Cont: Trans Women are not Women II: The Bath Of Khan

[d4m10n]

Aye a few will not, though isn't it correct that they are still coded Wolffian or Mullerian regardless, with a rare variance which had its fuller range of the given functionality halted?

I think that is correct, but I'm no developmental biologist. My point was merely that to the extent that sex is an adaptation, it has a specific adaptive function. In primates, that function requires one being who provides an ovum and womb and another who donates sperm. That dichotomy (which you can theoretically trace back throughout your entire line of mammalian ancestry) is about as binary as binary ever gets.

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[d4m10n]

Most of the time we spend aroused is not while those genitals are in view.

Presumably you've not yet heard the gospel.

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[Emily's Cat]

As the article says, both sex and gender are a lot more complicated than is generally believed, and are both a spectrum.

Colored light is also a spectrum. But red and blue are fairly distinct. IIRC, that's part of the heap fallacy? Not really sure. Also not claiming that's what you did, just making note.

 

[caveman1917]

No, but my point that you shouldn't be shocked that what is an academic discussion for you may be intensely personal for another.

If you come on a skeptics forum to make a bunch of claims then you shouldn't be surprised that people will criticize them and pick them apart. Sure, it's understandable that for some individuals such criticism will be too intensely personal, but then don't go specifically on a skeptics forum to make them - that's just stupid.

People that have been targets of intense bigotry for decades may not be the most receptive to a "facts and logic" approach to their self-identity.

Their loss. The masses have been the target of intense oppression by a small ruling elite for millennia, yet a clear analytic "facts and logic" approach - including criticism of the interplay between material oppression and identity, and a criticism of identity politics - is the only hope in hell they have for ever overcoming it.

 

[caveman1917]

I think that is correct, but I'm no developmental biologist. My point was merely that to the extent that sex is an adaptation, it has a specific adaptive function. In primates, that function requires one being who provides an ovum and womb and another who donates sperm. That dichotomy (which you can theoretically trace back throughout your entire line of mammalian ancestry) is about as binary as binary ever gets.

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It's also a stable equilibrium, deviation by one individual will result in infertility and stop propagation of the deviation.

 

[tyr_13]

Nobody is claiming that trans people are biologically identical to their gender. That's a stupid straw man, and a moment's thought would reveal it - in the context of this particular discussion alone. If people were insisting that trans people were biologically identical to their gender, then how could the argument be made that trans men can menstuate?

But even leaving aside the whole trans vs TERF issue, Rowling's statement was stupid and wrong anyway. The article in question was about menstruation. Therefore "people who menstruate" is a better term than "women". Do you kow why? Again, just take a moment to think about it. You yourself referred to schools. Why schools? Because school pupils menstruate. An ex-girlfriend of mine started menstruating when she was 9. Did that make her a woman? Are you making the argument that the schoolgirls you referred to are women?

So, even if we were to accept the argument that trans people are only their biological sex, it's still not only women who menstruate.

There's a problem in Rowling's statement from the other direction as well. The implication that "people who menstruate" is synonymous with "women" is implies that people who don't menstruate are not women. So anybody who's gone through the menopause is no longer a woman. A relative of mine had a hysterectomy in her 20s. Did she cease being a woman then?

If you address an article to "women", and then exclude a large number of women, then you'd be better off using a term that better describes who the article is aimed at/talking about. Like "people who menstruate". Because that's what the article was about - menstruation, rather than gender or biological sex.

Rowling was being stupid and, judging by her history of being a TERF, she was also being bigoted.

Don't fall into the trap of reflexively agreeing with something stupid that someone has said just because it aligns with your prejudices. Apply some thought first. In this case it really shouldn't take much to see the obvious flaws in Rowling's tweet.

Also, FWIW, science indicates that sex isn't binary, and that there are biological differences between transgender and cisgender people

If, you know, anybody is concerned with having their opinions informed by the facts rather than their prejudices.

It's pretty telling that these two posts that are factually correct and links to an article that rigorously cites its scientific sources is so vapidly handwaved, called 'opinion', and then turned into a discussion of 'yeah, but who wants to **** them?'

Bad showing on this board. Ignore the experts, and just assert plainly false things.

 

[d4m10n]

Ignore the experts, and just assert plainly false things.

This should be a super easy challenge to meet, if indeed you've got the experts on your side. Name two distinct "biological differences between transgender and cisgender people" if you can, bearing in mind that "transwomen are women" prior to any medical interventions such as HRT.

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[caveman1917]

It's pretty telling that these two posts that are factually correct and links to an article that rigorously cites its scientific sources is so vapidly handwaved, called 'opinion', and then turned into a discussion of 'yeah, but who wants to **** them?'

From the opinion piece:

The truth is, your biological sex isn’t carved in stone, but a living system with the potential for change.

Why? Because biological sex is far more complicated than XX or XY (or XXY, or just X).

So their argument is that sex is a "living system with the potential for change" because it's "far more complicated than XX or XY."

Looking up the definition of sex in biology to see if it says 'a living system with the potential for change' it does not say that, it defines the sex of an individual by the type of gametes it produces.

Bad showing on this board. Ignore the experts, and just assert plainly false things.

Yes exactly.

 

[tyr_13]

This should be a super easy challenge to meet, if indeed you've got the experts on your side. Name two distinct "biological differences between transgender and cisgender people" if you can, bearing in mind that "transwomen are women" prior to any medical interventions such as HRT.

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Brain volume, regional grey matter volume, right hemisphere and cortical structures, reactions to certain signaling hormones.

Which I've said before. Which I've linked to before. Which are cited in the article I just said cited its sources. Things you've, specifically, been told before.

Like I said, bad showing on this board for this topic.

 

[caveman1917]

Like I said, bad showing on this board for this topic.

True, this is not the first time on this board someone linked to some student's badly argued opinion piece to support a claim ("sex is not binary") which goes directly against the established biological literature, and then simply ignores the debunking - unless you'd like to actually show me these "spectra" of gamete types being produced?

 

[caveman1917]

Oh and if we're doing "science by opinion piece" anyway, have an opposing opinion piece by another group of experts as well. Heck, some of these even actually have a PhD.

 

[Belz...]

It's pretty telling that these two posts that are factually correct and links to an article that rigorously cites its scientific sources is so vapidly handwaved, called 'opinion', and then turned into a discussion of 'yeah, but who wants to **** them?'

What's telling is that you'd characterise the responses as such. I've made a detailed response that in no way was just "it's an opinion", and the latter is just an invention by you.

Why lie when it's so easy to verify your claim?

 

[Roboramma]

https://quillette.com/2020/06/07/jk-rowling-is-right-sex-is-real-and-it-is-not-a-spectrum/

Here's a decent article (by a biologist) explaining that sex is not a spectrum.

Here's another, co-authored by the same author, though it's behind a paywall:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089

 

[TurkeysGhost]

https://quillette.com/2020/06/07/jk-rowling-is-right-sex-is-real-and-it-is-not-a-spectrum/

Here's a decent article (by a biologist) explaining that sex is not a spectrum.

Here's another, co-authored by the same author, though it's behind a paywall:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089

Lol quillette. Every subscription comes with a free pair of skull calipers.

 

[Roboramma]

I'm not a huge fan of quillette, but I don't think it's as bad as that. Anyway, I read the article and found it well argued.

There's a fallacy called argumentum ad hominem, which seems to apply here. Either the arguments expressed are valid or they aren't. The fact that the magazine has a different ideology from yours doesn't actually impact on that.

I also posted a link to another article in the Wall Street Journal, by the way.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'm willing to bet that the "sex is a spectrum" crowd can't actually define the word "spectrum", and then use it to make a useful statement about sex.

Anyone care to take a shot? Give a definition of "spectrum", and then show how it applies to sex.

 

[Earthborn]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_(disambiguation)

A spectrum is a condition or value that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary infinitely within a continuum.

Note that this definition does not specify how values are distributed. Something can be a spectrum even when some values are far more likely than others. The spectrum between biological male and biological female has its most likely values near its extreme ends and its least likely in the middle. But it is still possible to recognise that some individuals are more or less biologically male or female compared to others.

 

[d4m10n]

Brain volume, regional grey matter volume, right hemisphere and cortical structures, reactions to certain signaling hormones.

Okay, I definitely missed the study about differences in brain volume between ciswomen and transwomen. Do you have a link to that?

ETA: Do you mean this paper? It seems to run contrary to your claims here:

Before treatment, similar volumes to natal sex are found in adults (Hahn et al., 2014; Rametti et al., 2011b; Savic & Arver, 2011) and adolescents (Hoekzema et al., 2015) with gender incongruence.

ETA2: From the same paper...

A study that included only gynephilic MtF did not find any indications for atypical sexual differentiation in this group (Savic & Arver, 2011)

Seems to me that the brain differences found in that paper apply to a subset of the folks of whom you were claiming measurable differences exist. It also seems to me that we have to dig down to the details here instead of going off the oversimplified claims of science bloggers.

 

[Ziggurat]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_(disambiguation)
Note that this definition does not specify how values are distributed. Something can be a spectrum even when some values are far more likely than others. The spectrum between biological male and biological female has its most likely values near its extreme ends and its least likely in the middle. But it is still possible to recognise that some individuals are more or less biologically male or female compared to others.

On a cellular level, sex in humans is binary. It's genetic. Yes, I know it's not actually X vs Y, but it is still a binary switch (well, two of them actually, but both have to be thrown one way to make male). Various environmental factors can affect the expression of genetic traits, but the genes themselves are still binary, and there's no getting around that.

The thing that really complicates the binary genetics is something almost nobody talks about: chimerism. We know that there are human chimeras. Most of them don't know they are chimeras. There's been very little done to examine what would happen in the case of mixed-sex human chimeras. Even though that's a fascinating avenue for research, it's basically off limits. Conservatives don't have much pull in universities and it's not a priority for them anyways, and liberals shy away from anything with even a whiff of biological determinism. But it's an avenue with a lot of potential for increased understanding.

 

[theprestige]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_(disambiguation)
Note that this definition does not specify how values are distributed. Something can be a spectrum even when some values are far more likely than others. The spectrum between biological male and biological female has its most likely values near its extreme ends and its least likely in the middle. But it is still possible to recognise that some individuals are more or less biologically male or female compared to others.

Can you give an example of a genetic value on the spectrum between XX and XY?

Genetically - and therefore, biologically - it's a binary switch. You get one expression path or the other. What varies is the degree to which your body travels down whichever path you're born with, and the degree to which your mental self-image identifies with that path of expression.