One of my main points of frustration with the whole push to accept transgender individuals in competitive sports leagues according to their identified gender is that this flies in the face of something that activists have been saying for decades.
What they said since I first started paying attention to transgender issues, about twenty years ago, is that they're trying to broaden people's understanding of sex and gender, to get people to recognize that gender and biological sex, and also things like sexuality and social presentation, are all different things which we should be able to understand and discuss separately. Fair enough. But if you accept that, there's essentially *no reason* to segregate sports leagues by gender, while there are very good reasons to segregate by biological sex!
Insisting that we should allow people into sports competition based on their identified gender is basically giving up the entire premise that trans activism is pushing people towards a more complex and nuanced worldview, and surrendering it to a simpler one where instead of only considering the relevance of biological sex, we only consider gender, even in situations where that makes no pragmatic sense. It's no wonder that a lot of people find this kind of model unpalatable; it's impractical, transparently ideological, and doesn't mesh at all with how the activists represent their own position.
> while there are very good reasons to segregate by biological sex!
Well, kind of. There are very good reasons to segregate by *something* biological that correlates with sex, but that thing isn't sex itself. Producing sperm in and of itself doesn't grant anyone an athletic advantage; neither does having XY chromosomes. The advantage comes from testosterone levels, both historical and present, and these days, T level is less correlated with sex than it used to be.
That's why the serious attempts to accommodate trans people in sports typically involve setting standards for testosterone levels, amount of time on HRT, age at transition, etc.
How is that not a "more complex and nuanced worldview"?
Producing sperm, or having XY chromosomes, doesn't inherently advantage someone in sports, but having been through male puberty, with the corresponding development of bone density and frame size, past muscle development (since it's easier to maintain or regain muscle than grow it to begin with,) does.
I'd be willing to credit attempts to accommodate people in trans sports based on standards set around testosterone levels, age at transition, amount of time on HRT, etc. as "serious" efforts, but I don't believe these are particularly widespread or popular. I have personally been ostracized from online communities, and lost IRL friends, for suggesting standards like this myself, and I had to come up with them independently because I didn't see anyone else arguing for them. I don't doubt that you have, but I personally have not encountered anybody else arguing for such positions in the wild, so my impression is that they're still pretty marginal.
"Producing sperm, or having XY chromosomes, doesn't inherently advantage someone in sports, but having been through male puberty, with the corresponding development of bone density and frame size, past muscle development (since it's easier to maintain or regain muscle than grow it to begin with,) does."
In some sports, yes. In others, not necessarily. Muscles will atrophy with a few years on HRT, but bones won't. Depending on the sport, having a bigger body with proportionally smaller muscles can be either an advantage or a disadvantage. That's why the only sensible answer is to leave it up to the governing bodies for individual sports.
In terms of promoting per-sport fairness, while allowing accessibility to transgender individuals within that constraint, I think that you do need separate standards for different sports. But, I think that without having an overarching set of meta-standards (basically, a set of guidelines for what the governing bodies for individual sports should be trying to accomplish with their rules, and what sort of criteria they should be working from,) I think that you risk a situation where the governing bodies are not all operating according to that understanding, and may have standards aligned wit totally different goals.
Isn’t levels of testosterone and amount of time in HRT the very things that the NCAA was using before the current executive actions? If I am wrong, I apologize.
So, I'm not an expert on the full extent of the NCAA's policies, but my understanding is that there wasn't a complete and coherent set of standards for all sports across the board, but rather that standards were set by governing bodies for individual sports. Athletes had to provide documentation of testosterone levels being within the allowable limit set for their sport, and to have been on HRT for a period of time (I'm not sure if this period was also set according to the sport, or one year across the board. Quick googling suggests the latter, although I recall participating in discussions with people who were at least under the impression that it was the former.)
There are people who just categorically opposed the participation of all transgender people in sports, usually on the basis of some fundamental ideological opposition, and those people for the most part were obviously not part of the left-wing coalition. And there are people who supported stricter rules for participation (I'd count myself among them,) because a year or so of HRT is really not enough to erase the athletic advantages of having been through male puberty. People holding this position were mostly excluded from the left wing coalition in communities where they aired their views (although I suspect that a significant number of left-wing people hold similar views privately, and I've talked to a fair number who've admitted in confidence that they're not convinced the mainstream opinions in their communities make sense, but they don't feel comfortable saying so. This is an issue that I think deserves its own more thorough discussion, but it's a digression from this topic.) People who shared this position openly were mostly moderates or conservatives, although I think it's fair to suspect that for at least some conservative commentators, this is actually a wedge intended to exclude transgender participants more generally, but they don't want to say so openly. But as a proposal, it at least deserves to be discussed on its own terms.
The actual policies as they stood though, I don't think were many people's best-case position, they were more of a compromise hammered out between people who thought the requirements ought to be stricter than that, and people who thought they ought to be looser. In the communities where I ended up ostracized for my own position at least, arguing that the restrictions ought to be looser than they were would not elicit much pushback or widespread disapproval, while arguing that the restrictions should *not* be loosened would elicit quite a bit.
I neither spend much time online and almost none before I joined Substack this spring so I don’t know anything about internet communities and it really hasn’t been much of a conversation in my social circles so I don’t know what it’s like.
It certainly seems reasonable to me to think that the previous NCAA guidelines might be insufficient in promoting fairness. I’d actually think for many competitions I would be reasonable to have going through male puberty to be disqualifying for a trans-woman.
Or the California HS method of expanding the girls’ track finals field by one participant so that no girl was excluded or kept from winning by competing against a trans athlete.
I just hate the hatred and dishonestly aimed at trans girls like the middle school WV shot putter. My aunt asked me to listen to Megan Kelly’s show about her and Kelly called her a man. Boy or girl, she was still 13. No teen deserves the vileness that Kelly was throwing her way.
T levels aren't always the best proxy for athletic performance. going through male puberty creates the most divergence between males and females.
I would agree with you, or what I assume you're saying, that a male who transitions before puberty and maintains female T levels should be allowed into a female league.
but I don't agree with someone who transitioned after puberty having the same access just because they have lower T levels. They would still have an unfair advantage.
Obviously a person with complete androgen insensitivity are completely phenotypically female but have XY yet should compete with females.
a lot of this is way too complicated for jocks and administrators. I think we just need boys, girls, and open leagues.
"but I don't agree with someone who transitioned after puberty having the same access just because they have lower T levels. They would still have an unfair advantage."
That may be true for some sports, but it can't be generalized to all sports. Really, the only sensible way to set policy on this is to leave it up to the leagues, because only experts in each sport can make the determination. It isn't nearly as simple as "male puberty = more muscles = winner".
Though, en passant, I think you need to write something about being "on the train since the early days of Less Wrong." 😉🙂
But relative to your, "trying to broaden people's understanding of sex and gender", you might note that "gender" is more or less the creation of feminism which transactivists have "transmogrified" into a rather problematic, unscientific, woo-ish, and quite thuggish if not psychotic cult:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex". Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
Great deal of merit, and scientific justification in that dichotomy created by feminism, at least some "sects" of it -- 23 at last count. But the "theory" and "medicine" around "gender identity" is hardly better than phrenology, than Chinese fortune cookies as someone said about the Myers-Briggs Type System. From a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the topic, one of the more coherent sources though it goes off into the weeds with some feminist cant and dogma:
"2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality:
Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices ..."
Kind of goes off the rails on "parenting practices" and elsewhere, but "feminine and masculine personalities" seems a useful perspective or the beginning of tenable point of view.
You might also have some interest in this post by one Dr. Maja Bowen -- also the author of "Born in the Right Body" -- which has a nice table of some salient "masculine and personalities", and a more or less scientifically justified distinction between sex and gender:
"How conflation of sex and gender became a tool of transgender ideology":
There are no “transgender individuals” and this is the point. Every individual is just a male individual or a female individual. People need to quit ceding the premise of a type of human.
I have no idea what you mean by "sticker debate thing." My point is don't use the very language that contains and spreads the lies that have to be debunked.
If you don't have the time or commitment to read the article, replying to the comments is probably not a good investment either. At the very least, not having read the article greatly reduces the chances of your comment leaving a good impression.
Didn't read the article! Technology just showed me the comment in which the writer referenced non-existent "transgender individuals" and every time I see that I respond in the way I responded. As long as people keep ceding the lie / false premise, the lie will never be debunked. No references to things that don't exist as if they DO exist!
Well, that makes sense I had assumed you did and was genuinely confused.
You should read it though it’s pretty good. I think the author of the piece would say getting bogged down in whether trans people are real is a mistake. The correct reaction to “OK but some people occupy a rare intersex space where they are difficult to categorize” or “some biological males identify strongly as females” is “OK, who cares? We have the categories of men and women for a reason and they are load bearing in our society—corresponding to, in general, different biological realities across most of the relevant populations. Accordingly, we are keeping them even if you find some edge cases, not redefining them to also handle these edge cases!”
Plus, this fallacy is an issue that really strikes both sides of the aisle.
With regards to transgenderism: Rightists will say "transgender 'women' are not women" and ignore all the ways that they *are* women. Far leftists will say "transgender women are women" and ignore all the ways that they *aren't*.
I think it shows up in a lot of other topics, or at least, the problem of binary thinking applied to problems that have spectrums: Abortion isn't a binary, gun control isn't a binary, etc.
Assuming they dress accordingly, "transwomen are women" in the context of who should shop at the women's clothing section. Assuming they pass sufficiently, "transwomen are women" for making snap descriptions (e.g. "that woman over there appears to have turned right"). "Transwomen are women" in so far as we ever use "feminine" as a synonym for "woman". For anyone out there who is legitimately sexually attracted to feminine presentation regardless of genitals, then "transwomen are women" in that context too.
Precisely all the ways that are denied by a man who emphasizes his own masculinity, or the ways denied by a woman who chooses to instead embrace non-binariness. The intangibles that come with either gender roles or whatever behaviors in the brain and personality traits that we associate with gender, even though they're not strictly restricted to one biological sex or the other. Surface qualities like convincingly appearing to be a woman on the outside, and all the ways that can matter in life, even though it's shallow, even though in many cases it *shouldn't* matter so much. And how that matters for dating.
Though really it should be a transwoman answering this question, not me. I know there are good accounts but I don't have any saved, if I come across them I'll share.
I don't accept the claim that a man with long hair and eyeshadow somehow "becomes" a woman in some intangible, ineffable sense. Femininity is not a costume to be worn and discarded on a whim. Note that your definition logically implies that tomboys are less authentically "women" than women who wear dresses and makeup, a sentiment which in any other context would strike many as misogynistic.
>Though really it should be a transwoman answering this question, not me.
Standpoint epistemology rears its ugly head once again. You don't need to be a cat to define what makes a cat a cat.
Is a platypus a mammal? When exactly does a house become a mansion? How many of the "correct" political beliefs does a person need before they earn a "conservative" or "liberal" label?
In real life, categories are often fuzzy. A passing transwoman you see on the street you would mentally classify as "woman", with all that entails, even though she doesn't have XX chromosomes. I don't need a specific definition with hundreds of different factors with varying weights for me and you to understand what it means to see a person on the street and think of them as 'he' or 'she'. And in many but not all domains of life, that transwoman you see on the street would be living life as a woman, for all that implies about society's gender roles.
I say "but not all" because of course the transwoman will never know what it is to give birth, to experience menstruation, or to grow up as a young girl (which is distinct from growing up as a young trans girl).
We all have different experiences, after all - white woman versus black woman, conservative man vs liberal man, etc etc, and even two people with many of the same labels can still be incredibly different. That's what Yassine's fallacy is really all about: Just slapping labels on things is of limited use. Real life is complex and we shouldn't think of everything in black and white terms (which again, is something I've seen happen a lot on both sides of the aisle).
>I never said long hair and eyeshadow is all that it takes.
You said that a man who convincingly looks like the modal woman therefore IS a woman in some intangible, ineffable sense.
>A passing transwoman you see on the street you would mentally classify as "woman", with all that entails, even though she doesn't have XX chromosomes.
Just because something looks like it's a member of a particular category, doesn't mean it IS a member of that category. I'm not German, have no German heritage, don't speak the language, have never lived in the country. Last week, someone asked me if I was German. Does that mean that I AM German in some intangible ineffable sense of the term, wholly uncoupled from ethnic heritage or culture?
I don't think so. I would simply say - people make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. The fact that someone erroneously thought I was German when I am not German does not imply that "German" is a fuzzy category in urgent need of redefinition to account for all the multitudes and different ways of being that exist within the spectrum of Germanness.
>And in many but not all domains of life, that transwoman you see on the street would be living life as a woman, for all that implies about society's gender roles.
I simply do not understand what it means to "live life as a woman".
>We all have different experiences, after all - white woman versus black woman
Regardless of ethnic heritage or skin tone, a white cis woman and a black cis woman were both born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, which is the defining rule-in characteristic of femininity. The fact that there are traits they don't share does not negate or overrule the traits they do.
I simply do not understand why "a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if faulty" is a deficient definition which needs to be replaced. Even if I did concede the point, I don't understand why your implied definition is superior: namely "a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if faulty; OR, a person who LOOKS LIKE a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes". You'll quickly note that the latter definition of womanhood is circular, as all definitions of womanhood proferred by trans activists inevitably turn out to be sooner or later.
>That's what Yassine's fallacy is really all about: Just slapping labels on things is of limited use. Real life is complex and we shouldn't think of everything in black and white terms
I'm not sure if Yassine would agree with your interpretation of his essay. But in any case, I don't think the reality of sexual dimorphism is anything like as "complex" as you would have me believe. 100% of babies born in the history of our species were born to female people - zero trans women have ever carried a baby to term. Contrary to pseudoscientific claims that sex is a spectrum, there has never been born an individual capable of producing small and large gametes, capable of both impregnating and being impregnated.
> Just because something looks like it's a member of a particular category, doesn't mean it IS a member of that category.
I disagree, it depends on the context. Let's say there's a display bread model made out of plastic and someone asks "Do you have any bread?". You'd answer "no" if the person was looking for food, but you'd answer yes if the person was looking to take bakery photos. The conceptual category remains exactly the same but its membership criteria changes depending on context.
Being German is a good example! Someone who moves to Germany and begins to live and breathe everything about German culture could be said to be German. They could also be said to NOT be a German because they didn't grow up there and don't have the same heritage. Both are true: They are and they are not German. The categories are fuzzy.
> I simply do not understand what it means to "live life as a woman".
You don't think our genders have a heavy influence on our lives?
> The fact that there are traits they don't share does not negate or overrule the traits they do.
A transwoman will never give birth. This is a fact of science, of how gametes work.
But there are other gendered traits which are probabilistic in nature, along a spectrum. For example: Men have more testosterone and are therefore more prone towards physical manifestations of anger and violence, and also I believe more prone towards excessive ego. None of that is unique to being a man! Women get angry, violent, and egotistical too. But society commonly codes these traits as more masculine than feminine, and there are many other traits that are seen in the reverse way. A transwoman is someone who inherently embodies so many feminine-aligned traits that it makes sense that they are women in some sense, despite the lack of the usual gametes. German but not German.
So, it's pretty easy to list specific features, but since it's pretty clear from your arguments in this thread that your position is that these are not particularly determinative features, I'd like to turn this around and ask, what particular features of cis women make them women?
There are definitely features which most cis women have in common, like XX chromosomes, egg cells, uteri, etc. which trans women don't have. Is a woman defined by some combination of those? Should an XY person with congenital androgen insensitivity disorder, whose phenotype is outwardly female, is assigned female at birth, and grows up being identified as female by others, be considered male? What about a person who's received a hysterectomy? Is a trans man, who's been through hormone replacement and has a fully male hormone balance, female?
A female person is a person who was born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if those organs are faulty. A male person is a person born with the organs associated with the production of small gametes, even if faulty.
Secondary sex characteristics do not determine one's sex - a person with testicles remains male even if they have grown breasts. Undergoing a hysterectomy does not make a person any less female, anymore than having a leg amputated retroactively means you were born with one leg rather than two. A trans man who's undergone a full course of hormone replacement therapy nonetheless still possesses the organs associated with the production of large gametes.
As much as trans activists like to muddy the waters and pretend that sex is a continuous spectrum rather than a more or less binary distribution, it isn't remotely difficult to classify people as unambiguously male or female 99% of the time. Even many of the so-called "intersex" conditions (more accurately known as "disorders of sexual development") only ever afflict one sex or the other. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been born with organs associated with the production of both large and small gametes.
If you have to stick to ONE membership categorization, this is definitely the most coherent one. The problem I have is that it's unhelpful to rigidly stick to a single definition across all contexts, and it also implies that the concept of "woman" cannot exist without the concept of "gamete". So does that mean that people didn't know what a "woman" was before 1600s/1800s? You could say that while humans couldn't precisely explain what a gamete was or its relation to secondary sex characteristics, they nevertheless were able to grasp at this "true" definition but this is unfalsifiable nonsense.
Tomas Bogardus ran into this exact problem even though I overwhelmingly agree with his critique of the "what is a woman" debate. He kept making assertions like "we know what gold is, and that is the atom with 79 protons in its nucleus" but obviously "gold" meant different things at different times and different places.
As far as I know, no humans ever produce both functional sperm and egg cells, so stipulating that the cells must be functional would eliminate that overlap, but of course, that would rule many people out of being either male or female.
But the more relevant issue, I think, is that this runs into exactly the sticker fallacy discussed in this article. I don't have to think that trans activists have a well thought-out framework to agree that for most of the criteria we regard as most relevant in distinguishing men from women, an XY person with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, who is born with a vagina and female external genitalia, develops female secondary sex characteristics, is assigned female at birth and socialized according to the expectations of a female person, and is likely to grow up without ever learning that they have XY chromosomes or organs associated with the production of male gametes, is not best regarded as male.
I think that many trans activists go too far (probably most, although I also think people collectively police the sharing of opinions they see as outside the consensus, which is its own problem) in treating self-identified gender identity as the *only* relevant distinction between men and women in too many cases. There are situations where other distinctions between male and female categories are more relevant, and we should be equipped to discuss and reason about those. But there are also many situations where other distinctions of the male and female categories are more relevant than being born with organs for the production of large and small gametes.
We can *mostly* successfully distinguish the male and female clusters from each other based on whether people are born with organs for large or small gametes, according to anyone's criteria (people with different political dispositions will argue about what proportion of edge cases it fails to capture.) But that doesn't mean that it's a good basis for drawing the distinction. Plato's definition of a man as a "featherless biped" successfully predicts most group membership, his amended definition of "a featherless biped with broad, flat nails" when Diogenes called a plucked chicken a man, even more so. But this doesn't mean that it captures what we consider to be the group's most determinative features.
"addiction is a disease" is a good example of how the 'slogan' is communicating something deep and complicated, but also can be misused or misunderstood as carrying other implications. There is a literal "Disease Model of Addiction" that is a legitimately medical approach to treating addiction. This was from several years ago but I remember reading that the disease model of addiction was significantly effective at treating addiction.
Addiction is a disease in the sense that it does neurologically affect your brain, and someone who is really succumbed to addiction ought to treat it in the same medical seriousness in the same way a cancer patient might. If you have cancer you don't skip your scans or doctor appointments, and it is important for people recovering from addiction to treat it with the same medical weight. And like say, cancer, you don't get "cured" of cancer magically and then you never have to worry about it again. In the same way under the disease model for addiction one cannot simply stop drinking alcohol and expect their condition to go away forever. Abstinence from the drink/drug is only part of the treatment but treating it like a disease where things like stress or various triggers (that can cause people to relapse) are seen as aggravating factors (or whatever the term) that *need to be considered* and mitigated along with treating the addiction directly. Of course the Disease Theory of Addiction isn't perfect or without controversy so to speak, but it has a specific meaning in an actual medical context (structuring a treatment plan with a doctor etc.).
But of course the problem is that like, "Cancer is a disease" in the sense that I need to take time off from work and need to take a medical leave. But "addiction is a disease" is not true in the sense that it should be used to justify or hide behind behavior morally speaking. People can use "it is a disease" irresponsibly, but that kind of falls into the general thing of how people medicalize their language to give it undue authority outside of the context it is meant for.
It all depends on the audience, I'm sure that "addiction is a disease" would be interpreted very differently between a lay audience and an audience of neurologist addiction specialists. When used in front of the former, I think it's reasonable to assume surreptitious intent.
I used to find the slogan annoying as well until I encountered a number of the sort of people it was coined to fight against in the wild. There are a sizeable number of people who seem to think that sex work is some kind of thing that short-sighted people do because they are too lazy to get "real jobs." The slogan is meant to convey that sex work comes with its own serious challenges as a job, that it is a form of labor, not an alternative to it.
As to why there are separate prisons for men and women: from all the prison dramas I've watched, it's so men will rape other men rather than women.
I agree with the article's premise. Sadly, I feel like it is heavy lifting is beyond the pale for most Americans, where they are failing at orders of magnitude simpler reasoning.
I was hoping that you'd get into some specific examples in the transwhatever debate (you touched on them, tantalizingly) and show us how the stick fallacy was being used.
What do you think was missing in terms of specific examples? I laid the foundation for sex segregation in sports but the truth is I don't have strong opinions except that I think "I identify as a woman ergo I should compete in female leagues" is silly logic.
I'm not sure anything is missing, I was hoping to see the groundwork applied to examples out in the wild. We know there's a lot of angst going on out there, but I'm not on the places (e.g., twitter) where this stuff is discussed. You did a great job on the foundation, don't get me wrong. I guess I wanted to know more about the current state out there. I can agree this was unreasonable expectations.
Because I believe people deploy the sticker fallacy intentionally, I anticipate I would get a great deal of resistance for wanting to explore the original basis for categorization in the first place. Once you start asking those questions, the jig is up.
This is true but the terminal goal is not to redirect the rape so much as reduce its quantity. Men definitely get raped in prison but women would get raped a bunch more.
Also many people feel even less comfortable with the dehumanizing conditions of prison—like communal showering and people watching you use the toilet etc—in the presence of the opposite sex. Prisons are not supposed to be pleasant but they are also not supposed to be maximally unpleasant—especially for women offenders who are less a problem for society anyway.
"Weight is such an extreme determinative factor in combat sports that an untrained 250-pound couch potato could walk into any boxing gym and absolutely demolish a 100-pound opponent with decades of training."
I'm no expert but I doubt this is literally true—reaction time and endurance make some difference. If it was no-holds-barred wrestling then the statement might be more true, but the rules of boxing are, if I understand right, partly to make technique more important than it would be without them (the bigger guy can't just jump on the smaller guy). But of course your larger point is valid!
The ability to throw and take punches are foundational to boxing ability. 100lbs is TINY and so while they might have remarkable agility and can dodge for a while, all it would take is one hit connecting to end the match. Meanwhile, the couch potato can reliably tank for quite a long time given the 100-pounder's meager striking power.
Also noting that it does break down eventually. Our beer belly dude would get wrecked by a 180 lb trainer and fit boxer—that’s more the. big enough to throw a knockout punch. But a fit and trained 250 lb 5 out of 10 boxer boxer still manhandles a 180 lb generational talent. It’s complicated!
You have to be stronger than a 100 lb person just to, like, move around if you wear 250. I don’t think the OP is imagining some morbidly obese 5’1’ shrimp who cannot walk under their own power (even if such people do exist), but rather a reasonably big beer belly dude.
A 250lb sedentary male without experience or training is going to lack the cardio to stay upright in the ring long enough for it to matter. A bantamweight fighter would dance out of his each until he's about ready to pass out, then get him.
This is bad and clearly outside your knowledge, Yassine.
I agree with the conclusion. But I don't think this quite explains properly what's going on with women's sports.
Consider (with credit to a recent Richard Hanania article), south Asians are substantially worse at sport than Africans. This is pretty much objectively true. One could debate why (one could debate why women tend to perform worse at sport than men), but regardless, it's true. But we *don't* organise sporting contests gated by race. Now OK, race is fuzzier (even granting the existence of trans people) than sex. But still, some sort of system could be put in place- that's not the fundamental issue. So sex is not just a convenient sorting property (it wouldn't be a very useful one anyway, as it only has two values (err... mostly)). A world in which no sporting contest was ever gated by sex would work perfectly well- we'd just almost never see women athletes or sportspeople.
The fact of the matter is that people want to see women's sports. And if we allow trans-women to compete in women's sports, then, despite trans people being relatively rare, given the money and prestige involved and advantage male bodies have in most sporting contests; the highest levels of women's sports would be dominated by trans women. And people in general don't want that. And their preferences matter more than those of a tiny minority of people who happen to be both trans and athletes.
I agree with your overall conclusion. I wish people focused more on the practical impact in the same way you just did, rather than take the bait over definitions.
Every single human trait is endlessly variable so strict labelling is a convenience with utility but is not informative. We’re far too complex beings
Come to think of it Why wouldn’t (the concordance between) biological sex and self perception of gender not vary in a miniscule percentage of humans?
BTW There are still old style swimming pools where changing areas are not segregated in the UK. That’s a rarity though and mostly in culturally homogeneous places.
Sports can just make a Transgendered Male and Transgendered Female category. Trans are an infinitesimal minority it’s probably not financially feasible
> Sports can just make a Transgendered Male and Transgendered Female category. Trans are an infinitesimal minority it’s probably not financially feasible
I don't think it'd even be *athletically* feasible, because the gap in "biological athletic advantage" between some trans women and other trans women is almost as big as the one between cis men and cis women. Hunter Schafer (age 14 at transition) is going to have athletic potential a lot closer to the cis female average than Caitlyn Jenner (age 65 at transition).
This is true. At the same time however, it's reasonable to assume that someone who decided to transition early is highly unlikely to be interested in athletic pursuits. Maybe the infinitesimal early-transitioners who *do* want to pursue sports are worth accommodating somehow, or maybe not.
"accommodating"? You're just changing the rules of the game then -- just saying that "female sports" should now include males. Put transwomen or male transvestites like "Lia" [AKA William] Thomas in with the girls.
Should be hell to pay for that, you know. You might note that Lia has apparently had "her" titles and prizes rescinded -- bloody good show in my book. And large percentages of the American public.
Yes, I literally meant "changing rules" when I said "accommodating". Crucially, I did not specify what what these rule changes would actually be because I was contemplating everything from a "separate trans league" to "granular female league qualifications".
Also, I think you're severely misunderstanding Ghatanathoah's point
Thanks for the response though I think you're kind of missing the point, many of them in fact, despite having certainly danced around many of them in several of your posts going back several years.
Moot which is the proverbial keystone, but the biggie seems to be the rather desperate, if not desperately demented efforts of the transgendered to be taken as, seen as, treated as members of the opposite sex. Explicitly RE-defining a female sex sports league to include males with feminine traits is going to be a non-starter for them since it denies their bogus, and quite demented claim to being female. You may wish to take a close look at Victoria Smith's article on a book by UK transwoman Debbie Hayton:
"He’s not the messiah, he’s a transwoman; Transsexual Apostate is a disturbing book, written for disturbing times";
And, on the same point, since you're something of a legal beagle yourself, you might take a close look at this article at Duke Law by UK philosopher Kathleen Stock on:
THE IMPORTANCE OF REFERRING TO; HUMAN SEX IN LANGUAGE
Sorry for the "yelling" there but that's the way it's formatted. And I can't say that I blame her for that at least. Apropos of which, you might also consider her own book, Material Girls -- the best kind in my experience ..., as she has a more or less coherent, credible, and scientifically justified definition for "gender identity".
All of which speaks to "Ghat's point", more or less knocking it into a cocked hat.
His point is that people who transition really early, as in they had hormone treatments so early that they underwent female puberty and then had full surgery as adults, may be "biologically female" in every way that is relevant for sporting competitions. In other words, they might not have any of the intrinsic athletic advantages biological males do. If they lack any intrinsic advantages over biological females, and have intrinsic disadvantages to biological males, and don't have male genitalia that might upset fellow athletes in the locker room, maybe the female division is the best fit.
I don't know if it's confirmed or not that early hormone treatments completely erase biological sex advantages. I'm not an expert on developmental sex differences, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, they can't give birth, but there's no sport where you do that.
No way on gawd's green earth that anyone born with testicles -- nominally male -- is EVER going to go through female puberty, a salient feature of which is menarche, having periods, because -- mirabile dictu -- they don't have any ovaries.
You may wish to read some rudimentary biology. Like this article on sex might be a good start to get a handle on what the defining differences are between males and females -- in a word or two, testicles versus ovaries:
If "adults" want to remove their ovaries or testicles then I guess they're entitled to do so. But to trick kids into thinking they can change sex? Crime and medical scandal of the century.
How is menarche relevant to sporting competitions? The parts of female puberty such a person would go through include bone and muscle development, the precise things that give males an advantage over females in sports. If they lack the athletic advantages of being biologically male, that eliminates the rational for requiring they compete with male athletes instead of female ones. There are not currently any competitive menstruating sports, but I suppose if there was some kind of menstruation contest it would be fine to exclude transwomen from it.
Tara, tara, tara ... -- perchance, a Japanese remake of a classic American war movie on the bombing of Pearl Harbour? 😉🙂
Regardless of whether those transwomen have any "athletic potential close to the cis female average", they're still NOT females. They're just male transvestites, guys in drag, if they still have their nuts attached, and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
"Trans activism is now just misogyny in drag; The attack on Alison Moyet shows how sexist trans thinking has become."
> "Every single human trait is endlessly variable ..."
Horse feathers, being charitable. No more than transgender articles of faith subsumed by their mantra, "trans women are women!!11!!". No, they ain't. At best, they're no more than male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached, and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
There are only two -- count 'em, two -- sexes, the defining traits being, to a first approximation, whether one has ovaries (females) or whether one has testicles (males). There ain't no other types of gonads -- ovaries & testicles -- because there ain't no other types of "reproductive cells" (as one of Trump’s EOs put it) other than ova -- AKA eggs produced by ovaries -- or sperm -- produced by testicles. There ain't no "spergs" or "eggerm" in between those two fundamental, bedrock types of cells so there are only two sexes: absolutely no transwoman is EVER going to produce any ova of "her" own so won't EVER qualify as female. Suck it buttercups.
Unmitigated horse shit. Great steaming piles of it.
And you're talking out of both sides of your mouth to put a "cherry" on top of those mounds -- ain't no such thing as "trans biological sex". That is just a figment of the fevered imaginations of you and too many of the transloonie tribe, a notable case-in-point being a transwoman -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- yclept "Riley Dennis" who seems to "think" that sex is simply a matter of best three out of five:
RationalWiki: For example, if someone was assigned male at birth, but took puberty blockers and hormones and had a vaginoplasty, they would have “female” hormones, secondary sex characters, and genitals. So, three of their five ways of determining sex would be “female”... That means three-fifths of the sex criteria point to female, and only one-fifth points to male – and if you believe that sex is an unchanging biological fact, that couldn’t be possible. But it is.
Crazier than shit-house rats, the lot of them. "Rational Wiki" being a bit of a joke -- a contradiction in terms to begin with -- for peddling that horse-shit too.
But at the outset YOU SAID -- as if repeating a lie makes it true the second time around:
AM: "Why wouldn’t biological sex ... not vary in a miniscule percentage of humans?"
There's absolutely no "variation" at all in "biological sex". People are either male or female or sexless. You might try getting your head out of your nether regions and do some reading and thinking with it. These articles might be a good start:
Aeon: "Sex is real; Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing is either one or the other"
Reality's Last Stand (indeed): Agustín Fuentes’ Book ‘Sex is a Spectrum’ Fails to Refute the Binary; Fuentes’ confused arguments against the sex binary ironically end up confirming it
ETA: Archive link of "Rational" Wiki article in case the Trans Ministry of Truth -- AKA, the Tranish Inquisition -- want's to memory hole what looks like a smoking gun:
"amused" to note that the "Witch-finders General" at Medium took "offense" at that post and cast it into the outer darkness -- lotta that goin' round these days:
"Error 410: This post is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules."
What an absolute flaming joke -- RationalWiki, Medium, and far too many others of the same ilk.
too long to read. Look up Kleinfelter XXY, Intersex, hermaphroditism etc in animals look up sequential hermaphrodites, protandry, protogyny. Everything about anything to do with living things is a variable
But sex isn’t gender as we’re told. Intersex is not the same as transgender either. Trans activists and their allies always do this - point to gender as a social construction that’s imposed by society and then also innate and immutable - and then conflate it to sex and secondary sex characteristics.
Man boobs doesn’t make you a woman. You’re still a man.
Do you also believe that the category of human beings is variable? Are people with an extra chromosome human beings because they have 47 chromosomes? Does their existence mean we cannot categorize human beings becaus you know, its variable?
The intersex was a point to say nothing about living organisms is absolute not even sex. I think there’s a misunderstanding. Transgendered does not mean your biological sex mutated. It’s probably a point too subtle for absolutists. To me it sounds like an exceptionalism, a forced fixation that has nothing to do with the complexity of how biology, behaviour psychology work.
We’re fluid and variable through and through why would gender perception be exempt? There must be something really special about that trait that makes it immune to variation.
Genetics and function do not map one to one. Gender to sex conformity can’t be an absolute because nothing about biology is.
> "Man boobs doesn’t make you a woman. You’re still a man."
Exactly right. An absolute travesty -- of many in the transloonie tales of tormented tribulations (ETA: or so they style it ...) -- that Bruce Jenner got some award for "Woman of the Year":
My initial draft had a section on the history of bathroom segregation but I deleted it because it would've been far too long. While the initial reason for it may have been anxieties about women's place in the public realm, that's not necessarily the reason today. I also personally find the division really silly and think all bathrooms should be either single-occupancy or unisex but I also acknowledge that I don't have the requisite Lived Experience™️as a guy to really appreciate sex segregation.
It would have been a really interesting discussion. While sports show these plots with varying physical capabilities, women had separate bathrooms because they weren’t seen as people who should be out of the home. Original women’s restrooms were designed with the comforts of the home. People don’t see trans people as individuals who should be in these places either. It’s history repeating itself with a new group. I agree that all bathrooms should be gender neutral
Great piece. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Not sure if you're aware but a lot has already been written in this vein, here are two noteworthy pieces:
Yup, big fan of both pieces. Neither quite captured my particular position, and I came up with the Sticker Shortcut Fallacy in response to Scott's "noncentral argument"
> Weight is such an extreme determinative factor in combat sports that an untrained 250-pound couch potato could walk into any boxing gym and absolutely demolish a 100-pound opponent with decades of training. In pure striking exchanges, technique has little bearing when you’re getting ragdolled by someone several times your mass.
When it comes to sex segregation of any kind, the lack of curiosity on why the segregation exists in the first place is astounding to me.
Wow. Deliberate and pretend ignorance. Men and women are segregated because one sex is generally stronger, more powerful and violent. It’s 100% irrelevant that some men are less strong, powerful or violent than some or even most women. Group based labeling that corresponds with biologically is valid legally, culturally and socially.
I don’t want the increased risk that some dude that has become castrated should be in women’s intimate spaces and sports teams because he individually is weaker than most women theoretically or even actually.
It’s amazing how someone taking about logic all the time cannot fathom there are only 2 sexes. It’s actually not complicated. I’d love to read your writing on age is just a meaningless number and I’m actually 25 because I’m in. Greater shape than most 25 year old men but my age assigned at birth is 47.
I would encourage you to re-read what I wrote more carefully, because you're demonstrating a lot of poor reading comprehension about what my beliefs actually are. Here's a hint: I believe humans have only two sexes.
One reason for separating bathrooms is costs. Building costs for joint bathrooms is higher. Basically men’s bathrooms were relatively low costs. Now men enjoy more privacy and the cost is higher for it.
One of my main points of frustration with the whole push to accept transgender individuals in competitive sports leagues according to their identified gender is that this flies in the face of something that activists have been saying for decades.
What they said since I first started paying attention to transgender issues, about twenty years ago, is that they're trying to broaden people's understanding of sex and gender, to get people to recognize that gender and biological sex, and also things like sexuality and social presentation, are all different things which we should be able to understand and discuss separately. Fair enough. But if you accept that, there's essentially *no reason* to segregate sports leagues by gender, while there are very good reasons to segregate by biological sex!
Insisting that we should allow people into sports competition based on their identified gender is basically giving up the entire premise that trans activism is pushing people towards a more complex and nuanced worldview, and surrendering it to a simpler one where instead of only considering the relevance of biological sex, we only consider gender, even in situations where that makes no pragmatic sense. It's no wonder that a lot of people find this kind of model unpalatable; it's impractical, transparently ideological, and doesn't mesh at all with how the activists represent their own position.
> while there are very good reasons to segregate by biological sex!
Well, kind of. There are very good reasons to segregate by *something* biological that correlates with sex, but that thing isn't sex itself. Producing sperm in and of itself doesn't grant anyone an athletic advantage; neither does having XY chromosomes. The advantage comes from testosterone levels, both historical and present, and these days, T level is less correlated with sex than it used to be.
That's why the serious attempts to accommodate trans people in sports typically involve setting standards for testosterone levels, amount of time on HRT, age at transition, etc.
How is that not a "more complex and nuanced worldview"?
Producing sperm, or having XY chromosomes, doesn't inherently advantage someone in sports, but having been through male puberty, with the corresponding development of bone density and frame size, past muscle development (since it's easier to maintain or regain muscle than grow it to begin with,) does.
I'd be willing to credit attempts to accommodate people in trans sports based on standards set around testosterone levels, age at transition, amount of time on HRT, etc. as "serious" efforts, but I don't believe these are particularly widespread or popular. I have personally been ostracized from online communities, and lost IRL friends, for suggesting standards like this myself, and I had to come up with them independently because I didn't see anyone else arguing for them. I don't doubt that you have, but I personally have not encountered anybody else arguing for such positions in the wild, so my impression is that they're still pretty marginal.
"Producing sperm, or having XY chromosomes, doesn't inherently advantage someone in sports, but having been through male puberty, with the corresponding development of bone density and frame size, past muscle development (since it's easier to maintain or regain muscle than grow it to begin with,) does."
In some sports, yes. In others, not necessarily. Muscles will atrophy with a few years on HRT, but bones won't. Depending on the sport, having a bigger body with proportionally smaller muscles can be either an advantage or a disadvantage. That's why the only sensible answer is to leave it up to the governing bodies for individual sports.
In terms of promoting per-sport fairness, while allowing accessibility to transgender individuals within that constraint, I think that you do need separate standards for different sports. But, I think that without having an overarching set of meta-standards (basically, a set of guidelines for what the governing bodies for individual sports should be trying to accomplish with their rules, and what sort of criteria they should be working from,) I think that you risk a situation where the governing bodies are not all operating according to that understanding, and may have standards aligned wit totally different goals.
Isn’t levels of testosterone and amount of time in HRT the very things that the NCAA was using before the current executive actions? If I am wrong, I apologize.
So, I'm not an expert on the full extent of the NCAA's policies, but my understanding is that there wasn't a complete and coherent set of standards for all sports across the board, but rather that standards were set by governing bodies for individual sports. Athletes had to provide documentation of testosterone levels being within the allowable limit set for their sport, and to have been on HRT for a period of time (I'm not sure if this period was also set according to the sport, or one year across the board. Quick googling suggests the latter, although I recall participating in discussions with people who were at least under the impression that it was the former.)
There are people who just categorically opposed the participation of all transgender people in sports, usually on the basis of some fundamental ideological opposition, and those people for the most part were obviously not part of the left-wing coalition. And there are people who supported stricter rules for participation (I'd count myself among them,) because a year or so of HRT is really not enough to erase the athletic advantages of having been through male puberty. People holding this position were mostly excluded from the left wing coalition in communities where they aired their views (although I suspect that a significant number of left-wing people hold similar views privately, and I've talked to a fair number who've admitted in confidence that they're not convinced the mainstream opinions in their communities make sense, but they don't feel comfortable saying so. This is an issue that I think deserves its own more thorough discussion, but it's a digression from this topic.) People who shared this position openly were mostly moderates or conservatives, although I think it's fair to suspect that for at least some conservative commentators, this is actually a wedge intended to exclude transgender participants more generally, but they don't want to say so openly. But as a proposal, it at least deserves to be discussed on its own terms.
The actual policies as they stood though, I don't think were many people's best-case position, they were more of a compromise hammered out between people who thought the requirements ought to be stricter than that, and people who thought they ought to be looser. In the communities where I ended up ostracized for my own position at least, arguing that the restrictions ought to be looser than they were would not elicit much pushback or widespread disapproval, while arguing that the restrictions should *not* be loosened would elicit quite a bit.
I neither spend much time online and almost none before I joined Substack this spring so I don’t know anything about internet communities and it really hasn’t been much of a conversation in my social circles so I don’t know what it’s like.
It certainly seems reasonable to me to think that the previous NCAA guidelines might be insufficient in promoting fairness. I’d actually think for many competitions I would be reasonable to have going through male puberty to be disqualifying for a trans-woman.
Or the California HS method of expanding the girls’ track finals field by one participant so that no girl was excluded or kept from winning by competing against a trans athlete.
I just hate the hatred and dishonestly aimed at trans girls like the middle school WV shot putter. My aunt asked me to listen to Megan Kelly’s show about her and Kelly called her a man. Boy or girl, she was still 13. No teen deserves the vileness that Kelly was throwing her way.
T levels aren't always the best proxy for athletic performance. going through male puberty creates the most divergence between males and females.
I would agree with you, or what I assume you're saying, that a male who transitions before puberty and maintains female T levels should be allowed into a female league.
but I don't agree with someone who transitioned after puberty having the same access just because they have lower T levels. They would still have an unfair advantage.
Obviously a person with complete androgen insensitivity are completely phenotypically female but have XY yet should compete with females.
a lot of this is way too complicated for jocks and administrators. I think we just need boys, girls, and open leagues.
"but I don't agree with someone who transitioned after puberty having the same access just because they have lower T levels. They would still have an unfair advantage."
That may be true for some sports, but it can't be generalized to all sports. Really, the only sensible way to set policy on this is to leave it up to the leagues, because only experts in each sport can make the determination. It isn't nearly as simple as "male puberty = more muscles = winner".
Indeed. Yes, to all of the above.
Though, en passant, I think you need to write something about being "on the train since the early days of Less Wrong." 😉🙂
But relative to your, "trying to broaden people's understanding of sex and gender", you might note that "gender" is more or less the creation of feminism which transactivists have "transmogrified" into a rather problematic, unscientific, woo-ish, and quite thuggish if not psychotic cult:
Wikipedia: In 1945, Madison Bentley defined gender as the "socialized obverse of sex". Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 book The Second Sex has been interpreted as the beginning of the distinction between sex and gender in feminist theory ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender#As_distinct_from_sex
https://terfisaslur.com/
Great deal of merit, and scientific justification in that dichotomy created by feminism, at least some "sects" of it -- 23 at last count. But the "theory" and "medicine" around "gender identity" is hardly better than phrenology, than Chinese fortune cookies as someone said about the Myers-Briggs Type System. From a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on the topic, one of the more coherent sources though it goes off into the weeds with some feminist cant and dogma:
"2.2 Gender as feminine and masculine personality:
Nancy Chodorow (1978; 1995) has criticised social learning theory as too simplistic to explain gender differences (see also Deaux & Major 1990; Gatens 1996). Instead, she holds that gender is a matter of having feminine and masculine personalities that develop in early infancy as responses to prevalent parenting practices ..."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-gender/#GenFemMasPer
Kind of goes off the rails on "parenting practices" and elsewhere, but "feminine and masculine personalities" seems a useful perspective or the beginning of tenable point of view.
You might also have some interest in this post by one Dr. Maja Bowen -- also the author of "Born in the Right Body" -- which has a nice table of some salient "masculine and personalities", and a more or less scientifically justified distinction between sex and gender:
"How conflation of sex and gender became a tool of transgender ideology":
https://lascapigliata.com/2018/03/27/how-conflation-of-sex-and-gender-became-a-tool-of-transgender-ideology/
There are no “transgender individuals” and this is the point. Every individual is just a male individual or a female individual. People need to quit ceding the premise of a type of human.
This is just you doing the sticker debate thing that is the subject of this entire post!
I have no idea what you mean by "sticker debate thing." My point is don't use the very language that contains and spreads the lies that have to be debunked.
If you don't have the time or commitment to read the article, replying to the comments is probably not a good investment either. At the very least, not having read the article greatly reduces the chances of your comment leaving a good impression.
Whatevs! It’s a busy world but I still have some smart thoughts.
It’s the title of the article dude! Did you get lost?
Didn't read the article! Technology just showed me the comment in which the writer referenced non-existent "transgender individuals" and every time I see that I respond in the way I responded. As long as people keep ceding the lie / false premise, the lie will never be debunked. No references to things that don't exist as if they DO exist!
Well, that makes sense I had assumed you did and was genuinely confused.
You should read it though it’s pretty good. I think the author of the piece would say getting bogged down in whether trans people are real is a mistake. The correct reaction to “OK but some people occupy a rare intersex space where they are difficult to categorize” or “some biological males identify strongly as females” is “OK, who cares? We have the categories of men and women for a reason and they are load bearing in our society—corresponding to, in general, different biological realities across most of the relevant populations. Accordingly, we are keeping them even if you find some edge cases, not redefining them to also handle these edge cases!”
Plus, this fallacy is an issue that really strikes both sides of the aisle.
With regards to transgenderism: Rightists will say "transgender 'women' are not women" and ignore all the ways that they *are* women. Far leftists will say "transgender women are women" and ignore all the ways that they *aren't*.
I think it shows up in a lot of other topics, or at least, the problem of binary thinking applied to problems that have spectrums: Abortion isn't a binary, gun control isn't a binary, etc.
I'm curious in what ways you believe trans women are women.
In a few ways, almost all of which are banal.
Assuming they dress accordingly, "transwomen are women" in the context of who should shop at the women's clothing section. Assuming they pass sufficiently, "transwomen are women" for making snap descriptions (e.g. "that woman over there appears to have turned right"). "Transwomen are women" in so far as we ever use "feminine" as a synonym for "woman". For anyone out there who is legitimately sexually attracted to feminine presentation regardless of genitals, then "transwomen are women" in that context too.
Precisely all the ways that are denied by a man who emphasizes his own masculinity, or the ways denied by a woman who chooses to instead embrace non-binariness. The intangibles that come with either gender roles or whatever behaviors in the brain and personality traits that we associate with gender, even though they're not strictly restricted to one biological sex or the other. Surface qualities like convincingly appearing to be a woman on the outside, and all the ways that can matter in life, even though it's shallow, even though in many cases it *shouldn't* matter so much. And how that matters for dating.
Though really it should be a transwoman answering this question, not me. I know there are good accounts but I don't have any saved, if I come across them I'll share.
I don't accept the claim that a man with long hair and eyeshadow somehow "becomes" a woman in some intangible, ineffable sense. Femininity is not a costume to be worn and discarded on a whim. Note that your definition logically implies that tomboys are less authentically "women" than women who wear dresses and makeup, a sentiment which in any other context would strike many as misogynistic.
>Though really it should be a transwoman answering this question, not me.
Standpoint epistemology rears its ugly head once again. You don't need to be a cat to define what makes a cat a cat.
> I don't accept the claim that a man with long hair and eyeshadow somehow "becomes" a woman in some intangible, ineffable sense.
I never said long hair and eyeshadow is all that it takes.
> Standpoint epistemology rears its ugly head once again.
And family resemblance rears its head:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_resemblance
Is a platypus a mammal? When exactly does a house become a mansion? How many of the "correct" political beliefs does a person need before they earn a "conservative" or "liberal" label?
In real life, categories are often fuzzy. A passing transwoman you see on the street you would mentally classify as "woman", with all that entails, even though she doesn't have XX chromosomes. I don't need a specific definition with hundreds of different factors with varying weights for me and you to understand what it means to see a person on the street and think of them as 'he' or 'she'. And in many but not all domains of life, that transwoman you see on the street would be living life as a woman, for all that implies about society's gender roles.
I say "but not all" because of course the transwoman will never know what it is to give birth, to experience menstruation, or to grow up as a young girl (which is distinct from growing up as a young trans girl).
We all have different experiences, after all - white woman versus black woman, conservative man vs liberal man, etc etc, and even two people with many of the same labels can still be incredibly different. That's what Yassine's fallacy is really all about: Just slapping labels on things is of limited use. Real life is complex and we shouldn't think of everything in black and white terms (which again, is something I've seen happen a lot on both sides of the aisle).
>I never said long hair and eyeshadow is all that it takes.
You said that a man who convincingly looks like the modal woman therefore IS a woman in some intangible, ineffable sense.
>A passing transwoman you see on the street you would mentally classify as "woman", with all that entails, even though she doesn't have XX chromosomes.
Just because something looks like it's a member of a particular category, doesn't mean it IS a member of that category. I'm not German, have no German heritage, don't speak the language, have never lived in the country. Last week, someone asked me if I was German. Does that mean that I AM German in some intangible ineffable sense of the term, wholly uncoupled from ethnic heritage or culture?
I don't think so. I would simply say - people make mistakes. Nobody's perfect. The fact that someone erroneously thought I was German when I am not German does not imply that "German" is a fuzzy category in urgent need of redefinition to account for all the multitudes and different ways of being that exist within the spectrum of Germanness.
>And in many but not all domains of life, that transwoman you see on the street would be living life as a woman, for all that implies about society's gender roles.
I simply do not understand what it means to "live life as a woman".
>We all have different experiences, after all - white woman versus black woman
Regardless of ethnic heritage or skin tone, a white cis woman and a black cis woman were both born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, which is the defining rule-in characteristic of femininity. The fact that there are traits they don't share does not negate or overrule the traits they do.
I simply do not understand why "a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if faulty" is a deficient definition which needs to be replaced. Even if I did concede the point, I don't understand why your implied definition is superior: namely "a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if faulty; OR, a person who LOOKS LIKE a person born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes". You'll quickly note that the latter definition of womanhood is circular, as all definitions of womanhood proferred by trans activists inevitably turn out to be sooner or later.
>That's what Yassine's fallacy is really all about: Just slapping labels on things is of limited use. Real life is complex and we shouldn't think of everything in black and white terms
I'm not sure if Yassine would agree with your interpretation of his essay. But in any case, I don't think the reality of sexual dimorphism is anything like as "complex" as you would have me believe. 100% of babies born in the history of our species were born to female people - zero trans women have ever carried a baby to term. Contrary to pseudoscientific claims that sex is a spectrum, there has never been born an individual capable of producing small and large gametes, capable of both impregnating and being impregnated.
> Just because something looks like it's a member of a particular category, doesn't mean it IS a member of that category.
I disagree, it depends on the context. Let's say there's a display bread model made out of plastic and someone asks "Do you have any bread?". You'd answer "no" if the person was looking for food, but you'd answer yes if the person was looking to take bakery photos. The conceptual category remains exactly the same but its membership criteria changes depending on context.
Being German is a good example! Someone who moves to Germany and begins to live and breathe everything about German culture could be said to be German. They could also be said to NOT be a German because they didn't grow up there and don't have the same heritage. Both are true: They are and they are not German. The categories are fuzzy.
> I simply do not understand what it means to "live life as a woman".
You don't think our genders have a heavy influence on our lives?
> The fact that there are traits they don't share does not negate or overrule the traits they do.
A transwoman will never give birth. This is a fact of science, of how gametes work.
But there are other gendered traits which are probabilistic in nature, along a spectrum. For example: Men have more testosterone and are therefore more prone towards physical manifestations of anger and violence, and also I believe more prone towards excessive ego. None of that is unique to being a man! Women get angry, violent, and egotistical too. But society commonly codes these traits as more masculine than feminine, and there are many other traits that are seen in the reverse way. A transwoman is someone who inherently embodies so many feminine-aligned traits that it makes sense that they are women in some sense, despite the lack of the usual gametes. German but not German.
So, it's pretty easy to list specific features, but since it's pretty clear from your arguments in this thread that your position is that these are not particularly determinative features, I'd like to turn this around and ask, what particular features of cis women make them women?
There are definitely features which most cis women have in common, like XX chromosomes, egg cells, uteri, etc. which trans women don't have. Is a woman defined by some combination of those? Should an XY person with congenital androgen insensitivity disorder, whose phenotype is outwardly female, is assigned female at birth, and grows up being identified as female by others, be considered male? What about a person who's received a hysterectomy? Is a trans man, who's been through hormone replacement and has a fully male hormone balance, female?
A female person is a person who was born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes, even if those organs are faulty. A male person is a person born with the organs associated with the production of small gametes, even if faulty.
Secondary sex characteristics do not determine one's sex - a person with testicles remains male even if they have grown breasts. Undergoing a hysterectomy does not make a person any less female, anymore than having a leg amputated retroactively means you were born with one leg rather than two. A trans man who's undergone a full course of hormone replacement therapy nonetheless still possesses the organs associated with the production of large gametes.
As much as trans activists like to muddy the waters and pretend that sex is a continuous spectrum rather than a more or less binary distribution, it isn't remotely difficult to classify people as unambiguously male or female 99% of the time. Even many of the so-called "intersex" conditions (more accurately known as "disorders of sexual development") only ever afflict one sex or the other. To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever been born with organs associated with the production of both large and small gametes.
If you have to stick to ONE membership categorization, this is definitely the most coherent one. The problem I have is that it's unhelpful to rigidly stick to a single definition across all contexts, and it also implies that the concept of "woman" cannot exist without the concept of "gamete". So does that mean that people didn't know what a "woman" was before 1600s/1800s? You could say that while humans couldn't precisely explain what a gamete was or its relation to secondary sex characteristics, they nevertheless were able to grasp at this "true" definition but this is unfalsifiable nonsense.
Tomas Bogardus ran into this exact problem even though I overwhelmingly agree with his critique of the "what is a woman" debate. He kept making assertions like "we know what gold is, and that is the atom with 79 protons in its nucleus" but obviously "gold" meant different things at different times and different places.
That's certainly *a* way to define male and female people, although it does leave some small amount of overlap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotesticular_syndrome
As far as I know, no humans ever produce both functional sperm and egg cells, so stipulating that the cells must be functional would eliminate that overlap, but of course, that would rule many people out of being either male or female.
But the more relevant issue, I think, is that this runs into exactly the sticker fallacy discussed in this article. I don't have to think that trans activists have a well thought-out framework to agree that for most of the criteria we regard as most relevant in distinguishing men from women, an XY person with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, who is born with a vagina and female external genitalia, develops female secondary sex characteristics, is assigned female at birth and socialized according to the expectations of a female person, and is likely to grow up without ever learning that they have XY chromosomes or organs associated with the production of male gametes, is not best regarded as male.
I think that many trans activists go too far (probably most, although I also think people collectively police the sharing of opinions they see as outside the consensus, which is its own problem) in treating self-identified gender identity as the *only* relevant distinction between men and women in too many cases. There are situations where other distinctions between male and female categories are more relevant, and we should be equipped to discuss and reason about those. But there are also many situations where other distinctions of the male and female categories are more relevant than being born with organs for the production of large and small gametes.
We can *mostly* successfully distinguish the male and female clusters from each other based on whether people are born with organs for large or small gametes, according to anyone's criteria (people with different political dispositions will argue about what proportion of edge cases it fails to capture.) But that doesn't mean that it's a good basis for drawing the distinction. Plato's definition of a man as a "featherless biped" successfully predicts most group membership, his amended definition of "a featherless biped with broad, flat nails" when Diogenes called a plucked chicken a man, even more so. But this doesn't mean that it captures what we consider to be the group's most determinative features.
That's why, even though I agree with the message, I'm annoyed by the slogan "sex stork is work"
Yup, it's similar to "addiction is a disease" "abortion is murder" and a host of other slogans
"addiction is a disease" is a good example of how the 'slogan' is communicating something deep and complicated, but also can be misused or misunderstood as carrying other implications. There is a literal "Disease Model of Addiction" that is a legitimately medical approach to treating addiction. This was from several years ago but I remember reading that the disease model of addiction was significantly effective at treating addiction.
Addiction is a disease in the sense that it does neurologically affect your brain, and someone who is really succumbed to addiction ought to treat it in the same medical seriousness in the same way a cancer patient might. If you have cancer you don't skip your scans or doctor appointments, and it is important for people recovering from addiction to treat it with the same medical weight. And like say, cancer, you don't get "cured" of cancer magically and then you never have to worry about it again. In the same way under the disease model for addiction one cannot simply stop drinking alcohol and expect their condition to go away forever. Abstinence from the drink/drug is only part of the treatment but treating it like a disease where things like stress or various triggers (that can cause people to relapse) are seen as aggravating factors (or whatever the term) that *need to be considered* and mitigated along with treating the addiction directly. Of course the Disease Theory of Addiction isn't perfect or without controversy so to speak, but it has a specific meaning in an actual medical context (structuring a treatment plan with a doctor etc.).
But of course the problem is that like, "Cancer is a disease" in the sense that I need to take time off from work and need to take a medical leave. But "addiction is a disease" is not true in the sense that it should be used to justify or hide behind behavior morally speaking. People can use "it is a disease" irresponsibly, but that kind of falls into the general thing of how people medicalize their language to give it undue authority outside of the context it is meant for.
It all depends on the audience, I'm sure that "addiction is a disease" would be interpreted very differently between a lay audience and an audience of neurologist addiction specialists. When used in front of the former, I think it's reasonable to assume surreptitious intent.
Many such cases.
"Alcoholism is a disease but it's the only disease you can get yelled at for having." —Mitch Hedberg
I used to find the slogan annoying as well until I encountered a number of the sort of people it was coined to fight against in the wild. There are a sizeable number of people who seem to think that sex work is some kind of thing that short-sighted people do because they are too lazy to get "real jobs." The slogan is meant to convey that sex work comes with its own serious challenges as a job, that it is a form of labor, not an alternative to it.
The typo made a bird pun! (Or it's no typo and I'm dumb)
Nice!
It's a typo but it's better that way
As to why there are separate prisons for men and women: from all the prison dramas I've watched, it's so men will rape other men rather than women.
I agree with the article's premise. Sadly, I feel like it is heavy lifting is beyond the pale for most Americans, where they are failing at orders of magnitude simpler reasoning.
I was hoping that you'd get into some specific examples in the transwhatever debate (you touched on them, tantalizingly) and show us how the stick fallacy was being used.
What do you think was missing in terms of specific examples? I laid the foundation for sex segregation in sports but the truth is I don't have strong opinions except that I think "I identify as a woman ergo I should compete in female leagues" is silly logic.
I'm not sure anything is missing, I was hoping to see the groundwork applied to examples out in the wild. We know there's a lot of angst going on out there, but I'm not on the places (e.g., twitter) where this stuff is discussed. You did a great job on the foundation, don't get me wrong. I guess I wanted to know more about the current state out there. I can agree this was unreasonable expectations.
Because I believe people deploy the sticker fallacy intentionally, I anticipate I would get a great deal of resistance for wanting to explore the original basis for categorization in the first place. Once you start asking those questions, the jig is up.
This is true but the terminal goal is not to redirect the rape so much as reduce its quantity. Men definitely get raped in prison but women would get raped a bunch more.
Also many people feel even less comfortable with the dehumanizing conditions of prison—like communal showering and people watching you use the toilet etc—in the presence of the opposite sex. Prisons are not supposed to be pleasant but they are also not supposed to be maximally unpleasant—especially for women offenders who are less a problem for society anyway.
This is a really good analysis.
"Weight is such an extreme determinative factor in combat sports that an untrained 250-pound couch potato could walk into any boxing gym and absolutely demolish a 100-pound opponent with decades of training."
I'm no expert but I doubt this is literally true—reaction time and endurance make some difference. If it was no-holds-barred wrestling then the statement might be more true, but the rules of boxing are, if I understand right, partly to make technique more important than it would be without them (the bigger guy can't just jump on the smaller guy). But of course your larger point is valid!
The ability to throw and take punches are foundational to boxing ability. 100lbs is TINY and so while they might have remarkable agility and can dodge for a while, all it would take is one hit connecting to end the match. Meanwhile, the couch potato can reliably tank for quite a long time given the 100-pounder's meager striking power.
When I picture a couch potato I'm not necessarily picturing a lot of upper-body strength. But it's certainly possible you're right!
Also noting that it does break down eventually. Our beer belly dude would get wrecked by a 180 lb trainer and fit boxer—that’s more the. big enough to throw a knockout punch. But a fit and trained 250 lb 5 out of 10 boxer boxer still manhandles a 180 lb generational talent. It’s complicated!
You have to be stronger than a 100 lb person just to, like, move around if you wear 250. I don’t think the OP is imagining some morbidly obese 5’1’ shrimp who cannot walk under their own power (even if such people do exist), but rather a reasonably big beer belly dude.
A 250lb sedentary male without experience or training is going to lack the cardio to stay upright in the ring long enough for it to matter. A bantamweight fighter would dance out of his each until he's about ready to pass out, then get him.
This is bad and clearly outside your knowledge, Yassine.
I agree with the conclusion. But I don't think this quite explains properly what's going on with women's sports.
Consider (with credit to a recent Richard Hanania article), south Asians are substantially worse at sport than Africans. This is pretty much objectively true. One could debate why (one could debate why women tend to perform worse at sport than men), but regardless, it's true. But we *don't* organise sporting contests gated by race. Now OK, race is fuzzier (even granting the existence of trans people) than sex. But still, some sort of system could be put in place- that's not the fundamental issue. So sex is not just a convenient sorting property (it wouldn't be a very useful one anyway, as it only has two values (err... mostly)). A world in which no sporting contest was ever gated by sex would work perfectly well- we'd just almost never see women athletes or sportspeople.
The fact of the matter is that people want to see women's sports. And if we allow trans-women to compete in women's sports, then, despite trans people being relatively rare, given the money and prestige involved and advantage male bodies have in most sporting contests; the highest levels of women's sports would be dominated by trans women. And people in general don't want that. And their preferences matter more than those of a tiny minority of people who happen to be both trans and athletes.
I agree with your overall conclusion. I wish people focused more on the practical impact in the same way you just did, rather than take the bait over definitions.
Only tangentially connected:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJ4iv5mOoIY/?igsh=MTJhZHJjbW5saDdiMw==
Every single human trait is endlessly variable so strict labelling is a convenience with utility but is not informative. We’re far too complex beings
Come to think of it Why wouldn’t (the concordance between) biological sex and self perception of gender not vary in a miniscule percentage of humans?
BTW There are still old style swimming pools where changing areas are not segregated in the UK. That’s a rarity though and mostly in culturally homogeneous places.
Sports can just make a Transgendered Male and Transgendered Female category. Trans are an infinitesimal minority it’s probably not financially feasible
Edited for clarity see parentheses
> Sports can just make a Transgendered Male and Transgendered Female category. Trans are an infinitesimal minority it’s probably not financially feasible
I don't think it'd even be *athletically* feasible, because the gap in "biological athletic advantage" between some trans women and other trans women is almost as big as the one between cis men and cis women. Hunter Schafer (age 14 at transition) is going to have athletic potential a lot closer to the cis female average than Caitlyn Jenner (age 65 at transition).
This is true. At the same time however, it's reasonable to assume that someone who decided to transition early is highly unlikely to be interested in athletic pursuits. Maybe the infinitesimal early-transitioners who *do* want to pursue sports are worth accommodating somehow, or maybe not.
"accommodating"? You're just changing the rules of the game then -- just saying that "female sports" should now include males. Put transwomen or male transvestites like "Lia" [AKA William] Thomas in with the girls.
Should be hell to pay for that, you know. You might note that Lia has apparently had "her" titles and prizes rescinded -- bloody good show in my book. And large percentages of the American public.
Yes, I literally meant "changing rules" when I said "accommodating". Crucially, I did not specify what what these rule changes would actually be because I was contemplating everything from a "separate trans league" to "granular female league qualifications".
Also, I think you're severely misunderstanding Ghatanathoah's point
Thanks for the response though I think you're kind of missing the point, many of them in fact, despite having certainly danced around many of them in several of your posts going back several years.
Moot which is the proverbial keystone, but the biggie seems to be the rather desperate, if not desperately demented efforts of the transgendered to be taken as, seen as, treated as members of the opposite sex. Explicitly RE-defining a female sex sports league to include males with feminine traits is going to be a non-starter for them since it denies their bogus, and quite demented claim to being female. You may wish to take a close look at Victoria Smith's article on a book by UK transwoman Debbie Hayton:
"He’s not the messiah, he’s a transwoman; Transsexual Apostate is a disturbing book, written for disturbing times";
https://thecritic.co.uk/issues/april-2024/hes-not-the-messiah-hes-a-transwoman/
And, on the same point, since you're something of a legal beagle yourself, you might take a close look at this article at Duke Law by UK philosopher Kathleen Stock on:
THE IMPORTANCE OF REFERRING TO; HUMAN SEX IN LANGUAGE
https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5029&context=lcp
Sorry for the "yelling" there but that's the way it's formatted. And I can't say that I blame her for that at least. Apropos of which, you might also consider her own book, Material Girls -- the best kind in my experience ..., as she has a more or less coherent, credible, and scientifically justified definition for "gender identity".
All of which speaks to "Ghat's point", more or less knocking it into a cocked hat.
His point is that people who transition really early, as in they had hormone treatments so early that they underwent female puberty and then had full surgery as adults, may be "biologically female" in every way that is relevant for sporting competitions. In other words, they might not have any of the intrinsic athletic advantages biological males do. If they lack any intrinsic advantages over biological females, and have intrinsic disadvantages to biological males, and don't have male genitalia that might upset fellow athletes in the locker room, maybe the female division is the best fit.
I don't know if it's confirmed or not that early hormone treatments completely erase biological sex advantages. I'm not an expert on developmental sex differences, but it wouldn't surprise me. Yeah, they can't give birth, but there's no sport where you do that.
No way on gawd's green earth that anyone born with testicles -- nominally male -- is EVER going to go through female puberty, a salient feature of which is menarche, having periods, because -- mirabile dictu -- they don't have any ovaries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menarche
You may wish to read some rudimentary biology. Like this article on sex might be a good start to get a handle on what the defining differences are between males and females -- in a word or two, testicles versus ovaries:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
And rather barbaric, quack medicine at best to be forestalling puberty in any kids -- they're incapable of understanding what the ramifications are:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty
If "adults" want to remove their ovaries or testicles then I guess they're entitled to do so. But to trick kids into thinking they can change sex? Crime and medical scandal of the century.
How is menarche relevant to sporting competitions? The parts of female puberty such a person would go through include bone and muscle development, the precise things that give males an advantage over females in sports. If they lack the athletic advantages of being biologically male, that eliminates the rational for requiring they compete with male athletes instead of female ones. There are not currently any competitive menstruating sports, but I suppose if there was some kind of menstruation contest it would be fine to exclude transwomen from it.
Tara, tara, tara ... -- perchance, a Japanese remake of a classic American war movie on the bombing of Pearl Harbour? 😉🙂
Regardless of whether those transwomen have any "athletic potential close to the cis female average", they're still NOT females. They're just male transvestites, guys in drag, if they still have their nuts attached, and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
"Trans activism is now just misogyny in drag; The attack on Alison Moyet shows how sexist trans thinking has become."
https://www.spiked-online.com/2018/07/10/trans-activism-is-now-just-misogyny-in-drag/#.W14X6NJKi71
> "Every single human trait is endlessly variable ..."
Horse feathers, being charitable. No more than transgender articles of faith subsumed by their mantra, "trans women are women!!11!!". No, they ain't. At best, they're no more than male transvestites if they still have their nuts attached, and sexless eunuchs if they don't.
There are only two -- count 'em, two -- sexes, the defining traits being, to a first approximation, whether one has ovaries (females) or whether one has testicles (males). There ain't no other types of gonads -- ovaries & testicles -- because there ain't no other types of "reproductive cells" (as one of Trump’s EOs put it) other than ova -- AKA eggs produced by ovaries -- or sperm -- produced by testicles. There ain't no "spergs" or "eggerm" in between those two fundamental, bedrock types of cells so there are only two sexes: absolutely no transwoman is EVER going to produce any ova of "her" own so won't EVER qualify as female. Suck it buttercups.
Trans”gendered” not Trans biological sex. Even biological sex is variable.
Edit: look at us two, even the ability of that curious rare category of people to trigger is obviously a spectrum!
> "Even biological sex is variable."
Unmitigated horse shit. Great steaming piles of it.
And you're talking out of both sides of your mouth to put a "cherry" on top of those mounds -- ain't no such thing as "trans biological sex". That is just a figment of the fevered imaginations of you and too many of the transloonie tribe, a notable case-in-point being a transwoman -- compound word like "crayfish" which ain't -- yclept "Riley Dennis" who seems to "think" that sex is simply a matter of best three out of five:
RationalWiki: For example, if someone was assigned male at birth, but took puberty blockers and hormones and had a vaginoplasty, they would have “female” hormones, secondary sex characters, and genitals. So, three of their five ways of determining sex would be “female”... That means three-fifths of the sex criteria point to female, and only one-fifth points to male – and if you believe that sex is an unchanging biological fact, that couldn’t be possible. But it is.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Riley_Dennis#On_biological_sex
Crazier than shit-house rats, the lot of them. "Rational Wiki" being a bit of a joke -- a contradiction in terms to begin with -- for peddling that horse-shit too.
But at the outset YOU SAID -- as if repeating a lie makes it true the second time around:
AM: "Why wouldn’t biological sex ... not vary in a miniscule percentage of humans?"
There's absolutely no "variation" at all in "biological sex". People are either male or female or sexless. You might try getting your head out of your nether regions and do some reading and thinking with it. These articles might be a good start:
Aeon: "Sex is real; Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing is either one or the other"
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
Reality's Last Stand (indeed): Agustín Fuentes’ Book ‘Sex is a Spectrum’ Fails to Refute the Binary; Fuentes’ confused arguments against the sex binary ironically end up confirming it
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/augustin-fuentes-book-sex-is-a-spectrum
PhilPapers Archive: What are biological sexes?; Paul E. Griffiths
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
ETA: Archive link of "Rational" Wiki article in case the Trans Ministry of Truth -- AKA, the Tranish Inquisition -- want's to memory hole what looks like a smoking gun:
https://archive.ph/h911h
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Riley_Dennis
And, speaking of the Tranish Inquisition -- no one expects that!! 🙄 -- a more apt name for the transloonie tribe is scarcely imaginable:
"The Tranish Inquisition clearly shows the Orwellian nature of our electronic Agora;
William Ray"
https://archive.ph/2018.12.03-141318/https:/medium.com/@williamray/the-tranish-inquisition-clearly-shows-the-orwellian-nature-of-our-electronic-agora-42883c79a180
"amused" to note that the "Witch-finders General" at Medium took "offense" at that post and cast it into the outer darkness -- lotta that goin' round these days:
"Error 410: This post is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules."
What an absolute flaming joke -- RationalWiki, Medium, and far too many others of the same ilk.
Source:
https://www.peaktrans.org/silencing-critical-voices/
too long to read. Look up Kleinfelter XXY, Intersex, hermaphroditism etc in animals look up sequential hermaphrodites, protandry, protogyny. Everything about anything to do with living things is a variable
But sex isn’t gender as we’re told. Intersex is not the same as transgender either. Trans activists and their allies always do this - point to gender as a social construction that’s imposed by society and then also innate and immutable - and then conflate it to sex and secondary sex characteristics.
Man boobs doesn’t make you a woman. You’re still a man.
Do you also believe that the category of human beings is variable? Are people with an extra chromosome human beings because they have 47 chromosomes? Does their existence mean we cannot categorize human beings becaus you know, its variable?
The intersex was a point to say nothing about living organisms is absolute not even sex. I think there’s a misunderstanding. Transgendered does not mean your biological sex mutated. It’s probably a point too subtle for absolutists. To me it sounds like an exceptionalism, a forced fixation that has nothing to do with the complexity of how biology, behaviour psychology work.
We’re fluid and variable through and through why would gender perception be exempt? There must be something really special about that trait that makes it immune to variation.
Genetics and function do not map one to one. Gender to sex conformity can’t be an absolute because nothing about biology is.
> "Man boobs doesn’t make you a woman. You’re still a man."
Exactly right. An absolute travesty -- of many in the transloonie tales of tormented tribulations (ETA: or so they style it ...) -- that Bruce Jenner got some award for "Woman of the Year":
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3264919/Another-award-shelf-Caitlyn-Jenner-set-honored-Glamour-magazine-s-Woman-Year-taking-secret-photoshoot-December-issue.html
And transwoman Dylan Mulvaney being gushed over by Kamala -- "she's for they/them" -- Harris for "living authentically as a woman".
https://www.thepinknews.com/2023/03/23/kamala-harris-dylan-mulvaney-birthday-card-backlash/
Archive link: https://archive.ph/9yQMJ
Barking mad the lot of them. And all of their enablers, hangers-on, useful/useless idiots, pandering political opportunists, and fellow-travelers.
Short attention span? Likely to run across something that knocks your "world-view" into a cocked hat? 🙄
But tough shit. So what. If those dudes or dude-esses aren't capable of producing either sperm or ova then they're neither male nor female.
US "biologist" (jury is still out ...) Jerry Coyne said the same thing:
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/04/sf-chronicle-sex-and-gender-are-not-binaries/#comment-2048737
Sorry man I stopped reading your responses it’s too OTT lol calm down
I wish you would have researched why there are separate bathrooms if that was your actual question. Link it to the sports idea. It is answerable.
https://time.com/4337761/history-sex-segregated-bathrooms/
Historians say it has nothing to do with anything biological and mostly to do with women’s place in society
My initial draft had a section on the history of bathroom segregation but I deleted it because it would've been far too long. While the initial reason for it may have been anxieties about women's place in the public realm, that's not necessarily the reason today. I also personally find the division really silly and think all bathrooms should be either single-occupancy or unisex but I also acknowledge that I don't have the requisite Lived Experience™️as a guy to really appreciate sex segregation.
It would have been a really interesting discussion. While sports show these plots with varying physical capabilities, women had separate bathrooms because they weren’t seen as people who should be out of the home. Original women’s restrooms were designed with the comforts of the home. People don’t see trans people as individuals who should be in these places either. It’s history repeating itself with a new group. I agree that all bathrooms should be gender neutral
Great piece. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Not sure if you're aware but a lot has already been written in this vein, here are two noteworthy pieces:
First, from Scott Alexander: The Categories Were Made For Man, Not Man For The Categories -https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/
And a reply to Scott: The Categories Were Made for Man to Make Predictions -http://unremediatedgender.space/2018/Feb/the-categories-were-made-for-man-to-make-predictions/
Yup, big fan of both pieces. Neither quite captured my particular position, and I came up with the Sticker Shortcut Fallacy in response to Scott's "noncentral argument"
This was a very brilliant article. 🩵
> Weight is such an extreme determinative factor in combat sports that an untrained 250-pound couch potato could walk into any boxing gym and absolutely demolish a 100-pound opponent with decades of training. In pure striking exchanges, technique has little bearing when you’re getting ragdolled by someone several times your mass.
Don't your UFC videos kinda disprove this?
I meant this specific to boxing in particular, but I edited it to be "Weight can be such..."
Ah. I don't watch any combat sports regularly, so the distinctions between types are often lost on me. Thanks!
BIRDS!
When it comes to sex segregation of any kind, the lack of curiosity on why the segregation exists in the first place is astounding to me.
Wow. Deliberate and pretend ignorance. Men and women are segregated because one sex is generally stronger, more powerful and violent. It’s 100% irrelevant that some men are less strong, powerful or violent than some or even most women. Group based labeling that corresponds with biologically is valid legally, culturally and socially.
I don’t want the increased risk that some dude that has become castrated should be in women’s intimate spaces and sports teams because he individually is weaker than most women theoretically or even actually.
It’s amazing how someone taking about logic all the time cannot fathom there are only 2 sexes. It’s actually not complicated. I’d love to read your writing on age is just a meaningless number and I’m actually 25 because I’m in. Greater shape than most 25 year old men but my age assigned at birth is 47.
I would encourage you to re-read what I wrote more carefully, because you're demonstrating a lot of poor reading comprehension about what my beliefs actually are. Here's a hint: I believe humans have only two sexes.
One reason for separating bathrooms is costs. Building costs for joint bathrooms is higher. Basically men’s bathrooms were relatively low costs. Now men enjoy more privacy and the cost is higher for it.
Trans isn’t real. Hope this helps.