[quote ClareCAIS]@Cailleach1 of course if I had functioning androgen receptors my embryological development would have been very different
These are the more recent comments I’ve been receiving on these videos[/quote]
(Name Change as I am likely to copy and paste some text that I have used in replies outside of Mumsnet.)
Firstly, I am horrified by the ignorance (in both senses) of those comments on YouTube.
Secondly, whether or not Dalea Rundblad was lying about anything at all is completely irrelevant to the general issue of people with CAIS.
Some earlier comments to ClareCAIS here seemed to boil down to, "Don't expect me to treat you with common courtesy until you have answered whether or not you think Dalea was lying?"
WTAF! It's obvious that this whole mess has moved well beyond Dalea and into the general area of CAIS.
I will be more than happy to be corrected by ClareCAIS if anything I post here is incorrect or offensive. This is how I understand things:
"Variations of Sexual Development"
DSDs are also referred to as "Variations of Sexual Development" (VSDs) and IMHO that is a much more helpful way to think of them and the people who have VSDs. Not, as Exulansic describes them, as people with "disabilities" but as a tiny minority of people with Variations of Sexual Development that do not fit neatly into an XX vs XY binary matched perfectly with female vs male phenotypes.
KARYOTYPE vs PHENOTYPE
Exulansic has not been consistent in her arguments about excluding CAIS people from women's spaces.
Sometimes she has argued that XY = male and that people with CAIS should be excluded on that basis (Karyotype).
At other times she has advanced a theory that CAIS might result in "masculinised behaviour" and has justified exclusion on the basis of safeguarding (Phenotype).
She cannot have it both ways.
Phenotype
MASCULINISED BEHAVIOUR - PHYSICAL AGGRESSION
XX females, XY males, CAIS XY women/males and XX men/females
In what follows, I am going to refer to "CAIS XY women/males" because that seems to cover both bases in terms of how GC feminists are referring to people who have this rare VSD. (Personally, and it should become obvious why, I would prefer "CAIS women".)
Other VSDs I am going to mention - these are very relevant to Exulansic's arguments:
CAH (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia)
- CAH XX females are masculinised
- CAH XY males are feminised.
XX males exist.
De la Chapelle Syndrome. They are even more rare than CAIS XY women/males and I have not found any research that includes them in studies of propensity for physical aggression.
CAIS XY: Exulansic's theory is that, despite being androgen insensitive, that there is a possibility that there might be another route that the presence of T in the body could lead to "masculinisation" of behaviour.
Research
There is a current research project with aims that mention, "If XY females with CAIS resemble women rather than men in regard to physical aggression, confidence that T is the responsible agent will be increased."
grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-HD081720-05
(That is a direct quote so do not complain to me if you do not like the wording "XY females".)
The grant holder has not published anything relevant to this aspect of the project so I have written to her asking if this has been researched yet.
However, there are already multiple research projects using "desktop" measures of "physical aggression" comparing:
- CAIS XY women/males with CAH XX and XY people
- CAH XX and XY people with both XX females and XY males
Although the results are not conclusive most of these studies have found that:
-
XX Females, CAIS XY women/males and CAH XY males show less propensity for physical aggression than CAH XX females and XY males.
-
CAH XX females show less propensity for physical aggression than XY males.
-
XY males show more propensity to initiate physical aggression than XX females
-
XX females show more propensity to persist with physical aggression once started than do XY males.
Discussion
Exulansic uses the theoretical possibility that CAIS results in "masculinised behaviour" as an argument to exclude people with CAIS from women's spaces, ie. on Safeguarding grounds.
There is no evidence to support this hypothesis.
However, there IS tentative evidence that some women with DSDs (CAH XX females) are so masculinised that they are "more like men" on many measures, including propensity for aggression, than:
- CAH XY males
- CAIS XY women/males
- XX women
For the avoidance of doubt:
I am NOT suggesting that CAH females are "really men" or "partly male" nor that they should be excluded from women's spaces. The single relevant factor is that their propensity for physical aggression would appear to be further from that of XX females than CAIS XY women/males.
Where is that knowledge going to take us, if we follow Exulansic's argument that "masculinised behaviour" is the criterion for exclusion?
It results in the:
- inclusion of CAIS XY women/males on the basis of phenotypically female behaviour by people who are, to all real-life intents and purposes, phenotypically female
- exclusion of CAH XX females
Karyotype
If we follow Exulansic's other proposal, that exclusion is based on Karyotype XY or presence of an SRY gene, then the result is:
- inclusion of XX males (De la Chapelle Syndrome)
(XX males are usually considered to be sterile in that technical, medical assistance is required in order to extract sperm with which to father a child.)
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