Any other scientists feel like you are in an alternate reality?

[RockPaperScience]

I mean, seriously.

I’ve sequenced and karyotyped more X and Y chromosomes (and autosomes, I’m not picky) than I can count. How did we get to this sorry, ugly, baffling state of affairs of science and biology denial. I know we kind of know how, but I’ve had a glass of wine and WTAF is going on?

[ArabellaScott]

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

I do not think these words mean what you think they mean

Hear me out on this. Have we taken an awfully long time to recognise that a Turing Test experimental bot is posting among us?

[donquixotedelamancha]

@MishyJDI

It's essentially because many people got stuck believing science was simply X and Y, without acknowledging Darwinism and spectrum. They are being left behind.

I asked you on a previous thread to discuss the evidence for your crazy idea that there are not two sexes.

Let's start with: what gametes do these other sexes (that all us scientists don't know about) produce.

[Santastuckincustoms]

When I was at school there were other pupils who believed things like you couldn't get pregnant if you did it standing up, you only got STDs from gay sex, women can control the flow of blood during menstruation, just like pee etc. I guess this is the new myth.

[Maskless]

My current favourite quote was a tweet from a blue-haired which complained that GCs are basing our opinions about sex being immutable on the biology we learned at school "in 1979". Things, she insisted, had "changed since then".

[Marynotsocontrary]

Most of the people asking this are concern trolling but the 5 datasets I'm talking about are chromosomes, hormones, external genitalia, internal reproductive anatomy, and gonads.

Why do the gonads have they their own 'dataset' anyway? Surely they're covered under the other headings?
Mostly missing the point, I know...

[Marynotsocontrary]

Sorry, a random 'they' sneaked in there.

[titchy]

@EmbarrassingHadrosaurus

I do not think these words mean what you think they mean

Hear me out on this. Have we taken an awfully long time to recognise that a Turing Test experimental bot is posting among us?

Maybe this is part 2 of the Turing test - once you've created an AI that no one realises is an AI, create one that changes the meanings of words and see if humans will accept the new meanings?

[EmbarrassingHadrosaurus]

Maybe this is part 2 of the Turing test - once you've created an AI that no one realises is an AI, create one that changes the meanings of words and see if humans will accept the new meanings?

I think so. Now, bizarrely, this has only been possible because of the special MN guidelines for posting on this topic because it would otherwise have been obvious much more quickly. [nerd]

More seriously, there is pretty much a successful move underway to persuade mainstream media to change their style guides to redefine words. E.g., see the BBC Style Guide that has redefined homosexual from meaning same sex to same gender etc.

The mainstream Style Guides are being presented to the major dictionaries as proof of contemporaneous changes in semantics and a justification for 'updating' the dictionary.

Posting nonsense in communities and attracting comments (as per Bunbury) is an additional way of feeding into the profile of redefinitions of words.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3438714-Bunbury-s-Public-Service-Announcement-2

[Beowulfa]

I'm interested in the rise of gender ideology and veganism. Being (not unreasonably) repelled by the options that face farm animals at birth, means knowing that those options depend on their sex. There's no third career path for lambs born "on the gender spectrum".

[aloris]

Biologists are used to thinking of living organisms in terms of collections of different cell types. I doubt they'll have any problem distinguishing between male and female when they really need to: they know that sperm and egg is the differentiating feature of a person who is male vs a person who is female. (Other features are secondary to that, and essentially delineate the range of secondary characteristics of a male or female person.) But I think what will happen is that the true biological meaning of "what is sex" will become arcane knowledge that only specialists will be able to access. The rest of us great unwashed will get a subset of information that has been pre-filtered to support a particular outcome, such as "sex is on a spectrum."

[Missmissmiiiiiiiiisss]

I heard the whole “very few people know what chromosomes they actually have” line on the Norlan podcast …. And was like with rare exceptions we are XX when we are born a physical girl and XY when born a physical boy. For most of the rare exceptions, it would become obviously at puberty if there was DSD caused by a chromosomal abnormality. Then vanishingly rare are those who have biological children.

It’s a bit like saying we don’t know that toddler humans who have milk teeth will lose them and get adult teeth. But because the vast, vast majority do, we very reasonably assume it as fact that this will happen unless something has clearly gone awry.

[Enough4me]

I have a background in biological sciences and would like to know how sperm can be so varied. I always thought a Y sperm created men (boys) when fertilising an egg (always X), so to find out there are ranges of Y is fascinating. I would love to know the research into this amazing Y sperm that exists in a spectrum.

Alternatively, are Y sperm the same, but some variation occurs in the womb creating this spectrum, wondering about the research?

Or, are babies born a sex and something in the environment is causing this spectrum.
Shouldn't this have been spotted, what could be doing this?

Finally, isn't it strange that this spectrum did not exist until it became fashionable -like there is no science behind it?

[Packingsoapandwater]

How did we get here?

I reckon I have an answer for that.

Technology gave people with next to no scientific awareness, from a country of embedded religiosity and an innate belief in the soul as a separate entity to the body, a global megaphone.

The rest of it is money, multinationals, politics, and the manipulation of metanarratives.

[GonadTheGaul]

I'm in biomedicine. In my field we have to know the difference between male and female, for some of my clinical colleagues it's the difference between patients living or dying. Nobody has a problem with biological sex in a medical/scientific context. Something that I find odd is that some of my colleagues still believe in gender 'outside work' and will insist that for anybody who says they're trans, we must all pretend they're the sex they want to be instead of the sex they are. These are people who think logically, understand complex biology and do medical research where the division between the sexes is integral to getting the research right, but they seem to have a huge blinker on that divides scientific and medical reality from the 'gender world' they inhabit the minute this subject comes up.

Another issue is that there's a lot of scientific and medical lack of understanding in the general population in my experience, including among people who may be highly educated in other areas. I think we have access to a lot of medical and scientific information online, in documentaries and in books. There's a lot of misinformation out there too and some of it sounds plausible, or is spun to sound plausible, unless you know a subject quite well. If it's not an area you know and you listen to somebody who sets themself up as an expert then you could easily be mislead. My knowledge of history is minimal so if somebody who said they'd studied history told me some rubbish about the life of King George I, complete with made up events and dates, I wouldn't spot anything wrong unless I wrote it down and checked (assuming I could recognise a reliable source to check), or unless it was totally outlandish.

There's also an odd disconnect between people who will believe and promote somebody who knows little about the subject talking rubbish about biology (e.g. a philosopher who claims male and female testosterone levels overlap) but are keen on claiming they want to follow the science on something like Covid. I suppose it's the difference between believing anything that supports an ideology you like which you see as not having any cost to yourself (and not caring about the cost to others) and believing in reality when there's a risk of your own death if you don't.

I suppose a result of this is the people who think they know about science, even when what they believe is total rubbish, and will assert that even when talking to people who really know what they're talking about, like that student trying to tell Robert Winston he's wrong about biology. What I struggle to understand is the fact that they see an eminent biologist, saying something about his field of expertise, and they don't think 'hang on, maybe he's right'.

[TheElementsSong]

Something that I find odd is that some of my colleagues still believe in gender 'outside work' and will insist that for anybody who says they're trans, we must all pretend they're the sex they want to be instead of the sex they are. These are people who think logically, understand complex biology and do medical research where the division between the sexes is integral to getting the research right, but they seem to have a huge blinker on that divides scientific and medical reality from the 'gender world' they inhabit the minute this subject comes up.

I call it the "BEEEEEEKIND" filter.

[TheWeeDonkey]

@Beowulfa

I'm interested in the rise of gender ideology and veganism. Being (not unreasonably) repelled by the options that face farm animals at birth, means knowing that those options depend on their sex. There's no third career path for lambs born "on the gender spectrum".

I was watching that Clarkeson's Farm, and TBH I am woefully ignorant about the realities of farming life so it did come as a shock to me the ease that animals past their breeding capacity are slaughtered.

I thought it was shown in as compassionate a way as it could be but it was still very eye opening.

I still don't understand how people who's careers are on the coal face of sex differences can say sex isn't real or sex is on a spectrum. Very odd.

[TheWeeDonkey]

Also still howling at PP using Darwinism to prove that sex isn't real 🤣

[merrymouse]

My knowledge of history is minimal so if somebody who said they'd studied history told me some rubbish about the life of King George I, complete with made up events and dates, I wouldn't spot anything wrong unless I wrote it down and checked (assuming I could recognise a reliable source to check), or unless it was totally outlandish.

Yes, but whereas there isn't much need to know about George I in everyday life, the practical consequences of sex are difficult to avoid.

[Helleofabore]

But TheWeeDonkey we also know this poster does it often. Like saying a founder of Stonewall knows nothing about gay history. Like using slang from other countries out of context.

Trying to use Darwin to support sex is a spectrum is par for the course.

[Enough4me]

I thought that Darwin noted survival through natural selection, not artificial selection.

The TW ideology is artificial, people are not evolving to have more than two sexes, and their ultimate goal appears to seek a society of people who are all men, some with fake breasts (procreation will be interesting!).

I presume that they know that they cannot be women as long as women exist and show the world what women are, so women need to be erased?

[LemonSwan]

What has darwinism got to do with this?

[Helleofabore]

Well Mishy, are you agreeing with how Long Chou understands becoming a ‘female’.

twitter.com/sal_robins/status/1451608596127498241?s=21

To be clear mishy

‘Getting fucked makes you female because fucked is what a female is’?

Is this what you mean by being on a spectrum? This is from the ‘side’ you are in support of, so I am checking if this is your definition. Do you think it is what Darwin would agree with?

[Helleofabore]

Or mishy, does it include this Professor’s definition.

well, i think it’s like your definition of “firefighter”—quite circular, as it goes, because it is a messy, socialized term. a woman is a person who is, or has been, presumed to adopt a passive role in sexual intercourse and a reproductive role in economic life. it’s not perfect

twitter.com/graceelavery/status/1405661319903289344?s=21

[TheWeeDonkey]

@LemonSwan

What has darwinism got to do with this?

Darwin spinning in his grave at the idea that there are more than 2 sexes in mammalian species is providing the electricity to power Twitter and Tumblr. Therefore propagating the belief that there are more than 2 sexes in mammalian species. 😶

[Artichokeleaves]

Some people have an individualised personal reality. It's become a thing.

However their personal alternate realities are not my problem. In reality, sex is dimorphic, and everyone knows and acts on this as established fact even if at the same time they're obfusticating about it.