Another disappointment - Dr Jen Gunter

[RoyalCorgi]

"Hi Matt. I'm a doctor. I think you are having some trouble, so allow me to help. Gender is not defined by whether you have a uterus/ovaries or penis/scrotum. So now you have a scientific opinion from a medical expert!"

twitter.com/DrJenGunter/status/1186844626528813057

Good job I never got round to buying her book.

She's right though, isn't she?

Gender is about masculinity/femininity, sex is about ovaries/testes.

^ what Table said.

Gender is defined by whatever you think in your own head.

Your sex, meanwhile....

I have a maxim in this life! Never trust anyone who uses too many exclamation marks! Dr Gunter is such a person!

Gender is about masculinity/femininity, sex is about ovaries/testes.

This is true, but the context suggests she's bought into the TRA propaganda.

Expert!

She definitely has bought into it. She's mates with Amanda Jette Knox.

Plus I always think anyone who starts a sentence with "I'm a doctor" sounds a bit of a dick.

That Dr Rich Boden person sprouts some absolute gibberish in that thread, and I say that as a fellow biologist.

There are some sensible comments:

twitter.com/CriticalThunke/status/1186987349030428672

Good job I never got round to buying her book

Ditto. If she doesn't understand the difference between male and female I'm not sure I want her expertise on the vagina. Would it be a female vagina or a new-fangled male one d'you think?

"Plus I always think anyone who starts a sentence with "I'm a doctor" sounds a bit of a dick."

I agree, it makes me chuckle though as it's like the line at the end of the "Brooklyn 99" tv show (Mum to a teen here) which has a completely irrelevant "Not A Doctor" after the final credits 🤷‍♀️

Her comment about charging $800 an hour for an explanation makes her look both unpleasant and foolish, particularly as her whole social media presence is built on explaining gynaecological matters to lay people.

Perhaps the reason she intends to charge that much is because she knows she hasn't got a logical explanation, and at that fee she won't be called upon to provide one.

Well here's the definition from the article she linked. It looks clear enough to me. What am I missing?

That Dr Rich Boden person sprouts some absolute gibberish in that thread, and I say that as a fellow biologist.

Christ yes. Sub-sexes based on different enzyme pathways? WTF?

I can never figure out whether the people claiming qualification are lying to us (about their qualifications) or to themselves (in order to say things they should know are untrue).

A few genuine experts do seem to be willing to engage in semantic games to justify this nonsense. I find this very frustrating because it undermines public confidence in Science to see two qualified individuals debating what should be accepted fact.

Maybe someone could crowdfund the $800. I'd be happy to chuck in five quid.

Gender is defined by whatever you think in your own head.

Gender is defined by whatever stereotypes and restrictions society rams into your head.

'Woman' is not a gender. 'Woman' is a sex descriptor. 'Feminine' is a gender.

What am I missing?

1. The words man and woman are sex designators, not gender designators. They signify that a person is either an adult + human + male or an adult + human + female.

Knowing that someone is a man or a woman tells you nothing about gender. It tells you whether they could theoretically father children or whether they could theoretically bear them. And not whether they like to wear makeup, high heels, do DIY, have beards, are assertive or quiet, emotional or stoic, play Rugby or softball, work as teachers or personal assistants.

We have expectations of what men and women are like when it comes to all of those things, but they are socially constructed. A man could wear and be all of those things, but he will never bear children.

1. No one has an innate sense of being a man or a woman. The awareness of being in a sexed body and living in a world of two types of sexed bodies - and only two - comes much later. We learn gendered behaviours and expressions, we aren't born with them.

1. Only a fraction of a percentage of babies born are ever assigned a sex at birth. For the rest of us, sex is determined at birth and observed at birth.

*determined at conception.

But I knew what you meant!

Yes, thank you!

She is really unpleasant. So many of the people that have decided to serve this nonsense up to us plebs are really unpleasant. I get the strong impression they have latched on to this precisely becase it's something they can use to sneer at people and they really enjoy sneering.

Clymer is pretty grim on that thread too with his awful "sweeties".

Came on to see if anyone had posted. FFS.

What does strike me about that thread is the number of people on that thread who are anti-abortion rights, and making crazed comments about Dr Gunter as an obs/gynae. I do see why the arguments are more polarised in the US; you'd want to steer clear of people who want to control women's bodies, and the argument for bodily autonomy is one of the stronger arguments for medical transition imo.

None of this mean sexual dimorphism isnt real though, wtf?

The daftest things about her tweets are that:

Her starting tweet does not actually answer the question asked (What is the objective difference btw a male and a female?).

Her second tweet refers the questioner to what she claims is the scientific answer to his query, but is actually a fairly basic guide to Health Care for Transgender Individuals. It has nothing to say about the question asked.

And last but not least, her entire line of argument is irrelevant to the claims being argued about, because we know that only a minute fraction of those who identify as trans present with any difference in sex development (DSD). The vast majority are unequivocal males or females with not a hint of a DSD in their physiological makeup.

They simply do not belong to the extreme outliers that these obfuscators like to drag out in support of the claim that humans are not dymorphic/sex is a spectrum/it's more complicated than biology 101

(IIRC, for instance all those referred to GIDS in the UK suffering from gender dysphoria (GD) were tested for DSDs and in over 5000 children presenting with GD, not one was found to have a DSD.)

So, whether or not there are new discoveries of genes or enzymes that influence the natural sex development in utero or adolescence (which that second doctor then talks about in the thread) is of no interest whatsoever when seeking to debate the question of whether men who identify as trans actually are women and vice versa.

waterl00 😂😂

I bought her book. Then saw online she said that trans women are women.

Her book's third chapter is about people in transition. To be fair, she's the ONLY medic I've seen who says taking testosterone has negative effects on a female body (as well as the desired ones).

However, the book reads like a dumbed down medical textbook.

I like her "respect my authority" attitude on twitter, she is an expert and she makes no apologies for that. I think a lot of us (well, me) could learn from that.

AND, she stands up for reproductive rights in America. Women need more of that.