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DSD’s and“Sex Assignment” – Podcast – Redux
Podcast Script
Apart from a Queer Theory saturated worldview, a worldview I briefly discussed in my last podcast, I can find only one physiological reason for why Gender Identity Activists propagandize in this way and why they say “sex is assigned” at birth. And that reason has to do with DSD’s or Disorders of Sexual Development (A categorization that Gender Activists want to relabel “Differences of Sexual Development”).
Let’s look at those for a few minutes.
Sometimes these disorders (I refuse to call them differences) result in the formation of two sets of sex organs, or an incomplete development of reproductive organs. They are sometimes caused by genetic mutations and at other times by chromosomal or hormonal defects.
But because we have people with ambiguous genitalia and chromosomal irregularities this is considered grounds for throwing the whole classification system up in the air and dispensing altogether with the male – female binary. As I outlined in my previous podcast, there are real world consequences to going down this path of eliminating the male – female sex binary as the overriding identifier of sex.
Unbelievably some prominent Medical Associations are playing along too. I think they have become politicized by radical Queer Theory Subjectivism. More about that in future podcasts.
I’m trying hard to be fair about this issue. So I don’t want to misrepresent Gender Ideologues. But in all my research I can find only one objective reason for why they say sex is assigned at birth. It’s the only reason why our grade school teachers were instructed to abandon the “biological sex” section of the Genderbread Person for the “sex assigned at birth” section of the Gender Unicorn. [See my previous podcast “Our Schools and Gender Ideology.”]
They hang their hat on DSD’s which occur in 1 out of 5000 births.1
That’s it!
That’s the only thing that grounds their ideology in anything remotely biological and scientifically objective. Everything else in their ideology is about the totally subjective lived experiences of the “disembodied” individual. Individual perception and desire are sacrosanct. Not to mention free floating.
Here are some Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD’s).
- Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) The most common DSD occurring in 1 out of 14,000 births is a recessive disorder caused by two parents who carry a faulty (mutated) gene which prevents the normal production of cortisol thus altering the development of primary and secondary sex characteristics of their child. This often leads to the virilization or masculinization of the female external genitalia producing obvious genital ambiguity. Internally these people develop and function as women.
- Klinefelter syndrome: Instead of 46 chromosomes, someone with this syndrome has 47. They develop as males but with abnormal body proportions and enlarged breasts, infertility is common.
- Turner syndrome: People with 45 chromosomes. Instead of having XX or XY they have only X chromosomes. They develop as infertile women because two X chromosomes are necessary for the normal development of ovaries. Causes numerous health and development problems, including but not limited to short stature, lymphedema, infertility, webbed neck, coarctation of the aorta, ADHD, amenorrhoea, and obesity.
- Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome: “People with androgen insensitivity syndrome develop as normal-appearing but sterile women, lacking a uterus and oviducts and having internal testes in the abdomen.”
- According to an article by Bonnie McCann-Crosby and V. Reid Sutton, “Disorders of Sexual Development,” in the journal Clinics in Perinatology 42 (June 2015): 403, a severe genetic mutation results in the testes never forming and therefore the body never masculinizes because of testosterone deficiency. These individuals develop as females who are infertile (because they lack a second X chromosome).
- Ovotesticular disorder (also called true hermaphroditism) – A condition where an individual has both testicular and ovary tissue.
- Mosaicism: People who develop from a single fertilized egg but because of a genetic mutation have a patchwork of genetically different cells. In other words two different sets of DNA, with some of the body’s cells being XX or a single X and some being XY. Klinefelter syndrome already mentioned is one kind of Mosaicism.
- Chimera: When two different embryos combine early in a pregnancy. Again, some cells are XX and some cells have XY chromosomes. Fewer than 100 cases documented worldwide.
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Okay, after having waded through that, what should we conclude? These are disorders. Not differences.
My brother was born with a cardio-vascular disorder which is why he died at the age of 21. His cardio-vascular system was incapable of working as designed and gave out way before the normal “expiration date.” Disorders of Sexual Development in almost all cases result in a short-circuiting of our reproductive system. It is a disorder.
Gender Ideologues should stop using DSD’s as an excuse for saying the male-female binary is obsolete.
Finally, and here is where the “assigned at birth” label gets attached, in the past when doctors were confronted with an infant having one of these disorders they had to make a careful judgment as to which sex the child was most likely to be comfortable with as the child matured. And this was usually because of ambiguous genitalia. Sometimes in the past, but not so much today, actual surgical intervention occurred to assist the infants future development. Occasionally the doctor would “assign” either a male or female path forward, depending on the doctor’s professional judgement. Birth certificate sex was therefore “assigned” in these exceptionally rare cases.
This is why Gender Activists use their “assigned at birth” “social construction” language.
Does that sound rational to you? Throwing out the male – female binary because a relatively low number of humans have one of these disorders? A disorder which occasionally necessitates a sex “assignment” by a medical professional? Does that sound reasonable to you. Does that non-binary world sound reasonable to you?
It doesn’t to me.
But it does if you want to fundamentally restructure society by tossing out all sexual norms, norms born out of biology and religious Truth.
Now of course most people are not agenda driven in this way. They just want to be considerate of what they regard as a “difference.” That’s completely understandable and loving. And we can still do that. We can still love people and embrace those with these disorders without buying into the radical social agenda being pushed on their behalf.
And we can love people who are genuinely confused, who think it is possible and advisable to reject their biological sex.
Kids With Early Smartphone Use Have Worse Mental Health
New global study from Sapien Labs finds consistent links, stronger for girls
Recent Jon Haidt substack dives into the results.
For parents who resisted, or who plan to resist, a new report may encourage many more parents to join you: Sapien Labs, which runs an ongoing global survey of mental health with nearly a million participants so far, released a “Rapid Report” today on a question they added in January asking young adults (those between ages 18 and 24): “At what age did you get your own smartphone or tablet (e.g. iPad) with Internet access that you could carry with you?” When they plot the age of first smartphone on the X axis against their extensive set of questions about mental health on the Y axis, they find a consistent pattern: the younger the age of getting the first smartphone, the worse the mental health that the young adult reports today. This is true in all the regions studied (the survey is offered in English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, and Swahili), and the relationships are consistently stronger for women.
It didn’t use to be this way…..before smartphones and social media.
There is a well-known finding in happiness research that, across nearly all nations, happiness or well-being forms a U-shaped curve across the lifespan (See Rauch, 2018). Young adults and people in their 60s and 70s are happier than those in middle age. But that may be changing, especially for women, as Gen Z (born in and after 1996) enters young adulthood. You can see the sudden collapse of young adult mental health in some of our previous posts on this Substack. For example, Figure 1 shows that up until 2011, young Canadian women were the most likely to report having excellent or very good mental health. By 2015 they were the least likely, and the decline in their self-reported mental health accelerated after that, while it changed very little for older women. (The same pattern holds for Canadian men, but to a lesser degree.)
Check out the details here. And read his advice to parents, schools, & legislators on how to move forward.
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Parents Before ‘Friends’