setting aside trans people for a second - is the government going to build separate washrooms for the >1 million uk residents who were born intersex? why can’t we make policy that is grounded in reality? lawmakers shout be required to pass a basic science course
there are different definitions of intersex. the figure you cited is correct for only the narrowest definition: visibly ambiguous genitalia at birth. by other criteria (ambiguous internal anatomy, androgen insensitivity, etc.), it can be as high as 1.7% (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)
Edit: i read the article more closely and i don’t stand by my figure. i retarct it because it seems that there may be good reasons to use the narrower definition. nevertheless, that is still 35k people that the government won’t acknowledge.
The way we educate science is we go “thus is it! But actually not but you’ll learn the complexities later”. Think of how they teach you the structure of the atom from highschool up to university level.
Unfortunately most people stop science education at highschool, which usually stops at “Sex is determined by the chromosomes” and doesn’t complicate it further because they still gotta get to chromosome replication before the end of the chapter.
That is my understanding as well. I think that our insistence that every person needs to fit in one category or the other is almost the whole problem. I wonder how many people think to themselves “I don’t want to be trans, I just want to be me.”
setting aside trans people for a second - is the government going to build separate washrooms for the >1 million uk residents who were born intersex? why can’t we make policy that is grounded in reality? lawmakers shout be required to pass a basic science course
Only 0.05% of people are born with ambiguous genitalia
there are different definitions of intersex. the figure you cited is correct for only the narrowest definition: visibly ambiguous genitalia at birth. by other criteria (ambiguous internal anatomy, androgen insensitivity, etc.), it can be as high as 1.7% (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex)
Edit: i read the article more closely and i don’t stand by my figure. i retarct it because it seems that there may be good reasons to use the narrower definition. nevertheless, that is still 35k people that the government won’t acknowledge.
The way we educate science is we go “thus is it! But actually not but you’ll learn the complexities later”. Think of how they teach you the structure of the atom from highschool up to university level.
Unfortunately most people stop science education at highschool, which usually stops at “Sex is determined by the chromosomes” and doesn’t complicate it further because they still gotta get to chromosome replication before the end of the chapter.
Intersex people are often trans. Because they were assigned a gender at birth, and many decide against that decision in various ways.
That is my understanding as well. I think that our insistence that every person needs to fit in one category or the other is almost the whole problem. I wonder how many people think to themselves “I don’t want to be trans, I just want to be me.”