.

OP posts:
SupermatchGame · 09/06/2018 22:21

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EnthusiasmIsDisturbed · 09/06/2018 22:21

I know ds would correctly identify Danielle Miscato as being a man

And he would be correct

AnotherQuoll · 09/06/2018 22:21

Geez you're rude Super Match. And wrong. He's a child who didn't know (or recognise) Bergdorf and happened to get it "wrong" ie. Saw a male as a male. It's not like he walked up to Bergdorf and said "You're a bloke!".

TerfsUp · 09/06/2018 22:25

Children are renowned for calling it as they see it. shrug

Was Burgdorf speaking? They have an unmistakably male voice that no amount of surgery or make-up will mask.

Bi11yOneMate · 09/06/2018 22:25

I used to be constantly misgendered by casual encounters - but I used to be highly muscled, and unfortunately suffered from (idiopathic) male pattern hirsutism so often had a 5 o clock shadow. As soon as I spoke or met the person's gaze they would apologize.
Interestingly I do not recall ever getting MIS gendered by women. Only men.

SupermatchGame · 09/06/2018 22:27

Yes, so people on here seem to think.

On the current thread: Transgender Man Jailed for Two Years

The trans man is misgendered continually. In only 16 posts he is referred to as 'her' 4 times and 'she' 10 times.

I think that is very rude.

MrsTerryPratchett · 09/06/2018 22:27

I worked with a transman, utterly lovely. She (she has since detransitioned so I'm not being a hateful TERF) worked with me in a very stressful environment with people with a lot of MH and addiction issues. Very very high stress at times. I noticed that the staff tried and normally succeeded in using chosen pronouns but when there was an emergency people would say things like, "what's she doing". The clients, who were often struggling with cognitive 'bandwidth' misgendered her all the time. They weren't being horrid, they just didn't have the capacity to use her chosen gender rather than the sex that she exhibited.

We try, we're polite, but we know what sex someone is. Aggressive gendering from birth is part of it I assume, as is an innate sense of sex. And I'm sure when she was presenting as a man those little misgendering moments hurt her. And I'm sorry if it hurt her. But we were in fear of our jobs. And the clients were in fear of losing services. It's not the A Clockwork Orange or 1984.

Bi11yOneMate · 09/06/2018 22:28

Incidentally I never took being misgendered as rudeness. I used to be upset at how "ugly" I must look, and had a lot of bullying to deal with. But honest mistaken misgendering was never an issue.

SuitedandBooted · 09/06/2018 22:31

SupermatchGame
"Extra curricular activity" ! Grin Grin
What, do you mean not parroting "Trans women are women" at every opportunity?

I bring my children up to be polite, very accepting of others, but still in tough with reality.

My son is 10, he didn't laugh, or mock MB, whom he has never come across before, He just recognises a male born person when he sees one.
Lots of people can, you know.

PaintBySticker · 09/06/2018 22:32

That app that could predict age, sex, age etc, thought my primary aged son was a girl. I think that’s common.

I’d also be interested in proper research on whether adults can tell the difference in other adults

Ihuntmonsters · 09/06/2018 22:33

That pet thing is very stupid. How would a cat or dog know what their owner identified as? Pets respond to us depending on how we treat them. If someone mistreats them enough to build up an association of fear anyone who triggers that association will cause the dog/cat to feel fear. It would be a nasty person who approached a fearful dog and expected them to 'get over their bigotry' if they were not able to accept that wearing women's clothing (for example) meant they weren't a man.

The picture is a bit weird too. My dog doesn't seem to care much about the sex of the dogs he humps/ is humped by but I doubt he will ever fall in love. Stupid to try and humanise dogs, they are dogs and behave according to dog nature, not human conventions.

AncientLights · 09/06/2018 22:34

I've not been quite sure what I think of SMG till now. Having just read that a child is 'rude' for speaking the truth in his own living room, about a person who was on TV and couldn't possibly be aware of what was being said, I have made my decision about SMG. It's not a positive one. Don't imagine s/he cares in the least.

TerfsUp · 09/06/2018 22:36

I would be willing to bet folding money that if my man-loving cat encountered a transwoman, said cat would be all over said person, shedding like a cheap suit.

(Erm, the cat would be shedding, not the person.)

Ihuntmonsters · 09/06/2018 22:38

That app was very inaccurate. We had threads on it at the time and I'm not the only one that was apparently a different age and sex. Facial recognition technology is still in it's infancy and it is purely designed to compare one photographed face with another and predict whether they are the same person based on their facial features using complex algorythms. No pomo value judgments involved.

nauticant · 09/06/2018 22:50

Often on computer screens I read the word "pomo" as "porno". What's surprising is that much of the time it doesn't really matter

SupermatchGame · 09/06/2018 22:50

Steady on Ancient I was just pointing out that there is a very high rate of (deliberate) misgendering on this forum anyway. The 'anecdote' as presented didn't really tell us anything given the context here. Of course children both make mistakes and speak bluntly. I have a (natal) female friend who has often been asked by children 'are you a boy or a girl?' I wasn't literally blaming the child, just making a point.

You know I really can't make up my mind either. Just when I think, oh some of these posters are all right really and I hope they see me as a decent person, a few will go and say something oppressive and horrible and then I'm back to thinking I actually couldn't care less at all. Such is the roller coaster of emotions that is this forum.

AnotherQuoll · 09/06/2018 22:59

Yeah my cat (neutered 11yr old male) is far more at ease with women than men, and seems to go with sex rather than gender. Even with a transsexual friend who's been on oestrogen for decades. (Which I only mention because I had thought oestrogen would affect the pheromones but maybe not so much. ?)

WeaselsRising · 09/06/2018 23:01

I can still remember an incident in the supermarket when my DD was very young. I didn't go for "gendered" clothing so she was dressed in an outfit with no clues as to her sex, and with blue shoes. She did have a lot of blonde straight hair.

We passed a family with a boy of perhaps 4 who commented about DD, calling her "she". His mother quickly corrected him and said it was a boy. He was adamant she was a girl but mother dragged him away before I had chance to tell him he was right.

After that I noticed quite often that unless a child is dressed as a Girl/Boy adults have a hard time working out what sex they are, while children seem to know. Adults look at the clothes and hair and make a judgement.

SuitedandBooted · 09/06/2018 23:05

He didn't make a mistake.
He knows a person who belongs to the heterogametic sex when he see's one. Not mocking, not being unkind, just remarking on a high-maintenance hair style.

LangCleg · 09/06/2018 23:16

enjoys misgendering as a frequently indulged pastime

Oh, what tosh. Language use isn't a sodding pastime, you ludicrous person.

Pronoun usage has to be the most childish of transgender fixations. They're not used to you; they're used about you. It's not possible to control the things 7 billion other people on the planet say about you. People say things I don't like about me all the time - some (many) of those things are almost certainly accurate despite my not liking them. If people want to use pronouns via sex and others want to go by "gender" (whether that be a gender binary or the umpteen tumblr genders) that's up to them.

Where2live · 09/06/2018 23:19

you can always tell. Sometimes it's your gut reaction. You supress it and then a few seconds you realise your gut called it.

SuitedandBooted · 09/06/2018 23:34

It was this video, btw.

MB isn't wearing a particularly "feminine" top, so DS just briefly saw shirt/face/voice/hair, and made his remark. He's seen enough music videos (and some family friends!) to know that make-up can be worn by both sexes, so it's not a deciding factor for him.

Coyoacan · 10/06/2018 00:28

Anecdotally, my five-month-old dd was passionate about boys and could tell the difference instantly between boys and girls, even if the girls had short hair and clothes that a typical boy would wear, she always knew.

SupermatchGame · 10/06/2018 00:29

that's up to them.

Look I couldn't actually care less what pronouns people use for me either, particularly on here. But it is considered harassment legally in work situations - which actually includes most situations either as an employer or as a customer/ service user. Do you think people should be able to misgender freely in the work place?

4GreenApples · 10/06/2018 07:40

DS1 used to be terrible for misgendering people. He just didn’t seem to grasp the difference between he/she, him/her until after he was 6.
He’d be frequently using both gender pronouns to refer to the same person in the same conversation, even people he knew full well to be male / female. We were forever saying things like “daddy is a man so we say he” .

We did have to explain and apologise to upset looking strangers more than once. But fortunately most people he misgendered didn’t take offence.