"There is no genetic test that can conclusively determine a person’s sex or gender."

[Macareaux]

...according to s letter signed by 700 biologists and 100 scientists.

This is the sort of thing thrown at us - how does one argue against such a weight of opinion

I can't help feeling that people have been so indoctrinated by gender ideology and that they hate everything Trump does in principle that critical faculties have gone out of the window.

It’s faith

I think its delusion. For some because of a genuine mental health condition (which may indeed have biological foundation - but that does not mean that the person is the opposite sex) but for so many others a delusion driven by dodgy power driven desires.

I'm pretty sure amniocentesis can accurately predict the sex of the baby. Counting pairs of genes and all that.

Delusional yes, in the medical sense (unshakable belief in something demonstrably false.)

Looking for a biological basis for gender is like looking for a biological basis for politeness

I think I have found the biological basis for skirts. Try doing a wee discretely in trousers if you are a woman. I suspect this also explains why all young children used to wear dresses.

It's words being deliberately misused in the service of an agenda.

I used to know someone who would lie through her teeth when it suited her purposes and she basically always persuaded herself that it was the truth if you looked at it in a certain way. Like a square is a circle if you think about it as one that got sat on and misshapen.

Well I conducted a beautifully accurate test of my sex when I shagged someone I took to be male and squeezed a tiny human out of my nethers nine months later.

Well I conducted a beautifully accurate test of my sex when I shagged someone I took to be male and squeezed a tiny human out of my nethers nine months later

Indeed. How do the TRAs explain how people pick partners to procreate with via intercourse.

If earnest belief made any fucking difference to reality, women would be in a much fucking better place. I'm really very miffed with this entire line of 'reasoning' - because no matter what, no matter how hard I wish, when dp and I bump uglies, it's always me that gets pregnant - and he would quite like a third kid, and I'm not sure I want to go through pregnancy again

I’m not on FB anymore but I used to be quite prolific, arguing with the woke.
Some really good points in this thread ❤️
I always used to ask the woke as well - if there are more than two sexes what are they called? Who do you know who is one of these third sex people? How do they procreate
Always always silence
Thanks to the knowledge on here even a lay person like me can easily debunk this shite which, as mentioned above, is faith and not science and faith is being generous

there are several biologists who I actually know and who study sex in this letter. They obviously know what they are saying is not true - that indeed sex for the vast majority of humans can be distinguished genetically (and also via genitals at birth), and those for whom that is not the case have specific well defined medical disorders.

It’s really weird and I think it stems from US left-right political wrangling. Some of my colleagues simply cannot stomach the idea of being seen as being on the same side as the religious right in the USA - mostly because the religious right also believe that gender roles are biological and god given and also that evolution and climate change are “liberal lies”. So my colleagues come up with ways to rationalize opposing sex being binary as well. Mostly the intersex = trans thing.

It’s really hard to be in the USA with this viewpoint at the moment as one will be assumed to be a bigot. For example if I say to my colleagues “males and female humans are biologically different” they will assume what i mean is what the religious extremists mean - that women should stay at home with the babies and men should work. There’s really no middle ground in the public discourse here. The secular feminist gender critical position largely speaking does not exist in the public discourse as it seems to do in the UK.

For example if I say to my colleagues “males and female humans are biologically different” they will assume what i mean is what the religious extremists mean - that women should stay at home with the babies and men should work.
OMG. It's like the last sixty years or so never happened.

Yes, I think FWRLurker has highlighted something very specific there - the progressive, open minded GC feminism that I know most of the posters on MN hold to is quite the anomaly in the landscape.

For quite a few people, it does not compute. They simply cannot understand why anyone who supports gay rights and women's liberation would have any problems at all with the trans juggernaut. They just see it as the next tick box progressive step, largely because of the bang up PR job that has been so effective.

That's why you get this patently ridiculous (If persistent) accusation that FWR and GC radfems on Twitter and FPFW are all funded by the American Right. It is the only way some people can fit the objections into their worldview. Trans everything is entirely wonderful. The only objectors must be right wing oppressors, even if they don't know it.

there are several biologists who I actually know and who study sex in this letter.

Really? Do you study sex as a biologist yourself? I'm a cell biologist and I don't know any biologists who "study sex". Biologists don't "study sex", their careers are way more niche than that.

This is the sort of thing thrown at us - how does one argue against such a weight of opinion

The number of scientists protesting is 700, There are 4.5 MILLION people with science degrees in the USA, and you don't need a science degree to call yourself a scientist.

700 is not weighty. Hell, the oil industry came up with 1500 to claim climate change isn't real, and we all know that is untrue.

There is no weight of opinion. This is all just boring attempts to repeat the lie, trying to make a point that has already been clearly and decisively rejected by GC feminists.

I'd make a point about repeating the lie, and who said it, but then TRAs would be popping up on twitter talking about GC's being devotees of Goebbels.

The piece was written by a fairly well-known TRA troll.

The piece quotes an editorial published in Nature as if it were peer reviewed as the rest of the journal.

There is a genetic test to determine sex. There is a forensic test to determine sex. There is an eyeball test to determine sex.

Political petitions are not peer reviewed proof of scientific belief.

So, to argue with this "voluminous bullcrap" - extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. There a tiny fraction of people who have variations in sex characteristics, but those variation are within the range of 2 sexes.

There is no proof there are more than 2 sexes, extraordinarily or otherwise.

None.

FWRLurker

For example if I say to my colleagues “males and female humans are biologically different” they will assume what i mean is what the religious extremists mean - that women should stay at home with the babies and men should work.

Seriously?

You work in a rarefied bubble.

If I say that some men consider themselves the same as women to people I know, I get a guffaw or a "but they're not" in return.

How do archaeologists know what sex people were? Has anyone told them their determinations are wrong? Are they assigning sex based on pelvic bones, femurs and DNA wrongly?

I’m not a scientist, it being in possession of a typing finger I asked Google, “can a DNA test determine sex?”

The first result was this:

“Sex
The simplest thing DNA can tell you is whether someone is male or female. Apart from some very rare cases, that doesn't even involve looking at their DNA sequence - all you need to know is whether they have X and Y chromosomes (making them male) or a pair of Xs (which makes them female). A foetus will, by default, develop as female unless the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is turned on.”

Apparently rudimentary use of a search engine is beyond the capacity of 700 “scientists”.

Since I am now of the opinion that gender, if it even exists at an individual level, is differently experienced by every human on the planet, presumably only unicorn and fairy laboratories can test for it.

Anyone else been on a voyage of discovery learning about wet vs dry earwax after reading this thread?!

I'm going to point out to you that science does acknowledge the existence of subjective phenomena.

If there is no biology to it then why do all these people want to change their physical form?? Can ANYONE explain that to me.

Perhaps so people will stop chucking them out of bathrooms?

If that is true then all IVF clinics should stop offering gender/sex selection because no genetic test can determine the sex of an embryo!

Sex selection is illegal in the UK, except to screen for specific genetic diseases that are carried on the X or Y chromosome

We did pre implantation genetic aneuploidy screening (due to prev mc) - cells from a 5-day embryo are analysed for chromosomal abnormalities. In doing so this identifies the sex of each embryo - however in the UK embryologists cannot legally record this information (except in the licensed cases above). In the US the same genetics report would detail the sex of the embryos as standard, unless requested otherwise. Sex selection is also legal in Cyprus and Dubai - so a couple with no fertility issues may choose to try IVF purely to try for a child of a particular sex. There was a daily mail exposé a couple of months ago about UK fertility specialists trying to get around UK law by sending patients abroad for sex selection. I seem to recall the article mentioning mainly Asian couples wanting a boy but white British couples wanting a girl.

I'm a cell biologist and I don't know any biologists who "study sex". Biologists don't "study sex", their careers are way more niche than that.

This. I spent years looking at how a single gene and it’s products worked in two different tissue types.

I'm pretty sure amniocentesis can accurately predict the sex of the baby. Counting pairs of genes and all that.

In addition to CVS and Amniocentesis, NIPT (non invasive prenatal testing) like Harmony or Panorama can also tell you the sex of the baby as early as 10 weeks

It's the same technology used for chromosomal testing on the POC (products of conception ie fetal tissue) after a miscarriage. I have several friends who weren't warned that the results would include the sex of the embryo, and found it very very distressing to discover their baby's sex through what is essentially an autopsy report.

People believe unusual stuff. And that’s ok, but if they want me to believe it too I need data, evidence.

When I did my PhD, there was a young woman in an adjacent lab working on how a specific protein evolved who believed in the literal truth of the bible. So she believed that the world was created in a week, a few thousand years ago. Yet she was working on a protein that had been evolving for millions of years. She didn’t seem perturbed by this.

Had her church asked her to sign a ‘scientists for the belief in the creation as per genesis ‘ letter she probably would have. what she wouldn’t have had is any evidence to support her belief.

So I’ll beieve there are extra sexes, or that sex is a spectrum when I see sufficient, coherent, replicated, peer reviewed data that presents extra gametes.

Until then, I will believe that there are two sexes, Male and female. That intersex conditions are where normal Male/female development goes awry. That intersex conditions are defined, medical issues and are nothing to do with trans. And that gender is a set of social behaviours based predominantly on societal expectations of each sex.

The tests for conclusively determining sex based on external observation of genitalia are FAR more accurate than the tests to determine if, for instance, you have breast cancer.

Does that mean we can all skip our breast exams and ignore lumps, since after all, the test for breast cancer isn't 100% conclusive and there are sometimes false positives and negatives?

Yes, I was vague in my statement “study sex”. I was referring both to a colleague who studies sexual selection and one who studies genetic basis of sex. I really don’t want to get more specific for extremely obvious reasons... not sure why you wouldn’t realize that.

Perhaps so people will stop chucking them out of bathrooms?