OK. Thanks for the explanation, though the conclusion isn't entirely consistent with what I meant.
Exile714 said:
CrystalShadow, I think the reason people are confused is not because of the science, but because there is a logical fault in your concept.
Assertion: transgendered people cannot change their genetic sex.
Refutation (your premise): most people do not know whether their genetic sex is normal (XX/XY) or intersex.
Ah, that's an interesting interpretation. Unfortunately, it's not what I meant.
Stated in the same terms, this is what I meant:
Assertion: transgendered people cannot change their sex, because it is determined entirely by a person's genetics.
Refutation: Most people are quite certain what their sex is, yet probably have no idea if their genetic sex is normal.
To my knowledge, that's a different argument. It's not about whether you can change your genetic sex, but whether a person's genetic sex is actually even relevant.
Yes, there are people whose genetic sex is complicated but knowing one's genetic makeup does not change their sex. There is no logical link between the assertion that people cannot change their sex and the premise that people do not actually know their sex.
That depends on defining sex in a very specific way, which was the point of my argument. Not whether knowing your genetic make-up changes anything about you one way or the other.
As I said, the actual assertion I'm dealing with is: Sex is defined solely by your chromosomes. - But for that to be valid, you'd have to know what your chromosomes say. Otherwise this can't be a meaningful definition of a person's sex.
(How can you know someone's sex if the only trait it's dependent on is usually an unknown?)
I think the underlying problem is that you are conflating sex with gender, possibly because you find sex (the biological configuration) easier to argue than gender (a combination of personal preferences and whether they align with societal norms). But transgender people, as opposed to intersex people who have a genetic abnormality, cannot change their sex. If you are XY but feel that your gender is female, or XX and feel that your gender is male, then you are transgender.
Most people that argue the point I'm trying to refute also make the claim that sex = gender. (IE, both terms mean the same thing. Therefore, for the purposes of the argument I'm trying to refute, if sex is immutable, so is gender.)
Otherwise, I'm personally not convinced either way. Gender is unbelievably complicated, and certainly has several possible interpretations that imply not only that it is possible to change it, but in fact that it is quite trivial to do so.
(Assuming gender to be an entirely social construct with no direct relation to biology for instance, you can change your gender merely by changing your behaviour...)
It sounds like you're trying to argue against someone who clearly does not understand what being transgender means. I think you do, but maybe you can't quite put it in terms which will be agreeable to this person and you're looking to overcome an argument which you cannot defeat.
(sorry if this is confusing. - I clicked 'post' accidentally before I was done.)
Pretty much true, really. I know the chances of actually convincing anyone are quite remote, but I tend to try anyway. You never really know what people will respond to.
Gender is about more than simple choice; there are ingrained feelings and emotions, some triggered by hormones and others by forces unknown, which guide us to our gender. Sometimes, be it through an intersex chromosome issue or some mechanism yet unknown, one's gender does not match one's sex. You can't change the sex, but you can alter the body to make it a better fit with one's gender.
As I said, there's many possible interpretations of what sex and gender are, which vary depending on what any given person's views are.
Generally, the most common ideas about it tend to assume that sex & gender are almost interchangeable concepts, and they don't get into much detail about what defines either because it's taken for granted that there aren't any people that don't fit the basic assumptions, so why bother being clear about the actual definitions?
I hope this helps. You're not going to win an argument with this premise, but in the end you shouldn't need to. I don't know if you're transgendered yourself or just trying to understand the topic better, but it's such a misunderstood topic that logic will rarely win against someone's preconceptions about it. Luckily, there seem to be more and more people who understand. Seek them out, and just avoid the topic if you can with those who don't understand.
It does help. Though clearly I'm not getting the right point across regardless of whether the argument is a good one or not.
Thanks for clarifying that though.
But yes the TDF (testis determining factor - what determines your gender) is thought to be the SRY gene found normally on the end of the Y chromosome, so for almost all cases that equals the Y chromosome itself being the TDF.
