4 ms·

>Lots of people seem confused, assuming we have some kind of definition for this. Then they get surprised when they discover how common the exceptions are. The

>Lots of people seem confused, assuming we have some kind of definition for this. Then they get surprised when they discover how common the exceptions are. There is a definition based on chromosomes, and another based on physical features. It's very clear. >In the US alone, there's close to 200k people born with the most obvious case - ambiguous genitals. That's like 5 in 10k people. How many of these have ambiguous chromosomes? >Otherwise sports organisations in the US tried to do various sex identification tests (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports) until they realised they're just uncovering more and more intersex people that didn't fall into either category and stopped. These abnormal people deserve their own sports category. They should not be shoehorned into male/female sports. Your point is that they are different from normal right? So act like it. >If nobody is confused, why are we continuing to fail at finding the consistent difference? Why can't you point at a well researched definition? I told you already. There has been an extreme propaganda campaign to tell people that there is such an abundance of abnormal cases that we need to entertain any mentally ill person claiming any designation for themselves. I am not swayed by this. >Other ideas like testosterone testing is even worse: "16.5% of men had low testosterone levels, whereas 13.7% of women had high levels with complete overlap between the sexes." (doi:10.1111/cen.12445) That's... again lots of people. Different people have different hormone levels but that does not change their primary biological function. I could apply much the same logic to the definition of anything biological. If you asked, "what is a human?" Nobody is confused by that, despite the myriad genetic and physical aberrant phenotypes and syndromes in the world. There really are only 3 categories that matter for biological sex. Male, female, and intersex. In the intersex case I don't really care what kind of mutant they are, it just needs to be recorded that they aren't typical. If you are a typical man in a dress or woman with a crew cut, you are not the other sex and not intersex, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to actually abnormal people trying to fit in.

ben_w 1y ago
> There is a definition based on chromosomes, and another based on physical features. It's very clear. If you really, honestly, define gender based on chromosomes, then you must agree that humans have about 15 genders. If you categorise those 15 documented variations of the X and Y chromosomes into either "male" xor "female" (which is what happens in practice), then you're not defining gender based on chromosomes. If you define based on physical features, there's overlap, which affects you two ways: (1) what do you call someone in the middle of a transition from one to the other? (2) what do you do for people born ambiguous? i.e. your own reaction to being told 200k in the USA are born with ambiguous your reaction is to ask about their chromosomes. Well, why did you reach for that? Clearly the chromosomes weren't all that important if people can't tell by looking. > These abnormal people deserve their own sports category. They should not be shoehorned into male/female sports. Your point is that they are different from normal right? So act like it. I've made this point myself back when people first started to realise this. Issues: 1) the main difference for sports is testosterone, so there's multiple ways to resolve this, e.g. one entirely legit thing we can do is just let people take testosterone for sports, while another is to just categorise people by testosterone counts (the same way for wrestling we already do for body mass). 2) the only externally visible presentation is that you're better at sports and infertile, you actually have to do a genetic test to spot it, so you have to test everyone because the people themselves won't even known unless you do. As nobody does such a test for birth certificates and passports, there's no point putting this information on a passport for the sake of women's sports. > I told you already. There has been an extreme propaganda campaign to tell people that there is such an abundance of abnormal cases that we need to entertain any mentally ill person claiming any designation for themselves. I am not swayed by this. No, you. You have listened to propaganda telling you that the exceptions are "mentally ill" and refused to listen to the evidence to the contrary. The professionals working with these people do not regard being trans itself as being mental illness. The medical community examines people for mental illness before allowing surgical transitions, because once you get to surgical interventions downstairs, functional reversal stops being possible. > Different people have different hormone levels but that does not change their primary biological function. "Primary" is putting the cart before the horse. We have many biological functions. Some of those functions are what worked in the ancestral environment (a community: humans barely function in isolation), where sex differentiation giving males big strong muscles and tough bones was actually important. For that, all that matters is the effect of the sex hormones. That environment barely exists any more, at least in the industrialised nations: sports and some parts of the military are most of the places where this extra strength matters, but again, what matters for that strength is exactly what you're ignoring: the hormones. And we have a lot more control over those hormones now than nature ever intended. Others of those functions include reproduction. For reproduction, note that gay and ace people exist. Do they have no biological function, or are they a third (/fourth for ace) gender? If you look at historical discussions, there were absolutely people who classed being gay as being a kind of transgender. > If you asked, "what is a human?" Nobody is confused by that, despite the myriad genetic and physical aberrant phenotypes and syndromes in the world. Tell that to every genocide ever. Going back in time, were neanderthals human? We got a lot of their DNA. Categories like "gender" and "species" were made by us, for our convenience. They're the map, not the territory. The approximation that works until it doesn't. Denouncing anyone who doesn't fit the categories you've constructed for them as "mentally ill" is a common human failing, but it is a failing. Happens a lot, in many categories, not just those under discussion in this thread. > In the intersex case I don't really care what kind of mutant they are, it just needs to be recorded that they aren't typical. Why does it need to be recorded? Who needs to care? To repeat: for sports, what matters is the hormones, not how you got them. Are you going to add a third (/fourth) kind of bathroom for them (or force them to use the disabled ones), just so that the existing male and female toilets can't be made safe for everyone?
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  Good grief, I'm not going to respond to all that. But a few points: >If you really, honestly, define gender based on chromosomes, then you must agree that humans have about 15 genders. These fine-grained distinctions are completely useless. You're either a male, a female, or some kind of mutant. I am ok with an intersex designation for ambiguous cases. I'm not ok with biologically normal men and women pretending to be something they're not. >We have many biological functions. As far as sex goes, we only have two functions. >Denouncing anyone who doesn't fit the categories you've constructed for them as "mentally ill" is a common human failing, but it is a failing. Happens a lot, in many categories, not just those under discussion in this thread. Denying basic facts is also a human failing. Men who think they are women, and vice versa, are denying reality. It wouldn't be a problem but for bad actors and the comfort of others. People do not want to share bathrooms with such people, nor compete in sports with other such people. >To repeat: for sports, what matters is the hormones, not how you got them. It's not actually that simple. Some people have wildly different phenotypes with the same hormone levels. Men are more sensitive to androgenic hormones than women. Additionally, what matters for men and womens sports is fundamentally the approval of other competitors. Especially in sports where one sex tends to have an advantage. This is the entire point of having separate designations for men and women. I would not be opposed to hormone testing. But it's up to the sports community to decide what is fair, and how many tiers of competitors can be supported. Audiences may also feel some kind of way about watching men box with women or men share a weight lifting competition with women. It says a LOT that all the trans females are breaking all the female records and taking the top slots in women's sports. You have to admit that this is no coincidence. These "females" have a clear advantage. Mediocre men are registering as females to take titles away from real women. It's sick and annoying to competitors and audiences. >Are you going to add a third (/fourth) kind of bathroom for them (or force them to use the disabled ones), just so that the existing male and female toilets can't be made safe for everyone? Regarding bathrooms, I guess the only solution may be to have single-occupancy bathrooms. Maybe they can share a sink in the hallway or something. We are never going to have more than 3 gender categories for bathrooms.

ben_w 1y ago

> There is a definition based on chromosomes, and another based on physical features. It's very clear. If you really, honestly, define gender based on chromosomes, then you must agree that humans have about 15 genders. If you categorise those 15 documented variations of the X and Y chromosomes into either "male" xor "female" (which is what happens in practice), then you're not defining gender based on chromosomes. If you define based on physical features, there's overlap, which affects you two ways: (1) what do you call someone in the middle of a transition from one to the other? (2) what do you do for people born ambiguous? i.e. your own reaction to being told 200k in the USA are born with ambiguous your reaction is to ask about their chromosomes. Well, why did you reach for that? Clearly the chromosomes weren't all that important if people can't tell by looking. > These abnormal people deserve their own sports category. They should not be shoehorned into male/female sports. Your point is that they are different from normal right? So act like it. I've made this point myself back when people first started to realise this. Issues: 1) the main difference for sports is testosterone, so there's multiple ways to resolve this, e.g. one entirely legit thing we can do is just let people take testosterone for sports, while another is to just categorise people by testosterone counts (the same way for wrestling we already do for body mass). 2) the only externally visible presentation is that you're better at sports and infertile, you actually have to do a genetic test to spot it, so you have to test everyone because the people themselves won't even known unless you do. As nobody does such a test for birth certificates and passports, there's no point putting this information on a passport for the sake of women's sports. > I told you already. There has been an extreme propaganda campaign to tell people that there is such an abundance of abnormal cases that we need to entertain any mentally ill person claiming any designation for themselves. I am not swayed by this. No, you. You have listened to propaganda telling you that the exceptions are "mentally ill" and refused to listen to the evidence to the contrary. The professionals working with these people do not regard being trans itself as being mental illness. The medical community examines people for mental illness before allowing surgical transitions, because once you get to surgical interventions downstairs, functional reversal stops being possible. > Different people have different hormone levels but that does not change their primary biological function. "Primary" is putting the cart before the horse. We have many biological functions. Some of those functions are what worked in the ancestral environment (a community: humans barely function in isolation), where sex differentiation giving males big strong muscles and tough bones was actually important. For that, all that matters is the effect of the sex hormones. That environment barely exists any more, at least in the industrialised nations: sports and some parts of the military are most of the places where this extra strength matters, but again, what matters for that strength is exactly what you're ignoring: the hormones. And we have a lot more control over those hormones now than nature ever intended. Others of those functions include reproduction. For reproduction, note that gay and ace people exist. Do they have no biological function, or are they a third (/fourth for ace) gender? If you look at historical discussions, there were absolutely people who classed being gay as being a kind of transgender. > If you asked, "what is a human?" Nobody is confused by that, despite the myriad genetic and physical aberrant phenotypes and syndromes in the world. Tell that to every genocide ever. Going back in time, were neanderthals human? We got a lot of their DNA. Categories like "gender" and "species" were made by us, for our convenience. They're the map, not the territory. The approximation that works until it doesn't. Denouncing anyone who doesn't fit the categories you've constructed for them as "mentally ill" is a common human failing, but it is a failing. Happens a lot, in many categories, not just those under discussion in this thread. > In the intersex case I don't really care what kind of mutant they are, it just needs to be recorded that they aren't typical. Why does it need to be recorded? Who needs to care? To repeat: for sports, what matters is the hormones, not how you got them. Are you going to add a third (/fourth) kind of bathroom for them (or force them to use the disabled ones), just so that the existing male and female toilets can't be made safe for everyone?

wakawaka28 1y ago
Good grief, I'm not going to respond to all that. But a few points: >If you really, honestly, define gender based on chromosomes, then you must agree that humans have about 15 genders. These fine-grained distinctions are completely useless. You're either a male, a female, or some kind of mutant. I am ok with an intersex designation for ambiguous cases. I'm not ok with biologically normal men and women pretending to be something they're not. >We have many biological functions. As far as sex goes, we only have two functions. >Denouncing anyone who doesn't fit the categories you've constructed for them as "mentally ill" is a common human failing, but it is a failing. Happens a lot, in many categories, not just those under discussion in this thread. Denying basic facts is also a human failing. Men who think they are women, and vice versa, are denying reality. It wouldn't be a problem but for bad actors and the comfort of others. People do not want to share bathrooms with such people, nor compete in sports with other such people. >To repeat: for sports, what matters is the hormones, not how you got them. It's not actually that simple. Some people have wildly different phenotypes with the same hormone levels. Men are more sensitive to androgenic hormones than women. Additionally, what matters for men and womens sports is fundamentally the approval of other competitors. Especially in sports where one sex tends to have an advantage. This is the entire point of having separate designations for men and women. I would not be opposed to hormone testing. But it's up to the sports community to decide what is fair, and how many tiers of competitors can be supported. Audiences may also feel some kind of way about watching men box with women or men share a weight lifting competition with women. It says a LOT that all the trans females are breaking all the female records and taking the top slots in women's sports. You have to admit that this is no coincidence. These "females" have a clear advantage. Mediocre men are registering as females to take titles away from real women. It's sick and annoying to competitors and audiences. >Are you going to add a third (/fourth) kind of bathroom for them (or force them to use the disabled ones), just so that the existing male and female toilets can't be made safe for everyone? Regarding bathrooms, I guess the only solution may be to have single-occupancy bathrooms. Maybe they can share a sink in the hallway or something. We are never going to have more than 3 gender categories for bathrooms.