Sex is a spectrum?!?

[LePetitLarousse]

This came up in my twitter feed this weekend.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html

As I see it, someone is arguing that because phenotypes for men and women vary normally, and because there are some disorders of sexual development, then somehow that means that sex is a spectrum. Am I misunderstanding this argument and think it is as silly as it sounds?

Gender identity ideology requires sex to be a spectrum. Even though it's self-evidently untrue. Once that's the goal, then everything that can be twisted to support the goal is used, and everything else is discarded as "transphobic". One handy trick is to use people suffering from disorders of sexual development as "gotchas" to help the sex-is-a-spectrum case. Unsurprisingly, these people dislike intensely being used as counters in an argument pushing anti-science.

No. It isn’t.

And

No, you are not misunderstanding.

And yes, it’s as silly as it sounds. And factually incorrect.

We still have the same old standard issue two-types-of-gamete-producing humans we’ve always had.

Another thing is that whilst continually appropriating the difficulties of people having disorders of sexual development, I'd bet money that if you went through all the prominent transwomen and transmen pushing the ideology, you would find all, of nearly all, of them would be plain old XX or XY types with nothing out of the ordinary in their chromosomes.

This is an excellent take-down:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1036307008318779395.html

But the person who wrote the second link has used no exclamation marks at all. The first one has loads of them.

Surely this makes the second link less convincing.

Oh my, that 'punchy', patronising writing style, aggression just below the surface, just daring one to disagree!

'Biological sex is a spectrum' kept cropping up on a Twitter thread that was linked from here last week (Luke Pollard coming out in favour of self-ID, I think) - out and out it got trotted, as if it were a universally proven and accepted scientific fact. It honestly felt Orwellian.

Also, for the record (and because MRKH is awesome) no women do have penises, not even intersex women...

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1033341907223674881.html

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1034521945201696768.html

Ahem... self correction:

‘No Women do NOT have penises’

(more coffee required & thank crikey kids back to school tomorrow)

We are still male or female, even with variations in chromosomes. Saying otherwise is like the TRA's arguing that black women are a subset of the female sex...remembering that guy on the radio now who invented angry women as another subset! www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html

But the person who wrote the second link has used no exclamation marks at all. The first one has loads of them.

Agreed, nauticant. We re so behind the curve on this. Education, research, experience, knowledge - all of those are deprecated in favour of lived experience and exclamation points.

See Hailey - most of us can't get a journal/paper authors to respond within a reasonable timescale for love nor begging. But Hailey gets to trump the normal peer review process and even to be an invited speaker for the Vancouver Women's March.

It isn't, just ask any farmer.

But don't farmers just put a mix of all genders in a field and then find themselves in a state of considerable surprise when they find some additional small animals in there?

Sex is not a spectrum.

That's bollocks.

Besides, it's completely beside the point/a total fudging of the ACTUAL arguments that trans activists are trying to make, which is that reproductive sex materially irrelevant and is determined by whatever one states it is....

The arguments trans activists need to actually tackle:
-how are you defining male and female/sex/reproduction?
-are you arguing that trans people are some form of intersex, even though the vast majority of them have completely normal reproductive anatomy? (There is no way that anyone who has fulfilled a clearly male/female role in reproduction is anything but obviously of that sex!)
-how does human reproduction work if male and female do not exist? (.....)
-can someone clearly male become fully female (and vice versa), in a reproductive sense? (NO)
-does one's reproductive anatomy change when you say "I am"?
-do you think that a subjective sense of identity should now be included in how we determine someone's reproductive class? (an absurd argument, because feelings around your body do not the reality of how it functions, and there is NO scientific evidence to support that idea)
-show me the scientific evidence for gender identities alone affecting reproductive function (once you have undergone medical therapy then it will be affected - but that is due to external intervention)
-are you arguing that PCOS makes you more "male" and testicular removal for cancer makes you more "female"?

Trans is not intersex.
Operations/medication do not change the sex you were born as. Slightly larger breasts in males do not make them female - many young boys commonly may have breast swelling (gynecomastia) that self-resolves. It would be bullying to make them feel like they were more like "girls" now.
These jokers have to drop this absurd argument.

Thanks, this was being pushed by a friend this week - having to mute all this constant TRA stuff, e.g.

-are you arguing that trans people are some form of intersex, even though the vast majority of them have completely normal reproductive anatomy? (There is no way that anyone who has fulfilled a clearly male/female role in reproduction is anything but obviously of that sex!)

I've seen signs of that a new "argument" is developing that trans people have an "intersex of the brain" and thus are, indeed, both trans and intersex.

The good thing about this is it moves away from messy arguments related to sexual development that tie themselves up in knots, and is, for the moment, impossible to prove or disprove. Appropriation a-go-go.

I can never get my head around sex is a spectrum.

The point of sex is reproduction. In humans you need two different kinds of gamete to come together and create a new life so why would sex be a spectrum as a matter of course in nature - there's no need for it. There is no third or fourth type of gamete.

I'm no scientist (that might already be obvious) but to the best of my knowledge infertility is usually associated with DSD and individuals who have these conditions are one sex or the other.

The bs makes my brain melt...

I've seen signs of that a new "argument" is developing that trans people have an "intersex of the brain" and thus are, indeed, both trans and intersex.
If that's their argument, then they have to provide actual evidence to prove it. But the fact of the matter is that how you feel (your "brain") has absolutely fuck all to do with your reproductive anatomy. As we have seen by the countless numbers of people who are late-transitioners after having fathered children (MALE) or get pregnant while identifying as men or non-binary (FEMALE).
So it doesn't matter.
Intersex refers SPECIFICALLY to an umbrella term of medical variations that naturally affect one's actual reproductive organs/function in some form or other. It's got ZERO to do with current trans theory.
TRAs are basically trying to "Queer" sex and appropriate intersex. It's completely unscientific.

There's some blatant lying in that post. There are no xy people who produce viable eggs and are able to gestate a human being and there are no xx people able to produce viable sperm which could fertilise an egg.
Intersex people sometimes have the appearance of the other sex but they are not the other sex.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but that paragraph goes one step further than the normal delusional into blatant lying territory.
As a biologist I'd be fascinated to find evidence to find a XY person capable of producing fertile eggs and gestating a human. That would be Truly amazing.

I think it is possible, because of genetic variation.

But the point is that it wouldn't matter about those incredibly rare people anyway, because if everything worked normally and they had no problems picked up during development/fertility they would be classified as female/male and have no reason to get their chromosomes tested............
In all likelihood, those individuals consider themselves as male/female as the next person (not some "different sex").
Intersex really needs to just be about intersex, with actual intersex people. And we really do need to talk about them more. Even the "evil" Germaine Greer agrees!
I am so sick of intersex being a footnote in a trans conversation, or being co-opted in order for people with completely normal reproductive systems simply to justify their own "queer" ideology.

In the universe where perceived sex rules over biology, then yes it is a spectrum.

"Thanks, this was being pushed by a friend this week - having to mute all this constant TRA stuff, e.g."

I tried to access the "lesbian" show but couldn't find it.

There is an extremely rare case of a Female with XY ‘mosaicism’ I think it was termed, with normal, functional Female reproductive organs who was pregnant and gave birth without knowing they had these XY chromosomes.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/

I think it is possible, because of genetic variation.

If I had a pipe, carpet slippers etc. I would kick back and reminisce about the days when this was put forward as a possible explanation of the Virgin Birth: Mary as a self-fertilising hermaphrodite.

It was discussed in some religious forums alongside whether or not Virgin Birth is plausibly more a case of parthenogenesis.

[/end diversion and notional pipe-clenching and slipper-wearing]

Thank you apostate. Interesting cases and I shall file that source away for when I'm teaching (cover some intersex conditions in gender topic in A level psychology) as I do like to be accurate!
However, seriously inappropriate to use mosaic conditions to claim that XX can produce fertile sperm as it's clearly not the cells in the body containing XX that are doing that etc.

And vice versa for xy female .