Changing chromosomes is possible

[SepticTankYank]

I rarely post on Facebook. I can never be bothered. Someone keeps posting anti JK Rowling posts. I commented on one and it got deleted. I commented on another and I wish it was deleted. I got a barrage of bullshit on there. Myself and two other girls agreed and discussed. The author stated he would delete anything that was transphobic (so anything that didn't agree with his views) one stated you can't change chromosomes. I asked if he was going to delete that or if science was still a thing? Obviously it was deleted but he then posted

"Please look up information/testimonies or - from a position of genuine interest, empathy, and respect - ask people for more information themselves. Don't just declare identities wrong, say it's scientific fact when it is provably wrong by anyone with literacy on this subject, and melt like a snowflake when someone explains that hate speech isn't free speech and they're not taking your transphobia."

I have asked but no response. What on earth does he mean that it's provably wrong that we are born a sex and it can't be changed??? This doesn't make sense to me and google doesn't bring anything that I see as relevant or likely to explain.

I'm doing a lot of reading on this at the minute, most of it guided by mumsnet and am learning so much. I'd like to thank you all for that.

Yep. He’s a massive mansplainer.

but I will delete people

How very progressive. The Orwellian assault on language continues. Its architects are unconcerned about the existential threat to freedom of speech because they don't believe in it. They believe in preaching a mantra of slogans from on high and demanding everyone else obediently chants along in unison. This new orthodoxy denounces, deletes and cancels. It is profoundly authoritarian.

Twaddle. He is rather puffed up isn’t he.

It's a dreadful argument he's put together and yet I imagine it works as most people just will see it and think, no, I'm not spending an hour or more explaining all the ways what you've just said is bollocks, and then having you come back at me with more bollocks.

Especially given his love of "educating people" with lots and lots of links!

This is a man who bores people into leaving the argument and then congratulates himself on winning it.

Wow, he certainly thinks a lot of himself doesn't he? What a load of shit.

It's pointless engaging with him. However, if you want to reply I'd simply include this link which explains what he's doing:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

I would love to see his lots and lots of links. I want to see the peer reviewed and robustly repeatable result studies he is referring to. Of course, his links may include some of the great pseudo science articles (one by a marine biologist) and be in the realm of ‘science just hasn’t caught up yet to provide proof but it will... just a matter of time ...’

I doubt he likes sciencey fact based science at all.

[quote nauticant]It's pointless engaging with him. However, if you want to reply I'd simply include this link which explains what he's doing:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop[/quote]
That's interesting Nauticant. It's interesting that the effect of the deluge is to paralyze debate. Because debate is not the aim. It is an obstacle.

[quote nauticant]It's pointless engaging with him. However, if you want to reply I'd simply include this link which explains what he's doing:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop[/quote]
Ah, I didn't realise it had a name.

@Winesalot Nah, he’ll just post that article in Scientific American that has lots of links to really really small scale, only tangentially related, studies from the mid 1990s, none of which he’ll have actually looked at. 🙄

He is an absolute embarrassment to science, debate, free speech, equality and all the other things he purports to endorse. The irony is laughable!

That’s the very one I was thinking about Vermeil. The one that also says nothing but infers a lot of tosh. And like them all says ‘it’s complicated’.

Brilliant (quoted by holidayplanningnewbie upthread)

"You know what a female body is, dude? It’s the only type of body that makes men like you ask such stupid questions. So please, stop. This is an emergency. This is three and a half billion human beings tied to the tracks, and you’re riding on the train. Your insistence on nuance, your fetish for accuracy, your smug deconstruction of common sense — it doesn’t make you thoughtful. It doesn’t make you wise. It doesn’t make you progressive. It makes you an asshole."

That article says everything. I got into comments to say, uni bio prof here, yes, two sexes in mammals, anything else is twaddle, etc etc, but, honestly Gender Detective in that article addresses the real issues perfectly.

Also, that interminable "answer" from this beak quoted by OP above? What a load of horseshit. If you excise all the times he says variations of "go forth and educate yourself," without once providing links to original sources, that whole mess would be only a quarter as long.

Plus I keep wondering why he thinks epidemiologists would be studying IQ differences between races. Psychologists used to do that before they got terminally laughed out of town. Sociologists tend to be the ones studying women's sandwich-making abilities. They're impervious to laughter, so they're still at it. Maybe he means population geneticists? But those characteristics would have to have identifiable alleles for population geneticists to work on them. As people have already said, you can't argue with stupid. It'd be really nice if stupid stopped arguing with us.

trans people are the most marginalised group in the world

Ah, I hadn't realised science, or maybe it's social science, had developed a reliable meter for this. That's useful. I wonder what the readings are for, say, Yazidi girls burned to death for refusing to be sex slaves, or the Uyghurs currently being persecuted in China, or the Indian girl and her mother killed recently by one of the men accused of the girl's gang rape.

they were taught something in 1995 by a teacher who didn't have a degree in epidemiology and have clung onto that as 'fact' ever since - sounds a bit close to your own experience eh? What a plonker.

Dear god. What a deeply misled, self important wally, now actively propping up sexism and homophobia and erasing child safeguarding and freedom of speech. He should be honest then and own it that his argument comes from the values above and that he is arguing politically, not using facts or logic. He starts with ‘science proves!’ But then ‘just talk to people and ask what they feel, that proves it!’ ‘(But only if you’re talking in a genuine way!’)

Love the way he says he’ll harass dissenters with lots and lots of published papers but then says like a poor shrinking violet to ‘only contact me in a week or two’ when you’ve repented. What’s in all this for him that’s not equally applicable to you?

That article holidayplanner linked to is fucking amazing. If you can be arsed to get back to this friend I would send him that one.

@holidayplanningnewbie

Don't forget

• Sex segregation is literally like race segregation.

He's talking bull. He's also talking sexist bull. I'm actually very interested in epigenetics and sex based differences. Anyway

I'd just ask him if sex is so immaterial and women can have penises and men can have vaginas etc and it's bigoted to think otherwise, why the trans lobby allows the most vulnerable portion of the people it represents to get life changing surgery on their healthy bodies in line with that 'bigoted' ideal? That men do have penises and no breasts and women do have vaginas and breasts? Why are healthy bodies being medically and surgically altered to uphold a binary they criticise?

Woman - I'm female because I have a female body.
TRAs - "Bigot! Transphobe!"
Transwoman - I'm a woman and therefore need a female body.
TRAs - "Of course! It's your right! Anything less would be a literal invalidation of who you are!"

Woman - I'm female because my reproductive system is geared towards making ova
TRAs - " Sex doesn't matter! It's so much more complicated than that! It doesn't make you a woman anyway! Loads of women have penises or no breasts and they are still women!"
Transman - "I'm a man"
TRAs - "Ok here are these hormones to help you develop male secondary sex characteristics and here is the clinic that will remove your breasts and female reproductive organs as they are obviously in direct conflict with you being able to identify as man.

It's crazy how "you're female so can't be male" is compared to "you're female so make me a sandwich". The first is only sexist if you value one sex over another.
Acknowledging sex is not invalidating identity.
It is also not saying 'I acknowledge your sex so believe you are less worthy of rights and protections'. Women have fought for years for them not to be treated differently because of their sex when it is irrelevant and for specific rights and services when it is.
The relevance of sex in some circumstances has not changed. The relevance of gender reassignment in discrimination has been acknowledged hence the protected characteristic in the equality act.

You know who agrees that it's shit to be made to feel bad for your sex? Feminists. But it's just not reality to therefore do away with it all together and treated everyone as sexless.
If feminists had argued sex is a spectrum and females were really males and that's the basis their rights should be based on women would not have the rights and services they specifically need today.
Same if homosexuals had used that arguement to say they were really heterosexual.
If transwomen and transmen are given rights and services on the basis they are male and female they will not only erase the rights of others but miss out on creating the rights and services they specifically need.

I revise my previous assessment,

He's a pompous scientific illiterate who doesn't give a shit about women's rights.

My rule of thumb is that the longer the FB post and the fewer paragraph breaks, the greater the chance of it all being bullshit. I’m sure you could write a formula to express this. (If x is number of words and -n represents paragraph breaks ...)

I welcome the opportunity to educate other people on the specifics of DNA and chromosomes and sex and gender and the complexities surrounding all of it. translation.

I am a massive wanker who did 4th form science. I don’t remember much of it, but someone on Reddit said this and it sounded convincing. I didn’t finish reading it because it was too long and there weren’t any paragraph breaks, but it sounded good. Also, I’m a man and I science better than women because penis.

Having failed at a number and of explanations, TRAs have started on the “humans can change chromosomes” thing. The capacity of humans to swallow bullshit astonishes me.

I read one earlier in Twitter. He said sex was more than gametes and was hormones etc. He then said a menopausal women had more in common with a man than a woman due to hormones. In other words sex is irrelevant and providing you take oestrogen you are a woman

menopausal women had more in common with a man than a woman due to hormones.

Crikey! I find the people who say things like this are people seriously in denial of reality. That any person looks at a woman or a man at one particular time in life and declares their sex based on that is moronic.

Even a post menopausal woman who is a brave cancer survivor with the loss of body parts is never anything like a ‘man’!!!

This is where being kind and allowing TW AW to stand as a ideal.

I feel like sometimes a brief, 'don't be silly, you don't really believe that' is all that such idiocy merits.

The problem is, any well thought out and valid response will be deleted.

I may just comment "you're a dick. I'll show myself out" then a dictionary entry for what a dick is.

He's moved on to police brutality and a feminist picture. The irony.

He has actually reported for the BBC in his local area regarding covid.

Reply with an Orwell quote. He will delete it of course but it's your best chance of giving him pause for thought.

Mainly block the dickhead though. Who needs that crap in their life. Actually, block him then post on your own timeline the article about "to the man who thinks biological sex doesn't exist." Then you'll have a load of others telling him or dismissing him and you will find out which of your friends have the winning combination of both brain and backbone.

Or a Robert Galbraith quote 🤫