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I highly recommend that anyone who believes the content of that editorial watch the video series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask https://en.wikipedia.o

I highly recommend that anyone who believes the content of that editorial watch the video series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hjernevask which can be found online. The short version is, the people pushing the "biological gender is not science" narrative are themselves more driven by ideology than science, not the other way around. If they really want a special case for people whose genitalia are misformed, that's a different argument than saying we shouldn't classify people based on genetics at all. Also, if people understand that the gender on a birth certificate is genetics based, then they can choose for themselves to discuss with their potential sexual partner why the gender on their birth certificate should be interpreted a particular way due to special factors in their case.

tomlock 8y ago
But, the idea that the classification is binary is inherently flawed if, as you state, there are special cases.
- MLR 8y ago
  I imagine that if one is being as technical as possible then sex is pretty unambiguous, i.e. egg/female sex cell producing -> female, sperm/male sex cell producing -> male. Of course that leads to complications when you have to try and generally apply it, which is where the ambiguity comes from.
  - tomlock 8y ago
    If there is ever ambiguity, the classification is not binary.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  So define it as non-binary but still based on genetics, if that's your argument. Or just M, F, and O for Other if you want to keep things simple. You could literally list their chromosome combinations to make it clear. XX, XY, XXY, whatever.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    But XY without a copy of sex determining region Y is (typically, there may be some other variation) female in phenotype, not a male (conversely, XX with SRY, resulting from the same crossover in sex cell formation, is male phenotype, not female.) Biological sex isn't binary, and it's also not as simple as chromosome combinations.
    - epicureanideal 8y ago
      In which case perhaps the proposed legislation is actually pretty good about how to identify sex... look at the genitalia, and only follow up with the genetics if that's ambiguous. The proposed legislation looks better in light of this, not worse. It proposes to identify by phenotype rather than genotype (although ultimately by genotype of specific genes that result in different genitalia), which is a practical way of categorizing people by the genes (most of) society actually cares about in this case.
  - tomlock 8y ago
    But people can have one body with multiple chromosome combinations. As soon as we start admitting that there needs to be an "other" category, we're admitting that the categorisation we currently have is at the very least, inadequate.
dragonwriter 8y ago
Biological sex (which is distinct from gender) is science, but it's not binary (for humans, it's loosely bimodal.) Deliberately choosing some aspect(s) of biological sex as ascribed gender and giving it special legal status isn't science, it's social engineering. > Also, if people understand that the gender on a birth certificate is genetics based That's not the proposal; the proposal is genitalia at birth compared to sex stereotypes with genetics resorted to only with ambiguous genitalia. But since it's possible for genetics (at the XX v. XY level, and even ignoring other combinations) to mismatch genitalia at birth without genitalia that would be ambiguous (unless one simply defines all genitalia as ambiguous), this is not equivalent to being based on genetics.
- epicureanideal 8y ago
  I would say trying to deny that 95%+ of humans are clearly either male or female and trying to engineer the laws around a small percentage that want to be differently identified is the social engineering. The author is not trying to make the minimum possible change to the proposed legislation to make it acceptable, they're just trying to find something wrong with it so they can resist it entirely. Genitalia match genetic sex in the vast majority of cases. There are plenty of places where laws are flawed. Laws are designed to handle the vast majority of cases. They are meant to be practical. Anyway, the point is, if the problem is with how to handle the exception to the rule, the < 5% with ambiguous gender, then the author of the editorial should make that argument, but saying that there is "no basis in science" for the proposed legislation is ridiculous and obviously ideologically driven.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > I would say trying to deny that 95%+ of humans are clearly either male or female No one is denying that the vast majority of humans fall mostly into one of two biological sex clusters and identify in a way which historically corresponds to the way people in that cluster have been externally ascribed a gender, so that's a strawman. > and trying to engineer the laws around a small percentage that want to be differently identified is the social engineering. Yes, the movement to align ascribed gender with gender identity is social engineering, no less than the attempt to reverse the movement made in that direction is. Virtually no one involved in the effort denies that, either. One side is trying to engineer to remove a palpable source of harm, the other to restore it.
henrikschroder 8y ago
The problem isn't the two major gender classifications, the problem is that it's impossible to objectively classify all humans at birth into either category. Most people are genetically either XX or XY, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome) Most people are born with either male or female genitalia, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism) Most people's genitalia corresponds to their genetic gender, but for some it doesn't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivit...) Most people's psychological gender corresponds to their genitalia and their genetics, but for some it doesn't. (The entirety of the trans* issue) The only reasonable way forward is to make legal gender optional and changeable. The idea that you can, or worse, should, classify every human into one of two options is wrong. It's a bizarre conservative, Victorian idea that nature should somehow always be neatly categorized, and when it can't be, those that don't fit in are somehow "wrong". No, the reality is that nature is messy and anything but neatly categorizable, therefore our systems should be flexible enough to handle that.
- harshreality 8y ago
  How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped together and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women, or you do away with individual sports and force (force... that doesn't sound gender-neutral to me) 50/50 split for teams. Gender identification may not be directly relevant to narrow performance in a lot of other areas, but it is relevant to overall human behavior, which affects personal choices that end up affecting things (like work and hobbies) even when performance on specific tasks is not directly affected by gender differences. Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. Not identifying people according to easily discernible (in the vast majority of cases) characteristics causes its own problems.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago

tomlock 8y ago

But, the idea that the classification is binary is inherently flawed if, as you state, there are special cases.

MLR 8y ago
I imagine that if one is being as technical as possible then sex is pretty unambiguous, i.e. egg/female sex cell producing -> female, sperm/male sex cell producing -> male. Of course that leads to complications when you have to try and generally apply it, which is where the ambiguity comes from.
- tomlock 8y ago
  If there is ever ambiguity, the classification is not binary.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
epicureanideal 8y ago
So define it as non-binary but still based on genetics, if that's your argument. Or just M, F, and O for Other if you want to keep things simple. You could literally list their chromosome combinations to make it clear. XX, XY, XXY, whatever.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  But XY without a copy of sex determining region Y is (typically, there may be some other variation) female in phenotype, not a male (conversely, XX with SRY, resulting from the same crossover in sex cell formation, is male phenotype, not female.) Biological sex isn't binary, and it's also not as simple as chromosome combinations.
  - epicureanideal 8y ago
    In which case perhaps the proposed legislation is actually pretty good about how to identify sex... look at the genitalia, and only follow up with the genetics if that's ambiguous. The proposed legislation looks better in light of this, not worse. It proposes to identify by phenotype rather than genotype (although ultimately by genotype of specific genes that result in different genitalia), which is a practical way of categorizing people by the genes (most of) society actually cares about in this case.
- tomlock 8y ago
  But people can have one body with multiple chromosome combinations. As soon as we start admitting that there needs to be an "other" category, we're admitting that the categorisation we currently have is at the very least, inadequate.

dragonwriter 8y ago

Biological sex (which is distinct from gender) is science, but it's not binary (for humans, it's loosely bimodal.) Deliberately choosing some aspect(s) of biological sex as ascribed gender and giving it special legal status isn't science, it's social engineering. > Also, if people understand that the gender on a birth certificate is genetics based That's not the proposal; the proposal is genitalia at birth compared to sex stereotypes with genetics resorted to only with ambiguous genitalia. But since it's possible for genetics (at the XX v. XY level, and even ignoring other combinations) to mismatch genitalia at birth without genitalia that would be ambiguous (unless one simply defines all genitalia as ambiguous), this is not equivalent to being based on genetics.

epicureanideal 8y ago
I would say trying to deny that 95%+ of humans are clearly either male or female and trying to engineer the laws around a small percentage that want to be differently identified is the social engineering. The author is not trying to make the minimum possible change to the proposed legislation to make it acceptable, they're just trying to find something wrong with it so they can resist it entirely. Genitalia match genetic sex in the vast majority of cases. There are plenty of places where laws are flawed. Laws are designed to handle the vast majority of cases. They are meant to be practical. Anyway, the point is, if the problem is with how to handle the exception to the rule, the < 5% with ambiguous gender, then the author of the editorial should make that argument, but saying that there is "no basis in science" for the proposed legislation is ridiculous and obviously ideologically driven.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I would say trying to deny that 95%+ of humans are clearly either male or female No one is denying that the vast majority of humans fall mostly into one of two biological sex clusters and identify in a way which historically corresponds to the way people in that cluster have been externally ascribed a gender, so that's a strawman. > and trying to engineer the laws around a small percentage that want to be differently identified is the social engineering. Yes, the movement to align ascribed gender with gender identity is social engineering, no less than the attempt to reverse the movement made in that direction is. Virtually no one involved in the effort denies that, either. One side is trying to engineer to remove a palpable source of harm, the other to restore it.

henrikschroder 8y ago

The problem isn't the two major gender classifications, the problem is that it's impossible to objectively classify all humans at birth into either category. Most people are genetically either XX or XY, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XYY_syndrome) Most people are born with either male or female genitalia, but some aren't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_hermaphroditism) Most people's genitalia corresponds to their genetic gender, but for some it doesn't. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivit...) Most people's psychological gender corresponds to their genitalia and their genetics, but for some it doesn't. (The entirety of the trans* issue) The only reasonable way forward is to make legal gender optional and changeable. The idea that you can, or worse, should, classify every human into one of two options is wrong. It's a bizarre conservative, Victorian idea that nature should somehow always be neatly categorized, and when it can't be, those that don't fit in are somehow "wrong". No, the reality is that nature is messy and anything but neatly categorizable, therefore our systems should be flexible enough to handle that.

harshreality 8y ago
How are you going to have sports, many of which have a substantial male/female performance difference between the distributions? Either everyone's lumped together and you have sports that exclude the vast majority of women, or you do away with individual sports and force (force... that doesn't sound gender-neutral to me) 50/50 split for teams. Gender identification may not be directly relevant to narrow performance in a lot of other areas, but it is relevant to overall human behavior, which affects personal choices that end up affecting things (like work and hobbies) even when performance on specific tasks is not directly affected by gender differences. Just because corner cases cause problems doesn't imply we should do away with any attempt to identify anyone as anything. Not identifying people according to easily discernible (in the vast majority of cases) characteristics causes its own problems.
- dragonwriter 8y ago