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> When investigating the intersection of unconscious attitudes (often shaped by culture) and performance, gender is more relevant than sex. This is a very broa

> When investigating the intersection of unconscious attitudes (often shaped by culture) and performance, gender is more relevant than sex. This is a very broad statement which is trivial to prove false. Look at powerlifting: men perform better than women, and testosterone plays a well-understood role in this performance. This is a function of sex, not gender. And while it's most numerically provable and obvious in powerlifting, this is true for a lot of sports. At a more fundamental level, I question whether the gender/sex divide is scientifically valid. One can point to the example of a transman and say, "Their female sex didn't align with their male gender at birth" but that seems like a very surface assessment; it's also possible that chemicals released by (for example) their brain or pituitary, are causing the dysphoria they experienced. Are we to claim that ovaries and testicles are sex, and the brain and pituitary is gender? Or might it make more sense to broaden our understanding of sex to realize that genitalia aren't the only organs regulating sex, and instead say that the transperson wasn't born female, but was instead born with a mixture of sex characteristics, and only the most obvious sex characteristics were female, while the characteristics which more fundamentally defined their identity were male. In a larger sense, this seems related to the categorization error of separating mind and body as if they are two different things, a separation which seems more clearly false. NOTE: Please don't construe anything I say as negative toward transpeople. I think humans have an inherent, fundamental right to define their identities and modify their bodies in any way they choose. People don't need excuses or justification to exercise that right. Certainly we don't need an abstract distinction between sex and gender to let people dress and socialize with people the way they want or change their bodies.

groovy2shoes 10y ago
> Are we to claim that ovaries and testicles are sex, and the brain and pituitary is gender? That about sums up the usual definitions, yes.
- devishard 10y ago
  Why make that distinction when they are fundamentally interconnected?
  - groovy2shoes 10y ago
    The point is that they're not fundamentally interconnected. The current line of thinking among transgendered people is that their sex is not appropriate for their gender, regardless of what the chromosomes say. I.e., their genital profile and secondary sex characteristics ("ovaries and testicles") do not exhibit the same sexual mode as their identity ("brain and pituitary", though in many cases likely just "brain").
kaitai 10y ago
I would disagree, actually. I am a woman who loves powerlifting, actually, and I think that the attitudes of many women in the United States toward lifting heavy things renders them less likely to actually do it. Many women believe they'll bulk up, they'll be unwomanly, men won't like them, women won't like them, it's ok to be physically weak as a woman because you can always get a guy to open the jar/lift the box. As a result, these women don't try to lift heavy things and when you ask them why, they say, "I can't! I am just not good at it." I'm a relatively small woman who got up to a 220-lb deadlift without much effort -- I know active helplessness when I see it.
- devishard 10y ago
  But if those attitudes changed, it wouldn't mean that suddenly women would be able to deadlift as much as men. Take a look at this chart: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.html http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.... Your deadlift of 220lbs puts you in the "Advanced" category assuming your body weight is somewhere in the middle. By comparison, I'm deadlifting 360lbs at 185lbs, and that's not even close to "Advanced", I'm well within the "Intermediate" category. For me to be considered advanced, I would have to lift 440lbs, literally twice what you're lifting. That's not a difference explained by psychology. Besides, we can easily remove the factor you're talking about: there are plenty of sports which don't have the social factors you're describing. There are tons of women who run, for example. In the 60 meter dash, the top male performer, Maurice Greene, finished in 6.39s, more than half a second faster than the top female performer, Irina Privalova, at 6.92s. A half second might not seem like a lot, but consider that Privalova's time wouldn't place her even in the top 25 of male atheletes. [1] Similarly, Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 marathon record doesn't wouldn't put her even in the top 10 (I suspect there are hundreds of men whose personal record beats her time, but Wikipedia only shows the top 10).[2] Do you really think Irina Privalova or Paula Radcliffe is just being actively helpless? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_metres#Top_25_performers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_metres#Top_25_performers [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#All-time_top_ten_athletes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#All-time_top_ten_athl...

groovy2shoes 10y ago

> Are we to claim that ovaries and testicles are sex, and the brain and pituitary is gender? That about sums up the usual definitions, yes.

devishard 10y ago
Why make that distinction when they are fundamentally interconnected?
- groovy2shoes 10y ago
  The point is that they're not fundamentally interconnected. The current line of thinking among transgendered people is that their sex is not appropriate for their gender, regardless of what the chromosomes say. I.e., their genital profile and secondary sex characteristics ("ovaries and testicles") do not exhibit the same sexual mode as their identity ("brain and pituitary", though in many cases likely just "brain").

kaitai 10y ago

I would disagree, actually. I am a woman who loves powerlifting, actually, and I think that the attitudes of many women in the United States toward lifting heavy things renders them less likely to actually do it. Many women believe they'll bulk up, they'll be unwomanly, men won't like them, women won't like them, it's ok to be physically weak as a woman because you can always get a guy to open the jar/lift the box. As a result, these women don't try to lift heavy things and when you ask them why, they say, "I can't! I am just not good at it." I'm a relatively small woman who got up to a 220-lb deadlift without much effort -- I know active helplessness when I see it.

devishard 10y ago
But if those attitudes changed, it wouldn't mean that suddenly women would be able to deadlift as much as men. Take a look at this chart: http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.html http://www.exrx.net/Testing/WeightLifting/DeadliftStandards.... Your deadlift of 220lbs puts you in the "Advanced" category assuming your body weight is somewhere in the middle. By comparison, I'm deadlifting 360lbs at 185lbs, and that's not even close to "Advanced", I'm well within the "Intermediate" category. For me to be considered advanced, I would have to lift 440lbs, literally twice what you're lifting. That's not a difference explained by psychology. Besides, we can easily remove the factor you're talking about: there are plenty of sports which don't have the social factors you're describing. There are tons of women who run, for example. In the 60 meter dash, the top male performer, Maurice Greene, finished in 6.39s, more than half a second faster than the top female performer, Irina Privalova, at 6.92s. A half second might not seem like a lot, but consider that Privalova's time wouldn't place her even in the top 25 of male atheletes. [1] Similarly, Paula Radcliffe's 2:15:25 marathon record doesn't wouldn't put her even in the top 10 (I suspect there are hundreds of men whose personal record beats her time, but Wikipedia only shows the top 10).[2] Do you really think Irina Privalova or Paula Radcliffe is just being actively helpless? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_metres#Top_25_performers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_metres#Top_25_performers [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#All-time_top_ten_athletes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon#All-time_top_ten_athl...