Have I completely misunderstood GCSE biology...

[proximalhumerous]

...or is the purpose of spotting an anomaly not specifically to disregard it in order that it doesn't lead to an inaccurate conclusion?

If so, why is everyone fixating on DSDs as "proof" that sex is a spectrum, when the anomalous 1.7% (if indeed it is as high as that - from what I've read that figure is only achieved if you include conditions such as PCOS which have a tenuous claim at best to be one of the "intersex" variations) is clearly a set of results that don't fit. Because something has deviated from the norm. It's not like calculating the mean of a range of heights, FFS.

Please can someone more scientific than me explain what is going on here? Or is it simply that certain factions are so hell-bent on arguing that anyone with ladyfeels can be a woman they're happy to completely disregard any sort of science or logic in order to do so?

Yes, I agree about that. Just wanted to explain that things can be quite complicated occasionally re XX and XY. I don’t think everyone understands that and people are attacked for saying otherwise sometimes.
This has nothing much to do with trans ideology though.

Having looked at the abstract, it's a study of a variety of mammals. It doesn't state that any inviduals in the study producing both gametes, or even with viable gonadal tissue of both types¹, were human.

They are mammals, which is closer than usual claims. Rabbits are nearer than clownish and slugs - so it's plausible for humans. But still unproven.

¹ Most in the study didn't.

I think most of it refers to humans (except the rabbit auto fertilisation bit)? Those sort of numbers have been reported elsewhere for human pregnancies iirc. I’ll check it out but I don’t have time right now so it’ll be later I’m afraid.

Would be interested if you get a chance, but no rush. It's a interesting rabbit hole (perhaps literally).

One important caveat to note too though is that we are talking about hermaphroditism now, which is only sometimes caused by XX/XY chimeras.

I don't disagree in principle, but the extra chromosome in DS is not a sex chromosome.

Sorry, only coming back to this now @NoBinturongsHereMate, but I think this was the paper I was thinking of earlier, though it’s quite old and I can just see the abstract.

academic.oup.com/bjs/article-abstract/69/5/279/6185759?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

This is another case which shows how complicated things can be
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2190741/#B13

True hermaphroditism is more usually referred to as ovotesticular syndrome nowadays in case you want to look up more, and as I mentioned upthread there are a number of causes.

Thank you for this, I for one hadn't appreciated that it is possible (in a vanishingly small percentage of the population) to have some xy and some xx cells.

So I guess it's possible the pp who claimed to be xxxy and have birthed children could have the condition you mention (although it wouldn't be written 'xxxy' as the pp did, because that denotes a separate, male condition).

However, I do take issue with your suggestion that 'accusing people of lying doesn't help anyone' - I didn't accuse anyone, what I said was that she sounded confused, because someone with 'xxxy' chromosomes can't give birth (which is AFAIK correct - if pp is going to use their rare medical condition as a gotcha, at least give it the right name). If she was wanting to enlighten us, she could have posted the info you did, but none of that was forthcoming, just the claims that the specialist told her that the condition is 'not unusual' , and that she'd apparently been threatened when trying to use a women's public toilet because she doesn't look female enough (gosh, why did this never happen before the SC ruling too? Amazing coincidence).

Youre right, DSDs are nothing to do with being trans, but they get shoe horned into TRA arguments as a gotcha, suggesting that it's all so complicated that we can't possibly segregate anything by sex. We can't possibly know. Which is clearly bollocks. That post sounded very much like one of those.

I am sick of the disingenuous trotting out of vanishingly rare conditions as a reason that women can't have our own spaces and services. That's what it seemed to me like the post was saying and that's what I was objecting to.

However, I do take issue with your suggestion that 'accusing people of lying doesn't help anyone' - I didn't accuse anyone

I was actually replying to another poster @AstonScrapingsNameChange, the one I quoted, who did imply pp was lying.

This is fascinating. Amazing how our bodies vary within a norm. But that's what it is, fascinating and beautiful to outsiders, normal to those whose bodies we are discussing. Bodies varying within a norm does not change that norm. There are only two sexes, female and male.

I'm put in mind of my colleague with polydactyly. In her family everyone had or two extra fingers. Doesn't mean that humans have 5-7 fingers on each hand. The norm is five. That does not change because some people have more.

Fair enough, I didn't see that post, apologies.

Yes, the issue is people don’t deny polydactyly exists, whereas you do hear people insist that people can’t have both XX and XY cells in their body, or they can’t have both a male and a female gonad simultaneously.
In very rare cases you can and it’s as well to know that I think.

It shouldn’t make any difference to the GC argument anyway.

Wrong.
Chimera and mosaic conditions producing people with the intersex DSDs including 46XX46XY are BOTH male and female. They have to be both male and female since that is how the gestating embryo is formed.

Furthermore, people with 46XX46XY karyotype CAN produce both sperm and ova . Examples where both ovotestes produce gametes are easily found by a little research.

Indeed, there are well recorded examples where a person who has successfully become pregnant and delivered a healthy child had clear evidence of spermatogenesis.

So, that leaves a few basic problems to conjure with -
There are people who are BOTH male and female.
Men HAVE become pregnant and given birth.
Women HAVE produced sperm.
Not all DSDs are specific to one sec or other
There is no single determinant of biological sex.

Err….. no.

I see we have a couple of new visitors today come to scold the silly mummies talking total nonsense as always

Indeed, there are well recorded examples where a person who has successfully become pregnant and delivered a healthy child had clear evidence of spermatogenesis

Cool, then you can provide a reference to this.

No humans cannot produce both sperm and eggs.

Lol. This is going to be death by google isn't it? 😂

There appears to be zero correlation in identifying as 'trans' and having these extremely rare DSDs anyway.

They are only being introduced to the discussion to muddy the waters and make people doubt their perfectly sound instincts.

No human being has ever changed sex. Not one, in the entire history of our species.

It'll be multiple links to abstracts when that poster clearly hasn't read the full journal article and a link to one which we've all seen before and discussed at length on this board and isn't the gotcha that they think it is,

With a side order of 'cower, silly mummies! I have come to impart my half understood wisdom on you!!'

I'm always astonished that, in 2025, there are still people who come out with this shite, seemingly entirely seriously.

Even if our latest plopper is right - and you're not, mate - the sciencey mitherings have the square root of fuck all to do with completely biologically bog-standard men trying to steal women's spaces, sports, dignity and privacy because of feelings in their heads.

'Rare medical conditions as human shield for entitled men' has been tried repeatedly, and better. It doesn't work. Next gambit please.

Or just use the men's. Far easier all round.

Can you imagine if these twits succeeded in designing a trans test based on some biological or genetic markes - which all the Basic Middle Aged Straight Males would instantly fail.

I haven't got anything to link, this is just my reckon. Considering the deleterious effects of testosterone on the bodies of the delusional women and girls who take it believing it'll magically change their sex, if there's an individual whose genetic make up somehow gave them the potential to produce both sperm and eggs, with a functioning uterus too, wouldn't the testosterone totally overwhelm the female cells probably rendering them non-functional or, at best, pretty shonky.

Not that this is at all relevant to all transpeople, including the vanishingly tiny number who both claim to be trans and also have a DSD.

Lol, these resurrections of old threads never change; it’s always some silly twit making a show of themselves 😊