I’ve gotten a few emails and /msgs about this so I really wanted to post a clarification.
When I put the color survey together, I was mostly interested in making maps and tables of color names; the opening survey was almost an afterthought. Finn added a question about chromosomal sex, since it’s closely correlated with colorblindness (Finn is one of the rare people with two faulty X chromosomes for color vision).
We debated for a long time to find a wording of the question that would be answerable unambiguously by everyone, regardless of gender identification or any other issues. In response to a friend who was suggesting we were overcomplicating things, Finn said, “I *refuse* to word the question in a way that doesn’t have a good, clear answer available for transsexuals, intersex people, and people who already know they have chromosomal anomalies.” I felt the same way, and at the same time I didn’t want to assume everyone remembers what the hell chromosomes are. After hours of debate, everyone was happy with this:
Do you have a Y chromosome?
Don’t Know Yes No If unsure, select “Yes” if you are physically male and “No” if you are physically female. If you have had SRS, please respond for your sex at birth. This question is relevant to the genetics of colorblindness.
We didn’t add a question about gender identification, in part because I wasn’t really planning to do anything with the survey data beyond basic calibration and didn’t want to hassle people with more questions, and in part because gender is really complicated. We recently programmed Bucket, the IRC chat bot in #xkcd, to allow people set their gender so he can use pronouns for them. This ended up taking hundreds of lines of code, three pages of documentation, and six different sets of pronouns and variables, just to cover all the basic ways people in the channel with different gender identifications wanted to be referred to (even without invented pronouns like “xe”, which we vetoed). And that’s just to cover the pronouns. The role of gender in society is the most complicated thing I’ve ever spent a lot of time learning about, and I’ve spent a lot of time learning about quantum mechanics.
So when I wrote the survey, I really didn’t have anything in mind for the data. After it went up, I saw the DoghouseDiaries comic, and immediately wanted to investigate. I was really amazed by the results, particularly the top-five list of colors, which came as a complete surprise. Everyone agreed it was the most interesting of my results (at some point, my friends were sick of hearing me talk about hues and saturations) and I couldn’t resist publishing it somehow.
Originally, my post had a big wall of text discussing how all I had was chromosomal data, and that what the comic talked about was gender identification. I rewrote this post a bunch of times, and ended up with roughly the wording that’s there now:
[…] realized I could test it (as far as chromosomal sex goes, anyway, which we asked about because it’s tied to colorblindness).
I didn’t want to spend a long time boring people about sex and gender (I’ll talk forever if you let me), but I also wanted to clarify that this was something I cared about and was trying to pay proper attention to. I ran it by some friends before posting, and they approved; one specifically thanked me for adding that note. So I figured I’d found a good balance.
But a number of people were still offended or upset by my use of the chromosomal data in a conversation about gender. Now, there are always going to be people upset about anything; as Ford Prefect said, “Fuck ’em. You can’t care about every damn thing.” But this is an issue I really do care about, and one I spend a lot of time trying to get right—and I genuinely appreciate the guidance. If people were offended or feel I didn’t handle this right, I’m sorry, and it’s my fault. But it wasn’t for lack of caring.
And to anyone writing software that handles gender or sex information, it’s a good reminder that these questions are not always straightforward for everyone, and a little courtesy can do a lot to make someone feel respected.
xkcd 
Ari, and others, it is not the small incidence of transgenderism that should stop us from considering this highly important topic, but that it is an important piece in the puzzle of human gender (and sexuality, since the world, esp. the west has for long confused sex, gender and sexuality). And gender is a part of all of us, including those who fit into the current standards or expectations of gender roles. It is an important part of understanding who we are. Clean water is important, but it is exactly our disconnection with nature (triggered by science) that is responsible for polluting the water we drink and the air we breathe. Just like Christianity (and today science) is polluting human gender and sexuality, by having forced them to fit into their dogma and preconceived notions of how things should be, and looking at everything from coloured glasses.
So, understanding male femininity (female masculinity has hardly been a problem in the west) is extremely important to understand who we are, as humans. And, unless we understand who we are, our claim to be higher animals is useless.
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@ Natural Manhood:
Hypocritical blanket judgements of a group of people do not help your debate (some of which I agree with, btw).
I challenge you to fight the bias in yourself before pointing your finger at others.
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Maybe someone mentioned it already, if not: http://qntm.org/gay – this is more about marriage, but it’s interesting how they handle the “gender problem”. Scroll down to Step 10, where they’re finally dropping the “genders” table 🙂
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Don’t know if this has been mentioned, but re the DoghouseDiaries comic, aside from gender there’s other categories that see colors differently, such as graphic designers. I didn’t see cyan or magenta on either list.
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Surely your bucket problem could have been solved by asking people what pronoun they wanted, rather than what gender. If you vetoed all the invented ones, you’re left with ‘he’ or ‘she’ (and perhaps ‘it’, and if you’re very generous, ‘they’ as well – for the MPD-ers out there ^.^).
No matter what someone perceives their own gender as, and what their genetic and biological genders are, there are still only two grammatical genders to think about – a chat bot is meant to talk to people, not give them a physical.
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It is amazing how we have overcomplicated the concept of gender by worrying about transgendered people in surveys. Wow. Male/Female. We don’t rephrase “left-handed” or “right-handed” for people with one hand so why do we worry so much about gender? It just seems silly to me. I think people are getting too sensitive these days.
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BARAN AKCAN BİYOGRAFİ
d. 1977, İstanbul, Avukat
Lise eğitimini Suadiye / İstanbul’da tamamladıktan sonra, Marmara Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi’ni bitirdi.
2003 yılında, İstanbul Hukukçular Birliği’nin kuruluşunda yer aldı. Bu kuruluşta Başkan Yardımcılığı ve Kadıköy Temsilciliği görevlerinde bulundu. 2005-2009 tarihleri arasında NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation) Türkiye Fahri Temsilciliği görevinde bulundu.
2006 tarihinden bu yana Akcan Hukuk Bürosu’nda avukatlık mesleğine devam etmektedir. Muhtelif gerçek ve tüzel kişilere hukuk müşavirliği; ayrıca AKC Danışmanlık ünvanı altında uluslararası firmalara ticari danışmanlık hizmeti vermektedir.
“Küresel Petrol Trafiği” adlı yüksek lisans tezi; “Ticaret Hukukuna Liberal Bakış” makalesi; “Ticari Alacaklar Açısından Uluslararası İcra Hukuku” adlı üç kitabı yayımlanmıştır.
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@Benjamin-
Randall is concerned about this because he spent the time to craft a question that he hoped would be inoffensive, only to take the results of that question and label people male or female on that basis.
Basically, a transwoman would answer his question with “yes I have a y chromosome” and then have her results be labeled “male” for a comparison that was about gender and not colorblindness.
So the disconnect between trying to write a good inoffensive question, and then blundering the delivery is what Randall is apologizing for.
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@Benjamin – Gender >> Male/Female
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The only issue I have with the way the question was worded wasn’t that it’s the presence of a Y that matters, but the absence of a second X that does. So, someone with Klinefelters syndrome (XXY) is as likely as a genetic female to be colorblind, and someone with Turner’s syndrome (X only) is as likely as a genetic male to be colorblind.
A better way of phrasing the question for the intended purpose would have been, “How many X chromosomes do you have? 1, 2, 3 or more”
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The problem is that the Western culture does not validate human gender (inner male or female identity) irrespective of one’s outer sexual organs (represented by X/Y Chromosomes). But this inner sex is very much determined by our biology, maynot be determined by the XY chromosomes, but by other sets of genes, hormones, etc.
Our Gender identity is not only about our outer sex organs. Our Gender identity is a combination of our “outer sex” and “inner sex.’
The reason why the west has a skewed view of gender identity, which only restricts it to the outer sex, is the obsession of Christianity with reproduction as the primary purpose of life, as well as sex. This obsession has been carried forward into science, and have translated into “scientifically” validated dogmas without adequate evidences to support this obsession.
This obsession translates into a view of nature, gender and sexuality, that restricts itself to what is needed for procreation. As far as reproduction is concerned you only need a ‘male’ and ‘female.’ Their inner sex is irrelevant. And so, neither Christianity nor western science nor culture bother themselves with it or recognize it.
However, life is much more than reproduction, eventhough its an important but a limited part of life.
Ironically, the west recognizes the vague concept of ‘sexual orientation’ one reason being, that it considers exclusive homosexuality (denoted by the ‘homosexual’ category) to be an impediment in procreation, so it wants to create a separate category for such people, without respect to their ‘inner-sex’ as a category of people who are biologically “inadequate” since they have inner stuff that doesn’t drive them towards reproductive sex. Or so believes western science.
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My problem with the whole thing is that people were offended and upset by it. I’m sorry, that’s ridiculous and as someone said earlier this is the point where it’s them and not you. Now let me explain why.
Now, no matter what the issue is, I always believe that both sides of whatever should make a reasonable attempt to understand the intent of the other person. Randall made a reasonable attempt to address the complicated issue of gender in a survey(not the easiest thing to do, you try creating a survey that addresses it and isn’t completely bloated). Actually, that isn’t true. He made more than a reasonable attempt, it was an ingenious attempt, and a better attempt than probably 99% of surveys out there And perhaps some people didn’t think it was enough, but that’s fine. But they should also realize that he did the best that he could come up with and that he was trying to be sensitive about it.
If you want to have a discussion about it, that’s absolutely fine and dandy. Nothing is wrong with discussing the issue, it’s a fun one to do. -But- If you are legitimately angry about the wording, in my opinion, it’s you, not him. Knee jerk reactions are not a good thing and in general cause people to stop listening to you in conversations.
A complete side note, I am utterly amused that my security phrase is muppets security.
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@Patrick –
It’s not the wording of the question Randall is apologizing for here. He’s apologizing about the disconnect between the question, and how he presented the final data. Targeting chromosomes in the question (which are what matter) and not the label of male/female (which are arguably not totally physical in nature) was awesome, the disconnect was when he then used the answer to that question, to make the male/female comparisons. Since really, the matter of gender identity is likely more important in the comparisons he was trying to make, it wasn’t really appropriate to use the chromosome question as a basis for that — thus why he’s apologizing.
I don’t think many trans people here are really offended (I should really just speak for myself though), as it’s obvious he was attempting to be awesome about it. And this post just shows that he cares about it, which honestly influences my opinion about Randall a lot more than the fact that he blundered the delivery of the data in regards to gender.
tl;dr: The question was about chromosomes and color blindness, not gender identity. He used the question in his presentation to divide the data into male and female groups to compare to the Doghouse Diaries comic. These groups are arguably much more about gender identity than anything so basing them on the question is improper. But Randall obviously was and is trying to be respectful, so I think it’d be ridiculous for any of us trans people to be too offended.
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I find it hard to believe that your readers would not know what a Y chromosome is. On the spectrum of XKCD esotera that barely makes it in on the low end.
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I don’t think many trans people here are really offended (I should really just speak for myself though), as it’s obvious he was attempting to be awesome about it. And this post just shows that he cares about it, which honestly influences my opinion about Randall a lot more than the fact that he blundered the delivery of the data in regards to gender.
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@Ari
“Insensitive” may be an appropriate term if I am trying to be civil. But I guarantee you that there may be some harsher words to describe your attitude.
Question for you: What DOES the first world bend backwards over when the basic infrastructure of day-to-day living is set into place? Please say something, because if you say nothing then there will be many humans from every continent who’d like to know where their care free utopia is and why they’ve been denied it.
Long story short: You are incorrect. Beyond our survivability, we have to deal with our own sentience as well. When we aren’t dying of thirst, we’re left to ponder other questions and the answers may be few and unsatisfactory. I’m certainly thankful my life is quite comfortable but that doesn’t make me happy, itself. And no amount of being thankful for shelter and ample food supply will squelch some of the other issues I as a gay man need to face.
And millions of others will have their own shadows to face.
That said… what do you work in? Professional art? Academia? Business? Media? Athletics? Journalism? Education?
Chances are you are dealing in the pleasantries of us people who, you know, have clean drinking water.
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There’s nothing wrong with trangender, however, those who do it insisting that they don’t remain as genetically male or female as they originally were are deluding themselves, and Randall made a stellar effort to assuage their feelings in the matter. If he mentioned chromosomes, the reader knew very well what he was asking and had no business taking offense. He cannot be responsible for ignorance and deliberate delusion.
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At the end of it all, I just think it was a very thoughtful gesture to use what u used.
Just because its a minority doesn’t mean it should not be represented.
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@Victor-
I think your still missing the subtle point here. He’s apologizing because in effect he did, “Do you have a Y chromosome? Yes? Okay you’re a guy,” when his entire intent was to get accurate data regarding colorblindness and not gender.
I don’t think most trans people here are offended (at least I’m not offended) considering Randall was definitely trying to be awesome about it and just screwed up. Also, y’know he acknowledged that he made a mistake.
Also as for your comment about not remaining genetically male or female — I don’t know any fellow trans people who actually think that their genetics change. And that aside, it’s a completely irrelevant thing to mention, as the entire point of this isn’t that trans people were answering the question incorrectly. The reason SRS was mentioned in the explanation wasn’t because people would think that having SRS would change their genetics, but rather as an extension of the “Unsure?” portion, basically: “Unsure? Physically male tends to be yes, physically female tends to be no, btw, if you’ve had srs, we mean physical sex at birth.”
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Q: Do you have a Y chromosome
– Yes.
– No.
– Maybe.
– Yes, but it’s broken.
– No, but I have a spanner wrench.
– Sorry, I’m all out.
– I lent it to Bob.
– I think I cot a couple lying in the attic.
– Where can I get one for cheap?
– Just a sec. Honey, do we have a Y chromo-thingie?
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It seems to me that this was a thoughtful, albeit not entirely successful, approach to a difficult issues.
Finding a context in which people can identify themselves as intersex – preferably noting the type of intersex condition they have – is really important to research of this type. This is because some conditions pop up more often in intersex people, sometimes due to differences in gene expression. As well as helping to weed out anomalous results, identifying any unusual pattern here could provide pointers as to _why_ certain traits are more common in normative males than in normative females, or vice versa.
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t there numerous women, born women, who carry a Y? Wasn’t there an Olympic female athlete who never even knew she had a Y until she was disqualified for it?
Some info: http://www.isna.org/faq/y_chromosome
the money quote: “So it is simply incorrect to think that you can tell a person’s sex just looking at whether he or she has a Y chromosome.”
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Not to be coarse, but the number of people whose chromosomal gender differs from their gender identity are not statistically significant, and getting worked up about using the two interchangeably in the context of a large survey is a pretty clear example of misguided anger.
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this hasn’t been updated in a while.
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I don’t know why there is any debate on this. You are either a man or a woman and you are an idiot to debate otherwise. All of this ” This ended up taking hundreds of lines of code, three pages of documentation, and six different sets of pronouns and variables, just to cover all the basic ways people in the channel with different gender identifications ” hogwash is ridiculous. You are a man or a woman and you shouldn’t be offended if you think you are something else. What you think doesn’t change what you are.
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You’re confusing sex and gender. Male/Female refers to sex, which is a purely biological description based on chromosomes and genetic makeup (which is not to say there are no grey areas; AIS, for example); Man/Woman refers to gender, which is a social description of the attributes attached to sex. As a result, there are males who identify as women; however, they are still males, and cannot change that fact.
SRS is a misnomer. Sex cannot be reassigned; sexual organs can be changed, but a male who has had his penis removed and a vagina created is still genetically male. The big HOWEVER is that a fairly significant number of children are born with ambiguous genitals AND genetics, which is the main reason SRS is performed.
Incidentally, there are serious ethical problems with SRS being performed at birth; a lot of people (I think correctly) believe that it should be postponed until children can give informed consent and make a decision for themselves.
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Hi Randall! I don’t know if you have heard about it, and maybe you don’t care much about crazy beat-like music like this, or you just simply won’t like it, but if you are so much into colors, I really recommend this wonderful album:
KEN NORDINE – Colors
I love it but for the first listening, unfortunately did not understood it all because I didn’t know more than half of the colors’ names in English. I looked them up and still did not know which colors they are… There you go.
Ramiz (w/ a cromosome Y)
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I appreciate that you took the time to discuss this. Being that I’m half anthropologist (academically, that is…the other half being audio production), and most of my classes were in gender studies, my world has been mish-mashed more often than not when studying the issues regarding gender.
Thank you for making an effort to be as clear as is possible with such topics. I wish more people and organizations would make such an effort.
~S
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I think your use of chromosomes as an approximation of sex (physiological without/before SRS) is sound. Those whose chromosomal sex does not match their physiological sex are a very small subset of the population, e.g. XY people with androgen insensitivity. That subset should be a statistically insignificant proportion of your sample–probably much smaller than the population who typed non-colors into the description box.
As far as approximating gender, for good or for ill, the vast majority of people have “congruent” (perhaps there is a better term) chromosomes and gender identity. The male-identified XX people and the female-identified XY people should cancel each other out in terms of skewing the “male” vs. “female” results. They might possibly diminish the gendered-ness of the results, but would be unlikely to completely mask the gender-related variation in the results. Clearly, in this case, they did not.
It would be interesting and tricky to devise a survey to try to tease out the influence of chromosomal sex from influences of gender identity, beliefs about gender roles, prenatal and postnatal hormonal influences, etc.
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Surprising nobody has brought up SRY (sex-determining Region of the Y) yet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SRY). The better question might have been to ask whether one is phenotypically male or female at birth due to the impossibility for a phenotypically female person to be completely certain that they are also genotypically female without genetic testing. Though odds are slim, a translocation of the SRY gene over to the X can also cause a Y-less XX male. klinefelter/turner and other such aneuploidy don’t really confuse the issue because it’s still about the expression of the gene which typically appears on the Y, but may malfunction.
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is liked thanks
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Anyone who gets offended by that should be shot
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@mis: You should be shot.
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Dude. Awesome Ford Prefect reference. I ROLLED.
Side note: I love you, and your comic.
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Why not just change the results to read, “Actual color names if you’re a genetic male” and “Actual color names if you’re a genetic female”? Or has that ship sailed?
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You know what’s awesome? Doing data entry for software that requires either “M” or “F” to be entered, judging this almost universally by patients’ first names, and often resorting to guessing based on handwriting style when you come across a Tracy or Kelly or Shannon.
Today, I saw one form that DID have the sex provided. First name was “Brian.” Sex was “F.” I wanted to scream, ’cause I don’t know if that’s a clerical error or a transgender person or just an unconventional spelling of “Brianne” or WHAT. ;-;
Society at large has GOT to start taking sex and gender seriously as complicated or at the very least DIFFERENT concepts. Every time some mouth breather finds out I’m a lesbian and then immediately asks why I “didn’t just stay a guy” it gets just a bit harder to offer a calm explanation instead of beating them over the head with a blunt object.
*deep breath*
You, on the other hand, have done a fantastic job of treating a difficult subject appropriately, and I thank you so much for that. =)
reCAPTCHA: “spossyma major” … That sounds like a constellation… or an organ.
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Why didn’t you ask about the SRY gene? This is the gene that makes fetus turn male and it SOMETIMES can get cross-over to X chromosome, resulting with XX males – according to http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/chromosome/Y they are males without any side-efffects from extra X (as it’s not, in fact, extra).
Just curious, I appreciate all thought you put in that matter.
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Randall, I am shocked and dismayed that you would apologise — and I’m particularly offended by the fact that you claim that it’s *your* fault. It isn’t.
There was *no* problem with interpreting the results in the way you did.
It’s a *survey*. It’s *statistics*. The results are going to contain a certain amount of noise, and by definition any conclusion you draw will be a *generalisation*.
So, of course you need to think about how much the issue of transgenderism affects your results. What proportion of the population of the world is transgender, or more to the point what proportion of the respondees to the survey are transgender? And thus how much will your results by affected by any assumptions you make
I would submit that the ‘error’ introduced is *completely* within the noise. The other perturbing factors in your data, including the lack of calibration of monitors and the boredom level of the respondees, are going to play a *much* higher rôle in affecting the outcome.
Mathematically, and statistically, there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why you should not have analysed the results as you did.
I am not joking about being offended. You should NOT have apologised for that, and should not have encouraged the type of person who would complain about it. These people should not be encouraged.
Please, make a *new* apology to myself and the remaining few sane people in the world, for your contribution to the insane PC culture that is infecting our society.
Seriously, not impressed.
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I don’t have time to wade through 191 posts, but I just wanted to offer warm praise for adequate due diligence about sensitivity. Yes, there is something of a flamewar going on if chromosomes have anything to do with gender. These things happen. There were flamewars lasting FIFTEEN YEARS back in the day that they discovered the testes produce estrogen (in very very minute quantities) and the ovaries produce testosterone (ditto). The scientific community outright refused to accept this data because of their preconceptions. The thing is, people being prone to overdoing things, people freely ignore any damned thing they like if it makes them emotionally uncomfortable. It’s so difficult to tell when ignoring or assuaging that discomfort is called for, too.
But the information you needed was chromosomes. You made clear you were trying to stand above the flamewars and really had a germane scientific reason for wanting to know the respondents’ Y chromosome status. I’m transgendered. I have gotten less and less patient with academic ideologue types trying to outdo each other for the “right” view of “transgender sensitivity protocol”. There isn’t going to be common agreement because the various threads of academic though are so murderously opposed.
This is compounded by the fact that a large portion of transgender folk are also autistic (such as me) (this is not just my armchair speculation, someone in Australia noted that the transgender condition per se doesn’t run in families at all…but _autistic spectra disorders_ PLUS a transgender condition _do_. My family has three of us in an N = 100 or so sample.)(Also both therapists vetted by the government where I live said that they had seen a large portion of their clients for gender issues also have some autistic spectra condition.)
And you will almost never please a group of autistics about anything.
So don’t lose sleep over this, please. You did well. Good on you.
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@david woodhouse
“It’s a *survey*. It’s *statistics*. The results are going to contain a certain amount of noise, and by definition any conclusion you draw will be a *generalisation*.”
It’s not about the results. It’s about being respectful. If you’re offended by people apologizing for being potentially disrespectful, I think that’s your problem not Randall’s or the “insane” people who care about others.
His attempt to be respectful (which I really applaud) had absolutely no impact on you, if for you it was a cut and dry yes/no question. So why do you care? Answer the damn question and move on, and allow for the respect of people who are different than you.
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There is certainly legitimate hard scientific data involved in observing that someone has a Y chromosome, or doesn’t. Beyond that, everything is more or less arbitrary social categorization. Even the difference between a penis and a clitoris is a subjective matter of size at birth.
In other words, it’s fine if you want to designate yourself and certain people as “men” and “women,” but do not pretend that these are in any way natural, default, or all-inclusive categories, or that they are any more biologically essential than, say, religion, or favorite ice cream.
It isn’t even about sensitivity or political correctness. It’s about being able to record an accurate and factual reflection of someone’s chromosomes (which, arguably, is what you’re asking when you ask about their sex) rather than subjective, impossible-to-define social designations like “male” and “female.” Surely scientifically minded people can get on board with using data that reflects an actual physical reality instead of vague, arbitrary cultural categories? (I mean, historically, I know that isn’t usually the case, but TRY, science guys. One of you obviously is.)
Kudos to the folks who carried out the study, not just for having sensitivity but for having SENSE.
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Kudos, Randall, for at least raising the issue and educating yourself enough to discuss it decently and with respect. *much applause* Thank you…
BTW everyone, SRS is a somewhat outdated term. GRS (Genital Reconstruction Surgery) is preferable nowadays, and more accurately describes the process. “Reassignment” is most certainly a bit vague.
@Chris Tucker: your ignorance is showing. Please open a book.
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<–trans xkcd reader here.
Randall, I have been a fan of your comics for quite some time, but now I'm also a fan of you. I think you have handled this fantastically. Kudos for the thoughtfulness about gender, kudos for bringing some awareness and thought to otherwise ignorant blag readers (a few have showed their dumb off on this comment thread), and kudos for being willing to apologize for making a mistake despite good will on your part. You're a good ally and clearly a good person.
@David and @ everyone who thinks transgender is not statiscally significant: You are wrong. Here's data:
[http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TSprevalence.html]
Above is a study estimating the nationwide prevalence (US) of male-to-female (mtf) transsexualism is 1 in 500, or 0.002% of male bodied population. Guess what portion of the population of US women is diagnosed with breast cancer each year? 0.001229%. [http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/breast.html] Mtf transsexuals are twice as common! So, if mtf transsexuals aren't statistically significant, then breast cancer sufferers are even LESS significant, and they don't deserve any time spent on research, treatment, or care. Now that's only talking about one kind of transgender. There are many types of transgender. If you just add in female-to-male (ftm) transsexuals, then trans people are almost 4 times as prevalent than yearly breast cancer cases. And then add in people with a gender other than man or woman, mtfs and ftms who aren't actually transsexual, intersexed people, phenotypic males or females with variant chromosones…. well, breast cancer sufferers are looking pretty "statistically insignificant.""
Congratulations transphobes, you are all asshats.
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Winter:
I don’t think statistically significant means what you think it means.
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I got a comic from my son, have a daughter in a Lesbian relationship, and am expecting my first grandchild in May. First, I smiled large at the comic, was curious about the site so read further, and have just spent 20 minutes browsing blog entries. (this a first for me) I am techo-challenged, and that is only the tip of the ice-burg. HOWEVER, at 63, I am optimistic after reading this exchange. “caring” in this time, in this world, at this moment is a risk. And I was taken with the extensive thought that went into the gender discussion. Language is so limiting, intention so easily misunderstood, and offense sooooo easily taken. I appreciated the Ford Perfect comment, because frankly, life is overwhelming, and one cannot avoid stepping on, over or through something that is fragile or sensitive in someone’s eye. Congratulations on your efforts to awaken us, with your sense of humor and your world view.
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If nothing else, Randall’s courtesy has warmed the hearts of a number of transpeople and trans-friendly people, and has given a 63-year-old hope for the youth of today. I think this counts as MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.
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