Racism and all the bad -isms

I’ve been looking into this for education…came across the publication which sheds some light on the history of sex determination and the evolution of the knowledge back behind it, which really didn’t start until WW2. excerpt below.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0306312718757081

" The 2006 consensus statement includes ‘45,X (Turner syndrome and variants)’ and ‘47,XXY (Klinefelter syndrome and variants)’ as ‘Sex Chromosome DSD’. However, discussion about these variations is limited and estimates of intersex in the consensus statement are reserved for a statement that ‘genital anomalies occur in 1 in 4500 births’ (Hughes et al., 2006: 554). There is also no consensus in medicine as to the boundaries of the DSD classification system. Despite the ‘consensus’ to include Turner and Klinefelter’s syndromes in DSD, some medical professionals have suggested they be excluded (Aaronson and Aaronson, 2010; Wit et al., 2007), and that the features that anchor the DSD should necessarily be gonads, genitals and the assignment of gender as close to the moment of birth as possible. I will return to these points. Crucially, the DSD classification rests upon the choice to include these syndromes, a choice that, as Bowker and Star (1999) point out, is not merely conceptual, but also normative and ethical, and that has clear consequences for the people so classified.

Some individuals and organizations have been critical of the shift to DSD terminology; many organizations used the term ‘intersex’ to reframe variations in sex characteristics as a social issue, not a medical emergency. The term ‘disorder’ structures the classification around the normal and the abnormal – a fact implicitly recognized by medical professionals when they suggested using ‘differences’ or ‘variations’ (rather than ‘disorders’) of sex development when speaking with individuals and family members (Ahmed et el., 2011). At the World Professional Health Association for Transgender Health conference in 2016, representatives of a number of global intersex activist communities presented evidence of ongoing medical mistreatment of intersex individuals internationally. As part of a presentation, Miriam van der Have, co-chair of Organisation Intersex International Europe (OII-Europe) and chair of Nederlands Netwerk Intersekse/DSD suggested a shift in the definition of the term intersex. Her ‘post-medicine definition’ defines intersex as ‘the lived experience of the socio-cultural consequences of being born with a body that does not fit with normative social constructions of male and female’ (Van der Have, 2016; see also Van der Have, 2017; Van Heesch, 2016). This post-medicine (and by extension, post-DSD) definition, to which I will return, shifts the focus from individual bodily differences, whether at the level of genes, chromosomes, gonads or genitals, to the social context in which such classifications are made, and the ramifications that inclusion or exclusion from normative social classifications can have on individuals. There is a lack of consensus, inside and outside medicine, as to whether to use the DSD classification system, and if so, what to include and what the central features of the classification are. This is not a new phenomenon."

I would think it to be more like 1:50,000. governments wouldn’t publish false figures, would they?

I’m sure it’s closer to 1 in 1,000 births. At least if you mean at a chromosomal level rather than developmental.

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See this is why people get pissed off with you. The combination of being unable to see beyond the end of your nose and think around an issue.

You are roughly the same age as me. Why do you think when we were at school kids weren’t coming out routinely?

There was one lad at my school who never came out, but was very effeminate. We all presumed he was gay. He schooling was a fucking misery and he was relentlessly, remorselessly bullied every single day. By pupils and teachers alike.

Were 10% of kids at your school non binary? I don’t know and neither do you. But you certainly can’t use the fact that no-one came out as evidence. For most non binary or gay schoolkids, especially of our generation, the object of school was survive it, then find you tribe after school, and then be yourself.

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I don’t know whether 500,000 people is too high or too low as an estimate. But the difficulty with any analysis of the trans community is that it is an identity that has only very recently become something people feel confident asserting. It’s going to naturally feel like it’s gone from nothing to 100mph in no time at all.

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Doesn’t mean that he was, though.

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200k to 500k would be somewhere between 0.3 to 0.7% of the population. I.e. not that many.

Given that many trans people will present entirely as their identified gender most people will likely not know or not be aware of any trans people in their social circle.

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Well fuck, I meant 1 in 100. Importantly, I’m not talking about any specific condition, but the collection of different conditions (and there are a LOT) that have been identified that cause someone to not fit into the sex binary model. The number obviously surprises a lot of people, but a lot of these people can live a long time without ever finding out about it and some people never do.

I’ll point out again, the Scientific American article I linked to a couple of days is a really thorough but easy to understand treatment of the issue

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Speak for yourself. I’m yet to have anybody else say they’re pissed off with me. But do carry on being offended on other people’s behalfs.

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[quote=“Limiescouse, post:3219, topic:1336”

[/quote]
Thanks, that’s worth a read.

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I just read the article. I’m late to the discussion, but wanted to say thank you, as it was very informative.

Edit:
For those who don’t want to read, I learned that the idea of a binary male-female is too simplistic, as it doesn’t describe the situation for everyone.

There are varying degrees of DSD (different sexual development) and thus it is a sliding scale with regard to sex. Depending on how strict you are going to be with the DSDs, it will influence whether we are talking about 1 in 100 people affected, or 1 in 4500.

Scientists are learning that competing factors are at work, biologically, in assigning a person’s sex. It is a combination of anatomy, hormones, cells, chromosomes and even stem cells that go from mother to baby in utero, or vice versa, and can be found in the other person many years later.

For most people it is pretty clear. But for a fair amount (1 in 100 to 1 in 4500) it is more complicated than that.

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It’s rather obvious they’re a very small part of the population. The candid from nothing to 100mph is all that is.

Well done on the ‘I don’t know’.

to be clarified on these studies though…Chromosomal abnormalities does not necessarily equate to non-binary when it comes to sex assignment at birth as that’s done by nature itself (let’s not forget that nature is truly the origin of all this). I would believe these reports would encompass more of the conscious side of gender and what that means to the individual?

I don’t know this, and am more asking the question than anything. We already know that human evolution has most easily been traced by genetics which really gets characterized in our human traits of ancestral origins (term used in leiu of the term “race” which I believe gives the wrong sense of where I’m going with this). Services like 23 and Me and predicated on this type of testing and analysis, but really does nothing to clarify where on the spectrum on masculinity and femininity we all land (if that really makes any sense?).

Of course not. That isn’t the point though

The point that people not presenting as non binary at school isn’t surprising - especially not when me and Klopptimist were at school. School was tucking brutal in the eighties.

Sorry, I don’t follow what question you’re trying to work through, but if you do have questions then I’d really recommend reading read the SA piece.

Apologies. I don’t know what point you are trying to make.

I can confirm the first part. But not the second, in comparison to the bombardment that today’s youth are having to navigate their way through. far simpler times.

This is very true, but it is a different kind of pressure?

I’m got an ADHD twelve year old that I’m going to have to help navigate a world where nothing is private, everything is online and judgemental. And it’s a world I barely understand myself. Not looking forward to it at all

However, as it relates to this discussion, I think things have got better kids today seem far more understanding and accepting of different sexualities and non-binary identities than in our day.

I think things are far, far worse for girls in particular. Accepting of ‘alternative’ sexualities, perhaps, but not much acceptance of young people just trying to figure it out at their own pace. Heaven forbid that a girl is not hyperhetero, or trans, or gay. They are the ones getting bullied now. Loud declaration of a different sexuality seems to be operating as a form of escape. The astonishing surge of 12 to 14-year old girls declaring themselves as transsexual is possibly just as much a form of mental self-defence as a true identity, confronted as girls are at that age with a new body they know longer understand.

It is absolutely terrifying.

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I think one of the main issues in any debate on sexuality/gender and stretch to mental health or wellbeing is the use of language.

This isn’t pointing fingers at anyone, as I am as guilty of awkward dialogue as anyone else.

We tend to patholigise difference and converse about people in those categories as if they have an illness/deviation/condition…
This promotes stigma and is reductionist in terms of their value to society.

Also, we can go the opposite direction and patronise people by describing them as “special”, particularly those with intellectual disability.

Its how we operate maybe.

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