"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 is worth showing the development chart for CAIS for anyone who has not seen it before. As Swyer was mentioned upthread, I will include that one too.

A genuine question for those arguing that sex is complicated and it's reasonable for people to say they don't know what sex they are. How should this be reflected in society? Should sex no longer be used as a category to decide access to spaces? Should it no longer be asked about in medical investigations?

If understanding of sex was to change, how would you like to see society change?

I would have more sympathy for this argument if Tandora's first line of attack wouldn't have been calling Sandy Peggie a homophobe and Trump supporter (in one of the many threads about the trial).

Agree. This separate thread is one in which Tandora's arguments should be discussed respectfully. The only difficulty on the other thread was that it was derailing the thread so severely. There is nothing else objectionable about Tandora raising his/her points at all, and no excuse for being disrespectful.

But….! People feel all sorts of unreasonable things that absolutely mustn’t be taken into account for health and justice!

Someone who feels disabled absolutely shouldn’t be able to use the resources allocated to support disabled people. A mother who feels like her child needs extra help at school shouldn’t be able to divert resources from a child who does need extra help.

People who feel the rules don’t apply to them should absolutely not be treated to accommodate that. Justice is portrayed as blind- she doesn’t care how you feel about your situation, or who you are, her rule is impartial.

I accept that, in fringe cases, sex is not black and white. But the fact that a woman with CAIS is, rightly, treated as a woman doesn't mean that any person with XY chromosomes can also claim womanhood.

Nobody on here has been unpleasant. But we aren't going to nod and say, "yes that makes total sense" when her arguments have more holes than a sieve.

There is a difference between discussing someone's arguments respectfully and agreeing with someone's arguments.

If Tandora wants a thread in which no one is allowed to disagree with her arguments she needs to go to Reddit.

All this is all fine as a discussion, but

Trans people are almost always the same biologically as other people of their sex. Normal, typical examples from a biological point of view.

There isn't a test for trans.

So it is all pretty irrelevant.

Bio Women are a concept evidently….. but trans women are women !!!

To quote some actual research on CAIS:

Complete AIS (CAIS) has a frequency of approximately 1:20,000 male births. CAIS is characterized by 46,XY karyotype, female external genitalia, testes located in the abdomen, inguinal ring or labioscrotal region, and internal genitalia with a blind ending vagina, absence of uterus and fallopian tubes, and no Wolffian development [1].

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8026333/

It's a very rare disorder of male development, which leaves the person's outside appearance with some female phenotype markers and internally with some male ones. Socially, most people with CAIS (but not all) express a gender that is consistent with being female. That doesn't actually make them biologically female. And it's not the gotcha you think it is.

As someone who has experienced numerous investigations as a child for disordered sexual development (not CAIS), it's deeply, deeply offensive to be co-opted into the gender identity arguments.

My biology and therefore sex (incontrovertibly female) isn't a choice. The way I present my exterior and behave (what I think many would call a "gender non confirming" way) is a choice. My sex doesn't change based on my behavioural choices. My behavioural choices are influenced by social conditioning, rejection or acceptance of societal gender stereotypes, etc etc. My sex is just the way I was born.

So... @Tandora , let me get this straight.

There are:

• men (lots of variation and degrees of masculinity)
• women (ditto, femininity)
• a vanishingly small number of people with DSD, most identified at birth (not germane to these discussions)
• a rapidly growing cadre of people with perfectly good male or female bodies who have a mental issue with their self image and feelings

The above has now been clarified in law by the Supreme Court.

Correct so far?

It's fair to say almost everyone has compassion for anyone with mental health issues and wishes them well.

However, some of the latter group are scared of men, so instead of addressing the issue of violent and angry men they want to come into the safe spaces women have created for themselves, without caring what the women think, and without any safeguards for the women.

Also there are some men who are bad actors who are gaming the system deliberately to access women when they are vulnerable.

I think that's it in a nutshell.

Indeed.

Even hundreds of years ago when the science of reproduction was far more of a mystery to us than it is now, humans understood that heterosexual sex is what makes babies. Some men and women had same sex sexual relationships (largely in secret) but I'm pretty sure none of them expected pregnancy to result.

But who knows?

Perhaps someone will uncover the hitherto undiscovered secret diary of Oscar Wilde in which he laments the fact that, despite his best efforts to ensure the continuation of his genetic line, he is still not pregnant this month.

We do welcome the discourse, that's why we are engaging in it.

We can't help the fact that there are so many more of us who believe that sex is biological, not philosophical.

Perhaps Tandora and a few others should reflect on whether this is a niche view for the same reason that "the earth is flat" is a niche view.

The fact that some people have a disorder (of sexual development) doesn't mean there are more than 2 sexes. It just means some people have a disorder. It's not really complicated at all.

The percentage of people with CAIS is somewhere between 0.002 and 0.005%. It's so offensive IMO to drag people with rare DSD's into your arguments about transgenderism.

Someone with CAIS who would be said to have a DSD is male.

To be clear, CAIS stands for "complete androgen insensitivity syndrome". Androgens are the things that trigger development of male external secondary sex characteristics such as penis and scrotum. Being completely insensitive to this means that, despite having a male reproductive system (i.e. being male) those secondary characteristics do not develop. It is a DSD only affecting males.

There is also partial androgen insensitivity which causes various debts of development inhibition of those characteristics.

Women may carry the gene on one of their X chromosomes (which they may pass on to their children) but it has no effect on their sexual development precisely because they have ovaries instead of testes, so would never have developed penis or scrotum anyway.

So you can have females with the gene but only males would actually have CAIS as a DSD which I believe is what you mean.

Genuinely hope that helps.

But you don't appear to care how profoundly damaging it is to them to be brought into the trans debate and used as a justification for why men without DSDs should be allowed to be called women.

I didn’t call Sadie “a homophobe”.
As part of a discussion that was being had claiming there is no evidence that SP has prejudicial beliefs including about race, I pointed out that she stated very explicitly on the stand that she is a Trump supporter.

Somebody with Complete Androgen Insensitivity syndrome is phenotypically female, but genetically male.

The existence of CAIS has no impact on the way we define sex. It's a developmental disorder, just like any other.

The fact that some people have CAIS does not negate the impact of sex on the far greater number of women who don't have the disorder.

Still nothing from @Tandora on whether 'good' women deserve single sex spaces. Can't thing of a word salad to cover no women should have safe fair sport, privacy and dignity in places where they are in a state of undress, protection under law for things that only affect women such a pregnancy, breastfeeding and menopause.

So easy to deny dignity to the witches but it's a bit harder when you can sling mud.

Don't worry I'm waiting.

If this one is too hard you could go with a nice simple definition of woman that includes some men.

Yes, but there are still two sexes. It’s not really complicated. The attempts to make it complicated are just desperate efforts to persuade us men can become women. The existence of DSDs doesn’t mean the average man can suddenly be allowed to enter single sex female spaces just because he says so. The two things are completely unrelated.

Sex is binary. Gender is socially and culturally constructed, and having a gender identity doesn’t affect one’s sex. Men who are feminine are still men; men who like sewing are still men; men who wear make up are still men; women who like science are still women; women who play football are still women - and so on.

“Where does this simplistic/ reductive framework leave women with CAIS for example ? They are infertile. Even the very weird “oh but their body intended to or was organised around (again very religious as if there’s some sort of intentionality or grand design) this wouldn’t work for women with CAIS as they have a male karyotype. They would fit the definition of biological female for the purposes of the SC judgement though.”

No. Those with CAIS have a body formed around the production of small gametes because they have testes. This above is a twist to attempt to discredit the statement that human sex can be reliably categorised as being formed to produce either small or large gametes, whether or not those gametes are produced now or have been or ever will be.

The relies on the presence of either ovaries or testes and if not fully formed, of streak versions.

CAIS is a DSD that only impacts genetically male people. The above quote obfuscates this rather well known fact in its attempt to misrepresent the statement that others have made and that experts have made and posters here have repeated.

Male people with CAIS have testes.

Someone with CAIS who would be said to have a DSD is male.

So you are claiming that women with CAIS are objectively male?

The vast majority of people with CAIS are (very appropriately) assigned female at birth. They would fulfil the SC definition of “biologically female” for the purposes of understanding protections from discrimination related to sex in the EA 2010

I don't expect a list of your publications - of course I don't.

But a tad more detail would be helpful.
'I am a (post-)doctoral research scientist working on the impact of sex hormones on the brain/ the development of the reproductive system/ the causes of DSDs.'
'I am a researcher in the social sciences with an interest in sex and gender who has read widely in the related biological science, to the point of discussion/ collaboration with a group of biologists.'
'I am a bench scientist working for a large research group investigating endocrine abnormalities and spend my days with 100s of pipettes.'
'I work in research for a pharmacy company that produces medications used by trans patients.' (See above for the variants on 'work in research'. I'm sure pharma companies do a LOT of market research in this expanding field.)
'I am a departmental secretary in a uni, attached to a research group investigating this area.'
'I volunteer part-time for Mermaids and because I got biology A-level I read the science and write documents for them.'

Any one of these could be true without your initial statement being dishonest (except perhaps the last one, which is in the borderlands). So you can see why we're all a bit curious. This is an international forum, there are 1000s of universities world-wide, there is ample opportunity to be obscure about personal details ('I am from India' when you were born there but work in the US; 'I have young DC' when you really mean that they're 12 and 11; '...for some years...' which can be anything from 2 or 3 to entire lifetime).

I'd be kinder to you if you hadn't been so incredibly rude and condescending to the paediatrician poster on the Tribunal thread, but you rather lost me there.

I think you have unwittingly identified the point in this, which is that Tandora's arguments about people with DSDs derail threads about trans issues.

That's the entire point in making them.

Taking up airtime in a debate about trans people by discussing the completely unrelated issue of people with DSDs stops people from discussing the question of whether the desires of male people without DSDs to be called women and included in women's spaces and sports should trump the rights of female people to have a word for themselves and their own spaces and sports.

That is why Tandora pretends to be so interested in DSDs.

It is a derail, and it is a deliberate one.

Containing the discussion on here stops those other threads from being derailed, but also distracts posters away from those other threads where the real issue is being discussed.