Merged Strict biological definitions of male/female

Except Steersman doesn't even want that. As I was saying, he's explicitly argued a page ago or so, that toilets should still be discriminated by genitals, not by his new rule. His seems to be just an extra classification, on top of existing ones, that even he can't say what it would be useful FOR.

It's like if I went to re-classify Japanese medieval swords by the colour of the wrapping on their hilt. Not as something to replace existing classifications (such as blade geometries), but an extra one on top of those. Without any idea about what it would help with. Like, why would it even matter if it turns out that Tokugawa Ieyasu (Toranaga in Shogun) had a red wrap instead of a black one.
 
HansMustermann said:
@hecd2
Granted you managed to un-dumb his definition to some extent, but my objection is still: what do you actually need that extra classification FOR?
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It can be usefully applied in biological studies relating to the evolution of anisogamy and the comparison of gamete fitness across all anisogamous species and in other specialist studies within reproductive biology. It is useless for many other fields of biology and ludicrously inadequate for any specifically human matters.

It's not even helping with sports, since a castrated man (which he counts as now sexless) still has a different skeleton and differently linked muscles to that skeleton (e.g., in the legs) than a woman. It's not like there's a way to also modify your body to be just like a female one, like the potion from Onimai.
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The narrow technical definition is of little use outside the study of reproduction across all species. It is utterly useless when applied to categorise humans in any social or political matters.
 
theprestige said:
I think he just wants One True Standard to Rule Them All.

Relevant xkcd.
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Indeed! Steersman is trying to come up with a universal, one-size-fits-all definition of the biological sexes "male" and "female". The problem with that is biology is far too complex and differs too much across species for this end to be anything but a pipe-dream. Its impossible.

He is striving to achieve the unachievable (and murdering the English language while doing so).
 
hecd2 said:
It can be usefully applied in biological studies relating to the evolution of anisogamy and the comparison of gamete fitness across all anisogamous species and in other specialist studies within reproductive biology.
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I will grant that it could. But that's not what he's doing, nor has he shown any competence or inclination to do so. He's instead arguing that it's somehow relevant to some "biological and legal" status, that he has yet to even try to support.

Could != is, that's all I'm saying.
 
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smartcooky said:
Indeed! Steersman is trying to come up with a universal, one-size-fits-all definition of the biological sexes "male" and "female". The problem with that is biology is far too complex and differs too much across species for this end to be anything but a pipe-dream. Its impossible.

He is striving to achieve the unachievable (and murdering the English language while doing so).
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I'm not sure it's impossible, but supposing it is, that doesn't make it desirable. Certainly the definition he's arrived at is stupid and unworkable as applied. He takes it as an axiom that you cannot have context-dependent definitions, but that's simply and obviously not true.
 
Ziggurat said:
I'm not sure it's impossible, but supposing it is, that doesn't make it desirable. Certainly the definition he's arrived at is stupid and unworkable as applied. He takes it as an axiom that you cannot have context-dependent definitions, but that's simply and obviously not true.
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Oh, he's doing worse than that. Like taking two definitions that can't both be true the literalist way he's doing it, in the same message even, arguing that you can't disagree with TEH EXPURTS, and then still pretending HE can retcon addendums to those himself anyway. But you can't.

Makes the fundie flat-earth creationists seem logical by comparison, is all I'm saying :p
 
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Ziggurat said:
I'm not sure it's impossible, but supposing it is, that doesn't make it desirable. Certainly the definition he's arrived at is stupid and unworkable as applied. He takes it as an axiom that you cannot have context-dependent definitions, but that's simply and obviously not true.
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Well IMO, if your definition is dependent on context, then that definition is not one-size-fits-all.
 
HansMustermann said:
I will grant that it could. But that's not what he's doing, nor has he shown any competence or inclination to do so. He's instead arguing that it's somehow relevant to some "biological and legal" status, that he has yet to even try to support.

Could != is, that's all I'm saying.
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Of course that's what I'm doing, what Griffiths and many other reputable biologists have been doing. Most of you lot are just not paying attention -- rather difficult to do so when one has one's head stuck in the "sand" ....

I've laid out the reasons in several different places exactly why biologists have settled on those definitions and what are the logical consequences that the saner among them accept.

Rerum cognoscere causas;
Mechanisms in Science: things learned at my mother's knee and other low joints
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https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas

"Is ‘sex’ a useful category?”
Cell magazine's Lysenkoism and repudiation of biology
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https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category

hecd2 more or less gets it right with this -- I've said, Griffiths has said, that the biological definitions are not much use in social applications but they're essential in biological "contexts" :rolleyes:

The narrow technical definition is of little use outside the study of reproduction across all species. It is utterly useless when applied to categorise humans in any social or political matters.
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As Paul2 got it right earlier with his (belated) admission that "around the production of one type of gamete at any one point in the organism's lifetime" is virtually useless -- no 'there' there.

As for your "biological and legal", there's two quite different bailiwicks there. Most of you lot want to make the "social" definitions for the sexes -- no better than "boys have penises and girls have vaginas" -- into the biological definitions. You're no better than the transloonie nutcases who want to turn the sexes into spectra.
 
Steersman said:
Of course that's what I'm doing
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No you're not, once you've literally admitted already that other things should go by other rules.

Just that you can flip-flop between polar opposite position, doesn't mean you're actually supporting either. It just means you've come to a logic debate unarmed :p
 
Steersman said:
As Paul2 got it right earlier with his (belated) admission that "around the production of one type of gamete at any one point in the organism's lifetime" is virtually useless -- no 'there' there.
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Way to shade things in your favor. I never said it was virtually useless nor "no there there." I only said I imagined a defeater to it and would need to reconsider, which would include that I might find a defeater to the defeater. Which I actually have thought of provisionally, but you are last person I would offer it to. Once I clean it up, I might post it.
 
smartcooky said:
Well IMO, if your definition is dependent on context, then that definition is not one-size-fits-all.
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Exactly. There is no one size fits all, no definition to rule them all, not even within biology. That doesn’t mean that a definition which implies that pre-pubescent and post-menopausal humans are sexless is “wrong” or useless within its rather narrow context - but it does follow that that definition doesn’t trump others in their context, even within the biological sciences.
 
Paul2 said:
Way to shade things in your favor. I never said it was virtually useless nor "no there there." I only said I imagined a defeater to it and would need to reconsider, which would include that I might find a defeater to the defeater. Which I actually have thought of provisionally, but you are last person I would offer it to. Once I clean it up, I might post it.
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I thought you weren't ever going to "post up something else in reply to Steers"? ;):)

But you SAID that you "realized a defeater to [your] suggestion, one that [ I ] mentioned below".

And the one I mentioned was more or less saying, rather explicitly, that your "organized around" is, in fact, quite useless -- and I gave chapter and verse why that was the case:

Sorry, but a vague and totally useless definition. What do you MEAN by "organized around"?

How, exactly, does that work for sequential hermaphrodites, particularly clownfish at hatching? They're "organized around" EVENTUALLY producing one or the other or both. Which sex are they at that point?

And likewise with other species that don't have a sex at conception because the eventual sex is determined by incubation temperature.

"produces gametes" -- right now -- is readily detectable and observable, at least theoretically. "organized around" isn't.
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https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14408351&postcount=1579

I await your "defeater to that defeater" -- with bated breath. But you might want to first take a close look at that post of mine -- and to my Substack posts (below) -- to maybe get some inkling as to why that "organized around" is, in fact, quite useless:

https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/win2021/entries/science-mechanisms/#toc
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
 
HansMustermann said:
No you're not, once you've literally admitted already that other things should go by other rules.

Just that you can flip-flop between polar opposite position, doesn't mean you're actually supporting either. It just means you've come to a logic debate unarmed :p
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Where the hell -- exactly -- did I say anything of the sort? Kinda think your reading abilities suck -- your abilities to engage in 'logic debate" aren't much better.

I've been saying from square one that "the folk-biology definitions for the sexes have been replaced by more philosophically, logically, and biologically coherent and useful ones":
https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13901973&postcount=9

Dozens of other places as well -- some 200 hits on "folk-biology" in my posts since the OP, lo these two years now. How time flies when you're having fun ...

https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/search.php?searchid=10390959

Don't know whether the search results are always "live" or not, but the results are from searching on "folk-biology" with me as the author.

But while I've said that people are welcome to use those if they wish, what I was objecting to was the insistence that those folk-biology definitions ARE the "biological definitions". They're simply not -- period.

Apropos of which, just exactly what are YOUR definitions for "male" and "female"? What does it take to qualify for membership cards in those categories? Citations required too -- you have any? ... :rolleyes:
 
hecd2 said:
Exactly. There is no one size fits all, no definition to rule them all, not even within biology. That doesn’t mean that a definition which implies that pre-pubescent and post-menopausal humans are sexless is “wrong” or useless within its rather narrow context - but it does follow that that definition doesn’t trump others in their context, even within the biological sciences.
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Pray tell, exactly what is your definition for "male" and "female"? What criteria must be met to qualify anyone for membership in those categories? Citations required too ...

Kinda think you're still making the sexes into spectra, that you "think" there are a whole bunch of criteria that qualify organisms, of all anisogamous species, as either male or female -- any one of which is sufficient.

Seems you're still kinda clueless about the difference between proxies and defining traits -- and despite my frequent links to illuminating articles thereon:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)

In addition to which you don't seem to have a flaming clue about what it means to have a sex in the first place. You might take a look at the definition for "sex" itself:

sex: Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.
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https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex

If you say -- as you lot are basically saying -- that "boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas" -- then you're losing sight of the fact -- trying to sweep it under the carpet, in fact -- that, for example, CAIS people have vaginas, but they also have internal but non-functional testicles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Physical

How much "reproductive function" -- and of which type -- do THEY have?

The "essence" of "sex" is that "reproductive function". And "produces gametes" -- right now, not next decade or in the last one -- is about as close as we're likely to get to that "essence" any time soon.

But scientific illiteracy -- and a rather pigheaded variety at that -- as far as the eye can see.
 
Steersman said:
Pray tell, exactly what is your definition for "male" and "female"? What criteria must be met to qualify anyone for membership in those categories? Citations required too ...
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Why should anyone bother?

We already know you'll reject them no matter what they are or what they say, and you'll reject any sources/citation that don't agree with you, as "folk biology", and you'll finish up by insulting the poster.
 
smartcooky said:
Why should anyone bother?

We already know you'll reject them no matter what they are or what they say, and you'll reject any sources/citation that don't agree with you, as "folk biology", and you'll finish up by insulting the poster.
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If what you table is not the biological definitions then, of course, they are not the biological definitions. It's not a matter of me "rejecting them" -- being "mean" to you and yours just for the hell of it (the horror!! :rolleyes:) -- but one of what those definitions are saying. Even hecd2 concedes that "there is a technical definition of male and female which applies and is useful in reproductive biology and in understanding the evolution of sex across anisogamous species":

https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14409465&postcount=1596

But what you're trying to do -- whether you realize it or not -- is repudiate and bastardize those definitions because they don't comport with your dogma, with your view of the sexes as "immutable identities", with your view that they "dehumanize" :rolleyes: you and your tribe. Same thing as the nutcases -- ostensible biologists and philosophers among them -- trying to turn the sexes into spectra, or insisting that it is no longer a useful category.

As for "insulting the poster", you might take a look in the mirror there mate. Starting with your rather "obstinate" inability to even admit that the religion-less don't have a religion.

Though, in a review of the last dozen or so comments, I see that one from hecd2, which I had quoted from above, offers a suggestion that might be a workable compromise -- though implementing it is still a rather sticky wicket:

For social and legal purposes, I think that women could usefully and coherently be defined as adult female humans who are or were capable of producing large gametes. This definition avoids the absurdities which result from using the reproductive biology definition, and the anomalies attendant on various rare DSD conditions if phenotype or karyotype-based definitions are used.
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https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14409465&postcount=1596

Though his definition still leads to the conclusion that many of the intersex are still sexless -- or neither men nor women -- since they've never been capable of producing either type of gamete and won't ever be able to do so.

But the problem there is still in the "adult female humans" since it is still begging the question, still assuming what it means to be female in the first place with no criteria specified for qualifying as such.

But the simple "are or were capable of producing large gametes" -- absent the previous "female humans" -- is more or less what I think I've suggested here several times: simply using Hilton's original "gonads of past, present, or future functionality" as the criteria for "man" and "woman" rather than for "male" and "female".

Too many -- mostly feminists and their various white knights -- have bet the farm on "adult human female" but that, as mentioned, still leaves hanging the question of how one defines "female". And the most common definition for "female", one endorsed by mainstream biology, is STILL "produces large gametes" -- right now. You might actually try taking a close look at it:

https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female

But you might also note there's a plan afoot in several Republican States:

These states are narrowly defining who is 'female' and 'male' in law
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https://www.npr.org/2023/05/03/1172...y-define-sex-female-male-transgender-intersex

A worthy effort though I think they're barking up the wrong trees since their definitions conflict rather fundamentally with standard biological ones.

That's kind of the crux of the problem -- finding workable definitions for "man" and "woman" in law that don't conflict with more or less essential definitions in biology for "male" and "female".
 
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