You say that a “broken clock” is an oxymoron by assuming the truth of the point you want to prove—-that only fully functional clocks can properly be defined as clocks. Same with “impotent male.” It is utterly self referential.
You say design or intent “doesn’t really cut the mustard.” Not sure what that means. I think it’s central. The physicality of the thing as a “clock” occurs because that is what it was designed to do. Ok it happens not to work because someone dropped it in the swimming pool. Now it’s a subcategory of clock, a broken one, but still a clock by its design. By the way, you never answered my question about what category “broken clocks” belong to if they are not a subcategory of clocks.
Same is true for males and females. Joe was a reproductive male until his drug addiction made him impotent. But he is still a male by evolutionary design that is physically expressed. By physically expressed I mean that he always has a prostrate and testes and likely some kind of penis. That will never change from the day he is born til the day he dies.
So I stick with my original systems definition. Still open to being proven wrong. You are a really smart guy.
The question is, though, Are you having fun? Hope so.
But a "prostate and ... some kind of penis" isn't the "necessary & sufficient condition" to qualify as a human male; it's having functional testes. No testes, no sex.
"But if we remove the gonads then their owners have their membership cards "revoked", they no longer qualify as males and females. We have "excised" ALL the sex out of them; they're sexLESS."
This is called "begging the question," or assuming the answer in your question. You may be right, but it is not a productive form of argument. The question you are "begging" is what needs to be surgically excised to make them sexless.
You are right; I would contend that a more invasive form of surgery is required.
Though hardly "begging the question" as I've emphasized many times that, by the standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. The only thing that needs "surgical excising" is the gonads: no gametes, no sex.
It is indeed. You certainly have an original perspective. I really enjoy the respectful back and forth with smart people. For years I debated everything under the sun with a politically far right Cambridge mathematician who was a bit of a polymath. We came to blows after the January 6 US Capitol insurrection. I am more of a classic Burkean liberal. We have not spoken much since. My debates with you are a bit of a throwback, though you are nothing like him. I joined Substack to find new debate partners. Hard to find a replacement for his education and intellect, although his cognitive distortions and values were extreme. Kind of like the Unabomber. Maybe after a break we can engage again. Mike
🙄 In your entirely unevidenced opinion. Which is worth rather less than diddly-squat. Hardly worth allowing you to even comment here.
You're too much of a gutless wonder and intellectual fraud to even table a definition for the sexes -- with credible citations -- that specifies any necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership that will apply to all anisogamous species.
Thanks. Though, again, I'm not sure it's all that "original". Seems that all I'm doing is applying ideas that have been developed by others to the "topic de jour" -- even if those ideas are generally outside common parlance.
As for sparring partners and ICYMI, you might check out the article on the Motte & Bailey site by Yassine Meskhout ["Public Defender. Saracen Invader."]:
Somewhat en passant or right out of the blue ... 😉🙂, you might have some interest in this comment of his in response to a Note of mine:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people."
Thanks. I will look him up. By the way, my interests and background cover much, much more than this gawd awful development with trans ideology. More than obvious that applies to you as well.
Don't be a stranger. As I'm sure you probably guessed, I'm from the US, but I prefer to call myself a native Californian. We're a different breed here.
I would hate to be with you while stranded on a remote desert isle. Instead of catching fish and climbing for coconuts, you would be sitting there wondering “what is a fish?” and “”what is a coconut?” “Do we eat the monothetic version or the poythetic version?” Until we starve to death.
The answer to your quandary is utilitarian and lies within anisogametic plumbing and is pretty obvious.
Miguelitro: “Do we eat the monothetic version or the polythetic version?”
Kind of think you're missing my point. Which is the question of which definition is the most "utilitarian", which definition provides the greatest "explanatory power".
The spectrumist definition is a total dog's breakfast since it has thrown pretty much everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into the criteria to qualify as male or female. Wright's polythetic definition reduces that spectrum down to a more or less manageable number (3), but at the cost of explicitly arguing that one doesn't actually have to be able to reproduce to qualify for sex category membership -- seems kind of unclear on the concept:
If the object of your classification is to determine who you're going to be able to reproduce with on that "remote desert isle" then Wright's polythetic version is likely to give you no better than 1 in 3 odds of doing so.
Only the monothetic definitions that constitute the biological standard is sufficiently clear, broad, and simple to have any utility in describing all of the millions of anisogamous species. You may wish to read this PhilPapers essay by Paul Griffiths -- university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics & Philosophy -- and this passage in particular:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
You say later, "The answer to your quandary is utilitarian and lies within anisogametic plumbing and is pretty obvious." But IF one starts from Wright's rather unscientific definitions that make past or future functionality sufficient conditions for sex category membership THEN what do we call members of all of those species "which regularly change sex"? Seems that one is obliged to say, by those definitions of his, that they're always male and always female.
Kind of a useless and rather clueless definition if you ask me. And apparently Griffiths likewise and also the authors -- one with an FRS to his name -- of that article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
I had emailed Griffiths some 8 or 9 months ago, and maybe about the same time after he had published his PhilPapers article -- to which he had kindly responded. Of particular note therefrom:
Griffiths (email): "It is, indeed, all about the various different things we call ‘definitions’ and the roles of these various things in science and in practical life. That’s such a complex topic that it is not surprising that so many people – philosophers included – make such a mess of it. Roughly my own view is that in science we shape our definitions to fit the phenomena we investigate, and that definitions should be evaluated by whether they form an integral part of a successful theory of some class of phenomena."
That's the question that needs answering when one is evaluating different types of definitions, the theory in question being the evolution of anisogamy and how that has driven the development of sexual dimorphism across literally millions of species over the last billion years or so. Neither Scientific American's full-blown spectrum definitions nor the spectrum-lite versions of Wright really cut the mustard on that account.
But, as a "recovering lawyer", you might have some interest in a related conversation I was having with UK lawyer Sarah Phillimore who argued, more or less reasonably, that as far as the Gender Recognition Act went, the government should "Rip it up and start again". However, she too seems desperately committed to that spectrum-lite version of Wright's, and which is, maybe arguably, the proximate cause for why the rather risible idea of "self-identification" ever got out of the starting blocks:
Sarah: "You miss the point. It’s not about functioning gonads. It’s about developing on a pathway with that potential. My gonads don’t function. I remain female."
Of course it's all "about functioning gonads". Sex is all about reproduction which is, if I'm not mistaken, rather difficult without those. You "remain female" in name only, not in "fact".
Functioning or not, there are two gonad production plumbing systems out there for humans—one designed to produce many small gametes, and one designed to produce few large gametes.
The systems are stable—we are not fish. (Invocation of fish reproduction shows how desperate the spectrum people are). The systems remain usefully definitional because they are fundamentally different even when they don’t produce eggs and sperm yet or have already finished their productive phase.
This is so dumb. 15 years ago this idiocy did not exist and hopefully 15 years from now this idiocy will disappear.
Miguelitro: (Invocation of fish reproduction shows how desperate the spectrum people are)
Strawman. You're still missing the point -- maybe you don't want to even try getting it. Neither I nor Griffiths nor the authors of that "Molecular Human Reproduction" article are arguing for anything other than a strict binary definition, a monothetic one.
I think I got a bit confused about all this talk about nonfunctioning gonad systems being somehow relevant to the definition of male v female or man v. woman. It's the design that matters; not whether it functions.
Think you're still missing my points. You may wish to try reading, in some detail, those posts of Griffiths -- particularly the concluding paragraphs of his Aeon article -- and the MHR one:
You might also reflect on that article's subtitle or abstract:
Aeon: "Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing [including every human ...] is either one or the other."
A famous biologist -- Theo Dobzhansky -- once wrote a book titled, "Nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution". A reasonable corollary to that -- which Wright more or less "stole" from a post of mine -- is that nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction: no reproduction, no evolution.
Function is the essential element which only the monothetic definitions of Griffiths and MHR actually acknowledge.
I read the Griffiths article and to be honest I was a bit disappointed. The primary aim of the article seemed to me to be defensive. He clearly wants to wall off biology from the political and ideological debate engendered by transgenderism. So he says really without any real support or argument that the dimorphism of sex in human biology has no real relevance outside of biology. I simply don’t buy it. Gender is deeply rooted in sex, even though gender roles are socially constructed. Without sex, there is no trans. Biology has to be relevant socially and politically. A real cop out.
He then goes into a long discussion of the infinite variety of reproductive strategies that have evolved for a vast variety of creatures without really saying why it’s relevant. But the implication seems to be that the fluidity and ever evolving reproductive patterns in nature provide a basis to minimize the particular strategy evolved for humans. The invitation is to infer that transgenderism is part and parcel of this enormous variety.
Ok transgender ideologues I threw you a bone. Now leave us biologists alone.
A very political scientific article really
It won’t work.
I also read some of your pieces again. I still fail to understand why current reproductive capacity is necessary to be male or female. It’s literal and reductive but why? Virtually all humans are born and die with distinct male or female reproductive systems that are evolved to produce either eggs or sperm. It’s the systems as much as the gamete production that defines male and female physiology. Why is this “unscientific?” You never explain.
What are you trying to prove or accomplish? You are very interesting and smart but I honestly don’t understand you at all.
This topic deeply motivates me because when one witnesses the educational and scientific institutions in the most scientifically advanced countries in the Western world slowly become captive to dogma, postmodernist epistemology and political ideology, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we're fucked.
🙂 Something of a convoluted issue that isn't all that easy to elucidate. Not as complex as quantum mechanics -- or economics or much of the law -- but there are still some "counter-intuitive" aspects that are pitfalls for the unwary.
Somewhat apropos of which, you might also take a gander at my "What is a woman?" post.
Have to continue here, Dr Kari turned comments off (shrug). I think a boy is a male and if standard definitions don't account for it, they should.
Again I've laid my cards out but I still don't know what your thoughts are, the definitions wrong, or we need to stop assuming people have sex unless they're a functional adult?
Steersman, I keep reading your comments but get no closer to understanding your position. If this is a push towards Socratic inquiry all the power to you, but I have long since stopped blaming myself for not understanding other peoples ideas because I realised most often it was the writer's failure to communicate them, which in turn reflected that they did not know what they're talking about.
Now, i think you highlight valid issues with sex definitions for individuals. A point in time definition of sex won't do - obviously a boy is a potential man, and post-menopausal woman is a women. So the definition needs that.
Next, people can have various genetic issues that mean they are not functional in terms of reproduction. This necessitates a kind of polythetic, or family resemblances, definition which you might call spectrum-lite. Clearly lacking some capability with placenta growth or some such, but in all other aspects having the right apparatus doesn't exclude you from being a woman, or shooting blanks not make you a man.
Next, there are intersex people with both male and female sex characteristics, but usually a lack of functional capability in terms of reproduction. Biologically, these individuals are the third-sex, not male or female, but neither.
Next, life is social and so in an important sense, though not exclusively, are the categories women/man. We do not do DNA tests for assigning into sex based groups or do genital tests for entry into toilets so somebody who has been living as a woman all her life in the social sense, yet is not a biological woman (being intersex) naturally is 'socially' a woman, if they have passed by virtue of accruing enough of the secondary sex characteristics.
Which brings us to the slippery slope. If a man, say, has female characteristics through hormones and considers themselves a woman, should they be accommodated under the social category? A brief aside-note the case of intersex is a social accommodation - it's not consequence free to appear as if you're a biological sex that you don't really belong to, in dating for example people might find it a betrayal to find out at the last, the actual truth of someone being intersex but presenting as a man or woman. But because of the family resemblances belonging, someone who can not have children for some specific genetic reason still belongs to the actual category, not just the social category - this would invoke disappointment but not the same sense of betrayal/confusion.
What makes the family resemblances delineation possible is that there is a real thing that exists, the sex binary, man and woman are not just arbitrary names we apply to create the categories (ie nominalism). Most of us fall cleanly into either category and it should be possible to assign those close to the full set of attributes to the category, while pushing some people into the no-sex category.
But back to the slippery slope of the social category and what degree of accommodation is possible. Well, if you believe that there are real differences between biological men and women, despite natural variation within them, then you might not want to accept someone into the social category just because they have some characteristics and identify in their heads as such. There is a real difference between choosing a sex (or having it chosen for you) because you're intersex and your life would likely be more difficult not to choose a social category, and choosing a sex based on the idea you're a different sex than you actually are.
How have I done, is this some of the thing you're pointing to?
Please *explain* to me, or be explicit that you want people to engage socratically with it.
Quote: "Consequently, it would seem to help a great deal to recognize that the definitions for the categories “male” and “female” — for such are they — are somewhat arbitrary, are context dependent, *depend on exactly what objectives we have in mind.*" - emphasis added.
When we classify things, there is some (possibly implicit) purpose behind the classification, i.e. the classification has to be useful in some contexts. In biology, the concept of sex and the terms male and female, have been designed with the purpose of explaining sexual reproduction across all the myriad species that employ sexual reproduction to propagate themselves. Defining sex, male and female strictly in terms of small vs large gamete production in the present presumably works well for this purpose.
However, the debate around "what is a (wo)man?" and trans rights is a rather different context. The terms 'man' and 'woman' are being contested - with sex being contested as a consequence. I suspect the reason why Hilton, Wright et al opt for definitions of sex that are more aligned with 'colloquial' definitions/intuitions reflects the fact that we routinely talk about adult humans being either men or women (or young humans being either boys or girls).
The fact that we have mens vs womens toilets, changing rooms, prisons, sports teams, etc where segregation is based on 'colloquial' sex is precisely what many GCs are trying to preserve in the face of the gender ideologists redefinition of the terms men and women to be completely unrelated to reproductive biology. It seems to me the biological definition of sex means that only a subset of men (as the term is commonly used) are males, the rest of them are infertile/sexless, but nevertheless visually/anatomically indistinguishable from other men. A similar point can be made about women/females. I'd add that we don't perform fertility tests before we decide that someone is a man or a woman - we generally infer that from their appearance.
It's thus not a straightforward matter to use biologically sex to defend e.g. the traditional women only spaces/services that GCs wish to defend because the biological definition of female excludes many women who are, by choice or otherwise, infertile. This raises some questions, e.g. how does one go about mounting such a defence given this state of affairs? Do we need a new concept to use in place of or alongside biological sex?
James: "This raises some questions, e.g. how does one go about mounting such a defence given this state of affairs? Do we need a new concept to use in place of or alongside biological sex?"
Very good questions, the ones of the hour in fact. 🙂
Though rather thorny ones which aren't easily grasped or dealt with. Largely because answering them generally calls for more intellectual honesty than is typical on virtually all sides of the debate. Think I've probably mentioned this in various venues but Paul Griffiths' Aeon article kind of nails the issue -- even if he goes off into the weeds a bit:
"Human societies can’t delegate to biology the job of defining sex as a social institution. The biological definition of sex wasn’t designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. Theorists who want to use the biological definition of sex in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare. The fact that it’s needed in biology isn’t good enough. On the other hand, whatever its shortcomings as an institutional definition, the concept of biological sex remains essential to understand the diversity of life. It shouldn’t be discarded or distorted because of arguments about its use in law, sport or medicine. That would be a tragic mistake."
The biological definitions are simply the wrong tools for the gatekeeping roles that society is trying to press them into doing. But that doesn't mean we should bastardize those definitions just to, in effect, give everyone a participation trophy. Trying to shoehorn the social justice foot into the glass slipper of biology just cripples the former and shatters the latter -- so to speak. 🙂
The problem is generally that many, mostly women, are fixated on the definition of "woman" as "adult human female", but, in general, they haven't a flaming clue that that definition isn't gospel truth. IF they want to hang onto that definition THEN it necessarily follows that menopausees don't qualify. A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms. Even if there are a few "wrinkles" to be dealt with. 🙂
''A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms.''
You'll have the trans rights activists raising the spectre of genital inspections to control access to bathrooms with that suggestion.
Of course such inspections have not previously been used for controlling access, the reason being that (a) we knew whether we were boys/men or girls/women and therefore knew which bathroom or changing room to use (b) we could infer whether someone was a boy/man or girl/woman with a high degree of accuracy based just on their fully clothed appearance and thus (c) if a man tried to access a women/girls only area or vice versa they could be challenged because they no right to be there in the first place.
Now this wasn't perfect, e.g. relatively 'butch' looking females might be incorrectly challenged when using the ladies bathrooms and the Buck Angels of the world could walk into the gents bathrooms without anyone batting an eyelid.
The change is that, in addition to the existence of some people who've medically altered their bodies to the extent they can 'pass' as the opposite sex (using the term colloquially here), we also have some people believing they're entitled to use the spaces previously reserved for the opposite sex on the basis of gender self identification and willing to meet any challenge to that with (a) claiming to be e.g. a woman (regardless of their presentation) if the space is supposed to be women only and (b) able to launch a counter-complaint of transphobia against the challenger.
So much not just for segregation of these areas by colloquial sex, but also by gender. If self id is all that's required to use them then any man (cis or trans) can claim to be a woman (cis or trans) or vice versa to use a single 'gender' space. And we haven't even considered non-binary people yet...
Do we go back to judging whether someone belongs in (wo)mens spaces based on their appearance/physical traits? If we don't wish gender self-id to be the criterion and we don't want the intrusive absurdity of genital inspections or a requirement to present a birth/sex certificate (is it genuine?) to access such places, then I don't see an alternative. In which case we then have to account for those trans people who don't 'pass' - which leads me to suggest that some provision of 'unisex' or 'gender neutral' spaces, alongside the segregated spaces, will be necessary to ensure they have somewhere to go if they need a bathroom break when out and about.
"You'll have the trans rights activists raising the spectre of genital inspections to control access to bathrooms with that suggestion."
If I'm not mistaken, you're studying physics so should have a decent handle on statistics, though you may not have run across the concept of proxy variables:
Maybe a bit of a tenuous argument that I haven't fully developed as much as I would like. But the bottom line -- so to speak -- is that the objective as far as toilets are concerned is to provide one set for the vagina-havers and one set for the penis-havers -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof.
Reproductive abilities -- which is what the biological definitions denote -- in that case are almost entirely irrelevant. But there is a strong correlation between genitalia and sex -- nominal or actual -- so it's somewhat immaterial, at least to a first approximation, whether we segregate toilets by genitalia or sex.
However, it is in fact rather difficult to determine nominal or actual sex since that requires confirming the presence of gonads in the case of "nominal" or folk-biology definitions, or confirming the gonads are functional in the case of actual biological definitions.
In which case, if we want a reliable go/no-go gauge, we have to rely on various other secondary traits that correlate to a high degree with genitalia, that constitute viable PROXIES for genitalia. But with the prevalence of "gender-bending" TRAs, there really aren't any. Hence, the "fall-back" position has to be the genitalia themselves.
Somewhat impractical or problematic, but it serves as something of a reductio ad absurdum: we either make it a law that only vagina-havers can wear a dress and that all vagina-havers MUST wear a dress OR we have genital inspections, in one form or another as a precondition for using public, communal toilets reserved for vagina-havers.
As you suggest, there may be other alternatives -- single-occupancy toilets for example, though I expect the costs might be prohibitive.
In any case regardless of what arrangements we decide on for toilet access, they should not, in any way, encompass changes to the biological definitions for the sexes -- which too many seem intent on trying to do.
My background is in AI & Computer Science (though I did do physics alongside my computing classes in my first year at uni). However, I do understand the concept of proxy variables. The presence of a penis vs vagina in the newborn baby effectively acts as a proxy for sex when we record 'male' or 'female' on the birth certificate and you're now suggesting using it directly as a proxy for sex when determining which toilets a person may use.
"...if we want a reliable go/no-go gauge, we have to rely on various other secondary traits that correlate to a high degree with genitalia, that constitute viable PROXIES for genitalia. But with the prevalence of "gender-bending" TRAs, there really aren't any. Hence, the "fall-back" position has to be the genitalia themselves."
So Buck Angel is told to use the ladies toilets even though Buck looks so much like a man you wouldn't bat an eyelid seeing him in the Gents facilities and you'd swear he's in the wrong place if you saw him using the Ladies. Maybe the signs will need to become 'Penis-havers' / 'Vagina-havers' instead of Male / Female or Gents/ Ladies. I doubt the TRAs will go for this, I doubt anyone else will either. That leaves us with making all toilets unisex / gender neutral, as the only other option - expensive maybe, but much more likely to be accepted.
However, I also disagree your premise. We had effectively operated the male-only / female-only spaces on the basis of appearance (do you look male or female?), social embarrassment if you accidentally entered the 'wrong' space, plus the ability to challenge someone who looked obviously in the wrong space otherwise. We did so even after 'sex change' surgery and cross sex hormone therapy made it possible for people to look like they were the opposite sex to that on their birth certificate.
Now the TRAs may claim that at the very least those who 'pass' were able to use the toilets of their preferred gender, without anyone suspecting, and my guess is they were correct. But people identifying as trans were pretty rare, and 'passing' rarer still so it may not have mattered that much.
The difference today is an ideology that claims that trans women are women, etc regardless of their genitalia, their sex, their appearance, etc, and which suggests you may be trans simply because you're don't conform with gender stereotypes, thus inflating the number who are trans-identified and challenging sex-segregation whether based on appearance or something more intrusive.
For your proposal to be accepted, you'll need to persuade people to drop this ideology (for starters...) but if you do a lot of the problem we currently have goes away. I.e. I think we can continue much as we did before with how we decide who uses the men's vs women's facilities (so long as challenging is still possible), but there is also a need to have a mix of gendered and non-gendered provision to cater for those trans-people who don't 'pass' or anyone who is otherwise uncomfortable using a gendered facility.
Generally agree with most of your comment. Though your "proxy for sex" is more accurately stated as "proxy for PROBABLE sex", at least by the biological definitions. All human males have testicles, but not all those with testicles -- e.g., prepubescent boys -- are males.
However, I kind think you're missing my point, though it may have been obscurely argued. IF we are obliged to have segregated loos -- primarily for reasons of cost -- THEN we EITHER use genitalia as the criteria for entry -- in which case the ladies will have to accept Buck Angels in their midst -- OR we use appearance as those criteria -- in which case the the ladies will have to accept a larger bunch of penis-having transwomen in their midst.
Regardless of the choice we make, some people are going to get their knickers in a twist. But that really shouldn't carry much if any weight at all. Maybe moot exactly how to adjudicate or control access to such semi-public facilities, which criteria should qualify as trump, but hard not to conclude that the bottom line, so to speak, is that vagina-havers are entitled to spaces that penis-havers are excluded from.
But, somewhat en passant, I hope you accept the argument that sex and gender are two entirely different kettles of fish.
I think I might agree 100% with this post - it seems to me you've accurately described the trade-offs involved for segregated loos. I also agree with your proposed "probable" qualification in my proxy for sex comment. I also agree sex and gender are 2 different things, though gender is given quite a few meanings itself - some people see it as the social roles and expectations associated with being one or the other sex, others see it as effectively the sex other people perceive you to be and others see it as gender identity and some claim it is a synonym of sex!
"A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms."
Except, of course, until the word "vagina" is equally redefined to encompass more variations and deviations from the strictly natural. Surely gender ideologues and trans activists would argue that the surgically created opening is a vagina just as much as any other. Just like trans women are women, trans "vagina's" are vagina's. Eventually, they'll simply argue a penis can be a vagina too, if the penis-haver identifies as a woman.
Generally agree. Largely why I typically qualify "penis-havers" and "vagina-havers" with "or reasonable facsimiles thereof". Though I guess I missed that this time around -- mea culpa 🙂.
But so what if that is the case? Would it still not exclude penis-havers from toilets and change-rooms and the like designated for the sole use of vagina-havers? Isn't that one of the main objectives? Though I'll concede there's a bit of a problem there in the case of women's sports.
But the problem is that too many seem to lose sight of the actual objectives, largely because they've turned "male" and "female" -- and their derivatives, "man" and "woman" -- into "immutable 🙄 identities" based on some "mythic essences" -- as Jane Clare Jones memorably and accurately once put it.
But those terms are basically just labels for quite transitory reproductive abilities; turning them into identities is, maybe arguably, the root cause for the whole transgender clusterfuck. For which both women and transwomen might be seen as more or less equally culpable.
You might want to take a gander at my "What is a woman?" post for some elaborations on the same theme:
"But so what if that is the case? Would it still not exclude penis-havers from toilets and change-rooms and the like designated for the sole use of vagina-havers? Isn't that one of the main objectives? Though I'll concede there's a bit of a problem there in the case of women's sports."
Perhaps, though I'd say the exclusion of men from women's changing rooms is not just about the penis in isolation, but also about the person and body attached to that penis. We're perhaps straying into hypothetical territory but I'm sure most biological women would still object to a trans-woman (biological male) who looks like Isla Bryson/Adam Graham (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63823420), but who had their penis removed and replaced with a "vagina". They are technically no longer penis-havers. But they are still men (even if not "male" according to the strict biological definition).
Fair enough. But what about people like Buck Angel? And butch lesbians? Seem to recollect some cases of the latter getting hassled in the lady's loos.
I've periodically jested that the best solution is to put airport type scanners at the entrances of all the toilets to check everyone's genitalia before allowing entry.
Point is sort of that any solution will probably have "edge cases" that someone will object to, more or less reasonably. The trick will be to find an optimal solution that's actually workable.
But I don't think that bastardizing and corrupting biology to comport with a rather arbitrary definition for "woman" -- by the strict biological definitions, menopausees don't qualify as such -- is any sort of a wise choice and tradeoff.
Buck Angel can walk into a gents public toilet and, unless the other users know who Buck is, they'll be unaware that Buck is female. I'd suggest Blaire White (and some of the other trans women I've come across) could similarly walk into the ladies without other users realising White is a male. Assuming they quietly and discretely go about their business, people will be none the wiser. A solution that aims to prevent 'passing' trans women from using the ladies is likely to be intrusive or impractical - genital inspections as you suggest, or some sort of certification that's difficult to fake (but then do we revert to genital inspect if they don't have the certification on them?).
The issue is those who don't look sufficiently male or sufficiently female (using the terms colloquially) to use either bathroom (or at least whichever bathroom they'd be more comfortable/safer in) without challenge. It seems to me the trans rights activists want people to accept self id, disregard appearance, and thus to ditch the challenges in these circumstances. If this is to be resisted an alternative that still satisfies the needs of this group of people is required.
I'll just say that if for some reason we were being forced to walk from one end of the world to the other, and dying somewhere in between was gonna be a bad option, I'd want you as my walking partner because even if we weren't quite sure where we were going, the stamina is the essential quality. I could probably survive hearing you talk about this the whole trip, since I'd have the surety nothing could make you give up anywhere along the way.
Thanks SCA -- I think 🙂. "Tenacious of life" or just "pigheaded"? 😉🙂
But me and the Energizer Bunny, though I do get discouraged at times. Someone -- the "father" of the US Parks system, I think -- once said that whenever you go to change something you find it connected to everything else in the universe.
Complex topic, and one I'll readily concede have some "unplumbed depths" and hidden pitfalls so my "prognostications" are somewhat tenuous and provisional.
Somewhat apropos of which, Carolina had suggested or argued, in a comment to one of her posts that I had linked to, that the biologists might have been wise to have created new words instead of trying to "repurpose" "male" and "female". An idea that has some merit and a few "legs".
However, as I've argued -- in my previous "Imperative of Categories" and "Reality and Illusion" posts on Medium, the former now republished on Substack -- I don't think that would really solve the problem, just move the goal posts. The problem is that the spectrumists' definitions -- both the lite and industrial strength versions -- try to sweep the whole concept of reproduction under the carpet, if not try to abrogate and repudiate it.
Some reason to argue that the concept is foundational to all of biology, and of society itself. Seems rather unwise to lose sight of that fact.
I find you an extremely interesting person outside of this particular--uh--interest. I suspect that too many of the bloggers and essayists across the spectrum of scientists and social scientists (as I guess I said before) are involved in their own little continued employment projects as they write about this. New categories, new treatment protocols, criticisms of old/current treatment protocols--lots of busywork.
The basics are real, as any auto mechanic could tell these guys. Chopping off bits, synthetically crafting new bits, flooding our physiological systems with synthetic hormones--those hormones have been problematic enough when used to treat deficiencies in the bodies of those who'd naturally produce them. Pumping guys full of estrogen was never gonna work out well, and vice versa. No disease is being treated here--it's all Dr. Frankenstein on a bender.
To me the only legitimate area for research would be to understand what creates, and if anything can ameliorate, the profound compulsions some people have to live a synthetic existence as the other sex.
That can't be seen as an ultimately benign hunger. If you've *got* to be perceived as a woman, you will naturally resist being termed a man for certain purposes--sports participation, assigned to the correct hospital room or prison facility. So give an inch lose the whole ball game.
This cultural imperative has been juiced up for a long time. All the films insisting a synthetic woman makes a better parent than the mother who gave birth to the kids--even in the most skillful and enjoyable rendering of this story, like "La Cage aux Folles," that better-parents theme can't be ignored. Now we understand how much of the apple that worm done et.
Thanks, though I wonder at your "last paragraph" -- the last in my comment or my post? 🙂 Some reason to argue they're of a piece.
In any case, quite agree with your "employment projects". A great many "perverse incentives" and pathologies on virtually all sides: Woke and anti-woke, parents, politicians, pharma, and professions of all stripes. Too many cases of the tail wagging the dog -- some value in both, but the combination has its pathological manifestations.
Somewhat apropos of which, an Upton Sinclair quote from a cogent analysis of the rot in Academia:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
But likewise agree with your "synthetic existence", an honest analysis of which is likely to condemn much of society. Some reason to argue that the transgendered are something of a canary in the coalmine. Somewhat apropos of which, my Medium essay on "Reality and Illusion", a term which served as the theme of Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?":
Species-ist!! 😉🙂 Some reason to argue that, at least from the apple's point of view, both worms and humans qualify as parasites.
But I still sympathize with the sentiment or perspective -- reminds me of the movie, "Reflections in a Golden Eye". Never did "plumb the depths" of that analogy, but sort of got the impression of a suggestion of the pathologies lurking at the heart of much of daily life and society. I'm of an age where I might say, "apres moi, la deluge", but with enough experience to have an inkling that that might still be rather "unwise" at best ...
You ever get a chance to read Shermer's post on Wittgenstein and Walsh's documentary?
Some merit in the "family resemblances" idea, possibly even outside the polythetic formulation. You in particular might have some interest the opening paragraph-preamble of the Needham article I linked to as I seem to recollect some cogent comparisons of the two there.
You say that a “broken clock” is an oxymoron by assuming the truth of the point you want to prove—-that only fully functional clocks can properly be defined as clocks. Same with “impotent male.” It is utterly self referential.
You say design or intent “doesn’t really cut the mustard.” Not sure what that means. I think it’s central. The physicality of the thing as a “clock” occurs because that is what it was designed to do. Ok it happens not to work because someone dropped it in the swimming pool. Now it’s a subcategory of clock, a broken one, but still a clock by its design. By the way, you never answered my question about what category “broken clocks” belong to if they are not a subcategory of clocks.
Same is true for males and females. Joe was a reproductive male until his drug addiction made him impotent. But he is still a male by evolutionary design that is physically expressed. By physically expressed I mean that he always has a prostrate and testes and likely some kind of penis. That will never change from the day he is born til the day he dies.
So I stick with my original systems definition. Still open to being proven wrong. You are a really smart guy.
The question is, though, Are you having fun? Hope so.
Already answered your duplicated comment here:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists/comment/16801533
But a "prostate and ... some kind of penis" isn't the "necessary & sufficient condition" to qualify as a human male; it's having functional testes. No testes, no sex.
"But if we remove the gonads then their owners have their membership cards "revoked", they no longer qualify as males and females. We have "excised" ALL the sex out of them; they're sexLESS."
This is called "begging the question," or assuming the answer in your question. You may be right, but it is not a productive form of argument. The question you are "begging" is what needs to be surgically excised to make them sexless.
You are right; I would contend that a more invasive form of surgery is required.
Answered, more or less, another of your duplicated -- though edited -- question here:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists/comment/16781153
Though hardly "begging the question" as I've emphasized many times that, by the standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. The only thing that needs "surgical excising" is the gonads: no gametes, no sex.
Thank you for all the time you spent conversing.
And thank you also for the opportunity to read some additional arguments into the record, some of which I hadn't thought of or tabled before. 😉🙂
But still something of a learning process, a work in progress.
It is indeed. You certainly have an original perspective. I really enjoy the respectful back and forth with smart people. For years I debated everything under the sun with a politically far right Cambridge mathematician who was a bit of a polymath. We came to blows after the January 6 US Capitol insurrection. I am more of a classic Burkean liberal. We have not spoken much since. My debates with you are a bit of a throwback, though you are nothing like him. I joined Substack to find new debate partners. Hard to find a replacement for his education and intellect, although his cognitive distortions and values were extreme. Kind of like the Unabomber. Maybe after a break we can engage again. Mike
Original. And wrong.
🙄 In your entirely unevidenced opinion. Which is worth rather less than diddly-squat. Hardly worth allowing you to even comment here.
You're too much of a gutless wonder and intellectual fraud to even table a definition for the sexes -- with credible citations -- that specifies any necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership that will apply to all anisogamous species.
Thanks. Though, again, I'm not sure it's all that "original". Seems that all I'm doing is applying ideas that have been developed by others to the "topic de jour" -- even if those ideas are generally outside common parlance.
As for sparring partners and ICYMI, you might check out the article on the Motte & Bailey site by Yassine Meskhout ["Public Defender. Saracen Invader."]:
https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/motte-and-grateful
Somewhat en passant or right out of the blue ... 😉🙂, you might have some interest in this comment of his in response to a Note of mine:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people."
https://substack.com/profile/18840496-yassine-meskhout/note/c-15841572
Not like my argument is totally beyond the Pale.
Jim
Thanks. I will look him up. By the way, my interests and background cover much, much more than this gawd awful development with trans ideology. More than obvious that applies to you as well.
Don't be a stranger. As I'm sure you probably guessed, I'm from the US, but I prefer to call myself a native Californian. We're a different breed here.
I would hate to be with you while stranded on a remote desert isle. Instead of catching fish and climbing for coconuts, you would be sitting there wondering “what is a fish?” and “”what is a coconut?” “Do we eat the monothetic version or the poythetic version?” Until we starve to death.
The answer to your quandary is utilitarian and lies within anisogametic plumbing and is pretty obvious.
Miguelitro: “Do we eat the monothetic version or the polythetic version?”
Kind of think you're missing my point. Which is the question of which definition is the most "utilitarian", which definition provides the greatest "explanatory power".
The spectrumist definition is a total dog's breakfast since it has thrown pretty much everything but the proverbial kitchen sink into the criteria to qualify as male or female. Wright's polythetic definition reduces that spectrum down to a more or less manageable number (3), but at the cost of explicitly arguing that one doesn't actually have to be able to reproduce to qualify for sex category membership -- seems kind of unclear on the concept:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex
If the object of your classification is to determine who you're going to be able to reproduce with on that "remote desert isle" then Wright's polythetic version is likely to give you no better than 1 in 3 odds of doing so.
Only the monothetic definitions that constitute the biological standard is sufficiently clear, broad, and simple to have any utility in describing all of the millions of anisogamous species. You may wish to read this PhilPapers essay by Paul Griffiths -- university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics & Philosophy -- and this passage in particular:
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
You say later, "The answer to your quandary is utilitarian and lies within anisogametic plumbing and is pretty obvious." But IF one starts from Wright's rather unscientific definitions that make past or future functionality sufficient conditions for sex category membership THEN what do we call members of all of those species "which regularly change sex"? Seems that one is obliged to say, by those definitions of his, that they're always male and always female.
Kind of a useless and rather clueless definition if you ask me. And apparently Griffiths likewise and also the authors -- one with an FRS to his name -- of that article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
I had emailed Griffiths some 8 or 9 months ago, and maybe about the same time after he had published his PhilPapers article -- to which he had kindly responded. Of particular note therefrom:
Griffiths (email): "It is, indeed, all about the various different things we call ‘definitions’ and the roles of these various things in science and in practical life. That’s such a complex topic that it is not surprising that so many people – philosophers included – make such a mess of it. Roughly my own view is that in science we shape our definitions to fit the phenomena we investigate, and that definitions should be evaluated by whether they form an integral part of a successful theory of some class of phenomena."
That's the question that needs answering when one is evaluating different types of definitions, the theory in question being the evolution of anisogamy and how that has driven the development of sexual dimorphism across literally millions of species over the last billion years or so. Neither Scientific American's full-blown spectrum definitions nor the spectrum-lite versions of Wright really cut the mustard on that account.
But, as a "recovering lawyer", you might have some interest in a related conversation I was having with UK lawyer Sarah Phillimore who argued, more or less reasonably, that as far as the Gender Recognition Act went, the government should "Rip it up and start again". However, she too seems desperately committed to that spectrum-lite version of Wright's, and which is, maybe arguably, the proximate cause for why the rather risible idea of "self-identification" ever got out of the starting blocks:
https://sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/rip-it-up-and-start-again-sex-and/comment/16633411
Sarah: "You miss the point. It’s not about functioning gonads. It’s about developing on a pathway with that potential. My gonads don’t function. I remain female."
Of course it's all "about functioning gonads". Sex is all about reproduction which is, if I'm not mistaken, rather difficult without those. You "remain female" in name only, not in "fact".
Functioning or not, there are two gonad production plumbing systems out there for humans—one designed to produce many small gametes, and one designed to produce few large gametes.
The systems are stable—we are not fish. (Invocation of fish reproduction shows how desperate the spectrum people are). The systems remain usefully definitional because they are fundamentally different even when they don’t produce eggs and sperm yet or have already finished their productive phase.
This is so dumb. 15 years ago this idiocy did not exist and hopefully 15 years from now this idiocy will disappear.
Miguelitro: (Invocation of fish reproduction shows how desperate the spectrum people are)
Strawman. You're still missing the point -- maybe you don't want to even try getting it. Neither I nor Griffiths nor the authors of that "Molecular Human Reproduction" article are arguing for anything other than a strict binary definition, a monothetic one.
I think I got a bit confused about all this talk about nonfunctioning gonad systems being somehow relevant to the definition of male v female or man v. woman. It's the design that matters; not whether it functions.
Think you're still missing my points. You may wish to try reading, in some detail, those posts of Griffiths -- particularly the concluding paragraphs of his Aeon article -- and the MHR one:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
You might also reflect on that article's subtitle or abstract:
Aeon: "Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing [including every human ...] is either one or the other."
A famous biologist -- Theo Dobzhansky -- once wrote a book titled, "Nothing makes sense in biology except in light of evolution". A reasonable corollary to that -- which Wright more or less "stole" from a post of mine -- is that nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction: no reproduction, no evolution.
Function is the essential element which only the monothetic definitions of Griffiths and MHR actually acknowledge.
I read the Griffiths article and to be honest I was a bit disappointed. The primary aim of the article seemed to me to be defensive. He clearly wants to wall off biology from the political and ideological debate engendered by transgenderism. So he says really without any real support or argument that the dimorphism of sex in human biology has no real relevance outside of biology. I simply don’t buy it. Gender is deeply rooted in sex, even though gender roles are socially constructed. Without sex, there is no trans. Biology has to be relevant socially and politically. A real cop out.
He then goes into a long discussion of the infinite variety of reproductive strategies that have evolved for a vast variety of creatures without really saying why it’s relevant. But the implication seems to be that the fluidity and ever evolving reproductive patterns in nature provide a basis to minimize the particular strategy evolved for humans. The invitation is to infer that transgenderism is part and parcel of this enormous variety.
Ok transgender ideologues I threw you a bone. Now leave us biologists alone.
A very political scientific article really
It won’t work.
I also read some of your pieces again. I still fail to understand why current reproductive capacity is necessary to be male or female. It’s literal and reductive but why? Virtually all humans are born and die with distinct male or female reproductive systems that are evolved to produce either eggs or sperm. It’s the systems as much as the gamete production that defines male and female physiology. Why is this “unscientific?” You never explain.
What are you trying to prove or accomplish? You are very interesting and smart but I honestly don’t understand you at all.
I’m still hoping for an epiphany.
I did not read any of your links. I will now,
Thank you.
This topic deeply motivates me because when one witnesses the educational and scientific institutions in the most scientifically advanced countries in the Western world slowly become captive to dogma, postmodernist epistemology and political ideology, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we're fucked.
Thank you for finally making yourself clear.
🙂 Something of a convoluted issue that isn't all that easy to elucidate. Not as complex as quantum mechanics -- or economics or much of the law -- but there are still some "counter-intuitive" aspects that are pitfalls for the unwary.
Somewhat apropos of which, you might also take a gander at my "What is a woman?" post.
I will. Thanks
Have to continue here, Dr Kari turned comments off (shrug). I think a boy is a male and if standard definitions don't account for it, they should.
Again I've laid my cards out but I still don't know what your thoughts are, the definitions wrong, or we need to stop assuming people have sex unless they're a functional adult?
Steersman, I keep reading your comments but get no closer to understanding your position. If this is a push towards Socratic inquiry all the power to you, but I have long since stopped blaming myself for not understanding other peoples ideas because I realised most often it was the writer's failure to communicate them, which in turn reflected that they did not know what they're talking about.
Now, i think you highlight valid issues with sex definitions for individuals. A point in time definition of sex won't do - obviously a boy is a potential man, and post-menopausal woman is a women. So the definition needs that.
Next, people can have various genetic issues that mean they are not functional in terms of reproduction. This necessitates a kind of polythetic, or family resemblances, definition which you might call spectrum-lite. Clearly lacking some capability with placenta growth or some such, but in all other aspects having the right apparatus doesn't exclude you from being a woman, or shooting blanks not make you a man.
Next, there are intersex people with both male and female sex characteristics, but usually a lack of functional capability in terms of reproduction. Biologically, these individuals are the third-sex, not male or female, but neither.
Next, life is social and so in an important sense, though not exclusively, are the categories women/man. We do not do DNA tests for assigning into sex based groups or do genital tests for entry into toilets so somebody who has been living as a woman all her life in the social sense, yet is not a biological woman (being intersex) naturally is 'socially' a woman, if they have passed by virtue of accruing enough of the secondary sex characteristics.
Which brings us to the slippery slope. If a man, say, has female characteristics through hormones and considers themselves a woman, should they be accommodated under the social category? A brief aside-note the case of intersex is a social accommodation - it's not consequence free to appear as if you're a biological sex that you don't really belong to, in dating for example people might find it a betrayal to find out at the last, the actual truth of someone being intersex but presenting as a man or woman. But because of the family resemblances belonging, someone who can not have children for some specific genetic reason still belongs to the actual category, not just the social category - this would invoke disappointment but not the same sense of betrayal/confusion.
What makes the family resemblances delineation possible is that there is a real thing that exists, the sex binary, man and woman are not just arbitrary names we apply to create the categories (ie nominalism). Most of us fall cleanly into either category and it should be possible to assign those close to the full set of attributes to the category, while pushing some people into the no-sex category.
But back to the slippery slope of the social category and what degree of accommodation is possible. Well, if you believe that there are real differences between biological men and women, despite natural variation within them, then you might not want to accept someone into the social category just because they have some characteristics and identify in their heads as such. There is a real difference between choosing a sex (or having it chosen for you) because you're intersex and your life would likely be more difficult not to choose a social category, and choosing a sex based on the idea you're a different sex than you actually are.
How have I done, is this some of the thing you're pointing to?
Please *explain* to me, or be explicit that you want people to engage socratically with it.
Twenty three comments but only two likes? Your post is a bit meandering, but I'm quite happy to make the likes number three!
https://thingstoread.substack.com/p/how-many-genders-are-there
Quote: "Consequently, it would seem to help a great deal to recognize that the definitions for the categories “male” and “female” — for such are they — are somewhat arbitrary, are context dependent, *depend on exactly what objectives we have in mind.*" - emphasis added.
When we classify things, there is some (possibly implicit) purpose behind the classification, i.e. the classification has to be useful in some contexts. In biology, the concept of sex and the terms male and female, have been designed with the purpose of explaining sexual reproduction across all the myriad species that employ sexual reproduction to propagate themselves. Defining sex, male and female strictly in terms of small vs large gamete production in the present presumably works well for this purpose.
However, the debate around "what is a (wo)man?" and trans rights is a rather different context. The terms 'man' and 'woman' are being contested - with sex being contested as a consequence. I suspect the reason why Hilton, Wright et al opt for definitions of sex that are more aligned with 'colloquial' definitions/intuitions reflects the fact that we routinely talk about adult humans being either men or women (or young humans being either boys or girls).
The fact that we have mens vs womens toilets, changing rooms, prisons, sports teams, etc where segregation is based on 'colloquial' sex is precisely what many GCs are trying to preserve in the face of the gender ideologists redefinition of the terms men and women to be completely unrelated to reproductive biology. It seems to me the biological definition of sex means that only a subset of men (as the term is commonly used) are males, the rest of them are infertile/sexless, but nevertheless visually/anatomically indistinguishable from other men. A similar point can be made about women/females. I'd add that we don't perform fertility tests before we decide that someone is a man or a woman - we generally infer that from their appearance.
It's thus not a straightforward matter to use biologically sex to defend e.g. the traditional women only spaces/services that GCs wish to defend because the biological definition of female excludes many women who are, by choice or otherwise, infertile. This raises some questions, e.g. how does one go about mounting such a defence given this state of affairs? Do we need a new concept to use in place of or alongside biological sex?
James: "This raises some questions, e.g. how does one go about mounting such a defence given this state of affairs? Do we need a new concept to use in place of or alongside biological sex?"
Very good questions, the ones of the hour in fact. 🙂
Though rather thorny ones which aren't easily grasped or dealt with. Largely because answering them generally calls for more intellectual honesty than is typical on virtually all sides of the debate. Think I've probably mentioned this in various venues but Paul Griffiths' Aeon article kind of nails the issue -- even if he goes off into the weeds a bit:
"Human societies can’t delegate to biology the job of defining sex as a social institution. The biological definition of sex wasn’t designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. Theorists who want to use the biological definition of sex in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare. The fact that it’s needed in biology isn’t good enough. On the other hand, whatever its shortcomings as an institutional definition, the concept of biological sex remains essential to understand the diversity of life. It shouldn’t be discarded or distorted because of arguments about its use in law, sport or medicine. That would be a tragic mistake."
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
The biological definitions are simply the wrong tools for the gatekeeping roles that society is trying to press them into doing. But that doesn't mean we should bastardize those definitions just to, in effect, give everyone a participation trophy. Trying to shoehorn the social justice foot into the glass slipper of biology just cripples the former and shatters the latter -- so to speak. 🙂
The problem is generally that many, mostly women, are fixated on the definition of "woman" as "adult human female", but, in general, they haven't a flaming clue that that definition isn't gospel truth. IF they want to hang onto that definition THEN it necessarily follows that menopausees don't qualify. A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms. Even if there are a few "wrinkles" to be dealt with. 🙂
''A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms.''
You'll have the trans rights activists raising the spectre of genital inspections to control access to bathrooms with that suggestion.
Of course such inspections have not previously been used for controlling access, the reason being that (a) we knew whether we were boys/men or girls/women and therefore knew which bathroom or changing room to use (b) we could infer whether someone was a boy/man or girl/woman with a high degree of accuracy based just on their fully clothed appearance and thus (c) if a man tried to access a women/girls only area or vice versa they could be challenged because they no right to be there in the first place.
Now this wasn't perfect, e.g. relatively 'butch' looking females might be incorrectly challenged when using the ladies bathrooms and the Buck Angels of the world could walk into the gents bathrooms without anyone batting an eyelid.
The change is that, in addition to the existence of some people who've medically altered their bodies to the extent they can 'pass' as the opposite sex (using the term colloquially here), we also have some people believing they're entitled to use the spaces previously reserved for the opposite sex on the basis of gender self identification and willing to meet any challenge to that with (a) claiming to be e.g. a woman (regardless of their presentation) if the space is supposed to be women only and (b) able to launch a counter-complaint of transphobia against the challenger.
So much not just for segregation of these areas by colloquial sex, but also by gender. If self id is all that's required to use them then any man (cis or trans) can claim to be a woman (cis or trans) or vice versa to use a single 'gender' space. And we haven't even considered non-binary people yet...
Do we go back to judging whether someone belongs in (wo)mens spaces based on their appearance/physical traits? If we don't wish gender self-id to be the criterion and we don't want the intrusive absurdity of genital inspections or a requirement to present a birth/sex certificate (is it genuine?) to access such places, then I don't see an alternative. In which case we then have to account for those trans people who don't 'pass' - which leads me to suggest that some provision of 'unisex' or 'gender neutral' spaces, alongside the segregated spaces, will be necessary to ensure they have somewhere to go if they need a bathroom break when out and about.
"You'll have the trans rights activists raising the spectre of genital inspections to control access to bathrooms with that suggestion."
If I'm not mistaken, you're studying physics so should have a decent handle on statistics, though you may not have run across the concept of proxy variables:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
Maybe a bit of a tenuous argument that I haven't fully developed as much as I would like. But the bottom line -- so to speak -- is that the objective as far as toilets are concerned is to provide one set for the vagina-havers and one set for the penis-havers -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof.
Reproductive abilities -- which is what the biological definitions denote -- in that case are almost entirely irrelevant. But there is a strong correlation between genitalia and sex -- nominal or actual -- so it's somewhat immaterial, at least to a first approximation, whether we segregate toilets by genitalia or sex.
However, it is in fact rather difficult to determine nominal or actual sex since that requires confirming the presence of gonads in the case of "nominal" or folk-biology definitions, or confirming the gonads are functional in the case of actual biological definitions.
In which case, if we want a reliable go/no-go gauge, we have to rely on various other secondary traits that correlate to a high degree with genitalia, that constitute viable PROXIES for genitalia. But with the prevalence of "gender-bending" TRAs, there really aren't any. Hence, the "fall-back" position has to be the genitalia themselves.
Somewhat impractical or problematic, but it serves as something of a reductio ad absurdum: we either make it a law that only vagina-havers can wear a dress and that all vagina-havers MUST wear a dress OR we have genital inspections, in one form or another as a precondition for using public, communal toilets reserved for vagina-havers.
As you suggest, there may be other alternatives -- single-occupancy toilets for example, though I expect the costs might be prohibitive.
In any case regardless of what arrangements we decide on for toilet access, they should not, in any way, encompass changes to the biological definitions for the sexes -- which too many seem intent on trying to do.
My background is in AI & Computer Science (though I did do physics alongside my computing classes in my first year at uni). However, I do understand the concept of proxy variables. The presence of a penis vs vagina in the newborn baby effectively acts as a proxy for sex when we record 'male' or 'female' on the birth certificate and you're now suggesting using it directly as a proxy for sex when determining which toilets a person may use.
"...if we want a reliable go/no-go gauge, we have to rely on various other secondary traits that correlate to a high degree with genitalia, that constitute viable PROXIES for genitalia. But with the prevalence of "gender-bending" TRAs, there really aren't any. Hence, the "fall-back" position has to be the genitalia themselves."
So Buck Angel is told to use the ladies toilets even though Buck looks so much like a man you wouldn't bat an eyelid seeing him in the Gents facilities and you'd swear he's in the wrong place if you saw him using the Ladies. Maybe the signs will need to become 'Penis-havers' / 'Vagina-havers' instead of Male / Female or Gents/ Ladies. I doubt the TRAs will go for this, I doubt anyone else will either. That leaves us with making all toilets unisex / gender neutral, as the only other option - expensive maybe, but much more likely to be accepted.
However, I also disagree your premise. We had effectively operated the male-only / female-only spaces on the basis of appearance (do you look male or female?), social embarrassment if you accidentally entered the 'wrong' space, plus the ability to challenge someone who looked obviously in the wrong space otherwise. We did so even after 'sex change' surgery and cross sex hormone therapy made it possible for people to look like they were the opposite sex to that on their birth certificate.
Now the TRAs may claim that at the very least those who 'pass' were able to use the toilets of their preferred gender, without anyone suspecting, and my guess is they were correct. But people identifying as trans were pretty rare, and 'passing' rarer still so it may not have mattered that much.
The difference today is an ideology that claims that trans women are women, etc regardless of their genitalia, their sex, their appearance, etc, and which suggests you may be trans simply because you're don't conform with gender stereotypes, thus inflating the number who are trans-identified and challenging sex-segregation whether based on appearance or something more intrusive.
For your proposal to be accepted, you'll need to persuade people to drop this ideology (for starters...) but if you do a lot of the problem we currently have goes away. I.e. I think we can continue much as we did before with how we decide who uses the men's vs women's facilities (so long as challenging is still possible), but there is also a need to have a mix of gendered and non-gendered provision to cater for those trans-people who don't 'pass' or anyone who is otherwise uncomfortable using a gendered facility.
Generally agree with most of your comment. Though your "proxy for sex" is more accurately stated as "proxy for PROBABLE sex", at least by the biological definitions. All human males have testicles, but not all those with testicles -- e.g., prepubescent boys -- are males.
However, I kind think you're missing my point, though it may have been obscurely argued. IF we are obliged to have segregated loos -- primarily for reasons of cost -- THEN we EITHER use genitalia as the criteria for entry -- in which case the ladies will have to accept Buck Angels in their midst -- OR we use appearance as those criteria -- in which case the the ladies will have to accept a larger bunch of penis-having transwomen in their midst.
Regardless of the choice we make, some people are going to get their knickers in a twist. But that really shouldn't carry much if any weight at all. Maybe moot exactly how to adjudicate or control access to such semi-public facilities, which criteria should qualify as trump, but hard not to conclude that the bottom line, so to speak, is that vagina-havers are entitled to spaces that penis-havers are excluded from.
But, somewhat en passant, I hope you accept the argument that sex and gender are two entirely different kettles of fish.
I think I might agree 100% with this post - it seems to me you've accurately described the trade-offs involved for segregated loos. I also agree with your proposed "probable" qualification in my proxy for sex comment. I also agree sex and gender are 2 different things, though gender is given quite a few meanings itself - some people see it as the social roles and expectations associated with being one or the other sex, others see it as effectively the sex other people perceive you to be and others see it as gender identity and some claim it is a synonym of sex!
"A more rational and useful definition, although a largely "unpalatable" one, is something like "adult human vagina-haver". Then it is "immutable", more or less, and provides a useful go/no-go gauge for controlling access to places like toilets and change-rooms."
Except, of course, until the word "vagina" is equally redefined to encompass more variations and deviations from the strictly natural. Surely gender ideologues and trans activists would argue that the surgically created opening is a vagina just as much as any other. Just like trans women are women, trans "vagina's" are vagina's. Eventually, they'll simply argue a penis can be a vagina too, if the penis-haver identifies as a woman.
Generally agree. Largely why I typically qualify "penis-havers" and "vagina-havers" with "or reasonable facsimiles thereof". Though I guess I missed that this time around -- mea culpa 🙂.
But so what if that is the case? Would it still not exclude penis-havers from toilets and change-rooms and the like designated for the sole use of vagina-havers? Isn't that one of the main objectives? Though I'll concede there's a bit of a problem there in the case of women's sports.
But the problem is that too many seem to lose sight of the actual objectives, largely because they've turned "male" and "female" -- and their derivatives, "man" and "woman" -- into "immutable 🙄 identities" based on some "mythic essences" -- as Jane Clare Jones memorably and accurately once put it.
But those terms are basically just labels for quite transitory reproductive abilities; turning them into identities is, maybe arguably, the root cause for the whole transgender clusterfuck. For which both women and transwomen might be seen as more or less equally culpable.
You might want to take a gander at my "What is a woman?" post for some elaborations on the same theme:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
"But so what if that is the case? Would it still not exclude penis-havers from toilets and change-rooms and the like designated for the sole use of vagina-havers? Isn't that one of the main objectives? Though I'll concede there's a bit of a problem there in the case of women's sports."
Perhaps, though I'd say the exclusion of men from women's changing rooms is not just about the penis in isolation, but also about the person and body attached to that penis. We're perhaps straying into hypothetical territory but I'm sure most biological women would still object to a trans-woman (biological male) who looks like Isla Bryson/Adam Graham (https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-63823420), but who had their penis removed and replaced with a "vagina". They are technically no longer penis-havers. But they are still men (even if not "male" according to the strict biological definition).
Fair enough. But what about people like Buck Angel? And butch lesbians? Seem to recollect some cases of the latter getting hassled in the lady's loos.
I've periodically jested that the best solution is to put airport type scanners at the entrances of all the toilets to check everyone's genitalia before allowing entry.
Point is sort of that any solution will probably have "edge cases" that someone will object to, more or less reasonably. The trick will be to find an optimal solution that's actually workable.
But I don't think that bastardizing and corrupting biology to comport with a rather arbitrary definition for "woman" -- by the strict biological definitions, menopausees don't qualify as such -- is any sort of a wise choice and tradeoff.
Buck Angel can walk into a gents public toilet and, unless the other users know who Buck is, they'll be unaware that Buck is female. I'd suggest Blaire White (and some of the other trans women I've come across) could similarly walk into the ladies without other users realising White is a male. Assuming they quietly and discretely go about their business, people will be none the wiser. A solution that aims to prevent 'passing' trans women from using the ladies is likely to be intrusive or impractical - genital inspections as you suggest, or some sort of certification that's difficult to fake (but then do we revert to genital inspect if they don't have the certification on them?).
The issue is those who don't look sufficiently male or sufficiently female (using the terms colloquially) to use either bathroom (or at least whichever bathroom they'd be more comfortable/safer in) without challenge. It seems to me the trans rights activists want people to accept self id, disregard appearance, and thus to ditch the challenges in these circumstances. If this is to be resisted an alternative that still satisfies the needs of this group of people is required.
I'll just say that if for some reason we were being forced to walk from one end of the world to the other, and dying somewhere in between was gonna be a bad option, I'd want you as my walking partner because even if we weren't quite sure where we were going, the stamina is the essential quality. I could probably survive hearing you talk about this the whole trip, since I'd have the surety nothing could make you give up anywhere along the way.
Thanks SCA -- I think 🙂. "Tenacious of life" or just "pigheaded"? 😉🙂
But me and the Energizer Bunny, though I do get discouraged at times. Someone -- the "father" of the US Parks system, I think -- once said that whenever you go to change something you find it connected to everything else in the universe.
Complex topic, and one I'll readily concede have some "unplumbed depths" and hidden pitfalls so my "prognostications" are somewhat tenuous and provisional.
Somewhat apropos of which, Carolina had suggested or argued, in a comment to one of her posts that I had linked to, that the biologists might have been wise to have created new words instead of trying to "repurpose" "male" and "female". An idea that has some merit and a few "legs".
However, as I've argued -- in my previous "Imperative of Categories" and "Reality and Illusion" posts on Medium, the former now republished on Substack -- I don't think that would really solve the problem, just move the goal posts. The problem is that the spectrumists' definitions -- both the lite and industrial strength versions -- try to sweep the whole concept of reproduction under the carpet, if not try to abrogate and repudiate it.
Some reason to argue that the concept is foundational to all of biology, and of society itself. Seems rather unwise to lose sight of that fact.
Agree entirely with your final paragraph.
I find you an extremely interesting person outside of this particular--uh--interest. I suspect that too many of the bloggers and essayists across the spectrum of scientists and social scientists (as I guess I said before) are involved in their own little continued employment projects as they write about this. New categories, new treatment protocols, criticisms of old/current treatment protocols--lots of busywork.
The basics are real, as any auto mechanic could tell these guys. Chopping off bits, synthetically crafting new bits, flooding our physiological systems with synthetic hormones--those hormones have been problematic enough when used to treat deficiencies in the bodies of those who'd naturally produce them. Pumping guys full of estrogen was never gonna work out well, and vice versa. No disease is being treated here--it's all Dr. Frankenstein on a bender.
To me the only legitimate area for research would be to understand what creates, and if anything can ameliorate, the profound compulsions some people have to live a synthetic existence as the other sex.
That can't be seen as an ultimately benign hunger. If you've *got* to be perceived as a woman, you will naturally resist being termed a man for certain purposes--sports participation, assigned to the correct hospital room or prison facility. So give an inch lose the whole ball game.
This cultural imperative has been juiced up for a long time. All the films insisting a synthetic woman makes a better parent than the mother who gave birth to the kids--even in the most skillful and enjoyable rendering of this story, like "La Cage aux Folles," that better-parents theme can't be ignored. Now we understand how much of the apple that worm done et.
Now *that* was a weird experience--having your reply disappear just as I was replying to it...
Should be back now. I got a "bad gateway" error just after posting it so I expect Substack was doing some maintenance or upgrades.
Thanks, though I wonder at your "last paragraph" -- the last in my comment or my post? 🙂 Some reason to argue they're of a piece.
In any case, quite agree with your "employment projects". A great many "perverse incentives" and pathologies on virtually all sides: Woke and anti-woke, parents, politicians, pharma, and professions of all stripes. Too many cases of the tail wagging the dog -- some value in both, but the combination has its pathological manifestations.
Somewhat apropos of which, an Upton Sinclair quote from a cogent analysis of the rot in Academia:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
https://michaelrobillard.substack.com/p/how-i-left-academia-or-how-academia
But likewise agree with your "synthetic existence", an honest analysis of which is likely to condemn much of society. Some reason to argue that the transgendered are something of a canary in the coalmine. Somewhat apropos of which, my Medium essay on "Reality and Illusion", a term which served as the theme of Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?":
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
"apple that worm done et"
Species-ist!! 😉🙂 Some reason to argue that, at least from the apple's point of view, both worms and humans qualify as parasites.
But I still sympathize with the sentiment or perspective -- reminds me of the movie, "Reflections in a Golden Eye". Never did "plumb the depths" of that analogy, but sort of got the impression of a suggestion of the pathologies lurking at the heart of much of daily life and society. I'm of an age where I might say, "apres moi, la deluge", but with enough experience to have an inkling that that might still be rather "unwise" at best ...
Rigorous and thought-provoking as always!
Thanks Frederick.
You ever get a chance to read Shermer's post on Wittgenstein and Walsh's documentary?
Some merit in the "family resemblances" idea, possibly even outside the polythetic formulation. You in particular might have some interest the opening paragraph-preamble of the Needham article I linked to as I seem to recollect some cogent comparisons of the two there.
I did not get to read the Shermer post.... If you don't mind, could you remind me of the link, please?
No problemo 🙂; link to my comment & his post:
"Nice integration of Wittgenstein’s idea of family resemblances, a very useful perspective and framework. ...."
https://michaelshermer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-anyway/comment/7630788
Been meaning to comment on your recent Dolphin post, hopefully later today.