4 ms·

2%? I had no idea that intersex babies were that common.

DamonHD 3y ago
You should see what happens with cattle when there are two calves at once! And of course this 2% 'I' is not including most of the other LGBT... folks, but some (who've never worked on a beef farm, or done any actual genetics in a lab, etc) continue to insist that everything is a cut-n-dried binary. Never let facts get in the way...
- flutas 3y ago
  > Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    I don't know why Turner Syndrome should be excluded from this, but in any case the person with it may well not fit into any sort of binary. The one I know best doesn't.
    - flutas 3y ago
      From my quick search, it sounds like people with turner syndrome still have the "correct" sexual organs for their physical gender. They may have under-developed ovaries, but still "correct." https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms/
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        That would come as a surprise to my friend who had to have a lot of surgery.
        flutas 3y ago
        Well, tell NHS they are wrong then? Or maybe your friend has some other issue aside from Turner syndrome that caused them to need surgery. > Even though many women with Turner syndrome have undeveloped ovaries and are infertile, their vagina and womb develop normally. This means they're able to have a normal sex life following treatment with female hormones.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        Maybe one can play games with words and divisions and so on, but any claims that human sex is absolutely binary falls on my friend's experience however it is labelled. Disease descriptions are messy too.
        someplaceguy 3y ago
        To be fair, it is quite clearly binary in the vast majority of cases. But of course, biology can be messy, so there are exceptions, not just due to genetics but also due to development issues. Apart from that there are also psychological issues, where one's biology might be clearly defined but the person might feel differently, for all sorts of different reasons.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        No it's not fair. I suspect that you have not found yourself in an out group on the wrong end of other people's prejudices very often. a) "Vast majority" is what we seem to be arguing about here, eg when you tot up all the LGBTIQ+ people, they are not "zero" (as some try to claim) nor "chosing to do it" (ditto) nor sub-human (ditto) nor dangerous perverts (ditto, eg in that Bill). b) And even if only 0.00000001% of people were not absolutely in a convenient binary category or the other, would that be a good reason to treat those few as political point-scoring opportunities, deny they exist, or discriminate against them? I suppose that when large chunks of a population still see out and out racism and sexism as somehow acceptable, for example, picking on other minorities for personal gain doesn't seem so weird. So fighting over the details of definition and number of intersex is rather to miss the point that is most definitely real and very much non-zero, and people in power refuse to act on that information humanely.
christkv 3y ago
Yeah no even a simple web search shows that 2% is incorrect
- ceejayoz 3y ago
  Cleveland Clinic agrees it’s 2%. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-interse... Ambiguous genitalia isn’t the only possibility.
  - christkv 3y ago
    They don’t provide any sources for their claims. They say 1 of 100 Americans are intersex but 2% worldwide so somehow double the rate but no source for any of their claims.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      So your “simple web search” you recommended only is worthwhile if the results agree with your existing position?
      - kyleee 3y ago
        I think the person you are responding to was asking for sources for the Cleveland clinic’s number
- deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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someplaceguy 3y ago
That figure is probably quite exaggerated, which is not surprising because such high figures tend to come from those who tend to gain the most from those claims. It likely includes many issues which most people probably wouldn't think of as being 'intersex'.
- aerojoe23 3y ago
  Even if it is doubled or quadrupled, does it matter? If just 0.05% of the us pop is intersex I think her argument is completely valid. I know you didn't say, "Well because they're so much less of them we don't have to protect their rights." But why say that numbers too big? What's the point? Are you trying to discredit the speaker? Whether or not that is your intent it does seem to be. Propaganda isn't to convince the critical it is to give the morally corrupt an excuse not to think.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I'd agree. Though I find the 2% figure surprising (I'd previously thought it was around 0.2%) it doesn't change the facts that human biology is complex and we shouldn't be trying to shoehorn people into specific roles. There's many cultures that have a far more nuanced view of genders than western societies, so the more recent expansion of thinking beyond "male or female" is us simply catching up.
  - someplaceguy 3y ago
    Well, I don't even know what her argument is because I can't even find it by skimming this huge article. Perhaps if the article went straight to the point, her argument wouldn't be lost in all the noise. For the record, I'm not interested in reading whether someone selected a 'yellow dress' or 'purpley pink flowers' or who picked someone up when. I'd be more interested in reading about actual intersex issues. I am in favor of protecting the rights of everyone, but I don't even know what 'rights' you are talking about. The intersex prevalence depends on how you define "intersex", with some definitions (those who argue "if the term intersex is to retain any meaning") making the prevalence at 0.018%, which is 2 orders of magnitude less than 2%. Whether that invalidates her argument or not I don't know, because again, I don't know what her argument is. I was just replying to the parent poster who was surprised by a figure which I was arguing was exaggerated.
bloak 3y ago
That would seem to be an exaggeration. Wikipedia says 1.7% of the population could count as intersex, but: "Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence) Are they including people with an asymptomatic condition in the 1.7%? It's not quite clear but if they are that's very strange. Even counting people who have some medical condition related to sex hormones but remain unambiguously male or unambiguously female as "intersex" is arguably misleading for the general public. In any case, those "late onset" people are not intersex "babies"!

You should see what happens with cattle when there are two calves at once! And of course this 2% 'I' is not including most of the other LGBT... folks, but some (who've never worked on a beef farm, or done any actual genetics in a lab, etc) continue to insist that everything is a cut-n-dried binary. Never let facts get in the way...

flutas 3y ago
> Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
- DamonHD 3y ago
  I don't know why Turner Syndrome should be excluded from this, but in any case the person with it may well not fit into any sort of binary. The one I know best doesn't.
  - flutas 3y ago
    From my quick search, it sounds like people with turner syndrome still have the "correct" sexual organs for their physical gender. They may have under-developed ovaries, but still "correct." https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/turner-syndrome/symptoms/
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      That would come as a surprise to my friend who had to have a lot of surgery.
      - flutas 3y ago
        Well, tell NHS they are wrong then? Or maybe your friend has some other issue aside from Turner syndrome that caused them to need surgery. > Even though many women with Turner syndrome have undeveloped ovaries and are infertile, their vagina and womb develop normally. This means they're able to have a normal sex life following treatment with female hormones.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        Maybe one can play games with words and divisions and so on, but any claims that human sex is absolutely binary falls on my friend's experience however it is labelled. Disease descriptions are messy too.
        someplaceguy 3y ago
        To be fair, it is quite clearly binary in the vast majority of cases. But of course, biology can be messy, so there are exceptions, not just due to genetics but also due to development issues. Apart from that there are also psychological issues, where one's biology might be clearly defined but the person might feel differently, for all sorts of different reasons.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        No it's not fair. I suspect that you have not found yourself in an out group on the wrong end of other people's prejudices very often. a) "Vast majority" is what we seem to be arguing about here, eg when you tot up all the LGBTIQ+ people, they are not "zero" (as some try to claim) nor "chosing to do it" (ditto) nor sub-human (ditto) nor dangerous perverts (ditto, eg in that Bill). b) And even if only 0.00000001% of people were not absolutely in a convenient binary category or the other, would that be a good reason to treat those few as political point-scoring opportunities, deny they exist, or discriminate against them? I suppose that when large chunks of a population still see out and out racism and sexism as somehow acceptable, for example, picking on other minorities for personal gain doesn't seem so weird. So fighting over the details of definition and number of intersex is rather to miss the point that is most definitely real and very much non-zero, and people in power refuse to act on that information humanely.

christkv 3y ago

Yeah no even a simple web search shows that 2% is incorrect

ceejayoz 3y ago
Cleveland Clinic agrees it’s 2%. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-intersex https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/16324-interse... Ambiguous genitalia isn’t the only possibility.
- christkv 3y ago
  They don’t provide any sources for their claims. They say 1 of 100 Americans are intersex but 2% worldwide so somehow double the rate but no source for any of their claims.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    So your “simple web search” you recommended only is worthwhile if the results agree with your existing position?
    - kyleee 3y ago
      I think the person you are responding to was asking for sources for the Cleveland clinic’s number
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

someplaceguy 3y ago

That figure is probably quite exaggerated, which is not surprising because such high figures tend to come from those who tend to gain the most from those claims. It likely includes many issues which most people probably wouldn't think of as being 'intersex'.

aerojoe23 3y ago
Even if it is doubled or quadrupled, does it matter? If just 0.05% of the us pop is intersex I think her argument is completely valid. I know you didn't say, "Well because they're so much less of them we don't have to protect their rights." But why say that numbers too big? What's the point? Are you trying to discredit the speaker? Whether or not that is your intent it does seem to be. Propaganda isn't to convince the critical it is to give the morally corrupt an excuse not to think.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I'd agree. Though I find the 2% figure surprising (I'd previously thought it was around 0.2%) it doesn't change the facts that human biology is complex and we shouldn't be trying to shoehorn people into specific roles. There's many cultures that have a far more nuanced view of genders than western societies, so the more recent expansion of thinking beyond "male or female" is us simply catching up.
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  Well, I don't even know what her argument is because I can't even find it by skimming this huge article. Perhaps if the article went straight to the point, her argument wouldn't be lost in all the noise. For the record, I'm not interested in reading whether someone selected a 'yellow dress' or 'purpley pink flowers' or who picked someone up when. I'd be more interested in reading about actual intersex issues. I am in favor of protecting the rights of everyone, but I don't even know what 'rights' you are talking about. The intersex prevalence depends on how you define "intersex", with some definitions (those who argue "if the term intersex is to retain any meaning") making the prevalence at 0.018%, which is 2 orders of magnitude less than 2%. Whether that invalidates her argument or not I don't know, because again, I don't know what her argument is. I was just replying to the parent poster who was surprised by a figure which I was arguing was exaggerated.

bloak 3y ago

That would seem to be an exaggeration. Wikipedia says 1.7% of the population could count as intersex, but: "Of the 1.7%, 1.5% points (88% of those considered "nondimorphic sexual development" in this figure) consist of individuals with late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH) which may be asymptomatic but can present after puberty and cause infertility." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex#Prevalence) Are they including people with an asymptomatic condition in the 1.7%? It's not quite clear but if they are that's very strange. Even counting people who have some medical condition related to sex hormones but remain unambiguously male or unambiguously female as "intersex" is arguably misleading for the general public. In any case, those "late onset" people are not intersex "babies"!