Yep. But we don’t live in that world, we live in a world where it is quite difficult to fire people hence how nuts it is that this situation can occur.
-
IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Think what you want about who should be fired for what etc., but saying that binary sex is a basic fundamental fact of nature shows an extreme level of scientific ignorance.
Biology has no basic, fundamental facts. It has some general guidelines, but just as many exceptions.
The only fundamental 'facts' in nature are the laws of thermodynamics. And we only know that are true for the particular universe we happen to occupy.
People keep confusing sex and gender: sex is biological which is why those who have a sex change need to ingest hormones. Gender is a construct, social roles we associate with each sex, and this hasn't been the same in all societies and is not static. We don't so much need to allow gender re-assignment, we need to allow definitions of gender to change and not limit ourselves to 2 genders.
DS
DS
Can you you provide an example of an exception to XX and XY being the sex chromosomes in humans?
They are the sex chromosomes. But that doesn't mean all XX people are female, or all XY people are male.
For a start, you need to understand that biologically female characteristics are the default for a human. There is a point during development where a specific region of the y chromosome, if present, switches on a cascade of hormones which begin the series of events that move the development towards male characteristics. The region responsible for this is the sry gene.
Now, here's the first layer of complication. It's possible to have a mutation such as a deletion, insertion, inversion etc. which can inactivate this gene while leaving the y chromosome intact. It's also possible to have a translocation that can move a section from the y chromosome to the x (although rare), which could result in XX males or XY females (in terms of biological characteristics). It could also result in hermaphroditism. So the overall chromosome doesn't matter in this case, it's the presence of absence of the sry gene. By the way, there are also genotypes which result from non disjunction (a failure of chromosomes to separate properly during meiosis), which can lead to individuals who are XXY (called Klinefelters syndrome - biological males with secondary female characteristics) or XYY (also biological males) or even XO (something called Turner's syndrome which results in biological females with other characteristics).
Okay. So you might say, well then, we can determine males or females by the presence or absence of the sry gene. Well, not so. It's also possible to have the sry gene, and still appear phenotypically female if you have something like androgen insensitivity. Which means you produce the protein to start male determination, but it's inactivated or not detected, which means you end up again as the default sex (female).
There is an interesting documented case of something similar to this happening in a village in the Domenican Republic where something like 1% of the males born are born with female characteristics. But then when they hit puberty, they start developing male sexual organs, essentially naturally transitioning into biological males. As a note on gender vs sex, it's interesting to hear stories from these people to see how many of them displayed culturally male traits (sports/fighting etc) and felt male, even though appearing female. As they transition during puberty, this seems justified, but that's only because their particular genetic makeup causes the switch to happen then. It's entirely possible for a slightly different makeup to create a situation in which that switch never happens, which is one of the reasons transgendered people exist.
One of many reasons, by the way. Because as you can probably tell by now, it's not simple, or binary.
People tend to simplify the world to marry up with their own experiences and relative ignorance. But in Biology (in particular though it's true of most of science) nothing is absolute. And when you are dealing with complex networks, everything is a spectrum.
A fair response.
I’d like to know the relative instances of those mutations compared to the number of people claiming not to be the XX or XY they were born with.
The basic fundamental fact is that if you are born a biological man, you don’t become a biological woman because the government can recognise you as a woman. If this is extreme level scientific ignorance, you should find it easy to show me the many examples of biological men giving birth and breast feeding babies.
How many trans people have you ever met? They may not represent the majority, but they exist. Biologically, scientifically, they exist.
Also, the examples given are some of the millions of possible combinations of genes and environment that lead to those particular phenotypes.
The point is, gender and sex are not simple, binary ideas. Most people fall somewhere near the extreme ends of the spectrum (biologically male characteristics/male gender or biologically female characteristics/female gender) but lots of people also exist somewhere in between.
Saying it's binary is as dumb as saying people are either tall or short. But like any phenotype, people exist at all sorts of heights. Sure, some ranges of heights are more common. Sure, most people exist within a specific range we'd call normal. Sure, some other traits are correlated with certain heights. But a massive spectrum of possibilities exist.
Are you serious? What sort of random nonsense is that?
There are lots of biological females who can't breastfeed and give birth. Are they not women?
That might actually be the stupidest post of 2019. Just snuck it in there too.
Are you serious? “Extreme levels of scientific ignorance” apparently but you can’t give me any examples of a man giving birth to a baby (not even reproduce using IVF), you know what biological women are known for by 99.99% of people. You pull fringe examples of what are biological deformities and claim that invalidates the idea of biological sex. Men can do all they want to pretend they can become women but at the end of the day they aren’t biologically women.
Is a person that loses an arm still a human? What about all their limbs? Biologically they remain a human. A woman that can’t give birth is biologically a woman. A man that gets pumped full of hormones and changes their name and appearance does not become a biological woman. Stupid doesn’t begin to describe your ideas. That heights analogy you used is hilarious. Yes the concept of biological sex has nuisances, but the way you make it sound, there is no such thing as a man or a woman.
Last edited:
Why do you think it is that the overwhelming majority of transgenders are male -> female?
I don't know so I probably shouldn't comment. Is that true?
If it is, and I had to hypothesise, I would say it's because maleness is just a collection of traits that get sculpted out of the default female traits. It kinda makes sense that the degree to which this happens physiologically and psychologically can vary.
But who knows. The main point is that it's complicated.
Maybe it's the only way males can get back at females for them getting out of the kitchen n sticking their noses into all of our sports n pass times. Life's been a bloody nightmare ever since someone let women out of the ladies lounge n into the rest of the pub unsupervised.
you think the employers should be forced to continue to employ somewhere under the threat of violence?
I am just unsure why you want the gov to intervene when an employer has fired an employee. It seems to contradict your typical view.
Please point out where I said I wanted the gov to intervene in this instance? My surprise was that they didn’t intervene and that the person was fired in the first place.
