Language matters. By insisting there’s no difference between 'sex' and 'gender' and that sex is “assigned at birth,” progressives have alienated many people from the transgender cause.
There are concerted legal efforts in Canada and the United States to conflate "sex" with "gender" and eliminate the notion of biological sex within the law. In Canada, biological sex has been protected in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights for decades. Yet, this hard fought protection is now under attack.
While I've long been a supporter of LGBTQ rights, the last straw for me was in about 2020 when I noticed that in certain circles on Twitter, it was no longer appropriate to use "mother" when discussing birth and breast feeding. On Twitter (prior to X), if any women objected to having the words "mother" erased from the discussion on birth and breast feeding , they would be immediately singled out, and stormed with an array of angry tweets. Many women were deplatformed on this basis.
As to the term "sex assigned at birth", I've found this to be absurd. For most mothers with reasonably good healthcare, they do an ultrasound of the fetus at about six months. At about six months into the pregnancy, if the fetus is positioned properly, they can see the sex organs of the baby and can determine the sex. So, obviously, sex is determinable before birth.
Scientifically speaking, sex is determined at conception when the 23 chromosome is created as part of the 23 chromosomes of the cell nucleus. Almost all humans have either an XX 23 chromosome (female) or an XY chromosome (male).
Yes, there are rare differences of sexual development (DSDs) in which a person has an extra X or Y chromosome, or a gene disorder, that means they do not develop genitalia congruent with their biological sex. But these cases are rare:
Trans activists have tried to argue that the rate of DSDs is much higher by saying that women and girls with poly cystic ovarian syndrome have a DSD. However, poly cystic ovarian syndrome is not a DSD.
The confusion among the public on the issue can only be the result of people getting lost/captured on social media. I found it bizarre when the well known Canadian author and feminist, Margaret Atwood, was quoted as saying that sex is a “flowing bell curve”."
Yet, in spite of the ever image aware Margaret Atwood's ponderings, it would be impossible to accurately fit a "bell curve" (Gaussian distribution) to the data on human biological sex.
trans activists (to be clear, not all trans people) are grasping at every possible straw to make trans as "biological" as possible to give it "scientific" basis. it is an attempt to legitimize it. it is also why they are so desperate to instantiate the idea of "trans kids" which is not a thing and a dangerous idea.
Hanna Barnes, the journalist, in her book, Time To Think, discusses some of the background that led to the huge uptick in teens in the UK identifying as "trans kids." The uptick seems to have started in about 2014.
“Trans” anything is not a thing and a dangerous idea.
Nobody can magically become born in the wrong body when they turn 18. None of it is real, at any age.
Adults cannot do whatever they want to themselves, and this is not just individuals living their lives.
Btw, "gender" has no application to humans because it's a linguistics term. That's why nobody can define it properly--it can mean anything and everything because it means nothing.
Yet academic feminism had replaced women's studies with gender studies BEFORE the trans trend. Were they really just admitting their departments study everything yet nothing at all?
Some solid points -- and you had me at "Gaussian distribution" ... 😉🙂
But this doesn't hold any water at all, biologically speaking:
"Scientifically speaking, sex is determined at conception ..."
Nope, sorry, not true at all. You might take a gander at my Note and comment here on the topic, particularly these bits from the Wiley Online Library and "biologist" PZ Myers:
Wiley Online Library: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ....
Another reason for the wide-spread misconception about the biological sex is the notion that it is a condition, while in reality it maybe a life-history stage. For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET." [my emphasis]
And US "biologist" -- the jury is still out on the question -- PZ Myers:
Myers: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female."
as a doctor, under normal genetic and physiological conditions, sex is determined at conception. there are a very large number of rare genetic anomalies that can occur to make this ambiguous in certain circumstances, and these are well described and understood. but these are in the strictest sense, pathologies. it is not instructive to apply them to the genetically and physiologically normal population.
"common knowledge" are the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. That's how Khelif got to compete in women's boxing. How the judge in the Tickle vs Giggle case agreed that Ms. Tickle had "changed sex" with her brand-spanking new neovagina:
There's a word we all should learn: gonochoric. From roots that imply being “anCHORed by GONads,” this term describes sexually reproducing species in which all individuals (1) are born either male or female and (2) remain that sex for life. Mammals, birds, and insects are gonochoric, and we are mammals, so... we are gonochoric. Every single one of us is either male or female for life.
As with gonochoric and bipedal, I kinda think you're conflating traits that are typical of a species at various points in the members' lifespans with those exhibited by all members at every point in those life spans.
From Google/Oxford Languages:
"noun: vertebrate; plural noun: vertebrates
an animal of a large group distinguished by the possession of a backbone or spinal column, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes."
As you suggest, human zygotes and embryos don't have spines, but that doesn't mean they're invertebrates. Only that they are currently "vertebrate-less", currently not in possession of a "spinal column":
Nope. Not at all true. Standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being ipso facto sexless -- which includes the prepubescent.
And this article, and quote therefrom, by a philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?" -- it's not the genes but the state of the gonads that define the sexes:
Griffiths: "The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. .... Finally, the fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate. The idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women."
im afraid youre confused. the consensus of the scientific and medical community has always been that the "sex" of an organism is determined by genotype, no matter what some "philosopher of science" has to say on the subject. because humans are highly intelligent social animals, we have a more nuanced approach that accounts for outliers, so we assign "sex" based on a large number of factors involving both genotype and phenotype. for genetically and physiologically normal humans, there is no ambiguity. some genetic anomalies result in discordant genotype and phenotype. for these individuals, sex is assigned based on a large number of factors depending on the genetic anomaly. and, their sex remains, from a biological standpoint, "ambiguous". if you or this philosopher believe that sexually immature (in the case of humans, prepubescent) organisms are "sexless" you are in a tiny, very poorly represented minority, not only in the scientific community, but in the sociological and philosophical community. find me any well represented and respected academic community (outside of queer theory) that agrees that a genetically normal, xy, prepubescent boy is not a male because he is not yet sexually mature. you cannot. your "expert" is probably not even that, and if he is, he is on the far fringes and his definitions are anything but "standard".
> "... the consensus of the scientific and medical community has always been that the "sex" of an organism is determined by genotype ..."
🙄 What a pile of horse feathers. Absolutely no reputable biological journal says anything of the sort. In fact, standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
these articles all say (correctly) the same thing: as a matter of definition, "in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males."
and you take this to mean, that because a sexually immature individual cannot YET make gametes, it does not yet have a sex? this is an absurd misunderstanding.
it is simply saying that the organisms that produce large gametes are female and small gametes, male. it is not attempting to say that before sexual maturity the individual does not have an assigned sex. the individuals that WILL produce a larger gamete are "female" before they actually produce them. and i could give you 10,000 scientific articles that refer to sexually immature individuals as male and female before they actually produce gametes.
also, i cant even imagine what purpose such a mangling of meaning hopes to serve you. what on earth is the practical application of this desperate attempt to show that organisms are only assigned a sex AFTER they have successfully produced gametes? (btw, nowhere in the scientific literature has this been the convention.)
"Wiley Online Library: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ...."
So, exactly what we are talking about . . . Biological sex is binary [except for less than 0.01% of the population who have DSDs.]
I'm not interested in getting into a discussion here about gender and gender roles. It has nothing to do with the determination of biological sex from a genomic perspective.
The title for the Wiley article is somewhat misleading -- the focus of the article is on what it takes to qualify as male and female as sexes.
But that "biological sex is binary" doesn't mean that everyone is either male or female. In fact, as the Wiley article and my quotes suggest, one might reasonably argue that some third of us are sexless, at least for significant portions of our lives.
Apropos of which and of your "genomic perspective", you might have some interest in this article, and quote therefrom, by a philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?" -- it's not the genes but the gonads that define the sexes:
Griffiths: "The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. .... Finally, the fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate. The idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women."
Except...."as the trans community faces what Trump has promised will be an onslaught against them during his second term"--I would say there is **currently** an onslaught against them here in the US with "gender-affirming care".
Any MD or anyone else who tries to say that this is not medicine, that these people are being lied to about risks, benefits, alternatives, and doing nothing is called "anti-trans." From HHS to the ACLU. They are under attack, now. And being lied to. People are not even being told that one can be trans temporarily, that gender dysphoria can resolve in many ways without medical intervention and that no one has any idea who might actually benefit with medical intervention or who will not have their gender dysphoria resolve without medical intervention. Detransitioners frequently report they were told they were ideal candidates. Apparently not.
They have been deprived of the chance to even make informed decisions. For example, the regret rate for surgery is not shown to be 1%, that that number for peole in the past seems to have an error bar that could consistentlly make it even 37%, you'd think that would be important to tell patients....right?! Telling these young people it is life-saving care is not caring for them, either. If someone needs life-saving care, get them suicide prevention support, not this. But hey, instead they are lied to.
There was recently a heartbreaking post by a young mtf who thought he was actually going to change sex, not just get a little pouch (Shapeshifter's words) made out of what was left of his male reproductive system and extra growth on the chest. The child--this was an adolescent!!--thought at the end he was going to have a female reproductive system.
The onslaught has been going on for a long time. It's about time that the US MD's and those who are virtue signaling about it, making careers about it, getting celebrity status supposedly "supporting it" etc., actually follow the science. And take care of the community rather than using them.
The doubling down is intense. My own family which was lukewarm on the topic is now horrified at what they see as the life and death threat the new administration poses to trans people even though they accept that my child was given gender transition without proper assessment. So I think the battle is going to be fierce but at least it will be out in the open and progressives can't keep gaslighting people.
Your use of the passive voice in this sentence is strange: "Profound anxieties are constructed around the threat that these boundaries might ever be violated." Why this detached language? Surely you know, at least vaguely, that women deal with outrageously high levels of sexual harassment, assault, voyeurism, "upskirt" photos, exhibitionism and on and on. (Just last week, some creep at the local park exposed himself to me when I walked by the bathrooms to get a drink of water. I encountered my first sexual predator when I was 8 years old. I am by no means unusual among females in having these experiences.) You've heard of the Me Too movement? You realize that women in the 1960s and 1970s had to start rape crisis centers, and they are still needed? Many girls and women are survivors of sexual trauma and other forms of male violence. Of course they are anxious to have their boundaries protected. Women have been fighting for literally millennia to have their boundaries respected.
Yes, all of those threats are very real. I was myself the victim of statutory rape as a teenager. So I empathize about the suffering caused by such predation. I was just making a somewhat different point that even absent the real threat of predation, it is not reasonable to expect society to simply forget all these rules about sex segregation overnight. There are too many anxieties wrapped up in them. Thanks for your thoughts, they are a very useful addition to this discussion.
Republicans are just LOVING this. Democrats got trounced in virtually all political contests, with every exit poll showing that identity politics, and gender politics specifically may have been THE deciding factor in this election. (It was #1 above immigration and inflation for swing voters according to the Blueprint report)
And what is the reaction? Blaming voters for being racist/sexist/transphobic etc. Keep it up trans activists, in the next cycle the majority of your donations will be coming from Republicans.
I would support the kind of approach you advocate broadly speaking, live and let live for adults so to speak, certainly I'm open minded to different forms of expression.
But I think we need to call into question body modification for psychological purposes and challenge the metaphysical claims of 'true trans' ideas. The truth is transsexuals have grown in number and I believe the best explanation is that trans is a culture bound syndrome and is a modal mistake, confusing a narrative identity with self-hood. The desire to become trans is driven by actually quite a generic symptom, dysphoria. It is a mistake to narrow our thinking around the gender narrative content without appreciating the disembodied, dissociative and meaning lacking existence many of us in fact struggle with in the modern world.
For a realist, 'true trans' means a person who has transitioned, nothing more. It's the assumption of an underlying reality, without an objective diagnostic test available, that causes the problem.
Thank you for this description--the "true trans" that some MD's seem to refer to is (fro the way they talk about it) "people who would have benefit outweigh harms if they medically transitioned". And they point to some mature adults who transitioned a while back and who are happy who have transitioned. (You know all this, I know!)
Unfortunately, as also you well know, one has no idea how to identify such people beforehand, and although the MD's keep saying they need more studies, somehow tens of thousands of minors and even more adults have started on medical transition in this country without anyone bothering to check if it helps. (Whoops!) Or they point to assessments but since they haven't compared their assessments to outcomes, who knows what the assessments actually mean--I'm thinking they find people who will very likely not benefit, but it doesn't mean that the people who pass the assessments will benefit...!
And most importantly, they have no idea what would happen to all these young people with dysphoria if they had been given dysphoria support rather than some activist's pet treatment (with lots of $$ just incidentially and lifetime dependence on drugs that they haven't really looked into long term, again, gee, they'd like to know) for it....
Probably what would happen is whatever happened to people like them before all this was available (and whatever happened for all the older people nowadays who are certainly not transitioning in droves like the ones mostly 25 and under).
No-one is denying that transgender identity exists. The error is to assume that identity is more meaningful than a psychological construct. In the critical realist position, as I understand it, reality is multi-layered or planar, and so identity exists on a separate layer from biology. Therefore however hard you identify, it won't make any difference to your biological reality. It's magical thinking to imagine otherwise, which is why they hate J.K Rowling so much; she made their world.
Fair enough, I revise my comment to say that some people deny transgender identity exists. I don't follow your logic that there isn't a category, since you just defined one. Even if you believe transgender people are delusional, that's still a category.
No, I just told you that there are no "transgender" people. It's not a category. "Trans" does not exist.
They're still just men or women.
Men who have mental illness (usually autogynephilia or severe narcissism) or women who have mental illness (usually childhood trauma or sometimes autism).
They didn't enter a special category for refusing reality. A symptom of something deeper is not a condition or a category.
Ah yes, men have perverted-asshole mental illnesses, but women have sensitive-victim mental illnesses.
Give it up, Kat. Surely even a single-issue feminist such as yourself knows that boys are more likely to be autistic. Boys also have a harder time masking symptoms, causing them more psychological distress.
Now, you might NOT know—or, perhaps, care—that gender-confused boys are just as likely to have experienced sexual trauma (nor that their rapist was vastly more likely to have been a woman). But now that you DO know, pretending otherwise would be as disgusting as sexism gets.
I appreciate that psychiatric manuals are to some extent works of creative writing, but DSM-5 does list “gender dysphoria”, and ICD-11 has “gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood” and “gender incongruence of childhood”. Controversially, ICD-11 has moved these classifications out of the mental health chapter, so you are right in that respect.
The term "transgender" irks TERFs. They think it concedes too much to the opposition. They might well be right. They prefer terms like "trans identifying," or others that are less polite.
A French doctor leaked a report that made the rounds a few days ago re the boxer Khalif. There is no ambiguity. He is male — has XY chromosomes, internal testes, no uterus, and levels of testosterone typical of males.
Oh, “Rosalee.” Why did you see fit to deposit that last sentence there?
FYI, here’s what she has said about her name: “When I was born here in Washington, my parents were public school teachers, and to express both pride in their heritage and hope for the future, they gave me an African name; ‘Ketanji Onyika,’ which they were told means ‘lovely one,’ she said. “My parents taught me that, unlike the many barriers that they had had to face growing up, my path was clearer, such that if I worked hard and believed in myself, in America I could do anything or be anything I wanted to be.”
You can prove you’re not a troll by coming to your senses, and removing that ignorant remark.
Or you can leave it there, and bring dishonor on the Navy. Up to you.
Thank you for writing this essay. As a master's swimmer, I am particularly sensitive to boys and men in the women's locker room and competing against girls and women. It is not okay on any level and must stop.
Trans activists lost their mind over your binary comment because they don't want sex to be viewed as binary. They want everyone to pretend it's a construct or a spectrum.
Also, they don't want a "common agreement on what words pertaining to sex and gender actually mean." They don't want sex/gender discussed in a logical way because their case is logically indefensible.
I can't tell from your post whether you agree or disagree with either point I just made.
I previously mis-stated what happened in reaction to my tweet. I meant to say that I tweeted that it’s impolite to call trans women “he”; 1,100 rad fems got really mad. Before, I incorrectly said in this thread that I’d said it was impolite to call them “she”.
I agree that it is impolite to consistently and deliberately call a trans women "he".
At the same time, I think there is too much language policing all around. In some ways, I get it. It is hard to have someone call you by something that indicates they do not perceive who you are. As a woman engineer, I've lost count of the times that people called me a guy, voiced discomfort at my feminine features and long hair, and when in a room with other men, sat there wondering if I was the Doormouse as the room was addressed as "Gentlemen . . .".
I find compelling pronouns in others to likely be a violation of free speech and I quit Twitter a few years ago in part because I got sick of the necessity to declare my pronouns.
Having said that, I don't have a problem with trying to use someone's desired pronouns, but I would probably defend myself vigorously if someone told me that I was misgendering them for occasionally getting their pronouns wrong.
One reason I gave up on the Rad Fems *and* Trans Pronoun Advocates was this kind of absolutist behavior.
Being more clear about biological sex and gender might be one way to move forward from this stalemate around pronouns.
I'm seriously curious whether you agree with the points I set out. Put another way, do you believe the TRAs have a philosophy problem or just a tactical problem?
Re: your pronoun fracas two days ago, I think people reacted because it sounded like you were calling *them* rude for using sex-based pronouns. Outside NYC, "rude" is an insult.
A few years ago, I was quite interested in the organization Women's Declaration International. However, what put me off in the end was how so much of the discussion was based around hypothetical legal arguments, philosophy, and policy positioning. Some of the hard line Rad Fem positioning really put me off. Most people have actual jobs and have to work with people from different backgrounds. For trans people, they need to feel comfortable and respected in the work place. For people who are not trans, they should not feel like they stepped on a land mine when they got someone's pronouns wrong. Philosophy problem or tactical problem? The problem stems from confounding gender with biological sex. The rights of trans identified individuals should not come at the expense of women and children. And people in general should not feel that a few cases of misgendering is a firing offense.
If Democrats are willing to die on this hill, an artificially created hill, they are doomed. I don't see how they are going to change course and they are out of touch with the majority of Americans. How you become a minority party.
I think all of the culture war stuff Dems have gravitated towards the last decades have annoyed voters. I don't study the gender side, but the race stuff is for sure a similar factor. It's not a simple story as often explained with broad categories. Dems will have to grapple with these issues if they want to compete nationally again. https://collegetowns.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-the-2024-presidential
Nobody can define “gender” for humans because it’s a linguistics term that applies to words only.
Whenever anybody uses it in reference to humans, it can mean anything and everything, so it means nothing.
Its sole purpose is to cause confusion, and that was John Money’s goal.
The mere use of it is the source of many problems.
That rabbi on CNN is a paradigmatic example of who pushes and drives this cultural rot. And when it collapses, people like him will pretend not to remember a thing.
Great article.
There are concerted legal efforts in Canada and the United States to conflate "sex" with "gender" and eliminate the notion of biological sex within the law. In Canada, biological sex has been protected in the Canadian Charter of Human Rights for decades. Yet, this hard fought protection is now under attack.
While I've long been a supporter of LGBTQ rights, the last straw for me was in about 2020 when I noticed that in certain circles on Twitter, it was no longer appropriate to use "mother" when discussing birth and breast feeding. On Twitter (prior to X), if any women objected to having the words "mother" erased from the discussion on birth and breast feeding , they would be immediately singled out, and stormed with an array of angry tweets. Many women were deplatformed on this basis.
As to the term "sex assigned at birth", I've found this to be absurd. For most mothers with reasonably good healthcare, they do an ultrasound of the fetus at about six months. At about six months into the pregnancy, if the fetus is positioned properly, they can see the sex organs of the baby and can determine the sex. So, obviously, sex is determinable before birth.
Scientifically speaking, sex is determined at conception when the 23 chromosome is created as part of the 23 chromosomes of the cell nucleus. Almost all humans have either an XX 23 chromosome (female) or an XY chromosome (male).
Yes, there are rare differences of sexual development (DSDs) in which a person has an extra X or Y chromosome, or a gene disorder, that means they do not develop genitalia congruent with their biological sex. But these cases are rare:
https://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1015520-overview?form=fpf
The rate of DSDs is approximately 1 in 10,000.
Trans activists have tried to argue that the rate of DSDs is much higher by saying that women and girls with poly cystic ovarian syndrome have a DSD. However, poly cystic ovarian syndrome is not a DSD.
The confusion among the public on the issue can only be the result of people getting lost/captured on social media. I found it bizarre when the well known Canadian author and feminist, Margaret Atwood, was quoted as saying that sex is a “flowing bell curve”."
Yet, in spite of the ever image aware Margaret Atwood's ponderings, it would be impossible to accurately fit a "bell curve" (Gaussian distribution) to the data on human biological sex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution
Yes, the conflation of biological "sex" and "gender" is a disaster for scientific honesty and for the rights of women and mothers.
Thanks for your efforts to bring this to light.
trans activists (to be clear, not all trans people) are grasping at every possible straw to make trans as "biological" as possible to give it "scientific" basis. it is an attempt to legitimize it. it is also why they are so desperate to instantiate the idea of "trans kids" which is not a thing and a dangerous idea.
Hanna Barnes, the journalist, in her book, Time To Think, discusses some of the background that led to the huge uptick in teens in the UK identifying as "trans kids." The uptick seems to have started in about 2014.
“Trans” anything is not a thing and a dangerous idea.
Nobody can magically become born in the wrong body when they turn 18. None of it is real, at any age.
Adults cannot do whatever they want to themselves, and this is not just individuals living their lives.
Btw, "gender" has no application to humans because it's a linguistics term. That's why nobody can define it properly--it can mean anything and everything because it means nothing.
Yet academic feminism had replaced women's studies with gender studies BEFORE the trans trend. Were they really just admitting their departments study everything yet nothing at all?
Some solid points -- and you had me at "Gaussian distribution" ... 😉🙂
But this doesn't hold any water at all, biologically speaking:
"Scientifically speaking, sex is determined at conception ..."
Nope, sorry, not true at all. You might take a gander at my Note and comment here on the topic, particularly these bits from the Wiley Online Library and "biologist" PZ Myers:
Wiley Online Library: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ....
Another reason for the wide-spread misconception about the biological sex is the notion that it is a condition, while in reality it maybe a life-history stage. For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET." [my emphasis]
And US "biologist" -- the jury is still out on the question -- PZ Myers:
Myers: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female."
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-76879044
And, as a fellow Canuck, you might have some interest in my post on "Statistics Departments Corrupted by Gender Ideology", Canada's included:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/statistics-departments-corrupted
Link therein to my submission to Statistics Canada endorsing that quite unscientific claptrap.
as a doctor, under normal genetic and physiological conditions, sex is determined at conception. there are a very large number of rare genetic anomalies that can occur to make this ambiguous in certain circumstances, and these are well described and understood. but these are in the strictest sense, pathologies. it is not instructive to apply them to the genetically and physiologically normal population.
Amazingly, this common knowledge has somehow become controversial and up for debate.
"common knowledge" are the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. That's how Khelif got to compete in women's boxing. How the judge in the Tickle vs Giggle case agreed that Ms. Tickle had "changed sex" with her brand-spanking new neovagina:
https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2023/2023fca0553
The rare anomalies do not discount the sex binary.
There's a word we all should learn: gonochoric. From roots that imply being “anCHORed by GONads,” this term describes sexually reproducing species in which all individuals (1) are born either male or female and (2) remain that sex for life. Mammals, birds, and insects are gonochoric, and we are mammals, so... we are gonochoric. Every single one of us is either male or female for life.
I'm most certainly not trying to "discount the binary". But that a category -- "sex" -- is a binary doesn't mean it's exhaustive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex
IF religion was a binary -- e.g., Christianity and Islam -- THEN atheists, the religion-less, are outside that binary.
But you seem to be a clever well-read fellow -- you might try reading these articles by philosopher of science Paul Griffiths:
Griffiths: "Sex is real
Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing is either one or the other": https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
"What are biological sexes?": https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
The spinal cord develops at 3.5 weeks, yet no human is an invertebrate. 🤯
As with gonochoric and bipedal, I kinda think you're conflating traits that are typical of a species at various points in the members' lifespans with those exhibited by all members at every point in those life spans.
From Google/Oxford Languages:
"noun: vertebrate; plural noun: vertebrates
an animal of a large group distinguished by the possession of a backbone or spinal column, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes."
As you suggest, human zygotes and embryos don't have spines, but that doesn't mean they're invertebrates. Only that they are currently "vertebrate-less", currently not in possession of a "spinal column":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vertebrate
> "... sex is determined at conception. ..."
Nope. Not at all true. Standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being ipso facto sexless -- which includes the prepubescent.
See this Wiley Online Library article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202200173
And this article, and quote therefrom, by a philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?" -- it's not the genes but the state of the gonads that define the sexes:
Griffiths: "The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. .... Finally, the fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate. The idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
im afraid youre confused. the consensus of the scientific and medical community has always been that the "sex" of an organism is determined by genotype, no matter what some "philosopher of science" has to say on the subject. because humans are highly intelligent social animals, we have a more nuanced approach that accounts for outliers, so we assign "sex" based on a large number of factors involving both genotype and phenotype. for genetically and physiologically normal humans, there is no ambiguity. some genetic anomalies result in discordant genotype and phenotype. for these individuals, sex is assigned based on a large number of factors depending on the genetic anomaly. and, their sex remains, from a biological standpoint, "ambiguous". if you or this philosopher believe that sexually immature (in the case of humans, prepubescent) organisms are "sexless" you are in a tiny, very poorly represented minority, not only in the scientific community, but in the sociological and philosophical community. find me any well represented and respected academic community (outside of queer theory) that agrees that a genetically normal, xy, prepubescent boy is not a male because he is not yet sexually mature. you cannot. your "expert" is probably not even that, and if he is, he is on the far fringes and his definitions are anything but "standard".
> "... the consensus of the scientific and medical community has always been that the "sex" of an organism is determined by genotype ..."
🙄 What a pile of horse feathers. Absolutely no reputable biological journal says anything of the sort. In fact, standard biological definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
Absolutely diddly-squat there in any of that about genotypes.
> "... that agrees that a genetically normal, xy, prepubescent boy is not a male because he is not yet sexually mature. "
🙄 See the previous comments and quotes from Wiley Online Library and biologist PZ Myers.
You might try getting your head out of the "sand" and read those articles, and the ones by Griffiths.
these articles all say (correctly) the same thing: as a matter of definition, "in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males."
and you take this to mean, that because a sexually immature individual cannot YET make gametes, it does not yet have a sex? this is an absurd misunderstanding.
it is simply saying that the organisms that produce large gametes are female and small gametes, male. it is not attempting to say that before sexual maturity the individual does not have an assigned sex. the individuals that WILL produce a larger gamete are "female" before they actually produce them. and i could give you 10,000 scientific articles that refer to sexually immature individuals as male and female before they actually produce gametes.
also, i cant even imagine what purpose such a mangling of meaning hopes to serve you. what on earth is the practical application of this desperate attempt to show that organisms are only assigned a sex AFTER they have successfully produced gametes? (btw, nowhere in the scientific literature has this been the convention.)
"Wiley Online Library: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ...."
So, exactly what we are talking about . . . Biological sex is binary [except for less than 0.01% of the population who have DSDs.]
I'm not interested in getting into a discussion here about gender and gender roles. It has nothing to do with the determination of biological sex from a genomic perspective.
The title for the Wiley article is somewhat misleading -- the focus of the article is on what it takes to qualify as male and female as sexes.
But that "biological sex is binary" doesn't mean that everyone is either male or female. In fact, as the Wiley article and my quotes suggest, one might reasonably argue that some third of us are sexless, at least for significant portions of our lives.
Apropos of which and of your "genomic perspective", you might have some interest in this article, and quote therefrom, by a philosopher of science, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?" -- it's not the genes but the gonads that define the sexes:
Griffiths: "The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. .... Finally, the fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate. The idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
Spot on!
Except...."as the trans community faces what Trump has promised will be an onslaught against them during his second term"--I would say there is **currently** an onslaught against them here in the US with "gender-affirming care".
Any MD or anyone else who tries to say that this is not medicine, that these people are being lied to about risks, benefits, alternatives, and doing nothing is called "anti-trans." From HHS to the ACLU. They are under attack, now. And being lied to. People are not even being told that one can be trans temporarily, that gender dysphoria can resolve in many ways without medical intervention and that no one has any idea who might actually benefit with medical intervention or who will not have their gender dysphoria resolve without medical intervention. Detransitioners frequently report they were told they were ideal candidates. Apparently not.
They have been deprived of the chance to even make informed decisions. For example, the regret rate for surgery is not shown to be 1%, that that number for peole in the past seems to have an error bar that could consistentlly make it even 37%, you'd think that would be important to tell patients....right?! Telling these young people it is life-saving care is not caring for them, either. If someone needs life-saving care, get them suicide prevention support, not this. But hey, instead they are lied to.
There was recently a heartbreaking post by a young mtf who thought he was actually going to change sex, not just get a little pouch (Shapeshifter's words) made out of what was left of his male reproductive system and extra growth on the chest. The child--this was an adolescent!!--thought at the end he was going to have a female reproductive system.
The onslaught has been going on for a long time. It's about time that the US MD's and those who are virtue signaling about it, making careers about it, getting celebrity status supposedly "supporting it" etc., actually follow the science. And take care of the community rather than using them.
I agree. The true 'trans rights activists' would want to protect this cohort from harms which aren't perpetrated on any other group of people.
The doubling down is intense. My own family which was lukewarm on the topic is now horrified at what they see as the life and death threat the new administration poses to trans people even though they accept that my child was given gender transition without proper assessment. So I think the battle is going to be fierce but at least it will be out in the open and progressives can't keep gaslighting people.
That sort of language is really dangerous for suggestible young people :(.
"the life and death threat the new administration poses to trans people"
What life and death threat are you referring to?
Referring to the perception not reality.
Your use of the passive voice in this sentence is strange: "Profound anxieties are constructed around the threat that these boundaries might ever be violated." Why this detached language? Surely you know, at least vaguely, that women deal with outrageously high levels of sexual harassment, assault, voyeurism, "upskirt" photos, exhibitionism and on and on. (Just last week, some creep at the local park exposed himself to me when I walked by the bathrooms to get a drink of water. I encountered my first sexual predator when I was 8 years old. I am by no means unusual among females in having these experiences.) You've heard of the Me Too movement? You realize that women in the 1960s and 1970s had to start rape crisis centers, and they are still needed? Many girls and women are survivors of sexual trauma and other forms of male violence. Of course they are anxious to have their boundaries protected. Women have been fighting for literally millennia to have their boundaries respected.
Yes, all of those threats are very real. I was myself the victim of statutory rape as a teenager. So I empathize about the suffering caused by such predation. I was just making a somewhat different point that even absent the real threat of predation, it is not reasonable to expect society to simply forget all these rules about sex segregation overnight. There are too many anxieties wrapped up in them. Thanks for your thoughts, they are a very useful addition to this discussion.
Republicans are just LOVING this. Democrats got trounced in virtually all political contests, with every exit poll showing that identity politics, and gender politics specifically may have been THE deciding factor in this election. (It was #1 above immigration and inflation for swing voters according to the Blueprint report)
And what is the reaction? Blaming voters for being racist/sexist/transphobic etc. Keep it up trans activists, in the next cycle the majority of your donations will be coming from Republicans.
I would support the kind of approach you advocate broadly speaking, live and let live for adults so to speak, certainly I'm open minded to different forms of expression.
But I think we need to call into question body modification for psychological purposes and challenge the metaphysical claims of 'true trans' ideas. The truth is transsexuals have grown in number and I believe the best explanation is that trans is a culture bound syndrome and is a modal mistake, confusing a narrative identity with self-hood. The desire to become trans is driven by actually quite a generic symptom, dysphoria. It is a mistake to narrow our thinking around the gender narrative content without appreciating the disembodied, dissociative and meaning lacking existence many of us in fact struggle with in the modern world.
For a realist, 'true trans' means a person who has transitioned, nothing more. It's the assumption of an underlying reality, without an objective diagnostic test available, that causes the problem.
Thank you for this description--the "true trans" that some MD's seem to refer to is (fro the way they talk about it) "people who would have benefit outweigh harms if they medically transitioned". And they point to some mature adults who transitioned a while back and who are happy who have transitioned. (You know all this, I know!)
Unfortunately, as also you well know, one has no idea how to identify such people beforehand, and although the MD's keep saying they need more studies, somehow tens of thousands of minors and even more adults have started on medical transition in this country without anyone bothering to check if it helps. (Whoops!) Or they point to assessments but since they haven't compared their assessments to outcomes, who knows what the assessments actually mean--I'm thinking they find people who will very likely not benefit, but it doesn't mean that the people who pass the assessments will benefit...!
And most importantly, they have no idea what would happen to all these young people with dysphoria if they had been given dysphoria support rather than some activist's pet treatment (with lots of $$ just incidentially and lifetime dependence on drugs that they haven't really looked into long term, again, gee, they'd like to know) for it....
Probably what would happen is whatever happened to people like them before all this was available (and whatever happened for all the older people nowadays who are certainly not transitioning in droves like the ones mostly 25 and under).
Thank you.
No-one is denying that transgender identity exists. The error is to assume that identity is more meaningful than a psychological construct. In the critical realist position, as I understand it, reality is multi-layered or planar, and so identity exists on a separate layer from biology. Therefore however hard you identify, it won't make any difference to your biological reality. It's magical thinking to imagine otherwise, which is why they hate J.K Rowling so much; she made their world.
I am denying it exists. Lots of other people have.
There is no such thing as “transgender.” There is no special category for those who refuse to accept the reality of their sexed body.
Fair enough, I revise my comment to say that some people deny transgender identity exists. I don't follow your logic that there isn't a category, since you just defined one. Even if you believe transgender people are delusional, that's still a category.
No, I just told you that there are no "transgender" people. It's not a category. "Trans" does not exist.
They're still just men or women.
Men who have mental illness (usually autogynephilia or severe narcissism) or women who have mental illness (usually childhood trauma or sometimes autism).
They didn't enter a special category for refusing reality. A symptom of something deeper is not a condition or a category.
Ah yes, men have perverted-asshole mental illnesses, but women have sensitive-victim mental illnesses.
Give it up, Kat. Surely even a single-issue feminist such as yourself knows that boys are more likely to be autistic. Boys also have a harder time masking symptoms, causing them more psychological distress.
Now, you might NOT know—or, perhaps, care—that gender-confused boys are just as likely to have experienced sexual trauma (nor that their rapist was vastly more likely to have been a woman). But now that you DO know, pretending otherwise would be as disgusting as sexism gets.
Diagnostically, wouldn’t it be helpful to have a name for a specific type of mental illness which has to do with gender?
You have to define "gender" first. Go ahead.
There is no specific type of mental illness for "gender."
There are conditions that already apply:
1. Autogynephilia (a fetish for heterosexual male cross dressers)
2. Severe narcissistic personality (failed gay males looking for attention)
3. Childhood PTSD (women who were molested)
4. Autism
5. OCD
6. Bipolar
7. Schizophrenia
8. Body dysmorphia
The idea that one is born in the wrong body is a symptom of something deeper that already has a name.
It's not a condition.
And if you want to refer to it as "gender" you have to define it. What does it mean?
I appreciate that psychiatric manuals are to some extent works of creative writing, but DSM-5 does list “gender dysphoria”, and ICD-11 has “gender incongruence of adolescence and adulthood” and “gender incongruence of childhood”. Controversially, ICD-11 has moved these classifications out of the mental health chapter, so you are right in that respect.
The term "transgender" irks TERFs. They think it concedes too much to the opposition. They might well be right. They prefer terms like "trans identifying," or others that are less polite.
A French doctor leaked a report that made the rounds a few days ago re the boxer Khalif. There is no ambiguity. He is male — has XY chromosomes, internal testes, no uterus, and levels of testosterone typical of males.
reference?
Here’s the published reporting (by Djaffer Ait Aoudia): https://lecorrespondant.net/imane-khelif-ni-ovaires-ni-uterus-mais-des-testicules/
gender?
How can they define how many when they can't define what a woman is
e.g. **Kentanji Brown Jackson on the SC who will make decisions for MILLIONS but had no clue when
asked to define 'woman'
Her given name sounds like something from a plantation assigned to a black female
Oh, “Rosalee.” Why did you see fit to deposit that last sentence there?
FYI, here’s what she has said about her name: “When I was born here in Washington, my parents were public school teachers, and to express both pride in their heritage and hope for the future, they gave me an African name; ‘Ketanji Onyika,’ which they were told means ‘lovely one,’ she said. “My parents taught me that, unlike the many barriers that they had had to face growing up, my path was clearer, such that if I worked hard and believed in myself, in America I could do anything or be anything I wanted to be.”
You can prove you’re not a troll by coming to your senses, and removing that ignorant remark.
Or you can leave it there, and bring dishonor on the Navy. Up to you.
Jennifer Sey's comments on this topic:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3225757/womens-sports-was-womens-rights-issue-on-ballot/
Jennifer Sey's bio:
https://www.xx-xyathletics.com/pages/our-founder
So great. Really appreciate your time and attention to details.
Thank you for writing this essay. As a master's swimmer, I am particularly sensitive to boys and men in the women's locker room and competing against girls and women. It is not okay on any level and must stop.
Trans activists lost their mind over your binary comment because they don't want sex to be viewed as binary. They want everyone to pretend it's a construct or a spectrum.
Also, they don't want a "common agreement on what words pertaining to sex and gender actually mean." They don't want sex/gender discussed in a logical way because their case is logically indefensible.
I can't tell from your post whether you agree or disagree with either point I just made.
I previously mis-stated what happened in reaction to my tweet. I meant to say that I tweeted that it’s impolite to call trans women “he”; 1,100 rad fems got really mad. Before, I incorrectly said in this thread that I’d said it was impolite to call them “she”.
I agree that it is impolite to consistently and deliberately call a trans women "he".
At the same time, I think there is too much language policing all around. In some ways, I get it. It is hard to have someone call you by something that indicates they do not perceive who you are. As a woman engineer, I've lost count of the times that people called me a guy, voiced discomfort at my feminine features and long hair, and when in a room with other men, sat there wondering if I was the Doormouse as the room was addressed as "Gentlemen . . .".
I find compelling pronouns in others to likely be a violation of free speech and I quit Twitter a few years ago in part because I got sick of the necessity to declare my pronouns.
Having said that, I don't have a problem with trying to use someone's desired pronouns, but I would probably defend myself vigorously if someone told me that I was misgendering them for occasionally getting their pronouns wrong.
One reason I gave up on the Rad Fems *and* Trans Pronoun Advocates was this kind of absolutist behavior.
Being more clear about biological sex and gender might be one way to move forward from this stalemate around pronouns.
I'm seriously curious whether you agree with the points I set out. Put another way, do you believe the TRAs have a philosophy problem or just a tactical problem?
Re: your pronoun fracas two days ago, I think people reacted because it sounded like you were calling *them* rude for using sex-based pronouns. Outside NYC, "rude" is an insult.
A few years ago, I was quite interested in the organization Women's Declaration International. However, what put me off in the end was how so much of the discussion was based around hypothetical legal arguments, philosophy, and policy positioning. Some of the hard line Rad Fem positioning really put me off. Most people have actual jobs and have to work with people from different backgrounds. For trans people, they need to feel comfortable and respected in the work place. For people who are not trans, they should not feel like they stepped on a land mine when they got someone's pronouns wrong. Philosophy problem or tactical problem? The problem stems from confounding gender with biological sex. The rights of trans identified individuals should not come at the expense of women and children. And people in general should not feel that a few cases of misgendering is a firing offense.
If Democrats are willing to die on this hill, an artificially created hill, they are doomed. I don't see how they are going to change course and they are out of touch with the majority of Americans. How you become a minority party.
A prerequisite to being a “transgirl” is to be male; for thousands of years, young males were called “boys”.
I think all of the culture war stuff Dems have gravitated towards the last decades have annoyed voters. I don't study the gender side, but the race stuff is for sure a similar factor. It's not a simple story as often explained with broad categories. Dems will have to grapple with these issues if they want to compete nationally again. https://collegetowns.substack.com/p/making-sense-of-the-2024-presidential
I keep thinking you’re my cousin!
Nobody can define “gender” for humans because it’s a linguistics term that applies to words only.
Whenever anybody uses it in reference to humans, it can mean anything and everything, so it means nothing.
Its sole purpose is to cause confusion, and that was John Money’s goal.
The mere use of it is the source of many problems.
That rabbi on CNN is a paradigmatic example of who pushes and drives this cultural rot. And when it collapses, people like him will pretend not to remember a thing.
Gender would have died with John Money, had second-wave feminists not rejected sex as a tool of patriarchal oppression.
Bullshit.
Lol ill take it! Ha