Defining identity

In case you had run short of things to be outraged about, today we have a story that the Trump administration is trying to push a legal definition of sex as "a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth."

To a biologist, this is a little like the government passing a law defining pi is being "exactly equal to three."  You might not like the fact that pi is an irrational number, it might be annoying to have to use a decimal approximation to calculate the circumference of a circle, but all of that falls clearly into the "tough shit" department.  The universe is not arranged so as to make you feel comfortable, and if you can't handle that, well, that's too freakin' bad.

Of course, it's no big mystery why they're doing this.  The evangelical Christians, who have had a stranglehold over the Republican Party for years, have a remarkable capacity to look past all sorts of biblical injunctions such as the prohibition against infidelity, divorce, and usury (lending money at interest), not to mention more perplexing ones like the rules against eating shellfish and wearing clothes made of two different kinds of cloth sewn together.  On the other hand, anything remotely approaching sexual relations between two consenting adults other than a traditional, in-marriage male/female relationship, makes these people go into a complete meltdown.  (Other than the aforementioned infidelity, which apparently is okay, especially if it was Donald Trump engaging in it.)

I swear, these people are more concerned about what I do with my dick than I am.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ben Tavener from Curitiba, Brazil, São Paulo LGBT Pride Parade 2014 (14108541924), CC BY 2.0]

Here's the problem.  Even beyond the obvious issue of equal rights for LGBTQ people at the heart of the debate, this viewpoint is completely contrary to what biological science says.  "Gender" is a construct of a lot of different features -- anatomy, brain wiring (the "which gender do you feel like?" part comes from this), chromosomal makeup (XX or XY or, in some cases, other combinations), hormone levels, and sexual orientation.  What the people pressing for this redefinition would like is if those always lined up in exactly the same way.

They don't.

Gender is not simple, and it's clearly non-binary.  Let's just look at two situations that should illustrate that beyond doubt.

First, consider the condition XY androgen insensitivity.  In this condition, the embryo has the ordinary male configuration chromosomally (XY), but has a genetic mutation that prevents the formation of receptors for testosterone.  During development, all embryos looks female until midway during the second trimester.  If the baby has an XY chromosome configuration, at that point -- assuming everything is working the usual way -- testosterone takes effect, the testicles descend into the scrotum and the penis gets larger.  In other words, all of the things parents look for during an ultrasound when they want to find out the sex of their baby.

In XY androgen insensitivity, none of this happens.  The baby looks anatomically female.  A pelvic exam -- seldom done on young children -- would reveal that the child has no uterus, only the lower two-thirds of the vagina, and gonads that are still small and undeveloped, and are still in the abdominal cavity.  These children usually are identified when the age of puberty hits and they don't start to menstruate, but up to then, they are perfectly ordinary girls who have female external anatomy, and more important, feel that they're female.

Santhi Soundarajan, an Indian track star, is one of these.  Because many female elite athletes have very low body fat content, a good many of them don't ovulate, which is why her condition wasn't identified.  But she competed in the Olympics, won a silver medal in the 800 -- and only afterwards did she learn that her chromosomes were XY, not XX.  The Olympic committee stripped her of her medal and banned her from competition.

What would you do if you were told the one thing you loved, were passionate about, excelled at, was no longer an option?  Santhi Soundaraian attempted suicide.

Then there's 5α-reductase deficiency.  The issue with this condition is the hormone dihydroxytestosterone, which is what directly acts to produce the male anatomy.  Males have two copies of the DHT gene, one of which activates prenatally (causing the changes in a male fetus mentioned above), and the other at puberty.  People with a mutation in the first DHT gene are born looking female for the same reason they are in XY androgen insensitivity.  The thing is, the second copy of the gene -- the one that activates at puberty -- works just fine.

When that gene switches on, at age 13 or so, the child goes from being an anatomical female to being an anatomical male, in the space of about nine months.

Add that to recent studies of gender identification in which it was conclusively established that trans individuals' brains are wired like the gender they identify with, not the gender associated with their anatomy.  So all the people who have liked to har-de-har-har about "boys who think they're girls" and how ridiculous that is and how next thing you know, you'll have people identifying as rocks (yes, I actually heard someone say that) -- please do shut up.  All you're doing is establishing how ignorant you are of the biological facts.

The biology of gender is complex, and not fully understood.  We still don't know if sexual orientation is genetic -- it appears to have a genetic component at least.  It, too, is non-binary.  About four percent of people identify as bisexual, for example.  And if you think sexual orientation is a choice, ask yourself when you sat down and gave thoughtful consideration to each gender, and decided which you chose to be attracted to.

Basing gender designation on anatomy alone is not just simpleminded; it's flat-out wrong.  So basing policy on an arbitrary, government-mandated definition of gender is two steps removed from the truth.

Look, I'm sympathetic if there are some parts of reality that make you feel squinky.  There are parts of it I'm not especially fond of myself.  But that doesn't mean the bits you don't like aren't true.  And if you're using your own squinky feelings to make decisions about who other people are, what rights they should have, and what they should be able to do with their own bodies, you are light years away from anything that could be called moral behavior.

**********************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a brilliant look at two opposing worldviews; Charles Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet.  Mann sees today's ecologists, environmental scientists, and even your average concerned citizens as falling into two broad classes -- wizards (who think that whatever ecological problems we face, human ingenuity will prevail over them) and prophets (who think that our present course is unsustainable, and if we don't change our ways we're doomed).

Mann looks at a representative member from each of the camps.  He selected Norman Borlaug, Nobel laureate and driving force behind the Green Revolution, to be the front man for the Wizards, and William Vogt, who was a strong voice for population control and conversation, as his prototypical Prophet.  He takes a close and personal look at each of their lives, and along the way outlines the thorny problems that gave rise to this disagreement -- problems we're going to have to solve regardless which worldview is correct.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Discrimination and brain scans

Today we have two stories that are interesting in juxtaposition.

The first is out of North Bend, Oregon, where two high school students reported ongoing harassment not only from students, but teachers and administrators, over the fact that the students are LGBT.

One of the students, Hailey Smith, describes an incident that is horrifying. "The discrimination wasn't an isolated incident and it didn't just come from students," she says.  "When I told the principal that my civics teacher called me out in front of the whole class and said same-sex marriage was 'pretty much the same thing' as marrying a dog,' the principal told me 'everybody has the right to their own opinion.'  The next day, the teacher apologized, but as I walked away, he said 'don't go marrying your dog.'"

Violence toward the two students went unaddressed.  The second student, Liv Funk, says she was harassed by several other students, and once was ambushed outside school, where she had "I fucking hate homos" yelled at her -- and then was hit twice with a skateboard.  Funk brought this to the attention of Jason Griggs, the school resource officer.  Instead of making sure she felt safe in her own school, and seeing that the students who attacked her received consequences for their actions, he turned the blame against Funk.

"Mr. Griggs said being gay was a choice, and it was against his religion," Funk reported.  "He said he had homosexual friends, but because I was an open homosexual, I was going to hell."

The story ends as happily as this sort of thing ever could.  The students brought these incidents to the attention of the ACLU, who filed a lawsuit against the school.  Both Griggs and the principal, Bill Lucero, have been fired.

Which they should be.  As school administrators, it is your job to protect the rights of the students who are in your charge.  All of your students, regardless of race, ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation.  If you can't do that, find another job.

It is also most decidedly not your business to bring your own religion into the picture.  You are free not to pursue homosexual liaisons if your religion tells you not to.  Whether anyone else does is, frankly, none of your damn business, and it once again brings up the open question of why so many people on the religious right are so incredibly concerned with what other consenting adults are doing in the privacy of their own homes.  With regards to sex, most of us just do it in whatever form we enjoy; these people seem absolutely obsessed with how everyone else is doing it, and often focus on that question with a dogged determination that suggests they spend most of their time thinking about it.

Which is, honestly, a little skeevy.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

The second story comes from the University of Liège (Belgium), where a neuroscientist named Julie Bakker studied diffusion tensor imaging brain scans of 160 children and teenagers who were transgender -- to use the medical term, had gender dysphoria, where they felt that they were the opposite gender from their anatomical sex.  And she found that these young people had brain structures that are consistent with the gender they feel they are, not the gender their reproductive organs would suggest.

Bakker was clear on what this implies.  "Although more research is needed, we now have evidence that sexual differentiation of the brain differs in young people with GD, as they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender," she said.  "We will then be better equipped to support these young people, instead of just sending them to a psychiatrist and hoping that their distress will disappear spontaneously."

So what LGBT people have always claimed is once again shown to be exactly correct; that sexual orientation and gender identification are not a choice, but a result of a fundamental difference in brain wiring.  It makes as much sense to discriminate against LGBT people as it would to discriminate against someone based on their eye color.

More to the point, since 99% of the anti-LGBT sentiment you hear comes from very religious people; if these individuals are wired that way, doesn't that mean that (in your worldview) God created them that way?  Funny how this implies that your all-loving God has created millions of people specifically for you to hate.

I'd like to think that this will open people's eyes a little, but I may be overly optimistic to think that.  People like Lucero and Griggs, the school administrators who gave tacit approval to harassment and violence against LGBT teenagers, clearly aren't going to let a little thing like a peer-reviewed scientific study change how they see the world.  I will say, though, that people like them will eventually be seen for who they are.  Just as we now look on the people who thought that other races were inferior, who sanctioned slavery and violence and discrimination, with well-deserved disdain, I can say with some confidence that the bigots of the world -- regardless of their target -- will one day be labeled as being on the wrong side of history.

*******************************

This week's book recommendation is a brilliant overview of cognitive biases and logical fallacies, Rolf Dobelli's The Art of Thinking Clearly.  If you're interested in critical thinking, it's a must-read; and even folks well-versed in the ins and outs of skepticism will learn something from Dobelli's crystal-clear prose.