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Dunning-Kruger
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
thee are only 2 atoms in the universe: hydrogen (74%) and helium (24%). so you're either a Hydrogen, a Helium or have a syndrome
Oh yes, I very sure we can compare atoms with humans. Maybe inside the sun a man can become a woman and vice-versa
They're pointing out the stupidity of your argument, since it depends on ignoring the fact that the remaining 5% exist, in the same way that classifying everything as those two elements requires ignoring the fact that the other 1% of matter exists
are you a preschooler?
yes, are you going to use "basic physics" too??
Welp, honest mistake. For some reason I thought hydrogen and helium can only create other atoms, not become eachother.
Still, my point stands, humans are no atoms
but humans are chromosomes apparently?
Well yeah, literally you are shaped by your genome
Genome is not the only thing that shapes what a person is. Gene expression is variable as well. The world, and people, are more complicated than that.
Your genome also shapes your scoliosis, but I don't see anyone keeping you away from the whirligig inversion table.
I think it's really funny you left out the exact intersex conditions that disprove your point, Swyer syndrome and de la Chapelle syndrome.
So someone with de la Chapelle syndrome is neither a man nor a woman but has a syndrome? 'Man' and 'woman' are social categories and syndrome is not, so this makes no sense. Also I doubt you'd be able to spot the 'syndrome' in a group of men.
This is a strawman I see repeated a lot. I've never seen trans advocates claim this, only opponents. Even then I would still argue that it is true to some extent. Sex is not just chromosomes (as proven by the two conditions I linked above). It's made up of many different characteristics and you can change some of them, e.g. with hormone replacement therapy, which changes some secondary sex characteristics. Or even just gynecomastia does it too.
For people who are interested in what the actual science says about this topic I recommend Forrest Valkai's new Sex and Sensibility video (warning, it's long).
Edit:
Language is completely made up and changes all the time. But you're claiming it will never change again?
And again, those are conditions, not something you choose to be, you are simply born like that.
Well than, waht is someone with Chappel syndrome?
Oh yes, it's also the malformations that you were born with
oh so you need drugs to mimic traits from the opposite sex (there are only two after all) and gender is given by your sex.
I am actually gonna watch this
Yes, language is not "made up" it evolved and will evolve naturally, demanding language to change to cater to you is not natural.
You’re approaching this discussion from a place of certainty, but the reality of biology, language, and human variation is more complex than the rigid model you’re presenting.
A few key points:
1 in 50 people has a variation of sex development (VSD). That’s not an anomaly, but a substantial population.
Genetic chimerism, which is rarely tested for, suggests as many as 12% of people have mixed chromosomal expressions—that’s 3 in every 25 people who do not neatly fit XX or XY.
Any woman who has ever had a child is a genetic chimera, because she retains some of her child’s DNA, meaning many women carry male DNA within their bodies.
If sex were as simple as XX/XY, these biological realities wouldn’t exist. But they do, and they complicate the notion that sex is an unchangeable binary.
Puberty is a hormonal process. It reshapes bodies, voices, muscle structure, brain development, and reproductive function.
If sex were truly "fixed," introducing testosterone or estrogen wouldn’t fundamentally change these same traits in adults. But it does.
So which is it? If hormones don’t influence sex, then puberty doesn’t matter either. If they do, then transitioning alters biological characteristics in ways that contradict your claims.
Modern Italian was not a natural evolution—it was imposed on Italy’s diverse dialects by the state.
After WWI, German was banned in schools and public institutions in parts of the U.S.
The French government has actively tried to suppress regional languages like Breton and Occitan to enforce a singular linguistic identity.
These weren’t "organic" shifts—they were deliberate policy changes. If language only changes on its own, these documented historical events should not have been possible.
If entire nations have altered their linguistic structures through conscious intervention, why would the evolution of gendered language be any different?
Left-handed people make up about 10% of the population—a minority, but we don’t dismiss their existence because they aren’t the majority.
The number of people with red hair is lower than the percentage of intersex people, yet no one claims red hair is "unnatural."
Statistical frequency doesn’t determine what is real. Something doesn’t need to be common to be biologically significant.
You’ve repeatedly expressed personal relief that trans people are not common in your area. That’s not a neutral scientific observation—that’s a personal bias.
You dismiss contradictory biological realities by calling them "defects" rather than engaging with what they actually mean.
You insist this discussion is about "logic," yet when presented with genetic, medical, and linguistic evidence, you shift the argument rather than addressing the inconsistencies.
If you want to engage with this topic honestly, you’ll have to account for these contradictions instead of sidestepping them. If your argument is strong, it should be able to withstand scrutiny. If it can’t, then maybe the issue isn’t with the facts—it’s with the assumptions you started with.
I was pointing out how XX doesn't always mean female and XY doesn't always mean male. I didn't say you could change your chromosomes. I think you might be misunderstanding the OP. When it says 'some XX people become cis men' it means that embryos with XX chromosomes develop into cis men, not that they decide to be later in life.
Usually a man.
How do you differentiate between "normal" and a malformation? These are just arbitrary categories we made up. The reality is that we can observe that some humans just are like that and that's fine and normal.
You're moving the goalposts. You were arguing that you can't change sex and now you're retreating to 'you need drugs to change sex', which is true for HRT, but not necessarily for gynecomastia.
It's also not "mimicking" traits. Someone with gynecomastia or someone who takes feminising HRT grows the same kind of breasts as a cis woman.
Even if this was true it would just be an appeal to nature. Natural doesn't mean good and unnatural doesn't mean bad.
But I don't think you can differentiate between 'natural' and 'unnatural' changes to language. Do you think language just evolves on its own without any human interference? Language is by definition something we do.
Yes, I actually was
If you need special care or attention that is a malformation. If there is a change in your physionomy that impedes you to have a life as normal as other human (you were born without a hand) that's a malformation.
I was actually arguing that you can't change your genome, so yeah, sex. But by HRT you still don't change that, you just try to mimic traits oposite of yours.
Of course language can be influenced, but usually when it is, it's for ease of understanding, and generally making people lives better.
By changing the language just for some people to be triggered because they were "misgendered" you don't bring any value
This doesn't apply to many of the intersex conditions we talked about. They can present in a way where people don't even notice they have them.
We've already established that genome doesn't exclusively determine sex. An XX male could live their entire life as a man and never even know that they have XX and not XY chromosomes.
It brings value to the people who are affected. And we do this sort of thing a lot. Just like almost nobody says the n-word any more because we've collectively decided that it's inappropriate.
Honestly it feels like you're doing all these mental gymnastics just so you can have a justification for being rude to trans people. Is that really how you want to spend your energy?
I found the one with Dunning-Kruger! Do I win a prize???
Sure, pick one you like :D
Woo!!!! I want the one with the ears!!!
Arguments mate, or you are just wasting our time.
Let me ask you this:
What is the 3rd gender that one can "transition" to? Does one need to take drugs to impede their biological physiology to work properly if they want to "transition"? If one stops taking hormonal drugs what will happen?
Any individual can have different traits:
Nothing of what I said makes anyone less of a man or woman, they are EXACTLY what they were born with whatever masculine or feminine traits they have.
You haven't read anything about this. It's very clear. The first thing you learn is that sex and gender are different. Sex is biology. Gender is identity.
The second thing you learn is that sex is not binary. (And gender, being a social construct, certainly is not set in stone.) Genes may be XX, but maybe some other factor may be preventing that gene from expressing fully or even at all. This can lead to highly androgynous folks or folks with odd genital configurations. It takes genes, gene expression, and hormones for a human to express characteristics of some sex. Not all three of these are perfectly aligned. You can argue that genes control all of it, but that doesn't stand. Genes can conflict, and environmental factors can affect things.
I learned all that and more in just twenty minutes of reading. Please, go do some homework. Start with "what is the difference between sex and gender," then let the rabbit hole take you down. At least, that's the path that helped me learn a bunch of this stuff.
And regarding Dunning-Kruger, the key point is confidence. That said, I'll caveat all the above I've said with this is just stuff that I've read from sources that I trust, which I can corroborate with my existing knowledge of genetics and broader biology. I'm not an expert. I can be proven wrong. Most of this is definitions and quite simple stuff, so my confidence is high but still shakeable.
Normally, I'm a stickler about answering asked questions, but your questions seem to be based on a misunderstanding of definitions. Once you get that sorted out, we can try again and maybe learn something together
If you're going to do a binary, X and Y chromosome doesn't hold up due to the presence of functional XX males from an SRY gene. Its speculated most Y chromosomes started as X chromosomes in animals that have that dichotomy.
In fact a functional or non functional SRY gene is a better determinant for biological sex.
The fact is though that testerone and SRY receptors have relatively high variability and trying to socially stress people into a group of traits will create a feedback loop that is opposed to more natural courses of evolution.
Its likely trans people - of whom there are records of going back to time immemorial - are likely an evolutionary adaptation and serve some evolutionary function to society we may not yet understand
Since gender is socially constructed (male norms, female norms, male jobs, female jobs) the presence of trans people in society that not only understand both sets of roles but can navigate them is probably an advantage over societies where those roles are less fluid and more strict.
There's a case to be made that the more strict gender roles become, the more evolutionary pressure there is to create trans people.
By definition "time immemorial" means we have no records.
This might sound strange but I don't believe in an set of norms in that sense. People can do whatever the fuck they like. Male jobs are male jobs because they require more muscle, female jobs might require more emotional IQ but I don't see why you should be constrained to that
I'm a dude, I like doing laundry, and I like playing with kids, don't like cars and don't like football. Does that make me a woman?
Just because you don't think there should be social characteristics associated with gender doesn't mean that there aren't
"what is the third gender" your deliberate misunderstanding and simplification of the issue is just bad faith debate. you're proving us that fractions are "syndromes" by using only integers. this is just a display of ignorance and bigotry, it doesn't really paint you as smart as you're trying to appear
So we agree that there are
XX - woman XY - man
And some genetic mutationa in between XXY - Klinfelter syndrome XXXY - no idea how this is called X -Turner syndrome XX intersex XY intersex And true gonadal intersex
And still these are medical conditions, a man on drugs wearing a wig is still a man, and a woman on drugs to grow facial hair is still a woman.
It's a he and a she regardless
so we agree that
1: one 2: two
and then there are just some numbers in between, 0.1, 0.2...
this is just a fact, you coming in these comments wielding words you don't understand and concepts you barely grasps doesn't make you smart or correct
you're just a bigot regardless
Numbers that can be proven mathematically. The gender idiology is nothing more than:
"Today I feel..."
congrats on your strawman, you're really driving your point home
congrats on proving math with math
there is scientific proof that gender ideology is not "today i feel", that sex and gender are distinct. you brought up multiple chromosomal conditions which are part of the scientific proof of such claim, but are too sold on high school biology to entertain complex concepts
if you want to bring "science" in this discussion, maybe read it first? it's ok to be uninformed, you can be wrong on the internet
Honey, nobody claims that trans women are biologically identical to cis women or the other way around. Sex is not gender.
And chromosomal deviations is exactly what the PhD in the OP is talking about. You can call them medical conditions if you like, but that doesn't change the fact that there are XY women and XX cis men.
Ok here I can see my lack in logic. I understood that the PhD was saying that XX can change into XY during the life of the person, not that they are born XY and naturally develop female traits.
My only pet peeve with all this is "misgendering" which I honestly despise. If one is a grown up 180cm male I'm never gonna call him a "her" just because of a wig and makeup.
But if someone was raised as a woman because that's how her body developed even if she has XY chromosomes I won't call her "he".
Why do bigots always assume trans women can't grow their own hair?
Is the assumption seriously that your average trans woman looks like a burly bearded man with a receding hairline?
Interesting.
What if they were 165cm, had the face and body and voice of a woman and you had no idea they were trans? Would you call them He if you found out?
Would you call a big burly bearded guy She after you found out they are a trans man?
If yes, why so? If no, why so?
Yes I would, in both cases. But I guess it would depend, if we were friends I might call them the way they want. But that is a favor as a friend, not something that I would accept be demanded from me
So what you're saying is that if you don't know the particular person, you will actively go out of way to be an asshole to them, but if they're someone you care about, then you'd pretend to respect trans people enough not to intentionally fuck with them.
Lovely.
No, I already said I'd simply avoid the person
No, you didn't lmao
You specifically said you would actively misgender them, unless they're your friend, in which case you "might" not actively go out of your way to do so. That's a dick move, simple as.
And no, you can't pretend that answer isn't real by adding "I would never interact with or see a trans person" because that's not how life works.
That's unfortunate, why not be friendly to a stranger?
Why does someones chromosomal sex matter to you if you don't want to have children with them?
Because I'm selective with my friends and I don't want any drama, and from my experience and what I keep seeing thsese king of people are all about atention.
Really don't want that in my life
So far you've only voiced your transphobic opinion, that's not how a good dialog is started.
Arguing with you is a waste of time.