Whale and Dolphin Conservation

[Occasionalposter25]

Not sure if the post has now been removed, but I took this screenshot yesterday - about intersex Right Whales...

Why is the XXY whale neither male nor female, but the XYY whale is male?

This is known as Klinefelter Syndrome in humans and occurs in about 1 in 650 male births. Why do you think that it is especially interesting?

The link in the screenshot doesn't work, but I found this article. https://therevelator.org/intersex-whale/

Edit: archive link. https://archive.ph/u9u8J

Why does everyone think that DSDs mean sex isn't binary in mammals? DSDs are sex specific ffs. Been sent a piece about a Dutch woman with a DSD who has won a literay prize and thanks the trans community for enabling her to get appropriate surgery - I ended up thinking she didn't know what a DSD was (and she called herself intersex).
Here's the link:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/dutch-london-bryony-gordon-fiction-charlotte-b1232698.html
Article ends with an explanation of DSDs and that they are not the same as gender dysphoria.

Let’s hope that anyone working in dolphin and whale conservation knows the importance of sex, and the value of sex disaggregated data.

XXY in humans is definitely male!

In terms of the last sentence of the first paragraph... 'Nature teaches us about so much about love and acceptance...'
Really?!

A mummy owl ripped apart and fed her dead baby owl to it's siblings on Springwatch last week. That doesn't say "love and acceptance" to me.

Can someone fill me in on what this has got to do with FWR?

Is there an issue with people (or animals) with DSDs not being loved or accepted?

I’ve not actually heard of anyone saying people with DSDs are victimised or oppressed.

I’ve heard people try and wedge DSDs into conversations about trans rights, but these points always lack coherence because people with trans identities and people with DSDs are different!

I bet the whales know who are the lady whales and who are the gentlemen whales!😊🐋

Pedant here! That first paragraph is incorrect. There's no such thing as an intersex species. Individuals within a species can be intersex. Genetic anomalies exist because animals aren't produced on assembly lines in a factory.

It's an attempt to shove trans into the rest of the mammalian world - look, whales are intersex and intersex proves sex is a spectrum which proves that gender woo is real...I think not.(Fallacy of the excluded middle, I think?)

Bloody hell whoever wrote that knows nothing about biology at all. "Intersex species"? "Tolerance"? Do they think hermaphrodite snails kindly refrain from beating each other up because they "listened and learned instead of judging" and realised they should be tolerant?

What a sky-high pile of cak.

Also how do we know this poor whale wasn't shunned by its bigoted peers?

Thanks @CassOle the original link took me to:

https://www.biographic.com/to-discover-the-worlds-first-intersex-southern-right-whale-the-third-test-was-the-charm/

Same story - I think.

It's disappointing that organisations are still shoehorning sex-specific dsds into the LGBTQI+ 'family'. Stonewall actually dropped the I because organisations advocating for people with DSDs said that being born with a chromosomal abnormality don't mean you're part of the 'rainbow' family. I'm glad they've deleted the post. Hopefully someone told the intern in charge of their media account that they wanted their reputation to be as a fact-based organisation not based on vague gender woo.

The unscientific part was the statement that the whale was neither male nor female. (and also the bit about not judging - like whales are going around judging each other for medical conditions)

And also “intersex species”. The (often now conspired offensive) term intersex means a DSD so it doesn’t make sense that a DSD would be a defining characteristic of a species. Some species are hermaphrodites or change sex - that is still a binary sex system even if within one individual, and is not a DSD. Some species can reproduce without sex and/or don’t have sexual reproduction at all. Also not DSDs. The whale is an individual with a DSD.

it reads as if the writer either thinks a whole species can be “intersex”, or alternatively thinks the word “species” means “animal”. That’s not good for someone in comms in an animal conservation organisation.

Don't worry. They'll be reeducated quick sharp by the noble clownfish of Stonereef.

Oh, I was so straight there to click on the laugh emoji before I remembered they'd taken it off us... Never mind. 😂😂😂

😂

The evidence against our belief that human sex is binary and immutable has just got stronger. Now the carefully-researched well-constructed TRA argument that TWAW is not just 'Because Clownfish', but also 'Because One Whale'.
I'm scared. I feel my entire Weltanschauung is teetering...

[full disclosure, I had to look up Weltanschauung, I knew there was a word like that but had to go all around the houses looking at synonyms to find it!]

The less said about dolphins the better.

(Of course, NADALT.)

I feel that this whole story is just a Viz cartoon strip waiting to happen (ideally involving the Pathetic Sharks).

I'm appreciating the responses and the humour.

Also wanted to say I find nature fascinating, but I need to read up on clownfish.

I'm also aware of the term gynandromorphism in terms of some lepidoptera (moths, butterflies )...but haven't seen that hijacked yet.

It's just not the same without it 😂