De La Chappell syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, androgen exposure in utero, ovotesticular disorder of of sex development all result in a person with cis male characteristics and in some cases cis male typical genitalia despite having xx chromosomes
Comment on Dunning-Kruger
OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Can someone explain to me how some XX people become cis male?
ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
forrgott@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Gene expression is not as straightforward as people think. All sorts of weird shit can happen, and that’s not even including gene mutations.
evasive_chimpanzee@lemmy.world 2 months ago
…scientificamerican.com/…/Pitch_sketch_final.png?…
This is the best resource I’ve seen to show things relatively simply.
The TL;DR is that a whole “Y” chromosome isn’t exactly responsible for “maleness”, the SRY gene is. It’s normally on the Y chromosome, but mutations can occur placing that gene onto the X chromosome. Inversely, someone could inherit a Y chromosome without that gene, in which case they would develop with female traits.
It’s not considered trans because someone with 46XX plus the SRY gene would develop male genitalia, be identified as male at birth, and likely identify themselves as male. For some types of these conditions, there are plenty of people walking around with no clue that their chromosomes don’t match their gender.
Disclaimer: I’m not a geneticist, so i could have explained something along little off.
Lemminary@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m also not a geneticist but I did study genetics for a while and that’s pretty much what I remember learning, so you’re good.
The books Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Body by Armand Marie Leroi explains it all very well and touches on many other related genetic conditions like the Klinefelter syndrome (XXY). It’s an incredible read all around that really opened my eyes to how malleable biology is.
OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org 2 months ago
I googled it for you.
Didros@beehaw.org 2 months ago
You’ve heard of xy people and xx people, but wait till you hear about X people!
Or xxx people, or xxy people, or… dies
gratux@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
cis just means your current gender identity is the same that was assigned to you at birth. there are cases where someone has XX chromosomes, but the body develops as male.
Lucky_777@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Maybe she means the exceptions?
Exceptions: While XX and XY are the most common sex chromosome combinations, there are exceptions, such as individuals with variations in their sex chromosomes, such as XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) or XYY.
DrBob@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I can try. The cis part means the person’s naughty bits are aligned with their gender identity. The male is their gender identity. So post-bottom surgery it’s perfectly possible. If you use different definitions for concepts though you will have difficulty making it work.
None of this has anything to do with the claimed PhD in genomics though. These are socio-cultural concepts. So they should stick their PhD where it belongs and address the arguments head on instead of trying to argue from authority.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
I don’t have a PhD, but my understanding of the basics is this:
All people start out developing as female in the womb before a certain point where a large dose of testosterone caused (usually) by the Y chromosome activating (basically the only time in life that it does apart from starting puberty AFAIK) causes the proto-labia and vagina to push outwards and form the ball sack and enlarging the clitoris and urethra into what we know of as the penis. This is why you can see that line down the middle of your ball sack; that’s where your labia fused together. It’s also why the tissue that makes up your ball sack is biologically identical to the tissue that makes up the inside of the vagina. It’s an outie vs. an innie.
There are many reasons why this wouldn’t happen “correctly” since biology is more a wonder of things somehow working at all after evolution is done with them rather than a perfectly designed, well-oiled machine. Sometimes the Y chromosome simply doesn’t activate, or it does, but the person has androgen insensitivity and so the testosterone doesn’t do anything, or they develop as female but have testicles where their ovaries should be, rendering them infertile but otherwise a perfectly normal woman. Sometimes a person is XX, but they experienced a higher than normal amount of testosterone during development and developed male instead of female.
And that’s before you get into the issue of intersex people, who are often surgically altered as babies when they’re born by the doctor to match with the genitalia that the doctor thinks should be the “correct” one. In a number of places, the doctors don’t have to ask permission or even tell the parents after.
Also, your definition of cis male is slightly off. “Cis” is the opposite Latin prefix of “trans,” meaning a non-changing/stable state of being, and in this case it’s used to mean that one’s gender identity matches up with the one that you were given at birth. It ultimately has nothing to do with what genitalia you have, and it’s simply an identification saying that your sense of gender matches up with the sex that the doctor declared and that you therefore aren’t trans. It’s an after the fact solution to the question of what to call people who aren’t trans and comes from the use of trans to identify somebody who transitions from one gender to another.
DrBob@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Chemists have moved away from cis and trans partly because of all of this. We use zusammen-together or entgegen-opposite now. I can attest to how politically charged a class about organic molecules can become.
I am not deeply versed on the socio-cultural side of it all, and there is clearly space to learn. I am reluctant to let cis hinge on a doctor’s proclamation but I’ll let it sit there for the moment.
EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
As somebody with a bit of learning on the matter (it’s amazing the hats you have to wear to prove you deserve to live - from anthropologist to biologist to archeologist), it’s interesting to see how the language of the community has evolved as our scientific understanding of sex vs gender has.
The term started as transsexual, and there are older people who refer to themselves by that term, but by the 2000s the term had shifted in favor of transgender, noting the recognition that sex doesn’t equate to gender that happened around that time.
Then came the use of cis as well as AMAB and AFAB (assigned male/female at birth) in order to better describe the complexity involved around the fact that a doctor has to declare you one gender or another when you’re born, and the easiest way to do that with the highest likelihood of being correct is based on sexual characteristics - namely, what genitalia you have. So cis is used to describe people who have no reason to disagree with the doctor’s assessment, and there’s a lot of discussion around where intersex people fall in the community (do they fit in the trans umbrella term?).
People like Dunning-Kruger up there are basically arguing that isotopes don’t exist.
puttputt@beehaw.org 2 months ago
I think you’re misunderstanding the point the OP is making. Typically, male/female are used when referring to sex, and masculine/feminine and man/woman are used when referring to gender. So this conversation isn’t about gender identity at all, but completely about biological sex.
There are a bunch of factors that go into determining sex. The two main categories are related to the person’s genes (their genotype) and how the person physically presents (phenotype). The biggest genetic marker is whether the person has XX or XY chromosomes (or some other combination). The easiest marker for phenotype is the person’s genitalia, but there are others, such as gonads, gamete production, hormones, etc.
So even just talking about biological sex, a person’s genotype and phenotype might give conflicting determinations of sex. So an “XX male” refers to someone with the genotype of a female, but the phenotype of a male, but says nothing about their gender identity or any surgeries they might’ve undergone.
With that in mind, someone with a PhD in genomics seems to be in the right field to address gene expression and genotypes vs phenotypes. Although you’re right that we shouldn’t rely on authority, but instead on the arguments presented. What we’ve been shown here, though, isn’t a fully fleshed out debate. It’s about 60 words on social media that amounts to “your mental model of sex is wrong; here are cases to rebut it”
DrBob@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
I also have a PhD. Not in genomics but in physiology. But we all do genetic work now.
The Dr. says that XX persons can become cis men. “CIS men” is explicitly about gender. I was trying to make the point (not very well as it turns out) that all of this hinges on definitions. So you have to unpack CIS men in this context. Without a sound understanding of the basics, all the rest is supposition.
And the gender identity and expression parts have nothing to do with gene expression, penetrance (giggity), DNA, RNA or epigenetic factors in gene expression.
Also the better example for the counter argument would probably be CAIS.
puttputt@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Oh, sorry if my response was too basic-level for your experience.
I get what you’re saying about “cis men” being explicitly about gender. I took it as meaning phenotypic males, and that they used “cis men” either for simplicity (perhaps to avoid getting into the details of trans people that they thought was irrelevant to the point they were making) or because they were just imprecise with their language. It’s also possible it was based off of something from earlier in the conversation that we can’t see because it’s just a screenshot.
Anyways, I agree, it was poorly worded, but I think the point they were trying to make was pretty straightforward (unless you insist on interpreting what they said to be something about genes affecting gender expression, then it doesn’t make sense).
Binette@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Outward, their genitals might look like those of the oposite sex.
match@pawb.social 2 months ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
tldr biology is dice rolls and humans are intersex for no reason sometimes
on a side note one of my friends had this and she only found out when she started transitioning. she is now a trans woman with XX chromosomes. i can only imagine how fucking vindicating it must have felt
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 months ago
To make involuntary non-cis , non-het , infertile aunts and uncles.
bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
WTF is going on on that article’s Talk page? Are teachers now assigning students to edit Wikipedia articles and have others “peer review” them?
yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
It seems like it’s a cooperation between Wikipedia and some schools?
…wikipedia.org/…/Bio_3595_AdGen_Wikipedia_Project…
wikiedu.org/about-us/