All the news on his speech seems to be about HS2 but I think that this is important too.
Trans people are literally just trying to get on with their lives while bigots obsess about them.
The same type of people said the same things about women getting the vote, interracial couples, and homosexuality.
I hope history continues to move in the right direction and leave these nosey fucks as nothing more than shameful memories.
Hey, will you look at the time!
Its ‘generate political cover for the Tories privatizing the NHS’ o’clock again!
Removed by mod
I think if anything this is more important.
Sure, HS2 is a complete shambles and an embarrassment and we should be criticising what’s going on, but this is a calculated and deliberate attack on human rights, and is a significantly bigger red flag that I wish more people took seriously.It’s also worth noting that HS2 is in shambles because Sunak, as chancellor, defunded and interfered with it
It’s simple, gender can be changed but sex cannot. End of story, anyone who argues otherwise is objectively wrong.
You’re not technically wrong, but it’s a nuanced issue and people should treat it as such rather than black and white.
Sunak saying “no one can change sex” without any qualifying statements is just designed to inflame and divide people.
No it’s designed to gain support from ignorant bigots who have nothing better to do than think about other people’s genitals all the damn time, but are completely incapable of actual learning anything that isn’t shoveled down their throat by a far right psychopath who stands to gain from what they’re saying.
It’s designed to offer a firm take on the nuanced issue. A lot of people feel like they are tired of being told they are crazy (on both sides).
It feels like if someone (self) inserts gender where he says sex here, they are looking for reasons to be upset.
Clown fish start life as males, and become female in adulthood. Gobies can switch back and forth between male and female. So far, we know of maybe 500 species of fish that can change sex.
I understand people are not fish, but I’m not sure we should be so quick to declare something about people “can’t be changed” with enough time, knowledge and science. Sex and gender are both complicated systems with lots of opportunity for unexpected variations affecting seemingly unrelated parts of a person.
It’s even possible for your body to have more than one set of chromosomes, it’s called Chromosomal Mosaicism and is detected in around 1-2% of pregnancies. Not all of those pregnancies make it full term, and not all mosaics are retained by the foetus, but in a world of billions of people it still ends up being a lot of people who are sexually diverse.
Biology is not simple. Do not underestimate the weird things your body can randomly surprise you with.
Most people generally assume we’re talking about current technological limits, unless otherwise stated, lest we end up with “yeah, everything is possible because DNA editing is possible”.
Even without technological intervention, we know some kinds of chemical exposure and cancers can alter chromosomes and literally change your X into a Y or vice versa. Or even turn it into a different shape than X or Y. Sometimes it a chromosome just goes missing entirely. Genetics are not always good at following the rules and they can break or perform strange new equations with mistaken values whenever a new cell is made. Organics are messy like that
Chromosomes delete, combine, duplicate, change and/or fuse bits of other chromosomes in unexpected places more than you might expect. It can happen to an embryo a few cells big right through a person’s life.
Given the male sex is defined by the presence of any Y chromosome though (if we go by chromosome sex determination alone), if an arm breaks off the 46th chromosome after the embryo is established as XX, that XX foetus can develop as XY. Has it changed sex in the womb since it changed chromosomes? Are they female because they were conceived as XX, or male because they were born XY? It happens.
And if a foetus has Chromosome mosaicism, with both an XX and an XY embryo that fused into one foetus, it can be born with both sets of working genitals. Because they usually determine sex visually, they might only see the XY genitals and classify it as male. But the blood tests will sometimes show XX and sometimes XY, as much as 50% of the time if the fusion happened early. Which sex is that person in that case, and are they only 1 sex?
Are they still male becaude they have a Y if the first implanted embryo with XX chromosomes absorbed a smaller XY embryo, and therefore the final body is mostly XX?And If a person with mosaicism as an adult surgically removes their XY-typical set/parts of their body including genitals, are they still XY? Even if the XY cells can be removed completely because they’re only a small part of the person? Because that can happen too.
It only gets more complicated and uncertain from there, because there are a lot of variables at play when there’s loads of organic data manipulation. But weird shit can and does happen for reasons we don’t yet understand or know about. Depending on how you define sex and the point of sex determination, it is very likely someone has already changed sex.
I dare you to take HRT for a couple of years and then say that again (obviously not really, but you clearly don’t give a shit about biology, which would prove you wrong, and are only here to spread ignorance in the name of transphobia)
Depends how you define sex.
If you just mean physical appearance then yes you can change your sex through hormones and surgery.
If you mean DNA then no, most AMAB will all have a X and a Y chromosome in every one of their cells which would technically make them male “sex”, despite whatever gender they identify as.
You can change your gender but you can’t really choose your biological sex. But it’s semantics really and not totally flushed out yet either.
yet
So transphobes can just ignore gender as a concept and treat sex as all there is and you can’t call them out because they are “technically correct”?
Strawman
He is a despicable right-conservative populist who obviously says this for all the wrong reasons but that does not change the fact that the statement by itself is a correct one. Humans can change their gender, that is possible because gender is a more or less internalised, socio-cultural and therefore psychological construct. The sex of a human on the other hand is an inherent, biological and physiological quality, written into each cells DNA. Therefore the sex of a person could only be changed by replacing chromosomes in every single cell of the individuals body. I very much hope for all trans people that it will become medically possible to change their sex in the future but at this point it is simply not medically possible and to deny this truth will not make the lifes of trans people better.
This is true insomuch as you define sex as the 46th chromosome, but an argument can be made that that is overly simplistic. Nearly every cell in our body experiences some amount of sexual differentiation, and this is often mediated by Testosterone and Estrogen exposure. The complicating part is that trans people undergoing hormone replacement therapy do dramatically change their hormonal profile, and while some tissues are only meaningfully sensitive to sex hormones early in development (no amount of HRT is going to change your skeleton, for instance, or cause someone to grow a uterus), other tissues do remain sensitive to sex hormones and can meaningfully differentiate in adulthood causing significant medical effects. Estrogen, for instance, promotes blood clot formation, which is why (cis) women have a higher rate of them. Trans women who take estrogen, as would be expected, also have a higher rate of blood clots compared to cis men. If trans people are only changing gender, and gender is a strictly social phenomenon, we can’t really explain this. Likewise, Testosterone can promote higher cholesterol levels that lead to heart attacks, which is why men have higher rates of them. Trans men taking Testosterone also experience this.
So, the fact of the matter is that trans people taking hormones go through biological changes that exactly parallel natural sexual differentiation, albeit in limited form. This has direct clinical relevance, as a trans man seeking cardiovascular medical support should not be treated the same way as a cis woman. Given this, there is a sound argument to be made that “biological sex” as defined in this way simply isn’t sufficient to describe these kinds of people. At a biological level, they really do represent a kind of intermediate state in sexual differentiation, and this bears medical significance.
What it doesn’t really bear, however, is social significance outside of very close intimate personal relationships. Regardless of whether you think having a strongly gendered society is a good thing or not, the fact is that we don’t determine social gender through magical Chromosome-Scopes, but rather a complex mix of perceived traits, both of the body and things like voice, hair, clothing, personality, etc.
Very interesting and I agree with everything you wrote.
At a biological level, they really do represent a kind of intermediate state in sexual differentiation
I just wish one day all people who feel a need to do so will be able to transition entirely, not just socially but also biologically.
If trans people are only changing gender, and gender is a strictly social phenomenon we can’t really explain this
Yes we can… It’s the exact same as consuming a drug which changes how your body works. Arguing otherwise is akin to saying people who drink coffee have a different sex than those who don’t.
My point is that binary sex is an incomplete metric that doesn’t accurately describe the biology of trans people. My wording was a bit clunky there, but if the meaningful traits that sex describes are mediated through hormonal profiles, and hormonal profiles do not necessarily match the 46th chromosome, there’s a strong argument to be made that what we’re really describing when we’re talking about sex in humans is not the value of a chromosome, but rather the pattern of sexual differentiation throughout the body, and the fact of the matter is that that is not a strict binary. Binary sex based on chromosomes is not capable of meaningfully distinguishing between a cis woman and a trans man despite there being many significant biological differences between them that are produce in the exact same way as they are between cis women and men.
It’s really not necessary to bend over backwards to defend him. If he was talking about chromosomes he’d have had no reason to say anything because it would just been a pointless non sequitur with no political relevance. He obviously meant it as an attack against trans people’s existence.
I never defended him and I don´t get why you project such nonsense on me after I clearly wrote:
He is a despicable right-conservative populist who obviously says this for all the wrong reasons but that does not change the fact that the statement by itself is a correct one.
Are you unable to separate between the person and the statement?
Is this your idea of bending over backwards to defend someone?
Your definitions of sex and gender are not in universal use, and they are not the definitions used by Sunak. So his statement was not “correct”, because what it meant was not correct.
Your definitions of sex and gender are not in universal use
Interesting! What definitions are in universal use?
I think my definitions of sex and gender and the definitions of the Council of Europe seem pretty congruent though:
Sex refers to “the different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones, etc.”
Gender refers to "the socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men. It varies from society to society and can be changed
and they are not the definitions used by Sunak
Good point, I assume that he (as the conservative-populist he is) probably meant to say gender when he said sex and that he wanted to imply that people can not change gender (which is obviously false because gender is a social construct and not an inherent biological quality).
All that does not change the fact that the statement “people can not change their sex” itself is a correct one though. As far as I understand logic, if somebody says something correct while meaning something incorrect, that does not change the true statement into a false one.
What definitions are in universal use?
No definition is in universal use.
meant to say gender when he said sex
He meant to say exactly what he said, and it was incorrect. He was not using your definition of sex. He was using it in the same sense as “I had a sex change operation”.
Or “Now I want to change the sex on my birth certificate”. Do you also chime in to inform people it’s wrong to do that?
Imagine knowing the last 13 years of Tory rule have been such a disaster that you have to spend all your time whipping up a fury against .01% of the population in the gutter press to the point where transphobic hate crimes have risen in Britain by like 60%
