"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.

It doesn't matter. Others do.

I think most sensible people know very well by now to skip past those posts.

I have an arts background (though also biology alevel)

what @DrBlackbird sets out is an arts based premise. It’s not real. It’s imaginary, symbolic

but to support with building understanding of what being trans actually is.
We have no idea what 'being trans actually is'. You seem to be suggesting that it is some sort of DSD of the brain - but we have zero proof of this, and the sudden explosion of trans identities, and the inability of anyone to have come up with any biological markers thus far, suggest that this isn't terribly likely.

And unfortunately many of the trans-identified males we encounter, on this board and elsewhere, are AGPs and/or possessed of the screaming levels of male entitlement which cause most sane women to say, 'Yeah, mate - get lost.'

And more to the point, I don't care what "being trans is".

It has nothing to do with what being a woman is. It's not relevant to my life in any way.

There is nothing "being trans" could mean which could convince me that we don't need a word for female people or any single sex spaces or sports.

My reality as a woman does not change just because of "what being trans means".

Being a woman and being a trans woman are two entirely separate things, and it would be better to all stop using even the term "trans woman", because they are not women of any kind.

By the way, did you have any comment about the links to studies that you plonked down over two posts on a thread the other day? Any comments about how they were relevant to the topic being discussed, or even confirming whether you read them before plopping them down? No?

I understand you are angry. I don't accept it is justified.

am bemused that someone with a PhD can't spell 'cite'

Thanks, yeh, I'm also dyslexic and have terrible spelling. It used to affect me a lot as a small child, but luckily as an adult and with computers it doesn't really hold me back.

So no sex based rights for women then. And no acknowledgement of our existence in law.

Well, yes - that too.

And contrary to what @Tandora seems to think, I have no problem with the existence of people with DSDs, other than to think it complicates their lives and that can't be much fun. I know someone with a DSD, one of the rare ones, and it pisses me off that the existence of people like this - who just want to get on with their lives - is being weaponised for a fight they never asked to be part of.

The only people 'weaponising' people with DSDs is you and others trying to use them and your relationship to them to silence discussion.

I'm simply discussing the realities of sex development which is essential in any conversation where people are making ideological claims about sex.

One of my DC is quite seriously dyslexic, and I used to work with dyslexic children, so you have my sympathy on that score.

However, I am baffled that you don't think that my anger is justified. Does the safety of vulnerable women in prison mean nothing to you? A level playing field for women's sports? Women's safety when their trousers are down around their ankles in toilets and changing rooms?

Of course I am fucking angry. I want everybody to have a decent life, but not at the cost of girls and women losing out, since we lose out already because we are, well, girls and women.

What’s an ideological claim about sex?

can you give an example?

as many posters on this board feel it is ideological to claim that the inner feelings of someone, which they’d say are based on sexist stereotypes, means that men like dr Upton have a right to enter the nurses women’s changing rooms. (Not the Drs, oddly)

Oh, no no no no.
People with DSDs have asked REPEATEDLY not to be dragged into this.

Until you can actually show that being trans is a DSD of the brain, perhaps the humane thing to do would be to leave them out of it.

I gave two examples of people with diagnosed DSDs who also felt that their conditions were being used in a way that was inappropriate in this discussion.

what is your opinion on their experience and feelings on this?

If you believe 'being trans' has a physiological basis, @Tandora, how do you feel about researching it with the goal of developing a test/diagnostic?

FWIW, I completely disagree with your premise here, but would this be a legitimate line of research in your eyes?

Then we could perhaps test people who are gender questioning, & guide them to appropriate treatment pathways. What do you think?🧐

What premise are you referencing?

The two bolded quotes @DrBlackbird

Oh to be able to c and p like the old days!

I look forward to the days when we can scan Karen White's brain to find out whether he really does have a lady brain, and whether being accepted for the woman he truly is earlier on would have stopped him from raping and sexually assaulting all those women.

Nero sammy https://x.com/neurosgs/status/1947715115987751259?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞-𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐍𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐒𝐞𝐱 𝐃𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬:

1. What are the key criteria that define a well-designed scientific study in the context of investigating sex differences in the human brain?

2. Are there existing studies that meet these standards? If so, please cite and briefly describe them.

3. If not:

a) How would you design your own study to reliably and accurately identify neurological sex differences?

b) What methods and statistical tests would you use? Which brain regions or functions would you focus on a priori, and why?

i think this post was in response to this question https://x.com/neurosgs/status/1946604514867658904?s=46&t=A2fpFNgDRyXF2d6ye97wEA

Challenge for activists: Show me where “gender identity” is located within the brain.

Any particular regions? Functional networks? Structural connections?

Show me what, where, how “gender identity” is stored neurologically

you can read the responses; the most pertinent one is imagination. Aka belief.

@Tandora

I previously asked you:

..our laws and customs are based on bodies, not minds. An adult human male is someone who has been through male puberty ... [and] ...irrespective of ... their mind, their body is of the type that is faster, stronger, more aggressive, more criminal, and capable of impregnation whether consensual or not, ... and has ... [been] associated at all times in history with superior worth and political power.
This is why females need protecting from the other sex, and [require] measures such as positive action. Reclassification of an AHM as female undermines that. How can you possibly justify doing that on the basis of a psychological attribute?

Your answers to other PP indicate that you consider no justification is needed, but why not? This seems somewhat callous towards women.

You say:

Treat... them according to their experience of sex, and not what we are able to externally "observe"/deduce about their sex based on observation at birth.

Women who have to share intimate space with them, or compete with them, etc, will also 'experience' their (male) sex, objectively, based on things that can be measured irl. Why does their experience count for nothing?

And:

[Provide] access to specialist health care at a developmentally appropriate time, exactly as we do for people with DSDs

If this is a neurological condition induced by anomalous endocrine events, as you suggest, surely it is incredibly dangerous and unethical to give children unapproved (and essentially unapprovable) treatments that will actively interfere with their normal neurological and hormonal development into adulthood?

People with dsd have said many times that they are not trans and resent being used in these discussions. Yet Tandora insists the discussion must be all about them. Evidence for their opinions is sadly lacking and we are all expected to go and search for it. Of course the reason for saying that is because the evidence does not exist.

There is a mass of research on dsds, of course, but it doesnt support Tandora's opinions.

@Tandora

Treating them according to their experience of sex, and not what we are able to externally "observe"/deduce about their sex based on observation at birth.

Very happy to treat them according to their "experience of sex".

And ti that end, it is important to realise that a trans women's "experience of sex" is fundamentally different to mine, so much so that the two are entirely unrelated. I have no more in common with a trans women's experience of sex than I do with what you would call a cis man.

My "experience of sex" is simply the lived experience of being of the boring simplistic type of female. The capabilities of the body, growing to self awareness within the historic and cultural constructions around that body and how they intersect with my self knowledge and others' reactions to and expectations of me. It is entirely predicated not
on some sort of a priori knowledge of being "a woman" but the opposite, a blank slate forming into consciousness within the fact of the body.

So given that, will you acknowledge that my experience of my own sex is nothing to do with whatever trans women experience, my experience of sex is also valid?

To take the analogy of "Hunger", I cannot know if you and I experience hunger the same way. Perhaps the physical feeling of Hunger for you is like the physical feeling of Itch to me.

However what we can see is that your Hunger and my Hunger have the same consequences. Food relieves it, no food increases it, if it is ignored or unsatied for too long, there is death of a specific type that can be measured and identified as starvation even though I am no longer around to tell the tale.

And we can therefore say that my Hunger and your Hunger are the same thing, and are different to Thirst, not because we know the subjective experiences are the same but because the outcomes and consequences are.

And this is how I know that a TW's experience of sex is not meaningfully related to what I experience. Not because I know how he feels, but because the outcomes and consequences are so different.

Eradicating judgements/ stereotypes about gender/ sex/ sexuality. This includes not making assumptions/ judgements about someone's personal identity, appearance, body or sexuality based on our own ideological beliefs about these things.

Soooo close….

Gender critical means exactly this - eradication sex stereotypes and gendered expectations of sex. Not thinking that wearing feminine clothes/makeup/long hair/high heels has anything to do with being female or being a woman. That the fact that a woman who wears jeans and loose-fit t-shirts, plays football and is lead mechanic at work has no impact on the fact that they are a woman. That a man who wears a short skirt, blouse, long hair and carries a handbag full of makeup in no way changes the fact that he is a man. The terms men and women simply reflect adult human males and females in the same way cob/pen, boar/sow, tom/tib, hob/jill, etc refer to other adult males and female animals.