San Jose State Prof Claims Chromosomes Don’t Determine Sex
“I know high school biology told you they do, but nope”
The professor in this story teaches biology. Students might want to think about asking for a refund.
Campus Reform reports:
Biology prof lectures state rep on ‘sex determination stuff’
A San Jose State University biology professor recently accused a Texas state legislator of being “bigoted” for tweeting that there are only two genders.
“In case you forgot how many genders there are,” Republican State Representative Briscoe Cain tweeted on December 21, attaching a picture of the XX and XY chromosomes.
Describing herself as a geneticist, Rachael French replied to the tweet with an extended harangue in which she impugned Cain’s motives and derided his understanding of biology.
“Hey geneticist here. You’ve disingenuously and for bigoted purposes oversimplified a complex phenomenon,” she wrote. “A few notes: 1) Sex and gender aren’t the same thing. 2) Chromosomes don’t determine sex.”
“I know high school biology told you they do, but nope,” she continued in a separate tweet. “A single gene on the Y starts a cascade of events involving genes all over the genome to determine sex. If any of those things changes, surprise!”
French went on to differentiate between gender, which she describes as “a complex phenomenon arising from interactions between genes and the environment,” and sex, which “describes the physical manifestations” of that interaction.
“‘Gender’ describes the psychological and/or the emotional identity,” she elaborated, saying, “they’re regulated somewhat, though certainly not entirely, independently.”
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Comments
Progressives don’t believe words have actual meaning. Only feelings count and words can be redefined to conform with your feelings.
She probably calls people on the right “Fascists” as well.
tell me again which side is anti-science?
LGBTP?………………..is winning. Satan smiles.
Um, she is correct. Ask any actual geneticist and they’ll confirm it High school genetics is very oversimplified, and no more accurate than the “solar system” model of atomic structure. Sex is caused by a complex web of phenomena that are triggered by one gene on the Y chromosome; the overwhelming majority of the time the whole set of interactions happens flawlessly and the baby turns out male, but sometimes things play out differently. The presence of a Y chromosome is an indication that it’s statistically overwhelmingly likely the child is male, and its absence is an indication of the overwhelming likelihood that the child is female, but they don’t cause it, and sometimes the statistical prediction doesn’t work out.
Bottom line, if every time you come across someone with a Y chromosome you bet they’re male, and every time you come across someone without one you bet they’re female, you’ll be rich, but once in a rare while you’ll lose one of your bets.
Which is very interesting scientifically, but of very little use in the real world, where almost everyone is definitely male or definitely female.
(Reply to Milhous)
For hundreds of years, everybody (scientists included) thought that they clearly understood the meaning of the words “sex”, “gender”, “male” and “female”. Along came “liberals” (no problem with definition there), and now we can have wonderful sophistic arguments akin to the one about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin.
Milhouse cleverly deconstructs the Y-chromosome, such that its flawless transmission is required to cause an organism to be male. What then is a “male”, if not the result of proper interpretation of the Y chromosome’s male locus, and if this error causes the absence of maleness, what name do we assign to the erroneous outcome (I assume that nobody wants to argue that females are defective males)?
Fortunately, when desired, science can be clearly differentiated from politics, and thus it can be conclusively shown that there is a conservative gene, a defect of which causes liberalism.
For hundreds of years people thought they understood all sorts of things that they really didn’t. The fact is that chromosomes do not determine sex. And for hundreds of years nobody ever thought they did, because nobody even knew about them. For thousands of years sex was determined by the physical expression, not by the chromosomes. An XY person who expressed as female was regarded as female.
And for thousands of years it has been well known and understood that there exist intersex people for whom the standard classification system doesn’t work, and they must be treated differently.
The Y chromosome cascade to maleness goes off without a hitch at a very high rate. The exception does not become the rule; it becomes a biological disorder that liberals want to erase for feelings and convenience of narrative.
By the way, the two most common forms of these anomalies are both called “syndromes” because they produce a cluster of anomalous symptoms. Also, they align very, very poorly with transgenderism, much more of a poor fit than the statistical model that aligns chromosomes to sex determination. This last statement is the inconvenient truth to the LGBTQ movement that wants to change biological dogma to suit their purposes.
De La Chappelle Syndrome aka XX Male Syndrome is one.
Androgen Insensitivity syndrome (a kind of XY pseudofemale disorder) is the other.
Last point: Turner’s syndrome (Single, unpaired X chromosome with no other sex chromosomes) is quite objectively female.
This once again clearly demonstrates the need for a Y chromosome to confer biological maleness and confers sexual dimorphism (separate sexes) in mammals. The fact that maleness due to SRY gene expression quite rarely goes wrong does not change the biological norm.
That would be no different than saying Tay Sach’s disease just causes the formation of a new type of brain cell…nothing wrong there, it’s just different (if you didn’t know, Tay-Sach’s is a horrible neurological condition where the child dies by age 4).
The basic question behind this whole debate is whether we should structure our society the way that works for the overwhelming majority, even if it’s inconvenient for a tiny minority, or should we structure it to make things better for the tiny minority at the expense of the overwhelming majority. It should be clear that if we can easily accommodate both we should do so, but if someone must be inconvenienced, who should it be? And I think that question answers itself.
The left has been intentionally conflating biology with sociology in order to push their agenda. If gender is biologically determined, then it cannot be molded. If it cannot be molded, then mankind cannot be “perfected,” as they see it.
We see this in many other contexts. Whenever reality doesn’t agree with their dogma, it is reality which must yield. That’s insane.
Funny, I use a different definition of “gender”.
It’s a purely linguistic concept; a grammatical device common enough in some languages, but entirely superfluous in others.
Of course everybody who defines it any other way is wrong. Obviously. By definition.
Well, that was easy. Next topic, please …