We might all have some male cells inside us?!

[Gosports]

I just came across this article that suggests just that. Our chromosomal makeup might be more complex than we assume. I had no idea. I thought every cell in my body was female.

I’m 100% GC and fully believe Robert Winston when he says we can’t change sex, but maybe the debate is a bit more nuanced than I first thought. Anyone with a more scientific background than me (ie, none) have any thoughts?

www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/

Yeah right cos I have a male brain in a female body which ( according to the school bullies ) makes me weird and worth excluding

Despite that I still managed to give birth anf if I had failed the doctors would be asking why, not saying -ah male person after all

Surly this is just in cases where there is chimeraism or chromosomal abnormalities not in everyone.

I find it fascinating but I don’t think it has much to do with the biological sex/gender swapping debate.

What is the third sex, I wonder?

Most of this is just a kind of word play. Convoluted stuff that leaves you with a less accurate model of the world than the basic one. Complexity doesn't always improve things.

A huge proportion of the cells in your body aren't even human, genetically. And many of the human ones aren't sexed, or even have genetic material.

To actually have genetically male cells inside a female would just be an artifact of having absorbed another embryo. That sort of thing happens - growth is messy.

A bunch of development disorders can happen, but they're akin to having a missing limb, extra fingers, whatever. The development disorders don't invalidate the two sexes any more than they invalidate the one species.

I've males walking around with male cells in my body for over two years of my life.

Oddly it made no difference to any aspect of my life that is informed by which sex I am (medical requirements, risk of violence, my character or interests).

That’s a good point, it is akin to having an extra finger etc. Someone with an extra finger might not quite fit the usual model but is 100% human

I've been^ , not 'I've males'

But anyhow it's DSD again

It focus is on sexual reproductive organs
It states most people don't discover until they go for fertility treatment

There is no evidence that female and males are fundamentally different beyond sexual organs . If there was - and it's a popular belief in America and Afghanistan - you have justification for keeping women in the kitchen and out of public life .

It not got anything to do with which reproductive class you belong to. That is what sex is. It relates to which reproductive system you have, the one intended to support the large immobile gametes or the one intended to support the small mobile ones. For the vast, vast majority of people there is no doubt about this.

I mean this paragraph is just bollocks:

A 46-year-old pregnant woman had visited his clinic at the Royal Melbourne Hospital in Australia to hear the results of an amniocentesis test to screen her baby's chromosomes for abnormalities. The baby was fine—but follow-up tests had revealed something astonishing about the mother. Her body was built of cells from two individuals, probably from twin embryos that had merged in her own mother's womb. And there was more. One set of cells carried two X chromosomes, the complement that typically makes a person female; the other had an X and a Y. Halfway through her fifth decade and pregnant with her third child, the woman learned for the first time that a large part of her body was chromosomally male. “That's kind of science-fiction material for someone who just came in for an amniocentesis,” says James.

"Something astonishing"? "Kind of science fiction material"? Such hyperbole. She is the result of the fusion of two embryoes, so two genetic codes showed up in genetic testing.

But you'll note no claim that it has any impact on her whatsoever. The fact that you now have genetic tests able to detect traces of the embryos you absorbed when you grew doesn't change anything about you.

It's not that there were some really weird people who weren't properly men or women that we can now detect the reason for. It's that we're just detecting something otherwise imperceptible, and irrelevant.

The correct response should be "oh, that's kind of interesting/cool", not "oh, well, we have to let men into women's sports now".

@anothersmahedmug but that’s the thing - the article was seeming to suggest we might all have DSD to some extent. I guess it does make sense that there might be a higher proportion than previously thought because most of us never get our chromosomes tested.

This article by Claire Ainsworth had become one of the most posted ‘gotchas’ on MN at one stage I am sure.

She also clarified that she meant that there is still two sexes but with many body variations within those two. Not that sex is spectrum.

TRAs also use this article to shoehorn the bodies of those with medical conditions to make their case that sex is a spectrum.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4405866-TT-Exulansic-Youtube

The thread above has a number of posters with these differences of sex development discussing just how those tactics cause pain and harm. And ask that all people stop politicising their conditions.

I absolutely have male cells inside me. Because I've been pregnant and given birth to two boys and two girls and their cells mixed with mine and that's that. It's called fetomaternal transfer. I also had sex with my husband last night.

Bit I'm still female.

I think what's fascinating about this is that it's scientific and follows a clear process of hypothesis, testing and understanding.

Surely by saying that science now understands and can test for mis-matched chromosomes you're arguing against self-ID? If you think you might be 'scientifically' trans then have a karyotype run and you can be supported accordingly. If you are only trans due to a feeling and not biologically then that's an entirely difference basis for argument, surely?

@NecessaryScene I quite agree, no justification for men in women’s sports!

That's like saying we might all have genetic abnormalities to some extent - well yes everyone does

But that doesn't mean we all have three legs to some extent

@CaravanConcerns I like that idea!

any argument based on this kind of thing is moronic. Grey exists. Different kinds of grey. That doesn't therefore mean black and white don't exist.

Mosaicism is not new either.

abcnews.go.com/amp/Primetime/shes-twin/story?id=2315693

Having ‘male’ cells in your body does not change your sex. As Necessary points out, does having huge colonies of bacteria and other non-human cells in our body mean we are not human?

But that doesn't mean we all have three legs to some extent

I like that :)

"We might all have three legs" is a very good response.

If someone has an unusual structure, such as some trace different genetic cells, which may even be a different sex, that's interesting, but irrelevant. (Except I guess to people designing genetic tests who need to be aware of that possibility?)

If someone actually has a real development disorder, then that's a medical condition that needs to be dealt with. Whether it's a sexual one or not.

Sexual development disorders are no different from any other disorder, except that they're being leveraged to break the male/female separation.

Fortunately we only have one human species around - neanderthals are extinct. But if there was more than one species present, and any laws in place to protect for discrimination or whatever, we'd have the similarly unpleasant sight of people trying to use Downs Syndrome or just daft genetic anomalies like that woman's to argue they could identify as a different species.

Classification by sex is necessary in some circumstances to uphold the rights of 50% of the population. Doing so, and hence requiring individuals with DSDs to fit into that framework is by far the lesser of two evils. And treating people with DSDs as male or female, is conceptually sounder than saying they're neither.

What has any of this got to do with male rapists in female prison, the likes of Lia Thomas smashing sports records in the women's category or women having to 'reframe their trauma' if they don't want a male in their refuge?

If nothing....then I'm really not interested in the weaoonising of people with DSDs to argue for the erasure of women's rights.

Micro-chimerism is weird. Very, very cool, but weird www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4989712/

I think this tells us we have more to learn about genetics, rather than that we have more to learn about sex.

@Hasselhoffsheadband I agree, and understand that people with DSDs don’t want their condition used in this way. It was more the suggestion that we could all have a DSD to some extent that gave me pause for thought.

I had two sons, so that means I have male cells bobbing about in me. That doesn't mean their pregnancies gave me a DSD.

Honestly, these people who are advising governments about sex and gender, sometimes I wonder if they get all their info from reddit.