Gender ideology and identification of remains

[LunchPoems]

So, I was listening to a detective novel. They discovered a body (no surprise!) The pathologist advised that it was female because of the length of the femur and the shape of the pelvis.

Makes sense, of course. But how can it be squared with the current ideology? Or am I being thick?

It can't. And there are always remains that cannot be sexed because of decay, bits missing etc. And a number of people who share major characteristics with the opposite sex - a woman with big hands, man with small feet for example. And then a small number of individuals whose bones share characteristics of the opposite sex, like women with narrow Q angles.

All of which are supposed to show that human beings are on a spectrum. There's a Twitter thread about "100 overlap" of sex characteristics that relies on these outliers to prove that human beings come in more than 2 sexes. Ludicrous, but is used so often that it has grown its own truth, especially when divorced from its original research.

NOTHING about gender ideology makes sense. It is rooted in fantasy and wishes.

I have a friend who is an osteoarchaeologist - they accurately sex v old skeletons. It is not hard

And there's always that really helpful stuff called DNA, that can be extracted from bones and teeth.

All this data doesn't tell you on its own of course how people lived - e.g. their social roles including 'gendered' roles - but there's no doubt about their biological sex.

But can sometimes be impossible. Honestly, don't feed any passing trolls. They leap on threads like this and will quote you as though you have killed every trans person ever.

These are people who use research like this to 'prove' that sex isn't immutable, binary or even exists! I had a long Twitter spat with one of them who just wouldn't move from that...

www.hindawi.com/journals/janthro/2015/908535/

It's not compatible. Neither is describing the women in Afghanistan or saying that men have not been allowed to leave Ukraine. If sex has nothing to do with bodies we only know if a person is a man or woman by asking each one individually. But TRAs are happy to assign a gender to others. Misgendering only matters if it is done to them.

Just had some strength training with an ex military guy; he commented that he always has to work on grip strength with women due to biology (predominantly size of hands and narrower wrists) and that female Olympic weight lifters have to have narrower bars. (All do but it's no different if you're a professional.)

I'm not defending TRA ideology, but they don't actually say that there is no biological difference between someone who is biologically male and someone who is biologically female, do they? Whereaa obviously it would be impossible to tell whether the person who's now a skeleton had 'identified' as male or female.

Ok, thanks all.

I don’t want to be goady, just wondered and couldn’t find an answer by googling.

Maybe that’s it @Fairislefandango . Thanks

Which 'they'? Because I really have had a long and detailed debate with a group who did say that differences noted were not indicative of sex, could not be relied upon because of all sorts of reasons - mainly that small men and large women do actually exist. They seemed to be quite expert in twisting all sorts of research to 'prove' that point.

Sure, small men and large women exist. But men with a female pelvis don’t.

An intact skeleton can be reliably sexed. If the skeleton isn’t intact then, depending on what bits are left, the identification is less accurate. At least til you dna test. That doesn’t mean the individual wasn’t sexed, just that the evidence is gone.

All this goes to show is that Robert Winston is right: humans can’t change sex.

Just wondering, if someone starting taking hormones/puberty blockers early enough, could that change their bones enough that their sex could not be guessed from their bones, or could be wrongly sexed? Obviously it could be checked by DNA.

I’m as gender critical as they come, but as I say I was just wondering.

Obviously. In the same way that it would be impossible to tell whether they supported Man Utd or Spurs.

Because I really have had a long and detailed debate with a group who did say that differences noted were not indicative of sex, could not be relied upon because of all sorts of reasons - mainly that small men and large women do actually exist.

Ok - clearly that's bonkers, unless they just meant that basing your assessment of sex on a quick glance at something like femur size could hypothetically turn out to be wrong if it were an unusually large woman.

Bones form in utero, so you’d have to start very early indeed. My guess (and it is a guess, because noone’s ever tried it) is that if you started meddling with the hormonal makeup of an embryo then whether the individual had successfully changed sex would be the least of their problems.

I mean, sure, if you could mimic all the subtle fluctuations in hormones from conception on then maybe. But we can’t.

The bones of babies/children are androgynous. It’s not until puberty (age 8+) that you get the sexual dimorphism occurring.

It’s as of yet unknown because not enough time or permission to carry out such a study. There have been studies showing that puberty blockers do affect bone mass and structure especially in transmen. But sexing skeletal remains relies on several morphological markers on several bones and the studies to date have measured with things like bone density scans, overall bone mass and height….which don’t tell you whether bone morphology does actually change.

I would suspect though that puberty blockers might result in a more androgynous bone morphology depending upon when puberty blockers started and what hormone therapy was then subsequently done such that it might be harder for an osteoarchaeologist to sex. But their sexing by visual and physical inspection and measurement these days is just an initial supposition, nowadays DNA is always extracted and tested and that would not change. So by the end of the sexing process, the remains would always have the correct sex.

mainly that small men and large women do actually exist

I’ve encountered that argument too - e.g. Lia Thomas, some people were saying that some women are just tall and strong and that it’s society’s fault to expect women to be petite.

That’s why there are several markers on skeletons to sex them. Femur size alone is not the best marker because large women and small men do exist. But looking at a female femur vs a male femur there is more than size. Womens femur bones tend to be more gracile and lighter in weight even if same length as a man’s (of course you have different weight guide for dry bones vs wet bones). Dry and wet don’t refer to water…but moisture levels in terms of how old the bones are. The older the bones, the drier and lighter they are. So you also need to age the skeletal remains while sexing them.

Anyway, in addition to the femur, there is also the pelvis and a female pelvis has different angles to a male pelvis. The opening is a different shape. And only women get pitting on their pubic symphysis (usually caused by childbearing).

As well as pelvis there is the skull itself, jaw angle, nasal bones, supraorbital bossing morphology and such all are markers of sex.

And this is why I struggle with Alice Robert’s stance on the whole thing. She’s a biological anthropologist, and an expert in anatomy, and skeletal remains. You’d think she’d get it. But no 🤷‍♀️

I read Written in The Bones last week. She gives one example of a skeleton where she had been asked to find clues to ID where the deceased had been transitioning. It showed clearly in the bones that it was a male transitioning and taking female hormones. Very interesting book.

I've had conversations with people who truly believe that what they say is accurate and that they were born female and any paleontology expert in a few years time would absolutely identify their penis as a female penis there body as a female body etc

I just didn't know what to say after that one

I know at least two of the male TRAs claim to be biological women.

A couple of years ago, a (then) 74 year old woman - Margaret Nelson, @Flashmaggie on Twitter - was visited by the police and warned about her views on this very subject
www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-are-the-police-stopping-a-74-year-old-tweeting-about-transgenderism-5-february-2019

The subsequent furore led to the police apologising, but she still gets monstered and cancelled
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-55904239

Osteoarchaeology is sO tRaNsPhObiC.