GCSE Biology

[InsulatedCup]

Article in Sunday Times here:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scientists-fail-edexcel-exam-board-for-confusing-sex-and-gender-in-its-gcse-exam-28hxv9c9d?shareToken=2c8bcb2fd43e84abdcb0c7913b598273

Apparently "gender" can be inherited - using the word sex would mean children wouldn't understand.
We are really going to work hard to dig ourselves out of this hole. Well gone to Fair Play fro Women to getting it in the news.

With the current battle over the great harm that is being pushed onto children’s bodies, we are explaining that it is not possible to change sex, although gender is fluid. If you then replace biological facts about sex with the word gender, it will then become impossible to explain reality.

Words matter.

"It says the same on the BBC gcse bitesize website too. Something along the lines of gender being controlled by X and Y chromosomes".

But if that is true, how on earth can people change their gender? Surely they can't. That is transphobia right there from the Beeb.

And aren't there dozens of genders? Gender-free being one of them. If X and Y chromosomes control gender, then how on earth do gender-free people even get conceived in the first place?

How could anyone be gender free? That would mean they had no ‘gender chromosomes’ at all. That’s about 1500 missing genes on the X chromosome alone.

..how on earth do gender-free people even get conceived in the first place?

Special condoms that keep pesky chromosomes out of a lady during gender, sorry, sex.

If it helps, I reckon I can tell the difference between a sex-maniac and a gender-maniac.

BBC bitesize explains clearly that sex chromosomes determine sex, male or female. It would be accurate to use the word sex in a biology exam and that is what children are taught. My son is taking biology GCSE at the moment and is very clear about this.. the word sex referring to male/female is used in his revision guides and science books. I’m not sure using the word gender would make the question clearer!

www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zcdfmsg/revision/5

In a separate piece about relationships and sexuality on bbc bitesize they differentiate between biological sex and gender (psychological/social). And explain how for some people they may feel these do not align.

www.bbc.com/bitesize/guides/zt3ck7h/revision/7

GCSE From the bitesize website - "Gender is controlled in humans by the X and Y chromosomes. Genetic screening involves testing people or groups of people for the presence of a particular allele or other genetic abnormality... Sex chromosomes, although mainly responsible for determining gender, carry some genes that code for a number of body functions."

So it mentions both sex and gender in connection with X and Y chromosomes.

It is not exactly news that adolescents will get 'confused' and snigger at any mention of the word 'sex.' We certainly did.

That was why they gave us biology lessons, so we could understand about gametes and zygotes and recessive genes and the rest of it.

O Level Grade B, University of London.

This is what the BBC bitesize page on Relationships and Sexuality says about gender:

Gender
Our sex, which is physical – male or female – is distinct from our gender, which is psychological and social.

What this means is that some of us have a gender which is different from our sex.

So they are making a clear distinction between sex and gender. (I won't get into the question of what gender actually is and why it might be expected to 'match' our sex).

But on the biology page it says:

Gender is controlled in humans by the X and Y chromosomes.

Sex chromosomes, although mainly responsible for determining gender, carry some genes that code for a number of body functions

So here, they are using gender to mean sex. No wonder children are confused.

More on the definition of 'gender' from the BBC

We may be male, but feel more comfortable thinking of ourselves as a female.

We may be a woman, but identify with the outlook and social norms of men.

When we feel this way, we are transgender.

This is a confusing feeling to have, especially when society expects us to act a certain way based on our sex.

Being transgender, however, is natural. Just like your sexuality, it is deeply personal. You should take time to work through your feelings and find what is right for you.

What the hell are the 'outlook and social norms of men'? And 'society expects us to act a certain way based on our sex'? I must have missed that bit of my 'education'.

And 'being transgender is natural'???

I agree it's an odd question and very patronizing. I don't know any GCSE students who'd think sex in that context meant sexual intercourse- and given the type of language sometimes used in GCSE exam questions, I'm unconvinced. Science students are expected to know technical and subject specific words/language far more complicated than "sex".

I also would argue that this is actually anti-trans. You can't change your sex chromosomes. You can change your gender presentation and have surgery to mimic the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite sex- thus changing gender. Arguably, this question implies it is biologically impossible to change your gender and your gender is explicitly linked to your sex chromosomes- which seems, dare I say it, transphobic?

I think I must be being thick but why is the answer Male? They all look like XX chromosome pairs?

I was confused as to what you meant, but when I scrolled through the article and understood what you were asking, I nearly spat out my drink. Please tell me you're not serious.

This is almost as bad as what I saw in another thread the other day... someone asking if men can only trace ancestors through their father, and if women can only trace ancestors through their mother.

The Mail on Sunday has the story. The final paragraph explains a lot:

It was reported last year that Pearson had been advised by LGBT charity Stonewall on gender issues. In 2017, Pearson endorsed its ‘LGBT-inclusive’ curriculum guide, which says rather than being born male or female, people are ‘assigned a sex at birth’

Lobbyists have created a huge pile of brown sticky stuff in their eagerness to get rid of the word 'sex'.

This will take years to unravel and fix unless Government provides the leadership necessary to roll back the batshit. Will that ever happen?
Of course not.
It was the Government that endorsed the use of 'gender', backed the lobbyists, and funded them.

Surely stating that gender is what is inherited in the xx/xy karotype is exactly what MRAs are arguing against?

They always seem a bit muddled about this. They say that sex and gender are different, so that seems to be something we agree on, but then they tend to conflate them and not really understand the difference.

MRAs and GC feminists are on the same page in that both reject the existence of transgender people, so on this issue, MRAs and GC feminists tend to say the same thing.

But personally, I've never heard a definition for "gender" that doesn't sound like a wishy-washy word salad. When I was young, "gender" and "sex" were interchangeable, which is how I use them.

QuercusRose

Just took a look at that page and agree they use the term gender and sex. I do think for science they should be consistent and use the term sex, especially when talking about x and Y chromosomes.

We've had discussions on this before but lobby groups targeting science, to the degree of influencing an exam board has many hallmarks of Soviet era Lysenkoism.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

In modern usage, the term lysenkoism has become distinct from normal pseudoscience. Where pseudoscience pretends to be science, lysenkoism aims at attacking the legitimacy of science itself, usually for political reasons. It is the rejection of the universality of scientific truth, and the deliberate defamation of the scientific method to the level of politics.

MRAs and GC feminists are on the same page in that both reject the existence of transgender people, so on this issue, MRAs and GC feminists tend to say the same thing.

If transgender people didn't exist, we wouldn't be in the horrendous mess we're in at the moment. MRAs are actually fairly indistinguishable from TRAs as far as this movement is concerned, because they are all in favour of removing women's rights. The transgender movement is very much a men's rights movement.

Thingybob

The prevalence of early and late onset transsexuals is the same. Gender dysphoria seems to occur at the same rate in most countries (ie it's incredibly rare, 6 per 100,000 of the population in kids) and transsexualism incl AGP is equally rare in adults, occurring in 1 in 34,000 adult females and 1 in 17,000 adult males).

The prevalence of transvestism is also the same, ie between 2 and 6% of males; the number of males with fetishes that involve violating female boundaries within that group is unlikely to differ from UK numbers.

In Germany for instance, transgender ideology and legislation is certainly being pushed the same as here, but the development there mirrors that in Canada more than our own.

Alice Schwartzer, Germany's foremost feminist and their Germaine Greer has been no-platformed and threatened for expressing gender critical views. Predators, including those with boundary violating fetishes, are starting to take advantage of well-meaning policies spreading throughout the country, but there is still no real public awareness of what is going on.

As for the language. Using gender instead of sex for modesty may be an English language issue.

In general usage in German for instance,

sex is Geschlecht
gender is Geschlechterrolle or Geschlechtsrolle (ie sex roles and stereotypes)
sexual intercourse is Geschlechtsverkehr or newer Sex

(STDs are Geschlechtskrankheiten)

And while those working in psychology and sociology increasingly also used the English word Gender from the end of the 20th century onwards, this isn't a problem as a conflation of either concept isn't possible in German given that no one uses sex in the context of sex classes.

The general public by the way continues to use the German words and is largely ignorant of transgender ideology.

If transgender people didn't exist, we wouldn't be in the horrendous mess we're in at the moment.

While I accept that my choice of words was poor, I think this is just being obtuse. I am saying that MRAs and GC feminists both reject the idea that people can be transgender.

MRAs are actually fairly indistinguishable from TRAs as far as this movement is concerned, because they are all in favour of removing women's rights. The transgender movement is very much a men's rights movement.

This is just nonsense. Transgender people have nothing to do with men's rights, or people who advocate men's rights, in any form. Do you watch any of the material they produce? Have you been to a MRA message board? Yeah, I thought not.

We may be a woman, but identify with the outlook and social norms of men.
When we feel this way, we are transgender.

Well that’s news to me BBC! And there was me, thinking I was just a woman who didn’t give a chaffinches chuff about feminine stereotypes!

Those useful idiots at Stop Funding Hate think this article is "hate" and worth hassling Tesco, etc, over

I think they did similar over Littlejohn's article on Linda Bellos.

Hi @Tesco - how do you reconcile your backing for @PrideinLondon with your funding of media outlets that produce content such as this? #StartSpreadingLove #StopFundingHate t.co/PR2Inv8iJi

twitter.com/StopFundingHate/status/1135112927244148736?s=19

I am saying that MRAs and GC feminists both reject the idea that people can be transgender.

Nonsense. Feminists simply think that transgender people are, and will always be, their birth sex. And that women need services and spaces based on their birth sex.

This existence-erasing thing is so childish. For feminists, replacing sex with gender identity in social organisation denies the existence of women. It's a zero sum game: if you want to argue it one way, it can also be argued the other. At least feminists have a basis in material reality for their erasure claim - unlike genderists, who won't define terms and rely on metaphysics.

Transgender people have nothing to do with men's rights, or people who advocate men's rights, in any form

And yet who wins? Always males.

Always.

Feminists simply think that transgender people are, and will always be, their birth sex.

Yes, and that's what MRAs typically think too.

I am saying that MRAs and GC feminists both reject the idea that people can be transgender.

I suppose it all depends on what you mean by 'transgender'. I accept that some people have gender (or sex) dysphoria, and are unhappy about the sex they were born as. I don't believe that anyone is literally 'born in the wrong body' - I am not religious and I don't believe in gendered souls. And as for people who just want to escape sexist stereotypes - how are they different from feminists?

I have no idea what MRAs think about this.

Transgender people have nothing to do with men's rights, or people who advocate men's rights, in any form.

TRAs want to remove sex segregated spaces, many of which are there for the protection of women and girls. This sounds like men's rights to me.

Have you been to a MRA message board? Yeah, I thought not.

I actually arrived here after being signposted to the 'hardcore feminists on mumsnet' by someone on another forum which had gone from general discussion to being quite a woman-hating place. I imagine a MRA message board to be like that, or maybe an even more extreme version, so I wouldn't seek one out. It was pretty unpleasant. I'm much more at home here.

Yes, and that's what MRAs typically think too.

It’s what almost everybody believes. The only people who believe otherwise are TRAs and their supporters.

To claim there’s commonality between MRAs and GC feminists on the basis that neither share a particularly extreme belief is as absurd as lumping atheists and Christians together on the basis they aren’t Scientologists.