Thanks for your comment and Restack. And for the subscription. 🙂
But the Y chromosome isn't "definitive" -- i.e., isn't "serving to define or specify precisely". It's just more or less a "harbinger": "something that foreshadows a future event : something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come; robins, crocuses, and other harbingers of spring":
The Y chromosome -- at least in babies -- is just an "anticipatory sign of what is [likely] to come", i.e., testicles that don't become fully functional until the onset of puberty.
In addition to which, the Y chromosome only works in some species since many others don't use the same chromosomes, or even the same mechanism yet they still have males and females:
The issue or problem is exactly which traits are common to ALL males and ALL females of ALL sexually reproducing species -- literally millions of them -- and that serves to uniquely define those categories. And, as I had indicated in my post, those criteria are whether one produces large or small gametes:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
Hope that clarifies things. Bit of a complicated issue, but starting with the definitions seems the only way forward, the only way out of the rather toxic & mephitic swamp created by transgender ideologues and their useful/useless idiots and fellow travelers.
Substack offers no control over the order in which responses appear. Ask an eight year old to explain it. Then tell him he’s sexLESS because his testicles haven’t dropped yet.
You can't even understand the definition that you so passionately bludgeon about.
The *phenotype* that produces gametes. It does not say that maleness is only satisfied during the part of life when gametes are produced, nor does it say that this definition varies from one individual to another.
"In genetics, the phenotype (from Ancient Greek φαίνω (phaínō) 'to appear, show, shine', and τύπος (túpos) 'mark, type') is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior."
What you appear to be arguing -- particularly since you're clearly incapable, being charitable, of specifying criteria that qualify individual organisms as male or female -- is that there is some magical, ethereal, unquantifiable essence that does that trick of qualification: essentialism, by the look of it. Not a particularly tenable position to take for any number of reasons:
But that "magical, ethereal, unquantifiable essence" seems to be exactly what many transactivists are arguing in claiming that transwomen are actually females. Maybe you're a closet TRA? 🙄
It's the quantifiable criteria for sex category membership that unhorses those TRAs. Criteria which you seem desperate to avoid accepting. Apparently because you -- and far too many others -- have turned "male" & "female" into "immutable identities 🙄" based on "mythic essences" instead of accepting the words as labels denoting quite transitory reproductive abilities.
Your own hallowed definition doesn’t back you at all so you throw a hissy.
Please accept a virtual hanky, dipshiit.
Male and female mean what they always have. But maybe if you post the Bacon quote a few more times and toss in some more sneer quotes you’ll wake up to a world that thinks you’re smart.
It’s you who can’t distinguish opinion from fact. You have your own take on what male and female mean that you shoehorn into discussions with an absolutely pathetic level of competitiveness.
"I think, therefore I am" was probably the best encapsulation of the idiocies a navel-gazing species can get up to.
But maybe my favorite and all-purpose quote ever is "Too many notes," and just swap out one word and we got every current argument on this nonsense nailed flat to the wall.
Maybe I don't know nuthin', but I know what men and women are and aren't. I remember watching a race and knowing from all the way as far back as my TV screen that Caster Semenya was a guy.
We need to start using "no" a lot more in public discourse, and face-to-face with every crazy or deadly purposeful activist and acolytes thereof, instead of doing what even you, here, do quite well--trying to answer them with too many words that they in turn can wriggle under and through.
I know what men and women are, and boys and girls. Someone who thinks they don't? Fuck off, in as many unpleasurable ways as the human mind can devise, and pardon my good healthy Anglo-Saxon means of retort to 'em.
If I'd had more time I might have been able to shorten my "epistle" ... 😉
I can sympathize but we simply have to say what we mean by various words for the categories in question. If it's just a matter of "feelinz", a matter of subjectivity then we're all screwed. One of Carol's more or less credible criticisms of gender ideology -- you might try looking for that bit of "wheat" in her (50-odd minutes of) "chaff". 🙂
Sure, we KNOW there are many "two types" -- penises & vaginas, XXs & XYs, ovaries & testicles, introverts & extroverts, etc. etc. The question is, what names will we attach to those binaries and their multitudinous combinations?
We have to draw a line in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may -- regardless of who's "offended".
I don't know you in real life of course, but you seem to have one of those interesting minds that can't resist going everywhere and anywhere and taking a word or phrase or concept by the neck and squeezing out every last drop of living possibility of examination, interpretation and refutation, but I myself ain't quite such an intellectual titan (and I mean that honestly and not with any mal-intent) so I'll stick to simpler discourse. Here's the first of three tweets I just tweeted:
dealing with the subject, and I think allowing these morons and their willing or unwilling minions and acolytes to make of this anything other than what I've laid out is absolutely conceding the field of war and this to our very great near-term cost.
Long-term everything goes back to basics; this is a self-culling or forced culling by sick parents and/or profiteers of those who, I guess, are best not reproducing anyway.
But it will certainly change the terrain for generations to come. Those who can ill-afford to give up a potentially-breeding offspring will have lost and those who've got a spare offspring or two to go off the deep end will win. More conservative cultures will dominate not necessarily through any strength of their philosophies of life but just through surviving numbers. It ain't gonna be no transhumanist future.
Thanks for the compliment, though bit of a mixed blessing -- "The lighter side of OCD and ADHD" .... 😉
But "jaw, jaw" is better than "war, war"; "thinking is better" as you put it. 🙂 I'd "Like" your tweets except I've been suspended by the Tranish Inquisition and their henchmen at Twitter, though maybe some changes in the wind.
Not sure which NYTimes article Singal is referring to but a recent Substack & Quillette article (archived) by Bernard Lane suggests some changes there as well:
Sympathize with your suggestion that many of the transgendered shouldn't be in the gene-pool in the first place, but still a lot of unnecessary grief and animosity being created. Apart from the pervasive rot produced in many of our so-called educational and scientific institutions -- which is arguably the bigger crime.
But, unfortunately or not, there seems to be no end of devils in the details -- don't think that ignoring them or trying to sweep them under the carpet is going to put an end to the problems they're causing.
Well, I'm not a eugenicist and I know well that if one manages to survive the terrible anguishes of one's youth despite one's best attempts not to, one can by the great beneficence of an inexplicable Cosmos might bring a far more worthy successor than oneself into the world. Sometimes we don't grow up until well into purported adulthood and I've no grounds to look scornfully on those whose various idiocies left them with irrevocable harm.
So it wasn't a cold-blooded statement but what I think is a realistic one. There's terrible harm done in the world when parents are incompetent and the equally incompetent manage to anoint themselves in loco parentis.
I agree entirely with your final paragraph. That's why I post on Twitter about this when I have something I hope will be useful to say. We quite often do profit from the words of strangers, don't we?
I'm lucky to have "survived" my youth and early, even later, adulthood -- more or less. I could easily have been at least an "honorable mention" in the Darwin Awards -- several times over. 🙂
But quite agree with "words of strangers" -- conversation, discussion, and debate is, maybe arguably, our claim to fame and fortune. Why I'm so "peeved" at those who try to poison that well, to circumscribe or limit that. ICYMI, decent article on the topic over at Glinner's "salon":
As for "something useful to say" ... 😉, I might suggest tweeting a link to the article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction that I've been trying to promote:
I don't want you to stick your neck out further than you're comfortable with, but if you wanted to throw the fox in amongst the chickens, you might quote the definitions for "male" and "female" from its Glossary, and point out that the logical conclusion is that many members of many species are in fact sexless ... 😉
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
This debate has lasted too long, I think. I don’t think it’s ever going to be solved simply by discussing precise definitions of the terms. Sometimes, people are just going to see things differently. We still can find common ground on the big issue.
Though relative to your comment, I can't say that I've read much of any of those "philosophers" so can't comment in any depth. But while there seems to be some credible arguments that they contributed to some general rot of society, I also get the impression that they have a point or two, notably that words, or more importantly their definitions, are, in fact, "socially constructed". As I like to emphasize, particularly since many seem unclear on the concept, Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt Sinai on tablets A through Z: NO definitions qualify as gospel truth bearing the imprimatur or signature of Jehovah -- Himself.
But I think that where they, or their followers, went off the rails and into the weeds was in concluding that all definitions are created equal, that there aren't any real, tangible, and objective correlates to the better or best of them.
Bit of a puzzle how we go about choosing or creating those definitions, though it seems important, if not essential, to take that bull by the horns. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in my essay on "What is a woman?" 🙂
Somewhat more broadly, ran across a quote, at Quote Fancy, that seems particularly relevant - to that post of mine and to many related issues:
" 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
Quite agree with you on "lasted too long". And that largely because pretty much everyone -- except for me & thee of course ...😉 -- has their hands stuck in the proverbial monkey trap:
However, I'm not sure how else you think we can resolve this issue -- any issue for that matter -- when the combatants are working from entirely different definitions if we can't agree on those definitions in the first place or if people refuse to address the principles behind them.
Apropos of which, skimmed your turtle post (all the way down ...) and while I think you make some good points, I still think, with all due respect Frederick, that you're barking up the wrong tree in many other areas. In particular, you might take a gander at the SEP article on accidental and essential properties, even the opening paragraph or two:
For example, you say that "vertebrate animals ... have been characterized as having just one head." But the "essential" property for "vertebrate" is "has a spine" while the number of heads is an "accidental" property of the category "vertebrate". It's immaterial how many heads a vertebrate has -- if it has a spine then it's a vertebrate, period. Extra heads by themselves doesn't change the membership in the "vertebrate" category -- nor, in all probability, in the "turtle species" category. See my "What is a woman?" post for a few details.
Similarly, you ask, "... is a person with four X chromosomes a unique sex, or a female with a biological anomaly?" But the "essential" property of "female" -- shared by large numbers of all sexually-reproducing (anisogamous) species -- is "produces [present tense indefinite] ova", while the number of chromosomes and type -- as you know, other species have different types & combinations -- is an "accidental" property. That's the benefit of those biological definitions -- they maximize the coverage and application of them by restricting or limiting the membership criteria.
There ARE some principles on how and why we create, define, and use various categories -- which I'm still struggling to get a better handle on. But failing to take due care and cognizance of those principles just tends to muddy the waters beyond any possible clarification of the issues they pertain to.
You may wish to take a gander at the Wikipedia article on extensional and intensional definitions, this passage in particular:
"An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
Having a spine is the necessary & sufficient condition to being in the "vertebrate" category, as having functional ovaries is the necessary & sufficient condition to being in the "female" category. Not quite sure how and why so many people balk at what seems a rather simple though quite useful principle.
Fairly decent overview article on different types of definitions here by a (retired) philosophy professor at Canada's Simon Fraser University that also goes into the concept of "necessary and sufficient conditions":
How about this, which is what, for millennia, has been told to children. "If you are a boy, you'll become a man when you grow up. If you are a girl, you will become a woman." In 1996, my husband of 18 years went to Stanford University Medical Center and spent 5 weeks having "sex-change surgery," in the terminology of the day. We were in the process of the divorce, as I never "tried it out," though he and his "professionals" pressured me to be like the wives featured on Oprah.
He and his "professionals" at that time did promote the idea that this is a rare diagnosis, and that it would be best to reassure our 2 young sons that they are boys and will grow up to be men. The tropes nowadays are quite different, and I fear for the psyches of "children of." The fact that my former husband's father was a repellent and violent man during his childhood was never explored. Hitting, beating and spanking children is not beneficial to their development. Neither is exposure to pornography or nutty ideas threatening bodily integrity. This nonsense will take a generation to undo; it took 2 generations or so from Alfred Kinsey and John Money (both child sexual molesters) to boost the pharma complex to where messed up young adults are paid indoctrinators, going into the schools, teaching "pronouns" and the American Girl doll company (Mattel subsidiary) publishes a book for girls in middle childhood in which they can read about becoming a boy "if you aren't comfortable in your body."
Not to give you a hard time Ute, but "what has been told, for millennia, to children" is very often profoundly unscientific at best. It had been told -- for millennia -- that the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe, that humans are the result of special creation, that bloodletting for "bad humors" and trepanning for migraines was cutting-edge medicine.
If "we" want to make progress then I kind of think we have to learn how to separate wheat and chaff, to separate the wisdom "that's been told" from arrant if not toxic nonsense.
Sure, if someone is a boy then it is PROBABLE that he'll become a man. But that's just begging -- and/or begetting -- the question: exactly what do you MEAN by "boy" and "man"?
IF you say that "man" is -- as is typical -- defined as "adult human male", and IF male is defined as "produces sperm (right now)" then it is entirely possible that a prepubescent XYer and penis-haver won't EVER become a male and a man IF the boy's testicles fail to develop, IF he remains infertile. The conclusions we reach very much depends on our starting points -- i.e., our definitions.
As Voltaire put it, "if you wish to converse with me then define your terms" -- kind of pointless otherwise:
As for "nonsense will take a generation to undo", I agree -- 110%, at least 🙂. Why I think it crucially important to be defining our terms in the best and most logical and scientific way we can manage. Really don't think those peddled by Carol and Emma Hilton qualify in the slightest degree on that score.
I am now advising, commiserating, and giving advice to a new trans widow on the other side of the world from me. She has a 2 year old son. She is stronger than I was, as she has me to talk to, on zoom, from the other side of this world. Don't be arrogant, Steersman. We are real mothers, with little children.
Sorry if it looks that way. As I said, my intent is not to give you a hard time or to anyone else suffering from the consequences of delusional thinking on the part of the transgendered and their hand maidens.
But I think the crux of the matter, a very large contributing factor to the problem of transgenderism is the ubiquity of scientific illiteracy -- one of Carl Sagan's main points in his Demon-Haunted World. Largely why I'm pushing the standard biological definitions for the sexes as a way of alleviating that illiteracy & ignorance -- even if some people wind up getting "offended" as "collateral damage". Think we all have our "unexamined assumptions" -- myself included in all probability. But don't think we're going to resolve that issue without taking an honest look at such.
Ran across an elaboration on Voltaire's quote that seems relevant:
“ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
Your English is actually pretty good. 🙂 And I quite like your "life as a sentence" -- relative to which, and in case you missed it (ICYMI) Kafka's Penal Colony is an interesting perspective along the same line.
Will probably take a look at some of your posts later.
No discussion of genetic determination? The presence or absence of a Y chromosome seems a perfectly servicable definition.
Thanks for your comment and Restack. And for the subscription. 🙂
But the Y chromosome isn't "definitive" -- i.e., isn't "serving to define or specify precisely". It's just more or less a "harbinger": "something that foreshadows a future event : something that gives an anticipatory sign of what is to come; robins, crocuses, and other harbingers of spring":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/harbinger
The Y chromosome -- at least in babies -- is just an "anticipatory sign of what is [likely] to come", i.e., testicles that don't become fully functional until the onset of puberty.
In addition to which, the Y chromosome only works in some species since many others don't use the same chromosomes, or even the same mechanism yet they still have males and females:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
The issue or problem is exactly which traits are common to ALL males and ALL females of ALL sexually reproducing species -- literally millions of them -- and that serves to uniquely define those categories. And, as I had indicated in my post, those criteria are whether one produces large or small gametes:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
Hope that clarifies things. Bit of a complicated issue, but starting with the definitions seems the only way forward, the only way out of the rather toxic & mephitic swamp created by transgender ideologues and their useful/useless idiots and fellow travelers.
Doesn’t match your silly redefinition of male and female in the slightest.
In your entirely unevidenced OPINION. Which ain't worth diddly-squat.
And you might try making an effort to put your comments in the proper sequence.
Substack offers no control over the order in which responses appear. Ask an eight year old to explain it. Then tell him he’s sexLESS because his testicles haven’t dropped yet.
You can't even understand the definition that you so passionately bludgeon about.
The *phenotype* that produces gametes. It does not say that maleness is only satisfied during the part of life when gametes are produced, nor does it say that this definition varies from one individual to another.
SO busted.
🙄
"In genetics, the phenotype (from Ancient Greek φαίνω (phaínō) 'to appear, show, shine', and τύπος (túpos) 'mark, type') is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology (physical form and structure), its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological properties, its behavior, and the products of behavior."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotype
We ARE, to a first approximation, our phenotypes.
What you appear to be arguing -- particularly since you're clearly incapable, being charitable, of specifying criteria that qualify individual organisms as male or female -- is that there is some magical, ethereal, unquantifiable essence that does that trick of qualification: essentialism, by the look of it. Not a particularly tenable position to take for any number of reasons:
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095507973;jsessionid=A63503861804E05E7E13E666516E3216
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism
But that "magical, ethereal, unquantifiable essence" seems to be exactly what many transactivists are arguing in claiming that transwomen are actually females. Maybe you're a closet TRA? 🙄
It's the quantifiable criteria for sex category membership that unhorses those TRAs. Criteria which you seem desperate to avoid accepting. Apparently because you -- and far too many others -- have turned "male" & "female" into "immutable identities 🙄" based on "mythic essences" instead of accepting the words as labels denoting quite transitory reproductive abilities.
God you’re thick.
Your own hallowed definition doesn’t back you at all so you throw a hissy.
Please accept a virtual hanky, dipshiit.
Male and female mean what they always have. But maybe if you post the Bacon quote a few more times and toss in some more sneer quotes you’ll wake up to a world that thinks you’re smart.
It’s you who can’t distinguish opinion from fact. You have your own take on what male and female mean that you shoehorn into discussions with an absolutely pathetic level of competitiveness.
You also seem really forgetful.
Funny you should mention TaaB, I was just playing the 12/8 picking pattern on my new acoustic guitar. Capo on 3.
Seriously, you can go as florid as you like with the citations but your gamete-o-genic definition of biological gender is absolutely idiotic.
Neither I nor MHR are talking about gender.
And "idiotic" is still just an ipse dixit, your unevidenced OPINION.
But you sure seem incapable of responding in proper sequence.
Dickhead.
You're the one who's thicker than a brick, and doesn't know his arse from a hole in the ground.
You've put diddly-squat on the table in the way of cogent arguments and evidence to back them up.
"I think, therefore I am" was probably the best encapsulation of the idiocies a navel-gazing species can get up to.
But maybe my favorite and all-purpose quote ever is "Too many notes," and just swap out one word and we got every current argument on this nonsense nailed flat to the wall.
Maybe I don't know nuthin', but I know what men and women are and aren't. I remember watching a race and knowing from all the way as far back as my TV screen that Caster Semenya was a guy.
We need to start using "no" a lot more in public discourse, and face-to-face with every crazy or deadly purposeful activist and acolytes thereof, instead of doing what even you, here, do quite well--trying to answer them with too many words that they in turn can wriggle under and through.
I know what men and women are, and boys and girls. Someone who thinks they don't? Fuck off, in as many unpleasurable ways as the human mind can devise, and pardon my good healthy Anglo-Saxon means of retort to 'em.
If I'd had more time I might have been able to shorten my "epistle" ... 😉
I can sympathize but we simply have to say what we mean by various words for the categories in question. If it's just a matter of "feelinz", a matter of subjectivity then we're all screwed. One of Carol's more or less credible criticisms of gender ideology -- you might try looking for that bit of "wheat" in her (50-odd minutes of) "chaff". 🙂
Sure, we KNOW there are many "two types" -- penises & vaginas, XXs & XYs, ovaries & testicles, introverts & extroverts, etc. etc. The question is, what names will we attach to those binaries and their multitudinous combinations?
We have to draw a line in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may -- regardless of who's "offended".
Sure. I agree.
I don't know you in real life of course, but you seem to have one of those interesting minds that can't resist going everywhere and anywhere and taking a word or phrase or concept by the neck and squeezing out every last drop of living possibility of examination, interpretation and refutation, but I myself ain't quite such an intellectual titan (and I mean that honestly and not with any mal-intent) so I'll stick to simpler discourse. Here's the first of three tweets I just tweeted:
https://twitter.com/redfoliot/status/1602053264954064899
dealing with the subject, and I think allowing these morons and their willing or unwilling minions and acolytes to make of this anything other than what I've laid out is absolutely conceding the field of war and this to our very great near-term cost.
Long-term everything goes back to basics; this is a self-culling or forced culling by sick parents and/or profiteers of those who, I guess, are best not reproducing anyway.
But it will certainly change the terrain for generations to come. Those who can ill-afford to give up a potentially-breeding offspring will have lost and those who've got a spare offspring or two to go off the deep end will win. More conservative cultures will dominate not necessarily through any strength of their philosophies of life but just through surviving numbers. It ain't gonna be no transhumanist future.
Thanks for the compliment, though bit of a mixed blessing -- "The lighter side of OCD and ADHD" .... 😉
But "jaw, jaw" is better than "war, war"; "thinking is better" as you put it. 🙂 I'd "Like" your tweets except I've been suspended by the Tranish Inquisition and their henchmen at Twitter, though maybe some changes in the wind.
Not sure which NYTimes article Singal is referring to but a recent Substack & Quillette article (archived) by Bernard Lane suggests some changes there as well:
https://genderclinicnews.substack.com/p/on-the-gender-clinic-beat
https://archive.ph/sxrSw
Sympathize with your suggestion that many of the transgendered shouldn't be in the gene-pool in the first place, but still a lot of unnecessary grief and animosity being created. Apart from the pervasive rot produced in many of our so-called educational and scientific institutions -- which is arguably the bigger crime.
But, unfortunately or not, there seems to be no end of devils in the details -- don't think that ignoring them or trying to sweep them under the carpet is going to put an end to the problems they're causing.
Well, I'm not a eugenicist and I know well that if one manages to survive the terrible anguishes of one's youth despite one's best attempts not to, one can by the great beneficence of an inexplicable Cosmos might bring a far more worthy successor than oneself into the world. Sometimes we don't grow up until well into purported adulthood and I've no grounds to look scornfully on those whose various idiocies left them with irrevocable harm.
So it wasn't a cold-blooded statement but what I think is a realistic one. There's terrible harm done in the world when parents are incompetent and the equally incompetent manage to anoint themselves in loco parentis.
I agree entirely with your final paragraph. That's why I post on Twitter about this when I have something I hope will be useful to say. We quite often do profit from the words of strangers, don't we?
I'm lucky to have "survived" my youth and early, even later, adulthood -- more or less. I could easily have been at least an "honorable mention" in the Darwin Awards -- several times over. 🙂
But quite agree with "words of strangers" -- conversation, discussion, and debate is, maybe arguably, our claim to fame and fortune. Why I'm so "peeved" at those who try to poison that well, to circumscribe or limit that. ICYMI, decent article on the topic over at Glinner's "salon":
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-lions-den
As for "something useful to say" ... 😉, I might suggest tweeting a link to the article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction that I've been trying to promote:
https://oxfordjournals.altmetric.com/details/2802153/twitter
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990?login=false
I don't want you to stick your neck out further than you're comfortable with, but if you wanted to throw the fox in amongst the chickens, you might quote the definitions for "male" and "female" from its Glossary, and point out that the logical conclusion is that many members of many species are in fact sexless ... 😉
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
Done on the second link: https://twitter.com/redfoliot/status/1602103288652079105
The first one seems like a string of comments so I'll skip for now.
You can share that Almost-Darwinned Award with me if you don't mind diluting your glory.
This debate has lasted too long, I think. I don’t think it’s ever going to be solved simply by discussing precise definitions of the terms. Sometimes, people are just going to see things differently. We still can find common ground on the big issue.
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/if-aneuploidies-sexes-then-two-headed
Foucault, Derrida, and Lyotard's wet dream.
Thanks for dropping by. 🙂
Though relative to your comment, I can't say that I've read much of any of those "philosophers" so can't comment in any depth. But while there seems to be some credible arguments that they contributed to some general rot of society, I also get the impression that they have a point or two, notably that words, or more importantly their definitions, are, in fact, "socially constructed". As I like to emphasize, particularly since many seem unclear on the concept, Moses didn't bring the first dictionary down from Mt Sinai on tablets A through Z: NO definitions qualify as gospel truth bearing the imprimatur or signature of Jehovah -- Himself.
But I think that where they, or their followers, went off the rails and into the weeds was in concluding that all definitions are created equal, that there aren't any real, tangible, and objective correlates to the better or best of them.
Bit of a puzzle how we go about choosing or creating those definitions, though it seems important, if not essential, to take that bull by the horns. Apropos of which, you might have some interest in my essay on "What is a woman?" 🙂
Somewhat more broadly, ran across a quote, at Quote Fancy, that seems particularly relevant - to that post of mine and to many related issues:
" 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
Quite agree with you on "lasted too long". And that largely because pretty much everyone -- except for me & thee of course ...😉 -- has their hands stuck in the proverbial monkey trap:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/14/how-to-avoid-monkey-trap-oliver-burkeman
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monkey_trap
However, I'm not sure how else you think we can resolve this issue -- any issue for that matter -- when the combatants are working from entirely different definitions if we can't agree on those definitions in the first place or if people refuse to address the principles behind them.
Apropos of which, skimmed your turtle post (all the way down ...) and while I think you make some good points, I still think, with all due respect Frederick, that you're barking up the wrong tree in many other areas. In particular, you might take a gander at the SEP article on accidental and essential properties, even the opening paragraph or two:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/essential-accidental/
For example, you say that "vertebrate animals ... have been characterized as having just one head." But the "essential" property for "vertebrate" is "has a spine" while the number of heads is an "accidental" property of the category "vertebrate". It's immaterial how many heads a vertebrate has -- if it has a spine then it's a vertebrate, period. Extra heads by themselves doesn't change the membership in the "vertebrate" category -- nor, in all probability, in the "turtle species" category. See my "What is a woman?" post for a few details.
Similarly, you ask, "... is a person with four X chromosomes a unique sex, or a female with a biological anomaly?" But the "essential" property of "female" -- shared by large numbers of all sexually-reproducing (anisogamous) species -- is "produces [present tense indefinite] ova", while the number of chromosomes and type -- as you know, other species have different types & combinations -- is an "accidental" property. That's the benefit of those biological definitions -- they maximize the coverage and application of them by restricting or limiting the membership criteria.
There ARE some principles on how and why we create, define, and use various categories -- which I'm still struggling to get a better handle on. But failing to take due care and cognizance of those principles just tends to muddy the waters beyond any possible clarification of the issues they pertain to.
You may wish to take a gander at the Wikipedia article on extensional and intensional definitions, this passage in particular:
"An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
Having a spine is the necessary & sufficient condition to being in the "vertebrate" category, as having functional ovaries is the necessary & sufficient condition to being in the "female" category. Not quite sure how and why so many people balk at what seems a rather simple though quite useful principle.
Fairly decent overview article on different types of definitions here by a (retired) philosophy professor at Canada's Simon Fraser University that also goes into the concept of "necessary and sufficient conditions":
https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm#part5
How about this, which is what, for millennia, has been told to children. "If you are a boy, you'll become a man when you grow up. If you are a girl, you will become a woman." In 1996, my husband of 18 years went to Stanford University Medical Center and spent 5 weeks having "sex-change surgery," in the terminology of the day. We were in the process of the divorce, as I never "tried it out," though he and his "professionals" pressured me to be like the wives featured on Oprah.
He and his "professionals" at that time did promote the idea that this is a rare diagnosis, and that it would be best to reassure our 2 young sons that they are boys and will grow up to be men. The tropes nowadays are quite different, and I fear for the psyches of "children of." The fact that my former husband's father was a repellent and violent man during his childhood was never explored. Hitting, beating and spanking children is not beneficial to their development. Neither is exposure to pornography or nutty ideas threatening bodily integrity. This nonsense will take a generation to undo; it took 2 generations or so from Alfred Kinsey and John Money (both child sexual molesters) to boost the pharma complex to where messed up young adults are paid indoctrinators, going into the schools, teaching "pronouns" and the American Girl doll company (Mattel subsidiary) publishes a book for girls in middle childhood in which they can read about becoming a boy "if you aren't comfortable in your body."
Ute Heggen (uteheggengrasswidow.wordpress.com for more on this last travesty)
Not to give you a hard time Ute, but "what has been told, for millennia, to children" is very often profoundly unscientific at best. It had been told -- for millennia -- that the Earth was flat and at the center of the universe, that humans are the result of special creation, that bloodletting for "bad humors" and trepanning for migraines was cutting-edge medicine.
If "we" want to make progress then I kind of think we have to learn how to separate wheat and chaff, to separate the wisdom "that's been told" from arrant if not toxic nonsense.
Sure, if someone is a boy then it is PROBABLE that he'll become a man. But that's just begging -- and/or begetting -- the question: exactly what do you MEAN by "boy" and "man"?
https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/beg-the-question
IF you say that "man" is -- as is typical -- defined as "adult human male", and IF male is defined as "produces sperm (right now)" then it is entirely possible that a prepubescent XYer and penis-haver won't EVER become a male and a man IF the boy's testicles fail to develop, IF he remains infertile. The conclusions we reach very much depends on our starting points -- i.e., our definitions.
As Voltaire put it, "if you wish to converse with me then define your terms" -- kind of pointless otherwise:
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7799868-if-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-define-your-terms
As for "nonsense will take a generation to undo", I agree -- 110%, at least 🙂. Why I think it crucially important to be defining our terms in the best and most logical and scientific way we can manage. Really don't think those peddled by Carol and Emma Hilton qualify in the slightest degree on that score.
I am now advising, commiserating, and giving advice to a new trans widow on the other side of the world from me. She has a 2 year old son. She is stronger than I was, as she has me to talk to, on zoom, from the other side of this world. Don't be arrogant, Steersman. We are real mothers, with little children.
Sorry if it looks that way. As I said, my intent is not to give you a hard time or to anyone else suffering from the consequences of delusional thinking on the part of the transgendered and their hand maidens.
But I think the crux of the matter, a very large contributing factor to the problem of transgenderism is the ubiquity of scientific illiteracy -- one of Carl Sagan's main points in his Demon-Haunted World. Largely why I'm pushing the standard biological definitions for the sexes as a way of alleviating that illiteracy & ignorance -- even if some people wind up getting "offended" as "collateral damage". Think we all have our "unexamined assumptions" -- myself included in all probability. But don't think we're going to resolve that issue without taking an honest look at such.
Ran across an elaboration on Voltaire's quote that seems relevant:
“ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
Your English is actually pretty good. 🙂 And I quite like your "life as a sentence" -- relative to which, and in case you missed it (ICYMI) Kafka's Penal Colony is an interesting perspective along the same line.
Will probably take a look at some of your posts later.