The headline is rather reductive, presumably to be more provocative. The actual frequency of these conditions is hard to measure for several reasons, but other studies generally do not indicate rates this high.
The headline implies that this singular study from the Danish Cytogenetic Central Registry voids previous studies and takes their place as the new, singular source of truth. That's not how epidemiology works, though, so this study should be considered another data point with associated sampling bias, not a refutation of previous statistics.
These cases are the result of genetic variants, so sampling within a single region (as is the case with this study) can't be extrapolated to the entire population.
pseudosavant · 11h ago
Very interesting. Relates to conversations I've had recently regarding trans people in sports. Turns out that conversation isn't simple, because gender is way more complex than the binary M/F options society has tried to act like it is.
Between reasons like in this article, or being born intersex, etc, there are definitely people with female chromosomes who have competed in men's sports, or people with female sex organs and male chromosomes that have competed in female sports. I don't know what the "fairness" answer is, but these are real people.
sunshowers · 11h ago
The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will).
All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot perform anywhere near the level that elite athletes do.
Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves.
abeppu · 10h ago
Absolutely lots of factors actually influence competitive advantage and it's arbitrary which ones we decide to use to group competitors!
I think a helpful reframing is to note that some sports do segregate by factors other than sex, generally bodyweight. If boxing, wrestling, judo, weightlifting etc all benefit from weight classes so that we can have more fair competitions among competitors in comparable weight bands, why not have height classes for various sports? Why not have cycling races with tiers of people at different points on the vO2 max scale?
I actually think it would be interesting to watch competitions for some sports that are based around who does "better than expected" by some model that predicts baselines. What if every marathoner was still trying to get the best time achievable, but we celebrated the person who most out-performed expectations? Critically, you wouldn't just stop paying attention when the first cluster of people cross the finish-line -- the winner might arrive later. I would also love to see if different styles of play would emerge in, e.g. an under-6-foot basketball height class.
pseudosavant · 10h ago
Societal gender norms have existed for probably as long as humans have, but we've only known about chromosomes for <200 years. Before the 1900 Olympics, women weren't even allowed to compete.
On the scale of human evolution, this is a very recent situation for society to figure out how to "decide".
lukev · 10h ago
There are plenty of cultures around the world that conceptualize gender differently than we do, as well. Including many where there are options where individuals can choose their gender, in various circumstances or for various purposes.
So actually on the scale of human evolution, humans have been making different choices about matters like these since we've been humans.
cogman10 · 10h ago
It's really not new or recent. For as long as there's been gender norms there's been groups of people outside those norms.
You can, for example, find examples of trans individuals in Utah in the 1800s. [1] Eunuchs are a pretty well-known concept since about the start of recorded history.
Here's an example of a roman cult which practiced self-castration. [2]
I didn't mean to imply that these people didn't exist, just that the scientific understanding detailing aspects of their existence (chromosomes, gonadal dysgenesis, etc) is new.
drewcoo · 9h ago
> Societal gender norms have existed for probably as long as humans have
Or gender norms have existed since gender was defined in the 70s-80s by feminist scholars. Before that was only sex, which biologists know to be not a binary but a bimodal distribution, itself.
lukev · 7h ago
That sound you hear is literally every anthropologist laughing hysterically.
xboxnolifes · 9h ago
Norms are not defined by scholars or scientists, even if they may define the terms to describe them.
autoexec · 5h ago
> We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair
That somehow was mostly because people with certain chromosomal characteristics were heavily disadvantaged in sports, but increasingly wanted participation in them. Because those people (who we called "women") would largely be unable to be competitive and/or would face considerable increased risk of physical harm if they played in/against the same teams as everyone else, people with those chromosomal characteristics splintered off to compete in/against teams of themselves.
This was extremely successful and many women have been happily participating in sports, enjoying the ability to win games by virtue of their training and the non-sex defining aspects of their genetic make up, all without having to unnecessarily accept outsized risks of bodily harm and injury.
It's also worth mentioning that there hasn't been much effort to keep women from competing outside of their own divisions if they're willing to accept the lower odds of success and higher risks of harm to themselves that'd come from that. For the most part, they have been deciding for themselves that it isn't worth it.
It's not even as if chromosomal advantages are the only place we've done this. We have weight classes in certain sports. We have teams that only accept people within certain age ranges. We have divisions based on demonstrated ability. We even have things like the special Olympics. These really aren't a problem or a bad thing to have.
People can't choose their biology, but they can choose to play sports in a way that's more fair and safe for themselves and the others they play with and that's a perfectly acceptable practice that we should encourage. This is true even when it means that some people are excluded from specific teams or events because of things they cannot change about themselves. There are still places for pretty much everyone who wants to play if they look hard enough, even if not everyone is able to be a part of any team or division that they'd like to.
xracy · 2h ago
> There are still places for pretty much everyone who wants to play if they look hard enough, even if not everyone is able to be a part of any team or division that they'd like to.
This reads to me as "separate but equal" which I think is exactly what's wrong with sports divisions. Sports divisions play out the "separate is inherently unequal" at so many levels.
gruez · 10h ago
>Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves.
What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does that mean for women's sports?
csours · 10h ago
For myself, it means that I should have some patience and humility. Of course, I don't participate in women's sports anyway, so that should be pretty easy for me.
sunshowers · 10h ago
I deliberately did not include any normative information on my post. Also, I didn't say the distinction was totally arbitrary (because it's not — social constructs rarely are totally arbitrary). I said the boundaries are fuzzy.
I think a regime where intersex cis women, as well as trans women who have been on testosterone suppression for a long period, would probably be most fair. I don't think categorical bans are fair in any respect, not is forcing intersex cis and trans women to compete with men (because they're likely to be much worse due to not having as much testosterone), nor is creating a third category (because it would have too few people to be truly competitive). But I'm not an expert and most likely neither are you, so I try to keep my opinions here relatively loosely held.
elp · 9h ago
The para-Olympics thrive with dramatically smaller numbers than trans women can manage. A 3rd category would do just fine.
The muscular changes that happen during puberty are permanent. No amount of testosterone suppression will change that. In how many sports do any trans-women end up on the podium vs their numbers in that sport?
The boundaries are really not that fuzzy at all.
giraffe_lady · 10h ago
> What does that mean for women's sports?
I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision. Why does everyone feel comfortable stepping into this conversation with authority?
gruez · 10h ago
>I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision. Why does everyone feel comfortable stepping into this conversation with authority?
Would you be equally deferential to the organizer/rule-making body if it was some other controversial issue, like whether women could compete at all? As a sibling comment mentioned, women couldn't even compete in the olympics before 1900, so if it came up as a culture war topic would your reaction also be "I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision"?
giraffe_lady · 8h ago
I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me.
I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
gruez · 7h ago
>I don't see the need to create and articulate a universalizeable moral framework to decide how I should react to a specific case in front of me.
You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on".
>I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
This is a very perilous position to hold, because it basically means if there's enough TERF athletes to outnumber trans women athletes (which doesn't seem too implausible, based on purely demographic factors) then it's okay to exclude them.
EnergyAmy · 6h ago
To your last point, most women don't want men in their sports, but have been pressured to go along with it.
It is okay to exclude men from women's sports because women have the right to sex-specific spaces.
giraffe_lady · 6h ago
My point is really more along the lines of: look around man. Transphobia is the tip of the spear of fascism in the 2020s, look who your allies are, look who benefits from drawing attention to this specific question right now. Look at what you are choosing to be a part of by doing this here and now.
kijjun · 4h ago
There are many people who view transsexualism as one part of a far more destructive arsenal.
Have you had a good look at who your allies are? A really good look? Are you sure you want to be a part of this?
We wield that spear in defence.
ryandv · 10h ago
You're right, discussion's open to the clergy only. Any laymen who continue to discuss this infohazard will be banned.
the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may admissibly and
meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in
order to answer them, and may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity,
not unless by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline
recognises a knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers,
but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the
world: thus giving to the élite more mental culture, though not more mental
freedom, than it allows to the mass [0].
Exactly. I also support human augmentation, body modification, blood doping, and exogenous testosterone usage at the Olympics. These are the affirmations a mere male athlete can use to transition into an alpha male elite athlete. You can maybe include minoxidil, for those who actually need it.
EnergyAmy · 10h ago
Michael Phelps has already had his records broken. Women will never break men's records across a wide range of sports. I keep seeing him brought up, but it's in no way comparable.
Pushing for allowing men into women's sports based on gender identity will result in the extinction of women's sports. If you want that, at least be honest about it.
sunshowers · 10h ago
Sorry, what?
aaaja · 8h ago
You can compare the world records of female athletes and male athletes in almost every sport and see that really this is an empirical observation.
To use one of your examples: Michael Phelps has at this point had his records beaten by a number of other male swimmers. But no female swimmer has come close. Not even Katie Ledecky.
BobaFloutist · 6h ago
Sure, but how big is the total pool of female swimmers? If we assume that ability to swim (within a sex, for the sake of argument) follows a normal distribution, the denominator of "people that gave swimming a real try" is going to have a direct relationship with the capabilities of the best ever to try. This is completely ignoring funding, encouragement, and access, and strictly discussing the sheer number of women that have literally tried swimming at a young enough age to discover their talent and have the opportunity to become the best swimmer they possibly could if they have it.
sunshowers · 8h ago
Well, yes, I completely agree it makes sense to have two categories.
tomrod · 11h ago
Depending on the specifics regarding "intersex", "trans", and other potential overlapping categorizations, estimates range from 1 in 5,500 births (sex chromosomes inconsistent) to as common as redheads (1 in just over 50). Roughly 0.5% is a good split-the-baby estimate, meaning a substantial fraction of the population may have issues with genitalia identification at birth, with another 1% having presentation later through late‑onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH), Klinefelter syndrome, and other chromosomal differences.
runeblaze · 11h ago
Yep also people with differences in sexual development ("intersex", sometimes) are also overrepresented in trans people for obvious reasons. It is like extremely murky
tzs · 10h ago
I think the fair approach may be to have some kind of rating system based on player performance, and then have separate competitions for players in different rating ranges.
Players should not be allowed to play in competitions below their rating. Include some measures to make it hard for people to purposefully lose in minor competitions to lower their rating so that they can then enter a major competition in a rating group well below their true strength.
Playing in competitions above their rating should generally be allowed, although this might need to vary from sport to sport. For example in a top level knock out tournament that had a few low level players enter their opponents in the first round would have a much easier chance of making it to the second round than the other high level participants.
There still might need to be some gender restricted competitions for social reasons. In a sport where there is a large gender imbalance among players, especially at the scholastic levels, people of the minority gender might be discouraged from playing because they don't want to stick out.
Competitions restricted to the minority gender give those players a chance to develop to the point that they can be comfortable playing the events that are open to all genders.
pitched · 11h ago
Coming from a place of curiosity not knowledge with this. Is it not true that strength roughly matches testosterone levels and that is bimodal in the population? Could what we call women’s sports today not be defined on that axis instead?
cogman10 · 10h ago
It's not perfectly bimodal. Some people are also more and less sensitive to testosterone. The average woman produces testosterone (I know, crazy) with some conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome causing their testosterone production to go into overdrive.
Some sports actually do test for testosterone in order to determine eligibility (I believe volleyball?)
Also, interestingly enough, people that do estrogen injections end up with lower testosterone production. Estrogen also tends to (but not always!) block the effects of testosterone.
Hormones are weird and how individuals react to them is all over the board.
And example of that craziness is what the article refers to. People with Y chromosomes and uteruses. It's caused (AFAIK) because the fetus didn't respond to the hormones which cause the gonads to turn into male reproductive organs.
ruszki · 5h ago
That hormone is testosterone. And that means that no matter how much testosterone those people with Y chromosome(s) get, their body cannot use them. Hence, they have a disadvantage even in women sports.
In theory.
The problem is that for example in women boxing these people are overrepresented. This indicates that testosterone is possibly not the only answer, and we don’t know the full picture AFAIK. But of course it’s also possible that simply Y chromosome causes changes in behavior and not physical performance, and it’s more likely that they like boxing more. We don’t know.
The current best proven differentiator AFAIK is testosterone level and whether their body can process that.
jl6 · 10h ago
Athletic performance is correlated with testosterone levels but also with a lot of other characteristics like height, weight, muscle mass, bone density, grip strength… you could define categories based on those too, but in practice it would be a roundabout way of defining pretty much the male/female distinction we have today.
kjkjadksj · 11h ago
At that point what would actually be fair is relegating high test and low test males as well. I think we all remember that one or a couple kids in school who were a full head taller than their peers and dominated every sport in gym class as a result.
_Algernon_ · 11h ago
Since the distributions overlap you are going to make a lot of people unhappy no matter where you put the cut-off.
zzo38computer · 9h ago
I think what will be fairer might depend on what sports they are; I think that they will have to be considered for each kind of sports, why they have sex/gender segregation, whether or not you should have a segregation at all (and if so, if it should be by something else instead), etc.
autoexec · 5h ago
Sports that don't need segregation and where people don't want segregation don't usually have it.
There is no rule that says women can't play in the NFL for example. A combination of biological realities, a lack of interested women, and cultural expectations have just naturally resulted in a segregated system. Any woman who is qualified for and interested in playing in the NFL can and should.
It's fine for people to decide who they want to play with/against too even if that means by definition that some people will have to play somewhere else. If someone wants to start a league of dart players all named Bill so what? May the best Bill win! The thing about sports divisions that segregate themselves (by name, region, age, gender, etc) is that they also limit their success. The best dart player named Bill can't claim to be the best dart player in the state without playing against people with other names.
If people are happy with their accomplishments within whatever division they're comfortable playing in, we can be happy for them too.
aaaja · 8h ago
This is why sports governing bodies who take a fair view on this have policies that exclude only athletes with male physiological advantage from the female category, rather than the broader group of those with male genetic markers. Which still permits inclusion of athletes with male DSDs like CAIS, who don't have such advantage.
Women have a right to sex-specific sports, and anyone that doesn't qualify is free to compete in the men's leagues.
Since I'm rate limited, to respond to comment below:
That has been the definition for far longer than any current culture war. Right wingers might be latching onto it now, but broken clocks and all that.
To be slightly more specific, because you think you've found a gotcha, it's the gamete size one would or should produce. Biologists are well aware that there can be disorders of development.
dragonwriter · 4h ago
> Organisms that produce the larger of two gamete sizes are female, and organisms that produce the smaller of two gamete sizes are male.
That's one of many ways sex is defined and it's definitely useful for some purposes, but I have no idea why some people think that is appropriate for making social distinctions.
> Women have a right to sex-specific sports
Gender (social, including legal, categories based on sex traits are gender, not sex) categories in sports were almost without exception created to prevent men from having to compete with and potentially lose to women. There is certainly an existing practice of gender segregated competition in some some sports and other competitive domains, but I’m not sure where the idea that this practice of segregation is a matter of rights comes from, no matter what basis of assigning gender is used. (Gender segregation has been frequently used as a means of preserving unequal treatment while meeting the US legal obligation for numerically equal opportunities in school sports insuring, but that’s obviously not the same thing as gender segregation being a right.)
lukev · 7h ago
Should produce... given what definition? I thought gamete size was definitive?
Look, I get what you're saying. Such cases aren't "normal". The claim that "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." And yet, people with six fingers exist, as do uncommon sex variations. It's fine. It happens.
The only reason to insist so stridently that there's an absolute and inevitable binary is if you're trying to enforce a social or religious norm, and are insisting that it's an immutable fact about the world instead of something culturally mediated.
EnergyAmy · 7h ago
"Should" meaning "would if it were mature and healthy"
> "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers."
No. There are no intermediates. Nobody produces "spergs" or "speggs". Someone may produce no gametes because they're not yet mature or because of a developmental disorder, but that just means that they will later on in life, or won't produce the gametes their body is set up to produce.
> The only reason
Bullshit. I bring this up because it's a fundamental fact of biology and HN should know better than to push pseudoscience. Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.
lukev · 6h ago
> healthy
You're just using more normative words, implying that you can tell what someone "really" is aside from literally any definition you can articulate, since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.
> Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.
Unless you are a biologist who specializes in this, caring so much about this means you are actually very much invested in the culture war.
EnergyAmy · 4h ago
> normative words
Look, you're trying to argue with the field of biology as a whole. Good luck.
> since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.
We've established no such thing. Find this mystical person first and then we can talk about something specific, instead of just waving your hands about hypotheticals.
> caring so much about this means
This is the worst sort of argument. Spout pseudoscience, get called on your bullshit, and then pull out "why do you care so much??? :(". Don't spout off in the first place and you won't get called out on it.
lukev · 10h ago
It's been really funny watching this definition become the main right wing talking point, as every other definition they've attempted has been shot down conclusively.
By this logic, individuals like those mentioned in the article above don't have any sex at all because their bodies are unable to produce gametes of any kind.
deadbabe · 11h ago
Ask a person bound by cerebral palsy with a dream to play pro basketball what fairness is.
a4isms · 11h ago
It's not a dichotomy between "unfair" and "absolutely fair." Things can be more or less fair, and it makes sense to discuss making things "more fair" or "less unfair" even if in doing so, we cannot reach "perfectly fair for everyone, all the time."
hydrogen7800 · 10h ago
Some disabilities cannot be overcome by public acceptance and accommodation, and some can to varying degrees, eg. the Americans With Disabilities Act.
jawns · 11h ago
To be more precise than the headline:
People with disorders of sex development such as Morris or Swyer syndrome have XY chromosomes, but they have female external genitalia, because the sexual development that would normally be triggered by XY chromosomes is somehow suppressed.
No comments yet
givemeethekeys · 10h ago
One in 15k. That suggests that there are roughly 22k females who were born male in the USA.
That is a high enough number that, were they to gather somewhere, you'd notice them, but a low enough number that trying to create laws to give them special treatment is political suicide.
sys32768 · 10h ago
Here's an actual person with this which is far more personable than this article:
I wonder what research into prevalence has done now, close to 10 years later and with way more political focus.
jodrellblank · 11h ago
tl;dr: "One in 15,000 males is born and grows up as a girl. .. this group is up to 50% larger than previously assumed"
realo · 11h ago
Well... that would be more than 20,000 USA-ians. Soon targeted for deportation? Or maybe some therapy ... you know ... to make them 'normal' again.
jodrellblank · 9h ago
The article isn't talking about trans people, it's talking about Androgen insensitivity and similar genetic disorders. AFAICT from a quick read, they are no more curable than Downe's Syndrome is.
realo · 8h ago
I know all that. Sorry for the too subtle cynism of my previous comment!
TeaBrain · 8h ago
The comment was more farcical and off-topic than it was cynical or subtle.
etchalon · 11h ago
I'm shocked to find out that sex is more complicated than gender identity, and that there might be a bimodal distribution at play. I have been lied to.
kulahan · 11h ago
Nothing in biology is really binary anyways. Male and female are just useful groupings because we’re a sexually dimorphic species, but as with anything in nature, that’s mostly a spectrum anyways, with strong representations at the anchoring ends.
realo · 11h ago
There is a certain degree of muted cynicism in the parent comment that is quite delightful...
kulahan · 11h ago
Yep, just thought this was an interesting point to go along with the theme.
Why say it's limited to biology? Even the binary logic in your computer can sometimes get stuck in a metastable state that's neither a 1 nor a 0. It's fundamentally impossible to completely prevent because of how physics works.
poly2it · 11h ago
I think the parent was being ironic.
aaaja · 8h ago
Sex is binary in the sense that the two sexes, female and male, refer to the two halves of a system of anisogamous sexual reproduction.
Sexual dimorphism in gonochoric species is a different type of thing to this.
andoando · 11h ago
I mean having an X or Y are pretty damn binary. DNA strand has binary pairs (A-T, C-G). The resulting codons have anitcodon pairs. Then within biological functions you have the parasympathetic system vs the parasympathetic system which do opposite things across the whole body, pro vs anti inflmmatory agents, activators vs inhibitors nearly on every level of biology.
Its actually rather astounding how much binary pairs play a role from the very core of physics.
Polizeiposaune · 10h ago
Gametes are binary - functional gametes in anisogamous species are either egg or sperm.
On the other hand, the XX vs XY karotype (chromosome set) is just very strongly correlated with sex.
The master switch for sex determination in humans (and most mammals) is the SRY gene, usually found on the Y chromosome. Its presence or absence determines whether a developing embryo takes the path towards producing sperm or producing eggs.
SRY can migrate to the X chromosome (resulting in males with an XX karotype) or can be broken by mutation (resulting in females with a XY karotype, usually infertile because other stages of development of the reproductive system depend on having two X chromosomes).
lagadu · 10h ago
Having and X or Y (or even multiple of each, as some people do, XXY and XYY are real, even single X or Y too) is binary, what's not binary is how it doesn't perfectly correlate with the sex (not even getting into gender here) that the person in question belongs to.
andoando · 10h ago
Sure what I was responding to is "Nothing in biology is really binary anyways". Certainly not everything is binary, we don't have two simple models of all people despite nucleotides having binary pairs, but there is a lot of damn binary in biology.
Polizeiposaune · 10h ago
Single Y is a lethal mutation -- there are too many genes needed for normal development that are present only on the X chromosome.
EnergyAmy · 10h ago
XXY and XYY and whatnot are all variations within a sex. Sex is defined by gamete size, females produce the larger gametes and males produce the smaller gametes. In humans, this is binary and immutable.
bregma · 10h ago
Wait... you mean everyone with an X chromosome is female? Is it that simple?
aghastnj · 11h ago
This is especially true if you're drunk and a US Marine stationed overseas...
acheong08 · 11h ago
> “It is very upsetting for people who have grown up and lived for years believing that they are of a particular sex to suddenly discover that they are actually of the opposite sex. This can be a relief but can also be a loss. For most people it comes as a shock that upends their whole identity. Coping with this can take years,”
I find this statement odd. Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender? What more is there to cope with beyond a simple genetic abnormality. It's not like discovering this means they suddenly have to register as the opposite gender or use a different bathroom. It's like taking a 13andme test and finding it hard to cope that you're 10% asian.
rconti · 11h ago
It would be very upsetting to most people to realize they had been switched at birth and raised by the "wrong" parents, even though it doesn't fundamentally change anything about the family you love, the childhood you experienced, and your development along the way.
otterley · 11h ago
> Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender?
This statement is extremely controversial. The gender attribution wars are still burning like the Springfield tire fire.
r14c · 11h ago
controversial, sure, but its mostly people being upset that their cultural norms don't match the traits we observe in humans. we have already established that chromosomes do not determine gender, whether people accept it is a different question.
we're also nearing the point where the earth being a spheroid is controversial so I'm not sure controversy really has anything to do with how factual something is.
kijjun · 10h ago
Who is "we"? That is not established at all, in fact the opposite is objectively true and widely understood. Chromosomes are the key determinant of "gender", by even the most progressive definition of the term.
lagadu · 10h ago
If anything chromossomes would be the key determinant of sex, not gender. But even that's not how we attribute sex: biologically sex is attributed by the capacity to generate small or big gamete, which means that someone who doesn't produce either type, such as a child or elderly person has no sex.
kijjun · 4h ago
This is absurd and offensive, and seems like something taken straight out of transsexual propaganda or fantasy.
Kye · 10h ago
I like to hit people with the fact that the sun isn't the center of the solar system most of the time. Like conservation of momentum and cosmic systems around barycenters, science marches on!
saulpw · 11h ago
Well for one thing it means that you are infertile, which would be very upsetting to many people apart from their gender.
postepowanieadm · 11h ago
It's about sex, not gender.
And it's about Scandinavia, not the USA.
davorak · 10h ago
Even if it is only about sex, the statement made in the article is a binary one, "they are actually of the opposite sex", which is an oddly black and white way of putting it.
drdeca · 11h ago
Race is a substantially less real concept than sex is.
otterley · 11h ago
What does "real" mean here?
stanfordkid · 11h ago
It means two people of different races can have a baby together, but two people of the same sex cannot.
khuey · 10h ago
So literally every human characteristic other than their sexual reproductive capability is not real?
drdeca · 9h ago
Well, I said race is "less real" not that it is "not real". Here are other things that are more real than "race": "blood type", "whether one has Down syndrome", "the number of limbs one has".
These kinds of properties/classifications are, I claim, more "natural", as far as biology. These groupings into classes are more natural (based on biological properties) than groupings into "races".
otterley · 8h ago
Maybe choose a more precise and less judgmental adjective than "real." The opposite of "real" is "fake," not "difficult to substantiate."
drdeca · 5h ago
But “difficult to substantiate” isn’t what I mean? I mean something more like whether something is there independent of what people think of it. (“Reality is that which, when one stops believing in it, doesn’t go away.”)
Distinctions between categories are often somewhat fuzzy, but in some cases there are processes independent of peoples’ opinions that behave largely like there are distinct buckets. Such as “has a left arm”.
With “race”, while there are certainly correlations between various genes and where one was born (and where one’s grandparents were born), and correlations between genes and other genes (which is partially explained by the correlations with location), any lines one may draw to split humanity into “races” will be fairly arbitrary, and at least substantially more arbitrary than splitting by whether someone is male or female (even though there are edge cases there as well; like I said, categories are often a little bit fuzzy).
Now, there may be other concepts that are even less real than race, but I don’t know if any of them are cared about enough to - oh, astrological signs! A person’s astrological signs are probably even less real than race, and people care enough about them to give them names.
otterley · 11h ago
Sure, but does that make it any less "real"?
prmoustache · 10h ago
First because there is absolutely no objective way to define races in their coloquial meaning. So they don't exist.
The only race we can truly define is homo sapiens sapiens.
otterley · 10h ago
> because there is absolutely no objective way to define races in their coloquial meaning. So they don't exist.
This is a pretty controversial statement. Even studied anthropologists disagree with this.
anon84873628 · 10h ago
It's the delta between the common use of the term in public discourse versus the scientific biological basis for it.
_wire_ · 10h ago
Re simple discoveries and coping:
Take a swig from your drink, then spit it back into the container. Keep drinking from same container. Offer a sip to your friend.
At a restaurant meal, mix all the food you are served together into one pile. Explain how it all gets mixed up in your stomach.
Imagine when a pet dog throws up, then eats its own vomit. Include neighbors dogs joining the feast.
Place a photo of a king rat on your refrigerator or over your dining table. Hang another in view from the toilet.
When reading these scenarios, at a certain point you may have become disturbed or offended, yet empirically there's nothing dangerous or even wrong with any of them.
Explain the dimensions of your distress and how you cope.
KevinMS · 11h ago
> Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender?
No we haven't. And in fact, the cases cited in the article still have gender determined by chromosomes, just not the basic XY, XX configurations.
ObscureScience · 11h ago
I don't believe that is true (but I am certainly outside of my expertise). As far as I understand it, sex chromosomes (specifically the Y chromosome) are responsible for genitalia differentiation, but the relevant genes of the chromosome needs to be expressed for it to happen. Whether it's the Y chromosome itself that is inactive, or genes on the other chromosomes that supress it I have no clue about.
davorak · 10h ago
There is genetic transfer between X and Y so you can have XX and still have male genital[1].
No expert but I thought there was a few to several cases along these lines.
To my understanding chromosomes are never responsible for anything, they are a container for genes, and some genes are likely to live on particular chromosomes, so talking about chromosomes being responsible is never 100% correct, so a bad level of abstraction when talking about corner cases.
The quote is about sex--you know the thing is that is actually real, and is absolutely defined by chromosomes.
nofriend · 11h ago
Such a person would lack a womb and ovaries and instead have internal testicles. Discovering that they are infertile is usually a shock to women, so it would at least prompt similar shock. Furthermore, discovering that the reason for their infertility is due to being biologically and genetically male would tend to prompt a similar gender dysphoria that trans people experience, I expect.
prmoustache · 10h ago
>Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender?
This is not universally accepted.
sunshowers · 11h ago
At least it might cause gender dysphoria.
CGMthrowaway · 11h ago
"Genetically men," a specific phrase used in TFA that adds the word "genetically," refers to a specific, contextually-dependent definition of sex as determined chromosomally (your sex genes). Hence, XY = "genetic man"
KittenInABox · 11h ago
> Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender?
I would think so but I think there's a ton of cultural pain points around this. These are people who identify as women but are being told that they may have ambiguity, e.g. they may not be able to bear children/have difficulty getting pregnant or have internal genitals that they would consider manly. I can definitely see that knowledge being painful to experience and trigger some kind of gender dysphoria.
Being told you're genetically abnormal and that this may affect your capacity to bear children, something people have been socialized/instinctively incentivized to desire, will always be shocking imo.
MattGaiser · 11h ago
We are culturally far from accepting that though.
Barrin92 · 11h ago
Stood out for me as well. For all I care you could tell me I'm genetically a giraffe or I was sent here from Alpha Centauri. If I was fine with it an hour ago when you hadn't told me I'm fine with it now
bee_rider · 11h ago
I think you are coming from a good place, but it is better to not compare our imaginary and implausible concerns (like discovering we’re a giraffe or from another planet) with real problems that people might actually have. I think you actually would have a lot to think about if you found out that you were a giraffe, but we don’t really have to seriously contend with that possibility or what it means.
Yes, it is good to remind people that we continue to be ourselves whatever we discover about ourselves. But, we should also be upfront about the fact that some of us are going to end up with real identity issues at some point.
Barrin92 · 10h ago
>with real problems that people might actually have.
But it's not a real problem, that's my point. The infertility is obviously, but that's not the identity issue here. Most people with infertility issues don't have a sex or gender identity problem, but a medical one.
Insofar as your genes matter in regards to your sex, they can only matter in what they express, and that's already done. It's like someone telling you they switched the blueprints for your house up, and you were supposed to have your neighbors house. But whatever you've been living in for 30 years, it's still the same place. Everything that's wrong with it is still wrong and everything that's good about it is still good.
Your body can matter to your identity because it's what you experience, but your genes can't unless you start to in a sense fetishize your genetic markup.
bee_rider · 10h ago
Ya know, maybe you are right. At least ideally. Actually, I jumped in with the best intentions and now I’m having second thoughts about what I wrote, haha.
I dunno. People end up with aspects of their identity that they have trouble contending with, in any case. I neither want to downplay that nor make it seem like a bigger deal than it ought to be. If the researcher is reporting that people are having trouble coming to terms with it (the genetic information specifically and in isolation), then it is a real problem, but I think I agree that it shouldn’t be. And also, it is a short quote by the researcher and not super detailed, so maybe it is actually the case that people are taking a while to come to terms with the medical meaning anyway.
drcongo · 8h ago
I'm really trying to believe you're coming from a good place here, but man, this really looks like a spectacular lack of empathy. Not everybody is like you. Try to look at it from the point of view of another human being, rather than imagining something happening to you. It's not about you.
Barrin92 · 3h ago
>this really looks like a spectacular lack of empathy
No, fake kindness isn't empathy. This wasn't about me. Everybody is actually exactly the same in that we all should care about our bodies, nobody should care about the biochemical details of their genes. That doesn't change your body or your personality.
Affirming someone's mistaken identity crisis because you want to show the world how nice you are is actually the opposite. What would help them is understanding exactly what I said, that they are still exactly who they were.
drcongo · 11h ago
Finding out that you can never have children would likely be upsetting to a great many people. Just because you're so amazing, doesn't mean everybody is.
725686 · 11h ago
Good for you. Not everyone is as good or strong as you.
The headline implies that this singular study from the Danish Cytogenetic Central Registry voids previous studies and takes their place as the new, singular source of truth. That's not how epidemiology works, though, so this study should be considered another data point with associated sampling bias, not a refutation of previous statistics.
These cases are the result of genetic variants, so sampling within a single region (as is the case with this study) can't be extrapolated to the entire population.
Between reasons like in this article, or being born intersex, etc, there are definitely people with female chromosomes who have competed in men's sports, or people with female sex organs and male chromosomes that have competed in female sports. I don't know what the "fairness" answer is, but these are real people.
All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot perform anywhere near the level that elite athletes do.
Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves.
I think a helpful reframing is to note that some sports do segregate by factors other than sex, generally bodyweight. If boxing, wrestling, judo, weightlifting etc all benefit from weight classes so that we can have more fair competitions among competitors in comparable weight bands, why not have height classes for various sports? Why not have cycling races with tiers of people at different points on the vO2 max scale?
I actually think it would be interesting to watch competitions for some sports that are based around who does "better than expected" by some model that predicts baselines. What if every marathoner was still trying to get the best time achievable, but we celebrated the person who most out-performed expectations? Critically, you wouldn't just stop paying attention when the first cluster of people cross the finish-line -- the winner might arrive later. I would also love to see if different styles of play would emerge in, e.g. an under-6-foot basketball height class.
On the scale of human evolution, this is a very recent situation for society to figure out how to "decide".
So actually on the scale of human evolution, humans have been making different choices about matters like these since we've been humans.
You can, for example, find examples of trans individuals in Utah in the 1800s. [1] Eunuchs are a pretty well-known concept since about the start of recorded history.
Here's an example of a roman cult which practiced self-castration. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Morris_Young
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galli
Or gender norms have existed since gender was defined in the 70s-80s by feminist scholars. Before that was only sex, which biologists know to be not a binary but a bimodal distribution, itself.
That somehow was mostly because people with certain chromosomal characteristics were heavily disadvantaged in sports, but increasingly wanted participation in them. Because those people (who we called "women") would largely be unable to be competitive and/or would face considerable increased risk of physical harm if they played in/against the same teams as everyone else, people with those chromosomal characteristics splintered off to compete in/against teams of themselves.
This was extremely successful and many women have been happily participating in sports, enjoying the ability to win games by virtue of their training and the non-sex defining aspects of their genetic make up, all without having to unnecessarily accept outsized risks of bodily harm and injury.
It's also worth mentioning that there hasn't been much effort to keep women from competing outside of their own divisions if they're willing to accept the lower odds of success and higher risks of harm to themselves that'd come from that. For the most part, they have been deciding for themselves that it isn't worth it.
It's not even as if chromosomal advantages are the only place we've done this. We have weight classes in certain sports. We have teams that only accept people within certain age ranges. We have divisions based on demonstrated ability. We even have things like the special Olympics. These really aren't a problem or a bad thing to have.
People can't choose their biology, but they can choose to play sports in a way that's more fair and safe for themselves and the others they play with and that's a perfectly acceptable practice that we should encourage. This is true even when it means that some people are excluded from specific teams or events because of things they cannot change about themselves. There are still places for pretty much everyone who wants to play if they look hard enough, even if not everyone is able to be a part of any team or division that they'd like to.
This reads to me as "separate but equal" which I think is exactly what's wrong with sports divisions. Sports divisions play out the "separate is inherently unequal" at so many levels.
What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does that mean for women's sports?
I think a regime where intersex cis women, as well as trans women who have been on testosterone suppression for a long period, would probably be most fair. I don't think categorical bans are fair in any respect, not is forcing intersex cis and trans women to compete with men (because they're likely to be much worse due to not having as much testosterone), nor is creating a third category (because it would have too few people to be truly competitive). But I'm not an expert and most likely neither are you, so I try to keep my opinions here relatively loosely held.
The muscular changes that happen during puberty are permanent. No amount of testosterone suppression will change that. In how many sports do any trans-women end up on the podium vs their numbers in that sport?
The boundaries are really not that fuzzy at all.
I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision. Why does everyone feel comfortable stepping into this conversation with authority?
Would you be equally deferential to the organizer/rule-making body if it was some other controversial issue, like whether women could compete at all? As a sibling comment mentioned, women couldn't even compete in the olympics before 1900, so if it came up as a culture war topic would your reaction also be "I don't know, I'm not an athlete, coach, tournament organizer, part of a rule-making body, or one of a number of other roles that would give me insight or authority to be involved in that decision"?
I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
You kinda do, otherwise your position just sounds like "why are you talking about trans athletes? You should just Trust the Experts, except when I disagree with them, then it's an Important Moral Issue that the public needs to weigh in on".
>I listed rulemakers and organizers but also athletes themselves. I don't know much about the history of the olympics but I would guess the desires and probably activism of women athletes played a role.
This is a very perilous position to hold, because it basically means if there's enough TERF athletes to outnumber trans women athletes (which doesn't seem too implausible, based on purely demographic factors) then it's okay to exclude them.
It is okay to exclude men from women's sports because women have the right to sex-specific spaces.
Have you had a good look at who your allies are? A really good look? Are you sure you want to be a part of this?
We wield that spear in defence.
Pushing for allowing men into women's sports based on gender identity will result in the extinction of women's sports. If you want that, at least be honest about it.
To use one of your examples: Michael Phelps has at this point had his records beaten by a number of other male swimmers. But no female swimmer has come close. Not even Katie Ledecky.
Players should not be allowed to play in competitions below their rating. Include some measures to make it hard for people to purposefully lose in minor competitions to lower their rating so that they can then enter a major competition in a rating group well below their true strength.
Playing in competitions above their rating should generally be allowed, although this might need to vary from sport to sport. For example in a top level knock out tournament that had a few low level players enter their opponents in the first round would have a much easier chance of making it to the second round than the other high level participants.
There still might need to be some gender restricted competitions for social reasons. In a sport where there is a large gender imbalance among players, especially at the scholastic levels, people of the minority gender might be discouraged from playing because they don't want to stick out.
Competitions restricted to the minority gender give those players a chance to develop to the point that they can be comfortable playing the events that are open to all genders.
Some sports actually do test for testosterone in order to determine eligibility (I believe volleyball?)
Also, interestingly enough, people that do estrogen injections end up with lower testosterone production. Estrogen also tends to (but not always!) block the effects of testosterone.
Hormones are weird and how individuals react to them is all over the board.
And example of that craziness is what the article refers to. People with Y chromosomes and uteruses. It's caused (AFAIK) because the fetus didn't respond to the hormones which cause the gonads to turn into male reproductive organs.
In theory.
The problem is that for example in women boxing these people are overrepresented. This indicates that testosterone is possibly not the only answer, and we don’t know the full picture AFAIK. But of course it’s also possible that simply Y chromosome causes changes in behavior and not physical performance, and it’s more likely that they like boxing more. We don’t know.
The current best proven differentiator AFAIK is testosterone level and whether their body can process that.
There is no rule that says women can't play in the NFL for example. A combination of biological realities, a lack of interested women, and cultural expectations have just naturally resulted in a segregated system. Any woman who is qualified for and interested in playing in the NFL can and should.
It's fine for people to decide who they want to play with/against too even if that means by definition that some people will have to play somewhere else. If someone wants to start a league of dart players all named Bill so what? May the best Bill win! The thing about sports divisions that segregate themselves (by name, region, age, gender, etc) is that they also limit their success. The best dart player named Bill can't claim to be the best dart player in the state without playing against people with other names.
If people are happy with their accomplishments within whatever division they're comfortable playing in, we can be happy for them too.
does not exist for sex or gender.
https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/gender-has-a-history-and-...
https://x.com/Fausto_Sterling/status/1229878759261712385
She is deeply unserious, and should be ignored if you value truth.
Should all just play esports instead.
"Intersex" is a misleading term that's been phased out in favor of DSD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development). Every person is still male or female.
Women have a right to sex-specific sports, and anyone that doesn't qualify is free to compete in the men's leagues.
Since I'm rate limited, to respond to comment below:
That has been the definition for far longer than any current culture war. Right wingers might be latching onto it now, but broken clocks and all that.
To be slightly more specific, because you think you've found a gotcha, it's the gamete size one would or should produce. Biologists are well aware that there can be disorders of development.
That's one of many ways sex is defined and it's definitely useful for some purposes, but I have no idea why some people think that is appropriate for making social distinctions.
> Women have a right to sex-specific sports
Gender (social, including legal, categories based on sex traits are gender, not sex) categories in sports were almost without exception created to prevent men from having to compete with and potentially lose to women. There is certainly an existing practice of gender segregated competition in some some sports and other competitive domains, but I’m not sure where the idea that this practice of segregation is a matter of rights comes from, no matter what basis of assigning gender is used. (Gender segregation has been frequently used as a means of preserving unequal treatment while meeting the US legal obligation for numerically equal opportunities in school sports insuring, but that’s obviously not the same thing as gender segregation being a right.)
Look, I get what you're saying. Such cases aren't "normal". The claim that "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers." And yet, people with six fingers exist, as do uncommon sex variations. It's fine. It happens.
The only reason to insist so stridently that there's an absolute and inevitable binary is if you're trying to enforce a social or religious norm, and are insisting that it's an immutable fact about the world instead of something culturally mediated.
> "humans have two biological sexes" is true in same way as the claim "humans have five fingers."
No. There are no intermediates. Nobody produces "spergs" or "speggs". Someone may produce no gametes because they're not yet mature or because of a developmental disorder, but that just means that they will later on in life, or won't produce the gametes their body is set up to produce.
> The only reason
Bullshit. I bring this up because it's a fundamental fact of biology and HN should know better than to push pseudoscience. Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.
You're just using more normative words, implying that you can tell what someone "really" is aside from literally any definition you can articulate, since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.
> Sex in humans is binary and immutable, but that doesn't mean boys can't play with dolls and girls can't like trucks or whatever dumb culture war stuff is raging.
Unless you are a biologist who specializes in this, caring so much about this means you are actually very much invested in the culture war.
Look, you're trying to argue with the field of biology as a whole. Good luck.
> since we've established that gamete size does not apply in all cases.
We've established no such thing. Find this mystical person first and then we can talk about something specific, instead of just waving your hands about hypotheticals.
> caring so much about this means
This is the worst sort of argument. Spout pseudoscience, get called on your bullshit, and then pull out "why do you care so much??? :(". Don't spout off in the first place and you won't get called out on it.
By this logic, individuals like those mentioned in the article above don't have any sex at all because their bodies are unable to produce gametes of any kind.
People with disorders of sex development such as Morris or Swyer syndrome have XY chromosomes, but they have female external genitalia, because the sexual development that would normally be triggered by XY chromosomes is somehow suppressed.
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That is a high enough number that, were they to gather somewhere, you'd notice them, but a low enough number that trying to create laws to give them special treatment is political suicide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcSCW51PSIs
I wonder what research into prevalence has done now, close to 10 years later and with way more political focus.
Sexual dimorphism in gonochoric species is a different type of thing to this.
Its actually rather astounding how much binary pairs play a role from the very core of physics.
On the other hand, the XX vs XY karotype (chromosome set) is just very strongly correlated with sex.
The master switch for sex determination in humans (and most mammals) is the SRY gene, usually found on the Y chromosome. Its presence or absence determines whether a developing embryo takes the path towards producing sperm or producing eggs.
SRY can migrate to the X chromosome (resulting in males with an XX karotype) or can be broken by mutation (resulting in females with a XY karotype, usually infertile because other stages of development of the reproductive system depend on having two X chromosomes).
I find this statement odd. Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender? What more is there to cope with beyond a simple genetic abnormality. It's not like discovering this means they suddenly have to register as the opposite gender or use a different bathroom. It's like taking a 13andme test and finding it hard to cope that you're 10% asian.
This statement is extremely controversial. The gender attribution wars are still burning like the Springfield tire fire.
we're also nearing the point where the earth being a spheroid is controversial so I'm not sure controversy really has anything to do with how factual something is.
These kinds of properties/classifications are, I claim, more "natural", as far as biology. These groupings into classes are more natural (based on biological properties) than groupings into "races".
Distinctions between categories are often somewhat fuzzy, but in some cases there are processes independent of peoples’ opinions that behave largely like there are distinct buckets. Such as “has a left arm”.
With “race”, while there are certainly correlations between various genes and where one was born (and where one’s grandparents were born), and correlations between genes and other genes (which is partially explained by the correlations with location), any lines one may draw to split humanity into “races” will be fairly arbitrary, and at least substantially more arbitrary than splitting by whether someone is male or female (even though there are edge cases there as well; like I said, categories are often a little bit fuzzy).
Now, there may be other concepts that are even less real than race, but I don’t know if any of them are cared about enough to - oh, astrological signs! A person’s astrological signs are probably even less real than race, and people care enough about them to give them names.
The only race we can truly define is homo sapiens sapiens.
This is a pretty controversial statement. Even studied anthropologists disagree with this.
Take a swig from your drink, then spit it back into the container. Keep drinking from same container. Offer a sip to your friend.
At a restaurant meal, mix all the food you are served together into one pile. Explain how it all gets mixed up in your stomach.
Imagine when a pet dog throws up, then eats its own vomit. Include neighbors dogs joining the feast.
Place a photo of a king rat on your refrigerator or over your dining table. Hang another in view from the toilet.
When reading these scenarios, at a certain point you may have become disturbed or offended, yet empirically there's nothing dangerous or even wrong with any of them.
Explain the dimensions of your distress and how you cope.
No we haven't. And in fact, the cases cited in the article still have gender determined by chromosomes, just not the basic XY, XX configurations.
No expert but I thought there was a few to several cases along these lines.
To my understanding chromosomes are never responsible for anything, they are a container for genes, and some genes are likely to live on particular chromosomes, so talking about chromosomes being responsible is never 100% correct, so a bad level of abstraction when talking about corner cases.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
This is not universally accepted.
I would think so but I think there's a ton of cultural pain points around this. These are people who identify as women but are being told that they may have ambiguity, e.g. they may not be able to bear children/have difficulty getting pregnant or have internal genitals that they would consider manly. I can definitely see that knowledge being painful to experience and trigger some kind of gender dysphoria.
Being told you're genetically abnormal and that this may affect your capacity to bear children, something people have been socialized/instinctively incentivized to desire, will always be shocking imo.
Yes, it is good to remind people that we continue to be ourselves whatever we discover about ourselves. But, we should also be upfront about the fact that some of us are going to end up with real identity issues at some point.
But it's not a real problem, that's my point. The infertility is obviously, but that's not the identity issue here. Most people with infertility issues don't have a sex or gender identity problem, but a medical one.
Insofar as your genes matter in regards to your sex, they can only matter in what they express, and that's already done. It's like someone telling you they switched the blueprints for your house up, and you were supposed to have your neighbors house. But whatever you've been living in for 30 years, it's still the same place. Everything that's wrong with it is still wrong and everything that's good about it is still good.
Your body can matter to your identity because it's what you experience, but your genes can't unless you start to in a sense fetishize your genetic markup.
I dunno. People end up with aspects of their identity that they have trouble contending with, in any case. I neither want to downplay that nor make it seem like a bigger deal than it ought to be. If the researcher is reporting that people are having trouble coming to terms with it (the genetic information specifically and in isolation), then it is a real problem, but I think I agree that it shouldn’t be. And also, it is a short quote by the researcher and not super detailed, so maybe it is actually the case that people are taking a while to come to terms with the medical meaning anyway.
No, fake kindness isn't empathy. This wasn't about me. Everybody is actually exactly the same in that we all should care about our bodies, nobody should care about the biochemical details of their genes. That doesn't change your body or your personality.
Affirming someone's mistaken identity crisis because you want to show the world how nice you are is actually the opposite. What would help them is understanding exactly what I said, that they are still exactly who they were.