Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Merged Strict biological definitions of male/female
- Thread starter d4m10n
- Start date
You're STILL trying, rather desperately, to make the sexes into a matter of identity. Because you -- and too many others -- are rather "offended" that the biological definitions for the sexes deprive you of your "humanity
", of your membership cards in those categories. If it's just a matter of identity then why can't others do the same thing, modify the biological definitions to comport with their delusions and desires? Like Ms. Tickle with "her" brand-spanking new neovagina?
Transgender woman Roxanne Tickle wins discrimination case after being banned from women-only Giggle for Girls app
Tickle successfully sued social media platform Giggle for Girls with judge stating ‘on its ordinary meaning sex is changeable’
www.theguardian.com
Equitable social policies, not to mention replicable science, depends on pretty much everyone being on the same page as to what it takes to qualify as members of particular categories.
You in particular, since you seem to be on the platform, might check out Dawkins' latest on some of the problems that follow from too many people playing Humpty Dumpty -- "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.":
Denying that Sex is Binary: A Study in Hypocrisy
The presidents of three American societies of evolutionary biologists and ecologists have written a joint letter to President Trump and members of the US Congress stating that “extensive scientific evidence” contradicts the view that “there are two sexes .
richarddawkins.substack.com
Steersman on The Poetry of Reality with Richard Dawkins
"hypocrisy" may be too strong an accusation as this "debate" over whether sex is a spectrum or a binary bears some unflattering resemblances to the Filioque heresy, to the question of making the sign of the cross with two fingers or three...
richarddawkins.substack.com
Emily's Cat
Rarely prone to hissy-fits
Sex is not a matter of identity in any fashion whatsoever, I have no idea where you're getting this from.
Good, I'm glad you appreciate that much anyway. Though one might argue that you're talking out of both sides of your mouth:
You certainly seem rather attached to the idea that everyone has to have a sex from conception to death. Yet you're willing to concede that zygotes up until some 6 weeks don't have a sex. Which is it? What are the criteria to qualify for sex category membership cards? By whose definitions? Which ones do you think should be "trump"?If I accepted Steersman's argument, I would end up being extremely confused about what sex I am right now. I'm perimenopausal... and I skipped three periods recently, then had a 10-day period that just ended. There's a pretty good chance that I'll skip a few more periods, but have another couple of periods before it all finally winds down.
So... was I sexless for a few months and then suddenly turned back into a female human for a month?
As above, so below:
"a characteristic of humanity", an identity that "every human being has", presumably from conception to death. Yet he will also accept that zygotes don't qualify as male or female -- in notable contradistinction to Trump's EO:
Consistency certainly isn't anything that either of you seem familiar with, or make as a guiding principle.
And you two are only the tip of the iceberg, even apart from all the transloonie nutcases who blather on about people "invalidating their existence" because those people don't accept that they can change sex:
Is it really true that “no one's denying the reality of biological sex”?
There seems to be a lot of people doing that thing that "no one" is doing
speakingplainly.substack.com
But many other cases, including those ostensibly on the right side of history. Like Sarah Phillimore -- of Genspect -- for one example of dozens I have on tap:
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Remember, in an idealist's worldview, perfect is the enemy of good. If a policy does not 100% suit 100% of the people 100% of the time, then it must not be adopted, even if, as in this case, such a "perfect" policy is physically impossible.
Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
The nice thing for me is that the so-called "strict biological definition" isn't the relevant definition most of the time and can be safely ignored. It's not worth my brain space to argue about it. Legal definitions are more important in human society.
This one is a proposal that I came across. I don't think it's a law yet:
It does get a bit complicated when they attempt to define the word "gender" but the definition of "sex" seems straightforward enough.
This one is a proposal that I came across. I don't think it's a law yet:
It does get a bit complicated when they attempt to define the word "gender" but the definition of "sex" seems straightforward enough.
Who's doing that? How so? Methinks it is you who is insisting that since the biological definitions for the sexes don't "suit 100% of the people 100% of the time" -- "muh humanity!!"
-- then "it must not be adopted" even within the realm of biology.If you don't want transwomen or some intersex in women's sports -- a more or less reasonable objective -- then since "sex" -- at least the biological definitions thereof -- isn't the "perfect policy" then maybe you need to change the criteria, the policy that produces the desired result.
Generally so, although the problems generally multiply like mushrooms or the heads on a hydra when those definitions conflict -- as they do in both Trump's EO and in that "Defining Male and Female Act" -- with the biological ones.
Lernaean Hydra - Wikipedia
The UK's Gender Recognition Act being a rather sad case in point -- a tragicomedy in three Acts. Clowns to the Left of us, Jokers to the Right ...
I had linked to that in an earlier and quite recent post; you may wish to take a gander at it, particularly since it is of some relevance to your "straightforward enough":
"deficiencies", "discrepancies", and "contradictions" doesn't begin to describe the problems with that Bill.
For one thing: "To establish a clear and consistent biological definition of male and female." It is most certainly NOT the biological definition for those categories. Starting off on the wrong foot before they're even out of the gate. They might have had a point if they defined new categories, say "human$male" and "human$female" -- entirely different kettles of fish from the biological definitions.
For another: "Every individual is either male or female." Horse feathers, great steaming piles of them. By the standard biological definitions -- which that Bill presumes to endorse or subscribe to -- some third of us, at any one time, are neither male nor female, are sexless. (In Seattle or not ...)
For another: "Physical differences between males and females are enduring, and the two sexes are not fungible (i.e., mutually interchangeable)." Which differences? Some differences are "enduring" and some aren't -- breasts and vaginas for examples. Rather amused to note that lesbian -- homogenitalia-ist -- Arielle Scarcella has a YouTube video up arguing that "neovaginas are different" -- I guess she would know ... As for "mutually interchangeable", I guess that would depend on the purpose one has in mind -- any port in a storm for example. Relative to which see this Los Angeles Times article on transwoman Lynn Conway, definitely a case of one smart cookie:
Finally, though there are many other problems with that Bill: "gender “(A) means “(i) males, females, or the natural differences between males and females, unless such term is otherwise specified or used alone (rather than with or as an adjective modifying other words); and “(ii) a synonym for sex;" There are a great many solid reasons to stipulate -- even if the concept may not yet be ready for prime time, that it is something that "leaked" out of some lab or ivory tower before it's time -- that "gender" refers to or denotes a range of sexually dimorphic properties -- behaviour, roles, expressions, stereotypes, etc.
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
If someone is out of the closet as CAIS, everyone already knows.
I find it bizarre that you seem to overlook this possibility in this day and age when they got a spot on the increasingly complexified Pride Flag.
...science denialism is bad policy.
Some plans afoot for a "divorce" of sorts:
Why it’s time for LGB to divorce T and Q
A battle is brewing in the LGBTQ+ community about whether the needs of plain-old LGBs are fundamentally divergent from Queers and folks who are transgender.
www.chadwickmoore.com
Kind of a "house divided" on the issue of whether sex is a binary or a spectrum and changeable. Though the whole premise of "Pride" might be "problematic" from the get-go -- goeth before a fall and all that.
Amen to that. Lysenkoism writ large:
Lysenkoism - Wikipedia
See also:
Should scientists study race and IQ? YES: The scientific truth must be pursued - Nature
The second of Nature's three Darwin 200 special issues celebrates 'everybody's Darwin' — the great man's legacy in the context of the human condition. The sequencing of the human genome and those of our animal relatives has broadened our understanding of the evolution of our species and the...
www.nature.com
DEI writ large. And the contretemps, the internecine warfare and mutual charges of heresy among "biologists" over whether sex is a strictly defined and quite circumscribed binary, or an entirely open-ended and largely incoherent spectrum. An "unspecified but multivariate combination of different traits, a definition that makes sex a continuum or spectrum" as Jerry Coyne recently put it:
A group letter to the presidents of three evolution/ecology societies objecting to their characterization of sex as a spectrum in humans and all other species
As I reported recently, the Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic B…
whyevolutionistrue.com
Even if he tends to talk out of both sides of his mouth -- not sure if he knows whether he's on foot or horseback when it comes to the question of the intersex being sexless or not since he's been trying to have his cake and eat it too.
But my own "modest" contribution to that argument, my "sad tale" of being defenestrated as an Editor at Wikipedia for objecting to their insistence that transwoman and Olympian Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female" -- when pigs fly:
Wikipedia's Lysenkoism
The politicization of science – by some very unusual suspects
humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com
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Puppycow
Penultimate Amazing
You are welcome to think that, but for me personally, I'm not going to say or think that a boy who is too young to produce sperm isn't a male or that a woman after menopause is no longer a female. Nor am I going to think that a man who has had a vasectomy is no longer a man, or any such silliness. And I'm also not going to spend a lot of time arguing back and forth about it. You keep your definition, and I'll keep mine.
Big LoL -- as they say ...
Too many people seem to "think" that words are some sort of magic, as if saying someone is a cat is casting a spell -- C-A-T -- on them. "Presto Digito, you're a cat!"
Or saying that they're a female magically restores their ovaries to full functionality ...They're generally just labels to denote the presence of the trait that defines the category, a matter of consensus as to what the words mean. For example, see this from "philosopher" Alex Byrne:
Not sure, for examples, what you think "boy" and "woman after menopause" might actually mean, but many if not most biologists worth their salt are likely to recognize that people in those categories don't have any currently functioning gonads and that they are therefore neither male nor female, respectively, i.e. that they are sexless. Which are the logical consequences of what is specified by standard biological definitions:
For examples, see first a trio of biologists writing for a reputable biological journal, the Wiley Online Library:
And American "biologist" (the jury is still out) PZ Myers:
And the standard biological definitions in question:
You seem to be in the same position as Humpty Dumpty ...
Humpty Dumpty - Wikipedia
You're certainly not likely to have much to say to any biologist that is coherent and consistent.
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d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
Wouldn't be at all difficult to put in a line about how people who cannot process androgens should not be excluded from female spaces and sports as if they could. Of course, that would require acknowledging the existence of ambiguity, which isn't something the current regime seems able to do. They seem to sincerely believe that everyone clearly falls into one of two categories at conception.
Indeed. Apropos of which, y'all -- some of you in any case -- might be "amused", particularly if you have any predilections for gallows humour, by this post on a "biologist" who's painted herself into a tight corner, the upshot of which is her "conclusion" that some mothers are males:
Chromosome Absolutism’s Last Stand: La Scap’s War on Biology
X’s Chromosome Crusaders: Sophistry Masquerading as Science
jameslinehan.substack.com
One is reminded, sadly, of Ignatius Loyola's Rules for Thinking With the Church:
Scientism writ large. When articles of faith -- "everyone is either male or female from conception to death!!11!!" -- conflict with brute facts, scientific insights, and epistemological principles.
I assume they still have their "original equipment" -- genitalia and (non-functioning) gonads -- and that those are generally the criteria for your definitions of "male" and "female". However, I don't think you quite understand that there other, often quite contradictory, definitions for the sexes in play with their own criteria for membership, and that those criteria are also used as the basis for granting various rights and privileges. Rights and privileges that generally conflict with the ones that generally attend your own rather idiosyncratic definitions.
For example, consider the case of transwoman/transsexual Renee Richards:
As an example of this era’s complexity, when Renee Richards, a transgender women’s tennis player, was forced to take a chromosomal test to qualify for the 1976 U.S. Open, she challenged the policy as discriminatory. The New York State Supreme Court agreed, with the judge declaring that there is “overwhelming medical evidence that (Richards) is now female.”
The New York State Supreme Court ruled that trans tennis player Renee Richards had medically changed her sex. Focus on Sport/Getty Images
How had Richards changed sex? The answer, she said, was gynecological. “Have a gynecologist examine” me, she proposed in a 1976 television interview, “and then you’ll have your answer, ‘Is this person a man or a woman?’”
If the New York State Supreme Court is going to rule that Richards qualifies as a female and as a woman -- despite once having had testicles -- then one might reasonably wonder how that will conflict with Trump's EO. And whether Richards will be stripped of "her" awards and honours.
Definitions don't exist in a vacuum, they're not simply identities or badges of tribal membership. Their defining criteria are generally used to sort people and other organisms into different groups to apply differential processing or to provide different rights and opportunities:
The Robert MacNeil Report; Transexuality and Sports
This episode features a discussion on transexuality and sports. The guests are Renee Richards, Dorothy Harris, Charles Ihlenfeld, Roberto Granato. Byline: Robert MacNeil
bobdroege7
Illuminator
- Joined
- May 6, 2004
- Messages
- 4,408
And here is her recantation:
"Richards has since expressed ambivalence about her legacy, and came to believe her past as a man provided her with advantages over her competitors, saying "Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I'd had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I've reconsidered my opinion."
en.wikipedia.org
"Richards has since expressed ambivalence about her legacy, and came to believe her past as a man provided her with advantages over her competitors, saying "Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I'd had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I've reconsidered my opinion."
Renée Richards - Wikipedia
Good for "her". One would think that many of those insisting on putting transwomen -- AKA male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached, or sexless eunuchs if they don't -- into women's sports might pay some attention to the views of one of those transwomen who recognize at least some of the rather far-reaching consequences of various differences between males and females. Though I rather doubt that "she" has yet to concede that "she" is most certainly not a female -- not unless medical science has advanced to the point of replacing "his" testicles with ovaries of "her" own ...And here is her recantation:
"Richards has since expressed ambivalence about her legacy, and came to believe her past as a man provided her with advantages over her competitors, saying "Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I'd had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I've reconsidered my opinion."
Renée Richards - Wikipedia
Rather too many -- here, there, and abouts -- are still rather clueless about those differences and their consequences. Apropos of which -- if that phrase is not yet verboten -- a recent post about some snowflakes getting their knickers in a twist about kicking transwomen out of the military:
Trump Announces Cruel Transgender Military Ban
Tim Miller goes over the memo from the Pentagon that goes over how they will implement the transgender ban: Kicking out hard working military members because their gender doesn't align with Trump, Hegseth, and the current administration.
www.thebulwark.com
Steersman on Substack
Big LoL. When transwomen refuse to wear the uniform that is prescribed for their sex — transwomen being male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached and being sexLESS eunuchs if they don't — then one might suggest that they are “unsuitable” or “unfit” — so to speak — to serve in the...
substack.com
"You cad! How cruel!"
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
Wrong thread. This post belongs in this thread....And here is her recantation:
"Richards has since expressed ambivalence about her legacy, and came to believe her past as a man provided her with advantages over her competitors, saying "Having lived for the past 30 years, I know if I'd had surgery at the age of 22, and then at 24 went on the tour, no genetic woman in the world would have been able to come close to me. And so I've reconsidered my opinion."
Renée Richards - Wikipedia
d4m10n
Penultimate Amazing
"Every individual is either male or female" seems to imply that every individual has "body structures...that, in normal development, correspond to one or the other gamete" but that isn't exactly true, is it? Someone with internal testes who would have been male had they developed normally (without the deleterious mutation which caused AIS) will have some structures which match one developmental pathway (breasts, vulva) and other structures which match the other one (testes, seminiferous tubules).
Once again, this is just Republican science denialism. They acknowledge that disorders of sexual development exist but refuse to deal with the implications for classifying individuals, waving away the problem by pretending it doesn't exist.
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