Naughtius Maximus

Single-sex spaces - such as changing rooms and toilets - must be used on the basis of biological sex, new guidance from the equalities watchdog has confirmed. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

You dumb fucker @MForstater No chromosomal makeup is genetically more predisposed to committing crime. Everything in biology is messy, geneticists don't think about what’s ‘typical,’ they recognize that there are many common sex chromosomal variations that don’t exactly match a binary. I find it highly problematic to categorize someone based on a DNA swab. … or chromosomes alone. It’s only one piece of a puzzle. A range of factors, not just a chromosome, makes for sex differentiation. Here is the kind of hedge maze you enter when you start applying tests in search of neat XXs and XYs. Some people can have just one sex chromosome, others three or more. You can be born with XY and still be entirely recognisable as a biological woman, if you’re also born with androgen insensitivity. @MForstater should not think that just because we know your ‘sex’ chromosome, we know what your criminal history or muscle mass or strength will be. The typical number of chromosomes in each human cell is 46. These include 22 pairs of “autosomes” (which refers to all chromosomes that are not sex chromosomes) and a pair of sex chromosomes, either an X and a Y (which makes for a male) or two Xs (female). That means the genetic signature for a person with 46 chromosomes is either 46,XY (males), or 46,XX (females). All physiology has a genetic component — metabolism, height, muscular composition. Someone with a particular autosomal gene mutation probably has an edge in endurance sports, with blood carrying more oxygen. But there’s no screaming about that by @SexMattersOrg. Why is gender the only genetic test the Terf Mob demands? Because of boogeyman fears of intentional Olympic gender frauds — though there has not been one actual documented case in 125 years — and the mangling of legitimate discussion about the fairness of transgender competition in women’s sports. If the goal of sex testing is “fairness,” then you’d better bring a whole raft of genetic and other physical tests to the Olympics. And if the goal is “safety,” as some have argued, then why isn’t there testing of every athlete for genetic mutations suggesting heart disease and stroke risk — and when do we start barring them? If we start acting on every issue, every allegation that comes up, then we start having the kind of witch hunts that we’re having now. This has created the mess over Khelif and Lin (recently cleared to compete in the F category)— that, and MAGA & Russian trolling. The solution is to standardize the matter with a simple declaration: Sex testing is wrong, as a matter of science and of ethics. A chromosome is one small piece of the female puzzle. It interacts with a swirl of other codings and factors, internal and external, and there is nothing neat or categorical about that — and no legislating it, either. Everything that makes us is more than a genetic map. If you don’t find that threatening, you might find it beautiful. Consider this: Each of us is born with somewhere between 40 and 80 mutations that our parents don’t have. You know what that means @MForstater? We’re all wildflowers.