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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
OP posts:
GassyAss · 16/06/2019 20:08

Clicky link?

Orchidoptic · 16/06/2019 20:08

So for how many years has science been agreeing with reality about two sexes? What has changed?

TheInebriati · 16/06/2019 20:18

Clicky link, its not an article but a blog;

''Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia
Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary''

''Nearly everyone in middle school biology learned that if you’ve got XX chromosomes, you’re a female; if you’ve got XY, you’re a male. This tired simplification is great for teaching the importance of chromosomes but betrays the true nature of biological sex. The popular belief that your sex arises only from your chromosomal makeup is wrong. The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change.''
blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/

Curiously, it doesn't say where the mystical third gamete is located, or how anyone manages to produce the gametes of the opposite sex.

Prawnofthepatriarchy · 16/06/2019 20:18

The fact that human beings can't change sex is a very inconvenient fact for some, but it can't be gainsaid.

OrchidInTheSun · 16/06/2019 20:21

I wish BowlofBabelFish would come back and shoot that nonsense into oblivion in her usual well-informed fashion

LangCleg · 16/06/2019 20:26

I prefer this inconvenient truth.

Inconvenient truths?
GCAcademic · 16/06/2019 20:28

The person who wrote this article has no expertise in this area but, predictably, does seem to have other skin in the game:

tsienlab.med.nyu.edu/people/simon-sun

Also, as far as scientific publications go, Scientific American is analogous to a tabloid newspaper.

LangCleg · 16/06/2019 20:28

I like this one as well.

Inconvenient truths?
nauticant · 16/06/2019 20:30

The author is Simón(e) D Sun.

It's always good to get impartial contributions to contentious matters.

nellodee · 16/06/2019 20:31

Most of this was written as though speaking down to idiots, apart from that one really technical paragraph in the middle which made no sense to anyone not an expert in the field. It read to me as though the author didn't actually understand it well enough to communicate the information clearly to the lay reader, and so was just copying it practically verbatim to look clever.

I love the way that its impossible to tell male and female brains apart, but absolutely provable that cis and trans brains are completely different. Having read some of the original research on this, I'd have to say that sample sizes were small, often without sensible controls, that the results were unclear and contradictory and that often the publicised conclusions were the exact opposite of the conclusions stated in the papers themselves. This is without getting into the whole plasticity of the brain debate.

I'm also curious as to how testosterone level variance is only 56% decided by X or Y. The average range for adult men is 240-950ng/dl and the average for adult women is 8-60. Even if only 56% of the very lowest of that range of male testosterone is due to sex, that leaves them at twice the testosterone level of the highest of the female range with an additional 60ng/dl unaccounted for. I can't make sense of that statement at all.

Is a doctoral candidate a PhD student? I'm not terribly impressed, I'm afraid.

AlwaysComingHome · 16/06/2019 20:32

I like this one as well.

What usually comes between a sperm and an egg is a condom.

BernardBlacksWineIcelolly · 16/06/2019 20:36

Ah, inconvenient bobbins

It pops up every now and again

Sex is a spectrum my left foot. It’s like some people have got so fucking decadent they’ve forgotten what sex is for

donquixotedelamancha · 16/06/2019 20:38

My mate is a chemist. He doesn't believe humans cause climate change- thinks it's caused by water vapour. I ask him to explain how all the climatologists could miss something so obvious, but he can't.

Sometimes even very capable scientists have blind spots. If science ever finds a spectrum of sexes between male and female it won't be announced by a neuroscientist PHd student in a blog post.

LangCleg · 16/06/2019 20:38

What usually comes between a sperm and an egg is a condom.

I love you!

GrumpyMiddleAgedWoman · 16/06/2019 20:41

Is a doctoral candidate a PhD student?
Yep.
In academic terms, that is a very lowly life form.

OldCrone · 16/06/2019 20:43

They seem to be moving the goalposts a bit:

When the biology gets too complicated, some point to differences between brains of males and females as proof of the sexual binary.

It's the genderists who've been going on about male and female brains, but now they're trying to say it's the non-believers in genderism who've been pushing this idea.

But a half century of empirical research has repeatedly challenged the idea that brain biology is simply XY = male brain or XX = female brain. In other words, there is no such thing as “the male brain” or “the female brain.”

It's almost as if they haven't been listening when we've repeatedly been saying that.

Let’s just take the most famous example of sexual dimorphism in the brain: the sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area (sdnPOA)...Throw in the observation that the sdnPOA in gay men is closer to that of straight females than straight males, and the idea of “the male brain” falls apart.

So have they changed their tune about sexed brains now? It's so hard to keep up with the constantly shifting positions.

For some properties like brain volume and connectivity, trans people possessed values in between those typical of cisgender males and females, both before and after transitioning. Another study found that for certain brain regions, trans individuals appeared similar to cis-individuals with the same gender identity. In that same study, researchers found specific areas of the brain where trans people seemed closer to those with the same assigned sex at birth. Other researchers discovered that trans people have unique structural differences from cis-individuals.

Sounds like an inconclusive mess to me.

DpWm · 16/06/2019 20:48

Inconvenient!

Inconvenient truths?
EverardDigby · 16/06/2019 20:52

It's amazing really how the human race has survived and reproduced these millennia given how difficult it clearly is to tell males from females.

AlwaysComingHome · 16/06/2019 20:53

Throw in the observation that the sdnPOA in gay men is closer to that of straight females than straight males

I was in Manchester yesterday and as I passed through Canal Street I distinctly heard one young man compliment another on his sexually dimorphic nucleus of the preoptic area.

I think they put this on their Grindr profile now.

youkiddingme · 16/06/2019 20:57

XX individuals could present with male gonads. XY individuals can have ovaries. How? Through a set of complex genetic signals that, in the course of a human’s development, begins with a small group of cells called the bipotential primordium and a gene called SRY.

This seems to be referring to the mechanism involved in rare intersex conditions such as De La Chapelle syndrome. Does this apply to many trans people?

AlwaysComingHome · 16/06/2019 21:00

Also, the preoptic nucleus is concerned with sleep. What the fuck has it got to do with sex?

I thought they claimed they were living like women, not sleeping like a woman.

FloralBunting · 16/06/2019 21:11

Also, the preoptic nucleus is concerned with sleep. What the fuck has it got to do with sex?

Stuff like this makes me so happy in my nucleus accumbens and amygdala.

youkiddingme · 16/06/2019 21:21

'genes like DMRT1 and FOXL2 maintain certain sexual characteristics during adulthood. If these genes stop functioning, gonads can change and exhibit characteristics of the opposite sex.'
Your article links to research which gives a fair bit of information on the discovery and characterisation of these genes.

And indeed, there is medical evidence that faults in these genes can lead to an array of health problems including sterilty, testicular cancer, and gonadal dysgensis.
There doesn't however, seem to be any link with being able to change sex documented thus far.

Further reading
www.karger.com/Article/FullText/357956

BernardBlacksWineIcelolly · 16/06/2019 21:26

I heard that being female stimulates an area of the brain known as shatners bassoon, which is also enlarged in trans identifying males

trufax

Orchidoptic · 16/06/2019 21:26

I want a better preoptic nucleus (emoji with huge bags under eyes)