I am finding this and related discussions interesting but also at times frustrating and confusing. I am quite skeptical of many recent concepts such as, "Gender fluidity" and the like, as well as the idea that gender is a completely social construct, although all of these issues and the discussions surrounding them seem often times to be severely blurred (is gender purely a social construct, or is it also socially influenced? If so, to what degree?) I found your comments via the recent post by Heather Heying (or rather, remnants and references to your apparently deleted comments therein). I find I am in agreement with much of what I have read of yours on this topic so far; however, I am still left feeling somewhat confused as to why you feel the biologically-based definitions of sex you cite should apparently reign supreme? Although I agree that they are much more precise than the one proffered by Heying, they nevertheless seem to me to be flawed in that they appear overly restrictive, creating large groups of people who seemingly must fail to fall into either category - male or female, unless I am interpreting this incorrectly.
As I understand it, the definitions of male and female sex you champion are strictly and narrowly defined based upon (1) the ability to produce gametes and (2) the relative size and perhaps also mobility status, of those gametes. Is that correct?
What Heying seems to be doing with her definitions is to broaden this in order to allow for inclusion of individuals who may, for instance, have lost their previous ability to produce said gametes. For instance, if an adult male who fits the definition you champion develops normally to adulthood, but then develops testicular cancer and then undergoes bilateral orchiectomy - or one who is a victim of some horrible accident that included his castration - would such a person suddenly now no longer be considered "male"? Similarly for female ovarian cancer patients or postmenopausal females, how then are they to be categorized? Do they go in an instant from having a sex to now being sexless?
It seems to me that, although inelegant and rather clunky, Heying's broadened definition allows one to retain their status as either male or female in such situations, which seems to me to be eminently reasonable.
Thanks for your comment -- and for your subscription. 🙂 Most appreciated.
But quite agree with your "severely blurred" comment relative to gender; more than a bit of justification to argue that gender -- as a rough synonym for personalities -- is at least partly the result of bedrock differences in biology between men and women: nature AND nurture. You might have some interest in my further elaborations of that theme 🙂:
Alan: "... feeling somewhat confused as to why you feel the biologically-based definitions of sex you cite should apparently reign supreme?"
Very good question, well-phrased; the one of the hour in fact. The short answer -- referencing your later "relative size and mobility status of those gametes" -- is more or less neatly summarized by this passage from the Wikipedia article on anisogamy:
"Although its evolution has left no fossil records, it is generally accepted that anisogamy evolved from isogamy and that it has evolved independently in several groups of eukaryotes including protists, algae, plants and animals. According to John Avise anisogamy probably originated around the same time sexual reproduction and multicellularity occurred, over 1 billion years ago."
The existence of those two types of gametes is close to those bedrock differences in biology that extend back over a rather long period of evolutionary history, not just of humans but of many species. Maybe moot exactly how those differences have affected various behavioural differences between the sexes, though many biologists provide credible evidence and justification for the argument that they have. For examples, see the following; while I can't say that I've read them all to any depth, the summaries are still illuminating:
"Why anisogamy drives ancestral sex roles:
Here, we develop mathematical models that validate the intuition of Darwin and Bateman, showing that there is a very simple and general reason why unequal gamete numbers result in unequal investment in sexually competitive traits. "
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes:
The ancestral divergence and maintenance of gamete sizes subsequently led to many other differences we now observe between the two sexes, sowing the seeds for what we have become."
Although I kind of doubt that all of those championing it have taken a close look at the definitions for "male" and "female" in the Glossary there -- which say diddly-squat about the "developmental pathways" and "anatomies of past, present, or future functionality" that Heying, Hilton, and Wright have been peddling.
In any case, while I have some sympathy for "Heying's broadened definition", at least apart from its apparent and quite unscientific objective of putting feelings before facts, the greater problem is that it's generally the proverbial thin edge of the wedge to forcing open the door to the sexes as spectra. For example, see this "Nitterized" tweet sequence -- you don't need Twitter to read them -- that leads to the tweet of that second article on "Gamete competition":
We kind of have to draw a line in the sand, and those biological definitions seem like the last line of defense; our backs are to the wall. And in large part because the corruption of them by Heying and company causes any number of rather serious problems when they're applied to other species, particularly those that, like clownfish, actually change sex over their lives.
You might also be interested in a "debate" that I'm having on that topic over at the International Skeptics Forum, a debate you may wish to weigh-in on ... 😉:
Thank you for your interesting and thorough response. I must say that I am impressed by the depth and intelligence displayed here - very uncharacteristic of what I personally am accustomed to seeing in posts in similar forums. Perhaps I just haven't been searching and/or reading on the web broadly enough, but I strongly suspect that (sadly) this is not the reason. I hope you don't mind my asking, but what, if anything, do you do professionally, and what is motivating you to spend, what seems to me, significant time posting and responding to queries and forum dialog? I myself am a university professor and basic cancer researcher, and I feel it would take an inordinate amount of my time if I were to craft posts of the type you are posting! Along these lines, I also found - and now even more so find - the comments of Heying and Co. suspecting you to be some sort of AI construct bizarre and ridiculous. Either that, or I am woefully underestimating what is possible in the field of human mimicry!!
Thanks muchly for the compliments; most appreciated 🙂.
To answer at least some of your questions, I'm a retired electronics technologist - probably equivalent to a two year associates degree in the US. And I'm very interested in how and people think the way they do, and think, on the basis of some evidence and other sources, that the system of social dialogue is, as I think Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) put it, "very badly broken in a way that may doom us all". And think I may have some information and background that may help to rectify that problem.
My About, and article on Wikipedia's Lysenkoism may provide some additional elaboration.
Re "university professor & cancer researcher", if you're so inclined, do drop me a line through the Substack email address that you have for me if you've received a post since subscribing, or I can send you my email address if not.
I can't comment on Heather's blog because I am not a paid subscriber but I don't understand how exactly you disagree with her? Here are quotes from two of the papers you posted:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
How is that different than what Heather says?
"Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen)." -Heather Heying
My initial assumption when you opened your comment on Heather's blog by denying that a baby's sex is identifiable was was that you are a TRA who has bought into the whole woke "fluidity" narrative. After looking through a couple of your blogs I see that is not accurate. But your arguments are very complicated and opaque. I still don't understand where you stand. Heather's essay was very simple and clear.
A baby's sex is identifiable at birth and even before birth using U/S because he or she has secondary sex characteristics of the genitalia which indicate whether he or she will produce eggs (large gametes), or sperm (small gametes) (unless the baby has "developmental or genetic anomalies" as Heying noted). The doctor, mother, father, u/s tech are not "assigning" or "guessing", they are observing the evidence.
The immutable genes (XX and XY) are not observable with the naked eye, nor are the gametes, but the secondary sex characteristics are an observable and reliable indicator.
So the "category" of male or female contains: gamete size, chromosome combination, secondary sex characteristics. Right?
Thank you for a thought provoking interaction. To state concisely, your premise seems to be that only the sexually mature and sexually functional should be recognized as male or female.
Thanks also to you for engaging with the issue - rather rare.
Though don't think it's just "my" premise about only the sexually functional being "recognized as male or female"; think it's pretty clear that that is exactly what the commonly accepted biological definitions specify and lead to.
But somewhat more broadly, I think my point is that, basically, there's no intrinsic meaning to "male" and "female" - decidedly contrary to Heying's rather dogmatic position. Given that "fact", I think that the issue is then a question of reaching some sort of consensus on what the terms should mean. Don't think we can really progress to agreement on policy if we can't even agree on what those words mean.
But whatever else we agree to disagree on, it seems that we - pretty much everyone - is going to agree that those with functional gonads are substantially more likely to be able to reproduce than those without them. How we integrate that fact into the definitions we agree on is maybe moot. But seems rather remarkably "unwise" to not recognize that rather brute fact, and to not make it an essential part of whatever definitions we do agree on.
Thank you for your comment, and for some very cogent and relevant questions. Thanks too for the intellectual honesty implicit in your "looking through a couple of your blogs I see that is not accurate" - honesty that is particularly noteworthy and commendable for being so rare these days. 🙂
Apropos of that honesty - or rather the too-common absence of it, I see that Heather has just terminated my subscription there and deleted one of my comments. A comment which I'll repost here later for the sake of posterity. Though she at least refunded a portion of my subscription.
But to try to do justice to your questions and to start with, you asked, "How is that different than what Heather says?" And the crux of the matter, the salient difference is that Heying's definitions encompass or include past, present, and future functionality as defining or essential criteria - which is underlined by the tweet that I had linked to:
That is what their letter stipulated as their definition:
"Individuals that have developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, - regardless of their past, present, or future functionality - are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
But the biological definitions that you quoted - and those of Google/OD - stipulate that it is ONLY present functionality that determines membership in the sex categories - those individuals with past functionality or future functionality don't qualify.
Her definitions, and those of Hilton & Wright, are more or less equivalent to defining, for example, a clock as a device for telling time - regardless of past, present, or future functionality. That functionality, the ability to record and indicate the passage of time, is the essential part - you probably wouldn't buy a "clock" if it was missing that ability. Absent, say, a mainspring in a mechanical clock, the device may LOOK like a clock, and may be referred to as a "clock" - in name only, but it is no longer a clock - it no longer tells the time. It WAS a clock and may BECOME a clock again if it is repaired by reconnecting the mainspring. Devils are in the details.
But a couple of your other comments bear some elaboration as well. You also said, "A baby's sex is identifiable at birth and even before birth using U/S because he or she has secondary sex characteristics ...." Part and parcel of which is your later, "So the 'category' of male or female contains: gamete size, chromosome combination, secondary sex characteristics. Right?"
But "gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics" are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions. In large part because literally millions of species have very different chromosomes and secondary sex characteristics. See for example the Wikipedia article on sex-determination systems in other species - at least four different types, and see also an elaboration on the difference between accidental and essential:
Such proxies allow us to INFER a probable or eventual sex, but they are not guarantees of a particular sex because they only CORRELATE with the property that is the essential property of the biological definitions for the sexes. CAIS people for example are typically born with vaginas, but they also have internal, though non-functional testicles - will they be both males AND females because of "potential" abilities to produce sperm? One of the more or less "fatal flaws" in Heying's "definitions".
Though I apologize if my explanations are overly "complicated and opaque". But it is a very complicated and convoluted issue that I'm still struggling to get a solid handle on - very much a "work in progress". 🙂 Why I appreciate cogent comments and questions, like yours, that help to clarify some of those aspects. Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in my latest post which attempts to clarify some related details about categories and categorization:
PS. ISTM you are equivocating on the biological definitions. What you say in the above comment is different than what you posted on Heather's blog. The papers you posted on Heather's blog contain the following definitions:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
Not quite sure why you think I'm "equivocating on the biological definitions". Because I've said the following?
"But the biological definitions that you quoted - and those of Google/OD - stipulate that it is ONLY present functionality that determines membership in the sex categories - those individuals with past functionality or future functionality don't qualify."
But that IS the upshot and summary of all of the definitions I've quoted. They SAY only "produces gametes", period. And "produces" is present tense indefinite:
That tense denotes something that happens regularly, in the present, not in the future or in the past. There's absolutely NO indication at all in the many definitions I've quoted and linked to about past or future functionality, only present. To reprise the sources I had linked to:
But that's the bedrock difference between the standard biological definitions, and the rather unscientific set that Heying and Company are pushing as gospel truth.
As a further point, you might consider how definitions are created in the first place; see:
In general, intensional definitions - like those of biology - specify the conditions required for category membership, and if there aren't any other conditions there then they can't be said to grant any membership cards. For example, there's only one condition for being a teenager - being 13 to 19 inclusive. Period - no exceptions. No one can infer that, for example, because the definition doesn't say so it includes Chinese people who are 20 to 23.
I realize that all of the foregoing - and much of what I've said in other posts on the topic - might be considered as "academic", only of theoretical importance or value. But the whole transgender clusterfuck turns on the question of what are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" to qualify as male or female.
I just got off a Zoom meeting with some of my family - leftists generally - who seem to "think" that people can actually change their sexes, apparently because they "think" that turning a penis inside-out into something that looks, if one doesn't look too closely, like a vagina. But that view is hardly unique to them - it's ubiquitous, in fact.
Don't think we're going to resolve that transgender clusterfuck unless we're prepared to say exactly what are the requirements to qualify as male and female. And the only definitions that seem to make any sense at all are the biological ones - most certainly not those of Heying and Company.
QUOTE:Not quite sure why you think I'm "equivocating on the biological definitions"ENDQUOTE
This seems like equivocating:
QUOTE: But "gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics" are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions.ENDQUOTE
Perhaps that is the wrong word for it? First you quoted papers which used the word define(d) and definiition repeatedly regarding male, female, and gamete size. And then you argued against that definition which you proposed in the first place
From the papers:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
QUOTE: But 'gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics' are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions. ENDQUOTE"
My mistake, I guess, in not recognizing your comment about gamete size. Mea culpa; shoot me at dawn 🙂.
Though it's not just gamete size itself - both Heying's "definitions" and biological ones recognize there are different sizes in play. The more important point is that the gonads that produce those different gametes don't have to be functional in Heying's definitions whereas in the biological definitions the gonads do actually have to be functional to qualify the organism as male or female. The difference between night and day.
Moot exactly why the biological definitions should make actual functionality an essential element, but they do, for probably very solid reasons. For one thing, it makes a difference when one is talking about species that change sex, that change the type of gamete they produce over their lives. See:
That article apparently uses Heying's definitions, at least in effect, but they're obliged to differentiate between functional and non-functional males and females. They've basically turned each sex into a binary which I think is likely to cause any number of problems with terminology and descriptions.
There ARE reasons why categories are defined the way they are; it's not a free-for-all where anyone can pull any definition they want out of their nether regions - for often quite untenable or self-serving "reasons".
I did look at ^that post^ which is why I used your "categories" construct in my reply.
Please note regarding your CAIS objection to Heather's definition (had to google that acronym to decipher BTW):
Heather qualifies her definition with the following: "but for developmental or genetic anomalies" which covers the CAIS exception. "The exception proves the rule".
My babies were not probable nor eventual girls and boys. They were girls and boys; females and males; despite not being sexually mature. To claim otherwise seems dehumanizing to me. Sexual function is not a necessary prerequisite to being female, not even to being an adult female. There are infertile and postmenopausal adult human females/women
But that's really not how scientific definitions actually work - they generally specify "necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership"; they don't add a whole bunch of qualifications for different species or subcategories to deal with those who might be "offended" by being excluded - which seems to be Heying's objective.
And, as I've just indicated above in the link to extensional and intensional definitions, those "necessary and sufficient conditions" are generally part and parcel of such definitions. There are NO exceptions to the "rule" (i.e., definition) that all bachelors are unmarried men, no exceptions to the "rule" that ALL teenagers are 13 to 19, inclusive:
By definition those statements are true - like saying "all gliders are aircraft with no engines"; there are no exceptions to that statement either - you won't ever find a glider with an engine because if it has an engine then it's not a glider. See the Merriam-Webster definition for "by definition":
Likewise with males: "all males produce sperm (present tense indefinite)"; if they can't produce any then they're not males - no exceptions.
Gigi: "To claim otherwise seems dehumanizing to me. Sexual function is not a necessary prerequisite to being female ..."
Kinda think you too are trying to turn "male" and "female" into identities. That you're rejecting the biological definitions for that reason because they quite clearly specify that "sexual function" - i.e., actually being able to reproduce - and right now, not in the future and not in the past - is, in fact, "a necessary prerequisite" to being male or female.
But that "dehumanizing" is particularly "problematic" since it is more or less exactly what many transwomen, in particular, are saying because they too want to make the sexes into identities - even if with far less justification than many others who have some connection to biology, to reality. You might have some interest in an old essay at Quillette that underlined that perspective of theirs, this passage in particular:
"We need to acknowledge that debates that invalidate the existence of trans and non-binary people or dehumanize us based on gender are both a form of transphobia and gendered violence. There is no neutral way to demand that someone defend their very existence and their right to a safe school and work environment."
"male" and "female" - according to the biological definitions - are not identities; they're just labels for transitory reproductive abilities. Nobody is being "invalidated" if they're told that - as with most intersex - they don't qualify as either male or female. Would you feel "invalidated" if you were told that you were no longer a teenager? You probably wouldn't because you recognize membership in that category is dependent on being inside a range of ages; same thing with the biological definitions for "male" and "female" except membership is dependent on having functional gonads of either of two types.
But by those definitions, children aren't born as non-humans and then become human once they acquire a sex at puberty. Seems to qualify as some rather "fuzzy thinking" to "think" that someone being told that they're neither male nor female means that they've been "dehumanized", that been deprived of their membership card in the human race. Part and parcel of making the sexes into identities rather than accepting them as labels for transitory biological reproductive abilities.
To go back to your clock analogy. A clock is designed to tell time. While it may not be functioning in that manner at the moment, it remains a clock
Humans are designed as male and female. "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." The identification of males and females in the Bible includes children and "barren women" (ie not restricted to sexually functioning adults)
As far as the grammar of the verb used in the scientific paper you cited, I think you are putting too much weight on that. If you write to the author, I expect they did not mean to exclude children nor the impotent/infertile from being categorized as male and female.
Male and female ARE identities and have been recognized as such for millennia. Identity- The set of characteristics by which a person or thing is definitively recognizable or known.
I disagree with your premise that only the sexually mature and sexually functional should be recognized as male or female.
Gigi: "While it may not be functioning in that manner at the moment, it remains a clock ..."
Would you pay full price for a non-functioning "clock"? The ability to tell time is its essential element - absent that it's no more than a chunk of metal, a paperweight. Is Jenner a woman because he may look like one? There's an essential function to "woman" - to "female" in fact - that he simply doesn't have, and won't ever have, at least by the biological definitions.
Gigi: "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
Genesis 5:2. Expect that the Bible also says something about the Earth being 6000 years old and the center of the universe. I will quite readily concede that the Bible contains much that is "profound psychology and exquisite logic" - as some journalist once put it. But don't think it should be taken as the last word on science and biology.
Gigi: "Male and female ARE identities and have been recognized as such for millennia."
That's just an article of faith that conflicts rather profoundly with a scientific perspective. And I rather doubt the Bible says anything about "anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, - regardless of their past, present, or future functionality", particularly since gametes weren't discovered until the late 1800s. But it's also more or less the position of the transactivists. Not sure that you really want to be in the same boat with them.
Honestly Steersman, ISTM that your premise that children cannot be categorized as male nor female plays much more into the trans narrative than recognizing their maleness and femaleness and acknowledging that there are immutable aspects of being male or female.
You think maleness and femaleness are categories one moves in and out of depending upon sexual function. Trans think one can move in and out of them based on desire and access to medical modifications. You have more in common with trans ontology than mine (or Heather's)
Thanks for your comment. But I wonder, precisely what are your definitions for male and female, and for gender, particularly since you seem to think that "male" and "female" qualify as genders.
That's the major problem with the transgender clusterfuck - everyone and their dogs, cats, and gerbils has a different definition for the terms in play. We can't possibly agree on policy if we can't even agree on the definitions.
Which is largely why I'm championing the biological definitions as the only way off the horns of that dilemma. Try looking closely at them - all they say is that what is ESSENTIAL to having a sex is having functional gonads of either of two types. There's diddly-squat there about any personality traits or stereotypes - much less about past or future reproductive abilities.
Try considering an analogy with "teenager". What is ESSENTIAL is being 13 to 19 inclusive. It is immaterial whether a person is tall or short, fat or thin, introvert or extrovert, or white or black or brown or green with purple polka dots. If they're 13 to 19 then they can "wear the gang's colours", and if they ain't then they can't.
SAME thing with the sexes, at least going by the biological definitions which have to qualify as trump. The definitions are the starting point; too many seem to think they can make up their own - largely my "beef" with Heyeing and Company.
Yeah - a dearth of free speech certainly seems to characterize "the gender critical debate", even among those who should know better.
But I wonder about the details of your "censoring" as I have been likewise. Apart from "The Heying Incident" of course, I'd had a couple of comments deleted at GC News, and been banned for a month for my "crimes", though I think the "proprietor" has since seen the "error of his ways" 😉. You may wish to take a gander at some recent "spirited discussions" there on the topic 🙂:
And while I hadn't been banned or had any comments deleted at PITT (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans), it was clear from some discussions that some there see sex and gender as synonymous - sort of the religious perspective which may be evident from my above comments at GC News.
But quite agree with you about "'gender identity' is gender fantasy" - you might have some interest in an article in the Journal of Cultural Anthropology by Sahar Sadjadi:
"Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. .... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
Quite a complex issue that takes some effort to separate wheat and chaff. My "program" to do so is still very much a work in progress, but ICYMI you might be interested in my opening salvo which hopefully gives the beginnings of a useful outline of the problem:
Offhand, it seems like a lotta people have axes to grind. And some justification to include some at PITT and among the GCs & Radfems and LGBQ - absent the T who are pretty much entirely beyond the Pale.
Somewhat apropos of which an otherwise credible article at The Line, by a gay male, that while it made some credible criticisms of transgenderism was still trying to endorse the idea that people can change sex - intentionally or inadvertently:
Somewhat amused to note that my criticisms along that line apparently precipitated the closing of comments there - no one complains until it is their own oxen that are being gored ... 😉
Thanks for your comment - appreciate knowing you felt my own comment on Heying's Substack wasn't "personal and added to the discussion". Thought I might have been cutting too close to the bone - guess I still was, or at least too close for her comfort. Still maybe a (too-common) case of no one complains until it's their own ox that's being gored. Apropos of which, you in particular might enjoy a quote of Sinclair Lewis:
"The booster's enthusiasm is the motive force which builds up our American cities. Granted. But the hated knocker's jibes are the check necessary to guide that force. In summary then, we do not wish to knock the booster, but we certainly do wish to boost the knocker."
So, as you say, Heather has a right to "maintain a level of bodily integrity" for her site, but rather disconcerting to see her repudiate her own principles when challenged on her own articles of faith. Lot of that goin' round these days - your experiences at PITT being a case in point. I had several of my own comments deleted at GC News - an otherwise useful and informative Substack - because I had challenged the "central dogma" of its proprietor - i.e., sex is immutable. Many people don't seem to realize - or want to consider - that the "truth" of that conclusion is largely contingent on which premise, which axiom, which definition we start off from. And it is a matter of choice, though some definitions are more useful than others - methinks that that is at least close to the crux of the whole trans issue.
On which point your "sheer aghastness" and "bizarre" seems right on the money if not an understatement; "absolutely gobsmacked" - a British colloquialism 🙂 - is the way I often put it. But partly why I'm trying to delve into some possible philosophical roots of the problem - kind of stumbling around in the dark, learning as I go. Not sure if you're a fan of Woody Allen, but I think his "Zelig" speaks to part of the problem, though that's not an avenue I've pursued to any depth:
But, somewhat en passant, a "deviated septum" doesn't sound like a lot of fun. 🙂 Reminds me of my mother who, for the last couple of years of her life, had been on an oxygen tank; she had said that it was like trying to breathe through a straw. I'd left a comment on your Substack post on that and other topics, but just remembered that I had a link to a Lord Acton quote archive that you might not have run across:
In the same vein, I'd taken a look at the synopsis of your books on Amazon; was thinking I would probably download the Kindle versions. I've just finished re-reading Heinlein's "Door Into Summer" and C.J. Cherryh's "Gate of Ivrel" so yours would probably dovetail nicely with them. Sci-fi can often provide some remarkably cogent if sardonic insights - reminds me of a review of and a passage from "one of the best sci-fi novels written", Bester's "The Stars My Destination":
The review comments about "quant. suff.", "Arrival of the fittest is the doctrine of the Holy Darwin", and "the Sargasso Asteroid peopled by retarded and fixated descendants of a long-ago marooned team of scientists who go about chanting inherited pharmaceutical formulae with barbaric religious zeal” may have more than passing relevance these days ... 🙂
Right you are on the Acton link - maybe I thought the underline in the heading was only an underline and not a link.
As for "immutable", as I've said or suggested, there are and have been many definitions for "male" and "female" over the centuries. "female" used to mean "she who suckles" - by which Jenner & his ilk could qualify:
Or it could mean "has concave mating surfaces" - by which Jenner at least might qualify on that score as well.
In addition to which, there are many different sets of chromosomes in many different species that still have males & females; it's not the X & Y that are the criteria, only the types of gametes produced:
But there really are no intrinsic meanings to "male" and "female" - they can mean whatever we want them to. But it kinda helps if we're all on the same page, on the same sides of the road. Chaos and mayhem otherwise.
I am finding this and related discussions interesting but also at times frustrating and confusing. I am quite skeptical of many recent concepts such as, "Gender fluidity" and the like, as well as the idea that gender is a completely social construct, although all of these issues and the discussions surrounding them seem often times to be severely blurred (is gender purely a social construct, or is it also socially influenced? If so, to what degree?) I found your comments via the recent post by Heather Heying (or rather, remnants and references to your apparently deleted comments therein). I find I am in agreement with much of what I have read of yours on this topic so far; however, I am still left feeling somewhat confused as to why you feel the biologically-based definitions of sex you cite should apparently reign supreme? Although I agree that they are much more precise than the one proffered by Heying, they nevertheless seem to me to be flawed in that they appear overly restrictive, creating large groups of people who seemingly must fail to fall into either category - male or female, unless I am interpreting this incorrectly.
As I understand it, the definitions of male and female sex you champion are strictly and narrowly defined based upon (1) the ability to produce gametes and (2) the relative size and perhaps also mobility status, of those gametes. Is that correct?
What Heying seems to be doing with her definitions is to broaden this in order to allow for inclusion of individuals who may, for instance, have lost their previous ability to produce said gametes. For instance, if an adult male who fits the definition you champion develops normally to adulthood, but then develops testicular cancer and then undergoes bilateral orchiectomy - or one who is a victim of some horrible accident that included his castration - would such a person suddenly now no longer be considered "male"? Similarly for female ovarian cancer patients or postmenopausal females, how then are they to be categorized? Do they go in an instant from having a sex to now being sexless?
It seems to me that, although inelegant and rather clunky, Heying's broadened definition allows one to retain their status as either male or female in such situations, which seems to me to be eminently reasonable.
Thanks for your comment -- and for your subscription. 🙂 Most appreciated.
But quite agree with your "severely blurred" comment relative to gender; more than a bit of justification to argue that gender -- as a rough synonym for personalities -- is at least partly the result of bedrock differences in biology between men and women: nature AND nurture. You might have some interest in my further elaborations of that theme 🙂:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/i/64264079/rationalized-gender
Alan: "... feeling somewhat confused as to why you feel the biologically-based definitions of sex you cite should apparently reign supreme?"
Very good question, well-phrased; the one of the hour in fact. The short answer -- referencing your later "relative size and mobility status of those gametes" -- is more or less neatly summarized by this passage from the Wikipedia article on anisogamy:
"Although its evolution has left no fossil records, it is generally accepted that anisogamy evolved from isogamy and that it has evolved independently in several groups of eukaryotes including protists, algae, plants and animals. According to John Avise anisogamy probably originated around the same time sexual reproduction and multicellularity occurred, over 1 billion years ago."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy#Evolution
The existence of those two types of gametes is close to those bedrock differences in biology that extend back over a rather long period of evolutionary history, not just of humans but of many species. Maybe moot exactly how those differences have affected various behavioural differences between the sexes, though many biologists provide credible evidence and justification for the argument that they have. For examples, see the following; while I can't say that I've read them all to any depth, the summaries are still illuminating:
"Why anisogamy drives ancestral sex roles:
Here, we develop mathematical models that validate the intuition of Darwin and Bateman, showing that there is a very simple and general reason why unequal gamete numbers result in unequal investment in sexually competitive traits. "
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27110661/
And:
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes:
The ancestral divergence and maintenance of gamete sizes subsequently led to many other differences we now observe between the two sexes, sowing the seeds for what we have become."
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
You might also be interested in knowing that the second article is increasingly popular, particularly on Twitter:
https://oxfordjournals.altmetric.com/details/2802153/twitter
Although I kind of doubt that all of those championing it have taken a close look at the definitions for "male" and "female" in the Glossary there -- which say diddly-squat about the "developmental pathways" and "anatomies of past, present, or future functionality" that Heying, Hilton, and Wright have been peddling.
In any case, while I have some sympathy for "Heying's broadened definition", at least apart from its apparent and quite unscientific objective of putting feelings before facts, the greater problem is that it's generally the proverbial thin edge of the wedge to forcing open the door to the sexes as spectra. For example, see this "Nitterized" tweet sequence -- you don't need Twitter to read them -- that leads to the tweet of that second article on "Gamete competition":
https://nitter.it/Phildidgee/status/1585519695997943808#m
We kind of have to draw a line in the sand, and those biological definitions seem like the last line of defense; our backs are to the wall. And in large part because the corruption of them by Heying and company causes any number of rather serious problems when they're applied to other species, particularly those that, like clownfish, actually change sex over their lives.
You might also be interested in a "debate" that I'm having on that topic over at the International Skeptics Forum, a debate you may wish to weigh-in on ... 😉:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=361531&page=7
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=13920219&postcount=243
Thank you for your interesting and thorough response. I must say that I am impressed by the depth and intelligence displayed here - very uncharacteristic of what I personally am accustomed to seeing in posts in similar forums. Perhaps I just haven't been searching and/or reading on the web broadly enough, but I strongly suspect that (sadly) this is not the reason. I hope you don't mind my asking, but what, if anything, do you do professionally, and what is motivating you to spend, what seems to me, significant time posting and responding to queries and forum dialog? I myself am a university professor and basic cancer researcher, and I feel it would take an inordinate amount of my time if I were to craft posts of the type you are posting! Along these lines, I also found - and now even more so find - the comments of Heying and Co. suspecting you to be some sort of AI construct bizarre and ridiculous. Either that, or I am woefully underestimating what is possible in the field of human mimicry!!
Thanks muchly for the compliments; most appreciated 🙂.
To answer at least some of your questions, I'm a retired electronics technologist - probably equivalent to a two year associates degree in the US. And I'm very interested in how and people think the way they do, and think, on the basis of some evidence and other sources, that the system of social dialogue is, as I think Scott Alexander (Slate Star Codex) put it, "very badly broken in a way that may doom us all". And think I may have some information and background that may help to rectify that problem.
My About, and article on Wikipedia's Lysenkoism may provide some additional elaboration.
Re "university professor & cancer researcher", if you're so inclined, do drop me a line through the Substack email address that you have for me if you've received a post since subscribing, or I can send you my email address if not.
I can't comment on Heather's blog because I am not a paid subscriber but I don't understand how exactly you disagree with her? Here are quotes from two of the papers you posted:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
How is that different than what Heather says?
"Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen)." -Heather Heying
My initial assumption when you opened your comment on Heather's blog by denying that a baby's sex is identifiable was was that you are a TRA who has bought into the whole woke "fluidity" narrative. After looking through a couple of your blogs I see that is not accurate. But your arguments are very complicated and opaque. I still don't understand where you stand. Heather's essay was very simple and clear.
A baby's sex is identifiable at birth and even before birth using U/S because he or she has secondary sex characteristics of the genitalia which indicate whether he or she will produce eggs (large gametes), or sperm (small gametes) (unless the baby has "developmental or genetic anomalies" as Heying noted). The doctor, mother, father, u/s tech are not "assigning" or "guessing", they are observing the evidence.
The immutable genes (XX and XY) are not observable with the naked eye, nor are the gametes, but the secondary sex characteristics are an observable and reliable indicator.
So the "category" of male or female contains: gamete size, chromosome combination, secondary sex characteristics. Right?
Thank you for a thought provoking interaction. To state concisely, your premise seems to be that only the sexually mature and sexually functional should be recognized as male or female.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Thanks also to you for engaging with the issue - rather rare.
Though don't think it's just "my" premise about only the sexually functional being "recognized as male or female"; think it's pretty clear that that is exactly what the commonly accepted biological definitions specify and lead to.
But somewhat more broadly, I think my point is that, basically, there's no intrinsic meaning to "male" and "female" - decidedly contrary to Heying's rather dogmatic position. Given that "fact", I think that the issue is then a question of reaching some sort of consensus on what the terms should mean. Don't think we can really progress to agreement on policy if we can't even agree on what those words mean.
But whatever else we agree to disagree on, it seems that we - pretty much everyone - is going to agree that those with functional gonads are substantially more likely to be able to reproduce than those without them. How we integrate that fact into the definitions we agree on is maybe moot. But seems rather remarkably "unwise" to not recognize that rather brute fact, and to not make it an essential part of whatever definitions we do agree on.
Thank you for your comment, and for some very cogent and relevant questions. Thanks too for the intellectual honesty implicit in your "looking through a couple of your blogs I see that is not accurate" - honesty that is particularly noteworthy and commendable for being so rare these days. 🙂
Apropos of that honesty - or rather the too-common absence of it, I see that Heather has just terminated my subscription there and deleted one of my comments. A comment which I'll repost here later for the sake of posterity. Though she at least refunded a portion of my subscription.
But to try to do justice to your questions and to start with, you asked, "How is that different than what Heather says?" And the crux of the matter, the salient difference is that Heying's definitions encompass or include past, present, and future functionality as defining or essential criteria - which is underlined by the tweet that I had linked to:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
That is what their letter stipulated as their definition:
"Individuals that have developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, - regardless of their past, present, or future functionality - are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
But the biological definitions that you quoted - and those of Google/OD - stipulate that it is ONLY present functionality that determines membership in the sex categories - those individuals with past functionality or future functionality don't qualify.
Her definitions, and those of Hilton & Wright, are more or less equivalent to defining, for example, a clock as a device for telling time - regardless of past, present, or future functionality. That functionality, the ability to record and indicate the passage of time, is the essential part - you probably wouldn't buy a "clock" if it was missing that ability. Absent, say, a mainspring in a mechanical clock, the device may LOOK like a clock, and may be referred to as a "clock" - in name only, but it is no longer a clock - it no longer tells the time. It WAS a clock and may BECOME a clock again if it is repaired by reconnecting the mainspring. Devils are in the details.
But a couple of your other comments bear some elaboration as well. You also said, "A baby's sex is identifiable at birth and even before birth using U/S because he or she has secondary sex characteristics ...." Part and parcel of which is your later, "So the 'category' of male or female contains: gamete size, chromosome combination, secondary sex characteristics. Right?"
But "gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics" are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions. In large part because literally millions of species have very different chromosomes and secondary sex characteristics. See for example the Wikipedia article on sex-determination systems in other species - at least four different types, and see also an elaboration on the difference between accidental and essential:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
The objective of the biological definitions is to cover as many species as possible, not to elaborate on all of the differences between them.
A further point is that "genitalia at birth" - what I object to in Heying's claim - are what are called proxies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
Such proxies allow us to INFER a probable or eventual sex, but they are not guarantees of a particular sex because they only CORRELATE with the property that is the essential property of the biological definitions for the sexes. CAIS people for example are typically born with vaginas, but they also have internal, though non-functional testicles - will they be both males AND females because of "potential" abilities to produce sperm? One of the more or less "fatal flaws" in Heying's "definitions".
Though I apologize if my explanations are overly "complicated and opaque". But it is a very complicated and convoluted issue that I'm still struggling to get a solid handle on - very much a "work in progress". 🙂 Why I appreciate cogent comments and questions, like yours, that help to clarify some of those aspects. Somewhat apropos of which, you might have some interest in my latest post which attempts to clarify some related details about categories and categorization:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
PS. ISTM you are equivocating on the biological definitions. What you say in the above comment is different than what you posted on Heather's blog. The papers you posted on Heather's blog contain the following definitions:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
Not quite sure why you think I'm "equivocating on the biological definitions". Because I've said the following?
"But the biological definitions that you quoted - and those of Google/OD - stipulate that it is ONLY present functionality that determines membership in the sex categories - those individuals with past functionality or future functionality don't qualify."
But that IS the upshot and summary of all of the definitions I've quoted. They SAY only "produces gametes", period. And "produces" is present tense indefinite:
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/simple-present/
That tense denotes something that happens regularly, in the present, not in the future or in the past. There's absolutely NO indication at all in the many definitions I've quoted and linked to about past or future functionality, only present. To reprise the sources I had linked to:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022519372900070
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
But that's the bedrock difference between the standard biological definitions, and the rather unscientific set that Heying and Company are pushing as gospel truth.
As a further point, you might consider how definitions are created in the first place; see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
In general, intensional definitions - like those of biology - specify the conditions required for category membership, and if there aren't any other conditions there then they can't be said to grant any membership cards. For example, there's only one condition for being a teenager - being 13 to 19 inclusive. Period - no exceptions. No one can infer that, for example, because the definition doesn't say so it includes Chinese people who are 20 to 23.
I realize that all of the foregoing - and much of what I've said in other posts on the topic - might be considered as "academic", only of theoretical importance or value. But the whole transgender clusterfuck turns on the question of what are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" to qualify as male or female.
I just got off a Zoom meeting with some of my family - leftists generally - who seem to "think" that people can actually change their sexes, apparently because they "think" that turning a penis inside-out into something that looks, if one doesn't look too closely, like a vagina. But that view is hardly unique to them - it's ubiquitous, in fact.
Don't think we're going to resolve that transgender clusterfuck unless we're prepared to say exactly what are the requirements to qualify as male and female. And the only definitions that seem to make any sense at all are the biological ones - most certainly not those of Heying and Company.
QUOTE:Not quite sure why you think I'm "equivocating on the biological definitions"ENDQUOTE
This seems like equivocating:
QUOTE: But "gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics" are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions.ENDQUOTE
Perhaps that is the wrong word for it? First you quoted papers which used the word define(d) and definiition repeatedly regarding male, female, and gamete size. And then you argued against that definition which you proposed in the first place
From the papers:
"Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males"
"Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm)"
Gigi: "This seems like equivocating:
QUOTE: But 'gamete size, chromosomes, and secondary sex characteristics' are no part of the standard biological definitions - they are not ESSENTIAL, only "accidental" parts of those definitions. ENDQUOTE"
My mistake, I guess, in not recognizing your comment about gamete size. Mea culpa; shoot me at dawn 🙂.
Though it's not just gamete size itself - both Heying's "definitions" and biological ones recognize there are different sizes in play. The more important point is that the gonads that produce those different gametes don't have to be functional in Heying's definitions whereas in the biological definitions the gonads do actually have to be functional to qualify the organism as male or female. The difference between night and day.
Moot exactly why the biological definitions should make actual functionality an essential element, but they do, for probably very solid reasons. For one thing, it makes a difference when one is talking about species that change sex, that change the type of gamete they produce over their lives. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
That article apparently uses Heying's definitions, at least in effect, but they're obliged to differentiate between functional and non-functional males and females. They've basically turned each sex into a binary which I think is likely to cause any number of problems with terminology and descriptions.
There ARE reasons why categories are defined the way they are; it's not a free-for-all where anyone can pull any definition they want out of their nether regions - for often quite untenable or self-serving "reasons".
I did look at ^that post^ which is why I used your "categories" construct in my reply.
Please note regarding your CAIS objection to Heather's definition (had to google that acronym to decipher BTW):
Heather qualifies her definition with the following: "but for developmental or genetic anomalies" which covers the CAIS exception. "The exception proves the rule".
My babies were not probable nor eventual girls and boys. They were girls and boys; females and males; despite not being sexually mature. To claim otherwise seems dehumanizing to me. Sexual function is not a necessary prerequisite to being female, not even to being an adult female. There are infertile and postmenopausal adult human females/women
Sure, Heather CAN qualify her definitions.
But that's really not how scientific definitions actually work - they generally specify "necessary and sufficient conditions for category membership"; they don't add a whole bunch of qualifications for different species or subcategories to deal with those who might be "offended" by being excluded - which seems to be Heying's objective.
And, as I've just indicated above in the link to extensional and intensional definitions, those "necessary and sufficient conditions" are generally part and parcel of such definitions. There are NO exceptions to the "rule" (i.e., definition) that all bachelors are unmarried men, no exceptions to the "rule" that ALL teenagers are 13 to 19, inclusive:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
By definition those statements are true - like saying "all gliders are aircraft with no engines"; there are no exceptions to that statement either - you won't ever find a glider with an engine because if it has an engine then it's not a glider. See the Merriam-Webster definition for "by definition":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/by%20definition
Likewise with males: "all males produce sperm (present tense indefinite)"; if they can't produce any then they're not males - no exceptions.
Gigi: "To claim otherwise seems dehumanizing to me. Sexual function is not a necessary prerequisite to being female ..."
Kinda think you too are trying to turn "male" and "female" into identities. That you're rejecting the biological definitions for that reason because they quite clearly specify that "sexual function" - i.e., actually being able to reproduce - and right now, not in the future and not in the past - is, in fact, "a necessary prerequisite" to being male or female.
But that "dehumanizing" is particularly "problematic" since it is more or less exactly what many transwomen, in particular, are saying because they too want to make the sexes into identities - even if with far less justification than many others who have some connection to biology, to reality. You might have some interest in an old essay at Quillette that underlined that perspective of theirs, this passage in particular:
"We need to acknowledge that debates that invalidate the existence of trans and non-binary people or dehumanize us based on gender are both a form of transphobia and gendered violence. There is no neutral way to demand that someone defend their very existence and their right to a safe school and work environment."
https://quillette.com/2017/12/13/words-lose-meaning-wilfrid-laurier-university/
"male" and "female" - according to the biological definitions - are not identities; they're just labels for transitory reproductive abilities. Nobody is being "invalidated" if they're told that - as with most intersex - they don't qualify as either male or female. Would you feel "invalidated" if you were told that you were no longer a teenager? You probably wouldn't because you recognize membership in that category is dependent on being inside a range of ages; same thing with the biological definitions for "male" and "female" except membership is dependent on having functional gonads of either of two types.
But by those definitions, children aren't born as non-humans and then become human once they acquire a sex at puberty. Seems to qualify as some rather "fuzzy thinking" to "think" that someone being told that they're neither male nor female means that they've been "dehumanized", that been deprived of their membership card in the human race. Part and parcel of making the sexes into identities rather than accepting them as labels for transitory biological reproductive abilities.
Some random thoughts...
To go back to your clock analogy. A clock is designed to tell time. While it may not be functioning in that manner at the moment, it remains a clock
Humans are designed as male and female. "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." The identification of males and females in the Bible includes children and "barren women" (ie not restricted to sexually functioning adults)
As far as the grammar of the verb used in the scientific paper you cited, I think you are putting too much weight on that. If you write to the author, I expect they did not mean to exclude children nor the impotent/infertile from being categorized as male and female.
Male and female ARE identities and have been recognized as such for millennia. Identity- The set of characteristics by which a person or thing is definitively recognizable or known.
I disagree with your premise that only the sexually mature and sexually functional should be recognized as male or female.
Gigi: "While it may not be functioning in that manner at the moment, it remains a clock ..."
Would you pay full price for a non-functioning "clock"? The ability to tell time is its essential element - absent that it's no more than a chunk of metal, a paperweight. Is Jenner a woman because he may look like one? There's an essential function to "woman" - to "female" in fact - that he simply doesn't have, and won't ever have, at least by the biological definitions.
Gigi: "So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
Genesis 5:2. Expect that the Bible also says something about the Earth being 6000 years old and the center of the universe. I will quite readily concede that the Bible contains much that is "profound psychology and exquisite logic" - as some journalist once put it. But don't think it should be taken as the last word on science and biology.
Gigi: "Male and female ARE identities and have been recognized as such for millennia."
That's just an article of faith that conflicts rather profoundly with a scientific perspective. And I rather doubt the Bible says anything about "anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, - regardless of their past, present, or future functionality", particularly since gametes weren't discovered until the late 1800s. But it's also more or less the position of the transactivists. Not sure that you really want to be in the same boat with them.
Honestly Steersman, ISTM that your premise that children cannot be categorized as male nor female plays much more into the trans narrative than recognizing their maleness and femaleness and acknowledging that there are immutable aspects of being male or female.
You think maleness and femaleness are categories one moves in and out of depending upon sexual function. Trans think one can move in and out of them based on desire and access to medical modifications. You have more in common with trans ontology than mine (or Heather's)
Thanks for your comment. But I wonder, precisely what are your definitions for male and female, and for gender, particularly since you seem to think that "male" and "female" qualify as genders.
That's the major problem with the transgender clusterfuck - everyone and their dogs, cats, and gerbils has a different definition for the terms in play. We can't possibly agree on policy if we can't even agree on the definitions.
Which is largely why I'm championing the biological definitions as the only way off the horns of that dilemma. Try looking closely at them - all they say is that what is ESSENTIAL to having a sex is having functional gonads of either of two types. There's diddly-squat there about any personality traits or stereotypes - much less about past or future reproductive abilities.
Try considering an analogy with "teenager". What is ESSENTIAL is being 13 to 19 inclusive. It is immaterial whether a person is tall or short, fat or thin, introvert or extrovert, or white or black or brown or green with purple polka dots. If they're 13 to 19 then they can "wear the gang's colours", and if they ain't then they can't.
SAME thing with the sexes, at least going by the biological definitions which have to qualify as trump. The definitions are the starting point; too many seem to think they can make up their own - largely my "beef" with Heyeing and Company.
Yeah - a dearth of free speech certainly seems to characterize "the gender critical debate", even among those who should know better.
But I wonder about the details of your "censoring" as I have been likewise. Apart from "The Heying Incident" of course, I'd had a couple of comments deleted at GC News, and been banned for a month for my "crimes", though I think the "proprietor" has since seen the "error of his ways" 😉. You may wish to take a gander at some recent "spirited discussions" there on the topic 🙂:
https://gcnews.substack.com/p/friday-september-9-2022/comment/8971002
And while I hadn't been banned or had any comments deleted at PITT (Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans), it was clear from some discussions that some there see sex and gender as synonymous - sort of the religious perspective which may be evident from my above comments at GC News.
But quite agree with you about "'gender identity' is gender fantasy" - you might have some interest in an article in the Journal of Cultural Anthropology by Sahar Sadjadi:
"Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. .... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/3728/430
Quite a complex issue that takes some effort to separate wheat and chaff. My "program" to do so is still very much a work in progress, but ICYMI you might be interested in my opening salvo which hopefully gives the beginnings of a useful outline of the problem:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome
Clearly I've touched a nerve ... 😉
Did a Google of YU and will have to look into it a bit further before commenting:
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-courts-sotomayor-lets-yeshiva-university-prohibit-lgbt-student-club-2022-09-09/
Offhand, it seems like a lotta people have axes to grind. And some justification to include some at PITT and among the GCs & Radfems and LGBQ - absent the T who are pretty much entirely beyond the Pale.
Somewhat apropos of which an otherwise credible article at The Line, by a gay male, that while it made some credible criticisms of transgenderism was still trying to endorse the idea that people can change sex - intentionally or inadvertently:
https://theline.substack.com/p/allan-stratton-a-call-for-nuance/comment/8719065
https://theline.substack.com/p/allan-stratton-a-call-for-nuance/comment/8766006
Somewhat amused to note that my criticisms along that line apparently precipitated the closing of comments there - no one complains until it is their own oxen that are being gored ... 😉
Thanks for your comment - appreciate knowing you felt my own comment on Heying's Substack wasn't "personal and added to the discussion". Thought I might have been cutting too close to the bone - guess I still was, or at least too close for her comfort. Still maybe a (too-common) case of no one complains until it's their own ox that's being gored. Apropos of which, you in particular might enjoy a quote of Sinclair Lewis:
"The booster's enthusiasm is the motive force which builds up our American cities. Granted. But the hated knocker's jibes are the check necessary to guide that force. In summary then, we do not wish to knock the booster, but we certainly do wish to boost the knocker."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boosterism
So, as you say, Heather has a right to "maintain a level of bodily integrity" for her site, but rather disconcerting to see her repudiate her own principles when challenged on her own articles of faith. Lot of that goin' round these days - your experiences at PITT being a case in point. I had several of my own comments deleted at GC News - an otherwise useful and informative Substack - because I had challenged the "central dogma" of its proprietor - i.e., sex is immutable. Many people don't seem to realize - or want to consider - that the "truth" of that conclusion is largely contingent on which premise, which axiom, which definition we start off from. And it is a matter of choice, though some definitions are more useful than others - methinks that that is at least close to the crux of the whole trans issue.
On which point your "sheer aghastness" and "bizarre" seems right on the money if not an understatement; "absolutely gobsmacked" - a British colloquialism 🙂 - is the way I often put it. But partly why I'm trying to delve into some possible philosophical roots of the problem - kind of stumbling around in the dark, learning as I go. Not sure if you're a fan of Woody Allen, but I think his "Zelig" speaks to part of the problem, though that's not an avenue I've pursued to any depth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelig
But, somewhat en passant, a "deviated septum" doesn't sound like a lot of fun. 🙂 Reminds me of my mother who, for the last couple of years of her life, had been on an oxygen tank; she had said that it was like trying to breathe through a straw. I'd left a comment on your Substack post on that and other topics, but just remembered that I had a link to a Lord Acton quote archive that you might not have run across:
https://www.acton.org/research/lord-acton-quote-archive
In the same vein, I'd taken a look at the synopsis of your books on Amazon; was thinking I would probably download the Kindle versions. I've just finished re-reading Heinlein's "Door Into Summer" and C.J. Cherryh's "Gate of Ivrel" so yours would probably dovetail nicely with them. Sci-fi can often provide some remarkably cogent if sardonic insights - reminds me of a review of and a passage from "one of the best sci-fi novels written", Bester's "The Stars My Destination":
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.0022-3840.1979.1204_604.x
The review comments about "quant. suff.", "Arrival of the fittest is the doctrine of the Holy Darwin", and "the Sargasso Asteroid peopled by retarded and fixated descendants of a long-ago marooned team of scientists who go about chanting inherited pharmaceutical formulae with barbaric religious zeal” may have more than passing relevance these days ... 🙂
Right you are on the Acton link - maybe I thought the underline in the heading was only an underline and not a link.
As for "immutable", as I've said or suggested, there are and have been many definitions for "male" and "female" over the centuries. "female" used to mean "she who suckles" - by which Jenner & his ilk could qualify:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/female#etymonline_v_5841
Or it could mean "has concave mating surfaces" - by which Jenner at least might qualify on that score as well.
In addition to which, there are many different sets of chromosomes in many different species that still have males & females; it's not the X & Y that are the criteria, only the types of gametes produced:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
But there really are no intrinsic meanings to "male" and "female" - they can mean whatever we want them to. But it kinda helps if we're all on the same page, on the same sides of the road. Chaos and mayhem otherwise.