Chromosomal Confusion

[Divine Miss Bee]

the thing is, sex and gender are not the same thing, never have been, and should not be treated as such under any circumstances. people are born with their biological sex, and that will always be true. but gender is a part of the personality, also inborn, that doesn't always match the outside body. if people identify as a certain gender, and change their appearance to match, it is as impolite to refer to them by their biological sex as it would be is you used the opposite gender's pronoun to refer to someone whose sex and gender did match. basically, a girl is a girl no matter the body she's born in. a boy is a boy no matter what body he's born in. if you refer to any woman as "he," or any man as "she," you're being rude and ignorant. the woman in the story should not be referred to as a man when she clearly does not think of herself as such.

 

[chinangel]

lot's of opinions here, may as well put my own two cents in.

As a transsexual, I hate the XX = female, XY = male thing. "AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!"

I'm kinda living proof that this is BS, as are many others in the world. That is NOT the way it is, and dumbing it down doesn't make you appear smart.

 

[drisky]

I don't think it matters really, being the first transgender president seems way more of an accomplishment than first female anyways. Society judges them more harshly than they do women. I try to put little emphasis on gender anyways, so calling people what they want to be called is fine with me, there is not that much beyond physical things that make us different so I don't need to over analyze peoples true nature or anything like that.

 

[Slippers]

No engineer is going to scrap a project. because there is a 0.1% chance that an erroneous result might be given.

Some people can't see 3d, some people can't recognise red from green, some people can't hear stereo sound, ect... And if you just happen to be one of the lot that can't do any of the mentioned above? Well, it simply sucks to be you.

Why? Because on a whole, the system works and in the end of the day, that is what matters.

The genetic illnesses you are speaking about occur in a rate of one in ten million, to all doctors, biologists and the like. That's an Anomaly, not a new sex or something else, just an anomaly.

It might be a workable system in day-to-day life, although I highly suspect you don't go and ask everyone you meet what chromosomes they have, and rather base your opinion of their sex on something else, most likely the physical appearance.
But using the same system to define rights of people, for example, would be a different matter.
And those conditions are way more common than one in ten million. It depends on the definition we use, but the estimates vary from 0.1% to 1,7% of the population. It's pretty common for a baby to born with genitalia that's not clearly neither, but they are usually "corrected" right away.

http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency

I've looked at the link, nothing said there is frequent enough to warrant reconsideration. 0.1-1.7 is not a lot either.
Given the evidence you supplied, I still call it - just an anomoly to the rule.

Get me something that has an occurrence rate of 5+%, then we can start talking about it.

Yes, I do judge gender on looks, but how many transgendered people do you think there are? The first link in google when I typed "frequency transgender" gave me 1 to 250-500. These are not numbers I sincerely care about. Basing it on statistics alone, looking at someone and saying that they are a girl, based on looks alone it's going to take 375 tries until I get one wrong.

 

[Okysho]

If you want to argue that he/she still thinks like a guy this is not always the case. With enough hormones and training, you can tech the human mind to do just about anything. I'm not talking about hypnosis, I'm leaning more towards mind conditioning and learning.

Actually, as nekoali pointed out earlier, the brain of a transgender person is almost identical to that of a person of the opossite sex.

Secondly, medical science and physiology have confirmed that there are people who are indeed born to the wrong gender. They may have the chromosomes of one sex, yet examinations and MRIs show that their brain structure is very similar, almost identical to the other sex. So it is a physical truth that some people, their bodies say one thing, but their brains say something else.

So she never thought like a guy, she always thought as a woman.

That's more to what I was getting at. Having not really covered in in behavioural psych, I wasn't about to start spewing stuff I didn't know anything about. Physical traits can only define something so much. This is why we have homosexuals and bisexuals in the first place. I find it strange that this world still has trouble excepting that people are all different from each other... It's kinda sad really.

edit: Just read Neko's post. Said it much better than I ever could. I remember reading something about this a long time ago, but again, not my area of experties...

 

[Chefodeath]

It really depends on how badly he/she was flaunting it in other people's faces. The only time being a woman in political power is laudible is when you've had to fight against the discrimination of being a woman to get there. This person most of life as a male, which to me, makes it decidedly unfemale.

And frankly, I'm sick of trannies insisting we take their gender fantasies as reality. What you do with your body is your business, but I reserve all the rights to be creeped out by you and keep a distance.

 

[nekoali]

If you want to argue that he/she still thinks like a guy this is not always the case. With enough hormones and training, you can tech the human mind to do just about anything. I'm not talking about hypnosis, I'm leaning more towards mind conditioning and learning.

Actually, as nekoali pointed out earlier, the brain of a transgender person is almost identical to that of a person of the opossite sex.

Secondly, medical science and physiology have confirmed that there are people who are indeed born to the wrong gender. They may have the chromosomes of one sex, yet examinations and MRIs show that their brain structure is very similar, almost identical to the other sex. So it is a physical truth that some people, their bodies say one thing, but their brains say something else.

So she never thought like a guy, she always thought as a woman.

As a point to bring up in response to this... Some may know already, I am pretty open about it, but I am a transgender woman. I can say with certainty in my own personal experience.. I never in my life thought like a male does. Physically (and possibly genetically, I haven't tested it) I was born with a male body. I was forced to socialize like a boy growing up. And I always, /always/ felt wrong. I tried to pretend, I tried to be like the boys around me, but it was an alien thing to me. I was far more comfortable thinking and acting like a girl... but whenever any of that slipped through, as it often did, I was subject to derision, bullying, emotional and sometimes physical abuse from those around me. Including my own family. So I tried to hide those thoughts as best I could... but I could never 'think like a boy'... So anyone saying that I am a man despite the fact that I look like, live like and think like a woman just because some accident of birth is rejected my entire existence and right to live as I wish to live. All those people who say 'What about black people w ho want to be white, or this person who thinks they are a cat' etc etc are just straw man arguments, because that is NOT what this discussion is. It is what is more important, a person's thoughts, feelings, presentation, and social status over a genetic test. Something that most people never even get.

For those that say genetics are the only determining factor... Stop and imagine for a moment that you for some reason has a genetic test done and discovered that you are one of the rare intersex people who has chromosomes different from physical appearance. It can and has happened that someone has lived their entire life as for instance, a man, but discovered that they actually have XX chromosomes. How would you react? Would you suddenly discard an entire lifetime of experiences and start living as a woman because that's what your genetics say? Would you struggle with your gender identity? What if everyone found out that you are genetically female, even though you look, act, think, feel like a male? But people denied what you really are because of some unseen genetic quirk? How would that make you feel? Well, transgender people go though that their entire lives. People want to deny who and what they are because of something they never see, choosing to believe that over all the evidence presented to the contrary.

Perhaps more importantly.. WHY is it so important to you to identify someone you've never me, or only know casually as something other than what they present themselves as? Why is someone's medical history so important to you?

 

[Jonabob87]

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

So even if someone developes into a male, if he has the XX-chromosomes, you don't care whether he looks male, has male genitalia, and looks totally normal male, he is a woman.

And same for XY-females?
http://priory.com/med/xx.htm

That's exactly what he's saying and I agree with him. Given that your body will continue to produce the hormones relevant to your ACTUAL gender, transgender people will have to keep of HRT for the rest of their lives. Having to constantly fight off your body's normal state is a surefire sign that you're making it do something it doesn't want to do.

 

[Lieju]

That's exactly what he's saying and I agree with him. Given that your body will continue to produce the hormones relevant to your ACTUAL gender, transgender people will have to keep of HRT for the rest of their lives. Having to constantly fight off your body's normal state is a surefire sign that you're making it do something it doesn't want to do.

We treat diseases all the time, making human bodies do things they don't want to do.

Besides, I was talking about instances where the person naturally developes into a male despite being born with the XX-chromosomes, or the other way around. Look the link I posted with that comment http://priory.com/med/xx.htm and tell me if you think the person in that picture must be a woman.

 

[nekoali]

lot's of opinions here, may as well put my own two cents in.

As a transsexual, I hate the XX = female, XY = male thing. "AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!"

I'm kinda living proof that this is BS, as are many others in the world. That is NOT the way it is, and dumbing it down doesn't make you appear smart.

Its funny, in most threads on this forum people say measurable science trumps all... but not on this topic. Here people let feelings override science.

Live your life any way that makes you happy. I will call you by the gender term and name you wish me to call you by. The reality however is you are either genetically male, or genetically female (unless you are an XXY which fits into neither category)

Except you are ignoring that medical science says that transgender individuals are and should be considered as their identified gender. Not by what their biology or genetics say. Or in other words, someone who identifies and is diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria IS a member of the gender they identify with. Not the one their biology says.

Nobody is denying what physical sex they were born into. Or what their genetics are saying. What we are saying is that those things are only a small part of what makes up a man or a woman, and not the most important thing. By focusing on it, you are like the three blind men feeling only part of an elephant. One is sure that it is actually a snake, because all he feels is the trunk, which to him feels like a snake. So he ignores the rest of the animal and identifies it by only one small part of it.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

I have to agree with the OP here and say that we should probably start using male and female for biological sexs and either use man and woman for genders or come up with some new words. That way you can identify yourself as a woman, even if according to genetics you are a male one (course that detail can be left out). Only reason why we don't already have words like this (at least in the English language, can't speak for other ones) is because for the longest time if you were born male you stayed male (or at least were considered one by society). That's beginning to change and I see no reason for our language to change along with it. Sure you'll end up with things like male woman or female man, but it won't be so oxymoronic when male and female don't equal man and woman respectively.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

I agree with this, specifically because all this sudden panic about gender and self-perception and everything is way over my head. As a straight female who identifies as such, the entire gender debate is utterly perplexing to me -- not because I don't understand that other people have issues with it, but that I personally can never fully comprehend it, because I don't experience it.

So I prefer to default to science, because it keeps me out of all the sticky situations you get in when people start really nitpicking about things like this.

If you are scientifically male and want to use female pronouns, I'll call you by them. If you want to change your entire appearance and sexual function and act as if you're biologically female, etc., I'll probably assume you have two X chromosomes and call you female -- but you're still not biologically female until you can change your actual DNA.

Not that society cares -- and whether it should or not is purely moot.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

The degree of ignorance displayed on this issue is about what I expected to see. Seems every time I've gotten into a discussion with even collegiate level thinkers this naive school of thought always comes up.

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

So if you are 1% negroid you are 'Black' then?

It is never as simple as this and never has been, science has proven it with increasing precision. Defining what you do as 'male or female' based purely upon it's exterior genitals is a rather narrow vision and deserves study. "He" or "she" is a matter of gender role and perception, esoterics, little more. This is why many "straight" men get so confused when they come onto 'what they thought was a girl'. For many intents and purposes, shi was a girl. This is why there are 'girls' and 'gentic girls'. How people are perceived is a tremendous amount of how their gender is defined. Transgenders deal with this manner of ignorance far too often. Between chemical, chromosomal and hormonal anomolies, statistically there is a 7-12% rate of hermaphrodism in newborns to some degree ranging from minor appearance issues to internal organs.

My ex-wife is a great example. Born with a degree of hermaphrodism, she had some organs of both sexes but only outwardly male genitals. Her chromosomes were XXY, not "XX or XY", giving her a very feminine appearance and form, a partially developed uterus and a penis. Many guys got very worked up when the two of us went out, but according to this school of black and white thought were they 'gay' for doing so? (ie) Looking at another 'male'. No, clearly not, as they perceives her to rightly be female.

Even further, her legal status would be different state to state in the US. Some states harbor this outdated mode of thought, many do not. A blood test would confirm that in some physical, chemically definable ways, she was female, and in others male.

In this venue, as in almost any which involve humans, it is never as simple as Black or White, but more akin to shades of grey. It's an issue of old cultural mores and needs to be grown beyond.

The brain as well as the body has genders. Its completely possible to be a male in body but your mind is female. However the gender argument is completely subjective.

Kudos for some knowledge and more open-thinking! If I had an internetz or cookie I would be giving it to you now. Yes, the brain also defines gender, independent of genetic structure and social conditioning. Again, many TGs I know of have just this issue plague them for most of their lives, being developmentally set between genders and/or sexes regardless of their perception of self or sexual orientation.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

The published article denied her of the right to be a female as it highlighted her past gender and so allowed for her current status as a female to be questioned, therefore they were wrong to print it. The thing to remember here is that although she becomes the "first female president", the fact that she is female here is immaterial as we (as civilised human beings) recognise that males and females are equal. Using this equality as a base, anyone who then brings to the fore the fact that she is used to be male is highlighting this fact not in the interest of societal well-being (i.e. a man or woman would be better at the job), but in the interest of generating discussion at the expense of someone else's quality of life and right to be seen as how they wish.

This probably is the best way to sum up the political situation of the article. I agree 100%. It's the 21st century. men and women are equals. There's no weird oppressive stuff like back in the 20s.

In terms of science, yeah you'll have to genetically classify them as male. But this is on a medical level, not a level of lifestyle. The only time this type of switch comes into play is when there are physical problems with the body or through sex. (assuming that he/she didn't go through any genital surgery)

If you want to argue that he/she still thinks like a guy this is not always the case. With enough hormones and training, you can tech the human mind to do just about anything. I'm not talking about hypnosis, I'm leaning more towards mind conditioning and learning.

If it looks and acts like a female, unless we're giving them a physical or having sex, who are we to judge?

This was about the most clear and concise thing I've read so far, and in many ways engenders me some hope.

I have been very involved in the ongoing issue of seeing TG's rights treated with some legal respect, from one-on-one counseling and development to protesting and discussions with politicians, and the degree of hateful ignorance I've encountered has been stunning at times. I've been in many heated debates and have the scars to prove it... But reading things like this gives me hope that there are some sensible people out there. Thank you, duder.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

lot's of opinions here, may as well put my own two cents in.

As a transsexual, I hate the XX = female, XY = male thing. "AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!"

I'm kinda living proof that this is BS, as are many others in the world. That is NOT the way it is, and dumbing it down doesn't make you appear smart.

Its funny, in most threads on this forum people say measurable science trumps all... but not on this topic. Here people let feelings override science.

Live your life any way that makes you happy. I will call you by the gender term and name you wish me to call you by. The reality however is you are either genetically male, or genetically female (unless you are an XXY which fits into neither category)

Except you are ignoring that medical science says that transgender individuals are and should be considered as their identified gender.

That's not hard science. It's current opinion by the majority of those sitting on the same diagnostic manual committee that once agreed that being gay was a mental illness.

The only hard science is the biological fact of the XY/XX.

Nobody is denying what physical sex they were born into. Or what their genetics are saying. What we are saying is that those things are only a small part of what makes up a man or a woman, and not the most important thing.

I'm focussing on the hard science. And then suggesting we be incredibly accomodating of people's needs. In my first post in this thread I pointed out that I think our words are just inadequate. We need something other than gender/sex to identify gender identity as distinct from biological gender.

Agreed entirely. As in my earlier post, it has never been as simple as XY or XX. Even within the narrow confines of that argument, there are XX, XY, XXY, XYY and XO, as defined by hard science. Adding into this chemical and hormonal anomolies along with societal conditioning and both hermaphrodism and transgenderism are much MUCH more common than most people realize.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Allow me to join that debate you had with your class for a second. The thing is, there's more to identifying as a certain gender than what chromosome you have.

This handy list should help. [http://www.tsroadmap.com/start/tgterms.html] As far as I'm concerned, identifying as a gender is, for all intents and purposes, being that gender. Besides, autopsies have been done on transsexual people and they found that many of them had more similar brain structure to the sex that they identified as rather than the sex they were born as. Additionally, if they did a blood test on the president, they would likely also find female hormones given how far along she seems to be on her transition. Any credible scientific source wouldn't be so quick to label her as male- sex is a biological thing, but gender is much deeper than that.

Which leads me to your question, OP. The GLBT community and allies have already started using the term "sex" in that way, and gender to describe how one identifies, regardless of if it is as a man, woman, neutrois, or some combination. I support this. I simply want to bring up that, given other circumstances surrounding a body that may be dug up, historians may be able to attribute a certain personality, attitude, and narrative to that body so that whatever part of the GLBT community it may have identified with, if any, isn't ignored.