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?

My Fruit-Flies-Do-It-So-It's-Real pal is really going for it. Says online this is evidence that male brain, female brain and trans brains are real and it's exciting for what can be done for trans people in the future.

I am not sending her a Christmas card this year on account of her being a moron.

My worry is that vulnerable people who are trans read this sort of bollocks (which is EVERYWHERE online at the moment) and believe that it is evidence that validates their gender dysmorphia. They BELIEVE it is possible to change sex, not just modify their clothing, body, speech, gait and mannerisms. these people are being sold a lie and are being set up for disappointment.

The information about this stuff is complex, I'm willing to bet that most people won't be able to get their head round the biological and genetic principles. I've got a post-grad in a healthcare field and I have to read it three times to get the most basic of grasps.

It is unethical to have people believe they can actually change sex. That's the sort of thing that leads to Lily Madigan saying that she hopes to be a mother. She will never be a mother and indulging delusions is unkind at best and sadly, can cause serious harm when the person realises that they can never have what they wanted.

This is making me really fucking cross.

My gametes matter.

Bowl I missed news of mini-babel's arrival & had been wondering how you were. Many, many congratulations and do hope that you are soon recovered!

From a recent thread, repsonse to BMJ by Richard Byng
GP and Professor in Primary Care Research
Susan Bewley, Chair of Health Watch; Damian Clifford, Consultant Liaison Psychiatrist; Margaret McCartney, GP and freelance writer:

(extract)
"Proposed ‘terminology’ may mislead and fudges the reality of biological sexual dimorphism. Sex is not “assigned”, but determined at conception and in early embryonic life. Biological characteristics of male and female have “historically” been observed at birth and likely this will continue. Sex should not be confused with gender - a social construct. Although internal subjective identity, legal status and external appearance can change or be re-aligned, a person’s underlying biological sex cannot." (continues)
www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3371/rr-0

Also from David C. Mackereth,Hospital doctor.
West Midlands:
"When exactly did the medical profession start to believe that gender is a fluid concept, or that you could be trapped in a body of the opposite sex?

Historically sex and gender have refered to the same thing.

Sex is determined at birth and is immutable.

Think otherwise? Prove it.

This is not scientific.

How can a medical profession believe such things and maintain its integrity?

When we pursue such an attack on gender as a fixed thing we attack what it means to be human. We need to see what we all stand to lose.

Once again where is the proof that sex can be wrong, or change?
.
What will happen to doctors who cannot go along with this?"

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3339177-Excellent-BMJ-Article-Responding-to-Previous-One-Featuring-ATH

Cheers ROwan! we are getting there.

that is very new good news!

Fruit fly friend recommended me a book to help my understanding:

"Evolution's Rainbow" by Joan Roughgarden

Quick look on dirty-amazon, and, guess what? Joan used to be John. So, there's that.

Oh dear.

Am totally reading this book, this review is comedy gold

www.theguardian.com/books/2004/aug/01/scienceandnature.society

twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1036948312354709504

I get nostalgia for 2004 reading that Guardian review. In those days the kind of thing we are now instructed to take at face value as being stunning and brave could be looked on with scorn. Also, that a newspaper (even the Guardian FFS) could be relaxed enough to say "this is bollocks".

There is no way that a Guardian journalist would be permitted to write that review now.

That review is brilliant vivarium. It's also from 2004 - can you imagine the Guardian publishing that now? They'd have to find a reviewer who pretended to take it seriously.

"Bollocksology" is going to be a new favourite of mine, I can tell.

Cross post, nauticant.

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

I don't know how to do the quote thing that turns stuff bold. Anyway, there are male tortoiseshell cats but they are infertile. They're XXY. In humans we call XXY Klinefelter's syndrome. I don't know what we call it in cats.

''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 smile''

I used to be into butterflies when I was younger which why I'd heard about gynandromorphism. It causes bilateral asymmetries. If you see a butterfly that looks like two halves of different butterflies stuck together it's probably gynandromorphic. I used to understand the genetics but I'm vague on it now.

I don't think it's a good idea for TRAs to justify their ideology by analogies with insects because it just draws attention to their hive minds.

I don't know how to do the quote thing that turns stuff bold.

Put an asterisk either end of the section to be bolded. It plays havoc on threads where people are talking about A level grades! Carets italicise and hyphens strikeout - those sometimes bugger up material pasted in where they're being used paired instead of commas or brackets.

Like this

Thanks.

Yes, you could have a Male tortie if they had xxy- hadn’t thought of that... I’m not sure about trisomy rates in other mammals - be interesting to see, probably not much work on it?

I get nostalgia for 2004 reading that Guardian review. In those days the kind of thing we are now instructed to take at face value as being stunning and brave could be looked on with scorn

The same journalist, Peter Conrad, has wriiten a recent review for The Observer of The Hayward Gallery's exhibition:
26 Aug 2018 'Drag: Self-Portraits and Body Politics review – a purely cosmetic exercise'
(extract)
"They and their colleagues congratulate themselves on their subversive audacity – but have we, in reclaiming our right to decide who we are and which toilet we frequent, succumbed to another orthodoxy? A declaration by the feminist critic Judith Butler hangs heavy over Drag. “Gender,” Butler claims, is “an imitation for which there is no original.” If that’s the case, I wonder how we all originated: the genitals we’re equipped with at birth still come in handy for reproduction, even if the contact between them is mediated by test tubes or turkey basters. Butler makes gender sound as conventional as artistic genre, a matter of arbitrary and unnecessary rules; she reduces the body to a postmodern literary text, with no intrinsic meaning beneath the verbal posturing and gesturing that we layer on top of it" (continues)
www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/aug/26/drag-self-politics-body-politics-hayward-gallery-review

I've been having a conversation with a friend about that thread.

The graphs of 'bimodal data' and talk of data look scientific and superficially convincing (clearly, to 28,000 people on the internet who have liked it...), but he doesn't label the axes -- what are they supposed to represent?!

If the question is 'were you born with a penis' the answer is yes or no (1 or 0) - its a binary. His pink and blue bimodal graph makes no sense if that is the question. And since that is the question, the rest is handwaving.

(see my pictures attached)

"bimodal distribution" i should have said.

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

That writing style is like fingers down a blackboard to me, but it deeply appeals to many of the hard of thinking anime avatars and useful idiots on Twitter.