Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Thoughts on the definition of biological sex

"...the authors argue that scientists should explicitly define the usage of 'male' and 'female' in their research, as no single trait, such as chromosomes or genitalia, determines whether a person is singularly male or female. The boundaries between sexes has been found to be more complicated than that." Scientists should "specify what definitions of sex they are using in their research." And: "It is also critical that transgender and gender-diverse people be included in [conducting] the actual research as opposed to just being its subject."
"Push for inclusive language in sciences as part of transgender rights fight," Nikki Rojas, The Harvard Gazette, Feb 10, 2022.

hyacinth
August 27, 2023 - hyacinth in West Harwich, Massachusetts - photo by Tucker Lieberman

Robert Rutledge says on Twitter:

"It takes no intellectual effort whatsoever to start thinking of gender as an undefined set of overlapping categories, and to stop thinking of it as only two exclusive categories.

Doing so also leads to a greater understanding of how the world around us really is.

Try looking at it this way: To a working person, there are really only two exclusive days of the week. And they are: Monday, and Saturday.

Saturday's the best: not working! Rest up. Do some chores. Have a beer!

Monday's the worst! God help us.

But then you discover -

Friday. What is it? It's certainly not Monday, thank god. And it's almost Saturday -- whoo hoo!

Tuesday? That's pretty Monday; but, not exactly Monday. It's not Saturday, that's for sure."

And so on.

"And it's around this point that you can see that the days of the workweek are names we give to poles, with Monday and Saturday having perhaps the most disparate characteristics; but that their distinction isn't binomial.

If you can understand the work-week, you can understand non-binary gender."

— Robert Rutledge @rerutled, July 15, 2023 tweet

The latest 'no third gamete' article

Here's a Colin Wright opinion in the WSJ: "A Biologist Explains Why Sex Is Binary
In an effort to confuse the issue, gender ideologues cite rare ambiguous ‘intersex’ cases."

The first sentence is:

"The transgender movement has left many intelligent Americans confused about sex."

You can see what you need to see from the first sentence. To respond:

  • We're not a "movement."
  • Transgender people exist, and we're not in opposition to "intelligent Americans."
  • No one is confused about sex, thanks.

The article is paywalled, but you may be able to hear it by pressing the audio button. A preview of the thesis: Sex is binary because there's sperm, there's egg, and there's no third gamete. That's what the article says. So, really, you could skip it.

Also

wsj article headline
Katy Montgomerie @KatyMontgomerie The claim 'a woman is someone who has never had a penis' is a GC classic and it is a direct contradiction of their main propaganda 'Sex Matters'. They are saying 'your sex characteristics simply do not matter, your body today doesn't matter, all that matters is essences'
And of course they have to argue this - Recently I've seen a few GCs arguing that getting the UK to define sex as 'biological sex' will backfire because in the courts it will result in trans people getting rights because the important parts of our sex have changed
(of course this will still result in both some trans people losing out, and totally unworkable invasive laws that punish trans people for no reason, but that isn't good enough for GCs. They want us ALL to lose, and all of us to be punished to the point where we can't carry on)
They might have really strong propaganda that they spend most of their time on on this, but really they know that they aren't arguing for anything about sex or material reality or anything like that. They are just arguing that trans people shouldn't have rights and that's it

See also: "Identity isn't a predefined object". It's a 7-minute read on Medium. Medium lets you read a certain number of stories for free every month. You may also consider a paid membership on the platform.

Please read my articles on Medium/a>.

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