hey there lgbtqia+ fam allies and haters
I'm tres this is you know dose of tres
and I've been thinking I know that pride
month is officially over and all I hope
you had a great pride but people should
be loud and proud of their openness and
acceptance all year so even though I'm a
bit late to the pride party with this
paper I've been pondering this for a pit
a bit transgender animals let's talk
about it really quick before we get into
it click the subscribe and the bell
because YouTube has decided that
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bell for that true story definitely do
it before we get into trans animals
though I want to mention a few things
one I have a bachelor's in science in
psychology which I got with departmental
honors and two while getting that degree
I had a practicum and chose sexual
health care education I'm not an expert
but I do have some experience
researching and thinking about why we
humans do the things we do apart from my
personal feelings on the matter so let's
just get that out of the way see I think
we should start this conversation by
defining some terms sex and gender
according to merriam-webster's
dictionary sex is the sum of the
structural functional and sometimes
behavioral characteristics of organisms
that distinguish males from females ie
sex is a physical thing it's assigned to
you at Birth by a doctor who looks at
your genitalia and documents your sex
usually based on that alone it can also
be indicated by chromosomes are genetic
especially in IVF situations but
importantly biology is messy and those
halves don't always hold just because
you have those things doesn't mean you
feel that way but we're not going to
talk about that too much in this video
now same dictionary gender it's an
adjective
behavioral cultural or psychological
traits typically associated with one sex
I eat gender is a social thing we in the
United States tend to use the term
interchangeably gender and sex sex and
gender but they're not the same thing I
think we use gender to describe sex
because people don't like using the word
sex in polite conversation they think
it's dirty or vulgar which I totally get
I grew up in the Midwest too but again
they're not the same thing sexist
physical gender is socio behavioral so
those of you used to listen to my
podcast you might know that I love adam
ology and the word sex comes from the
middle english and lat
and has always meant the categorization
of male or female but genders etymology
actually comes from describing language
gendered language is a common occurrence
in Romance languages so people know who
or what you're describing in Spanish for
example you would say l or a a he or she
but you'd also say professed sword or
profess surah genders definitions since
middle English has been how we talk
about sex gender didn't mean sex but it
did describe it which means like all
language it has changed evolved and
updated to match society's needs so in
your head I hope you have now taken sex
and gender and separated them physical
socio behavioral sidebar gender and
Romance languages is also fascinating
and I highly encourage you to read up on
it because the beach in Spanish for
example is la playa which is feminine
for some reason and Teatro or Theatre is
masculine for some reason but why I
don't know maybe you do look it up let
me know anyway in sidebar the American
Psychological Association not exactly a
bastion of progressiveness radical
thinking defines transgender as quote an
umbrella term for persons whose gender
identity gender expression or behavior
does not conform to that typically
associated with the sex to which they
were assigned at Birth transgender is a
term meaning the gender of a person is
different from their sex assignment at
birth if you take one thing from this
video it is that sex and gender are
different when we are talking about sex
we are commonly talking biology but when
we're talking about gender or say
transgender we're commonly talking about
psychology society and self I've said
this three times I really don't want to
say it again so transgender Animus
animals don't often sit back and think
about their gender in that way it just
happens to them snakes lizards beetles
fish birds and some mammals all have
documented cases where a male or female
changes what they call their gender
expression which reminds me we should
probably find those terms as well gender
identity and expression gender identity
is what some psychologists would call
covert behavior behavior cannot directly
observe it's inside the brain because
gender describes how someone feels not
their physical sex they aren't tied
together so this can mean some people
have a physical sex that doesn't match
their gender identity gender expression
on the other hand is a way for people to
overtly express this
behavior they may change their clothing
their hair or their physical appearance
they might even get surgery to help
their overt expression aligned with
their covert identity but not always
everyone is different we don't know if
animals have any gender identity but
they definitely have gender expression
and sometimes that expression has
transitioned from birth sex to another
gender because we're not perfectly tied
together one famous example is this lion
we all know that lions look like this
thanks to Disney's recent documentary
lion king males grow Mane's while
females remain sleek they drink water
all seductively what is happening memmer
arey lives in Botswana and though this
lion has a Mane she ain't a lion she's a
lioness with the gender expression of a
male lion and it's pretty intense
she's roaring she's mounting other
lionesses yeah a lion's mane is normally
used to attract females like homeless
chic for some humans right now so this
gender expression doesn't actually match
sex it's rare and interesting in lion
behavior but not singular it does happen
why no one actually knows but they think
it has to do with an excess of
testosterone in her body researchers
don't have a lot of information about
gender bending Lions what they do know
is they behave a bit like lionesses and
a bit like lions mating and hunting like
females but roaring and scent-marking
like males this lion was seen killing
the Cubs of a neighboring pride even
after their neighbors stole a kill cub
killing is definitely not a normal
female behavior more a male behavior but
not in this case clownfish are a common
aquatic example of transgender animals
but they don't just change expression
they also are able to spawn and carry
offspring because they change sex all
the little knee moans are actually male
presenting hermaphrodites when the
female of a school dies the dominant
male binge eats and becomes a female of
the group literally she knows the
pronoun change there she has
transitioned and chooses a partner from
the school who becomes them the dominant
male and they go back to one to do the
whole thing again we would call that a
transition where a gender expression
would change from male to female or
female to male wrasses also follow this
pattern but instead of transitioning
from M to F they go female to male f2m
when the new male wrasse takes over as
the leader of the school of females then
they're the big boss another example is
the Marsh Harrier a euro African bird of
prey this bad boy eats frogs and small
mammals and
birds it's badass it's summers in the UK
and winters in Africa class males are
brown ginger and gray with black
wingtips but not always and in fact 40%
of males looking act like the chocolate
brown Yellow crowned females of the
species their gender expression is
different experts think some of the
males look female because the species
are highly territorial in the male's
that look female can breed without
fighting off the other males gender
expression for the win spotted hyenas
are one of the most amazing animals in
the gender expression community because
they have pseudo penises
yeah the females have the pseudo penis
and it looks so convincing just looking
at a spotted hyena cannot tell you their
sex female hyenas can get erections and
copulate in urinate they can even birth
through the pseudo penis the pseudo
penis ain't a dick though it's a
clitoris see even in humans the clitoris
and penis come from the same fetal
tissue it's called a homologous organ
but in this case it's pretty extreme the
swollen clitoris looks a lot like a
penis in the labia or folds the vulva
form what look like testes it's an
extraordinary example of transitioned
gender expression in the animal kingdom
there are a lot of animals that don't
have sex and gender in full alignment a
hundred percent of the time and others
that transition from one gender
expression or actual sex to another
sometimes it's due to an environmental
change like the loss of a dominant mate
which triggers hormonal changes and
other times it's predetermined by
evolution but it exists and it's real
and it's natural but we humans we aren't
fish we aren't Birds we aren't even
lions we're primates we're more advanced
some would say are we subject to these
same laws of nature is the male-female
and primates less zero one or more there
are advanced primate examples of socio
behavioral unmatching of sex and gender
bonobos and chimps share a lot of their
DNA with us so they looked into their
gender expression in the wild chimps and
bonobos are very different
chimp males are aggressive territorial
political leaders of their groups while
females are focused on nurturing
offspring and social relationships with
bonobos groups the females are in the
lead and the members are less violent
more polygamous across the board they
would share food and sex rather than
fight and the two species are different
but they are 99.6% genetically identical
researchers say this is a pretty strong
example of differing gender expression
in primates but they took it a bit
further by studying their social
grooming behavior in zoos in the wild
social grooming is more sex determinant
chimps are more male male social
grooming oriented for example but
Discover Magazine wrote about research
in this area quote zoo living apes --is
grooming seemed to be more individuals
history and personality related rather
than sex related neither species showed
these sex typical grooming patterns
displayed by their wild counterparts
which is solid evidence that certain sex
roles are at least partially
environmentally determined in these
species to break that down they're
essentially saying they expressed their
gender differently it's not a one-to-one
but fascinating story nonetheless and
shows that even animals have complex
relationships with their own identities
expressions and sexualities gender
expression is an intricate set of social
and biological cues individual to each
animal in person and science seems to
show it is not a choice but biological
and environmental for example identical
twins are more likely than fraternal
twins to be transgender together and MRI
scans of people who say their gender
identity doesn't match their sex show
the brain more closely resembles their
identified sex than the one that they
were assigned at birth and this starts
very young quick reminder by the way sex
is assigned because no one checks your
chromosomes and DNA when you're born
doctors look at external genitalia and
decide sex biology is complicated and
that is not a 100% successful strategy
I've put together this video because for
some reason people tend to give animals
some kind of deference that we don't
give to humans when an animal does
something we call it natural when a
human does it it's an agenda we tend to
forget that humans are animals we are
part of the animal kingdom and therefore
aren't the black and white 0 & 1
sexuality and communication that some
people wish we could be biology is
almost never binary and is almost always
a continuum or spectrum of beautiful
messy evolution much of which we don't
entirely understand in 2014 1 in 6
people knew a fellow human who is openly
transgender by 2016 it was 1 in 3 and
that's huge but it's not like there are
more transgender people now it's just
that more people are stepping into the
light this is not unlike the openness
movements of the 90s in the arts with
the lesbian gay and sometimes bisexual
communities estimates of transgender
individuals in the u.s. population is
something like 0.3% we're about a
million people the
American high school has 752 people so
that means there are two or three people
in every school that see the T and LGBT
and feel something in 2019 the United
Nations World Health Organization
finally accepted a revised
classification of diseases which removed
gender identity disorder from its list
of mental illnesses though interesting
sidebar
it added gaming disorder to the list
they will have to make a video about
them lgbtqia+ is an acronym to describe
the complicated relationship humanity
has with our own gender expression each
letter encapsulate s' the millions of
experiences that Americans and many more
millions around the world have and
that's normal animals have this humans
have this everyone has this and biology
and evolution is amazing thanks for
watching make sure you subscribe let me
know what you thought of the video in
the comments and I am tres I'll see you
in the future