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I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a serious argument that limb agenesis implies th

by EA-3167 7mo ago

I would say that humans are sexually dimorphic in the same way that humans are bipeds. if you attempted to make a serious argument that limb agenesis implies that we’re a variable-limbed species it would be obfuscating rather than illuminating.

enragedcacti 7mo ago
99.8% of all matter by count is either hydrogen or helium, are atoms dimorphic?
- EA-3167 7mo ago
  That’s a very fun way to think about it, but it’s far more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I also don’t for a minute believe that the goal here is some broader reform of how the world talks about statistical distributions. I’d rather not have discussions in bad faith.
  - enragedcacti 7mo ago
    It was intended in good faith, to make the point that rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my experience, most trans people have no problem with the statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)". In the context of sports, it is definitely relevant that there are many edge cases and substantial overlap in the distribution of phenotypes between AFAB and AMAB people. Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing across 8 billion people.
    - EA-3167 7mo ago
      Speaking for myself I believe that trans people and non-binary people should be accommodated, but there’s a contextual limit. When it comes to equal protection, employment, healthcare, medical access, bathrooms and a dozen other issues it’s a no-brainer in favor of accommodating people. Ironically the sports divide is probably the single area where having some physical advantages isn’t a bonus. It’s also near and dear to the hearts of billions, and such a terrible hill to die on. Ideally the solution would be a league like the Paralympic competitions, but high level athletes are rare, trans people are relatively rare, and two overlapping are incredibly rare. To make such a league would be a farce that couldn’t hope to succeed.
      - lynndotpy 7mo ago
        In the Olympics, it appears trans athletes are still a minority among the group of athletes who are excluded because of sex characteristics. Most of the athletes impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone limits in the Olympics are cis women. Such a league would include cisgender former Olympic athletes who had to undergo forms of HRT in order to qualify. When discussing trans people in sports, the most salient contexts aren't elite sports championships like the Olympics. "Sports" is also done recreationally and is often considered a normal part of ones childhood upbringing. On the topic of trans people, the question "can my child play this sport with their friends"?
        EA-3167 7mo ago
        Is anyone worth listening to seriously suggesting that informal childhood sports are somehow equivalent to programs that can define academic or professional careers? Edit I’d add that T screening in sports exists primarily to find dopers, not people trying to pass.
        lynndotpy 7mo ago
        I don't see how your question follows from the rest of the discussion, or in what specific ways you are suggesting people argue to be equivalent. Both K-12 sports and Olympic sports are understood to be sports. To restate myself, sports during childhood are much more important than elite world championships. Almost everyone I know did a sport with peers during our formative years, myself included. Meanwhile, nobody I know was ever close to qualifying to be an Olympic athlete, and I feel certain the same is true for most of the people in this thread.
- brainwad 7mo ago
  If you're a cosmologist ;) usually they talk of 3 elements though - H, He and "metal".
- zahlman 7mo ago
  If it were possible for us to exist (and thus consider the question) in the absence of the other atoms, and if those other atoms overwhelmingly (somehow) had a number of nucleons between 1 and 2, then the analogy might plausibly make sense.
lynndotpy 7mo ago
No, that is not a good analogy at all. It's so poor an analogy that it's challenging to interpret this comment generously. I think you might be arguing facetiously to make a different rhetoric point than the literal content of your post, bot I will respond to your text literally. Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" and those metrics are accessibly mutable. Even within the Olympics, the natural variation of these metrics within cis women is a famous topic of debate (Imane Khelif, Caster Semenya, etc.) Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable.
- NeutralCrane 7mo ago
  > Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable. This would apply to sex chromosomes as well
  - lynndotpy 7mo ago
    So? It would apply to sex chromosomes and only sex chromosomes, which is just one observed sex characteristic. We are talking about sexual dimorphism and secondary sex characteristics. Humans were understood to be sexually dimorphic before we discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, and we usually label our babies with a biological sex without the aid of consumer genetic testing.
- zahlman 7mo ago
  > Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex? > and those metrics are accessibly mutable. What is that even supposed to mean?
  - lynndotpy 7mo ago
    > What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex? Not all biological variation is classified as intersex. > What is that even supposed to mean? You can change a lot of your 'secondary sex characteristics' intentionally. This is much easier than removing a limb, and even easier than adding a limb.

by EA-3167 7mo ago

enragedcacti 7mo ago

99.8% of all matter by count is either hydrogen or helium, are atoms dimorphic?

EA-3167 7mo ago
That’s a very fun way to think about it, but it’s far more effective in a semantic debate than a serious one. I also don’t for a minute believe that the goal here is some broader reform of how the world talks about statistical distributions. I’d rather not have discussions in bad faith.
- enragedcacti 7mo ago
  It was intended in good faith, to make the point that rarity alone is not a good metric for salience. In my experience, most trans people have no problem with the statement "humans are sexually dimorphic" in a biology context. They (and I) have issue with it when its used in a debate to say "Humans are sexually dimorphic (and therefore trans and intersex people are irrelevant/shouldn't be accommodated/don't exist)". In the context of sports, it is definitely relevant that there are many edge cases and substantial overlap in the distribution of phenotypes between AFAB and AMAB people. Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing across 8 billion people.
  - EA-3167 7mo ago
    Speaking for myself I believe that trans people and non-binary people should be accommodated, but there’s a contextual limit. When it comes to equal protection, employment, healthcare, medical access, bathrooms and a dozen other issues it’s a no-brainer in favor of accommodating people. Ironically the sports divide is probably the single area where having some physical advantages isn’t a bonus. It’s also near and dear to the hearts of billions, and such a terrible hill to die on. Ideally the solution would be a league like the Paralympic competitions, but high level athletes are rare, trans people are relatively rare, and two overlapping are incredibly rare. To make such a league would be a farce that couldn’t hope to succeed.
    - lynndotpy 7mo ago
      In the Olympics, it appears trans athletes are still a minority among the group of athletes who are excluded because of sex characteristics. Most of the athletes impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone limits in the Olympics are cis women. Such a league would include cisgender former Olympic athletes who had to undergo forms of HRT in order to qualify. When discussing trans people in sports, the most salient contexts aren't elite sports championships like the Olympics. "Sports" is also done recreationally and is often considered a normal part of ones childhood upbringing. On the topic of trans people, the question "can my child play this sport with their friends"?
      - EA-3167 7mo ago
        Is anyone worth listening to seriously suggesting that informal childhood sports are somehow equivalent to programs that can define academic or professional careers? Edit I’d add that T screening in sports exists primarily to find dopers, not people trying to pass.
        lynndotpy 7mo ago
        I don't see how your question follows from the rest of the discussion, or in what specific ways you are suggesting people argue to be equivalent. Both K-12 sports and Olympic sports are understood to be sports. To restate myself, sports during childhood are much more important than elite world championships. Almost everyone I know did a sport with peers during our formative years, myself included. Meanwhile, nobody I know was ever close to qualifying to be an Olympic athlete, and I feel certain the same is true for most of the people in this thread.
brainwad 7mo ago
If you're a cosmologist ;) usually they talk of 3 elements though - H, He and "metal".
zahlman 7mo ago
If it were possible for us to exist (and thus consider the question) in the absence of the other atoms, and if those other atoms overwhelmingly (somehow) had a number of nucleons between 1 and 2, then the analogy might plausibly make sense.

lynndotpy 7mo ago

No, that is not a good analogy at all. It's so poor an analogy that it's challenging to interpret this comment generously. I think you might be arguing facetiously to make a different rhetoric point than the literal content of your post, bot I will respond to your text literally. Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" and those metrics are accessibly mutable. Even within the Olympics, the natural variation of these metrics within cis women is a famous topic of debate (Imane Khelif, Caster Semenya, etc.) Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable.

NeutralCrane 7mo ago
> Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable. This would apply to sex chromosomes as well
- lynndotpy 7mo ago
  So? It would apply to sex chromosomes and only sex chromosomes, which is just one observed sex characteristic. We are talking about sexual dimorphism and secondary sex characteristics. Humans were understood to be sexually dimorphic before we discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, and we usually label our babies with a biological sex without the aid of consumer genetic testing.
zahlman 7mo ago
> Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex? > and those metrics are accessibly mutable. What is that even supposed to mean?
- lynndotpy 7mo ago
  > What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex? Not all biological variation is classified as intersex. > What is that even supposed to mean? You can change a lot of your 'secondary sex characteristics' intentionally. This is much easier than removing a limb, and even easier than adding a limb.