Counter argument to this article please.

[jellybe]

blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/

Does anyone have a useful proper scientific argument to this article. Just been told that I need to read this as my understand of xx and xy is simplistic and insulting and some women have higher levels of T due to PCOS (no shit Sherlock but they are still women hence the polycystic ovaries I should know as I'd be one of them)

I've read the article and it seems to be using intersex with out naming it as intersex as an argument (please correct me if I'm wrong) but any articles that you have would be great.

Check out @SwipeWright on twitter for a thorough debunk. Outliers don’t mean categories don’t exist. (As a PCOS sufferer I find the appropriation of my condition quite hurtful, so thank you for recognising this.)

Also look up @fondofbeetles on twitter who is dr emma Hilton.

I read that article the other day. It is an opinion piece, not the official view of SA - though I'm not impressed that they have anything to do with it at all.

My main thought was "So what if you can prove sex is a spectrum?" I mean we do argue that sex is fundamentally a binary, in a biological and functional sense, and that the existence of intersex doesn't change that (as some intersex people also say). But of course anyone who's wedded to this argument won't listen.

However, even is sex was a spectrum of some kind, that doesn't mean a man can just decide to be a woman. ASD is a spectrum, but that doesn't mean that if you're severely autistic you can just identify yourself to the other end of the spectrum - or vice versa. Hair colour is a spectrum, but if I have dark hair, however much I bleach it that won't make me blonde.

Race is also a spectrum, far far far more so than sex is. There are many different ethnicities and genetic groupings, and countless possible mixtures of those. And yet trans activists do not (or none I've ever encountered) think that you should be able to identify as black if you're white, and make out that you're black by adopting a bunch of stereotyped "black" culture and aspects of appearance, and then get to scream "bigot" at black people if they dare to question that you're really black.

So IMO the spectrum argument is specious anyway, so we can ignore it.

It isn't specifically a counter argument to this article, but I've always thought this article, entitled An open letter to the guy on Twitter who wonders if biological sex is real, is a brilliant riposte to all that anti-scientific shit:
medium.com/@genderdetective/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-on-twitter-who-wonders-if-biological-sex-is-real-58d2cb4403f5

Thank you. You wonderful mumsnetters.
dayoftheclownfish I'm also a sufferer and find it bloody insulting.

Slightly confusing ( and to be fair I am not in the mood for trans science that wastes people's time, like climate change deniers )

I think it says that DSD exist..true
I think it says that brain sex doesn't ..true

It's the conclusion that sex isn't binary is odd.

Just because brains aren't binary doesn't prove that sex isn't, it just proves that reproductive biology matters less to the brain than sexual reproduction organs. The authors seem to have a some bizarre notion that you can only have binary sex if you also have Male and female brains!

If trans was simply somebody being really more female, then surely there would be something t9 show for it beyond a thought process? Something in their biology that would show this?

Surely the word ovaries in PCOS give these idiots a clue?

The other chestnut - what do you call a woman without ovaries - a woman.

Checkout
@intersexfacts
@fondofbettles
@Swipewright - already recommended
@zaelefty

On twitter.

Factual, knowledgable, respectful and witty.

Another PCOS hairy woman here and I took great delight when a trans ally talked about the '1 in 60' number that Wikipedia quotes which turns out to be 'intersex conditions' which covers a huge array of issues that men or women might have which are more commonly associated with the other sex - including hirsuitism - of pointing out that included me, so GTF.

Some people have one leg. Some people have no legs below the knee. Some people have legs but spine issues meaning they are in wheelchairs. My nan has legs but can't hold her weight. A three month old baby cannot sit nor stand.

How many legs do humans have?

Can humans walk?

Exceptions prove the rule.

As per the article corgi posted, priests, pimps and politicians have no bother identifying what a woman is.

Thank you. You wonderful mumsnetters.
dayoftheclownfish I'm also a sufferer and find it bloody insulting

You have every right to be insulted.

Plus others...
Female genital mutilation changed to Forced genital mutilation.

Women with mastectomies being compared to males in single sex changing rooms - report for the Scottish government.

Etc...
The anger will only mount...

Im

Hello sisters ... been angry about this since 2018 ...

I'm lucky to not live with PCOS but I know women who do and any woman who suffers it has my deepest symathy, its a horrible condition. I think the way that ths illness has been appropriated is disgusting although not suprising, they do it with DSD too. Surely the clue is in the name, only women and gilrs have ovaries therefore it is a condition that only affects women and girls.

IMO the spectrum argument is specious anyway, so we can ignore it.

Too right, DSD or intersex conditions have so many profound and far reaching effects on a persons life, not just the appearance or development of their genetalia. Its so offensive that their struggles have been appropriated this way.

medium.com/@genderdetective/an-open-letter-to-the-guy-on-twitter-who-wonders-if-biological-sex-is-real-58d2cb4403f5

What a brilliant piece, thanks for posting it RoyalCorgi

That article is a failure of "assertion - reason"

Yes some people are not XY or XX. Yes women and men have similar brains.

And so.... Jenner who won a male olympic medal and fathered children is therefore genuinely a woman if Jenner says so.

And so... That Guardian Freddie who had grew a baby in his uterus is a man if Freddie says so?

Er, no, that does not follow.

Perhaps we have all been guilty of seeing some huge correlation between those who give birth , get raped etc with female and attributing the totally wrong cause , ie thinking they gave birth because females can whereas in fact it's a random association?

This is the latest Colin Wright article: quillette.com/2020/06/07/jk-rowling-is-right-sex-is-real-and-it-is-not-a-spectrum/

But the short version is: yes, things might be a bit more complicated than one marker doesn't mean that it's a case of anything-goes. We are not clownfish or rainbows, we are humans. What our soul is may be something totally different, but that's a religious/spiritual enquiry.

Is @BowlOfBabelfish still around? She was great on the science stuff.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089

I shared this. And pointed out that my PCOS didn't stop me experiencing female pubity. Etc

My (relatively new to all this) take. The genetic stuff is all variations that we can only describe because we know that XX and XY is the norm, correct in the majority of cases. These variations are only ever described by how they are different to the standard XX and XY. They are neither a separate category in themselves nor somehow proof that the binary categories themselves don't exist.

The brain stuff seems to me to be confusing cause and effect, particularly in how it relates to hormones. Given that the articles admits that hormones play different roles in different contexts and that they can vary wildly not only according to sex but also based on stuff like whether you're involved in raising a child or not, what on earth do they have to do with one's sex? And why does the fact that the binary sex model can't neatly divide hormones into two somehow mean that the 'messiness' of hormones discredits the binary sex model? You can't split lots of things along sex lines, but that doesn't automatically mean sex as a concept is flawed. Fundamentally, you can split the sex organs in almost all cases along sex lines and this is what makes people male or female.

Similarly the argument that some structures of the brain previously thought to be dimorphic can actually be quite similar clearly shows that the brain has nothing at all to do with sex, though it may have some influence on people's feelings about theory sex (which I suppose could well be what the trans community means by that elusive 'gender identity', although I note this article doesn't go that far and I'm sure the author knows a hell of a lot more about what science 'says' than I do). Nonetheless, sex remains binary.

newrubylane I think I'd agree with your take on it.

Trans people have brains that are different from males and females, a unique kind of brain,” Guillamon says. “It is simplistic to say that a female-to-male transgender person is a female trapped in a male body. It's not because they have a male brain but a transsexual brain.” Of course, behavior and experience shape brain anatomy, so it is impossible to say if these subtle differences are inborn.

www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-something-unique-about-the-transgender-brain/

I bet the doctors doing any of the brain studies mentioned were not using Stonewalls big umbrella definition.

Intersex organizations and people have asked pseudo scientists repeatedly to stop using them to justify misogyny.

Do you have links to that wilderness? I've been trying to find statements of this but can't find them.

The person who I was discussing with has now flounced - this was after I shared a page from the nhs.

Trying not to let it piss me off that they have tried to make it look like I've bullied them off the discussion as I wasn't willing to be educated by them ( I wouldn't sit down and just shut up) with their final post asking Cis people to refute the science I was sharing.

This is a good place to start.
isna.org/faq/transgender/