Oh look, it's me! I found out a few years ago that I have De La Chapelle syndrome. I'm actually a trans woman though and not a guy, so I consider it a bonus rather than a downside since it made me have very little testosterone growing up.
Gender being a social construct makes defining it very wonky. This question the right is always asking to ''define what a woman is'' is really easy to fuck up. Is it chromozones? There is FAR more than two chromosomal makeups, in advanced lab classes that learn to test for chromosomal makeup, students are forbidden to test themselves, any classmate, and any family, because it's almost certain that one of those people will not be XX or XY, it's not that uncommon. So chromosomal sexing necessitates more than one gender, or rather fluid gender identity. It's it the sex organs? Oh no, you won't like this one, is it functioning sex organs or just any? What do we do with intersex people? They can't fit into one category by definition, then there's men who have kids, who think of themselves as men, who find out they have a uterus! And its mentrating! What to do what to do. There's a lot of men with half testicle half ovary sex organs, are they men? Well not if we go by sex organs now you need a bigger section of category because sex organs don't fit into two columns, it's far more complicated. So what do we do! general anatomy? Modern human biologists have a lot of data saying there's such a thing as a male typical brain, and a female typical brain, how fun! Maybe that will work, sure, but now you have to accept there literally are women trapped in male bodies and vis versa. So again, you need to be fluid with your gender definitions.
Every single metric biological data can provide all point to the same truth, there are not two simple columns where humans can be neatly placed that won't cause a lot of people to be miserable, misunderstood, or maligned for not fitting either concept.
Basic biology is clear. We are a VERY complicated species.
So let's just look at anthropology. Did any human civilizations NOT have two genders? Yeah A LOT of them. And even today we have examples. Anciently, Hebrews had 9 genders I think? Jesus mentions 5 genders. He dosen't seem to have any problem with them existing either. Well.. it looks like we're not the first people to find out that binary gender isn't the only option.
Last time I looked there wasn't anything particularly associated with being queer, but the sample set of people who both have this and know that they do is pretty small so who knows! Could be, and we could just be missing the data. Or they could both be correlated with some other factor
I found out because I was doing genetic work to test for Ehlers Danlos and I'd gotten my entire genome sequenced, so I figured I'd look for other stuff as well. I've suspected for a few years now that I've got some sort of intersex condition for a while because of very low testosterone and a weirdly fast transition, but finally got the confirmation earlier this week and wow my genetics are kinda a mess. Tbh I'm amazed that my code actually compiled XD
Yeah, as I commented elsewhere, I'm damn impressed my code managed to compile and run. I guess life has a pretty fault-tolerant compiler at times, or maybe I was just super lucky to not have the errors be in spots that'd completely screw me over.
That would be the laryngeal nerve. It’s been with us vertebrates for a long time.
I take your, “for zero reason,” to indicate that it’s silly that it’s so long in a giraffe. And it is, because it connects the larynx and the brain, two bits that aren’t very far apart. You’d never design it that way from scratch.
But the laryngeal nerve’s length has a reason: it loops around the heart and it developed in our fish-like ancestors. At that time, it wasn’t silly for the nerve to wrap around the heart, because fish don’t have necks and thus the nerve was about the same length whether it wrapped around the heart or not. As necks developed, evolution found it easier to lengthen the nerve than to reroute it. So here we and giraffes both exist, having much longer laryngeal nerves than you’d engineer if you were making us from scratch.
Also interesting in that regard Androgen insensitivity syndrome: Despite different root causes, it is something of the opposite of Chapelle syndrome. People who possess XY chromosomes, but possess female genitalia.
I really feel for the inevitable handful of trans men with Androgen Insensitivity syndrome. Imagine how bad it'd be if you were born with the wrong body, and couldn't change it through hormones - it'd be an actual nightmare.
