Simple Science

There’s a story making the rounds about a transwoman who was booted from competing in the Miss Universe Canada pageant because she’s trans. Once again I made the mistake of clicking on the Yahoo! News story for this and reading some of the comments. (As an aside: Some people really, really suck boil-ridden ass.)

The good thing about torturing myself in this fashion, however, is that it’s inspired me to continue my response to the ignorant reasons that the grievously ignorant toss out there to hate on and condemn transpeople. So, I now present to you… 

Part II: Biology and Genetics

There’s a whole school of people who often shout things like the following on message boards: 

IF YOU WEREN’T BORN WITH A PENIS AND TESTICLES, YOU ARE NOT MALE!
IF YOU WEREN’T BORN WITH OVARIES AND A UTERUS, YOU ARE NOT FEMALE!
IT’S SIMPLE BIOLOGY!!

-or-

YOU’RE EITHER XX OR XY.
IF YOU ARE XY, YOU ARE MALE AND ALWAYS WILL BE MALE!
IF YOU ARE XX, YOU ARE FEMALE AND ALWAYS WILL BE FEMALE!
IT’S SIMPLE GENETICS!! 

Now as far as science goes, I like it well enough, but I am NOT very adept at either biology or genetics; so the fact that I can even muster up an argument to these two statements kind of shows just how hollow they really are. First let’s deal with biology.

Birth defects* happen all the time. As examples: boys can be born without testicles, and girls can be born without ovaries. Additionally, there are hermaphroditic people in the world who have ambiguous genitalia at birth, so according to “simple” biology, what does that make these people, male or female?

Also, what if something happens where either the testicles or ovaries have to be removed? Does that mean that the person is no longer male or female? If a guy gets into an accident and his genitals are destroyed, does that make him any less of a man? Is a woman who’s had a hysterectomy less of a woman?

In reality there is nothing simple about biology. To break down what someone’s gender is purely by what’s between their legs or what internal organs they happen to have at a given point in their life doesn’t take into account any of the myriad things that can happen to someone, either through some type of defect, disease, or accident. In short, this is a foolish and erroneous way to label and box people. Attributing someone’s gender to what kind of “equipment” they happen to be sporting doesn’t address any of the variations that occur in this multiple-shades-of-gray world, which makes it a poor way to discern such things. 

To springboard off of this, and to tie in the genetics aspect, there are people who have complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (or CAIS). This, from my dime-store understanding of how the human body works, is when someone’s cells are unresponsive to male hormones. This is present in the womb; so what can (and does) occur, is that there are people who are XY chromosomally, but have the genitalia and outwards appearance of a typical female. 

What I found even more interesting about this condition is that XY people with CAIS don’t have ovaries, but have testicles (oftentimes located internally). However, since the body can’t process the testosterone that is produced by these testicles, it is essentially converted to estrogen, which will feminize the body. The overwhelming majority of people with CAIS are born without fallopian tubes or a uterus, but they will develop as women, and, way more often than not, will happily live their lives as women. So, can we disregard all of that and say that they are men purely because they are XY? Well, according to the haters on the message boards, yes… though I, and I’m sure these women with CAIS, would staunchly disagree.

This alone should prove that genetics is not in any way “simple”. To add to that thought, there are also people who are born XXY, XYY, XXXY, XO, XXX, XXXX, and even XXXXX. So yes, let’s all just break it down into XX and XY. As we can see, there are no variations to this at all and everything is as black and white as the braying people on the message boards make it out to be.

Now if all these departures from the norm exist, who’s to say that the brains of transpeople aren’t just different from what their bodies say they are? I’m sorry if all of this information dealing with biological and genetic diversity destroys the basic cut and dry definitions that the uninformed strive to cultivate, but, you know, the facts are what the facts are. Apologies to the people who hate and avoid facts, because the facts are here, and they’re coming to get you.

I hope all is well in your world.

* I'm using the word "defect" only as a way to state that these people are born different from what’s seen as “the norm”, and I am in no way calling these people "defective" or the like. I mean, being trans could actually be seen as a “defect”, though I obviously don't think that trans people are defective in any way.


UPDATE (4/4): The decision to ban this woman from the pageant has since been overturned, and she can now compete. I'm pretty sure this blog post had everything to do with the reversal of this decision.

(Note: I'm 100% certain this blog post had nothing to do with the reversal of this decision.)