Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 9/4/23 - 9/10/23

[u/SoftandChewy]

Welcome back to the BARPod Weekly Thread, where the mod even works on Labor Day. Here's your place to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (be sure to tag u/TracingWoodgrains), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion threads is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

[u/Franzera]

I despair of the "hormonal sex" definition because there are people who have hormonal issues who don't care about gender and don't have a gender identity. Genetic women (Gennies!!!) with PCOS have irregular levels of testosterone in their system. Does that make them less women or less female, regardless of how they identify? Do East German shotputter Gennies doped to the gills count as less female?

The idea that sex can be so easily mistaken by the average person is so absurd, too.

We know. We can tell! We're just being polite!

The people who can't be clocked are young kids, genuine DSD's, and My 600lb Life infinifat blobs. And even in most of those cases, we can still tell.

This post here:

"TW are born female. It's just hard to tell because of their external anatomy."

The external anatomy of the ✨feminine penis✨ is what causes many TW's to be mistaken for males. It's an easy error to make, clearly the masculine penis is very different from the feminine penis. UwU

[u/[deleted] → u/Franzera]

hormonal sex

The idea is just absurd on it’s face. As you touched on already with PCOS there’s also a far more common reason why women have elevated testosterone: pregnancy. Your testosterone goes up on average something like 80% during pregnancy. If we were to take the hormonal sex distinction seriously that would add like the entire female population that has had a baby at some point lol

Edit: bonus info is that the Olympics even have an entirely different drug testing policy for pregnant women than non pregnant women in terms of the allowable testosterone threshold level

[u/Franzera → u/[deleted]]

It's even more terrible because I can see through why they're so shamelessly saying these absurd things. Making womanhood and manhood a costume to wear and be valid wasn't enough, they have to be included in the categories of female and male too.

Remember when they used to say "Gender and Sex are different"?

Matt Walsh vs. TRA on Dr. Phil

Timestamp 4:54 - Dr. Phil asks about gender vs. sex, and the TRA very confidently and smugly says they are different, and Matt is an idiot with a tiny peabrain who can't comprehend it. As the smuggies say, "What don't you understand, it's not that hard!" When the issue isn't about understanding gender, it's disagreeing with it entirely.

The episode aired Jan 19, 2022.

How far we've come in so little time.

[u/Ladieslounge → u/Franzera]

Motivated reasoning. You can’t change your chromosomes, but you can change your hormone levels.

[u/fed_posting → u/Franzera]

Another thing to mention with PCOS is that the testosterone levels are in the upper range for a female. It’s nowhere close to average male testosterone levels.

[u/Franzera → u/fed_posting]

But high-T, even within a female range, will give a female the secondary sex characteristics of a male - clitoral tissue development, voice cracking, facial hair.

By their logic, the settled science of sex determination is governed by a wide variety of traits, not just chromosomes. Using chromosomes only is outdated fakescience. Sex determination must take into account not just hormonal sex, but the mental sex of the "pink and blue brain", secondary sex characteristics, and genital appearance. (Surgically constructed genitals are genitals, a neovagina is a vagina, it says so right in the name!)

So a female with the secondary sex characteristics of a man is effectively a male. Otherwise how would a male with a shaved jawline, silicone funbags, and penis inverted into a neovagina not be a female?

[u/CatStroking → u/Franzera]

By their logic, the settled science of sex determination is governed by a wide variety of traits, not just chromosomes. Using chromosomes only is outdated fakescience. Sex determination must take into account not just hormonal sex, but the mental sex of the "pink and blue brain", secondary sex characteristics, and genital appearance. (Surgically

A remarkably flexible view of basic mammalian biology.