Thread by @FondOfBeetles

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet I don’t think I have a ‘verdict’. There’s so much in that post/video that it’s difficult to unpick my thoughts.

First, there is the stuff about how to classify CAIS and there is discussion within this thread about the dev bio, endocrinonlogy etc.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet I have never hidden my developmental biology understanding of sex, which is centred not on chromosomes (or any other determination mechanism) but on gamete type, which is in animals a product of gonad type.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet Thus, I agree with @OwnerOfIdeas that the taxonomy of AIS, involving testes that would typically make sperm and not ovaries that would typically make eggs, is male. Others disagree, but I maintain this is the only coherent description of sex.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas I hope I have also been consistent that DSDs are not simply academically interesting, but that they affect *people*. And people are not words in a textbook.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas With that in mind, I find it very difficult, in the post/video, to reconcile a call for ‘compassion’ with an ugly shift from academic classification>a token nod to pragmatism>blaming women with CAIS for their biology.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas But the concept of women with CAIS having ‘male entitlement’ shocked me, TBH.

Babies with CAIS are observed female. They are brought home as girls. They are treated like girls, and all that entails in a gendered world - the extensive socialisation, the risks, the expectations.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas Sex-selective abortion, FGM, infanticide, nutritional and educational neglect, becoming child brides, being kidnapped by Boko Haram, being abused and raped, being shot at their college by an armed incel who hates women. We all know the lists.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas Male entitlement doesn’t originate in a Y chromosome or internal testes that don’t ‘do their job’. Male entitlement (and the corresponding effect on female lives) is not innate, it is acquired during one’s formative years being observed as male or female. Because patriarchy.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas I know people are concerned about ‘giving an inch’ as a slippery slope that ends with any male in female spaces. I don’t see it for CAIS. Because, ironically, nobody ‘sees’ CAIS women as male at any given moment or, importantly, *at any point in their lives*.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas As ever, happy to discuss. There’s a lot going on and I’m still mulling it over.

@WackyPidgeon @JamesVSD1 @zaelefty @JuliaMasonMD1 @madadhruadh @hoovlet @OwnerOfIdeas It feels to me like the author of the post/video has, in their haste to make no exception to ‘no males in female spaces’, forgotten about, well, what feminism is. Does that make sense?