Blacklists

Blacklisting, aka pre-emptive blocking by mass list on Twitter, for the most part is politically infantile – but that also makes it dangerous. There's a strong whiff of McCarthyism and Cultural Revolution style zealotry that emanates from a lot of the people who deploy Twitter blacklists. 

These mass blacklists are the social media equivalent of deep sea trawling for a particular species of fish. You may catch what you want but inevitably you also catch and waste loads you don’t.

I've recently discovered that I'm on several blacklists – mostly I suspect because I've tweeted, and written on this blog about gender issues in ways that are deemed to deviate from the one true path, or I have followed or been followed by the wrong people, or liked or RTed the wrong tweets.

Well, so be it. I've been on the Left for too long and suffered more actual consequences as a result of that than most of the armchair arbiters of what is true and just, so I'm not unduly bothered.

This is not a whinge – well, not much –  more an expression of my concerns about the effects of the politics behind it all at a point in human history when senseless divisions are arguably more dangerous to the entire planet than at any point ever - including when the USA and USSR were at risk of lobbing ICBMs at each other.

I don't reactively block people who've blacklisted me but I did get irked last night when someone, when it was pointed out to him that he'd blocked me, checked out my timeline and declared sententiously - and behind my back – that  “it's very clear she's on that block list for a reason and I shan't be manually unblocking her.”

The "I shan’t" was so very Christopher Robinish, that shall be his name for the purposes of this post.

My immediate response to Christopher Robin’s patronizing and supercilious dismissal of me was adrenaline fuelled and for about five minutes I wanted to rip him up for bog paper but my rational brain kicked in before I put fingers to keyboard - as it almost always does.

One of the other people in the thread is also on the same blacklist - presumably for the same reasons - ie being someone who has been declared to be a gender identity deviationist.

Her guilt has been determined by some anonymous person/s who added her account to the mass blacklist, TerfBlocker. However, Christopher Robin doesn't block her - presumably because they share other platforms, which would make it all a bit awkward.

Another person I know is also on the same blacklist and as a result has been blocked by Christopher Robin.

Now, all three us who are on the blacklist that Christopher Robin uses as a sort of force field to protect himself from circuit blowing rage surges, are left wing women who are unfailingly polite and rational – not to mention articulate, erudite, and thoroughly decent human beings.

One is a very dear friend on whose behalf I have decided to be deeply offended. Like me, she has reservations about aspects of the current transgender orthodoxy but unlike me she is too worried about the toxic nature of the on-line debate to engage in it publicly. Yet she is also on the blacklist and so is blocked by Christopher Robin.

I can imagine the enlightened ones would say, ‘ah but she's a closet TERF so she deserves to be on the blacklist because she thinks bad thoughts.'

The likes of Christopher Robin don't matter much because in the great scheme of things, they're inconsequential lightweights – but overall it's the Left's loss. 

It's a classic own goal. Self-censorship. Political infantilism.

On the SCAR Intersection

To those who are finding that sitting on the Jessica Yaniv fence is cutting deep into their political and ethical nether regions – let me say this: Yaniv is an exhibitionist with a menstruation fetish focused on girls; demonstrates racist attitudes, and possibly has a personality disorder. 

I think it's fair to say that, on the good ship Trans Rights, which is navigating increasingly choppy seas, Yaniv is a very big, loose cannon.

 

I don't know if Yaniv is genuinely trans. Who can know for certain in these days of the primacy of self defined gender identity and blurred boundaries? Whatever the truth of it, #WaxMyBalls has become the quintessence of polarisation in this most polarised of debates.

 

In an era in which the concept of intersectionality is tossed around a lot, the busiest and most dangerous intersections of all remain the ones where sex, class, and race meet. A large number of people wearing gender identity blinkers (many of whom really ought to know better) are hurtling into that intersection at breakneck speed, shouting 'we are on the right side of history, give way bigots!’

 

By so doing, they are helping create the conditions for the father of all pile ups, and as in all great ideological crashes, there will be multiple casualties – mostly poor, genuinely marginalised, highly vulnerable people. 

 

The blinkered ones will largely emerge unscathed because typically they wear quite a lot of protection – in the form of varying combinations and degrees of white, male, middle class, educated, affluent, socially and geographically mobile privilege that serves to cushion them from the damage of the pileups they've helped create. 

 

Sure, the blinkers are very trendy and those who wear them no doubt firmly believe they not only look cool but they're on the right side of history (politically speaking the operative word in that phrase may well be right) but it’s a foolish left wing activist who ignores manufacturers’ labels, i.e., who fails to question why the blinkers have been created and marketed and made so very popular in a world dominated by the malign influence of global corporate capitalism.

 

The intersection in the middle of which Yaniv has set up camp, is the deep (think Mariana Trench deep) belief in the fundamental division between : Female, as in possessing a vulva, vagina, uterus and ovaries; and, Male as in possessing a penis, prostate, and testicles.

 

The roots of the belief in an essentially binary biological sex were well grounded at the dawn of the phallocracy when the rise to dominance of patrilineal descent systems and the triumph over mutuality and cooperation, of aggressive, individualised competition, provided the material impetus for the drive to control reproduction through the sexual sequestration of women, and formed the foundation for all subsequent forms of oppression and hyper-exploitation of women.

Gender identity activists will not change all that with essentially emotive appeals – generated from within the bubble of western privilege – to the primacy of gender identity over biological sex, but they may very well strengthen deeply held conservative beliefs about the latter.

Some of the comments I've seen about the Yaniv Affair are troubling, and all those who have tacitly or overtly supported this person's ascent into global notoriety should be having a serious talk with themselves. 

 

On a linked issue, I saw a Twitter exchange this week that tagged the Twitter accounts of the New Zealand Prime Minister and the Minister of Immigration. 

 

The exchange was between an NHS doctor who is a UK Labour Party member, a former Young Tory, and self-appointed crusader for trans rights, and a Kiwi trans activist. 

 

The former suggested that NZ should provide UK trans kids with "protection and refuge" because they "are facing ongoing systemic oppression and mistreatment" in their own country.

 

The latter responded with enthusiastic agreement and cited the precedent of NZ having granted residence on humanitarian grounds to a British trans woman who had ‘fled discrimination’ in the UK. (1) 

 

I’ve been seeing National Party billboards going up – in preparation for local government elections I assume – and I'm trying to imagine the political mileage that could be made out the preposterous suggestion that NZ should take British minors as refugees because the NHS won’t automatically prescribe puberty blockers and cross sex hormones and perform genital surgeries on kids who are not yet neurologically mature. 

 

For the ideologically motivated participants, those tweets were either a conscious decision to poke a stick into the spokes of the NZLP’s election bicycle, or they demonstrate a stunning narrowness of political focus and a complete lack of political nous.

 

 Notes:

1) In that case, which was reported in the media in late September 2017, the applicant was a TW who had moved here to join family already living here, and the application on humanitarian grounds was made after a failed application for residency under the entrepreneur category.)

 

When A 'Mother' Becomes A 'Carrier'

In this article the writer of the tweet above - who also stubbornly insists on further depersonsalising and commodifying the role of women who carry a child for someone else by referring to them as 'carriers' – takes a theoretical biotechnology that is laden with complex moral, political and legal issues and which is highly unlikely ever to be available to people outside the thin layer of very affluent people who want designer offspring, and weaves a fantasy in which women are all but written out of reproduction.

And not just women. In this monstrous new world, any imperfect human is to be written out at embryo stage -  and who knows where the definition of imperfection will end? 

 

The use of the term surrogate was intended to break down the belief that the woman who gestates a foetus, is that child's mother. The idea is a woman capable of producing viable eggs and/or carrying a foetus to term fills a gap in the creation of a child for a single person or a couple who cannot have their own children.

 

Describing a woman as a 'carrier' (NB. a carrier is also what we call a person infected with a disease causing organism) depersonalises and commodifies that pregnancy even further, and it illustrates both the vacuity and the rampant narcissism of those people who believe in a future in which female reproductive capacity will be fully controlled and commodified by being technologised, with the ultimate aim of rendering it obsolete.

 

Those who have sunk to this nadir of rank misogyny compound their offence by pretending it is for the good of women – that it is to ‘free’ women up from the restrictions of their biological role in the production of eggs and the gestation of new humans.

 
In this bleak vision, all that is required of the genetic female will be some skin cells and the leasing of her uterus - until such time as science develops a viable artificial womb at which point she will be fully relieved of her role as the mother of the species. 

 

The fact that there may not be a social world in a hundred years, let alone one capable of sustaining this technologised future, seems to have escaped their attention. But of course it would, as they have neither the wit nor the wisdom to conceive of a different, more human way organising both production and reproduction.

 

Trans humanism which is the soil in which these notions take root, clings to variations on the theme of a technologised future of ‘perfected’ humans - either fully human but genetically manipulated to be free from disease and to possess desired physical and behavioural characteristics; or cyborgs, humans with robotic parts.

 

In the context of a highly stratified world built on the premise that progress equals unending growth and consumption, a world that is ruled by a tiny minority of powerful people motivated solely by self-interest, how would such a project end?  With the development of a super elite whose every physical and psychosexual need is served by legions of genetically designed humans and cyborgs? 

 

Forgive me if I see in that, the most monstrous of dystopian nightmares.

(Added after publication :  see this comprehensive thread on Twitter from Bea Jaspert)

 

More on Testosterone

Those people who use their public platforms to argue that the case is not proven for testosterone (T) being a performance enhancer (PE) for genetic females, are either several studies short of a valid opinion, and/or are beating an ideological drum with one hand and with the other,  conducting a chorus that loudly proclaims all those who have concerns about women’s sports are ignorant and / or bigots.

 

There has been loud condemnation of an Otago University study which calls for a weighting system to be introduced to allow transgender women (TW) to compete fairly in female sports events.  This has been attacked by various people – including some extremely problematic claims of incompetence and /or bigotry. Some people have allowed their ideological fervour to cloud their judgment to the point where, if I were them, I’d be worried about a libel suit.

 

Jack Byrne, a human rights researcher at Trans Action, in an RNZ piece, cited a 2014  study  (drawing on data collected in 2011) that was published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

 

Byrne claimed the study showed "no clear scientific evidence proving that a high level of testosterone is a significant determinant of performance in female sports," and he further claimed that a literature review in Sports Medicine found no direct and consistent research that transgender female athletes have an advantage in sport. (1)

 

Apart from the highly selective nature of that quote, the 2014 study claimed no such thing and it is worrying that RNZ, as NZ’s flagship of quality journalism, seems either not to have read the study, or chose to ignore both its purpose and its findings. 

 

The study was concerned with “establishing valid normative serum androgen values” –  i.e. a standard reference range (SRR) for elite female athletes – "to help develop the blood steroidal model of the Athlete Biological Passport and by so doing, to improve policies around hyperandrogenism in female athletes." 

 

It was not directly concerned with the issues around transgender athletes who compete in female events; it did not screen for a Y chromosome, and nor did it carry out specific  diagnostic tests for polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) an endocrine disorder which elevates T levels and has implications for female reproductive health. 

 

The statement Byrne was drawing on is :

“With the exception of data extracted from doping programs in female athletes in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), there is no clear scientific evidence proving that a high level of T is a significant determinant of performance in female sports.”

That data has been used both to demonise the GDR and as the basis for sports governing bodies' and the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) ban on all anabolic and androgenic substances.

 

If that data is now being claimed to not be clear scientific evidence proving that a high level of exogenous T is a significant determinant of performance in female sports- then all criticism of the GDR should cease immediately because it has been exposed as pure agit prop.

 

But, the truth is that exogenous T is a potent performance enhancer in genetic females – for evidence of that you only have to look at what happens to the strength related athletic performance of trans men (genetic females who transition) who are granted an automatic therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for exogenous T use, and for whom there are no limits on that use in competition. (Obvious health implications aside)

 

There is also strong evidence to suggest that higher endogenous T levels enhance performance, in power events especially. 

 

 A study of endurance athletes cited in the 2014 study reported that the: 

“hyperandrogenic subgroup (T concentration 1.9 ± 0.2 nmol/L) showed a more anabolic body composition, a higher total bone mineral density (BMD), and upper to lower fat mass ratio as well as the highest maximal oxygen uptake and performance values in general than did oligomenorrheic or amenorrheic athletes with normal androgen levels (1.1–1.2 ± 0.4 nmol/L).”

 

The researchers also cited other studies that have reported an almost 2 to 1 over-representation of women with PCOS in female Olympic athletes (37% vs 20% in the general population). Importantly,  "the PCOS subgroup showed a higher T concentration and free androgen index than those observed for regularly menstruating or non-PCOS Olympian athletes.”

 

They concluded: 

“This last recruitment bias supports the assumption that there is an ergogenic effect of T in high-level female athletes.”  (2)

 

Although the 2014 study was not designed to diagnose PCOS,   the researchers felt that several of the athletes in the study had this endocrine disorder.  (3)

 

“In our present cohort, the 99th percentile for T concentration is calculated at 3.08 nmol/L. It is close to the 2.78 nmol/L threshold proposed as one of the criteria for the diagnosis of PCOS and the 3.0 nmol/L cutoff proposed by others to detect hyperandrogenism.” 

 

They also noted that the calculated prevalence of athletes with a hyperandrogenic 46 XY DSD in their cohort gave them a ratio of 7.1 per 1000.  Because they did not screen for SRY, they note that the actual prevalence of 46XY DSD was possibly even higher. (4) 

 

In light of studies that have estimated a 46 XY DSD occurrence at a rate of 1 in 20,000 in the general population, this study’s reported prevalence is approximately 140 times higher than expected in the general population.

 

The researchers noted that the 46XY athletes in their study tended to be younger and showed a higher T concentration than the female athletes who were known to have been doping.

 

In summary: the researchers noted the significantly higher proportion of elite female athletes whose T level was at or above the diagnostic level PCOS plus, what appears to be a highly skewed representation of athletes with a 46XY DSD.  (5)

 

It may be argued that this study does not categorically prove T is a PE for genetic females but it provides strong evidence to suggest it is nonsensical to argue that it proves it is not. 

 

The fact remains - and this is an issue the Otago researchers have tried to grapple with - if there were not separate events for women and men - in most sports, women would never make the podium. 

 

The background to this is complicated.  The IOC and IAAF adopted a quick and arbitrary solution to the complex organisational and ethical problems posed by both athletes with 46 XY DSDs and transgender athletes competing in female sports, which was to set a limit for all competitors in female events of below 10 nmols/L ie the lower end of the male SRR - unless athletes were able to prove they had complete androgen insensitivity.

 

This arbitrary definition was chosen in the absence of normative statistics of androgen levels in an elite athlete female population – hence the 2014 study.

 

A study "Serum androgen levels and their relation to performance in track and field" was commissioned by the IAAF after its hyperandrogenism rule was challenged in the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The study which has been criticised for methodological flaws, found there was a performance advantage to female athletes with higher endogenous T level in several track and field events, ranging from 4.5%  to 1.2%.

 

The IAAF/IOC then complicated the matter further this year by lowering the level to 5 nmols/L for some track events only, which was perceived as targeting a specific cohort of African middle distance runners, Caster Semenya among them. (6)

 

There is a range of factors which enable people to reach elite levels of any given sport; some are naturally occurring physiological advantages, others are cultural and socio-economic.  Sports is not a level playing field but the single biggest divider is the performance difference between female and male athletes – averaging 10-12% and rising to 25% in power events like weight lifting.

 

Against the blithe and often spectacularly ill-informed or ideologically motivated assertions that testosterone is not a proven factor in female athletic performance, transgender athlete Kristin Worley, who surgically transitioned in 2001, successfully argued for an increase, on health grounds, in the amount of exogenous testosterone her sporting body (the UCI) permitted her to take. (7) 

 

Others, like Rachel Mackinnon, argue that any imposed limit on endogenous testosterone is a violation of trans women’s human rights, ie only TW should determine their levels of androgen suppression, if any.

 

Clearly for both of these cohorts of people who went through a male puberty - in which the average athletic advantage that males have over females is triggered by testosterone - the amount of androgens and ratio of male to female hormones that their genetically male bodies need in order to be able to perform athletically and to maintain general health, is of great concern. 

 

Having had an orchiectomy, athletes like Worley no longer produce any appreciable amount of T naturally and some want to increase the allowed exogenous level to enable them to compete at a level commensurate with their competitive drive  - which may be highly problematic if, as some have argued, exogenous T is a more potent performance enhancer than endogenous T.

 

Some TW athletes, like MacKinnon, who have not had an orchiectomy see any requirement to reduce TW’s endogenous T to be unfairly discriminatory given other women have no imposition on their naturally occurring T. 

 

The point in question here is whether higher T levels and going through a T triggered and fuelled puberty – and possibly even the possession of the Y chromosome itself  - confers an average performance advantage (PA) over 46XX women. 

 

We may all agree that performance advantage is complex and multi-faceted and that the PA of trans women and 46XY DSD women with partial androgen insensitivity will not be as great as that of genetic males, but it is highly likely to be enough to skew female sports significantly – especially in events in which power and strength are major factors.

 

 

Notes:

(1) Byrne is not the only person to misrepresent this study; sports writer Andy Brown made the same claims in 2015 and the statement that a literature review finds gaps in the research into trans athletes is hardly controversial or remarkable given everyone knows there isn’t enough  – yet – and there needs to be.

 

(2)  They discounted congenital adrenal hyperplasia as a possible cause of virilization in the study cohort. “Among our studied population, none of the 13 athletes with a 17-hydroxyprogesterone serum concentration above 8 nmol/L showed increased T or A4 (data not presented), ruling out the possibility of an untreated 21-hydroxylase deficiency, the most common form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia, as a cause of the high T levels.

 

(3)  PCOS is an endocrine disorder which, in severe forms, has implications for overall and specifically reproductive health. Women with PCOS are either more likely to enter/succeed in sports, or possibly there is something about training regimes for female athletes (most rely on male data) which affects endocrine health. Another big question is where the incidence and/or severity of this endocrine disorder is increasing as a result of increasing exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in the wider environment.

 

(4) Four had 5α-reductase deficiency and two had partial androgen insensitivity.

 

(5) The androgen sensitivity levels of those 46XY athletes is not known but as athletes with 46XY DSD with complete androgen insensitivity are over represented in elite female sports the question has been raised at to whether the possession of a Y chromosome itself confers a performance advantage.

 

(6)Caster Semenya has refused to take androgen suppressing drugs to lower her endogenous T level to the new level of 5 nmols/L – which is still well above the top of the level for natal women.

 

(7) Worley’s claim and the arguments underpinning it should be noted by all those who have enthusiastically embraced the medical and surgical transitioning of children. If a post-pubertal orchiectomy leaves a person unable to maintain a general level of health, let alone be competitive in a sport, without higher exogenous T levels than are permitted by a sports governing body, what might happen to the overall health and wellbeing of children whose genetic puberty is suppressed with drugs and who have a counter puberty induced with cross sex hormones, and whose endocrine health thereafter must be maintained by constant doses of a mix of synthetic male and female hormones?

 

Child Care for Councillors

The management-governance split in local government that accompanied the Neoliberal ‘reforms’ of the 1980s, gives paid officers and central government (CG) enormous power over local government (LG) spending.  CG sets the rules - local governance and management have delegated oversight of centrally determined regulations and a range of delegated responsibilities. 

 

Take out the remuneration of the Mayor, Councillors, the CEO and staff, plus the costs of the delegated responsibilities and regulatory role imposed by CG and, in districts with a small rating base, there's not much left to meet other demands.

 

In the largely rural district in which I live, the council recently voted on the issue of councillors’ allowances. The Remuneration Authority sets rates of reimbursement for use of private car, phone and any childcare expenses. Local councils can decide which of these they will implement. 

 

When my council voted on this, they unanimously voted for the car and phone allowances, and unanimously voted against childcare allowance. The only councillor who would have voted in favour of reimbursement of childcare expenses, was absent at a family funeral. 

 

I’ve been surprised to hear a large number of people, including women, argue along the lines of: 

'I had to tailor my career to the demands of childcare, so can they'; or, 

'I managed so why can’t they; or,

'Other employers don't pay for childcare so why should my rates be spent on this.'

 

This ignores the facts that only 6% of local government councillors are under 40, and one in three are women which is a situation we should be aiming to change.  it also fails to account for the fact that family structures have changed and old community links have been shattered; most families can’t survive on a single wage, and many people have to work longer hours with greater inroads on personal and family time.

 

We will only get the best quality representation if we remove barriers to participation; otherwise we are governed mainly by those for whom there are no barriers. 

 

The argument that employers don’t subsidise childcare ignores the questions of whether employers should do so, and whether the state should stop committing so much money on  layers of highly paid managers and consultants, and subsidise childcare or - perish the thought - look at radical solutions like socialising it. 

 

The argument put forward in my district was that councillors are no different in essence from other 'volunteers' who don't get childcare allowances. 

 

All those who voted seemed oblivious, or chose to ignore the question that, if people get a car and phone allowance to enable them to serve as councillors, what’s the difference between that and reimbursement for what a parent might have to spend on child care to enable them to serve as councillors? 

 

If refusing remuneration for personal expenditure is a measure of commitment to service and acknowledges the unpaid work of volunteers, why did they not reject ALL allowances? Why pick on childcare?

 

That aside, councillors are not volunteers; they are elected officials who are remunerated for their service, at levels set by a central government body, and related to the population of the city, town or district. 

 

The same body also sets the pay range for CEOs, which establishes the baseline for the pay scales of the various levels of staff who are employed and managed by the CEO.

 

The CEO in my district- population 12,000 - gets a salary of $250,000 plus a car and other expenses. Fifteen senior managers earn between $100,000 and $200,000. 

 

The Mayor receives $90,000 pa (recently increased from $70k) and Councillors get $20,000, although that is increased if they chair committees.

 

Councillors in large metropolitan centres get significantly greater remuneration because it is decreed that demands on their time and the consequences of decisions they take may be proportionately greater.

 

The disaster of the Fox River landfill illustrates how problematic all these arrangements can become. A geographically huge district, with a low rating base, aside from its statutory regulatory and delegated obligations has to cater for a massive influx of tourists.  It put off dealing with a potential problem because it simply did not have the money to do anything about it. After a huge flood breached the old landfill and resulted in a mass pollution of a pristine river and shoreline, the council was also unable to pay for the clean up, which has to be taken over by central government.

 

How much more sensible would it be to have arrangements that would ensure local management and governance of a standard that could anticipate such disasters and have the funding to take steps to prevent them, or at least to have sufficient expertise and locally controlled funding to enable them to put right historical bad decisions before they become disastrous?

 

As a trade unionist, I look at it this way – councillors are paid elected officials who do an important job. They:

work irregular hours because meetings may have a scheduled start time but they can, and often do, run over; 

are expected to work unsocial hours, i.e. to attend night-time meetings and often do the equivalent of split shifts; 

are often required to respond to issues and to constituents' concerns outside normal working hours;

are on the equivalent of a fixed term contract with no guarantee of renewal; and,

may have interrupted their career progression in another field.

 

If people want to get their knickers in a twist about how their rates are spent - how about breaking with the good old Kiwi tradition of punching down and start looking up and thinking about how we can make local government more responsive to local needs including encouraging younger people and women to participate in governance.

 

A good start point would be to demand central government stops the iniquitous tax on a tax i.e. clawing back 15% from ratepayers in the form of GST on rates. 

 

Leaving that 15% in the council coffers could make a real difference to councils' ability to respond to at least some of the demands posed by climate change - for example.

 

Once Upon A Spectrum

Having an XX or XY sex chromosome is the biological norm and a foundational reality that is the basis of species reproduction. 

 

For those who inhabit the bubbles of technology, affluence and apparent choice, reproduction may not loom large in a world teeming with 7+ billion people, but for those outside the bubbles, it remains a more central and pressing reality. 

 

Numeric variations of the foundational chromosomal binary do occur; all are rare, some are extremely rare; some do not affect either reproductive fitness or wider health and well-being but most do affect reproductive fitness, and some have wider adverse outcomes for overall health and well-being, even causing death without the appropriate treatment.

 

The existence of a range of chromosomal and phenotypical variants on the XX: XY binary is used ideologically to claim that biological sex exists on a spectrum – taken by some to mean there are a number of different sexes. It is also used to justify the existence of a number of gender identities, some congruent with biological sex, some not. 

 

Although it is sometimes implied or overtly claimed they do, these numeric variants of the XX: XY norm do not constitute a range of sexes. 

 

The poor understanding of DSDs and the links between sex and gender can be illustrated by the claim made by the World Health Organisation, that it is possible for there to be people who have sex monosomy – i.e. only 1 X or one Y chromosome.

 

The truth is that, while a single X chromosome is compatible with life, (although known to be the cause of a large proportion of spontaneous abortions) – a single Y chromosome is incompatible with life. It would not make it past zygote stage, let alone to being a viable foetus.

 

Yet this claim has been repeated as fact in two major pieces here and here  on the transgender issue published by Stuff in the past year.

It may seem a bit nitpicky and a bit academic but it illustrates the way in which an ideology can harness science – in this case the existence of a growing list of numeric chromosomal disorders or variants – in order to influence a range of social policy decisions. 

 

In all of the above instances, the existence of DSDs is being used to strengthen the case for what is now seen as a "naturally occurring variation of human experience" – transgender identity. 

 

Gender identity is rather loosely defined as an individual's perceptions or subjective experience of being of a gender that may be 'cis' – congruent with their biological sex, or 'trans' – non-congruent, or neither. Given gender and sex are now used interchangeably, getting a grip on these increasingly slippery descriptors can be difficult.

 

There is an overlap between transgender and DSDs in that some people with a DSD may also be transgender but they are distinct phenomenon and it does no favours to either grouping for them to be lazily or opportunistically conflated in the way that the concepts of sex and gender have been to the point where they are so fused as to be politically and critically indistinguishable - which serves to undermine a key component of second wave feminist theory.

 

The change in the words that make up the acronym DSD illustrates this popularising and politicising of a scientific term. It used to be disorders of sexual differentiation and is now differences of sexual development. 

 

The descriptive umbrella term Intersex was coined to depathologise individuals born with a DSD, which is a valid strategy, but it may also serve to support a normalisation of a phenomenon for reasons that may not be benign or progressive.

 

For example, in a world saturated in endocrine disrupting (EDC) and DNA damaging chemicals, (DDC) if there is an increase in these conditions and others that are even subtler, it would not be surprising.

 

An increase in human genito-urinary disorders and a decrease in male sperm quality has been charted globally over the past 50 years, and we know there are profound effects of these chemicals on marine mammals.

 

We ought to be alert to the potential for snowballing effects on humans, given environmentally induced endocrine disruption is now widely accepted and evidence now shows that metabolic syndrome in horses is connected to the presence of EDCs in their food – most likely herbicide and pesticide residues.

 

The effects of any one of these chemicals on any given species or individual within that species, at any given point in the life cycle, are complex enough; the effects of thousands of chemicals in various amounts and combinations is a nightmarish unknown.

 

Mass chemical pollution is one of the three inter-related global catastrophes facing us. It would hardly be surprising if there were a variety of powerful entities with a vested interest in normalising chromosomal or autosomal disorders and other more subtle conditions, which may always have existed but the prevalence and severity of which are increasing. After all if these are all just naturally occurring variations in human genetics and physiology, then no-one needs to be held to account if they are increasing in incidence and severity.

 

Under significant pressure from the transgender lobby, which has a power and reach at complete variance with the claim of being the most marginalised and discriminated against of all minorities, the WHO has recently removed gender identity disorder  (GID) from its diagnostic manual, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) – following the American Psychiatric Association’s influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s  (DSM) 2012 replacement of GID with gender dysphoria (GD) – defined as the "emotional distress that results from a marked incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and the assigned gender."

 

This move from a disorder – an illness,  to dysphoria – a non-specific state of anxiety or dissatisfaction, to a natural variation of human experience, combined with the almost complete fusion of the concepts of sex and gender, has huge implications, which I will explore further in another post.