7 ms·

Humans are bipedal. It's not perfectly true, but that doesn't invalidate the natural and normal case.

by ta8645 3y ago

throwaway626 3y ago
[flagged]
wredue 3y ago
These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female, and that these norms are not exclusive to humans. As an example, gay people are perfectly normal and natural.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female. No. It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female. This can be stated as truth, just as a scientist would claim that humans are bipedal, even while acknowledging exceptions do exist.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female. False logic - you might want to work on your syllogisms there. By normal you mean common place. It's normal for crust material to not be gold. Statistically it's more likely for a human to be neither male nor female than it is for crustal matter to be gold. We do not, however, conclude that the crust does not contain gold. Indeed we value the rare.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      Webster's dictionary: Normal: conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern : characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine. Gold is not normal material in the crust. The crust is not gold. Gold is not the crust. And it is normal to have a penis (male) or a vagina (female). This has nothing to do with what we value, be it rare or otherwise, it has to do with biological facts.
      - defrost 3y ago
        Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other. This runs contrary to your claim. I am principally chiding you for your sloppy logic and poor grasp of facts here, to be clear. Intersex people are more common than gold.
        ta8645 3y ago
        > Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other. And it is a fact that humans have zero, one, two, or more legs. But you would never argue with the scientific claim that humans are a bipedal mammal. The exceptions do not invalidate the norm. > This runs contrary to your claim. It does not run contrary to my claim. My claim is that humans are either male or female. And this is wildly, overwhelmingly true. I don't feel any need to qualify the statement that humans are two-legged creatures either. There are exceptions in both cases, but they're not the norm. > Intersex people are more common than gold. It was your analogy, not mine.
        seethedeaduu 3y ago
        Regarding the bipedal claim it is not specific enough, what is the quantifier? "All"? "Most"? "Some"? Your second claim (humans are either male or female) uses "All". If there are exceptions then we have a contradiction.
  - moshegramovsky 3y ago
    Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female? What about a man who loses his penis in an accident? Is he no longer a man? Would he still be allowed to identify as a man? Would a woman born without a vagina still be allowed to identify as a woman?
    - ta8645 3y ago
      > Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female? As a rough approximation, yes. > What about a man who loses his penis in an accident? He's a man who lost his penis. Statistically insignificant and doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of humans, by far, have either a penis or a vagina. Again, the exceptions do not invalidate the norm that we all know is true. For thousands of years we've understood human reproduction and the role of males with penises, and females with vaginas.
      - moshegramovsky 3y ago
        But it's okay for society to destigmatize sexual and gender minorities, right?
    - pelch 3y ago
      More specifically it is development of testes or ovaries that makes an individual male or female. This concept applies across all gonochoric species, not just humans.
  - rsingel 3y ago
    Why do you care what genitals people have? The strongest argument about why it matters is women's sports which conservatives always derided and still deride. But weirdly now people like you care about the purity of women's sports. Maybe ask yourself why you give a s** about putting people into category A or B? Or go read one of the famous blog posts about the assumptions that programmers make about people's names and then apply that to gender
    - smsm42 3y ago
      We live in a culture where it matters a lot. We possess biology where it matters a lot. If we were robots which are about to be designed and programmed from scratch, you could ask if it's worth it to make us sexually dimorphic and ingrain it in our cultural programming. But you're too late, it's done already. Pretending it doesn't exist because you'd like it not to won't get you very far.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      Why do scientists make a distinction between the different types of galaxies? Because taxonomy, and recognizing differences, can lead to better scientific understanding. How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue.
      - magicalist 3y ago
        > How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue. Is it? Seems like very literally the realm in which you brought up this topic in the first place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094098
    - pelch 3y ago
      Not just women's sports but many other women-only spaces too. The key question is, should men be permitted to ignore women's boundaries and consent if they say they are women? If your answer is yes, then you're likely a misogynist who sees men's desires as more important than the dignity and safety of women and girls.
    - 3y ago
- Retric 3y ago
  Normal is a poor description of what you’re getting at. The rate of homosexuality has no bearing on the morality or how natural homosexuality is. People generally don’t assign moral implications to unusual genetic conditions like Albinism which are described as abnormal even though they are literally natural. Homosexual exists across the animal kingdom, it’s literally both natural and abnormal mammalian behavior. That isn’t normally seen as being relevant to people’s acceptance of it.
defrost 3y ago
Nor does it justify the vilification and exclusion of the one legged, no legged, and tripods.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > Nor does it justify the vilification and exclusion of the one legged, no legged, and tripods. Of course not. No good person would claim otherwise. But it does not invalidate those people, to make the claim that humans, as a biological classification, are bipedal.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Do you have any objection, then, to passports describing people as zero, one, two or other legged? I ask as here in Australia we eliminated a straight binary [ M | F ] choice on passports 12+ years ago so that people who were neither M nor F no longer had to commit fraud and lie on official state documents: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/15/australian-passports-third-gender-option https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/15/australian-pas... https://ihra.org.au/21597/ten-years-of-x-passports-and-no-protection-from-discrimination/ https://ihra.org.au/21597/ten-years-of-x-passports-and-no-pr...
    - ta8645 3y ago
      We're getting pretty far afield from the teaching of science here. But if you must know my personal opinion, it's that legal documents should allow for exceptions from the norm to be noted where applicable. I would not support the right for a person to select their legal classification arbitrarily though, it should be based on objective biological conditions, such as hermaphroditism.
      - defrost 3y ago
        That's precisely what it is based upon - see the links, the person that instigated the change was biologically intersex. You'll note your error in a peer comment where you incorrectly state that humans are either Male OR Female I trust.
moshegramovsky 3y ago
Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal? What if it there were such a person in your family? Words matter.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal. We're talking about the language of science here. Biologists often talk about humans in terms of their biological characteristics. There is no judgement, only classification. And acknowledging what is normal, is not a value judgement. It's not meant in a hurtful way. Intent matters.
  - Angostura 3y ago
    If we are talking about the language of science, 'unnatural' wouldn't be used. Abnormal may be used in context of say, a development issue, but something like 'atypical' is more likely to be used.
- smsm42 3y ago
  Abnormal - certainly. Unnatural - not a good term, since it implies connection to the philosophy where "natural" somehow implies good. Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too. But that term is useless - there's no useful distinction between losing a leg via "natural" or "unnatural" event. If there would be a person if my family thag lost a leg it'd depend on their wishes I assume - some people are comfortable talking about their loss or joking about it, others aren't.
  - shiroiuma 3y ago
    >Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too I don't think that's natural at all. "Natural" would be simply dying from cancer in your leg, after it metastasizes to the rest of your body. Amputation isn't natural, nor is any other human medicine. All medicine is unnatural, and working against what would happen in nature. Just putting a bandage on a small cut to avoid infection is unnatural: to be natural, you should let it get infected and then die from it.
crote 3y ago
"Humans are right-handed. It's not perfectly true, but that doesn't invalidate the natural and normal case" Yet left-handed people exist. It's just a regular variation of human existence, so can you really say calling it "unnatural" and "abnormal" is factually correct? However, culturally they have been treated as unlucky and evil, and left-handed children were until very recently forced to write with their right hand. Turns out words actually do matter, and calling it "unnatural" can lead to a lot of harm. Should we also call white people unnatural and abnormal, considering that the vast majority of humans aren't white?
- ta8645 3y ago
  > Should we also call white people unnatural and abnormal, considering that the vast majority of humans aren't white? Sure, why not? Looking at the world population, skin color is normally darker than a typical white European. Not sure why anyone should feel bad about that. Not sure how many different ways to say this. If there is an overwhelming physical characteristic, that the vast majority of humans exhibit, it's not hurtful to acknowledge it as normal, and deviation from that norm, by definition, as abnormal. People treating each other poorly is a completely separate issue. And you shouldn't treat someone poorly, just because they're not normal in some characteristic. Most of us aren't normal, in one way or another. And it's okay that we're not all the same, and there's no reason to pretend we are.
  - meheleventyone 3y ago
    I think you’re correct in a very narrow sense where it shouldn’t matter that some traits are more prevalent and that can be described as normal. It just flies in the face of what we know about human behaviour across recorded history.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      > It just flies in the face of what we know about human behaviour across recorded history. You're right, human behavior is often abhorrent and focused on differences. But trying to solve that problem by pretending that scientific taxonomy is the cause, is counterproductive. People want an easy answer, and it's easier to warp science than change the hearts of men. But it's an insidious "solution" that has untold corrosive effects and impairs our ability to inspect reality with integrity and honesty.
Bud 3y ago
You need to be more careful about how you use "normal". And "natural", for that matter. All of the intersex and trans stuff has been around and has been "normal" for millennia.

Humans are bipedal. It's not perfectly true, but that doesn't invalidate the natural and normal case.

by ta8645 3y ago

Humans are bipedal. It's not perfectly true, but that doesn't invalidate the natural and normal case.

throwaway626 3y ago

[flagged]

wredue 3y ago

These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female, and that these norms are not exclusive to humans. As an example, gay people are perfectly normal and natural.

ta8645 3y ago
> These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female. No. It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female. This can be stated as truth, just as a scientist would claim that humans are bipedal, even while acknowledging exceptions do exist.
- defrost 3y ago
  > It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female. False logic - you might want to work on your syllogisms there. By normal you mean common place. It's normal for crust material to not be gold. Statistically it's more likely for a human to be neither male nor female than it is for crustal matter to be gold. We do not, however, conclude that the crust does not contain gold. Indeed we value the rare.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    Webster's dictionary: Normal: conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern : characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine. Gold is not normal material in the crust. The crust is not gold. Gold is not the crust. And it is normal to have a penis (male) or a vagina (female). This has nothing to do with what we value, be it rare or otherwise, it has to do with biological facts.
    - defrost 3y ago
      Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other. This runs contrary to your claim. I am principally chiding you for your sloppy logic and poor grasp of facts here, to be clear. Intersex people are more common than gold.
      - ta8645 3y ago
        > Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other. And it is a fact that humans have zero, one, two, or more legs. But you would never argue with the scientific claim that humans are a bipedal mammal. The exceptions do not invalidate the norm. > This runs contrary to your claim. It does not run contrary to my claim. My claim is that humans are either male or female. And this is wildly, overwhelmingly true. I don't feel any need to qualify the statement that humans are two-legged creatures either. There are exceptions in both cases, but they're not the norm. > Intersex people are more common than gold. It was your analogy, not mine.
        seethedeaduu 3y ago
        Regarding the bipedal claim it is not specific enough, what is the quantifier? "All"? "Most"? "Some"? Your second claim (humans are either male or female) uses "All". If there are exceptions then we have a contradiction.
- moshegramovsky 3y ago
  Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female? What about a man who loses his penis in an accident? Is he no longer a man? Would he still be allowed to identify as a man? Would a woman born without a vagina still be allowed to identify as a woman?
  - ta8645 3y ago
    > Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female? As a rough approximation, yes. > What about a man who loses his penis in an accident? He's a man who lost his penis. Statistically insignificant and doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of humans, by far, have either a penis or a vagina. Again, the exceptions do not invalidate the norm that we all know is true. For thousands of years we've understood human reproduction and the role of males with penises, and females with vaginas.
    - moshegramovsky 3y ago
      But it's okay for society to destigmatize sexual and gender minorities, right?
  - pelch 3y ago
    More specifically it is development of testes or ovaries that makes an individual male or female. This concept applies across all gonochoric species, not just humans.
- rsingel 3y ago
  Why do you care what genitals people have? The strongest argument about why it matters is women's sports which conservatives always derided and still deride. But weirdly now people like you care about the purity of women's sports. Maybe ask yourself why you give a s** about putting people into category A or B? Or go read one of the famous blog posts about the assumptions that programmers make about people's names and then apply that to gender
  - smsm42 3y ago
    We live in a culture where it matters a lot. We possess biology where it matters a lot. If we were robots which are about to be designed and programmed from scratch, you could ask if it's worth it to make us sexually dimorphic and ingrain it in our cultural programming. But you're too late, it's done already. Pretending it doesn't exist because you'd like it not to won't get you very far.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    Why do scientists make a distinction between the different types of galaxies? Because taxonomy, and recognizing differences, can lead to better scientific understanding. How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue.
    - magicalist 3y ago
      > How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue. Is it? Seems like very literally the realm in which you brought up this topic in the first place: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094098
  - pelch 3y ago
    Not just women's sports but many other women-only spaces too. The key question is, should men be permitted to ignore women's boundaries and consent if they say they are women? If your answer is yes, then you're likely a misogynist who sees men's desires as more important than the dignity and safety of women and girls.
  - 3y ago
Retric 3y ago
Normal is a poor description of what you’re getting at. The rate of homosexuality has no bearing on the morality or how natural homosexuality is. People generally don’t assign moral implications to unusual genetic conditions like Albinism which are described as abnormal even though they are literally natural. Homosexual exists across the animal kingdom, it’s literally both natural and abnormal mammalian behavior. That isn’t normally seen as being relevant to people’s acceptance of it.

defrost 3y ago

Nor does it justify the vilification and exclusion of the one legged, no legged, and tripods.

ta8645 3y ago
> Nor does it justify the vilification and exclusion of the one legged, no legged, and tripods. Of course not. No good person would claim otherwise. But it does not invalidate those people, to make the claim that humans, as a biological classification, are bipedal.
- defrost 3y ago
  Do you have any objection, then, to passports describing people as zero, one, two or other legged? I ask as here in Australia we eliminated a straight binary [ M | F ] choice on passports 12+ years ago so that people who were neither M nor F no longer had to commit fraud and lie on official state documents: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/15/australian-passports-third-gender-option https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/15/australian-pas... https://ihra.org.au/21597/ten-years-of-x-passports-and-no-protection-from-discrimination/ https://ihra.org.au/21597/ten-years-of-x-passports-and-no-pr...
  - ta8645 3y ago
    We're getting pretty far afield from the teaching of science here. But if you must know my personal opinion, it's that legal documents should allow for exceptions from the norm to be noted where applicable. I would not support the right for a person to select their legal classification arbitrarily though, it should be based on objective biological conditions, such as hermaphroditism.
    - defrost 3y ago
      That's precisely what it is based upon - see the links, the person that instigated the change was biologically intersex. You'll note your error in a peer comment where you incorrectly state that humans are either Male OR Female I trust.

moshegramovsky 3y ago

Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal? What if it there were such a person in your family? Words matter.

ta8645 3y ago
> Would you feel comfortable saying that a human who isn't bipedal is unnatural and abnormal. We're talking about the language of science here. Biologists often talk about humans in terms of their biological characteristics. There is no judgement, only classification. And acknowledging what is normal, is not a value judgement. It's not meant in a hurtful way. Intent matters.
- Angostura 3y ago
  If we are talking about the language of science, 'unnatural' wouldn't be used. Abnormal may be used in context of say, a development issue, but something like 'atypical' is more likely to be used.
smsm42 3y ago
Abnormal - certainly. Unnatural - not a good term, since it implies connection to the philosophy where "natural" somehow implies good. Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too. But that term is useless - there's no useful distinction between losing a leg via "natural" or "unnatural" event. If there would be a person if my family thag lost a leg it'd depend on their wishes I assume - some people are comfortable talking about their loss or joking about it, others aren't.
- shiroiuma 3y ago
  >Cancer is natural. Losing a leg to cancer would be "natural" too I don't think that's natural at all. "Natural" would be simply dying from cancer in your leg, after it metastasizes to the rest of your body. Amputation isn't natural, nor is any other human medicine. All medicine is unnatural, and working against what would happen in nature. Just putting a bandage on a small cut to avoid infection is unnatural: to be natural, you should let it get infected and then die from it.

crote 3y ago

"Humans are right-handed. It's not perfectly true, but that doesn't invalidate the natural and normal case" Yet left-handed people exist. It's just a regular variation of human existence, so can you really say calling it "unnatural" and "abnormal" is factually correct? However, culturally they have been treated as unlucky and evil, and left-handed children were until very recently forced to write with their right hand. Turns out words actually do matter, and calling it "unnatural" can lead to a lot of harm. Should we also call white people unnatural and abnormal, considering that the vast majority of humans aren't white?

ta8645 3y ago
> Should we also call white people unnatural and abnormal, considering that the vast majority of humans aren't white? Sure, why not? Looking at the world population, skin color is normally darker than a typical white European. Not sure why anyone should feel bad about that. Not sure how many different ways to say this. If there is an overwhelming physical characteristic, that the vast majority of humans exhibit, it's not hurtful to acknowledge it as normal, and deviation from that norm, by definition, as abnormal. People treating each other poorly is a completely separate issue. And you shouldn't treat someone poorly, just because they're not normal in some characteristic. Most of us aren't normal, in one way or another. And it's okay that we're not all the same, and there's no reason to pretend we are.
- meheleventyone 3y ago
  I think you’re correct in a very narrow sense where it shouldn’t matter that some traits are more prevalent and that can be described as normal. It just flies in the face of what we know about human behaviour across recorded history.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    > It just flies in the face of what we know about human behaviour across recorded history. You're right, human behavior is often abhorrent and focused on differences. But trying to solve that problem by pretending that scientific taxonomy is the cause, is counterproductive. People want an easy answer, and it's easier to warp science than change the hearts of men. But it's an insidious "solution" that has untold corrosive effects and impairs our ability to inspect reality with integrity and honesty.

Bud 3y ago

You need to be more careful about how you use "normal". And "natural", for that matter. All of the intersex and trans stuff has been around and has been "normal" for millennia.