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?

I hope now you're home someone is feeding you delicious things to make up for the rubbish they fed you in the hospital.

Bowlofbabelfish wrote: anaesthetic failure AGAIN

It's intrusive to enquire so please ignore but at the back of my mind, I'm thinking, "Redhead? Brunette?"

BMJ Christmas: Red for danger: the effects of red hair in surgical practice :)
More staid paper: Anesthetic Requirement is Increased in Redheads

Isn't it gender that is a spectrum rather than sex, in that each of us is a mix of female and male traits?

More or less...
Everyone is a mix of traits stereotyped as 'masculine' or 'feminine'. 'Spectrum' is far too simple a model as someone may be a mix of 'feminine' and 'masculine' traits.

The z/w chromosome system is absolutely fascinating... been absolutely years since I looked at it, AAK you’ve given me a reading wormhole for the next time I’m stuck under the baby feeding

Bowl I would love to read up on that - if you find anything good please do share it certainly wasn't covered on my course. And I'm so glad your minibowl is doing well ❤

The tile should read Good satisfying sex for women is on a spectrum :)

title not tile and I am just having a joke divert

as you were....

Biologist pal of mine INSISTS that sex is a spectrum. Insists because of fruit flies or some such nonsense.

She's talking unscientific bullshit, and she's a science teacher in a school. Terrifying, actually terrifying.

I mean, I guess that would be relevant if it was possible to have a conversation with a fruit fly. Not sure what it has to do with people.

Biologist pal of mine INSISTS that sex is a spectrum. Insists because of fruit flies or some such nonsense.

There was a woman who believed in the literal truth of Genesis doing a PhD in the lab near me. The human mind is capable of serious dissonance

Utterly adorable little feet, Bowl.

As an Aspie there's only one Spectrum that I acknowledge.

And that's the one Captain Scarlet worked for.

My brother went to uni with a geologist who belonged to some religion that thought the world was 5,000 years old. He still got a job in the oil industry. People can compartmentalise.

As I understand it, the rare mosaic conditions mentioned earlier are a result of genetic material from one embryo being absorbed into another.

That doesn't so much call into question sex but the whole nature of an 'individual.'

That doesn't so much call into question sex but the whole nature of an 'individual.'

I hadnt thought of it that way, but you’re right, and that’s a profound thought indeed.

Awwww master Ramekin Babelfish's feet... they are gorgeous.

I dunno how to do a smiley with hearts for eyes, but [smiley with hearts for eyes].

Incidentally, this discussion has raised (for me at any rate) the interesting question of what counts as intersex. TRAs (who want to inflate the numbers prior to co-opting them and appropriating their experience) generally co-opt hypospadias (and sometimes PCOS - yes I am compensating for not knowing how to do a hearts-for-eyes-smiley). But I've seen geneticists/ child development specialists on here say hypospadias isn't a DSD, just a birth defect (and to suggest it is a DSD would be like me comparing my minor speech impediment because of a tongue tie to a friend's non-verbal child with a global developmental delay due to chromosomal abnormalities/trisomies). Any thoughts? (I have a young relative with hypospadias, and I am dreading the day some woke fucking numpty at school says to him "you're not a proper boy, you're somewhere in between, isn't that cool?" because he will not think it's "cool", he will be hurt and confused and upset.)

As I understand it, the rare mosaic conditions mentioned earlier are a result of genetic material from one embryo being absorbed into another.

aspie - is that the case for all mosaic conditions?

Some (I think most) mosaic conditions are the result of de novo (ie spontaneous and new) mutations at an early stage of development- so if your embryo is at the 16 cell stage and one cell develops a mutation, the ‘offspring’ of that cell will have it and not the others. We are all patches of mosaics in some ways.
Other mosaicism occurs when the gene is on the X chromosome - you dont need a double dose of the X so in the embryo, one x in each cell shuts down at random. This creates a mosaic of x1 or x2 being active. Thus conditions which are x linked (ie the gene for them is on the X chromosome) are often varied in severity (and more serious in males, who dont have that second X to act as a buffer.)

"Other mosaicism occurs when the gene is on the X chromosome - you dont need a double dose of the X so in the embryo, one x in each cell shuts down at random. This creates a mosaic of x1 or x2 being active. Thus conditions which are x linked (ie the gene for them is on the X chromosome) are often varied in severity (and more serious in males, who dont have that second X to act as a buffer.)"

Am I remembering correctly - this is what's behind tortoiseshell cats? Coat colour is on the X chromosome in cats, so when it's a girl, they get two copies of the coat colour gene and they can both be expressed in patches over the cat's fur?

Yup, that is correct *fermats - tortoiseshell cats are always female and are mosaics.

All female animals are mosaic really. It’s just thattheres not much in humans that’s as obvious as the coat colours on a cat.

The fruit fly thing is where something called a gynandromorph is created - but that’s a fly thing, not a human thing :)

I understand where the drive to depathologise comes from. People with intersex conditions have historically been treated badly because of it and so in a way their being has been seen as disordered. I can understand why that is rejected. It’s a bit like saying someone IS ASD rather than HAS ASD.

Same goes for mental illness and any other stigmatised health condition. There's a long history of abuse of mental health patients in the UK, some of which remains ongoing. I don't think that depathologising efforts actually help though: we end up with euphemisms like "client" and "service user" (IMO the correct term in a medical context is "patient“). The stigma ends up being transferred to the euphemism and the patient is still treated badly. I see clear parallels between intersex children being subjected to medically-unnecessary genital surgery and the abuse of sectioning powers against a psychiatric patient's interests, with the added insult that cosmetic genital surgery on intersex infants hasn't even been acknowledged as abusive by anyone until recently.

The answer to me is that we need to learn to recognise that someone can have a disorder but that doesn't always mean that it has to be treated immediately, or even ever. It would follow from that children should not be given treatments with irreversible adverse effects (e.g. impaired sexual function) if those treatments could reasonably be deferred until the child is old enough to understand the implications and give meaningful consent.

As I understand it, the rare mosaic conditions mentioned earlier are a result of genetic material from one embryo being absorbed into another

Or is that chimeras?

Another type of mosacism is 45,X/46,XY. This happens if during embryonic cell division of a male embryo, the Y chromosome is lost from one of the cells. The embryo continues to grow with a mix of cells with complete male genotype (46,XY) and the genotype of female with Turner syndrome (45,X). The clinical effects are very variable due to the possibility of different proportions of each cell type and where the cells end up

Errol Yes, it's chimeras that are made of two or more fused embryos.

Even a chimeric boy who had an ovary where one of his testes should have been was never going to produce ova because the testosterone produced by his one testis would prevent the female puberty required for ovulation. In the same way, women with CAIS have testes that will never produce sperm because the woman underwent female puberty because of the aromatisation of testosterone into oestrogen.

I do not have CAIS but even I can see how growing up a girl, going through puberty but then the expected menses never come, and then when that amenorrhea is investigated being told that you have no ovaries and can never conceive without an egg donor, is going to be a painful experience. It's hurtful to try to pretend that being born male and raised as a boy with no expectation of motherhood is comparable to CAIS.

There is a heck of a lot of hurtful appropriation going on out there, sadly.
It’s one of the TRA’s most deployed tactics :/

I ended up trying to discuss this with the friend who had shared it, and I was surprised by the extent she was so sure she was in the right. Her argument was largely that lived experiences trumps everything.