Exulansic has reduced following?

[Linearpark]

Are people still following her now she's migrated to Odyssey? Her numbers are way down but you'd think everyone knew where to find her by now. Is there something about the Odyssey platform that is off-putting that I should know about. eg has it got unsavoury content or is it sound and just small and alternative? Or do people subscribe to channels that they aren't really interested in? Just wondered.

I honestly don't know what's happened to my username .

There are only 2 sexes. I'm leaving gender identity out of it as it doesn't seem evidence based.

More worryingly, last night I was on gettr, I don't know if that's cool on here or not, but I can tell you that the way Ex and Karen are behaving is getting frankly worrying. There are also some dangerous tras around threatening to do her address and also report her to her professional body. This is completely out of order. One tra got banned. Then it emerges that Claire Graham really is going to report Ex to the Prof body. She is deadly serious and has looked up definitions of bad behaviour and how Ex behaviour matches up. I have to say her behaviour does match up yet I still think it's wrong to report someone unless they are frankly dangerous. Anyway you can imagine the fracas as Karen says.

But looking at recent postings Karen is frankly going batshit crazy calling anyone who raises any issue all sorts of names and interrogating them. She did this to me and she didn't realise that she was talking to someone who has followed her from the beginning and contributed many positive comments to the chat. She treated me like a piece of shit tonight. Like I'm a tra, and others are being similarly treated. Someone called are has been accused of writing the offending dilation leaflet. They have PAIS but are at the female side. Karen is calling her a man and accusing "him" of promoting online dilating sessions with this booklet as a sexual fetish. There is no evidence and this is a dsd advocate of 10 years . Then someone gets hold of a copy of this leaflet and there's at the back a list of all female authors who are consultant Dr's. No apology to Rae they just condemn him for her stern letter proclaiming her innocence.

Sorry forgot inverted commas there. So then Ex starts going off on one of her fantastical tangents and starts saying all babies should be tested at birth. And someone says what for, apparently for CAIS, so again what for, as what is the point ? So Ex says so they can be told about there condition and that they will be sterile when they grow up so someone points out it is not necessary and abusive. Wait till a period doesn't come. But no, we must keep them out.
Can't get my head around it all just what is going on. I used to very much respect the pair of them. In some ways they still produce some good stuff but both seem to be becoming extremists and noone gets a chance to defend themselves. If anyone so much as tags Claire into a message that's it you are part of the conspiracy.

I think the discussion of this issue is not because of the needs, situation or significance of those with this/these disorders. I suspect (and it is only my opinion) it is because some/many people think it opens doors for others to 'identify' or conflate their situation with those who have any of these disorders.

Knowing as early as possible is still best, in my opinion. Even from a practical level. No one knows what therapies medical science will develop in the future. If you knew that you child has this condition, and they could get treatment to 'turn on the gene' and be able to 'activate' the receptors, why would you not access that? As a parent. Obviously if the treatment is not worse than the condition.

Also, the studies showed that a certain percentage of individuals had precursors to sperm (I think in CAIS). What if a way was developed in which they were able to mature these precursors to viable sperm? You'd give your child the possibility of becoming a parent, and having a family in their future relationships.

I wouldn't be advocating a situation where everybody is kept as ignorant as possible, for as long as possible. Forewarned is forearmed!

Completely agree Caillieach, these things need to be dealt with sensitively. What's best for the children should be the concern. Not whether it helps or hinders men trying to pretend to be women.

Having said that, testing at birth doesn't really make sense for a condition this rare. Not on the NHS anyway.

These are women though. So you want to extract tissue , persuade it into meiotic division and produce sperm? The thing is, the germ cells and their mitotic products do not have functional androgen receptors and androgen stimulation is required for spermatogenesis.

Then there would be a need for a surrogate, and your male partner couldn't provide his sperm as you'd need an egg. Might be simpler just to get the dad involved.

If lesbian, same really partner steps up.

The nipt test is now on the nhs but I'm not sure if that's for all women or just some.

It can be done privately too, I had one at 9 weeks pregnant. It's a simple but expensive blood test.

However the sex specific part of the test, which would pick up dsds, obviously reveal the sex of the baby which has other implications (sex selection) and was why there were concerns about it being on the nhs. It also picks up a range of other trisomies and issues. This opens an ethical can of worms.

Not all countries have a state healthcare system.

It's not the main point of the debate here. People can hang on to Ex's ideas about testing for the child but it doesn't make her assertions any less damaging.

I've been watching the gender clusterfuck unfold, and doing what I can to speak out against it, for ten years now.

In all that time, the consistent message has been that trans =/= DSD. The preferred strategy, when faced with TRA BS 'intersex' arguments, has consistently been to point that out, along with the fact that most people with these conditions, along with their advocacy orgs, have asked not to be dragged into arguments about gender.

They're still asking but it appears that some people have now decided it's a better strategy to ignore their plea, drag them in anyway and engage in extremely convoluted, technical arguments about the most correct way to categorise their sex.

I don't understand why and I find this new approach incredibly cruel, unnecessary and counterproductive.

As far as I can tell, there is not one single, agreed way of absolutely medically / scientifically categorising sex, even among those who are actually qualified to have an opinion worth listening to.

There is consensus that biological categories are all, by their nature, fuzzy but that doesn't necessarily mean there is a spectrum between them.

Certainly in the case of sex there is no spectrum. We can have a clear definition of male and female while still acknowledging the edges of those categories are very slightly fuzzy.

Another area of consensus among suitably medically qualified people is that what matters first and foremost is people's humanity and dignity.

I am appalled to see all this intense speculation about the genital arrangements, other sexual characteristics, physiology and every minute detail of a tiny number of people's rare medical conditions. I have read some incredibly dehumanising stuff over the past couple of months and some senselessly cruel suggestions about what a tiny number of people's private medical data should mean for how they are treated by society.

It's totally unneccessary.

Every person with a DSD is recorded as male or female at birth, or shortly thereafter, and from what I have read, the vast majority of people with a DSD stick with their recorded birth sex.

So why don't we just go with that? Outside of sport, what are the arguments against just using recorded sex (i.e. legal sex)?

When it comes to our rights, legal sex is what matters. That's why the GRA is a big deal.

If the GRA did not exist then the only people who could change the sex on their birth certificate would be a subset of people with a DSD. Fair enough IMO, but even if you think not, DSD are rare, DSD where the sex of a person is truly ambiguous are vanishingly rare and unlike trans, are not socially contagious.

Treating people with a DSD as human beings with human rights, according to their recorded sex, even if they apply to change it, creates no loopholes and opens no floodgates.

We have learnt recently that the TRA have been exploiting DSD and the accommodations put in place for people with these rare conditions for at least 80 years. Corbett v Corbett closed the loophole that the TRA had been exploiting since 'The Hidden Case of Ewan Forbes' and probably a lot earlier.

Why the hell would anyone decide to go down this rabbit hole now and argue for women's rights on these terms?

It's fucking bullshit.

It IS fucking bullshit.
We've gone from "people with DSDs want no part in this debate, please respect them and leave them out of it" - to pulling them into the debate and almost ending up as militant as the TRA.

I cannot believe it has come to this.
I cannot believe some people are advocating this.
DSDs are provable, legitimate genetic conditions. So rare as to be almost unheard of.
And in the case of CAIS in particular, it's astonishing to me that anyone would suggest they use male spaces. It's not about "identifying" as anything. There is NO masculinisation at any point in their development.
I think I'm out of this one now.

@MangyInseam

But I cannot agree that DSDs have ANY place in the transgender argument.

They are though, because the are part of the whole structure of the belief system. It's not just that some people make direct arguments, in it's more sophisticated forms it's an indirect argument that's being made.

One example being the with regard to the idea that there is this thing called gender identity which is separate from sex. Some people, even some psychologists, think that because it is possible to have a person who is technically male, but who has a "real" self-identity as female - and what's more this is socially recognized so not some crazy fantasy - this is evidence that somehow gender identity is separate from or can form apart from our experienced of a sexed body.

So, because we know there are people with DSDs who are biologically male but identify as female we can extrapolate some kind of capacity for gender identity that is separate from the sexed body itself.

Since most of us don't want to deny that, people trying to push gender ideology find that's a powerful argument with many people, and then they use it to argue that there are other situations in which people might experience this different gender identification.

So it's not just the argument that being transgender is a dsd, it's this argument about the existence of a kind of gender essence which can in some cases be experienced as separate from the body. Dsd's are just evidence of that in this scenario.

Someone needs to do the work to really dig deep into this idea of gender identity - our sense of ourself as male or female - and how it's formed, IMO. Because the idea of some essence is just a bad conclusion but seems compelling to a lot of people who should know better.

People with DSD are not part of any belief system and are not evidence of anything. They are just human beings, navigating the world in the bodies they were born with. Same as the rest of us.

DSD existed before the evolution of even rudimentary brains or nervous systems, let alone belief systems. Disorders of sexual development are as old as sexual reproduction, which predates humans by almost 2 billion years.

Why is this suddenly a problem now?

People with DSD have sexed bodies, the same as the rest of us, even if the gender system - which is what we are trying to get rid of - is not quite sure which oppressive pathway they should be pushed into.

So, because we know there are people with DSDs who are biologically male but identify as female we can extrapolate some kind of capacity for gender identity that is separate from the sexed body itself.

There are people with dsds who have unabiguously female genitalia at birth, who are recorded as female and who are brought up as girls. Their experience of the world is the same as mine until the point where their periods did not start and as a result of medical investigations they were diagnosed with CAIS.

'Gender identity' is harmful bobbins. I don't 'identify as female', why on earth would I extrapolate that someone with CAIS would?

We're all just born in our bodies.

Completely agree with everything you've said Langcleg. I'm completely exhausted after two nights of trying to get Ex and Karen to back off people with DSDs. I've had enough. The pair of them are mad as hatters.

Totally agree that this is absolute BS, regressive and inhumane. Ex, YKr and their extremist fans are all on Gettr now and still going further down the rabbit hole - I hope in ever decreasing circles. It's good to see people speak out here, but there's not a great deal of support for the remaining DSD allies on Twitter. As a result I think a lot of people still don't really know what's been going on and others are scared to speak out in case they also get targeted in one of the response / take down videos this gang tend to go in for about people who stand up to them. Those who have called it out eg. JCJ, Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce - have done so in quite an opaque way, not naming anyone, so it's still going over a lot of people's heads. Ex is getting quite a few credible speaking invitations and I really can't imagine those inviting her would want to be associated with her views re DSDs - it really doesn't help the movement at all.

@ATeamAmy

I agree with everything said about girls with CAIS needing to be the exception to any rule written along a strict XX/XY boundary.

However, having followed these arguments these last few weeks, my hardline stance on trans people (no DSDs involved) has been challenged. I can't see any moral difference when it comes to people like Jazz who have been brought up from a very young age (an age that few of us would have clear memories of) as female, have been told by all the responsible adults around her that she's female and that her genitalia is a mistake by God or similar, has gone on puberty blockers that have rendered her male genitalia next to useless and led her to develop a typical female appearance, and ultimately had bottom surgery. The notion that Jazz and individuals like her should be encouraged to/forced to abandon their identity and "resume" being male is, I think problematic. The only difference in a trans case to a girl with CAIS is that, in the former, the child is surrounded by mendacious, exploitative adults (and even that's not cut and dried in the case of well-meaning parents following medical advice), and in the latter, the parents are wholly innocent. And either way, as far as the child is concerned, they are not responsible for parental actions over which they have no control, and medical misdiagnosis.

Also, I'm assuming that there may be girls with CAIS who will decide to actually embrace their XY genetic status. What is their status? Are they transitioners? Surely we cannot morally oppose any girl with CAIS deciding they would like to identify as male?

It's a bloody minefield, and I completely agree that DSD conditions should not form any part of the GC discussion and respect the request that they be left alone. Having said that, I have seen DSD charities linked as a parent resource on GC websites, so possibly our side is also muddying the water.

My hardline stance has not been challenged at all.

There is a bright, clear line between people with a DSD and people with a gender identity.

There is a bright, clear difference between a person navigating the world in the body they were born with, and a person navigating the world in a body that has been medically and surgically altered because of 'gender'.

There are many victims of gender ideology inxcluding young males like Jazz and also a much larger group of female detransitioners who have been permanently masculinised and who still need to navigate the world in the bodies that they have.

We need practical solutions for the casualties of gender. The last thing we should be doing is using their horrible circumstances to try to argue any sort of political point.

Agree with everything Langcleg wrote.

I'm appalled by the cruelty being shown by Exulansic, Karen and some of their followers. I don't want any part of it.

There does need to be a discussion around sport though. There absolutely has to be a discussion around 46XY DSDs, including CAIS, competing in women’s competition. There is no escaping that and it is often tied in with trans athletes by TRAs and those DSD athletes themselves. The debate is the same regarding male biology competing in women’s competition. The IOC have intrinsically linked the two together in their document so there’s no escaping putting the two together for sport.

People with DSD are not part of any belief system and are not evidence of anything. They are just human beings, navigating the world in the bodies they were born with. Same as the rest of us.

I didn't say anything about a belief system.

It's quite common in science to propose the existence of something you can't see directly because of indirect evidence. In some cases that kind of approach can give such strong indications it's generally regarded as true.

And it's quite common with explorations around the brain and how it works that observations around abnormal developments or the effects of brain injuries and such are used to draw conclusions around brains more generally.

If you want to stop that kind of thing it would have consequences well beyond this issue.

If we want to understand how people, including people in the medical world, have ended up proposing that there is some kind of separate capacity around our sexed identity, it leads right back to these kinds of cases. It doesn't really matter if any of us like it, or if we think the conclusions in this case are bogus. Just ignoring the link being made means you can't argue against it.

As for it all being about protecting people's dignity, that is an argument often used by those talking about gender ideology, there's a kind of general truth about it for everyone but it doesn't make the questions or claims being made go away.

Karen Davies is off-the-hook insane now. Exulansic isn't quite so abusive but I just think she's just becoming irrelevant.

Reading Gettr for just 5 mins in their circles is an utter cesspit. I can't believe I used to subscribe and follow both of them. I used to watch Exulansics YT channel avidly. I foolish I feel now.

It I was Stella O Malley or a leader in Genspect I would be preparing a legal case right now. However they're probably too busy or classy to respond. I wouldn't be so dignified.

The detail of the argument is one thing, the behaviour of Karen Davis and Exulansic is quite another. They are behaving like bullies, turned on by power and self righteousness rage. There is absolutely no reason why anyone who wants real discussion about these issues would turn to either of these two bullies seeking fair- minded, informed analysis. Karen Davis has lied repeatedly about Genspect and every time she is corrected by a parent she deletes the comments. Why does she do that? Exulansic clearly can't handle disagreement either.
BTW, probably a stupid question, is @langcleginspace the same as @langcleg?

Just out of interest, what specific lies has KD told about Genspect?

No LangclegsinSpace is like me, paying tribute to former poster Langcleg with a name change from when she was banned.

We need practical solutions for the casualties of gender. The last thing we should be doing is using their horrible circumstances to try to argue any sort of political point.

I have at no point in my post intimated or stated that we should use their circumstances as a political point, @LangClegsInSpace. Please don't misrepresent my post because you don't agree with my feelings on the matter of children, socially transed before they could even read and subsequently medically transed, making me (not you, not anyone else) feel that they are a moral grey area with regard to strict segregation along XX/XY lines.

I didn't say anything about a belief system.

Yes you did. Here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/4494001-Exulansic-has-reduced-following?msgid=115631030

As a parent who has followed this very closely and made many comments on KD's YouTube, I can answer this. The specific lies KD has said about Genspect:

1. She's said Genspect is in favour of bottom surgery for children. Nope.
2. She's said Genspect is in favour of puberty blockers. Wrong.
3. She's said Genspect is funded by Jennifer Pritzker/ Arcus foundation. Another lie.
4. She's said that Genspect is professionally associated with a number of people such as James Cantor, Michael Bailey and Ray Blanchard. All untrue. None of these people have ever been team members or advisors in any capacity.
5. She said that Claire Graham is a paid employee of Genspect. She isn't and have never been, she's a team member who volunteered input re DSDs.
6. She has said that nobody has told her about the work Genspect done- they have and she has deleted the comments.
7. She has said that nobody has told her about the work that Stella O'Malley and Sasha Ayad has done , they have and she has deleted the comments.
8. She has knowingly lied about Genspect by telling people that when they repeat James Cantor's 80% desistance stat that this is a form of platforming James Cantor. Yet she repeats that statistic herself and she has deleted the comments pointing out the hypocrisy.
9. She has implied that parents who support Genspect should be regarded with suspicion of child abuse - this is a lie in kind.

And I'm angry. Genspect is actually shifting this conversation and has helped me. My friend was able to tell her story on TV only because of Genspect. These people don't care about dysphoric kids AT ALL.