ScienceVet is a Ph.D in Biochemistry and has published in the fields of endocrinology and sexual differentiation. His Ph.D. is in Biomedical Sciences - Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmocology.
Transcript of this thread for easier reading:
So. Hi new people! Apparently, we’re gonna talk about sex. Like physical sex! Because… there’s some confusion.
First, sex defined: We’re talking physical sex here, not gender. Body parts, hormones, and genetics (and more).
BLUF: BIOLOGICAL sex is a spectrum.
Ok, everyone’s super familiar with the XX/XY dichotomy, right? Yeah, what we all learned in like… 4th grade? And that’s great, it gives you a starting point. But it’s… well it’s only the very starting point.
The IDEA is, XX is girl, XY is boy, right? Welllll… that’s not totally right. There are XY people, who have ovaries! And give birth! AH! And XX people who have male bodies and functional sperm! Double AH!
These are usually written off as “abnormalities” and indeed, some cases have medical issues. But many don’t (like the XY woman giving birth). And this is really only the very very tip of the iceberg of “wait, that doesn’t fit into our M or F box unless we make it bigger.“ There’s a WHOLE HOST of things that can cause all sorts of “weird” things to happen, ranging from genetic (XXY, XYY, Y, X, XX with translocation, XY with deletion) to hormonal (Androgen Insensitivity, Estradiol failure), and disruptors like dioxins.
So, you’re a scientist, and you want to research stuff, right? Which means you have to categorize stuff. Without categories, data is hard! So you take allll these people, including the “weird” ones and you plot them on a graph. Logical!
You use all the differences there are, different genetics, different responses to hormones, different effectiveness in signalling pathways, different sizes in anteroventral periventricular nucleus (AVPV) (yeah that’s a thing) and give everything numbers, add them up.
You get what’s called a bimodal distribution (mostly, we’ll get to that later) which looks like this. Those two big peaks are what we call “male” and “female” (even conveniently colored pink for boys and blue for girls - we are using victorian gender colors right?)
[Image Description: A graph showing a smooth line that goes up from approximately zero, forms two “humps,” and then returns to zero. The area under the curve is colored in with a left-to-right gradient that goes from light blue to light pink.]
Now, when you’re trying to look at data, we often group stuff. When we do that with a plot like this, it’s called a “histogram.” Basically we’re breaking down a curved line into discrete “bins.” Like this (image stolen from the web).
[Image Description: A bar graph showing the distribution of test scores. Each bar represents the number of students who got a score between 0 and 10 percent, 11 and 20 percent, etc. The data is approximately bimodal, like the graph of sex characteristics, and is divided between students who didn’t study and students who did study.]
Traditionally, we’ve used REALLY BIG bins for this when talking about sex. Basically you either group everything vaguely near a peak into the peak, or you just pretend there’s nothing else but the biggest peaks. This makes it super easy, because 2 is simple to do data with.
However, as we’ve gotten to know more and more about signaling and brains and hormones and started to pay more attention to the outliers where standard stuff just didn’t seem to work, we discovered that this isn’t a great model to use.
Now I’m not talking feelings here. I’m talking about data. As you start to look at anything interesting, like say the effects of 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin on animals, you start to realize that a 2 bin model doesn’t predict your results well.
At first you say, “Well it was just weird.” So you redo it, and it still doesn’t work. So you look at your model and you say, “Well ok, what if the model’s wrong?”
But the model sort of… almost predicts a lot of things, and it worked for years, so…
Some enterprising soul says, “Hey, remember that histogram where we said we’ll just model using the peaks?” And everyone goes, “Uh, yeah?” And they say, “What if we… USED that data?” And everyone groans, because complicated data is hard.
But someone sits down and does the work, and lo, wow the model starts to work again. Where TCDD was “randomly” turning some boys into girls but then some girls into boys, now you can see there’s a subgroup of what you’d called “female” that responds like the “male.”
What’s important here is that you haven’t MISLABELED males as females. These are functional “females” who can do all the usual “female” things like gestate babies. But they respond to this one endocrine disruptor in a “male” way.
So you add another two categories, call them “Male2” and “Female2” and go on, happy that your model works! You’ve got 4 sexes now, but you don’t really have to tell anyone that, right?
Exceeeept then you remember you’ve got those XY people that gestate babies. So you add “Intersex1” And then the XX people with penes… and ovaries? Ok, “Intersex2” because all these groups respond differently with signalling and brains when you get into the weeds.
And the more you look, the more we LEARN, the more we’re able to separate out those fine differences. Depending on what we’re doing, we may not care. If a doc is giving you aspirin, it probably isn’t a big deal. But if they’re using a steroid on you? Or treating dioxin poisoning? THAT SHIT COULD BE IMPORTANT. It’s like saying, “the light’s off so the power must not be flowing.” It really matters if the light’s off because the bulb blew.
If we go back to that histogram plot, we can keep breaking down your biological sex into smaller and smaller differences in brain areas, hormone levels, signalling differences, genetic variances. There’s nothing stopping us from binning EVERY INDIVIDUAL into their own bin.
Technically, this wouldn’t be “infinite sexes” but 7.4 billion sexes is functionally close for our brains. Now, our medicine isn’t advanced enough for THAT level of detail to make any difference. BUT IT MIGHT BE in the future. Individualized medicine!
The thing to remember is that this isn’t “new.” We’re not ‘inventing sexes’ here. Sex has ALWAYS been this curve. We were just using REALLY BIG bins. And now we’re realizing that that’s not representative of biology, it’s inhibiting understanding of medicine and biology
In case anyone’s curious, this isn’t ideology. This is because I had to figure out why my data didn’t match the prediction. Those rats I mentioned? Yeah, my lab. And lab rats are a really pure genetic monoculture, and they STILL don’t fit the two peak model well.
So, since it’s come up, an addendum!
Yes, we looked at other things we could do to make our data fit the existing model, that’s how science works! The ONLY way the data fit was if we let “sex” be more than just those two narrow peaks.
Models’ purpose in science is to predict. If they don’t predict correctly, first we check if we’ve measured the data correctly, and repeat the experiment a couple more times. If it still doesn’t fit, we have to look at the model.
Intersex! Because I didn’t specifically mention this above.
“Intersex” is a term used to collectively speak of the “middle ground” of biology where people can’t easily be binned into those two big “male” and “female” peaks. It can include a large range of biology.
It is worth noting that I never talk about transgender in this thread. Intersex is not the same as transgender. You can be one without the other, or be both.
For people who think this is just “outliers”:
Current estimates are that the intersex population is at least 2%. We know that’s low because there are a lot of “invisibly intersex” people. That means AT LEAST 150 million people in the world.
I apologize for the failure to use the word “intersex” higher up in the discussion. Many people in the middle ground (including the XY person who can carry a child, for example) use this term. I cannot go back and edit the thread, and apologize for my overly clinical description.
Part of the purpose of the thread, which may have failed, was to point out that “intersex” is not a condition, it is not a disease. It’s natural with a bimodal distribution. Science not only supports this, it suggests that ignoring intersex people makes your conclusions wrong.
If you’d like additional reading on this topic, the author’s original thread contains links to resources if you scroll to the bottom. [link]
The Science Vet Explains Biological Sex and Gender
Since we don’t have many terms, I decided to gather all the ones I had the energy for and compile them. Click the links to read more (pride flags too) and feel free to add on!
General Terms
Intersex(Adj.) - A term to describe those who were born with a sex variation that led to having sex characteristics that aren’t traditionally male or female. Abbreviation is IS. Noun form is Intersexuality. Read more here.
Dyadic (Adj.) - A term meaning “of two” utilized by intersex people to describe people who are not IS. Noun form is Dyad(s). Other terms are perisex (likely not coined by IS people), endosex, and juxtasex (both coined by IS people). There is no consensus on what to call non-intersex people, but I prefer dyadic (although some believe it reinforces the sex binary).
Variation - A term used to refer to the cause of someone’s intersexuality. It is to be used instead of condition/disorder/etc. There are 3 main types of IS variations - Chromosomal, Hormonal, and Gonadal. There are some variations listed on LGBTA Wikia, the main source for this masterpost.
DSD - An abbreviation meaning either “difference of sexual development” or “disorder of sexual development.” The latter should not be used, and Variation is to be used overDSD. (Link contains list of Variations)
Intersexism / Inter(sex)phobia - The discrimination, prejudice, dislike, and hatred of and towards IS people.
Dyadism - [TW] The belief that beingDyadicis normal, correct, the default, etc., and that IS people are unnatural, wrong, diseased/deformed, insignificant, etc. Can also be called Perisexism, Endosexism, or Juxtasexism.
Assignment Related [TW]
Sex Assignment- Different from gender assignment, sex assignment is the process by which a person’s “biological sex” is determined. Everyone is assigned a sex and gender at birth, and for intersex people, sex assignment can be complicated and traumatic (see; IGMand Forced/Coerced HRT).
AXAB - Assigned “X” At Birth. For IS people who did not have a sex assigned to them at birth. A similar term isUAB.
AIAB - Assigned Intersex At Birth. For IS people whose intersexuality was recognized at birth. May be used in place of/alongside “AXAB.”
IAFAB / IAMAB - “Intersex Assigned Female At Birth” and “Intersex Assigned Male At Birth.”
CAFAB / CAMAB - “Coercively Assigned Female At Birth” and “Coercively Assigned Male At Birth.” These terms are not intersex exclusive, [TW] but in the IS community are sometimes used to describe people who underwent IGMor other medical methods of assignment.
IGM - [TW] Infant/Intersex Genital Mutilation. Used by IS people in reference to the surgical procedures used to alter intersex people’s genitalia/remove internal organs in order to assign or reassign our sex and/or gender.
Forced/Coerced HRT - [TW] Forced/Coerced “Hormone Replacement Treatment” is an experience that probably deserves its own name independent of HRT, however is called this due to lack of terminology. It refers to the hormones given w/o proper consent to IS people in order to make us appear dyadic. It also may be given as a result of IGM impairing or destroying organs responsible for the production of certain hormones.
Gender Identity
Intergender - A gender that is in some form linked to being intersex. Also known asIntegender orMera(Hydragea/Idra).
Inter-Aligned - A gender alignment for nonbinary IS people whose gender is aligned with being IS instead of or alongside being masc-aligned or fem-aligned.
Duogender - A gender that is a combination of male and female as a result one’s intersexuality. It can be considered a specific inte®gender. A similar term is Trans-Intersexual.
Ipsogender- A gender modality for IS people who identify as the gender they were assigned, and may or may not identify with being cisgender due to their experiences with intersexuality, dydaism, and/or cissexism. Coined by an IS sociologist! A similar term is Advenagender.
Ultergender- A gender modality for IS people who do not identify as the gender they were assigned, and due to their intersexuality may or may not identify with being transgender.
XTF - A term for IS people who are transitioning femininely, regardless of whether they’re cis, trans, etc. Also can be used by transfeminine or exparfem IS people opposed to MTF.
XTM - A term for IS people who are transitioning masculinely, regardless of whether they’re cis, trans, etc. Also can be used by transmasculine or exparmasc IS people opposed to FTM.
Culturally Exclusive Terms
Ay’lonit - A term from Jewish culture for AFAB individuals “who [have] not shown signs of typical female puberty” - “presumed infertile” and have masculine sex characteristics (Source). Historically a term to refer to intersex people, but in modern times is used by both trans and intersex Jews.
Saris- A term from Jewish culture for AMAB individuals “who has not shown signs of typical sexual maturity; a eunuch.” There are two types: Saris Chama and Saris Adam. (Source). Historically a term to refer to intersex people, but in modern times is used by both trans and intersex Jews.
Androgynos- A term from Jewish culture for a person possessing both male and female sex characteristics. (Source). Historically a term to refer to intersex people, but in modern times is used by both trans and intersex Jews.
Tumtum- A term from Jewish culture for “a person of indeterminate gender; one whose genitals are obscured or not clearly male or female.” (Source). Historically a term to refer to intersex people, but in modern times is used by both trans and intersex Jews.
Kathoey- A term used by people in Thailand who in English may be described as transfeminine, effeminate gay men, or intersex.
Please correct anything on here if needed! Especially the culturally exclusive terms (although please do so with appropriate sources).
Also, don’t just like, reblog too! I didnt know about a few of these terms and it’s so important for us to gather all the words about ourselevs we can.
I found this article very helpful and will keep it for future reference. Thank you Intersexfairy!
One comment: The Kathoey of Thailand see themselves as women, and should be referred to as women or transgender women.
This was meant to be posted on @transhealthed – a new side-blog dedicated to more information/statistics/resources. if you like what you see here, feel free to visit there. I will reblog posts i make from there.
The best way of oppressing a marginalized group is not with guns and prisons, but with prejudices and denial. Marleen is a woman with XY chromosomes. She was told that people like her does not exist.
This type of erasure applies to gay and lesbian individuals, to transgender people, as well as intersex individuals (i.e people born with variations in sex characteristics, as in chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones or genitals.)
The story we are all told is a very simple one: There are men. There are women. Women love men and men love women. If you are assigned male you have to live as a man. If you are assigned female you have to live as a woman. Any variations are forbidden, no to be talked about, because they may weaken the belief in the holy binaries of sexual orientation and gender identity.
But the fact is that nature and culture are full of diversity, both as regards sex, gender and sexuality.
Vice tells the story about the Dutch dancer and playwright Marleen Hendrickx. Marleen has androgen insensitivity syndrome. She was born with XY chromosomes, but her insensitivity to male hormones made her grow into a woman.
However, according to interphobes and transphobes having one X and one Y chromosome makes you a man. So she cannot exist.
Marleen says:
When I was 14, I learned about chromosomes in biology. I asked my teacher if it was possible for someone to be born with XY chromosomes, essentially being a boy, but to also be insensitive to male hormones, essentially becoming a girl – basically, my condition. “No, that’s impossible,” he replied. In a way, he said that I don’t exist. [Her graduation performance] XY WE represents our existence.
I want people to realise there’s more than just “man” and “woman”. People often say that nature consists of the male, the female and nothing else. Being intersex is a prime example that this is not true. Sometimes people ask, “How many more letters do we need in ‘LGBTQI+’?” But no one extra is joining, we’ve always been here. Only, now, more people are speaking out…
It was nice being able to talk to my peers in the support group when I was 12, and to express my feelings. Apart from them, I never really shared much with anyone, only one friend. At 22, she hinted that maybe I should talk to a professional, because I had started seeing myself as an alien.
If a guy said he liked me, I thought it was impossible – because he didn’t know me. I couldn’t get into relationships – I was afraid to – while all my friends had boyfriends. My psychologist told me that those guys did know me, just not that part of me. I had to learn that being intersex was a part of me, but not everything.
Gradually, I started telling my friends. I cried every time, but everyone reacted normally. One of them said, “Who cares what your chromosomes look like? You are, and always will be, Marleen.”
The photographer Zanele Muholi (top photo) has been documenting the lives of Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people in townships in South Africa for two decades now.
If you are in London, there is a Muholi exhibition at the Tate Modern, where you can see more of their art.
“It’s this togetherness, this unity and humanity that is attached to this exhibition that makes me happy,” they told Time.
“These things mattered to me before we even spoke about it. But, at this particular period, we’re talking of radical change that is happening around the world, when people are talking about inclusion in all true senses.”
Boston teenager raised as a boy gets pregnant
Transphobes often dismiss both trans and intersex people by reducing their gender identity to their biological sex, most often referring to their genitalia.
The Boston teenager Mikey Chanel was born with male genitalia, and she was raised as a boy by her family. She had never really felt like a boy, though, but it wasn’t until she reached puberty that the truth came out.
A medical check up revealed she had a cervix, ovaries, uterus, fallopian tubes and that she could get pregnant if she wanted to.
She was diagnosed with Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome (PMDS), which is a rare condition where a person has external male genitalia, but female reproductive organs internally.
Mikey is now four months pregnant and she said that she cannot wait to be a parent. She also revealed that after being prescribed oestrogen to help with her pregnancy, she feels more like a woman and hopes to continue her transition further after her baby is born.
Mikey is what we call an intersex person, but it is easy to see the relevance to the transgender debate. Gender identity cannot be reduced to genitalia.
She explains how the system tried to conceal the true nature of her being intersex and her androgen insensitivity syndrome, instilling a sense of shame in the process:
My parents had broken the news to me at age 11 that I would never have a monthly period, that I would not be able to have biological children, and that I would have to take hormonal supplements to go through puberty (and would need to continue to take them for the rest of my life). However, the reason why was never fully explained. There was some vague explanation about cancerous ovaries that had to be removed when I was a baby, but it didn’t fully add up. My parents also told me, as the doctors had told them, that I “didn’t have to tell anyone” about any of this.
She formed her social identity around a particular image—that of a feminine, straight, cisgender girl, suppressing anything associated with being intersex. This also caused her to deny her attraction to women.
There is no real reason for shame here, as Shana points out:
As it turns out, there are many ways in which human beings can biologically deviate from these equations, resulting in a myriad of possible differences in genitalia, hormones, internal anatomy, and/or chromosomes. These differences do not usually pose a medical threat to intersex people; rather, it is the perceived threat to society intersex bodies pose—namely, to the rigid gender binary that defines so much about how we treat individuals—that has caused the Western medical establishment to historically view our bodies as a problem to be fixed, as a reality to be erased, rather than as a set of natural variations as common (by some calculations) as having red hair.
Meeting other intersex people helped her immensely. She mentions the role of InterACT, an intersex advocacy organization that is increasing intersex awareness:
We must engage in sustained activism to #EndIntersexSurgery, and pass laws like New York City Council Bill 1748-2019 that seek to increase public awareness and outreach around these issues. We must change the medical system that results in intersex people self-reporting disproportionately worse health outcomes than the general population. We must also stand with our transgender siblings and fight against countless laws that target them, and also implicate intersex people like myself, including so-called “bathroom bills” that attempt to police restrooms on the basis of “biological sex,” as well as fight against a system that perpetuates violence against trans women in particular at alarming rates.
Caster Semenya lost her latest appeal to be allowed to defend her Olympic 800m title without taking testosterone-suppressing measures, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland announced Tuesday.
No, she is not transgender. She is a cis woman, but the desperate attempts at finding a definition of “woman” that excludes trans women has led to this.
The CAS' decision comes in a challenge to the International Association of Athletics Federations’ regulations for athletes with differences of sex development brought by Semenya, the Black South African runner who produces more testosterone naturally than has been deemed typical of cisgender women.
The regulations that Semenya challenged would require her to artificially suppress her hormone levels in order to continue to compete in women’s events. In the executive summary of the still-confidential full decision, the court explained that the “regulations are discriminatory but that … such discrimination is a necessary.” …
In other words, the CAS has decided that differential treatment for Black women, trans women and intersex women is required for athletic competitions to be “fair” to other women — at least, it is under a system in which white people wield tremendous power over the bodies and autonomy of those who are perceived to be a threat.
This decision comes during the current political moment of global attack against individuals who do not fit stereotypes of binary sexual difference, and after a long history of white authorities policing the bodies of women of color, particularly those Black and Indigenous women from the global south.
Now the Swiss court has accepted these misogynistic, racist, intersexphobic and transphobic policies and practices.
“I am very disappointed by this ruling, but refuse to let World Athletics drug me or stop me from being who I am,” Semenya said in a press release.
“Excluding female athletes or endangering our health solely because of our natural abilities puts World Athletics on the wrong side of history. I will continue to fight for the human rights of female athletes, both on the track and off the track, until we can all run free the way we were born. I know what is right and will do all I can to protect basic human rights, for young girls everywhere.”
(In case you do not know: Tasmania is an island state in Australia).
The Tasmania Law Reform Institute concludes that the changes made to Tasmania’s gender recognition laws last year have made trans lives easier without creating any unintended consequences for cisgender people.
In 2019 the Tasmanian government passed new laws which made gender optional on birth certificates and allowed trans people to legally identify as their correct gender without having had gender confirmation surgery.
The Law Reform Institute’s report also recommends that Tasmania introduce new laws that will make it easier for intersex people to claim compensation for surgical procedures that were conducted without their consent.
