Not sure what the point of that is.
Is it, “ya never can tell!”
or is it, “sure looks like a dame to me!” 'cause that exactly fits her assigned gender at birth, how she presents, how she self describes and how society has treated her, her whole life.
I have 46 chromosomes (one of which is a Y-chromosome), but I think I’m a dog, not a human. I then decided I “identified as a dog.” Therefore, I’m a dog. Those 7 chromosomes less a dog has that I still have just disappeared.
Even if I mutilate myself to look like a dog, I’ll always have 46, not 39 chromosomes; aka always human.
Perhaps it was that she was assigned a gender at birth that does not match her genetic sex.
ETA That was addressed to levdrakon, who wondered what the point is.
TO DM - there was no mutilation involved in the beauty queen referenced above.
But is completely contradicted by her XY chromosomes and her internal reproductive organs. As per monstro’s link, the woman in question has no uterus or ovaries.
We have already discussed in similar threads why it’s so stupid to consider “species identity” as any kind of reasonable analogy to gender identity:
FWIW, we asked for an evaluation of our son for several things: a number of them were things common to Jews (although not Tay-Sachs, because I don’t carry the gene for it), and because of my age, Down Syndrome, Fragile X and XYY. He was evaluated for everything. So we knew he was a normal XY male. His external genitalia matched that, and so far so has his personality.
That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have supported him if he had come to us with a different story, but everything lined up for his being a biological male.
That’s what it means.
Some people aren’t as clear cut. They may be XXY, or be XY, but present visually as perfectly normal females. They may have chimera syndrome, and quite literally have XY genitals, but an XX brain-- a woman’s brain in a male body. There are so many ways for the human body to be put together, and work, but not fit into the binomial gender norm, we need to be more tolerant of those who need to work harder to find thei place in what really is a spectrum, and not a dichotomy.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion by many here. I’m curious about a concept that has arisen in this thread, highlighted by these two (snipped) posts:
What are the differences between a woman’s brain and a man’s brain? That sounds (from the perspective of someone who doesn’t really care about such things) like the sort of rampantly-sexist talk that got Larry Summers fired (I know technically he resigned).
In the situation that RivkahChaya is talking about, the brain cells might literally contain different chromosomes than the cells in the genitals. Whether that would lead to any differences in thought patterns or personality is a completely separate difference.
You know, sometimes you strike me as a rational, reasonable Doper.
And then sometimes you just leave me scratching my head.
In other words, wut?
The point was, for the people suggesting that chromosomes is all it takes, that she has XY chromosomes. So, boy’s bathroom and locker for her! I’m sure that won’t raise any eyebrows.
Una posted a fairly lengthy review of some research on differences between brains to her site a year or so ago.
http://transascity.org/the-transgender-brain/
Her summary:
There are a number of differences although individuals vary. Interestingly, there is increasing evidence that transgender folks tend to have brain structures that match their identity gender rather than their assigned gender.
Start here and then use Google if you’re really interested:
I wish we’d put to rest the belief that sex and gender have always been the same until recently, and it’s just a liberal plot to separate them. Whether or not they have been viewed conjoined at times, they have not always been so, apparently for the greater majority of the English language.
The Oxford English Dictionary has a definition for “gender” as “A class of things or beings distinguished by having certain characteristics in common; (as a mass noun)” from as far back as 1398. uses of this form are given up until almost the 20th century.
The OED also has a definition for “sex” as “Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions; (hence) the members of these categories viewed as a group; the males or females of a particular species, esp. the human race, considered collectively” from as far back as 1382 - nearly the same year as the above. Uses of this form are given in every century since that time.
I can’t link to the OED because it’s behind a paywall. But I’m sure anyone with academic access like myself can verify it.
Note that in the case of gender it refers only to “having certain characteristics in common,” and in the case of sex “reproductive functions” are clearly spelled out.
So it’s not those liberals that are creating any new definition. One might ask if it was conservatives who tried to meld the definitions with equal accuracy.
Gender is not the same as sex, despite Derek’s and other tantrums over it. Most major medical and psychological organizations worldwide recognize this, despite the “wisdom” of the conservative sages o’ the SDMB.
My sex was put down at birth legally as “male.” My gender was assumed to be “male” at birth and assigned by my parents. But my gender was actually not, something that did not become clear until age 7 or 8. Then when I started to show signs of female puberty at 12-13, even my sex was in dispute. Later on it was determined that I made estrogen instead of testosterone and am intersex. Y-chromosome essentialist trolls say as long as I have any trace of a “Y” chromosome I must be the manliest man that ever manned, regardless of 40 years of constant, unwavering awareness, years of psychological testing, total assimilation into female society, and of course an intersex condition so severe I grew an A/B-cup breasts in junior high school and looked so distinctly feminine that I was often called “ma’am” even when wearing a suit and tie.
The differences under discussion are structural, not (as far as we can tell) functional. We can say that this area of the brain is this shape and this size in a man, and this shape and size in a woman. What we can’t really do is say, “Therefore, men are better at X and women are better at Y,” or “This explains why women are so emotional,” and so forth.
No, the sort of talk that got Larry Summers’s resignation requested (to be precise) was a bunch of vacuous ill-informed speculation that average differences in career outcomes for male and female academics had to be due mainly to differences between a woman’s brain and a man’s brain, rather than to systemic sexism in society.
Speculation, moreover, that was based largely on an anecdote about how Summers’s own toddler daughter, when given two toy trucks, called them “mommy” and “daddy” truck. (Because of course toddler minds are perfect tabulae rasae revealing the intrinsic workings of the biological human brain unaffected by any socialization influences. :rolleyes: )
In fact, anyone who’s ever had even the slightest introduction to the formal study of grammar recognizes this. In particular, it has always been accepted that gender can be not only masculine or feminine but neuter. The traditional classification of biological sex, on the other hand, does not use this tripartite division.
one thing ive often wondered about: if gender and sex are two separate qualities, that combines into four types of humans. add to that the fact that puberty can sometimes change either or both of these qualities; you now have 12 combinations and if you add in sexual preference, (and if that can be changed) you now have dozens of combinations. and yet most often, in my (albeit limited) experience, people in all of these combos still try to fit into “male” and “female” social construct. a girl born with male parts, still wants to have soft features, long hair, a bosom, be thought of as sexy, etc. and will want to change her body thus.
my guess is this doesnt apply to all, but it does to enough to make me wonder, is it something inherent to gender, or an overwhelming desire to fit into societal norms?
i’m not asking as elegantly as i had hoped. the more crude version is: why do some transexuals find it inadequate to just be a girl with male parts?
mc
For the same reason you would find it inadequate to be considered and treated as a girl with male parts.
As Una pointed out, the distinction between “sex” and “gender” in English goes back to at least 1398, and the distinction in the concepts runs back as far as human history does. Conservatives have a tendency to decide that whatever concepts they were taught as a kid go back all the way to ancient times, but it’s just not true.
The existence of multiple genders is incredibly well documented and is as indisputable as evolution or a round earth. While people certainly put their fingers in their ears and deny reality on certain topics, decrying Eviloution or joining the flat earth society, reality exists regardless of whether they accept it. Hijras in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have a long history, as do various other genders in other parts of Southeast Asia. The Balkans have had Sworn Virgins as another gender since the 1400s. References to a non-male, non-female people go all the way back to early writings from Sumeria and Egypt. Even in America, the concept of “Two Spirit” people was common to various Native American societies, and some recognized even more genders. While these are often discounted or ignored by people who want to ignore them, especially the 19th century British historians who collected a lot of the data used in the 20th century, they most certainly exist.
A ton of what people associate with ‘gender’ in society has changed which gender it’s associated with over time. Pink used to be the boy’s color, now it’s ‘obviously’ a girl’s color, dresses used to be uinisex kid’s clothes, now dressing a boy in a dress is weird (and both of these only changed in the early 20th century). Women have sometimes been considered wanton lusty wenches who distract men from their higher thinking using feminine wiles, while at other times women are chaste, pure beings who only have sex at the behest of animalistic men who are constantly consumed by lust. Gender roles simply aren’t derived from ‘biological fact’, as much as people like to claim that.
This simplest answer is because a large number of us have a female mental gender which fully expects and desires to have the correct body to match. The next level of answer is that those of us who are female and straight find that having male genitals in your partner is a major turn-off for about 99% of straight men. The next level of answer is that until only very recently (the last 5 years or so) proof of “full surgical conversion” was needed in order to allow us to legally change our gender on identification documents that we need for work and safety.
Increasingly, there is a small subset of “non-ops,” male and female, who can exist happily with whatever genital configuration they were born with.
There’s even some socio-political blowback to fight against a genital-essentialist system that puts many of us into a no-win situation. The typical conservative mindset towards transgender persons is:
People like me should be allowed to exist (grudgingly), BUT
We MUST have full surgery in order to even have a chance to be considered our new social and legal gender, AND
There should be NO laws protecting us from being fired, demoted, or harassed at work over our gender identity, AND
There should be no laws allowing us proper identification documents without full surgery (and even in two states, such as my very own, that is not enough to change a birth certificate), thus facilitating getting another job, AND
There should be NO laws allowing us protection from medical discrimination, AND
Our necessary surgical and medical procedures should NOT be covered by Medicare or even private insurance, so
Some (it used to be many) of us are driven to poverty and homelessness as a result, leading us to sex work, THUS
Giving conservatives a useful humorous trope to laugh at.
The tide turned considerably under the Obama Administration. It’s already flowing back now slowly, although not as fast yet as some feared.
To add to this, one sect of traditional Jewish teaching held that there were really 6 genders under God, although my understanding was that this mostly vanished about 1000 AD as there was a move to align parts of Jewish tradition more with the Catholic interpretation of the O.T.