Cont: Trans Women are not Women 3

[Meadmaker]

I don't think anyone in this thread has expressed any of the caricatured comments that you've presented here.

To be fair, I agreed with one of them, and agreed it was self evident.

However, you are absolutely correct that it was a caricature. I wasn't in the mood to try and fix it so that it was something real. I didn't mean to agree with the caricature, but i think there is truth underlying the caricature.

 

[Giordano]

It's very difficult indeed to tell the sex of many mammals without quite close inspection of the genitals. That doesn't mean they aren't one or the other. Come to that, while many birds are extremely sexually dimorphic, many others require a five-year training course to tell them apart. They're still either male or female, one or the other.

Many animals, such as certain fish, can change genders during their lifetimes. Are they over their life times male? Or female? So they breed as one type one moment and a different one another moment. Does it matter that much? Except if you want to breed with them.

 

[Ziggurat]

Many animals, such as certain fish, can change genders during their lifetimes.

No. They change their sex. They have no gender, that's a human social construct.

And mammals cannot do that, so I'm not sure what relevance this has to the current discussion.

 

[Rolfe]

Many animals, such as certain fish, can change genders during their lifetimes. Are they over their life times male? Or female? So they breed as one type one moment and a different one another moment. Does it matter that much? Except if you want to breed with them.

Fish don't have gender, they have sex.

Do read this.

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1133120326844506112

However, none of that happens in mammalian species. Man is a mammal, in case you hadn't noticed. (I follow one CAIS woman on Twitter who has "not a clownfish" in her bio.)

This too. https://sci-hub.tw/downloads-ii/2020-05-10/0d/10.1007@s12129-020-09877-8.pdf

 

[Mycroft]

You have no more right to be protected from a man then I do.

Again I'm sick of this insulting demarcation.

"Not wanting a gay man in my locker room because he might rape me" is homophobic.

"Not wanting transgender people because they might sneak into a shared private space as the other gender and molest/rape me" is transphobic. <snip>

I agree with you.

I'm reminded of an anti-immigrant argument I've seen around.

Allowing immigration increases crime because some of the immigrants will commit crimes.

It doesn't matter if immigrants as a whole commit less crimes per capita than the native population because (cherry pick several reports of immigrants committing crimes) these particular crimes would not have happened if the immigrants had been kept out.

To me any argument that says trans-women should be kept out of women's spaces because the cis-women there might be fearful of them because (here is an example of when a trans-woman did something bad to a cis-woman) is the same as the anti-immigration argument.

The idea that if some members of a group do bad things then we must be wary of all members of that group doing the same bad thing is inherently discriminatory. It's literally the pre-judging in prejudiced.

 

[d4m10n]

It doesn't matter if immigrants as a whole commit less crimes per capita than the native population because (cherry pick several reports of immigrants committing crimes) these particular crimes would not have happened if the immigrants had been kept out.

Are "immigrants" supposed to be the analogue to "people born with Y chromosomes" in this analogy? If so, I think I've found the problem.

 

[Mycroft]

However, none of that happens in mammalian species. Man is a mammal, in case you hadn't noticed. (I follow one CAIS woman on Twitter who has "not a clownfish" in her bio.)

This too. https://sci-hub.tw/downloads-ii/2020-05-10/0d/10.1007@s12129-020-09877-8.pdf

Not so cut & dry.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sses-grow-a-mane-and-start-acting-like-males/

 

[Mycroft]

Are "immigrants" supposed to be the analogue to "people born with Y chromosomes" in this analogy? If so, I think I've found the problem.

They are an analogue to trans-women.

There are cis-women born with Y chromosomes.

https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/swyer-syndrome

 

[Giordano]

"Because you have a smaller penis, you're closer to the 'woman' end of the spectrum than someone with a larger penis. You're 100% XY and 0% XX, but it's still a continuum because reasons."

"Also, canine-feline is a spectrum. A maine coon is actually more of a dog than a chihuahua."

"And don't forget that the Tu-95 is more of a jet airplane than the ERJ 140."

Turns out that size does matter after all. Take that, Yoda!

(And take that, less-endowed men everywhere. Having a small penis really does make you less of a man.)

Ah, you caught my point, if only greatly misunderstanding it once it was in your catcher’s mitt. My very point is genitalia do not determine if someone is male or female. There are some XYs with penises shorter than some XXs clitori. In fact these organs are derived during development from the same fetal tissue; they can go either way. Same is true of scrotums and labia. And they typically don’t go to two extreme endpoints but end up somewherein-between. So size doesn’t matter: it doesn’t make you male or female. A male with a small penis is not more of a female or less of a male. So gender must be defined by something else, right?

OK, it must be Xs and Ys, right? Yet not everyone gets XX or XY. Some get different mixes. It is not 100% as discussed upthread. And once one has a particular set thAtperson can still develop into a male or into a female.

So gender must be defined by something else, right? I vote that the most important thing is what someone believes themselves to be because that ultimately is how we all think about our own gender. I thought of myself as male long before I knew my karyotype. I don’t frequently check my pants to confirm my thinking. Great if one’s thinking matches ones genitals and ones karyotype, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Oh, Maine coon cats are nothing like dogs - they are cats by all criteria. There is no extant biological spectrum where they gradual become dogs. You are talking about totally separate species here. But if you want to go on with this insulting comparison please provide an example of a corn cat claiming that they see themselves as a dog and we can then discuss trans-species-ism. Or you can.

 

[Mycroft]

I object to the term trans-girl. It has a lot more baggage than "transwoman" and carries overtones of the person actually being a girl when the whole point is that he is not. Effeminate youth is more like it.

Trans-girl sounds like a superhero, with the apparent super-power to compete and dominate in women's sports.

 

[d4m10n]

I recently came across these helpful definitions in my social feed which are supposed to help minimize or prevent microaggressions:





More here. (Cannot find the full collection on Instagram, oddly enough.)

Anyhow, I was wondering what definition of "man" fits both "trans man" and "cis man" as they are stipulatively defined here.

In other words, if "cis man" is a man assigned male at birth, and "trans man" is a man assigned female at birth, what underlying qualities (if any) make them both a man? What should the definition of "man" be in the lexicon of social justice?

(Choosing "man" since at least I've some sense of what that is like in terms of lived experience. Switch the question to "woman" if you prefer.)

 

[Rolfe]

Not so cut & dry.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sses-grow-a-mane-and-start-acting-like-males/

And? They're still lionesses.

 

[Rolfe]

They are an analogue to trans-women.

There are cis-women born with Y chromosomes.

https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/swyer-syndrome

Also CAIS. They're still women. We've been over this before. Functional SRY gene and functional androgen receptors, male. Lack either of these, female. Swyer syndrome lacks a functional SRY gene and CAIS lacks androgen receptors.

Disorders of sexual deveopment, sometimes referred to as intersex conditions, are sex-specific genetic or developmental disorders of people who are still, all of them, either male or female. And quite a lot of them are getting very vocal about having their medical problems weaponised by the trans lobby and being co-opted into an alphabet soup they want nothing to do with.

For most people with a DSD it's particularly important to them to know and have others understand that they are indeed men and women, not some strange half-way house. Some of them even put things like "not a clownfish" in their twitter bios.

 

[Meadmaker]

Ah, you caught my point, if only greatly misunderstanding it once it was in your catcher’s mitt. My very point is genitalia do not determine if someone is male or female. There are some XYs with penises shorter than some XXs clitori. In fact these organs are derived during development from the same fetal tissue; they can go either way. Same is true of scrotums and labia. And they typically don’t go to two extreme endpoints but end up somewherein-between. So size doesn’t matter: it doesn’t make you male or female. A male with a small penis is not more of a female or less of a male. So gender must be defined by something else, right?

OK, it must be Xs and Ys, right? Yet not everyone gets XX or XY. Some get different mixes. It is not 100% as discussed upthread. And once one has a particular set thAtperson can still develop into a male or into a female.

So gender must be defined by something else, right? I vote that the most important thing is what someone believes themselves to be because that ultimately is how we all think about our own gender. I thought of myself as male long before I knew my karyotype. I don’t frequently check my pants to confirm my thinking. Great if one’s thinking matches ones genitals and ones karyotype, but sometimes it doesn’t.

Oh, Maine coon cats are nothing like dogs - they are cats by all criteria. There is no extant biological spectrum where they gradual become dogs. You are talking about totally separate species here. But if you want to go on with this insulting comparison please provide an example of a corn cat claiming that they see themselves as a dog and we can then discuss trans-species-ism. Or you can.

I think this argument confuses necessary and sufficient conditions. There are ordinary, common, karyotypes, and those often go with certain configurations of genitalia, but there are exceptions. So, I think your conclusion is that "gender must be defined by something else, right?" As if somehow the existence of the exceptions make karyotypes and genitals irrelevant to the classification.

I have said it in the past, but I'll repeat. If person A and person B are capable of engaging in sexual intercourse with the result that person B becomes pregnant, then person A is a male and person B is a female. There are no exceptions. It is a sufficient condition for determining sex.

From there, you can pretty much work out almost everyone else. There are a few exceptions, but not many.

Of course, that is talking about the male or female sex. If, instead, you want to talk about a male or female gender, it seems to me that it could mean whatever you want it to mean. It used to mean "sex", but now we're working on finding a new definitions.

 

[Rolfe]

Actually there aren't really any exceptions now that they've got good at looking carefully at babies with apparently ambiguous genitalia instead of saying "let's just bring it up as a girl."

 

[caveman1917]

I am willing to believe that “not willing to accept it” is different from “debunked.”

No it's been debunked alright, some people certainly seem unwilling to accept that though.

Humans do produce two types of gametes. Big deal; that does not make sexual development binary. It’s not that simple.

Yes it is, the type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex, nothing more and nothing less.

But more so how can one look at the range of phenotypes produced even by XY and XX humans and say sex is binary?

That's easy, by understanding that sex is defined as 'the type of gamete produced' and not as "the range of phenotypes produced" and simply ignoring your irrelevant appeals to "phenotypes" and what-not.

Please answer the following questions:

1) Do you know what a definition is?

2) Do you know what the difference is between a variable (say height or phenotype) correlated with a property (say species or sex) and the definition of said property (say gamete type produced or ability of interbreeding with other organisms of said species).

3) If the answer to 2 is no, as it appears to be, are you also saying that species is a spectrum because the distribution of heights (a phenotype variable correlated with, but not defining, species) of cats and dogs overlap?

 

[caveman1917]

Not so cut & dry.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...sses-grow-a-mane-and-start-acting-like-males/

Are you claiming lions change sex? Fascinating.

 

[caveman1917]

No. They change their sex. They have no gender, that's a human social construct.

And mammals cannot do that, so I'm not sure what relevance this has to the current discussion.

As well as it supporting sex being binary rather than refuting it, since the fish are said to switch between male and female (2 sexes) and not some continuum of them.

 

[Mycroft]

I think this argument confuses necessary and sufficient conditions. There are ordinary, common, karyotypes, and those often go with certain configurations of genitalia, but there are exceptions. So, I think your conclusion is that "gender must be defined by something else, right?" As if somehow the existence of the exceptions make karyotypes and genitals irrelevant to the classification.

I have said it in the past, but I'll repeat. If person A and person B are capable of engaging in sexual intercourse with the result that person B becomes pregnant, then person A is a male and person B is a female. There are no exceptions. It is a sufficient condition for determining sex.

From there, you can pretty much work out almost everyone else. There are a few exceptions, but not many.

Of course, that is talking about the male or female sex. If, instead, you want to talk about a male or female gender, it seems to me that it could mean whatever you want it to mean. It used to mean "sex", but now we're working on finding a new definitions.

You realize this whole conversation is about people who are the exception, right? So dismissing the exceptions makes no sense.

 

[Giordano]

No it's been debunked alright, some people certainly seem unwilling to accept that though.



Yes it is, the type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex, nothing more and nothing less.



That's easy, by understanding that sex is defined as 'the type of gamete produced' and not as "the range of phenotypes produced" and simply ignoring your irrelevant appeals to "phenotypes" and what-not.

Please answer the following questions:

1) Do you know what a definition is?

2) Do you know what the difference is between a variable (say height or phenotype) correlated with a property (say species or sex) and the definition of said property (say gamete type produced or ability of interbreeding with other organisms of said species).

3) If the answer to 2 is no, as it appears to be, are you also saying that species is a spectrum because the distribution of heights (a phenotype variable correlated with, but not defining, species) of cats and dogs overlap?

1. Sure.

2. I listed several properties of gender that typically used to define gender but that are variables. Gamete type of able to interbreed with others in a species? What of those that never could or no longer produce gametes at all? No gender at all?

3. Height has never been used to define a species uniquely. Genitalia, chromosomes, hormone levels have been used to define gender, yet these are overlapping variables.