I wouldn't care
I would care, but I wish I wouldn't
I would care: I have a problem with transexuals
I don't know
There is. Firstly the human genome is redundant. In general there is a lot of extra code. Specifically to sex, there are fertile assigned-female-at-birth women who have an XY karyotype, here's an article on it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/ It's not an isolated incident either. This happens a lot.
The Y chromosome that's losing genes each generation and is trending towards extinction, the Y chromosome that's being selected against because it is largely redundant. 200 unique genes are nothing special. They are unique but beyond that, only a few of them serve a purpose.For example, the Y-chromosome has 200 genes that have been under male specific selection since long before our species.
Empirical evidence shows otherwise. You don't need to study the gene expression in isolation to know that HRT works. The evidence is all in the phenotype.How can hormone treatment modulate the expression of genes that a female to male transexual does not have?
It's what happens. It's why HRT works. Are there specific genes you are worried about that you think will express themselves regardless of the environment?Do you believe all the widely expressed genes unique to the Y-chromosome stop functioning in a testosterone deprived environment? I doubt it.
That's precisely my point. Nobody is without sin when it comes to objectivity. Everybody seeks evidence that fits their paradigm.Talk about the pot calling the kettle black, Stephen Jay Gould was clearly a scientist heavily swayed by his ideology.
You can use science as a tool to oppress or to resist oppression. Or you can follow the scientific method in its purest form. The first two lead to political positions, the latter does not lead to any political position, merely the search of truth. The "scientist" would not advocate for or against dating trans people, because that is a political view which has absolutely nothing to do with the quest for an objective truth.The implication here is that we must accept that sex is independent of genes or we are oppressing transexuals. That is absurd of course.
I know I'm biased, and I am not afraid to admit it. Because I would rather live in a world where humans define and create themselves, rather than be held back by medieval notions of "birthright".
what if someone decided they wanted to be a dolphin?
what if a 60 year old man declared that he was a little girl in an old man's body and sought out surgery to make himself look like a disgusting child? is that the sort of self definition you'd like?
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
-Betrand Russell
We cannot think ourselves out of our biological limitations.
We have to build, invent, shape, form and craft the world with our physical bodies: To get to this paltry moment in time has taken thousands of years and we're still so far off from being able to make our immaterial will the actual and direct force that shapes the cosmos, like psychic space wizard gods. One day maybe, but not yet.
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, but wiser people are full of doubts.
-Betrand Russell
It seems Marxism was Gould's religion, but I think it was also partly this:
You're really straining your credibility here since that study you linked claims that mother and daughter are the only two individuals ever recorded. They were also not "assigned-female-at-birth", they were assumed to be female.Like most American intellectuals, I first learned about this subject [evolutionary biology] from the writings of Stephen Jay Gould. But I eventually came to realize that working biologists regard Gould much the same way that economists regard Robert Reich: talented writer, too bad he never gets anything right. Serious evolutionary theorists such as John Maynard Smith or William Hamilton, like serious economists, think largely in terms of mathematical models. Indeed, the introduction to Maynard Smith’s classic tract Evolutionary Genetics flatly declares, “If you can’t stand algebra, stay away from evolutionary biology.” There is a core set of crucial ideas in his subject that, because they involve the interaction of several different factors, can only be clearly understood by someone willing to sit still for a bit of math. (Try to give a purely verbal description of the reactions among three mutually catalytic chemicals.)
But many intellectuals who can’t stand algebra are not willing to stay away from the subject. They are thus deeply attracted to a graceful writer like Gould, who frequently misrepresents the field (perhaps because he does not fully understand its essentially mathematical logic), but who wraps his misrepresentations in so many layers of impressive, if irrelevant, historical and literary erudition that they seem profound.
Whether you know it or not, what you're peddling here is BS. It's from a Bryan Sykes book titled Adam’s Curse: A Future without Men. The geneticist who thinks genetics involves too much math and isn't afraid to BS in order to sell books. Most of his repeatedly wrong published claims haven't been too far out of the realm of possibility at the time they were published. Although plenty have been humorously absurd: Russian apewoman could have been a Yeti, says top geneticist. Nice that they distinguish him from bottom geneticists. Or his mtDNA from a Pleistocene polar bear that lived more than 40,000 years ago that another geneticist (possibly a bottom geneticist) was able to demonstrate was from a Siberian/Alaskan polar bear that was sampled around ten years ago. The list goes on.
Anyone who knows anything about evolution would know Sykes' take on the Y-chromosome is BS because it rests on the argument that recombination is the only way to remove deleterious mutations from the gene pool. Wait, I thought of a couple other ways, death and reduction of net reproductive success. It's not as if his ideas were accepted beyond the popular media, but here's a pretty sound refutation:
But you're telling everyone that 200 identified coding genes which are the product of 100 million years of male specific selection (including recent selection) are nothing special.Although more than thirty mammalian genomes have been sequenced to draft quality, very few of these include the Y chromosome. This has limited our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of gene persistence and loss, our ability to identify conserved regulatory elements, as well our knowledge of the extent to which different types of selection act to maintain genes within this unique genomic environment. Here we present the first MSY (male-specific region of the Y chromosome) sequences from two carnivores, the domestic dog and cat. By combining these with other available MSY data, our multi-ordinal comparison allows for the first accounting of levels of selection constraining the evolution of eutherian Y chromosomes. Despite gene gain and loss across the phylogeny, we show the eutherian ancestor retained a core set of 15 MSY genes, most being constrained by negative selection for nearly 100 million years (My). The X-degenerate and ampliconic gene classes are partitioned into distinct chromosomal domains in most mammals, but were radically restructured on the human lineage. We identified multiple conserved non-coding elements that potentially regulate eutherian MSY genes. The acquisition of novel ampliconic gene families was accompanied by signatures of positive selection, and has differentially impacted the degeneration and expansion of MSY gene repertoires in different species.
Furthermore...
Comparative Analysis of Mammalian Y Chromosomes Illuminates AncestralStructure and Lineage-Specific EvolutionWe observe that diversity across the entire human Y chromosome is extremely low. We find that neutral models with sex-biased demography may contribute to low Y diversity. However, models of extreme differences in reproductive success between males and females are insufficient as the sole explanation for patterns of genome-wide diversity. Alternatively, then, natural selection appears to be acting to reduce diversity on the Y. We show that models of purifying selection affecting Y chromosome diversity are consistent with low observed diversity, if purifying selection acts on more than the few coding regions left on the Y chromosome. Thus, our results suggest that selection may also act on the highly repetitive ampliconic regions, and support arguments for the functional importance of these regions [29]. Further strong purifying selection acting on the human Y is consistent with reports of the conservation of both the number and the type of functional coding genes on the Y chromosome in humans [12] and across primates [55], [56]. It is also possible that positive selection has been acting to reduce diversity on the Y chromosome, but this explanation would require multiple independent selective sweeps across populations.
In other words, you don't really know what you're talking about.
If you don't know what the genes do, how are you making that claim based on phenotypes? You're making a claim that I know you can't support.
I have no reason to be worried about that. My issue is that you're making false and/or unsupported scientific claims.
Date? No, bang like a drum, yes.
Definitely not!
@Exarch
It's not a copout. There's a neurological basis for transsexuals. (Frank et al, 2013)
http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/10.1210/jcem.85.5.6564
There is none for otherkin and transpecies or whatever. And if a foetus were to develop the brain of another species, it would not survive due to incompatibility with cranial volume. Hence your argument is Reductio Ad absurdem, comparing two completely irrelevant concepts, one real, one fictional and claiming them to be the same thing.
@Sumskillz
Assigned is exactly what happens. When a baby is born, they look at the genitals and then they fill out the birth certificate as either male or female. If the genitals are ambiguous then they make a decision. It is assigned. It is based on assumptions, but it is assigned, for the baby's journey through life is dictated by the sex that's written on their birth certificate.They were also not "assigned-female-at-birth", they were assumed to be female.
Also, if you want to be pedantic, to assign, means to allocate or designate.
If I was worried about my credibility I wouldn't bother arguing with you since I'm clearly intellectually inferior due to my possession of two X chromosomes.You're really straining your credibility here since that study you linked claims that mother and daughter are the only two individuals ever recorded
/s
So you want more evidence?
There's the fact that in 1992 the Olympic Committee started testing for the SRY gene in female competitors, only to be abolished once it was found to be inconclusive at determining maleness (ie there were some fertile women with the SRY gene) (Genel, 2000). http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conw...erTesting.html
Now I have to admit that it is hard to find a lot of evidence for fertile women with CAIS, but it is because they are invisible; they live normal lives and so have no reason to get a chromosomal bood test which would otherwise reveal them. Hence why they Wang article claims itself as a first.
Another article which I find interesting; the individual was phenotypically intersex, yet still gave birth and so by the strictist biological definitions (pregnancy, giving birth) is female:
Talerman, A., Verp, M. S., Senekjian, E., Gilewski, T., & Vogelzang, N. (1990). True hermaphrodite with bilateral ovotestes, bilateral gonadoblastomas and dysgerminomas, 46, XX/46, XY karyotype, and a successful pregnancy. Cancer, 66(12), 2668–2672. http://doi.org/10.1002/1097-0142(19901215)66:12<2668::AID-CNCR2820661234>3.0.CO;2-5
I could go on, but I cbf doing a lit review just to disprove another boy on the internet (also why I'm being lazy with my citations). Also look up chimeras. There are plenty of exceptions to the rule when it comes to sex, karyotype and phenotype.
Regarding Sexual dimorphism (relevant to the other thread too) There's the fact that intersex occurs as high as 2% and corrective surgery at birth occurs between 0.1-0.2% (Blackless et al, 2000).
So we humans clearly are not bimodal without exception.
It's hard to dispute quotations when you don't cite them. But yes, you're correct. It's no longer degenerating. Congratulations lol."Although more than thirty mammalian genomes have been sequenced to draft quality, very few of these include the Y chromosome. This has limited our understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of gene persistence and loss, our ability to identify conserved regulatory elements, as well our knowledge of the extent to which different types of selection act to maintain genes within this unique genomic environment. Here we present the first MSY (male-specific region of the Y chromosome) sequences from two carnivores, the domestic dog and cat. By combining these with other available MSY data, our multi-ordinal comparison allows for the first accounting of levels of selection constraining the evolution of eutherian Y chromosomes. Despite gene gain and loss across the phylogeny, we show the eutherian ancestor retained a core set of 15 MSY genes, most being constrained by negative selection for nearly 100 million years (My). The X-degenerate and ampliconic gene classes are partitioned into distinct chromosomal domains in most mammals, but were radically restructured on the human lineage. We identified multiple conserved non-coding elements that potentially regulate eutherian MSY genes. The acquisition of novel ampliconic gene families was accompanied by signatures of positive selection, and has differentially impacted the degeneration and expansion of MSY gene repertoires in different species. "
But you're telling everyone that 200 identified coding genes which are the product of 100 million years of male specific selection (including recent selection) are nothing special.
100 million years and 200 genes... compared to 2000 genes on the X chromosome. Granted, they don't all code of sex determination, but XO is a karyotype which has been observed in living human beings, whereas YO is not. You'd be dead without it. Do you still want to compare chromsomal e-penes lol? I could go on about sex linked genetic disorders...
It still lost almost all it's genes (~1400 from memory), the only thing that saved the y chromome was that there was nothing left to lose, and hence natural selection kicked in and prevented any further loss (losses in genes resulting in infertile males which don't breed). You're accusing me of idiocy based on belief in a scientific paradigm that was popular and accepted as truth in the scientific community in the last decade, which was only discredited in the last 5. Incidentally, ten years ago is when I was taught cell and molecular biology. I confess, I didn't want to invest this much time into an argument on the internet so I didn't bother doing research, instead relying on what I was taught.In other words, you don't really know what you're talking about.
Trans women on HRT with blood hormone levels within the the female range, do not produce sperm. Trans men on HRT within male hormone levels do not menstruate. The former disproves the spermatogenetic genes you mentioned earlier. This is common knowledge, I'm surprised that you don't already know this.If you don't know what the genes do, how are you making that claim based on phenotypes? You're making a claim that I know you can't support.
I've already addressed this. Science does not take a stance on whether you should or should not date anyone and it does not take a stance on superiority or inferiority. The scientific method is based on inductive reasoning (in the form of a hypothesis) and deductive reasoning / falsifiability to unveil an objective truth. Superiority, inferiority, definitions of what consitutes male or female beyond purely reproductive purposes, are all subjective terms. You cannot measure them, nor falsify them. But you believe that men are physically and intellectually superior to women, correct? That, is unscientific.My issue is that you're making false and/or unsupported scientific claims.
References for which I either didn't hyperlink or give the full reference in text:
Blackless, M., Charuvastra, A., Derryck, A., Fausto-Sterling, A., Lauzanne, K., & Lee, E. (2000). How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis. American Journal of Human Biology, 12(2), 151-166.
The issue with "gender assignment" is .02% of births with truly ambiguous genitalia, not the tumblr multitudes who decide they identify with the opposite sex.Assigned is exactly what happens.
"When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like Fidel Castro, not screaming in terror, like his victims."
My shameful truth.
This is not evidence of your claim. People with XY gonadal dysgenesis are not fertile females.
You said:
According to that 2008 study you linked, that mother and daughter are the only two individuals known to exist.
That was true in 2008, but it is not true now. There are massive databases of human DNA, 23andMe alone has the DNA of well over a million individuals who have opted into their research. Such an anomaly would be immediately noticeable.
While I can see why they are not excluding those women from competition based on limited information, I doubt it's a coincidence that so many women with male DNA are among Olympic athletes. My guess is that they are extremely overrepresented.
You did establish a couple exceptions to that (something I was aware of, other than the two fertile cases), but pointing out some odd occurrences doesn't disprove that transexuals aren't biologically transformed into the other sex, they remain somewhere in between. Nor does it support your claim that each of us have a complete template for both sexes within us.
This is the citation accidentally I left out: Natural Selection Reduced Diversity on Human Y Chromosomes
The Y never was degenerating, it lost a lot of genes that weren't necessary to its new function, gained some new ones and altered ones. That is simply selection, not degeneration. The evidence from sex linked genetic disorders further disproves your claim that each of us has a complete template for both male and female within us. The Y is adapted to functioning with an X and not on its own, so naturally an XO has a better chance of being viable since the X is closer to the ancestral form, but it's not like an XO person doesn't have serious issues.
It's not the total number of genes that is significant, a single point mutation in just one gene can have a dramatic effect or not be a big deal. The issue is that those 200 genes are the only genes that have been under male specific selection and in the absence of hormonal treatment, the genes that make someone biologically male (I realize some occasionally end up on the X). My point is that HRT doesn't replace all the functions of the genes on the Y, nor does it make them completely go away.
I recognize the assumption regarding non-coding DNA all being "junk DNA" was once widely accepted, but that is not the only claim that I object to. I don't really understand your intent in making all these claims. It's plain to anyone that trans people are not biological completely transformed into the other sex. Some hetersexual people will be attracted to them anyway, others won't. It's not like convincing them that DNA doesn't matter will change their subjective preferences which are somewhat gut level.
That's not what I was referring to. I was asking how you know that all the genes on the Y chromosome do not function in a low testosterone environment based on phenotype when you don't know what they do.
You should have gotten from my posts in this thread that I agree with this, except that you can turn performance of specific tasks into something measurable and make statistical generalization about them.
No, statistically speaking males and females have different aptitudes, women are statistically better at some things, men others, but picking one male individual and one female individual at random, they may not conform to the statistical generalization. That said, I don't really see how that's relevant to this thread.
A friendly, free and above all non-threatening reminder,
Personal references, ESPECIALLY of the insulting kind aren't on, and will be dealt with, with extreme prejudice and in an entirely arbitrary way that probably will make a mockery of just about any sense of justice or ideals of free speech you may hold... BUT...on the other hand it will make it look like i do something around here, so hey...i win at least.
Better yet though, just make sure you tow the right side of the ToS, and as bonus you get to make my moderational apm atrocious.
Carry on guys and girls.
Except that some of them have gotten pregnant... and given birth to viable offspring, which is why I referenced Wang et al and Talerman. Pregnancy and giving birth to viable offspring is the cornerstone of the biological definition of "female".
And I cbf reading the rest of what you posted. I've got better things to do.
So is it a lot, or is it "the only two known to exist"?
This is quite amazing. I recall reading about a family in France (pre-1900's I think) which only had females and was quite an enigma but unfortunately this was pre-genetics and no follow up was done.
Selfish gene people, and I admit I'm in that camp, would enjoy this one. I think the most likely senerio would be the X is inactivating the Y somehow inducing mosaicism. I'd actually bet on that, being the Y was from the father in the daughters case. At the same time the daughter was "female" XY but infertile. Had the daughter been fertile this could be a strong case for a parasitic X chromosome. From the family history, and the daughter being infertile, this isn't a case of 2 but a case of 1 very unique and really lucky individual.This suggests that a mutation in a novel sex-determination gene or a gene that predisposes to chromosomal mosaicism may be responsible for the phenotype in this family.
Last edited by Phier; September 30, 2015 at 08:57 AM.
"When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like Fidel Castro, not screaming in terror, like his victims."
My shameful truth.
That still doesn't support the claims you've made. The question isn't would you date a true hermaphrodite.
Yeah, actually looks like just one confirmed. I had only skimmed the study, but now that I've read it carefully I think your assessment is correct. Cells from the mother's skin were 46,XY (80%)/45,X (20%). In the gonad: 46,XY (92.9%), 45,X (5.9%), 46,XX (0.6%), 47,XXY (0.6%). That seems really odd to me, but I don't know what's typical in cases of mosaicism.
Look, all I'm saying is that I'm yet to encounter a transgender person whose physical birth gender I couldn't immediately see. For that reason I couldn't have any sort of relationship with a Transgender person because on a mental level I can't treat them like they'd wish to be treated. I don't mean it as a slur against Transgender people, I'm just answering the OP's question.
I do have to wonder, how far down the the rabbit whole we have gone, when you need to justify not wanting to have sexy with a pretty man or be a bigot.
There are a lot of women I have no desire to have sex with too.
Apparently tolerance, or even acceptance isn't enough, you have to want to schtup them to be an acceptable modern man.
"When I die, I want to die peacefully in my sleep, like Fidel Castro, not screaming in terror, like his victims."
My shameful truth.
Whos forcing you to schtup them?