Biologists take on sex seen in fab

[exmouse]

twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1207834357639139328?s=21

Seen this floating about on fb
Any thoughts?

This is akin to people pointing out that not everything is a heterotroph and that plants are photoautotrophs to justify the reality of people who claim to be 'breatharians'. Just because plants are autotrophs it doesn't mean that humans aren't heterotrophs. It is a spectrum! because Fungi! (or something along those lines )

Thanks to everyone who has debunked this. The OP's link was sent to me by two woke doctors of my acquaintance who are looking to find evidence to support their belief that there must be some pathological reason to explain the trans phenomenon. They are desperate to prove that I'm a horrid old radfem and they're kind and lovely and accepting.

Until now I've not been able to respond to that link because I didn't understand what it was saying. I'm shocked that experienced medical practitioners don't seem to understand either.

Fungi are unambiguously heterotrophic, although I know a few people who claim that Fusarium venenatum (Quorn) fixes carbon.

What igneococcus said. I was about to post the same thing. But they could bluster on about chemoautotrophes I guess.

Society's gender programming is a powerful thing indeed.

I agree. Hence all the nicely gendered toys, activities, and behaviours society expects from its’ children.
I’m sure it would be very interesting to see how societal expectations change according to geography and / or time.

Mother Nature on the other hand is all biology and the reason any of us are here to have this existential discussion on MN.

Also, I’m pretty sure humans don’t reproduce using spores or externally (eww messy in humans) so mushrooms and fish need not apply.

But they could bluster on about chemoautotrophes I guess

Thanks - I knew there would be something

Everything is a spectrum* these days.

*definition of which is flexible.

If they’re suggesting that chromosomal abnormality relates to trans issues, then I’d suggest that be used as a diagnostic tool, since there doesn’t seem to be any other objective test.

Anyone who doesn’t have one of these fascinating variations that proves sex is a spectrum isn’t and can’t possibly be transgender.

Cue cries that DSDs and transgender aren’t the same thing.

Okay — then why are DSDs brought into the conversation?

I’d also really appreciate it if biologists used the word spectrum accurately. Perhaps they could consult physicists. Just what, on their spectrum, are these “biologists” measuring along a linear scale? The frequency of chest hair?

Frankly, I think the fact that so many otherwise well-educated people buy into this demonstrates how deep the belief in Ladybrain actually is. Because that is the foundational premise: that there is Ladybrain, and somehow or other (burble burble hormone washes, burble burble epigenetics) some men are born with one and some women (teenage girls, actually) are not.

There MUST be Ladybrain for genderism to make sense as anything other than delusion.

Though Ray Blanchard did recently tweet that it IS delusion, one that MH practitioners have decided is best treated by society making reasonable compromises to indulge it.

Frankly, I think the fact that so many otherwise well-educated people buy into this demonstrates how deep the belief in Ladybrain actually is. Because that is the foundational premise: that there is Ladybrain, and somehow or other (burble burble hormone washes, burble burble epigenetics) some men are born with one and some women (teenage girls, actually) are not.

People like Robert Winston, who really ought to know better.

This is from his contribution to the House of Lords debate about the GRA in 2004.

Good evidence has emerged from Professor Waters of Monash University in Australia—he is now long retired—that suggests that some people who become transsexuals later in life have been exposed to an abnormal surge of either male or female hormones during pregnancy. That has caused them to have a different psychological sex from their genital sex.

api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/2004/feb/03/gender-recognition-bill-hl#S5LV0656P0_20040203_HOL_264

And going by his interview on Radio 4 the other day, he still believes in ladybrains.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3790643-Robert-Winston-Radio-4-Today-Programme

This is very interesting. I'm embarrassed that I even dipped my toe into this subject.

Respect to you all. I now consider myself better educated on the subject.

How can doctos not have a better understanding of Biology and science? That's bizarre.

DSD are when things go wrong in the normal mammalian process of meiosis. Apart from one extremely rare (and extremely "wrong" ) variation, they are always genetically male or female and rarely fertile. How does that mean sex is a spectrum? Unless they are saying they believe every trans person has a DSD in which case I say, crack on with the chromosomal testing, lets get gender dysphoria reclassified as a medical issue again! oh, wait, no, that wasn't acceptable was it? It's only aceptable if it's a perfectly normal inalienable right to feel like a woman or a man, even though noone can define that.

It's like saying the number of limbs humans have is a spectrum between 0 and 4 because some people are born missing one or more and some people lose one or more in accident/warfare. i.e non-scienticifc and a bit dumb.

Are there any stats available on the dates of Dsd within gids ?

Not dates rates

YesAnastasia: This is very interesting. I'm embarrassed

Don’t be embarrassed. Stay and chat

The lack of functioning receptors in some DSD is similar to the lack of functioning receptors in type 2 diabetes. (Different cause but similar outcome, a hormone is made but can't be responded to appropriately) . But we don't talk about a diabetic spectrum.

Or that everyone is on a spectrum of diabeticness.

or that everyone is on a spectrum of blindness because some people are born blind due to things going wrong in the standard development of a human, or due to an accident.

On a serious note, this whole debate makes me worry about the quality of sciece teaching in schools.

Anyone invoking Nemo has already lost the argument.

Are there any stats available on the dates of Dsd within gids ?

As I said earlier, the reported rate is zero cases in about 5000 patients.

That's because people with DSD don't have gender dysphoria but serious medical issues which may or may not come with being assigned a sex (the one and only correct usage of the term) and any resulting issues from this assignment turning out wrong.

However, this is extremely rare. Statistically speaking, every two years one person with a DSD in the UK decides to have their sex reassigned because the doctors got it wrong at birth. But the doctors don't simply guess and assign a sex arbitrarily where a baby isn't obviously male or female at birth.

1 in 5000 babies require specialist input in determining sex - these are cases of a baby born with ambiguous genitalia.

That's approximately 130 babies per year in the UK. In about 7 or 8 of these babies, even specialist input does not lead to conclusive results and sex is assigned based on all available results and discussion with the parents.

Taking the numbers over a two year span, this sex assignment may eventually be found to be wrong for 1 of these babies. That's 1 in 260 babies with ambiguous genitalia, or 0.0001% of the population.

(Those numbers are from the submission to the Scottish Census Draft Bill by dsdfamilies, a small charity supporting parents of children diagnosed with a DSD as well as the children themselves.)

So, no sex is not a spectrum and even 94 to 95% of children born with ambiguous genitalia can after investigation be determined to be unequivocally male or female. There are no true hermaphrodites in humans (that is persons capable of producing both types of gametes, neither at the same time nor one after the other), and there are no non-binary bodies.

For a little linguistics exploration:

non-binary ordinarily denotes something not consisting of, composed of, indicating or involving just two (systems, or classes or characteristics etc).

Mathematically speaking it denotes not having a base of 2. Like the decimal or hexadecimal number systems.

But even a baby who at birth undergoes intensive evaluation for a DSD and whose sex must still be assigned on an educated best outcome basis, does not have and will not develop a body that is non-binary.

Because there are only two sexes in humans, so even a person with characteristics of both sexes will not ever be non-binary as there are two and only two sexes whose different characteristics may be present. There may be typical male and female characteristics to varying degrees, but there are no characteristics of a third sex present.

And if that zoology professor uses the word in the sense of neither male nor female, again this isn't strictly speaking true. But more importantly this kind of othering of people with DSDs, of putting them into a third category is considered incredibly offensive by them.

@CharlieParley Thankyou-that's fantastic information x

Because that's how desperate she is. All these people are. Kelp, clownfish, strawberries, mushrooms. All to pretend that biological sex isn't a thing, in order to prop up the ideology of transgenderism.

So true, Ereshkigal. It’s extraordinary the lengths they (TRAs, allies) go to. Almost as if they know they haven’t got a single rational, robust argument. Not a one.

Yes, that really is fantastic info, CharleyParley.

I love these threads. The level of insight, knowledge and understanding, and of course the wit - all of it together is a combination that always makes me so proud to be part of the FWR community - your very good health, women of this board

It means you may be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally male/female/non-binary, with cells that may or may not hear the male/female/non-binary call, and all this leading to a body that can be male/non-binary/female.

Try out some combinations for yourself. Notice how confusing it gets? Can you point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Is it fair to judge people by it?

These are some of the tweets in that thread which are downright embarrassing. She misrepresents how sex determination in humans happens (it's a cascade), her tweets however suggest it's like a random combination - even asking people to try it for themselves.

That's simply not how it happens. For any given condition, first this had to happen, then that, then this, then that etc (a cascade, like I said, not a random number of ingredients shaken about).

“Hormonal male” means you produce ‘normal’ levels of male-associated hormones. Except some percentage of females will have higher levels of ‘male’ hormones than some percentage of males. Ditto ditto ‘female’ hormones. And...

Or this one - in and of itself, an over or undersupply with hormones is a condition of the endocrine system, not a DSD. But she includes this right in the middle of her lecture about how biological sex is complicated, so either she suggests here that women with PCOS for instance (who have too much testosterone) are not proper females, or that they have a DSD. Obviously what she really suggests here is that she doesn't really know what she's talking about.

Furthermore the existence of DSDs, ie of sex determination deviating for various reasons from the normal path of development in unborns, is evidence of the existence of DSDs, ie that babies can be born with ambiguous genitalia.

It is not evidence that individuals who are entirely ordinary in how their sex developed in utero and puberty and who therefore unequivocally belong to one of two distinct and mutually exclusive types of sex classes can move change their sex afterwards.

In that sense, and this is the only one that matters, sex is entirely simple. Two sex classes. No spectrum. Males are not and cannot ever be female. And vice versa.

If we are born into one sex class, we die still belonging to that sex class. No matter what we do to our bodies in the meantime.

Thank you CharlieParley, that is wonderfully clear.

I agree. Hence all the nicely gendered toys, activities, and behaviours society expects from its’ children.
I’m sure it would be very interesting to see how societal expectations change according to geography and / or time.

The dramatic change in toy advertising from the 1970s to the 1990s is an example of the commercial backlash against Feminist progress.

Clothes and hairstyles too, Creepster.

I was a child of the 70s - a glance at my end of primary class photo (79) shows half the girls with short, boyish hairstyles, only about a quarter should length, and the rest with the long hair girls nearly all have today.

My mum's school photos (50s) show many more girls with short/shoulder length hair - lots of bowl haircuts from the look of it - very few (none I think) with very long hair.

Biologists are on a spectrum of ability to understand biology.

Some biologists understand biology very well, some biologists understand biology quite well, and some biologists ("the sexual functions of humans are like clownfish or kelp" brigade) do not understand biology.