Differences in Sex Development (aka "intersex")

[arthwollipot]

Trans Rights Advocates

Thank you.

...and again all your examples fall into either male or female - an active SRY gene or not.

To you, the SRY gene is the one, sole determinant of biological sex? I think the literature, some of which I posted, a lot more of which almost certainly exists, disagrees with that. For one example, take a look at the SOX9 gene.

And sorry for pointing this out, but you clearly can't have looked at the sources I posted because I just worked out that one of the links is faulty. Here is the corrected link:

Sex Chromosome Abnormalities

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to review the literature. I have learned some new things today.

URL="http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=355523&highlight=Intersex"]here is the appropriate thread to discuss such disorders of sex development [/URL]

Then the mods can make the appropriate call.

 

[Manger Douse]

Thank you.

To you, the SRY gene is the one, sole determinant of biological sex? I think the literature, some of which I posted, a lot more of which almost certainly exists, disagrees with that. For one example, take a look at the SOX9 gene.

And sorry for pointing this out, but you clearly can't have looked at the sources I posted because I just worked out that one of the links is faulty. Here is the corrected link:

Sex Chromosome Abnormalities

I read the links you posted and there are still only male or female, there is no third sex nor inbetween sex nor is sex a spectrum like your original article claimed

Then the mods can make the appropriate call.

You were the one complaining this was off topic

 

[Rolfe]

Wait - you think that all intersex conditions still fall into the gender binary? You're going to have to walk me through that logic. If they are all either male or female, then they're not intersex. Because that's what "intersex" means.

Intersex is a bit of a misnomer. The preferred term nowadays is "differences of sexual development" or DSD. I understand they would prefer "variations in sexual development" but the problem with that is that it resolves to "VSD" which is the usual abbrieviation of an anomaly of heart development (ventricular septal defect). So DSD it is.

I think the term "gender" should be avoided in this thread. We are not talking about feelings in people's heads here, we are talking about the physical reality of sex and sex organs.

People with DSDs are all either male or female like the rest of us. XXY is Klinefelter's syndrome, which is a condition of males. X0 is Turner's syndrome, which is a condition of females. And so on. In only about 0.2% of births is there any ambiguity at all as to which sex a child is, even though a DSD may be present. (Just as someone with a VSD actually has a heart.)

In the 0.2% of cases more specialised investigation including chromosome typing and hormone analyses are necessary to work it out, but it can be done. Always.

The so-called "hermaphrodite" situation, ovotesticular syndrome, is the nearest you can come to the fabled "intersex", but even there the person is not a third sex, and is not both sexes. Nobody has ever been born who can produce both sperm and ova. It's more a case of a male or a female infant having some anomalous tissue which has formed as early germinal material of the other sex.

There are only two sexes, everyone is either one or the other, and the vast majority of people with DSDs (particularly the ones where there is no doubt whatsoever which sex the person is) get quite ratty when activists co-opt their medical problems to declare that they are in some way not "real" men or women.

People with DSDs occasionally transition, though not at a higher rate than the rest of the population as far as I know. I met someone on Twitter the other day who said he was XXXY, which is a form of Klinefelter's, a condition of males, but he was living as a woman. He was extremely clear that there is no third sex and that his biological sex is male though.

On the other hand Erik Schinneger, who was raised as a girl in the 1950s in error, "transitioned" to his true biological sex of male once this was discovered when he was about 20.

So there are anomalies, but the anomalies are not a spectrum between the sexes, they are anomalies of one sex or the other, and there is no third sex and no third type of gamete.

 

[theprestige]

The trans rights debate would be entirely different, a lot simpler, and a lot less controversial, if it were actually about intersex people and what they need and want. But it's not. So while Arth's claims about nonbinary sex may or may not be technically accurate, they're functionally irrelevant to what's actually being debated.

Unless Arth can bring his argument for nonbinary sex around to a practical application in the trans right debate, then technically correct is once again the worst kind of correct. Assuming it's even correct in the first place, which it probably isn't.

This thread was originally created to separate intersex questions from gender identity and public policy questions in The Other Thread. Arth's flogging of the intersex question was separated out from another thread in which gender and sex identity were being debated. So this is definitely the thread to flog the intersex question free of any real context, but I don't really see the point.

 

[Rolfe]

No, except people with DSDs are still pleading with trans advocates not to weaponise their medical problems as a gotcha in the trans debate, and even pleading with funding bodies to stop declaring that money given to the rainbow queer alphabet soup is money given to support people with DSDs, because actual support funds for DSD patients are drying up as the rainbow alphabet soup sucks up all the money.

The overwhelming majority of people who claim a trans identity are genotypically and phenotypically normal members of the sex they actually are. The existence of people with genotypical and/or phenotypical anomalies of the sexual organs has literally zero relevance to the trans debate. But still it continues. Some people have Klinefelter's syndrome, therefore I (a normal male) should be permitted to access all female-specific intimate spaces is a complete non-sequitur, but that doesn't stop them.

I think the loss of funding experienced by genuine DSD charities, and the problems people with DSDs are experiencing due to people who simply "identify" as having a DSD joining their support forums and even kicking out genuine DSD sufferers for talking about their particular condition or asking what diagnosis someone else has, are genuine issues too.

 

[Aber]

One of the problems with the hard distinction between "sex" and "gender" is definitional. When you say that "sex is binary", what exactly are you talking about? Are you talking about chromosomal sex? Gonadal sex? Urogenital sex? Endocrinal sex? Neurological sex? There are variations to the binary distribution in all these cases.

No - response from a biologist

https://www.quackometer.net/blog/2020/09/the-capture-of-nature.html

In 2015, Claire Ainsworth published an article “Sex Redefined – The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.” It is an exemplar of the ideological and denialist approach to sex.

The Ainsworth article goes along the well established specious set of arguments you will find in ‘gender studies’- it seeks to undermine our ability to talk about sex. That approach goes like this:

• Say you are going to give the ‘old fashioned’ defintion of sex but actually set up a straw man. Instead of discussing how biologists define the sex of an organism in terms of the evolved development path it follows with respect to either gamete type (male or female), claim sex is a set of ‘sex characteristics’ like genitals, breasts and things like facial hair. Stick to humans.
• Note how sex characteristics vary enormously between individuals and many overlap between what we call sexes. There is no clear dividing line, for example, in bone morphology in humans for example. Therefore, there is no clear diving line between the sexes.
• Set up another false straw man of how karytypes are synonymous with sexes — that is XX/XY are defining of female and male rather than being one type of sex determining mechanism. Note how sex chromosomal aneuploidies mean sex cannot be binary. This is false and conflates atypical chromosome numbers with sexes.
• Come to the conclusion that sex is too vague, subjective and unreliable a concept to classify humans.

 

[d4m10n]

Every person you've ever met who succeeded—however marginally—in the neverending game of evolutionary fitness (i.e. sexual reproduction) managed to pass on their genes via one of exactly two possible pathways.

Our reproductive process is as binary as nature ever gets.

 

[arthwollipot]

Every person you've ever met who succeeded—however marginally—in the neverending game of evolutionary fitness (i.e. sexual reproduction) managed to pass on their genes via one of exactly two possible pathways.

Our reproductive process is as binary as nature ever gets.

That's so far from the point it's not even funny.

I can see that I'm unlikely to make any headway by posting science here, so I don't think I'll spend any more intellectual effort in this space. Thank you to the mods for moving this discussion to the appropriate thread.

 

[Emily's Cat]

There are more, but two is a good first approximation.

So... how do you believe that babies get made?

 

[Rolfe]

I think he has bowed out. He thinks we're all too dim to understand the "science" he's posting.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Ah, so you are someone who still preserves the outdated hard separation between "sex" and "gender". My mistake. I will modify my future statements accordingly.

Personally, I see "gender" as a synonym for sex, of which there are exactly two in the human species.

I understand that some people refer to "gender identity" as "gender", by which they mean either a) a person's resonance with social stereotypes of gender roles or b) dysphoria or c) a motte and bailey of the two as it fits their argument.

When "gender" is used to represent a person's internal perception of themselves it can mean anything at all, and there are as many "genders" as there are people on the planet.

When we're talking about the biology of sex, and the reality of sex, there are explicitly and exclusively two sexes among humans, and indeed among all mammals on earth.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Wait - you think that all intersex conditions still fall into the gender binary? You're going to have to walk me through that logic. If they are all either male or female, then they're not intersex. Because that's what "intersex" means.

"Intersex" is a horrible misnomer, and it does active damage to people with congenital conditions of sexual development. CCSDs are sex-specific conditions to start with. And each person is still only either male or female, even if they have some ambiguity in development.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Biological sex, whatever you are specifically referring to, falls into a bimodal distribution.

This is bad math, and you've been fed a falsehood, my friend. If you have a bimodal distribution when measuring a specific dependent variable... then it means that your data source contains two distinct populations, and you have failed to identify that categorical variable.

Spergs do not exist.

 

[d4m10n]

That's so far from the point it's not even funny.

Sexual reproduction strikes me as fairly salient here, since it is the (binary) process which gives rise to sexual differences in the first place.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think the loss of funding experienced by genuine DSD charities, and the problems people with DSDs are experiencing due to people who simply "identify" as having a DSD joining their support forums and even kicking out genuine DSD sufferers for talking about their particular condition or asking what diagnosis someone else has, are genuine issues too.

Absolutely. I have a friend who has a very rare CCSD - XX/XY mosaic affecting the sexual organs. They have far more right to claim "intersex" than anyone on the planet, being as they are literally a mosaic of two different people.

They were sucked into the trans stuff when puberty hit and their development went very wonky. At first they felt validated... but in short order they felt extremely used and abused. They now run a detrans forum, which has a high proportion of people with CCSDs.

One of the challenges they identified is that people with CCSDs struggle to get appropriate medical care. They have been force-paired with transgender stuff, so they get referred to gender clinics and gender-related therapy, and they have a difficult time getting general practitioners to recognize that they have an actual, legitimate medical condition that needs actual, legitimate medical treatment. Their deleterious conditions are NOT an identity.

 

[Emily's Cat]

That's so far from the point it's not even funny.

No, that is EXACTLY the point. That is what sex is. Sex is the means by which we as humans reproduce and pass on our genetic material. It's the means by which all sexually reproductive species survive. It is without question an evolutionary mechanism.

And in mammals it is explicitly and exclusively binary. There are variants of every single mammalian species that have reproductive anatomy that arranged around the production of large sessile gametes, and we call those mammals females of their species. There are variants of every single mammalian species whose reproductive anatomy is arranged around producing small motile gametes, and we call those males of their species.

There is no in-between sex, there is no third sex. There are only two. That's how reproduction works. That is the bedrock upon which our evolution as mammals rests. That is exactly what sex is.

I can see that I'm unlikely to make any headway by posting science here, so I don't think I'll spend any more intellectual effort in this space. Thank you to the mods for moving this discussion to the appropriate thread.

You won't make headway posting pseudoscience. Nor will you make headway by obfuscating real science.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I think he has bowed out. He thinks we're all too dim to understand the "science" he's posting.

Yeah, I'm caught up now. It's a shame really, I still rather like arthwollipot as a person. But on this topic... well...

 

[Emily's Cat]

Sexual reproduction strikes me as fairly salient here, since it is the (binary) process which gives rise to sexual differences in the first place.

Honestly, I don't know how you would even begin to talk about medical conditions that cause disorders of sexual development without talking about sex. It's like trying to talk about polydactyly while refusing to acknowledge that humans normally have five digits on each appendage. Or talking about male pattern baldness while refusing to admit that humans grow hair on their heads in the first place.

 

[Rolfe]

Yeah, I'm caught up now. It's a shame really, I still rather like arthwollipot as a person. But on this topic... well...

It may be that he realises he's talking absolute nonsense but would rather just stop than admit it.

Lots of people talk sense on one topic and complete rubbish on another.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I think he has bowed out. He thinks we're all too dim to understand the "science" he's posting.

More likely he realized that this thread, like all related threads on this forum will be dominated by the transphobes that, for some unknown reason, are obsessed with the topic.