7 ms·

Biological sex is binary. Not all humans have two arms, but it would be wrong to say the number of arms we have is “a spectrum”. 99% of people start out with tw

Biological sex is binary. Not all humans have two arms, but it would be wrong to say the number of arms we have is “a spectrum”. 99% of people start out with two arms. If you think that the number of arms humans have is some unknowable value because amputees exist, that doesn’t make sense to me, it favors a technically correct philosophical argument over reality. Biologist Richard Dawkins agrees (though his argument is much better stated than mine): https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/07/biological-sex-binary-debate-richard-dawkins https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2023/07/biological-sex-bi... Note that this doesn’t really “solve” all parts of the debate around gender and sports, but it’s a good starting point.

defrost 2y ago
reproductive sex is binary. Dawkins knows better and knows that that humans are born that are not clearly male, not clearly female, and also very clearly neither male nor female. That's actual empirical observed science. There are peer reviewed medical papers in respected journals that look at hundreds of thousands of birth records and break the numbers down on distributions of chromosonal variations at birth.
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  Would you mind linking a study? It seems like that directly contradicts what Dawkins says in his article
  - defrost 2y ago
    I bought a first edition copy of Dawkin's The Selfish Gene in 1978 and a good number of his books since. He understands genetics and these days, when talking to the likes of Piers Morgan et al. he plays a cagey game and talks about reproductive sex, what is required to make a baby outside of a lab the good old fashioned way, when a sperm fertilises an egg. He's well aware there are more than two types of human birth, he glosses over what he knows to keep things simple to avoid contraversy or something. If this is all news to you, rather than something you might have read, as I did, some 40+ years ago, then you might choose to start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex IIRC it links to medical papers and meta papers. There are several people here in Australia that were born neither male nor female. That's a fact. One took a valid complaint through the Australian courts that they would be lying on an official document if they checked either [F] or [M] on an Australian passport. Doctors and genetics experts gave evidence, the Australian passport system was changed. This wasn't some "cultural gender" thing based on someone's feelings about gender, it was stone cold genetic reality about "sex" at birth .. which in reality is a lot more complicated than many Fox cable hosts claim it to be on camera.
    - subjectsigma 2y ago
      Ok, great. Can you link to the study which shows chromosomal distributions, the one you mentioned in your comment?
      - defrost 2y ago
        [3], [8], [9], and all the numerous other references that appear immediately after a "%" sign in the already provided link. [3] is Selma Feldman Witchel (2018). "Disorders of Sex Development". Best Practice & Research. Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 48: 90–102. doi:10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2017.11.005. PMC 5866176. PMID 29503125. The estimated frequency of genital ambiguity is reported to be in the range of 1:2000–1:4500 Those referencess of the 218 references provided are the ones that mainly focus on various aspects of distribution frequency.
        subjectsigma 2y ago
        Thanks!
    - blinkedup 2y ago
      > There are several people here in Australia that were born neither male nor female. That's a fact. One took a valid complaint through the Australian courts that they would be lying on an official document if they checked either [F] or [M] on an Australian passport. Do you have a reference for or link to the details of the court case? It would be very interesting to understand the details.
      - defrost 2y ago
        There are several Family Court of Australia decisions, along with the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and its underpinnings that go with the 2003 decision of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to recommend that Australian passports allow the indeterminate category and for the State of Victoria to change their policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_rights_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_rights_in_Australia sketches out a framework, the details can be extracted from the public records for the Department, the State of Victoria, and the decisions of the Family Court.
- blinkedup 2y ago
  By chromosomal variations, do you mean sex chromosome aneuploidies? If so, individuals with this particular class of conditions aren't ambiguous with regards to their sex. The Y chromosome still determines if someone is male. For example, XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) is a male condition, X0 (Turner syndrome) is a female condition, XYY (Jacobs syndrome) is male, and so on.
  - defrost 2y ago
    Of all the humans born, some are clearly and unambigiously male and check all the many boxes that make them male, some are equally female, some others are not so clearly male and only check some of the boxes leaving the gate open for the "but they're really male (even if only a bit)" arguments. Some others again are neither male nor female. This is the spectrum of human physical and genetic birth presentations as described by peer reviewed medical papers (a number linked in the intersex wikipedia link). Venn diagrams are not difficult to grasp and anyone taking issue with the categorisation in the field is more than welcome to submit their work and arguments to the relevant journals.
    - blinkedup 2y ago
      Thanks for replying. That doesn't directly answer my question but it sounds like you meant to refer to differences of sex development (DSDs) more broadly rather than just those caused by chromosomal variations. Though for competitive sports, and protecting the women's category in particular, it is only a smaller set of DSDs that eligibility policymakers need to be concerned with: those that confer male physical advantage.
subjectsigma 2y ago
As a follow up just because I’m still thinking about it. I had a long discussion with a friend about this one time and he advocated for a tiered approach. So instead of having a men’s league you would have an A, B, and C league and people are placed based on performance. If we go just based on pure athletic ability then the A league would be mostly men and the C league would be mostly women, but there would be upward mobility and likely a mixed league in the middle. This might be a good model for younger kids, but by the time kids reach high school the biological gap is too great. See https://boysvswomen.com/#/ https://boysvswomen.com/#/ This is a problem because high school is the time when college scholarships become a thing, performance in competitive high school sports matters. Also, you now need three leagues instead of two, which could get expensive depending on the sport.
- cko 2y ago
  Potential problem: all three leagues are dominated by men, and no one watches leagues B or C.
- blinkedup 2y ago
  It's fascinating the convoluted ideas people will come up with just to avoid the most obvious one: separate male and female categories. Did you friend say why he advocated for these arbitrary tiers rather than separating by sex?
  - subjectsigma 2y ago
    Obviously so trans people can play sports, I think it's a laudable goal but I agree that people are going to great lengths to make sports 'fair' in ways that seem to only make them less fair to 99% of participants
    - blinkedup 2y ago
      Interestingly there were a couple of transgendered athletes competing in this year's Olympics: Hergie Bacyadan, a female boxer who identifies as a man, and Nikki Hiltz, a female runner who identifies as a non-binary. Both competed in their respective sports in the category congruent with their sex. I guess your friend was aiming more towards not upsetting male athletes who identify as women and who desire to compete in the female category, by abolishing the category altogether, rather than these male athletes being told "no".

defrost 2y ago

reproductive sex is binary. Dawkins knows better and knows that that humans are born that are not clearly male, not clearly female, and also very clearly neither male nor female. That's actual empirical observed science. There are peer reviewed medical papers in respected journals that look at hundreds of thousands of birth records and break the numbers down on distributions of chromosonal variations at birth.

subjectsigma 2y ago
Would you mind linking a study? It seems like that directly contradicts what Dawkins says in his article
- defrost 2y ago
  I bought a first edition copy of Dawkin's The Selfish Gene in 1978 and a good number of his books since. He understands genetics and these days, when talking to the likes of Piers Morgan et al. he plays a cagey game and talks about reproductive sex, what is required to make a baby outside of a lab the good old fashioned way, when a sperm fertilises an egg. He's well aware there are more than two types of human birth, he glosses over what he knows to keep things simple to avoid contraversy or something. If this is all news to you, rather than something you might have read, as I did, some 40+ years ago, then you might choose to start with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex IIRC it links to medical papers and meta papers. There are several people here in Australia that were born neither male nor female. That's a fact. One took a valid complaint through the Australian courts that they would be lying on an official document if they checked either [F] or [M] on an Australian passport. Doctors and genetics experts gave evidence, the Australian passport system was changed. This wasn't some "cultural gender" thing based on someone's feelings about gender, it was stone cold genetic reality about "sex" at birth .. which in reality is a lot more complicated than many Fox cable hosts claim it to be on camera.
  - subjectsigma 2y ago
    Ok, great. Can you link to the study which shows chromosomal distributions, the one you mentioned in your comment?
    - defrost 2y ago
      [3], [8], [9], and all the numerous other references that appear immediately after a "%" sign in the already provided link. [3] is Selma Feldman Witchel (2018). "Disorders of Sex Development". Best Practice & Research. Clinical Obstetrics & Gynaecology. 48: 90–102. doi:10.1016/j.bpobgyn.2017.11.005. PMC 5866176. PMID 29503125. The estimated frequency of genital ambiguity is reported to be in the range of 1:2000–1:4500 Those referencess of the 218 references provided are the ones that mainly focus on various aspects of distribution frequency.
      - subjectsigma 2y ago
        Thanks!
  - blinkedup 2y ago
    > There are several people here in Australia that were born neither male nor female. That's a fact. One took a valid complaint through the Australian courts that they would be lying on an official document if they checked either [F] or [M] on an Australian passport. Do you have a reference for or link to the details of the court case? It would be very interesting to understand the details.
    - defrost 2y ago
      There are several Family Court of Australia decisions, along with the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 and its underpinnings that go with the 2003 decision of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to recommend that Australian passports allow the indeterminate category and for the State of Victoria to change their policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_rights_in_Australia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex_rights_in_Australia sketches out a framework, the details can be extracted from the public records for the Department, the State of Victoria, and the decisions of the Family Court.
blinkedup 2y ago
By chromosomal variations, do you mean sex chromosome aneuploidies? If so, individuals with this particular class of conditions aren't ambiguous with regards to their sex. The Y chromosome still determines if someone is male. For example, XXY (Klinefelter syndrome) is a male condition, X0 (Turner syndrome) is a female condition, XYY (Jacobs syndrome) is male, and so on.
- defrost 2y ago
  Of all the humans born, some are clearly and unambigiously male and check all the many boxes that make them male, some are equally female, some others are not so clearly male and only check some of the boxes leaving the gate open for the "but they're really male (even if only a bit)" arguments. Some others again are neither male nor female. This is the spectrum of human physical and genetic birth presentations as described by peer reviewed medical papers (a number linked in the intersex wikipedia link). Venn diagrams are not difficult to grasp and anyone taking issue with the categorisation in the field is more than welcome to submit their work and arguments to the relevant journals.
  - blinkedup 2y ago
    Thanks for replying. That doesn't directly answer my question but it sounds like you meant to refer to differences of sex development (DSDs) more broadly rather than just those caused by chromosomal variations. Though for competitive sports, and protecting the women's category in particular, it is only a smaller set of DSDs that eligibility policymakers need to be concerned with: those that confer male physical advantage.

subjectsigma 2y ago

As a follow up just because I’m still thinking about it. I had a long discussion with a friend about this one time and he advocated for a tiered approach. So instead of having a men’s league you would have an A, B, and C league and people are placed based on performance. If we go just based on pure athletic ability then the A league would be mostly men and the C league would be mostly women, but there would be upward mobility and likely a mixed league in the middle. This might be a good model for younger kids, but by the time kids reach high school the biological gap is too great. See https://boysvswomen.com/#/ https://boysvswomen.com/#/ This is a problem because high school is the time when college scholarships become a thing, performance in competitive high school sports matters. Also, you now need three leagues instead of two, which could get expensive depending on the sport.

cko 2y ago
Potential problem: all three leagues are dominated by men, and no one watches leagues B or C.
blinkedup 2y ago
It's fascinating the convoluted ideas people will come up with just to avoid the most obvious one: separate male and female categories. Did you friend say why he advocated for these arbitrary tiers rather than separating by sex?
- subjectsigma 2y ago
  Obviously so trans people can play sports, I think it's a laudable goal but I agree that people are going to great lengths to make sports 'fair' in ways that seem to only make them less fair to 99% of participants
  - blinkedup 2y ago
    Interestingly there were a couple of transgendered athletes competing in this year's Olympics: Hergie Bacyadan, a female boxer who identifies as a man, and Nikki Hiltz, a female runner who identifies as a non-binary. Both competed in their respective sports in the category congruent with their sex. I guess your friend was aiming more towards not upsetting male athletes who identify as women and who desire to compete in the female category, by abolishing the category altogether, rather than these male athletes being told "no".