The XX= female and XY = male myth. It's not that simple.

[Maybebaby56]

If you have been tracking the recent proliferation in the mass media of articles about transgender persons such as Caitlyn Jenner, then you might have also noticed the mean, hateful, and ignorant comments that are often posted in response. One of the more common responses is that "She is never going to be a he, XX= female and XY = male, and that is that".  Well, no, it's not simple.

There is a very informative website put out by the World Health Organization that is worth reading: http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html.

I will copy and paste the first page here, but I will highly recommend that anyone interested visit the website and read the many pages of useful information with which to combat ignorance about genetics and gender.

Genetic Components of Sex and Gender

Humans are born with 46 chromosomes in 23 pairs. The X and Y chromosomes determine a person's sex. Most women are 46XX and most men are 46XY. Research suggests, however, that in a few births per thousand some individuals will be born with a single sex chromosome (45X or 45Y) (sex monosomies) and some with three or more sex chromosomes (47XXX, 47XYY or 47XXY, etc.) (sex polysomies). In addition, some males are born 46XX due to the translocation of a tiny section of the sex determining region of the Y chromosome. Similarly some females are also born 46XY due to mutations in the Y chromosome. Clearly, there are not only females who are XX and males who are XY, but rather, there is a range of chromosome complements, hormone balances, and phenotypic variations that determine sex.

The biological differences between men and women result from two processes: sex determination and differentiation.(3) The biological process of sex determination controls whether the male or female sexual differentiation pathway will be followed. The process of biological sex differentiation (development of a given sex) involves many genetically regulated, hierarchical developmental steps. More than 95% of the Y chromosome is male-specific (4) and a single copy of the Y chromosome is able to induce testicular differentiation of the embryonic gonad. The Y chromosome acts as a dominant inducer of male phenotype and individuals having four X chromosomes and one Y chromosome (49XXXXY) are phenotypically male. (5) When a Y chromosome is present, early embryonic testes develop around the 10th week of pregnancy. In the absence of both a Y chromosome and the influence of a testis-determining factor (TDF), ovaries develop.

Gender, typically described in terms of masculinity and femininity, is a social construction that varies across different cultures and over time. (6) There are a number of cultures, for example, in which greater gender diversity exists and sex and gender are not always neatly divided along binary lines such as male and female or homosexual and heterosexual. The Berdache in North America, the fa'afafine (Samoan for "the way of a woman") in the Pacific, and the kathoey in Thailand are all examples of different gender categories that differ from the traditional Western division of people into males and females. Further, among certain North American native communities, gender is seen more in terms of a continuum than categories, with special acknowledgement of "two-spirited" people who encompass both masculine and feminine qualities and characteristics. It is apparent, then, that different cultures have taken different approaches to creating gender distinctions, with more or less recognition of fluidity and complexity of gender.

[Marlee]

Good analysis. Nature isn't all that cut n' dry. Unfortunately, some people show us that stupidity is.
So many times I think certain comments left in reply of articles are done just to provoke a fight. I just ignore em. (and hopefully that drives em nuts)

[Jean24]

Excellent post. The chromosomers are all graduates of a junior high school biology class and have the most basic understanding. That's why they fail whenever they try to apply it to transgender people. Oftentimes we also hear about how rare it is to be intersex as if that's some kind of defense, when in reality their own argument defeats them because being transgender is more rare than many intersex conditions. Some occur in 1000 births while trans men and women could be as high as 1:100,000

[Lady Sarah]

I still have a document from St Mary's Hospital in SanFrancisco that shows me being admitted as " intersex phenotype", when I went in for my orchiectomy. The surgeon made that determination after x-rays and ultrasound, even though my chromosomes are 46XY. My insurance will not pay to make a proper diagnosis.

I know I am not the only one like myself, and there are several variants. One could spend countless hours researching this on the internet, and come out more informed as well as confused at the same time.

For the purposes of transitioning from male to female, most doctors do not want to make that diagnosis, as WPATH will only complicate everything. That part is worse than when it was HBIGDA. In fact, my primary care doctor told me that a proper diagnosis of being intersex could result in my no longer being permitted hormones or surgeries, based on WPATH. Could this really be the intentions of those whom wrote it?

[Jean24]

I still have a document from St Mary's Hospital in SanFrancisco that shows me being admitted as " intersex phenotype", when I went in for my orchiectomy. The surgeon made that determination after x-rays and ultrasound, even though my chromosomes are 46XY. My insurance will not pay to make a proper diagnosis.

I know I am not the only one like myself, and there are several variants. One could spend countless hours researching this on the internet, and come out more informed as well as confused at the same time.

For the purposes of transitioning from male to female, most doctors do not want to make that diagnosis, as WPATH will only complicate everything. That part is worse than when it was HBIGDA. In fact, my primary care doctor told me that a proper diagnosis of being intersex could result in my no longer being permitted hormones or surgeries, based on WPATH. Could this really be the intentions of those whom wrote it?

God that sounds so awful Lady Sarah. I'm sorry you're having an insurance nightmare. I honestly hate the WPATH a lot with the way it assumes we're lying until we're diagnosed otherwise. It's also disturbing to hear that you may not be permitted to take hormones and have surgeries if you are diagnosed with that. I just had a karyotype done and was hoping to see something like Klinefelter's or anything else that might help me make sense of why I seemed feminized prior to HRT. Hopefully it's not true that they exempt you.

[Lady Sarah]

God that sounds so awful Lady Sarah. I'm sorry you're having an insurance nightmare. I honestly hate the WPATH a lot with the way it assumes we're lying until we're diagnosed otherwise. It's also disturbing to hear that you may not be permitted to take hormones and have surgeries if you are diagnosed with that. I just had a karyotype done and was hoping to see something like Klinefelter's or anything else that might help me make sense of why I seemed feminized prior to HRT. Hopefully it's not true that they exempt you.

I was told that the only thing that could be accomplished if I got all the testing, was peace of mind. As long as WPATH is concerned, I should just go about as mtf. That way, my treatment does not come into jeopardy, and my transition can continue. If I were forced to detransition under WPATH, I would not want to live.

[Joelene9]

  I tried to explain this to my Southern Baptist brother. He still believes the readout of pair 23. Even though Androgen insensitivity gene location is in pair 17, one of the 22 autosomal pairs. Also there is the environment that the embryo develops in is a factor. It appears that known DES sons tend to have more transgender yearnings than those who weren't exposed to DES. That is for another generation to find out after we are long dead.

Joelene

[HughE]

Contrary to popular belief, the sex you develop as isn't actually determined by X and Y chromosomes. Instead, whether you develop as male or female depends on what hormones are present during the time your prenatal development is taking place (if high levels of androgenic hormones are present, you develop as male, otherwise development occurs as female by default). All the X and Y chromosomes do is cause you to develop ovaries or testicles, and the actual process of sexual differentiation appears to be entirely hormone driven (which is why it's possible to have XX men and XY women).

Because of this dependence on hormones, it's possible for people to be born who've had part of their prenatal development occur as male and part as female, or intermediate between male, or completely as the opposite sex to  their genetic one. Most importantly from our point of view, all it needs is for your hormones to be OK during the first trimester, but then disrupted in some way during the second and/or third trimester, and you can easily end up in a situation where your brain has undergone opposite-sexed development. As Joelene mentioned, there's quite a few of us MTFs and transfeminine people in the over 40s age group who were exposed to a drug called DES, which was a commonly used treatment for preventing miscarriages in at risk pregnancies up until about 1980, and has potent androgen-suppressing properties.

One example that illustrates particularly well how important androgenic hormones are in driving male development, is a condition called Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS). In CAIS, the hormones are actually produced as normal, however a mutation to the gene for the androgen receptor renders the cells throughout person's body completely unable to detect or respond to androgenic hormones, so all their development occurs as if those hormones weren't there. The result is that you end up with people who are genetically male (XY), but born with female genitals and an otherwise female appearance, and who, as adults, both look and behave just like ordinary women.

http://web.archive.org/web/20160313063902/http://annierichards.com/ais.htm

[Serenation]

Most anti trans people that want to argue genetics like terf sites have specific rules to exclude intersex people from participating or being used as examples.

this is from the rules section of a terf sub>-bleeped-<

No COINing (Co-Opting Intersex Narratives) or racist appropriation of Indigenous "Two-Spirit" people.

[Michelle_P]

It's even hard to draw a line at what is or isn't intersex.  There are the chromosomal errors noted here, the genetic errors like the androgen insensitivity case noted above, there are transcription, synthesis and folding errors in production of the messenger proteins involved, and there are other biochemical influences that produce the same disruptions as the genetic and transcription errors.

It's hard to justify pointing at any one thing and claiming that this is a philosophical dividing line, beyond which our ideology refutes your validity.  That's definitely TERF stuff, among many others.  (It cuts both ways.  I've heard it used to argue that some of us aren't REALLY Trans.  Gah.)

Like I've said before, how we got here is interesting, but we're here, and the treatment paths available really don't care much about how we got here.  We have to deal from the deck we're given.

[Lady Sarah]

I believe that one can be both intersex AND trans. In my case, I have several intersex attributes, but was (for all intensive purposes) physically male. I was raised as a male. I transitioned to become female.  I am positive that I am not the only one.

[josie76]

What the 2 sex proponents don't understand is gender is not based on the development of the body. It is based on the individuals hard wired instincts. Our base human instincts are determined in the hypothalamus. Everything from "fight or flight", the need for food, companionship, the want for sex, who we are sexually attracted to, and what gender we are supposed to be are controlled at this basic primitive brain level.

Studies done on mice in the early 1990's showed presence of testosterone at certain levels just before birth would change the sexual attraction of the adult. By giving extra T they all acted like hetero males when placed with a hetero female. By blocking T they all responded like  hetero females when placed with a hetero male mouse. There was an increase in the size of a section within the hypothalamus with more T. So based on that and brain scans of people who reported their sexual attraction it is proven there is a link between the hypothalamus and sexual attraction. It also makes sense of the wide range people experience between true hetero and everything in between as the section of the hypothalamus has no two sizes. It simply develops in the individual to whatever point it will before birth. As it develops it hard wires sexual attraction.

Although no studies have explained where other instincts are located inside the hypothalamus, it is known that is where they exist. There is still much to be learned.

In my own life I have always felt like I should have been female. When I was young it didn't really make sense but later from puberty on I experienced very strong female instincts. I could not understand why I had these "feelings" so I buried them as much as I could. I say "feelings" because they were not emotions like normal but very deep below subconscious drives or needs. That's the only way I can describe them.

The only choice a person has is wether to fight their instincts in order to fit society's chains of expected behavior. A very unhappy existence.