Merged Strict biological definitions of male/female

[d4m10n]

I don't trust the Trump administration (or any right-wing political movement) to pen those strokes.

They will instead pretend that the world is really quite simple and difficult cases do not exist.

 

[Steersman]

I don't trust the Trump administration (or any right-wing political movement) to pen those strokes.

They will instead pretend that the world is really quite simple and difficult cases do not exist.

Indeed. Though "difficult" tends to be rather subjective and idiosyncratic -- many people here clearly having their knickers in a twist at the prospect of them, or those near and dear, losing their sex category membership cards for one reason or another.

But speaking of that and of "right-wing political movements", you -- and/or others here ... -- might be interested in some info on the primary author of that EO defining the sexes:

Today’s FFS Friday honors May Mailman, who played a significant role in authoring the recent Executive Order on Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. ....

Too many people use language uncritically and it has resulted in the erasure of women. This is what Independent Women and feminist partners have been telling state legislatures for a few years now. ....

Until recently, May Mailman was the Legal Director of the Independent Women’s Forum and the Director of the Independent Women’s Law Center. It was in that capacity that I met her, when she was counsel for a group of women who were suing their sorority (Kappa Kappa Gamma) over its decision to admit a man who calls himself Artemis, in direct violation of the sorority’s own bylaws. ....

FFS Friday: May Mailman

January 24, 2025

karadansky.substack.com

But as Paul Griffiths has emphasized, the biological definitions for the sexes really are not terribly useful for various social engineering purposes. It might be wise for us to re-define various terms with that in mind. Apropos of which:

Steersman: Why I've argued that they would be wise to change their focus and, instead, define "woman" as "adult human ovary-haver'. Virtually the same "immutable" trait but a definition that doesn't conflict with the biological one. ...

Daleth: Make it "adult human born with ovaries" and you're there. Some women have their ovaries removed due to a medical condition (ovarian cancer, etc.). ....

Steersman: Works for me. Though many women might not be terribly impressed or enthusiastic about it -- too many of them have turned both "female" and "woman" into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essence", as UK "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones once put it.

Steersman on Woman: Adult Human Female

> "It’s unfortunate we need to clarify sex in law but it’s good that we are getting this done." Indeed. Justice Alito in the Skrmetti case suggested that a "protected class" needs to be based on an "immutable" trait to make that protection work. And the Alabama definition for female, in...

wahf.substack.com

 

[angrysoba]

I think you're making a ridiculous meal out of one specific case which is easily dealt with by a few strokes of a pen.

I don't trust the Trump administration (or any right-wing political movement) to pen those strokes.

They will instead pretend that the world is really quite simple and difficult cases do not exist.

I can see it now. An aide rushes into the Oval Office to explain that the executive order seems to have excluded a CAIS individual from a particular bathroom.

President Donald Trump, while posing for his Mount Rushmore sculpture, is confused about this "CAIS". He turns to his head of healthcare, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to fill him in on this latest incaranation of LGBTQ+DEI.

RFK explains... "It'...sa...con..dition...caused...by...glyphosate...and...seed...oils....and...too...many...vaccines."

Trump has glyphosate, seed oils and vaccines banned by executive order.

 

[theprestige]

I don't trust the Trump administration (or any right-wing political movement) to pen those strokes.

They will instead pretend that the world is really quite simple and difficult cases do not exist.

Yes, let's have a moment of silence for all the CAIS sufferers, trying to find the right government-subsidized collegiate sports league for their athletic ambitions.

 

[Steersman]

I can see it now. An aide rushes into the Oval Office to explain that the executive order seems to have excluded a CAIS individual from a particular bathroom.

President Donald Trump, while posing for his Mount Rushmore sculpture, is confused about this "CAIS". He turns to his head of healthcare, Bobby Kennedy Jr, to fill him in on this latest incaranation of LGBTQ+DEI.

RFK explains... "It'...sa...con..dition...caused...by...glyphosate...and...seed...oils....and...too...many...vaccines."

Trump has glyphosate, seed oils and vaccines banned by executive order.

Big LoL. Rather typical of his administration so far:

Trump Fired, Then Unfired, National Nuclear Security Administration Employees. What Were Their Jobs?​

The administration asked some of the agency’s workers, who were part of last week’s massive layoffs across the federal government, to come back.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/16/us/politics/trump-national-nuclear-security-administration-employees-firings.html?unlocked_article_code=1.x04.7b_h.AXTwDVPJDtDe&smid=url-share

 

[d4m10n]

Yes, let's have a moment of silence for all the CAIS sufferers, trying to find the right government-subsidized collegiate sports league for their athletic ambitions.

Not sure why we'd limit ourselves to athletics here (much less intercollegiate athletics) but I really don't think they should be forced to use the male locker rooms to change clothes when working out at the school athletic center. What say you?

 

[theprestige]

Not sure why we'd limit ourselves to athletics here (much less intercollegiate athletics) but I really don't think they should be forced to use the male locker rooms to change clothes when working out at the school athletic center. What say you?

Which would only happen if a dispute arose, which it wouldn't, for reasons that should be obvious.

This debate would be very different, if it were actually about CAIS individuals fighting for access to women's locker rooms.

 

[Steersman]

Yes, let's have a moment of silence for all the CAIS sufferers, trying to find the right government-subsidized collegiate sports league for their athletic ambitions.

Reminds me of a classic Kingston Trio song about "The Man [Woman?] Who Never Returned":

Well, let me tell you of the story of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket, kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the M-T-A
Well did he ever return, no he never returned
And his fate is still unlearned (what a pity)
He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.

 

[Steersman]

In any discussion of actual real life, I don't think there's a woman alive who would be shouting "get that man out of my single-sex space" about a CAIS woman.

I wonder if you, and your "tribe", would feel the same about various transsexuals about whom it is said that only their gynecologists know for sure. Particularly since your criteria for "woman" and "female" seems to begin and end with genitalia.

But, somewhat apropos of which, I ran across the case of a transwoman and transsexual, Lynn Conway, who was a very smart cookie indeed. Seems to have been sailing on a more or less even keel despite a predilection for "gender non-conformance":

Lynn Conway - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Lynn Conway's homepage

Lynn Conway's Story

https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/Media/Through%20the%20Gender%20Labyrinth.pdf

 

[Rolfe]

Which would only happen if a dispute arose, which it wouldn't, for reasons that should be obvious.

This debate would be very different, if it were actually about CAIS individuals fighting for access to women's locker rooms.

I think it will arise in relation to athletics. I have heard one CAIS woman say that she doesn't think CAIS women are really great athletics prospects because of [insert medical technobabble] problems they have with connective tissue or something. If she's right, there isn't an issue. However there is a study that was done at an Olympic Games where they tested all the female athletes for the SRY gene.

They were actually looking for actual (normal) men dishonestly masquerading as women to win medals. It had happened in the past. They didn't find any, and nobody was disqualified, and that's one of the reasons they stopped doing the test. All that testing and all that money and we didn't find any deliberately cheating men. What a waste, give it up.

What they did find was a small bunch of people with DSDs. They analysed the results and said look, so many 5ARD, so many PAIS, so many CAIS. I think that was it. They assumed all these people, including the 5ARD and the PAIS individuals, were sincere in their belief that they were female, so not cheating. (More recent events may suggest that wasn't necessarily a valid assumption.) At that point nobody was thinking, 5ARD and PAIS are actual male people who have gone through male puberty (at least to some extent) and letting them compete just because they were mis-assigned female at birth is not fair to the actual women here. It took that podium at Rio to do that, I think.

But what about CAIS? The numbers were small, but the suggestion was that there were significantly more than there should have been in comparison to the prevalence of CAIS in the population. The observation that even pre-puberty, boys have a small but significant advantage over girls, may be relevant here. CAIS women, despite having ZERO bioavailable testosterone mark you, may have a shade of an advantage over normal women, perhaps due to skeletal conformation.

This is going to be a point of debate. Exclude 5ARD and PAIS, but what to do about CAIS? Is even a shade of "male advantage" too much? Personally I'd be inclined to treat having CAIS in much the same way as that swimmer's famously large feet and wingspan and something about lactic acid metabolism, as a natural advantage that's allowed in women. (That swimmer's records have all been broken already anyway.) But there is a genuine debate to be had and it's actually above my pay grade. It's the one aspect of female single-sex spaces that there could be a case for closing off to CAIS women.

 

[d4m10n]

This debate would be very different, if it were actually about CAIS individuals fighting for access to women's locker rooms.

It is entirely unclear to me why they ought to have access to women's locker rooms, if you take the policies of the Defending Women EO (linked at #2,611) to be both lawful and correct. Not seeing anything in there which provides carve-outs for genetic males with intersex conditions or allows for the intervention of common sense.

 

[Rolfe]

Lucky that isn't the wording of actual legislation then.

 

[d4m10n]

Not yet, anyhow.

I fully expect MAGA fanboys in state legislatures to ctrl-C ctrl-V the EOs which test well with red state audiences.

 

[theprestige]

It is entirely unclear to me why they ought to have access to women's locker rooms, if you take the policies of the Defending Women EO (linked at #2,611) to be both lawful and correct.

They ought because nobody is trying to stop them.

Again, this debate would be very different if it were actually about female presenting people fighting for access to women's locker rooms.

 

[Emily's Cat]

Not sure why we'd limit ourselves to athletics here (much less intercollegiate athletics) but I really don't think they should be forced to use the male locker rooms to change clothes when working out at the school athletic center. What say you?

You can get down into the weeds on this, but you should understand that it's weeds all the way down and there is no bottom. You'll just continually find tinier and tinier "what about this specific rare or hypothetical situation" to try to find a perfect solution to.

Alternatively... You could use your thinky brain and realize that literally nobody other than them and their doctor and maybe their immediate family knows they have CAIS in the first place, they don't have a dick for the females to get uncomfortable about, and there's nothing physical about them that indicates internal testes and an inability to process testosterone. To everyone in the world who interacts with them in a non-medical situation, they will be perceived as and assumed to be female.

I'm so tired of the constant whataboutism involved in this. I'll reiterate yet again what i've been saying for nigh a decade: If nobody can tell that you're actually the opposite sex, nobody can tell.

I have fake plants throughout my house. They're very high quality fake plants. You can look at them, even closely look at them, and you can't tell that they're not real. They even have little bits of carefully designed brown edges here and there to make them look more real. So unless someone tries to pluck a leaf, nobody can tell that they're fake. And the result of this dose of pragmatic reality is that in this context, and in this situation, it does not matter whether they're real or fake. If nobody can tell that they're plastic and rubber, nobody can tell.

This is all pedantic rules-lawyering about a situation that has some academic thought exercise interest but no real world value whatsoever. I swear, it's nothing more than a needless distraction to create arguments that otherwise wouldn't exist and have no actual real-world impact.

The ride says you have to be 4'6" tall to ride it. There's even a handy sign with some cartoon character holding up their hand at the appropriate height. But nobody is going around with a plump line to guarantee that the sign is exactly perpendicular to avoid an errant reading of 4'5.8". And nobody is telling people to take their shoes off because without that half inch of heel lift they technically don't qualify. Spending pages and pages going back and forth about the fact that the sign means that someone who is technically a quarter inch under the threshold is going to be barred from riding the rollercoaster because they wear lifts in their shoes is not only pointless, it's a complete waste of everyone's time and brain cells.

 

[Emily's Cat]

But what about CAIS? The numbers were small, but the suggestion was that there were significantly more than there should have been in comparison to the prevalence of CAIS in the population. The observation that even pre-puberty, boys have a small but significant advantage over girls, may be relevant here. CAIS women, despite having ZERO bioavailable testosterone mark you, may have a shade of an advantage over normal women, perhaps due to skeletal conformation.

I have questions. For someone who has CAIS, what happens at puberty? I assume there's nothing wrong with their adrenal, so they'd still attain their genetically predisposed height, which would be correlated with the male sex, likely making them taller than the average female. I'd assume they would end up with larger hands and feet than most females too.

But what about growth plate closure? Secondary sex characteristics? I know that one of the problems with puberty blockers is that they don't specifically halt only the production of sex hormones, but that they affect the functioning of the pituitary, which is heavily involved in puberty but also does other things. But I don't really understand the scope of that SRY/receptor relationship. Do people with CAIS develop a female-typical pelvic tilt and femur angle, and if so is that set in motion during fetal development?

My general assumption has been that CAIS wouldn't impact characteristics that are only correlated with sex, rather than directly driven by sex. But I really don't know.

 

[d4m10n]

You can get down into the weeds on this, but you should understand that it's weeds all the way down and there is no bottom. You'll just continually find tinier and tinier "what about this specific rare or hypothetical situation" to try to find a perfect solution to.

AIS is one of the most common intersex conditions, last I checked.

I'm so tired of the constant whataboutism involved in this.

Directly addressing the obvious deficiencies of an EO purporting to define the sexes while repealing intersex guidance isn't whataboutism at all; it is directly on point here in this thread.

To everyone in the world who interacts with them in a non-medical situation, they will be perceived as and assumed to be female.

If law and policy requires them to use the male-designated facilities, this line of reasoning comes down to telling them to (1) violate the law/policy and (2) keep quiet about their condition.

 

[Emily's Cat]

AIS is one of the most common intersex conditions, last I checked.

Maybe if you're rolling all types of AIS together? CAIS is like 1 in 100,000 or so.

 

[Emily's Cat]

If law and policy requires them to use the male-designated facilities, this line of reasoning comes down to telling them to (1) violate the law/policy and (2) keep quiet about their condition.

What it comes down to is that literally nobody is going to know they have CAIS unless they wander around with an orange cone on their heads proclaiming "I have internal testes!!!!"

You're opposing a policy that does a lot of good for a lot of females all because there's a vanishingly small chance that a male with a very specific DSD would technically be in violation even though nobody would ever know about it.

For all intents, you're arguing against having general laws against jaywalking because some rural roads in the middle of nowhere don't have stop signs for miles and miles and they don't have crosswalks and somebody might really need to get to the other side.

 

[Steersman]

I'm so tired of the constant whataboutism involved in this. I'll reiterate yet again what i've been saying for nigh a decade: If nobody can tell that you're actually the opposite sex, nobody can tell.

He's "just asking questions" ... Though maybe with some justification -- something of a rhetorical argument, one to draw attention to some devils in the details. See below.

You're opposing a policy that does a lot of good for a lot of females all because there's a vanishingly small chance that a male with a very specific DSD would technically be in violation even though nobody would ever know about it.

Indeed. Though there may be a few flies in that "vanishingly small" ointment of yours.

But relative to your "does a lot of good for a lot of females", you might have some interest in this article which argues that transwomen have stolen some 900 awards that should have gone to actual females (sex) -- helluva situation that we have to qualify that term because the transloonies have redefined it as a gender:

UN reveals staggering number of women’s medals lost to trans athletes under Biden-Harris
A whopping 600 female athletes have lost 890 awards across 29 sports

UN reveals staggering number of women’s medals lost to trans athletes under Biden-Harris

A whopping 600 female athletes have lost 890 awards across 29 sports.

getoutspoken.com

But more to your "vanishingly small" point, you in particular might like this Substack Note by Gerald Posner who's been writing extensively on the transgender issue:

Gerald Posner on Substack

The NCAA is making a mockery of Donald Trump’s Executive Order to keep biological men out of women’s sports. Listen to Kim Jones of Icons explain why the Trump’s order cannot work as it is written and what needs to be done now.

substack.com

Seems to be a bit of a misreading on his part -- see my comment for details about the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA's) efforts to implement Trump's EO about transwomen in women's sports:

Steersman on Substack

Kim Jones of Icons explain why the Trump’s order cannot work … I think you probably mean that it’s the NCAA’s implementation that is “problematic”, not Trump’s EO. You might have some interest in the NCAA policy statement of February 6th which suggests some pitfalls: NCAA women's sports: A...

substack.com

But the upshot of all of that is the NCAA stipulating that a "student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete for an NCAA women's team". Which the woman being interviewed on Fox News, Kim Jones, is objecting to -- somewhat obscurely. But she is arguing that the NCAA should be defining "woman" and "female", and that they should be implementing policies to test everyone (?) by cheek swabs -- which, as she emphasizes, only determines the presence of a Y chromosome.

But the problem in both cases is going to be that while people like Imane Khelif and Caster Semenya -- who were designated female at birth -- will be prevented from competing in female sports -- CAIS people will likewise be prevented from doing so, probably unfairly.

Offhand, it seems the best solution is for the NCAA, and similar organizations, to simply specify that "edge cases" will be dealt with by "proximity" to the "ideal" definition. I don't think it's up to Trump's EO to fully define "male" and "female", and their exceptions; that seems the bailiwick of those implementing the policies. And there seems to have been a bill in the House of Representatives that would have picked up the slack, although it may exhibit the same deficiencies:

https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/9218/text

But while Trump's EO and that House Bill go some distance in curtailing various "trans-gressions" against women in general, not to mention endorsing, more or less accurately, the standard biological definitions for the sexes, I still think the discrepancies between those two will likely cause problems down the road -- not least in the contradictions between the legal and biological definitions. Will we have one set of definitions for the kids in their biology classes and another set for their legal and social studies classes? From contradictions, anything follows:

Principle of explosion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It is maybe moot as to which is the chicken and which the egg, which the cause and which the effect, but there's some reason to argue that too many so-called biologists and philosophers are peddling the idea of the sexes as spectra -- which of course is part and parcel of the claim by the transgendered to change sex.

For an example of that, see this post by Jerry Coyne, a "biologist" of some repute though his claims to that title are rather suspect at best:

Today we must deal with a letter from the Presidents of three organismal evolution and ecology societies (The Society for the Study of Evolution, American Society of Naturalists, and the Society of Systematic Biologists), a Diktat declaring that biological sex is not binary, exactly as they did in 2018 (same societies, almost the same statement). Both letters were also responses to statements by the U.S. government headed by Trump, taking issue with the government’s position that sex is binary. HHS incorrectly used genitalia as an earlier criterion for what was binary, but Trump’s new Executive Order uses an accurate definition of sex, one based on whether an individual’s reproductive apparatus is set up to produce large immobile or small mobile gametes.

Ideology trumps biology: Three evolution societies again issue a misleading statement about the definition of sex (Post #30,000)

I wish I had a happier post for number 30,000, but you’re stuck with this one. However, it’s in line with the kind of stuff I’ve been writing about for a while, so it’s appr…

whyevolutionistrue.com

It's got diddly-squat to do with "reproductive apparatus", and everything to do with gametes coming off the end of the production line on a more or less regular basis. Too many people don't get -- or want to get -- that reputable biologists have recognized that the single trait that is shared by ALL females and by ALL males of ALL the millions of species on the planet for the last billion years or so is the process and mechanism for producing large or small "reproductive cells":

Rerum cognoscere causas

Mechanisms in Science: things learned at my mother's knee and other low joints

humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com

That is the "universal" property that is intrinsic to those definitions, and that justifies calling the sexes "natural kinds":

Are sexes natural kinds?

Muhammad Ali Khalidi, Are sexes natural kinds? - PhilPapers

Asking whether the sexes are natural kinds amounts to asking whether the categories, female and male, identify real divisions in nature, like the distinctions between biological species, or whether they mark ...

philpapers.org

A question that Kathleen Stock at least touched upon in her Material Girls.

But a rather sad commentary on the state of biological science that too many practitioners can't agree on a workable definition for an absolutely astounding phenomenon that is arguably foundational to the whole process of evolution -- and for the last billion years or so. That is arguably the bigger problem with transgenderism, that it is contributing to the bastardization and the corruption of biological science. You in particular might also like this article in The TransAtlantic about the Royal Society on that point:

Above the very doors of its Marble Hall in central London, etched into the stonework above the lintel, stands the bedrock statement of the scientific episteme – Nullius in Verba, On No One’s Word. This is the core of what we might call the scientific disposition and for centuries it has distinguished the broader scientific paradigm from the implosive circularity of mere faith, unbridled superstition, received knowledge, and obedience to authority. ....

The dislocations experienced around gender identity ideology have revealed the great threat couched in abnegation of the scientific disposition. .... The consequences in departing from this disposition are truly as dark as they are unacknowledged by the relativist iconoclasts who champion actually-existing identity politics.

Self-ID or 'Nullius in Verba'? Between Science and Authority

The Royal Society was founded in 1660 and stands as probably the most august academy of sciences in the West. Of course, by science we do not simply mean test tubes and geiger counters, but all manner of knowledge claims subject to rigorous interrogation and that hold our esteem as such.

thetransatlantic.substack.com