What does the cloacal exstrophy have to do with anything? Anyway, if the presence of a Y chromosome determines a person as male, then having a chromosomal mosaic is irrelevant.
But depending on which part of the body you test, a Y chromosome may or may not be present.
Furthermore, all women pregnant with male children have some Y chromosomes detectable in their blood due to foetal blood crossover. Women who have had bone marrow transplants from male donors have nothing but 46,XY chromosomes in their blood.
Cloacal extrophy means that there’s neither internal nor external genitalia to give us a clue, in the presence of chromosomal ambiguity.
And how many people are included in “every person ever examined”? You are a scientist, (albeit CS) n=?
Autopsies n=~40 AFAICR. MRI scans, n=~2800 in aggregate from multiple experiments in several continents.
Albeit CS? You cut me to the quick! The truth always hurts… ::blackeye:
But my statement still stands, even if you autopsied a hundred transsexuals, you cannot tell if another person who identifies as transsexual has that same brain structure without slicing their head open and dissecting their brain.
Yes, that makes this technique less than useful as a diagnostic tool. MRI scans are less certain than examining individual cell types in each neural structure, but that has to do.
Even if we did have the technology to examine the brain without physical dissection, would you automatically tell someone with that brain structure that they needed to transition and refuse those who did not?
I’m not in the business of arrogantly commanding anyone to do anything. There’s been too much of that.
My initial reaction would be to check the equipment. Then check to see if there was something I’d missed, whether and to what degree the theory was wrong. Then to raise a red flag regarding this person’s transition, not to prevent it, but to double and triple check such an anomaly. And if there was such a neurological anomaly, but no desire to transition(assuming no other difficulties with family etc), to report that the theory was deeply flawed, and more work needed doing on it. To put it bluntly, “Back to the old drawing board”.
Your biological determinism reduces ad absurdum.
Not as such. You raised a hypothetical situation that has never been recorded, such as the sun rising in the west. You postulate that some people wish to transition that do not have such anomalies. They may exist, but we’ve actually tested a decent fraction of the transsexuals with textbook symptoms without finding them.
Note the underlined bit. We’ve only examined “obvious” transsexuals, not the less clear-cut cases. Neither have we examined transgendered people with more ambiguous psychology.
Here’s where we get into the morality of the situation. What about those who don’t fit the textbook definitions? The Libertarian in me says “Hey, their body, their choice,” and as long as they don’t have a florid psychosis, who am I to say whether or not they should get tattoos, or ears pierced, or mammary augmentation, or genital reconstruction, or teeth straightened or filed to points.
I draw the line at sterilisation, on personal grounds. I would have no part of that, unless there was a really good reason. There are entirely too many hysterectomies performed almost at whim, by doctors unwilling to try alternate therapies first. But if the patient has already had children, it’s no worse than any other form of contraception.
This is not a hypothetical situation to me: I advise all young trans women to go through sufficient male puberty to make them barely fertile, then store genetic material before surgery. This does have a cost in their appearance, one that may be negligible, or not. Yes, and I realise IVF and such practices are condemned by the Church, so it’s a good job I’m not Catholic.
Sadly(IMHO), most girls of 13 or 14 would prefer to look good and adopt, rather than have children sharing their genes. I can understand that the idea of being a biological father freaks some of them out, and there’s the little matter of who’s to be the mother too… but I counsel them to store gametes anyway.
And I strongly urge those in their twenties to do so, before starting Hormones that will eventually sterilise them, often permanently. All too often though, they have hitherto-undetected Intersex conditions, and are sterile. The last case I counselled had a zero sperm count,
severely intersexed, and didn’t know it. In her case, she has to have additional tests, as if she’s very, very lucky, motherhood could be in her future.
If so… I’m sure I’ll be forgiven for being just a little jealous, even though I’m 52, far too old to bear children safely even if I didn’t have my unusual medical history. I have a son, after all. I should count my blessings.
You raised some good points, as I said. There
are moral issues. Just not the ones you might think.
