Cont: Trans Women are not Women 4

[caveman1917]

As with most human cases ( & selection in general), it's not not an easy one to test - especially in that people (presumably unlike other mammals) may actually be conscious of their strategy.

Not just that, they may also choose not to follow an optimal strategy. For example, if I were to be maximizing my reproductive success one thing that immediately comes to mind would be going to the gym. Yet you don't see me going to the gym, even though I'm perfectly conscious of that particular inefficiency in my strategy, because, frankly, I just have better things to do with my life than optimizing a reproductive strategy. Once you have high-level social organization and self-consciousness you can't just assume that a simple model of maximizing a reproductive strategy will be explanatory regarding human social structures.

 

[Tippit]

The belief seems to be that many immigrants reject "Western values," or even seek to destroy them. Not that a lot of evidence is offered.

There is lots of evidence that immigration policies are being radically changed to allow the importation of all kinds of people who are openly hostile to western culture, and values. This has been less of a problem in the US, so far, than it has been in Europe. I would encourage you to seek it out, if you're interested.

There are also, incidentally, lots of potential immigrants who espouse and desire western values much more so than even western natives. We should seek to immigrate more of the latter and less of the former.

The idea that Muslim women wearing headscarves are signaling a commitment to continued subjugation of women? Expressing ties to your first culture while becoming American strikes me as completely innocuous, like still listening to ranchero music or watching the World Cup. Or going to mosque. In theory religious freedom is a core Western value, but perhaps not in practice.

I don't have a problem per se with women in the US wearing hijabs. I value their individual freedom and their freedom of religion, as it ensures my own. What I have a problem with, are the social, economic, and political consequences of the mass importation of people who do not share my historical cultural values and experience, or who might be openly hostile to them. This does not seem to be a concern for "liberals", who appear to only be concerned with virtue signaling, and appealing to the god of diversity.

 

[d4m10n]

The idea that Muslim women wearing headscarves are signaling a commitment to continued subjugation of women? Expressing ties to your first culture while becoming American strikes me as completely innocuous, like still listening to ranchero music or watching the World Cup.

This seems like an odd comparison to me. Watching the World Cup has almost nothing to do with the social status of women, whereas the sort of head coverings encouraged by holy writ generally do.

 

[Louden Wilde]

I myself really wouldn't know, not knowing what the probability of the child ending up with a trans identity might be, or how much the knowing itself might affect the development/evolution/formation of that trans identity, but that apart, I suppose there are arguments to be made for both sides: simply watching how the child turns out (while supporting them fully, either way), as well as telling them as soon as they're old enough to understand (which is when?).

... would you like to put out some answers to those questions yourself, or at least opinions, even if tentative?

Thanks for the kind words Chanakya! Actually I think you've summed it up pretty well. Let's say the probability with that gene is ~30% (as suggested by that MZ study I mentioned earlier) - I don't think I would bring the up the genetics to the child (i.e. due to not wanting the knowledge to weigh on them). That being said, if the child was in psychological distress, I'd definitely bring it up with the relevant health care pros (therapist, pediatrician, psychiatrist, etc.). At some point in those discussions (assuming the issues persist) - probably mid-teens, I could see having that discussion with the child

My (not so hot) take is that surgery, hormones should be a last resort, given the long-lasting effects they may have. My bet is that if we are successful in reducing gender stereotypes, the percentage of people with that gene variant who end up becoming trans will drop. Note- there's a whole other discussion to be had on the controversy surrounding the apparent rise in teenage girls declaring themselves trans.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I’ve gone over ~30 pages of the thread...

I understand that words may change meaning. However, changing the definition of word with a precise definition (women) that applies to the largest oppressed class of people (females) to a circular version against the wishes of those already involved seems ill-advised. I’d like a future where we try harder (worldwide) to equalize treatment of females (acknowledging intrinsic the female-male behavioral differences that lead to rape and violence by the latter) and reduce gender stereotypes/expectations.

I feel they (females) should have their own spaces, sports, and that positions should be set aside in areas where they are under-represented. To be clear, we (obviously) should not discriminate against anyone, but reconciling that with the push of (some) trans-activists that trans-women should be considered as identical to adult human females will be difficult. I hope there will be a more wide-spread nuanced discussion - changing the current tenor seems a prerequisite for such talks.

Excellent post, and welcome to ISF!

 

[Emily's Cat]

The others also are puzzling to me, but I think I agree that biological sex is not important in certain respects.

It is not important for how anyone should present or behave, or for how we are supposed to feel, nor important for how we should dress, walk or speak and so on and so forth

Robin, are you a female human, an ovarian? I ask, because I frequently run across this sentiment from testicularians - that sex isn't and shouldn't be important.

For ovarians, however, it actually *is* important. I agree that in most cases, it shouldn't be important in how we treat each other, but that's an 'ought' not an 'is'. And even then, there are inescapable biological differences that I think should merit some differences in treatment. Not in terms of courtesy and respectfulness, but in terms of access and accommodations. Things like private stalls, with the understanding that ovarians are likely to take longer in the toilet (because of mestruation), as well as access to facilities for breastfeeding and pumping, and some degree of safety in terms of sexual abuse and rape so we don't get full of baby against our will. There will alwas be some difference in dress, in part because males and females of the species are shaped differently. Ovarians don't need to accommodate external testes in our clothing... but do have to accommodate periodically leaking fluids out of our nethers, as well as those sticky-outy things on the front of our chests that often need a bit of support for our comfort.

We walk differently... because our pelivises are different, as are the attachment points for muscles and tendons, and the angle between out hip socket and our femurs. We speak differently because our voices are, on average, higher (it has something to do with the adam's apple, but I don't know how that part works).

As far as how we feel goes... I'm going to politely suggest that many people really don't understand exactly how strong an influence testosterone and estrogen have on humans.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Among the oft repeated claims was that ‘female’ can’t be rigorously defined - the unspoken argument often being that if they could find a single exception to the definition I was using, then anyone could be female. I saw a well-put rejoinder on medium entitled An Open Letter to the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real (the gist being that these claims are disingenuous).

Adding in the link, since this is worth reading
An Open Letter to the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real

this made me laugh, and really captures a portion of this debate that gets under my skin:

It’s so easy to get sucked into this debate, to get that hot indignation in your stomach that comes when a foolish claim is so proudly asserted. And I don’t even have skin in the game — binary or not, my sex will still land me squarely in the “paid more, raped less” category. So what’s the point beyond intellectual exercise? It seems more and more obvious to me that even entertaining the debate is a concession, an assent to women’s lives being made the subject of thought experiments and counterfactuals plucked from the air by some post-grad who, coincidentally, has never once worried about pregnancy from rape.

And some very resonant points in there:

Isn’t it odd that sex was never so complicated before? There was nothing ethereal about biology when it came to allocating the right to vote, or own property, or walk down the street at night without fear. We knew perfectly well what made someone female when that female-ness guaranteed a life of subservience and pain. Only when women began to say no did their bodies become a concept.

So many feminists have made this point, over and over again. I see them say it. I know you read it. Did you listen? If not, why? And why do you always respond when I say it? It seems you do know who has a female body, when it comes to deciding which perspective gets ignored.

It’s the only type of body that gets you thrown on the funeral pyre when the husband dies. It’s the only type of body that gets your feet bound and your breasts ironed. It’s the only type made pregnant through rape and burned with acid, the only type expected to sit quietly and listen while we redefine it away, the only type men have spent millennia criticizing and critiquing and buying and selling until we suddenly decided we don’t even know what the **** we meant this whole time.

Geez. I might need to stop quoting. Just go read the whole thing.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Put it this way

Dice

The one is a female

The two and rest are dudes.

Only the one can make another dice

2 - 6 can get 1 to create one.

2 = Great guy

3 = bit of a git

4 = Uber git

5 = Far out

6 = Oh my god!

2 - 6 can all make 1 have another dice if they hang out

To keep going, if that were animals which would want to make sure you had enough of?

The comment was "if females are relatively plentiful". You're providing an example where females are relatively rare - only one in six is female.

A female take a LONG time to make a human. It's nine months of gestation, a couple of years of hanging by a teat, and several more years until that pre-people is mature enough to be moderately self-sustaining.

It takes a male only a few minutes to do their part to make a human.

When there are relatively more females in the population, those females gain power with respect to sexual selection - they have more agency over choosing who to mate with. When there are relatively few females in the population, the females have significantly less agency over mating.

It is reproductively strategic to males to have more males than females in the population, so that they have a larger hand in sexual selection. This leads the things that Louden mentioned - sex selective abortion, infanticide, etc. that reduce the number of female offspring in favor of the number of male offspring.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Let's take that question a step further. Suppose you could genetically test the fetus for this hypothetical gene. Given that life is harder for trans people, would it be ethical for parents to abort a fetus because it had that gene?

Depends... is it ethical for a female to about a fetus for any other reason? Or is it only ethical for a female to abort a fetus for specific list of reasons?

 

[Emily's Cat]

I probably should have said therian mammals if you include the chromosomes as part of the process, but unaware of any evidence that suggests more than two sexes in monotremes. There are also notably a few rodent species that lack a Y chromosome, but sexual development still looks like that in other mammals. Those pathways seem largely conserved across amniotes at least - so I also could have been more broad.

I was under the impression that the two-sex paradigm is pretty firmly established in all species with two very differently sized gametes. Which ends up including virtually all mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles. I think it includes amphibians, but I'm not sure whether the ability to change the gametes produced when the sexes in a population are limited counts as not being binary sexed or not.

 

[Louden Wilde]

As far as how we feel goes... I'm going to politely suggest that many people really don't understand exactly how strong an influence testosterone and estrogen have on humans.

Agreed.
& I'd add that exposure to those differing hormonal/gene expression profiles during development (i.e. up to maturity) has very long-lasting - essentially permanent - effects. For those interested in this topic and sports (re: trans women participation with females), check out Emma Hilton on Twitter (@FondOfBeetles)

PS Thanks for the welcome!

 

[Louden Wilde]

I was under the impression that the two-sex paradigm is pretty firmly established in all species with two very differently sized gametes. Which ends up including virtually all mammals, birds, fishes, and reptiles. I think it includes amphibians, but I'm not sure whether the ability to change the gametes produced when the sexes in a population are limited counts as not being binary sexed or not.

It (2 sex paradigm) does extend that far that for sure (& beyond). I suppose I was being conservative in that I know mammals the best - and they (we) have additional differences between the gametes that don't seem present in other amniotes (birds, reptiles + mammals), where parthenogenesis (females giving rise to other females sans fertilization) pops up occasionally.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Here is a tweet by Chase Strangio clarifying that it isn't about denying biology, but about using "biological sex" as a term in political and legal discourse.

Actually... he's decrying the "notion" of biological sex as a "fixed binary" and claims it was "invented" to regulate trans people out of categories.

Which is not any different from denying biology, because sex IS a fixed binary.

The phrase "sex assigned at birth" originates from intersex activists to point out that some individuals are genetically one sex but have been registered as the other sex at birth, or even surgically altered as a baby to more resemble the opposite sex.

No, it doesn't originate from interesex activists. It originates from trasngender activists trying to leverage the existence of some very rare developmental sex disorders in order to push their mantra that TWAW and to dilute and erase the importance of sex.

 

[d4m10n]

It is reproductively strategic to males to have more males than females in the population, so that they have a larger hand in sexual selection.

I'd've thought the best strategy for males (to pass on their individual genes) would be for them to remain in the smallest minority sustainable, assuming no social constraints on polygyny.

 

[Minoosh]

First, I would point you to this NIH study:

Disparities in Abortion Rates: A Public Health Approach

It claims:



As you can see, the abortion rate in 2008 for black women was about 233% higher than for white women. I can understand why feminists would prefer not to lay the blame for these statistics on themselves and place them squarely on Sanger, but the reality is that feminists, as well as anyone who promotes abortion is at least partially responsible.

Why blame? Why are the stats inherently bad?

It's unclear to me whether these stats are the direct result of some unwritten eugenics policy ...

IMO, this is a questionable form of argument. Though you say, "It's unclear to me," you still get a claim in, while ignoring an equally (if not more) valid hypothesis.

... the outcomes seem to be the essence of negative eugenics - limiting people with certain traits from reproducing.

Same style of argument. Use the word "seem," but essentially attribute the phenomenon to a conspiracy, rather than individual people making individual choices. Also, since blacks and Hispanics are still more fertile than non-Hispanic whites, I'm even less convinced that what's happening is related to Sanger promoting eugenics 100 years ago. It's related to, or at least a byproduct, of science.

As soon as women could prevent or limit pregnancies, they did so in droves. They could make choices. There turned out to be a ton of pent-up demand. Now, maybe the scientists were in on the conspiracy. It involved Big Pharma and chemical companies. So corporatists, if not the actual scientists, did drive up the supply of reproductive choices. But the demand, IMO, was down to individuals choosing smaller families. That, too, could be driven by global elites, for whatever reason, but the argument seems tenuous to me at best. I can think of other reasons women wouldn't want to have 15 children if they could avoid it.

To be honest, I haven't done much research about Steinem, I was just aware that she has a credible connection to the Central Intelligence Agency. I am aware that the CIA has a history of and is in the business of sponsoring coups around the world and creating social and political instability for the benefit of elites, so I find it problematic that such a prominent activist who allegedly represents the emancipation of 50% of the population is connected to an organization that has a vested interest in dividing people. What are we in 2020 other than deeply divided?

Gosh. Extremely motivated reasoning in my view. The coups around the world were largely driven by the Cold War mindset and the domino theory. Elites did benefit - weapons and logistic industries, certainly. Did US and USSR officials conspire to keep tensions at a fever pitch to keep the money rolling in? Definitely possible. But there's another lens that can be applied to the CIA's history of coups: Ultimately, many operatives probably believed they were defending the American way of life against creeping totalitarianism. Of course THAT belief doesn't disprove the conspiracy, either. But in such a case, they would be useful idiots rather than co-conspirators with the cabal.

Your claim that trans women are the result of a conspiracy foisted on us by the global elite ... well I'm not sure I can prove that's not true. But I know there are other ways of looking at it - such as, transgender people are visible now due to organic social evolution, at least in "Western" countries (and Thailand). I think this is a valid framework for looking at the issue. And IMO considering other frameworks is an important part of exploring the causes of social phenomena.

I hope that last bit keeps this post on-topic.

 

[Minoosh]

There is lots of evidence that immigration policies are being radically changed to allow the importation of all kinds of people who are openly hostile to western culture, and values. This has been less of a problem in the US, so far, than it has been in Europe. I would encourage you to seek it out, if you're interested.

I would argue that the people aren't necessarily being "imported" - many are individuals voting with their feet. As a result of people walking, floating and swimming to safety, Europe has more Muslims. Knowing that this was going to happen, governments responded by trying to make the flow more orderly. Conceivably, they were trying to save lives. It's certainly true that some immigrants despise the West and those individuals do horrible things. But I hypothesize that there are just as many who are grateful, and inclined to pursue peaceful co-existence, and to be a valuable source of information on planned attacks. And to go home, if possible, perhaps with a fresh perspective on Western values.

I don't have a problem per se with women in the US wearing hijabs.

They are great for bad hair days.

What I have a problem with, are the social, economic, and political consequences of the mass importation of people who do not share my historical cultural values and experience, or who might be openly hostile to them. This does not seem to be a concern for "liberals", who appear to only be concerned with virtue signaling, and appealing to the god of diversity.

I know many who are just appealing to plain old God. I'm surrounded by them. Congregationalists tend to be bleeding hearts.

If you can demonstrate that what's going on is mass importation, go ahead. Not that it could have happened that way; that it did happen that way. Your concerns are shared by white supremacists chanting "Jews will not replace us." And IMO, white supremacism is not a sustainable way of life anymore. It was, and it kept a lot of people out, but I feel it's outlived its usefulness.

ETA: And no, I'm NOT saying you're a white supremacist.

 

[Minoosh]

I'd've thought the best strategy for males (to pass on their individual genes) would be for them to remain in the smallest minority sustainable, assuming no social constraints on polygyny.

Ultimately you'd end up with a lot of inbreeding, though. Often not good for a species.

 

[d4m10n]

Ultimately you'd end up with a lot of inbreeding, though. Often not good for a species.

The selfish gene probably doesn't take long-term species-level fitness into account. There is a perfectly good and venerable explanation as to why natural selection tends to drive towards a 50:50 sex ratio, however.

 

[Earthborn]

That being said, if the child was in psychological distress, I'd definitely bring it up with the relevant health care pros (therapist, pediatrician, psychiatrist, etc.). At some point in those discussions (assuming the issues persist) - probably mid-teens, I could see having that discussion with the child

If this child was in the hypothetical 30%, and you knew what to look out for, it would probably become an issue a lot earlier, and they would not appreciate the fact that you kept this important aspect of their identity a secret from them for two dozen years. Especially not if it means they had to go through puberty -- a particularly stressful time for trans individuals -- while you knew beforehand it would cause them to suffer.

My bet is that if we are successful in reducing gender stereotypes, the percentage of people with that gene variant who end up becoming trans will drop.

I don't see why that would be the case. Reducing gender stereotypes will make it easier to transition socially which likely results in more people being able to do so, but I see no reason to assume it will have much effect on the number of transgender people.

 

[Earthborn]

Actually... he's decrying the "notion" of biological sex as a "fixed binary" ...

... as a term in political and legal discourse.

In other words, if people use "biological sex" in political discourse, they do so to exclude transgender individuals.

No, it doesn't originate from interesex activists.

Yes, it does.

It originates from trasngender activists trying to leverage the existence of some very rare developmental sex disorders

They coopted the jargon, and use it as leverage. That is true. Probably because the term is used in this way by people who try to research gender identity issues, who also study the development of gender identity in intersex individuals.