what's the politics of virilized clitoris =/= penis? eg Mrkhtake2

[quixote9]

Mrkhtake2's threads on intersex conditions are very helpful, so I've been reading her a good bit lately. I've gathered from her tweets that it's a no-no to call an enlarged clitoris a penis, which raises questions for me. I'm not on twitter (I just read the publicly available sites in my browser) so I can't ask her directly, and I'm hoping someone here can explain it to me.

I'm a biologist, taught zoology for years, had the usual embryology classes, etc., etc. Developmentally, clitoris and penis are derived from the same tissue. They wind up in different shapes, the head and shaft are both homologous, the clitoris does not wrap around the urethra. A virilized clitoris doesn't include the urethra either, since that can only happen in the embryo. So, yes, they're different, but they're not unrelated.

So why is it unacceptable to discuss them as similar (not equivalent) organs? I don't, for my sanity, read TRAs. Do they make a big deal out of these are identical and that proves they're right about no such thing as biological sex?

Anyway, I'd be grateful for some education here.

You can't see out of a clitoris nor ejaculate seminal fluid. A penis is not a 'bigger clitoris.

Pee not see!

I doubt we can educate! Feels daft that word in this context.

To me TRAs grab anything with similarities eg penis and clit and times them to make 1000...conveniently ignoring the differences.
It's the same with polycystic ovary syndrome. I've seen trans activists leach onto that as... oh we suffer from hairy faces it's our pcos flaring up.

For the same reason melanocytes are not glia
For the same reason your jaw is not a gill.
For the same reason your inner ear bones (forgive me I can’t remember which specific one) arent your hyoid.

Ontogeny is not phylogeny, as it was no doubt drummed into you during your training

Ontogeny is not phylogeny

OMG. Flashback!

Moobs are not breasts.

This doesn't seem complicated at all tbh.

If you have an enlarged clitoris, you have an enlarged clitoris.

"clitoris and penis are derived from the same tissue"

Yes, but similarly, so are sperm and eggs. But no one would say they are literally the same thing. They are of course related, but which of the two anisogamous gametes you have is literally the definition of biological sex.

The point here is that nothing is different between the sexes other than the sexual organs and resulting secondary sex characteristics. So saying they are "basically the same" avoids the issue. To the extent they are distinct, they help define differences between the sexes.

CAIS individuals are XY and do indeed have a clitoris and vagina (not a penis), and they also have testes, not ovary. That particular intersex condition illustrates that something went wrong during sexual development, some time after the ovary and testis have formed from the germ cell primordia, but before the penis would have developed from the clitoral/penile precursor cells.

Well I'm not a zoologist or anything else biology related.

It may have come from the same tissue as a penis, But the clitoris is one component of the female sex organ and is just for pleasure and has 8000 nerve endings, females have a vagina for intercourse and giving birth, and a urethra to wee out off, plus labias, the clitoris is uniquely on its own.

a penis is an all in one sort of thing......

so why would you call a single unique component, after something that has a much broarder purpose. It's like deciding to call a finger a hand?

an enlarged clitoris is just that, and enlarged clitoris. It doesn't have any other function other than been a source of pleasure.

Do they make a big deal out of these are identical and that proves they're right about no such thing as biological sex?

Indeed they do. Along the lines that it's the same organ and it's the length that determines whether you're male or female.

Which allows them to pretty much blur biological lines up the wazoo.

Lesbian transwomen often refer to their penis as a big clitoris.

actually maybe it's more like calling a finger a foot.

OMG. Flashback

It’s a bit like the paleo lot or the twats who use evolutionary psychology to say that ‘weve Evolved to...’

Firstly we haven’t evolved TO DO anything - evolution isn’t goal driven.
Secondly, they only go as far back as serves their argument. So let’s all eat steak and no grains because hunter gatherers. But no further forward than that. And no further back. But why pick that point? I mean we have a common ancestor with everything in the planet. It’s as logical to say that we should be following the diet of an Australopithecus. Or some small insectivorous mammal. Or a fish. Or something barely multicellular. I mean heck we’ve got a common ancestor with daisies- doesn’t mean I’m sat here photosynthesising.

And ditto clitoris/penile tissue. Everything in an embryo was once the same cell. But we are t saying everything derived from mesoderm is the same thing. Or even things derived from quite differentiated cell populations or tissues - neural crest for example.

A regular (ish) woman on a thread here yesterday claimed her transman friend's enlarged clitoris was a penis.

I despair of the state of science education in the uk

bowl I love you sciencing. In my head your posts always finish with 'end of'.

A large clitoris won't have two hairy balls hanging under it.

Along the lines that it's the same organ and it's the length that determines whether you're male or female.

Is it time to quote Meg John Barker in the BACP guidance?

The sex of a baby is medically assigned on the basis of the length of the clitoris/penis.

If my aunt’s clitoris was a penis, she’d be my uncle

I've very encouraged by these posts.

Now we just need to eradicate the misuse of the word vagina to mean vulva as it seems to be in commonplace language all over the place these days,, and we'll be getting somewhere.

I mean heck we’ve got a common ancestor with daisies- doesn’t mean I’m sat here photosynthesising

Hair and nails are made out of keratin, so essentially the same thing. Once you've done a French plait with your nails, we can talk about how a clitoris and a penis are the same thing.

Lols Lang them midwives with their rulers so they can sort out what’s the girls and what’s the boys

datun I feel I should purchase a small gavel ? Might come in handy at home as well.

Thanks for the perspectives, mumsnetters!

Yes, if there are people out there saying the only difference is length and no big deal, then ... gaaah. Just gaaah.

One reason why, to me, the homologies are really interesting is that it can make it much easier to explain to the denser kind of guys what's happening in, for instance, FGM. Once you point out that it's equivalent to slicing off the head of the penis and then slicing and stretching and sewing together the skin of the scrotum (homologous to the outer labia) there tends to be a stunned silence at the other end of the discussion.

Likewise the homology between the clitoris and the glans has interesting implications. Both have a similar number of nerve endings, but the story doesn't end there. The only difference between the tactile sensitivity of the middle of your back, say, and your fingers is the density of nerve endings. So the tactile sensitivity of the clitoris exceeds that of the glans as the lips do with respect to, maybe, an elbow.

Anyway, good to get some understanding of what's going on with all this without having to wade through TRAs.

If a clitoris is a penis why do men have so much difficulty finding it?