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[–]HOWABOUTNO 9 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 4 fun10 insightful - 5 fun -  (3 children)

Sex is about a biological determination based on many factors, factors that do not involve "identifying" as female, or "being raised as female".

CAIS are male. They have testes. And no ovaries. Just because they "pass as" women on the outside doesn't make them women.

I'm obsessed with them because I'm done with people like you calling disordered men "women" or "female".

Disordered men are not women. They will never be women. They are disordered men.

They are "unique cases"? Either consider the non-disordered men that "pass as" women on the outside after all their surgeries women (and while you're at it, consider all humans that are born with a disorder that affects their legs, hearts, etc, non-human or some other specie, especially if they "identify" as another specie, because apparently all it takes for "gender identity" to be "valid" is a disorder), or take a few steps back and realize you're arbitrarily making DSDs an exception when they aren't. All DSDs are either male or female. And the sex has nothing to do with what one "identifies" as, how one is raised, and what society claims one is.

[–]lefterfield 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

No one encountering most CAIS individuals would mistake them for men. Many of them may not even be aware of their condition until puberty, or later. It is an irrelevant point to keep harping on and to keep comparing to other nonsense like "identifying as other species" - that is incredibly offensive. These people have a genetic defect, they are not insane. And DSDs are not an "arbitrary" exception. They are usually identified as females at birth. I don't give a fuck what they "identify" as, their doctor can make the determination better than you or the voices in anyone's head.

They are genetically male. Admit that you're making insane, offensive comparisons because you have no legitimate argument or nuanced understanding of DSDs, or shut up and go away.

[–]soundsituation 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

No one encountering most CAIS individuals would mistake them for men.

Things have gotten heated in here and I don't want to pile on, but I'd like to respond to this part of your comment just to wonder out loud whether whether Olympic-level DSD athletes are representative of most DSD individuals appearance-wise, because just looking at the Tokyo games, two of the three DSD athletes (Margaret Niyonsaba and Beatrice Masilingi) are, in my opinion, easily identifiable as male. Christine Mboma looks more ambiguous.

Anyway, perhaps it's a trivial point but I still wonder.

[–]MarkTwainiac 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'd like to respond to this part of your comment just to wonder out loud whether whether Olympic-level DSD athletes are representative of most DSD individuals appearance-wise, because just looking at the Tokyo games, two of the three DSD athletes (Margaret Niyonsaba and Beatrice Masilingi) are, in my opinion, easily identifiable as male. Christine Mboma looks more ambiguous.

Please stop conflating the DSDs that XY athletes like Niyonsaba, Masilingi and Mboma have with XY CAIS. None of them have XY CAIS! XY CAIS is not on the list of XY DSDs subject to the current World Athletics' DSD regulations. To be subject to the current regulations pertaining to DSD athletes' eligibility in women's competition, athletes have to have one of a small handful of XY DSDs - all of which are characterized by having male-typical responsiveness to the testosterone their testes pump out. In other words, these athletes are not "androgen insensitive." Whereas persons with CAIS are androgen insensitive, ostensibly completely. The acronym CAIS stands for "complete androgen insensitivity syndrome."

The unfortunate umbrella term "DSD" applies to approximately 40 different, discrete conditions that are distinct from one another in numerous ways. These diverse conditions and the persons who have them can't all be spoken about and lumped together as if they were all one and the same.

whether Olympic-level DSD athletes are representative of most DSD individuals appearance-wise

Your attempt to generalize about what "most DSD individuals" look like based on "Olympic-level DSD athletes" who all have a small number of XY DSDs characterized by testes, male levels of T and male-typical sensitivity to to T, aka male physiology, ignores that a) DSDs occur in females as much as in males; and b) most people with DSDs have outward appearances that fit in the normal range of what males and females normally look like.

Only a small handful of DSDs result in genital anatomy that might be ambiguous-looking at birth, and thus might cause a person to be mistakenly sexed. The vast majority of people in the world with DSDs are males and females with late-onset or non-classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which doesn't manifest until puberty or adulthood, and they all look like entirely normal males and females.

Persons with MRKH, Turner's, Swyer's, etc don't look anything like most of the XY athletes now competing, or who have competed, in women's elite-level athletics like Niyonsaba, Masilingi, Mboma, Seyni, Wambui and Semenya. Persons with the particular XY DSDs these athletes have are not representative of all persons with DSDs in their appearance, or in other ways either. If you took away the hair extensions, nail lacquer and other accoutrements that these XY athletes sometimes rely on to give them a more "feminine" appearance when competing in women's sports, they all look like typical guys - including Mboma, who has a body shape like CeCe Telfer's, not like a girl or woman of or near Mboma's age. In the photos of themselves taken off the field that these athletes post on social media, they tend to look like typical guys whose sex no one would question.