Here we go again. Richard Dawkins pushes bad biology and hatred.
Hey friends,
Remember me? I’ve been offline for a long long time — life has interfered, it’s been a busy semester, but right now it’s our Fall Break, so I have a little time to address some bad science by Richard Dawkins and others that has been nagging me for a while.
This article by Richard Dawkins is titled “Why biological sex matters,” and that’s possible the last line I agree with. The subheading continues “Some argue that lived experience and personal choice trump biology – but they are wrong,” and that’s where I have problems. I’d argue that biology trumps biology — when all you have to offer is a simplistic, reductionist version of biology, then a fuller understanding of the depth and complexity of biology ought to be appreciated more.
Dawkins has long been an advocate of a gene-centric version of biology that focuses on the differential survival of competing alleles, that sees higher order phenomena like interactions between individuals, communities, and species as echoes of the activity of genes. This is a valid and useful perspective on evolution and ecology, but it’s only a small part of the story. A fundamental part, for sure, but biology has multiple levels and ignoring the reality of organisms to focus entirely on what is ultimately an abstraction is going to lead you into a delusion.
Also at play here is an ideological commitment to traditional stereotypes. If you have an a priori commitment to the idea that men and women must be different, then it is easy to find the differences — but then you must magnify those differences and ignore the similarities to justify your position. One of the noteworthy and horrifying features of this article is that Dawkins is nailing his colors to the mast and making his transphobia blatantly obvious. I don’t want to dwell on it here, but he openly makes his alignment clear.
If the editor had challenged me to come up with examples where the discontinuous mind really does get it right, I’d have struggled. Tall vs short, fat vs thin, strong vs weak, fast vs slow, old vs young, drunk vs sober, safe vs unsafe, even guilty vs not guilty: these are the ends of continuous if not always bell-shaped distributions. As a biologist, the only strongly discontinuous binary I can think of has weirdly become violently controversial. It is sex: male vs female. You can be cancelled, vilified, even physically threatened if you dare to suggest that an adult human must be either man or woman. But it is true; for once, the discontinuous mind is right. And the tyranny comes from the other direction, as that brave hero JK Rowling could testify.
When you say “violently controversial”, the description really only applies to one side of the debate. Yes, you can be “cancelled” for being a homophobe, a racist, or a transphobe, but it’s a toothless fate — you can go on being rich and so well respected that you get invitations to air your ugly opinions in the media. Meanwhile, trans people are being tortured, denied health care, or murdered for your collaboration with the wretched idea of a rigid sexual binary. “Brave Hero” JK Rowling gets book deals, movie rights, and can buy multiple mansions, and is not at all comparable to a teenager who gets thrown out of their home, forced to live on the streets, or the Texas trans kid who is denied puberty blockers or hormone treatments or even basic therapy, and has to negotiate vigilante cops patrolling the highways to make sure no one can go out of state for treatment. The violence, much of it state-sanctioned, is all going one way.
In this article, Dawkins admits that the range of human variation is continuous and broad, so his mission is to find one thing where there is a sharp discontinuity that will allow him to support the bigotry of Rowling with “Science,” an a priori commitment that will bias his conclusion. There’s a long history of bigots carrying out this kind of exercise, where they reduce the whole of human experience to just one thing that is discrete that will demolish all arguments for diversity. He comes up with one, a familiar claim: it’s all about gametes. Forget about the fact that we’re complex multicellular organisms, let’s crunch every factor that makes us human into one property, one cell that defines everything.
Sex is a true binary. It all started with the evolution of anisogamy – sexual reproduction where the gametes are of two discontinuous sizes: macrogametes or eggs, and microgametes or sperm. The difference is huge. You could pack 15,000 sperm into one human egg. When two individuals jointly invest in a baby, and one invests 15,000 times as much as the other, you might say that she (see how pronouns creep in unannounced) has made a greater commitment to the partnership.
Right. Throw away minds and bodies and society, and you can distill us down to a single cell, a spermatozoan or an ovum. He sees no problem at all with this extreme reductionism, but I do. He’s also throwing most of biology. I have a couple of objections.
The first is an obvious error. How can you sweep away all the factors that affect the cost of reproduction and treat it as a matter of gamete size? That might matter in echinoderms, but it’s not a significant factor in big, complex, multicellular and social organisms. Dawkins ‘analysis’ is neither informed nor appropriate.
- Gametes are a trivial cost in multicellular organisms like us. Trivial? I mean negligible. The numbers he mentions are an excellent example of biased reporting. It’s true: eggs have a much larger volume than sperm. But if you’re talking about relative investment, ovulating people produce one relatively gigantic egg per month. Humans with testes produce 1500 sperm per minute. That means that that egg volume represents 10 minutes of sperm production, and that goes on constantly, throughout most of your post-adolescent life. A month is about 44,000 minutes long; that means that in that time, a person with ovaries makes one gamete, while a persion with testes makes 65,000,000 gametes.
The significant difference here is not in cost, or relative investment, it’s in selectivity or in relative opportunity to produce offspring. It’s quantity vs. quality. But you can’t argue that the differences between male and female in complex multicellular organisms rest entirely on the properties of gametes.
A further problem here is that he is sweeping away all of the interesting differences.
- There is a significant difference between the biological sexes, but it’s not gametes (unless you are an extreme reductionist who can’t see the other differences.) Far more important to us is menstruation, not simple anisogamy. The basal metabolic rate of an average medium-sized person is about 1300 kilocalories per day. The menstrual cycle can increase that by 70-150 kilocalories per day, or about a 10% increase in caloric requirements.
That’s small, but it matters. If we’re comparing sexes, though, the difference is offset by the average larger size, and therefore greater metabolic requirements, of people with testosterone percolating through their system. Furthermore, we don’t identify women as people who menstruate (or produce ova, for that matter), so it’s all a bit irrelevant. Constructing and shedding a thickened endometrium every month is neither necessary nor sufficient for defining “womanhood”.
It also has nothing directly to do with gametes.
- The larger cost difference is obviously pregnancy. Making an egg cell? Pfft. Cheap and easy. Bearing a child? There’s the expense. The total energy cost of making a baby is about 77,000 kilocalories. A pregnant person is experiencing an increased cost of about 470 kilocalories per day in the third trimester. That’s a hard workout every single day.
Again, this is not about gametes. Pregnancy is a whole body workout requiring significantly greater nutritional input. Fortunately, or perhaps hopefully, we are social organisms and that additional cost can be supported in part by a partner, or an extended family, or a whole community. Alloparenting starts here, and alloparenting doesn’t care if you’re cis or trans, an auntie or a cousin, a grandfather or grandmother. The role of supporting a mother should not involve a sexual difference.
- Many people are not aware of this, but pregnancy isn’t the expensive bit: it’s breastfeeding. A year of breastfeeding is going to cost the nursing parent close to 200,000 kilocalories…and of course somewhere in that year that child is going to start eating other foods, that the family will have to provide for them. Then the biological reality really sets in, and you realize that this child is helpless and needy and is going to have to be fully supported by the foraging and earnings of the adults in the group for 20 years.
The costs of reproduction are, or should be, shared by a community. Biology constrains the permissible roles of the parents, but human evolution, and the evolution of all multicellular organisms, is about opening up the range of contributions every member of the population can make, and reducing the complexity of reproduction to a simplistic “Men inseminate, women get pregnant” does a vast disservice to the diversity of roles required to build a society we all benefit from.
A further problem with Dawkins’ logic is that many human beings do not produce any gametes at all, or choose not to reproduce. A man with a vasectomy has not necessarily changed sex. A woman with a hysterectomy does not necessarily cease to be a woman. By hinging your definition of sex on one practically invisible property of a single cell type, you are answering your question of “why biological sex matters” with a negation. It mostly doesn’t. It matters in a relationship that desires to produce children, but otherwise, no — in all my day-to-day interactions with a multitude of people to build a good life and contribute to society, the question, “Do you produce viable gametes?” has never once come up. It is literally the least relevant question I could ask of any other human being on the planet, since I’m not a doctor involved with reproductive health, and will not be having any more children myself.
Here’s a statistic for you: 15-20% of American women will not have children at all. Some of them by a biological inability, but the majority by personal choice: they have better things to do with their life than raising children. This is a valid choice, and most of them are not going to be complaining on their deathbeds that they never got around to getting pregnant. Are we seriously going to argue that these women are not women, or that they fail to make a good contribution to society, or that they’ve wasted their lives? Of course not. That is a conclusion we might arrive at if we decide that gonads are destiny. We do a deep disservice to human beings when we define them by reproductive potential — there is a hell of a lot people can accomplish without reproducing.
Biology is complex and messy and does not dictate who you must be — it generates an explosion of variety. Do not let a biologist, whether it’s stodgy old Dawkins or stodgy old Myers, use biology as a cudgel to tell you who you must be. Look around you and realize that there diverse sex and gender roles, which should tell you that gametes as a model are too simplistic and primitive, and recognize that biology frees you to be whoever you want to be.
The substance of Dawkins’ article was embarrassing enough, but then I got to the end where, like a good scientist, he credits his sources for all this misinformation. Look at this — not a single biologist among them, only some anti-trans bigots.
today’s unfortunate children who, latching on to a playground craze, find themselves eagerly affirmed by “supportive” teachers, and au courant doctors with knives and hormones. See Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020); Kathleen Stock’s Material Girls: Why Reality Matters for Feminism (2021); and Helen Joyce’s Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality (2021). Many of us know people who choose to identify with the sex opposite to their biological reality. It is polite and friendly to call them by the name and pronouns that they prefer. They have a right to that respect and sympathy. Their militantly vocal supporters do not have a right to commandeer our words and impose idiosyncratic redefinitions on the rest of us. You have a right to your private lexicon, but you are not entitled to insist that we change our language to suit your whim. And you absolutely have no right to bully and intimidate those who follow common usage and biological reality in their usage of “woman” as honoured descriptor for half the population. A woman is an adult human female, free of Y chromosomes.
Look. Shrier, Stock, and Joyce are not credible sources. They are ideologues with axes to grind.
Trans health care does not involve going after children with knives. It’s not a “playground craze.”
Words are flexible, and we have every right to adapt their usage to meet the needs of people. People always have. It’s not a matter of “whims” to recognize that words can be used to disrespect people, and your denials are not persuasive.
Trans men and women are not bullying you when they ask you to respect their identity and the biological reality of their lives. The only bullying going is by people who demand that everyone must conform to the dictates of a small set of cells in their groins, and deny the reality of their minds and bodies.
And then to end on “adult human female,” a vacuous tautology if ever there was one, and the “Y chromosome” canard? What a ridiculous and unscientific article. It’s a disgraceful abuse of science, the product of a narrow, limited, conservative mind that has lost all ability to appreciate the glorious complexity of humanity. He’s simply pandering to a hateful clique.
That’s all I wanted to say. Dawkins continues his trajectory of disappointment and regressive failure to recognize the reality of human existence, and I felt compelled to call him out, and all the other nasty people abusing science to prop up a shameful ideology of hatred. I swear, the older I get, the more disappointed and cynical I feel — I really should have stayed young and gullible and optimistic. Was that an option?
At least I still have all these people reassuring me that a humane decency can persevere and who even make a material contribution to the promotion of my weird and seemingly minority perspective. Thanks to everyone on Patreon, and if you want to restore my faith in humanity (and also help support freethoughtblogs, and my growing collection of spider-friends) you can join, too. Even a dollar a month will keep bloggers typing away, and feed a lot of spiders.
Yeah, I know, if I could say I was using the money to feed kittens, I’d probably get more donations. But spiders are adorkable, too, and I like keeping them healthy.
I wish I could promise to post videos more regularly, but my classes are crushing me right now, and there isn’t a lot of relief in sight. In January, I’ll be teaching a course in ecological developmental biology, which I haven’t taught in several years, and I’m frantically trying to update the course before the term smacks me in the face. Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone, and talk about my research and readings on the intersection between the environment and embryos? That might be useful to me, you’ll have to let me know if it would be useful to you.
Later, everyone! And don’t listen to anyone who tries to condense your identity down to a single cell type — remember, you’re all magnificent multicellular social organisms!
Just like with harassment and abuse and other things, Dawkins has an opportunity to look at the experts and relevant perspectives, and decided his perspective is better.
There’s a whole set of diverse plumbing abound those gametes. When the plumbing looks like the other gamete society tends to pretend they are the other gamete based on superficial genitalia obsession.
I don’t think reality or society actually cares except in social posturing and control.
A playground craze? That gives the game away. He sounds like an ordinary Christo-fascist.
Evolution has had time to add things to gamete production.
This is just an assertion without proof or data and may be dismissed without proof or data. It is just wrong.
Dawkins is way out of his area of expertise here and it shows.
Sex assigned at birth and gender identity are two different things. When they don’t agee, with call such people, Trans people.
Dawkins just completely ignores the existence of gender and gender identity.
This is what anti-Trans bigots do.
1. They claim that gender and gender identity don’t exist.
2. Or they claim that gender exists but people can’t change their gender identity.
Both are simply and empirically wrong.
Gender exists and people change their gender identity all the time.
That is what Trans people are.
Dawkins is just flat out lying here.
I missed where anti-Trans bigots are getting beat up or murdered by the rest of society.
I also missed where the state has passed laws to persecute and discriminate against Trans people.
Calling people like Rowling and Dawkins anti-Trans bigots and pointing out where they are wrong isn’t persecution.
It’s hard to see the Dawkins who wrote The God Delusion in the Dawkins we see today.
Dawkins is 82 and has had a stroke.
Who knows, maybe he is just showing age related cognitive impairments.
I really don’t like this idea though. It’s too easy to write off old people this way.
It’s more likely that he has come up against the limits of how flexible and open his mind is to new ideas. He was born into a different age where cis white straight males were naturally assumed to be superior and rule the world.
That other groups are contesting that leadership and taking their places at the top of every where isn’t something he can understand.
Dawkins starts out saying sex is all about the gametes, but then ends up saying it’s all about the chromosomes? He’s internally incoherent even before PZ’s excellent rebuttal.
The genitalia are elaborations related to gametes. There are lots of things added to biology since gametes that society keeps bringing in, including behavior. It’s keeps being more than gametes despite the obsession.
I’d never heard of this one.
So many crackpots, so little time.
Abigail Shrier is a generic far right wingnut extremist.
Her book has been criticized by everyone who actually works in medical and related fields that deal with Trans people.
It’s all lies and logical fallacies in book form.
If that is what Dawkins is using as a source, he has right there pretty much vaporized his credibility.
“Some argue that lived experience and personal choice trump biology – but they are wrong,”…
By that very statement, is Dawkins also going to decline any medical treatment, due to biology?
After all, taken just on the face of that idiocy, I no longer need to exercise (my cranky knees and back would thank him), ignore my diet, stop taking all of those silly pills that make my personal choice to trump biology’s efforts to kill me early and well, eat as much salt as I want to.
And I agree with PZ, it’s fascinating and damning that he couldn’t offer a citation from any biologist on the entire planet, instead choosing from a fine list of transphobes.
I think you are trying to overly complicate a biological issue (sex), and conflate it with a societal or ideological one (gender). A bit like the dichotomous keys high school students make. Yes, you can subdivide two groups using a set of 5 characteristics, but you can also do it with just 1…Occam’s Razor? Eg. Does the leaf have a smooth edge or a jagged edge? Versus Does the leaf have a smooth edge, parallel veins, and taper to pointed tips; or a jagged edge, veins from a central point, and heart-shaped? The latter is more specific, but the former is a quick and simple way to get the same results.
When an archaeologist finds a skeleton, he determines the sex using the pelvis and other clues. It is categorized as either male or female, without debating other factors unless there is sufficient reason to.
With living organisms, gamete size is a good system for determining sex, especially when lacking other obvious clues. Some species of octopus have sexes that are so similar, that even they can’t tell them apart until they try to mate. If we discover a new species, and the reproductive apparatus isn’t obvious, or we only have one specimen, then gametes produced would settle the issue.
Of course there are exceptions! However if you are satisfied with using gametes to determine the sex of a newly discovered parasitic worm or coral, why are you insisting that humans are exceptional? It reminds me of creationists trying to place humans above all other life forms and separate from nature.
And the whole ‘free of Y chromosomes’… okay, so people with Androgen Insensitivity aren’t women even if they otherwise look like women and were brought up as women their entire lives? That’s not a ‘playground craze’, that’s a matter of biology as indisputable as the chromosomes and the gametes… and a measurable percentage of people where those don’t all line up neatly. Because, to quote from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (which is at least as reputable as some of the sources Dawkins cited):
When part of the coding that goes between the genes and the obvious expression goes ‘wrong’, you get mismatches. And arguing ‘but that’s so rare’ doesn’t make it go away. Sure, the number of people with AIS is usually estimated between 2-5 per 100,000, but at that rate that still means somewhere around ten thousand people in the U.S. alone. Does Dawkins really want to be on record as saying that those ten thousand real people can be ignored?
(Obviously he is on record here as saying pretty much that, no matter how much he might deny that he’s talking about these people in particular. Then again, he’s never shown much care about splash damage from his pronouncements anyway.)
Ironic, given a story on CNN’s main page about a Viking queen’s rune stones, celebrating her life and accomplishments – something beyond unusual for the Middle Ages.
Or females buried with full warrior regalia.
Just as you fixate upon gamete size, ignoring the species whose gametes are the same size, because considering those undermines your non-argument. Why are you fixating upon only a few species?
@BACONSQAUDgaming
Who are you responding to?
@10 there you are again, with your silly name, trolling as always. Why dont you just give up and find another toy ? The “archeologist” argument, one that has even been adressed and deunked yet again here recently, come on…
@BACONSQUADgaming:
Who’s saying that humans are exceptional? We’ve seen birds that are chimeras (two siblings fused together early enough in development that there’s just one bird) often enough that we know whether the bird will effectively be male or female even if the two halves of the chimera are of different sexes. (Only the left ovary in birds tends to produce, so the bird will only be fertile if the left half is female).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-sider_budgerigar For that matter, see the first reference link from there which shows pictures of chimeras of multiple birds, a lobster, and a butterfly. Weird sexual crap that doesn’t fit into a neat binary happens all over the animal kingdom.
@15 we all here know sex is not a binary, and that it can only be one if we quite arbitrarily decide to exclude factors as you please. The guy youre responding to does not care , all he does is concern trolling and posting the same bullcrap over and over, he also has been banned before and is since making a mess with his new alias, like pschaeffer, quite poorly.
Do skeletons have genders?
What happens when people find female appearing skeletons buried with warrior’s weapons? This isn’t even that unusual.
Can archaeologists tell whether this person used male or female pronouns or were they nonbinary?
And what does anything you wrote have to do with Transgender people?
Even my Braindead Troll to English translator on Google isn’t coming up with anything coherent.
@10 BACONSQAUDgaming
Biologists do things to animals that would be recognized at the very least politically incorrect or criminal to do to humans. I won’t attempt to rationalize that, but I will say the argument from, “But you do that to animals!” steers us toward a discussion of the ethical treatment of animals instead of an excuse to do it to humans too.
IIRC, it was you that pointed out last time that…
sex isn’t binary it is bimodal.
There is a significant middle group that we call intersexes at 1.7% of the population.
@17 remeber the athropoligcal society statement? They reiterated what every rational (so not far-right loser) person knows. Aracheolgists dont “determine” sex with perfect confidence , they evaaluate it and arrive at a conclusion based on averages, or if you will..a spectrum. But baconguy does not care, or he`d have ceased to exist (here) months ago
This is what he used to say.
Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (2016 ed), Endnotes p397
The selfish geneticist
For simplicity we should do like many fish species and switch gender when we reach a certain size.
I figure BACONSQAUDgaming gets by on implications that someone is opposing our ability to sort by genitals. We can do that, it’s not accurate and it enabled transphobic moral panics, which enable broader LGBT+ moral panics, and that also enables panics related race via general social taste for moral panics.
I forgot to link the passage in #21: The Selfish Gene, p397
First it was “Women have vaginas and men have penises – how difficult can it be?”
Then it became “Women have XX chromosomes and men have XY chromosomes – it’s elementary!”
And now it is “Women have large gametes and men have small gametes – it’s science!”
I wonder what gender essentialists will come up with next.
I think you are trying to overly complicate a biological issue (sex)…
No one is “trying to complicate a biological issue;” we’re pointing out that biology is already complicated. If you can’t handle complicated stuff, then kindly shut up and let the grownups deal with it.
When an archaeologist finds a skeleton, he determines the sex using the pelvis and other clues. It is categorized as either male or female, without debating other factors unless there is sufficient reason to.
So what? When ordinary people see other ordinary people, we determine their sex using their visible physical features and other clues, without debating other factors unless there is sufficient reason to. And trans people do indeed have sufficient reason to point out other factors. What was your point again…?
With living organisms, gamete size is a good system for determining sex, especially when lacking other obvious clues.
Yeah, well, with humans, there’s no lack of obvious clues — including what gender people say they are — so no one really needs to go about doing on-the-spot gamete scans. Again, what the fuck is your point here…?
How often do humans need to “determine sex using gamete size?
I’ve never done it or had any reason to do it.
In fact, it is never done even in medical settings.
It’s not even common in biology.
What was your point again?
This is just dumb.
This is so disappointing. Dawkins is a biologist with a good knowledge of genetics. I do not doubt that he knows about various chromosomal and hormonal aberrations from the overly simplistic “XY=male, XX=female”.
There are indeed cis women with XY chromosomes and cis men with XX chromosomes out there; some of them never know that about themselves unless they decide to have children and get their karyotype checked as part of a treatment for infertility. Not to mention that the notion of being male or female predates the notion of chromosomes, karyotypes, and gametes.
Ever since his “Dear Muslima” gaffe, I could not bear to read his books or anything written by him, but even so, seeing a man whom I once admired sink even deeper into shit is jarring.
It was also “penises don’t go in there! That’s not what they’re made for!”
I keep thinking there is humor involving F plasmids but I can’t get there. Something about F +/-.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-plasmid
@ 11 jenorafeuer
Right?! Even leaving aside trans people (which you can’t because they’re part of society too) there are cis women with Y chromosomes and dysfunctional internal testes who have been recognised as women in every society throughout history.
Are we suddenly to call them men? Not let them use women’s toilets? How are you supposed to tell the difference anyway?
It’s Dawkins and his hatemongers who are trying to impose a bizarre redefinition on everyone else for ideological purposes.
If I said to Dawkins, “Fill in this form and when you’re done hand it to the woman at the front counter”, and when he got to the front counter he saw these two
https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article18105033.ece/ALTERNATES/s615d/0_DPP_SAH_sa181077_015JPG.jpg
he’d have no doubt who to hand the form to. What he would not to is say, “excuse me, I was told to hand this to the person with the large immotile gametes but I didn’t bring my endoscope…”. They’re both trans by the way (Jake and Hannah Graf.)
It’s the transphobes trying to change common usage of English words into medical terms useless in non-medical contexts.
I’m not writing this to engage with BACONSQUADgaming who seems incapable of arguing in good faith, but other readers might be interested. Pelvis shape is not just of interest to archeologists. It’s a significant issue in obstetrics/midwifery because a significant proportion of women have pelvis shapes that increase the risk of birthing problems.
The best pelvis shape (i.e. least likely to have prolonged or obstructed labor) is ‘gynoid’, that is, ‘female’ in ancient Greek. This accounts for only 41% of women. You read that right: less than half of women have a ‘feminine’ pelvis structure. The second most common pelvis shape at 33% is ‘android’. Yep, a third of women have a ‘masculine’ pelvis. There are other classifications of decreasing frequency that don’t fit either category, and even in the medical setting, people with a gynoid pelvis still have obstructed labors and people with non-gynoid pelvises often have uncomplicated births…it’s almost like forcing rigid binary categories onto complex, non-linear traits is bad science!
But wait, it gets better. Pelvis shape is NOT genetically fixed, and is affected by <a href=’https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8728076/”>age of first walking erect and participation in strenuous physical activity in adolesence, or to quote the conclusion of this paper: ‘The final shape of the female pelvis seems to be determined by culture and environment as well as by genetics.’
Neither of these studies, by the way, are remotely new. Abitbol is from 1996, using data from 1962-1980 and the original classification of gynoid/android/etc. is from the 1930s.
Genetic determinism has always been a helpful lie for oppressing minorities. The only thing that changes is which minority is at the forefront of oppression.
Apologies for the unclosed tags. Let’s try again…
I’m not writing this to engage with BACONSQUADgaming who seems incapable of arguing in good faith, but other readers might be interested. Pelvis shape is not just of interest to archeologists. It’s a significant issue in obstetrics/midwifery because a significant proportion of women have pelvis shapes that increase the risk of birthing problems.
The best pelvis shape (i.e. least likely to have prolonged or obstructed labor) is ‘gynoid’, that is, ‘female’ in ancient Greek. This accounts for only 41% of women. You read that right: less than half of women have a ‘feminine’ pelvis structure. The second most common pelvis shape at 33% is ‘android’. Yep, a third of women have a ‘masculine’ pelvis. There are other classifications of decreasing frequency that don’t fit either category, and even in the medical setting, people with a gynoid pelvis still have obstructed labors and people with non-gynoid pelvises often have uncomplicated births…it’s almost like forcing rigid binary categories onto complex, non-linear traits is bad science!
But wait, it gets better. Pelvis shape is NOT genetically fixed, and is affected by age of first walking erect and participation in strenuous physical activity in adolesence, or to quote the conclusion of this paper: ‘The final shape of the female pelvis seems to be determined by culture and environment as well as by genetics.’
Neither of these studies, by the way, are remotely new. Abitbol is from 1996, using data from 1962-1980 and the original classification of gynoid/android/etc. is from the 1930s.
Genetic determinism has always been a helpful lie for oppressing minorities. The only thing that changes is which minority is at the forefront of oppression.
raven@19–
Not saying this to criticise, but if you really dig down even the bimodal model is too simplistic (just a lot less simplistic than the binary model and much less weaponisable). Bimodal implies a spectrum, usually for a single variable and therefore linear. It is possible to find bimodal distributions for multivariate functions, but this is never the way I see it presented on this subject.
Sex is complex and multivariate, and even the idea of putting an ‘intersex’ label between male and female peaks on a graph should raise questions like ‘can anyone tell me what the x-axis variable is?, and ‘why is hypospadias usually classified as a male variation but micropenis intersex?’ and ‘why are we lumping chromosomal variations with enzymatic variations?’ and ‘if Turner Syndrome is an XO karyotype, shouldn’t we place it on the far side of the female mode, away from the male mode?…but then where does XO/XY mosaic Turner’s? fit’.
Brony, Social Justice Cenobite @ 30, and for some, their penis certainly belongs in the pencil sharpener. I’ll not question their choices.
I’ll simply hand them a bandaid.
As for idiot commenter that’s put me off bacon indefinitely and Dawkins, such hard, pat “responses” that ignore intersex conditions and even chimerism cases where one ovary and one testicle are both functional and present. Quite well documented, yet both deny that which is so well documented. For Dawkins, it makes me mistrust all work prior and since that lunacy began, for the troll, I question even the existence of a functional brain.
OT, got a surprise from my iphone yesterday. It griped at me about my “double support time” being excessive and predicted a fall within the next 12 months. Didn’t realize it was tracking my walking at all. But, useful to know and it’s a suggestion that some disc issues are growing worse, I’ll have to bring that up with doctor.
And I’ll be reviewing updated forensic data on that device, it’s been a few years since I was last supporting them and all they did then was trace one’s movements (as did Android devices).
Personal choice trumps biology all the time. I wear glasses. Biology would have me unable to see clearly and I chose to tell biology to fuck off. Most of us have chosen to trump biology in one way or another in the past 24 hours. It’s something we do all the time. A great deal of human advancement and flourishing comes from us trumping biology.
Dawkins:
Who was it who said —
–?
(Robert Benchley in 1920, with slightly different wording, per the link…)
OT, unless you look at it crosseyed:
Scientists propose sweeping new law of nature, expanding on evolution –
Perhaps an interesting topic of conversation with the 20th-century Dawkins.
Pierce, here’s Sabine’s take on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IngBEkg61_E
@23. birgerjohansson : “For simplicity we should do like many fish species and switch gender when we reach a certain size.”
Of course, that’s what some trans people do. Okay maybe not based on reaching a certain size so much but still.
Then there’s fungi and gender … See frex : https://www.popsci.com/fungi-sex/
@26. rietpluim
Have they ever really moved on from the first two of those?
@1. Brony, Social Justice Cenobite
That ^ – so much. Notably without good evidence or logical reason to do so. Siding with the bigots and religious extremists becuase, hey, its not like they’ve ever “cancelled” (to use the reichwings stupid and inaccurate term for facing consequences for hateful words and actions) anything or anyone because of their extremist intolerant bigotry. (Like, even a beer company earlier this year..)
@38. Pierce R. Butler :
Surprised he missed the obvious pregnant or not preggas where famously you can’t be just a bit .. But then false pregancies are a real thing (ahem, yeah) so..
Also, what actions, exactly, make JK Rowling a “brave hero?” What has she ever said or done that even remotely endangers her life, her career as a bestselling novelist, or her ability to reach an audience of millions of people with her every utterance? Yes, she seems to be getting death threats, but are they really as numerous, or as credible, as the threats LGBT+ people get every day?
JoeMyGod just had a post about an FBI report showing a recent spike in violence against LGBT+ people. Not just threats, but actual violent acts. Can Dawkins or Rowling point to a spike in violence against homophobes or transphobes?
Dawkins’ use of the tired old phrase “brave hero(es)” show he’s still wallowing in that Slymepit he and his dumbass fanboys created over ten years ago.
@ 43 Raging Bee
There has been a massive increase in hate crimes against trans people in the UK since the start of the modern anti-trans hate movement circa 2015, at least in large part to to constant propagandising in the media by the likes of “brave heroes” Rowling, Stock, Joyce; and now Dawkins. :-(
Transgender hate crime England and Wales 2023 | Statista
https://www.statista.com/statistics/624011/transgender-hate-crimes-in-england-and-wales-by-offence-type/
Also, yes, I remember when it was the anti-feminists who called themselves “brave heroes” for daring to stand up to… women not wanting to be hit on by strangers in elevators at 3am.
No wonder Dawkins relates.
Charly@29–
I’m not so sure about Dawkins’ expertise on the subject. His field is evolutionary biology, so obviously he would be familiar with chromosomes and genes and so on, but when it comes to specific knowledge of sex characteristics in humans it’s pretty clear he has taken his information from transphobes and not from the literature.
What’s sad to me is that he’s not even speaking knowledgeably about his own field any more. He should know that genotype:phenotype mapping is incredibly complex for all but a handful of traits. He’s treating gender identity like ABO blood type. (And even then, supposedly simple inheritance patterns like ABO blood type are far more complex and unpredictable in real life than most textbooks describe them — even in college-level texts!)
[meta]
chrislawson,
1: Dawkins is 82 years old and shouting at clouds; and
2: You can’t actually ask him, so of course your question is rhetorical.
The best thing that could have happened to Dawkins’ credibility is if in 2011 he’d decided to permanently retire from the public sphere and deleted all his social media accounts. It’s been nothing but an embarrassing decline for him.
This is a naturalistic fallacy on steroids and an appalling sort of scientism applied in the service of a grossly bigoted and reactionary political ideology.
This is so so stupid … Dawkins in his dotage has gaslighted himself.
I used to try to be charitable to Dawkins, but that is no longer possible.
A whole body workout with another organism inside of you, distorting your body and hormone levels, posing numerous potential health threats, etc.
I’m pleased to see that a young woman who was denied a medically required abortion in Tennessee is now running for a seat in the Tennessee legislature. I hope she wins and thereby inspires many others to do the same.
https://time.com/6320148/allie-phillips-abortion-lawsuit-tennessee/
@BACONSQAUDgaming
Hey, dufus, did you even read or watch PZ? You certainly didn’t engage with any of his arguments.
I don’t pay much attention to the arguments these people make. They have the conclusions they want, and they make stuff up to support them. Tomorrow it will be a different set of specious claims. It’s not about science, it’s about maintaining a power structure which they feel benefits them.
Richard Dawkins is a classic privileged Brit, probably born to it. He’s used to seeing people who aren’t like him as lesser beings: women, people from other continents, people who weren’t born to his level of privilege. Feminism threatens him because it claims that women are his equals, hence the “Dear Muslima”, (which also mixes in his contempt for non-Western people.) The existence of trans people threatens the line he draws between the superior sex he belongs to and the inferior sex. (And non-binary people tromp all over that line.)
I see a similar dynamic with the infamous JKR: like an awful lot of Brits, she wants to feel like a part of the privileged classes, who, in England at least, are transphobic because trans people threaten one of the bases of their status. So she apes their prejudices. Okay, she’s still a woman and thus a lesser being, but if you’re a quasi-noble, then even though you’re a woman, you’re still several levels above commoners of any sex. (It’s interesting to me that the Harry Potter books portray a world with levels of privilege and the abuse that goes along with it, but while some of the characters complain about the abuse, mainly if they’re the target of it, no one seriously challenges the privilege system — other than Hermione, who the books make fun of for it.)
I expect Dawkins is at least somewhat aware of the limitations of defining sex simply by gamete production (and is perhaps unwilling to bite the bullet and accept that, on this definition, those people who do not produce gametes don’t have a sex). It would explain why he changes tack at the end of the argument from gametes to Y chromosomes. But doesn’t he know that there are cis women who are not “free or Y chromosomes”?
@ 50 Allison
Yes you’re right. The whole ideology drips of biological purity thinking and a supremacist mindset. Even the way Dawkins speaks of trans people as needing “sympathy”. Like what the fuck?
It’s deeply fascistic thinking and redolent of British class consciousness.
kome@37,
Indeed – one must assume that for consistency, Dawkins goes naked and eats only raw food.
Dawkins: opens his mouth
Me: STFU FOREVER, DICK!
Biology trumping biology is very useful.
I don’t understand how you can argue that sex isn’t determined by gametes, or that “womanhood” doesn’t have anything to do with gametes when the examples of what does, periods and pregnancy for example, when they’ve all governed by gametes and the body type that evolved to produce said gametes. All of the differences between the two sexes are based on the biology that has evolved to produce the respective gametes, how is that even controversial when sex and gender are different things?
The comparison with Ruffs just keeps making more sense to me. The satellite males have a separation between physical and social aggression. I feel little more than the reactions of others with a range of intense language. I have more flexibility in ways and it’s an advantage. And in humans there’s no reason to make assumptions about genitalia and the behavior.
And the behaviors may be in the female Ruffs too, undetected. We don’t look at enough variables, and we overvalue other variables.
@fal1
Who are you responding to?
I always find it incredibly funny that imbeciles show up here spewing the same vomit , and always reveal right away that they have not bothered to read anything at all before posting
@Brony PZ, how is pregnancy and periods not due to gametes? It’s the body types that evolved to produce male or female sex gametes that are responsible for all the differences between males and females. Also no one has every argued that people who don’t reproduce aren’t still male or female, or that a woman stops being female if she has a hysterectomy.
@fal1
Who were you responding to in 56?
I’m not responding to “also no one…” you can respond to me and I want to know who you were responding to.
It’s a strange routine. Show up, gossip about what is above in comments and blog post (it’s all implied and assumed), and start asking questions unrelated to a clarification request when asked who you are responding to. It’s like their words don’t actually mean anything to them.
@Brony did you read the blog post? I told you who I was replying to. Every biological aspect he referred to is a result of the evolution of male and female bodies to reproduce. Everything else is gender so irrelevant to what Dawkins said in his article.
@fal1
Ok, the blog post. We’re getting somewhere.
You have this assertion about everything being about reproduction. Some of it is about the pancreas too.
Now I’m going to need you to tie that gossip in 56 to something concretely in the post.
@65 every time an actual or would be pschaeffer clone or baconegg doofus ruins the informed discourse, truly unfortunate. And it would be “only” that, if there was no far right culture war
@Brony ok, I was pointing out that these things:
“There is a significant difference between the biological sexes, but it’s not gametes (unless you are an extreme reductionist who can’t see the other differences.) Far more important to us is menstruation”
“The larger cost difference is obviously pregnancy. Making an egg cell? Pfft. Cheap and easy. Bearing a child? There’s the expense. The total energy cost of making a baby is about 77,000 kilocalories. ”
are, despite what PZ says, ultimately due to gametes and the bodies that evolved to produce them.
Even for a bacteria some of it is about something else required for survival so reproduction can be possible. And when you are a multicellular organism the results can be non-breeding helpers and more.
It’s about the epiglottis too.
@fal1
You really think a “despite what PZ says” is enough? Who accepts just a “no, you’re wrong”?
I could have left it at “despite what you say” but instead I’m asking you for more. I can’t tell what part of your 56 is responding to that. Where is PZ denying something? He’s adding to the experience. Things related to, but not, gametes.
If you’re going to have a pronoun you’re going to have to accept the underlying systems that make such object modification possible. The things that let you attach meaning to anatomy and differences among your fellow humans at a level above 2.
I feel nothing for man, manly, and male is an anatomical abstraction that breaks down into other anatomy. I don’t bond to the extra social stuff the same.
@Brony he’s not adding to the experience, he’s stating things that are a direct result of the bodies that evolved to produce the male or female sex gamete are “nothing directly to do with gametes.”
@fal1
You keep limiting biology to reproduction. Those things operate independently of gametes. Biology evolved, and gametes and hearts and intestines resulted.
Nothing evolved to do any of that specifically. Even the reproduction systems are made from previous things and scattered around the genome.
I literally tend to see the social control and aggression aspects of gendered words first. The biology of anatomical abstraction in language in groups exists independently of gametes. That’s why we get the differences in association between male and female and man and woman in aggression in profanity.
@Brony I’m not limiting biology to reproduction, I’m talking about biological sex, male and female, and how humans reproduce, also how we categorise every species on earth. Social aspects has nothing to do with biological sex. None of this post is an argument against anything Dawkins said, and I can’t understand what it is you’re even arguing against – or what it has to do with trans people who clearly know what sex they are and the gender they want to transition to.
@fal1
That “bodies evolved to produce the male or female sex gamete” is limiting biology to reproduction.
I don’t care if you want to leave out social aspects. You want to conveniently ignore social aspects when sex and reproduction are social. No. You can sputter.
If you can’t understand something quote it. The number of people who abandon that basic part of language is amazing and probably political resentment. So sputter.
@fal1
Categorization is social here. I’m talking about we categorize too, your level of resolution seems incompetent for social primates that exist in large troops, sometimes swarms. And a different feel for anatomy in language is part of that.
@Brony ok agree to disagree, you’re speaking total gibberish.
No. There is only disagreement. We are very symbolically irrational primates.
None of this post is an argument against anything Dawkins said, and I can’t understand what it is you’re even arguing against…
If you can’t understand what we’re arguing against, how can you be sure nothing said here is an argument against Dawkins?
More to the point, if you can’t understand what we’re arguing against, that’s probably because you have absolutely no clue what we’re talking about at all.
(Here’s a little clarification: we’re arguing against both transphobic bigotry and the gross misuse of “genetic determinist” arguments to pretend said bigotry is “sciencey.” Do you understand that — or, for that matter, anything in this comment?)
Richard Cockins. Dick Cockins
@Charly same. He isn’t using reason on this one. Its “I want the social category of men and women to be a real thing. Here is a biological distinction I can point at” which is not a true binary anyway and doesn’t connect to the social categories unless you play lets pretend.
Uh, I’d like to know what Fal1 has been smoking, it’s clearly some kinda dank.
@Raging Bee, well yes I do not understand the points being raised – as I’ve explained all differences raised here are directly a result of gametes and the bodies that evolved to produce them, the only arguments against that is Brony trying to claim that because I said this I’m limiting the entire field of biology to reproduction which is ridiculous, and Brony trying to shoehorn social aspects into biological sex. None of this is applicable to what Dawkins said as he wasn’t writing about why gender matters.
@DanDare again another one trying to shoehorn in the social aspects, I’ve clearly said the opposite. The biological distinction is obvious to everyone who isn’t a fan of navel gazing, I’m pretty sure you can tell which of your parents is a female and which is male no?
@fal1
This is the obvious implication of defining sex by gamete production, though. The alternative is to adopt a normative/teleological view in which one’s sex is defined by the gametes one “should” produce. That’s the rhetoric dogmatic sex binarists usually adopt. But it’s nonsense, since there is no purpose to biology (only function, or lack of function).
And actually at least one person has argued that, strictly speaking, people who don’t prodige gametes are not male/female in the biological sense. Namely Paul Griffith, who sees “biological sex” as a life-history stage rather than a static condition. That’s at least a coherent viewpoint but it is obviously out of touch with how these words are commonly used (in science and outside science).
@ 83 fal1
I don’t even understand what your argument is or what point you are trying to make. Just some observations:
There is no such thing as a body evolved to produce gametes. That’s not how evolution works. There are bodies that produce gametes because bodies of that type leave offspring.
You’re obsessed with gametes. Gametes alone are nothing. You need all the other sexually differentiated apparatus to turn those gametes into viable offspring. Sexual differentiation cannot be reduced to gametes anymore than the circulatory system can be reduced to blood types.
He was writing an ideological polemic denouncing increased recognition and acceptance of transgender people in society. It’s motivated reasoning – starting from his conclusion (I want sex to be binary), and then hamfistedly trying to reinterpret reality to reach that conclusion. He can’t even keep his story straight. Sometimes the thing that makes sex binary is your beloved gametes, sometimes it’s the Y chromosome. Well it can’t be both! There are people with ova and Y chromosomes. What then is their “binary” sex. The question is meaningless because there is no binary in nature, it’s a political idea Dawkins is trying to rationalise.
Do me a favour and go back and click on the link at #32. They are parents to two children. Which is male and which is female do you reckon? There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
@ ^
(Hint: they used a surrogate, but the guy with the beard supplied the eggs.)
i wish people making contorted arguments about gametes and chromosomes and etc. would just take the mask off and admit that they think transgender people are icky and dangerous because of a cultural prejudice. stop dressing your bigotries in reasonableness and talking around the point, please. it’s pathetic and transparent and i’m not impressed. be honest, tell me you hate me and think that i’m delusional and i’ll just shrug and go back to living my life in the way that makes me most comfortable and happy in my own skin thank you very much.
@2damntrans more navel gazing i see, its not an obvious implication at all. Medical conditions exist, menopause exists. No one argues that humans aren’t bipedal because birth defect effecting legs exist.
@silentbob my point is that it Dawkins was right and nothing he said was remotely controversial to the vast majority of people. Gamete production and chromosomes are a simple way to define biological sex – again how is this controversial? How many people who are “male bodied” and produce sperm are of female sex or vice versa? OK fair but humans evolved to reproduce and they do that via gametes. I’m not obsessed with gametes I just pointed out that both periods and pregnancy are a result of gamete production. You all keep bringing up rare medical conditions like it’s a gotcha, fyi I’m not denying medical conditions exist and effect every aspect of human biology. Not sure what your point is regarding the link at #32, I hope they’re a happy family, the baby was made the same way as every other one – male and female sex gametes. Are you trying to say the sex of the egg donor is male?
@Ada Christine I don’t think that at all, and as I said earlier I don’t understand how defining male and female sex is even related to trans people, they know their birth sex. Why would I think you’re delusional? Whether you dislike the gamete or chromosone definitions there isn’t an alternative proposed is there? Again, no one who isnt obsessed with gender finds these topics even remotely controversial.
fal1:
Says the person who keeps arguing vehemently about this topic.
(Everyone can see how not obsessed you are about these topics)
is it a problem to you, then, if i say i’m a woman and would like to be referred to with “she/her” pronouns?
@John Morales ok dude, I posted twice and then said agree to disagree before getting further responses I replied to, so it seems you’re speaking nonsense.
@Ada Christine nope not at all
then what’s the purpose of the discussion? do you deny that people who take the most interest in rigorous definitions of sex have expressed a prejudice against transgender people?
@fal1 : Erasing and ignoring intersex folks much?
Do they not register for you and do you not know that many people don’t know their own specific (externally invisible & immaterial) gametes and / or chromosomes status without specific issues arising that draw attention to them, eg infertliity and are indistinguishable from cis people? Indeed, are you absolutely certain you ain’t intersex yourself?
(Even if so, most probly ain’t.)
Gametes? Ga know yerself – in the Biblical sense of tha word.
Mmmhmm. Sure, fal1. You are not invested in this uncontroversial topic, nor are you obsessed.
So.
Just curious; when you meet someone for the first time, do you ask them about their gametes before you can determine their gender? That being the determinant and all.
I’m still trying to figure out fa1’s views, in part as well, that the last argument seems to be that only one person disagrees with their views, when it’s been a veritable tag team disproving every damned thing that fa1 has blathered.
Fa1 fails on points of biology, period, beginning with ignoring isogamy, making special exceptions all over the fucking place for “rare diseases”, oddly never defining precisely when something is rare vs fairly common and further fails by ignoring the rather embarrassingly widespread trait of parthenogenesis, where one cannot have a binary sex, given that one sex only exists in those species.
I’ll not even go into the fact that, without gametes, my wife of over 41 years spent half of our marriage apparently no longer being female or a woman, as PCOS (not exactly a rare condition) brought on menopause quite prematurely and she entirely ceased producing gametes. Or how she managed to survive when a claimed evolved for major system ceased functioning, when pretty much every other major system that we evolved with failing is rapidly lethal.
I’ll not even go into non-XY/XO systems, which are extremely rare – as rare as hymenoptera, an obviously rare group of creatures that are known only to exist at picnics.
Or something.
“agree to disagree”? I hate that phrase. You have to be an idiot to think that means anything.
The phrase / aphorism (?) / saying thingamy-whatsit “It is what it is” is equally infuriatingly meaningless.. A common one I hear.. as inadiably hear often albeit my hearing sucks.
Better to just say I’m sick of arguing now & wanna drop it like a tired doggy with a tennis ball thrown too many times for the dog to still enjoy it really..
“”It” often being something
.. something.
Variable.. X = ???
Algebra?
Which is abstract where Algie’s bra or a bra for algae which ain’t mammallian and thus needs no bras .. anyhow..
personally i just want to know why it matters that i’m “biologically male” to anybody but a doctor? the cashier at the grocery store doesn’t care. my coworkers don’t care. the vast majority of people i encounter on a daily basis have no interest or benefit in knowing or caring. so what’s the point? what is the nature of the alleged controversy?
These things are so natural and unchangeable that they require social reinforcement from people like fal1.
@ ^ Ada Christine : I don’t care – but respect.
It hurts me in no way whatsoever that you are you. I’m fine with that.
It hurts fal1 & other transphobes in no way whatsoever that you are you & live your life as you.
But somehow it enrages them and they cannot tolerate.. you beng you & there is NO good reason why butt just their squick and bigotry and narrow-nminded shitfuckery.
Which is all on them and not you or your fault.
So you have my respect and they have my contempt and can relate. You deserve better.
@104 and all that is possible to respect even if you decide that Ada is “male” by arbitrarily in and excluding factors
Okay, let’s have fun with this
If you put an egg and a sperm together in a petri dish, you can get a fertilized egg, but you will not get a pregnancy or a baby out of it. Because gametes aren’t sufficient to produce a pregnancy: you need an entire human body.
If you really believed sex was just gametes, you wouldn’t be so insistent that everyone can be categorized as male or female. No babies produce sperm. If sex was really just gametes, there ought to be zero babies with “male” written on their medical records. None at all. But of course there are, because sex isn’t gametes.
And if you really believed sex was just gametes, you would have to acknowledge that trans people who’ve had surgery have changed sex.
Of course, all of this would be easier for you to understand if you learned basic biology:
Bodies did not evolve “to” or “for” anything. Evolution has no purpose. You’re taking creationism and thinking you can swap the word “evolution” in without changing your creationist mindset.
But perhaps the more important point is what @102 Ada says. You don’t use gametes to pee, so why do you care about gametes in public bathrooms?
@SteveoR
thank you, that’s appreciated. the question is directed at fal1, though.i don’t expect a straight answer, though.
The utter refusal to engage with the issue of gendered language is simply dishonest. Fal1 doesn’t get to choose the issues other people bring.
There’s another useless incompetent non literalism that does nothing but convey a feeling, “shoehorn”. The issue is there, deal. If you can’t beyond your feelings unconnected to the text of another you get attitude.
So what if you feel something is “show horning”?
No, the issue didn’t vanish with fal1’s denial. It’s still here.
Most people don’t care. It is none of their business anyway.
We saw this with gay people not so long ago. It is why opposition to single sex marriage failed.
Are their gay people living on my road? Sure, it is a long road.
Are they married?
Got me. I don’t know or care.
It doesn’t affect me one way or another. It’s irrelevant to my life.
It’s the same with Trans people. It doesn’t affect the rest of us and it isn’t a concern for other people. It is a free country after all.
Or put another way, as long as people aren’t hurting anyone else, they are free to live their life the way they want.
Dawkins isn’t being polite and friendly here.
He is being passive aggressive.
He is being condescending.
I’ll put it another way.
It’s none of Richard Dawkins business or concern whether someone is Trans or not.
They have the right to live their life the way they want as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
And Richard Dawkins et al. have no right to tell them they aren’t and can’t be Trans people.
Hmmph…. By most definitions of the word I’m a Baltimore native but considering a lot had happened in my life after I was 8 hrs old I can’t in anyway consider myself to be a Baltimore-ian.
So I’ve always wondered what the catchall ultimate conclusion to “Sex is binary” supposed to be. Full respect to biologists who know more than I do and can back up that it is not, but really, my response is “Meh, if you say so. And …?”
I really don’t get what inescapable conclusion is supposed to leave me gob-smacked.
@Ada Christine the purpose of the discussion is the science of biology and i dont think having an accurate definition of biological sex is prejudice. I never mentioned anything about whether you were biologically male, I said I have no issue with you calling yourself a woman and requesting she/her pronouns. I’d agree that in the vast majority of circumstances someone’s sex or trans identity is no one else’s business.
@StevoR you clearly haven’t read what I wrote as I’ve referred to medical conditions (such as DSDs) and queried why some on here attempt to use them as a gotcha. I see you also just flat out make stuff up so I won’t waste my time.
@Wzrd1 my point is simply agreeing with Dawkins, sex and gender used to mean the same thing. Now gender has become undefinable, it’s a messy subjective highly personal concept that should be left as such. For 99% of people a biological definition of sex is straightforward and to pretend otherwise is ridiculous. Yes DSDs exist (i believe thats preferred over intersex these days?) and effect a small number of people but that doesnt mean we need to pretend its incredibly complicated to sex humans. Neither is the existance of trans people.
@PZ thats fair enough, I was just trying to politely stop wasting my time.
@Brony again you seen to constantly conflate sex and gender. Gendered language has nothing to do with biological sex.
@ 183231bcb if you are going to try and claim that something isn’t based on gametes then I suggest you don’t start the argument with “if you take a male sex gamete and a female sex gamete…”.
Again the politically posturing person fal1 FEELS like gendered language has nothing to do with biological sex. Someone being a “pussy” or a “dick” has nothing to do with anatomy.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
How spineless. Can’t deal with the use of anatomy in language. Fortunately I can just keep redirecting.
I’m conflating, just because. No reasons.
@fal1
You never quoted the gibberish you referred to earlier. If you rely on insults and assertion no one is putting up with that forever. My negative feeling language goes somewhere at least.
sometimes I wonder if pschaeffer and baconimbevcile have some kind of low tier botnet, peridodially dropping their oeuvre every now and then, it just is that unoriginal
But promoting an inaccurate definition is prejudice. That’s the point here: the gamete definition is not all accurate, although you seem to be assuming it is.
what’s the purpose of this “accurate” definition? what branch of biology is clamoring for a conclusive definition of male and female sex? under what circumstances does any particular definition apply?
Ada Christine @ 119, the only field of biology that I can think of is medicine and even then, under very narrow circumstances.
This is genuinely the most hilarious comment in the entire thread. They didn’t even make it through an entire sentence before misquoting it.
fail1 blithered thusly:
@Raging Bee, well yes I do not understand the points being raised – as I’ve explained all differences raised here are directly a result of gametes and the bodies that evolved to produce them…
Exactly: you admit you don’t understand what we’re talking about, so you just repeat your same old stupid excuse for a counterargument yet again.
@DanDare again another one trying to shoehorn in the social aspects, I’ve clearly said the opposite.
Yes, Dan said something and you just said “nuh uh!” So what?
The biological distinction is obvious to everyone who isn’t a fan of navel gazing…
First, as we’ve been saying, the “biological distinction” isn’t as simple as you keep on insisting it is. If you can’t grasp this obvious fact, then you’re an uneducable moron and there’s no use trying to talk to you like you’re a grownup.
…I’m pretty sure you can tell which of your parents is a female and which is male no?
Yes, and we don’t need a gamete-scan to do so. How does this support your ignorant assertions about “biological distinctions?”
@Ada Christine the purpose of the discussion is the science of biology…
Are you a biologist? Have you been listening to any of the discussions that ACTUAL BIOLOGISTS have been having on this subject? Because there’s plenty of biologists — including the author of this blog — who understand this subject far better and more honestly than you do. NO ONE needs idiots like you pretending you have anything to contribute here.
Okay I take back what I said because apparently I missed this one:
Neither of my parents have gametes. And yet I can tell which is male and which is female, because being male or female is not about gametes!
here’s how we can tell if words mean the same thing: substitution.
for example, the following phrases: I had gametes with your mom last night.
doesn’t really hit the same
(and it’s internally inconsistent because I don’t produce gametes)
Well, I went to the store before it started raining, so I got milk and a dozen gametes.
And out of a general interest in healthy food, a pack of dot hogs. Gotta dilute the chili somehow. ;)
To me it looks like most of this discussion is people talking over each other.
Personally, I don’t think there’s any problem with “defining” sex based on gamete sizes if you acknowledge that it is reductive, and made up and that nature doesn’t really care about how simpleton humans for some reason like to “define” and “categorize” things.
@ ^ lotharloo : The problem is that’s sadly a big IF and too many will then exploit that to be douchebags to & harm trans people (&, incidentally, intersex people too who just get erased here) which is the whole reason they’re trying to impose such a reductive & ultimatley insufficient and fallacious definition in the first place.
Also who exactly is talking over who and why?
@ wzrd1 : Wait, gametes taste like chilli now?
Dude, I don’t think this is the place for discussing the taste of gametes.
I don’t know but I’ve been told there are one or two places on the internet for that.
@113. fal1 : “@StevoR you clearly haven’t read what I wrote as I’ve referred to medical conditions (such as DSDs) and queried why some on here attempt to use them as a gotcha. I see you also just flat out make stuff up so I won’t waste my time.”
You claim I’m making stuff up huh? Ok, what exactly do you think I’m making up here?
You heard him, StevoR — he won’t waste his time specifying any of his allegations.
(And I’m guessing he won’t waste his time dealing with what actual biologists have said in PZ’s most recent post on this subject either.)
Well, you have to break a few gametes to make an omelette.
And one can make a chili flavored omelette, I’ve done it quite a few times for a change of pace.
Also done some with fruit and cheese.
And spinach, with a fine sharp cheese.
The other type of gamete, I throw them back, as they’re way under minimum catch size.
Hey, Dawkins: this time it’s more about memes than genes. I forget who came up with that concept …
@127
You’d also have to acknowledge that gametes, and hence that overly reductive definition of sex, are
a)Irrelevant to the vast majority of “concerns” transphobes pretend to have, such as the alleged dangers of HRT (not based on gametes) or public bathrooms, or sports teams.
b)You can change gametes, and hence “change sex.”
Transphobes never want to acknowledge either of those.
@raging bee yes and there are also lots of biologists that agree with Dawkins. The same arguments being made about biological sex could be made about every aspect of human biology – but they’re not, common sense is applied.
@183231bcb ok how can you tell then? Genuinely curious what gives it away if its not the body type or biology associated with the male or female sex gamete. Also how can you change gametes? Its an overly reductive definition in the same way saying humans are bipedal is overly reductive. There’s nothing transphobic about it. If you cant define sex how can you tell you’re the wrong one?
@lotharloo how is it ‘made up’? there are two sexes and two types of gametes, its not like its a categorisation that’s completely arbitrary or random without basis. It’s the basis of human reproduction and the same way we categorise every other species of animal. Its good enough for Dr’s, with a 99% accuracy (or thereabouts, again no one denies DSDs exist).
@StevoR I was talking about your post #104.
heh heh heh.
Gametes, not genitalia, so is the current dogmatis.
@fal1 : “@StevoR I was talking about your post #104.”
Okay but what specifically there do you claim I “just flat out made up?” What there do you take issue with and consider inaccurate and why?
@StevoR that I’m somehow transphobic because I refuse to pretend it’s really hard to sex 99% plus of humans
Sex, gender… same thing to some people.
(Thus their confused worldviews)
@John really? Didn’t think that was the case any more, there’s only two sexes but there’s infinite genders as far as I’m aware.
I’ve also heard that lots of scientists are dissenting from evolution.
You can always find lots of people who believe in all kinds of wrong, bad ideas. It’s the consensus that matters, and if you look at the major, relevant scientific organizations, they’re saying Dawkins is wrong. That and the evidence is what matters.
The major scientific organizations would say Dawkins is wrong for saying sex is defined by genes, chromosomes and gametes as he did in that article linked?
@138. fal1 : For starters, the percentage of known intersex people is about 1.7% roughtly 2% not 1% and actually likely higher.
Source : https://ihra.org.au/16601/intersex-numbers/ (Bolding original.)
So, yeah, The number you think are “really hard to sex” is larger than you think by double. Without even getting started on trans individuals and given the number of people on this planet you are erasing or igoring an awful large number of people by ignoring the existenac eof , say, 2% of them as probly a minimum number.
Would you fly a plane that had a 1% crashing record?
If you aren’t transphobic – & hey, I don’t know youso maybe you aren’t – then you certainly seem to do a good impression of transphobia. The whole coming here and repeatedly stating that you find sex to be a binary when it has clearly been established by expert biologists like our host to be bimodal and a continuum is a bit of a tell. I’ll second what #123 Raging Bee wrote upthread here.
If your reaction to criticism of transphobes is to say that anti-transphobes are “making stuff up” well, it makes you seem like you’re standing and identifying withy them. If that isn’t the case, well, you need tomake that clearer in my view, fal1.
I may be waaaaaaay off base, but if I were a transphobe, I’d stay the hell away from arguments about sex and biology. Firstly, I’m pretty sure they’re irrelevant (or only become relevant because transphobes don’t understand them), secondly, transphobes are wrong about biology.
Why oh why can’t we get better quality bigots?
Louis
I feel I need to bring up “the right tool for the job,” again. There’s no practical purpose to scan someone’s gametes in order to choose which pronouns to use to refer to them. Language, and by extension, pronouns, are a cultural phenomenon. We use cultural cues to intuit how a person wants us to interact with them and which pronouns to use. If we’re still unsure, we can always ask, or, on the internet, look at their profile, tags, or whatever.
At no point have I ever vivisected a person to check their gamete production abilities. That knowledge simply hasn’t been relevant to my interactions with people, and it’d be damn invasive to probe into such medical detail with a stranger.
The problem I have with defining people by their gametes is that it’s uselessly reductive and insulting to a person’s humanity on top of that. The only purpose I can see of rearranging our language around gametes, chromosomes, genitals, or whatever they come up with next, is to give transphobes all the confidence of a pedantic reply guy and the expectation of a cookie for being “technically correct, the best kind of correct.” That’s why they rage when we prioritize respect and self-determination over their overriding commandment to put everything in one of two boxes.
It’s like taking the question, “Is a Pop-Tart a sandwich?” dead seriously instead of treating it like the silly meme it is.
Saw a good quote on Mastodon about how conservatism is basically a desire to retreat into the simplicity of childhood, the time when they were shielded from the complexity of the world. Transphobes just want to reduce humanity for the same reason. Sex and gender are messy, complex topics, and they want to go back to the schoolyard where “everyone” “knew” it was one of the two most common genders that produced cooties.
On Twitch, I follow a genderfluid artist with a beard. If they want to be referred to as they/them or she/her, seriously, what’s the harm in respecting their wishes? My respect for them as a person overrides the binary biases I learned in my youth. The two boxes of “man” and “woman” aren’t sacrosanct and unquestionable, and neither are the biological straws transphobes keep grasping onto.
…there are also lots of biologists that agree with Dawkins.
Okay, what have those biologists said that isn’t as demonstrably wrong as what Dawkins has said?
Also how can you change gametes?
Um…it’s called “gender reassignment surgery?” Maybe look it up before you pretend you know anything?
The major scientific organizations would say Dawkins is wrong for saying sex is defined by genes, chromosomes and gametes as he did in that article linked?
Actual biologists understand — and we’re trying to explain to you — that “genes, chromosomes and gametes” don’t always align with each other as simply and consistently as you insist on pretending they do. There are plenty of people who have “male” chromosomes and “female” gametes, or vice-versa, or other combinations of traits; and this isn’t confined to only the 1-2% of people who identify as trans or intersex either. This is why we laugh at transphobes when they jump from one of those to another as “THE key indicator of what sex you are.”
This has been explained, in general and in detail, in countless blog posts and comments, for many years already. Your apparent refusal to either read and understand this information, or admit you can’t handle it and shut up already (as I shut up about, say, quantum physics), clearly shows you’re an uneducable idiot, and, yes, a transphobe. Because that’s what transphobes and other bigots do: ignore and refuse to acknowledge readily-available information that doesn’t fit into their simplistic worldview.
If you don’t think it’s fair to call you a transphobe, then stop talking like one.
@fal1
You never did quote the gibberish. And all you can do is assert the language issue doesn’t matter. You are weak and gamete obsessed.
In your 135 you have a problem. If there are experts on both sides, you should be able to convey why your expert is right. You came here and Dawkins has a record to ignoring the relevant experts and people with first hand experiences like with sexual abuse. Dawkins is shit by reputation and expertise so…
And body types? This moral panic about trans women has plenty of cis women getting policed for not having the “right” body type. As far as I’m concerned this mess reveals paranoia and irrational fear of anatomy instead of abusive behavior and you and Dawkins enable it.
You aren’t finding out about gametes from a visual. That’s part of this mess. People obsessed with getting to make genital assumptions with some visual marker, clothing, behavior… something. And you can’t have it. You to stretch definitions so they exclude instead on include what we are.
All I have to do is not cooperate. There are lots of made up parts. And your need for a error prone heuristic is your problem in the long run.
One way to tell fal1 doesn’t believe their own BS is how quickly they keep changing their definition of “sex.”
First it’s “gametes.” Then it’s
And then
So we start with sex being solely defined as gametes, something clearly defined with four possible combinations (you have no gametes, just sperm, just eggs, or both sperm and eggs). Gametes are also possible to measure, albeit not something you can sense from random people you meet on the street.
Then we shift from a biological definition to sex being a socially constructed “association” between vague impossible-to-define “body types” and gametes, that somehow allows people with no gametes to have a “body type associated” with gametes they don’t have.
And then we jump back to actual biological traits, except this time they have to throw in “genes and chromosomes,” additional traits which aren’t gametes and which are different in every person So we’ve gone from four biological sexes to eight billion in the span of two posts.
I know my mom is female because she told me, and I know my dad is male because he told me. Again, neither of them have gametes, so by your own definition (or, one of them, anyways) you wouldn’t be able to figure out their sex.
Puberty. Also, old age. And as Raging Bee points out, you can speed it up with surgery.
This is a hilarious self-own from someone who can’t define sex.
Bronze Dog @ 145, I’ve this thing, if anyone insists upon sampling and viewing my gametes to decide what pronoun to address me by, vivisection very well may occur. I’ll likely chew my way to a core sample of them, starting at the wrong end and burrow my way through.
Or at least, they’ll feel that way in the end and I’m decidedly cis male. And oddly, I’ve never had my gametes surveyed before and really don’t feel a need to do so in my early 60’s. ;)
As for addressing someone by a preferred pronoun, I really don’t care what they want to be addressed by, even starlord works for me, although for that, I’ll probably want to be addressed as starlard.
183231bcb @ 148, aren’t most gametes self changing, hence don’t need for one to change them manually? ;)
I’ll just get my jacket…
@142. fal1 :
Major or relevant? Not that it really matters. Don’t you have google? Oh well, lessee :
Source : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6830997/
Says the National Institutes of Health ( NIH) “the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research.” National Institutes of Health wikipage.
Nature journal :
Source : https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8
Then we have this list here :
https://transhealthproject.org/resources/medical-organization-statements/
Of “Leading medical groups [that] recognize the medical necessity of treatments for gender dysphoria and endorse such treatments. Most of these groups have also explicitly rejected insurance exclusions for transgender-related care.”
Which may not be quite the same thing youare after but includes statements from each organisation linked in hypertext that generally show that, yeah, Dawkins is in the transphobic, anti-science minority here.
PS. Then there’s doing a google search for “scientific organisations that insist on binary sex” which is perhaps even more telling here :
https://www.google.com/search?q=scientific+organisations+that+inisist+on+binary+sex&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU834AU834&oq=scientific+organisations+that+inisist+on+binary+sex&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAHSAQkxNTc3NWowajSoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#ip=1
Which results in top placed articles incl :
Source : https://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2015/feb/19/nature-sex-redefined-we-have-never-been-binary
Plus this Scientific American article with an anvilicious title that should give the likes of Fal1 and Dawkins the waa-ay out of date a clue ‘Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia – Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary’ :
& concludes :
Source : https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/stop-using-phony-science-to-justify-transphobia/
Now, I think I’ve done my share of googling here & perhaps Fal1’s google-fu is better so I’m going to ask them if they an provide any major relevant scientific organisation (NOT transphobic increasingkly fringe and outdated or ideologically blinkered individual biologists) that actually supports their sex is only binary position because I’m notseeuing any here.
@StevoR Yes there might be 1.7% of people with DSDs, most of those are still easily sexed though (as in by Drs at birth). Doesn’t CAH effect people later in life? It doesn’t change their sex that is still easily observed at birth. The number of people with congenital conditions is tiny – less than 0.2% is what I read.
I’m not convinced any of you have actually read Dawkins article, I won’t find anything stating it is a 100% strict binary as that is not what he argues for – he references people who are intersex. Still, your evidence doesn’t blow me away…..the first article is talking about ‘genderqueer’ whatever that is, its nothing to do with biological sex though. That’s like non binary stuff isn’t it? Totally irrelevant and undefineable. In fact all your links in first post are about gender identity not sex. The second post appears a bit more relevant but they are opinion pieces from the Guardian and Scientific America….hardly scientific organisations….two by the same person and none of them are biologists either. The last one is I’m guessing written by someone who identifies as non binary (going by the pic and use of they pronouns in other articles) and seems to be arguing that transgender people are proof that sex is not binary – that doesn’t make sense either, they’re sex is still male or female. Gender isn’t relevant. Are you lot now arguing that sex and gender are the same thing again?? There are some interesting points in that last article, regarding the ranges in hormone levels etc – I don’t disagree with that, as Dawkins himself says in the article the range of human variation is continuous and broad and DSDs exist, there’s still only two sexes though. I can find plenty of scientific articles that agree with that.. Seems we may be disagreeing on terminology, the distribution is bimodal and I’m pretty sure Dawkins has said as much.
@183231bcb If you cant see the connection between gametes and the body types that evolved to produce them then I don’t know what to say. Did you read the article? PZ decided Dawkins explicitly talked about gametes, he also discusses sex being defined by genes and chromosomes. Clink the link above and stop conflating sex and gender identity.
@raging bee that isn’t true at all – gender reassignment surgery has nothing to do with gamete production. Trans women do not produce eggs or vice versa trans men and sperm. Nothing you have said disputes the fact that humans are incredibly easy to sex, even most of the people with DSDs. What percentage of people born with functional male genitalia or biologically female or vice versa? Sounds like you’re conflating sex and gender again – or do you take them to be the same thing?
@Brony I did look into it and there were not many biologists attacking what Dawkins has said, there certainly doesn’t appear to be many agreeing that language or society dictates biological sex. Yes body types – male and female bodies. Again, not controversial. I never said anything about finding out about gametes from a visual, in fact in one of my very first posts I said in most circumstances its no ones business.
@fal1
You didn’t look up shit.
You can’t quote the gibberish, and depend on ruling parts of the debate as irrelevant by fiat, your personal feelings.
You’ve completely ignored what I mentioned about cis women having their bodies policed. That’s your cowardice and need to dismiss things outright. Keep running away from people’s points, it’s useful. You just type “not controversial”.
And in your 153 you assert 1.7 % of people are easily sexed, your assertion is dismissed.
You can quote a relevant part of the Dawkins piece anytime. You came here and if we’ve missed something you can show it.
Your shallow ignorant views on body types are based on misogynist societies that just love to force people with different anatomy into particular lifestyles and roles. You can cite to back up your assumptions or sputter.
Humans are only easy to sex until they aren’t and you flee from every attempt to show it with the exceptions. You just assert it and you can shove those up your orifice of choice.
@155 fails failures are the typical failures of a regressive, an authoritarian. There always must be clear hierarchy poeple cna be put into, clear indication of what you can and what you must not get. This thread now goes on for (this comment included) 156 posts, a multitude of which have either indirectly or directly addressed and refuted what fail1 or Richie the Deludued blabbered, and after 156 (!) posts fail1 still blabbers the same nonsense. The options are : 1)He is ingnorant 2)he is an imbecile 3) he is a hard right-winger who thrives on redctive hierachical categorization 4)he has severe dementia
fail1: All you’re doing now is repeating assertions that have already been refuted countless times, and ignoring everything we’ve said in response to same. I consider this argument over — especially since there’s a whole new blog post quoting detailed statements BY ACTUAL BIOLOGISTS that you’re not even touching. Go back to bed and stop pestering the grownups.
Fal1 just once again dismissed everything out of han, just because apparently.
“Still, your evidence doesn’t blow me away…..the first article is talking about ‘genderqueer’ whatever that is, its nothing to do with biological sex though. That’s like non binary stuff isn’t it? Totally irrelevant and undefineable. In fact all your links in first post are about gender identity not sex.”
They literally don’t cite anything in the content as a problem. State it as fact. No quotes, no explanations. Non-binary is out because they type it.
I’m non-binary and I’ve defined quite a few language issues up the thread you’ve rejected based on nothing. You coward.
Personal experiences count and relevant experts count.
“The second post appears a bit more relevant but they are opinion pieces from the Guardian and Scientific America….hardly scientific organisations….two by the same person and none of them are biologists either.”
And they’re wrong because…?
Keep running away. It’s useful.
“The last one is I’m guessing written by someone who identifies as non binary (going by the pic and use of they pronouns in other articles) and seems to be arguing that transgender people are proof that sex is not binary – that doesn’t make sense either, they’re sex is still male or female.”
Either the author is correct or not, so what if they may be non-binary? Do you have cooties?
And again, you just endlessly assert humans as a whole are just male and female. Like a good little robot.
” Gender isn’t relevant. Are you lot now arguing that sex and gender are the same thing again?? ”
You can quote people doing that coward.
” There are some interesting points in that last article, regarding the ranges in hormone levels etc – I don’t disagree with that, as Dawkins himself says in the article the range of human variation is continuous and broad and DSDs exist, there’s still only two sexes though.”
Why are there only 2 sexes? Again’ you are just coming here with the assumption.
Instead of non-binary/gender-null I can go with “I make choices with language you and your political allies have strong feelings about”. Maybe the coward who comes to make their political opponents do work for them can understand that.
Quote the gibberish fal1. My tourette syndrome adds an element to this too. I think it lets me see insulting language with high emotional granularity. High resolution. Like a thing that has parts to be modified and manipulated.
And if your previous pattern is any indication you will find whatever you can to dismiss me out of hand. Insults, general negative conclusions with no quoting so that it’s just your feelings.
Boy, do transphobes love the circularity of their arguments. It means they can define themselves as right and ignore all the real world examples. It’d be nice if they retreated into their ivory tower of fake simplicity, kept to themselves, and just let the rest of us deal with the messy real world.
If fash1 keeps his crusade of anencephaly going, he will be “hammered” pretty soon anyway, fare-unwell!
In his endelss cognitive coma, fash1 somewhere at the start of his feces-dumping operation seriously dropped the line “this has not been controversial in the past” or something along the lines. Honestly, in which realm devoid of arguments and logic is that an actual valid argument or even an argument at all? 200 years ago , slavery was hardly controversial in the US, in old Egypt it also was not controverisal at all, so what? Ethical and scientific reasoning should strive to be well informed and should include new discoveries and ideas, not jump into the past whenever the comfort seems to erode. Fash1, in example 1 would be the pissed slveowner protesting the paradigm-shift by pointing at a time where he was gailed as a great man, not even slightly questioning himself (relfecting). So brain dead it is beyond any imagination
@Brony I’ve told you several times I considered your idea that social aspects and language can define biological sex. What did you want me to comment on regarding policing women’s bodies? I think it’s wrong and bathroom legislations are ridiculous and impractical. See what happens when you don’t assume you know everything I think because I’m not obsessed with gender. I am yet to see a definition of non binary that can’t be applied to the whole population. It has nothing to do with biological sex and I won’t pretend mainstream biology says it is, it does not at all. Why are there two sexes, really? Name a third? It’s not me making it up, there’s no third or fourth or ninth sex. There’s two sex gametes required for reproduction, and two corresponding sexes. Is that a coincidence? You can make up as many genders as you like, and people do.
@BronzeDog I’ve not said anything transphobic and nowhere have I said it’s simple.
@jeanmeslier I think your ableism will get you your matching papers before my attempts at having a discussion…
@fal1
You can can quote where you told me something. I can’t get you to quote my supposed gibberish.
My implications in my above comment should be obvious. Your input is not required there, your input is required where I want a quote coward. I believe you and Dawkins are enabling abuse. You can comment or not there.
You can engage with the specific groups that claim existence. Your mockery about potential numbers of groups is rejected and again I label you a coward.
Gendered language has to do with sex. I mentioned anatomy in language for a reason, as did many others coward. No one thinks they are the same.
@Brony ok starter for 10.
“I don’t care if you want to leave out social aspects. You want to conveniently ignore social aspects when sex and reproduction are social.”
Gibberish with regards biological sex.
“Categorization is social here. I’m talking about we categorize too, your level of resolution seems incompetent for social primates that exist in large troops, sometimes swarms. And a different feel for anatomy in language is part of that.”
Gibberish with regards biological sex.
“person fal1 FEELS like gendered language has nothing to do with biological sex. Someone being a “pussy” or a “dick” has nothing to do with anatomy.”
Gibberish.
“Instead of non-binary/gender-null I can go with “I make choices with language you and your political allies have strong feelings about”
Gibberish. Nobody cares if you’re non binary, it’s like the easiest identity to adopt. There’s zero requirements.
@Fal1
Now that you’ve quoted the gibberish you can explain why it’s gibberish so you can be more than a coward who relies on insults.
Some of that looks like you just don’t like it and I don’t have to care.
You care or you would no keep coming back. I care. Others in this comment section care. You WISH people would not care and all you can do is deny. You have no reasons for why the people in the articles are wrong, you just type it. Pathetic.
It’s strange how the human race didn’t suddenly stop associating anatomy with extra meaning because Fal1 doesn’t like it. The association of male/man and aggression and female/woman and submission is very common. And the feelings people have about gendered language are specific. Fal1 just ignores them and declares them different and unconnected with no quotes and explanation.
And all I have to do is keep being me while Fal1 denies my personality. The whole clown thing is fun here. “Natural fools” among jesters in the medieval times.
It’s not hard because I see the fear.
People use “gibberish” when they are too cowardly to use coherent, competent, criticism. Gibberish has no meaning. It’s an insult all by itself. It’s aggression chosen to deal with the fear.
Fal1 can disagree but that requires language conventions like quoting and explanation and Fal1 is into political dominance posturing only.
@Brony I’ve not insulted you? It’s called disagreeing. Yes words can have two unrelated reasons, that’s not limited to anatomy its literally the way language works. I don’t ignore them it’s because these other meanings have zero effect on the definition of biological sex. Literally none. Gendered language may relate to GENDER, not sex. Again, do you equate these as being the same (sex and gender)?
Not sure what you’re getting at with regards males being associated with aggression? It’s probably related to the fact males are responsible for the vast majority of aggression/violence/assault etc.
@Fal1
I explained why your words are an insulting and you flee from replying in specifics. You can disagree and be insulting at the same time.
Keep avoiding the quoting and explaining. It’s useful.
@Fal1
Keep avoiding that we make associations between anatomy and sex and behavior as a matter of course. It’s useful to watch you explain that you don’t know that anatomy is used in insults. And you only point out the male part. Spineless.
I suppose there are actual assholes being aggressive? Not just the gendered versions.
@Brony good night this is a massive waste of time, I apologise if you genuinely feel insulted but I haven’t a scooby doo what quote it is you want. I’ve explained fairly comprehensively why I do not think gendered language has anything to do with biological sex, I’ve even googled it and found absolutely nothing. Whether you agree or disagree with gametes or genes or chromosomes etc being responsible the biology world seems pretty much agreed that biological sex is the physical characteristics that distinguish males and females, social and cultural stuff is gender. Good night I’m going to the pub.
@fal1
You lecture and order and I have lectures and ordered back. And I did it with non-gendered versions that now look very inconvenient to you. Spineless.
Will you act like that isn’t a thing too?
Start quoting incompetent. You wast your time. You came here.
@Brony I told you I’m off to the pub, I shall drink till what you just posted makes sense, it may be a while.
@fal1
And then you came back because you have last word issues and needed to make more insulting implications. That’s all you have. It’s useful.
What did you want me to comment on regarding policing women’s bodies? I think it’s wrong and bathroom legislations are ridiculous and impractical.
Exactly. And having admitted that, you also thereby admit that there is absolutely no place, and no policymaking implications, for your simpleminded opinions about “biological sex”, which are utterly irrelevant to anyone but yourself. You may go now.
Oh, gee, such wit. Too scared to actually provide some content?
Recurring troll, BD.
PZ knows this specimen.