Vagina Museum thread about chromosomal mosaicism.

[Slythermum]

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1463138816684875785.html

The twaw lot are having a field day.

If this person has xy chromosomes and yet gave birth to children I would expect that person to be a chimera which is a verified condition where 1 twin absorbs the other twin and the resulting child caries both twins dna

That is so interesting, though I don’t really have enough knowledge to understand it.
You’d have thought she couldn’t seem so normal or be well. I wonder what her hormones were like?

Her hormones were normal.

This is really interesting.

But has absolutely fuck all to do with the males who are trying to encroach on women's rights.

What has it got to do with trans?

@Thefartingsofaofdenmarkstreet

This is really interesting.

But has absolutely fuck all to do with the males who are trying to encroach on women's rights.

Quite. Mosaicism and chimerism are really interesting, but have nothing to do with typical males identifying as women.

It's really on the same level as the "quantum mechanics is complicated and confusing, therefore any old woo woo goes" type arguments you see quacks advancing all the time.

🙄 nothing to do with trans.

transwomen are xy wanting to be xx.

Not medical anomalies such as this and definitely not people with a difference of sexual development.

It's the bit at the end that they lean on:

The researchers noted that they have no idea if this woman was a one-off, or if there's more people like her, because there is no reason to karyotype someone who developed as expected, and experienced no problems with fertility.

Except that when they did do this testing as standard, it didn't reveal any more instances than in the general population (this one's from Australia, but I believe they found the same in the UK)

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6083207/

In fact if you scroll down you can see a whole list of related papers, and the ones I've clicked on all say the same thing - no point checking chromosomes just because of gender dysphoria, as they've never found any link.

It's really on the same level as the "quantum mechanics is complicated and confusing, therefore any old woo woo goes" type arguments you see quacks advancing all the time.

A TRA hit me with that the other day. 'Gender is too complicated to understand, but so is quantum physics, they are the same!'

A TRA hit me with that the other day. 'Gender is too complicated to understand, but so is quantum physics, they are the same!'

Except quantum physics is actually very precise, has a lot of solid theoretical background which is born out in practical experiments, so has huge predictive value.

It's not even that complex. Non-intuitive, yes, but utterly understandable. (Can even be translated into other languages without any loss of applicability!)

Just because you as a layperson (who hasn't even attempted to) doesn't understand something, doesn't mean it's a bunch of meaningless nonsense.

Although it could be - see Lindsay, Pluckrose and Boghassian's accepted submissions to assorted "studies" journals. It was quite easy to make up "gender" papers, but they certainly couldn't have created a quantum physics paper.

Chromosomal mosaicism is vanishingly rare, and can often lead to other, serious, health problems beyond infertility. I hate the way a difficult health condition is being used to justify other behaviours.

There is a fabulous riposte to people preaching theories to support quack science - the armchair scientific theorists. Have they read the entire paper, is it peer reviewed and published in a reputable journal, have they done a literature to see where this fits within the field and have they done the same with other articles cited to support the paper in question?

If TRAs think this is proof that transpeople are some sort of male/female hybrid, would they be happy for an extra safety net of chromosome checking to be built into any legal transition process? I imagine the number of legal transitions would plummet as a result. I hope people like Clare Graham push back against this latest "gotcha". The appropriation of the experiences of people with DSDs is particularly heinous.

I've argued with TRAs against that one paper about a subject with mosaicism being proof that sex doesn't exist several times but that tidal wave of clueless idiocy is too much, I hope someone else does, either an intersex activist or a biologist.

In the GIDS paper on puberty blockers by Carmichael etc they did karyotyping and hormone profiles on all children before giving puberty blockers. All were as expected for their natal sex. Trans is not an intersex disorder

I see the desperate attempt to pin trans identities onto something tangible as related to the age old stigmatisation of mental health issues.

And even the current drive to de-stigmatise mental health issues often ignores huge environmental /social /cultural /developmental factors contributing to mental ill health and attempts to solidify the various diagnoses as actual things. Which then get used as the basis for identities in much the same way a declaration of being trans is.

It all feels very unhelpful towards building societies that are healthy and accepting for everyone.

An interesting facet of this unusual case (iirc, I read the paper a while ago) is that it doesn't seem like this woman had any sort of 'gender' issues - she neither wished to nor could have changed sex.

I happened to read something about Turner Syndrome yesterday and it struck me at the time that it was something the trans movement must latch on to- although it's not linked to it at all.

Women with Turner Syndrome are XX women where something has gone wrong with an X chromosome- missing completely/missing from some cells. It can have lots of effects or very few.

They are not men with XY chromosomes who want to live as women, or women genetically who want to live as men.

I have no doubt there will be other chromosomal conditions that medically are unusual and no doubt they'll be used to blur the discussion: which is that women want the aspects of society that are ours protected- places we should feel safe (loos, changing rooms, institutions like hospitals, prisons); we want ownership of language relating to us and our bodies- eg menstruation, mother, menopause; we want privacy as women sometimes that is not invaded by men of any kind.

I know this may not seem relevant but I have had three ‘failed’ pregnancies with babies with chromosomal disorders including mosaicism, and Turners. None of the pregnancies were viable. It was so traumatic. I just hate seeing these conditions discussed in this way though I’m struggling really to explain why. Maybe it just feels flippant. I don’t know.

I'm somewhat reminded of this, which was popular during my university days:
xkcd.com/451/

Glibness aside, I really dislike the conflation of trans and chromosomal disorders / disorders of sexual development. As pp have said, there is no correlation between being trans and having chromosomal mosaicism or a DSD. They are different things. Waving around medical terminology and the lived experiences of people with DSDs to imply that sex is "complicated" or that there are more than 2 biological sex classes is scientific nonsense (although fashionable nonsense) and insulting to people who experience difficulties because of a DSD or other medical disorder.

“TedImgoingmad

If TRAs think this is proof that transpeople are some sort of male/female hybrid, would they be happy for an extra safety net of chromosome checking to be built into any legal transition process? I imagine the number of legal transitions would plummet as a result. I hope people like Clare Graham push back against this latest "gotcha". The appropriation of the experiences of people with DSDs is particularly heinous.“

Yes, there has been a recent thread about a trans woman biographer on Woman’s Hour conflating Transgenderism with DSD when citing some historic legal cases - an WH u fortunately not picking up on the sleight of hand.

I like the cartoon

It does annoy me that trans people like to pretend that GC feminists have never heard of DSDs or chimerism.

The first case of chimerism I read about concerned a pregnant woman in the US who applied for benefits. She took a DNA test to prove she was the mother of her two older children (apparently this was a standard requirement where she lived) and the result suggested she was unrelated to them.

The woman was investigated for fraud and faced the threat of losing custody of her children. However, when she gave birth to her third child, blood samples were immediately taken from both of them and found not to be a match. Further tests then revealed that the woman was a chimera. Some of her cells had DNA that was related to her children’s DNA and other cells had a different DNA profile.

In another case of chimerism I read about, a woman had a different shade of skin on half of her lower body. You could see the dividing line running vertically down her midriff.

These cases are very interesting, but they don’t really help us work out whether trans women can fairly compete in women’s sport, or whether it’s safe and appropriate to place trans women offenders in women’s prisons.

In my second sentence, I’d like to replace “trans people”, with “some trans activists who are active on Twitter”.

My apologies.

know this may not seem relevant but I have had three ‘failed’ pregnancies with babies with chromosomal disorders including mosaicism, and Turners. None of the pregnancies were viable. It was so traumatic. I just hate seeing these conditions discussed in this way though I’m struggling really to explain why. Maybe it just feels flippant. I don’t know.

It is relevant, I'm sorry people talk about these serious conditions so glibly