They / them at work

[pootlefump]

I've just written a long post and it's disappeared so in brief - how do you deal with staff who are they/them at work? I will really struggle to call a very obvious biological male 'they'. I also can't loose my job and do want to be respectful but also can't change my view on this nonsense !

Well that’s bollocks.

I have the BRCA2 gene mutation have had extensive genetic counselling and am part of a long term research study that includes yearly mammograms - no one has ever measured my fingers when calculating my risk.

@fedupandstuck You said that my paragraphs about prenatal hormones were dodgy science, but studies reported in the reputable scientific journal Pediatric Neuroendocrinology beg to differ.

The hormone bath in the womb cannot affect your sex. It's too late - that characteristic has already been fixed. And if you've never been female, how can you feel female, because you can't possibly know what it feels like to be female, or even if it feels like anything at all. That's something I can never get past.

No, I said that your whole post was dodgy. I'm not disagreeing that foetuses are exposed to hormones in utero. If I was disputing that then I'd have done so specifically. Just because some aspect of what you wrote has some truth to it doesn't make it all accurate!

I have BRCA 2 too. My family history goes back to 1849 - the furthest you can tell, since death certificates weren’t invented till 1837. It’s very rude to dismiss something as bollocks. It’s known that prenatal sex hormones testosterone and oestrogen influence finger length, and that oestrogen fuels the majority of breast cancers. BRCA is different because it’s down to a faulty gene rather than oestrogen exposure.

Well I'm seriously right handed. I wouldn't trust my left hand to get a drink from the table to my lips. I've done a bit more looking at my hands and they are pretty much the same size apart from my right index finger. It's more than a cm longer than the left one!

Again, you might think that what I actually said was dodgy, but it’s been reported in reputable medical journals.

@Belichtofalicht what has been reported in reputable medical journals, specifically? Ta.

I just refuse to out of principle, but have never needed to. 'Oh Bob is at lunch atm' is sufficient.

In women, whose index fingers are mostly longer than their ring fingers, the effect is more pronounced in the right hand.

I don’t know if the same is true for men. That is, where a man’s ring fingers are longer, if the effect is stronger on the right.

I have one in my therapy group (mental illness goes hand in hand with this) and I call her by her name all the time. In front of doctors when she’s not there I say ‘she’ I wouldn’t say she in front of her, I don’t want her to think I hate her because I don’t, I hate the ideology

The stuff I said in my post that you thought was dodgy, about body first and then brain and everything else can all be found here:

Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF (2010). "Sexual hormones and the brain: an essential alliance for sexual identity and sexual orientation". Pediatric Neuroendocrinology. Endocrine Development. Vol. 17. pp. 22–35. doi:10.1159/000262525.

And many other studies too.

@TathingScinsel

There’s a huge amount of evidence for what I said about finger length and breast cancer risk. Maybe do some research before erupting with “Bollocks.” No one measured my fingers during all my testing and genetic counselling either. Maybe they should have done.

Links between finger length and breast cancer, including age at diagnosis and links between finger length and menopause:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3493764/#:~:text=We%20found%20a%20direct%20association,associated%20with%20age%20at%20diagnosis.

Links between finger length and other cancers:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5822871/

I cannot find in the mentioned paper where it states that all embryos are female until they are exposed to hormones in utero. Perhaps I missed it.

Regarding male and female brains, presumably in the 14 years since that paper was published we now have the ability to scan people's brains and definitively identify whether they are transgender and what their sexuality is? Because of these specific differences in brain development that causes a brain to be specifically identifiable as male or female.

@fedupandstuck

Sorry, that part is in other research. Check out the fourth line of the second para of this link. We are all phenotypically female at the start. Yes, our developmental destiny might be to end up male due to the chromosomes we received at conception, but that’s expressed later in gestation as we develop. Before that stage, at the start, we are all female. Obviously there is no differentiated genitalia at this stage; that too comes later.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222286/

@fedupandstuck No, I don’t think we can use brain scans the way you suggest. Culture, socialisation etc all play their role. But if you were to do a large-scale scan, you would probably be able to see some generalities in brain structure and gender identity, and some correlation to those in finger length. But individuals vary a lot, of course. I’m talking in generalities only.

The fact is, what happens to us hormonally in the womb has enormous effects on our risks for various cancers, our finger lengths, and our sexual orientations. LGBTQ people are right when they say they are “born that way.”

Perhaps it IS dodgy, as you say. Maybe we’ve got it all wrong and future science will prove that. But at the moment, there’s a wealth of reputable scientific evidence pointing to the things I said.

And has a clinician ever measured your fingers?

😂

No, they haven’t! And maybe they should!

Did you see the studies I posted about finger length and the risks of various cancers?

BRCA2 is inherited on the X chromosome by the way, so boys can only inherit it from their mums but girls can get it from either parent.

XX or XY is determined at conception, meaning, we don’t ‘all start out female’ as you so confidently and incorrectly asserted a few posts ago.

Have those studies been repeated with the same results? Because that’s the problem with finger length studies generally.

Unless you believe the whole of FWR has a reduced risk of breast cancer, regardless of individual genetics?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4158978/

Again, did you see the study I posted? Not to you, to someone else, but just a minute ago. We all start out phenotypically female. Our developmental destiny is fixed at conception depending on the chromosomes we inherit, yes, but the process that that kicks off doesn’t start until 6 weeks. Before that, we are phenotypically female, although of course we don’t have gonads at that stage.

You really should do some research before spurting “bolllocks” and telling someone they’re wrong, you know. It’s not making you look very bright.

@TathingScinsel

“Have those studies been repeated with the same results? Because that’s the problem with finger length studies generally.”

The links I posted are drawn from metadata - ie conclusions drawn from many studies - so yes, sort of. Maybe the exact studies weren’t replicated, but the same conclusions were seen in many studies. READ!

“Unless you believe the whole of FWR has a reduced risk of breast cancer, regardless of individual genetics?”

I’m confused about your sentence above. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

The finger-length thing is about association. As in, women who’ve never had children are at higher risk for bc than those who had children, but it doesn’t mean that all mums get bc and all non-mums don’t.

Phenotypically is irrelevant when you are an embryonic blob, the bit that matters when you are a blob is genotype.

There are thousands of digit ratio studies that have proven irreproducible, it’s Friday night, I’m not wasting my evening reading pseudoscience but if you’ve got something that has actually been confirmed then yes please, do post it. Otherwise I tend towards the opinion that digit ratio is more like phrenology than actual science (especially as scientists can’t actually test the blood hormone levels of early stage human embryos to confirm or refute the high androgen hypothesis!)

https://www.science.org/content/article/talk-hand-scientists-try-debunk-idea-finger-length-can-reveal-personality-and-health

Bringing this back on topic temporarily (poor OP), what do you think digit ratio would indicate about people who want others to use they/them pronouns when talking about them?

It’s not in every single woman, just the majority. Obviously there is much variation in individuals, but looked at on a large scale, there is an association between index/ring finger length and sexual orientation. And risks for various cancers, too. (See the links I posted.) This does NOT mean that if you have a certain finger-length set-up, you will get a certain cancer. It’s not cause and effect. It means there’s an association that’s observable on a large scale.

FWR = forum of feminist activists

Feminist activists = exposure to high levels of prenatal androgens

High levels of prenatal androgens = supposed reduced risk of breast cancer.

So do FWR posters all have a reduced risk of breast cancer? Or does that sound like a load of spurious correlation bollocks?

I can’t take anyone seriously who says that we all start out female, it’s clearly nonsense (but a popular assertion amongst transactivists).