I have little doubt that we have all heard the line that transphobes use, that your gender is what you’re born with, you can’t change it, etc, and needless to say this is stupid, almost as stupid as the time I saw someone on reddit trying to convince someone diagnosed with NPD they didn’t actually have it (the stigma surrounding that condition is absurd). But while I’m assured most of us know that this is wrong, I still think it’s important to know why, and what better way to do this than by using the very same ‘basic biology’ these people try to uphold?

To begin with, it’s quite easy to see that the very concepts of ‘male’ and 'female are vague when you get into the specifics. As I have mentioned several times in the past, ‘maleness’ as we usually think of it is not in fact determined by the entire y chromosome, but by only a segment of it. If that segment is lost, as it sometimes is, the person in question develops as female but is chromosomally ‘male’, by the definitions of transphobes. So are they actually male or not? Either way, their criteria are completely broken down. And this problem isn’t just limited to the Y chromosome; what about XXY men? They bear some female secondary sexual characteristics, but they are undoubtedly recognizably developmentally male. And X, XXX, and XXX+ women do exist. What about them? Should XYY men be banned from sports as well due to their supposed heightened testosterone?

To make matters more complicated, development of sexual characteristics is more complicated than just one gene. If anything downstream malfunctions, someone can end up with both male and female reproductive structures, also known as intersex people. What about them? Are they supposed to play male sports half the time and female sports the other half?

Even ignoring all this, the very conclusion that the existence of trans people is ‘unscientific’ is false. The consensus in the scientific community is that sex and gender are indeed separate, and can be misaligned for an individual. If they’re willing to deny what actual scientists are saying for their own ideology, they’re free to do that, but they have no excuse to pretend to uphold science. How do I know what scientists agree on? My anatomy and physiology textbook. From 2006.

An entire decade before the whole wokemongering bullshit started. It’s not as if the authors are particularly progressive either; several other textbooks I own from the early 2000s to a few years back agree on this.

I think it’s quite clear that anything transphobes say isn’t based in fact, but only their own delusions. They can’t deny that they don’t give a shit about biology at all, which is perfectly fine to me. However, they shouldn’t go around masquerading as triumphant ‘experts’ when they don’t understand what they’re trying to use as a cudgel. The sad thing is, many uninformed people will see their rhetoric online and fall for their bad faith arguments, and I think it’s the responsibility of those who know better to not only tell them not only that they are wrong, but also why they are wrong.

I apologize for the terrible structure and awkward phrasing.

    • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
      141·
      4 days ago

      the stuff we all have between legs, that definitely defines sex.

      Ok, but like, it doesn’t. See this comment I made yesterday.

      Edit: I’m actually going to copy the comment here, so no one has to click on a link to read it:

      What do we mean by “sex”?

      Do we mean chromosomes? If so, there aren’t two sexes, there are a whole bunch, look at the list on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies

      Do we mean genitals? If so, again, there aren’t two distinct sexes, instead it’s more of a spectrum between “this is obviously a penis” and “this is obviously a vulva”. In fact, infants with genitals that can’t be neatly classified as a penis or a vulva frequently have surgery forced upon them and these (completely unnecessary) surgeries cause all sorts of issues later in life.

      Do we mean hormonal profile? Again, it’s not as straightforward as testosterone = male, estrogen = female. The endocrine system is wildly complicated and the ratios of sex hormones people have can vary wildly. A person’s hormonal profile is also extremely changeable, which is something shitty right-wingers don’t want “biological sex” to be.

      Do we mean size of gametes? This is the only option that even remotely makes sense, because it is true that in humans there are only two kinds of gametes, small gametes (sperm) and large gametes (eggs). Furthermore, there has never been a case of a human who produces both eggs and sperm, every human produces at most one of the two. But lots of people are completely infertile, producing no gametes. So if by “sex” we mean the size of gametes someone produces, then there are a whole lot of people who are sexless because they produce no gametes.

      But ok, size of gamete produced almost works as a definition of “sex”. So maybe we could look at the gonads in people who don’t produce gametes and make a determination of their sex that way. Well, it turns out that doesn’t work either, because there are people with both ovarian tissue and testicular tissue, and sometimes these tissues are even mixed together in the same organ (called “streak gonads”).

      So what are we left with? Nothing. There’s nothing to “sex”, it’s a meaningless term. Listen to any shitty right-winger try and define “biological sex” and you’ll hear them eventually say something like “a male is someone whose reproductive system is geared towards producing sperm”. But what does that mean? Fuck all, I’d say. What shitty right-wingers mean is “a female is someone who I think is a woman”. They’re all of them, to a person, talking about gender every time they say “biological sex”. They’ll deny it, but ask them about intersex people, or people with ambiguous genitalia or streak gonads, and you’ll get nonsense in response.

      I’ve whiled away many a hilarious hour reading terfs (on ovarit, before it shutdown) arguing about which particular intersex people count as women. They never agree, there is no “party line”, it’s all vibes and always has been.

            • v_pp@lemmygrad.ml
              111·
              4 days ago

              Consequently, people who are infertile do not have a sex? You are just demonstrating the point: that your attempts to define “biological sex” are faulty. People who recognize this fact are not denying reality; you are.

                • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  2·
                  4 days ago

                  So is it “what’s between your legs” that makes sex, or is it gametes?

                  Hermaphroditism exists, clitoromegaly and micropenis exist (and can be remarkably hard to tell apart), CAIS exists where gametes and anatomy can literally contradict each other in the same individual.

                  It seems like you’re about to say “there is a third group that has ‘neither’ as a sex” (which is true) but you immediately shy away from that conclusion and revert to anatomy.

                  The whole existence of “abnormal” is a normal part of evolution, amd in fact it is why we could become what we are today. Genetics and transcription are not fixed systems in place since 1 billion MYA, they mutate and cluster and without that mutation process none of it could ever exist. Without an in-between sex, the system of sexuality cannot develop and all animals just stay reproducing asexually forever. It’s not something with a fixed or deep cosmic meaning, it’s literally a bunch of accumulated errors that end up coincidentally making something that’s internally coherent most of the time.

        • Are_Euclidding_Me [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
          81·
          4 days ago

          So you’re saying gametes determine sex and anyone who doesn’t produce gametes has no sex. Cool. That’s fine, and a reasonable way to define “sex”, if we must do so.

          Your definition of sex isn’t a common one, most people who care to try and define sex don’t like saying that people can have no sex at all, which is what you’re saying.

          I clearly said in my comment that every human produces at most one of two possible types of gamete, so I don’t know why you spent so many sentences talking about a hypothetical third gamete, I’m well aware there’s no such thing.

          I’m also going to emphasize, once again, that genitals don’t always match gametes and, furthermore, don’t always fit cleanly into either penis or vulva, lots of people are born with ambiguous genitalia.