Not to nitpick but to me the title of this post is implying that XXY individuals are born female. Generally they’re born male.
What the comment is referring to is likely Swyer Syndrome, where the individual has an XY configuration but a dysfunctional gene in the sex-determining region of the Y chromosome. This means the embryo develops female anatomy and the resulting children tend to identify female, but they lack functional gonadal tissue. It’s estimated to occur at a rate of about 1 in a 100,000 females.
By the by, treatment for these individuals usually involves removing the dysfunctional gonadal tissue as it often becomes cancerous (which often gets misunderstood as “gender reassignment surgery”) and supplemental hormone replacement therapy. They would be affected too by any bans on hormone administration to kids often connected with trans people. One of the reasons why blanket bans should be a no-go regardless of how you feel about any other trans issue.
I think we can safely say that is nitpicking, but it’s informative and correct so I’m all for it!
From my biology lessons 20 years ago, I thought I was taught that it was the presence of a second X chromosome that made a person genetically female, but I could definitely be misremembering. Either way, XXY individuals are usually born male, and Dr Genetics Federation was likely talking about sawyer syndrome (or so google tells me). Thanks for the correction!
Not in humans, no! While in some animals sex determination is purely about X dosage (Drosophila), in humans the Y chromosome is actually sex-determining. In females the second X chromosome actually gets inactivated as a means of gene dosage compensation.
There’s also androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) in which the person develops female characteristics. In some cases they carry a child to term with embryo transfer.
Part of the issue with removing the nuts (gonadal tissue?) Is that these people have major issues with bone density and other sex hormone related problems whereas the risk of cancer is similar to any male getting testicular cancer.
They aren’t given a choice because the surgery happens at a young age, yet they have to bear the medical consequences.
So disclaimer here, I’m only savvy on the molecular bio and can’t speak as much to the actual healthcare side of things, but the actual diagnosis is a little more complex than what I’ve written here. Sometimes streak gonads (gonadal tissue which failed to become fully functional ovaries or testes) will still contain some testis or ovarian tissue which will produce hormones. Just depends on the severity of the gonadal dysgenesis.
But as you’ve written it here is seems NPR is implying the surgery itself causes bone density issues? Those issues arise due to an absence of sex hormones, which would still be a problem in complete gonadal dysgenesis. This is why treatment is usually paired with hormone therapy as well as surgery.
I can’t speak to the relative risks of either, though. As with any surgery and treatment, it’s a medical decision with a lot of factors.
This is also outside of my area of expertise, but I am guessing the NPR interview is this one from Fresh Air:
Weigel, who identifies as she/they, was born with androgen insensitivity syndrome — a condition in which a person has both X and Y chromosomes, but does not respond to male hormones. Though Weigel presented as female at birth, tests revealed that she lacked a uterus and ovaries, and that she had internal testes.
Citing the risk of testicular cancer, Weigel’s doctors convinced her parents to have her testes surgically removed, but Weigel now says the cancer risk was overstated — and that the removal of her testes as an infant led to complications later in life.
“By removing my testes, they basically put my body into artificial hormone withdrawal and didn’t give me new hormones until a certain age when they decided it was time to induce puberty on my body,” she says. “Puberty that would have happened naturally on its own had they left my body intact.”
While it is often recommended that women with CAIS eventually undergo gonadectomy to mitigate cancer risk, there are differing opinions regarding the necessity and timing of gonadectomy. The risk of malignant germ cell tumors in women with CAIS increases with age and has been estimated to be 3.6% at 25 years and 33% at 50 years. However, only three cases of malignant germ cell tumors in prepubescent girls with CAIS have been reported in the last 100 years. The youngest of these girls was 14 years old. If gonadectomy is performed early, then puberty must be artificially induced using gradually increasing doses of estrogen. If gonadectomy is performed late, then puberty will occur on its own, due to the aromatization of testosterone into estrogen.
So the argument, I think, is that the risk of cancer is very low before puberty, and people with CAIS should be involved in the decisions - since it may be pretty safe to allow puberty to happen prior to gonadal removal, at the least, which would obviate the need for surgery as a very young child and hormone replacement as an adolescent (a non trivial burden for a young person).
Ohhh, I see my confusion now. My original comment was about Swyer syndrome, not CAIS. CAIS and Swyer Syndrome are very similar in concept but have a lot of important differences, especially in gonadal development. Usually in CAIS the testes will develop which can produce sex hormones, while Swyer syndrome leads to streak gonads which are generally functionless. Seems like there’s quite a debate about the timing of gonadectomy in CAIS indeed.
Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) is a difference in sex development involving hormonal resistance due to androgen receptor dysfunction.
Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) is an AIS condition that results in the complete inability of the cell to respond to androgens.
The unresponsiveness of the cell to the presence of androgenic hormones prevents the masculinization of male genitalia in the developing fetus, as well as the development of male secondary sexual characteristics at puberty, but does allow female genital and sexual development in those with the condition.
Individuals affected by CAIS develop a normal external female habitus, despite the presence of a Y chromosome, but internally, they will lack a uterus, and the vaginal cavity will be shallow, while the gonads, having been turned into testicles rather than ovaries in the earlier separate process also triggered by their Y chromosome, will remain undescended in the place where the ovaries would have been.
Most individuals with CAIS are raised as females.They are born phenotypically female and are usually heterosexual with a female gender identity; however, at least two case studies have reported male gender identity in individuals with CAIS.
Yes. Though I’d point out that HRT covers a much broader range of pathologies than what the current media landscape covers.
As far as I understand, in the original etymology, “replacement” in HRT referred to the fact that the hormone source is coming externally to buoy up a diminished supply in the body. It’s not (necessarily) referring to “displacement” of a hormone that’s already there. More like this usage: when you run out of milk, you go to the store to replace it.
Technically menopausal hormone therapy is HRT, for example. Testosterone replacement in males with low circulating levels is another. Nowadays the usage is definitely shifting, though, and clearly it has a different colloquial meaning.
“Eureka” comes from the Ancient Greek word εὕρηκα heúrēka, meaning “I have found (it)”, which is the first person singular perfect indicative active of the verb εὑρίσκω heurískō “I find”. It is closely related to heuristic, which refers to experience-based techniques for problem-solving, learning, and discovery.
I was having a civil and boring discussion with someone on a (non-anonymous) forum once about a highly specific technical thing, and then some random person decides to write something along the lines of “I have nothing to add to this conversation, but I just want to point out that the guy you’re talking to is actually an employee of <well known company> :)”
I don’t know if that guy felt any cringe after posting that, but I sure as hell felt it for him. Neither of us really knew how to respond to that, and it kind of just killed the discussion to avoid that awkwardness.
Sometimes I still think about that guy. Is he still vicariously Pretty Woman’ing people? Did he accomplish some of his life goals? I hope so.
Because these are not too rare. It’s one of the more frequent mutations.
But even a person with XXY is a male. Since the male gonosome is considered as a mutation of an X chromosome. Somewhere in the evolution of mammals and other vertebrates (or most likely much earlier) something messed up and created the Y chromosome from an X chromosome. That’s why genetic diseases are usually more frequent in males, since one branch of the X chromosome does not have some backup. It’s simply missing.
So whenever a person has one Y chromosome. It is considered male. The lack of a Y chromosome is considered a female.
This can also be seen in people with genetic disorders, such as three gonosomes. XXX is a female XYY is a male XXY is also a male.
And to everyone’s information: I am for Germany and we do not have two words for sex and gender.
I don’t understand what you English speakers are up to.
Well, since there is just one word in German for sex and gender, it’s the same thing here, some people try to use the English word gender (untranslated) here.
But I simply don’t understand why this is needed. It’s getting so mixed up and complicated, but at the same time it barely has any relevance. Because what does it add to society, dialogue or communication? German is a very precise language, and I don’t understand why some people try to soften it up with the English term of gender. It’s so weird.
I’m pretty sure alot of people use it interchangeably to mean the same thing. But I think over the years, gender has become more of a “social” word and Sex as more of a “biological” word. I say Gender instead of sex when talking about someone’s biology. A bit confusing honestly for non-native English speakers
Yes, it’s confusing. I think I somewhat have an understanding of what the term “gender” refers to, it at the same time it is so untranscribable and somewhat extremely vague.
Race is a biologically misleading term. There is just one human race alive on this planet and it’s called Homo sapiens sapiens.
What English speakers are referring to as race is actually ethnicity.
The genetic variations between humans from different continents is far too little to make out different races. There are no clear borders between one “race” to another.
Yes, I understood you the first time, but what does social construct mean?
Another race, that’s what humans deem too different from themselves to consider them equal. (Even though there are not enough genetic differences to qualify for an actual different race). But these differences are physical and not socially constructed.
Neurological differences between men and women aren’t socially constructed any more than racial characteristics are. You should read up on the neurology of trans and cis people.
I just wrote a comment above but I believe OP is mixing XXY with what the comment was about, which is likely Swyer Syndrome: XY individuals with female anatomy and gonadal dysgenesis. While they have a Y chromosome, a defective sex-determining gene leads to a failure to sexually differentiate into male gonadal tissue and leads to subsequent loss of downstream sex hormone production.
So I assume such people are identified as females at birth. But if their chromosomes indicate that they are male, what’s the gender then?
I think it’s a male then, right? Because when a defect leads to malformations, it still is a malformation. One that people could probably live very well with.
If the SRY gene is broken, they’d still physically develop as female, though potentially with some abnormalities, rather than as male. Even leaving gender identity out of it, sex is still more complicated than if exists Y; then male
But If I have a construction plan, and this plan is somewhat flawed, but I start building anyway, then I am still building the planned object, but with flaws?
I don’t want to offend anyone. I myself have a genetic defect, much worse if you ask me, than some sexual genetic defect. I can barely consume any fructose without shitting myself. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I think you’re trying to oversimplify things a bit. Sexual differentiation is an extremely complex process. To be frank, a biological perspective doesn’t really care about “what’s recorded on the government ID”. As you get more and more granular, those kinds of generalizations become less useful.
For a pure science take, such an individual might be described as:
A 14-year-old unmarried girl was referred with complaints of primary amenorrhea and nondevelopment of breast. Her build was normal. Examination of her secondary sexual characteristics revealed no breast development, absent axillary hairs, and sparse pubic hairs. External genitalia was of female type. Karyotype showed genotype of 46, XY. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed hypoplastic uterus with absent fallopian tubes and ovaries. A diagnosis of Swyer syndrome was made. (Swyer Syndrome Case Study)
But that doesn’t really fit on a driver’s license, so…
I think if we’re going to use the construction plan metaphor, it would be more accurate to say that the builders didn’t get the message to alter the plans. Like if there was a house plan that was designed so it could be a duplex or a single family home by adding or removing one wall. Both options actually exist in the plans for the house at all times (yes, XX still has the genetic code for male anatomy), the SRY gene isn’t the plans to build male anatomy, that’s stored elsewhere, the SRY gene is more like a text to the builder saying “go with option B”. Except in this case the text failed to send, so the builder defaulted to option A.
So at the end of the day, the builder doesn’t put the wall in and builds a single family home, not a duplex. The owner may have wanted a duplex, but that isn’t what got built. So is it a duplex or not? I would lean towards saying no, but we’re not talking about houses, we’re talking about people, so it should probably just be their call
Anatomically, they look female. They develop a uterus and vagina, but usually don’t develop other secondary sex characteristics (breasts, widened pelvis, etc). The karyotype will show typical male XY chromosomes. Usually I’ve seen them classified as intersex because of this.
The sex of the baby will almost certainly be recorded as female. Keep in mind that while the karyotype might indicate XY, babies generally aren’t karytotyped at birth, as that’s a pointless expense for the overwhelming majority of people. The parents, doctors, and children wouldn’t have any idea about their condition until:
Streak gonads are detected, which involves an MRI or ultrasound
Hormone levels are measured in a blood test
The child fails to undergo puberty as expected
Since only #3 is visible without a specific test, it’s usually the first indicator, and the other two tests are used as confirmations of the syndrome. That’s when supplemental hormone therapy and surgery are discussed as well.
If gender is in the brain, why does it relate to sexual (physical) properties?
Or am I missing something?
Because so far I understood that for example the sex can be female, and so can the gender. But what sense does it make to have female gender? There is just a human in your head.
So to me it seems like gender is a belief. Because beliefs are also located in the brain.
But then again… how important is this belief? And why are people claiming that there are more than two genders? Because of gender refers to sex, then what is going on there?
I’m gonna throw a common metaphor at you. See my previous post in here for a more thoughtful exposition on my gender experience.
Gender is kind of like shoes. If you have the right kind of shoe, well fitted, on the right feet, you don’t think about your shoes much at all. You know you have a certain type or brand of shoes on, but it’s not an essential element of your daily life. You’re not constantly aware of them. This parallels the common cisgender notion that the self isn’t gendered, that “there is a just a human in your head.” If your shoes are too small, on the wrong feet, or made wrong for your feet, it’s a whole problem all fucking day. It’s uncomfortable and disorienting. It’s distracting and persistent. Over time, it becomes painful, and you use increasing amounts of focus and energy dealing with your footwear incompatibility. This is what being gender incongruent is like. You spend huge amounts of time and energy trying to deal with a profound discomfort and incompatibility that nobody else understands or acknowledges because their shoes are fine.
Because so far I understood that for example the sex can be female, and so can the gender. But what sense does it make to have female gender? There is just a human in your head.
But then again… how important is this belief? And why are people claiming that there are more than two genders? Because of gender refers to sex, then what is going on there?
Their are neurological and therefore psychological differences between people of different genders. These are normally aligned with their physical sex and hormones. When there is a misalignment between gender and sex that’s what trans people are. It’s not belief, it’s brain structure.
There is just a human in your head.
Do you not feel attached to your birth gender at all? Or any other gender? Like if you woke up in a body of the opposite sex would you be okay with that?
Statements like this sometimes make me thing the person I am talking to is either very ignorant or a very confused agender person.
Because so far I understood that for example the sex can be female, and so can the gender. But what sense does it make to have female gender? There is just a human in your head.
But then again… how important is this belief? And why are people claiming that there are more than two genders? Because of gender refers to sex, then what is going on there?
Their are neurological and therefore psychological differences between people of different genders.
But there are many nuances between people. It wouldn’t make sense to try to distinguish between those nuances.
These are normally aligned with their physical sex and hormones. When there is a misalignment between gender and sex that’s what trans people are. It’s not belief, it’s brain structure.
This is a rather bold statement. To my knowledge scientists have yet to understand how the brain works. And I believe studies to identify peoples brain structure as gay, trans or straight would be very questionable. And dangerous I should say. Depending on the governments, this would be very dangerous. Imagine what the Russians or Chinese would do…
There is just a human in your head.
Do you not feel attached to your birth gender at all? Or any other gender? Like if you woke up in a body of the opposite sex would you be okay with that?
I don’t think that I would care much. I guess I would be annoyed by menstruation. I really cannot see any blood, I become unconscious and fall over like a bad soldier. But other than that, I do believe that I could be happy in any kind of healthy body.
Statements like this sometimes make me thing the person I am talking to is either very ignorant or a very confused agender person.
I am just confused. So much is going on in this world. And then suddenly people create new concepts that are still somewhat in the making, under constant change, concepts that I have nothing to do with, but I don’t want to get out of touch. And I do understand that something is driving people, and usually people have good intentions (even people that are on the other side of a discussion). But I find this gender stuff to be difficult to understand. Especially the need to identify with something. For me happiness comes from another place. Not from a (and don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to offend) self centred perspective. I don’t feel the need to identify who and what I am. I think one quickly falls into a mental trap there, because thinking and identity is something far too complex to articulate in language. I’d rather just enjoy time with people that are important to me and do stuff that we enjoy.
And to everyone’s information: I am for Germany and we do not have two words for sex and gender. I don’t understand what you English speakers are up to.
I don’t understand what you mean here? I’m sure biological sex and gender identity are considered separate ideas even in languages without a specific word for them. To my mind a lot of transphobia comes from people not understanding there’s a difference between sex and gender.
As for the XXY, I’m OP and that’s my mistake. I misremembered my biology lessons and thought a second X chromosome made someone biological female, rather than the presence of an Y chromosome making someone male. I replied to someone else explaining my mistake.
I don’t understand what you mean here? I’m sure biological sex and gender identity are considered separate ideas even in languages without a specific word for them.
Some people here in Germany claim so. These people use the English word “gender”, because German doesn’t offer a specific word for that. But I don’t understand why one has to differentiate. I don’t think there is gender identity. Identity is the constitution of my character and my values. Feelings and emotions are not part of character, they are reactions to stimuli.
To my mind a lot of transphobia comes from people not understanding there’s a difference between sex and gender.
But that’s barely comprehensible to me. How could it ever be, if my language does not offer this differentiation. The way we talk strongly affect the way we think. And I am not thinking in categories such as gender and sex. There is just gender (the last sentences sound weird. But I simply cannot translate it)
As for the XXY, I’m OP and that’s my mistake. I misremembered my biology lessons and thought a second X chromosome made someone biological female, rather than the presence of an Y chromosome making someone male. I replied to someone else explaining my mistake.
Gender: Social and sometimes people raised as one gender don’t identify as being that gender
But why the word gender then?
Because if it only relates to the way someone was raised, then it is not connected to the sex. The role of a male or the role of a female are very different in other cultures. So gender becomes something extremely vague.
What if I identify my gender to be male? What does that even mean then? Is my gender then what European men are like? What kind of European man? Or a Muslim man? Maybe an ultra radical Indian man who would burn his wife?
The role of a man and a woman is usually a purely social construct. Why would I identify with such a construct? It’s so vague. And what use does gender identity have? We humans use such terms usually to classify the properties of a human. But the gender term seems to be a bad classification standard. Classification must be something specific. But this gender term is not very specific.
This English stuff makes me go mad. It makes me go mad. Maybe for context: the German word “Geschlecht” is also not the most precise. It means sex, but in the past it also meant something like old family, like the some old royal family. It is also used genealogically.
If I am a male and I am looking for a mate to make children, then I am not interested in the persons belief, what they believe to be, but their biological properties.
When does gender become relevant?
I have looked up gender studies. Gender studies started to analyse the cultural and social dynamics between the sexes. Also analysing the roles, male and females take in society according to their sex. But the term gender, does that not undermine those studies? Because how can you analyse those dynamics, if gender becomes a term so loose?
Because words have a meaning and you don’t seem to understand the difference between sex and gender so I explained it to you in the simplest way possible. If you want to argue that gender doesn’t exist then I can refer you to tons of videos from people much more knowledgeable than you and me on that subject.
It’s funny that you say “German is a precise language” and you’re mad that in English there’s a word to distinguish between two separate concepts… Are you somehow trying to argue that German is a superior language instead of admitting that maybe it doesn’t cover every possibilities? Wait until you learn about Japanese and Mandarin with their words for abstract concepts!
Why would I identify with such a construct?
You don’t live in society?
If I am a male and I am looking for a mate to make children, then I am not interested in the persons belief, what they believe to be, but their biological properties.
Oh so then you don’t mind if your mate looks like him or do you think it might be relevant to speak about gender now that you’re thinking about forming a family with that person? This part of your text also makes you sound a lot like you believe in eugenics… Trying to pass your genes based on the how good the other people is biologically and nothing else… I’ll leave it at that…
I don’t know where you found your definition of gender study but it’s exactly what it says, women study has been a thing for ages, nothing unusual about broadening that field to encompassate more than just women and it just so happens that some people don’t fit in what is men or women gender expectations.
You’re stuck on the fact that genders vary from place to place… As if everything else is the same no matter where you look in the world? A person raised male but identifying as female might have been two spirit (a gender older than the society you live in by the way) had they been raised in a traditional first Nation family, but that’s not their reality and as such they make their situation make sense in the context they live in.
Just because your language doesn’t have a word for it doesn’t mean people don’t experience it, it just means your language needs to evolve. If the word for depression doesn’t exist in a language then do you think depression doesn’t exist for the people who speak it?
Identity is the constitution of my character and my values. Feelings and emotions are not part of character, they are reactions to stimuli.
What does that have to do with gender? Just because you think you don’t care about gender, doesn’t mean that society doesn’t, or that gender doesn’t care about you.
They are talking about things like Androgen Insensitively Syndrome where XY people are born with female anatomy. This is because the chromosome dosen’t determine gentials but rather the hormones that chromesome creates. In the case of Androgen Insensitivity the body dosen’t respond to male hormones so develops female gentials despite having male chromesomes because female is the default. Weiredly enough though the gonads are still male.
Gonna add this clarification up here for you: sex is xy or xx etc. Gender is wearing dresses and playing with barbie dolls, vs space ships and army toys.
Its pretty obvious xx has nothing to do with the color pink, and so sometimee xy’s prefer these societal structures, so they adopt them as their own.
Technically if an xy was risen as the female gender, they wouldnt even be transgender - their original structure was pink and shit, and so they never changed it. (There is argument that xx -> pink and xy -> army is aligned on the same “side”, so any deviation would be trans - but realistically theres only historical basis for this, nothing that would even make it to the hypothesis stage, much less official definition)
Okay, this description was really funny, but gender is more complex and inherent and can’t be totally reduced to the social aspects. I say that getting my hormones corrected “fixed me” because, after years of antidepressants and anxiolytics and therapies, turning off testosterone is what finally alleviated a constant, lifelong feeling of something being inherently, unquenchably wrong. This was a feeling I’d had all my life. Treating it psychologically never touched that feeling. Even as my depression and anxiety and truama responses improved, that feeling remained. Even social transition just made it easier to cope with. HRT turned it off. If you or anyone else reading this is familiar with the Dark Tower books, I’ve long made comparisons to Jake’s split timeline. You know implicitly that you should be having a different emergent experience of life, of body, of puberty, but time’s arrow neither slows nor reverses. You’re stuck living in two timelines, and every step towards transition brings them closer to harmony, and at least for me, HRT totally collapsed them into a single life. This is the human experience that has the cultural mapor code of pink vs armies laid over it.
It’s more complex because they’re related, but not always.
Genetic sex is the basis for some epigenetic status, which causes some organs to develop more in this or that way, including structures in the brain, which in turn impact behavior, which tends to cause some social preferences.
But none of those steps is written in stone. While “usually” and “if everything goes as expected” an XY and XX will develop following certain patterns all the way from genetics to social preferences, there are also a lot of cases where either one of the steps didn’t go as expected: maybe it went the opposite way, or only worked partially, or not at all, or whatever else.
It’s basically unpredictable, and the worst thing is to get stuck in a status where part of you says one thing, while another part says something else. HRT is just one way to change the part that’s easiest to change in a particular case to keep things as close to harmonized as possible.
Tbh, this doesn’t feel like a response to my post. All I was getting at is that gender is more complex and inherent than just social structures. There are social, psychological, and physiological aspects to gender. A lot of people reduce it to a social/cultural phenomenon, which inevitably leads someone to question the necessity of medical transition. Many trans people, myself included, will/would permanently struggle with chemical dysphoria our whole lives if we relegate the condition and its treatment to psychology and sociology. That’s all I wanted to say. To me, HRT is that science so advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic. Spironolactone was a revelation in me, and my first few estrogen injections were all but religious experiences.
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