#in humans there are two sex chromosomes: X and Y

[batcoins]

Ancient DNA reveals first known case of sex-development disorder

Researchers identified six ancient humans with chromosomal conditions, including the earliest case of Turner syndrome.

Through sequencing ancient DNA, researchers have previously found ancient people with an atypical number of chromosomes, including an infant with Down syndrome — caused by an extra copy of chromosome 21 — who lived around 5,000 years ago.

[Kyriaki] Anastasiadou and her colleagues have now discovered the first prehistoric person known to have had Turner syndrome, which occurs in females and is characterized by having only one complete copy of the X chromosome, instead of the two copies usually found in females (males have one X and one Y). The person lived in Somerset, UK, roughly 2,500 years ago, during the Iron Age. People with Turner syndrome tend to be shorter than average and experience fertility problems.

The other people the researchers identified with sex-chromosome syndromes were male. Among them was the earliest known person to have an extra Y chromosome, known as Jacob’s syndrome, which is linked to being taller than average. The man lived around 1,100 years ago, during the Early Medieval Period. The team also found three ancient males from different points in time who had an extra X chromosome, a condition known as Klinefelter syndrome, which is linked to growing taller than average and having broader hips and larger breasts.

There is no evidence that the people were treated differently from those without the syndromes, says Anastasiadou. “There didn’t seem to be anything different about how they died or how they were buried at first glance,” she says.

#chromosome conditions #intersex #we've always been here

[we-the-human]

If you asked me if I had a pet and I said “yes, I have a stallion”, you know exactly what I am talking about.

I have a male horse. That is his definition. Just a word that describes him based on his sex and his species.

That doesn’t mean that’s ALL I see him as. He could be my best friend, my confidant, and we provide each other affection and happiness. I would groom and clean him, feed him, take him out riding everyday, bond with him. I would treat him when he’s sick - pay thousands of dollars to treat an injury or infection. He’s my best buddy and I love him. He is a Stallion, but his definition is not what he is to me.

Other people in the world purchase stallions for one reason and one reason only. To make money and breed. Someone could purchase a stallion, put it through gruelling paces to train it to its full potential, even at the cost of his health. He would be groomed and fed only because it increases the worth of his performance and thus his sperm. The only things he gets is to further his usefulness as either a horse whose actions directly make money, including his genetic material. He is not given affection or love outside of this. If he became injured, he would be put down. This is someone who only treats a stallion as his definition - a male horse capable of producing sperm that can be exchanged for money.

A man is a human male. He is in possession of a Y chromosome(s). His genetic instructions will attempt to create sperm. He may or may not succeed. He will NEVER produce ova.

A woman is a human female. She is only in possession of X chromosomes. Her genetic instructions will attempt to create ova. She may or may not succeed. She will NEVER produce sperm.

I do not see men and women as their definitions. We are people with feelings and dreams and lives.

Some people DO see others as simply a means of reproduction - mostly men in regards to women across the world. Our sex is what we are oppressed by. It is not all we are, it is just that some people want to own us simply for being women - like the stallion. CONTINUING to define man and woman on the basis of species and sex is important because sex is the basis on which women are oppressed and if we can’t define our oppression and make policies off that then we will devolve.

We have a definition for men. We have a definition for women. This is all that is, a definition.

No one can be both. No one can switch between the two.

#gender critical #gender studies #gender #trans #feminism #women’s rights

[catboybiologist]

has anyone ever told you that you're perfect as a biological man and you should learn to love yourself as the man that you are????

so cw for discussions of transphobia and all that. So first off, yes, but I'm still trans. End of that discussion.

But anyways, I got this and a similar ask back to back, from either a transphobe or a troll making a weird joke. While the asks themselves are uninteresting, they made me want to talk about something that's been brewing in my head a while. And that's how the phrases "biological man" and "biological woman" make no goddamn sense, as a biologist. So I'm gonna use this ask as starting point to launch into that greater discussion- I'm not really responding to the asks itself, more dumping some thoughts I've had kicking around for a while. (Also sorry this blog is so transfemme language centered sometimes, I'm just writing from my perspective and don't want to exclude anyone I'm sorry. The rest of this post will be from a transfemme perspective but applies to transmascs as well for testosterone and other elements of ftm transition).

The reason it doesn't make sense to me is like, what exactly do you mean by biological? You're describing a massive biological system, and all of its components. So let's dissect what you could mean by "biological".

Obviously you're not talking about the entire human biochemical system, because biology includes our thoughts and behavior. So if someone socially or identity transitions, we're already eliminating some biological factors from what we consider as "biological" here.

Soft tissue secondary sex characteristics are easily acquired by HRT. Shit, I have some breasts growing already, and I'm 4.5 weeks in. So that can't be what you're talking about.

So maybe you're talking functional genetics? Well if we wanna talk that way, we gotta talk about gene regulation. The entire point of taking HRT is the change patterns in gene expression across the body, suppressing genes associated with masculine secondary sex characteristics and promoting genes associated with feminine secondary sex characteristics. Estrogen, like any hormone, is a signalling molecule that is trafficked between cells and across the body. Its job is to kick off a network of downstream signals that carry out a variety of individual functions. So in terms of active genes, a trans person on HRT will functionally be the sex of their target gender.

Okay okay, maybe for some reason you don't care if they're off or on, if you have a gene that has the potential to make you male, you're a man, dammit! Well, as mentioned before, everyone has the genes required to give you secondary sex characteristics of either sex. So under that definition, everyone is biologically both a man and a woman at the same time. And also biologically cancer. Not "biologically has cancer", biologically IS cancer. Also, we're all every organ all at once everywhere on our body. Changing patterns in gene expression are how one organ differentiates from another, and how many visible traits arise. As mentioned earlier, this includes many genes responsible for secondary sex characteristics.

But chromosomes! Y chromosome is a man! The only reason the X and Y chromosomes have relevance to sex determination is due to the Sry gene, which is linked to the Y chromosome. Why is this the case? Well, your chromosomes are paired. Normally, pairs of chromosomes are the same size and have the same genes. This is helpful, because it means you can have two copies of every gene- if one becomes nonfunctional, you have a backup, or you can express multiple spicy variants of the same gene. Somewhere in our evolutionary history, one of these pairs of chromosomes experienced a large scale deletion, causing many of these genes to be missing. It's fine if you have the backup copies on the other chromosome- but some kind of patch needs to be developed to help make sure that, on average, most offspring have at least one copy of the full chromosome. So, the individuals that linked the Sry gene to the Y chromosome, the chopped-up version of the chromosome, passed down some offspring. But there's nothing intrinsic about why it has to be this way- most animals don't have chromosomal sex determination at all. Even in mammals its fairly common for an X chromosome to grab the Sry gene, creating a phenotypic male with an XX karyotype. It's an evolutionary patch, nothing more, and a rule that is frequently broken. And if we want to talk about evolutionary patches being biological determinism… well then let's start talking about how vitamin C deficiency is the "biologically mandated" state of the human. And besides, chromosome structure is really mostly relevant for how it functionally affects gene expression, and we already talked about how gene expression is changed by HRT here.

Alright, alright dammit. I'm talking about the genitals, dammit. If you have a penis you're a man! Okay great. Tell me if you would classify post-SRS women as "biological" women then. Also, we're really starting to reach here.

Fine! I'm talking about bone structure and bone structure alone! I mean yeah, some elements of bone structure will always remain in someone that's had testosterone in their system long enough- its rock deposits in your body after all, its difficult to reverse. But some don't! Even adults on transfemme HRT experience hip widening, changes in height, and other changes in their bones (they just take a LONG time, and I've often ranted about the massive amount of misinformation regarding how long HRT takes to show its full effects). Additionally, there's plenty of surgeries for facial structures- is FFS the true hallmark of a "biological" woman? And also… no matter what metric you start drawing lines on here, you're gonna end up excluding some cis women as well.

To be abundantly clear, NONE of this is to say that you aren't valid if you aren't medically transitioning. What I'm doing here is pointing out that "biological" is a useless, overexpansive, arbitrary adjective that, even using the most transphobic definitions, still includes most trans people. The line is drawn… somewhere in here, to them. And more often than not, it will be drawn wherever excludes the most trans people, which will invariably exclude some cis people, and they'll all eat each other alive.

The reality is that "man" and "woman" are useful conventions that can be generally applied to classify most people into one category or another. And that's not unique to gender, it's literally how language works. As with pretty much any linguistic classification, its observational, not prescriptive. When thinking up of names for animals, we don't think up of a definition first, we see a group of animals that share similar traits and then think up of a name that will represent that species. But then, if we find more edge cases later, or an edge case becomes more prominent, we either adjust the definition or subdivide the group further with accurate terminology. Imagine if, around the time humanity discovered weasels, we made a definition of weasels that only included the European Mink. Then we found the least weasel, and people started crusading about how its "not biologically a weasel" and "defend weaselkind". It's just so… arbitrary. Where it begins and ends is up to us as a society, and linguistics, meaning that "biological" as an adjective here isn't doing much.

What is a woman? Well, some combination of the factors above, and many, many more I didn't talk about here. It's a classification cluster of people exhibiting certain traits that is not easily reducible to a simple adjective. And guess what, so is literally anything we see in the world. What is a race? What is a nationality? What is a species? What is continent? There are useful, simple definitions for each of these things- and those definitions are helpful on a first pass! But once you start to examine it more closely, that utility breaks down, and you have to get more nuanced. Which is exactly what happens for trans people, but for some reason, people aren't willing to have that conversation in the same way we're able to have quirky debates over whether or not Australia counts as a continent or an island.

I want to develop these thoughts further at some point, but I hope this is at least a good summary of my perspective on all this, as a biology grad student, and I hope that some people find utility and comfort in my explanation!

#cw transphobia #transphobia #cw transphobes #trans #transition #hrt #trans science

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

u do know cis women can be born with xy chromosomes. and yes, they will be assigned female at birth. also cis men can have xxy(yes, xxy) chromosomes and assigned male at birth? anyways, trans women are women,and u just want an excuse to hate minorities.

XXY males are just fully male. They don’t even have ambiguous genitals. From a cursory internet search

As for XY women, that is CAIS or Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. Wherein the cells don’t respond to masculinizing hormones during fetal development. Babies born with CAIS have a female phenotype but a male karyotype. CAIS is therefore typically discovered during puberty when the body doesn’t begin to menstruate or go through other expected stages of sexual development. This is because there is no uterus, a shallow vaginal canal, and undescended testes rather than ovaries. They are of course infertile.

Because women with CAIS have a female phenotype body they are usually raised as girls. It is phenotype that determines how we are classed as male or female and therefore I would posit that people with CAIS are female. Some may disagree and indeed as far as science is concerned this is a male disorder of sexual development.

Now here’s the part that really matters:

99.99% of all human beings have a phenotype that matches their karyotype. The vast VAST majority of trans people have an unambiguous sex.

CAIS cases result in a vulva and vagina, not some third thing.

There is no third gamete in human beings. Genitals that are ambiguous at birth still belong to either a male or female body.

Intersex conditions are not evidence of a third sex, nor do they disprove the gender binary. For the same reason a baby born without kidneys doesn’t “disprove” that humans are meant to have two. Because inevitably intersex conditions do not result in a fully functional body. Besides infertility, many intersex conditions come with other health issues ranging from things like endocrine disorders to intellectual disabilities.

Stop using people’s medical conditions as gotchas when 99.9% of trans people are perrisex.

Edited because I was unaware of XX men (caused by a very interesting case of the X chromosome inherited from the father absorbing enough of the Y to transfer the SRY gene)

#radical feminism #radical feminist safe #radical feminist community #radical feminists do interact #radical feminists do touch #radblr #radical feminists please interact #radical feminists please touch

[adaginy]

The Big Guide to Humans: Sex and Gender

It is mostly true, and yet very over simplifying, to say that humans have two sexes. More accurately, sex has a very strong binomial distribution on a spectrum from male to female. Sex is determined before birth based on genes and hormones, resulting in specific internal and external genitalia. A person at the far male end of the spectrum will have "XY" chromosomes and the hormones they produce, outward-extending external genitals, and relatively simple internal genitals. A person at the far female end will have "XX" chromosomes and their respective hormones, and will have external genitals that tuck inward to become their large and complicated internal genitalia (see reproduction). It is, however, possible to have internal and external genitalia that do not match each other or that combine features of each, hormones that do not match the chromosomes, genitalia that do not match the chromosomes, "XXY" or "X[null]" or chromosomes, chromosomes that appear as a second X or a Y but are combined, and perhaps other irregularities not adequately described in research accessible outside of Terra. These persons fall outside of the two peaks. In these cases, sex is determined medically by internal genitalia and culturally (more on this below) by external. If a person feels strongly averse to being their birth sex, adjustments can be made to their hormones, sexual dimorphism, and genitalia (mostly external) to move them toward the other end of the spectrum. That said, unless you are 1) medical personnel, 2) able to produce offspring with a human, or 3) unwilling to be surprised during sexual encounters, human sex is mostly irrelevant. Asking about their genitalia, if they have not displayed interest in mating (see flirting), is considered extremely rude. The primary way a human's gender (overly simplified as "the sex they feel they should be") affects you, a non-human with questions about humans/a human, is only in how you refer to them conversationally for languages that mark gender (languages that usually mark sex are expected to use gender for humans). This information is usually included in introductions to specific humans, or may be available in files your translation dock will pull automatically. The broad categories of human gender are Man, Woman (these two approximately equally common), Both, Neither, Unclear/Other, or Varying (these last 4 together not as common as man or woman). A human may feel some level of distress determining their gender, especially if they are not a male man or female woman, and it can take years for them to be certain. Or they may know it so instinctively and intrinsically that they never think about it. As with genitals, it is considered rude to be curious about further details — unless the human considers you a close friend and/or offers explanation on their own.

If sex is a spectrum, the details of a human's gender are an n-dimensional color-coded time-lapse graph, representing how one feels about their genitalia/dimorphism, whether they think it's relevant that they have/haven't made deliberate moves along the sex spectrum (or do/don't want to), their feelings about their "traditional gender role" (a reference to complicated human history of treating sex like speciation or a caste, and assuming sex predicted gender), how they demonstrate that they agree/disagree with their sex and/or gender role, how strongly they feel about these things, how much they've thought about them, whether these feelings have changed over time, and infinitely more details based on the human's personal experience, culture, medical history, etc etc. Where/how a person's gender details appear in this hypothetical graph is not predictive of which of the categories they will place themselves under, and a person with complex feelings about their gender may use words that will lose nuance in translation if they can be translated reliably at all.

#addie writes #humans are space orcs #big guide to humans #behave in the notes or I will turn this car around <3 #Clarification: by which I mean “fuck terfs” not “oh no my notifications” if you wanna reblog then go nuts

[craftingcreatures]

Alright, so I was thinking about Hammerheaded Bats (Hypsignathus monstrosa), as one does, and I just... have questions.

Obviously these things are absolutely ludicrous. The deranged-looking eyes, the goblin-esque ears, the lips that look like they got slammed in a car door a few too many times. And, of course, the gloriously fearsome schnozz. As far as creatures go this is one of the creaturey-est. 10/10. Brilliant design.

It gets better, as biology usually does. These bats are large, with a wingspan of almost a meter. Males and females display some rather extreme sexual dimorphism - the males are twice as heavy as the females, and it is only they which possess the extravagant nasal anatomy. That nose is an amplifying chamber, allowing the males to honk at their lady loves with a noise rather like a duck's quack played over a squeaky fence gate. Hammerheaded bats are the only bat species known to mate in a lekking system, in which the males all come together in one place to compete for the females' affections against each other. The males with the loudest, most obnoxious honks are the most desirable to the females.

Hammerheaded bats are one of a very few mammals known to have an XO sex determination system (For reference, humans have an XY system). This means that female bats, like humans, have two X chromosomes, but males do not have a Y-chromosome; instead, they have one X chromosome and that's it. This kind of chromosomal sex-determination is more often seen in insects like grasshoppers.

All of this is good. I love me some weird animals, and Hammerhead bats are no slouches when it comes to weirdness. But, fellas, we've only just scratched the surface when it comes to the weirdness of bat. And I do mean the surface, because the real weirdness is inside.

...

OK so there's a lot to unpack here.

First off, the larynx. It's obscenely large, three times larger in males than in females. It's half the length of the entire spinal column. It's so big that it smooshes all of the internal organs - you know, important things like the heart and lungs - all the way down into the lower abdomen. AND it's connected to air sacs in the throat that amplify the honks even further.

Like. I know why these bats are like this. I know why their honk-producing apparatus is so over-engineered and dominant that there's barely any room for anything else. Biology will do crazy things in pursuit of reproductive success. But like... they still have to live. These are bats. They're endothermic and they fly. Their oxygen consumption is through the roof. HOW do they get away with squishing their heart and lungs that much?! Is there some kind of pocket dimension where the rest of their lungs are stored?! Sir, how do you breathe?!

In conclusion, Hammerhead bats break my brain and I want to know everything about them. I love living on this planet - there's so much bonkers stuff to learn.

Info from https://caitlynfinton.com/2022/05/06/meet-the-hammer-headed-bat/

#bat #fruit bat #hammerheaded bat #These guys come from Africa and they're the largest bats on the continent #Also they have fun tongues because they basically drink fruit juice all day and that requires a special kind of tongue #Also they might carry Ebola #That's not confirmed though #I love my bizarre honking disease children

[reasonsforhope]

"Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes [a.k.a. egg cells] from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

Hayashi, who presented the development at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute in London on Wednesday, predicts that it will be technically possible to create a viable human egg from a male skin cell within a decade. Others suggested this timeline was optimistic given that scientists are yet to create viable lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Previously scientists have created mice that technically had two biological fathers through a chain of elaborate steps, including genetic engineering. However, this is the first time viable eggs have been cultivated from male cells and marks a significant advance. Hayashi’s team is now attempting to replicate this achievement with human cells, although there would be significant hurdles for the use of lab-grown eggs for clinical purposes, including establishing their safety.

“Purely in terms of technology, it will be possible [in humans] even in 10 years,” he said, adding that he personally would be in favour of the technology being used clinically to allow two men to have a baby if it were shown to be safe.

“I don’t know whether they’ll be available for reproduction,” he said. “That is not a question just for the scientific programme, but also for [society].”

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

Others suggested that it could prove challenging to translate the technique to human cells. Human cells require much longer periods of cultivation to produce a mature egg, which can increase the risk of cells acquiring unwanted genetic changes.

Prof George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, described the work as “fascinating”, but added that other research had indicated that creating lab-grown gametes from human cells was more challenging than for mouse cells. “We still don’t understand enough of the unique biology of human gametogenesis to reproduce Hayashi’s provocative work in mice,” he said.

Study Methods

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower [although not THAT much lower] than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

Going Further

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

Prof Amander Clark, who works on lab-grown gametes at the University of California Los Angeles, said that translating the work into human cells would be a “huge leap”, because scientists are yet to create lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Scientists have created the precursors of human eggs, but until now the cells have stopped developing before the point of meiosis, a critical step of cell division that is required in the development of mature eggs and sperm. “We’re poised at this bottleneck at the moment,” she said. “The next steps are an engineering challenge. But getting through that could be 10 years or 20 years.”

-via The Guardian (US), 3/8/23

#genetics #gene editing #genetic engineering #reproductive care #infertility #infertility cw #ivf #science and technology #lgbtq #oocytes #gametes #turner syndrome #queer parenting #good news #hope

[darlin-djarin]

i should sleep but i need to talk about the skywalker family and their chromosomes

it starts out a little silly but i promise i get deadass once i start talking about luke and how he was born.

now, it all starts with anakin.

anakin had no father, his mother birthed him like he was jesus (jesus intersex representation?? 😨 that’s another story) and she could only give him X chromosomes. that means either anakin didn’t have chromosomes, he had two X chromosomes, or he had just one X chromosome. considering his mother birthing him and his fatherlessness (loser), it’s most likely that he had a single X chromosome. therefore he was intersex.

now he probably still had cock and balls (derogatory), otherwise he couldn’t have had kids with padme. if the jedi order had a sex ed class (they probably did tbh), then anakin would probably know or realize that he only had one X chromosome, and therefore he realized he’s intersex.

as much as i love the idea of non-binary anakin- let’s be real guys. anakin would be those types of dudes who, when asked what their pronouns are, would answer with “nor/mal”. people would mention his beauty or his feminine demeanor and he’d be like “i’m not gay”. or something like that. i’m projecting my homophobic brother’s personality onto him. they’re very similar and i’m not particularly fond of either of them. at least, not anakin in the prequel movies.

my big boy chad master anakin in the clone wars had ultimate lightskin rizz.

anyway so onto luke.

it gets serious here.

since anakin only had one X chromosome, and padme had XX, then both of them contributed an X chromosome to their children. they literally couldn’t be able to make a biological male child. if they did end up having a male child, they would either have to be also intersex, or trans.

leia and luke were both born with XX chromosomes.

“but olly! in the movies, they said luke was a boy when he was born!” ah wonderful observation, my silly little padawan.

obviously star wars “humans” aren’t clearly “humans”, rather aliens as well. so likely their biology might differ from irl. but if we were to ignore that and consider all the possibilities, we could come up with a logical explanation.

obviously the technology in the star wars universe is very advanced, at least more advanced than the options we have available. i think the topic of gender and sexuality isn’t even a real thing in the universe. gender is a social construct, right? and clearly with the different aliens, races, and religions in the universe, the discussion of what “gender” is wouldn’t technically apply anywhere because gender isn’t real.

back to the technology part- i’d like to think the universe at that time would be able to find out a child’s “gender” or orientation by examining their brain when they are born. according to this study by Dr. Julie Bakker in how trans peoples brains correspond with the gender they identify as, regardless of how they were born, it can be understood that even from a young age, trans people think and process the same way cis people would within their respective identity/gender.

i think it would make the most sense that when luke and leia were born, they were given brain scans or something of the sort to determine what their gender/identity would be, regardless of how they were biologically born.

therefore we get luke’s “gender reveal” in the movies, even though he was likely born as a biological female.

basically trans luke is canon, y’all are just cowards.

so the whole skywalker family only have X chromosomes. until we get to ben solo. because of Han’s Y chromosome, ben would’ve been born as a cis male (derogatory).

that’s why he became evil. it’s bc his whole family is trans and he was kicked out for being cis.

hope this made sense

#ty lio for endorsing my silliness and goofiness #i’m dead serious about this tho #star wars #star wars headcanons #would this be a headcanon?? if it’s technically true? #star wars shitpost #anakin skywalker #luke skywalker #leia organa #padme amidala #han solo #ben solo #kylo ren #trans luke skywalker #anakin skywalker is intersex you can’t change my mind #keeping up with the skywalkers #shmi skywalker #extra virgin olive oil #oil.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Since we know that Gallifreyans/Time Lords are rather flexible on the question of gender, how do they perceive it? Do their bodies adapt depending on whether a person identifies as a man or a woman (or something else)? Do their X and Y chromosomes also detriment the body's biological sex, same as with humans?

🌈 Gender Perception and Physical Adaptation

Gallifreyans/Time Lords have some proper flexibility when it comes to gender. They're capable of identifying and presenting as male, female, or other/mixed genders across their regenerations. This fluidity extends to their biological sex, where hormonal balances influence physical characteristics and gender identity in each incarnation, making them quite a mix of stereotypical female/male traits.

🧬 Hormonal Influence and Physical Adaptation

Two primary hormones, akin to human estrogen and testosterone, play a significant role in determining an incarnation's physical appearance and biological makeup. These hormones exist in every Gallifreyan body, creating a spectrum of male and female traits. The ratio between these hormones is influenced by the four factors of regeneration, which comprises genetics, environment, skills, and utter randomness.

The skeletal structure, cardiovascular system, and other physical attributes adapt based on the dominant hormonal influence during regeneration. For instance, a Gallifreyan with a higher concentration of masculine hormones might exhibit broader shoulders and larger hearts. In comparison, one with a higher concentration of feminine hormones might display wider hips and a more robust recovery mechanism from cardiac diseases. There are measurable differences in many aspects of their biology, and you'd be really hard-pressed (including in a human) to find someone who is completely masculine or completely feminine. In Gallifreyans it's quite feasible to have someone who exhibits many physically male traits but can also give birth.

📖 Historical Gender Dynamics

Historically, Gallifreyan society didn't highly regard the female gender, with females making up only about 10% of the population. This skewed ratio reflects past societal norms and biases, emphasising masculine traits and roles within their civilisation. However, like many aspects of Time Lord culture, perspectives on gender have likely changed with time.

💡 Chromosomal Determination

The reproductive compatibility between Gallifreyans and humans suggests the presence of a system akin to X and Y chromosomes in Gallifreyans, which enables successful interspecies reproduction. This system likely provides the genetic framework for determining biological sex, ensuring viability for reproduction while accommodating the Gallifreyans' broad gender fluidity.

Hope that helped! 😃

→🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (WIP) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP)

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#doctor who #gil #gallifrey institute for learning #dr who #dw eu #gallifrey #dw meta #gallifreyans #ask answered #whoniverse #gil biology #gallifreyan biology #time lord biology

[blueepink07]

When it comes to choosing my favourite detail in Milgram, then Yuno's hair clips are definitely it!!

The hair clips together form an X and a heart!

The fact that there are two hair clips and one of them has an X shape, it really looks like a pair of chromosome!

"Chromosomes are bundles of tightly coiled DNA located within the nucleus of almost every cell in our body. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes."

"Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes (46 in total): one set comes from your mother and one set comes from your father."

"Of these 23 pairs, one pair are sex chromosomes so differ depending on whether you are male or female (XX for female or XY for male).

The other 22 pairs are autosomes (non-sex chromosomes) and look the same for both males and females."

The heart although it could be just a simple, cute accesory, might also symbolise that Yuno wasn't aware of the baby's sex, since the first one is always X and the second one changes: Y - male, X - female. The heart could be like an unknown variable!

It might also imply that Yuno was just 1 or 2 weeks pregnant at the time, since the zygote (which has the chromosomes which determine the baby's sex) is not formed until the third week.

And... That's all! Just thought it was interesting to mention!

#milgram #thoughts #milgram yuno #yuno kashiki

[grison-in-space]

One thing you have to understand about me as a scholar is that before I fell wholly under the spell of behavior, I trained as quite a good population geneticist. There is still a large part of my heart devoted to the subject and the addictive intuition I can use when I'm studying it.

What this means is that when I think about disentangling what biological sex even is, I start with the chromosomes themselves. Mammals have a gene called SRY that lives on the Y chromosome, which is tiny and mostly chewed up in our species and several others. If this gene is expressed, the embryo expressing it triggers a cascade of hormonal signals during development that encourages the developing fetus to turn its budding gonads into testes, spin its genital tubercule into a penis, and generally walk along a particular well trod path towards one kind of reproductive destiny. If it's not expressed, by default the budding reproductive system develops ovaries and a clitoris instead.

This is is where it gets complicated.

See, that's how it works in mammals, but that's actually a strange setup in its own right when you think about genetic sex determination systems. You can really get quite exotic with those, including baroque variations on haplodiploidy[1]. But even if you insist on limiting your understanding of what biological sex is doing to mammals... well, for one thing, SRY isn't the way that sex chromosomes always worked. Monotremes don't have that gene. In them, as with birds and their W chromosome, the sex determining part of the heterogametic chromosome[2] is distributed across the whole chromosome, not confined to just one single gene.

And there are reasons that sex specific modulation genes might migrate to the heterogametic chromosome in any case. All sexual dimorphism creates an inherent tension between the expressions of genes and specific variants that are best for any given fitness optimum in each sex, you feel me? Think about the way some show chickens have to be bred to win at shows, between "best hen" and "best cockerel" competitions: often, breeders maintain separate lines for each sex, and never the twain shall meet! There's a pleiotropic pull that makes it harder to select for particular traits in a really dimorphic species. Transpositions of genes from one chromosome to another can mean a relaxation in the conflict of sexual dimorphism by more closely coordinating sex-specific expression.

This is one of the reason dosage compensation is a thing. Everyone remembers those little stories about Barr bodies and tortoiseshell cats, right? How every body with at least two X chromosomes is a mosaic of cell lines that silence and ignore all but one of those chromosomes? In cats where the locus for "no eumelanin" (i.e orange pigment only) happens to sit on the X, heterozygote animals (that is, torties) have hair cells that are a mosaic of cell lines that decided to turn off the X chromosome with the "black" allele and cell lines that decided to turn off the orange X? The thing is, most phenotypic variations are not driven by changes in coding regions: they're driven, often very strongly, by changes in gene regulation. This is why having an extra copy of an autosome is almost always lethal in humans: the sole exception is trisomy 21, which we usually know as Down's syndrome. Adding another whole chromosome's worth of gene product to the system for any but the very smallest of chromosomes just isn't survivable for long unless you have a mechanism to even out the imbalance of gene product--and the X chromosome is not a small chromosome in humans. It's what, somewhere between six and eight in size? (Autosomal chromosomes are named biggest to smallest.)

To make this survivable and okay, sex chromosomes get all kinds of special tinkering. They need to make sure that gene expression between sexes, in species with sex chromosomes, is as perfectly equal as possible. A surprising amount of the time, you'll find sex differences whose main function appears to be keeping things in some other system totally the same, minimizing variation between sexes rather than creating them. Bodies are complicated things!

So ANYWAY: if you want to understand sex differences as they are, outside the realm of typical genital development? You have to understand that biological sex is a function of tons of different systems that might or might not uniformly all co-vary in the same direction. For example, let's take a list of five imaginary traits, each of which can be scored on a scale from -1 (most masculine) to +1 (most feminine). If sex is a single uniform thing, you'd expect all of these things to covary, such that you'd see a relationship like this imaginary dataset:

Ind 1: 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.8 0.8

Ind 2: 0.1 -0.1 0.3 -0.2 0

Ind 3: -0.7 -0.6 -0.8 -0.5 -0.9

[1] Haplodiploidy means that if you have one copy of all your chromosomes, you develop as male; if you have two copies, female. This is how bees and ants and wasps work. In some cases, as in cottony cushion scale insects, you can even do a frankly bizarre thing in which you have some haploid "invasive male tissue" that exists pretty much entirely to fertilize your eggs so you can lay diploid daughter eggs without having to bother to find a male.

You can see a strong covariance of traits between these individuals, such that some measure of sex is inflected along a spectrum that then gives rise to the five related traits, with a filter for noise laid over top. But this isn't usually what we see in the sex differences literature: with the exception of reproductive organs themselves, usually we actually see results more like this:

Ind 1: 0.0 0.1 -0.4 -0.8 0.3

Ind 2: 0.7 -0.6 0.1 -0.7 -0.4

Ind 3: 0.5 0.3 -0.2 0.1 -0.8

See how variation at one spot doesn't do a good job of predicting the next in this data set? All of these traits are variable, and all of them have some individuals who don't quite cluster with "their" group. It's the covariance between the scores on various "levels" of sex that is low: that is, real differences between sexes exist, but we don't know why they're there, and scores on each don't correlate well with each other--especially for behavior.

In any case, there's quite a lot of good reason to think that SRY might actually not be the end all be all of genetic variation according to sex, even though it casts a deciding vote in which direction of gonadal development a given individual starts on. How much of variation between sexes in mice is actually a function of SRY and its androgenic changes, and how much is a function of the genes on the Y and the cis acting regulation of those genres, is an open question.

So the thing I'm reading about is: there was a random mutation in a mouse line that deleted SRY, producing mice that are XY but otherwise develop as fully fertile females. On the other hand, there are also transgene constructs that have SRY transplanted to one of four autosomes (the Four Core Genotypes model). This lets us disentangle the effects of chromosomal sex from, essentially, SRY- vs SRY+ positive (or testicular anatomy or whatever) development. It's extremely cool shit and I'm very interested in brushing up.

And that's what I was excited about, folks.

[2] The heterogametic chromosome is the Y chromosome in an XY system or the W in a ZW system-- as contrasted to the homogametic chromosome, which appears duplicated in ZZ or XX individuals. The distinction between the two is which sex is which: XX animals are female and XY male, but ZZ animals are male and ZW animals are female. Either works fine.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

I think I may be overthinking this but ever since I read a translation of Vil's new bday line that mentioned that his dad was magicless, it made me wonder if the magic gene is reliant on the mom (kinda like how in pokemon, the baby takes after the mom's species). Think abt it: Ace's dad is magicless so he likely got his magic from his mom, Azul's grandma is said to be a powerful mage so he gets his magic from his mom's side, Epel's grandma has magic (and I think his great grandma too, not sure abt his mom tho), Kalim's mom has magic while his dad doesnt, I think Im sensing some sort of pattern here with the one magical parent+one normal parent pairs, seeing as the magical ones are usually the moms/on the mom's side.

But what do you think? Am I overthinking it or nah?

While I see where you may get the idea from (you listed some good examples, and TWST overall has more prominently magical mothers than prominent magical fathers), genetics is never as easy as that. (Also!! Some of the family members listed aren’t strong instances since assumptions were made about them; for all we know, Papa Trappola’s dad could have been able to use magic or the magical mom’s own moms may not have had that magic gene.)

The examples only go as far back as two generations; to get a more accurate read on the influence of maternal genes on magic acquisition, we’d need a lot more data (ie great grandparents, great great grandparents […], environmental factors, consideration of other genes, etc) or a family pedigree to reference. Otherwise, it could be a conflation of “lots of characters have mage moms” and “magic is reliant on the mom”; those two statements don’t actually mean the same thing.

Below the cut I will go into much more technical detail about basic genetics and how genes are sorted and then are expressed as traits. If you don't care for all that, then you can peace out now ^^ This isn't a mandatory read!

If we used a Punnett Square model (think of it as multiplying the genes of the mom and the genes of the dad to predict possible generic combinations for their children), we may be able to better illustrate how likely it is for a male vs female child to have the capacity for magic. I think we could maybe guess magic is a recessive trait for humans (since it only occurs in 10% of them). “Recessive” means that the trait is easily “covered up” or not expressed if a dominant gene is present.

In genetics, recessive is a lowercase letter and dominant is an uppercase letter. Thus, a mage would most likely have “mm”, as “Mm” and “MM” would have dominant genes that mask the magic of “m”. However, it’s not clear whether the magic gene is autosomal (on the first 22 chromosomes) or sex-linked (on the 23rd and final set of chromosomes), which further complicates things. If magic is autosomal, then I can kind of see why “mm” is feasible, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily mom dependent, since the dad also contributes a recessive m.

Here is an example Punnett Square; blue is the dad’s genes and red is the mom’s genes. R is the dominant trait which masks magic and r is the recessive trait which expresses magic. We need a rr in order to have a magic using child, which occurs 25% of the time.

If magic is sex-linked, then it poses a strange situation. Sex chromosomes are XX for women and XY for men. If their child is a girl, the mom gives 1 X and the dad gives 1 X. If their child is a boy, then the mom gives 1 X and the dad gives 1 Y. So if magic is truly dependent on the mother’s genes, the mom’s Xs truly matter, right?? But if you do the Punnett Square to see if it’s possible, it makes no sense.

To the left is the mom’s genes and on top is the dad’s genes. The r that accompanies one of mom’s Xs carries the recessive trait for magic. (I know it says “disease” there, but just pretend it’s magic.) In the real world, note that many hereditary diseases are X-linked. This is because the Y chromosome is so much smaller than the X; the Y is mainly known for carrying genes for sex differentiation for male body parts.

If you cross X^rX mom with XY dad, you’ll see that it reads as 50% of men can use magic and 50% of men cannot use magic, and 100% of women can’t use magic. (To be a carrier means the child has the magic trait to pass on to her future kids, but she as the mom is totally incapable of expressing that magic herself.) This is just… not true of the TWST world which has a number of female mages (look at the Great Seven), so it seems like magic can’t be sex-linked to the mom??? (If we made magic linked to the dad’s genes then this still would not make sense because daughters would not receive dad’s Y^r; this would make all boys mages and no girls mages.) Maybe this would work if the mom was X^rX^r, but then that would make 100% of their sons magical which also is not true.

dbjsbsksndksns That was all a very simplified breakdown + rambling about magic and how genetics might influence that 💦 I’m NOT saying what I shared was entirely accurate it’s been a while since I did studied genetics so my recall may be rusty; understanding and “calculating” genetics is a LOT harder than slapping some squares together and calling it a night. Likewise, it’s probably not as easy as saying “the one magic gene is reliant on the mom’s side”. As I said before, we’d need a pretty extensive family history to more accurately figure this out! It would also be useful to consider other genes (because genes can influence other genes) as well as environmental factors.

Side note: What I don’t really get (and this may just be a function of the game’s target demographic being women instead of men) is that if we accept the speculation that women are supposedly the ones that pass on their magic genes and many women (parent-wise) appear to be magical themselves, then why is NRC specifically an all-boys school? Even the other private magic institutions we see (RSA, NBC) appear to be all-male. Wouldn’t there be more women?? More co-ed or even at least one big all-girls school mentioned??? It may be just me overthinking what is a meta concept totally not related to in-game lore, but you'd think even a passing mention would be warranted...

#twst #twisted wonderland #disney twisted wonderland #twst theories #twst theory #twisted wonderland theories #twisted wonderland theory #notes from the writing raven #question

[stinetoftdk]

Introducing myself. (Part 1)

Trigger Warning: Sexual Abuse, disordered eating and gendered upbringing.

"I learned to hide my body, by compressing my chest with bandages to hide my developing breasts, by practicing to make my voice go deeper and by wearing big hoodies and baggy pants, to hide my wider hips."

Not Male, Not female: I am born Intersex, which means that my body didn’t develop in the same manner as most other bodies, in regards to sex traits.

The human body has 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up the genes of the body. The 23rd pair is the sex chromosomes and is in most cases what determines if a person will turn out to be male or female and in a few cases, intersex.

Someone who is genetically female, will have two x-chromosomes, while someone who is genetically male will have one x-chromosome and one y-chromosome.

The genetic sex doesn’t determine the biological sex, but it is part of the equation.

In my case, I have two x-chromosomes in combination with a y-chromosome, which genetically makes me a combination of both male and female.

However, this wasn’t apparent when I was born. When I was born I looked like a typical male child and I was according to medical tradition assigned the male gender.

At the time, in 1985, it wasn’t customary to test for atypical combinations of sex chromosomes in Denmark and therefore, my parents had no reason to think that I was anything other than a baby boy.

What We Learn: My upbringing taught me that my body wasn’t my own, that my body was wrong and that it should be hidden away. I learned that I had no privacy, that my feelings didn’t matter, that I was worthless and that I had to be a boy.

From an early age I was scorned whenever I was acting in a manner that my parents deemed feminine. My mother, who had lost my older sister to “Sudden Infant Death Syndrome” SIDS, was afraid she might accidentally push me in a feminine direction because of the loss of her daughter and out of this fear my parents became hyper vigilant in making sure that I was brought up to be a man.

I learned that I wasn’t allowed to act naturally, but instead had to be a boy, like my older brothers.

I received a strict and disciplined upbringing, that didn’t leave much room for privacy.

When I was 7 years old I was sexually abused, by a person much older then me. It only happened once, but I learned that my body isn’t my own. A few years later, I confided in my parents, who to my big surprise, told me that I should keep it to myself, as saying anything about it, could potentially ruin the life of the abuser.

(Me at 6-7 years of age)

So I learned the my feelings didn’t matter and I felt worthless.

When going to the mall with my parents, to shop for new clothes, they told me that I could choose exactly the clothes that I wanted… but only from the boys department. When pre-puberty, the development stage before puberty, set in and I began to develop female sex traits, I was teased immensely and received daily beatings, in school.

I learned to hide my body, by compressing my chest with bandages to hide my developing breasts, by practicing to make my voice go deeper and by wearing big hoodies and baggy pants, to hide my wide hips. I learned that my body was wrong and that I had to be a boy, even though I for the most part liked how my body was developing.

When at home, at dinner time, my parents told me to eat up, so I could become a big and strong young man, just like my brothers. I was afraid that my parents would notice that I was developing female traits and scorn me, so I ate well while they were watching.

After dinner I would often become sad, because I had no interest in becoming a man and I didn’t understand why my parents wanted me to. I learned to associate eating and being overweight with safety, but I also learned to associate eating with masculinity and becoming a man.

I developed an eating disorder because of this, where I have a tendency of shifting between starving myself when I’m happy and overeating when I become sad, called bulimia.

For the reader: If you want to know more? Follow along. If you have any questions? be sure to ask them in the comments, I would love to give you an answer.

#intersex #intersex community #trans community #transgender #trans pride #transgirl #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtq community #transfem #childhood trauma

[machinesonix]

Okay with Dune 2 being mostly about messianic philosophy and the next one probably even moreso, I wanna talk about what I see as the BIG MESSIANIC PICTURE behind the setting, or at least what I believe it to be. There's going to be spoilers in here, but they're not going to be anything you're going to see on screen in this trilogy.

I'm gonna start off by highlighting something that might not be totally obvious at first glance. There are two completely different prophecies Paul finds his terrible purpose in. The Kwizatz Haderach is the ‘ultimate human’ envisioned by the Bene Gesserit who will have an enhanced power of prescience because he can project the Other Memory through both the X and Y chromosome and free humanity from its animal nature. The Lisan al-Gaib is a myth planted in the Fremen culture by the Bene Gesserit in case the Sisterhood ever needed to control them. The big tldr is that Bene Gesserit training involves a lot of learning through observation, so their kids tend to learn things so fast it looks like they already knew them and they pass that off as a miracle. 

I think it’s pretty obvious we’re supposed to find this Kwizatz Haderach thing pretty sus. The disciples of this prophecy are themselves purveyors of false prophecy. Paul certainly doesn’t believe he’s the Kwizatz Haderach, and that’s because he knows he’s not the Lisan al-Gaib. But he does wind up ticking the boxes. He does in fact survive the Water of Life ritual despite his sex. He is indeed uniquely prescient because he can see both sides of the Other Memory. Thing is as we move forward into the books that are not getting movies, we’re asked to reinspect this because of all the other Kwizatz Haderachs.

Brian Herbert gets kind of a raw deal because he didn’t have his father’s writing chops, but we’re comparing him directly to a person many consider to be the greatest science fiction author of all time. What he did have is a deeper insight into his dad’s setting and philosophies than anyone else, so miss me with any mess about which books you don’t consider canon unless you’re ready to go all Council of Nicea with me. Anyway, a really prominently weird thing that loses a lot of people is that Paul’s kid is a worm. He’s not born that way, he basically does the Water of Life ritual in the middle of a bunch of pupating sand worm larvae and comes out of it as a big worm with a human head that can produce spice in his own body. Leto II claims that he’s the Kwizatz Haderach, and to be fair, he is way more of an ‘ultimate being’ than his dad. People worship him not as a prophet, but as a god. Paul brought revolution to the universe, Leto II brought peace. It’s the peace of a godlike tyrant who can read minds and punish dissidence before it happens, but as long as we’re comparing people to their dads it's not like he started a race war that killed 26 billion people in the name of ‘justice.’ 

You may have heard Duncan Idaho winds up being the real Kwizatz Haderach. If you remember that gimp suit beetle thing in the first movie, the Harkonnens and their Tlelaxu buddies take dead people and turn them into sort of clone-zombie servitors called gholas. I’m not making any promises, but there is a real possibility the third movie will have Jason Momoa in a gimp suit, because Duncan is the best ghola. The second Duncan Idaho, bearing the edgy mid-century sci-fi moniker Hayt, is a gift from the Tlelaxu to Paul after his rise to power as an ostensible ‘we’re sorry we helped the Harkonnens kill your entire family.’ If you’ve seen the 1984 Dune movie you’ll know that the Duke of House Atreides keeps a pug. What you might not know is that it’s been the same pug for 10,000 years by virtue of genetic xeroxing. Once Leto II takes over, Duncan becomes the new house pug. Duncans serve as mentats, swordmasters, philosophers, and more over millenia of incarnations. Eventually one of the Duncans gets slammed with all the memories of the previous Duncans and he’s got this totally bizarre version of the Other Memory where he can remember all of his ancestors' memories, but his ancestors are also himself. Thereafter he can run like the Flash and fistfight robots and people call him the Kwizatz Haderach. Like I said, Brian’s books are petty controversial among fans.

Also the reverse-Bene Gesserit wind up making a Bizarro Kwizatz Haderach at one point but he’s just prescient enough to see that there isn’t a future where he isn’t just a washed up fraud. 

Now let’s put it all together. I think the core philosophical study at the center of Dune is the question ‘What is a messiah?’ And like any great work of art it really is more about the question than the answer. Our three Kwizatz Haderachs (I’m not gonna count Thallo, he’s more like an allegory for Joel Olstein) propose some possibilities. Paul is the guy who ticks all the boxes. His messianic status is descriptive, not prescriptive. He isn’t actually the guy the Bene Gesserit thought it was going to be, so that notion of predestination is gone, but if the Kwizatz Haderach is ‘the man who can use the Other Memory,’ then he’s it. He and the people around him knew the prophecy and chose to lean in that direction, he got 

Leto II is the closest thing to a divine manifestation that fits in this universe. He is literally in the body of one of the unstoppable forces of nature the Fremen venerate as their protector. He calls himself ‘God-Emperor’ in a setting where every man, woman, child, face dancer, and thing in between is raised on the principle that there is a monotheistic creator deity and that deity wants humanity to flourish. Everyone who didn’t believe in God got killed by robots ten thousand years ago. By insisting on literal religious worship of his political station, Leto II is seriously making some waves. Imo this is sort of like an extreme example where the question is more like ‘Is this what it takes before you’ll call someone the messiah?’ Even then, the fact that this dude is definitely NOT God in the way this setting understands it casts aspersions on the idea of a visibly supernatural force being inherently divine.

Finally, Duncan is a total freak accident. He is the ‘perfect human’ because he has been iterated on and improved over and over again, but he has nothing at all to do with the Bene Gesserit breeding program. Thousands of years after the Fremen uprising, when everyone thinks the Kwizatz Haderach is ancient history, there’s this guy with super powers. Unlike Paul, there’s no prophecy to suggest he might be the Chosen One and no decision to lean into the mythos surrounding it. The idea of iteration is really important with Duncan. Pardon the unflattering comparison, but there’s something kind of Heglian in how perfection is an inevitability as long as someone keeps stirring the pot. 

I would argue that aspects of all of this are present in the first book. Leto II and Duncan are just deeper explorations of some of the questions posed by Paul. And if I’m to wrap this all up with a neat little bow, I think the point of it is that they’re all totally valid Kwizatz Haderachs. ‘Kwizatz Haderach’ are just words. For ten thousand years, there was a description of a thing and nothing existed that fit that description. There was a plan to create something that fit the bill, but we got a guy who could do the miracle even when we went off script. At that point it just seems like a semantic argument. Likewise, Leto II is pretty much God. He’s immortal, he sees all things past and future, his body produces and feeds him the chemical that puts him in that trippy oneness-with-everything. He sure as fuck isn’t what anyone was expecting God to look like, but it’s pretty much theologicially bankrupt to be like ‘Excuse me, something isn’t the universal superbeing unless it’s exactly what I already had in mind’ even if people do exactly that all the time. If the 400 meter single worm-boot fits, as they say. I’m not exactly how to make this sound as serious as I mean it, but Duncan as Kwizatz Haderach is basically like Brian Herbert shoving the pile of Korans off his desk and going ‘Fuck it, look.’ This guy’s got nothing to do with the Bene Gesserit. He has the genetic memory of his masculine ancestors, but you probably couldn’t get away with calling it the same thing Paul does in court. Half the reason he gets called the ‘perfect human’ is the sentiment expressed by ‘Oh dawg, Duncan, bro, he’s the realest, most human out of any of us.’ He is just called the Kwizatz Haderach because that is the language that exists in the culture that is closest to what he is. But you know what? Same with Paul, or Leto II, or even the Joel Olstein guy I mentioned. 

Prophecies don’t predict saviors, they make them. Chani has a line in the new movie that’s something like ‘Promise them a messiah and they will wait forever,’ and I think that’s Dune boiled down to its most essential notion.  

#dune meta #dune #philosophy #oh my god this turned out to be so long #paul atreides

[daraoakwise]

150 years ago, a boy was born to my great-great grandmother. And that was the last time that happened anywhere on my maternal line until my son was born in 2016. This is a story about intersex people.

For 150 years, the women of my family kept having daughters, who either also had daughters, or they were oddly unable to have children. Strange quirk, we assumed. No boys.

In the late 1970s, my mother’s sister had a daughter with Down Syndrome. Genetic testing was done, and it was discovered that although she looked female, she actually possessed the male XY chromosome combination. Her sister was born three years later. And because of that genetic concern, her genes were checked. And she possessed … the XY chromosomes. A third daughter, born a few years later, possessed the usual XX.

Keeping in the tradition, my mother had two daughters. Because of our cousins’ genetic conditions, my sister and I were both checked. Both of us appeared typically XX. And so for more than thirty years, it was dismissed as a quirk, and no one said the word intersex because that wasn’t a thing in 1980.

In 2016 I had a son, breaking the chain of girls. It was an interesting story! I then had two daughters, and didn’t bother to do any genetic checking.

And then in 2020 my sister became pregnant. Early genetic testing said boy, XY. Twenty week anatomy scan said girl. Definitely 100% girl. Uhhh?! As expected, she*** was born genetically male, possessing only male gonads in the form of undescended testes, but female external genitalia.

It was Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, a genetic mutation carried on the X chromosome. See, all bodies start female. Then, when the hormonal influence of the Y chromosome kicks in, instructions on the X are supposed to detect the testosterone and create male genitalia. Except a person with AIS is non-reactive to testosterone, and the body stays, at least superficially, female. Genetic check would say boy. Presence of testes says boy. Pants check says girl. Making the question of sex (sex. Gender is something else, ok?) distinctly complicated.

If someone has a mother who is a carrier of AIS, there are 4 possibilities. Unaffected XY, and so genetically and structurally male. Affected XY, and so intersex. Affected XX, and so a female carrier. Unaffected XX female and entirely unaffected.

My grandmother was a carrier. My aunt and mother are carriers. My sister is a carrier. When my niece was born, my single non-intersex cousin and I did genetic testing. And we are both carriers as well. My son is an unaffected XY male. My niece is affected XY intersex. Both my cousin and I also have 2 daughters each. And, because it is medically and psychologically relevant, we had them tested. All XX.****

And I was ready to check one more thing: are my daughters carriers? There is a 50/50 chance. And then I stopped, because they are preschoolers, and that is their reproductive decision. They know three intersex people. And if they care, someday they can check their genes and the odds that my grandchildren will be intersex. The intersex people they know will, I hope, be able to talk to them about the beauty of their lives as one of the wonderful variations of humanity.

#***both of my adult intersex cousins identify as the female gender. For now so does my two year old niece pending future choices. #****the discovery that one is intersex is sometimes not made until puberty (doesn’t happen) or beyond. #Unusually in my family it is a part of their story from birth #intersex #androgen insensitivity syndrome

[fleshdyke]

Hey? You know that bird?? The one that is trans? The one on your blog, can you show me that bird again, or like pictures of examples of how birds change plumage and go from female to male? I cannot seem to find many pictures online :(

sure can!

image id: an eclectus parrot with a mostly green head, dappled with some red feathers, red feathers tipped with green on the neck, a half-plucked blue chest and abdomen, blue ventral wings, dark red wing feathers tipped with green, light eyes with wide dark pupils, and a black bill with the upper mandible streaked yellow and orange. there are some grey and white down feathers sticking out on her wings and chest from plucking. the other two images are pictures of the same bird, one a more zoomed out shot from a different angle, and one a close-up headshot. end id

the best pics of her i could find

image id: an eclectus parrot with a mostly red head, a green forehead and crown, a green chest dappled with blue, red patches underneath the wings, dark red wings with some green feathers, blue flight feathers, brown eyes, the upper mandible of the bill orange and yellow with a small streak of black, and a black lower bill mandible. end id

here’s another example of an eclectus parrot with marbled male/female plumage, his name’s atlas and he belongs to u/midgetcanadian iirc on reddit! this pic is from a long time ago actually, he’s gone fully green with regular male colouration and was dna tested to be male. he’s essentially the opposite case of the bird i work with, whereas she spent the first 15-odd years of her life with regular female colouration and started turning green after she bonded with an african grey we presumed to be male. that african grey has since passed away four-ish months ago, so we’ll see if his absence has any effect on her plumage.

image id: two eclectus parrots, one male and one female. the male is mostly vibrant green, with patches of red under his wings, blue flight feathers, dark eyes, an orange and yellow top bill mandible and black lower mandible. the female has a bright red head and neck and darker red wings with a blue chest and body, blue on the ventral side of the wings, light eyes, and a fully black bill. end id

this is an example of regular male/female colouration (apart from the few red feathers on the male’s neck). they’re very distinguishable, so much so that ornithologists thought they were different species for years.

switching to different sexes like this actually isn’t unheard of in birds. sometimes, when a hen’s ovaries stop working for whatever reason, she will start behaving more like a cock, and if the species is sexually dimorphic, begin to appear like one, too. bird sex is a lot more fluid than human sex is as they have a completely different chromosomal system (Z and W chromosomes as opposed to humans’ X and Y), and birds can actually control the sex of their chicks if need be. zebra finches, for example, will begin producing more females if the flock is having a difficult time, and kookaburras always tend to hatch a male before a female.

it’s actually not super rare for female birds to suddenly “become” males when their sex organs stop working. this is especially common in domestic chickens, ducks, peafowl, but that’s likely just because it’s a lot easier to monitor them and take notice of when it’s happening. but why do birds never seem to change from males to females? it’s because, like how a humans’ default sex is female, all birds’ default sex is male. so it’s not like a bird has never been born intersex and had characteristics of both sexes/changed appearance from male to female over time, it’s just a lot more rare, since when a female’s defining female trait (ovaries) stops working, sometimes their bodies then default to male and a hen chicken would grow large, ornamental tail feathers, grow larger combs, and begin crowing. when a bird’s ovaries stop working, they stop producing oestrogen, and so they take on more male traits as a default. sometimes they develop testes as well, and there’s even been a case of a previously female bird siring viable offspring as a male. some birds have even been found to be gynandromorphic, where their secondary sex characteristics (plumage, flesh/beak colouration, fat distribution, etc) are split male/female neatly down the middle of their bodies.

so does this mean that millie (the first eclectus) is trans? yes and no, but mostly no. in a human sense, millie would not be trans, primarily because birds have no sense of gender. obviously this doesn’t mean she’s “cis” either; she just is. to call her trans would be gross anthropomorphism, which is ideally to be avoided at all costs when it comes to real life animals. however, as long as you’re aware that sex is a very complicated matter and that she’s not truly trans in the human understanding of it, i don’t see an issue with casually referring to millie and any other female-male birds as trans! we don’t fully understand what’s going on with millie in regards to her ovaries/testes and hormones, because as much as universities and labs want to study her, we don’t want to stress her more than is strictly necessary, and since her partner died, we won’t be handing her off to some scientist anytime soon. all we know is that millie is somewhere between male and female, and it’s not the rarest thing in the world that she seems to be switching from female to male. but in the case of atlas, the second eclectus above, his case was likely just a result of confused hormones while he was young, as he’s got entirely normal male characteristics now, and he was very young (1-2 years i believe) while he was marbled like that.

so yeah, bird sex is a very interesting thing to study and i am very lucky to have such a great example of sex switching in birds right at my own aviary!

(just as a side note: millie is unusual for two reasons! one is her sex switch, and the other is the fact that she bonded with an african grey like she did. parrots are very social animals and most of them form bonds for life, most parrots being monogamous and forming strong emotional bonds with their partners, african greys included, but eclectuses are the only exception to this. they are the only parrot species that isn’t monogamous; a female will mate with many different males over their lives, and males can tend to many different females at once. females will stay in their nest hollows for at least six months straight of the year, depending entirely on her many mates to bring her food, and males will spend all day every day bringing food to various females. millie was a strange outlier for bonding so closely to her mate, but very unfortunately he passed away from undetected cancer a few months ago. millie has been living with a volunteer since then as to reduce stress. you can partially see her mate standing on the same perch as her off to the side of the second pic.)

#got a little carried away here LMAO #anyways heres your infodump for today! bird sex is a super cool topic #also shoutout to ducks for being AGGRESSIVELY lesbian. this doesnt relate to the topic at all but i was reminded of it when i was doing #research for this and it’s just really funny to me. good for them #asks #birds #bird #birdblr #birblr #parrots #parrotblr #biology #infodump #long post #animal death #100