How should one phrase that sentence without it becoming completely confusing?

Would it be offensive to say "a person with an x and y chromosome"?

Even though gender is only a social construct... for some reason, taking estrogen will have totally different effects on a person, depending on that gender.

It's always going to be confusing but I believe "transgender woman" is unambiguously someone assigned male gender at birth who identifies as a woman.

What if a biological male is assigned female gender at birth? Would they be transgender, or just female?

That's part of the reason that "biological male" isn't a highly informative/technically-precise term, but assuming you mean something like Swyer syndrome, there isn't really a reason to worry about estrogen making them infertile, so in context using the phrase "transgender women" would have been clear regardless.

I think, since the assignment is typically done by a medical professional (at least for recording a birth certificate), the assumption is that the gender is either a quickly fixed clerical error or reflective of a phenotype that presents as sufficiently male/female to convince a professional.

"Convincing a professional" is a reasonable proxy for biological sex, given that the cases that would fool a medical professional are in many (most?) cases sufficiently ambiguous that a reasonable person could take either side for what the biological sex is.

1. When is that going to happen? (Genuinely curious if it does happen)

2. It is really up to the person.

Regarding 1:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34290981

They would continue to be male, forever. "Female" is a sex, not merely a gender identity.

At birth, nobody is "assigning" genders to you, they are attempting to observe your sex from primary sex characteristics. If they see vulva, they are observing a female; if they see penis/scrotum, they are observing a male.

While there are edge cases, it is generally pretty simple.

This is a bit off-topic, but "at birth" is a seriously wrong phrasing - they were assigned that phenotypical gender well before birth.

You could say "people with male/masculine bodies" or you could specify you mean sex rather than gender.

"transgender women pursuing medical transition" or "transgender women pursuing HRT" would both be accurate and non-confusing options in that sentence.

> Would it be offensive to say "a person with an x and y chromosome"?

AMAB is politically neutral and unambiguous.

In social science the word “gender” is used to refer to the social construction of male and female in order to distinguish it from “sex” which is the physiological makeup of ones body.

Physiological sex can be further broken down into ones Anatomical sex, ones chromosomal sex and ones hormonal sex.

However it is possible to have anatomically male genitalia and XX chromosomes as well as all other combinations. To ignore this is to ignore biology.

> Gender is not a social construct.

Yes, it is.

> Your gender is the ability to become pregnant or to impregnate someone

No, that's reproductive function. Which is closely related to (but different from) biological sex, and not particularly closely related to gender.

> What's socially constructed is how your gender is presented

No, gender presentation (and gender identity, which is related to but different from presentation) is not a social construct, though it is influenced by gender, which is.

> or implied because of said society.

If you mean “ascribed by” instead of “implied because of”, that's what gender, distinct from gender identity, gender presentation, sex, reproductive function, etc., refers to. So, aside from not understanding the terminology, you seem to correctly understand that it is a social construct.

I'm a bit confused how gender presentation can be not a social construct but gender itself can be a social construct. It seems to me that gender presentation depends on gender.

> I'm a bit confused how gender presentation can be not a social construct

Gender presentation is behavior.

> but gender itself can be a social construct

Gender is socially ascribed status.

> It seems to me that gender presentation depends on gender.

Depending on the basis on which gender is acribed, it could well be the other way around.

What's the definition of gender presentation?

>Depending on the basis on which gender is acribed, it could well be the other way around.

How is it possible to have a concept of gender presentation without having a concept of gender? The definition of gender presentation to me seems to rely on the fact that there's a thing gender. Whereas you could imagine a world where gender exists but no gender presentation exists. Therefore I believe gender does not depend on gender presentation.

That's a decent, if slightly confused, defense/description of the view of gender and sex prescribed by Critical Gender Theory, however, despite its academic sounding terminology and many PhDs, critical gender theory remains unscientific hokem.

1. It's not Critical Gender Theory, though Critical Gender Theory uses broadly similar definitions for the subset of those things which it thinks are worthy of discussion, it's just the fairly common language to distinguish the innate physical (sex broadly, reproductive function for the particular subset you raised), internal self image (gender identity), externally ascribed status (gender), and behavior (gender presentation), and neutral as to material as opposed to conceptual relationships. CGT is opinionated about the material relationships, holding (as I understand it, but CGT isn't something I've more than casually encountered) that gender presentation is socially learned behavior produced by social gender ideas and other aspects of personal social context, gender identity (which CGT doesn’t, IIRC, talk much about directly, but recognizes insofar as it recognizes that people have a social identity related to the social construct of gender) as a product of gender presentation and social gender stereotypes (reversing a common progressive view that gender identity is a fundamental, immutable or nearly so, aspect of identity amd that gender presentation is an expression of identity, to which social gender images may play a part.) 2. It (my post, not Critical Gender Theory) is not supposed to be scientific; it's pretty much all definition of terms, which precedes the ability to even discuss observations of facts, which in turn precedes the ability to discuss hypothesized generalizations from observed facts and empirical tests of those generalizations.

It's important to remember that essentially all human concepts are socially constructed on some level. Even basic ones like 'fish' (is a dolphin a fish? Many cultures would say yes, but modern taxonomy classifies them differently), 'fruit' (is a tomato a fruit?), 'river' (is this a river or a canal?), so it would be truly remarkable to find out that the concepts 'male' and 'female' correspond to objective physical reality - they would be unique among human words!

So no, you don't require CGT to make a distinction between biological sex and the fuzzy notions of 'woman' and 'man'.

To give some examples: is a person with XY chromosomes but Androgen insensitivity (testicles, but a purely female phenotype, including all anatomy, such as a uterus) Male or Female? Purely biologically, obviously male (small, mobile gametes). Would you send this person to male prison? Would they be able to inherit the title of King in medieval society? Should they be encouraged to dress as a man, because that is their biological sex? Should they not be allowed to a gynecologist, since gynecologists are only for women?

Similarly, let's say you have a person with XX chromosomes born with a typical female phenotype, but who has undergone bottom surgery and testosterone therapy, so they now have no breasts, hair on their chest, a penis and apparent testicles. Is this person female? Biologically, yes - they have (or had) large, immobile gametes. Would women feel comfortable if such a person were to undress in a female locker room? Should an advertising company seek to target tampon ads to this person, since they are biologically female? Should they be allowed as a contestant in a Miss America pageant?

The discussion of how malleable the relationship between sex and gender is, and CGT does make arguments in that area that are arguable. But it is not arguable in any way that the concepts 'man' and 'woman' are much fuzzier than biological sex, that they are socially constructed, like all other natural language words and concepts.

What dragonwriter is writing isn't Critical Gender Theory. In critical gender theory the idea that there exists a gender identity that is independent of society does not exist. See https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/...

As to classifying what dragonwriter has written as hokem people would find it more convening if you gave an actual argument.

The distinction you're reaching for is usually called "sex". Gender is the socially constructed presentation of that.

Hermaphrodites invalidate this argument.

This invalidates the argument as much as people with Down Syndrome invalidate the statement "people have 42 chromosomes".

Hermaphrodism is a genetic abnormality, not a normal state of being.

1.7% of the population are intersex. 2% of the population are blond.

Are blonds genetic abnormalities? Can I say “No people have blonde hair” and dismiss all the blonds?

Prevalence of intersex conditions are nowhere near 1.7%. More like one in a thousand or one in ten thousand.

It's quite a complicated question to answer, and it depends how intersex is defined.

https://isna.org/faq/frequency/

> Total number of people whose bodies differ from standard male or female one in 100 births

> Total number of people receiving surgery to “normalize” genital appearance one or two in 1,000 births

I am going by Blackless‘s research. Even if that figure is wrong Klinefelter syndrome occurs at rate 1-2 per thousand which means that your estimate of one in ten thousand is way out.

And in the Dominican Republic intersex people are common. It still misses the point though. You can’t dismiss people because they are a minority.

You can thank genetic "abnormalities" in part for evolution. Many genetic variations, even those that cause disease, have been later found to give evolutionary advantages. Sickle cell comes to mind.

There is no "normal state of being" and it's dehumanizing to talk that way about people who are simply different from you. Nature is bizarre if you open your eyes and humans as social animals spend a huge amount of effort to appear normal.

> I guess you couldn't say, right?

Of course I can say. Many people have five fingers and some have fewer and some have more. The second sentence of the Wikipedia article on fingers agrees with me. [1] What was so difficult about that that you thought it would be some kind of gotcha?

> Your view makes it impossible to distinguish anything from anything else. It's just intellectually a dead end if you take it seriously with any consistency.

I think I've already demonstrated that you're wrong, but feel free to provide concrete examples of where my view does what you claim.

> Don't be so open minded your brain falls out.

Please avoid this type of language. It's not welcome on HN.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger

So post-menopausal people are genderless?

(If you say "but they were women, so we define them as continuing to be women," then I"m going to ask you about congenital azoospermia.)

Post-menopausal women still have internal organs which indicate their sex.

And a child born without hips? Are they genderless?

The poster above is being down voted because they are not using the proper terms. What they are talking about is called sex, with gender explicitly being the socially constructed notion usually based on biological sex.

Further, they are using a bad definition of biological sex anyway, as 'people who can impregnate' and 'people who can give birth' is limiting (many cis men can't impregnate for various reasons, and no cis woman can give birth after a certain age, or before a certain age).

The rest of your own comment is low-effort claims with no connection to the topic at hand.

However he is exactly wrong. Check the dictionary “ either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones”. Gender is the term used when talking about the social construction.

Simply replacing “men” with “people” in that sentence would work fine.

Yeah I've taken a lot of estrogen at this point and I was never required to sign anything...

Agree that people who call themselves "men" typically don't sign up for titty skittles.

It seems to vary wildly; I have heard horror stories about having to go through multiple visits and sign multiple consent forms. Some of this is due to WPATH SoC v7 (released 2011), which meant well but has resulted in overly-burdensome consent requirements that especially harm those who cannot afford it. As I understand it, SoC v8 intends to lessen those consent requirements, but it still hasn't been released yet :(

https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc

ps. "Estrogen. Little, Blue, Different."

I consciously chose "men" both to parallel the construction of the headline "Boy", with the specific intention of having the sentence hit home for those HN readers who see themselves as "men", while quietly tapping into a certain sexist bias ^1 I've observed in both American medical practices.

Under normal circumstances, I would agree with your point, and I would likely have selected either "transwomen" or "bio-males" in this scenario. Both are exclusionary for various reasons ^2^3, and when making my selection I came to realize that all possible phrases I could use here would result in some sort of HN reply thread about the word or phrase chosen.

Technically, the most correct phrasing for the sentiment I was expressing clocks in at 26 words: "People seeking estradiol treatment for body dysphoria who are perceived as 'men' by their prescribing doctor, regardless of their self-identified gender or their physical sex characteristics". However, that itself would have resulted in a reply thread about shorter ways I could have expressed that, and encouraged a discussion about weakening the accuracy of transgender representation for the convenience of others. That would do more harm than good to transgender acceptance at this point in time than I could accept.

In the end, I considered it most productive for the guaranteed-to-occur HN tangent about my choice of phrasing here to focus on how the word "men" in transgender treatment contexts is insufficiently representative, rather than to focus on how the most-correct phrase is overly representative.

In review of the replies, I am content with the results of my choice. Many users are realizing that there is no simple wording to express this concept, and that every possible choice has issues. It will slightly improve empathy and understanding of transgender representation issues. I feel this choice of wording has been successful.

^1 Doctors are more likely to seek informed consent for procedures affecting reproductive systems (including E2/T dosing) from those they perceive as "men", regardless of the person's actual 'sex' or self-identified gender, especially when the side effects would affect virility in a fertile male.

^2 Genders that are not "women" are permitted to treat body dysphoria by increasing their estradiol levels, too.

^3 Short for "biological males", which excludes people who are not simple 'XY males', such as hermaphrodites, that for whatever reason choose to treat body dysphoria with estradiol.

People on feminizing HRT.

This comment should not be downvoted. HN have the smart people but does not have a basic knowledge how to be respectful and 'debating' about gender and biology.

>>most people getting this treatment see themselves as women who are changing their bodies to match their gender, not as men who are changing their gender.

I am assuming you have some sort of source showing that this person has the desire to transition? If not I am unclear why this fact matters in the context of this story of what appears to be a doctor forcing medication on a patient against both their and their guardians desire or consent

The higher-order reason that it's relevant is that there's something of a moral panic going on about medical therapy for transgender youth. While this particular case (assuming that the news story is accurate, of course) seems like an entirely unjustified prescription that's also entirely irrelevant to any medical gender transition, there is absolutely a push to try to get doctors to be unable to prescribe estrogen or testosterone for children under any circumstances, and most of the people pushing this seem to have trouble using standard/well-accepted terms for transgender people. So, it's a reason to take the claim about estrogen's side effects with a grain of salt, in much the same way that you'd be at least slightly skeptical of claims about Linux from someone who insists on spelling it "LINUX" - it's a sign that they might be getting their information, in turn, from an unreliable source.

Do you have a source for encouraging the prescription of children to have hormone replacement therapy? All I’ve seen are puberty blockers myself.

There's a case where an NHS gender clinic at Tavistock Centre is being sued by a former patient who was given both puberty blockers and testosterone at age 16. You can find reports from both mainstream media (like the BBC) and places like LifeSiteNews.

To be clear, by "children" I mean minors past the age of puberty, not, like, 5-year-olds.

Parent is responding to the sentence they quoted at the top of their comment.

I'm sure you intended to be respectful with your comment, but why are women changing their bodies to match their gender superior to men changing their bodies to match their gender?

Nobody said anything about "superior". Men changing their bodies to match their gender are generally not prescribed estrogen, so it doesn't make sense to reference them in the context of people being prescribed estrogen, that's all.

you're really quite sure that trans women are not offered estrogen?

I think we're agreeing vehemently. But I'm not sure. To be clear, since trans women are women, "men" doesn't refer to trans women.

Trans women are offered estrogen, of course. Neither cis nor trans men are normally prescribed estrogen.

what is your point, why would you give estrogen to a straight male or a born female who identifies as male?

Aplogies, I assumed you were calling trans women starting estrogen therapy 'men'.

The whole thread started because the OP was using the word 'men' to refer to people who are just starting estrogen therapy specifically, not hormone-replacement therapy in general. The person you initially replied to was pointing out that trans women prefer to be called (trans) women at that point, not 'men seeking a gender change'.

You seem to have assumed that they were putting trans men at a disadvantage, but the discussion was never about trans men. It was always about the proper terms to use for someone who is seeking estrogen, whether they should be talked about as 'men seeking to change their gender' or 'women seeking to align their sex with their gender'.

Unfortunately, from your earlier reply, I assumed that you were insisting on the use of 'men' in this case, and I wanted to point out why I believe 'trans women' is more correct. I realize I was wrong in my assumption.

In people who are not seeking estradiol treatment for body dysphoria, prescribing estradiol can still be a viable treatment for issues other than body dysphoria where, due to genetic or other issues, raising their circulating estradiol (E2) blood levels results in a medically positive outcome. In one paper on this topic, two such medical conditions are hypogonadism and prostate cancer:

https://eje.bioscientifica.com/downloadpdf/journals/eje/181/...

Trans men are not offered estrogen. Which is what the parent is saying.

trans men are born female who are male. why would you give them estrogen

Exactly

They're offered estradiol, not estrogen.