Oddly enough, buddhuu, you're wrong on both counts. I'm a woman (a strong feminist too) and a biochemist with extensive research experience in my chosen field of work and author of a Master's thesis on a Foucaultian approach to ideological interpretations of sexuality.

Crow Sister, I found this site because I was looking for the lyrics to 'The Man Who Talks Trash Every Day', not some bozo with a sex-change fixation.

All I was trying to do, by responding to this thread, was to point out a few commonly made misinterpretations.

I'll accept that in the very rare cases where the sexual characteristics of a neonate are atypical or ambiguous that decisions are made (usually by parents) to divert androgyny into one of the two biologically defined sexes. However, there are others, such as Organisation Intersex International, who take a laudably alternative approach.

When I wrote this - 'Whatever incisions or excisions are made to assist someone to change their gender identity, the chromosonal determinants that distinguish women from men remain fully in place and long may that remain the case.' - it was probably the last few words that provoked a knee-jerk reaction. I was making the point that I am firmly opposed to all forms of chromosomal manipulation, not attempting to sanction an eternal division of the sexes. I was also simply avowing that bodily alterations do not change a person's inherent sexual characteristics.

As far as I'm concerned gender identity is not essentially a function of karyotypes or ploidy, but largely formed by social development. In other words, I'm fully on the nurture side of the debate and see sexuality as a sliding scale from complete macho (think Bruce Willis with a hangover) to Dickens' stereotypical Dora Spenlow. I'd like to think we make our own choices within that spectrum, but too many of us, as this debate indicates, are hidebound by our social development.

So, have I seen a folk singer who has chosen a gender role different to her/his biologically defined (or confused) physical characteristics? I don't know and, fundamentally, I don't care.