p4jkafla wrote: 
not mine.

 haresfur wrote: 

Transferred from another topic:

 p4jkafla wrote:  
I'm so sorry about all that shit. Although Australia is still far from where it needs to be, even our conservative somewhat homophobic ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott, was accepting of our highest-ranking transgender member of the Australian Defence Force, Cate McGregor. I think it was he could see her as a person, not a label.

 R_P wrote:

Sadly, I was wrong. The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president. The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community. He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party, claiming his anti-transgender policies are meant to “protect the country.” This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me.

 haresfur wrote: 

 p4jkafla wrote: 
Thanks for that. Nice to see you around.

Healthy Mice Born From Same-Sex Parents For the First Time

When scientists made immature human egg cells from donated blood, some speculated that human reproduction was on the verge of a massive disruption.

The future is now.

Last week, a team from China completely overhauled natural reproduction, using genetic engineering to make mice born from same-sex parents for the first time. Babies from two moms were indistinguishable from mouse pups generated through good-old-means: not only were they healthy, they went on to give birth to mouse pups of their own.

Those born with the DNA of two dads—with the help of a surrogate—survived through birth but only lived a few days, underscoring the fact that the new technology is still in its infancy.

A masterful technological tour-de-force aside, the study pinpoints critically important genetic factors that allow an embryo to develop normally. It’s like cracking the biological Enigma code of reproduction—a set of genetic instructions that allow an embryo to survive, regardless of how it’s made.

“This shows us what’s possible,” said senior author Dr. Wei Li at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The team described their results in Cell Stem Cell.

Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic
Biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male

 miamizsun wrote: 
Amen.  Me and a friend of mine were talking about this and he described a situation he had with his daughter who is a lesbian and hangs out with a lot of transgender friends and my friend overheard them talking about Caitlyn and he offered how Bruce Jenner inspired him in his youth and how he was such a hero to him and one of the transgender people in the group got up in his face for daring to mention him under the "dead" name, calling him names, really angry.  Suffice  to say, he did not stand for this and ended up lecturing her on basic civility and human kindness on a one to one level and really that is what it comes down to.  Life and personal interactions are complex and nuanced and the context of each personal encounter is fluid and unique.  There are occasions under the flag of social justice where some people lose sight of this and you have some type Orwellian facism placed over our everyday language that can be quite dangerous.

 marko86 wrote: 
currently i think the science (biology, neurology, etc.) may be complicated

what i'm referring to is the social ramifications of making a lot of specialized vague rules backed by force

and the consequences of that force (possibly lives and careers ruined)

preferences of identification (sexual and otherwise) are personal and could evolve

discriminating against someone who doesn't recognize or feel exactly like you do is a slippery slope

if i identify as a male professionally or m-f, but on the weekends i identify as something other, that's my preference and my business

maybe i want to identify based solely on how i feel at the moment

is that possible? it very well could be

should i expect to punish others for not immediately recognizing this?

my preferences may float my boat, but may not be your cup of tea

restrooms? if it is a one hit there shouldn't be any mystery/conflict

public? i don't know, maybe just base them on age

i'm open to any and all ideas here

i'd rather not over-criminalize or even criminalize based on preferences/feelings/emotions

 miamizsun wrote: 
I do not see it as unnecessarily complicated, because it is complicated.  We have seen the consequences of the over simplification in our social system and the allowing trans to use which bathroom they choose was a step towards acknowledging that. 

I skimmed through this thread and I did not find it all that decisive, especially as compared to some other topics. I suppose being in the CIS majority has its advantages, but a least there are those who think about these things..

One of the more interesting ones of the radio lab podcast was the the Indian female runner who got banned from Olympics The Olympics had ditched the old XY/XX standard in favor of just testing testosterone, of which she had very high levels, naturally. Their solution was novel, but fair.

 marko86 wrote: 
i think a lot of this conversation in general has gotten unnecessarily complicated and divisive

what are the logical consequences of over-complicating a social system?

maybe we should just try practicing broad based non-violent human rights and when it comes to preferences just mind our own beeswax

RadioLab just had a really good series on the topic call Gonads. It is complex to say the least.

:laugh:

i knew it

since the second grade i've always thought that i was way ahead of my time

during recess, i was discussing the undiscussable with some chums on the playground

i used the term front hole in 67

In this guide, whenever we use the medical term “vagina,” we’ll also include “front hole” as clinically recommended by researchers in the BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth journal.

 Steely_D wrote: 
That's addressed in the Sapolsky article as well. Sure, ultimately the genotype determines almost everything, but it's a long journey to an expressed phenotype...

The sine qua non of human sex designation in humans is chromosomal—all your cells either have two X chromosomes, making you female, or one X and one Y, making you male. End of story. But no: Instead, there’s various chromosomal disorders where individuals can be XYY, XXY, XXX, X, or XXYY. Most result in infertility; some, like Turner syndrome (in which there is solely an X) produce neurological, metabolic, endocrine, and cardiovascular abnormalities.

Much more interesting than these rare disorders is the recent finding that adult men typically have some XX (i.e., female) stem cells scattered throughout the body, which have differentiated into mature cells, including neurons. Meanwhile, women who have given birth to a son have a similar scattering of XY stem cells. Remarkably, during pregnancy, some maternal stem cells become incorporated into the fetus, some fetal stem cells into the mother. Thus, many of us are sex-chromosome mosaics (with, at present, unknown consequences).

Once sex chromosomes are determined, everything else about gender designation follows suit: XX versus XY determines whether you wind up with ovaries or testes. That determines whether it’s predominantly estrogen and progesterone, or testosterone in your bloodstream. The hormones you’re marinated in then determines which type of genitals you form as a fetus, as well as secondary sexual characteristics ranging from the chemical composition of your sweat to the workings of your brain. Chromosomal, gonadal, endocrine, genital, and phenotypic sex go hand in hand.

Except they don’t, as it turns out—there are numerous disorders where someone might be male in some of those ways, but female in others.

To begin with, chromosomal sex and gonadal/anatomical sex can disagree. In a syndrome called 46,XY DSD, people have normal male sex chromosomes, testes—genitals that are usually classified as male—plus a womb and Fallopian tubes. In ovotesticular disorder, the person has the sex chromosomes of one sex, but both ovarian and testicular tissue, producing ambiguous genitals. (...)

Hormones affect target cells by interacting with specific receptors (estrogen receptors bind estrogen, insulin receptors bind insulin). Another type of dissociation at the hormone level is seen with “testicular feminization syndrome,” where there is a mutation that inactivates the androgen receptor, which normally binds testosterone and DHT. Normal XY, normal testes, normal levels of the two hormones, but the hormones have no effects, producing a phenotype that ranges from ambiguous to female. In the latter case, the disorder is usually discovered around puberty, when the girl fails to start menstruating. She fails to start because, as it turns out, there’s no ovaries or uterus, the vagina dead ends, and way up in the stomach are testes pouring out androgens.

Thus there’s numerous ways where chromosomal sex and phenotypic sex differ, accounting for 1 percent of births. This is not rare—pick a human at random and the odds are greater that they were born with ambiguous intersex genitals than they have an IQ greater than 140.

Perhaps the most interesting dissociation occurs one step further down the line. This is where the person has the chromosomes, gonads, hormones, genitals, and secondary sexual characteristics—hair, voice, musculature, facial structure, the works—of one sex. But has always felt like the other. (...)

What is not discussed, is possible epigenetic effects (i.e. environmental or heritable effects active during gene expression). But they might exist as well and complicate the picture even further.

PS: The main point of referring to complex biology was to show that it is not some arbitrary "state of mind", like today I feel like eating spaghetti.

 R_P wrote: 
I keep falling back on two things:

genotype and phenotype

Ignoring unusual situations like XXY, because I'm sure that's not what this is about, there are only two answers - XY and XX. We're done.

Then, there's the topic of expression, interpretation of the body chemistry. Based around ideas like hormonal creation (more/less testosterone/progesterone/etc). There are about 3.56 kajillion ways that we can see that expressed, and then there's the nurture part of how those nature chemistries are presented.

So, teasing this out, I only believe that there is XX and XY.
But I acknowledge the spectrum of how people want to/have to behave based on the other chemistries that the other genes code for, and their life experiences.
This is the genotype-phenotype distinction.

 kurtster wrote: 
Yes, thanks for bumping it. I did miss it the first time around.