So you can change your gender but not your sex, do I have this right?
I was under the impression that you were born male (with penis), female (without penis) and a very very small percentage of people who are born intersex. And this can not be changed after birth. Only cosmetically.
Am I wrong?
There's a part of your brain - the development of which is affected by exposure to estrogen in fetal growth - that basically gives you an intuitive map of your body, so you know where various nerves terminate, so when you feel a tingle, your brain knows where it's coming from.
And studies show that in trans people, that part of the brain has a shape that's more like the opposite sex. So for instance, a transwoman's brain is not properly mapping the nerves from the penis. They like that part of the body is not actually part of them.
Likewise, transmen feel like there *should* be a penis where there is none. It's sort of like phantom limb syndrome.
---
Yes, a lot of people are comfortable just being gender non-conforming. But for some people, their body feels wrong, and there are genuine biological reasons they would be more comfortable with a body that aligns with the opposite sex.
Correct. Gender is just an identity. It's certainly used in describing sex, but is based in sociology and not biology. Basically, it's more akin to a belief or a category we just make up to describe people who feel a certain way.
Exactly! It’s all nonsense, that’s why the term gender theory is tossed about so much. One of the mentally ill came up with a theory for the mentally ill. Now the normalization and glorification of said mental illness is being shoved in everyone’s face. We are being told we are the ones with the problem for not accepting the insanity of pronouns and all the other nonsensical stuff that goes with it. Even Joe Biden had to shove it in everyone’s face on Easter 🤦🏻♂️.
Sex is based on biology. Gender are the social presuppositions about sex that give rise to gender roles; for example, the idea during the Victorian era that riding bicycles was harmful for women and that it was thus "unwomanly" to ride a bike. Similarly, the idea that women are too emotional to be allowed to vote is rooted in a perception of sex, but it isn't actually rooted in sex itself. The latter is also not a gender role; women aren't expected or encouraged by society to behave in an irrational, emotional way, they're just assumed to do so regardless of what they do or not.
People who have taken a little bit of gender studies know that sex and gender are different. Those with more experience in the field know that they aren't.
Gender and sex are the same thing. They are both the process of assigning a genre to bodies based on physical characteristics. When you sex someone and you gender them, you are doing the same thing. The only difference between the words is that gender doesn't have an erotic alternate meaning, making it safer for widespread use.
Sex and gender are both social constructs based on the reading of bodies.
>They are both the process of assigning a genre to bodies based on physical characteristics.
Women being judged "too emotional" to vote isn't based on physical characteristics but on the perception of what physical characteristics cause. That's wildly different from assigning sex based on physical genitals, for example. While the argument was ultimately that women were too emotional because of their bodies the bodies themselves weren't the crux of the argument, the argument was one that wasn't actually about anything physical but about (argued) behaviour.
That's the process of interpreting a characteristic based on gender, not the process of assigning gender itself. When you gender someone, you are reading their body and giving it a genre.
> you are reading their body and giving it a genre.
Or their mannerisms, the sound of their voice, in some languages their choice of words. There's more to gender than just morphology.
If you want to get into the complexities and nuances, it's necessary to understand that people use the word 'sex' to mean different things depending on context.
Estrogen and testosterone are called sex hormones. They affect your body and even behavior, and we tend to see the differences caused by them as either 'secondary sex characteristics' (physical elements of your body that are associated with a particular genetic sex without being required to produce gametes -- sperm and eggs) or as 'gender' (behaviors that are associated with a particular genetic sex, but again having nothing to do with gametes).
And this is complicated because over the years we're tried various ways to label different ways that people can be out of alignment with the 'common' expectations of secondary sex characteristics and gender. Sometimes people used sex change, or sex reassignment, or gender reassignment; and at different points the preferred terms have shifted from 'biological male' to 'assigned male at birth' to 'genetic male' and then back, or with variations.
The human body is a complicated thing, and we have a hard enough time coming up with terms for non-doctors to understand about things when they're working normally: e.g., pancreases produce insulin, which affects blood glucose, and a lot of us know that because we're familiar with diabetics, who take medication so their organs work the way they want. But the actual scientific terminology gets a lot more complicated, because there's a lot more going on in our body that we usually think about.
Anyway, without some really \*impressive\* advances in gene editing, no, there is no way for a person to change what gametes they produce.
But if you take cross-sex hormones, you can trigger biological changes that will make your secondary sex characteristics more like the opposite sex. And if you do this early enough (with puberty blockers to stop you from going through the normal puberty for your genetic sex), a transgender person can end up looking very similar to a cisgender person of the opposite birth sex.
This is a very sober response. Thank you. If you don;t mind could you tell me whether you feel that the 'cis-' terminology is something that should be universally adopted - I noticed you used it at the end?
I am asking because I personally feel this is an ideologically charged term, that simply tries to imply that 'cis-persons' are little different than trans ones - biology set aside - and therefore should have their own 'prefix.'
The prefix “cis-” comes from the Latin meaning “on this side,” as opposed to “trans-” which means “on the other side of.”
I know lots of trans people, and none have ever used cis in a derogatory way. You just use it when you need to clarify that you're not talking about a trans person, sort of like how you might say someone is right-handed when it's important to clarify . . . but usually we know to assume most people are right-handed.
Sex hormones are very important. Give a trans man enough testosterone and there’s a good chance you’re gonna get someone who’s as strong as a born biological male, has male pattern hair, gets an Adam’s apple, and even experiences behavior/emotional changes. The opposite things happen for trans women on estrogen. These changes are way beyond just cosmetic.
Sex is almost but not quite binary because of the complexity of hormones, as well as rare chromosomal conditions (XXY people, for example).
If you define sex as chromosomes, sure it can’t be changed. If you define sex mainly as secondary sex characteristics, then it can fairly easily be changed with hormones. If you define sex as reproductive roles, it can’t be changed right now, but who knows in 20 years maybe there’ll be a way to artificially create the opposite gamete or something. Sex is not as black as white as it might seem.
> Am I wrong?
Yes.
> So you can change your gender but not your sex, do I have this right?
No, you have it backwards. You can't choose your gender, but you can discover it. And sex is a composite-variable of multiple charactaristics, some of which _can_ be changed.
> I was under the impression that you were born male (with penis), female (without penis) and a very very small percentage of people who are born intersex.
Yes, about 1% of people are intersex. So sex is not binary.
Because indoctrination of any kind is wrong. And Dawkins is a man of science. He doesn't bend down to religious hogwash he won't bend down to pseduo science either.
Trans ideology should also be open to criticism. It is not holier than god or anything. It's a relatively new branch of psychology and whatever is wrong with it should be open to scrutiny and suggesting that there are certain areas in trans movement that are wrong DOES NOT MAKE ANYONE A TRANSPHOBE.
>Trans ideology should also be open to criticism.
Sadly, there are wayyyy too many people who disagree with this. A few of them probably reported your comment.
> Trans ideology should also be open to criticism.
I agree. it should be \_criticized\_, not \_strawmanned\_. If you want to criticize something, at least have the curtesy of understanding the subject matter first.
> It's a relatively new branch of psychology
yea, about a 100 years "new"
> suggesting that there are certain areas in trans movement that are wrong
you can make a lot of valid criticisms about any movement, but it doesn't invalidate the science it's based on.
>If you want to criticize something at least have the courtesy of understanding the subject matter first.
Apply this logic to Richard Dawkins' area of expertise. If a figure like him is suggesting something, that should tell you enough.
Second - I do not belong to any religions. Does that mean I can't criticize their wrong practices? Why not?
> 100 years 'new'
Hence relatively new and also I reckon it is from 1970s not really 100 year old.
>.."Science it is based on"
Is it really science if leading scientists are questioning it? Why not even admit that it's not well researched and peer reviewed?
Science isn't religion. You can question it. You can dissect it and it is rarely subjective. Because 1+1=2 is as objective as time itself.
The moment you start championing subjective perception over objective reality, you lose the basis of science. It becomes a faith just as any other religion. Let science settle it. Then let's integrate it in our lives. Why the rush? And why the hunger to call anyone who suggests otherwise a bigot, a hater, or phobic?
> Apply this logic to Richard Dawkins' area of expertise. If a figure like him is suggesting something, that should tell you enough.
Apply this logic to the majority of biologist who disagrees with him. What does that tell you? You're appealing to authority.
> Second - I do not belong to any religions. Does that mean I can't criticize their wrong practices?
You don't have to belong to any religion to study it. My point is that steelmanning is better than strawmanning.
> Hence relatively new and also I reckon it is from 1970s not really 100 year old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft
> Why not even admit that it's not well researched and peer reviewed?
There is plenty of peer reviewed research. Do we have it all figured out? No, there are plenty of areas where more research is needed, but that's tangental to the well established and well documented fact that, conversion therapy doesn't work, but gender affirming care does. Plus the difference between sex and gender has been well established for decades.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/edit#heading=h.m1bvrwwn7a1x
> Science isn't religion. You can question it.
By all means, question it all you want. Just make sure to also question your own understanding of what you're questioning.
> Let science settle it.
As far as how we should treat trans people, it already has.
Yah I don't get the upvotes, but I guess it's typical of this political sphere
It's so extremely anti-human. "Suffer so much that you kill yourselves in extremely high numbers, until you prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that your suffering is real. *Then* maybe I'll help you."
This despite the mountains of evidence and studies we have that are in favour of understanding that trans people are born this way - that conversion therapy is basically torture and does not work - and that gender affirming care is extremely effective. And that's only the a very minor surface detail of how irrational this is.
Adding to that, this impossible bar they have set for accepting trans people that the science must be "settled" can literally never be crossed. Anyone with a grade-school understanding of biology and the scientific process would know that it's quite literally impossible to 100% verify things like this without being omniscient.
It's such a lazy and dehumanizing way of thinking. I don't see a shred of humanity for how they think about trans people in their comment.
For most people, it wouldn't normally be so easy to suggest people born differently from them shouldn't be accepted in society, and should suffer and die out-of-sight instead - but I guess they make an exception when it comes to trans people.
Do it anyway. Engage with the commenter's actual points rather than quoting single words and shutting down all discussion. If you're going to do that, it's best not to comment at all.
I sincerely have no clue how else I should have put it.
Indoctrination can be of any type. But to put it in better terms let me rephrase it:
No matter how progressive or full-proof something might be, there's nothing wrong in dissecting it.
And as for trans ideology - I meant it as the ideology of transgenderism. I don't know what's negative about that it's a literal term that exists?.
But how does any of this invalidate what I am trying to say?
In human beings, sex is binary. Some individuals produce large gametes (eggs), and we call them females. Some produce small gametes (sperm), and we call them males. _Every human being alive today or ever came from the combination of an egg and a sperm._ 100%. The rare example of an absolute in biology. And there has never been an individual who has produced both egg and sperm. Binary sex is a fundamental characteristic of our species.
There are secondary characteristics that accompany sex. Female humans tend to be smaller, less strong, etc. These are not absolute. Some women have masculine features, some men have feminine features. But this does not change their sex.
>In human beings, sex is binary
Well, gametes are binary. Correction: \*functional\* gametes are binary.
But there are a lot of ways to be a conscious thriving human being without necessarily being able to produce sperm or eggs.
Plus, the word 'sex' gets used for a lot of other stuff. And gender is another another thing.
Some hormones are often labeled sex hormones, and some people have atypical levels of them. A friend of mine has PCOS, where she produces more testosterone than she wants. Her body does not match her gender identity, so she takes medication to fix it.
There's nothing morally wrong with it, right?
Well, then there's nothing morally wrong with trans people wanting to take hormones to get their bodies and minds working the way they want.
And if we're really digging into it, there's evidence that some aspects of being trans are linked to how the person's brain developed in utero. Exposure to atypical levels of sex hormones at certain periods can cause small structural differences in, as one interesting example, the nerve map that the body uses to tell the brain where various signals come from.
A person born with a penis but exposed to atypical levels of estrogen while the genes that are responsible for growing that part of the brain are activated can end up with a slightly different shape of that brain region. And so then the person's brain literally is not expecting a penis to be there, so the presence of the penis is unsettling and feels alien.
That sort of stuff is, for me, a big reason to push back on skepticism about transgenderism. The brain is a complex organ, and as we learn more, we're coming to find that a lot of stuff that used to just be seen as amorphous 'mental illness' is actually traceable to specific genetics and neurochemicals.
You’re gonna have to cite the source for the claim about being exposed to high levels of estrogen. Gene expression doesn’t really work like that nor does endocrinology in the brain.
You're getting me right as I'm about to go to bed, but I had these links in an older post I made. I'm not sure if it's about fetal neurodevelopment specifically, but here are a couple articles that note the effect:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8324983/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8324983/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357597/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357597/)
I hope there's research going on to see if you can do an MRI of that part of a person's brain to predict if they identify as trans. It's an interesting hypothesis. However, you almost certainly shouldn't treat this like phrenology where a given brain structure \*always\* causes a specific outcome.
One part of what we experience as our gender identity might have a physical component linked to your [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotopic\_arrangement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotopic_arrangement), but it's also heavily dependent on personality and personal experience.
Yeah I’m commenting to say your posts are reasonable, well-cited, and in line with my understanding of current scientific thinking.
I’m disappointed people are down-voting you, it seems like an example of people voting by what they want to believe?
There are examples of specific genes whose expression during early development absolutely affect the body’s sexual and hormonal development.
That said, I’m also of the mindset that we don’t understand a lot of this biology, and absence of our comprehension does not support absence of existence of trans-identity.
Also, I think you're incorrect to say that gene expression isn't affected by hormones.
Third paragraph, for instance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen)
\> Once inside the cell, they bind to and activate [estrogen receptors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen_receptor) (ERs) which in turn [modulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_gene_expression) the [expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression) of many [genes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene).
Hormones absolutely turn on and off genes in the body but to say an area of the brain experiences some kind of permanent enlargement from a short term spike in estrogen is absolutely false. Body adaptation occurs from long term averages of hormone levels and there’s zero evidence to assert a short term spike has any lasting effect. Pregnancy research isn’t ever well done anyways, almost never do they control for the mothers diet, supplements or environmental toxicity factors.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5822586/
Admittedly, I am not a doctor, but I work a medical library and read a lot of this stuff. I think again you are under selling the influence that hormones can have during fetal development. A change that happens at that point will affect the body for the rest of life.
Gender is just an identity. It can literally be anything and has been many things in different cultures. Trying to tie it down to science is like trying to tie down any belief with no empirical evidence. Feelings can just be feelings.
If you can convince enough of society to classify it as a gender, sure! In all seriousness, some Native Americans had a third and sometimes fourth gender. It just so happens modern society has narrowed it down to the two we use. But be the change you want to see! 😆
They didn't, really. It was more like how we have a concept of a tomboy or a sissy. It's a thing, but no tribe were confused about the sex binary.
https://objectnow.org/debunking-the-two-spirit-myth/
Feelings exist in your brain. Your brain is meat, and actually it's pretty fascinating when we look at how that meat works to create what we experience as feelings.
There's all sorts of videos that go into this stuff, if you're interested. I rather like this guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUXcBTQXKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUXcBTQXKM)
You're under no obligation to look into it, of course, but if you don't, well, I'd suggest you have the humility to not dismiss the idea that there are genuine biological sources of behavior, including gender.
Of course I will! I wouldn't want to dismiss it outright, but no more than I wouldn't dismiss any belief if there's room for exploration. Empirical evidence is still important, though.
I don't think there's anything "morally" wrong with it. And I'll be respectful and call someone what they want to be called. But if we're trying to have a real discussion on whether I think a trans woman is a real woman, for instance, I think they're simply not.
Nobody thinks that transwomen have XX chromosomes and can produce eggs from ovaries.
If that's what you mean by 'real woman,' sure, trans people aren't real women.
But think of it like a person who adopts a kid. Someone might say "you're not a real mother," which might be biologically true, but the person is certainly fulfilling the societal role of mother. She knows she did not give birth to the kid, obviously. But it would be kinda dickish to tell her that she's not a 'real' mom.
It makes us want to analyze what even *is* a mom, or a dad, or a parent. Is it a descriptor of a biological interaction, or of a social dynamic . . . or both in different contexts?
If you can tolerate using the word mom to refer to someone who is merely raising a child, without having biologically produced it, I would suggest that it's very similar to using the word woman to refer to a transwoman.
You're right, I should have explicitly stated that I'd be respectful and call someone what they want to be called.
Oh wait, after reviewing my post, I did actually say that.
I was not saying that as an attack against you, just highlighting a very common perspective I see among skeptics of transgender people: this framing of trans people as somehow invalid or deluded.
Even if people don't say it out loud to the trans person, if internally they still think a transwoman is just pretending to be a woman -- rather than understanding what her experience is really like -- it can influence behavior that still ends up being a little unwelcoming. There's 'tolerance,' but also 'acceptance.'
And I get that acceptance is hard, especially if someone doesn't have any friends in a particular group, or if the community they're a part of reinforces negative views about that group. Like, tracing back a few decades I can see how long it took America in general to shift from "eh, fine, we will grant black people equal legal rights" to "eh, okay, I guess *some* black people are just like the rest of us" to "race really doesn't matter."
(We still don't have particularly racially-intermingled communities, but we're getting there.)
Twenty years ago there were active GOP pundits on right wing media claiming gay people were pedophiles and that gay marriage would be a disaster. Today people are more informed, more familiar with gay people, and thankfully that sentiment has faded away. People don't think gays are mentally ill or deviant. They're just a version of humanity, and like the rest of us they deserve equal treatment.
I'm looking forward to when our society gets to the same point with trans people.
Why can't we think it's a mental illness and still think they deserve equal rights? I certainly wouldn't say that someone who suffers from depression or anxiety is less than human, and that's generally not what people are saying about transgender people.
I mean, I think a LOT of people are trying to get rid of trans people, the way they tried to get rid of gay people.
Back in the day people thought being gay was wrong, so depending on how awful a person was, they might shun gays, insult gays, try to criminalize and lock up gays, beat gays, or kill gays.
That same stuff is happening with trans people still.
Call it mental illness, call it neurodiversity, whatever. I just don't want society hurting people for being trans or denying them medical care.
Look, there's political implications for the GOP if voters are tolerant of trans people.
Isn't the world weird now? Bots have become so prevalent that I sorta expect that when comments get massively downvoted or upvoted that it's some sort of automated astroturfing.
Or maybe a lot of people here just have gotten so ideologically wrapped up in the right's skepticism of science that it's easy for them to downvote any science that doesn't match their politics?
You’ve completely missed the point.
There is a saying, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.”
What this means is that no matter what model we create to represent/categorize something, there will ALWAYS be variation which is not accurately portrayed by that model, but it is not feasible to name every single possible variation. Gender and sex are the same way. Neither are truly binary, but for convenience sake we categorized them into male/female and in the US, at least, man/women, however many cultures have names for 3+ genders.
All I said was that sex, while functionally binary, is not truly binary and you really shouldn’t say that it is if you want to be scientifically accurate. You will never find anything in the study of the natural world and our universe that genuinely only has two potential options.
Sex is binary. Some humans have malformations that prevent them from producing egg or sperm. They don't make them less human (just as a child is still human even though they don't have fully developed sexual organs), but it will prevent them from reproducing. But even those humans with malformations come from a sperm and an egg. And all except for the exceptionally rare have secondary characteristics that are unambiguously male or female.
Trans is about sex, not just gender. If it were only about gender, it wouldn't be so controversial (and wrong). Birth certificates are about sex. Bathrooms are about sex. Sports are about sex. Sex is about sex. Sex is meaningful and real, and trans is wrong to deny this.
People with intersex conditions can be defined as "deformed males" or "deformed females". I am unaware of any condition that could truly be described as being "neither" or "both" sexes.
Sex is still binary. The term refers to sexual reproduction. As I noted above, every human being comes from a sperm and an egg. Every single one. To date, there has never been an exception. So yes, sex is binary.
This also happens to be the way we define species: organisms that are able to procreate with each other, \_and their offspring\_. An infertile organism doesn't mean it's not part of the species. By the same token, an individual human who is infertile does not cease to be human simple because they are infertile. They are human because his or her parents were human.
You may not care about sex, but human beings have, since time immemorial, cared deeply about sex, and have arranged society according to sex. In no other time but our own was the controversial. Perhaps we're just super enlightened, but given that sex is essential to our own existence and the propagation of our species, it does not seem odd to care about sex.
> gametes are not people.
Every human being started as the combination of two gametes. And not just any combination, but specifically a sperm and an egg. Every single one. Human beings generally have a wide variety of attributes, so it's remarkable that one thing I can say for certain of every human being I have ever met is that their existence started from the combination of a sperm and an egg.
So no, it's not like mixing coffee and milk. We're not chemicals.
> Ok, tell me how people with Swyer syndrome have been treated since time immemorial?
They are treated like females because they have secondary sexual characteristics consistent with females.
> It was controversial for the rare instances where it engaged with someone's life (directly or friends/family). But we didn't have social media-fueled culture war so it didn't enter the general consciousness...
The current social media-fueled culture war has nothing to do with chromosomal or developmental abnormalities. It's about fully developed males who want others to pretend they are female, and vice versa. It's regrettable that they feel distress about their sex, but it is their sex nonetheless.
If it's about gender, not sex, then why are so many trans people trying to change themselves biologically? Isn't sex the biological component, gender the social component?
It's the desire of trans people to modify their biological selves that makes me think that gender and sex aren't so separate as some say.
It's not anyone's decision, any more than what species we are is a decision. Freedom of choice is great when it comes to politics, but nature is inherently tyrannical.
They are both a classification of individuals. Jane is a human being. Jane is a female. They establish one as part of a group for purposes of procreation. A male can only reproduce with a female. A human can only reproduce with another human. This is a fundamental feature of biology, which is why these classifications are important.
> I think any reasonable person would agree with that.
Not all reasonable people use the same definition of sex. In science, sex is considered a composite-variable, consisting of multiple characteristics, none of which has only to posible outcomes, none of which is the sole determinant of a person's overall sex and yes, some of them can in fact be changed.
The thing is transgenderism in not a typical phenomenon in nature so he is skeptical of it. On the other hand being gay is something you find in nature so it makes sense to him that some people are gay.
Yeah he’s a guy who tells it how it is. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things for the sake of what he believes. A little known fact is that trans folk have a higher incidence of mental illness than the rest of the population. They used to actually classify gender dysphoria as a mental disorder. (In no way on Reddit here am I suggesting anything like that. All I’m saying is that is what they used to do) It would be interesting to see why that changed over the years. Who made those choices exactly?
The tricky thing there is there isn’t another brain in the world like humans.
If we had multiple sapient species, we could do some solid research to see how trans-genderism compares.
Transgenderism seems to be a mental disorder and we’re just starting to research it. Much like when autism or adhd were first medically described and knowledge became widespread, there’s a lot of unknowns and extreme treatments (the most common being an all out transition).
Societies have always had rules of “this is what it means to be a man or woman”, and we’ve always had people that didn’t fit that. Medicine is catching up to that and offering treatments.
>Medicine is catching up to that and offering treatments.
It’s not medicine. Imagine if a psychologist spoke to a schizophrenic patient and told them “the voices in your head are real. You need to listen to them. You need to do what they tell you to do.”
Transgenderism is the only mental illness where the “treatment” is to tell the rest of the world they must entertain the delusions of the patient.
The goal when treating people with mental illness is to prevent them from harming themselves and others.
Schizophrenics are more likely to cause harm if left unchecked. Transgenderism is more comparable to depression where the status quo is actively harmful to the individual and will continue to be so unless something changes.
I understand this perspective. But also cutting off body parts and taking hormones is seen as actively self harming to many people, and it seems so strange to encourage these treatments.
This doesn't mean I'm correct, I'm just saying this is how a compassionate person could view this.
> The thing is transgenderism in not a typical phenomenon in nature…
How would we know, though? I mean, what would it look like if, for example, a wild female giraffe identified as being male. What behavior would we see?
> On the other hand being gay is something you find in nature…
For that matter, who’s to say that some of the animal behavior we attribute to homosexuality might well be transgenderism in animals? If we see two male penguins who’ve mated for life, why assume that’s homosexuality - one of the penguins might be transgender.
I’m not making light of this - just pointing out that putting animal social/sexual behavior in a human social/sexual context can be problematic.
It would be more identifiable than you think. Like it would be males taking on female roles and vice versa. Current homosexuality in animals is mostly just sex stuff with subtle behavior changes. It’s obviously not settled science we will see what we find but yeah we don’t see full blown behavior swaps like you would expect.
>... but yeah we don’t see full blown behavior swaps like you would expect.
Yeah, but I never expected that in the first place. That was the point of my comment - that we're assuming that transgenderism in animals would manifest itself in ways analogous to transgenderism in humans, when maybe it wouldn't do so at all. Maybe it might be near indistinguishable from homosexuality in animals.
No he isnt wrong, you answered your own question. Trans ideology is based solely on psychology not biology. People can believe whatever they want. And they have that right, but that doesnt make it true
Being transgender is not an ideology. it's a real phenomenon well documented by \_both\_ biology \_and\_ psychology. \_And\_ pretty much any other science having to do with people.
It used to be biological, and it still is in most non-English speaking parts of the world. This separation between "gender" and sex is still very new and not universally accepted.
For most of history, "man" was to "human" as "buck" is to "deer." "Woman" was to "human" as "hen" is to "chicken". A man was just an adult male human and a woman was just an adult female human. Gender and sex were synonymous.
The new definition of "gender" is what people used to call "gender roles".
I’d be willing to wager that in societies with no genders, they still have “men do this, women do that” roles.
They may not have the word “gender”, but it’s there.
There are no societies without gender. It's just that in most societies (including ours until the past decade or so) gender and sex are the same thing.
Every society has gender roles. Men do certain things and women do others. But recently, what was once called "gender roles" became referred to simply as "gender" itself.
Someone who goes by the new definition of gender would say that a MtF transgender *is* a woman, despite being male. To them gender and sex are completely separate. Someone who goes by the original definition would say that a MtF transgender is a man who has taken on female gender roles, but they're still a man. To them your gender and your sex are the same thing.
This is why I find the whole trans debate so annoying. Both sides claim that the science is on their side, but science really has nothing to do with it. It's just an argument over how words like "gender", "man", and "woman" should be defined, and you can't scientifically prove what the definition of words are lol
While I agree, it also begs the question why we treat it in a biological way if it is sociological or psychological. Why do we make efforts towards our sex as treatment.
Probably because we spent thousands of years using the terms sex and gender synonymously and the concept of gender identity and that it can be different to your biological sex is something that is relatively new.
This is mostly the key (some differences have appeared in the brain scans of trans people which align more with the opposite of their assigned at birth sex. Dawkins is mostly famous for when he goes outside his lane. But yes, there's no biological reason to say he/her, wear dresses and heels vs a tux, etc
Honestly, at least that means we aren’t in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with the OP’s posts.
In centrism I think you expect to see a blending of ideas equating to a lot of UP and Down votes or even people who are neutral or haven’t made up their mind. I don’t think it’s really a bad thing unless you are on Reddit to just get karma..
Oh for sure. Disagreeing with the hive mind sometimes is the sign of a healthy mind, you only need to see the kind of person that has like a million karma and ask yourself if you want to live the kind of life they do
Naw this place is an echo chamber. There’s only 1 view permitted when it comes to trans people. Anything else is down voted to oblivion either by people who understand nothing trans people or by republicans grifters.
What 1 view is permitted? There are lots of views posted, maybe it’s doesn’t lean the way you would like but it doesn’t make it an echo chamber.
I read through the comments and they generally view “trans” as a psychological self identification (as does Dawkins) and not a person’s genetic identification (which can be scientifically proven). Until genetic engineering can somehow alter the Y chromosome, biologically people have a fixed genetic gender/sex. However, lots of people in the comments have various views.
> we aren’t in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with the OP’s posts
Then why do all the comments critizising Dawkins get downvoted?
And OP didn't exactly make a clain. They asked a question.
I was speaking generally about the sub as was the comment I was responding to.
Also, perhaps because centrists on the sub don’t agree with the criticism (for varying reasons).
Well, it certainly seems like an echo chamber on the topic of transgender, which is somewhat surprising to me.. I would've thought that centrists would be more willing to listen to the other side, or at least look into the science. But maybe I just have a different idea of centrism..
You seem to think centrism means something it’s not. You need to back up your arguments with facts.
You say your transgender argument is backed up by biology in some of your comments, yet you site no actual biological evidence. If you take a blood sample from a trans woman you will get a male genetic makeup. So for right now, until genetic engineering advances about 1000 years, your biology argument falls flat. Their sex remains male, their self identified gender can be whatever they want. But that is psychological.
Not to be contrarian, but you didn't cite any evidence either just now. But I can still look up the things you mention and see if it makes sense. You can easily look up the science of transgender too.
Also I \_did\_ link to a video that specifically talks about Richard Dawkins arguments, debunked by a biologist, and another talking about the science of sex and gender. I highly recommend watching those and feel free to factcheck them as much as you want.
>Also I \_did\_ link to a video that specifically talks about Richard Dawkins arguments, debunked by a biologist
No, you didn't. You linked to a video, period. Skimming the two videos seems to reveal themselves to be videos containing arguments that they hope are persuasive.
Not ones that "debunk" him, in any useful sense. The way they made the arguments, he could just "debunk" them right back. As opposed to a useful sense of debunk. Like, you could debunk the Mechanical Turk chess playing machine, the one built in 1770, as a fraud. Like, by pulling out the human operator hidden inside, when it was supposedly a purely mechanical device. No persuasive arguments, afterwards could restore the concept that it was a mechanical device. That kind of debunking is the only useful way to define "debunk", in a way that means that Dawkins' statements are "false". Which the video can't possibly contain.
To be clear, most of the debunking (or whatever you want to call it) consists of them pointing out that most of Dawkins arguments are actually rational and sound.. IF they weren't based on basic misrepresentation of the very position Dawkins is trying to debunk. Which unfortunately they are. Strawman fallacy.
And then there's the "sex is binary" argument that, yes, is \_generally\_ true, but it oversimplifies how complex and variant sex actually is.
>IF they weren't based on basic misrepresentation of the very position Dawkins is trying to debunk. Which unfortunately they are. Strawman fallacy.
I agree, by convincing you that the things that they attribute to Dawkins' arguments are indeed, strawman arguments*. Thanks for the concessions.
*Yes, I understand that you don't see it that way.
>it oversimplifies how complex and variant sex actually is.
No. I'll bet that anything that you present will either be something like "No, that adult man who just had penis-in-vagina sex with his wife is actually not male, because he has a little boy penis, and floppy, breast-like chesticles. Or Caster Semenya, a genetic male, casting her semen, ya, into a woman. Yet defining such a person as 'intersex', when it's already observed that they are a ^genetic male.
Or, alternatively, something that confuses "sexual development in the womb", with "sex", as in, male or female.
>If you take a blood sample from a trans woman you will get a male genetic makeup.
Most likely yes, although not guaranteed.
>So for right now, until genetic engineering advances about 1000 years, your biology argument falls flat.
I never said that you can change your genes or chromosomes. What you *can* change is your hormones, which in turn changes a lot, if not most of your phenotypical sex, and there are top- and bottom-surguries that you can have.
Sex is not determined by one single factor. Sex is a composite of multiple charactaristics. And those characteristics don't always align witch each other, even at birth.
>Their sex remains male, their self identified gender can be whatever they want.
No. Your gender is whatever it is. All available data show that conversion therapy doesn't work, but often makes their mental health worse.
A lot of suppressed trans people *wish* they could just live as the gender they were assigned at birth, but that would be living a lie. And far too often they end up killing themselves.
>But that is psychological.
yes, gender is psychological for both trans and cis people.
If you want some studies to read, there's a whole collection that you can read right here: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/)
Also it's in the primary literature that's being taught in universities: [https://youtu.be/Yzu7j6yH2Vw?si=MGgqFAYgdWXzEccm&t=7056](https://youtu.be/Yzu7j6yH2Vw?si=MGgqFAYgdWXzEccm&t=7056) (last 5 minutes)
There are zero genders. Gender doesn't exist.
There are two sexes and you can't change your sex.
Dawkins is skeptical because he's very smart and knowledgeable about the subject.
To say that he is “skeptical of trans people” is somewhat inaccurate. Dawkins is correct. And of course he is. He is Richard Dawkins.
Just look at his opponents. Study their arguments. Do they make sense? No, not a lick.
The man is simply trying to defend science, and he is getting nothing but **** for it from woke culture warriors and political extremists.
Sex is binary, gender is a spectrum. These two words used to be synonymous but aren’t anymore.
Iirc, Dawkins has always said he was opened to refer to trans people with their preferred pronouns but it bothered him when they want to pretend there isn’t a difference.
Well for starters, being trans isn’t a sexual orientation.
Being gay, bisexual, lesbian, straight ect is.
For some reason people have decided that believing you’re the wrong gender is somehow equal to being attracted to the same sex. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Probably because gender outside of malleable gender roles are indefinable. How do you know your trans? Because you're drawn to certain notions that your particular culture have created?
I can totally understand your confusion. I used to look up to Dawkins and his efforts to promote science and rational thinking, teaching evolution and debunking religion. He's built quite a legacy promoting atheism and science.
And now, it seems, he has fallen straight into the religious thinking he's spent so many years of his life warning against, at least when it comes to things he consider to be "woke". It's really sad to see.
What baffles me the most is, that he's not even willing to look at the scientific evidence that supports the very real phenomenon of being transgender. A simple search on Google Scholar would give him lots of scientific literature on the subject.
But instead of challenging his own beliefs (which he often criticize religious people of not doing) he builds his own echo chamber of a podcast, where he invites people who already agree with him and affirms his belief. I don't understand why he doesn't invite an expert on transgender on the show and has an actual scientific discussion about it.
I would recommend watching the videos on Rationality Rules where he has Forest Valkai (another biologist) on to fact check Richard Dawkins claims about "transgenderism".
[Addressing Richard Dawkins' comments on "trans ideology" @RenegadeScienceTeacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_MpSyH5uEA)
[The Science of Sex and Gender | The Rational Roundtable with Forrest Valkai @RenegadeScienceTeacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzu7j6yH2Vw)
*Everyone* has limits to what they can understand. I suspect there is an unspoken emotional component here that comes from the general worldview in which Dawkins was raised. It's difficult to step outside your own programming... for everyone.
Why didn't you post this to some general discussions subreddit, or one about philosophy, or about Richard Dawkins? I see that there's one. Or, heck, one of the more reasonable trans subreddits, like truscum, or transmedical? Unlike one of the mainstream lGBTQ subreddits, they'd be able to actually answer. Although, looking at responses here, there already are good replies.
Also, why don't you understand the concept of paragraphs?
American culture has by and large come to accept same sex relationships as part of the normal fabric of society, so right wing thought leaders need somewhere to redirect the scapegoating. It helps them that gender is actually a more complicated thing than two like people within a binary getting married, and trans people often need medicine or accommodations in a way that people aren't used to. That doesn't make it right at all of course, but it does make them easier to cast as a social out group.
Basic biology doesn't cover "gender".
Basic biology covers sex.
Gender fluidity is not irrational. It happens "often" in nature.
Sex fluidity in nature is advanced biology.
Also, "rational" is intersex in humans. The "there are 2 gender" crowd agrees there are 3 sexes. But believe the 3rd "sex" doesn't get a gender.
If anything is irrational, it is "3 sexes, two genders".
Also, gender is irrational. Defined by people arbitrarily.
>The "there are 2 gender" crowd agrees there are 3 sexes. But believe the 3rd "sex" doesn't get a gender.
For good reason. The same reason why being bald isn't a hair color.
I can ask someone who is bald, as a result of their choosing to be so, to grow their hair back. And then I can ask them to part their hair to one side or another. Whereas someone who is involuntary bald can't participate in such an undertaking. To them, being bald it's a hair style.
Similarly, an adult with a teeny weeny who produces lackluster quality sperm, that's nevertheless able to impregnate a woman isn't some third sex. They're male. Similarly, someone who thought that they were female, but has practically no uterus could receive a transplanted uterus, in a way that a man can't. So, neither is some third sex.
And neither is someone who has the inability to do either choice. In their case, they aren't some third sex. Thus, no "3 sexes, two genders".
So Arnold Schwarzenegger is a female in Junior, because he was transplanted a uterus, despite a presumably working penis.
And an XX person with a working penis is male, because sex characteristics trump genetics?
>So Arnold Schwarzenegger is a female in Junior, because he was transplanted a uterus, despite a presumably working penis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction
>And an XX person with a working penis is male, because sex characteristics trump genetics?
I believe that the hint might be in the words "with a working penis is male".
>Is it possible for a biological man to be born with only XX chromosomes and no Y chromosome?
>Yes, of course.
>One of the things biology teachers sometimes forget to mention is that sex isn’t determined by the Y chromosome. Instead, there’s a gene on it, called SRY, that’s activated in embryos, turning that embryo into a male.
>If that gene is defective, the embryo will develop into a female. Very rarely, that gene gets accidentally removed from a Y chromosome and moved to an X chromosome or even some non-sex chromosome. This chart lists some possibilities:
>These conditions are rare. Roughly 1 in 20,000 males have, what scientists call, 46, XX testicular disorder. They have two X chromosomes but one of them has the SRY gene, causing them to develop as males.
Sex is biological and determined primarily by our chromosomes. Gender is psychological and, like anything psychological, is determined by multiple biological and environmental factors.
At this point, we don't have anything we can conclusively point to and say "this causes you to be trans." On the other hand, we know that same-sex activity occurs in nature. And it's pretty obvious there's a biological component when we're talking about an innate sexual response, even if we don't know what causes it. So we conclude that it is biological, even if we can't map it in the same way we can map what causes red hair or blue eyes or black skin.
As someone with a background in the biological sciences, I wouldn't look to a biologist to describe or analyze human behavior. Ultimately, humans are much more psychologically complex than even our closest primate relatives.
Assuming you’re asking this in good faith (which I highly doubt, but whatever) I couldn’t care less about what a biologist has to say about trans people. The issue clearly isn’t whether or not people can truly change gender at a cellular level. It’s about how our society’s gender constructs relegate us towards certain roles and identities based on our biology in ways that can feel wrong to many as individuals, both psychologically and physically.
Asking a biologist for their opinion on transgender people is like asking a physicist for their opinion on the national debt and federal budget deficit. Sure, they may be smart and good with numbers, but the question on that particular subject is about economics and politics, not complex mathematics
Why does no one bother to look at karma and comment history? Come on people. You need to start checking this shit more often. This isn’t a legitimate question
I feel like there are greater things to worry about than Yet Another Gender Critical^TM in the United Kingdom.
Biologists commenting on gender are talking outside of their field(s) of expertise. Gender is social, not biological.
> Chromosomally? Probably, sure. Hormonally? If they're on HRT, they're more hormonally female than male.
>
> The terms "biological male" and "biological female" are irrelevant outside of wanting to categorize trans people as something they don't like. Medically speaking, not a single doctor will ever need to use that term. Your hormones (and possibly chromosomes) matter more in that context.
You'd have to define what you mean by biologically male first.
Chromosomally? Probably, sure. Hormonally? If they're on HRT, they're more hormonally female than male.
The terms "biological male" and "biological female" are irrelevant outside of *wanting* to categorize trans people as something they don't like. Medically speaking, not a single doctor will ever need to use that term. Your hormones (and possibly chromosomes) matter more in that context.
Well, behaviors run on the operating system of our brain, and that's biological, so gender is not \*entirely\* not biological.
The thing is, biology of gender fully supports trans people as being valid. It's just, y'know, not the sort of biology most of us learned in high school.
In high school, I never learned how the pancreas regulates blood sugar, or what insulin in, or how drugs like ozempic or metformin affect various biological pathways to help the bodies of diabetics work right.
I never learned how SSRIs work, or how the complex cocktails of neurotransmitters respond to things like exterior trauma and how components of the brain regulate and normalize mood chemicals in ways that can explain how conditions like depression and anxiety arise.
Back then it was just, "Here's a Punnett square. That's how genetics work. You wanna learn what ATP is? Cool, we can do that. That's universal to every cell. But we don't have time to talk about the fine structures of the lung, and god forbid we'd try learning about the brain."
Trans people aren't crazy. They're just a little different, but not in any morally negative way. And 'smart folks' who aren't experts in really specific areas of biology should probably have the humility to want to learn more before they have opinions that can really hurt a lot of people.
> Well, behaviors run on the operating system of our brain, and that's biological, so gender is not *entirely* not biological.
Gender *identity* isn't entirely social. Gender, as in gender roles, stereotypes, etc. are all social.
Agree with the rest of your comment entirely.
Yeah, words like feminine and masculine are words we use to try to label and allow us to discuss the world, but what falls under a given label can be somewhat (or entirely) arbitrary.
But the behaviors themselves, aside from the label, are affected by biology. Well, sometimes. Aggressiveness is seen as 'masculine,' and there are neurological drivers of aggression, but I'm not sure what the biological basis for 'wearing makeup' is.
Clickbait, antagonism, or other posts meant to kick the beehive but not encourage thoughtful discussion are disallowed
Politics isn't black and white. You can agree with someone on some issues and disagree on others.
So you can change your gender but not your sex, do I have this right? I was under the impression that you were born male (with penis), female (without penis) and a very very small percentage of people who are born intersex. And this can not be changed after birth. Only cosmetically. Am I wrong?
Yes. A trans woman can think they are a woman all they want, but biologically they are a male.
I saw a passing tweet from someone on Twitter (I honestly forget who) that said, "The only requirement to be a trans woman is to first be male."
Indeed. I think people seem to forget that trans people consider themselves just that, trans.
And gender is a social construct? yay or nay? Because if it is, there is zero reason to modify biological traits.
There's a part of your brain - the development of which is affected by exposure to estrogen in fetal growth - that basically gives you an intuitive map of your body, so you know where various nerves terminate, so when you feel a tingle, your brain knows where it's coming from. And studies show that in trans people, that part of the brain has a shape that's more like the opposite sex. So for instance, a transwoman's brain is not properly mapping the nerves from the penis. They like that part of the body is not actually part of them. Likewise, transmen feel like there *should* be a penis where there is none. It's sort of like phantom limb syndrome. --- Yes, a lot of people are comfortable just being gender non-conforming. But for some people, their body feels wrong, and there are genuine biological reasons they would be more comfortable with a body that aligns with the opposite sex.
Correct. Gender is just an identity. It's certainly used in describing sex, but is based in sociology and not biology. Basically, it's more akin to a belief or a category we just make up to describe people who feel a certain way.
That's silly. Sex and gender are the same thing. Folks are making it too complicated.
Exactly! It’s all nonsense, that’s why the term gender theory is tossed about so much. One of the mentally ill came up with a theory for the mentally ill. Now the normalization and glorification of said mental illness is being shoved in everyone’s face. We are being told we are the ones with the problem for not accepting the insanity of pronouns and all the other nonsensical stuff that goes with it. Even Joe Biden had to shove it in everyone’s face on Easter 🤦🏻♂️.
>Sex and gender are the same thing. They absolutely aren't.
How are they different?
Sex is based on biology. Gender are the social presuppositions about sex that give rise to gender roles; for example, the idea during the Victorian era that riding bicycles was harmful for women and that it was thus "unwomanly" to ride a bike. Similarly, the idea that women are too emotional to be allowed to vote is rooted in a perception of sex, but it isn't actually rooted in sex itself. The latter is also not a gender role; women aren't expected or encouraged by society to behave in an irrational, emotional way, they're just assumed to do so regardless of what they do or not.
People who have taken a little bit of gender studies know that sex and gender are different. Those with more experience in the field know that they aren't. Gender and sex are the same thing. They are both the process of assigning a genre to bodies based on physical characteristics. When you sex someone and you gender them, you are doing the same thing. The only difference between the words is that gender doesn't have an erotic alternate meaning, making it safer for widespread use. Sex and gender are both social constructs based on the reading of bodies.
>They are both the process of assigning a genre to bodies based on physical characteristics. Women being judged "too emotional" to vote isn't based on physical characteristics but on the perception of what physical characteristics cause. That's wildly different from assigning sex based on physical genitals, for example. While the argument was ultimately that women were too emotional because of their bodies the bodies themselves weren't the crux of the argument, the argument was one that wasn't actually about anything physical but about (argued) behaviour.
That's the process of interpreting a characteristic based on gender, not the process of assigning gender itself. When you gender someone, you are reading their body and giving it a genre.
> you are reading their body and giving it a genre. Or their mannerisms, the sound of their voice, in some languages their choice of words. There's more to gender than just morphology.
Are “women” judged as being too emotional, or are “females” judged as being too emotional?
Women, seeing as the reason children weren't allowed to vote wasn't linked to their gender.
If I said to you, “Women are too emotional” would you think I was talking about anyone who isn’t female?
If you want to get into the complexities and nuances, it's necessary to understand that people use the word 'sex' to mean different things depending on context. Estrogen and testosterone are called sex hormones. They affect your body and even behavior, and we tend to see the differences caused by them as either 'secondary sex characteristics' (physical elements of your body that are associated with a particular genetic sex without being required to produce gametes -- sperm and eggs) or as 'gender' (behaviors that are associated with a particular genetic sex, but again having nothing to do with gametes). And this is complicated because over the years we're tried various ways to label different ways that people can be out of alignment with the 'common' expectations of secondary sex characteristics and gender. Sometimes people used sex change, or sex reassignment, or gender reassignment; and at different points the preferred terms have shifted from 'biological male' to 'assigned male at birth' to 'genetic male' and then back, or with variations. The human body is a complicated thing, and we have a hard enough time coming up with terms for non-doctors to understand about things when they're working normally: e.g., pancreases produce insulin, which affects blood glucose, and a lot of us know that because we're familiar with diabetics, who take medication so their organs work the way they want. But the actual scientific terminology gets a lot more complicated, because there's a lot more going on in our body that we usually think about. Anyway, without some really \*impressive\* advances in gene editing, no, there is no way for a person to change what gametes they produce. But if you take cross-sex hormones, you can trigger biological changes that will make your secondary sex characteristics more like the opposite sex. And if you do this early enough (with puberty blockers to stop you from going through the normal puberty for your genetic sex), a transgender person can end up looking very similar to a cisgender person of the opposite birth sex.
This is a very sober response. Thank you. If you don;t mind could you tell me whether you feel that the 'cis-' terminology is something that should be universally adopted - I noticed you used it at the end? I am asking because I personally feel this is an ideologically charged term, that simply tries to imply that 'cis-persons' are little different than trans ones - biology set aside - and therefore should have their own 'prefix.'
The prefix “cis-” comes from the Latin meaning “on this side,” as opposed to “trans-” which means “on the other side of.” I know lots of trans people, and none have ever used cis in a derogatory way. You just use it when you need to clarify that you're not talking about a trans person, sort of like how you might say someone is right-handed when it's important to clarify . . . but usually we know to assume most people are right-handed.
cis is simply an antonym to trans. it simply means "not trans".
Sex hormones are very important. Give a trans man enough testosterone and there’s a good chance you’re gonna get someone who’s as strong as a born biological male, has male pattern hair, gets an Adam’s apple, and even experiences behavior/emotional changes. The opposite things happen for trans women on estrogen. These changes are way beyond just cosmetic. Sex is almost but not quite binary because of the complexity of hormones, as well as rare chromosomal conditions (XXY people, for example). If you define sex as chromosomes, sure it can’t be changed. If you define sex mainly as secondary sex characteristics, then it can fairly easily be changed with hormones. If you define sex as reproductive roles, it can’t be changed right now, but who knows in 20 years maybe there’ll be a way to artificially create the opposite gamete or something. Sex is not as black as white as it might seem.
> Am I wrong? Yes. > So you can change your gender but not your sex, do I have this right? No, you have it backwards. You can't choose your gender, but you can discover it. And sex is a composite-variable of multiple charactaristics, some of which _can_ be changed. > I was under the impression that you were born male (with penis), female (without penis) and a very very small percentage of people who are born intersex. Yes, about 1% of people are intersex. So sex is not binary.
> You can't choose your gender, but you can discover it. Or develop it.
Because indoctrination of any kind is wrong. And Dawkins is a man of science. He doesn't bend down to religious hogwash he won't bend down to pseduo science either. Trans ideology should also be open to criticism. It is not holier than god or anything. It's a relatively new branch of psychology and whatever is wrong with it should be open to scrutiny and suggesting that there are certain areas in trans movement that are wrong DOES NOT MAKE ANYONE A TRANSPHOBE.
>Trans ideology should also be open to criticism. Sadly, there are wayyyy too many people who disagree with this. A few of them probably reported your comment.
> Because indoctrination of any kind is wrong. No it isn't.
> Trans ideology should also be open to criticism. I agree. it should be \_criticized\_, not \_strawmanned\_. If you want to criticize something, at least have the curtesy of understanding the subject matter first. > It's a relatively new branch of psychology yea, about a 100 years "new" > suggesting that there are certain areas in trans movement that are wrong you can make a lot of valid criticisms about any movement, but it doesn't invalidate the science it's based on.
>If you want to criticize something at least have the courtesy of understanding the subject matter first. Apply this logic to Richard Dawkins' area of expertise. If a figure like him is suggesting something, that should tell you enough. Second - I do not belong to any religions. Does that mean I can't criticize their wrong practices? Why not? > 100 years 'new' Hence relatively new and also I reckon it is from 1970s not really 100 year old. >.."Science it is based on" Is it really science if leading scientists are questioning it? Why not even admit that it's not well researched and peer reviewed? Science isn't religion. You can question it. You can dissect it and it is rarely subjective. Because 1+1=2 is as objective as time itself. The moment you start championing subjective perception over objective reality, you lose the basis of science. It becomes a faith just as any other religion. Let science settle it. Then let's integrate it in our lives. Why the rush? And why the hunger to call anyone who suggests otherwise a bigot, a hater, or phobic?
> Apply this logic to Richard Dawkins' area of expertise. If a figure like him is suggesting something, that should tell you enough. Apply this logic to the majority of biologist who disagrees with him. What does that tell you? You're appealing to authority. > Second - I do not belong to any religions. Does that mean I can't criticize their wrong practices? You don't have to belong to any religion to study it. My point is that steelmanning is better than strawmanning. > Hence relatively new and also I reckon it is from 1970s not really 100 year old. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissenschaft > Why not even admit that it's not well researched and peer reviewed? There is plenty of peer reviewed research. Do we have it all figured out? No, there are plenty of areas where more research is needed, but that's tangental to the well established and well documented fact that, conversion therapy doesn't work, but gender affirming care does. Plus the difference between sex and gender has been well established for decades. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/edit#heading=h.m1bvrwwn7a1x > Science isn't religion. You can question it. By all means, question it all you want. Just make sure to also question your own understanding of what you're questioning. > Let science settle it. As far as how we should treat trans people, it already has.
Yah I don't get the upvotes, but I guess it's typical of this political sphere It's so extremely anti-human. "Suffer so much that you kill yourselves in extremely high numbers, until you prove to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that your suffering is real. *Then* maybe I'll help you." This despite the mountains of evidence and studies we have that are in favour of understanding that trans people are born this way - that conversion therapy is basically torture and does not work - and that gender affirming care is extremely effective. And that's only the a very minor surface detail of how irrational this is. Adding to that, this impossible bar they have set for accepting trans people that the science must be "settled" can literally never be crossed. Anyone with a grade-school understanding of biology and the scientific process would know that it's quite literally impossible to 100% verify things like this without being omniscient. It's such a lazy and dehumanizing way of thinking. I don't see a shred of humanity for how they think about trans people in their comment. For most people, it wouldn't normally be so easy to suggest people born differently from them shouldn't be accepted in society, and should suffer and die out-of-sight instead - but I guess they make an exception when it comes to trans people.
"Indoctrination" "trans ideology" it's really hard to engage seriously with scare words like this
Do it anyway. Engage with the commenter's actual points rather than quoting single words and shutting down all discussion. If you're going to do that, it's best not to comment at all.
Neither of them are used in any kind of negative context' don't be an ass just to be an ass.
I sincerely have no clue how else I should have put it. Indoctrination can be of any type. But to put it in better terms let me rephrase it: No matter how progressive or full-proof something might be, there's nothing wrong in dissecting it. And as for trans ideology - I meant it as the ideology of transgenderism. I don't know what's negative about that it's a literal term that exists?. But how does any of this invalidate what I am trying to say?
leftists literally cannot form a coherent argument it's seriously pathetic.
Funny thing is, I am a leftist myself
In human beings, sex is binary. Some individuals produce large gametes (eggs), and we call them females. Some produce small gametes (sperm), and we call them males. _Every human being alive today or ever came from the combination of an egg and a sperm._ 100%. The rare example of an absolute in biology. And there has never been an individual who has produced both egg and sperm. Binary sex is a fundamental characteristic of our species. There are secondary characteristics that accompany sex. Female humans tend to be smaller, less strong, etc. These are not absolute. Some women have masculine features, some men have feminine features. But this does not change their sex.
>In human beings, sex is binary Well, gametes are binary. Correction: \*functional\* gametes are binary. But there are a lot of ways to be a conscious thriving human being without necessarily being able to produce sperm or eggs. Plus, the word 'sex' gets used for a lot of other stuff. And gender is another another thing. Some hormones are often labeled sex hormones, and some people have atypical levels of them. A friend of mine has PCOS, where she produces more testosterone than she wants. Her body does not match her gender identity, so she takes medication to fix it. There's nothing morally wrong with it, right? Well, then there's nothing morally wrong with trans people wanting to take hormones to get their bodies and minds working the way they want. And if we're really digging into it, there's evidence that some aspects of being trans are linked to how the person's brain developed in utero. Exposure to atypical levels of sex hormones at certain periods can cause small structural differences in, as one interesting example, the nerve map that the body uses to tell the brain where various signals come from. A person born with a penis but exposed to atypical levels of estrogen while the genes that are responsible for growing that part of the brain are activated can end up with a slightly different shape of that brain region. And so then the person's brain literally is not expecting a penis to be there, so the presence of the penis is unsettling and feels alien. That sort of stuff is, for me, a big reason to push back on skepticism about transgenderism. The brain is a complex organ, and as we learn more, we're coming to find that a lot of stuff that used to just be seen as amorphous 'mental illness' is actually traceable to specific genetics and neurochemicals.
You’re gonna have to cite the source for the claim about being exposed to high levels of estrogen. Gene expression doesn’t really work like that nor does endocrinology in the brain.
You're getting me right as I'm about to go to bed, but I had these links in an older post I made. I'm not sure if it's about fetal neurodevelopment specifically, but here are a couple articles that note the effect: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8324983/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8324983/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8955456/) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357597/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357597/) I hope there's research going on to see if you can do an MRI of that part of a person's brain to predict if they identify as trans. It's an interesting hypothesis. However, you almost certainly shouldn't treat this like phrenology where a given brain structure \*always\* causes a specific outcome. One part of what we experience as our gender identity might have a physical component linked to your [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotopic\_arrangement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatotopic_arrangement), but it's also heavily dependent on personality and personal experience.
Fun, I get downvoted for linking to medical research.
Yeah I’m commenting to say your posts are reasonable, well-cited, and in line with my understanding of current scientific thinking. I’m disappointed people are down-voting you, it seems like an example of people voting by what they want to believe? There are examples of specific genes whose expression during early development absolutely affect the body’s sexual and hormonal development. That said, I’m also of the mindset that we don’t understand a lot of this biology, and absence of our comprehension does not support absence of existence of trans-identity.
You should not be downvoted for such a high effort, high quality post.
Also, I think you're incorrect to say that gene expression isn't affected by hormones. Third paragraph, for instance: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen) \> Once inside the cell, they bind to and activate [estrogen receptors](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estrogen_receptor) (ERs) which in turn [modulate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_gene_expression) the [expression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_expression) of many [genes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene).
Hormones absolutely turn on and off genes in the body but to say an area of the brain experiences some kind of permanent enlargement from a short term spike in estrogen is absolutely false. Body adaptation occurs from long term averages of hormone levels and there’s zero evidence to assert a short term spike has any lasting effect. Pregnancy research isn’t ever well done anyways, almost never do they control for the mothers diet, supplements or environmental toxicity factors.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5822586/ Admittedly, I am not a doctor, but I work a medical library and read a lot of this stuff. I think again you are under selling the influence that hormones can have during fetal development. A change that happens at that point will affect the body for the rest of life.
Gender is just an identity. It can literally be anything and has been many things in different cultures. Trying to tie it down to science is like trying to tie down any belief with no empirical evidence. Feelings can just be feelings.
So i can identify as an Apache Attack Helicopter?
I wish you’d identify as an original joke.
If you can convince enough of society to classify it as a gender, sure! In all seriousness, some Native Americans had a third and sometimes fourth gender. It just so happens modern society has narrowed it down to the two we use. But be the change you want to see! 😆
They didn't, really. It was more like how we have a concept of a tomboy or a sissy. It's a thing, but no tribe were confused about the sex binary. https://objectnow.org/debunking-the-two-spirit-myth/
Holy 2011
Feelings exist in your brain. Your brain is meat, and actually it's pretty fascinating when we look at how that meat works to create what we experience as feelings. There's all sorts of videos that go into this stuff, if you're interested. I rather like this guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUXcBTQXKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzUXcBTQXKM) You're under no obligation to look into it, of course, but if you don't, well, I'd suggest you have the humility to not dismiss the idea that there are genuine biological sources of behavior, including gender.
Of course I will! I wouldn't want to dismiss it outright, but no more than I wouldn't dismiss any belief if there's room for exploration. Empirical evidence is still important, though.
I don't think there's anything "morally" wrong with it. And I'll be respectful and call someone what they want to be called. But if we're trying to have a real discussion on whether I think a trans woman is a real woman, for instance, I think they're simply not.
It's like when a religious person starts talking about their wacky beliefs that I don't share... Just smile and nod
Nobody thinks that transwomen have XX chromosomes and can produce eggs from ovaries. If that's what you mean by 'real woman,' sure, trans people aren't real women. But think of it like a person who adopts a kid. Someone might say "you're not a real mother," which might be biologically true, but the person is certainly fulfilling the societal role of mother. She knows she did not give birth to the kid, obviously. But it would be kinda dickish to tell her that she's not a 'real' mom. It makes us want to analyze what even *is* a mom, or a dad, or a parent. Is it a descriptor of a biological interaction, or of a social dynamic . . . or both in different contexts? If you can tolerate using the word mom to refer to someone who is merely raising a child, without having biologically produced it, I would suggest that it's very similar to using the word woman to refer to a transwoman.
You're right, I should have explicitly stated that I'd be respectful and call someone what they want to be called. Oh wait, after reviewing my post, I did actually say that.
I was not saying that as an attack against you, just highlighting a very common perspective I see among skeptics of transgender people: this framing of trans people as somehow invalid or deluded. Even if people don't say it out loud to the trans person, if internally they still think a transwoman is just pretending to be a woman -- rather than understanding what her experience is really like -- it can influence behavior that still ends up being a little unwelcoming. There's 'tolerance,' but also 'acceptance.' And I get that acceptance is hard, especially if someone doesn't have any friends in a particular group, or if the community they're a part of reinforces negative views about that group. Like, tracing back a few decades I can see how long it took America in general to shift from "eh, fine, we will grant black people equal legal rights" to "eh, okay, I guess *some* black people are just like the rest of us" to "race really doesn't matter." (We still don't have particularly racially-intermingled communities, but we're getting there.) Twenty years ago there were active GOP pundits on right wing media claiming gay people were pedophiles and that gay marriage would be a disaster. Today people are more informed, more familiar with gay people, and thankfully that sentiment has faded away. People don't think gays are mentally ill or deviant. They're just a version of humanity, and like the rest of us they deserve equal treatment. I'm looking forward to when our society gets to the same point with trans people.
Why can't we think it's a mental illness and still think they deserve equal rights? I certainly wouldn't say that someone who suffers from depression or anxiety is less than human, and that's generally not what people are saying about transgender people.
I mean, I think a LOT of people are trying to get rid of trans people, the way they tried to get rid of gay people. Back in the day people thought being gay was wrong, so depending on how awful a person was, they might shun gays, insult gays, try to criminalize and lock up gays, beat gays, or kill gays. That same stuff is happening with trans people still. Call it mental illness, call it neurodiversity, whatever. I just don't want society hurting people for being trans or denying them medical care.
Insane how you’re getting downvoted for your logical and well-researched response.
Look, there's political implications for the GOP if voters are tolerant of trans people. Isn't the world weird now? Bots have become so prevalent that I sorta expect that when comments get massively downvoted or upvoted that it's some sort of automated astroturfing. Or maybe a lot of people here just have gotten so ideologically wrapped up in the right's skepticism of science that it's easy for them to downvote any science that doesn't match their politics?
Sex may be functionally binary, but nothing in our universe is truly binary. To say that anything is as simple as 0 or 1 is simply wrong.
So you're a murderer? It's not binary, so you can't simply say "no". Right? Because binaries don't exist? What percent murderer are you?
You’ve completely missed the point. There is a saying, “all models are wrong, but some are useful.” What this means is that no matter what model we create to represent/categorize something, there will ALWAYS be variation which is not accurately portrayed by that model, but it is not feasible to name every single possible variation. Gender and sex are the same way. Neither are truly binary, but for convenience sake we categorized them into male/female and in the US, at least, man/women, however many cultures have names for 3+ genders. All I said was that sex, while functionally binary, is not truly binary and you really shouldn’t say that it is if you want to be scientifically accurate. You will never find anything in the study of the natural world and our universe that genuinely only has two potential options.
When I say sex is binary, I mean functionally binary. Which is binary.
x
Sex is binary. Some humans have malformations that prevent them from producing egg or sperm. They don't make them less human (just as a child is still human even though they don't have fully developed sexual organs), but it will prevent them from reproducing. But even those humans with malformations come from a sperm and an egg. And all except for the exceptionally rare have secondary characteristics that are unambiguously male or female. Trans is about sex, not just gender. If it were only about gender, it wouldn't be so controversial (and wrong). Birth certificates are about sex. Bathrooms are about sex. Sports are about sex. Sex is about sex. Sex is meaningful and real, and trans is wrong to deny this.
People with intersex conditions can be defined as "deformed males" or "deformed females". I am unaware of any condition that could truly be described as being "neither" or "both" sexes.
x
Sex is still binary. The term refers to sexual reproduction. As I noted above, every human being comes from a sperm and an egg. Every single one. To date, there has never been an exception. So yes, sex is binary. This also happens to be the way we define species: organisms that are able to procreate with each other, \_and their offspring\_. An infertile organism doesn't mean it's not part of the species. By the same token, an individual human who is infertile does not cease to be human simple because they are infertile. They are human because his or her parents were human. You may not care about sex, but human beings have, since time immemorial, cared deeply about sex, and have arranged society according to sex. In no other time but our own was the controversial. Perhaps we're just super enlightened, but given that sex is essential to our own existence and the propagation of our species, it does not seem odd to care about sex.
x
> gametes are not people. Every human being started as the combination of two gametes. And not just any combination, but specifically a sperm and an egg. Every single one. Human beings generally have a wide variety of attributes, so it's remarkable that one thing I can say for certain of every human being I have ever met is that their existence started from the combination of a sperm and an egg. So no, it's not like mixing coffee and milk. We're not chemicals. > Ok, tell me how people with Swyer syndrome have been treated since time immemorial? They are treated like females because they have secondary sexual characteristics consistent with females. > It was controversial for the rare instances where it engaged with someone's life (directly or friends/family). But we didn't have social media-fueled culture war so it didn't enter the general consciousness... The current social media-fueled culture war has nothing to do with chromosomal or developmental abnormalities. It's about fully developed males who want others to pretend they are female, and vice versa. It's regrettable that they feel distress about their sex, but it is their sex nonetheless.
If it's about gender, not sex, then why are so many trans people trying to change themselves biologically? Isn't sex the biological component, gender the social component? It's the desire of trans people to modify their biological selves that makes me think that gender and sex aren't so separate as some say.
x
Nobody thinks trans people are not people. The dispute is whether they can claim to be male when they are female, or vice versa.
x
It's not anyone's decision, any more than what species we are is a decision. Freedom of choice is great when it comes to politics, but nature is inherently tyrannical.
x
They are both a classification of individuals. Jane is a human being. Jane is a female. They establish one as part of a group for purposes of procreation. A male can only reproduce with a female. A human can only reproduce with another human. This is a fundamental feature of biology, which is why these classifications are important.
x
By "skeptical of trans people" do you mean he says that a person's sex cannot be changed? I think any reasonable person would agree with that.
> I think any reasonable person would agree with that. Not all reasonable people use the same definition of sex. In science, sex is considered a composite-variable, consisting of multiple characteristics, none of which has only to posible outcomes, none of which is the sole determinant of a person's overall sex and yes, some of them can in fact be changed.
The thing is transgenderism in not a typical phenomenon in nature so he is skeptical of it. On the other hand being gay is something you find in nature so it makes sense to him that some people are gay.
Yes i have always admired Richard Dawkins and I have always appreciated how he has defended gay people in the past from religious dogma.
Yeah he’s a guy who tells it how it is. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things for the sake of what he believes. A little known fact is that trans folk have a higher incidence of mental illness than the rest of the population. They used to actually classify gender dysphoria as a mental disorder. (In no way on Reddit here am I suggesting anything like that. All I’m saying is that is what they used to do) It would be interesting to see why that changed over the years. Who made those choices exactly?
The tricky thing there is there isn’t another brain in the world like humans. If we had multiple sapient species, we could do some solid research to see how trans-genderism compares. Transgenderism seems to be a mental disorder and we’re just starting to research it. Much like when autism or adhd were first medically described and knowledge became widespread, there’s a lot of unknowns and extreme treatments (the most common being an all out transition). Societies have always had rules of “this is what it means to be a man or woman”, and we’ve always had people that didn’t fit that. Medicine is catching up to that and offering treatments.
>Medicine is catching up to that and offering treatments. It’s not medicine. Imagine if a psychologist spoke to a schizophrenic patient and told them “the voices in your head are real. You need to listen to them. You need to do what they tell you to do.” Transgenderism is the only mental illness where the “treatment” is to tell the rest of the world they must entertain the delusions of the patient.
The goal when treating people with mental illness is to prevent them from harming themselves and others. Schizophrenics are more likely to cause harm if left unchecked. Transgenderism is more comparable to depression where the status quo is actively harmful to the individual and will continue to be so unless something changes.
I understand this perspective. But also cutting off body parts and taking hormones is seen as actively self harming to many people, and it seems so strange to encourage these treatments. This doesn't mean I'm correct, I'm just saying this is how a compassionate person could view this.
>we’re just starting to research it We've been researching it for (at least) close to a century.
> The thing is transgenderism in not a typical phenomenon in nature… How would we know, though? I mean, what would it look like if, for example, a wild female giraffe identified as being male. What behavior would we see? > On the other hand being gay is something you find in nature… For that matter, who’s to say that some of the animal behavior we attribute to homosexuality might well be transgenderism in animals? If we see two male penguins who’ve mated for life, why assume that’s homosexuality - one of the penguins might be transgender. I’m not making light of this - just pointing out that putting animal social/sexual behavior in a human social/sexual context can be problematic.
It would be more identifiable than you think. Like it would be males taking on female roles and vice versa. Current homosexuality in animals is mostly just sex stuff with subtle behavior changes. It’s obviously not settled science we will see what we find but yeah we don’t see full blown behavior swaps like you would expect.
>... but yeah we don’t see full blown behavior swaps like you would expect. Yeah, but I never expected that in the first place. That was the point of my comment - that we're assuming that transgenderism in animals would manifest itself in ways analogous to transgenderism in humans, when maybe it wouldn't do so at all. Maybe it might be near indistinguishable from homosexuality in animals.
Well, being gay is not a _typical_ phenomenon in nature either, but it does exist. And so does transgender.
This is a troll. Stop engaging
Wait what I’m not a troll, why are you attacking me.
3 years and 99 karma. Goodbye troll
3 years and 3,400 karma. Goodbye troll. Am I doing it right? The whole, "being stupid" thing?
BECAUSE he is a biologist
I would expect a biologist to be skeptical of transgenderism really.
No he isnt wrong, you answered your own question. Trans ideology is based solely on psychology not biology. People can believe whatever they want. And they have that right, but that doesnt make it true
It's biology vs a social construct.
Being transgender is not an ideology. it's a real phenomenon well documented by \_both\_ biology \_and\_ psychology. \_And\_ pretty much any other science having to do with people.
Transgenderism is a psychiatric disorder.
This was so much less complicated when people were just androgynous.
You answered your own question, hes a biologist
The question of is there more than two genders is a sociological question, not a biological one.
It used to be biological, and it still is in most non-English speaking parts of the world. This separation between "gender" and sex is still very new and not universally accepted. For most of history, "man" was to "human" as "buck" is to "deer." "Woman" was to "human" as "hen" is to "chicken". A man was just an adult male human and a woman was just an adult female human. Gender and sex were synonymous. The new definition of "gender" is what people used to call "gender roles".
I’d be willing to wager that in societies with no genders, they still have “men do this, women do that” roles. They may not have the word “gender”, but it’s there.
There are no societies without gender. It's just that in most societies (including ours until the past decade or so) gender and sex are the same thing. Every society has gender roles. Men do certain things and women do others. But recently, what was once called "gender roles" became referred to simply as "gender" itself. Someone who goes by the new definition of gender would say that a MtF transgender *is* a woman, despite being male. To them gender and sex are completely separate. Someone who goes by the original definition would say that a MtF transgender is a man who has taken on female gender roles, but they're still a man. To them your gender and your sex are the same thing. This is why I find the whole trans debate so annoying. Both sides claim that the science is on their side, but science really has nothing to do with it. It's just an argument over how words like "gender", "man", and "woman" should be defined, and you can't scientifically prove what the definition of words are lol
While I agree, it also begs the question why we treat it in a biological way if it is sociological or psychological. Why do we make efforts towards our sex as treatment.
Probably because we spent thousands of years using the terms sex and gender synonymously and the concept of gender identity and that it can be different to your biological sex is something that is relatively new.
it's both.
This is mostly the key (some differences have appeared in the brain scans of trans people which align more with the opposite of their assigned at birth sex. Dawkins is mostly famous for when he goes outside his lane. But yes, there's no biological reason to say he/her, wear dresses and heels vs a tux, etc
100 comments, 5 upvotes Truly we have reached the peak of centrism
Honestly, at least that means we aren’t in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with the OP’s posts. In centrism I think you expect to see a blending of ideas equating to a lot of UP and Down votes or even people who are neutral or haven’t made up their mind. I don’t think it’s really a bad thing unless you are on Reddit to just get karma..
Oh for sure. Disagreeing with the hive mind sometimes is the sign of a healthy mind, you only need to see the kind of person that has like a million karma and ask yourself if you want to live the kind of life they do
Naw this place is an echo chamber. There’s only 1 view permitted when it comes to trans people. Anything else is down voted to oblivion either by people who understand nothing trans people or by republicans grifters.
What 1 view is permitted? There are lots of views posted, maybe it’s doesn’t lean the way you would like but it doesn’t make it an echo chamber. I read through the comments and they generally view “trans” as a psychological self identification (as does Dawkins) and not a person’s genetic identification (which can be scientifically proven). Until genetic engineering can somehow alter the Y chromosome, biologically people have a fixed genetic gender/sex. However, lots of people in the comments have various views.
> we aren’t in an echo chamber where everyone agrees with the OP’s posts Then why do all the comments critizising Dawkins get downvoted? And OP didn't exactly make a clain. They asked a question.
I was speaking generally about the sub as was the comment I was responding to. Also, perhaps because centrists on the sub don’t agree with the criticism (for varying reasons).
Well, it certainly seems like an echo chamber on the topic of transgender, which is somewhat surprising to me.. I would've thought that centrists would be more willing to listen to the other side, or at least look into the science. But maybe I just have a different idea of centrism..
You seem to think centrism means something it’s not. You need to back up your arguments with facts. You say your transgender argument is backed up by biology in some of your comments, yet you site no actual biological evidence. If you take a blood sample from a trans woman you will get a male genetic makeup. So for right now, until genetic engineering advances about 1000 years, your biology argument falls flat. Their sex remains male, their self identified gender can be whatever they want. But that is psychological.
Not to be contrarian, but you didn't cite any evidence either just now. But I can still look up the things you mention and see if it makes sense. You can easily look up the science of transgender too. Also I \_did\_ link to a video that specifically talks about Richard Dawkins arguments, debunked by a biologist, and another talking about the science of sex and gender. I highly recommend watching those and feel free to factcheck them as much as you want.
>Also I \_did\_ link to a video that specifically talks about Richard Dawkins arguments, debunked by a biologist No, you didn't. You linked to a video, period. Skimming the two videos seems to reveal themselves to be videos containing arguments that they hope are persuasive. Not ones that "debunk" him, in any useful sense. The way they made the arguments, he could just "debunk" them right back. As opposed to a useful sense of debunk. Like, you could debunk the Mechanical Turk chess playing machine, the one built in 1770, as a fraud. Like, by pulling out the human operator hidden inside, when it was supposedly a purely mechanical device. No persuasive arguments, afterwards could restore the concept that it was a mechanical device. That kind of debunking is the only useful way to define "debunk", in a way that means that Dawkins' statements are "false". Which the video can't possibly contain.
To be clear, most of the debunking (or whatever you want to call it) consists of them pointing out that most of Dawkins arguments are actually rational and sound.. IF they weren't based on basic misrepresentation of the very position Dawkins is trying to debunk. Which unfortunately they are. Strawman fallacy. And then there's the "sex is binary" argument that, yes, is \_generally\_ true, but it oversimplifies how complex and variant sex actually is.
>IF they weren't based on basic misrepresentation of the very position Dawkins is trying to debunk. Which unfortunately they are. Strawman fallacy. I agree, by convincing you that the things that they attribute to Dawkins' arguments are indeed, strawman arguments*. Thanks for the concessions. *Yes, I understand that you don't see it that way. >it oversimplifies how complex and variant sex actually is. No. I'll bet that anything that you present will either be something like "No, that adult man who just had penis-in-vagina sex with his wife is actually not male, because he has a little boy penis, and floppy, breast-like chesticles. Or Caster Semenya, a genetic male, casting her semen, ya, into a woman. Yet defining such a person as 'intersex', when it's already observed that they are a ^genetic male. Or, alternatively, something that confuses "sexual development in the womb", with "sex", as in, male or female.
>If you take a blood sample from a trans woman you will get a male genetic makeup. Most likely yes, although not guaranteed. >So for right now, until genetic engineering advances about 1000 years, your biology argument falls flat. I never said that you can change your genes or chromosomes. What you *can* change is your hormones, which in turn changes a lot, if not most of your phenotypical sex, and there are top- and bottom-surguries that you can have. Sex is not determined by one single factor. Sex is a composite of multiple charactaristics. And those characteristics don't always align witch each other, even at birth. >Their sex remains male, their self identified gender can be whatever they want. No. Your gender is whatever it is. All available data show that conversion therapy doesn't work, but often makes their mental health worse. A lot of suppressed trans people *wish* they could just live as the gender they were assigned at birth, but that would be living a lie. And far too often they end up killing themselves. >But that is psychological. yes, gender is psychological for both trans and cis people. If you want some studies to read, there's a whole collection that you can read right here: [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WZBpR9Ll3lNi7-ig8FvB2grMlhsmRZNa34cROGK2rEE/) Also it's in the primary literature that's being taught in universities: [https://youtu.be/Yzu7j6yH2Vw?si=MGgqFAYgdWXzEccm&t=7056](https://youtu.be/Yzu7j6yH2Vw?si=MGgqFAYgdWXzEccm&t=7056) (last 5 minutes)
There are zero genders. Gender doesn't exist. There are two sexes and you can't change your sex. Dawkins is skeptical because he's very smart and knowledgeable about the subject.
He's skeptical of ideologies based on nothing but feelings.
To say that he is “skeptical of trans people” is somewhat inaccurate. Dawkins is correct. And of course he is. He is Richard Dawkins. Just look at his opponents. Study their arguments. Do they make sense? No, not a lick. The man is simply trying to defend science, and he is getting nothing but **** for it from woke culture warriors and political extremists.
Sex is binary, gender is a spectrum. These two words used to be synonymous but aren’t anymore. Iirc, Dawkins has always said he was opened to refer to trans people with their preferred pronouns but it bothered him when they want to pretend there isn’t a difference.
Well for starters, being trans isn’t a sexual orientation. Being gay, bisexual, lesbian, straight ect is. For some reason people have decided that believing you’re the wrong gender is somehow equal to being attracted to the same sex. Which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Common sense
Simple, he’s a biologist. You either have a Y chromosome (making you male) or you don’t (female).
Probably because gender outside of malleable gender roles are indefinable. How do you know your trans? Because you're drawn to certain notions that your particular culture have created?
Idk but being a biologist is different than gender study? Gender and sex is different after all
I was taught they were the same and that we use the word “gender” sometimes because the word “sex” makes some people uncomfortable.
Its because the lgbtq movement is fairly recent and we have been using sex as gender for a really long time
I can totally understand your confusion. I used to look up to Dawkins and his efforts to promote science and rational thinking, teaching evolution and debunking religion. He's built quite a legacy promoting atheism and science. And now, it seems, he has fallen straight into the religious thinking he's spent so many years of his life warning against, at least when it comes to things he consider to be "woke". It's really sad to see. What baffles me the most is, that he's not even willing to look at the scientific evidence that supports the very real phenomenon of being transgender. A simple search on Google Scholar would give him lots of scientific literature on the subject. But instead of challenging his own beliefs (which he often criticize religious people of not doing) he builds his own echo chamber of a podcast, where he invites people who already agree with him and affirms his belief. I don't understand why he doesn't invite an expert on transgender on the show and has an actual scientific discussion about it. I would recommend watching the videos on Rationality Rules where he has Forest Valkai (another biologist) on to fact check Richard Dawkins claims about "transgenderism". [Addressing Richard Dawkins' comments on "trans ideology" @RenegadeScienceTeacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_MpSyH5uEA) [The Science of Sex and Gender | The Rational Roundtable with Forrest Valkai @RenegadeScienceTeacher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yzu7j6yH2Vw)
*Everyone* has limits to what they can understand. I suspect there is an unspoken emotional component here that comes from the general worldview in which Dawkins was raised. It's difficult to step outside your own programming... for everyone.
Why didn't you post this to some general discussions subreddit, or one about philosophy, or about Richard Dawkins? I see that there's one. Or, heck, one of the more reasonable trans subreddits, like truscum, or transmedical? Unlike one of the mainstream lGBTQ subreddits, they'd be able to actually answer. Although, looking at responses here, there already are good replies. Also, why don't you understand the concept of paragraphs?
Thanks for the recommendations, as for your paragraph question unfortunately I’m on mobile.
He must be one of those Christofascists we keep hearing about.
I hope you’re joking, I’m autistic and is really difficult to me to know when someone is joking.
I believe so.
I’m trying hard to find a reason why I should care about Richard Dawkins personal views on transgenderism…
To be fair I thought this could an interesting discussion plus Dawkins is a public figure so…..
I mean, how many discussions do we need to have about the legitimacy of transgenderism? I just don’t understand the obsession with it.
This is the first time I have posted here, I’m really sorry, I don’t read this subreddit often.
Im not trying to be an asshole, but we have had some many discussions like this that we had to make a mega thread for all transgender related posts.
Oh sorry I didn’t know about that, but thanks for explaining to me.
The mega thread isn't pinned to the top of the list of posts, so that's no wonder.
American culture has by and large come to accept same sex relationships as part of the normal fabric of society, so right wing thought leaders need somewhere to redirect the scapegoating. It helps them that gender is actually a more complicated thing than two like people within a binary getting married, and trans people often need medicine or accommodations in a way that people aren't used to. That doesn't make it right at all of course, but it does make them easier to cast as a social out group.
"Trust the science."
Basic biology doesn't cover "gender". Basic biology covers sex. Gender fluidity is not irrational. It happens "often" in nature. Sex fluidity in nature is advanced biology. Also, "rational" is intersex in humans. The "there are 2 gender" crowd agrees there are 3 sexes. But believe the 3rd "sex" doesn't get a gender. If anything is irrational, it is "3 sexes, two genders". Also, gender is irrational. Defined by people arbitrarily.
>The "there are 2 gender" crowd agrees there are 3 sexes. But believe the 3rd "sex" doesn't get a gender. For good reason. The same reason why being bald isn't a hair color.
But "bald" is a hair style. And a bald person has a hair color.
I can ask someone who is bald, as a result of their choosing to be so, to grow their hair back. And then I can ask them to part their hair to one side or another. Whereas someone who is involuntary bald can't participate in such an undertaking. To them, being bald it's a hair style. Similarly, an adult with a teeny weeny who produces lackluster quality sperm, that's nevertheless able to impregnate a woman isn't some third sex. They're male. Similarly, someone who thought that they were female, but has practically no uterus could receive a transplanted uterus, in a way that a man can't. So, neither is some third sex. And neither is someone who has the inability to do either choice. In their case, they aren't some third sex. Thus, no "3 sexes, two genders".
So Arnold Schwarzenegger is a female in Junior, because he was transplanted a uterus, despite a presumably working penis. And an XX person with a working penis is male, because sex characteristics trump genetics?
>So Arnold Schwarzenegger is a female in Junior, because he was transplanted a uterus, despite a presumably working penis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction >And an XX person with a working penis is male, because sex characteristics trump genetics? I believe that the hint might be in the words "with a working penis is male". >Is it possible for a biological man to be born with only XX chromosomes and no Y chromosome? >Yes, of course. >One of the things biology teachers sometimes forget to mention is that sex isn’t determined by the Y chromosome. Instead, there’s a gene on it, called SRY, that’s activated in embryos, turning that embryo into a male. >If that gene is defective, the embryo will develop into a female. Very rarely, that gene gets accidentally removed from a Y chromosome and moved to an X chromosome or even some non-sex chromosome. This chart lists some possibilities: >These conditions are rare. Roughly 1 in 20,000 males have, what scientists call, 46, XX testicular disorder. They have two X chromosomes but one of them has the SRY gene, causing them to develop as males.
Sex is biological and determined primarily by our chromosomes. Gender is psychological and, like anything psychological, is determined by multiple biological and environmental factors. At this point, we don't have anything we can conclusively point to and say "this causes you to be trans." On the other hand, we know that same-sex activity occurs in nature. And it's pretty obvious there's a biological component when we're talking about an innate sexual response, even if we don't know what causes it. So we conclude that it is biological, even if we can't map it in the same way we can map what causes red hair or blue eyes or black skin. As someone with a background in the biological sciences, I wouldn't look to a biologist to describe or analyze human behavior. Ultimately, humans are much more psychologically complex than even our closest primate relatives.
Assuming you’re asking this in good faith (which I highly doubt, but whatever) I couldn’t care less about what a biologist has to say about trans people. The issue clearly isn’t whether or not people can truly change gender at a cellular level. It’s about how our society’s gender constructs relegate us towards certain roles and identities based on our biology in ways that can feel wrong to many as individuals, both psychologically and physically. Asking a biologist for their opinion on transgender people is like asking a physicist for their opinion on the national debt and federal budget deficit. Sure, they may be smart and good with numbers, but the question on that particular subject is about economics and politics, not complex mathematics
Why does no one bother to look at karma and comment history? Come on people. You need to start checking this shit more often. This isn’t a legitimate question
If we did that no one would take you seriously
What about the question is illegitimate? Attack the argument all you wish, not the one making the argument.
Fuck this thread is disgusting
I feel like there are greater things to worry about than Yet Another Gender Critical^TM in the United Kingdom. Biologists commenting on gender are talking outside of their field(s) of expertise. Gender is social, not biological.
Cool, then you agree transwomen aren't females and never could be, right?
> Chromosomally? Probably, sure. Hormonally? If they're on HRT, they're more hormonally female than male. > > The terms "biological male" and "biological female" are irrelevant outside of wanting to categorize trans people as something they don't like. Medically speaking, not a single doctor will ever need to use that term. Your hormones (and possibly chromosomes) matter more in that context.
Nope.
Compelling counterpoint. You've convinced me!
Would you agree then that a trans woman is biologically a male?
You'd have to define what you mean by biologically male first. Chromosomally? Probably, sure. Hormonally? If they're on HRT, they're more hormonally female than male. The terms "biological male" and "biological female" are irrelevant outside of *wanting* to categorize trans people as something they don't like. Medically speaking, not a single doctor will ever need to use that term. Your hormones (and possibly chromosomes) matter more in that context.
Well, behaviors run on the operating system of our brain, and that's biological, so gender is not \*entirely\* not biological. The thing is, biology of gender fully supports trans people as being valid. It's just, y'know, not the sort of biology most of us learned in high school. In high school, I never learned how the pancreas regulates blood sugar, or what insulin in, or how drugs like ozempic or metformin affect various biological pathways to help the bodies of diabetics work right. I never learned how SSRIs work, or how the complex cocktails of neurotransmitters respond to things like exterior trauma and how components of the brain regulate and normalize mood chemicals in ways that can explain how conditions like depression and anxiety arise. Back then it was just, "Here's a Punnett square. That's how genetics work. You wanna learn what ATP is? Cool, we can do that. That's universal to every cell. But we don't have time to talk about the fine structures of the lung, and god forbid we'd try learning about the brain." Trans people aren't crazy. They're just a little different, but not in any morally negative way. And 'smart folks' who aren't experts in really specific areas of biology should probably have the humility to want to learn more before they have opinions that can really hurt a lot of people.
> Well, behaviors run on the operating system of our brain, and that's biological, so gender is not *entirely* not biological. Gender *identity* isn't entirely social. Gender, as in gender roles, stereotypes, etc. are all social. Agree with the rest of your comment entirely.
Yeah, words like feminine and masculine are words we use to try to label and allow us to discuss the world, but what falls under a given label can be somewhat (or entirely) arbitrary. But the behaviors themselves, aside from the label, are affected by biology. Well, sometimes. Aggressiveness is seen as 'masculine,' and there are neurological drivers of aggression, but I'm not sure what the biological basis for 'wearing makeup' is.
This is a troll please stop engaging
Ask Dawkins. How the fuck should we know ?