(I’m just trying to learn. No hidden mockery in this and this is no gotcha bs aimed at t women. I’m NOT transphobic. Just saw this in a debate and wanted to know other people’s thoughts)
I just want to know:
- Is this factually correct?
- If it is, does it matter? Why or why not?
- How would you logically respond to this?
- How does this statement not contradict with Trans Women are Women
How would you respond to the statement “Trans women are biologically male” ?
with an earnest instruction for the person in question to sunset their lifecycle at their earliest convenience
Biological sex (male, female, intersex) refers to the physical aspects of your body, such as primary sex characteristics (reproductive organs), secondary sex characteristics (body hair, breasts, fat distribution, etc), hormone levels (estrogen, testosterone), and chromosomes.
Gender (man, woman, nonbinary, other terms) is more about an internal sense of self, how you see yourself and how you want your body to be, as well as what social category you belong in.
A trans woman is a person who was biologically male at birth, but sees herself as a woman/wants her body to align with her gender (woman). Not all trans women medically transition, and that’s ok, but for those who do, it can change various aspects of their biological sex, such as hormone levels and secondary sex characteristics, so it may not be entirely true to say that trans women (post transition) are biologically male either.
I was really scared to ask this question lol. But I needed to know. Thank you so much. That about sums it up.
This!
who cares
if someone asks to be called she/her/susan then just do it. it doesn’t need to be so complicated
conservatives ranting about biology are attacking a straw man. nobody actually gives a shit
It’s just a matter of politeness. It’s rude to call someone something they don’t want to be called.
Typical Susan
if someone asks to be called she/her/susan then just do it.
In my life I’ve only met one person who noted her pronouns, and none (including her) who ever asked for specific pronouns use. That’s shit is such a weird Americanism. You’re weird if you do that.
normally you specify preferred pronouns on the internet or in documentation. in real life, most of the folks in my circles are making it as obvious as possible by communicating it through presentation, or by telling you their name.
on the internet or in documentation
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
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Change rooms should be unisex either way and professional sports is totally solvable - we already have weight classes etc but at the end of the day sports is just entertainment and not what we should be basing our society about. It can fuck off and disappear for all I care - plenty of other entertainment out there.
The reason why sports are segregated by gender is because men can’t stand to lose to women.
Think about this. Why are even non-contact sports segregated? Tennis? Why?!
Even chess is segregated by gender. Chess!
The reason athletic sports are segregated by gender is because physically, cis men vastly outperform cis women. Like, if we got rid of gender divisions altogether, cis men would be the only ones competing. I think it’s unfair to both cis and transgender female athletes to effectively bar them from competitions altogether.
For nonathletic sports, it’s more complicated. In chess, for example, the best female chess player in history is the 64th best chess player overall. The second best woman doesn’t break the top 140. I assume this is because of historical discrimination against women in the chess community leading to them being underrepresented at the top. Having women’s divisions is good because it encourages women to play.
To be clear, trans women are women, so it only makes sense to have them compete against other women.
Why are even non-contact sports segregated? Tennis? Why?!
This has been tested on multiple occasions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Sexes_(tennis)
The only real win in singles was Billie Jean King (then 29yo) over Bobby Riggs (then 55yo). Riggs had recently beaten Margaret Court who was a 17 year number one in the women’s game.
Martina Navratilova in 2023 stated that the reason the 55-year-old Riggs lost to the 29-year-old King was simply because of age.[37] Navratilova said Riggs lost “because Bobby was too old,” and added, “A 35 year old Bobby would have beaten all of us.”[37]
Maybe bit it’s more likely it’s jus5 entertainment based. Women leagues are created to attract more viewers/participants.
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Yes abolishing of woman sports if that helps you understand it. We can easily redesign sports grouping - it’s not nuclear weapons, not rocket science. It’s easy.
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Well surely you can agree that letting men into women’s change rooms
If the idea is that that’s a no-no because men are sexually attracted to women, then I must remind you that gay people exist.
If the idea is that men cannot be trusted, then there are many other spaces where men have power that should be examined first.
how do you think trans people feel about it?
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you could learn to share public spaces with other people, or you could take a shit at home
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You conservatives spend an insane amount of time thinking about and making shit up about children’s genitals. It’s so fucking wet and creepy.
Uh…
Oh sweet baby Jesus… 🤦…
Uhm thanks for pointing that out…The word was supposed to be “weird” and there’s no sane way, no matter how badly I smashed my big fat appendages across the screen, that spell correct could have thought I meant to type “wet”, but yet somehow that’s what it chose.
My phone finally forced me to let it update to the newer os stuffed full of ai, and now does some insanely weird spell corrections. It will even sometimes change words that I have spelled correctly to things that mean something completely different. But this one is a real beauty. Honestly, it’s so fucked up that I am just going to leave it.
I’m pretty sure everybody understands what happened here. Good on you for keeping it, because it’s hysterical!
It’s extremely
hairymessy to define biological sex. Whoever wants to argue has a middle school level understanding of biology, refuse to learn and completely ignores the science.See
It’s extremely hairy to define biological sex.
Doubly so after puberty.
So transgender or gender fluid people are those that fall in the intersex spectrum exclusively? Or can a typical male with typical internal and external genital structures, and typical male hormones and male secondary characteristics identify as a gender other than male?
It’s extremely hairy to define biological sex.
Ermm… What is that sentence dude?
In this context, “hairy” can mean “tricky” or “difficult”.
Alr lol
Fixed… -w-
“You’re biologically a loser lmao”
Got 'em lmao
Are eunuchs biologically agender?
Are intersex people with chimerism or cryptorchidism biologically two genders at once?
Are women who have had hysterectomies biologically male?
The answer to all of the above is, and I say this with all the respect in the world, a resounding ‘no.’
Thank you so much.
They meant DNA not organs intact
there are many types of chromosomes outside of xy and xx. and they are about as common as being trans. shit, its fairly common for karyotype tests to come back with only an x for people past a certain age, a lot of people lose their second sex chromosome over time. this would make many people have an unverifiable ‘birth sex’ beyond just what is physically in their pants
even if i did have an xy chromosome (i dont even know if i do) being biologically male or female is nebulous. “biological men” dont have big feminine tits and estrogen in them for decades, but i do. so at minimum i am something not phenotypically or biologically male or female despite identifying as a trans woman
I was only explaining what they meant, not conjecture. There’s like 40+ DNA xy type variants…there’s an info graphic somewhere. Biology DNA would also be different than phenotype oresented.
DNA isn’t perfect either though. It’s possible to be AMAB with XX chromosomes and AFAB with XY chromosomes (both still having the “correct” fully functional organs for their assigned gender). Some intersex people can also have multiple sets of DNA, some being XX and some being XY.
Neatly fitting all cases of biology into 2 categories like that is basically impossible anyway regardless of how you do it. “Biologically male/female” is basically impossible to define without also excluding some people that were born into each category. They’re fundamentally useless terms that don’t actually convey anything meaningful…
There’s an info graphic somewhere with like 40+ variants and how they manifest
1: Yes.
2: Not really. It’s more about self image and social presentation.
3: Best response I have is, “And?” Covers a lot of bases.
4: Same way you get any title like Doctor, or Fam, you need to be accepted into the community by peers, and not necessarily universally.
Yep
In addition to what others have said, I’d like to add a little more information.
Hormones work by changing your gene expression. Every one of us has all the DNA for both typically male and typically female traits. Hormones play a part in deciding what parts of your DNA are active within your cells and what parts aren’t. There’s a complicated set of interactions that decides what hormones you produce naturally and how your body responds to them. Sometimes something happens in an atypical way with that complex set of interactions and that’s how intersex people exist.
(There are examples of people with XY chromosomes who have internal testes but are insensitive to testosterone and grow up female, and even examples of people with XY chromosomes who have functioning uteruses and have given birth naturally. It can get very complicated)
When you go on HRT as part of a medical transition, the instructions your cells are following in your DNA switch to the instructions tied to those hormones. That’s how trans people’s bodies change. Their cells are actually functioning differently.
A trans women on estrogen for a long enough time will eventually have their blood proteins go to a more typically female profile. They’ll also see their risk factor for certain diseases switch. The risk of cardiovascular disease goes down (typically something that affects more males) and their risk for autoimmune disease go up (typically something that affects more females).
So are trans woman biologically men? Eh, not quite. Saying somebody is biologically male/female is a little reductive. It can be complicated.
So what ur saying is that if I take both hormones in even amounts I’ll be lifespanmaxxing and be at low risk for both heart disease and autoimmune disease (/j)
Diseasemaxxing (fify)
In general, please don’t ask loaded, third-rail questions on !asklemmy@lemmy.ml, because
- it’s a PITA for mods, and
- that’s not what the community is for:. It’s supposed to be a clone of r/askreddit.
please don’t ask loaded, third-rail questions
never heard of these; what are they?
I wouldn’t engage in discussion with people saying that. Nothing good can come from it, and they probably aren’t people worth spending time with.
That’s true. But if they’re babbling about that to a number of people, they might be mislead into believing their bs. If I knew a proper response, I could call their bs out.
Because this feels like a loaded statement, I’d respond like this: Biology makes mistakes. Biology is fallible. To frame this about biology is not sufficiently complex to address the issue.
- Talk to experts.
- The initial statement seems to me is that of a culture warrior, not a curious mind. Therefore it doesn’t matter to me.
- Compassion doesn’t require logic. But if you want sonething slightly logical: I don’t understand quantum physics either. I’m reliably informed it exists. Me being unable to grasp the uncertainty principle leaves me feeling uneasy and frustrated. Others may feel in a comparable way about gender identity. It’s okay to admit that you don’t get it. I don’t fully understand it either. It’s not okay to be an asshole about it.
- Apples to rotten pears.
There was a famous physicist. Maybe Einstein or Feynman who said to the effect “anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics most certainly does not”
It would depend on the context. The response depends on who is asking, their openness to learn and the reason for the statement. In isolation, it appears inflammatory rather than factual. It can be both.
Why respond to it. If someone’s already recognised someone as a trans woman what’s the problem
Aight, you asked multiple questions, so you’re going to get some strange answers, possibly including this one.
To your title question, the only time I’ve heard anyone say that, they were being a douche. My response online is mostly of the “down vote, report if appropriate, and move on” variety.
In meat space, my response is usually either an eye roll and walking off, or a “fucking moron” and walking off.
I have big dude privilege in meat space, and roll well armed, so have no need to pretend to be nice to douche nozzles spewing bullshit.
The other questions are harder.
1: for a given value of factual, sure, I guess. But it’s using imprecise language that’s been weaponized, so I would be dubious of someone stating it until there was more context. “Biological” isn’t as definitive and limited in usages as to be without question in that context.
2: don’t matter. If a guy says he’s a guy, he’s a guy. If a gal says she’s a gal, she’s a gal. End of fucking story, and I will gladly tell anyone fucking with my trans homies that they’re a fucking moron and be willing to either walk off, or fuck them up if they insist. IDGAF about sometimes XY or XX status, or any of the other possible combinations (remember when I said “Biological” isn’t that useful or definitive? Yeah, biology ain’t a binary). I care about the person’s expressed self. It’s about basic human decency and respect.
3: I wouldn’t respond logically. It doesn’t merit any effort on my part. I’m not in the business of convincing anyone that everyone has human rights, should have equal acces to all civil rights, or that someone else’s gender is none of their fucking business. It isn’t about logic. Anyone at this point trying to frame gender as some kind of science debate is a douche and can go fuck themselves. The debate at this point has nothing to do with “biology”. It’s about human rights. And yes, I will fight on that hill.
4: it would only contradict if the person trying to bring “biology” into a conversation is being a douche instead of just missing the point. I don’t automatically assume a person trying to frame the subject in those terms is acting with malice. So they may not be contradicting the fact that trans women are women. They may just be exploring the language of transness in an attempt to better understand the matter. And that’s okay. It isn’t a built in part of language, so everyone has to absorb the concepts over time.
Alas, assholes and morons use that language to denigrate trans people. So I also can’t assume someone isn’t doing so. I have to wait for context, or be proactive in stating that I ain’t putting up with bigotry, so if that’s where they’re going, it won’t end well.
Me? The debate is over. What’s still in play is people finding their path to internalizing the subject. We don’t get to debate what is a fundamental human experience. Trans people exist. It isn’t imaginary on their part, it isn’t bad parenting, it isn’t trauma. They’re trans, and that’s it.
Don’t debate with idiots. They drag you down at their level and beat you with experience. - Mark Twain
Seriously, complex question usually requires complex answers, the type that doesn’t fit in a 10 words meme. If I learned anything, it’s that you won’t convinced people who don’t care about the truth. People won’t change their mind unless they are personally affected by something. They don’t deserve the tolerance they refuse to others.
