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Biology Is A Shit Show

Apr26

This has been posted elsewhere many times over the years and was composed by Rebecca Helm, a biologist and assistant professor at the University of North Carolina (at least at the time this was written).

Rebecca Helm, a biologist and an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Asheville US writes:

Friendly neighborhood biologist here. I see a lot of people are talking about biological sexes and gender right now. Lots of folks make biological sex sex seem really simple. Well, since it’s so simple, let’s find the biological roots, shall we? Let’s talk about sex…[a thread]

If you know a bit about biology you will probably say that biological sex is caused by chromosomes, XX and you’re female, XY and you’re male. This is “chromosomal sex” but is it “biological sex”?

Well…

Turns out there is only ONE GENE on the Y chromosome that really matters to sex. It’s called the SRY gene. During human embryonic development the SRY protein turns on male-associated genes. Having an SRY gene makes you “genetically male”. But is this “biological sex”?

Sometimes that SRY gene pops off the Y chromosome and over to an X chromosome. Surprise! So now you’ve got an X with an SRY and a Y without an SRY. What does this mean?

A Y with no SRY means physically you’re female, chromosomally you’re male (XY) and genetically you’re female (no SRY). An X with an SRY means you’re physically male, chromsomally female (XX) and genetically male (SRY). But biological sex is simple! There must be another answer…

Sex-related genes ultimately turn on hormones in specifics areas on the body, and reception of those hormones by cells throughout the body. Is this the root of “biological sex”??

“Hormonal male” means you produce ‘normal’ levels of male-associated hormones. Except some percentage of females will have higher levels of ‘male’ hormones than some percentage of males. Ditto ditto ‘female’ hormones. And…

…if you’re developing, your body may not produce enough hormones for your genetic sex. Leading you to be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally non-binary, and physically non-binary. Well, except cells have something to say about this…

Maybe cells are the answer to “biological sex”?? Right?? Cells have receptors that “hear” the signal from sex hormones. But sometimes those receptors don’t work. Like a mobile phone that’s on “do not disturb’. Call and call, they will not answer.

What does this all mean?

It means you may be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally male/female/non-binary, with cells that may or may not hear the male/female/non-binary call, and all this leading to a body that can be male/non-binary/female.

Try out some combinations for yourself. Notice how confusing it gets? Can you point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Is it fair to judge people by it?

Of course you could try appealing to the numbers. “Most people are either male or female” you say.

Except that as a biologist professor I will tell you…

The reason I don’t have my students look at their own chromosome in class is because people could learn that their chromosomal sex doesn’t match their physical sex, and learning that in the middle of a 10-point assignment is JUST NOT THE TIME.

Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone on the basis of “biological sex” & identity, ask yourself: have you seen YOUR chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the people you work with? The state of their cells?


Since the answer will obviously be no, please be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are, and remember that you don’t have all the answers. Again: biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be.


Note: Biological classifications exist. XX, XY, XXY XXYY and all manner of variation which is why sex isn’t classified as binary. You can’t have a binary classification system with more than two configurations even if two of those configurations are more common than others.

Biology is a shitshow. Be kind to people.

One More Time – The New Brain Study Does NOT Refute Current Neurobiological Models of Being Transgender

Dec5

I’ve been challenged elsewhere by people about my contention that this new “no female or male brain” does not invalidate the older neurobiological studies that show a neurobiological link to being transgender. I asserted it did not. Others flatly asserted it did.

So, I went directly to Professor Daphna Joel, one of the authors of this study. Below is my query, and below that is the screenshot of her reply.

She agrees with me that this study does not invalidate the neurobiological model of gender identity. Read that again. And then read that again.

LetterToProfJoel

 

Here is here response.

 

LetterFromProfJoel

In fact, she agrees with me that it is very possible that just a few key structures control our sense of gender identity. So the next time some gender critical feminist tries to cite this study and say that being transgender is a “social” phenomenon only, refer them here. The truth is we still do not know, and while the body of evidence is growing, the important point is this study does not invalidate the neurobiological model of why we are transgender.

A Public Service Announcement About Facebook, Network Connections, and Bad Programming

Sep22

Facebook is an amazing social media experience but technologically, it’s a pile of crap. And it’s not the only pile of crap out there either. A lot of work has gone into making the HTTP/HTTPS protocols useful as “live” protocols when they never intended as such. HTTP/HTTPS were always intended to grab static content and deliver it for viewing, not interaction.

But this is like VHS and Betamax. VHS was worse but it won that war. The world wide web now sits atop a mess of HTTP/HTTPS code that is really problematic and often unnecessary, and which often has unintended side effects.

Case in point – I recently lost access to my Facebook account. Every time I tried to login, pages would not successfully load. I checked all sorts of things, flushed browser caches, tried four different browsers on four different machines. None of this helped. I could login to a different account fine on a given machine but not into my account.

A friend came along and mentioned that she had similar issues before and solved them by going into Settings, choosing the Security tab, then choosing “Where You’re Logged In”. Since I couldn’t even login, I wasn’t sure this was helpful, but I persisted and I finally managed to login to my account on Chrome on my HTC One smart phone. When I did, I was shocked. There were a large number of sessions, from all sorts of places. One was from the Atlanta airport in 2013 – more than two years ago! Yet Facebook still counted this as an “open” session and apparently was trying to keep it alive.

I began killing clearly old sessions. After whittling that number way down to just the few machines I use around my house, I tried to login from my desktop PC again. It worked. The laptop worked. And while I don’t always do that, it worked logging in from my work laptop as well.

So I am making this post as a public service announcement, and for myself as well. I want to preserve this reminder on somewhere other than Facebook so I can get the specifics again, should I ever need it again.

But I will also try to avoid that and periodically check my open session count, just to be sure it doesn’t end up crazy huge again either.