There is no reason for a test of that kind unless an abnormality is suspected. That being said it's safe to say that almost all men are genetically male and all women are genetically female, just on the statistical evidence alone. Disjunction of that kind is rare, so tests aren't necessary, it's a very safe assumption that unless somebody is having serious issues without cause that their genetic background is what it appears to be. Just as not everybody needs to have a heart biopsy to know that their heart is functioning.
DNA controls all physical characteristics and to an extent the chemistry of the brain. We still have no clear idea what causes people to have an inexplicable need to be the opposite sex. It's an abnormality, a mental and emotional condition. I almost feel it's a matter of degrees removed from believing you are a polar bear, and everyday you wake up and realize you aren't a polar bear and feel discomfort and emotional torment because of it. It's necessarily a delusion. The treatment that we've used is to change that persons structural appearance to fit that delusion, we validate the delusion, and then the person can live a nearly normal life. To most people however it's just as absurd as waking up and putting on polar bear make-up before heading to the office, it's still a delusion and people can't be forced to accept a delusion.
I have nothing against transgender people, I recognize that it's painful to wake up in somebody else's body everyday, but in the same way it's difficult for people to accept a physical lie.
A physical lie? See, that's kind of what I'm getting at.
You aren't going to argue that a house with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms is actually a house with 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, just because that's how it was built, and that's what the blueprints say.
How is it therefore 'physical lie', if someone has a body that is physically one way, but genetically another?
Surely, it is the genetics that are 'lying', if anything? (Your genes caused you to be the way you are, but if you've had any other alterations for any reason, they aren't going to be in your genes.)
If you lost your arm in an accident, no appeal to genetics is going to convince anyone that your arm is still there.
Yet it seems to be taken for granted that someone whose body is largely consistent with a sex different to their genes is 'lying'?
OK... It would seem I have to rewrite things yet again. Let's see if it'll make sense this time.
So you're talking about 20,000 some people world wide that have that abnormality, a sex reversal. I'm talking about the almost 19 million transsexuals world wide.
Whether it is a natural change or an artificial one, it still has the effect of making someone's appearance and genes no longer match.
If you then try to determine someone's sex, you are inherently faced with a contradiction, and therefore have to discard one set of information or another.
My point, really, is that it seems kind of strange to disregard the more obvious, and in practice more meaningful traits, in favour of one which you'd only know about if you specifically tried to measure it.
If you assume you can't trust your eyes, are you willing to follow the logical consequences of trusting some invisible trait which isn't usually measured instead?
It was supposed to be a fairly simple point. But I guess people are easily distracted.
Well, from my various masculine attributes, such as, quite importantly, my penis, and lack of abnormalities often caused by the intersex/other chromosome variations, I can pretty definitively conclude that I am indeed XY, and therefore male.
Your point seems to be a little vague and hazy, you might want to work on clarifying it a bit more, because at this rate all you're going to get is either confused or wise-ass answers.
That point being that you are inferring you are male from your attributes, which is the usual way of doing things.
You (presumably) don't actually know if your genes are XY or not. But it's reasonable to assume they are.
The reason I made this, is there seem to be a group of people who like to turn the logic on it's head, and say :
You are male if your genes contain the XY sex chromosome arrangement. Whatever else is going on doesn't make any difference as long as this remains true.
Yet, how many people actually know what their chromosomes are? You say you're inferring an answer...
Anyway, I'd clarify it if I knew a better way of putting it. Any ideas?
Unless you have any abnormalities in your attributes then you don't have a disorder in your gender chromosomes. I know for sure what chromosomes I have even though I haven't been tested. There are always signs even if there are cases where girls have XY and the SRY-gene got screwed up and made a girl turn into a boy.
IF you have a case where someone obviously has an appearance (phenotype) that contradicts their genes (karyotype), is it reasonable to argue that the genes matter, and the appearance of this person does not?
That was the whole, and only starting point for this thread.
The question that arose, is a result of the fact that if anyone did have an appearance and genes that were completely contradictory, they wouldn't know about it, because you don't usually have your genes tested unless there's something obviously wrong.
Thus, the question: Do you know what your genes say you are? Because if a person is going to claim that appearance doesn't matter, but genes do, then why would it be alright to assume appearance predicts genetics?
To be clear about the kind of thing that really leads to this argument:
Person A:A transsexual tries to change their sex.
Person B: That's impossible.
Person A: Why?
Person B: Because they can't get pregnant/get someone pregnant.
Person A: Why would that matter? Besides, medical advances could make that possible in the near future
Person B: Well, they still couldn't change their genes! And if you can't change your genes, you can't change your sex.
Person A: But if someone meets all the other criteria, why would genes matter?
Do you see what I'm getting at?
It's not about whether genes and appearance match, but the assumption that even where they don't, the genes are more important.
But if someone can have the traits of something other than what their genome says (however that came about), then obviously appearance cannot predict genetics.
And if that's the case, how many people know their own genetics?
(And, ultimately, why is it relevant?)
In any event, while I don't seem to be able to get my point across, the poll results are still interesting in their own right.
So... Whatever.
You can have an operation to make you appear a different gender than your genetic one, sure. You can be born with a disorder in your SRY gene that makes guys look like girls. They will appear to be girls from every kind of view, but if you know what to look for you can see there's something odd.
You have made a quite lengthy argument, but it all boils down to this. I can put on a hat and that doesn't change my genotype.
OK, so you clearly didn't care to read my argument about how I can determine my genotype, but only focused on the shallow metaphor why your argument says nothing relevant to the study of genetics.
I am not colour blind, that tells me I don't have the phenotype for colour blindness and being male I know that does in turn mean I know my exact genotype. My step father got blood type O- and that tells me that his genotype for blood got all the recessive alleles so there's only one possible genotype. I can say a lot of my genotype by using my phenotype. I know if I have had any operations to change my appearance so I can without a doubt know what my genotype concerning my gender is. If you bothered to read my post you will see that I admit that there are disorders that can make it hard to tell, but also that there are traits that distinguish their disorder. So I know for sure that I got XY, got any protests?
Yes actually. If you had understood the whole reason for this thread, you would know that it isn't about genetics to begin with.
Therefore, you saying my argument holds no relevance to the study of genetics, means you don't understand the reason I'm making it in the first place.
I think what's confusing people is that genetics has very little to do with the argument. It's supposed to illustrate the stupidity of a particular line of reasoning. Not demonstrate something about the science of genetics.
The whole, and only point of any of this, is that it is really rather silly to claim that your genotype overrules your phenotype.
Therefore, if your phenotype and genotype don't match for whatever reason (be that a natural cause or an artificial one), it makes no sense to argue that your phenotype is wrong, and your genotype is the actual 'correct' interpretation.
It should also be obvious from that premise, that knowing your phenotype, but not your genotype undermines the argument that your genotype tells anyone what you 'really' are.
Please tell me you have never studied genetics at any level. Because if you have I will have to track down whoever taught you and teach that person about genetics.
Genotype is what gives us the phenotype in all cases. If one genotype isn't expressed in our phenotype it is because another gene disrupts it. Let's say if I had a gene coding for horns placed on chromosome 16 and a gene that disrupted my horn development on chromosome 4. In that case the chromosome with the most influence would be the one with the lowest number. So my phenotype would be that I didn't get horns, and that would be reflected in my genotype as well. You say this thread has nothing to do with genetics, yet your thread starting question is about chromosomes. You say that we can't say what our genotype is based on our phenotype and you couldn't be more wrong. Phenotype is not the same as appearance. Phenotype is all about genetics. If our phenotype doesn't seem to match our genotype it's only because we don't know our genotype.
I did a biology class during my attempt at a physics degree. I didn't pay much attention to the exact meaning of various terms, but I did pretty well on the overall concepts. I don't generally care what, precisely a word means as long as it gets the point across, so forgive me if that offends your sense of literary exactness.
However, please don't confuse a word I borrowed from someone else who was using it a specific way with what I meant. I've mostly tried to avoid using technical terms such as phenotype and genotype, since I presume most of the people on the forum don't use them anyway.
If you cut of your arm, is that reflected in your genotype as well?
Do surgical alterations count as a phenotype (visible traits), or are they something else entirely?
If a surgical, cosmetic or accidental physical change can be considered part of someone's phenotype, then it implies that phenotype and genotype may not match.
Then again, perhaps that's not a phenotype. I only started using that term when someone else was using to imply it's the visible traits a living organism has.
In which case, you're nitpicking my incorrect use of a word, and (again), missing the point.
(Aside from which, it would also imply that a phenotype is almost as difficult to measure as a genotype. If 'visible traits' are not necessarily equivalent to a phenotype, then phenotype is an irrelevant concept in this discussion.)
The logic of this really should be self-evident, yet all I get is nit-picking about issues that avoid the actual question:
Does your genome have the last word on what you are, irrespective of all other evidence which would contradict this?
If so, how many people have actually followed through with what this implies?
This started to see how many people would follow through with the practical implications of an irrational premise.
If you still don't get it, there's no helping it. It's clearly beyond my ability to state correctly in whatever exacting terms you insist on.
Yes, a cut in your arm or a surgery does not reflect your phenotype. That is the first thing you have said that has been correct when I have discussed this matter with you. I have not tried to discuss the original post, but the content of what you posted on someone else's post a while back where you showed me that you don't understand the basics of genetics. Genetics is the only thing I have tried to discuss. However since you insist on me answering the original question too I will give you the response that we don't know how much our genes are reflected in who we are. Intelligence, coordination, physical appearances, personality and a lot of other things are in our genes. How we turn out is a large equation with too many variables to show the answer. If I cloned myself twice and put my clones in two different places where the conditions would be almost exactly the same with the exceptions of a few minor details, would they turn out the same? We don't know.
We want to believe that we're more than our genes and that genes don't make us who we are, but genes make up a lot of who we are. Those who study social anthropology and psychology will put the biology as a minor thing while biologists will disagree. The cold truth of it is that we don't know and there's no way to get a conclusive answer because we're unable to run a simulation complex enough.
Ah. Well, then you're trying to correct an indirect problem. Because I was reflecting someone else's ideas back at them to begin with.
If I wanted to specifically discuss genetics I'd probably have been a lot more careful. As it was I couldn't understand why it mattered, since it didn't particularly seem relevant.
However, I fail to see how this developed considering the first 3 posts.
The first being someone else
The second being me EXPLICITLY pointing out a preposition which is a logical contradiction.
Then you decide to state that you can tell what a person's chromosomes are just by looking at them?
I'm sorry, but that's where you stopped making sense, which is why I argued with it.
Can you tell someone actually has brown hair if they've dyed it?
Because that's basically what you said.
I really don't think any amount of understanding of genetics will support the preposition that you can tell someone's chromosomes just by looking at them, when this can include many artificial changes that self-evidently would not be causally related to their genetic make-up.
If I misused some terminology along the way, then I apologise if this added to the confusion. But my point the whole time was intended to be about someone's appearance (artificial modifications included), VS their genetics.
The premise that you can determine someone's genetics from their appearance alone cannot possibly be true unless you rule out all other factors first.
Which makes your statement akin to this: "You can work out the genetics of any visible trait that are the result of genetic factors related to those visible traits."
Which is a rather redundant statement.
Aside from which, if you factor in environmental causes (which was part of the premise, even if I failed to get the point across clearly), it's quite possible to have visible traits that don't bear any relation to your genetics.
A point which your arguments about genetics don't accommodate, since they implicitly assume every visible trait is the result of natural development alone.
(While my argument implicitly assumes the opposite.)
Well, from my various masculine attributes, such as, quite importantly, my penis, and lack of abnormalities often caused by the intersex/other chromosome variations, I can pretty definitively conclude that I am indeed XY, and therefore male.
Your point seems to be a little vague and hazy, you might want to work on clarifying it a bit more, because at this rate all you're going to get is either confused or wise-ass answers.
That point being that you are inferring you are male from your attributes, which is the usual way of doing things.
You (presumably) don't actually know if your genes are XY or not. But it's reasonable to assume they are.
The reason I made this, is there seem to be a group of people who like to turn the logic on it's head, and say :
You are male if your genes contain the XY sex chromosome arrangement. Whatever else is going on doesn't make any difference as long as this remains true.
Yet, how many people actually know what their chromosomes are? You say you're inferring an answer...
Anyway, I'd clarify it if I knew a better way of putting it. Any ideas?
Unless you have any abnormalities in your attributes then you don't have a disorder in your gender chromosomes. I know for sure what chromosomes I have even though I haven't been tested. There are always signs even if there are cases where girls have XY and the SRY-gene got screwed up and made a girl turn into a boy.
IF you have a case where someone obviously has an appearance (phenotype) that contradicts their genes (karyotype), is it reasonable to argue that the genes matter, and the appearance of this person does not?
That was the whole, and only starting point for this thread.
The question that arose, is a result of the fact that if anyone did have an appearance and genes that were completely contradictory, they wouldn't know about it, because you don't usually have your genes tested unless there's something obviously wrong.
Thus, the question: Do you know what your genes say you are? Because if a person is going to claim that appearance doesn't matter, but genes do, then why would it be alright to assume appearance predicts genetics?
To be clear about the kind of thing that really leads to this argument:
Person A:A transsexual tries to change their sex.
Person B: That's impossible.
Person A: Why?
Person B: Because they can't get pregnant/get someone pregnant.
Person A: Why would that matter? Besides, medical advances could make that possible in the near future
Person B: Well, they still couldn't change their genes! And if you can't change your genes, you can't change your sex.
Person A: But if someone meets all the other criteria, why would genes matter?
Do you see what I'm getting at?
It's not about whether genes and appearance match, but the assumption that even where they don't, the genes are more important.
But if someone can have the traits of something other than what their genome says (however that came about), then obviously appearance cannot predict genetics.
And if that's the case, how many people know their own genetics?
(And, ultimately, why is it relevant?)
In any event, while I don't seem to be able to get my point across, the poll results are still interesting in their own right.
So... Whatever.
You can have an operation to make you appear a different gender than your genetic one, sure. You can be born with a disorder in your SRY gene that makes guys look like girls. They will appear to be girls from every kind of view, but if you know what to look for you can see there's something odd.
You have made a quite lengthy argument, but it all boils down to this. I can put on a hat and that doesn't change my genotype.
OK, so you clearly didn't care to read my argument about how I can determine my genotype, but only focused on the shallow metaphor why your argument says nothing relevant to the study of genetics.
I am not colour blind, that tells me I don't have the phenotype for colour blindness and being male I know that does in turn mean I know my exact genotype. My step father got blood type O- and that tells me that his genotype for blood got all the recessive alleles so there's only one possible genotype. I can say a lot of my genotype by using my phenotype. I know if I have had any operations to change my appearance so I can without a doubt know what my genotype concerning my gender is. If you bothered to read my post you will see that I admit that there are disorders that can make it hard to tell, but also that there are traits that distinguish their disorder. So I know for sure that I got XY, got any protests?
Yes actually. If you had understood the whole reason for this thread, you would know that it isn't about genetics to begin with.
Therefore, you saying my argument holds no relevance to the study of genetics, means you don't understand the reason I'm making it in the first place.
I think what's confusing people is that genetics has very little to do with the argument. It's supposed to illustrate the stupidity of a particular line of reasoning. Not demonstrate something about the science of genetics.
The whole, and only point of any of this, is that it is really rather silly to claim that your genotype overrules your phenotype.
Therefore, if your phenotype and genotype don't match for whatever reason (be that a natural cause or an artificial one), it makes no sense to argue that your phenotype is wrong, and your genotype is the actual 'correct' interpretation.
It should also be obvious from that premise, that knowing your phenotype, but not your genotype undermines the argument that your genotype tells anyone what you 'really' are.
Please tell me you have never studied genetics at any level. Because if you have I will have to track down whoever taught you and teach that person about genetics.
Genotype is what gives us the phenotype in all cases. If one genotype isn't expressed in our phenotype it is because another gene disrupts it. Let's say if I had a gene coding for horns placed on chromosome 16 and a gene that disrupted my horn development on chromosome 4. In that case the chromosome with the most influence would be the one with the lowest number. So my phenotype would be that I didn't get horns, and that would be reflected in my genotype as well. You say this thread has nothing to do with genetics, yet your thread starting question is about chromosomes. You say that we can't say what our genotype is based on our phenotype and you couldn't be more wrong. Phenotype is not the same as appearance. Phenotype is all about genetics. If our phenotype doesn't seem to match our genotype it's only because we don't know our genotype.
I did a biology class during my attempt at a physics degree. I didn't pay much attention to the exact meaning of various terms, but I did pretty well on the overall concepts. I don't generally care what, precisely a word means as long as it gets the point across, so forgive me if that offends your sense of literary exactness.
However, please don't confuse a word I borrowed from someone else who was using it a specific way with what I meant. I've mostly tried to avoid using technical terms such as phenotype and genotype, since I presume most of the people on the forum don't use them anyway.
If you cut of your arm, is that reflected in your genotype as well?
Do surgical alterations count as a phenotype (visible traits), or are they something else entirely?
If a surgical, cosmetic or accidental physical change can be considered part of someone's phenotype, then it implies that phenotype and genotype may not match.
Then again, perhaps that's not a phenotype. I only started using that term when someone else was using to imply it's the visible traits a living organism has.
In which case, you're nitpicking my incorrect use of a word, and (again), missing the point.
(Aside from which, it would also imply that a phenotype is almost as difficult to measure as a genotype. If 'visible traits' are not necessarily equivalent to a phenotype, then phenotype is an irrelevant concept in this discussion.)
The logic of this really should be self-evident, yet all I get is nit-picking about issues that avoid the actual question:
Does your genome have the last word on what you are, irrespective of all other evidence which would contradict this?
If so, how many people have actually followed through with what this implies?
This started to see how many people would follow through with the practical implications of an irrational premise.
If you still don't get it, there's no helping it. It's clearly beyond my ability to state correctly in whatever exacting terms you insist on.
Yes, a cut in your arm or a surgery does not reflect your phenotype. That is the first thing you have said that has been correct when I have discussed this matter with you. I have not tried to discuss the original post, but the content of what you posted on someone else's post a while back where you showed me that you don't understand the basics of genetics. Genetics is the only thing I have tried to discuss. However since you insist on me answering the original question too I will give you the response that we don't know how much our genes are reflected in who we are. Intelligence, coordination, physical appearances, personality and a lot of other things are in our genes. How we turn out is a large equation with too many variables to show the answer. If I cloned myself twice and put my clones in two different places where the conditions would be almost exactly the same with the exceptions of a few minor details, would they turn out the same? We don't know.
We want to believe that we're more than our genes and that genes don't make us who we are, but genes make up a lot of who we are. Those who study social anthropology and psychology will put the biology as a minor thing while biologists will disagree. The cold truth of it is that we don't know and there's no way to get a conclusive answer because we're unable to run a simulation complex enough.
Ah. Well, then you're trying to correct an indirect problem. Because I was reflecting someone else's ideas back at them to begin with.
If I wanted to specifically discuss genetics I'd probably have been a lot more careful. As it was I couldn't understand why it mattered, since it didn't particularly seem relevant.
However, I fail to see how this developed considering the first 3 posts.
The first being someone else
The second being me EXPLICITLY pointing out a preposition which is a logical contradiction.
Then you decide to state that you can tell what a person's chromosomes are just by looking at them?
I'm sorry, but that's where you stopped making sense, which is why I argued with it.
Can you tell someone actually has brown hair if they've dyed it?
Because that's basically what you said.
I really don't think any amount of understanding of genetics will support the preposition that you can tell someone's chromosomes just by looking at them, when this can include many artificial changes that self-evidently would not be causally related to their genetic make-up.
If I misused some terminology along the way, then I apologise if this added to the confusion. But my point the whole time was intended to be about someone's appearance (artificial modifications included), VS their genetics.
The premise that you can determine someone's genetics from their appearance alone cannot possibly be true unless you rule out all other factors first.
Which makes your statement akin to this: "You can work out the genetics of any visible trait that are the result of genetic factors related to those visible traits."
Which is a rather redundant statement.
Aside from which, if you factor in environmental causes (which was part of the premise, even if I failed to get the point across clearly), it's quite possible to have visible traits that don't bear any relation to your genetics.
A point which your arguments about genetics don't accommodate, since they implicitly assume every visible trait is the result of natural development alone.
(While my argument implicitly assumes the opposite.)
Read what I wrote. I said I can tell my phenotype because I know I haven't had any surgeries and I haven't dyed my hair. I can also tell if someone got their sets of 22 autosomal chromosomes and I can tell their gender chromosomes if I get a thorough look. I said nothing more than that if you claim I did I will stand on my claim that you need to read my post through.
If you think I can't you my understanding of genetics to say something about someone's genotype you prove to me that you don't understand genetics at all. You are right that genetics and appearance is a complicated matter, but there are things you can always rely on. You can't tell the complete genotypes by looks, but you can tell an awful lot if you put some work into it.
Also you didn't just misuse the word phenotype. You showed a complete lack of understanding for the true meaning of the word and used it to make a point. You seemed to think that phenotype can be seen by an outward look and that it does not reflect the genotype. When we are talking phenotype we are talking genetics because it's a word used to describe the expressed genes.
You have admitted to not having specific education in genetics, yet you know more than me who has studied genetics at a university level. You clearly know more than me who has run tests on genetics and created simulations on genes, expressions and mutations. You have clearly pieced together a better thesis of this than me, yet you don't know the basics. That is really impressive.
You say that looks don't always match genes. Unless you're thinking augmentations such as dying your hair, surgery or accidents you are wrong. Your genes tell us how you'll look like, but there are conditions. If you have the genes to be tall, but get poor nourishment you wont end up as a tall person. If you have the genes to be short you will be short despite getting enough to eat. Given proper data about a person someone with more knowledge of genetics than me can say a lot about a person's genes, but not all. I repeat since you don't seem to get it any of the other times that we can't say everything, but we can say the major things.
There is no reason for a test of that kind unless an abnormality is suspected. That being said it's safe to say that almost all men are genetically male and all women are genetically female, just on the statistical evidence alone. Disjunction of that kind is rare, so tests aren't necessary, it's a very safe assumption that unless somebody is having serious issues without cause that their genetic background is what it appears to be. Just as not everybody needs to have a heart biopsy to know that their heart is functioning.
DNA controls all physical characteristics and to an extent the chemistry of the brain. We still have no clear idea what causes people to have an inexplicable need to be the opposite sex. It's an abnormality, a mental and emotional condition. I almost feel it's a matter of degrees removed from believing you are a polar bear, and everyday you wake up and realize you aren't a polar bear and feel discomfort and emotional torment because of it. It's necessarily a delusion. The treatment that we've used is to change that persons structural appearance to fit that delusion, we validate the delusion, and then the person can live a nearly normal life. To most people however it's just as absurd as waking up and putting on polar bear make-up before heading to the office, it's still a delusion and people can't be forced to accept a delusion.
I have nothing against transgender people, I recognize that it's painful to wake up in somebody else's body everyday, but in the same way it's difficult for people to accept a physical lie.
A physical lie? See, that's kind of what I'm getting at.
You aren't going to argue that a house with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms is actually a house with 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, just because that's how it was built, and that's what the blueprints say.
How is it therefore 'physical lie', if someone has a body that is physically one way, but genetically another?
Surely, it is the genetics that are 'lying', if anything? (Your genes caused you to be the way you are, but if you've had any other alterations for any reason, they aren't going to be in your genes.)
If you lost your arm in an accident, no appeal to genetics is going to convince anyone that your arm is still there.
Yet it seems to be taken for granted that someone whose body is largely consistent with a sex different to their genes is 'lying'?
OK... It would seem I have to rewrite things yet again. Let's see if it'll make sense this time.
So you're talking about 20,000 some people world wide that have that abnormality, a sex reversal. I'm talking about the almost 19 million transsexuals world wide.
Whether it is a natural change or an artificial one, it still has the effect of making someone's appearance and genes no longer match.
If you then try to determine someone's sex, you are inherently faced with a contradiction, and therefore have to discard one set of information or another.
My point, really, is that it seems kind of strange to disregard the more obvious, and in practice more meaningful traits, in favour of one which you'd only know about if you specifically tried to measure it.
If you assume you can't trust your eyes, are you willing to follow the logical consequences of trusting some invisible trait which isn't usually measured instead?
It was supposed to be a fairly simple point. But I guess people are easily distracted.
I see, you're talking about a philosophical criteria of truth in relation to what we can see which is a subjective physical set of information and the perceived abstract, objective reality which is the genetic test.
My thought is that truth isn't skin deep, if a woman gets surgery to become a man, or even gets surgery to have wrinkles removed it's still a concealment of the full details that make up the whole physical truth. If a person has the chromosomes that would usually be attributed to a member of the opposite sex, yet bears the appearance of the other sex they still remain physically truthful.
Changing somebodies appearance doesn't change what or who they are. If a person gets surgery at 67 to remove all their wrinkles, they are just a person who is 67 who had surgery to get rid of their wrinkles. If a woman gets surgery to look like a man she's still a woman that had surgery to look like a man. I don't accept physical appearance by itself to be a quantity that decides objective reality. The genetic test is not needed. It's a question of whether it's acceptable to deceive people with a modified physical reality.
So I'm guessing your looking in to this based on the controversy around sex change? Since in many cases even with a sex change legally a lot of things want to say you are your original sex anyway? ex: Sports.
I've never been tested, although personally I would like to be if I ever decide to have kids. It's a fairly unlikely possibility but if I were to be XXX (which still results in a normal female, but with two barr bodies) I would like to know. Since were I to have a male child they could end up XXY, and that carries a much larger amount of issues.
I love genetics, and issues like this are always interesting to see how society looks at them
I'm just going to say, as someone who took a genetics class, whatever you are genetically is what you are physically. The rare disorders where this isn't the case, are all very obvious by puberty at the latest.
I'm male, I don't need a genetic test to know that I am also genetically male.
I'm just going to say, as someone who took a genetics class, whatever you are genetically is what you are physically. The rare disorders where this isn't the case, are all very obvious by puberty at the latest.
I'm male, I don't need a genetic test to know that I am also genetically male.
I'm just going to say, as someone who took a genetics class, whatever you are genetically is what you are physically. The rare disorders where this isn't the case, are all very obvious by puberty at the latest.
I'm male, I don't need a genetic test to know that I am also genetically male.
Well, from my various masculine attributes, such as, quite importantly, my penis, and lack of abnormalities often caused by the intersex/other chromosome variations, I can pretty definitively conclude that I am indeed XY, and therefore male.
Your point seems to be a little vague and hazy, you might want to work on clarifying it a bit more, because at this rate all you're going to get is either confused or wise-ass answers.
That point being that you are inferring you are male from your attributes, which is the usual way of doing things.
You (presumably) don't actually know if your genes are XY or not. But it's reasonable to assume they are.
The reason I made this, is there seem to be a group of people who like to turn the logic on it's head, and say :
You are male if your genes contain the XY sex chromosome arrangement. Whatever else is going on doesn't make any difference as long as this remains true.
Yet, how many people actually know what their chromosomes are? You say you're inferring an answer...
Anyway, I'd clarify it if I knew a better way of putting it. Any ideas?
Unless you have any abnormalities in your attributes then you don't have a disorder in your gender chromosomes. I know for sure what chromosomes I have even though I haven't been tested. There are always signs even if there are cases where girls have XY and the SRY-gene got screwed up and made a girl turn into a boy.
IF you have a case where someone obviously has an appearance (phenotype) that contradicts their genes (karyotype), is it reasonable to argue that the genes matter, and the appearance of this person does not?
That was the whole, and only starting point for this thread.
The question that arose, is a result of the fact that if anyone did have an appearance and genes that were completely contradictory, they wouldn't know about it, because you don't usually have your genes tested unless there's something obviously wrong.
Thus, the question: Do you know what your genes say you are? Because if a person is going to claim that appearance doesn't matter, but genes do, then why would it be alright to assume appearance predicts genetics?
To be clear about the kind of thing that really leads to this argument:
Person A:A transsexual tries to change their sex.
Person B: That's impossible.
Person A: Why?
Person B: Because they can't get pregnant/get someone pregnant.
Person A: Why would that matter? Besides, medical advances could make that possible in the near future
Person B: Well, they still couldn't change their genes! And if you can't change your genes, you can't change your sex.
Person A: But if someone meets all the other criteria, why would genes matter?
Do you see what I'm getting at?
It's not about whether genes and appearance match, but the assumption that even where they don't, the genes are more important.
But if someone can have the traits of something other than what their genome says (however that came about), then obviously appearance cannot predict genetics.
And if that's the case, how many people know their own genetics?
(And, ultimately, why is it relevant?)
In any event, while I don't seem to be able to get my point across, the poll results are still interesting in their own right.
So... Whatever.
You can have an operation to make you appear a different gender than your genetic one, sure. You can be born with a disorder in your SRY gene that makes guys look like girls. They will appear to be girls from every kind of view, but if you know what to look for you can see there's something odd.
You have made a quite lengthy argument, but it all boils down to this. I can put on a hat and that doesn't change my genotype.
OK, so you clearly didn't care to read my argument about how I can determine my genotype, but only focused on the shallow metaphor why your argument says nothing relevant to the study of genetics.
I am not colour blind, that tells me I don't have the phenotype for colour blindness and being male I know that does in turn mean I know my exact genotype. My step father got blood type O- and that tells me that his genotype for blood got all the recessive alleles so there's only one possible genotype. I can say a lot of my genotype by using my phenotype. I know if I have had any operations to change my appearance so I can without a doubt know what my genotype concerning my gender is. If you bothered to read my post you will see that I admit that there are disorders that can make it hard to tell, but also that there are traits that distinguish their disorder. So I know for sure that I got XY, got any protests?
Yes actually. If you had understood the whole reason for this thread, you would know that it isn't about genetics to begin with.
Therefore, you saying my argument holds no relevance to the study of genetics, means you don't understand the reason I'm making it in the first place.
I think what's confusing people is that genetics has very little to do with the argument. It's supposed to illustrate the stupidity of a particular line of reasoning. Not demonstrate something about the science of genetics.
The whole, and only point of any of this, is that it is really rather silly to claim that your genotype overrules your phenotype.
Therefore, if your phenotype and genotype don't match for whatever reason (be that a natural cause or an artificial one), it makes no sense to argue that your phenotype is wrong, and your genotype is the actual 'correct' interpretation.
It should also be obvious from that premise, that knowing your phenotype, but not your genotype undermines the argument that your genotype tells anyone what you 'really' are.
Please tell me you have never studied genetics at any level. Because if you have I will have to track down whoever taught you and teach that person about genetics.
Genotype is what gives us the phenotype in all cases. If one genotype isn't expressed in our phenotype it is because another gene disrupts it. Let's say if I had a gene coding for horns placed on chromosome 16 and a gene that disrupted my horn development on chromosome 4. In that case the chromosome with the most influence would be the one with the lowest number. So my phenotype would be that I didn't get horns, and that would be reflected in my genotype as well. You say this thread has nothing to do with genetics, yet your thread starting question is about chromosomes. You say that we can't say what our genotype is based on our phenotype and you couldn't be more wrong. Phenotype is not the same as appearance. Phenotype is all about genetics. If our phenotype doesn't seem to match our genotype it's only because we don't know our genotype.
I did a biology class during my attempt at a physics degree. I didn't pay much attention to the exact meaning of various terms, but I did pretty well on the overall concepts. I don't generally care what, precisely a word means as long as it gets the point across, so forgive me if that offends your sense of literary exactness.
However, please don't confuse a word I borrowed from someone else who was using it a specific way with what I meant. I've mostly tried to avoid using technical terms such as phenotype and genotype, since I presume most of the people on the forum don't use them anyway.
If you cut of your arm, is that reflected in your genotype as well?
Do surgical alterations count as a phenotype (visible traits), or are they something else entirely?
If a surgical, cosmetic or accidental physical change can be considered part of someone's phenotype, then it implies that phenotype and genotype may not match.
Then again, perhaps that's not a phenotype. I only started using that term when someone else was using to imply it's the visible traits a living organism has.
In which case, you're nitpicking my incorrect use of a word, and (again), missing the point.
(Aside from which, it would also imply that a phenotype is almost as difficult to measure as a genotype. If 'visible traits' are not necessarily equivalent to a phenotype, then phenotype is an irrelevant concept in this discussion.)
The logic of this really should be self-evident, yet all I get is nit-picking about issues that avoid the actual question:
Does your genome have the last word on what you are, irrespective of all other evidence which would contradict this?
If so, how many people have actually followed through with what this implies?
This started to see how many people would follow through with the practical implications of an irrational premise.
If you still don't get it, there's no helping it. It's clearly beyond my ability to state correctly in whatever exacting terms you insist on.
Yes, a cut in your arm or a surgery does not reflect your phenotype. That is the first thing you have said that has been correct when I have discussed this matter with you. I have not tried to discuss the original post, but the content of what you posted on someone else's post a while back where you showed me that you don't understand the basics of genetics. Genetics is the only thing I have tried to discuss. However since you insist on me answering the original question too I will give you the response that we don't know how much our genes are reflected in who we are. Intelligence, coordination, physical appearances, personality and a lot of other things are in our genes. How we turn out is a large equation with too many variables to show the answer. If I cloned myself twice and put my clones in two different places where the conditions would be almost exactly the same with the exceptions of a few minor details, would they turn out the same? We don't know.
We want to believe that we're more than our genes and that genes don't make us who we are, but genes make up a lot of who we are. Those who study social anthropology and psychology will put the biology as a minor thing while biologists will disagree. The cold truth of it is that we don't know and there's no way to get a conclusive answer because we're unable to run a simulation complex enough.
Ah. Well, then you're trying to correct an indirect problem. Because I was reflecting someone else's ideas back at them to begin with.
If I wanted to specifically discuss genetics I'd probably have been a lot more careful. As it was I couldn't understand why it mattered, since it didn't particularly seem relevant.
However, I fail to see how this developed considering the first 3 posts.
The first being someone else
The second being me EXPLICITLY pointing out a preposition which is a logical contradiction.
Then you decide to state that you can tell what a person's chromosomes are just by looking at them?
I'm sorry, but that's where you stopped making sense, which is why I argued with it.
Can you tell someone actually has brown hair if they've dyed it?
Because that's basically what you said.
I really don't think any amount of understanding of genetics will support the preposition that you can tell someone's chromosomes just by looking at them, when this can include many artificial changes that self-evidently would not be causally related to their genetic make-up.
If I misused some terminology along the way, then I apologise if this added to the confusion. But my point the whole time was intended to be about someone's appearance (artificial modifications included), VS their genetics.
The premise that you can determine someone's genetics from their appearance alone cannot possibly be true unless you rule out all other factors first.
Which makes your statement akin to this: "You can work out the genetics of any visible trait that are the result of genetic factors related to those visible traits."
Which is a rather redundant statement.
Aside from which, if you factor in environmental causes (which was part of the premise, even if I failed to get the point across clearly), it's quite possible to have visible traits that don't bear any relation to your genetics.
A point which your arguments about genetics don't accommodate, since they implicitly assume every visible trait is the result of natural development alone.
(While my argument implicitly assumes the opposite.)
Read what I wrote. I said I can tell my phenotype because I know I haven't had any surgeries and I haven't dyed my hair. I can also tell if someone got their sets of 22 autosomal chromosomes and I can tell their gender chromosomes if I get a thorough look. I said nothing more than that if you claim I did I will stand on my claim that you need to read my post through.
I did. It doesn't make sense. For instance, the statement directly above this one relies on you asserting hidden knowledge about yourself to answer a question based on the superficial qualities which you had claimed should be sufficient evidence by itself.
Knowing you've never had surgery negates the premise, and is therefore pointless to consider as an argument.
If you need that kind of extra information to make a determination then you're already drifting into quite a different idea than the one this thread was ever based around.
(What could you determine about the history of an unknown person who was unconscious for instance?)
If you think I can't you my understanding of genetics to say something about someone's genotype you prove to me that you don't understand genetics at all. You are right that genetics and appearance is a complicated matter, but there are things you can always rely on. You can't tell the complete genotypes by looks, but you can tell an awful lot if you put some work into it.
Your understanding of genetics will only take you so far. And it relies on insuring there's nothing else conflating the point which you haven't accounted for.
That you acknowledge you cannot tell a complete genotype by looks alone should in fact invalidate your own argument in the context of what you're being asked to discuss in the first place.
But, as you seem intent on pushing this point, what then is definitely NOT possible to identify about a person's genome from looking at them?
Also you didn't just misuse the word phenotype. You showed a complete lack of understanding for the true meaning of the word and used it to make a point. You seemed to think that phenotype can be seen by an outward look and that it does not reflect the genotype. When we are talking phenotype we are talking genetics because it's a word used to describe the expressed genes.
I borrowed the term, and the definition from someone else earlier in the thread. I would never have used the term 'phenotype' to begin with otherwise. However, I took a definition from someone I thought knew what they were saying, and used it they same way they did.
Using an incorrect definition of a word doesn't tell you anything about a person's understanding of a subject.
It means they don't know the term, and are applying it incorrectly as a result to mean something other than what it's intended to.
If I start talking about chemistry in Dutch, would your lack of understanding of the technical terms I was using mean you don't understand anything about chemistry?
You have admitted to not having specific education in genetics, yet you know more than me who has studied genetics at a university level. You clearly know more than me who has run tests on genetics and created simulations on genes, expressions and mutations. You have clearly pieced together a better thesis of this than me, yet you don't know the basics. That is really impressive.
An appeal to your own authority won't help you if you are misunderstanding the premise or nature of the conversation.
(Aside from which, being an expert on a subject doesn't automatically make everything you say on the subject correct. It merely implies you are more likely to know the correct answer than someone without such specialised knowledge.)
Nothing you have said relates to the intent of what I said. Telling me you know the subject better is meaningless if you're misrepresenting my point in the process.
What you're doing isn't refuting my claim, it's straw-man argument which shows you don't understand the claim being made to begin with.
You say that looks don't always match genes. Unless you're thinking augmentations such as dying your hair, surgery or accidents you are wrong.
Oh. Finally you see my point. Yet you still argue all this irrelevant extraneous stuff, then claim your personal authority on a technical subject invalidates a claim I was never making.
Look, being clumsy with language is different from not knowing what I'm talking about.
To refute my argument you do at least need to understand what it is.
Your genes tell us how you'll look like, but there are conditions. If you have the genes to be tall, but get poor nourishment you wont end up as a tall person. If you have the genes to be short you will be short despite getting enough to eat. Given proper data about a person someone with more knowledge of genetics than me can say a lot about a person's genes, but not all. I repeat since you don't seem to get it any of the other times that we can't say everything, but we can say the major things.
I knew that already. I'm ignoring your 'explanation', since you repeatedly seem to fail to grasp what I was saying to begin with.
Not to mention that your explanations actually reinforce my point, despite what you seem to think
For instance: "If you have the genes to be tall, but get poor nourishment you wont end up as a tall person. If you have the genes to be short you will be short despite getting enough to eat."
And, when faced with a short person, how do you determine if they are short due to lack of food, or due to their genes?
More relevant to the intended point, if a short person has 'tall' genes, does that somehow mean they're not short anymore?
Do4600 said:
CrystalShadow said:
Do4600 said:
CrystalShadow said:
Do4600 said:
There is no reason for a test of that kind unless an abnormality is suspected. That being said it's safe to say that almost all men are genetically male and all women are genetically female, just on the statistical evidence alone. Disjunction of that kind is rare, so tests aren't necessary, it's a very safe assumption that unless somebody is having serious issues without cause that their genetic background is what it appears to be. Just as not everybody needs to have a heart biopsy to know that their heart is functioning.
DNA controls all physical characteristics and to an extent the chemistry of the brain. We still have no clear idea what causes people to have an inexplicable need to be the opposite sex. It's an abnormality, a mental and emotional condition. I almost feel it's a matter of degrees removed from believing you are a polar bear, and everyday you wake up and realize you aren't a polar bear and feel discomfort and emotional torment because of it. It's necessarily a delusion. The treatment that we've used is to change that persons structural appearance to fit that delusion, we validate the delusion, and then the person can live a nearly normal life. To most people however it's just as absurd as waking up and putting on polar bear make-up before heading to the office, it's still a delusion and people can't be forced to accept a delusion.
I have nothing against transgender people, I recognize that it's painful to wake up in somebody else's body everyday, but in the same way it's difficult for people to accept a physical lie.
A physical lie? See, that's kind of what I'm getting at.
You aren't going to argue that a house with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms is actually a house with 4 bedrooms and 1 bathroom, just because that's how it was built, and that's what the blueprints say.
How is it therefore 'physical lie', if someone has a body that is physically one way, but genetically another?
Surely, it is the genetics that are 'lying', if anything? (Your genes caused you to be the way you are, but if you've had any other alterations for any reason, they aren't going to be in your genes.)
If you lost your arm in an accident, no appeal to genetics is going to convince anyone that your arm is still there.
Yet it seems to be taken for granted that someone whose body is largely consistent with a sex different to their genes is 'lying'?
OK... It would seem I have to rewrite things yet again. Let's see if it'll make sense this time.
So you're talking about 20,000 some people world wide that have that abnormality, a sex reversal. I'm talking about the almost 19 million transsexuals world wide.
Whether it is a natural change or an artificial one, it still has the effect of making someone's appearance and genes no longer match.
If you then try to determine someone's sex, you are inherently faced with a contradiction, and therefore have to discard one set of information or another.
My point, really, is that it seems kind of strange to disregard the more obvious, and in practice more meaningful traits, in favour of one which you'd only know about if you specifically tried to measure it.
If you assume you can't trust your eyes, are you willing to follow the logical consequences of trusting some invisible trait which isn't usually measured instead?
It was supposed to be a fairly simple point. But I guess people are easily distracted.
I see, you're talking about a philosophical criteria of truth in relation to what we can see which is a subjective physical set of information and the perceived abstract, objective reality which is the genetic test.
Ah, this confused me for a second. That is the heart of it, yes. Though I don't personally agree with the premise that genetics provide an objective statement of truth under these circumstances, it is the premise around which the idea was formed.
My thought is that truth isn't skin deep, if a woman gets surgery to become a man, or even gets surgery to have wrinkles removed it's still a concealment of the full details that make up the whole physical truth. If a person has the chromosomes that would usually be attributed to a member of the opposite sex, yet bears the appearance of the other sex they still remain physically truthful.
I get the idea of there being a deeper truth in some cases. But it's also important to know what criteria are being used to assess what amounts to the truth.
The concept of sex dates back much further than genetics does. Male and female are therefore concepts that weren't built around an understanding of genetics.
genetics therefore is at best, supplementary information, not some kind of higher truth. So taking it out of context as being more important doesn't seem right to me.
Changing somebodies appearance doesn't change what or who they are. If a person gets surgery at 67 to remove all their wrinkles, they are just a person who is 67 who had surgery to get rid of their wrinkles.
That's a bit arbitrary, since in many contexts the idea you are refuting would be taken for granted as being true.
When it comes to almost anything other than human beings, a sufficient amount of modification is generally considered to change one thing into something else.
You'd pretty much never endorse the idea that the leather in a couch is still a cow, or that the bricks in your walls are still mud.
These kind of statements are therefore a matter of degrees, not of absolutes.
Make sufficient changes to something, and it ceases to be whatever it once was, and becomes something else instead.
That's obvious though, yet typically not applied to human beings.
(And a person who is 67 who has had surgery to remove their wrinkles is indeed still 67. But... they no longer have wrinkles. It would be a lie to say they did, regardless of why they no longer have them.)
If a woman gets surgery to look like a man she's still a woman that had surgery to look like a man.
As I said above, under most circumstances this would be sufficient cause. The question is not if surgery can turn a woman into a man, but how much surgery it takes to turn a woman into a man.
(And to a lesser extent, if the required changes are medically possible at this moment in time.)
I don't accept physical appearance by itself to be a quantity that decides objective reality. The genetic test is not needed. It's a question of whether it's acceptable to deceive people with a modified physical reality.
Why wouldn't it be? We do it all the time. Pretty much everything human beings have ever gotten their hands on is subject to being artificially modified.
Look around you. How much of that hasn't been modified from it's original state?
Why would the human body be an exception to this?
And once you accept the notion that turning one thing into another is in fact commonplace in reality (objective or otherwise), the question merely becomes how much effort you have to make for one thing to become another.
(That's not to say there aren't things which can't be changed; You can't make yourself younger, because age is a measure of how long you've been alive, and you cannot shorten your own lifespan retroactively. You could however, hypothetically speaking give yourself the body of someone much younger - even say, that of a 5-year old. It wouldn't make you 5 years old again, but it would mean you are physically identical to someone that age.)
Have you ever looked at the blueprints of a really old building and compared them with the building itself?
Especially if the building has been renovated, I think you'd find the original plans often don't match the actual building.
Now, suppose you got into an argument about a heavily renovated building.
One person says the blueprints are irrelevant, because the building doesn't look like that anymore.
The other says the actual structure of the building is irrelevant, because the original blueprints say it's something different.
Now, who do you suppose is correct in this little argument, and why?
OK, you use your lack of understanding of genetics to prove your point and I wont bother to discuss this any further, but I will inform you that I NEVER said that you can determine the full set of genotypes from appearance, I did in fact mention that twice in my last post alone. Phenotype is observable traits, that does not mean appearance in any sense, but it can in some cases mean that. Every sentence you reveal how little you understand and I am sick of trying to reason with you. I said that with sufficient data you can say a lot about someone's genotype. If you disagree with that then you clearly don't want to admit that you're wrong.
I dont see the point of a chromosome test honestly, not to devalue genetic science or anything, but you just look at yourself.
for example me, built like an average male, I have a fully functioning penis, went though male puberty, I can grow a beard, and no physical abnormals that would suggest I would be a different gender, thus I am male.
simplyfied? yes. Still accurate? in my opinion yea.
Again I am all for genetic research and all but it's kind of as simple as that, you're born a gender (be it girl, boy or hermaphrodite) and you stay that gender unless you physically want to change yourself, now you'll be geneticly the gender you once was, while appearing physically the opposite gender. I think when it comes down to sex operations and such is where genes matter medically. but only in a medical sense, in your everyday life it doesnt matter if you have XY or XX chromosomes.
I'm just going to say, as someone who took a genetics class, whatever you are genetically is what you are physically. The rare disorders where this isn't the case, are all very obvious by puberty at the latest.
I'm male, I don't need a genetic test to know that I am also genetically male.
My bad, my prof never mentioned any that didn't cause defects. I was just relating his lecture. Then again, it is a gen ed course, guess I should have anticipated it being wrong.
My bad, my prof never mentioned any that didn't cause defects. I was just relating his lecture. Then again, it is a gen ed course, guess I should have anticipated it being wrong.
Nothing wrong with being wrong, as they say I think everyone really is just relating what knowledge they have learned. That just varies per person. The more you know!
As for the rest of the extensive argument going on above and likely below here, from what I can tell you are both arguing a different thing... as in not really directly contradicting each other. Your more so debating different but related concepts, along with possibly some misinterpretation of each others arguments along the way.
I would also consider that a good way to debate is not to just simply point out repetitively how a person does not seem to understand anything, but fail to regularly explain the statements they misused and provide them the real meaning. That is just my opinion though.
I'm just going to say, as someone who took a genetics class, whatever you are genetically is what you are physically. The rare disorders where this isn't the case, are all very obvious by puberty at the latest.
I don't know if there are any that can cause a female to appearer male but there are ones that can make male appear female and any signs can easy be mistaken for other more common conditions. You can have someone who grew up believing that they are female, the have a female voice, no Adams apple, no masculine hair growth, enlarged breasts, labia, clitoris, vagina, a second opening for the urethra, and everything that you would think as making them female, except that what should be ovaries are malformed testes. These people typically don't have a period, though some do have some minor blood discharge. I knew a girl like this because she never started her period she believe that she could not get pregnant and had sex with lots of guy, neither her or any of the guys ever suspected she was anything other than a female. In her mid 20s it was discovered in an unrelated surgery that she was actually genetically male.
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