Cont: Transwomen are not women part XII (also merged)

[mumblethrax]

And lazy thinking and indoctrination are bad for humans too.

When it matters, sure. I don't really care about lazy thinking and indoctrination when it comes to, I dunno, film reviews. Just means I won't rely on that reviewer. So I'm afraid there's still some work involved in getting to the canary in a coal mine, rather than a canary just sitting around, doing canary stuff.

If you want to argue that calling trans people groomers and pedophiles leads to bad behavior like this, I'm sympathetic to that claim, but I'm not interested in discussing it here. No conclusion on that topic is going to enlighten us about whether or not transwomen are women.

Again, I'm not making that claim.

I'm simply pointing out that you aren't thinking about this topic in a logically consistent way.

 

[mumblethrax]

Confidence isn't a property of the subject being measured, it's a property of the measurement process.

I'm unclear on why you think this matters.

But far more damning to your position is the fact that your measurement itself presupposes the sex binary, as you even admit. If there are options other than male or female, then decreasing confidence in female doesn't have to increase confidence in male. They are only automatically inverses of each other if there are no other options, that you must be one or the other.

This argument relies on the same sophistry that the usual argument does.

"Sex is a reproductive role, a developmental pathway, a body plan, distinct from sexual determination, and there are only two sexes in this sense."

Fine, that's perfectly reasonable.

"Sex is observable."

Well, not in the abstract sense that's just been supplied. If we want to "observe" sex, we'll need to either make inferences from the drivers/results of sexual determination (which will not allow us to exhaustively classify every individual as male or female), or proffer a new definition.

I mean, I'm not super interested in doing this, but the idea that sex cannot be understood as a bimodal distribution because we have nothing to put on the x-axis is completely wrongheaded.

 

[Ziggurat]

When it matters, sure. I don't really care about lazy thinking and indoctrination when it comes to, I dunno, film reviews. Just means I won't rely on that reviewer. So I'm afraid there's still some work involved in getting to the canary in a coal mine, rather than a canary just sitting around, doing canary stuff.

We're talking about some of the most fundamental aspects of human identity here. It matters.

Again, I'm not making that claim.

I'm simply pointing out that you aren't thinking about this topic in a logically consistent way.

But you haven't done that at all. You're claiming that the fact that I'm not talking about something that's off topic means I must be thinking about it in a very specific way, even though you haven't demonstrated that.

 

[mumblethrax]

We're talking about some of the most fundamental aspects of human identity here. It matters.

It doesn't follow from this that "it matters every time anyone talks about it." People can talk about important subjects frivolously. You still haven't given anyone a reason to give a ****.

But you haven't done that at all. You're claiming that the fact that I'm not talking about something that's off topic means I must be thinking about it in a very specific way, even though you haven't demonstrated that.

No. You didn't "not talk about it", you shrugged it off as an irrelevant one-off, while kvetching endlessly about what LBGT students believe.

 

[Ziggurat]

I mean, I'm not super interested in doing this, but the idea that sex cannot be understood as a bimodal distribution because we have nothing to put on the x-axis is completely wrongheaded.

You fundamentally misunderstand the issue. It's not that you can't put anything on the x axis to produce a bimodal distribution. There are plenty of things you can put on the x axis to get a bimodal distribution. It's that all these things which you put on the x axis to get a bimodal distribution are not sex. Many of them are properly categorized as sexual characteristics, but sexual characteristics are not sex. Your own attempt, "confidence", is also not sex.

The only way you're going to get anything other than binary sex in humans would be a mixed sex chimera. And such hypothetical cases, as interesting as they are, are really not part of this trans debate at all.

 

[Ziggurat]

It doesn't follow from this that "it matters every time anyone talks about it." People can talk about important subjects frivolously.

They weren't talking frivolously. They were quite serious.

You still haven't given anyone a reason to give a ****.

If you don't care, I can't make you. But your confusion that anyone else cares strikes me as willful ignorance.

 

[mumblethrax]

You fundamentally misunderstand the issue. It's not that you can't put anything on the x axis to produce a bimodal distribution. There are plenty of things you can put on the x axis to get a bimodal distribution. It's that all these things which you put on the x axis to get a bimodal distribution are not sex. Many of them are properly categorized as sexual characteristics, but sexual characteristics are not sex. Your own attempt, "confidence", is also not sex.

After I point out the sophistry, you continue to engage in the sophistry.

I wonder how you imagine you can classify individuals as male or female without relying on something that is "not sex".

The only way you're going to get anything other than binary sex in humans would be a mixed sex chimera. And such hypothetical cases [...]

They aren't hypothetical.

 

[d4m10n]

I told you what the x-axis would be--statistical confidence.

To which I asked: confidence of what? It sounds to me like you're content with picking either "maleness" or "femaleness" so that basically clears it up.

Given that we're talking about a system of classification with two classes, confidence in membership of one class will decrease as confidence in membership in the other increases. So, take your pick. Either graph confidence of femaleness or confidence of maleness.

Okay, this is really helpful. I'd expect the result to be a large cluster of data points close to zero and another large cluster of data points around one. I'd also expect the middle of the graph to be fairly flat, with somewhere between 1.7% and 0.018% of observations falling in the middle part of the graph on account of various intersex conditions, and maybe another percent or so for those who've made some efforts to physically transition.

This is all assuming, of course, that we throw in just about any and every sex-relevant characteristic into some sort of machine learning algorithm or statistical classifier, including external body habitus, genital morphology, development or regression of paramesonephric ducts^WP, free testosterone levels, etc. It also assumes that we have a training data set where we know the answer (M/F) for every characteristic being measured.

What would happen if we put someone like Lia Thomas into your hypothetical probability calculator? That depends on which and how many characteristics we chose to measure and how predictive each characteristic was when dealing with clear-cut training data. Using physically measurable characteristics only, I'm guessing they would score towards the male end of the graph, with hormone replacement effects dragging them a bit towards the flat center part of the curve.

ETA: I'd expect the confidence curve to look something like this in shape, but from zero to one along the x-axis.

 

[mumblethrax]

They weren't talking frivolously. They were quite serious.

You can be frivolous while attempting to be serious. This whole forum is an exercise in that.

If you don't care, I can't make you. But your confusion that anyone else cares strikes me as willful ignorance.

I'm not confused about the reasons other people care. It's just that their reasons are risible.

 

[mumblethrax]

To which I asked: confidence of what? It sounds to me like you're content with picking either "maleness" or "femaleness" so that basically clears it up.

Sure. The conversation got nuked before I could explicitly say this, I suppose.

Okay, this is really helpful. I'd expect the result to be a large cluster of data points close to zero and another large cluster of data points around one. I'd also expect the middle of the graph to be fairly flat, with somewhere between 1.7% and 0.018% of observations falling in the middle part of the graph on account of various intersex conditions, and maybe another percent or so for those who've made some efforts to physically transition.

I'd expect that, too.

This is all assuming, of course, that we throw in just about any and every sex-relevant characteristic into some sort of machine learning algorithm or statistical classifier, including external body habitus, genital morphology, development or regression of paramesonephric ducts^WP, free testosterone levels, etc. It also assumes that we have a training data set where we know the answer (M/F) for every characteristic being measured.

I don't think you need every relevant characteristic. The usual loci of sexual differentiation will probably get you there.

What would happen if we put someone like Lia Thomas into your hypothetical probability calculator? That depends on which and how many characteristics we chose to measure and how predictive each characteristic was when dealing with clear-cut training data. Using physically measurable characteristics only, I'm guessing they would score towards the male end of the graph, with hormone replacement effects dragging them a bit towards the flat center part of the curve.

Probably, yeah.

 

[d4m10n]

I don't think you need every relevant characteristic. The usual loci of sexual differentiation will probably get you there.

Fair enough, but the usual loci won't get us where the activists are hoping to go. Now that we've actually got ourselves a curve with a modal value near zero and another one near one, we run into the next problem. The "sex is bimodal" argument is generally deployed in service of the central tenet.

Here is the argument in brief, courtesy of the ACLU:

Every individual’s sex is multifaceted and comprised of many distinct biologically-influenced characteristics, including, but not limited to, chromosomal makeup, hormones, internal and external reproductive organs, secondary sex characteristics, and gender identity. Where there is a divergence between these characteristics, gender identity is the most important and determinative factor. Therefore, someone’s sex or gender is properly understood to be the same as their gender identity.

It is not clear why the only characteristic which cannot be objectively quantified must take precedence over the sort of measurable characteristics which could be fed into a statistical formula, but it is clear to me that the "sex is bimodal" crowd is doing a bit of argumentative legerdemain here. After distracting us with all the various characteristics, they settle on exactly one which could not have been part of the bimodal graph in the first place.

 

[mumblethrax]

Fair enough, but the usual loci won't get us where the activists are hoping to go.

Depends on the activist, I suppose, but sure, people are gonna misuse science.

By the same token, people insisting that sex cannot be understood as anything but a binary are giving oxygen to the sex-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be crowd, by sticking to a bad talking point. It would be better to say, "Sure, you can, if you want to, understand sex as a distribution, but it will be close enough to binary that it's not clear what you gain by doing so."

 

[Ziggurat]

Depends on the activist, I suppose, but sure, people are gonna misuse science.

By the same token, people insisting that sex cannot be understood as anything but a binary are giving oxygen to the sex-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be crowd, by sticking to a bad talking point. It would be better to say, "Sure, you can, if you want to, understand sex as a distribution, but it will be close enough to binary that it's not clear what you gain by doing so."

Why would that be better? You may feel it to be more accurate, but it's not more persuasive. How is the distinction you're drawing anything more than pedantry?

 

[Ziggurat]

It is not clear why the only characteristic which cannot be objectively quantified must take precedence over the sort of measurable characteristics which could be fed into a statistical formula,

Precisely because it cannot be quantified. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

 

[mumblethrax]

Why would that be better? You may feel it to be more accurate, but it's not more persuasive. How is the distinction you're drawing anything more than pedantry?

Most obviously it's better by virtue of being true rather than false.

I have no idea whether it's more persuasive or not, but I do consider it rhetorically better to try to engage with an audience in an honest way, rather than playing opposite day with everything they say.

 

[LondonJohn]

Depends on the activist, I suppose, but sure, people are gonna misuse science.

By the same token, people insisting that sex cannot be understood as anything but a binary are giving oxygen to the sex-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be crowd, by sticking to a bad talking point. It would be better to say, "Sure, you can, if you want to, understand sex as a distribution, but it will be close enough to binary that it's not clear what you gain by doing so."

I still maintain that this focus on the word "sex" strictly and solely in its biological sense is misleading a propos the transgender identity debate.

And that's because there are two widespread reasonable definitions of "sex". One is indeed the strict biological definition. But the other is effectively a proxy for "gender". People have become used to "sex" and "gender" being effectively synonymous; but now that medical science has decoupled the two terms, this isn't true any longer. However (for obvious and understandable reasons), many people continue to use the word "sex" as a proxy for "gender".

So, in fact, the word "sex" - in the context of a debate about transgender identity - is a lot more complicated than simply "biological sex". Only a few fringe activists, for example, believe that when people transition, they transition their biological sex. Most pro-trans-rights people know full well that transgender people retain the biological sex they had from birth, and that it's purely their gender which has transitioned.

This confusion over definitions of terms means that most legislatures - rightly - consider that in certain contexts "sex" can be a weapon against transgender people. For example, if someone harassed a trans man by saying "We all know what sex you really are - you're just pretending to be the opposite sex", this would most likely be considered aggravating hate speech: the speaker here is using "sex" as a proxy for "gender".

The confusion extends to the use of "female" and "male". In a similar way, up until recently, those two words have been wholly synonymous (in their noun form) with "woman" and "man" (and in their adjective form with "woman-like" and "man-like"). And many people still use those words in that way.

I go back to one example of this confusion in action: the part on the identity page in English-language passports which asks for the person's "sex" - where the two possible answers are "male" or "female". Again, this Q&A is something of a relic from a time when sex and gender were entirely synonymous. More and more legislatures are now - appropriately and correctly - allowing transgender people to adjust this field to their trans gender, even though the label is "sex" and the two possible responses are "male" and "female". In doing so, these legislatures are sensible & rightly considering that the question (in this context) pertains to gender identity more than biological sex - that, in other words, the word "sex" in this context does not mean "biological sex" but is instead being used as a synonym for "gender".

 

[d4m10n]

"Gender" decoupled from sex still means like three or four different things, LJ. Are you talking about masculine and feminine social roles or something else?

Sent from my SM-G996U using Tapatalk

 

[mumblethrax]

I still maintain that this focus on the word "sex" strictly and solely in its biological sense is misleading a propos the transgender identity debate.

Could be--certainly not everyone is careful about the distinction.

'Gender' started replacing 'sex' on official documents in the US in...what, the late 70s? 80s at the latest?...but it was pretty much just a euphemism for 'sex'.

 

[d4m10n]

...according to Johns Hopkins University:

https://studentaffairs.jhu.edu/lgbtq/education/glossary/

"Lesbian [sexual orientation]: A non-man attracted to non-men. While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label."

Can we safely presume that this new "man" / "non-man" binary is actually a spectrum?

 

[smartcooky]

It says a lesbian is "a non-man".

Nope. That does not support your claim that they are saying "Lesbians aren't women either!"

(For clarity "women are not men")