Intersex

[Tootsurly]

Bit of a thought experiment, plus curious as to how much people know about intersex conditions / DSDs.

This is slightly Black Mirror, although not totally beyond the realms of possibility. If there ever came a point where anything specifically related to being male or female required a DNA test to determine your sex before participating, what would happen to intersex people whose chromosomes didn't match their outward appearance (i.e. genotype and phenotype don't match)?

Fond of Beetles is the Twitter username of Emma Hamilton, a developmental biologist.

Ah! Thank you.

Argh!, thanks for the reminder - Dr Emma Hamilton

You self identify yourself as having a medical condition? How does that even work?

What really concerns me (and pisses me off) is that the majority of intersex people I know are rabid TRAs. I don't think that does us any favours at all.

I assume she doesn't just study the development of beetles...?

I have seen a post where she explained her username but no, she doesn't study beetles.

Studies genetic disease. You can find her details online.

What is your rationale for letting in people with Swyer Syndrome and not people with CAIS? They are both XY, but neither goes through male puberty. The former have Müllerian structures but no ovaries, and need exogenous œstrogen to mature. The latter have internal Wolffian structures that do not produce spermatozoa, and go through female puberty spontaneously (by T conversion) resulting in a normal female body and genitals. Both are infertile. Are you distinguishing purely on gestational capability?

Well I don't know if it's been "reclaimed" but its usage is prevalent amongst groups of people with DSDs.

I don't think she studies the development of beetles generally - I think she is just fond of beetles. She's not an entomologist.

I worked with someone in a prison who was intersex.

They were in a male prison but more recently have been more accepting of their female side and started using female pronouns.

I can’t remember their chromosomes but I think it was XXY and they were literally half male and half female.

They are physically very male but the facial features are very female.

I obviously don’t know what genitalia they had but I read up that micro penis’ and oversized labia are signs of being intersex.

Presumably so are a lot of other genetic mutations in those communities?

They literally weren't. Mammalian species aren't hermaphroditic.

Dr Emma Hilton.

Hi OP, I'll admit I completely misunderstood your reason for posting initially.

There have been people who come to this board with gotchas/provocative posts where they conflate DSDs with gender identity.

I've now RTFT and can see that this is something you've spotted too and are equally as annoyed by it but for very different, and very personal, reasons.

It's interesting that you use the term intersex. I avoid doing that because there's no such thing as "between the sexes".

Re your own DSD, do you have Swyer?

It’s a quotation from JBS Haldane, who was a geneticist, like Dr Hilton.

Sorry, tired and making mistakes!

Did you live under a rock during the olympics?

Time to wheel out the Ainsworth paper!

https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a

Lots of people hate it because it gets misused by TRAs, particularly the last sentence.

But that sentence is only about people with DSDs, whose sense of their gender can usefully inform their selection of treatment options. It's irrelevant for everyone else, including 'trans' people.

PS I think OP's question could be answered by reference to whether someone has gone through male puberty or not, because that's the source of the problems of aggression, fairness, safety etc. So, do karyotype testing then apply exemptions on a case by case basis?

Thanks for your kind post.

I don't have particularly strong feelings about the term "intersex", although I do agree there's really no such thing. (I have much stronger feelings about its inclusion in the gender identity alphabet soup.) It's commonly used in the "community" so I just go along with that, but a lot of them have their own agenda and (imo) want to be seen as special and different, so are very happy to promulgate the idea of being "between" and of 1.7% of people being intersex - and half of them are trans and/or queer, etc., etc. My TERF views don't tend to go down terribly well and Helen Joyce is seen as the devil incarnate or worse.

Yes, I have SS. It's shitty, but perhaps not so bad as some of the other variations. I don't have to dilate my vagina, for one.

RTFT. Or at least my posts.

I have. Sounds like you were trying to be clever and catch people out but then realised we're all quite knowledgeable from the replies posted and ever since you've been talking yourself round in circles.

Eh? Are you sure you've read the full thread?

A lot of people with DSDs object to being included in the alphabet salad. Stonewall recently put this on their website.
'Stonewall works with intersex groups to provide its partners and stakeholders information and evidence about areas of disadvantage experienced by intersex people but does not, after discussions with members of the intersex community, include intersex issues as part of its current remit at this stage.'

Foetuses are either female or male depending on whether the sperm that fertilised the egg had an X or Y chromosome. X is female, making XX with the egg, Y is male, making XY with the egg.

The sperm and egg are gametes and there are only two gametes.

The phenotype that produces the smaller gamete, the sperm, is male and the phenotype that produces the larger gamete, the egg, is female. There are only two sexes male and female.

Thus there are only two systems or pathways that can be followed.

This doesn't stop there being diversity at the foetal level. Within male and female there is wide variation of anatomy, physiology and behaviour. Some of the variation results in additional chromosomes which are disorders or differences of sexually development.

One example which may help explain some of the confusion:
There are male humans with XY chromosomes who are partially or completely insensitive to testosterone. They will look like girls and develop like girls but often find out they are boys when they don't have periods, they have short vaginas or vaginas that end in no cervix and have no uterus. This is very distressing. Socially I would refer to them as women and girls but they are men and boys.

I won't go into any further detail here but check out @FondOfBeetles on X/Twitter for detailed discussions about DSDs.