Interesting concept, "trans ideology". This is partly the fault of the trans community for defining "trans" so broadly in the first place. This was intentional, in part just to get away from "transgender", which from the time it was coined was extremely broad in scope, but included a large subculture for which the word "transgender" meant "not transsexual".
What we have now is something else, and I don't even want to try to deal with it here. What does concern me is "assigned sex". Yes, this is a real thing for some people, especially in a world flooded with endocrine disruptors and other stuff that makes sexual development go wrong. Sexual development is certainly not a matter simply of XX vs. XY, and wouldn't be even if those were the only two possible configurations. Enzymes and hormones are part of the "other stuff". For a Y chromosome to do its job properly, these other things have to be intact. For a sampling of what can go wrong, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8720965/
There are some interesting observations in this publication. See, for example, "2.2.2 17α-Hydroxylase, 17,20-Lyase Deficiency (P450c17D)". In one case we have "steroidogenesis in adrenals and gonads is severely impaired, causing deficiency of cortisol and sex steroids, with mineralocorticoid excess. Consequently, 46,XY fetuses are severely undervirilized while 46,XX sexual development is unaffected at birth (33). The typical presentation of this form of CAH is a phenotypic girl or adolescent with pubertal failure, including lack of breast development and primary amenorrhea, hypertension and hypokalemia (45)."
XY sex chromosomes, but typical presentation as "a phenotypic girl or adolescent with pubertal failure". Male genotype, female phenotype. Hmmm. Admittedly this is rare, as are other similar conditions. I came across this information 19 years ago when I was researching my own endocrine issues revolving around pregnenolone insufficiency and partial pubertal failure. CAH did not fit, in any known variant, but it came closer than anything else I was able to locate back then. I still look for new research from time to time, when I have spare time, which is never.
A transwoman that transitioned surgically is usually at minimal risk for prostate cancer. The prostate shrinks away to almost nothing. Don't ask me how I know. An undersized pituitary can be quite a problem, or not. How would one know if it is? Empty sella syndrome diagnosis. How is it diagnosed? It can't be, as far as I know. (Empty/partially empty sella alone is diagnosed through MRI, been there, done that, but finding it doesn't tell you if it is a problem. Syndrome = yes, a problem, but no way to tell if that's what's causing the problem.)
Inquiring about it at least made for an interesting phone conversation with a UCSF endocrinologist.
Wow, all very interesting information! I spoke rather broadly as it relates to prostates in trans women, but certainly one may argue that the use of exogenous hormones are likely to cause the prostate to shrink. One aspect I've always sort of considered was the fact that many adolescent boys/ young men are falling into body dysmorphia by way of social media and using steroids and SARMS while they are still developing. The end result for some of these individuals is shot testosterone, underdeveloped sexual organs, and loss of sex drive and impotence by their mid-late 20s when these young men decide to stop taking such supplements. I hypothesize that there's a feedback mechanism in which the body checks for testosterone and other hormones. It doesn't care where it comes from, it just wants to see if there's enough of it. If not, it signals for the gonads to develop in order to produce more testosterone. If there's enough, it signals that there's no need to further develop and overproduce. Then, at some point, a superseding signal tells the body to just shut off all development, and at the point that window is lost then the body will no longer develop.
All this to say that hormones are extremely finnicky, and we are playing fast and loose with this idea that they can just be tossed around with no real consequences. It seems like the case you discussed above is one in which a genetic defect within the Y chromosome may have led to alterations in hormone production? Or, it could be the X chromosome as well since either one going bad in men doesn't appear to have a compensatory mechanism.
I'm just a little slow to reply here. Terrible Substack backlog, I'm afraid. What I've gleaned from researching endocrine disorders is that the subject is enormously complex, and that the likelihood of an individual like me discovering anything actionable is low. Enzyme and substrate availability is critical, and a genetic defect preventing synthesis of an enzyme, or regulatory gland damage limiting production of a substrate, can have profound and surprising effects (if not lethal).
Best not to live in a world awash in endocrine disruptors, but even more important is to be careful not to ingest them as "medicine".
I'm a copy editor. One of my former bosses once said that conservatives were responsible for this whole "gender" problem because they were too squeamish to use the word "sex" referring to male/female. I tend to agree.
Also, my OB told me my son was a boy at 12 weeks gestation. I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Well, I sure hope so, because that's a penis." To me, that's why this whole "assigned at birth" is so ridiculous. What are those dumb "gender (should be sex, right?) reveal" parties for, if people are supposed to wait for the doctor to assign it at birth?
Your first comment is interesting. Do you think it may have been due to a conflation of "sex" as a biological, scientific term with sex as an act? I wouldn't deny if this was the case, as even now I sometimes view conservatives as being rather prudish. I never verbalized it properly but one of my biggest hang-ups with The Daily Wire is that they feel too "fellow kids", out-of-touch conservative for my liking if that makes sense.
A lot of this doesn't seem to make sense. It seems, if I were to follow the logic from the 2016 JAMA article, this use of "assigned" may have been done as a correction for trans individuals who incorrectly self-report their gender as their sex. But again, this would be a correction for something that shouldn't have been a problem, because one's sex does not change. This just tells us that social/cultural use of scientific terms has changed their meanings, and now these people are leveraging these terms in a manner that's different than their original use and thus changing how science is conducted or interpreted.
Why is it that differentiating between sex and gender is so obvious to those of us who aren't immersed in trans rhetoric, but so offensive to people who are? As you explain here, there are clear and valid reasons for keeping the two separate and keeping activist driven language changes entirely out of scientific papers.
Outside of surveys, I sort of don't see any reason why anything aside from "sex" should be used as it's apparent that the use of sex refers to biological, molecular differences that need to be taken into account in studies.
I knew one trans man up until the last 10 years or thereabouts. I don't think too many people thought about the issue at all, until they really started pushing the T and Q in media, legislation (pronouns are protected grounds in Canada under our Charter) and in education. When they came for the kids, people woke up. Why would grown men dressed as a caricature of women be paid by government to read to small children? It is happening across Canada. It's part of the Marxism that has crept into our education system. Children are being indoctrinated. They are confused into believing that puberty is something they can cancel and pick up later on without a problem or "change" gender. Most young girls are uncomfortable with puberty. I suspect boys are similarly uncomfortable, although there seems to be more of a culture of celebrating boys to men. The surgeries are barbaric and comprise abuse if done on young people. Young people need protection from themselves and those who would permanently sterilize them and mutilate their healthy bodies.. My other issue is the cancelling of women and mothers to appease Ts and score ESG points. Or grifters who piggy back on the movement for fame and fortune. I won't mention any names...
I think the fact that the profession that gets pushed for these story time hours being "drag" and nothing else is rather telling. I would argue that all of these story hours occurring now are really just a reactionary response, as really a lot of this stuff going on right now seems to be. It's all reactionary politics, and even now my news feed is full of pride-related articles that seem to be written as a reaction to...something. It's almost like each side has to construct a strawman and turn it into a boogeyman for their team to react to.
Maybe one problem we've had as a society has been to present female puberty in the most flowery, unrealistic way that it sort of downplays a lot of the necessary realities of being a female. It appears now the general approach taken is to tell young girls that it sucks to be a woman, and that getting your periods or having to bear children are all horrible feats of "womanhood". Rather ironic given how many trans men are being celebrated for having kids to be honest.
Seems capitalism has been doing pretty well at destroying families too. The Industrial Revolution pretty much did in the multi-generational household in favor of the nuclear family. These days, one income won't support a family, so day care has to be hired. Etc.
Find it very troubling that this language is seeping into scientific articles. Scientists know the difference between the biological sexes - I just can't accept that they don't know this. Therefore it appears to be some kind of agenda.
You are right that some people equate sex and gender; they are related but different. Nonetheless, scientists know the difference between biological sexes - it's not something assigned.
I ran into this languaging at Kaiser. I'm due for my pap smear and the email addressed to me said "all people with a cervix need to be checked for cervical cancer." I had a couple email exchanges with my nurse practitioner, and I wrote, if you can't recognize me as a woman, and if you don't know the difference between my cervix and a trans woman's inverted penile tissue, then you're no longer competent to give me a pap smear. I will go elsewhere for my health checkup.
As I should have made clear it seems, if we are to follow the logic of the 2016 JAMA article, it seems that this use of the word "assigned" is acting as a correction for trans individuals who may conflate their sex with their gender, and so they write down their gender when a self-survey asks for their sex. But even this argument would be made moot by the fact that sex and gender cannot be interchanged in that manner, so we're essentially adding a correction to something that wouldn't need correcting if the people using these terms actually understood how to use them properly. This is an issue of gender activists using words freely and then changing the language.
I made a comment once on one of Heather Heying's posts questioning if scientists sort of allowed this to happen when we use phrases that already conflate sex and gender. Even growing up we used the phrase "male to female transwoman", so we're already using both sex and gender in a phrase, only here we are using them as if the sex of the individual is being changed. Maybe this should have been something addressed early on, or maybe it was but activists got a hold of the language and made this language the norm. Not sure, but maybe that would be something interesting to investigate. 🤷♂️
Thank you. I didn't think of "sex assigned at birth" in that way. One's sex at birth is not assigned, but feels that way to someone who identifies with the sex that doesn't match their body.
I see what you mean, "transwoman" does equate sex and gender. I think some people "on the right" also equate sex and gender too; if you have a penis - are a man - you have these characteristics.
Interesting concept, "trans ideology". This is partly the fault of the trans community for defining "trans" so broadly in the first place. This was intentional, in part just to get away from "transgender", which from the time it was coined was extremely broad in scope, but included a large subculture for which the word "transgender" meant "not transsexual".
What we have now is something else, and I don't even want to try to deal with it here. What does concern me is "assigned sex". Yes, this is a real thing for some people, especially in a world flooded with endocrine disruptors and other stuff that makes sexual development go wrong. Sexual development is certainly not a matter simply of XX vs. XY, and wouldn't be even if those were the only two possible configurations. Enzymes and hormones are part of the "other stuff". For a Y chromosome to do its job properly, these other things have to be intact. For a sampling of what can go wrong, see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8720965/
There are some interesting observations in this publication. See, for example, "2.2.2 17α-Hydroxylase, 17,20-Lyase Deficiency (P450c17D)". In one case we have "steroidogenesis in adrenals and gonads is severely impaired, causing deficiency of cortisol and sex steroids, with mineralocorticoid excess. Consequently, 46,XY fetuses are severely undervirilized while 46,XX sexual development is unaffected at birth (33). The typical presentation of this form of CAH is a phenotypic girl or adolescent with pubertal failure, including lack of breast development and primary amenorrhea, hypertension and hypokalemia (45)."
XY sex chromosomes, but typical presentation as "a phenotypic girl or adolescent with pubertal failure". Male genotype, female phenotype. Hmmm. Admittedly this is rare, as are other similar conditions. I came across this information 19 years ago when I was researching my own endocrine issues revolving around pregnenolone insufficiency and partial pubertal failure. CAH did not fit, in any known variant, but it came closer than anything else I was able to locate back then. I still look for new research from time to time, when I have spare time, which is never.
Also, there is this: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2002/10000/Gender_verification_of_female_Olympic_athletes.1.aspx
A transwoman that transitioned surgically is usually at minimal risk for prostate cancer. The prostate shrinks away to almost nothing. Don't ask me how I know. An undersized pituitary can be quite a problem, or not. How would one know if it is? Empty sella syndrome diagnosis. How is it diagnosed? It can't be, as far as I know. (Empty/partially empty sella alone is diagnosed through MRI, been there, done that, but finding it doesn't tell you if it is a problem. Syndrome = yes, a problem, but no way to tell if that's what's causing the problem.)
Inquiring about it at least made for an interesting phone conversation with a UCSF endocrinologist.
Wow, all very interesting information! I spoke rather broadly as it relates to prostates in trans women, but certainly one may argue that the use of exogenous hormones are likely to cause the prostate to shrink. One aspect I've always sort of considered was the fact that many adolescent boys/ young men are falling into body dysmorphia by way of social media and using steroids and SARMS while they are still developing. The end result for some of these individuals is shot testosterone, underdeveloped sexual organs, and loss of sex drive and impotence by their mid-late 20s when these young men decide to stop taking such supplements. I hypothesize that there's a feedback mechanism in which the body checks for testosterone and other hormones. It doesn't care where it comes from, it just wants to see if there's enough of it. If not, it signals for the gonads to develop in order to produce more testosterone. If there's enough, it signals that there's no need to further develop and overproduce. Then, at some point, a superseding signal tells the body to just shut off all development, and at the point that window is lost then the body will no longer develop.
All this to say that hormones are extremely finnicky, and we are playing fast and loose with this idea that they can just be tossed around with no real consequences. It seems like the case you discussed above is one in which a genetic defect within the Y chromosome may have led to alterations in hormone production? Or, it could be the X chromosome as well since either one going bad in men doesn't appear to have a compensatory mechanism.
I'm just a little slow to reply here. Terrible Substack backlog, I'm afraid. What I've gleaned from researching endocrine disorders is that the subject is enormously complex, and that the likelihood of an individual like me discovering anything actionable is low. Enzyme and substrate availability is critical, and a genetic defect preventing synthesis of an enzyme, or regulatory gland damage limiting production of a substrate, can have profound and surprising effects (if not lethal).
Best not to live in a world awash in endocrine disruptors, but even more important is to be careful not to ingest them as "medicine".
I'm a copy editor. One of my former bosses once said that conservatives were responsible for this whole "gender" problem because they were too squeamish to use the word "sex" referring to male/female. I tend to agree.
Also, my OB told me my son was a boy at 12 weeks gestation. I said, "Are you sure?" He said, "Well, I sure hope so, because that's a penis." To me, that's why this whole "assigned at birth" is so ridiculous. What are those dumb "gender (should be sex, right?) reveal" parties for, if people are supposed to wait for the doctor to assign it at birth?
Your first comment is interesting. Do you think it may have been due to a conflation of "sex" as a biological, scientific term with sex as an act? I wouldn't deny if this was the case, as even now I sometimes view conservatives as being rather prudish. I never verbalized it properly but one of my biggest hang-ups with The Daily Wire is that they feel too "fellow kids", out-of-touch conservative for my liking if that makes sense.
A lot of this doesn't seem to make sense. It seems, if I were to follow the logic from the 2016 JAMA article, this use of "assigned" may have been done as a correction for trans individuals who incorrectly self-report their gender as their sex. But again, this would be a correction for something that shouldn't have been a problem, because one's sex does not change. This just tells us that social/cultural use of scientific terms has changed their meanings, and now these people are leveraging these terms in a manner that's different than their original use and thus changing how science is conducted or interpreted.
Why is it that differentiating between sex and gender is so obvious to those of us who aren't immersed in trans rhetoric, but so offensive to people who are? As you explain here, there are clear and valid reasons for keeping the two separate and keeping activist driven language changes entirely out of scientific papers.
Outside of surveys, I sort of don't see any reason why anything aside from "sex" should be used as it's apparent that the use of sex refers to biological, molecular differences that need to be taken into account in studies.
I knew one trans man up until the last 10 years or thereabouts. I don't think too many people thought about the issue at all, until they really started pushing the T and Q in media, legislation (pronouns are protected grounds in Canada under our Charter) and in education. When they came for the kids, people woke up. Why would grown men dressed as a caricature of women be paid by government to read to small children? It is happening across Canada. It's part of the Marxism that has crept into our education system. Children are being indoctrinated. They are confused into believing that puberty is something they can cancel and pick up later on without a problem or "change" gender. Most young girls are uncomfortable with puberty. I suspect boys are similarly uncomfortable, although there seems to be more of a culture of celebrating boys to men. The surgeries are barbaric and comprise abuse if done on young people. Young people need protection from themselves and those who would permanently sterilize them and mutilate their healthy bodies.. My other issue is the cancelling of women and mothers to appease Ts and score ESG points. Or grifters who piggy back on the movement for fame and fortune. I won't mention any names...
I think the fact that the profession that gets pushed for these story time hours being "drag" and nothing else is rather telling. I would argue that all of these story hours occurring now are really just a reactionary response, as really a lot of this stuff going on right now seems to be. It's all reactionary politics, and even now my news feed is full of pride-related articles that seem to be written as a reaction to...something. It's almost like each side has to construct a strawman and turn it into a boogeyman for their team to react to.
Maybe one problem we've had as a society has been to present female puberty in the most flowery, unrealistic way that it sort of downplays a lot of the necessary realities of being a female. It appears now the general approach taken is to tell young girls that it sucks to be a woman, and that getting your periods or having to bear children are all horrible feats of "womanhood". Rather ironic given how many trans men are being celebrated for having kids to be honest.
What's it got to do with Marx?
Destruction of the family.
https://simplysociology.com/functions-of-the-family-marxism.html
Seems capitalism has been doing pretty well at destroying families too. The Industrial Revolution pretty much did in the multi-generational household in favor of the nuclear family. These days, one income won't support a family, so day care has to be hired. Etc.
Find it very troubling that this language is seeping into scientific articles. Scientists know the difference between the biological sexes - I just can't accept that they don't know this. Therefore it appears to be some kind of agenda.
You are right that some people equate sex and gender; they are related but different. Nonetheless, scientists know the difference between biological sexes - it's not something assigned.
I ran into this languaging at Kaiser. I'm due for my pap smear and the email addressed to me said "all people with a cervix need to be checked for cervical cancer." I had a couple email exchanges with my nurse practitioner, and I wrote, if you can't recognize me as a woman, and if you don't know the difference between my cervix and a trans woman's inverted penile tissue, then you're no longer competent to give me a pap smear. I will go elsewhere for my health checkup.
As I should have made clear it seems, if we are to follow the logic of the 2016 JAMA article, it seems that this use of the word "assigned" is acting as a correction for trans individuals who may conflate their sex with their gender, and so they write down their gender when a self-survey asks for their sex. But even this argument would be made moot by the fact that sex and gender cannot be interchanged in that manner, so we're essentially adding a correction to something that wouldn't need correcting if the people using these terms actually understood how to use them properly. This is an issue of gender activists using words freely and then changing the language.
I made a comment once on one of Heather Heying's posts questioning if scientists sort of allowed this to happen when we use phrases that already conflate sex and gender. Even growing up we used the phrase "male to female transwoman", so we're already using both sex and gender in a phrase, only here we are using them as if the sex of the individual is being changed. Maybe this should have been something addressed early on, or maybe it was but activists got a hold of the language and made this language the norm. Not sure, but maybe that would be something interesting to investigate. 🤷♂️
Thank you. I didn't think of "sex assigned at birth" in that way. One's sex at birth is not assigned, but feels that way to someone who identifies with the sex that doesn't match their body.
I see what you mean, "transwoman" does equate sex and gender. I think some people "on the right" also equate sex and gender too; if you have a penis - are a man - you have these characteristics.
🤡 squared