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Michelle Styles's avatar

Some of this is down to *bikini medicine*, namely the assumption that men and women are alike except for the bits covered by a bikini. If bikini medicine holds, then biological sex isn't that important (Butler's view). However, in 2014, the NIH did cough to the fact that they had not bothered accounting for biological sex as a variable in research and that in fact, perhaps it did matter. Since 2016, biological sex as a variable has been accepted. Among things they discovered was that male and female heart disease exhibit different patterns and that male and female bodies react differently to certain medications. There is also research into pregnancy and menopause etc etc. In short biological sex is an important variable in medical research. https://orwh.od.nih.gov/sex-gender/sexgender-influences-health-and-disease has more information.

Equally, it was thought that people were not that bothered about this. The Respect My Sex, if you want my X campaign in the UK (now in its 2nd week) has shown that it is something the grassroots will get mobilized about. They have a series of honesty questions to doorstep politicians about. Basically if a politician can not give a straight answer about what is a man or a woman then why should electorate trust them to give a straight answer on anything else?

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LovingMother's avatar

Agree - plus you cannot really change the bits covered by the bikini other than to destroy what was there and plastic surgery your way into a cosmetic fiction.

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Michelle Styles's avatar

Also the discovery of peptides in tooth enamel in 2017 showed that there is more going on. Basically tooth enamel is binary (they are trying to refine it down to show intersex but are not there yet). It is useful in identifying skeletons so in archaeology and forensics (think a mass grave with badly degraded skeletons -- teeth are often all that is left). Paradoxically it is why we now know that the identification of skeletons through gendered grave goods is inaccurate (the female Viking warrior in Birka) https://www.brighton.ac.uk/strand/what-we-do/research-projects/sex-determination-of-human-remains-from-peptides-in-tooth-enamel.aspx#:~:text=Sex%20determination%20of%20human%20remains%20from%20peptides%20in,depends%20on%20the%20quality%20of%20the%20DNA%20sample.

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LovingMother's avatar

Thank you.

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Nancy Robertson's avatar

Don't you just love it when they sew part of a man's colon to his inverted penis to construct his "vagina." And how about those hideous scars on the arm that result when it's skinned to form a woman's "penis." Dr. Frankenstein ain't got nothing on these docs.

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Carl Fasbinder's avatar

Makes me wonder what happened to “Do no harm” as a first principle.

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C. A. Meyer's avatar

Every single politician should be asked your last question.

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Michelle Styles's avatar

There are ways to ask that question -- for example Do you believe a biological male police officer should administer a rape test kit to a female victim of severe sexual trauma? Should a biological male police officer strip search a woman? Should the woman be allowed to object to the above without being branded a bigot?

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jt's avatar

Good *show!* <bowing>

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