Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sex and Gender

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

There has been lots of discourse about gender expression recently, and “science” is often trotted out as an argument to deny the experience of others. “Feel however you want,” these arguments typically begin, “but there are only two sexes, and they’re easily defined, and that’s just science.” That’s … well it’s crap.This week on Sawbones, join us as we make it extremely clear where science stands on this complex issue.

Saw bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. And we came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We were sawed through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobbing. So, Marital Tour of Miscited Medicine. Haha, I'm your co-host, Justin McAvoy. And I'm Sydney McAvoy. What's with the congenial? Just feels so tickled to be doing this show. You know, it's a delight to get to work with my wife

and I'm just happy to be recording this podcast. Well, me too, Justin. I'm excited this week. Lately, Justin, there's been a lot of discourse in the world, in the media, in the news, about sex and gender. And it occurred to me that we've never really done just like that as a topic on our show. Talk about sex and gender and like from a both a scientific and a historical perspective, what, how have these ideas either changed or maybe just our understanding of them, our knowledge of them has grown and evolved over time. And the reason I think it's so important is that I keep seeing this argument lately that while we may believe, and these are very much like Western, a lot of this American

sort of thinking, but also like reflects a lot of Western ideas about gender, that while maybe now we're open to the possibility that gender is not binary, that gender could be fluid, could be a spectrum, that you see these arguments that like, well, but sex is not, sex is binary, sex is science, sex is biology, obviously we all know this. And there are a lot of false arguments that are predicated on that, that as an accepted truth. That. But it is not a truth. It is wrong.

It seems like that's a lot of people like to frame the discourse as feelings or emotion or identity or society, whatever, versus hard, cold science. And you, Sydney, are here to rip science from their grasping hands. Well, I just think if you're going to- Going to- Going to the home team, as it were. If you're going to try to claim some,

like, that some sort of belief system, basically, your own personal beliefs and biases are based in science, you better be right. You better be right, or Sydney will come for you. Ask the wellness community. Sitting going to come. And if it's, and the thing is like, if this is wrong and you're using it

to oppress others and to deny the existence of people, then you need to be called out and educated. You just happen to have a podcast So that that's what that's what I wanted to talk about today is to let's focus on sex first Great success Okay, great success I have had a lot of conversations with even other like scientists that For God's sake, when we're recording solmones, my button, my special button that makes Borat say,

my wife doesn't work. So folks at home, this is the second time, I've done it and Rachel's had to edit it out both times. So to save Rachel the indignity, just pretend you heard Borat saying my wife. Okay, great. Sorry. So whether people are making their argument based on like

chromosomes or... Wait, whether people are making their argument based on like chromosomes or... Wait, whether people are doing this? No. Because I have known a lot of different whether people that have not been in the way you're just going... Not meteorologists. Okay. Like, whether.

Whether people are making this argument. We have taken a pronouncing W-H words like that around the house to help our daughter. That's the way that W-A-2 word I know does realising. Yeah it is. Weather? Yeah like I'm saying weather I got you weather. Yeah not weather like the outside. That is the pronounciation is very helpful in our case. I have had people in science tell me like, well, there are two biological sexes, right? And again, they're usually basing this argument on either chromosomes, XX, versus XY.

There's like binary sexes. Or there, it's a more sort of base argument on like, well, you just look in the bathing suit area and you can tell. Yes. And obviously, I think it's easier for people to understand why that argument is unscientific and flawed. But then they give it back to the DNA chromosome thing and think like, well, but this is, this is truth.

I was taught it in high school science. Which many of us were, right? You were probably taught that at some point. Yeah, I don't pay, I just wasn't being very close to it, but for sure, I'm sure I was taught that. So let's talk about, let's start with chromosomes, because there are many layers when it comes to sexual development, but let's start with the chromosomes.

Okay. And to do that, we have to kind of get embryonic. So we talk about the immediate forming of the embryo, right? Like the sperm and the egg come together. The sperm and the egg come together. Make a zygote. Yeah. So, and we really, by the way,

are beginning of understanding this process, the specific like the genes and chromosomes and carry types and all this, really developed in like the mid 1900s. That's when we began to look at genes and chromosomes and start to understand when we talk about sex and the layers of sexual development and what equals what.

That is where we started to figure this out. There was a lot of research done by a psychologist named Dr. John Money and a pediatric endocrinologist named Dr. Claude Mujon. And they did a lot of research on this back in the 1950s. They actually had a gender affirming clinic that they would run to do like procedures and things for in this pursuit. So this is when you start to see the scientific understanding of this specific area of genetic

research. The traditional understanding was that XX means girl, XY means boy, this is a very sort of rudimentary kind of explanation that people would give you. And again, I'm not saying that is accurate, that it was the understanding. And if we wanted to know a definitive answer, you could do what's called a carry type, where you just, and you've probably seen pictures of this.

It's all the pairs of chromosomes laid out in a little photograph. And then you look at the last pair, is it XXX or XY? Do they look the same or do they look different? And then that's it. If this were done on all of us, if this exact procedure, if we all had a carry type done,

which you may have, I haven't, but some people have. You may actually be surprised as to what you would find, because there aren't only two choices. There aren't just XX and XY individuals. There are other combinations that can and do happen, some of which you know about because they present in a physical form, right, like in a clinical presentation in that person. And others which you may never know, because as chromosomes are dividing, as cells are dividing, as genes are being exchanged between chromosomes.

As all this is happening, there's always room for variation. That's why we all look different, right? Because of all the variation that can occur during that process. So sometimes the chromosomes aren't distributed equally. And you get something like XXY or XO, meaning X alone, or you get XXX. Sometimes you can have transfers of genetic material between what we have commonly called the sex chromosomes, the X and Y chromosomes, right? So there's a part of the Y chromosome called the SRI region, And this is responsible for a lot of the secondary sexual characteristics.

If that gets transferred to an X chromosome, then all of a sudden the X chromosome has those same properties. Well, I'll say that we would associate with a Y chromosome. And these things aren't just a lot of times when you start to talk about this, even people who have heard this sort of science before will say, well, but like this is never happening. I mean, like this is so rare, right?

Like this is so incredibly rare. Well, somebody who has triple X, three X chromosomes. Okay. Or X, Y, Y. Those are both about one in a thousand live births. I thought you were about to say somebody who has triple X on DVD. It's like, I love that flick. I didn't realize that.

Do you have triple X on DVD? No. You don't allow me to collect physical media anymore. No, we had too much. The X-X-Y, which is the most common of these, is actually one in 600 live births. That's more. Yes, my point is, these aren't quite as rare as you think they are.

Right. And again, not everyone always realizes either immediately in puberty or ever that this might be true because you don't generally get to see your chromosome. No, that would be wild. There are also other... Well, it gets maybe inside out boy.

Maybe when he went over the bar on the swings, maybe he saw his chromosomes? No, you still, they're too little. You still can't see them. There's also other things that can happen that are, again, more rare than these conditions, but there's like mosaicism when there are different sets of chromosomes in different body cells.

So depending on which cell from your body I sampled, I might see a different makeup there. There's also something called chimerism. And we've talked about these before on the show where in utero two fertilized eggs will fuse and form like, you know, one embryo, one eventual person. So within that person are basically two different sets of chromosomes. So again, you could get completely different carryotypes based on which, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah, that's awesome. And I mean, those things happen. There's also like the exchange we've talked about this before on the show too, I think, between a pregnant person and the fetus that happens, where like some of the fetal cells get into the pregnant person's body and some of their cells get in, like you can still find them later on.

So again, you can find XXXY, XXXY, XYY, all these different combos in people, and that just happens. That's just nature, that's just there. That's not, XXX, why, why, why all these different combos in people. And that's, that just happens. That's just nature. That's just there. That's not how anyone feels that is science. You can find combos in me too, especially for my road trip or something. And I go, little peckish.

I'm sorry, Sydney. I have to find, this is, I'm kind of out of my lane here. So I'm trying to find my great jokes for our team. And these are, these are, Have for any pizza pretzel. Thank you for asking, listener. That's my brand. This is just the first layer, by the way.

Even after you've got the chromosomes sort of established, there's also the development of the reproductive organs, what we usually refer to as the gonads. So like ovaries or testes. That's a really, it's a really funny word. I don't want to do real. I know. It's a really funny word.

Dang. This involves a lot more than just the chromosomes because you can get individuals who are X, Y, who don't develop testes and vice versa. And I mean, so this is not a one to one thing. There is this belief that X, Y equals testicles, equals man, and vice versa for X, X. And this, none of this is true.

There are 25 different genes that work together to create the physical characteristics that we associate with sex. Any of those can change the course of things and create a variation. Again, all of these are ways that sex can exist on a spectrum. A lot of this is classified. You may have heard the term intersex before. There's also differences in sexual development or DSDs. Is that a preferred term? I think it depends. I've heard that scientifically a lot of like researchers have adopted the term DSDs, but I've also heard that from some intersex individual like activist organizations they prefer intersex, but I think

it would be an individual person. Like I think you'd have to ask a person what they would prefer. And there are a lot of these that can come into play depending on like hormones and receptors. And there are cases, again, that you don't always know that this variation might occur. There was like a 70-year-old father who back in 2014 presented with a father was a father for seven years old presents with a hernia and it ends up being there's a uterus and a fallopian tube in there. So testes or ovaries can develop, but this does not necessarily align with any sort of, you know, definite chromosomal array. Also the external genitalia that develops next, that doesn't necessarily align with anything

either, because again, there are all kinds of hormonal differences and receptor differences that can affect what develops, what you see, basically, when a baby is born, what you can look and visualize there. All of that is not necessarily tied to anything on a genetic level. And again, there's even further variation when we get to like puberty. You can see changes at that point and variety that doesn't again line up with what you had assumed previously. Plus, there's also this idea of brain sex, what your brain, what sex your brain is. And again, this is not something that I feel like there are a lot of people who

try to write this all off as like just something you believe. But there are also scientific studies, there are scientific differences when we look at the structure and function of the brain. When it comes to, for instance, there was a study that was done in people who are transgender. And they basically said, if I look at the brain after I look at structure and function, the brain of a transgender woman structurally and functionally is more similar to assist gender woman than assist gender man. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. And vice versa. And they've done these studies and proved them time and again.

So the brain sex is a thing. There are real observable differences, which isn't the end all be all, but they are there. So if you're going to use science for your argument, you better make sure it's in your favor. And it's not. The science says sex is a spectrum, just like gender is a spectrum. And these things, all these things I'm talking about again, just to give you an idea as to like how not rare this is.

So when it comes to intersex or differences in sexual development, individuals, there used to be this argument that like this occurs in like 0.05, 0.06% of the population. This is like negligible. We don't even need to, which even if it was, Hey, yeah, the zero was, we should probably try to think about it. Exactly. But if you, if you want to start talking about how sex is a binary and all of this proves that that's untrue, then you need to consider every case where XX chromosomes do not, you know, default equal girl and XY boy. And in that case, it's probably about

1.7% of the population. That sounds like a lot to me. Yeah, it's like 130 million people. Yeah. Right? So it's a lot of people to put it in perspective. That's about the same percentage of the population that has green eyes. It's about the same percentage of the population that has red hair. And we don't consider either of those things so rare that you'll never see them or know anybody with them in your life.

That's true. So these, you know, this, we do have our own biases against them. If I could, if I may be so bold, and maybe that's in the week, could all reevaluate too. So in a lot of the recent like, and what brought this to mind for me, personally is in our state of West Virginia, there was this horrific piece of legislation passed to ban transgender athletes from playing sports in high school and college, actually, all levels of schooling that are like with the group that is congruent with their own gender identity, right?

And a lot of this was based on the idea that we could either do an external genital examination or we could do a chromosomal test and prove what their, quote unquote, biological sex. This is how it was always worded is and that that's just science. But that's not true. None of that is true because there isn't a binary and you couldn't do either of those things and definitively prove anything because if you want to ask, how can you scientifically determine sex, the answer is you can't if you're using sex as a binary. You can't because it's not a binary because it's a spectrum.

So the whole argument falls apart at that point and then further like what is your motivation for even doing that? Well, it's always to do harm. It's always to oppress and discriminate and deny someone of their natural human rights. So there's no reason to do it. But beyond that, scientifically, it just doesn't stand. Well, that's it that should wrap it up. I guess we've solved another one, Sid.

Well, that's not the whole story, though, because sex is not a binary. Okay. We've determined that. Gender is not a binary, either. And while we here in the West may have only recently begun to say that out loud and acknowledge it, there are a lot of people all over the world who have known that for a long time. And I want to talk about that, but first let's go to the Billing Department. Let's go. Let's go.

Well, hello, I'm Renee Colvert. Hi, I'm Alexis Preston, and we are the host of Can I Fight Your Dog. And we got breaking news, we got an expo say, at all the beans have been spilled via an Apple Podcast review that said this show isn't well researched. We got no doubt. Of course it's not. Not since the day we started as it has been well researched Guessing an anthropomorphizing dog is what we do. The can I pet your dog promise is that we will never do more than 10 seconds of research

before telling you excitedly about any dog we see. I'm going to come at you with top 10 enthusiasm, minimal facts. We're here for a good time, not an educated time. So if you love dogs and you don't love research, well, you know what, come on in. Can I pet your dog podcast every Tuesday on Maximum Fun Network? Where in the world is gender not binary? Well, Dustin, that I think again, where could it be? When it comes to gender the difference is and I think you probably already understand that what if somebody talks about sex or as gender what is gender? Don't you dare force me to answer a question here on this episode?

I'm a listener city not an answerer. I'm dare you. I I'm a listener, not an answerer. How dare you. I say it, I share it, fall for your rotten tricks. Gender has to do with, it's much more of a construct, right? It's much more socially dictated. It has to, it's poison girls. No, it's not. In the sense that we have understood it as this is,

that's the labels that we wanna put on it. In the past, yes. But it has connotations. The old, ancient idea of like, but not ancient, but like our connotation of, quote unquote, boys and girls in. And everybody else. And everybody else.

Yes. Yes. So gender has to do with like everything around us in our time and place. This is what I'm saying. I'm not saying literally. It's not just the connotations that we have put on as a society. Yes.

Exactly. So gender is more complicated. And it's changed over time. Like what we associate with different genders, what colors or clothing or activities or jobs or whatever. Well, what our roles are, all those things can be, uh, can change depending on where you are and when you are and which culture you're within. Again, in our, in the Western view, gender was considered a binary that was sort of linked with that binary sex

for a while, right? Like sex was boy girl, man woman. Gender is the same thing or has been. I mean, I'm not saying again, this is not true, but this was the perception. Gender is also man woman, and it is linked with those sex definitions, and that's that. And when you start to go to like, what do you associate with each one? Traditionally, in the West, we've had this masculine view of what a man who is X, Y would be. And this feminine view of what a woman who is X, X would be. As if that is the all knowing truth and that's the... On the man's side, you gotta kind of,

I don't know, like a Justin Macrioy type, who's sort of like the classic machismo man as we've understood in American culture. You're sort of like a Justin Macaroid type. You know what I mean? That's all I'm like one end of. Yeah. In the classic, in the classic mode,

obviously these definitions have developed over time. But if you're talking about in a classic style, machismo, that kind of thing. It's kind of like a just point. And if you're looking for your classic feminine, demure, you know, deferential, right, fainting flower. That's me, all of it.

That's the macroeconomic type. You got kind of the classic, the classic archetypes represented here on this podcast. Right. Very helpful. Because it gives you a place to start from. So the thing is, while we may, and again, and especially in, I mean, let's just be honest, especially in the US, we have this view that like, well, this is the way we believed it. So obviously everyone else believed the same thing. and yes, this is the way it is American Exceptionalism I believe right and but this is this could could not be farther from the truth

There are lots of cultures throughout a time and place that have never viewed gender as a binary and Because they you know because gender was something that was much larger, more fluid and a much bigger spectrum than what we view it here in the West, it reflects that innate understanding that sex is not binary either, right? Because we're talking about cultures that understood these things long before we could do a chromosomal array. Right. If you look to Native American people, like in the United States, you can find, like, among the zoonie in the Navajo people, the idea of two spirit individuals, being very common, specifically in the Navajo tradition, there can be four genders.

There's like a masculine masculine masculine, feminine, feminine, feminine, feminine, feminine. And each of those has its own sort of, you know, again, because that's what we do with gender. We have like things we, connotations we make, roles, that person plays in society, things they look like and do and act and be. And each of those has their own. And that's just, that's part of that culture and always has been that no, there aren't two genders that would never have been that's not the framework,

that's not the structure. If we look as far back as the commissu-tra, nice. You remember the commissu-tra? Oh yeah, there. I used to watch several specials on showtime devoted to understanding that particular tone, so I'm very, very well educated there. Which was written between 400 and 300 BCE. There is recognition of other genders in India that far back. So again, these are not new concepts. These are ancient concepts.

And specifically in India, these individuals were thought to possess like a mystical almost ability, extra abilities, especially in like the realm of like song and dance and you know, these beautiful sort of magical energies that these individuals had that fit into this third gender. And actually in 2014, the Supreme Court in India officially recognized a third gender. I mean, you know, there wasn't just male female. There was a third gender that we would probably, in our terminology, refer to as in the West as transgender. They use the term, Hizra or Kinar, is their preference, which is actually a reference

to a mystical creature in India. But anyway, they are one of several countries now who have a third gender option. And now that has also been added with more in even Western countries recognizing transgender individuals and gender non-conforming individuals and non-binary individuals and everybody who didn't fit into that sort of false framework of boy girl. There are lots of countries who have followed suit now, but even earlier this concept of a third gender that is ancient, that is not new, that is not the result of whatever transphobic activists want to say it as.

These are ideas that have existed long before the United States of America existed. And again, if we continue to look outside of our sort of cultural lens, among the first nations people in Australia, you find sister girls and brother boys. And among the indigenous communities there, gender has always been fluid and more than a binary and something that was defined by asking someone or them telling you, and you then accept that because they know that. And that's the end of the conversation. And no examination or blood tests is necessary

to prove anything further. And even when we try to use our terminology, to define those, brother, boy, sister, girl, what does that mean, our terminology isn't even the language we would use in the West is not enough for that. We can't encompass all of the cultural connotations of that and what those words mean. We could try to all of the cultural connotations of that and what those words mean. We could try to say, well, that's sort of what that is the same

as what we would call a transgender woman or whatever. But no, it's more than that because their concept of gender is different than what we have here in the US and assume is scientifically grounded because it's all just a cultural thing. in the US and assume is scientifically grounded. Because it's all just a cultural thing. In Hawaiian indigenous cultures, we have the Mayhuz, who again, defy this gender binary in Samoa. They have the faafin people, the in Madagascar, the Secrata, in the Wahaka State of Mexico, the Muxes.

There are lots of different gender categories outside of male female that exist all over the world, all throughout time, all across cultures. That just, and again, these aren't new ideas that have just always been. Gender is not binary, sex is not binary. There are not two things. So why do we hold so tightly in the US

to this false idea that this framework we have, this sex binary, this gender binary is all correct? And that even though in many ways, like we're in the minority for believing it that we should that we should impose this idea on our own people at alone, people who live outside the US. I mean, I've been doing solbans long enough to know when I'm about to have to start apologizing. On behalf of my gender and race. And so I'm just going to strap in and get ready because it's probably my fault. Right. I mean, are you using you as a representation?

I'm quite the historical you, I guess. For white heterosexual cisgender men. Yeah, it's your fault. Yeah, it's all like. under men. Yeah, it's your fault. Yeah. So basically, if you want to trace like the roots of, especially in these other cultures, so because like to say that in all these other places that I just listed, that people who are not, who do not fit into some sort of binary gender framework are all completely accepted and celebrated in their communities and given all the same equal rights. Yeah. No, I can't imagine.

No, that's not true. And it's still a struggle for people who have all over the world, depending on what culture they're raised in, if they don't fit into this false gender binary. Why did that change? So it probably dates back to, first of all, when you go into the Renaissance era, there's this idea of class hierarchy that starts to become varying and grained. The idea of social strata. There are the elite people, there's royalty, there are rich people, there are well-educated

people, and then you go down the ladder below that. And along with this idea of like a class hierarchy and the aristocracy and everything, and then the working classes below that, you start to get a hierarchy of other things that comes with it. So this is the ruling class, and along with the ruling class comes the ruling gender.

And that ruling gender is masculine. And masculine becomes associated with man, becomes associated eventually, we would say with X-Y, although we're not at that point yet. So masculine men get placed at the top of this newly developed class and then gender hierarchy. Feminine, eventually women as it becomes the binary are placed below them. So first you have this like hierarchy of gender roles that begins to develop.

And with that comes all their roles and responsibilities in society and flip side what they're not allowed to do. Because as soon as you define who's in charge, everyone else is defined in relation to them and what they can't do or are limited from because they're not that thing in charge. And the thing that was in charge was a white masculine man.

Because just alongside this gender hierarchy that's being developed, as you start traveling all over the world, these Western, these European cultures start traveling all over the world, they also start developing their racial hierarchy, right? This is the same time where we start to see whiteness placed at the top, masculinity placed at the top, people who own land, who have money placed at the top,

all of that becomes like the center, and everybody else just has to try to orbit around it as best they can. And as you get into like the revolutionary period, of like the 17 and 1800s, you start to see like, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, you, again, you're talking about like a time

where we're like supposed to be celebrating the rights of man standing after the rights of man, standing up for the rights of man, man supposedly is the stand in for humanity, but it's not really right because as laws begin to be codified in the US, who's at the top, who's allowed to vote, who's allowed to own property? Who's allowed to make all the decisions over and over and so you have to if if that Person who has that power is going to maintain and being charged by virtue of their Gender you've got to very clearly define what is that gender and what isn't and so then we get these sort of ideas of men who are masculine being the sex and the gender binary and women who are thin and, you know, on the other side.

And then we take that framework and we force it upon every country that we colonize all over the world, not just the US alone, of course, but all the other colonizing nations. That's what they did. They took this idea of a binary and every country they went to that had another idea that had more fluid ideas, more a more of a spectrum idea of gender. Every country they went to, they said, that's wrong, or it's primitive, or it's gross, or it's immoral, or it's not Christian, whatever they wanted to do to say it was bad, to demonize it, and started to impose this idea along with all the other things colonization brought of gender as a binary, which is why you see that sort of like struggle to get back to where they were in the

beginning in some of these societies like people who are Outside the gender binary trying to fight back to a time where like you know hundreds of years ago where that was Normal and accepted and everyone knew that there were more than two genders because that's the truth and now they're trying to get back to that because of what The colonizers did but I think it's really important when you look at sex and gender to understand that we get this really limited perspective, like, well, we know what the truth is. And that is so arrogant and wrong because one, it's not the truth. You know, sex is not a binary, gender is not a binary. And two, other cultures, other societies, other countries have known this for thousands of years.

And just because it took us this long in the US to figure this stuff out or to listen to people who've been telling us this for a long time, doesn't mean that we just, gosh, that's us all over, right? We just discovered it. Yeah, we discovered it. Yeah. We discovered it today.

We'll name it day after us. I'm a man for the rest of us. Right. No, but like, this has always been true. And I mean, that's great that we finally figured it out, I guess. But that doesn't, but that doesn't negate the fact that there are a lot of other places where this has been known for a long time. And it is the truth.

You know, when you start talking about like, in a lot of other places where this has been known for a long time and it is the truth. You know, when you start talking about like in a lot of these cases, what scientifically could we do to figure out somebody's sex? There aren't two sexes, and there is no reason to do this. It's not something that, you know, we should be doing that we can be doing that has value other than to use as a tool of oppression. And what we do know, what science does tell us on the contrary, is that validating someone's gender, validating who they are, and offering them appropriate support using correct pronouns, offering people who seek out gender affirming treatments or surgeries, making sure that they have access to those things.

That science tells us is often life-saving. It reduces the rates of anxiety and depression and self-harm. Those are things that science can tell us that validating someone's gender experience is the right thing to do, not just scientifically, although that's always nice too, but, you know, ethically. Now, Justin, as I said in the beginning of this episode, the impetus for this concept is topic, is that I heard so many people making the argument that sex is binary and using science as a reason for discrimination and for denying people's fundamental existence. Yes. And so that's why I felt like it was important to address

that no, actually scientifically that's wrong and sex isn't binary. But regardless of all that, honestly, the only way to really know someone's gender identity, it has nothing to do with all the chromosomes and the genes or genitals or any of the things we've talked about, the best way to do that is to ask someone. And then whatever someone says is valid and true, because you don't have to have any sort of proof

to justify your identity. It is what you say it is, and that's it at the end of the day. So I think it's important to remember that, well, it's useful to know this science because so many people are using it wrong to discriminate against others. At the end of the day, the science isn't the point.

Treating people with respect and dignity and validating their existence is what really matters. So there aren't two sexes. Go tell your high school science teacher that they were wrong. Yeah, go push them into a dumpster and say, hey, idiot. Don't do that. Hey tough guy. Remember when you used to push me into a dumpster?

Well, now I'm pushing you into a dumpster, Mr. Wilson. Well, I, please don't, please don't. I had, I had some great, I had some great science teachers. But the thing is like, and I said this to my colleagues who I believe, you know, have a lot of knowledge in the scientific world. We were all taught a lot of stuff that was wrong. But like if we have, you know, open hearts and open minds, then we can learn that we were wrong. And not that this is new information that changed.

You're just wrong. We were just wrong. And like if you're not sure in science, if we can be wrong, I mean, listen to our podcast. Yeah, we're wrong a lot. We're wrong a lot. Not about this though, this one I feel pretty good about. That's ridiculous.

No, we're on the right track here. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. Hope you've enjoyed yourself. We got a book, SoftBund's Book. If you want that, you can find it wherever fine books are sold, or even bad books, like any book, like any pretty much any bookstore, not a cushion bookstore probably.

That would be a pretty progressive cushion bookstore, anyway, you know books. It's called The Sophan's book There's paperback version that has some stuff about quarantine and and what have you it's pretty neat And I think you you would you should get it We got some other stuff there. We've got a fun horseshoe crepti shirt and some other things at mackleroy merch dot com. So head on over there and check it out Thanks also to the taxpayers for these their sole medicines as the intro and outro

of our program. And thanks to you for listening. We appreciate it. That is gonna do it for us. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Cindy McRoy. And it's always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! comedy and culture.

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