33 ms·

They have a Y chromosome. They are a male. It’s the lack of the Y not the presence of two Xs that make a woman a woman

by water8 5y ago

emilyst 5y ago
Do you know you don't have a Y chromosome? Did you check?
- water8 5y ago
  - emilyst 5y ago
    I think your comment was directed to the wrong person.
epgui 5y ago
Unfortunately, it just is not that simple. It's up to you, but you have a choice between either letting go of this idea, or continuing to hold slightly wrong beliefs. (I am a scientist, but this is not my specific area of expertise) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
- Ourgon 5y ago
  It is "that simple", those who suffer from Klinefelter syndrome are men. With modern fertility therapy some of them can impregnate women. You can try to complicate matters but this does not add veracity to such statements, it just shows that 'gender ideologues' will latch on to medical conditions in a search for legitimacy to the detriment of those who suffer from such conditions. https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome
  - eesmith 5y ago
    Quoting the linked-to SciAm article: > According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD. Nor is it only XXY which is the issue: > For many years, scientists believed that female development was the default programme, and that male development was actively switched on by the presence of a particular gene on the Y chromosome. In 1990, researchers made headlines when they uncovered the identity of this gene, which they called SRY. Just by itself, this gene can switch the gonad from ovarian to testicular development. For example, XX individuals who carry a fragment of the Y chromosome that contains SRY develop as males. ... > The gonad is not the only source of diversity in sex. A number of DSDs are caused by changes in the machinery that responds to hormonal signals from the gonads and other glands. Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, for example, arises when a person's cells are deaf to male sex hormones, usually because the receptors that respond to the hormones are not working. People with CAIS have Y chromosomes and internal testes, but their external genitalia are female, and they develop as females at puberty. Noting "But they are rare—affecting about 1 in 4,500 people." (The "some form of" is for a wide range of issues, like "surgeons reported that they had been operating on a hernia in a man, when they discovered that he had a womb. The man was 70, and had fathered four children.")
  - epgui 5y ago
    I would encourage you to read the article I posted, because it barely has anything to do with Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad other nuances.
    - Ourgon 5y ago
      I see your one article by one activist and raise you the whole body of literature on sexually reproducing species, to be more specific of mammals - of which we are one - as written by non-activist biologists. I would encourage you to read some of it and enlighten yourself. Do you want some pointers?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  >> They have a Y chromosome. They are a male. It’s the lack of the Y not the presence of two Xs that make a woman a woman > Unfortunately, it just is not that simple. Unfortunately, it probably is that simple: https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome: > Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic condition in which a boy is born with an extra X chromosome. Instead of the typical XY chromosomes in men, they have XXY, so this condition is sometimes called XXY syndrome. > Men with Klinefelter usually don’t know they have it until they run into problems trying to have a child. When people say things like "males have XY chromosomes," it's a somewhat fuzzy shorthand for the idea that "maleness" is determined by the natural progression of certain biological processes. That those processes can rarely take a few unusual twists and turns to get to that phenotype doesn't invalidate the core idea.
  - epgui 5y ago
    It is not that simple, and I am not merely referring to Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad nuances.
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > ...and I am not merely referring to Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad nuances. And I wasn't exclusively referring to it either. My point there's a legitimate idea there that isn't undermined by slight fuzziness or technical imprecision in layman definitions. This isn't a perfect analogy, but Wikipedia has red as light with a wavelength of 625–750nm [1]. A lot of these discussions are a lot like trying to undermine the concept of red itself by noting that 624nm light exists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colo...
- Ourgon 5y ago
  As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth. I first saw this claim being made this year by anthropology graduate students on Facebook. At first I thought they mistyped and were simply referring to gender. But as I began to pay closer attention, it was clear that they were indeed talking about biological sex. Over the next several months it became apparent that this view was not isolated to this small friend circle, as it began cropping up all over the Internet. In support of this view, recent editorials from Scientific American—an ostensibly trustworthy, scientific, and apolitical online magazine—are often referenced. The titles read, “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum.” Even more recently, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, published an editorial claiming that classifying people’s sex “on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “has no basis in science” and that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female.” In the Nature article, the motive is stated clearly enough: acknowledging the reality of biological sex will “undermine efforts to reduce discrimination against transgender people and those who do not fall into the binary categories of male or female.” But while there is evidence for the fluidity of sex in many organisms, this is simply not the case in humans. We can acknowledge the existence of very rare cases in humans where sex is ambiguous, but this does not negate the reality that sex in humans is functionally binary. These editorials are nothing more than a form of politically motivated, scientific sophistry. The formula for each of these articles is straightforward. First, they list a multitude of intersex conditions. Second, they detail the genes, hormones, and complex developmental processes leading to these conditions. And, third and finally, they throw their hands up and insist this complexity means scientists have no clue what sex really is. This is all highly misleading and deceiving (self-deceiving?), since the developmental processes involved in creating any organ are enormously complex, yet almost always produce fully functional end products. Making a hand is complicated too, but the vast majority of us end up with the functional, five-fingered variety. What these articles leave out is the fact that the final result of sex development in humans are unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Thus, the claim that “2 sexes is overly simplistic” is misleading, because intersex conditions correspond to less than 0.02 percent of all births, and intersex people are not a third sex. Intersex is simply a catch-all category for sex ambiguity and/or a mismatch between sex genotype and phenotype, regardless of its etiology. Furthermore, the claim that “sex is a spectrum” is also misleading, as a spectrum implies a continuous distribution, and maybe even an amodal one (one in which no specific outcome is more likely than others). Biological sex in humans, however, is clear-cut over 99.98 percent of the time. Lastly, the claim that classifying people’s sex based on anatomy and genetics “has no basis in science” has itself no basis in reality, as any method exhibiting a predictive accuracy of over 99.98 percent would place it among the most precise methods in all the life sciences. We revise medical care practices and change world economic plans on far lower confidence than that. https://quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/ https://quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/ Written by an evolutionary biologist - one of the many who speak up in reaction to gender ideology.

They have a Y chromosome. They are a male. It’s the lack of the Y not the presence of two Xs that make a woman a woman

by water8 5y ago

They have a Y chromosome. They are a male. It’s the lack of the Y not the presence of two Xs that make a woman a woman

emilyst 5y ago

Do you know you don't have a Y chromosome? Did you check?

water8 5y ago
- emilyst 5y ago
  I think your comment was directed to the wrong person.

epgui 5y ago

Unfortunately, it just is not that simple. It's up to you, but you have a choice between either letting go of this idea, or continuing to hold slightly wrong beliefs. (I am a scientist, but this is not my specific area of expertise) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...

Ourgon 5y ago
It is "that simple", those who suffer from Klinefelter syndrome are men. With modern fertility therapy some of them can impregnate women. You can try to complicate matters but this does not add veracity to such statements, it just shows that 'gender ideologues' will latch on to medical conditions in a search for legitimacy to the detriment of those who suffer from such conditions. https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome
- eesmith 5y ago
  Quoting the linked-to SciAm article: > According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD. Nor is it only XXY which is the issue: > For many years, scientists believed that female development was the default programme, and that male development was actively switched on by the presence of a particular gene on the Y chromosome. In 1990, researchers made headlines when they uncovered the identity of this gene, which they called SRY. Just by itself, this gene can switch the gonad from ovarian to testicular development. For example, XX individuals who carry a fragment of the Y chromosome that contains SRY develop as males. ... > The gonad is not the only source of diversity in sex. A number of DSDs are caused by changes in the machinery that responds to hormonal signals from the gonads and other glands. Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, or CAIS, for example, arises when a person's cells are deaf to male sex hormones, usually because the receptors that respond to the hormones are not working. People with CAIS have Y chromosomes and internal testes, but their external genitalia are female, and they develop as females at puberty. Noting "But they are rare—affecting about 1 in 4,500 people." (The "some form of" is for a wide range of issues, like "surgeons reported that they had been operating on a hernia in a man, when they discovered that he had a womb. The man was 70, and had fathered four children.")
- epgui 5y ago
  I would encourage you to read the article I posted, because it barely has anything to do with Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad other nuances.
  - Ourgon 5y ago
    I see your one article by one activist and raise you the whole body of literature on sexually reproducing species, to be more specific of mammals - of which we are one - as written by non-activist biologists. I would encourage you to read some of it and enlighten yourself. Do you want some pointers?
tablespoon 5y ago
>> They have a Y chromosome. They are a male. It’s the lack of the Y not the presence of two Xs that make a woman a woman > Unfortunately, it just is not that simple. Unfortunately, it probably is that simple: https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome https://www.webmd.com/men/klinefelter-syndrome: > Klinefelter syndrome is a genetic condition in which a boy is born with an extra X chromosome. Instead of the typical XY chromosomes in men, they have XXY, so this condition is sometimes called XXY syndrome. > Men with Klinefelter usually don’t know they have it until they run into problems trying to have a child. When people say things like "males have XY chromosomes," it's a somewhat fuzzy shorthand for the idea that "maleness" is determined by the natural progression of certain biological processes. That those processes can rarely take a few unusual twists and turns to get to that phenotype doesn't invalidate the core idea.
- epgui 5y ago
  It is not that simple, and I am not merely referring to Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad nuances.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > ...and I am not merely referring to Klinefelter syndrome. There are a myriad nuances. And I wasn't exclusively referring to it either. My point there's a legitimate idea there that isn't undermined by slight fuzziness or technical imprecision in layman definitions. This isn't a perfect analogy, but Wikipedia has red as light with a wavelength of 625–750nm [1]. A lot of these discussions are a lot like trying to undermine the concept of red itself by noting that 624nm light exists. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum#Spectral_colo...
Ourgon 5y ago
As a biologist, it is hard to understand how anyone could believe something so outlandish. It’s a belief on a par with the belief in a flat Earth. I first saw this claim being made this year by anthropology graduate students on Facebook. At first I thought they mistyped and were simply referring to gender. But as I began to pay closer attention, it was clear that they were indeed talking about biological sex. Over the next several months it became apparent that this view was not isolated to this small friend circle, as it began cropping up all over the Internet. In support of this view, recent editorials from Scientific American—an ostensibly trustworthy, scientific, and apolitical online magazine—are often referenced. The titles read, “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum.” Even more recently, the most prestigious scientific journal in the world, Nature, published an editorial claiming that classifying people’s sex “on the basis of anatomy or genetics should be abandoned” and “has no basis in science” and that “the research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female.” In the Nature article, the motive is stated clearly enough: acknowledging the reality of biological sex will “undermine efforts to reduce discrimination against transgender people and those who do not fall into the binary categories of male or female.” But while there is evidence for the fluidity of sex in many organisms, this is simply not the case in humans. We can acknowledge the existence of very rare cases in humans where sex is ambiguous, but this does not negate the reality that sex in humans is functionally binary. These editorials are nothing more than a form of politically motivated, scientific sophistry. The formula for each of these articles is straightforward. First, they list a multitude of intersex conditions. Second, they detail the genes, hormones, and complex developmental processes leading to these conditions. And, third and finally, they throw their hands up and insist this complexity means scientists have no clue what sex really is. This is all highly misleading and deceiving (self-deceiving?), since the developmental processes involved in creating any organ are enormously complex, yet almost always produce fully functional end products. Making a hand is complicated too, but the vast majority of us end up with the functional, five-fingered variety. What these articles leave out is the fact that the final result of sex development in humans are unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time. Thus, the claim that “2 sexes is overly simplistic” is misleading, because intersex conditions correspond to less than 0.02 percent of all births, and intersex people are not a third sex. Intersex is simply a catch-all category for sex ambiguity and/or a mismatch between sex genotype and phenotype, regardless of its etiology. Furthermore, the claim that “sex is a spectrum” is also misleading, as a spectrum implies a continuous distribution, and maybe even an amodal one (one in which no specific outcome is more likely than others). Biological sex in humans, however, is clear-cut over 99.98 percent of the time. Lastly, the claim that classifying people’s sex based on anatomy and genetics “has no basis in science” has itself no basis in reality, as any method exhibiting a predictive accuracy of over 99.98 percent would place it among the most precise methods in all the life sciences. We revise medical care practices and change world economic plans on far lower confidence than that. https://quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/ https://quillette.com/2018/11/30/the-new-evolution-deniers/ Written by an evolutionary biologist - one of the many who speak up in reaction to gender ideology.