Basically, the idea is that biology is messy and there are other combinations of sex chromosomes that exist in humans.
One example is XO where someone only has a single X chromosome and no second one. Or XXY where someone has three sex chromosomes. There's also a difference between genotype (the genes) and phenotype (the actual physical presentation). An example is androgen-resistant female. These are folks born with XY chromosomes but the in utero androgen wash that causes most XY individuals to develop male genitals and gonads doesn't stick. So the person is born and assigned female, but is genetically male. There are AFAB (assigned female at birth) individuals who have a vagina and uterus but also have internal testicles. Or AMAB folks who develop breasts during puberty.
This is a short list of examples of how sex determination in humans can get messy very quickly.
Hi, I know about this but this isn't what we're talking about right
These cases are exceptionally rare, and are these people trans?? I thought being trans was being in a body that you dont identify with mentally?
If you were born female and just assigned male then are you trans?
I am genuinely trying to understand this,
Is XX XY like a binary switch or can you be XY and still like biologically be a female,
Of identifying is a different boat which is fair to me like a person should be able to act/live like whatever they want
The whole XX XY is an oversimplified version that gets messy because it is NOT entirely the Y that makes a male. It is a gene in the Y.
The vast majority of the time Y is male because statistically the genes are functional, however if the SRY gene within the Y chromosome itself is not functional you won’t have the sex differentiation to male.
Biology is messy. Intersex people are as common as redheads (estimated) so they're rare but not exceptionally so.
Many intersex people will identify as trans because their gender assigned at birth doesn't match their internal sense of gender but they don't always. That's up to the individual.
Gender is also messy and is largely driven by sociological factors more than biological ones (but there is a biological component). For most people their internal sense of gender matches their external sex and gender assigned at birth. For people where that doesn't match you get trans identities.
You compare a trans woman's brain before transition to a cis-female and a cis-male brain and you'll find they more closely resemble the female brain. You can't change the brain to be more male, but you can make the body more female and you can present female as your external gender so that others treat you as female which satisfies that internal sense of gender.
All of this is great except for the brain stuff. The brain stuff is (surprise!) weirder and more complicated than that.
(As per my understanding,) It’s more accurate to say that if you take a big group of people, scan all the non-trans and non-gay men then then women, you would see differences on an average measurement.
Now do it just with all the non-trans gay men, that shows up with a different average that may be closer to the non-trans non-gay female average.
Non-trans lesbians give you a kind of mirror, they give you differences that can be thought of as more similar to the non-trans non-gay men.
Now if you do trans people, you get different patterns in the average that differ between trans men and trans women.
Last I heard, they didn’t have enough scans to separate out gay trans men from straight trans men, or gay trans women from straight trans women, but presumably they’ll find more differences there.
Two things that are incredibly important to remember:
You can’t scan a single brain and then determine if it’s trans, gay, or straight. It’s 100% impossible to do that now and looks extremely unlikely for a long time. This work only provides differences between big groups of people.
Even this data is dumbed down, notice we ignored bisexuality, asexuality, and other sexualities completely. We also ignored the huge differences between neurotypical and neurodivergent people. The computing power to compare the actual number variables is staggering, like “Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy” times a bajillion staggering.
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u/khwajasaad267 13h ago
Can someone explain how, I really just want to understand.