martybegan
Diamond Member
- Apr 5, 2010
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Didn't but wasn't hard to find again. Moderately technical but not incomprehensible.
Does having a Y chromosome make someone a man? | Intersex Society of North America
"A lot of unintended harm happens when people assume a Y chromosome makes a person a boy or a man and the lack of a Y chromosome makes a person a girl or a woman. For example, one physician educator on our Medical Advisory Board had the challenging experience of trying to calm a 23-year-old patient who had just been told by a resident that she was “really a man” because the resident had diagnosed the patient as having a Y chromosome and complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS).
It is true that in typical male development, the SRY gene on the tip of the Y chromosome helps to send the embryo down the masculine pathway. But more than the SRY is needed for sex determination and differentiation; for example, women with CAIS have the SRY gene but lack androgen receptors. In terms of hormone effects on their bodies (including their brains), women with CAIS have had much less “masculinization” than the average 46,XX woman because their cells do not respond to androgens.
Moreover, the SRY gene can be translocated onto an X chromosome (so that a 46,XX person may develop along a typical masculine pathway), and there are dozens of genes on chromosomes other than the X and the Y that contribute to sexual differentiation. And beyond the genes, a person’s sex development can be significantly influenced by environmental factors (including the maternal uterine environment in which the fetus developed).
So it is simply incorrect to think that you can tell a person’s sex just looking at whether he or she has a Y chromosome."
goes on
Easier read here,
Sex biology redefined: Genes don’t indicate binary sexes | Scope Blog
"The simple scenario many of us learned in school is that two X chromosomes make someone female, and an X and a Y chromosome make someone male. These are simplistic ways of thinking about what is scientifically very complex. Anatomy, hormones, cells, and chromosomes (not to mention personal identity convictions) are actually not usually aligned with one binary classification.
The Nature feature collects research that has changed the way biologists understand sex. New technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that chromosomal sex is a process, not an assignation."
more
There is a whole lot of pseudo-science going on here to justify a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of the population wanting to define their own gender/sexuality.
Nature is more simpler than most people realize, as long as you look at it from a biological level.