Differences in Sex Development (aka "intersex")

[theprestige]

Yeah, I got the picture. And I said so:

What's wrong with "male" being used to denote one of the two sex development pathways in mammals, and the mammals possessing it?

You know, the way pretty much everyone uses it, including Lexico?

 

[Steersman]

What's wrong with "male" being used to denote one of the two sex development pathways in mammals, and the mammals possessing it?

Let me count the ways ...

Though it might be easier to count the ways in which such uses were right, the fingers of one hand probably being way more than sufficient.

Do show me the dictionaries and biological journals which explicitly endorse that "development pathways" schlock. It's incoherent and quite anti-scientific claptrap. It leads to any number of quite serious - if sometimes amusing - contradictions:

In classical logic, intuitionistic logic and similar logical systems, the principle of explosion (Latin: ex falso [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from falsehood, anything [follows]'; or ex contradictione [sequitur] quodlibet, 'from contradiction, anything [follows]'), or the principle of Pseudo-Scotus, is the law according to which any statement can be proven from a contradiction.[1] That is, once a contradiction has been asserted, any proposition (including their negations) can be inferred from it; this is known as deductive explosion.

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

You know, the way pretty much everyone uses it, including Lexico?

Soooo what? If everyone was jumping off a cliff then would you follow them over it? Too many of us are less humans than lemmings ....

You may wish to take a closer look at my last comment; uses really aren't a guarantee of anything, much less of truth or falsity:

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8110811-the-ideal-subject-of-totalitarian-rule-is-not-the-convinced

 

[d4m10n]

Clearly a case of the left-hand not knowing what the right is doing - lotta that goin' round these days.

Is this clearly the case to anyone other than yourself?

Can you think of any alternate explanations for all the times Lexico uses "male" to describe someone who cannot produce sperm yet or cannot produce sperm any longer? I certainly can.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Even if the properties are categorical, even if there's diddly-squat that allows us to say they're commensurable, we can still arbitrarily order them.

Yes, you can ARBITRARILY order them... but the order that you've given them is... wait for it... ARBITRARY. It has no meaning.

Here's the meat: If you apply an arbitrary made-up "order" to a set of categorical variables, you can make them LOOK LIKE whatever the hell you want them to look like. It's pretend. It's lying with (bad) statistics.

As I posted earlier, you can apply an arbitrary order... and you can make a set of fruit look like a bathtub, a normal distribution, a an exponential distribution, and a bimodal distribution - and not a single one of those plots that LOOKS LIKE a distribution actually means anything at all. At no point does how you ARBITRARILY order them actually imply that fruit are bimodal. They aren't. It's an artifact of an ARBITRARY arrangement. It's a mirage. It's a face on Mars.

 

[Emily's Cat]

True enough, just noting hastily that you can have a spectrum that is not a continuum.

Absolutely. That's why I've been specifying the variables must be ordinal. They can be ordinal without being continuous. They have to have an innate order, something that Steersman just keeps ignoring, and somehow pretending that their wishes for how statistics works based on their google and Wikipedia skills somehow supersede my actual education and application in my career.

 

[Steersman]

Is this clearly the case to anyone other than yourself?

Can you think of any alternate explanations for all the times Lexico uses "male" to describe someone who cannot produce sperm yet or cannot produce sperm any longer? I certainly can.

Hundreds, thousands, millions of connections that one can make with any given set of data points, lots of "alternate explanations" that one can derive from them, very few of which hold much if any water. Hypotheses are a dime-a-dozen, 25 cents a boatload.

If you seriously think Lexico's editors - and those at the Oxford English Dictionary - are rejecting and repudiating their own definitions - by intent or in effect - then maybe you need to try showing them the errors of their ways. 'Rots of 'ruck.

 

[porch]

If you seriously think Lexico's editors - and those at the Oxford English Dictionary - are rejecting and repudiating their own definitions - by intent or in effect - then maybe you need to try showing them the errors of their ways. 'Rots of 'ruck.

No, you're the on who thinks that the editors of these dictionaries are rejecting and repudiating their own definitions. Duh.

 

[Steersman]

Yes, you can ARBITRARILY order them... but the order that you've given them is... wait for it... ARBITRARY. It has no meaning.

Here's the meat: If you apply an arbitrary made-up "order" to a set of categorical variables, you can make them LOOK LIKE whatever the hell you want them to look like. It's pretend. It's lying with (bad) statistics.

As I posted earlier, you can apply an arbitrary order... and you can make a set of fruit look like a bathtub, a normal distribution, a an exponential distribution, and a bimodal distribution - and not a single one of those plots that LOOKS LIKE a distribution actually means anything at all. At no point does how you ARBITRARILY order them actually imply that fruit are bimodal. They aren't. It's an artifact of an ARBITRARY arrangement. It's a mirage. It's a face on Mars.

Fine. I agree. One hundred and 10 percent - at least.

But that's not the point. I'm not trying to justify some bimodal distribution or a calculation of means and standard deviations which, of course, are heavily dependent on the particular order one chooses.

I'm trying to get at what it would mean to say that sex was a spectrum - the "argument" of Novella and others of his ilk. Why I posted that joint-probability distribution by karyotype and heights (below). My equating of karyotypes to sexes was only to illustrate a possible process and methodology, not to justify any claim that sex was in fact a spectrum.

But part and parcel of that principle - or maybe a later application it - was to show that "d4m10n's" "argument" that the intersex were neither male nor female but still had a sex boils down into an assertion that sex is a spectrum - however you want to allocate them to endpoints and midpoint(s).

Is sex to be a spectrum or are the intersex to be categorized as sexless?

That seems to be the question that logically follows from the biological definitions for the sexes - definitions which you haven't really addressed in any coherent fashion that I've seen. Or at least from the quite serious conflict between those definitions and the rather decidedly anti-scientific definitions of Hilton and Company.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Nope. You're conflating the criteria for membership in the sex categories which are pretty simple indeed - i.e., produces sperm or ova - with all of the different mechanisms of chromosomes and genitalia that are part of how actual sexual reproduction operates in all of those 7 million species.

The essential property of the categories "male" and "female" is "produces gametes"; all those other mechanisms are "accidental properties" that have no bearing whatsoever on sex category membership.

This is incorrect. The elements that Aber mentioned are the DETERMINING mechanisms of sex. They are what DETERMINE whether a given individual develops as male or develops as female.

Crocodiles, for example, develop into male or female dependent on the temperatures to which the eggs are exposed. If the temperature is low, the embryos develop into females; if the temperature is high, they develop into males. So for crocodiles, temperature is the determining mechanism by which sex develops.

You might note that this development process gives no ***** about whether the individual crocodile ever *actually* produces sperm or eggs. The determinant governs which anatomical pathway is followed: the pathway that develops the organs that are generally responsible for producing eggs, or the pathway that develops the organs that are generally responsible for producing sperm.

Here's a thought question, to challenge your philosophy: Let's assume you have an immature ape, and the ape has no known congenital conditions. The ape has not reached puberty. The ape has normal testicles and penis.

Based on your philosophy, this ape is sexless, because they don't actually produce any gametes yet.

So... Given your philosophical premise... What is the likelihood that this specific ape will produce ova in the future? What is the likelihood that this specific ape will produce sperm? Which sex does your philosophy say this ape will most likely develop into? What is the probability that this ape develops into the opposite sex?

 

[Steersman]

No, you're the on who thinks that the editors of these dictionaries are rejecting and repudiating their own definitions. Duh.

So are they or not?

If they're not then they are flatly contradicted by the examples they quote.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Foundational principle - not sure that anyone here has a clue about the concept - of logical non-contradiction:

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

Either the definition is correct and the examples are wrong, or the examples are right and the definition is wrong. Make up your mind; ◊◊◊◊ or get off the pot.

 

[Emily's Cat]

I'm trying to get at what it would mean to say that sex was a spectrum

Sex ISN'T a spectrum. I don't know why you're investing so heavily in a thing that isn't.

Is sex to be a spectrum or are the intersex to be categorized as sexless?

False dichotomy. Sex is NOT a spectrum, and people with disorders of sexual development are NOT sexless.

 

[Emily's Cat]

So are they or not?

If they're not then they are flatly contradicted by the examples they quote.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Foundational principle - not sure that anyone here has a clue about the concept - of logical non-contradiction:

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

Either the definition is correct and the examples are wrong, or the examples are right and the definition is wrong. Make up your mind; ◊◊◊◊ or get off the pot.

It's YOUR definition! YOU are the one insisting that children are sexless. YOU are the one trying to use Lexico's definition of male to support YOUR argument that children are sexless.

None of the rest of us in this thread accept your definition. As far as the rest of us are concerned, YOUR interpretation of Lexico's definition is wrong, and there is no contradiction between Lexico's definition of male and their examples employing the term male. For everyone else in this thread, the definition and the usage are consistent.

 

[porch]

Do show me the dictionaries and biological journals which explicitly endorse that "development pathways" schlock. It's incoherent and quite anti-scientific claptrap.

Under the Steersman definition of the sexes, there is no such thing as female or male offspring. I have found at least one case of reputable biologists who do not adhere to such a usage in their scientific paper. It's called "Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes", by Lehtonen and Parker:

Third, there is symmetry in the abundance of the two sexes: the average number of male offspring is usually equal or close to the number of female offspring.

https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990#71570494

 

[porch]

So are they or not?

If they're not then they are flatly contradicted by the examples they quote.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Foundational principle - not sure that anyone here has a clue about the concept - of logical non-contradiction:

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

Either the definition is correct and the examples are wrong, or the examples are right and the definition is wrong. Make up your mind; ◊◊◊◊ or get off the pot.

Buddy, you're hilarious. Here is a logical possibility that you cannot grasp:

The definition is correct and the examples are correct. They complement one another to give a fuller definition than either one alone.

 

[d4m10n]

Sex ISN'T a spectrum.

Just for the sake of compare and contrast, here are a handful human attributes which can be seen as spectra.

• height
• weight
• eye color
• skin tone
• hirsuteness/hairlessness
• general intelligence
• Neanderthal ancestry (%)

Some of these traits are difficult to measure, others are very straightforward, but in each case we can say there is a gradient from those who most exemplify the trait being measured to those who do so the least.

Sex is not on the list because there isn't a gradient of possibilities between the two sexes; female and male developmental pathways are divergent rather than being two endpoints in an array of possible outcomes, any of which lead to reproductive capacity.

 

[Steersman]

This is incorrect. The elements that Aber mentioned are the DETERMINING mechanisms of sex. They are what DETERMINE whether a given individual develops as male or develops as female.

Fine. But we're not talking about DETERMINING (!!11!!); we're talking about DEFINING. There IS a difference. Which Emma Hilton once tried to clarify and emphasize; JPG below:

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1260850849317871617

<snip>

Here's a thought question, to challenge your philosophy: Let's assume you have an immature ape, and the ape has no known congenital conditions. The ape has not reached puberty. The ape has normal testicles and penis.

Based on your philosophy, this ape is sexless, because they don't actually produce any gametes yet.

So... Given your philosophical premise... What is the likelihood that this specific ape will produce ova in the future (1)? What is the likelihood that this specific ape will produce sperm (2)? Which sex does your philosophy say this ape will most likely develop into (3)? What is the probability that this ape develops into the opposite sex (4)?

1) 0.00000 ....0%
2) maybe 90%?
3) male
4) 0.00000....00%

But generally a bunch of red herrings.

I am NOT, in any way shape or form, trying to argue that mammals can change sex.

What I am trying to get you to address - like pulling teeth or convincing YECs that the Earth is older than 6000 years - is that the structure of Lexico/Google-OED/Wikipedia/Parker-Lehtonen-essay definitions makes "produces gametes" into necessary and sufficient conditions: no gametes, no sex.

Try looking and thinking about what I'm actually saying, not what you THINK I'm saying - some rather significant differences by the look of it.

 

[theprestige]

Let me count the ways ... ; )

I'm not asking for a count. I'm asking for an explanation: Pick one way you think it's wrong, say what it is, and explain why you think it's wrong.

Though it might be easier to count the ways in which such uses were right, the fingers of one hand probably being way more than sufficient.

Here's some ways it's right: It's based on observable biological fact, it includes all mammals, and it doesn't admit any confusion or inconsistency when trying to apply policy decisions to prepubescent boys, post-menopausal women, or people asserting a trans-gender identity. It effectively ignores all equivocation about gender as a social construct, focusing instead on scientific fact.

So. What's wrong with it, in your opinion?

Do show me the dictionaries and biological journals which explicitly endorse that "development pathways" schlock.

Soooo what? If everyone was jumping off a cliff then would you follow them over it? Too many of us are less humans than lemmings ....

Sorry to present some of your points out of order, but this juxtaposition is just too funny to pass up.

In any case, I'm not appealing to authority here, even though I'm confident in my assessment. I don't need a dictionary to tell me it's a good definition. I've reasoned it out for myself. Even if everyone else on the world disagreed with me (something I have not seen any evidence for), I'd still be confident in my reasoning and my conclusion: The developmental pathways definition, rooted in observable biological fact, is a good definition to use.

It's incoherent and quite anti-scientific claptrap. It leads to any number of quite serious - if sometimes amusing - contradictions:

Describe one such contradiction, in your own words. I'll even give you an example to work with: A transwoman is convicted of a crime, and asks to be sex-segregated with the female prisoners. However, according to the developmental pathways definition of sex, she's on the male pathway, and therefore should be sex-segregated with the other males, regardless of her gender identity.

Meanwhile, a post-menopausal woman, also a convict, asks to be sex-segregated with the female prisoners. According to the same definition, she's on the female pathway, and therefore should be sex-segregated with the other females - and would be even without her asking.

No contradictions so far. Can you come up with one?

You may wish to take a closer look at my last comment; uses really aren't a guarantee of anything, much less of truth or falsity:

They're a guarantee of usage, though.

What's untrue or false about the developmental pathways definition? It's rooted in observed scientific fact, after all. Are you saying the underlying science is wrong? That a female who's had a hysterectomy is no longer on the female developmental path, as determined by her genetic heritage from the moment of conception?

 

[Steersman]

Buddy, you're hilarious. Here is a logical possibility that you cannot grasp:

The definition is correct and the examples are correct. They complement one another to give a fuller definition than either one alone.

That's because of your premise, because of your article of faith. Because you're dogmatically committed to the idea that every one, every member of every last sexually-reproducing species is either male or female - from birth to death. And probably beyond too ...

Flatly contradicted by standard biological uses:

What could that be? Simply this: males produce sperm, females produce ova. That’s all that Placozoa do to count as male or female, so that must be all that’s required to be male or female. In non-political contexts, biologists agree. Describing the bluehead wrasse, a species of fish that can change sex under certain environmental conditions, Campbell’s 9th edition of Biology says this (p. 999): “a female wrasse undergoes sex reversal, a change in sex. Within a week, the transformed individual is producing sperm instead of eggs.”

https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/how-our-shoes-can-help-explain-the

 

[Steersman]

Sex ISN'T a spectrum. I don't know why you're investing so heavily in a thing that isn't.

Because you can't possibly unhorse people like Novella if you haven't a clue where they're coming from or how to interpret what they're saying.

False dichotomy. Sex is NOT a spectrum, and people with disorders of sexual development are NOT sexless.

That's what follows from your premise. Which is not gospel truth. Which you apparently think it qualifies as.

You're avoiding the question of why one set of definitions might have a broader deeper range of applicability than others. You're hardly better than a religious fundamentalist with their fingers in their ears saying, "Nyah, nyah, can't hear you."

 

[theprestige]

The clownfish rebuttal need not concern us when deciding on public policies for sex-segregated spaces in human societies. Nor need it concern us in a discussion of DSD conditions arising in humans. If that's where you have to go to find your contradictions, then you will end up far outside the problem space you started in, and have nothing useful to say about problems and solutions within that space. As we have seen.