"Kind of think the fate of the western world hangs in the balance over how we resolve the transgender clusterfuck; not sure yet whether that’s hyperbole or an understatement."
Totally agree with this.
At my stage of life I should be devoting myself to trying to cement my reputation and legacy as an artist. Being at the peak of my lifelong apprenticeship at this stage, and before the hands succumb to arthritis and the brain to over medicating with alcohol....Instead I've dragged my sorry ass out of feminist retirement because I do see this battle with Queer Theory/CSJ ideology as being existential for the sanity of of western society into the near future. A large portion of the younger generation are becoming literally psychotic from a pathological over exposure to toxic social media. Nihilist ideologies that seem clever and sophisticated are seducing them into dangerous cult thinking.
I could have overcome being cancelled for my wrong think a few years ago and gotten on with constructing my legend (being bit facetious there). But instead I've girded the loins and picked up the cudgels to batter the Woke demons to death. I have only one grandchild, its a bit for her...ironically she is named Trinity. But above all its because as human beings we get only one stab at this conscious, precious existence. I don't care how subjective and flimsy reality might be. I just want the naive younger peeps to understand we all have to serve somebody (as Dylan sung it, while we all smirked at his sellout) and best that ideology we serve be one about love, minimising harm to each other, and compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings.
"betraying" some of your hippie roots or history 😉, but largely agree with most if not all of your comment. 🙂
Somewhat en passant or of general relevance, not sure if you follow this Substacker or not but very good post here that addresses some of what we've been discussing:
Good morning! Sunshine here in beautiful Murrurundi and I have a Galah parrot mauling my ear because shes hungry.
Steersman, I've gotten the impression you're one of those eccentric characters who thrives on debate and being the devils advocate. I read most of the links you gave me, but in the end all that guff was cancelled out by these last 4 sentences of yours...
"... because being male and female is a matter of the type of gametes we produce, there's simply no way that a human male can change into a human female since to do so would require him to replace his functioning testicles with functioning ovaries. A biological impossibility.
Amen to that. Largely why I argue that the only way to turn the transloonie tide is to fall back on the biological definitions stated above as the only reasonable common reference point."
By this admission you are reiterating the point Gender Critical feminists are trying to make - males are men, females are women and there's no such thing as "trans" children or adults because nobody is changing sex.
I know a little bit about Foucault and his ilk, having read them 25 years ago when I was a dreadlocked Visual Art student. Daft. I can see how their wanky intellectual switch and bait has influenced you. Some of their musings about language and semantics have been sucked up by Queer Theory (also known as Critical Social Justice in a more respectable sounding description). Words being "signifiers", rah, rah, rah blahhedy blah. The map is not the territory.
Therein lies madness, be assured.
But perhaps you value cleverness over reality? For some, particularly those who live in their heads, theres a sort of appealing metaphysicism to lean into the idea that written and oral communication is all a matter of fleeting, transcient subjectivity and that nothing underlies everything. Theres that alluring kernel of truth in there that all phenomena is light reflecting off atoms and sound waves going out into the universe for eternity...meaningless, nothingness.
I believe (having been an earnest young follower of Buddhism) that kind of intellectual speculation is especially attractive to those who suffer the despair of being an entity that understands it will die. Nihilism as a salve for existential despair.
Anyway, there I go waxing all former days hippie spiritual, when you prefer to be stimulating the brain cells with intellectual sophistry.
But now I think I'm getting a handle on where you come from. And above quote from you reassures me you're not thick as a brick.
I need to feed this Galah before it rips my ear off.
Kind of think the fate of the western world hangs in the balance over how we resolve the transgender clusterfuck; not sure yet whether that’s hyperbole or an understatement.
Pearl: “By this admission you are reiterating the point Gender Critical feminists are trying to make - males are men, females are women ...”
Sure. But the question is, what justifies that claim? Particularly in the face of scientific illiterates, grifters, and charlatans who claim that sex is a spectrum? My point is largely that it’s a matter of definition, and that the biological ones “deserve” to qualify as trump – and in large part because they’ve been published, in black and white, in various solidly credible biological journals and dictionaries. Something of an incontrovertible fact, even if those definitions themselves may be somewhat less than ideal.
But apropos of which, you might have some interest in seeing that that those definitions are being tweeted thither and yon by all and sundry – and to the general disadvantage and chagrin of said illiterates, grifters, and charlatans:
Though not sure that those championing that article really understand the logical consequences of the definitions in it. Maybe someone needs to apprise them of the errors of their ways ... 😉
Pearl: “...25 years ago when I was a dreadlocked Visual Art student. Daft.“
🙂 Been there, done that, etc., though more like 50 years for me. “One can forgive the young everything except their youth” ...
Pearl: “Words being ‘signifiers’, rah, rah, rah blahhedy blah. The map is not the territory. Therein lies madness, be assured. … all a matter of fleeting, transient subjectivity and that nothing underlies everything.”
I’m certainly not at all arguing that “nothing underlies everything”. Seems to be a great deal of justification to differentiate between “the signifier” and the “signified”, between the map and the territory. But where postmodernists, the “social constructionists”, and their ilk go off the rails and into the weeds is, as one devotee once put it, in insisting that “it’s models all the way down”. Maybe something of an article of faith that there’s something “real”, some tangible “territory”, at the bottom of that chain, but seems the only rational basis for anything.
And, relative to those biological definitions, some majorly brute facts seem to be that a significantly large percentage of all of the “higher” order species engage in “sexual” reproduction, are characterized by many members which produce large gametes, and by many members which produce small gametes. And that those who can produce either can reproduce, and that those who produce neither can’t.
How we attach those facts, and related ones, to various labels, to various “signifiers” is somewhat arbitrary. But regardless of what signifiers we create, we won’t ever change those facts; madness if not rank insanity that so many try to sweep those facts under the carpet – who thereby need to be stomped all over, and with hobnail boots ... 😉
I’d once argued that biologists might have chosen words other than “male” and “female” to describe those categories, those “brute facts” – largely because the biological definitions conflict with folk-biology – though I don’t think that really would have solved the problem:
“So, in consequence and relative to which, one might tentatively suggest a couple of hyphenated words — based on Latin for some extra pizzazz — to cover all of those bases, to create a set of exhaustive categories, to name them for some as yet unspecified ‘adaptive or pragmatic purpose’, to wit: parit-ova (produces ova); sperma-facit (produces sperm); ...”
"... the “argument” that “sex is immutable” – risibly unscientific and flatly contradicted by definitions endorsed by various credible biological journals..."
Red rag to a GC feminist.
I struggled through a lot of the scientific paper you linked to. But I am essentially unconvinced it made any argument other than human dimorphism is a fact and arose billions of years ago.
So I wonder if by stating the 2 sexed types of Homo Sapiens ARE NOT immutable you might be making a sort of disingenuous theoretical academic argument that just because things probably didn't start out that way gazillions of years ago then the situation with dimorphism is thats its unstable and may change again, hopefully not at any moment.
I didn't get to the end of the paper (even I baulk at procrastinating that long to avoid doing what I should be doing) so perhaps I missed the bit where they explained the mechanism or hocus pokery required to change XY into XX types.
Can you clarify what you meant by that sentence cut and pasted at the top?
If you've discovered the scientific mechanism how the transmogrification between sexes can be effected I'm startled that you haven't shared this with the community that very much wants it to be so but appears to have created a ghoulish abbatoir instead.
Sorry if I disappointed you. Hopefully I can rectify that somewhat. 🙂
And I apologize if the reference to and quote of the Parker & Lehtonen paper was a bit obscure and not well developed, and I apologize if I sent you off on a bit of a wild-goose chase in reading that article, much of which is irrelevant to the definitions I quoted. But the focus of the Gnats & Camels articles was more about what the actual issues are than getting into the weeds about the different definitions on the table. I've tried to deal with that paper in more detail in several other posts that you may want to look at later:
However, I'll now try to answer several of your questions, though they each cover a lot of ground that isn't easily dealt with. But, first off, you said:
Pearl: "So I wonder if by stating the 2 sexed types of Homo Sapiens ARE NOT immutable you might be making a sort of disingenuous theoretical academic argument ..."
To start with an analogy, would you say that the category "teenager" is immutable? Or would you agree that people pass into and out of that category depending on whether they're 13 to 19 inclusive or not?
The word "teenager" is just a label that denotes those who are between those ages. The category definition doesn't change -- unless we decide to change it -- so we might say the definition itself is "immutable". But one's status AS a teenager, as a member of the category "teenager" changes as we age, so you're unlikely to say that "teenager is immutable".
Same thing with the categories "male" and "female". See again the definitions for "male" and "female" from the Glossary of that article:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
So, for example, a male is a member of ANY sexually-reproducing species who produces "smaller gametes", i.e., sperm. And if that individual stops producing those gametes then it no longer qualifies as a male -- for example, a transwoman who has his testicles removed no longer qualifies as a male; he's turned himself into a sexless eunuch. The same way that a person who has their 20th birthday no longer qualifies as a teenager.
Pearl: "I missed the bit where they explained the mechanism or hocus pokery required to change XY into XX types. ... how the transmogrification between sexes can be effected ..."
Neither I nor that article are arguing that "XX types" change into "XY types". What their definitions are saying is that what defines each of those categories is simply the ability to produce either of two types of gametes. There is nothing in those definitions about chromosomes because different species use chromosomes other than the X & Y common to humans -- and most mammals:
But because being male and female is a matter of the type of gametes we produce, there's simply no way that a human male can change into a human female since to do so would require him to replace his functioning testicles with functioning ovaries. A biological impossibility.
Pearl: "... appears to have created a ghoulish abattoir instead. ..."
Amen to that. Largely why I argue that the only way to turn the transloonie tide is to fall back on the biological definitions stated above as the only reasonable common reference point.
well, heavens you're an overthinker and I like and relate to that! Thats quite an answer.
At present its 7.07pm in Aus and I'm preparing my XX mate his daily sustenance (as he assures me his genotype are incapable of learning to do more than kill game and I prefer to have a more complex diet than all protein) So I'll get back to you once I've purged the red wine from my brain cells, eaten my balanced evening meal and had a chance to reflect.
However, after quickly scanning your response we can quickly ditch one piece of socially constructed silliness - that of the "teenager". Total social construct but serving an important niche in the contemporary Wests narrative of how little humans adapt to living in the world.
But while I agree entirely that "teenager" is a "social construct", so too are "male" and "female". All words for that matter. There are no intrinsic meanings to any of those words; we assign meanings to them as we see fit; Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z.
Though some meanings make more sense, are more coherent and consistent with other facts. And the biological definitions I quoted earlier seem like they should be trump -- if you'll excuse the term. 🙂 But that article of mine on "What is a woman?" goes into some of those details -- and the devils therein.
But it's now 12:40 AM here on the wet west coast of Canada, and close to my bedtime so may not get back to you for 8 hours or so.
excellent, we'll both slumber and allow our unconscious minds to dredge up the answers then. My plan for the next 3 hours is to binge watching the last few episodes of Dark go straight to bed after that (if not during...)
That idea that words are nothing but meaningless social constructs is dangerously close to Queer Theory claptrap. Try taking a vow of silence for a month and at the end of that consider if you still think oral communication is just useless grunting.
I must tiptoe carefully through the minefield here so as not to make myself unwelcome in other parlors, but I was overwhelmingly under-impressed by that essay and, after taking a look at its author's website, confounded by the enthusiasm shown to it by the hostess of the establishment which welcomed the guest.
Sad state of affairs when we all have to "tiptoe" around the possibility of being "disfellowshipped" by one sect or another. Too many too quick to get their knickers in a twist, to go off in a "high dudgeon" at being "offended" -- and wind up cancelling subscriptions as happened to me again recently ... 😉. And on pretty much all sides of the fence.
Though curious why you think -- if you're willing to elaborate ... 😉 -- that "that essay" fell short of the mark. As I had indicated, I think the author was too quick to dismiss society's culpability in various crimes, but think she was justified in throwing stones at those who claimed that those stickers were "transphobic". Those stickers were certainly critical of much of transgender ideology, even if they betray or manifest some highly questionable ideology themselves. Canons (sic) to the Left of us, canons (sic) to the Right ... 🙂
Not likely to resolve the underlying issues if we can't look at both sides with some fairness and honesty.
The stickers--sure, Barbara was correct in general but over-wordy to the extreme in discussing it. The jargon of self-help-meisters and aspirants ain't my bowl of chowder.
The discussion re Nicki Clyne was I thought absolute bullshit. And I got a real tendency to build fanciful narratives from very little evidence, and my internal storyteller was breaking the speed limit in thinking about why Holly might have invited that guest post and I felt rather disappointed in the event I might've been on target.
I thought Barbara couldn't have built a more self-parody of the therapeutic entrepreneur website if she'd been dead-on determined to do so. It seemed to have everything Holly would recoil from.
As for taking care in discourse--I'm not at all bothered by offending someone's sensibilities if I'm being honest in a discussion and they got tender skin about some (in my view of course) foolish belief or outright stupidity.
But Holly's been extremely frank about what she endured, from childhood, and the after-effects, and if there's no rational need to inflict distress I'd be shabby--or worse--to cause it where a little thoughtful phrasing or self-editing can avoid it.
And I know how easy it is to set someone brooding over what a stranger has remarked in cyberspace. I'm too old for it to keep happening to me so often. So I try to be mindful of how easy it is to cause some absolutely unnecessary pain.
Maybe it's just a lesson to me that I shouldn't get myself over-excited in admiration of the wisdom of others because everyone's got their human weaknesses. But I always hate it when someone's luster dims a little in my eyes.
Maybe some reason to be critical of that particular "profession" -- as with many. Some merit in it I expect, but maybe a tendency to "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". Wegner's "trinity" of victim-perpetrator-savior may be generally applicable in some cases but probably an error to put too much weight on it in all cases.
SCA: "... discussion re Nicki Clyne ..."
I see your comment over there along that line. 🙂 Remember reading a bit about NXIVM ages ago, and reading the Wikipedia article on it I see that it was something of a cult. I should take a closer look at Wegner's argument but she may have a point that too many are many too quick to judge others simply on the basis of who their friends are. Maybe some merit in the proverb about the enemy of my enemy being my friend, though there may be less in the "corollary" of "the friend of my enemy is my enemy". "social dynamics" is often built on shifting sands and questionable premises.
SCA: "extremely frank"
Agree entirely; never ceases to amaze me that she seems not to have been badly crippled by anger or bitterness at her parents or the "culture" she came out of.
SCA: "... how easy it is to set someone brooding ..."
Maybe I'm a bit "careless" on that score, and tend to the "principle" of calling a spade a shovel and letting the chips fall where they may. Though some are more "precariously balanced" than others, and are less able to handle challenges to their "articles of faith". Seem to recollect that the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann eventually committed suicide in part because he was apparently depressed at the lack of acceptance of his theories. I see his motto had been, "Speak the truth, write with clarity, and defend it to your very end."
SCA: "because everyone's got their human weaknesses ..."
Indeed. We all have clay feet -- though those of some people seem to have been turned into durable ceramics able to carry a bit more weight than those of others -- been through a bit of "fire" of one sort or another.
A couple of times I tried getting a little help via the 50-minute hour professionals, and I discovered that having patient friends with common sense during times of acute anguish was far more useful.
Most of us, we just need someone willing to stand each side of us, holding us up as we try to stumble along a broken road until we get our strength back. The problem is real friendship is real rare these days. Long-term acquaintances ain't the same.
For profound vile abusive situations, especially from those who owed us love and care and failed miserably to give it, an experienced sensible professional has the necessary distance, emotionally, to provide real therapeutic help. Those professionals are rare, no matter how many listings are in one's insurance directory.
What astonishes me about Holly is how clearly and usefully she can write about terrible things so other people can understand how to recognize and protect against them as much as possible. I think her anger and bitterness unfortunately gets turned against herself in doubt and anxiety but she seems to have found a therapist who ain't a moron--and it seems her capacity to form loving relationships with good friends wasn't destroyed by those who tried to destroy her.
The trans ideologues totally fucked up the Age of Aquarius, for sure!
Great link, I've heard of that Substack.
"Kind of think the fate of the western world hangs in the balance over how we resolve the transgender clusterfuck; not sure yet whether that’s hyperbole or an understatement."
Totally agree with this.
At my stage of life I should be devoting myself to trying to cement my reputation and legacy as an artist. Being at the peak of my lifelong apprenticeship at this stage, and before the hands succumb to arthritis and the brain to over medicating with alcohol....Instead I've dragged my sorry ass out of feminist retirement because I do see this battle with Queer Theory/CSJ ideology as being existential for the sanity of of western society into the near future. A large portion of the younger generation are becoming literally psychotic from a pathological over exposure to toxic social media. Nihilist ideologies that seem clever and sophisticated are seducing them into dangerous cult thinking.
I could have overcome being cancelled for my wrong think a few years ago and gotten on with constructing my legend (being bit facetious there). But instead I've girded the loins and picked up the cudgels to batter the Woke demons to death. I have only one grandchild, its a bit for her...ironically she is named Trinity. But above all its because as human beings we get only one stab at this conscious, precious existence. I don't care how subjective and flimsy reality might be. I just want the naive younger peeps to understand we all have to serve somebody (as Dylan sung it, while we all smirked at his sellout) and best that ideology we serve be one about love, minimising harm to each other, and compassion for the suffering of all sentient beings.
"betraying" some of your hippie roots or history 😉, but largely agree with most if not all of your comment. 🙂
Somewhat en passant or of general relevance, not sure if you follow this Substacker or not but very good post here that addresses some of what we've been discussing:
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/hallucinating-your-inner-trans-reptile
Good morning! Sunshine here in beautiful Murrurundi and I have a Galah parrot mauling my ear because shes hungry.
Steersman, I've gotten the impression you're one of those eccentric characters who thrives on debate and being the devils advocate. I read most of the links you gave me, but in the end all that guff was cancelled out by these last 4 sentences of yours...
"... because being male and female is a matter of the type of gametes we produce, there's simply no way that a human male can change into a human female since to do so would require him to replace his functioning testicles with functioning ovaries. A biological impossibility.
Amen to that. Largely why I argue that the only way to turn the transloonie tide is to fall back on the biological definitions stated above as the only reasonable common reference point."
By this admission you are reiterating the point Gender Critical feminists are trying to make - males are men, females are women and there's no such thing as "trans" children or adults because nobody is changing sex.
I know a little bit about Foucault and his ilk, having read them 25 years ago when I was a dreadlocked Visual Art student. Daft. I can see how their wanky intellectual switch and bait has influenced you. Some of their musings about language and semantics have been sucked up by Queer Theory (also known as Critical Social Justice in a more respectable sounding description). Words being "signifiers", rah, rah, rah blahhedy blah. The map is not the territory.
Therein lies madness, be assured.
But perhaps you value cleverness over reality? For some, particularly those who live in their heads, theres a sort of appealing metaphysicism to lean into the idea that written and oral communication is all a matter of fleeting, transcient subjectivity and that nothing underlies everything. Theres that alluring kernel of truth in there that all phenomena is light reflecting off atoms and sound waves going out into the universe for eternity...meaningless, nothingness.
I believe (having been an earnest young follower of Buddhism) that kind of intellectual speculation is especially attractive to those who suffer the despair of being an entity that understands it will die. Nihilism as a salve for existential despair.
Anyway, there I go waxing all former days hippie spiritual, when you prefer to be stimulating the brain cells with intellectual sophistry.
But now I think I'm getting a handle on where you come from. And above quote from you reassures me you're not thick as a brick.
I need to feed this Galah before it rips my ear off.
Top of the morning to ya! You seem to have been up at the crack of dawn. 🙂
Pearl: “...one of those eccentric characters who thrives on debate and being the devils advocate.”
🙂 Certainly to some degree. Reminded more of Hitchens:
“Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/37722-beware-the-irrational-however-seductive-shun-the-transcendent-and-all
Kind of think the fate of the western world hangs in the balance over how we resolve the transgender clusterfuck; not sure yet whether that’s hyperbole or an understatement.
Pearl: “By this admission you are reiterating the point Gender Critical feminists are trying to make - males are men, females are women ...”
Sure. But the question is, what justifies that claim? Particularly in the face of scientific illiterates, grifters, and charlatans who claim that sex is a spectrum? My point is largely that it’s a matter of definition, and that the biological ones “deserve” to qualify as trump – and in large part because they’ve been published, in black and white, in various solidly credible biological journals and dictionaries. Something of an incontrovertible fact, even if those definitions themselves may be somewhat less than ideal.
But apropos of which, you might have some interest in seeing that that those definitions are being tweeted thither and yon by all and sundry – and to the general disadvantage and chagrin of said illiterates, grifters, and charlatans:
https://oxfordjournals.altmetric.com/details/2802153/twitter
Though not sure that those championing that article really understand the logical consequences of the definitions in it. Maybe someone needs to apprise them of the errors of their ways ... 😉
Pearl: “...25 years ago when I was a dreadlocked Visual Art student. Daft.“
🙂 Been there, done that, etc., though more like 50 years for me. “One can forgive the young everything except their youth” ...
Pearl: “Words being ‘signifiers’, rah, rah, rah blahhedy blah. The map is not the territory. Therein lies madness, be assured. … all a matter of fleeting, transient subjectivity and that nothing underlies everything.”
I’m certainly not at all arguing that “nothing underlies everything”. Seems to be a great deal of justification to differentiate between “the signifier” and the “signified”, between the map and the territory. But where postmodernists, the “social constructionists”, and their ilk go off the rails and into the weeds is, as one devotee once put it, in insisting that “it’s models all the way down”. Maybe something of an article of faith that there’s something “real”, some tangible “territory”, at the bottom of that chain, but seems the only rational basis for anything.
And, relative to those biological definitions, some majorly brute facts seem to be that a significantly large percentage of all of the “higher” order species engage in “sexual” reproduction, are characterized by many members which produce large gametes, and by many members which produce small gametes. And that those who can produce either can reproduce, and that those who produce neither can’t.
How we attach those facts, and related ones, to various labels, to various “signifiers” is somewhat arbitrary. But regardless of what signifiers we create, we won’t ever change those facts; madness if not rank insanity that so many try to sweep those facts under the carpet – who thereby need to be stomped all over, and with hobnail boots ... 😉
I’d once argued that biologists might have chosen words other than “male” and “female” to describe those categories, those “brute facts” – largely because the biological definitions conflict with folk-biology – though I don’t think that really would have solved the problem:
“So, in consequence and relative to which, one might tentatively suggest a couple of hyphenated words — based on Latin for some extra pizzazz — to cover all of those bases, to create a set of exhaustive categories, to name them for some as yet unspecified ‘adaptive or pragmatic purpose’, to wit: parit-ova (produces ova); sperma-facit (produces sperm); ...”
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
Pearl: “And above quote from you reassures me you're not thick as a brick.”
Bit of a “left-handed compliment”, but I’ll take it with some appreciation. 🙂
"... the “argument” that “sex is immutable” – risibly unscientific and flatly contradicted by definitions endorsed by various credible biological journals..."
Red rag to a GC feminist.
I struggled through a lot of the scientific paper you linked to. But I am essentially unconvinced it made any argument other than human dimorphism is a fact and arose billions of years ago.
So I wonder if by stating the 2 sexed types of Homo Sapiens ARE NOT immutable you might be making a sort of disingenuous theoretical academic argument that just because things probably didn't start out that way gazillions of years ago then the situation with dimorphism is thats its unstable and may change again, hopefully not at any moment.
I didn't get to the end of the paper (even I baulk at procrastinating that long to avoid doing what I should be doing) so perhaps I missed the bit where they explained the mechanism or hocus pokery required to change XY into XX types.
Can you clarify what you meant by that sentence cut and pasted at the top?
If you've discovered the scientific mechanism how the transmogrification between sexes can be effected I'm startled that you haven't shared this with the community that very much wants it to be so but appears to have created a ghoulish abbatoir instead.
(Geeez...and I thought you were nice...)
Sorry if I disappointed you. Hopefully I can rectify that somewhat. 🙂
And I apologize if the reference to and quote of the Parker & Lehtonen paper was a bit obscure and not well developed, and I apologize if I sent you off on a bit of a wild-goose chase in reading that article, much of which is irrelevant to the definitions I quoted. But the focus of the Gnats & Camels articles was more about what the actual issues are than getting into the weeds about the different definitions on the table. I've tried to deal with that paper in more detail in several other posts that you may want to look at later:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/on-being-defrauded-by-heather-heying
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
However, I'll now try to answer several of your questions, though they each cover a lot of ground that isn't easily dealt with. But, first off, you said:
Pearl: "So I wonder if by stating the 2 sexed types of Homo Sapiens ARE NOT immutable you might be making a sort of disingenuous theoretical academic argument ..."
To start with an analogy, would you say that the category "teenager" is immutable? Or would you agree that people pass into and out of that category depending on whether they're 13 to 19 inclusive or not?
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/teenager
The word "teenager" is just a label that denotes those who are between those ages. The category definition doesn't change -- unless we decide to change it -- so we might say the definition itself is "immutable". But one's status AS a teenager, as a member of the category "teenager" changes as we age, so you're unlikely to say that "teenager is immutable".
Same thing with the categories "male" and "female". See again the definitions for "male" and "female" from the Glossary of that article:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
So, for example, a male is a member of ANY sexually-reproducing species who produces "smaller gametes", i.e., sperm. And if that individual stops producing those gametes then it no longer qualifies as a male -- for example, a transwoman who has his testicles removed no longer qualifies as a male; he's turned himself into a sexless eunuch. The same way that a person who has their 20th birthday no longer qualifies as a teenager.
Pearl: "I missed the bit where they explained the mechanism or hocus pokery required to change XY into XX types. ... how the transmogrification between sexes can be effected ..."
Neither I nor that article are arguing that "XX types" change into "XY types". What their definitions are saying is that what defines each of those categories is simply the ability to produce either of two types of gametes. There is nothing in those definitions about chromosomes because different species use chromosomes other than the X & Y common to humans -- and most mammals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
But because being male and female is a matter of the type of gametes we produce, there's simply no way that a human male can change into a human female since to do so would require him to replace his functioning testicles with functioning ovaries. A biological impossibility.
Pearl: "... appears to have created a ghoulish abattoir instead. ..."
Amen to that. Largely why I argue that the only way to turn the transloonie tide is to fall back on the biological definitions stated above as the only reasonable common reference point.
well, heavens you're an overthinker and I like and relate to that! Thats quite an answer.
At present its 7.07pm in Aus and I'm preparing my XX mate his daily sustenance (as he assures me his genotype are incapable of learning to do more than kill game and I prefer to have a more complex diet than all protein) So I'll get back to you once I've purged the red wine from my brain cells, eaten my balanced evening meal and had a chance to reflect.
However, after quickly scanning your response we can quickly ditch one piece of socially constructed silliness - that of the "teenager". Total social construct but serving an important niche in the contemporary Wests narrative of how little humans adapt to living in the world.
🙂👍
But while I agree entirely that "teenager" is a "social construct", so too are "male" and "female". All words for that matter. There are no intrinsic meanings to any of those words; we assign meanings to them as we see fit; Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z.
Though some meanings make more sense, are more coherent and consistent with other facts. And the biological definitions I quoted earlier seem like they should be trump -- if you'll excuse the term. 🙂 But that article of mine on "What is a woman?" goes into some of those details -- and the devils therein.
But it's now 12:40 AM here on the wet west coast of Canada, and close to my bedtime so may not get back to you for 8 hours or so.
excellent, we'll both slumber and allow our unconscious minds to dredge up the answers then. My plan for the next 3 hours is to binge watching the last few episodes of Dark go straight to bed after that (if not during...)
That idea that words are nothing but meaningless social constructs is dangerously close to Queer Theory claptrap. Try taking a vow of silence for a month and at the end of that consider if you still think oral communication is just useless grunting.
Sleep tight.
Yikes! This surprises me almost as much as the Spanish Inquisition might!
🙂 How so? No one expecting it? 😉
I must tiptoe carefully through the minefield here so as not to make myself unwelcome in other parlors, but I was overwhelmingly under-impressed by that essay and, after taking a look at its author's website, confounded by the enthusiasm shown to it by the hostess of the establishment which welcomed the guest.
Shocked, I am. Unutterably shocked.
Sad state of affairs when we all have to "tiptoe" around the possibility of being "disfellowshipped" by one sect or another. Too many too quick to get their knickers in a twist, to go off in a "high dudgeon" at being "offended" -- and wind up cancelling subscriptions as happened to me again recently ... 😉. And on pretty much all sides of the fence.
Though curious why you think -- if you're willing to elaborate ... 😉 -- that "that essay" fell short of the mark. As I had indicated, I think the author was too quick to dismiss society's culpability in various crimes, but think she was justified in throwing stones at those who claimed that those stickers were "transphobic". Those stickers were certainly critical of much of transgender ideology, even if they betray or manifest some highly questionable ideology themselves. Canons (sic) to the Left of us, canons (sic) to the Right ... 🙂
Not likely to resolve the underlying issues if we can't look at both sides with some fairness and honesty.
The stickers--sure, Barbara was correct in general but over-wordy to the extreme in discussing it. The jargon of self-help-meisters and aspirants ain't my bowl of chowder.
The discussion re Nicki Clyne was I thought absolute bullshit. And I got a real tendency to build fanciful narratives from very little evidence, and my internal storyteller was breaking the speed limit in thinking about why Holly might have invited that guest post and I felt rather disappointed in the event I might've been on target.
I thought Barbara couldn't have built a more self-parody of the therapeutic entrepreneur website if she'd been dead-on determined to do so. It seemed to have everything Holly would recoil from.
As for taking care in discourse--I'm not at all bothered by offending someone's sensibilities if I'm being honest in a discussion and they got tender skin about some (in my view of course) foolish belief or outright stupidity.
But Holly's been extremely frank about what she endured, from childhood, and the after-effects, and if there's no rational need to inflict distress I'd be shabby--or worse--to cause it where a little thoughtful phrasing or self-editing can avoid it.
And I know how easy it is to set someone brooding over what a stranger has remarked in cyberspace. I'm too old for it to keep happening to me so often. So I try to be mindful of how easy it is to cause some absolutely unnecessary pain.
Maybe it's just a lesson to me that I shouldn't get myself over-excited in admiration of the wisdom of others because everyone's got their human weaknesses. But I always hate it when someone's luster dims a little in my eyes.
Thanks.
SCA: "self-help-meisters ... therapeutic entrepreneur"
Maybe some reason to be critical of that particular "profession" -- as with many. Some merit in it I expect, but maybe a tendency to "when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". Wegner's "trinity" of victim-perpetrator-savior may be generally applicable in some cases but probably an error to put too much weight on it in all cases.
SCA: "... discussion re Nicki Clyne ..."
I see your comment over there along that line. 🙂 Remember reading a bit about NXIVM ages ago, and reading the Wikipedia article on it I see that it was something of a cult. I should take a closer look at Wegner's argument but she may have a point that too many are many too quick to judge others simply on the basis of who their friends are. Maybe some merit in the proverb about the enemy of my enemy being my friend, though there may be less in the "corollary" of "the friend of my enemy is my enemy". "social dynamics" is often built on shifting sands and questionable premises.
SCA: "extremely frank"
Agree entirely; never ceases to amaze me that she seems not to have been badly crippled by anger or bitterness at her parents or the "culture" she came out of.
SCA: "... how easy it is to set someone brooding ..."
Maybe I'm a bit "careless" on that score, and tend to the "principle" of calling a spade a shovel and letting the chips fall where they may. Though some are more "precariously balanced" than others, and are less able to handle challenges to their "articles of faith". Seem to recollect that the famous physicist Ludwig Boltzmann eventually committed suicide in part because he was apparently depressed at the lack of acceptance of his theories. I see his motto had been, "Speak the truth, write with clarity, and defend it to your very end."
https://paperpile.com/blog/ludwig-boltzmann/
SCA: "because everyone's got their human weaknesses ..."
Indeed. We all have clay feet -- though those of some people seem to have been turned into durable ceramics able to carry a bit more weight than those of others -- been through a bit of "fire" of one sort or another.
A couple of times I tried getting a little help via the 50-minute hour professionals, and I discovered that having patient friends with common sense during times of acute anguish was far more useful.
Most of us, we just need someone willing to stand each side of us, holding us up as we try to stumble along a broken road until we get our strength back. The problem is real friendship is real rare these days. Long-term acquaintances ain't the same.
For profound vile abusive situations, especially from those who owed us love and care and failed miserably to give it, an experienced sensible professional has the necessary distance, emotionally, to provide real therapeutic help. Those professionals are rare, no matter how many listings are in one's insurance directory.
What astonishes me about Holly is how clearly and usefully she can write about terrible things so other people can understand how to recognize and protect against them as much as possible. I think her anger and bitterness unfortunately gets turned against herself in doubt and anxiety but she seems to have found a therapist who ain't a moron--and it seems her capacity to form loving relationships with good friends wasn't destroyed by those who tried to destroy her.