She was 100% on board with them regulating reproductive care because it has never personally affected her as a biological male.
She only has an issue now that her favorite team turned on her after telling her for the last 30 years that she’s next.
Assigned male at birth is the term you want to use. “Biological male” is a term used by transphobes to spread misinformation.
Biology is very complex and not your elementary school version of biology. What makes someone “biologically” male? Is it having a penis, having testis, having more testosterone than estrogen, having XY chromosomes? These can all be intermixed with other characteristics.
The “basic biology” definition doesn’t work in the real world, and the people using it are actively trying to harm trans people or ignorant. Now you’re more informed so ignorance isn’t an excuse anymore.
I’m not super versed into this, just looking to learn 🤗
Individuals having two X chromosomes (XX) are female; individuals having one X chromosome and one Y chromosome (XY) are male.
Doesn’t that and having a penis means being a biological man? I don’t really see how “biological man” is offensive…
The problem is what does it mean to be biologically a man? Is it a static thing defined at birth or is it a description of the living organism as it exists? (It’s the latter.) For example, there are some animals that can change their sex naturally. We don’t say they’re just the one they’re born as.
OK, so now humans. If biological sex is a description of the person as they exist currently, what does it mean for us? Chromosomes are a useful tool because they contain the code that tells our body how to develop, but the actual development is the part that matters, not the chromosomes. The chromosomes will dictate what hormones are produced, and the hormones are what actually control development. We can control what hormones are in the body, so we can hijack the process and change the actual development.
So, since biological sex is a description of the creature as they are, if we hijack the process of development to tell the body to develop according to given sex, that’s what their biological sex should be called, right? The clownfish that was once a male that changes into a female is a female. We don’t say it’s a male just because it once was one.
I can’t say whether it’s offensive. I’m a cis man. The issue I do know is that it’s used by transphobes to pretend like they know more than they do and harm trans people. For example, congress’s anti-trans bathroom rule. Speaker Johnson said: “All single-sex facilities in the Capitol and House Office Buildings — such as restrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms — are reserved for individuals of that biological sex” He’s using the term as a weapon, not as a descriptive tool.
Where it’s most important is for doctors. My understanding is assigned sex at birth and medical records and understanding who the person is now is the useful information. They do need to know sex assigned at birth, and they also need to know if they’re on HRT or have had other procedures. They have to treat trans people differently than their sex at birth because biologically they are different.
Biological sex is not as cut and dry as you might think.
Assigned male at birth is overall a better more descriptive term, as through medical transition trans people acquire different sexual characteristics.
I’m not an expert in the field but this is how I’ve seen people more educated than me in biology describe it.
What about people with testis but no penis? What about people with XY chromosomes but a vagina? What about people with a penis and vagina?
“Basic biology” is the problem. You think a high school course was enough for you to have a complete understanding of biology. Biology is complex and messy, which your class didn’t discuss. It taught rigid definitions, which don’t exist in nature. Hormones define biological development. Every individual has different levels of different hormones, and also things just happen strangely sometimes too.
There’s also an issue with intersex people where some are born with both male and female genitals and the doctor (without consulting anyone else) may remove components the baby was born with to make them fit the rigid definition of male or female that they decided.
Nature is complex. Not understanding the complexity is fine, as long as you don’t pretend to. If you insist that your understanding is complete though then you’re arrogant and ignorant. It’s best not to be that way because it prevents learning and improving yourself.
I haven’t even had bottom surgery yet, but thanks to HRT my metabolism is much more in line with that of a typical woman than that of a man. Meaning that it is much more accurate to refer to me as a biological woman than as a biological man. So saying I’m the later isn’t just insulting, it is even scientifically incorrect. A trans woman who has received bottom surgery is in fact for pretty much all intents and purposes the same as a cis woman who has received a radical hysterectomy. Unless you call that kind of cis woman a biological man, doing the same to the trans woman is just as nonsensical.
And yes, this really affects pretty much everything: The treatment of things like brain tumors depends on biological sex and if you treat a trans woman like a man you are going to see the same bad outcomes that treating a cis woman like a man would have. Because again: Trans woman are (from a certain point in their transition onwards) biological women. Yes, it changes, get over it.
The reason to talk about amab/afab is specifically because they are the only terms that are reasonably consistent in all edge cases, except clerical errors.
Small matter of clarification. Liberal and far left are as far apart as liberal and far right.
Its because sexual differentiation is many process that starts with an SRY gene and ends with hormone receptors all over the body. Evolution also acts on all of it at each step of the process. A good example is like chest hair patterns on men which are all over the place.
You can have a penis if the correct receptors are triggered while still not having testes or an SRY gene.
Evolution also has examples of creatures that evolved so that both sexes (hyenas) or none (many birds) have a penis in different creatures and where sexuality is environmentally determined (turtles). These evolutionary pressures that created all these animals may be acting on humans also.
Which all comes down to the idea that the way we treat people is socially constructed. Like we don’t want murder so we lock up murderers.
People who want to legislate biological binaries are saying there’s an inherent danger to society in allowing the edge cases to exist. I and many others would argue this is a kind of short-sighted eugenics program that disallows human diversity for purely aesthetic reasons.
The results are like intersex babies getting gruesome gender assignment surgeries to fit better into the binary so when scientists later poll people they get results created by the binary. We’re sort of basking in our own farts when we talk about biological sex.
Edit: it appears the person we’re replying to is uninterested in factual discussion and is just here to reinforce his own hateful worldview.
Who assigned them male at birth? What if they were raised like a cisgender female typically would be in our society?
What makes someone “assigned at birth”? Is it dressing in masculine clothes, is it having a name like Michael and Billy, is it having a circumcision? These can all be comingled with other variations of child rearing.
Just because a parent assigns a “gender” at birth doesn’t make it someone’s actual identifying “gender”. As a young child they have no say in the matter and it’s quite frankly wrong to whitewash their childhood history and personal trauma like that.
Now that you’re more informed, I hope moving forward you stop trying to erase people’s adolescent psychological adversity.
Assigned at birth is referring to what the doctor writes on your birth certificate. It’s not complicated. It has nothing to do with gender.
Man, just reread what was shared with you and take the learning experience. You tried to be cute by making a mad-lib out of it and you sound way worse now than you did two comments up.
Edit hours later after checking to see if my advice was heeded:
Calling trans women biological males is transphobic hate speech. Not allowed here.
It’s entirely relevant to the conversation. She couldn’t get pregnant, so she didn’t give a shit that women’s reproductive rights were on the table until the leopard ate her face personally. I’m as left as they come, but the virtue signaling you just did is why so many people get so turned off by so much rhetoric of our political side.
It’s not virtue signaling. The language the other person used is what the republicans constantly say when they are describing trans women because they don’t believe trans women are women, and it’s used to take away the rights of trans people, and it’s working.
There are plenty of ways to say that she isn’t cis and doesn’t have a uterus while being respectful – like I just did.
I’m as left as they come, but the virtue signaling you just did is why so many people get so turned off by so much rhetoric of our political side.
I think you want the trans community and its allies to not confront you on dangerous rhetoric then, while they constantly have to fight people on the left and right to keep from having their rights stripped away.
Being an ally means being open to learning when we make mistakes, and the language the other person used wasn’t appropriate. I hope you and others here can understand why.
