DNA and chromosomes

[isabellerossignol]

This might be verging on an idiotic question but I'm just going to ask it anyway.

This whole argument about having been born in the wrong body, having a brain that belongs to the opposite sex etc. I'm assuming that all the markers that are through every cell in our bodies also apply to brain cells as well? If you took a biopsy of brain tissue it would also have XX or XY markers? So does that not categorically refute the idea of a brain in a non matching body?

The extent of my biology knowledge is GCSE and what I've read online, so please forgive the idiotic question.

Yup, every single cell
Here's more from the transphobic bigots at Yale
medicine.yale.edu/news-article/13321/

Science is incorrect on this because it doesn't take into account manly/womenly magical essence.

Men and women are genetically different. Who knew.

All you need is Layla Moran - she can see into the soul and figure out if it's a woman's soul.

She did Physics at uni apparently. She missed her true calling. She could have been fantastic at biology - rewritten the whole book.

Thank you.

I know it sounds like such a stupid question but this stuff has been pushed so hard for such a long time that I actually was doubting myself and wondered if the brain, unlike the rest of the body, was somehow different from other cells.

I think that the 'born in the wrong body' narrative originated as a way of describing how gender dysphoria feels - just like the phrase 'pins and needles' describes a sensation but doesn't mean you literally have pins and needles sticking in you.

However over time people have started to claim it literally. It's nonsense.

To be scientifically pedantic, present in every cell in the body that has a nucleus. Mature red blood cells don't. And normally only one of of the sex chromosomes would be present in gametes. Eggs can only carry an X chromosome (as women are XX and only have an X to pass on). Sperm can be X or Y, because men are XY.

The fact that a very few people have XXY or XYY or XXYY or XXXY or XXXXY doesn't alter the fact that the vast majority of humans fall into two categories.

Sex and gender are different things though. That's what I find most worrying about arguments around this topic - the people making the rules seem to have forgotten this.

Yes, and women with Turners Syndrome are XO, they only have one sex chromosome. But this doesn't make them an intermediate sex. Any more than having three copies of chromosome 21 makes people with Downs Syndrome some sort of different human.

Some of this comes from a study done 20 years ago which appeared to show that some trans individuals had brain structures more similar to the opposite sex. This has now been debunked. Someone posted a good paper debunking this recently: www.eneuro.org/content/eneuro/early/2019/12/02/ENEURO.0183-19.2019.full.pdf

TL;DR - To simplify the paper massively - 1) yes you can see the effects of gender dysphoria in the wiring of the brain but 2) there is no evidence to suggest that gender dysphoria is innate as the brain is plastic and is moulded by our experiences 3) gender dysphoria appears similar to other types of body dysmorphia which are caused by external/social factors

Quoting from that paper:
Just over 20 years ago, a publication reported the first observed neurobiological difference between cisgender and transgender individuals. In particular, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) was found to have a smaller average size in male-to-female (MtF) transgender individuals, with a size more similar to that of an average cisgender female than cisgender male... these data supported the theory that distress in gender dysphoria was due to an anatomical incongruence between brain and body sex.

We observe, based on previously published data, that the primary mechanism behind the experience of gender dysphoria appears not to be that the anatomical brain sex is opposite to gender assigned at birth. Instead, we propose that systemic changes in functional networks, specifically the distress, social behavioral and body-ownership networks, result in the incongruence between sense of gender and gender assigned at birth.

Full transcript: Grace Ann

It can be a lot more complicated than that, though - this is cut and paste off the Internet but it's all accurate:
"First of all, in a sexual species, you can have females be XX and males be X (insects), you can have females be ZW and males be ZZ (birds), you can have females be females because they developed in a warm environment and males be males because they developed in a cool environment (reptiles), you can have females be females because they lost a penis sword fighting contest (some flatworms), you can have males be males because they were born female, but changed sexes because the only male in their group died (parrotfish and clownfish), you can have males look and act like females because they are trying to get close enough to actual females to mate with them (cuttlefish, bluegills, others), or you can be one of thousands of sexes (slime mold, some mushrooms.) Oh, did you mean humans? Oh ok then. You can be male because you were born female, but you have 5-alphareductase deficiency and so you grew a penis at age 12. You can be female because you have an X and a Y chromosome but you are insensitive to androgens, and so you have a female body. You can be female because you have an X and a Y chromosome but your Y is missing the SRY gene, and so you have a female body. You can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but one of your X's HAS an SRY gene, and so you have a male body. You can be male because you have two X chromosomes- but also a Y. You can be female because you have only one X chromosome at all. And you can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but your heart and brain are male. And vice - effing - versa. Don't use science to justify your bigotry. The world is way too weird for that shit."

About half your genes affect your brain and, indirectly, how you see the world. There's at least 15 different sexes in mammals, even if most look superficially male or female. Gender is even more complex, with some people not particularly identifying with one or another or not thinking about it, others having a very firm gender identity that may or may not correlate with their sex or expectations in their society. Like handedness (which is nearly as complex and fascinating - humans are one of few species to have a consistent 10% ratio of lefties), just because you can't see it doesn't mean gender doesn't exist or that those with it don't know what they're talking about.

"it's all accurate"

Even this bit And you can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but your heart and brain are male.?

How does that work then?

Slipping in that nonsense in at the end of a list of rare to extremely rare edge cases doesn't make it true.

Who's trying to appropriate science to push their agenda?

Sex and gender are different things though. That's what I find most worrying about arguments around this topic - the people making the rules seem to have forgotten this.

This^. Except substitute forgotten with deliberately conflated^

There's at least 15 different sexes in mammals, even if most look superficially male or female

Is she using differences of development as new sexes? Because that's a bit strange... people born with one leg aren't a new type of human!

My sibling is trans.

They have had every test available with regards to brain scans and chromosomes etc.

All came back perfectly normal and didn't show any difference from any other male.

So I think I can be forgiven for being extremely skeptical about the whole bullshit over this and 'how science has shown'.

"There's at least 15 different sexes in mammals, even if most look superficially male or female"

There there should be 15 distinct types of gametes. Where are they?

this is cut and paste off the Internet but it's all accurate:

Like so many c&ps off the Internet, it is not 'all accurate'.
There's some parts which are accurate and some which are baseless assertions. Mixing the two isn't clever.

at 'this is cut and pasted off the internet'

Because obviously everything on the internet is accurate

15 different sexes in mammals - hahahahshahaha!
igneococcus 15 types of gametes where are they - love It!
Ps love the name too 😊

I'm a biologist, there are currently, at a guess, another ~100 biologists within a 50 m radius of my desk and when I go home tonight there is another biologist waiting for me at home. I have never met one that actually believes that sort of nonsense.

Thank you Joisanofthedales

Iniogococcus

Yes, ditto. It is the biological version of insisting that the earth is flat,

Igneococcus, sorry

Who cares what may or may not be the case in non human mammals, or clown fish and so on. In humans our chromosomes in our brain match that of our body, so you’re exactly right op we can’t have the wrong sex brain from our body.

Gender really is a useless term imo. Sex and sex role stereotypes are two separate things, gender makes it sound like it’s something not pushed on us through no fault of our own, sex role stereotypes makes it clear what the reality is.