Some days I feel like I’ve spent one quarter of my life learning oversimplifications, and the remaining three quarters trying to encompass all the wonderful complexity out there. And then I have to deal with all the people who have turned the beginning stuff they learned in grade school into rigid dogma, rather than the first step in learning. I appreciate learning I’m not alone, like from this Stanford blog from a few years ago.
The simple scenario many of us learned in school is that two X chromosomes make someone female, and an X and a Y chromosome make someone male. These are simplistic ways of thinking about what is scientifically very complex. Anatomy, hormones, cells, and chromosomes (not to mention personal identity convictions) are actually not usually aligned with one binary classification.
The Nature feature collects research that has changed the way biologists understand sex. New technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that chromosomal sex is a process, not an assignation.
As quoted in the article, Eric Vilain, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at UCLA, explains that sex determination is a contest between two opposing networks of gene activity. Changes in the activity or amounts of molecules in the networks can sway the embryo towards or away from the sex seemingly spelled out by the chromosomes. “It has been, in a sense, a philosophical change in our way of looking at sex; that it’s a balance.”
Two very nice words: process and balance. Those are so much more accurate than bang, your sexual identity was determined by a collision of two gametes in your Mom’s fallopian tubes, and don’t you argue with me. Or this: a fascinatingly perverse video from a guy who has been banned from playing the card game, Magic: The Gathering for harassment.
Just to explain the context a little bit: the banned player is quite irate, and has discovered a horrible thing that the makers of his favorite card game have done that is ruining the game. You only have to listen to the first 30 seconds of this excerpt, but you can continue if you enjoy listen to a growed man ranting about SJWs wrecking his fantasy game.
“Magic has adopted “they” as the preferred third-person-singular pronoun for a player, replacing “he or she”.”
This on the 25th anniversary of the world’s most popular card game is a fucking disgrace. Gender is real.
Then he goes on to whine about the low frequency of transgender people in the US, as if the number makes any difference, and is if the only possible reason to make this change is to satisfy transgender men and women (hint: there’s a larger spectrum of individuals who don’t identify by those pronouns). It’s a 12 minute video. All that’s in it is this guy complaining about how a card game company wasted all this effort making a grammatical change via one sentence in an internal document about some upcoming card releases, listed in a section titled “various nonfunctional changes”. The sad thing is that over 20,000 people have watched this performance.
I don’t know about you, but I think I’m going to pay more attention to the views of experts in reproductive and developmental biology, published in Nature and by Stanford, than the angry ravings of a bigoted game player who doesn’t like these new people sneaking into his gaming community. But what do I know? That whiny gamer has been invited to speak at an atheist convention in Milwaukee. Remember when atheism used to try to associate itself with science?
The thing is, this doesn’t even have to be a decision made for inclusive “SJW” purposes. There are a number of ways to try to be gender neutral in English—”he or she” & variants thereof, alternating “he” and “she” as examples, etc.—but the singular “they” (or just making all examples plural, leading back to “they”) is the simplest and most natural-sounding by far. It’s yet another example of the right seizing on something innocuous and turning it into a grand leftist conspiracy.
There’s also the conspiracy theorist thinking. It’s nefarious that they buried a statement about this change in the middle of an internal document! Were they supposed to make a blaring loud public announcement about a minor grammatical change?
Hey PZ, any recommended reading if I want to get closer to understanding the ins and outs of gender in biology, without having had biology at a university level?
Just last week I heard Eric Weinstein and his wife (?) Heather talk about gender, where they talked about it as a significantly pervasive trait in mammalian species, that has a lot of clarity and critical function (poor summary, I know). There’s a lot of confusion in just listening to one biologist versus another biologist (without the field knowledge that lets me sift deep understanding from deepities) – so do you know of any works that try to tie together trends and developments in the field from a historical or meta perspective?
Today, increased popularity of brainlessness, “revelation” and “justified prejudice” – shows how dangerous are school traditions based on “obedience training” and “blind believe”…
Freedom of speech and equality are like genome and phenotypes – outcomes of well balanced social processes in physical environment – blind fate can turn our social life to “casino effect” with “Russian roulette” at the end…
From Anaximander, Epicure, Copernicus, Newton and others – curiosity was compelling force of knowledge hunger and world orientation, not mentioning know how…
With “curiosity killing cat” and “spooky action at the distance”… ;-)
We (humans) are not yet masters of our fate, biology or even the social life… living in constant emotional roller-coaster.
How easy it can be lost is described in two interesting books: “Collapse” by Jarred Dimond and “Cultures and Civilisations: Software of the mind” by Geert Hosted, not to mention of lectures and publications of prof Sapolsky of Stanford…
Simplifications are necessary evil for us to learn gradually what it is possible to see, but dogma is like muzzle, keeps us away from looking with wonder and understanding…
The ancient curse of Gnosis!
Leaders of “the flock” love simplifications and dogmas…
Thank you for interesting remarks.
Best regards
Like, text space is at a premium on Magic cards, and ‘he or she’ takes a lot of space. There’s call to make this change even if you don’t care about the inclusivity argument – ‘they’ is an accepted gender-neutral pronoun and it’s about half the length.
This reminds me of the last time Magic players got up in arms about gender: the most recent parody set (containing cards that use unusual or ridiculous rules, or are themed around in-jokes) represented an idealised, generic tournament Magic player as female, and boy did some people not like that*.
(Admittedly, I do miss the convention of always referring to a player of a game as ‘she’.)
* The card was a reference to the player personas the designers use to see whether a card has an audience; the card represented Spike, the persona who likes cards that win tournaments, and let you (at great expense) bring in any card banned from tournament play. Previous sets had Timmy, the persona who likes cool cards even if they turn out to be secretly rubbish, and Johnny, the persona who likes weird synergies between cards, both of which have pretty obvious genders.
And also “mosaic” (used in the text as “mosaicism”), which has been mentioned here before.
On the other hand, there’s also “disorder”, which makes me wince because it feeds in to the whole “there’s something wrong with you” ideation.
I note that WikiP says:
So I’m not alone in wincing.
I think people need a revamping of their personal pronoun usage. I tend toward “they” a lot. I would accept other preferences if someone asked. Maybe newer pronouns will make it into M-W or other dictionaries. I wonder if Jordan Peterson would be outraged. Speaking of…I was randomly perusing Youtube for criticism of Peterson and landed on Rationality Rules, who criticizes him on “truth” and “archetypes”. Then somehow I went down a strange path where Peterson crosses with Zizek, due to some recent article by the latter and Peterson locking horns with a “Zizek” tweetbot:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/963536145215733760
Both these guys are strange internet sensations and people are speculating on a looming showdown. Zizek seems to have gotten himself in hot water for views on gender and LGBT+ as intimated here:
https://thephilosophicalsalon.com/a-reply-to-my-critics-concerning-an-engagement-with-jordan-peterson/
I don’t see the connection with atheism. Trust me, if you go to certain Christian web sites and defend a transgender person you will be swamped by idiots who have not only kindergarten biology but also the will of God (“male and female created he them”) on their side.
@Tom Foss #1
But the thing is, “he or she” is not exactly gender neutral, nor is alternating the two. And it’s definitely not inclusive. After all, there are people to whom either pronoun does not apply. “They” is neutral, inclusive, and safe when referring to an unspecified person.
I first encountered the idea of using ‘they’ in that manner as a kid about 30 years ago, so it seems to me that they are running well behind the times there. As such, this guy is seemingly getting very irate about something that is extremely insignificant and old news.
I also learned that electrons ride in nice shells around the nucleus of the atom and that there’s a limited number of spaces in each shell. I shall henceforth accuse physicists of science denialism because that’s what I learned in grade 7 or so.
This reminds me of the freakouts that occurred at gaming tables when WotC released Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition and Oh The Huge Manatee, it had women and people of color represented in the artwork on the Player’s Handbook.
From my limited classroom experiences with the abovementioned Eric Vilain, we should probably be careful of lauding him or anything – in said class, he made it very clear that he wholeheartedly supports conversion therapy for LGBT people, especially children.
Magic is not the most popular card game. Poker is. Suck it up, hipsters.
It’s kind of implicit, but I think PZ has a normative assumption that he’s basing this on: atheists should be more sophisticated thinkers about gender than theists.
On the other hand this
is nonsense! “Not usually”? How does ~99% concordance between chromosomes, anatomy, hormones etc and biological sex equate to not usually aligned with one binary classification?
And the axe grinding resumes…
“They” is how I was taught english grammar handled this mumble-mumble-ty years ago, when dinosaurs roamed
the earthmy bedroom. This literally has NOTHING TO DO WITH BIOLOGY.“Strong the butthurt is in this one, yes?”
I still miss Michael Spivak’s gender-neutral pronouns e, eir, and em from The Joy of TeX.
Not long ago I revisited the Jungian dichotomy of introversion vs extroversion as this is one of those categorization things into which people get pigeonholed. I was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon the concept of ambiversion, a mixture that breaks the traditional dichotomy.
Jung had introduced the notions of anima and animus, a dichotomy that at least recognized individuals could express a mixture of traditionally “feminine” and “masculine” traits. But this dichotomy needs revision too. Or jettisoning with the collective unconscious.
The “self” as it unfurls through an interaction of genes and development could have outcomes that fit the traditional binary, a mixture, a going over to the opposite (enantiodromia), or a less rigid fluidity. There are cases where nonbinary gender outcomes are deepset and rigid. Others are more context dependent (role personae). Regardless of bases people should be free to express their identities and accepted as such. If a certain someone is an avowed neo-Jungian, use the lingo against him and he can’t call it a post modern attack.
I have heard of asexual identity before. Given my monicker I find it interesting. Parthenogenesis is a thing but sadly not amongst humans. There is also agender.
chris61:
And where did you get that number? Did you only read the one bit about 1/100 with “DSD”?
I’m not a biologist, but I can read. This was linked at the bottom of the article PZ cited above (my emphasis):
That doesn’t sound like they’re aligned with anything.
And while we’re at it, who knows what the fuck to say about your microbiome. But I bet ours are not much alike, except that neither was designed with simple classification schemes in mind … just as God didn’t intend it.
@20
Understood. I am and almost everyone is NOT a patchwork of male and female cells, at least not to an extent that affects the correlation between anatomy, hormones, chromosomes and biological sex. There is also zero evidence that microbiomes affect that correlation.
I agree with Matt Cramp @5. Being more inclusive can be seen as just a great added bonus to freeing up space in the text box on a card, especially the more times “he or she” or “his or her” is used.
But of course a bigot would rather gargle diarrhea than admit that a change with social justice benefits helps in other ways too.
I have to say I agree with chris61 here (an unusual occurrence). This is from PZ’s link:
I just don’t see how that’s internally consistent. 99 in 100 is not “not usually”, it’s very much “usually”. There’s nothing I can see in the article that suggests that any less than 99 peope in 100 are readily assignable, on the basis of chromosomes+anatomy+hormones, to one of two sexes. There is the possibility of a few cells from the individual’s mother or child surviving, but unless and until we have evidence that makes a significant difference, it’s an interesting fact but does not change the more-or-less binary division.
It’s not in any way necessary to exaggerate the proportion of people who are not readily asssignable to one of two sexes on the basis of chromosomes+anatomy+hormones, to recognise that gender identity may follow a different pattern – and even if it didn’t, that would have no implications at all for how we should treat transwomen, transmen, and those with a non-binary gender identity.
@22 Tabby Lavalamp
I have no horse in this race whatsoever but I note that using “they” is only being more inclusive if the proportion of individuals who prefer “they” to “he or she” is greater than the proportion of individuals who prefer the latter to the former.
@23 KG
Exactly!
That is an incredibly broad and sloppy use of the word “usually”. Definitely not what I would say.
However, I would also point out that the numbers don’t matter — we don’t have a vote and say that rare human beings with a frequency below a threshold X are to be disrespected and their existence ignored.
@26 PZ
If I were to write that you usually were usually wrong about your biological facts when what I meant was that maybe 1% of the time you make an error, would you describe my statement as an incredibly broad and sloppy use of the word “usually” or would you declare it an out and out lie?
The history of ‘they’ being used as a singular pronoun that does not specify sex goes back centuries, wtf are these people thinking?
there is nothing more anathema to the authoritarian mind than that idea!
uncle frogy
Who exactly is “exaggerating the proportion” of non-binary people? If anything, estimates are almost certainly under the real proportion because (1) most surveys don’t offer any alternative to male/female, (2) a lot of non-binary people are understandably wary about publicly identifying themselves, and (3) a lot of people with non-standard sex genetics are unaware of it.
And I’d like to remind you, yet again, that gender is not the same thing as chromosomes, and repeating this refrain only plays into the hands of the regressive right even if you personally dislike their gender politics. The number of people identified as transgender in the US doubled between 2010 and 2016. This is clearly not because of some chromosomal event.
And as PZ says, the proportion really doesn’t matter for the purposes of this discussion. The most common genetic disorder is cystic fibrosis, at 1 in ~3000 births, well under your 1% threshold — that doesn’t mean people with CF’s rights are unimportant or that people should get furious in the unlikely event that Magic the Gathering makes some effort to be more inclusive of them, and if for some reason someone supporting CF rights mistakenly claimed that it was 1 in ~100 births, then sure that would be worth gently correcting, but not with all that regressive baggage attached.
Maybe what the author was trying to express is that most humans are not “pure” 100% male or female because of the male fetal cells in mothers and maternal cells in offspring. That could explain the “not usually aligned with one binary classification” [bolding added], even though in most cases, the ratio of such cells to the rest of the cells in the body is negligible.
The difference is probably between “100% male/female” and “99.999999999% (or whatever) male/female”, but nevertheless.
@3 Philip Hansen
A good book I’ve read is Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People by Joan Roughgarden.
@31 Owlmirror
That is the statement that I took exception to. The existence of microchimerism (what you are referring to) or somatic mosaicism through loss of Y chromosome in aging males does not make that statement any less false.
For a while, I struggled with the difficulty of changing everything about how I use pronouns because such a small percentage of people are trans. Then I realized that a small, like 2.4, percentage of Americans are Jewish. Yet we as a society give them a lot of respect, pay attention to their special days, etc. In that light, recognizing the needs of the small percentage who don’t use he or she seems good to me.
Important background info:
The guy who made that video was recently banned from tournament Magic by Wizards of the Coast for his part in orchestrating harassment campaigns against women in the community that resulted in at least one women quitting the game after being hounded by his fans.
chris61:
I never said it would. However, gut bacteria and so forth are certainly not cis males like I am, yet they are a part which makes me what I am. That’s a bit puzzling.
If I’m not only a collection of cells with human DNA, questions about what I am as a human being (at a biological/chemical level of description) don’t have the simple or straightforward answers one might naively expect. We’re not only composed of “male cells” or “female cells,” whatever that’s even supposed to mean all the way down at the cellular level. Everybody does have some parts, at this scale, which are neither male-aligned nor female-aligned. And being the unaligned sort of things that they are, it turns out that they also don’t strongly or typically affect those things which are so aligned, just as you said.
Doesn’t that complicate things for people with certain of types of views on gender? (Not you, perhaps, but think of the many ridiculous things that many ordinary people say.) At least on the face of it, the views one would probably develop from an elementary school (or Bible school) understanding of our biology don’t look like they could work. It wouldn’t even be derivable that I’m human, given that I’m not all human cells, if they’re insisting that this kind of 100% purity should be a requirement, or that it must explain various large-scale features of me which they had associated with it. And then the obvious and uncomfortable question to ask is what the hell they think I am, if not that.
So I clicked to open that video and now youtube thinks I’m a whiny neckbeard.
gijoel, heh.
You prompt me to highlight something PZ wrote in the OP:
(This very post is likely to increase that number (as you’ve exemplified), and therefore that sadness)
—
Worth pointing out that gender is only of relevance in some contexts — akin to the distinction between ‘Mrs’ and ‘Ms’, but some people seem to imagine its relevance is not restricted.
BTW, “whiny neckbeard” suggests not all neckbeards (I have one currently) are whiny.
(A sentiment with which I conditionally concur)
“They” was good enough for Shakespeare to use as a singular neutral pronoun.
I figure it’s good enough for modern english usage, as well.
It seems to me that past uses of “they”, though they may be grammatically singular, are often in contexts where the author is thinking of more than one person. Shakespeare:
“There’s not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend”
Are there cases where “they” is used specifically for one person?
(Just quibbling. It probably is the least bad solution.)
@ WMDKitty — Survivor
By Shakespear’s day singular ‘they’ as an epicene pronoun had been in use for at least a couple of hundred years, and it’s only been frowned upon by frowning prescriptivists for the last couple. Now things are merely returning to normal.
@ aziraphale
From a late C14 translation of Ecclesiastes:
“Eche on in þer craft ys wijs.”
Each one in his craft is wise. I’m pretty certain the ‘they’ there would have been considered a craftsman
( Oh! and regards to Crowley)
@32 TricksterGoddess
Thanks very much for the suggestion, looking it up now :-)
The intense vituperation over changing “he or she” to “they” is so petty it beggars belief. This whole discussion over the nature of gender is superfluous to the fact that the whole video is nothing more than over blown wining about something that ultimately means nothing to him and is polite to those of trans identification. This doesn’t even rise to the level of a first world problem, just one of an inability to accept anyone who is not like himself. Fear of the Other.
Given that the singular “they” is pretty much completely entered into the common lexicon by this point, it’s pretty clear that they’re just attacking it because they know “SJWs” like it and their idiotic reactionary politics force them to hate anything SJW’s like.
@aziraphale,
What I think is different about the modern use of “they” is that it is being used to refer to specific, known people, and is treated (at least in some respects) as singular not just in meaning but in form. So back in the days when we just had landlines, it was common to say things like “Someone called but they didn’t leave a message,” with a clear singular meaning but an unknown referent.
It’s a slight shift, but a shift nevertheless, to go from there to “Chris called but they didn’t leave a message,” where we know who Chris is.
As for the form, I think in the past I would’ve said “Someone’s at the door and their talking to themselves,” but these days people say “Chris is talking to themself.”
Ain’t it cool how language changes?
I will never for the life of me understand why some people get so worked up about trans folks.
Like, I don’t understand being trans. It’s not something I have the cognitive frame of reference for. But so what? I don’t understand people who unironically enjoy country music, or like snorkling, or enjoy wasabi instead of recognizing it as the Hellspawn Radish Paste it is. So what? It costs me zero dollars to listen to a friend tell me about their snorkling vacaton, or let them play Blake Shelton in the car while I drive, or eat their sushi with wasabi on top while I slather mine in soy sauce, or to call them by their preferred pronouns. Literally it does not hurt me in the slightest.
So why is it everyone is fine with saying “I don’t know what you see in the Star Wars prequels but sure, enjoy them” but then they throw a shitfit when asked to acknowledge that, while they might not understand what trans people are going through, it’s just a basic level of consideration to use the pronouns they prefer.
Why is that hard?
@36 consciousness razor
It took me a while to parse this comment and even now I’m not certain I’ve got it right. But if I understand you correctly you’re saying that biology is more complicated than what we might learn in grade school. There I’m with you. But I still don’t believe that excuses the statement that I initially called out as ridiculous. And just an FYI – unless one looks using very sensitive techniques the majority of us are composed of human cells anyway that can be clearly identified as either “male cells” or “female cells”. Bacteria are neither male nor female so your micro biome doesn’t tip the balance in the slightest.
@28 Holmes:
They aren’t thinking, they are emoting and choosing a ‘hill to die on’. Especially when this is over the wording in a fantasy card game. It seems the banned player has, in his opinion (which, of course, overrides all other facts and opinions /s) a grievance and is picking nits wrt the game. He’s banned and he’s using any excuse to rile up his ‘base’ (sounds eerily familiar. . .)
Gee ignorant asshole, you presume biology is is as determinant as chemistry is.
Here’s a clue. Biology is messy chemistry, as timing is also important.
You are looking at conditions of “state” (chromosomes), and pretending that in the middle (kinetics/mechanisms) have nothing to do with the final outcome.
And you wonder why folks her see you as a troll? Think about it, then provide the conclusive paper that chromosomes are the SOLE determinant of gender, if you dare.
chris61: I’d like to elaborate a bit on the sentence you took issue with.
If this described individual intersex people as the norm for the population in general, it would be very odd, I agree. But that sentence is talking about anatomy, hormones, cells, and chromosomes; it’s not referring to individuals and certainly not simply individuals who are intersex. The blog post does go on to discuss people who are intersex and I can see how innocent confusion about the meaning of the sentence could occur, but if you go back and read what it actually says, its meaning should be clear.
Klinefelter syndrome, in which someone who would be assigned male at birth has an extra X chromosome, is not typically classified as intersex. It occurs in 1:500 to 1:1000 AMAB individuals, making it potentially more common than Down syndrome (1:700) in AMAB newborns. Micropenis (less than 7cm in length in adulthood) is not uncommon in affected individuals. These are people assigned male at birth with two X chromosomes. We therefore cannot say that having two X chromosomes is aligned with one binary classification.
Polycystic ovary syndrome, which is the result of elevated androgens in people who would be assigned female at birth, is not typically classified as intersex. For AFAB people of childbearing age, it can occur at a rate of two to 20 percent of the population. Clitoromegaly (clitoral index [width × length in mm] more than 35mm²) is not uncommon in affected individuals. These are assigned female at birth people with high levels of testosterone. We therefore cannot say that high levels of testosterone are aligned with one binary classification.
People who have carried fetuses with XY karyotype can retain cells carrying Y chromosomes and a great number of people capable of giving birth will ultimately carry such a fetus. That may be one explanation for this study where Y chromosomes were found in 63 percent of the brains of autopsied cadavers, who otherwise carried XX chromosomes and were identified as female on their death certificates. Sixty-three percent is a significant result. So Y chromosomes can’t be aligned with one binary classification.
Anatomically, sexing skeletal remains is far more difficult and yields far more ambiguous results than forensic drama would ever lead anyone to believe. If the population is unknown, it becomes even more difficult. In this study, 20 skeletons had their sex determined by 15 existing methods of forensic anthropology and no single individual was identified as belonging to one sex exclusively. Skeletal anatomy can clearly not be aligned with one binary classification.
No, most people are not intersex, which is narrowly defined. But the traits we’re told in grade school categorically go along with one binary classification are more malleable than that. Skeletons cannot be neatly divided into male and female, Y chromosomes are quite regularly found in people you’d consider cis women, hormones fluctuate wildly, chimerism may be present in 21 percent of triplets, and eight percent of twins (and let’s not forget the risk of a “ghost” twin who died in utero and was absorbed!), and sometimes people with predominantly XY chromosomes give birth and nobody would have known if it weren’t for karyotype testing.
As we look closer, we find things are just a lot more complicated than the simple explanations given in grade school. Meaning that if we make a broad stroke declaration (people with such-and-such hormones/chromosomes/anatomy are always assigned male at birth), we are very likely to be wrong. If the sentence were about people, yes, most people with high levels of testosterone, Y chromosomes, and phalli longer than 7cm were typically assigned male at birth. Most people in the world are assigned a binary gender at birth. It’s unusual to not give a newborn a binary gender. But not everyone with high levels of testosterone or everyone with a Y chromosome or everyone with a phallus of some length was assigned male at birth. Therefore, those traits themselves cannot categorically be aligned with a binary classification. It is not usual for a trait to exclusively belong to one binary classification.
And so: Anatomy, hormones, cells, and chromosomes are actually not–are you reading this?–usually aligned with one binary classification.
@51 Mellow Monkey
Actually they are unless you are using a very convoluted definition of the word ‘usually’ to mean always.
@50 Nerd
Chromosomes are not the SOLE determinant of anything. What I said was that anatomy, hormones, chromosomes, cells usually align with a binary classification. Because they do.
Ah. I am always so disappointed when I assume innocent misunderstanding instead of willful misrepresentation.
chris61
The keyword in that sentence isn’t usually. It’s one.
It’s as though you wandered into a discussion about animal husbandry and breed identification in dogs. Someone notes that coat color is not usually aligned with one breed. And then you insist that Labrador Retrievers are usually black. You’re not even involved in the actual argument.
It looks like the difference comes down to something like this.
On chris61’s side of the aisle: there are usually some (not all) features of a person, which align with a binary gender classification; it’s unusual when a person doesn’t exhibit those.
On the other side: it’s not true that all features of a person usually align with a binary gender classification; having features that don’t is very much a usual occurrence, as all or nearly all people are like that (depending on the specific features in question).
Those would of course be compatible with one another, if those fairly summarize the two arguments.
@53 Mellow Monkey
Now I think I see what you’re getting at. Most individuals can be assigned male or female based on the alignment between anatomy, hormones and chromosomes but if you choose individual anatomical features, single hormone measurements and happen to catch that one in 100 to 1 in 1000 cells with a chromosome complement that differs from the majority of the cells in the individual then you could justify saying that anatomy, hormones etc etc. “are not usually aligned with one binary classification”. I think it’s a specious argument but sure if you want to go with it.
“I wonder if Jordan Peterson would be outraged”
I don’t think so. But I’m not totally sure. He is outraged that there is legislation that requires him to use trans pronouns. He said in an earlier interview that he does not have a problem with trans pronouns and said he would use them if a student asked. In subsequent interviews, he seems to have hardened his view. He now says he will not use trans pronouns, but I think that is because there is legislation requiring him to do so, and that he would use trans pronouns if asked IF there was no legislation requiring him to do so.
…Jordan Peterson’s most recent interview was with Leigh Sales who presents the ABC’s “The 7:30 Report”. He talks about trans pronouns at about 4:45.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kf0ICLyhiAo
(This is the interview Cathy Newman should have had)
John Morales: “This very post is likely to increase that number (as you’ve exemplified), and therefore that sadness”
Yeah, sad that the video is so popular. On the other hand, you can’t sensibly comment on the video unless you watch it. Of course you wouldn’t need to watch the whole video to know you’re not going to learn much more by watching it all.
Porivil Sorrens: “Given that the singular “they” is pretty much completely entered into the common lexicon by this point…”
That’s probably the best argument in it’s favour. Unfortunately, it does still sound a little ‘awkward’ to some people – using a plural as a singular. But, as someone has pointed out, it’s been in use since Shakespeare’s day, so there’s really no excuse.
@57
He’s also had unhinged rants where he states that he thinks particular nonbinary pronouns are part of an evil cultural marxist conspiracy that wants to destroy western culture, so like lol.
To wit:
Is a gendered epithet?
What is the plural of ?
Technically no, but in practice it’s far more commonly applied to men.
“Wankers”.
Why? I’m simply not getting your point here. We’re all made of atoms, none of which are human, yet we are all human. You have to be some weird form of essentialist (like the religious fundamentalists you talk about in that comment) to find that puzzling. Why do you find it puzzling, or think that anyone else here should?
Nor, for that matter, do I understand Mellow Monkey’s point@52, despite reading it several times, and going back as suggested to reread the linked article. It seems to me that the sentence in dispute can only have the interpretation chris61 and I gave it. And I see that PZ@27 appears to agree with us on this point:
Exactly so.
Right, I wasn’t exactly speaking for myself there. Sorry for the confusion. What I had in mind was someone like the religious person I talked about later on.
Still, many puzzles can be solved, or at least they can be rendered less mysterious. For myself, I’ve never solved a Rubik’s Cube, but that’s not a very troubling kind of puzzle, one which calls into question some foundational beliefs I have or whatever. Point is, I didn’t mean to put so much weight into it, when speaking for myself.
Anyway, if you’re being told (in elementary schools and the like, maybe not biology journals or other sophisticated treatments of the subject) that humans consist of human cells, all of which may or may not be gendered as determined by our human chromosomes, and that’s the sort of thing that makes us what we are, according to the biology teacher…. Well, if you came to believe that, then you might have some issues to work through, when that rug is eventually pulled out from under you. It’ll take a bit of careful thinking to get to the right sort of conclusions. And it’s obviously not necessary that people do come to the right conclusions, especially when they’re being given contradictory information from sources that may all seem to be trustworthy.
As an aside, I’ve found it’s still pretty common for people to think “bacteria” and so forth are only bad, if they’re in your body (that must be an “infection”*), because they think only human cells are supposed to be in there if you’re healthy, which of course is incorrect. You tell them that their bodies are swarming with the things right now, while they are perfectly fine, and you’ll often get surprised looks if not quite disbelief. I’d say you don’t really need religious convictions (or a somewhat developed idea like essentialism) to come away with that impression… just not much of an education beyond what people tend to get in elementary school (perhaps especially if this was decades ago, in the US, in rural and/or poor school districts, etc.).
*But they don’t always get that either. Some people think getting a “cold” can happen because a person is exposed to low temperatures. I’ve heard it often enough: “don’t go outside: you’ll get a cold.” Some just don’t have a very clear idea of what they think is going on in their bodies, nor do they try to get one. These are apparently just things they’ve heard and take for granted, as something like tautological truths (it’s right there in the name “cold”!), then this “advice” is passed off to others. This same sort of folk pseudo-wisdom is pretty clearly responsible for a whole lot of ideas about gender and gender roles. As silly as some of it may sound, it’s still a big stumbling block for some people, as I’m sure you know.
@66 consciousness razor
So you correct the ideas about gender roles by addressing gender roles, not by trying to deliberately obfuscate the biology.
I think the phrase “a patchwork of genetically distinct cells” is probably what started the thought process in #21. Not a correction of what anybody had said in the thread, since I’m well aware that I was the first to bring it up. And it’s not obfuscation. (Maybe complication, for people who want stories that are not biology are far too simplistic. But that’s not like hiding any of it.)
Or maybe I just don’t get what you’re trying to say here. That’s possible. But whatever it is, I’m sure I wasn’t “trying to deliberately” do that (as redundant as that phrase is), if we agree on what any of these words mean.
@68 consciousness razor
The comment about obfuscating the biology was in reference to the Stanford blog post that PZ linked above, not to you.