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Emma Hilton Profile picture
@FondOfBeetles
May 27, 2019 • 19 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Clownfish. Sequential hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Anglerfish. Extreme dimorphism. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Seahorses. Female fucks around while male carries babies. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Birds. Non-XY genetic determination. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Crocodiles. Sex determined by environmental temperature during development. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Platypus. Five pairs of sex chromosomes. X1X1X2X2X3X3X4X4X5X5 (female) and X1Y1X2Y2.... (male), where X3 and X5 look more like a bird (non X) than a mammal. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Hyena. Females have pseudo-penis which she internalises during mating. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Lily. Hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Flatworms. Hermaphrodites. They penis fence to determine which takes the male role. Most of the time, no-one wins and they each, perhaps dejectedly, spaff (😉) over the other. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Bees. Males are missing an entire genome copy. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Asparagus. No sense of sexed self and no plausible mechanism for social construction of gender. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Tuatara. Sex determination so extremely temperature sensitive that climate change is causing them to be all male. How to recognise the male: he makes small gametes. He can also be seen looking annoyed at enforced incel status.
I’m pinning this. Please add requests. Also, any examples you see touted as an argument against sex. What was the strawberry one?
Peafowl. Sexual selection gone mental. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes. And she’s not a massive freaking showoff, like this fella...
Mushrooms. Delicious. How to recognise the female: there are no females (‘there is only Zuul’). ‘Female’ and ‘male’ are predicated on two and only two differential gametes, and fungi don’t have them thingies, settling instead for equivalent gametes labelled +/-, or A/B, or yawn.
Fun fact (not really): the truly unique structure of the female hyena reproductive system, whereby she is sole arbiter of when to allow intercourse, suggests that female hyenas cannot be raped.
Straw-not technically a berry-berries. Delicious hermaphrodites. Genetic sex determination is polygenic and may reasonably be described as a (limited) spectrum. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Head lice. Annoying buggers. The female transmits chromosomes she inherited from either her mum or dad; the male *only* transmits chromosomes he inherited from his mum. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
@jhilton_

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Emma Hilton Profile picture
Nov 4
The claim that won't die: trans-identifying males are "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" in sport.

"One can imagine a large car with a small engine competing against a small car with a small engine, and that summarizes the playing field." Joanna Harper, Huff Post, 2016.

"You have a bigger body, and you have a smaller engine to move that vehicle around." Yannis Pitsiladis, BBC, 2019.

"giving trans women the disadvantage of having to power larger skeletal frames with reduced strength and aerobic capacity." Jamie Agapoff, 2025.
What happens when a trans-identifying male suppresses testosterone?

They lose a bit of muscle mass.
Their haemoglobin drops to female-typical levels.

The claim that won't die rests on the idea that trans-identifying males retain their skeletal frame and most of their muscle mass, but become unable to move it around a sports fields, rendering them "disadvantaged".
The words "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" are carefully chosen, and typically leave the reader to infer that this means "underpowered" and therefore "disadvantaged" compared to females.

So it's fair to have them in female sport, right?

Wrong.
Read 10 tweets
Emma Hilton Profile picture
Sep 26
Shocking from @nrarmour here.

“Most of the studies used to ban transgender women so far are based on the performances of cisgender men, which scientists have argued is not an appropriate comparison.”

That’s me, @TLexercise and others.

“Others” including the ones moaning about not having their say. You know, the say they took for granted. The one they didn’t tell @nrarmour about.

Ever read their archery paper?Image
Image
“Other studies have compared the performances of transgender women athletes with sedentary cisgender women, also argued as an inappropriate comparison.”

NGL, bit flummoxed here. Any ideas?

If you want inappropriate comparisons, try the Fat Bloke Study. Written by the scientists moaning about being excluded.

Nancy @nrarmour links to it. Fails to care that the reason why trans-identifying males can’t jump as high as the female comparators is that they are 20kg heavier, carrying way more fat, and are far less fit.
For disclosure, I have not been part of this IOC working group.
Read 4 tweets
Emma Hilton Profile picture
Sep 22
So the actual paper is fine. I’ve only skimmed, but it looks at gene expression between male and female humans and mice, to answer questions about the evolution of genes associated (or not) with sex. Image
The authors - who admit in peer review that these graphs exaggerate overlap - suggest in discussion that if one were to look at gene expression in, say, the skin from an individual within the overlap, you could not identify whether that individual was male or female.
It’s a high-level take on a more simple principle in this debate: overlapping height, and is a 5’8” individual male or female?

The authors use the same analogy in the introduction.
Read 9 tweets
Emma Hilton Profile picture
Sep 20
World Athletics reveals the scale of the issue of male athletes with DSDs competing in the female category in international track and field.

I am not surprised at the number (I suspect the true figure is higher).

Nobody working in this area will be surprised at the number.
Even the ones who said it was “just a few”. They knew the scale.

Even the ones who said “you’re racist” as they fervently argued that black women are fundamentally different to white women. They knew the scale.
Also a poorly kept “secret” is that the majority of this cohort are 5ARD, where males can appear to be female at birth but have male-pattern athletic advantage.

This is the DSD that Caster Semenya has.
Read 6 tweets
Emma Hilton Profile picture
Sep 13
I had no experience of Charlie Kirk beyond the occasional clip that went past my timeline, none of which I engaged with deeply.

From this UK POV, he was a preppy fundie Christian conservative doing preppy fundie Christian conservative stuff.

No opinion about him beyond characterising him as above, and not thinking at all about that.

But I have rarely wanted to defend anyone more.
Why would I want to defend a preppy fundie Christian conservative? Why did my gut plummet and my heart sink when I learned he had died?

Almost all of us can understand the human POV.
I wasn’t exposed to him. I had to look up everything everyone was saying he said.

None of the below is about me and his views. It’s about the appalling dishonesty I see.

The way social media works. Or doesn’t.
Read 7 tweets
Emma Hilton Profile picture
Aug 19
So, this paper is being widely circulated as a gotcha.

First thing, any author whose affiliation is "The University of the Sunshine Coast, Sippy Downs, Australia" is probably winning at life.

But let's talk about bird sex.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rs…
Birds use genetic sex determination, just like humans.

The "make male" gene for humans is called SRY, and it lives on the Y chromosome.

If you have functional SRY and its downstream transcriptional storm, you will make testes and make male.
Birds differ. Their "make male" gene is called DMRT1.

It pretty much works like SRY, in that it's immediate downstream target is the parallel gene in both humans and parrots, and the ensuing transcriptional storm triggers testes development (testes being male, of course).
Read 16 tweets

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