> ... had mind-bogglingly idiotic parents who raised him the wrong gender ...
Though uncommon, XX children can have ambiguous genitalia at birth. Today (1) we have some idea on what it is and we can deal with it at various stages of growth in-utero, at birth, during infant development, at adolescence or even later? Faced with a similar situation the past, parents gambled (aided with biases and superstitions). Is that sufficient to call it idiocy, I do not think so.
> Another one is the question, whether gender dysphoria results from mental illness, or the other way around.
[We have the data](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909367116), being trans is identifiable as early as 2-3yo, from the moment gender differences in behavior become apparent, long before any capacity to comprehend and adhere to complex expectations of boogeyman "transtrender parents".
You want to be treated as arguing in good faith, but fail to research the subject, propose questions that assume the conclusion, bring up vague anecdotes contrary to the statistics you're unwilling to consider, and disregard the fact that transgender children suffer from lack of treatment just as hard as wrongly treated cisgender children.
>There are lots of kids born with ambiguous & differing genitals where parents & doctors make an assignment for that kid outside the womb.
I don’t think most people would argue against medically intersex people identifying outside of traditional norms, which I would imagine is a small subset of people identifying as trans.
> A child who insists that he is no longer a male (or never was) is definitely confused.
Circular, self-reinforcing, argument. Invalid.
> If that same child insists that he's black, even though both of his biological parents are white, would you take him at his word or save him from getting Dolezal'ed by an unforgiving woke mob?
Non-sequitur. Dismissed. Child still in need of psychological treatment.
> Children don't make good decisions. Their brains are literally missing the hardware until about age 25. [1] We don't allow them to make permanent changes that they might regret.
Sure we do. All the time. We allow them to grow up - that's rather permanent. You're not upset about that. Of course, it just so happens to be something you don't personally disagree with, unlike the topic of discussion.
> but the science is beyond any question that XX and XY are distinct genders. They come with different hormone levels, XX can carry babies and lactate, etc.
What about XX with, say, Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia? They have excess androgens and sometimes ambiguous genitalia. Estrogen insensitivity syndrome also comes to mind, where the body is unable to process estrogen. Those XX individuals have the body shape usually associated with an XY.
Or perhaps XY individuals with 5?-Reductase deficiency? They cannot process androgens and are sometimes born with genitalia that look like one typically associated with XX. They used to be mistakenly raised as individuals of the female gender. In a similar vein, there's Aromatase excess syndrome where the XY individual has male genitalia at birth and female secondary sexual characteristics at puberty. What is their gender?
Are XXY females and XXY males their own separate gender? Then what about XYY and XXYY syndrome?
Even ignoring those rarer genetic differences, what about women with polycystic ovary syndrome who are unable to conceive and have high testosterone levels? Or XY who went through menopause and have their estrogen and progesterone production limited or even halted, do they stop being women?
There's a reason both the words "gender" and "sex" exist.
> I'd imagine you take the position that a child seeking this care is always confused. Could this be mistaken? I'd conjecture that you believe this to be the case, because you don't address the simple fact that you assume that all children in this circumstance must be confused. If they are not, then they can give informed consent and your claim is void.
A child who insists that he is no longer a male (or never was) is definitely confused.
If that same child insists that he's black, even though both of his biological parents are white, would you take him at his word or save him from getting Dolezal'ed by an unforgiving woke mob?
Children don't make good decisions. Their brains are literally missing the hardware until about age 25. [1] We don't allow them to make permanent changes that they might regret.
> My kids are either male or female, no matter how they choose to express themselves
Yet intersex exists.
Additionally there are cases where an individual can be biologically one sex but genetically another. For instance, some women may have XY chromosomes typically associated with males, and some men may have XX chromosomes typically associated with females.
This can affect how people prefer to express themselves.
> Similarly by referring to a person with XX chromosomes as she
It is worth pointing out that there are non-transgender XX males [1]. They are very rare, but it can happen. If the part of the Y chromosome which contains the SRY (testis-determining factor) gene is translocated to the X chromosome, an individual can be an infertile XX male. I don't think anyone would try to argue that such a person is not actually male (assuming they in fact identify as such), in spite of their XX chromosomes, since their external appearance from birth can be completely male. (XX male individuals vary: some appear anatomically completely male, albeit sterile; others show incomplete masculinisation.)
Biological sex cannot be reduced to chromosomes, although chromosomes can be used as a rule of thumb valid 99.99% of the time. In fact, I don't think there is any one single factor to which biological sex can be reduced; both maleness and femaleness are composites of collections of traits which usually occur together, but none of those traits is absolutely necessary to being of that biological sex. People who talk about biological sex as if it was completely determined by chromosomes are ignorant of the whole story.
> I wonder if some of the gender and queer issues in kids these days are actually because of this issue, same with other pathologies that sometimes require medication like ADHD/Autism.
Uh, transgender people were scientifically known since at least the late 19th century [1]. The problem is that the Nazis eradicated all the knowledge during their reign [2], and that the Catholic Church was actively fighting against LGBT people for a very long time, even before that era (and modern-day Evangelicals in the US have taken on their mission).
What has changed in "gender and queer issues" is that this negative influence has disappeared as the public importance of the Catholic Church has waned over the last decades and that protections for LGBT people got affirmed by courts, constitutions and laws.
As for ADHD/autism: these were also known to science at least in the mid 19th century [3]. However, for a very long time the issues were not as apparent or problematic in society as they are today, mostly because most of society was working in the agricultural sector with lot less work load than modern-day turbo-capitalism requires [4].
> If a surgery changes their chromosome then they change sex too.
Now you've completely changed your definition in the course of a few minutes, but you still don't want to change your beliefs. Funny how that works. Imagining what your new definition will be, what if you have any of these sex chromosome anomalies, as more than 2 out of every thousand humans do? What if you use gene therapy to change your chromosomes but don't alter your anatomy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies
> What if I tell you I don't care what sex you are or you think you are.
Then why are you making a big deal of trying to define it for others and supporting those trying to legislate who can believe what?
> Personally, I raise an eyebrow when a six year old boy raised by adoptive lesbians decides he is transexual, and I feel like society may be failing that boy.
How do you feel when a 3 year old boy raised by non-adoptive heterosexual parents acts transgendered, regardless of what his parents do to try to get him to be like what people like you think boys are supposed to be like?
> I also wonder why Edith felt the need to mention gender not being binary in a discussion partly about whether biological sex influences choice of job, considering the fact that as far as I know biological sex is indeed binary, you either have at least one Y chromosome or you don't.
I think she refers that gender is not binary as you can be straight male, straight female, gay male, gay female, bisexual, asexual, etc.
I am not completely sure but I think there can be mutations where you have 2 chromosomes X and 1 Y. So XXY [1]
> For example, a man can wake up one day saying to himself, "Damn, I feel like a woman". If I don't accept that he is, if only for a fleeting moment, a woman, than I'm labeled a bigot.
This comes across as a caricature of a serious issue.
For what it is worth, whether I agree or disagree with you (or anyone), I strive not to mischaracterize your concerns.
I would like to ask a favor. Please read [1] and come back here afterward. Try rephrasing your comment. I hope you are capable of making a good faith attempt at understanding sex (at birth), gender identity, expression, and so on.
> > Sex assigned at birth is not a reliable indicator of that
> You might want to rethink that phrasing, because it’s a very reliable indicator
In the context where current gender identity is an insufficiently reliable indicator, which is the context of the supposed need to ask the question, no, it is not.
If you need to probe beyond current gender identity because your personal sensitivities about genitalia can tolerate no error, then you need also to bypass indirect proxies entirely and ask the question you are actually concerned about regarding genitalia.
> For me, my very self has no gender. While obviously I can only testify to my own experience of being a person—to my knowledge, I’ve only been this one—I cannot imagine that I alone enjoy such a self-perception.
It may be anecdotal but the case of David Reimer certainly contradicts her theory.
Reimer was castrated as an infant and raised as a girl after a botched circumcision. He had surgery and hormone therapy. Nevertheless he identified as a boy and displayed many of the same symptoms that trans people do.
>> "This notion of an internal representation of gender identity is backed by science"
My claim, backed by science, is that this child was a biological male: he had male hormones and male chromosomes. His delayed development didn't change that scientific reality.
Though uncommon, XX children can have ambiguous genitalia at birth. Today (1) we have some idea on what it is and we can deal with it at various stages of growth in-utero, at birth, during infant development, at adolescence or even later? Faced with a similar situation the past, parents gambled (aided with biases and superstitions). Is that sufficient to call it idiocy, I do not think so.
1. https://childrensnational.org/choose-childrens/conditions-an...
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