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Look, I'm a lefty. I support people's right to express themselves however they feel compelled to do so. But... We are a primate species, we propagate our speci

by johnea 1y ago

Look, I'm a lefty. I support people's right to express themselves however they feel compelled to do so. But... We are a primate species, we propagate our species through sexual reproduction. This reproduction involves one of each of the two dominant sexual expressions of our anatomies. These two members of a sexually reproducing pair cannot be self identified, they must be one biologically male and one biologically female participant. So in a traditional use of the words male and female, these are the conditions that are being referred to. This is 100% separate and orthogonal to any individual's perception of themselves, and how they would prefer to be perceived and treated by society. This is not specifically the topic of the article, but the article seems to be issued in support of an argument that a human individual is free to state their biological sex, which is factually not true. Trying to apply the terms male and female to individual organs is a stretch of the colloquial use of those words, and serves to inflame colloquial debate on a topic that is fully a distraction from fighting for every individual's right to express themselves however they see fit. Let's please stop being drug into culture war hot button confrontations over issues that are fully established fact, like sexual reproduction of a mammalian species. This fully established scientific fact in no way jeopardizes any individual's freedom to express themselves and their sexuality in society, and fighting against established fact just serves to undermine the social effort to secure those rights.

wizzwizz4 1y ago
This research is completely unrelated to whatever "culture war" you're thinking of, and while (as I've written in two comments before) I think the article does misrepresent the paper somewhat, none of what you've said is relevant to either the research, or this article summarising it.
- johnea 1y ago
  I don't disagree with you that my post is not directly related to the article, and I would point out from my original post: > This is not specifically the topic of the article I would disagree that this has nothing to do with the culture wars. The culture war topic of gay and trans rights is saturated with articles on topics just like this one. My point is that facing off against scientific fact to support an ideological point is counterproductive.
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    The article isn't "facing off against scientific fact": my main objection to the article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45294489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45294489) is that it's mostly explaining long-established, uncontroversial academic consensus (which forms the background of this paper), rather than the paper's contributions. That's like attributing "the inverse square law is a low-order approximation to the behaviour of gravity, rather accurate for relatively slow and light" to Albert Einstein's hit new paper "Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation" (which in fact barely mentions that fact, because all readers are expected to already know it). > The culture war topic of gay and trans rights is saturated with articles on topics just like this one. That would be because "biological reality" is among the most popular talking points of anti-gay and anti-trans folk, but a fairly-obscure feature of reality aligns well with the main gay / trans rights ideological narratives, and people who discover this for the first time get all excited and decide to write a blog post about it. If reality were a different way – if mammalian sexual dimorphism were as rigid and neat as is popularly asserted –, then I'm sure there'd be academics talking about how "ascribing magical significance to biological trivia, demanding that people constrain their behaviour based on something you need a microscope to identify, is fundamentally at odds with the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity" (or some such), and populists yelling about how science "proves" that clothing choices are constrained by "biological reality" (though we have that anyway), and the LGBT bloggers would blog about something else. In other words, appeals to biological reality are not why supporters of gay and trans rights believe in their causes: pointing out "hey, biological sex doesn't work like human genders anyway" is to them just a tool for telling narratives, which is why (even though I get why they're written) I get vaguely annoyed by those articles you complained about. Given this, your assertions in this comment thread significantly annoy me. The only reason this kind of research has to do with "the culture wars" is because the culture wars have attempted to appropriate the topic, and have successfully constructed an association between the things in your mind. That association doesn't exist in the article, it doesn't exist in the paper, and perhaps it doesn't even exist in reality (the science is currently inconclusive). You're the one making this about "the culture wars". I would rather discuss the far more interesting science.

by johnea 1y ago

wizzwizz4 1y ago

This research is completely unrelated to whatever "culture war" you're thinking of, and while (as I've written in two comments before) I think the article does misrepresent the paper somewhat, none of what you've said is relevant to either the research, or this article summarising it.

johnea 1y ago
I don't disagree with you that my post is not directly related to the article, and I would point out from my original post: > This is not specifically the topic of the article I would disagree that this has nothing to do with the culture wars. The culture war topic of gay and trans rights is saturated with articles on topics just like this one. My point is that facing off against scientific fact to support an ideological point is counterproductive.
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  The article isn't "facing off against scientific fact": my main objection to the article (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45294489 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45294489) is that it's mostly explaining long-established, uncontroversial academic consensus (which forms the background of this paper), rather than the paper's contributions. That's like attributing "the inverse square law is a low-order approximation to the behaviour of gravity, rather accurate for relatively slow and light" to Albert Einstein's hit new paper "Die Feldgleichungen der Gravitation" (which in fact barely mentions that fact, because all readers are expected to already know it). > The culture war topic of gay and trans rights is saturated with articles on topics just like this one. That would be because "biological reality" is among the most popular talking points of anti-gay and anti-trans folk, but a fairly-obscure feature of reality aligns well with the main gay / trans rights ideological narratives, and people who discover this for the first time get all excited and decide to write a blog post about it. If reality were a different way – if mammalian sexual dimorphism were as rigid and neat as is popularly asserted –, then I'm sure there'd be academics talking about how "ascribing magical significance to biological trivia, demanding that people constrain their behaviour based on something you need a microscope to identify, is fundamentally at odds with the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity" (or some such), and populists yelling about how science "proves" that clothing choices are constrained by "biological reality" (though we have that anyway), and the LGBT bloggers would blog about something else. In other words, appeals to biological reality are not why supporters of gay and trans rights believe in their causes: pointing out "hey, biological sex doesn't work like human genders anyway" is to them just a tool for telling narratives, which is why (even though I get why they're written) I get vaguely annoyed by those articles you complained about. Given this, your assertions in this comment thread significantly annoy me. The only reason this kind of research has to do with "the culture wars" is because the culture wars have attempted to appropriate the topic, and have successfully constructed an association between the things in your mind. That association doesn't exist in the article, it doesn't exist in the paper, and perhaps it doesn't even exist in reality (the science is currently inconclusive). You're the one making this about "the culture wars". I would rather discuss the far more interesting science.