4 ms·

I presume this is a consequence of the datasets they had to work off but it is really frustrating that they have one catchall "transgender and gender-diverse" c

I presume this is a consequence of the datasets they had to work off but it is really frustrating that they have one catchall "transgender and gender-diverse" category, segmenting by birth sex or particular gender identified with would be interesting/valuable

37r7rudjduj 6y ago
I realize this might be rude but I'm not sure what the polite way to ask is, isn't your sex always your birth sex for the most part? Outside the effects of the medications and the cosmetic effects of the surgery isn't your body still mostly the same as far as the nuts, bolts, and genetic disorders, are concerned?
- spicywatermelon 6y ago
  Medication has a profound effect.
- mkr-hn 6y ago
  That depends on what you mean by "sex." And even then, it's not a neat binary thing by any definition. Most things that involve humans fall on a bimodal distribution. Cropping out the wide fields in that distribution is convenient for statistics, forms, and rhetoric, but it doesn't reflect the true range humans are capable of.
  - 37r7rudjduj 6y ago
    Can you elaborate on this more? I meant "sex" in the way that my physician would use the word. I'm aware of things like intersex conditions but, unless someone is actually intersex or otherwise complicated, your reply doesn't really answer my original question.
    - transatlantic38 6y ago
      I'm not that poster but I can elaborate. Basically your physician couldn't easily use "biological sex" as a blanket term to accurately asses the risk factors and health needs of a medically transitioned person. Our sex is "otherwise complicated." The reason for this is that medical transition, primarily through the mechanism of hormone replacement therapy, actually changes some aspects of biological sex and the associated risk factors at a "nuts and bolts" level even though its not touching every single aspect of biological sex. It's not purely cosmetic, though that's a common misconception. Hormones ultimately control a lot about how human bodies express sex and the associated medical factors. In reality "biological sex" is composed of multiple sexually differentiated systems within the human biology that can theoretically operate somewhat independent of each other, and changing the dominate hormone in your body will flip or at least shove a lot of those systems towards the other end of the distribution. I guess a way to phrase this in developer terminology would be that "biological sex" is sometimes a leaky abstraction. As a personal example: despite my birth sex, it would be a mistake for my doctor to ask that I routinely get regular breast cancer screenings in the same way it would be a mistake to ask a cis man to regularly screen himself for breast cancer. My risk of breast cancer is much lower than a cis woman's and comparable to a cis man's. But at the same time I have absolutely zero risk of prostate cancer, and it would also be a mistake to try and test for that based on any possible symptoms I'm having. An ideally perfect doctor would be able take my history and be cognizant of what risk factors of biological sex, exactly, which conditions were associated with, and then be able to map that onto my body to figure out what I'm at risk for. As you can probably imagine, this is very difficult to do. A lot of times what makes a condition linked to sex isn't actually understood in the first place.
      - 37r7rudjduj 6y ago
        I wanted to say thanks for giving such a detailed reply. I still have some things that I'm unsure about as far as the framing of everything but having concrete examples like your point about your lowered risk of breast cancer is immensely helpful in understanding where I'm making social judgements vs. just being ignorant about the topic as a whole. It's often hard to get clear answers like yours because just phrasing these kinds of questions often feels like a minefield. So your patience in answering what I'm sure is an at least somewhat demeaning line of questioning is very appreciated and helps a lot in wrapping my head around this.
- alicemaz 6y ago
  when it comes to this topic, "sex" "gender" "male" "female" "man" "woman" etc etc are overloaded with contradictory meanings by people trying to make sneaky ontological arguments. unless I'm specifically talking about the signifier itself, I don't really care about these kinds of games, so I just try to say unambiguous things anyway aside from language legerdemain, the word "sex" is also used to refer to what sex you're legally designated as, which is only loosely coupled to biology by now
- DavinMiler 6y ago
  The terms "gender" and "sex" are defined differently by different people, but in general the definition is something like this: Sex is usually defined in terms of genitalia, genotype (chromosomes) or similar biological properties. However, this is still not a binary male/female property, see for example intersex people. Depending on your definition, undergoing surgery may change your sex, gender, or both.
  - implements 6y ago
    Should intersex conditions be considered normal human genetic variances (like eye colour), or genetic disorders (like Down Syndrome)? It’s humane and polite not to describe people as abnormal, but being medically accurate I’d argue that humans are indeed binary sexed, and immutably so.
    - sascha_sl 6y ago
      It really depends where you draw the line of "intersex condition", it's not really a term physicians specialized in the field use anymore, because variance in sexual development is ubiquitous if you look hard enough. "DSD" is typically used when there's a pronounced effect that is physically diagnosable, but it often misses other neurological factors that, for instance, corelate in transgender people. Then again, a lot of severe conditions that would often fall under the DSD umbrella are often overlooked until they become somehow important. For instance, complete androgen insensitivity, so zero functional testosterone in an XY individual, is often not diagnosed until you notice the lack of periods / cervix. Calling it bimodal is a much more precise way to go about it that acknowledges we have two broad categories, with lots of exceptions and caveats.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Should intersex conditions be considered normal human genetic variances (like eye colour), or genetic disorders (like Down Syndrome)? Doesn't really matter, for this purpose. > I’d argue that humans are indeed binary sexed, and immutably so. Unless you defining terms such that the variations are not merely disorders but actually nonhuman, you are clearly wrong; human alignments of sex characteristics are non-binary though bimodal.

37r7rudjduj 6y ago

I realize this might be rude but I'm not sure what the polite way to ask is, isn't your sex always your birth sex for the most part? Outside the effects of the medications and the cosmetic effects of the surgery isn't your body still mostly the same as far as the nuts, bolts, and genetic disorders, are concerned?

spicywatermelon 6y ago
Medication has a profound effect.
mkr-hn 6y ago
That depends on what you mean by "sex." And even then, it's not a neat binary thing by any definition. Most things that involve humans fall on a bimodal distribution. Cropping out the wide fields in that distribution is convenient for statistics, forms, and rhetoric, but it doesn't reflect the true range humans are capable of.
- 37r7rudjduj 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on this more? I meant "sex" in the way that my physician would use the word. I'm aware of things like intersex conditions but, unless someone is actually intersex or otherwise complicated, your reply doesn't really answer my original question.
  - transatlantic38 6y ago
    I'm not that poster but I can elaborate. Basically your physician couldn't easily use "biological sex" as a blanket term to accurately asses the risk factors and health needs of a medically transitioned person. Our sex is "otherwise complicated." The reason for this is that medical transition, primarily through the mechanism of hormone replacement therapy, actually changes some aspects of biological sex and the associated risk factors at a "nuts and bolts" level even though its not touching every single aspect of biological sex. It's not purely cosmetic, though that's a common misconception. Hormones ultimately control a lot about how human bodies express sex and the associated medical factors. In reality "biological sex" is composed of multiple sexually differentiated systems within the human biology that can theoretically operate somewhat independent of each other, and changing the dominate hormone in your body will flip or at least shove a lot of those systems towards the other end of the distribution. I guess a way to phrase this in developer terminology would be that "biological sex" is sometimes a leaky abstraction. As a personal example: despite my birth sex, it would be a mistake for my doctor to ask that I routinely get regular breast cancer screenings in the same way it would be a mistake to ask a cis man to regularly screen himself for breast cancer. My risk of breast cancer is much lower than a cis woman's and comparable to a cis man's. But at the same time I have absolutely zero risk of prostate cancer, and it would also be a mistake to try and test for that based on any possible symptoms I'm having. An ideally perfect doctor would be able take my history and be cognizant of what risk factors of biological sex, exactly, which conditions were associated with, and then be able to map that onto my body to figure out what I'm at risk for. As you can probably imagine, this is very difficult to do. A lot of times what makes a condition linked to sex isn't actually understood in the first place.
    - 37r7rudjduj 6y ago
      I wanted to say thanks for giving such a detailed reply. I still have some things that I'm unsure about as far as the framing of everything but having concrete examples like your point about your lowered risk of breast cancer is immensely helpful in understanding where I'm making social judgements vs. just being ignorant about the topic as a whole. It's often hard to get clear answers like yours because just phrasing these kinds of questions often feels like a minefield. So your patience in answering what I'm sure is an at least somewhat demeaning line of questioning is very appreciated and helps a lot in wrapping my head around this.
alicemaz 6y ago
when it comes to this topic, "sex" "gender" "male" "female" "man" "woman" etc etc are overloaded with contradictory meanings by people trying to make sneaky ontological arguments. unless I'm specifically talking about the signifier itself, I don't really care about these kinds of games, so I just try to say unambiguous things anyway aside from language legerdemain, the word "sex" is also used to refer to what sex you're legally designated as, which is only loosely coupled to biology by now
DavinMiler 6y ago
The terms "gender" and "sex" are defined differently by different people, but in general the definition is something like this: Sex is usually defined in terms of genitalia, genotype (chromosomes) or similar biological properties. However, this is still not a binary male/female property, see for example intersex people. Depending on your definition, undergoing surgery may change your sex, gender, or both.
- implements 6y ago
  Should intersex conditions be considered normal human genetic variances (like eye colour), or genetic disorders (like Down Syndrome)? It’s humane and polite not to describe people as abnormal, but being medically accurate I’d argue that humans are indeed binary sexed, and immutably so.
  - sascha_sl 6y ago
    It really depends where you draw the line of "intersex condition", it's not really a term physicians specialized in the field use anymore, because variance in sexual development is ubiquitous if you look hard enough. "DSD" is typically used when there's a pronounced effect that is physically diagnosable, but it often misses other neurological factors that, for instance, corelate in transgender people. Then again, a lot of severe conditions that would often fall under the DSD umbrella are often overlooked until they become somehow important. For instance, complete androgen insensitivity, so zero functional testosterone in an XY individual, is often not diagnosed until you notice the lack of periods / cervix. Calling it bimodal is a much more precise way to go about it that acknowledges we have two broad categories, with lots of exceptions and caveats.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Should intersex conditions be considered normal human genetic variances (like eye colour), or genetic disorders (like Down Syndrome)? Doesn't really matter, for this purpose. > I’d argue that humans are indeed binary sexed, and immutably so. Unless you defining terms such that the variations are not merely disorders but actually nonhuman, you are clearly wrong; human alignments of sex characteristics are non-binary though bimodal.