Biology is not as simple as one might think trust me i am a biologist….

[Karensalright]

Is it the case that those supporting gender ideology have developed a new tactic? Coming on here pretending to be a scientist stating their profession, and then proffering their expert knowledge via a link to wiki?

Surely if they were telling the truth they would link us to a peer review paper from a scientific website.

Is it a new trend or have I just cottoned on to it. In an attempt to influence new comers.

Replies and discussion gratefully appreciated, as long as you don't point out that i can be a bit thick..

They’ve been doing this for ages.

There was a fashion on here a while back for user names with ‘the professional XXX’ because twits were coming in here ‘as a professional twit I’m here to tell you all…’

It’s the follow up with i was a tomboy thing its an in disguise thing

I love that No. 2. 🤗

I shall have to tell my Mum…

Yes the biologist quoting wiki bothered me too on that thread. No academic would ever use wikipedia to back up an assertion.

That post looked like they'd copied some stuff across to get some complicated words into their argument and then thought they'd look profesh by popping in a link.

TRAs realising we all have testosterone and oestrogen really isn't the gotcha they think it is. And if our cells were all undergoing 'random mutations' all the time, there would be a far higher percentage of DSDs (Klinefelters, Turner's etc) with mosaicism happening right left and centre.

The whole "women aren't who we've always believed, some people we thought were men are actually women because..." schtick is a red herring when it comes to women-only spaces / opportunities / resources / representation anyway.

It doesn't matter whether the new definition of Woman is "still biology but it's complicated", " just a social construct anyway" or anything else.

It doesn't even matter if all the "women" under this new definition really do have something significant in common with each other that they don't share with any "men".

What matters, the thing that it's crucial to keep sight of, the thing that all the TRAs' twisting and turning and TWAWing is desperate to hide, is that Woman-only provisions weren't set up for the word Woman. They were set up in response to and shaped by the needs of specific people.

And who were they? They were the people who met the everyday, common or garden understanding of woman at that time.

It doesn't matter if that was a flawed understanding, it's still the people who met this definition who suffered the challenges that created the need for and shaped the form of women only provisions. Not transwomen, not people who meet a deeper, less obvious definition of biologically female we may now have.

And that truth doesn't change just because you retrospectively change who the word Woman points to.

Of course, TRAs would counter TW should have been included. But if TW had been included back then, the challenges would have been different so the shape of the provisions would also have been different. The reality however is that they weren't, so to add them now is to muddle up two definitions of Woman.

Of course, this isn't a logical path TRAs are going to be motivated to follow. But it's one that gender critical people should see clearly. At the end of the day, arguing about the definition of Woman isn't the point. In some ways it's letting the TRAs set the terms of the debate.

The real question TRAs need to answer is how can TW's "womanhood" qualify them to access "women's" resources when those resources are only "women's" under a definition they reject.

Thing is, the "biology is complicated" argument doesn't join up with "therefore sex is an unreal spectrumy thing that is impossible to define" argument and furthermore doesn't actually join up logically with "therefore a man can be a woman" argument.

But TheRightSideOfHistory-ers Gish Gallop the whole thing, gobbledegook-style, in the hope that they can bewilder people into missing the bait-and-switch.

I usually find that TRSOHers flounce at the point when the obvious follow-on question is asked: "If trans identity is because of having [a special complicated spectrumy indeterminate biology], surely we can simply do a sex-status test on all applicants so we know who to affirm and treat?"

AsAScienceGraduate (BSc Hons, Anatomy, Edinbawa Yooni), I might even have learned about the SRY gene (at the time of my degree we were more interested in the hox genes and Sonic The Hedgehog) but I had completely forgotten and couldn't really explain any of that these days.
One of the lasting benefits of my degree is it helped install in me a good bullshit detector. As someone said upthread, a person with a good understanding will be able to explain things in a straightforward way without having to bamboozle you with big science words that they do not understand nor can they explain

I am a biologist, although the determination of sex is very far from my speciality😛I am open to the possibility that, in the future, it will be discovered that a proportion of people have a dysphoria that can have a hormonal/in utero development basis. I remember reading/listening somewhere that women with a particular DSD suffer more of dysphoria, for example. However, I've also read that gender clinics don't routinely screen for DSDs/hormonal levels because the link is so weak that the investigation isn't worth it. Additionally, even if one day we discover that for some people there is a strong, early development cause, it's not automatic that transition will improve the symptoms, and it's not automatic that it's safe for women to include these people in all women spaces, if their pattern of aggression follows more the pattern of their sex. (There's a discussion to be had about dignity as well, but safety comes first). I'll try to find references for my two claims re DSD, but it takes time.

Somebody who overcomplicates doesn't understand or is trying to hide something.

YY! And flits about from one over complicated idea to the next so you never get to pin them down or explore anything! Someone’s been doing that a lot round here lately, and it’s mega frustrating.

This is an important point.
I still feel strongly that getting the explicit definition of, broadly, "a woman is a person who is feminine in some way" out there would help expose the sheer misogyny of it all. That's the underlying premise and it's wrong.

The Cass Review is saying 'hey look at evidence' today.

This isn't a coincidence.

The real question TRAs need to answer is how can TW's "womanhood" qualify them to access "women's" resources when those resources are only "women's" under a definition they reject.

So True 😄

We’re on holiday and watched the film Junior last night (it was the only thing in English). In the film, Arnold Schwarzenegger gets pregnant and has a baby. The hole thing about how he’s actually carrying the foetus is completely hand waved away. My family kept shushing me as I was pointing out the million of ways it wouldn’t be possible for a man to be pregnant.

I wonder what TRAs make of this film….

The thread title could have read:

"<insert discipline> is not as simple as one might think. Trust me I'm a <disciplinologist>"

and been (a) just as accurate and (b) just as useless.

Try it. It works for "Quantum physics", "Laundry", "hairdressing", "Artificial intelligence", "Artificial Stupidity" (currently more advanced),.

"Artificial Stupidity" (currently more advanced),."

snortle, true story!

Putting aside social contagion for the moment, I’ve also wondered if there’s some biological/neurobiological basis that might account for an individual to experience gender dysphoria (hormonal, chromosomal, a combination). However, even if there is, it still remains that our individual has grown up as, for example, a biologically intact male. So whilst fully sympathetic to their dysphoria, the answer is not to mislead them into horrific surgeries or lifelong harmful medication and to pretend that in doing so they’ve become female. But rather to work with them on acceptance and expression.

When my brother was going through transition they did brains and tested his chromosomes.

They found everything to be completely normal.

He's a sample of one but this was from him directly.

So for me, I do find this hard to get around as an idea.

Of course there may be something out there that we don't understand still.

It's actually a serious point. "Intelligence" being on a spectrum must go two ways along the graph. Up and down.

Bearing in mind unlike sex, we really [still] have no idea what "intelligence" is. Although on current behaviour it seems to be a magic word that makes government money appear from nowhere.

I think most girls who have gone through the very awkward puberty stage have wished they weren't a woman at one stage or another, haven't they?

DD1 has learning disabilities. During a sex ed class, about pubertal development changes, she said she didn't want to be a girl anymore. The teacher calmly asked her what she did want to be. She decided on 'a dog'. The teacher said "DD1, they have eight nipples." DD1 muttered in disgust "I'll be a girl then."

Now I appreciate she has LDs, but so many young people are expressing a distress that their body is changing in uncontrollable ways and they hate it. If there's an easy thing to blame, and an 'easy' solution, they'll take it.

This part of biology is not that difficult.

Of course there may be something out there that we don't understand still.

There are lots of things we don't understand still ....

With the Malaga airport cohort it is a fetish.

In their case examining how people develop fetishes of all sorts would be far more useful and relevant than any consideration of hormones or genetics.

My DS is likely to end up 6'3" plus, with at least size 13 feet, shovel hands and his father's brow ridges (which have launched a thousand neanderthal gags). Fortunately he has never shown any sign of buying into this nonsense but if it did it would be really remiss of anyone to let him believe he could ever be regarded as a female by society.

I don't think it is fair to let children (or indeed adults) believe that sex is something that can be changed, it can't and for the majority of people, certainly the overwhelming majority of MtoF is can't even be convincingly pretended.

The time, effort and other resources that have been put into trying to persuade us all that sex isn't fixed would have been so much better spent trying to fine ways to help those with dysphoria accept themselves for who they are.

Making the world as bit less shit for girls/women would do more good than telling girls they can be boys instead.

Hopefully the juggernaut is slowly, the tide is turning and we can focus on finding ways to help those in distress rather than harming them.

agree with all of that @Runningupthecurtains

The time, effort and other resources that have been put into trying to persuade us all that sex isn't fixed would have been so much better spent trying to fine ways to help those with dysphoria accept themselves for who they are.

Or even better spent on addressing gender differences in society that affect us all. If just 1% of the brain power that 50% of the population possess could have been engaged in science, technology, politics and all the other preserves of masculinity, it's hard not to feel we'd have a much nicer world. But the art of politics is not to do the possible but promise the impossible. Because that's a gravy train for life

Cool teacher!