Chromosomal Confusion

[Jonabob87]

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

So even if someone developes into a male, if he has the XX-chromosomes, you don't care whether he looks male, has male genitalia, and looks totally normal male, he is a woman.

And same for XY-females?
http://priory.com/med/xx.htm

That's exactly what he's saying and I agree with him. Given that your body will continue to produce the hormones relevant to your ACTUAL gender, transgender people will have to keep of HRT for the rest of their lives. Having to constantly fight off your body's normal state is a surefire sign that you're making it do something it doesn't want to do.

 

[Lieju]

That's exactly what he's saying and I agree with him. Given that your body will continue to produce the hormones relevant to your ACTUAL gender, transgender people will have to keep of HRT for the rest of their lives. Having to constantly fight off your body's normal state is a surefire sign that you're making it do something it doesn't want to do.

We treat diseases all the time, making human bodies do things they don't want to do.

Besides, I was talking about instances where the person naturally developes into a male despite being born with the XX-chromosomes, or the other way around. Look the link I posted with that comment http://priory.com/med/xx.htm and tell me if you think the person in that picture must be a woman.

 

[nekoali]

lot's of opinions here, may as well put my own two cents in.

As a transsexual, I hate the XX = female, XY = male thing. "AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!"

I'm kinda living proof that this is BS, as are many others in the world. That is NOT the way it is, and dumbing it down doesn't make you appear smart.

Its funny, in most threads on this forum people say measurable science trumps all... but not on this topic. Here people let feelings override science.

Live your life any way that makes you happy. I will call you by the gender term and name you wish me to call you by. The reality however is you are either genetically male, or genetically female (unless you are an XXY which fits into neither category)

Except you are ignoring that medical science says that transgender individuals are and should be considered as their identified gender. Not by what their biology or genetics say. Or in other words, someone who identifies and is diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria IS a member of the gender they identify with. Not the one their biology says.

Nobody is denying what physical sex they were born into. Or what their genetics are saying. What we are saying is that those things are only a small part of what makes up a man or a woman, and not the most important thing. By focusing on it, you are like the three blind men feeling only part of an elephant. One is sure that it is actually a snake, because all he feels is the trunk, which to him feels like a snake. So he ignores the rest of the animal and identifies it by only one small part of it.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

I have to agree with the OP here and say that we should probably start using male and female for biological sexs and either use man and woman for genders or come up with some new words. That way you can identify yourself as a woman, even if according to genetics you are a male one (course that detail can be left out). Only reason why we don't already have words like this (at least in the English language, can't speak for other ones) is because for the longest time if you were born male you stayed male (or at least were considered one by society). That's beginning to change and I see no reason for our language to change along with it. Sure you'll end up with things like male woman or female man, but it won't be so oxymoronic when male and female don't equal man and woman respectively.

 

[Aurora Firestorm]

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

I agree with this, specifically because all this sudden panic about gender and self-perception and everything is way over my head. As a straight female who identifies as such, the entire gender debate is utterly perplexing to me -- not because I don't understand that other people have issues with it, but that I personally can never fully comprehend it, because I don't experience it.

So I prefer to default to science, because it keeps me out of all the sticky situations you get in when people start really nitpicking about things like this.

If you are scientifically male and want to use female pronouns, I'll call you by them. If you want to change your entire appearance and sexual function and act as if you're biologically female, etc., I'll probably assume you have two X chromosomes and call you female -- but you're still not biologically female until you can change your actual DNA.

Not that society cares -- and whether it should or not is purely moot.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

The degree of ignorance displayed on this issue is about what I expected to see. Seems every time I've gotten into a discussion with even collegiate level thinkers this naive school of thought always comes up.

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

So if you are 1% negroid you are 'Black' then?

It is never as simple as this and never has been, science has proven it with increasing precision. Defining what you do as 'male or female' based purely upon it's exterior genitals is a rather narrow vision and deserves study. "He" or "she" is a matter of gender role and perception, esoterics, little more. This is why many "straight" men get so confused when they come onto 'what they thought was a girl'. For many intents and purposes, shi was a girl. This is why there are 'girls' and 'gentic girls'. How people are perceived is a tremendous amount of how their gender is defined. Transgenders deal with this manner of ignorance far too often. Between chemical, chromosomal and hormonal anomolies, statistically there is a 7-12% rate of hermaphrodism in newborns to some degree ranging from minor appearance issues to internal organs.

My ex-wife is a great example. Born with a degree of hermaphrodism, she had some organs of both sexes but only outwardly male genitals. Her chromosomes were XXY, not "XX or XY", giving her a very feminine appearance and form, a partially developed uterus and a penis. Many guys got very worked up when the two of us went out, but according to this school of black and white thought were they 'gay' for doing so? (ie) Looking at another 'male'. No, clearly not, as they perceives her to rightly be female.

Even further, her legal status would be different state to state in the US. Some states harbor this outdated mode of thought, many do not. A blood test would confirm that in some physical, chemically definable ways, she was female, and in others male.

In this venue, as in almost any which involve humans, it is never as simple as Black or White, but more akin to shades of grey. It's an issue of old cultural mores and needs to be grown beyond.

The brain as well as the body has genders. Its completely possible to be a male in body but your mind is female. However the gender argument is completely subjective.

Kudos for some knowledge and more open-thinking! If I had an internetz or cookie I would be giving it to you now. Yes, the brain also defines gender, independent of genetic structure and social conditioning. Again, many TGs I know of have just this issue plague them for most of their lives, being developmentally set between genders and/or sexes regardless of their perception of self or sexual orientation.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

The published article denied her of the right to be a female as it highlighted her past gender and so allowed for her current status as a female to be questioned, therefore they were wrong to print it. The thing to remember here is that although she becomes the "first female president", the fact that she is female here is immaterial as we (as civilised human beings) recognise that males and females are equal. Using this equality as a base, anyone who then brings to the fore the fact that she is used to be male is highlighting this fact not in the interest of societal well-being (i.e. a man or woman would be better at the job), but in the interest of generating discussion at the expense of someone else's quality of life and right to be seen as how they wish.

This probably is the best way to sum up the political situation of the article. I agree 100%. It's the 21st century. men and women are equals. There's no weird oppressive stuff like back in the 20s.

In terms of science, yeah you'll have to genetically classify them as male. But this is on a medical level, not a level of lifestyle. The only time this type of switch comes into play is when there are physical problems with the body or through sex. (assuming that he/she didn't go through any genital surgery)

If you want to argue that he/she still thinks like a guy this is not always the case. With enough hormones and training, you can tech the human mind to do just about anything. I'm not talking about hypnosis, I'm leaning more towards mind conditioning and learning.

If it looks and acts like a female, unless we're giving them a physical or having sex, who are we to judge?

This was about the most clear and concise thing I've read so far, and in many ways engenders me some hope.

I have been very involved in the ongoing issue of seeing TG's rights treated with some legal respect, from one-on-one counseling and development to protesting and discussions with politicians, and the degree of hateful ignorance I've encountered has been stunning at times. I've been in many heated debates and have the scars to prove it... But reading things like this gives me hope that there are some sensible people out there. Thank you, duder.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

lot's of opinions here, may as well put my own two cents in.

As a transsexual, I hate the XX = female, XY = male thing. "AND THAT'S THE WAY IT IS!"

I'm kinda living proof that this is BS, as are many others in the world. That is NOT the way it is, and dumbing it down doesn't make you appear smart.

Its funny, in most threads on this forum people say measurable science trumps all... but not on this topic. Here people let feelings override science.

Live your life any way that makes you happy. I will call you by the gender term and name you wish me to call you by. The reality however is you are either genetically male, or genetically female (unless you are an XXY which fits into neither category)

Except you are ignoring that medical science says that transgender individuals are and should be considered as their identified gender.

That's not hard science. It's current opinion by the majority of those sitting on the same diagnostic manual committee that once agreed that being gay was a mental illness.

The only hard science is the biological fact of the XY/XX.

Nobody is denying what physical sex they were born into. Or what their genetics are saying. What we are saying is that those things are only a small part of what makes up a man or a woman, and not the most important thing.

I'm focussing on the hard science. And then suggesting we be incredibly accomodating of people's needs. In my first post in this thread I pointed out that I think our words are just inadequate. We need something other than gender/sex to identify gender identity as distinct from biological gender.

Agreed entirely. As in my earlier post, it has never been as simple as XY or XX. Even within the narrow confines of that argument, there are XX, XY, XXY, XYY and XO, as defined by hard science. Adding into this chemical and hormonal anomolies along with societal conditioning and both hermaphrodism and transgenderism are much MUCH more common than most people realize.

 

[Escapefromwhatever]

Allow me to join that debate you had with your class for a second. The thing is, there's more to identifying as a certain gender than what chromosome you have.

This handy list should help. [http://www.tsroadmap.com/start/tgterms.html] As far as I'm concerned, identifying as a gender is, for all intents and purposes, being that gender. Besides, autopsies have been done on transsexual people and they found that many of them had more similar brain structure to the sex that they identified as rather than the sex they were born as. Additionally, if they did a blood test on the president, they would likely also find female hormones given how far along she seems to be on her transition. Any credible scientific source wouldn't be so quick to label her as male- sex is a biological thing, but gender is much deeper than that.

Which leads me to your question, OP. The GLBT community and allies have already started using the term "sex" in that way, and gender to describe how one identifies, regardless of if it is as a man, woman, neutrois, or some combination. I support this. I simply want to bring up that, given other circumstances surrounding a body that may be dug up, historians may be able to attribute a certain personality, attitude, and narrative to that body so that whatever part of the GLBT community it may have identified with, if any, isn't ignored.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

What are your thought?

I think that in the next century or two they will have the technology to change your DNA to match.

I also think that if you live as a gender, then that's your gender, no matter what your DNA says. DNA can be wrong.

 

[Treblaine]

despite what you think about yourself or what you DO to yourself, in 2000 years when they dig up your bones and test your DNA you will be labeled as a male or a female.

because at the end of the day... isn't that all that REALLY matters? (sarc)

Wait, no!

Of course does not! Your chromosomes are not relevant to your day to day living, to your relationships, to how your brain works.

What DOES matter is hormones, organs and your own psychological self-image.

She is a woman. Not an ideal woman, not always a woman, but for all intents and purposes a woman.

Here is a good rule of thumb: if this girl got busted for tax evasion and had to be sent to jail... would you put her in mens prison or women's prison? You think this woman should share the showers with male rapists? That would be insane.

So before you say "no you're not a woman" ask which prison they should be sent to.

GOD! People just do not understand DNA, and especially do not understand chromosomes as they are and INDICATOR of sex, NOT the final deciding factor!

For example some "males" with XY chromosomes have a genetic disease that means the SINGLE GENE to control Testosterone receptor is malfunctioning, so their body is completely non-responsive to testosterone, the result is they grow testicles as a foetus in mother's womb but they never descend, in fact they grow a vagina, a womb (that a fertilised egg can be implanted in) and fallopian tubes to the testicles where the ovaries would be. The are born and grow up looking 100% female with a bit or hormone therapy will go through puberty to be female.

 

[Altanese]

I'd just like to give a big thank you to everyone who had the guts to say something as profound as "No matter what you do you will always be your birth sex." It's really something intersex, transgender, gender confused, and gender queer (like myself) people love to hear about.

 

[pieguy259]

To quote Dirk Gently: "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands." If this person thought of herself as a woman, and lived as a woman, then it was only fair that she be treated as a woman. Biologically male or not.

Oh, and in regard to "you are who you choose to be": just please don't choose to be a gun.

 

[master m99]

i agree with you point abou her being male, i tend to use guy, girl when talking about a person normaly, but male, female when speaking scientificly, so i guess i would call this person a girl who happens to be male, i know that weird but there we go

 

[Treblaine]

despite what you think about yourself or what you DO to yourself, in 2000 years when they dig up your bones and test your DNA you will be labeled as a male or a female.

because at the end of the day... isn't that all that REALLY matters? (sarc)

Wait, no!

Of course does not! Your chromosomes are not relevant to your day to day living, to your relationships, to how your brain works.

What DOES matter is hormones, organs and your own psychological self-image.

She is a woman. Not an ideal woman, not always a woman, but for all intents and purposes a woman.

Here is a good rule of thumb: if this girl got busted for tax evasion and had to be sent to jail... would you put her in mens prison or women's prison? You think this woman should share the showers with male rapists? That would be insane.

So before you say "no you're not a woman" ask which prison they should be sent to.

GOD! People just do not understand DNA, and especially do not understand chromosomes as they are and INDICATOR of sex, NOT the final deciding factor!

For example some "males" with XY chromosomes have a genetic disease that means the SINGLE GENE to control Testosterone receptor is malfunctioning, so their body is completely non-responsive to testosterone, the result is they grow testicles as a foetus in mother's womb but they never descend, in fact they grow a vagina, a womb (that a fertilised egg can be implanted in) and fallopian tubes to the testicles where the ovaries would be. The are born and grow up looking 100% female with a bit or hormone therapy will go through puberty to be female.

 

[xdom125x]

I think sex is determined in womb as xx or xy but gender is a whole other can of worms that can only be known in a persons lifetime by that person themself.

To quote Dirk Gently: "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands." If this person thought of herself as a woman, and lived as a woman, then it was only fair that she be treated as a woman. Biologically male or not.

Oh, and in regard to "you are who you choose to be": just please don't choose to be a gun.

But hypothetically, if there was a genetic test to determine the species of that "duck" wouldn't that be more reliable than the behavior?

 

[Lyndraco]

I think alot of you put too much emphasis on DNA results--while it codes for our entire being, it is only the blueprint. Who you grow up to be is just as dependent on that as on your culture, family, environment, and social life.

DNA is also capable of mutating, deleting bits of itself, duplicating bits of itself, misreading itself, and any other number of issues. I'm more amazed that people can even exist with how complicated we are and how many problems can happen with our DNA. My point is that even DNA is not the clear cut answer to gender/biological sex issues.

To put this in perspective, think about what we "knew" about medicine 60 years ago--we've learned a lot since then. Think of what we may possibly know 60 years in the future--we may learn that hard science can detect discrepancies in gender and biological sex. You should not be so quick to say that XX is only female and XY is only male, because you can't possibly KNOW that for 100% certain unless you know exactly what every little bit of your DNA does and how it interacts with the environment. And if you do know that, why haven't you cured cancer?

If she wants to be female, and has gone to that much trouble to do so, then she's female.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

The degree of ignorance displayed on this issue is about what I expected to see. Seems every time I've gotten into a discussion with even collegiate level thinkers this naive school of thought always comes up.

You are male if you have an XY(ZZ) chromosome.
You are female if you have an XX(ZW) chromosome.

I couldn't care less how you want to be perceived.

So if you are 1% negroid you are 'Black' then?

Check your quotes. I wasn't the fellow that originally said that, someone named "Slippers" is. Sure, I agreed with him, but give him your wall of text and not me.

As for the rest of it - if you would have read on the same guy already made the argument that this is the rule, and that there are exceptions. Only a handful of exceptions, mind you. I would think someone looking for a collegiate-level discussion would know that there are exceptions to almost everything.

Now, I would apologize, as I am wan to make errors with PC's and coding and such relatively simple things, sorry- but, well, I would think that someone so clever would realize by agreeing with him as you just did, de facto it matters not if he originally made the quote or not. You hold the same outdated opinion, so bob's your uncle then.

And you would still be wrong. Spend enough time in actual textbook research, like someone looking for a collegiate level discussion who has collegiate level understanding, or someone who has just spent enough time on the fetish scene hon, and you'll eventually meet the exact reasoning behind why. As a fetus develops, it begins female, ALL do, and not all fully develop from female to male at the point of maturation, many get caught at some point in between, resulting in TG or herm persons. Literally someone who's genetic code is NOT as simple as XX or XY, which are not the only two chromosomal codes anyways is often a "____ trapped in a ___'s body." It's not all that complicated, easily proven scientifically and far more common than most people are comfortable with thinking, just a matter of degrees. As minor as a woman with very manly features, thick jaw and shoulders, to the more severe male with ovaries and excessive mammalial tissue or further yet to varying levels of functional outward hermaphrodism.

And (I did read on, thank you very much) regardless of if this is the exception or not, these are still people you are pointing a very divisive and derisive finger at, rather incorrectly. One in a million is still 350 people in Amerika, and the percentage of herm/TG/TS/GQ is FAR more than that. Transgendered people cut across all races and creeds as a law of genetic probability, and including all colors of the rainbow, you get roughly 5-7%. In Amerika alone that is about 15 to 24.5 million people. Maybe not all even realize or accept the facts of their own biology and couldn't care less, it's often the case. But if we're going by biology, they have no choice, do they? Would you say this entire chunk of the populace is beneath deserving of recognition because they are simply "an exception to a rule"? Being the odd man (or woman) out somehow makes you less valid?

Majority rule implies minority right, otherwise all you see is the Tyranny of the majority.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

Pointing a finger at? I'm not making any sort of divisive or derisive finger. Fuck, I hate it when people assume that I'm totally against something when I make a statement. And I never claimed to be clever, either.

Alright. I'm not a collegiate level thinker. I'm only in my freshman year of college, and I have little to no interest in the field of biology. Call me ignorant. Sorry.

Here's what I'd like to know - are you arguing that there are different degrees of being male/female, like 10% male, 90% female? Or are you just saying that I shouldn't give one huge dividing line between males who were born males and males who want to be female? Because I'm not trying to do the latter.

If a person is male, but wants to be percieved as a female, that's fine. I don't care. It isn't my body, why should I care? But if you were born a male, then you really weren't "the first female to be president of some college organization", you were (and kill me for technicality here if you must) the "first transgender male to female to be president of some organization". TransMF and vice-versa need a better name.

What I'm looking for here is clarification - fine if you want to be female, but not being born that way means you can't be fully female. You can look like one, you can dress like one, you can lop your gonads off and pretend you've got the bits of one, but you still aren't fully female. It's not a divisive line, it's just that a person that has a change isn't and can't be as of now a fully formed female. There needs to be a new word for something beyond "used to be male but is now female".

Note that those are mostly hypothetical "you's".

Never said you claimed to be clever, I called you that due to the snarky wording of your quote. Though you may be ignorant of subject matter, I'd hardly use the term as an insult, as you do seem intelligent and more well spoken than many, ignorant, not stupid. We're all ignorant of something. Hell, I know jack and squat about automobiles and am lousy at programming...

But I digress. You, not a hypothetical or implied understood you - actually referring to you 'you' are indeed pointing most divisive and derisively. By agreeing with the original statement made you agree with an incorrect understanding of biological science and sociology in a way many people would find rather insulting. MTF or FTM transgenders are treated very differently by the law in Amerika than even homosexual persons which they are often misunderstood as. A case comes to mind in which a woman was found to have been post-op TG after her husband died in the line of duty as a firefighter. The couple had been wed for quite some time. And although friends admitted he was aware of this, his aghast parents refused to believe their son would marry 'a man' and sued in court that she be removed from his will, the same 'female' they had known for years and treated as family was now 'something else', despite years of love and loss endured together. By treating her as 'something that used to be a man' and not simply a woman, the parents were defying the wishes of their now dead child, insulting his memory over what amounted to their personal comfort. This example is mostly sociological, but I'm simply using it to prove my point, that by singling them out, Transgenders, it is both divisive and derisive.

And yes, that is...roughly... what I'm saying, your 10-90% question. There are 5 proven chromosomal patterns and studies on another two. It's been a proven fact for quite a long time now, just not a very popular one, for obvious reasons sadly. It's not so simple as just XX or XY, and many times is never going to be. To be 'fully male' or 'fully female' isn't the concept most seem to think it is.

I don't wish to kill you for technicality, but... Por ejemplo- I know many TG's and TS's who are in fact naturally occurring partial hermaphrodites, born somewhere in between their body's expression of their chromosomes' configuration. On the fetish scene, I've met a rather burly looking fellow, 6'2", hairy-chested, 'stache and all who had a vagina just as the counterparts also exist, the more socially fetishized 'she-males'. Now, what did this make them? They were born the way they are, not 'dressing like' or 'acting like' something they were not, because they were not naturally either. Do their chromosomes define their masculinity or femeninity? Or is it now the parts they possess? Or is it the role they play in social settings? Are they 'fully male'? Or 'fully female'? They were what they were to whoever perceived them, what they were perceived as. If one was seen as 'male' or 'female' then for all intents and purposes, they were, regardless of chromosomes, chemistry, hormones, blood counters and so on.

Now, I do agree with you that there should be, and is, different terminology for those identifying as being outside of typical gender boundaries and wishing to be perceived as such. In a growing fashion they are referred to as 3rds, or 3rd gender. But these are not all that is 'male' 'female' or 'other'. What you seem to be seeking is the difference between a GG or GM (genetic girl/man) and a MTF/FTM transgender, one who has been born as such that some physical alteration was required to their body to finish it's formation from one sex or the other. Sometimes, there is very VERY little factual difference.

As the old sayings go "if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, there's a damn good chance it might be a duck, regardless of what you think." Many 'females' would be surprised to know that biologically speaking, many of them are 'male' in some respects, be it organ content, chemically or chromosomal. And vice versa.

Again, this is no small number of people, millions of human beings, tax-paying, working, living and loving Amerikans, deserving of respect as everyone else. And the science supporting their claims is growing.

As to those 'you's' which were not mostly hypothetical...? Are you seriously questioning my womanhood in some manner of trying to undermine the validity of my argument?