"Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" - Discuss

[dunBle]

To save further derailment of the Sandie Peggie tribunal threads with people debating Tandora's statements on the above theme, I've started this thread to point them to instead.

This was my question - how SHOULD we organise society around these categories?

Does a multidimensional view of sex mean that Sandie Peggie and Dr Beth Upton have equal right to use a female changing room, or should there not be any changing room marked female at all?

@Tandora you are not engaging with me. Is it because of my protected characteristic of sex or protected belief of gender realism?

Sad times.

You’re hurting my feelings I might have to cry to a Doctor.

As far as I can tell, the question of which category people with DSDs should be in only ever appears to be an issue in elite sport (e.g. Caster Semenya).

Please let it be clownish!

I'm trying to find the post about how most people don't have a 'gender identity' - I've lost it.

Almost all people have a 'gender identity' - the terminology is a distraction and I wouldn't use it - I think we need a better term to describe what we mean.

BUT regardless of the terminology, 'gender identity' is so ubiquitous that it is (or used to be until very recently - I haven't checked since around 2021 so may have changed) part of the ASQ assessment age 36 months - 'if you ask your child if they are a boy or girl do they respond 'correctly''. This is all 'gender identity' is.

There's plenty of psychological literature on the psychological/ cognitive development of this awareness - although the older literatures tend to be written from a starting assumption that these will naturally follow from sex at birth, however, more recent literatures acknowledge that this pathway of cognitive development cannot always be assumed.

Clownfish! 😮

And how common is CIAS exactly @Tandora? I doubt it goes unnoticed, surely the lack of menstruation is investigated and then the condition is diagnosed, so I’m guessing there are figures.

Please stop using rare syndromes as TRA evidence. We are not trying to exclude people like this, we are trying to keep Nigel in a wig (and a fully functioning penis) out of single sex female only spaces. It’s completely different.

(also, any ‘there’s huge variance in sex’ argument that involves fruit flies or lizards or fish or any animal that’s not human, or at least a primate, is irrelevant)

I just asked my four year old whether his little sister is a boy or a girl. He said she's a girl. Then I asked him why she is a girl and he said because she doesn't have a willy like me.

I've got lost trying to catch up on the thread. Is gender identity an identifiable entity now?

Or is it one of the parameters of biological sex?

But asking a very young child is not a reliable indicator. A 3yo boy who has been repeatedly told by his parents that he is a girl will say he is a girl.

Whils they are male they have been unable to develop male secondary sex characteristics because they are effectively immune to testosterone - therefore their body’s develop with female characteristics. Which is the default pathway unless it’s disrupted by functioning sry gene.

Are CAIS women able to reproduce? No. This is because their reproductive system is unable to operate as would be expected. They have testes, not ovaries and those testes don’t function.

It really is quite despicable that you are using peopld with DSDs to try to assert that men can be women at will, and vice versa.

I think that these are legitimate questions and there is a legitimate debate to be had about how to organise society/ arrange policy. But it absolutely cannot take place on reasonable terms before we resolve misunderstandings about sex, gender, DSDs, transness and what being 'male' or 'female' actually means scientifically.

Also, surely "responding correctly" means a child with a penis responding that he is a boy and a child with a vulva responding that she is a girl.

The very fact that we consider there to be one correct response and (at least) one incorrect response is proof that when we say boy we mean male child and when we say girl we mean female child.

If the question were about gender identity there would be no incorrect responses.

At the risk of derailing this thread- and I don’t want to do that- I’m going to relate this conversation to the NHSF situation.

The doctors on the stand do not agree with you, Tandora, despite their support for DU.

If they did, they would be saying so in their emails, in their evidence, they would be disclosing those emails, rather than hiding evidence and conspiring against SP.

the terms man and woman are simply male and female.

Upon which human and mammal reproduction is based.

upon which laws are based as the males tend to sexually assault the females, and the females can become pregnant and have certain medical maternity and postnatal/ motherhood needs.

there’s so much variation between individuals in terms of hormones, behaviour, looks etc that we’d need a category per individual person.

the very few people who have disorders of sexual development (and have survived being born as some die pre term) are still either male and female, but would possibly need specific medical care due to the health issues and sometimes cognitive issues associated with the chromosomal difference.

once again their diagnosis is being used by people who want to be gender non conforming and special but are in reality either male or female.

Possibly. Especially at 3. But not necessarily.
There are a minority of children who, no matter how many times you say they are a girl, they will tell you they are a boy, and vice versa. There is also evidence that where sex assignment for people with DSDs has been decided on the basis of convenience (rather than appropriate medical consideration) as historically was often the case, individuals will 'transition' later in life.

What is the misunderstanding, exactly, that means that it's not appropriate to keep males, who can and do impregnate females against their will, separate from females in situations which make females more vulnerable to forced impregnation?

Are there any on here?

There are at least two trans men on here who understand and accept biological reality.

That question doesn't get at gender identity. It gets at self-identification of sex.
We know very little about how this actually develops - after all, until they are quite a bit older, children think they can turn into the opposite sex by putting on clothing of the opposite sex, or just by growing older a boy thinks he will breastfeed.
It's rather like asking them how many fingers they have and instead of saying "OK we know they can count" saying children have a "finger identity" which might differ from their actual number of fingers.

If the question were about gender identity there would be no incorrect responses

But the question is about gender identity. This is what gender identity is - cognitive awareness/ knowledge of sex. Only there has been a historical assumption that this awareness/ knowledge will directly follow from birth observed sex/ sex of rearing. Usually it does, but something it doesn't.

Why does this mean that the desire of a adult man to use the same open plan changing room as teenage girls makes him female?

That’s the highest estimate. But these individuals are absolutely nothing to do with the idea of trans women, and none of them would consider themselves transgender. They would all be classified as having a DSD. They do not change their gender, their development has not correctly followed the pathway for their sex.
Completely different to all of the individuals who claim they want to be, or are in fact, the other sex and many individuals with a DSD find it offensive (and rightly so) that the trans lobby wish to include them as a gotcha.

Right I have to go back to my actual job x