Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[JoeMorgue]

This.
Especially the highlighted.

Why do girls get the princess pink fluffy wuffy stuff, why can't boys play with dolls and fluffy wuffy stuff too?
etc etc etc.

Gender is what we are pressured to do as we grow up, I would like to see what would happen if we weren't.

This whole gender self focus thing might just disappear as no one would care anymore, be yourself... the stereotypes have gone.

What drove it home for me, and I've mentioned this before probably in this thread, was when Target both got rid of gendered toys (i.e. no longer had distinct, labeled "boys" and "girls" toy sections in its stores) and implemented a policy of "You can use the bathroom of the gender of your choosing" for it's store restroom.

Does anyone else notice that those two problems... use the other problem as their solution in a perfect loop?

Gender Role 1: "Certain toys are being labeled for boys and girls.
Solution: "Get rid of the labeling."

Gender Role 2: "Bathrooms are labeled via biological sex, not gender."
Solution: "Keep the labeling, but let people choose which label applies to them."

Why not tell the little boys and girls in the toy aisle "We'll keep the boys and girls labels, but it's okay because you can just identify as whatever gender you want." Why is that the problem for one thing but the solution for the other and vice versa?

 

[mumblethrax]

In my mental image I'm 6"4, have 1% body fat, and a much stronger jawline. I'm not asking, demanding, or expecting anyone to literally think that's what I look like.

"Mental image" isn't magically different when its about sex. It's functionally no different from "I would like to be."

The desire to have sex with a man is not magically different from the desire to have sex with a typewriter, but it's much more plausible that the former is rooted in neuroanatomical structures than the latter.

Similarly, it's plausible that gender identity is rooted in neuroanatomy, while it's not especially plausible that the desire to be a teapot is.

We do not need to postulate magical differences to acknowledge differences in kind.

 

[The Atheist]

I was working on a car as I read this earlier. I thought this was funny.

Nice!

There was a bloke I know recently posted that he was tired because he'd up all night with a tranny.

Yes everyone has unique medical issues but why does someone other than their doctor care and why does someones risk of breast cancer effect what bathroom they use?

Nice way to miss the entire point, which was that the world has much bigger issues than bathrooms.

Women like Rolfe don't want the trans women in the women's toilets, the trans women don't want to use the men's toilets...

I now believe the best answer to that conundrum is to completely ignore it and concentrate on the more important aspects. As it is, lawmakers are siding with the trans women, so women will just need to learn to get over it.

So to speak.

Are we just going to build a world of bathrooms so everyone will feel comfy?

More than likely, yes.

I'd advise going long on bathroom company shares.

If there's a strong evidence for transexuality there is strong evidence between the sexes, period.

I do hope that was deliberate.

 

[mumblethrax]

Semenya is a male with partial androgen insensitivity. She was mistakenly believed to be female when she was born because her ambiguous genitalia bore a closer resemblance to female genitalia than to male. Society in general and the sports authorities in particular are still trying to figure out what to do about all this.

If she has an androgen insensitivity, then I can't say I understand all the attention to her testosterone levels.

 

[JihadJane]

Similarly, it's plausible that gender identity is rooted in neuroanatomy, while it's not especially plausible that the desire to be a teapot is.

Why not?

 

[mumblethrax]

Why not?

Because there's a plausible evolutionary account for neuroanatomical basis of gender identity. We haven't had teapots (or western beauty standards, or apache helicopters, or whatever else people wish to come up with) long enough for that to be the case.

 

[d4m10n]

Since we drifted back onto sport there for a second, I'd like to offer up a quick hypothetical.

Suppose a hitherto unknown sport (e.g. pickleball) became widely popular and suddenly found themselves in a position to formulate rules for their two separate leagues. One league is open class, the other one is set aside for people who have never enjoyed the virilizing effects of androgens. Suppose further that the International Council of Pickleballers went with a relatively simple rule, such as "if you have the SRY^WP gene, you are eligible for play in the open league, but not the restricted league." What objections would you raise, if any?

 

[Meadmaker]

We know they had a miscarriage, and we know that there seems to have been some initial confusion about the hospital's treatment regimen as a result of their trans status. It seems apparent that fetal distress was already in progress when they presented themselves to the hospital

But as far as I could determine from the articles I read, there was nothing which established that any different treatment regimen would have prevented the miscarriage or substantially changed any outcomes.

That's all conjecture.

I noted that as well. We can't know what the outcome would have been if she had said she was a woman in labor instead of a man in labor.

On the other hand, the whole point of the article in the New England Journal of Medicine was that as a result of the gender/sex confusion, things were done differently, and the author of the paper believed that this created elevated risk, and that in the future, the hospitals needed to change the way they do things in order to keep people safe.

 

[mumblethrax]

Suppose further that the International Council of Pickleballers went with a relatively simple rule, such as "if you have the SRY^WP gene, you are eligible for play in the open league, but not the restricted league." What objections would you raise, if any?

If I were committed to existence of separate pickleball leagues, I would point out the existence of SRY-negative androgen-sensitive XX males. I would also argue that currently competing atheletes should be grandfathered in with any rule change, since they trained and competed in good faith under the rules previously established by the ICP itself.

I'm sympathetic to "creative discrimination" in the service of sex-egalitarian participation (I wouldn't be watching the Women's World Cup without it), but athletic bodies are in the unenviable position of trying to come up with an operational definition of "male athlete" or "female athlete" that satisfies our intuitions after the fact, and I suspect that there just isn't one.

 

[d4m10n]

If I were committed to existence of separate pickleball leagues, I would point out the existence of SRY-negative androgen-sensitive XX males.

What's that condition called?

 

[theprestige]

Since we drifted back onto sport there for a second, I'd like to offer up a quick hypothetical.

Suppose a hitherto unknown sport (e.g. pickleball) became widely popular and suddenly found themselves in a position to formulate rules for their two separate leagues. One league is open class, the other one is set aside for people who have never enjoyed the virilizing effects of androgens. Suppose further that the International Council of Pickleballers went with a relatively simple rule, such as "if you have the SRY^WP gene, you are eligible for play in the open league, but not the restricted league." What objections would you raise, if any?

I mean, requiring athletes to qualify by publishing personal medical information seems awkward, but not overly so.

 

[mumblethrax]

What's that condition called?

XX male syndrome^WP. About 10% of those with the condition are SRY-negative.

 

[d4m10n]

XX male syndrome^WP. About 10% of those with the condition are SRY-negative.

Perfect, thanks!

ETA: Probably I'd advise the pickleballers just let this one go.

Individuals who are 46,XX male, SRY-negative, and identify as women are exceedingly rare.

 

[mumblethrax]

Perfect, thanks!

ETA: Probably I'd advise the pickleballers just let this one go.

Individuals who are 46,XX male, SRY-negative, and identify as women are exceedingly rare.

So are elite athletes. We should expect people with advantageous intersex conditions to be wildly over represented among high-ranking women (and they are).

 

[Rolfe]

That all seems right to me; it explains (rather than contradicts) what I wrote about the need to put in a bit of wiggle room when inferring karyotype from phenotype.

In terms of inferring genotype from phenotype I don't think we'd get Semenya wrong, but we might get a woman with adrenal hyperplasia wrong, right enough.

 

[qayak]

JWomen with Swyer syndrome have neither testes nor ovaries. They do have a uterus, however, and can become pregnant through implantation of donor eggs.

Which sports team should they be on?
Which bathroom should they use?

Women with Swyer syndrome, should they be athletic, should be on women's teams. Men with Swyer syndrome , should they be athletic, should be on men's teams.

The issue here is that people only want to compete if they have an unfair advantage. Men with syndromes readily want to compete in female sports because they will be champions but females with issues that cause them to have male traits don't want to compete against males because they will always lose. We are only talking about men who want to compete against women and, to put it bluntly, **** them.

 

[Rolfe]

Just for clarity, do we actually know what condition Semenya has or is it conjecture?

It can be accurately inferred from the recent judgement that was handed down by the CAS.

Does your judgement of her being male apply equally to people with Swyer syndrome?

https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/swyer-syndrome/

Women with Swyer syndrome have neither testes nor ovaries. They do have a uterus, however, and can become pregnant through implantation of donor eggs.

Which sports team should they be on?
Which bathroom should they use?

Female. The best concise definition of male is having a functional SRY gene and bioavailable androgens. Swyer syndrome women lack the former and CAIS women lack the latter. (There is a very rare condition I think someone mentions below that is an exception to that, but it covers almost everyone.)

 

[Belz...]

Gender roles are BS.

Are they, though? I mean, on principle we should be able to do whatever we want, regardless of sex, but in practice, every society will have some idea of what this or that group's role or behaviour should be like, and that's in no small part due to actual biological differences. It's not surprising that these roles emerge, even differently, in every culture, and it might not actually be a bad thing, even if it sometimes causes harm or stifles one's choices.

I guess I'm saying that it's not that simple.

 

[Rolfe]

If she has an androgen insensitivity, then I can't say I understand all the attention to her testosterone levels.

PARTIAL androgen insensitivity. Basically she's a disadvantaged male, not an advantaged female. She still has enough sensitivity to androgens to go through male puberty and have a broken voice and run like a man.

If she had complete androgen insensitivity she'd still have a fair chance of being an elite athlete just because such women have a slightly androgynous musculoskeletal system that gives enough of an edge to offset their complete lack of androgen response, but that hasn't in the past been regarded as unfair. The fact that even an androgynous build can confer such an advantage even when effective concentration of testosterone is zero should tell us quite a lot about the fact that testosterone is not the only athletic advantage biological males have over females.

 

[Rolfe]

Since we drifted back onto sport there for a second, I'd like to offer up a quick hypothetical.

Suppose a hitherto unknown sport (e.g. pickleball) became widely popular and suddenly found themselves in a position to formulate rules for their two separate leagues. One league is open class, the other one is set aside for people who have never enjoyed the virilizing effects of androgens. Suppose further that the International Council of Pickleballers went with a relatively simple rule, such as "if you have the SRY^WP gene, you are eligible for play in the open league, but not the restricted league." What objections would you raise, if any?

That the SRY gene needs to be functional to disqualify from the restricted league, and that in addition someone with a functional SRY gene who also has complete androgen insensitivity syndrome goes in the restricted league.

There's something else, male XX non-SRY, but I don't know how it's diagnosed so I'm not qualified to write that rule. Maybe you just say if you've been diagnosed as male XX non-SRY you have to be in the open league. It's very rare, but you can bet your bottom dollar that some guy with that condition, seeing the above rule, will spot easy pickings and try to muscle in.