Why do people use human abnormalities to prove sex isn’t binary?

[madeupnameagain]

I am really at a loss why people use human birth abnormalities to prove that sex isn’t binary.

It’s no different than declaring that humans can have one or more heads because very rarely humans are born as part of co-joined twins.

How can people rationally use DSD’s to prove sex isn’t binary?

You do realise a lot of people are just plain stupid don't you?

there’s a thread trundling on currently that illustrates this perfectly

This. Although, so many other great comments

It's the Trumpian 'flood the zone' technique, whereby they are throwing out lots of information to try to confuse/distract you.

They're trying desperately to muddy the waters, put doubt in your mind, so you forget the core principles.

Actually this idea of a “female brain in a male body” could be very interesting to research - if you could find enough trans men and women you could scan their brains and measure the overall size of the brain, % of grey matter and size of the hippocampus and amygdala.

It would be absolutely fascinating to discover if trans identifying people had a brain physiology more similar to the average brain of the gender they are identifying into. And if yes, does that mean we could diagnose someone who has a likelihood of having feeling of being “born in the wrong body”?

stanmed.stanford.edu/how-mens-and-womens-brains-are-different/

So I did a quick google and of course the research has been done - I found a study that looked 24 transgender women who had not had any HRT. Apparently there was some indication brain size had “shifted away” from an average man’s brain, but hadn’t reduced in size to match a woman’s brain.

And what can you really tell from measuring the size of brains in 24 people? Seems like more research could be interesting.

I would love to find a science-based, observable “reason” why some men think they are really women. It would help me reconcile my GC thinking with what the trans community keep insisting.

Being able of reliably scan 'brain sex' would be useful in diagnosing people with gender dysphoria, if thats what gender dysphoria is.

It wouldn't determine sex, though because thats about reproductive roles.

Also, i wonder how many trans identifying people would stand by the results of the scan? If it was established that they didnt have a mismatch, would they stop identifying as the opposite sex?

They jump on anything to try and justify their cause. Most people with DSD are also not trans. They still have a biological sex but their genitals may not match that biological sex.

They like to throw out XXY syndrome a lot also. People with XXY syndrome are male. They generally identify as male and have male genitalia but may have poor or no fertility. The presence of a Y chromosome makes someone male, regardless of their other chromosomes.

I have a corollary question - if it's not considered a threadjacking -

Even if you were to think that sex isn't binary, how do you get from there to "it's a matter of everyone's free choice"?

i don’t have an opinion to share about transgender issues, however I did used to work in a department that sent away tests for congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which results in newborns with ambiguous genitalia. In the milder forms it is more common than cystic fibrosis and phenylketonuria, so as this is just one condition that causes disruption to development of sexual organs it is probably not correct to say the situation is vanishingly rare. It was also often treated appallingly badly in the past, with doctors making a gender decision on babies and arranging surgery based on what was easier to do for physical effect and not on what the individual’s brain development might be and what hormones they had been exposed to. It caused serious trauma to people and it would be hoped that there could be more compassion around these issues which can be incredibly traumatic when gender issues are so divisive.

Well those with DSDs have repeatedly asked for their conditions not to be dragged into these debates by TRAs to confuse and muddy the waters. That desire has not been respected, unfortunately.

Such articulate and thoughtful replies. I have nothing to add 😊

Because most people dont know what a DSD is and that in and of itself it 'proves' as if it needed proving, that people are one sex or the other sex, not both, not indeterminate. So the lack of knowledge in the population has been pounced on by these people to gaslight that there is such a thing as intersex (never was).

Good analogy.

Desperate straw clutching by people who hahe gone all in on an ideology that looks increasingly shaky, sunken cost fallacy a la Helen Joyce.

They try and muddy the trans water with DSDs and claim false equivalence to try and shore upnan ideology that doesn't stand up to logical, rational, scientific analysis.

But most simply its: I know you are but what am I?

I don’t have a link to the research to hand, but there has been at least one study that showed that people with (diagnosed, not self-diagnosed) gender dysphoria had brain scans that most closely resembled people with eating disorders. The hypothesised explanation was that both groups had a mental health problem revolving around a disordered self-image.

No one has proved (nor ever will) that sex isn't binary. Smoke and mirrors! 🤷‍♂️

"I think it's incredibly rude to call intersex people abnormal" was the response I got (and have seen used elsewhere) when I stated that DSDs were genetic abnormalities. FFS....i didn't say anyone was abnormal, but medically speaking, they have abnormal genetics. Talk about twisting words!

This. It makes no sense. Their argument is that sex and gender identity are separate things. So DSDs are irrelevant to their case. But then, as sex and gender identity are different, they shouldn’t have a problem with maintaining singje sex provision either. But they are. Because nothing they say makes any sense.

They have just taken a ‘throw enough mud at a wall’ approach, machine gunning out as much shite as they can.

Luckily for them, most people in positions of power only needed to be presented with a ‘poor sad trans teen’ and ‘isn’t this a bit like how we treated homosexuals’ and just stopped thinking at that point and nodded along with it all.

Why? To persuade that transwomen are literally women and to let them into women's spaces. It works, look at the Sandie Tribunal answers.

Related to the condition I mentioned earlier, and some other similar conditions, my understanding is that good practice now is to raise children with conditions that cause ambiguous genitalia as ‘intersex’ until they are able to make the decision for themselves- if they want to. There was a bit of a move towards many feeling able to live as intersex long term. Unfortunately I do feel that the risk now is due to the societal noise around the issue some will feel forced to select to choose a gender, which feels wrong if it’s not purely by choice and is a return to the bad old days when it was unacceptable not to be pigeonholed. As a previous poster has said this type of ‘intersex’ condition should be a separate issue from the broader trans debate theme.

Oh I read that too! I don’t have a link either. Wish I’d made a note of it.

It’s parental choice. Intersex people are male or female. I know a intersex boy and his parents decided for him to have surgery to make his genitalia look and function like a boys and to remove internal ( non functional) female organs - which were extremely likely to turn cancerous - whilst he was a young child so that he underwent surgery whilst he was too young to remember it.

You’d have to break down the different types of trans people first. Even in just TIMs there are transvestites without a sexual fetish, those with a sexual fetish, AGPs, and transexuals. And probably sub types of transexuals. ( those who have had gender incongruence from a young age and those who have not).

And because trans is now a social movement, you have all the kids with a whole host of social and mental health issues who claim a trans identity.

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Genetic testing and medical investigation will determine the sex.