Differences in Sex Development (aka "intersex")

[porch]

Steersman has repeatedly linked to this online dictionary definition of male:

https://www.lexico.com/definition/male

Thing is, the usage example from that very source is . . . .wait for it! . . . "male children".

 

[Rolfe]

So it does. Bwahahahaha.

I wonder if the compiler of the definition deliberately chose that example in order to illustrate what he means by "the sex that produces...". To show that he is not specifically limiting his definition to individuals that are producing gametes at the time, but that he is describing a class. Something Emily's cat has repeatedly tried to explain.

 

[Elaedith]

It does seem to me that if everyone could be convinced that 'male/female' refer only to individuals currently able to produce gametes, that we would immediately need new words to replace them. We would then use the new words almost all the time and only use the words 'male' and 'female' when we currently use terms like 'fertile male/female'. I don't think this would help to clarify anything.

 

[Rolfe]

Exactly. The usage of "male" and "female" in ordinary conversation would also become so fraught that it would almost have to be dropped. How do you know someone is fertile? Only if they have produced a child. For a man, that's a hard one. How do you know his wife's child is actually his? For a woman it's more certain, but did you ask whether her child was adopted? And maybe she has had an early menopause.

In practice we more commonly use the words "man" and "woman" though. Given that pretty much any dictionary definition of these words is likely to rely on the words "male" and "female", it seems likely however that these will also be out of bounds.

In medicine and veterinary medicine we'd have to modify our language radically, only using male and female to refer to individuals of proven fertility. What the hell do we say when we're sexing puppies and kittens? Well, Mrs Jones, you have two which will probably become male and three which will probably become female?

Oh no, says Mrs Jones, I'm not going to breed from them, I'll be wanting you to neuter them as soon as they're old enough.

And yet, somehow, I still have two kittens that will need a castration operation and three which will require an ovariohysterectomy. How do I know which operation to do on which kitten?

 

[Rolfe]

We currently have trans activists trying to forcibly redefine the word woman from its longstanding definition of "adult human female" to "anyone who claims to be a woman" or words to that general effect. Which is really something for the "what is identity" thread. Somehow we still need a word for the class of human beings which typically produces large gametes though. So we get suggestions such as menstruator, cervix-haver and so on. Even though not all women menstruate and some women do not have a cervix. (A few with particular DSDs may never have had a cervix.) It's regressive, confusing and frankly insulting.

At least we know why they're trying to do it though. It makes sense in their world-view.

This attempt to forcibly redefine the words male and female only to refer to proven fertile individuals during their fertile years is even madder, if only because there is no obvious reason (other than that it might generate academic papers in an obscure corner of a philosophy journal) why anyone would want to do that.

I'd love to know how the people who are pushing this redefinition would actually talk about a litter of puppies or kittens in real life.

 

[d4m10n]

There are two sex categories of mammal, male and female. The debate as it has been conducted concerns whether there is a third category (no there isn't), whether there are individuals which cannot be properly allocated to either category, and whether individuals can switch categories.

I would say that the rabbit hole isn't entirely pointless, since it's generally good to clarify what we mean by "male" or "female" in threads like this one.

By "female" I mean someone born with ovaries and follicles in the primordial stage of folliculogenesis, whether or not they get the chance to grow up and ovulate and regardless of whether they have already gone through menopause.

By "male" I mean someone born with testes, physiologically likely to undergo spermatogenesis when the time comes, whether or not they actually get the chance to ejaculate (e.g. castrati^WP).

Plenty of people with DSDs will fall into the above two categories, but a handful (including many CAIS individuals) have a mix of sex-typical characteristics from the get-go and cannot produce either form of gamete. These I would not call male or female, but rather "intersex."

 

[theprestige]

I would say that the rabbit hole isn't entirely pointless, since it's generally good to clarify what we mean by "male" or "female" in threads like this one.

My view is that the meanings are already clear enough to anyone interested in good faith discussion.

 

[Rolfe]

I would say that the rabbit hole isn't entirely pointless, since it's generally good to clarify what we mean by "male" or "female" in threads like this one.

By "female" I mean someone born with ovaries and follicles in the primordial stage of folliculogenesis, whether or not they get the chance to grow up and ovulate and regardless of whether they have already gone through menopause.

By "male" I mean someone born with testes, physiologically likely to undergo spermatogenesis when the time comes, whether or not they actually get the chance to ejaculate (e.g. castrati^WP).

Plenty of people with DSDs will fall into the above two categories, but a handful (including many CAIS individuals) have a mix of sex-typical characteristics from the get-go and cannot produce either form of gamete. These I would not call male or female, but rather "intersex."

I think that is a reasonable position, but it's one I would argue against. I think that if you drill down into your "intersex" category it gets smaller and smaller until it may well disappear completely.

The "mix of sex characteristics" is never a 50/50 split where a classification could go either way, but is generally an individual with predominantly (often overwhelmingly) one or the other set of characteristics and the characteristics of the other sex being vestigial. It's virtually impossible to find someone where a full diagnosis of their condition leaves you scratching your head. (Someone on twitter insisted "here's one" to me, but the abstract of the paper, which was in a very obscure publication, described the person as a man throughout and revealed that he had fathered children. He had some vestigial ovarian tissue which someone claimed showed histological evidence of having ovulated. I'd seriously like to see that evidence, given that the hormonal milieu of an individual who had actual spermatogenisis couldn't possibly support ovulation.) These people think of their bodies as male or female, but with some anomalous structures, and it's hard to see why this should be denied to them.

CAIS women are perhaps more anomalous than most. Nevertheless they think of themselves as female and they are phenotypically female apart from certain internal structures.

It's simple enough to put them in the female box, simply by adopting the definition of female as "not having a functional SRY gene" and defining a functional gene as requiring the necessary hormone receptors to allow that gene to be fully expressed. By an analogy with the freemartin heifer who has plenty "normal" (in structure) SRY genes in her white blood cells, but the gene cannot be meanungfully expressed.

One of the pernicious things being done by the TRA lobby is to weaponise the medical problems grouped under the DSD umbrella and claim that these people are not male or female, not "real" men or women. This not only upsets them a lot, it flies in the face of the actualité, where people who truly don't have a sex don't exist.

(I think this is where the derail started, when Steersman chipped in to insist that about 70% of the population doesn't have a sex. Basically, only if you redefine basic words in the language in the way the TRAs have pioneered.)

 

[Rolfe]

Basically, what I'm doing with the "functional SRY gene system" and defining functional as having the necessary tissues and hormone receptors to enable the gene to be expressed in the normal way, is trying to find a definition that accords with the way the words "male" and "female" are actually used by ordinary speakers of the language in normal conversation. We had definitions that were perfectly useful, until people with agendas came along and started to twist the wordings of the definitions in ways the original authors had not intended.

In normal life, nobody is recognised as not belonging to one sex class or the other. They may wish they weren't, they may want to transfer themselves to the class they aren't, but the reality is that in 99.92% of births visual inspection will get the sex right, and in the other 0.08% genetic and hormonal analysis will reveal the correct classification.

CAIS individuals will be classified as girls at birth and often nobody even notices there's something amiss until their early teens. Of course their particular medical condition has to be considered by their doctors, but that's the case with anyone who has a congenital anomaly of either the chromosomes or hormone receptors.

Using the "functional SRY gene system" gets as close as possible as it's possible to get to how people are actually allocated as male or female in real life. Which is what a good dictionary definition should do. It's certainly true that it's a bit esoteric for normal dictionary use, but it's a better position than starting to parse and over-parse a definition that has been written for lay consumption and start insisting that the normal classification of human beings as male and female, men and women, must be wrong because it doesn't fit the dictionary definition.

That's completely arse-backwards. The dictionary definition should strive to fit with actual usage, not the other way around.

 

[Steersman]

Originally Posted by Rolfe:

There are two sex categories of mammal, male and female. The debate as it has been conducted concerns whether there is a third category (no there isn't), whether there are individuals which cannot be properly allocated to either category, and whether individuals can switch categories.

I would say that the rabbit hole isn't entirely pointless, since it's generally good to clarify what we mean by "male" or "female" in threads like this one.

Thanks, entirely agree; progress!

As I've been saying from day one, the crux of the matter is Voltaire's demand: "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".

The problem is that virtually everyone has a different and conflicting definition for the terms in play: are "male" and "female" to be seen as exhaustive or non-exhaustive categories? Are they to denote sexes (reproductive abilities), genders (personalities, personality types, and other traits that merely correlate, to a greater or lesser degree, with reproductive abilities), or (gawd help us all) entirely subjective gender-identities ("the merging of science, magic, and religion")?

No wonder pretty much everyone and their dogs, cats, and gerbils is riding madly off in all directions.

Seems to me that the only rational way off the the horns of that rather "painful" dilemma is to start with the biological definitions that are clear, explicit, and entail "necessary and sufficient conditions" for monothetic category membership.

By "female" I mean someone born with ovaries and follicles in the primordial stage of folliculogenesis, whether or not they get the chance to grow up and ovulate and regardless of whether they have already gone through menopause.

<snip>

Plenty of people with DSDs will fall into the above two categories, but a handful (including many CAIS individuals) have a mix of sex-typical characteristics from the get-go and cannot produce either form of gamete. These I would not call male or female, but rather "intersex."

Fine. Though "intersex" is then either another sex or it's a polite euphemism for "sexLESS" - call a spade an effen shovel, let the chips fall where they may. But what YOU mean by "male" and "female" is NOT what is meant and entailed by the biological definitions. We can't possibly have a rational conversation if everyone means different things by the same words.

You - and Rolfe and far too many others - seem desperately committed to the idea that everyone has to have a sex, that "male" and "female" are exhaustive categories. Which is flatly contradicted by standard biological definitions that have far more "epistemic justification" than yours. You're in the same (leaky and sinking) boat as Novella and transactivists; here's a recent response to me (as OaringAbout) on Novella's sadly misnamed blog that underlines that perspective and "argument" - one based on little more than "feelinz" ("How dare you?!!" )

The point you're completely disregarding, which is central to Novella's argument, is that your definitions don't qualify everyone. They exclude CAIS persons and many others too. That's Novella's main point - it's exclusionary, and that doesn't make for good science ....

http://disq.us/p/2q7pvsh

I haven't had time yet to respond to "Alfie", but my argument is largely, "so effen what? CAIS and others are included in the sexLESS category." It is that scientific categories are NOT designed to be "inclusive", they're not intended as "participation trophies"; they're designed to get a handle on some brute facts which are crucial to survival as individuals and as a "civilization.

But that objective is precluded if not made impossible by muddying the waters by trying to include everything but the kitchen sink in their definitions: if they mean and encompass everything then they MEAN nothing and are thereby USELESS, if not worse than useless. Alfie and Novella wouldn't recognize "good science" if they fell over it. Cretins.

To underline that point, a quote from Pinker's How the Mind Works (pg 12):

An intelligent being cannot treat every object it sees as a unique entity unlike anything else in the universe. It has to put objects in categories so that it may apply its hard-won knowledge about similar objects, encountered in the past, to the object at hand.

To insist on including everything in every category is to abandon, abrogate, and repudiate every last principle of reason and logic on which our "civilization" is founded.

But many others have drawn attention to that "philosophy" and modus operandi of the "lumpers", including Jane Clare Jones and Helen Joyce who have, more or less, rallied around the logical and scientific flag of the "splitters":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpers_and_splitters

Jones:

Trans woman: Ok, but why would you want to define woman as “adult human female” and define “female” like that? That excludes trans women.

We’re not trying to exclude you from the category of female. You just are excluded. Because you’re not female. It takes no effort and no desire whatsoever on our part to get to that conclusion. What, however, would take a great deal of effort and desire is performing the conceptual jiggery-pokery with the meaning of the ontological and political category we belong to in order to include you, which we’re not going to do, because it’s a harm to us, and because the only reason for doing it is to service your feelings, and mate, we’re feminists

.

https://janeclarejones.com/2019/06/...isnt-just-a-figment-of-the-trans-womans-mind/

Joyce, on the definition of "woman" ("She Who Must Not Be Named" (!!11!!)):

People who want to be so defined. I think people should be able to be who they want to be

— John Nicolson, British member of parliament

The intention here is to be “inclusive.” But inclusive definitions miss the point. The way you define something is to state criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t. A prime number, for example, is “a number that has no divisors but itself and one.” That excludes really rather a lot of numbers: six (two times three), say, and 71,417,010 (12,785 times 5,586). It’s not those numbers’ fault, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not nice numbers. They’re very nice. They’re just not prime.

https://web.archive.org/web/2020071...tte.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/

Some foundational principles are being swept under the carpet in pandering to transgender dogma. Which you and Rolfe - and too many others - are "aiding and abetting" by pushing your own rather idiosyncratic and quite unscientific definitions.

 

[theprestige]

As I've been saying from day one, the crux of the matter is Voltaire's demand: "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".

"If."

The problem is that virtually everyone has a different and conflicting definition for the terms in play.

I strongly disagree.

I'm pretty sure everyone has largely similar and/or complementary definitions for the terms in play. There may be some academic debate about the exact terminology to use for very specific things in very narrow and relatively esoteric technical contexts, but that's about it.

Here, in the threads discussing the topic on this forum? I'm pretty sure everyone agrees on the definitions. I'm pretty sure the real problem is that some people have an ideological agenda that benefits from pretending not to understand what we mean by these terms, and from pretending there's some meaningful ambiguity or illogic to their common use.

 

[Rolfe]

Some foundational principles are being swept under the carpet in pandering to transgender dogma. Which you and Rolfe - and too many others - are "aiding and abetting" by pushing your own rather idiosyncratic and quite unscientific definitions.

That is completely hilarious. The guy insisting that children are neither male nor female is accusing others of "pushing idiosyncratic definitions".

The guy who can't concisely define who is to come under the "has a sex" and who is to come under the "doesn't have a sex" categories, let alone explain how we're supposed to tell, is calling a definition that states "a male is someone who received a functional SRY gene system at conception ("system" to include the required hormone receptors, enzymes etc necessary for the gene to affect the body in the normal way)" unscientific.

And the guy who is pushing a definition that leaves 70% of the population as biologically neither male nor female is accusing others of "pandering to the transgender dogma". (Of course it suits the trans agenda very well if, for example, post-menopausal women aren't female. Goodbye single-sex spaces and provisions for post-menopausal women.)

 

[Steersman]

Originally Posted by Steersman
As I've been saying from day one, the crux of the matter is Voltaire's demand: "if you wish to converse with me, define your terms".

"If."

Not quite sure how you think the issue can be resolved if we don't - you know - try conversing with - talking and listening to - the proponents of the other sides ...

Originally Posted by Steersman
The problem is that virtually everyone has a different and conflicting definition for the terms in play.

I strongly disagree.

And your evidence for that is what?

I'm pretty sure everyone has largely similar and/or complementary definitions for the terms in play. There may be some academic debate about the exact terminology to use for very specific things in very narrow and relatively esoteric technical contexts, but that's about it.

Don't think you've been paying attention. Or even looked very far into what I've quoted and linked to.

Here, in the threads discussing the topic on this forum? I'm pretty sure everyone agrees on the definitions. I'm pretty sure the real problem is that some people have an ideological agenda that benefits from pretending not to understand what we mean by these terms, and from pretending there's some meaningful ambiguity or illogic to their common use.

The only "true Scotsmen" are here?

Again, you may wish to try reading and thinking about the sources I've linked to.

No dispute whatsoever on the "pretending" - most of the transgendered seem rather desperate to get everyone to go along with delusions that they actually qualify as "men" or as "women", that they've actually changed sex - hence the desperate efforts to redefine the sexes as spectra.

But a rather large number of people have the more or less justified view that "men" and "women" are NOT defined as sexes - i.e., "adult human male (sex)", and "adult human female (sex)" - but as genders, as anyone who happens to have the least bit of "family resemblance" to those who are actually adult human males (sex) and adult human females (sex).

 

[Rolfe]

Just a recap on how I got to where I am at present. Imagine a twitter conversation with anyone who feels like it butting in with their tuppenceworth.

"A woman is an adult human female." This is a standard and until recently pretty much uncontested dictionary definition. (Which I note Steersman wants to repudiate, or else he wants to deny that I'm a woman, one or the other.)

"Define female."

"Someone with two X chromosomes" gets chimed in at this point, inevitably.

"What about XXY?" (This of course is a male karyotype.)

Usually this gets resolved when someone gets over the point that it's the presence of the Y chromosome that makes someone male, and its absence that makes someone female, typically.

"What about Swyer's syndrome and XX males?" (I don't think there is a particular term for XX males.)

This gets resolved when it's pointed out that it's the presence of the SRY gene, usually on the Y chromosome, that makes someone male, not the actual Y chromosome itself. So, presence of SRY gene, male, absence of SRY gene, female. This is the actual definition that was used by the Olympic Games when they were enforcing sex segregation.

This is the point where they then start bringing up CAIS, chimeras and mosaics. It seems to me that if one simply specifies that the SRY gene system as a whole has to be functioning in the body, then we're there.

There's nothing either contentious or unscientific about this. It's simply a process of refining a definition that was good enough until the TRAs started getting militant.

 

[Rolfe]

But a rather large number of people have the more or less justified view that "men" and "women" are NOT defined as sexes - i.e., "adult human male (sex)", and "adult human female (sex)" - but as genders, as anyone who happens to have the least bit of "family resemblance" to those who are actually adult human males (sex) and adult human females (sex).

Now who is pandering to the transgender lobby?

 

[Steersman]

Now who is pandering to the transgender lobby?

Maybe you think Merriam-Webster is doing so as well?

Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender). This delineation also tends to be observed in technical and medical contexts, with the term sex referring to biological forms in such phrases as sex hormones, sex organs, and biological sex. But in nonmedical and nontechnical contexts, there is no clear delineation, and the status of the words remains complicated.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1

Maybe you think there's no useful distinction between "sex" and "gender"? No justification for arguing that they're entirely different kettles of fish?

That's the problem with Novella's ignorant and quite clueless screed - he's trying to mash what MW is referring to as gender into the category of sex and calling it the latter. But there's a great deal of historical justification - largely the basis of your own "arguments" - for using "men" and "women" as genders, as being totally disconnected from any reproductive abilities - past, present, or future - at all.

Rather large number of "feminists" and fellow-travelers who've staked their reputations - such as they are ... - on defending "adult human female (sex)" as THE definition for "woman". But that is something of a late arrival on the scene, somewhat arbitrary, and contingent on the definition for "female" - which is the crux of the matter which you're apparently trying to avoid dealing with.

Absolutely no question that there is something in the way of a "natural kind" of those who actually have functional gonads - those which produce, habitually, on a regular basis - gametes of one sort or the other that can be used in reproduction. But HOW we name those categories and what might reasonably follow in the way of social policies towards those who are, and are not, members of those two categories is the issue.

 

[Rolfe]

Yes, they probably are. Dictionaries are a major target of the trans lobby, and just as capable of being captured as the police, the schools, the courts, governments, you name it.

Getting the definition of woman as adult human female junked is their first objective.

Steersman, this question is not intended to be a negative one, and by all means don't answer if it embarrasses you, but are you somewhere on the autism/Asperger's spectrum? A fair few forum members are. I ask merely because very literal interpretation of language seems to be a thing for such people. Being very keen on devising and defining categories is another,

 

[Emily's Cat]

Some foundational principles are being swept under the carpet in pandering to transgender dogma. Which you and Rolfe - and too many others - are "aiding and abetting" by pushing your own rather idiosyncratic and quite unscientific definitions.

Just because you use the word "unscientific" doesn't actually make it unscientific.

 

[Steersman]

Yes, they probably are. Dictionaries are a major target of the trans lobby, and just as capable of being captured as the police, the schools, the courts, governments, you name it.

Sure. But that some are is no justification for arguing that all are.

Or arguing that everything that comes from any one of them is necessarily beyond the Pale. Is that statement from MW "valid" or not?

Getting the definition of woman as adult human female junked is their first objective.

Yeah, them and the Illuminati ...

Steersman, this question is not intended to be a negative one, and by all means don't answer if it embarrasses you, but are you somewhere on the autism/Asperger's spectrum? A fair few forum members are. I ask merely because very literal interpretation of language seems to be a thing for such people. Being very keen on devising and defining categories is another,

Probably, to some degree.

But that's not much if anything to charge against categorization. As I've indicated in one place or another, that's pretty much the bedrock principle of science, mathematics, and civilization itself; that, as some have argued - even if with tongue firmly in cheek, it is taxonomy which is the "world's oldest profession". If we can't agree - particularly when push comes to shove - on what are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for category membership then I think we're all "screwed, blued, and tattooed".

 

[Steersman]

Just because you use the word "unscientific" doesn't actually make it unscientific.

Top of the morning to you Emily

Are the definitions published in the Journals of Theoretical Biology and of Molecular Human Production not more or less exactly what Lexico, Wikipedia, Google/OED, (philosopher of biology) Paul Griffiths, and many other sources are endorsing and promoting?

https://www.lexico.com/definition/female
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1459925709426728961

You, perchance, have similar sources which endorse the "definitions" that Emma Hilton and Company are peddling?

Absent the latter, I'm not quite sure how you can possibly insist that the former don't qualify as THE scientific definitions for the sexes.

But maybe you don't quite realize, or want to face the fact that many definitions - particularly in science, mathematics, and biology - are stipulative definitions, they're "true", by definition:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stipulative_definition

Such definitions are the "axioms" of our discourse; we can't PROVE them to be true, we assert a priori, that what we MEAN by the terms are encompassed by their definitions. They're "true" by definition:

by definition idiom
: because of what something or someone is : according to the definition of a word that is being used to describe someone or something
A volunteer by definition is not paid.
A glider is by definition an aircraft with no engine.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by definition

We won't EVER find a glider with an engine - even if we search from one end of the world to the other - because, BY DEFINITION, the necessary and sufficient condition to qualify as such is to NOT have one.