I'm on holiday. I'd sworn off this pointless nonsense for the duration, but this is getting ridiculous.
It's not just any old sperm - it's sperm "with which a female may be fertilized". Does "Ramon" have any of that type?
Well yes, he does. Obviously (unless there's something else wrong with him). He has sperm with which a female may be fertilised if he has the vasectomy reversed, or if he undergoes a procedure to extract sperm directly from the testes which can then be used for artificial insemination. That can be done at any time.
So is Ramon, as he is, any less male than a non-vasectomised man who is sitting quietly watching TV? He doesn't have sperm "with which a female may be fertilised" at that precise moment either, because he's not using the delivery mechanism. He needs to get up and find a willing female to do that. Just as Ramon needs to get up and have the vasectomy reversed.
It's back to the question of, what did the person writing that definition mean? What did he think the addition of the phrase "with which a female may be fertilized" added to the definition? Almost certainly he wasn't thinking about vasectomy, but about useless, non-functioning sprematozooa. He wanted only the producters of the good stuff to count.
If we're merely talking about the delivery mechanism, then a man would automatically become not-male when he puts on a condom. And if anyone wants to say that a condom can be taken off, sure it can, but a vasectomy can also be reversed. A vasectomy is rather like a condom that just stays on longer. A man producing great sperm would also become not-male if he was impotent. Does that have to be permanent, or is he still male now if he regains his sexual function in the future?
On the other hand, what about the man who has excellent sexual function but is "firing blanks" in the sense that the sperm he is producing are duds? Not male, then. Can't impregnate a female. Sure. But these things are almost never absolute. In among the duds there are very probably some decent chaps who could do the job, except the odds are against one of these few being the one to win the race to the ovum. Is the man male if there are a few viable sperm in the mix, just not enough to make him fertile in practice?
This is what you get when you take a definition which hasn't nailed down every single word and decide for yourself what it means, then cling to that definition even though it should be obvious it's leading some very silly places. The number of edge cases here is ridiculous. It would seem that for anyone (or any animal) to be declared male he'd have to have a full fertility exam before you could use the word. Every time. Because situations change.
And this is just considering the male, the sex in which gamete production is indeed continuous in the normal situation. It gets even murkier when we come on to the female. In mammals the female is only fertile for a small proportion of days, even when she is in the fertile part of her life span. In some species the female cycles (ovarian or menstrual cycle) continually when she isn't pregnant. In others she only cycles for part of the year, the breeding season, and the ovaries are dormant the rest of the time.
When is she female? All the time so long as she's functioning as normal for her species, even when her ovaries are in their inactive stage? Or only during the fertile part of the year? But even during the fertile part of the year, is she only female during the few days each cycle when she's capable of becoming pregnant? Or all the time? What about a cycle when the ovum released was a dud?
Is she female while she's pregnant? Because she sure as hell isn't producing fertile ova during that time. She has a corpus luteum (or several corpora lutea) to prevent that happening.
Inquiring minds want to know. This definition isn't nearly precise enough.
I re-read that thing about the coastline paradox, and I think this is an example of it. The closer you look the more convoluted it gets and the harder it is to draw a line. You have to define every single word or phrase you use in case some idiot takes a phrase intended to convey that only viable sperm need apply to mean that the sperm must be at the start of a functioning delivery system.
But then if you meant viable sperm only, how many? Will one do? Or one a month? Even though in practice it hasn't a hope in hell of being the successful one?
On the other hand if you meant a functioning delivery system, what does that mean? Does it have to be functioning right this minute? Is a celibate monk male? If a man with a vasectomy isn't male, how is a man wearing a condom male?
Is a woman female only on her fertile days? Or all the time so long as she's cycling? The contraceptive pill stops ovulation and women on the pill don't have a normal cycle. Are they female or not? What about a woman with an IUD fitted? She ovulates normally but the fertilised ovum can't implant. Not female?
What about species that are seasonal breeders? Are
any of that species male or female during the non breeding season? What about bitches? Their anoestrus period lasts for months, then they get going again - they only ovulate twice a year. When are they female?
Depends on what the person writing the definition wants to be the answer, of course. Who gets to decide?
Christ on a bike, does anyone in the entire world think this is what the words male and female mean to anyone? If we actually needed words for these concepts we should be coining new ones, because male and female are already taken. However, I can see no need or indeed demand for words to denote such difficult-to-define and difficult to verify organisms.
Just the facts ma'am, just the facts ... Hard to imagine a bigger smoking gun as evidence of the rot that transgenderism has wrought - so to speak. That comment of Grzanka's may well be - or should be - the epitaph for much of Academia, at least for the Mark I version.
