The Science

 I studied Biology at university so I know a bit about this. Well, all right, it was 50 years ago and I concentrated on plants after the first year. But I studied genetics especially and I do remember a little bit even after all this time. 

Most trans deniers are fond of saying that if you have a Y chromosome then you’re a man. It’s obvious. 

But as usual it’s not that simple. 

In the early days and weeks of an embryo’s existence it has the capability of becoming either male or female. After a while, if the embryo has a Y chromosome, it generates hormones called androgens which initiate the formation of the male  physical form. But if left alone, the embryo will be female. Female is the default gender if you like. 

There are some individuals who have so called androgen insensitivity syndrome (“AIS”) which means the embryo doesn’t respond to the androgens and carries on merrily developing as a female. 

At birth these children are invariably registered as female - they are indistinguishable from other baby girls without carrying out a full genetic analysis. So you have a girl who has a Y chromosome. 

AIS is rare and the resulting individuals are not perfect females. Their internal organs aren’t entirely female, they don’t menstruate and are infertile. But it would take a real zealot to deny them their gender. 

What the Y chromosome with its androgens doesn’t reliably do is to guide mental development along pure binary lines. Which is why there’s more to being a man or a woman than whether you have a penis or a uterus. We have all met effeminate men and masculine women. We are now accepting of people who prefer to have loving and/or sexual relationships with people of the same gender, behaviour which not long ago was stigmatised in the same  way as gender reassignment is by some people today. And some people have a strong feeling from a very early age that, really, at bottom, deep deep down they are not the same gender as their physical body. In short the Y chromosome may determine the physical form, but there’s more to a human being than physical form, and the Y chromosome doesn’t even always get that right. 

If a space ship arrived from mars, assuming they studied the earth’s life forms rather than wipe us all out with their superior technology, they’d conclude that the dominant species was dimorphic, ie they fell into two types. Let’s call them “male” and “female”. 

They’d note that the “males” tended to be hairier all over their bodies, including their faces, but oddly not always on the top of their heads. They were more muscular and tended to talk louder in meetings or in the pub. They competed over anything, even silly things like how much aerosol cream you can squirt into your mouth. They had deeper voices and  wore different clothes. 

The “females”  put paint on their faces and wore elaborate hairstyles. They had higher voices, and were cooperative rather than competitive. They had behavioural differences called “emotions” which men didn’t seem to have. Their mating rituals involved wearing curious uncomfortable footwear to make their legs look longer and they exposed their legs, sometimes all the way up to their bottoms, even in cold weather. 

The Martians would quite reasonably believe that they could tell a male from a female based entirely on their behaviour and appearance.

Maybe it isn’t just the technology which makes Martians wiser than humans