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[+] 10 points 5 months ago (40 children)
  • [–] 21 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (29 children)

    That isn't even a reliable indicator, and if it comes up, it is a discussion between the patient and the doctor and no one else. We have the language to be specific. Besides, doctors don't even know what to do with trans people regardless of gender or surgeries because all medical research on the topic has been blocked, erased, or burned by knuckledraggers

    (MTF) When I go to doctors I have to explain to them that if they run my bloodwork as Male, every single damn metric on it is going to be flashing bright red. When it's run as Female, I can get actual data out of it. Also guess who you go to if you have titty problems.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (29 children)
  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    the term "biological sex" doesnt make much sense tho

    what are all of those complex medical treatments trans people can get, if not biology? far more advanced and interesting biology at that

    and "biological sex" isnt a binary either, 1 in 40 people are intersex, mostly with almost no effect, but not in the binary either

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (11 children)

    Sure it does, it's the sex you have biologically. The second thing you're talking about is called gender-affirming care and is distinct from biological sex. Both "sex" and "gender" are societal concepts, but sex is descriptive whereas gender is prescriptive. You can read that to mean sex is scientifically determinable, whereas gender is meaninglessly abstract. Sex says, "assuming all your bits work, here's how you would contribute to the reproductive process." Gender says, "regardless of what bits you were born with but dependent on what bits people think you were born with, here's how society will treat you and expect you to behave." "Biological gender" doesn't exist, just like "sociological sex" doesn't exist. So I guess in that sense, "biological sex" doesn't make sense, because there's no other kind.

    Edit: got banned from an entire separate community (an unthemed meme community no less lol) for this discussion because they thought I was transphobic 🤣🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️ Sorry for the misunderstanding, I'll just stay out of it next time 👍🤣

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (10 children)

    Biology is a term used to describe how your body functions. Hormones changing your body is biology, whether they're natural or otherwise. "Biological sex" is a dog whistle. It is not a term used by people who are being honest. It's just sex, or sex assigned at birth. "Biological sex" is a term for bigots to sound like they have science on their side.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Sure it does, it's the sex you have biologically.

    Exactly what I said, there's no other kind

    Biology is how the body is functioning and growing. This is defined by what hormones are in the body, as hormones tell cells how to function. In this way, biological sex is the sex defined by what hormones are in your body. Sex assigned at birth does not necessarily match this.

    Biological sex is not a term that has any meaning. It is a term invented to lend the air of scientific authority to a certain group of people making a bad faith argument. Sex is the term that is more commonly used, or sex assigned at birth to be more specific (which implies it changes and is not just gender).

    Iff (if and only if) we're using the words as their definitions imply, biological sex = what hormones are in your body. Hormones define how your body functions, meaning their biological activity. Then it follows that hormone replacement therapy changes biological sex. It isn't the bullshit static thing the people typically using the word to mean, as a replacement for "sex assigned at birth". That term they won't use because it lends credence to the idea it can change, rather than something that makes them sound as if their opinion is based in science.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (6 children)

    To be clear though, hormones don't define how your body functions, that'd be DNA. You wouldn't have hormones or the ability to process them into meaningful signals without DNA. Ultimately, "biological sex" is determined by the sex chromosomes, which never change. I'm not arguing whether or not right-wing chuds co-opted the term (I've no clue, I don't listen to right wing chuds), but it does have an objective, scientific, apolitical, societally functional meaning.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    To be clear though, hormones don't define how your body functions, that'd be DNA.

    Chicken or egg. Hormones don't work without DNA, but also your cells don't function without hormones. The DNA has the instructions, but the hormones tell it what instruction to follow. Your cells don't know to create a leg where your leg is until hormones tell them that they're supposed to be leg cells. The DNA is the same, but the hormones tell them what to do.

    You wouldn't have hormones or the ability to process them into meaningful signals without DNA.

    Sort of true, but we can now add/change hormones that aren't created in our bodies by design. We also get hormones through our diet too. DNA does have instructions that allow it to produce hormones when the right conditions are met, but that's not the only way to get them, nor does that define sex as we all produce both sex hormones in different quantities.

    but it does have an objective, scientific, apolitical, societally functional meaning.

    That's the funny thing; does it? We all think it does, until you try to define it. Give it a shot. If it's XX/XY, intersex people break it. If it's reproduction, sterile people break it. If it's what gonads you posses, people who have had hysterectomies break it.

    I've never actually heard a definition that doesn't break down somewhere. It can still be useful, but it's a spectrum. If you define it as a spectrum then it's actually pretty simple, and it's based on how their body is currently functioning.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    Intersex people have sex chromosomes, idk what you mean that they "break" anything. We even already have a term for them, it's "intersex". If we need to add terms when distinctt genetic morphologies are established, we can! That's the beauty of science, we're always learning more.

    Everything in your body comes from DNA first. The first bits of you that ever existed were chromosomes, everything else comes as a result of how your dad's DNA combined with your mom's DNA to make your DNA. You can add all the outside hormones to your body that you want, without DNA telling your body how to respond to them, all you'd have is dead meat filled with chemicals.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    Intersex people have sex chromosomes

    Yes, and they don't always match what you'd expect. There are XX "men" and XY "women".

    Everything in your body comes from DNA first. The first bits of you that ever existed were chromosomes, everything else comes as a result of how your dad's DNA combined with your mom's DNA to make your DNA. You can add all the outside hormones to your body that you want, without DNA telling your body how to respond to them, all you'd have is dead meat filled with chemicals.

    Again, chicken or egg. They don't exist in a vacuum. There are hormones in their environment when the egg is fertilized that tell the DNA how to express itself. Without hormones all you'd have is dead meat. Your body can not function or form without hormones. DNA is a set of rules, and hormones tell it which rules to follow. They work together. Neither is more important than the other. DNA with "female" hormones develop a female body, no matter what DNA they have, and vice versa. The DNA usually (but not always) is an indicator of what hormones they'll produce, but the expression is also dictated by hormones.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Well we hit the reply limit so I won't be able to respond to the proper comments and quoting is far too tedious. As such, you'll just have to use context clues to figure out which parts of your most recent comment I'm referring to.

    Obviously there's no first chicken but they all came out of eggs. And I was only half-trolling about the plant DNA, I'm also pointing out the importance of DNA. You said it didn't matter what the DNA was, I pointed out the flaw in that reasoning. It has to be the right DNA, estradiol is estradiol no matter where it occurs, it can't turn anything female.

    And sorry if you feel you've wasted time, personally that's the only reason I'm on this platform. 🤷‍♂️

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Personally, I have no expectations. Like I said, if we need more accurate language, all else we need is the data for it to describe.

    The chicken-egg thing is easy though, the egg came first. All chickens came out of eggs, including the first one. Two non-chickens combined their DNA to make a chicken, which came out of an egg.

    Where did the hormones that control DNA expression come from? DNA. DNA is more than 3 billion years older than hormones, DNA can replicate itself without hormones. Hormones can't combine themselves to make new hormones, and they certainly can't turn themselves into DNA.

    DNA with female hormones develop a female body no matter what DNA they have

    Not true. Add human estrogen to sex-undetermined plant DNA, you certainly won't make a female human and you have no guarantees what sex the plant will be. Add it to asexual organisms, they're not going to suddenly develop hitherto non-existent sex morphologies. DNA is king, it's straight-up GOATed. The only way to break it down further is to start categorizing people by their A-T to G-C ratio, and I don't think that's an efficient use of time, technology, or resources.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    The chicken-egg thing is easy though, the egg came first. All chickens came out of eggs, including the first one. Two non-chickens combined their DNA to make a chicken, which came out of an egg.

    I don't know if you're trolling or not. There is no sudden point where chicken evolution became a chicken. They just get more and more chicken like traits. It's a spectrum of evolution, which is still ongoing.

    Where did the hormones that control DNA expression come from? DNA.

    No? It was in the environment first. Then evolution selected DNA that responded to the environment in ways that helped it reproduce. This then evolved into cells that produce their own hormones that act on DNA in existing pathways. Without DNA already being effected by hormones in the environment there likely wouldn't have been evolutionary pressure to manufacture them.

    Not true. Add human estrogen to sex-undetermined plant DNA...

    You're obviously trolling. Clearly I'm talking about humans. Wtf. Cut out your bad faith shit. You're wasting both of our time.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (5 children)

    Yes, and the language for that is "biological sex." If you go to the doctor, they will ask you for your biological sex.

    "Biological sex" is poor language because it doesn't actually provide any useful information. It says nothing about my hormone levels, it says nothing about my fat distribution, it says nothing about my (in)ability to have kids, it says nothing about my dose requirements, it says nothing about my genitals, it says nothing about my medical history, it says nothing about my BMI, it masks certain cancer risks, it has never actually achieved anything useful at the doctor's office. All it does is placate transphobes and cause bureaucratic headaches.

    If a medical form needs to know if I can get pregnant, the correct language is "are you able to get pregnant". It's not transphobic to ask that in a medical context, if anything it's expected. It is transphobic to assume a trans person can't answer that truthfully. Besides, the question also covers cis women who can't get pregnant and trans men who can.

    Doctors don't immediately get amnesia when something gets defunded ... But claiming that doctors suddenly don't know what to do is a hyperbole that misses the actual issue.

    Yes, they literally do seemingly get amnesia. One of the main complaints we have about doctors is that they dismiss every concern by blaming it on us being trans. I've heard it described as "trans broken leg syndrome". It's a similar issue to what cis women face, almost like it's a systematic issue that affects anyone who isn't a cis man.

    That should all be taken into account, of course, but pretending that "biological sex" is useless in medical contexts is an ignorant take.

    This is contradictory. Trans people already face discrimination and confusion from doctors on the norm. Eg: I've even had issues with my ophthalmologist, as if being trans has any effect whatsoever on my eyes. A single binary "biological sex" marker erases all the nuance involved and strips us of the language needed to properly convey it.

    And besides, if "biological sex" is such a bogus concept, then what do we even contrast "gender" with in the first place?

    Individual physical characteristics. Call it "Sex" and leave it open ended for all I care. It's the enforcement of a strict binary, removal of agency, and purposeful ignorance of modern science that I take issue with - all while hiding under the term "biological". It is for those reasons that it is often used as a dogwhistle.


    Finally, your persistent sealioning only contributes to the problem that no one ever fucking listens to trans people. We are a tiny and very vulnerable minority who are constantly being drowned out in a sea of cis voices that think they know the trans experience better than us (eg: when was the last time you saw NYT quote a trans person?) You have easily typed out more than any trans person in the conversation but have seemingly learned absolutely nothing from it.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    "can you get pregnant,” then that leaves out important information, such as “I have ovaries and should be screened for ovarian cancer.”

    They know you have ovaries if you can get pregnant. From an outside perspective it definitely looks like you're just being argumentative rather than discussing it from a position of knowledge.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    You are sealioning. You don't speak to your doctor in order to use the loos. In this context, "biological sex" is a transphobic dog whistle.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    You don’t speak to your doctor in order to use the loos. In this context, “biological sex” is a transphobic dog whistle.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 months ago* (5 children)
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  • [+] -1 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    I didn’t invent anything.

    Really?

    "it’s a totally useless term that can only be used as a dogwhistle."

    This you?

    If you can't see the strawmanning here, you're one or more of unselfaware, unable to back down when you're wrong, disingenuous or malicious.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    And there you go pretending context doesn’t exist. Amazing.

    That’s not a strawman or an invention, it’s literally what the person was saying.

    You and I clearly use the word literally very differently. I use it considerably more honestly and literally than you do.

    If you can’t see the strawmanning here, you’re one or more of unselfaware, unable to back down when you’re wrong, disingenuous or malicious.

    I'm leaning towards options (b) and (c) here.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Like I say, you and I use the word "literally" very, very differently.

    When I say something like "they literally said it", I mean that they actually said it. You know, that that was what they said. Literally.

    When you use that phrase, you mean "that's how I interpreted it because I wanted to argue about it. All day."

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    It’s completely accurate to say “literally” while paraphrasing.

    1. No is isn't. Use words like "essentially" for that. "It's literally what they said" is in fact a lie.
    2. Especially not when inventing a bunch of absolutism that wasn't there and interpreting it with a whole bunch of extra, much easier to debunk nonsense that you added yourself.

    people insisted that sex has no meaningful use even in medical contexts.

    I didn't see that in this thread. Oh, unless you're meaning it "literally" with your version of the word "literally" which doesn't man literally literally and for some reason includes absurd straw man content.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Just FYI, I've never been asked about my "biological sex" from a doctor, and I'm pretty sure you haven't either. You've been asked about your sex. That's it. "Biological sex" is a right-wing dog whistle.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    It's not redundant. I'd say it's wrong. If biology is how the body is working, biological sex should be the same as hormonal sex, which would be the same as someone's sex confirmation therapy is making it, not sex assigned at birth.

    It is not implied to mean "biological sex" because that's not a term anyone used until anti-trans people made it up. It is only used rhetorically to imply their view is the one supported by science. It isn't.

    So immediately jumping to "dogwhistle" every time you hear someone say something that's supposedly in this list of secret right-wing code words is kind of a disingenuous argument and you're just going to alienate people who then won't take you seriously in the future.

    Dog whistles can become mainstream. It doesn't change the origin. Just because you hear it on TV sometimes doesn't mean that's the correct term. It was made up as a rhetorical argument to imply superiority. That's it.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (9 children)

    I've yet to have any single interaction with a doctor where knowing I was born with a penis has been helpful beyond not having to ask questions like "might you be pregnant?", but so many flags in medical paperwork that just result from them mislabeling me as a male.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (8 children)
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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    Is it transphobic for a doctor to ask a trans man if he might be pregnant, or no?

    no

    if they are, at the time, able to be pregnant, it makes sense and is not transphobic

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  • [+] 0 points 5 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (6 children)

    why not mention what your preferred terminology is so that people who actually care about being affirming can use the correct term?

    Oh, if you actually care about being affirming, the correct term is gender. What you say to your doctor is private. Gender is the public facing bit. It's the relevant bit for which toilets you or I go in, which is what we're discussing.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (6 children)
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  • [+] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I didn’t leave a top-level comment. I replied to someone who made an excessively broad statement lacking any nuance. They didn’t say “it’s being used as a transphobic dogwhistle in this context,” they suggested that it can only be used as a transphobic dogwhistle

    No, they didn't, they just said (and to repeat, they said it in the context of this guidance about access to gendered spaces) "it's a transphobic dog whistle", which is absolutely what it is in this context, and you strawmanned that up to "it's always transphobic dog whistle in every context, even if you omit the unnecessary oversimplifying adjective 'biological'" and made the argument about that.

    very legitimate point that I made that doctor’s need to know

    Correction, very irrelevant point in this context.

    If you aren’t transphobic and you aren’t autistic, I would expect you to adjust how you speak in this kind of context

    Great, so you’re assuming I’m not autistic. Neurotypical defaultism is ableist.

    No, there's an if at the start of that sentence and an and partway in.

    and the fact that you can’t seem to understand why it happened is the same reason they wanted to do it.

    Oh, I can understand why it happened. It’s because someone was being petty and trigger-happy without caring to stop and think critically for a moment. I didn’t say I don’t understand how this could happen. I just called it petty.

    I think it's rational to ban someone who refuses to accept that their lengthy sealioning is unwelcome from a comm designed to be free of exactly that kind of sealioning.

    You act like you're unable to understand why those comments were unwelcome. If you do understand why they're unwelcome, stop. If you don't understand why they're unwelcome, don't claim to understand.

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  • [+] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    why are people saying it’s a transphobic dogwhistle when I simply say “it’s not necessarily a transphobic dogwhistle”?

    Ib don't think you really thought about that question before you posted it. If I recall correctly, this is your first use of the word "necessarily". If you had merely said "it's not necessarily a dog whistle in every context -medics might use the term", you might have simply had a quick "but in this guidance transphobic dog whistling is very much where it comes from and in any case a medic is likely to omit the word biological".

    Again, the context of this while discussion, as you keep rejecting despite the link at the top of the page, is the trans-harassment "equalities" guidance. The other context is entirely and irrelevantly of your invention.

    this isn’t a trans comm, and neither were half the ones I got permabanned from. So your logic falls short.

    I have no idea which comms you got banned from, but some whole instances are designed to be safe spaces so that trans people can complain about being excluded from access to public toilets in peace without you turning up to derail the entire conversion to be about what the word "sex" means. blahaj.zone is one such instance, and I know there are several other instances that are keen to protect trans folk from exactly the kind of "bbbut medically, surely" crap you're pulling here.

    The fact that you argue rather than apologise when people say you're behaving insensitively to trans folk is exactly the reason I fully support banning you from trans-supportive spaces.

    Nothing I’ve said has been bigoted, y’all are just loading layers of meaning and interpretation onto my statements because you’re conditioned to see transphobia and bigotry everywhere you look. It sucks that you have to put up with that stuff, but that’s not what I’m doing and you’re overapplying that filter.

    Wow. I want you to think of a phrase about a minority group that you personally acknowledge is offensive.

    Imagine someone turning up after someone explained that that phrase was offensive and then spending upwards of three hours arguing that it it isn't offensive in some contexts. And then to cap it all, blaming that targetted group of people in general for being offended and hinting that they should have put aside a lifetime of prejudice and disadvantage so they can look more calmly rationally at the debate about whether it's always offensive.

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I want you to think of a phrase about a minority group that you personally acknowledge is offensive.

    If someone tries to say that the word “ethnicity”

    I think if you break character and you're really honest with yourself and me, you may be able to come to terms with the possibility that maybe, just maybe, you don't sincerely believe that 'ethnicity' is a word that you, personally acknowledge is offensive.

    It was a breathtakingly futile attempt to help you for once look at something from someone else's perspective. I don't know why I tried given how insulated from empathy for anyone else's feelings or perspective you have demonstrated you are over the last hours.

    You make it really hard to care about anyone’s feelings if I have to walk on eggshells

    Lol. You really think that the victims of transphobic talk are to blame.

    The next time a trans man dies of ovarian cancer because his doctor was too afraid to have him screened for it (or worse: didn’t even know he has ovaries in the first place!), then at least I know it won’t be my fault.

    Lol lol lol. You are parodying yourself now! You invented this timeline, this complete fiction, this flight of fancy in which someone was insisting that it's transphobic for a doctor to ask people about their medical history, (a context and an assertion that you, and only you invented) and then you blamed someone merely telling you that you were being impolite for the DEATH of your fictional character when they followed the imagined straw man advice that literally no one gave except you. And then you congratulated yourself that you had done your best to prevent the fictional death resulting from the implausible consequence of following advice that you yourself invented!

    You have to give in and admit that the sheer audacity and absurdity of this far fetched straw man is actually funny!

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  • [+] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    You’re not worth arguing with.

    You have a funny way of showing it.

    manufacturing so much outrage over using sex as opposed to gender as a useful concept in medical contexts

    That's all on you honey, all you. The rest of us were talking about access to gendered spaces for trans people. No one except you is weirdly taking about banning words from medical discourse.

    I’m done arguing with you.

    Do you mean that literally, like my version of literally, when it's literally true? Of course not!

    Wait, I get it now! Almost everything you say isn't true and has some bigger agenda. No wonder you assumed that someone else was behaving that way at the start of all this!

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