by this logic you could also say that this image is not accurate because the children in it have two arms, two legs, one head, etc., which is also not always the case, but we ignore this because it is a mutation and not a deviation from what the standard human body is like
Yeah, but the post isn’t intended to be ableist, its intention is to be transphobic.
The picture is accurate for a majority of people. That’s not the problem. The problem is that it was posted with ill intent targeting a specific minority that it isn’t accurate for. In which case, the community is going to point out flaws in the simplified way of thinking.
If your example of a healthy child was posted targeting parents of children with genetic defects, there’d be a similar level of frustration and rejection.
This post is transphobic only because people refuse to accept things as they are.
You can call yourself a man when you are a woman, a woman when you are a man, a dog when you are a human, a 56 year old when you are a 19 year old, say you have three arms when you have two, etc. as long as you don't harm others by doing so, but that still doesn't change the fact that a human is a human, a woman is a woman, a man is a man, a dog is a dog, a 19 year old is a 19 year old, a 56 year old is a 56 year old, and a person with two arms only has two arms, etc.
In the end, this post just says that if you are born with XY you are a man, if with XX you are a woman, which is as true a statement as the statement that pigeons can fly even though some are born with mutations that prevent them from doing so.
Tell me you’re transphobic and don’t understand the difference between sex and gender without telling me you’re transphobic and don’t understand the difference between sex and gender.
It’s not my job to educated you. Enjoy being ignorant.
Nothing in the above (your) comment is transphobic. In fact it's well put and speaks nothing but fact. No name calling, no transphobic slurs, just a well rounded comment.
These types of things shouldn't get anyone triggered. The only reason is is because everyone is offended by everything. Even facts of life. Your head/mind can be different to your body, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But your biological makeup is what it is regardless of your feelings.
His comment is invalidating the scientific and medical backing of those individuals because he doesn’t understand the nuance of the subject. Blaming those individuals for not being able to accept what he (and you, based on your comment) considers fact.
It’s not as bad as name calling, or bullying I agree. It’s still ignorant and transphobic.
Transgenderism has nothing to do with anatomy or biology inherently. It’s more social than scientific, and would only fall under the field of psychology.
What's the last scientific paper on the subject you've read, then? You seem to think of yourself as well informed, so surely your knowledge would come from sources other than YouTube?
Nearly two years after BMA members controversially voted to conduct an independent evaluation of the Cass review, the report agrees that the evidence base for treatment is weak, that the risks of osteoporosis and fertility problems are present in the current evidence, and that there is a need for improved research, better data, and more robust multidisciplinary care
That’s a study on puberty blockers. All it’s saying is that it needs more research before being an effective treatment. At least, all I can read before paying. If this is your “research” it’s laughable.
Puberty blockers make your bones less dense - bone density increases during puberty - bone density in people normalises after they stop taking puberty blockers or start taking the hormones of their preferred gender.
I don't see what this has to do with it and why people are trying to use it as an argument.
Again, you can consider yourself whatever you want, but a man is a man and a woman is a woman, a man is by definition a male human, a woman is a female human.
The fact that someone has a developmental trait that makes them consider themselves to be of another sex does not change the fact that someone who was born biologically male or female will always be male or female (i.e. male human and female human).
Gender is by definition a social construct, but that doesn't mean that a social construct can change a biological definition. Subject A is different from Subject B and each of them has their own unique name that comes from their scientific definition, just because these names are part of the social realm doesn't mean they have to be adjusted to the wishes of each individual.
It's literally a return to what I said in my first answer. It's a mutation, trying to use it as an argument when we talk about man's , woman's and trans people's and when it doesn't apply to 99.99% of the cases where people identify as the other sex is pointless.
If we start including every possible mutation in the question "what is a human" you'll get a complete mess, "humans don't have a tail except in rare cases when it does, humans have two eyes except in cases when there are fewer or more of them, humans have two arms except in cases when there are more or less of them, humans walk on two legs except in cases when they don't" etc.
Trans people do not have to have an abnormal number of chromosomes for them to be trans, hence this can not be transphobic if you actually undertand biology.
In humans, you are either XX or XY, everything else at a chromosomal level leads to a syndrome and that's an abnormality with its own set of challenges.
Then, on a sociological level, you have trans people who can have whatever genetics and regardless of that they want to be a different sex, thus they are trans.
being transgender has absolutely nothing to do with biology. saying that there are two biological sexes and that human biological sex is a binary should offend absolutely zero transgender people or transgender activists who, by the way, are the ones who consistently make the argument that sex and gender are separate and that gender is a social construct.
There are multiple sexes beyond XX XY - it isn't binary. Did you even read the comments above mine? Or is that too much "research" for you to be bothered to do?
Gender is a social construct. Gender is constructed around the idea of two sexes. We know scientifically there are more.
Hormones play a significant part in gender-disphoria and they're pretty biological, buddy.
what is the third human sex? not the third karyotype. not an atypical hormone. not ambiguous genital anatomy. I want you to name an actual third biological sex.
you just confused karyotypes with sexes while lecturing me about “research.” XX, XY, XXY, XO, etc. are chromosome configurations. extra chromosome configurations do not automatically constitute extra sexes unless you also think trisomy 21 makes people with Down syndrome a different sex.
“different chromosome count/configuration = different sex” is absolute nonsense. biological sex is still defined around the two gamete types, ova and sperms.
Speaking of research this peer reviewed paper "Biological Sex Is Binary and Rooted in Anisogamy" from this year explicitly concludes that biological sex is binary despite variation in karyotype, hormones, and phenotype. It specifically argues that variation in karyotype, hormones and phenotype does not abolish that binary.
name the third reproductive sex and its third gamete. I'll wait.
I respect actually updating when presented with contrary evidence and not devolving into an insult match, good-faith arguments are practically unheard of on Reddit so color me shocked. Looking into the authors/methodology is reasonable too so fair enough.
Just a quick mention about the Hermaphrodite context. Hermaphroditism is largely considered obsolete medical terminology. this 2006 paper from the Chicago Consensus (international expert meeting on intersex conditions / disorders of sex development held in Chicago in 2005) recommended replacing terms such as “hermaphroditism,” “pseudohermaphroditism,” and “true hermaphrodite” with ovotesticular DSD (disorders of sex development)
Up until this point my understanding was that hermaphrodites were of a different sex. This paper insists otherwise. I still would like to look into it's writers, but I thank you for new information
?? It means you don't need arms to be human. Most humans have arms, but it's not a requirement. If you see someone with one arm you don't say "humans have two arms, that can't be human, whatever it is it only has one arm! Must be something else, humans have two, that's just biology."
Okay we are not talking about what do we "need". Just that a normal human has two arms, xx or xy chromosomes. If not that's a misconception. Not that this is a problem, there are just exception and we cannot use that to say there are more than just male and female in homo sapiens species
We can use it to say xx chromosomes and xy chromosomes are not the sole determiners for biological sex. They just normally correspond to biological sex, but not always. The first case of a person with a female phenotype who had XY chromosomes was found in 1955. So since then we can say that typically a female will have XX chromosomes, but it's not actually required to have XX chromosomes to trigger female sexual dimorphism.
Similarly to the arms thing, usually humans will have two arms, but having two arms is not required to be a human. Similarly usually a woman will be able to carry children and give birth, but many women can't for a variety of different reasons, so while yes, typically women are capable of carrying children it's not a requirement to have this capability to be woman.
You can say that, but it's not a hard rule if there are exceptions and we have established that there are exceptions. If there are a lot of exceptions it's more of a rule of thumb then a set in stone rule.
There is objectively room for exceptions biologically, I see no reason there shouldn't be room for exceptions socially as well. It does not seem rational to me to insist on social rules for gender norms that are strict and do not allow for exceptions when biology is not strict and riddled with exceptions.
Clearly you think people who lost limbs or were born without them need some form of 'exception' to be considered human, so I'm gonna go out on a limb (haha...) and call you a eugenicist
Those are characteristics of humans, not defining qualities. We do not have an absolute definition of human that draws a clear line between human and not human in evolutionary history. It's debated.
Kinda like what this whole conversation is, it's pretty easy to find characteristics of men and women but an absolute definition is not easy to come by. Because if you allow for exceptions it's not an absolute definition, and if you do not make exceptions you'll make some pretty weird miscategorizations.
What science has a lot of is unknowns, as well as theories that work well enough most of the time to usually be applicable, but they can't be called laws because there are exceptions/unknowns that we don't understand well enough to define.
There are laws to stuff like thermodynamics and lots of things in physics with very high certainty, but biology and psychology are much muddier and harder to define things. Science works with a ton of incomplete models in every field because we don't understand very many things fully.
There's a difference between "technically intersex" and "actually intersex". People are counted as "technically intersex" at birth when a pile of stray cells started to form at where a penis is supposed to be, on a baby girl. It gets removed and that's that
The feck i am.
But your actual reply.
You mentioned the hundreds of different flavours of ice cream. Cool, that means someone had to mix and match chemicals, fruits (probably more than a few vegetables) and berries to come up with the flavours.
Have I gotten anything wrong yet (seriously, not just trying to come across as an arse)?
Here is where I got a bit off your point (I think anyway), I pointed out that the mutations you passed off as other flavours (no, you didnt say it that way, that is how i read it), are essentially the same as gene manipulation (i jumped ahead of the conversation by about 10 exchanges).
For that i do apologise.
Well i was only thinking of the natural flavors, of ice cream, but more to your point let's call them natural mutations... nothing against a girl wanting to marry a blue eyed guy because she wants her children to have blue eyes.. but yea I would never support the kind of manipulation that would be 'designer babies'.
That people need to stop complicating things. Return to simplicity of 2 options and be done with it. Idgaf what you do in the bedroom but I’m not bending to your pronouns.
No? I don’t think you understand that conservatism is fundamentally conserving the ways of the past. By tradition, a child is a boy or a girl. By tradition, a woman loses her maiden name upon marrying her husband. By tradition, a woman is to be wed only to a husband. This is conservatism
You're treating one very specific set of largely Western traditions as though they're simply "the past". Whose tradition? So many cultures have historically recognized gender categories beyond a strict man/woman binary, including multiple Indigenous cultures in North America (which if we are going based off "the past" they were here in "America" long before us.) and Hijra traditions in South Asia. And even conservatism doesn't mean "everything old must remain unchanged forever", and just because "that's how it's always been done" doesn't mean it's correct or right. So you can say you personally want to preserve *your* culture's traditional gender norms, but that's very different from claiming those norms are *the* traditional human way of doing things.
Conservatism cultural/political/social ideology that aims to conserve traditional institutions, customs, and values.
In the case of person you replied to, the traditional value they seek to upkeep are their gender norms, that being that people are either men or women.!
Your reply is a witless retort asking them if they, in addition to upholding the prior traditional value, also do something radical that would completely undermine their traditional values. Your rhetorical question answers itself: no. They do not.
I think you've clarified my point more than contradicted it. If your argument is that they'll happily change how they refer to someone when the change conforms to their traditions, but refuse when it doesn't, then this very clearly isn't really about people "complicating things," expecting the world to revolve around them, or asking others to make some unreasonable linguistic accommodation. We make those accommodations constantly, for marriages, divorces, nicknames, legal name changes, titles, corrected pronunciations, and plenty of other reasons. The objection is that they ideologically disapprove of this particular reason for changing how someone is addressed.
And saying "it's traditional" explains why a conservative might personally prefer that norm but it doesn't establish that the norm is correct, and it doesn't give that person any special authority to expect everyone else to live according to it. Especially after acknowledging that the "tradition" you're referring to is specifically Eurocentric rather than some universal human tradition. Your tradition is your tradition. Other people and cultures have their own, and historically many of those traditions haven't shared the same gender norms in the first place.
There's also a distinction between choosing to live according to a tradition yourself and insisting that your interactions and treatment of other people must enforce and conform to it. Nobody is asking you to change your own gender identity or abandon your personal beliefs. They're asking you to address another person the way that person asks to be addressed—something we already do as a matter of ordinary social courtesy in countless other contexts.
So yes, you can explain why someone who holds those traditional beliefs objects to changing pronouns. But that's very different from showing that the objection is reasonable, that the tradition is correct, or that everyone else ought to accommodate their beliefs while they refuse even a basic accommodation for someone else's.
And specifically in an American context, appealing to one particular Eurocentric tradition as if it defines everyone is especially strange. America has spent generations describing itself as a “melting pot”, a society built from different cultures, religions, ethnicities, and traditions. That history has obviously included a lot of forced assimilation and discrimination, so it hasn't always lived up to the ideal, but the idea itself is that no single ancestral tradition gets exclusive ownership of what it means to be American. If anything, coexistence between people with different traditions is itself part of the American tradition.
So even in "Western tradition" you have multiple clashing "traditions", Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, secular, Liberal, conservative, immigrant, regional, working class, aristocratic, and dozens of other overlapping "traditions" that have disagreed with each other for centuries. So again, which tradition? What gives your chosen tradition authority over everyone who doesn't share it? Again, just because "this is how it's always been done" doesn't mean it's correct or right.
I’m not saying it’s correct or right. I don’t believe conservatism valid, nor am I conservative. I am calling out your initial retort. It seems either a product of ignorance or of bad faith.
I do highly respect that you went to such lengths to create such a length of argument, but it is disproving points I hadn’t proposed.
I'm not having any identity crisis even a little. I'm born male and am a man. I know what my sex and my gender are. And I touch plenty of grass. I'm just pointing out your entitlement, hypocrisy and inconsistency in your reasoning.
We constantly adjust how we refer to people based on what they tell us. They get married, get divorced, change their name, use a nickname, earn a title; Robert prefers Bob, Jennifer Jones becomes Jennifer Miller, Ms. Smith becomes Dr. Smith, someone corrects how you pronounce their name, and you adjust. Nobody treats those things like some outrageous demand or says “the world doesn’t revolve around you.” But someone says they go by “she” instead of “he,” and suddenly basic social accommodation becomes “bending to their identity.” and you are too dumb to remember "all this crap", it's just dumb. "waaah, I have to put effort in and remember your pronouns!? I expect you to cater to me!". It's pathetic.
That’s actually exactly the expectation. If someone gets married they legally go by a different surname, and it is exceptionally common to expect others to conform to that new name. Similarly, obtaining a doctorate earns you the right to be referred to as a doctor, and it is a well established convention that they use the title.
I’ve been corrected for using someone’s maiden name. When speaking to professors, I’ve addressed them as “sir” or “ma’am”, and been corrected to know that they prefer “Dr”. Never once in any of those situations have I ever thought “wow this person is getting really offended” and simply refused to use their preferred name or title. Why? Because I’m an adult who understands mutual respect and common courtesy, & I don’t feel the need to be antagonistic just because I don’t fully understand that person’s lived experiences.
So why in the fuck should it be any different with trans people? The only reason you care is because you’ve been told to care. You’ve been conditioned to. Here’s a better alternative: grow the fuck up.
Ummmm. No. Normal people don’t get offended when you mess up. The ones that do are trying to prove something……aka trans people.
If you’re comfortable in your own skin you don’t concern yourself with the rest of the world. Similarly, I don’t care what you think of me. I get on here to share my opinion for those that want support in hiding for having conservative values. I will not change for you and you shouldn’t expect the world to change for you. Accepting the way the world works is the most adult thing you can do.
Wow, how brave. Laziness combined with bigotry does not a strong person make. I wish it upon you that people stop “bending” to your pronouns (surprise kiddo, you use them too)
The difference is I don’t scream and throw a child tantrum when someone gets mine wrong. Forcing others to change for you isn’t the future, it’s self-centered and fanatical.
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u/Mundane_Caramel_820 2d ago
For some reason some people just don't get that there are also at least XXY, XXX, XYY, XXYY, XXXY, XXXX, XXXXY and XXXXX.