Saw this clip between Walsh and the trans identifying male. This is why the TRA would rather hurl vile names and resort to violence, because they would lose every rational, calm discussion.
a eays way to give people like me a eaosn to be radical and voilent towards Nonbelivers of Christanity, Judaism and biology. even if that means being as radical and violent as the Taliban and or ISIS
and also im not justifying ISIS or the Talibans voilence im saying being as radicla and vpoilent as them. the cartels in mexico act the same way ISIS and Hamas do
not if you favor silencing the transgdner, Liberals, elftists, demcorats and amrxists even if it means being as radicla and voilent as the cartels who became this way from learning from ISIS or HAMAS and or repeating the same atrocities Lenin and Stalin committed such as the genocidal purges and Gulag slave labor camps
As a biologist, I just correct them to say Variations of Sex Development instead of 'intersex'. Variations occur across the genome in autosomes and sex chromosomes. The variations in autosomes, no matter how extreme in consequence, do not make the individual not human, e.g. a person born without legs is a legless human and their existence does not make human beings no longer a bipedal species & all humans on a leg spectrum. The variations in sex chromosomes do not make the individual neither sex or both sexes, and even if it did, it wouldn't put all humans on a sex spectrum. Another thing I like to ask is if a person with Down's is not human, because, following their logic of a karyotype of xxy, a sex trisomy, being not male or female, the logical conclusion would be that monstrous.
Infertility is common for a person with a VSD. For some conditions, it is completely impossible to reproduce. Each one is different. XXY, Klinefelter, the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is expressed so the individual has male development and produces sperm.
Are there any subcategories or sub-subcategories where the individual does not produce either gamete, functional or not? I occasionally get into arguments about sex as a binary vs a spectrum and would like to narrow down the edge cases as much as possible.
Link to violent "Trans Day of Vengeance" in Los Angeles. Trans Resistance Network and Antifa attack, harass, menace, block traffic on main streets, marching to a police station. No police response. Anyone wonder why we trans widows, who have written our memoirs (In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, iuniverse.com/bookstore, 2022) are a bit shaky that they might come and attack us in our homes, for simply and in straightforward manner, telling the narcissistic abuse we suffered from our cross-dressing (now ex) husbands? See for yourself in news video:
Lotta "stochastic terrorism" on the part of various transactivists that get far too much of a free ride and blind eye by governments and media. I rather doubt any other group would fare as well ...
You are exactly right. And consider the timing. The local Nashville news stations are reporting that the shooter had reams of diaries going back months and planned this crime well ahead. Most likely, as an online gamer, loner who had a crush on a female former classmate, she was groomed, I pose, by these very extremists. Also, Steersman, they menaced the drivers of cars, putting posters over their windshields, they DID STUFF. That's not just words. That is proving there are no boundaries for this privileged class of psychopaths.
Thanks for the link, Ute. How fitting that the video starts with a shot of the Ripley's Believe It or Not tourist museum that invites guests of all ages to experience the unbelievable mysteries of our world." Yes, mysteries such as why anyone in their right mind would ever believe that "transwomen are women."
Exactly! Built in to the whole misuse of "intersex" is the implication that people with DSDs aren't real men or women, but are some weird mishmash of the two. It's insulting as hell, not to mention flat-out wrong. Everyone male is a "real man", whether he's a trans "woman", or a man with a DSD, or a straight man, or a gay man, or whatever. It's an either/or - if you're male, that's what it takes to be a real man.
The whole "intersex" thing drives me crazy. It's so completely beside the point. Even if people with DSDs actually were some third sex, which obviously they are not, so what? How would that show that a trans person could actually change his or her sex?
Think of hybrid species - lions exist and tigers exist, and on rare occasion one of each will mate with the other and produce a baby liger/tion. But the existence of ligers does not in any way mean that if we take an adult male lion, shave off his mane, dye him orange, and tattoo black stripes on him, that he will become a tiger. He'll still be a lion. A shaved, dyed, and tattooed lion, but a lion nevertheless.
I knew a man who had a DSD that made parts of his anatomy smaller than average. But he was one hundred percent male and would be outraged if any of these "trans" idiots considered him to be "intersexed" or "trans" in any way.
Thanks Colin, I just joined your subscription to read this article. It was really helpful to have the points broken down in this way, and I appreciated it was easy to understand. Happy to support you to carry out such vitally important work debunking trans ideology pseudo science! There seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors on the TRA side and not whole lot of logic. I also think Matt Walsh can be quite polarising, but on this issue he’s on point. Look forward to reading more of your articles.
Biologist here. Scientific arguments are good up to a point. Let's just be careful not to engage in the co-opting of common sense. Nobody needs to be a biologist in order to be able to tell someone's sex in person.
We can all tell. And at the end of the day that is where the strength of our argument lies.
As a biologist, you may have some particular interest in the definitions for the sexes in the Glossary of this paper in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
No thank you. Under normal circumstances I am game to analyze the science sideways until Sunday, but at this point, to even engage in such discussion in a political context whether with a trans activist or anyone else is itself an act of giving into the BS tactics that are explained in this article. They are not trying to have a debate, they are just trying to bully and keep us on the defensive. Don't fall for it. People can't change their sex, there's no scientific basis for the idea of being born in the wrong body, DSDs are irrelevant to the question and they don't know what they're talking about.
Let's focus on the fact that our entire profession is being made a mockery of by political capture and the horribly low-quality, purely subjective junk social "science" being used to justify it. We need Studies using objective data sources, objective criteria and control groups. Evidence-Based Science!
I'm certainly not arguing any human can change sex. And I'll certainly agree that many people -- including various so-called biologists and philosophers -- "don't know what they're talking about". Being charitable.
But the reason that your "entire profession is being made a mockery of" is largely because most biologists and philosophers don't know their arses from a hole in the ground when it comes to the principles that undergird their fields. Whence the interminable squabble over whether sex is a binary, a spectrum, or -- gawd help us -- "socially constructed". A relevant quote from a paper by a well-regarded Belgian virologist that I'd linked to in the above:
"Sections 4–8 of this review followed a chronological presentation of recent developments in viral taxonomy which revealed that the field has been plagued by an uninterrupted series of conflicting views, heated disagreements and acrimonious controversies that may seem to some to be out of place in a scientific debate. The reason, of course, is that the subject of virus taxonomy and nomenclature lies at the interface between virological science and areas of philosophy such as logic, ontology and epistemology which unfortunately are rarely taught in university curricula followed by science students (Blachowicz 2009)."
The bottom line of which is that there is NO intrinsic meaning to the words "male" and "female", that we can define those categories any way we wish -- pay the words extra. However, the point is that there are substantially sound and solid reasons to DEFINE those categories as does that article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
"This claim is unfortunately common and even appears in top science and medical journals."
Why? I mean, I think I know the answer politically, and this TIM is definitely not a "medical expert" or scientist, but why does this ridiculousness pass muster among actual biologists and "top scientists"? What "scientific" reasoning are they using to support it?
The peer reviewed journal articles on trans issues in psychology are pervasively corrupted. The articles I looked at would not have been accepted from undergrad students prior to about 20 years ago. Scientific standards and ethics were openly disregarded, and the research designs indicated lack of competence.
Psychology was captured earlier and more thoroughly than bio science, but at this point I would be very skeptical of any data, analysis or conclusions reported in peer reviewed journals for any field of study.
"The peer reviewed journal articles ... psychology are pervasively corrupted."
Indeed, and absent the qualification. Apropos of which and ICYMI, you might "enjoy" an article by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender" -- an article that Colin had tweeted about several years ago.
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences [and by Emma Hilton and Company] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)."
Hilton's definitions are likewise "purely descriptive" and "lack a functional rational" -- i.e., by her definitions, one doesn't actually need to be able to reproduce to qualify as male or female:
Thank you, Steersman! I plan to go back through the articles I reviewed and make notes on their deficiencies. Need to wait until I finish my taxes. I’ll post more detailed critiques on this site after I do.
Yeah, I guess when I was pondering this I wasn't thinking of psychology as actual science... Sorry, lol, but I'm trained as a sociologist and I also don't think of any of the social sciences as even attempting to be scientific anymore. It's sad. And scary. :(
Great content as usual. It's helpful to get a case study of a trans activist using cliché arguments and pettifogging with false information. I'm sure many readers here can relate to this. It's also quite satisfying for an actual PhD in evolutionary biology to chime in and set the record straight. Why acolytes of identity politics feel they can speak on scientific consensus, while also crying bigotry on the science community, is beyond me.
I have to give the trans identifying man credit for going to an event which was obviously pro gender critical and go up against Matt Walsh. This is what good debate should sound and look like.
Fair point. He was brave to put his ideas out there and argue them, even if there was some intellectual dishonesty. Most trans activists retreat to name-calling, intimidation, and silencing opposing views.
Not only name-calling and intimidation but out right violence as has been demonstrated in recent events when women and their supporters tried to speak. They don't realize that these vicious actions peak people and steers others away from their infamous trope that trans people are facing violence or worse, genocide.
It’s bizarre and disturbing that women have become the target.
It makes me wonder how far trans activism will go. How violent it will get. The structure of the ideology doesn’t tolerate criticism that might allow it to self-correct. It also rejects empathy for those with dissenting opinions.
When you have the media, politicians and TRA wrongfully referring to gender critical women who want a voice in the game as Nazis, right-wing religious zealots, transphobes, TERFS, etc. we become fair game for any and all methods of silencing us, including violence. Too often, police stand by and let the violence happen.
I feel like we’re living in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Queer Theory has transformed the left into a parody of itself. One that’s challenging to mock because it continually doubles down on it’s own stupidity and absurdity.
But you can tell they’re freaked out about mockery because they’re so aggressive in preempting personal attacks
Not entirely. The British Medical Journal doesn't think so. Nor did the late Justice Scalia:
"Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically."
"The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male."
I agree with both of these points. I understand the terms "gender role", "gender", and "gender identity" as referring to different things.
The BMJ quote seems to be referring to "gender roles", which does not seem incoherent to me.
The late Justice Scalia's reference to "gender" more generally may be useful as well, if we take gender to mean something like: where one falls in the statistical distribution of characteristics typically belonging to males vs females (for biological reasons). i.e. it refers to the spectrum of masculinity-femininity.
But "gender identity" seems different than the above two, and is based on unfalsifiable subjective testimony, endless category confusion, and ultimately a kind of mind/body dualism. To put it more charitably, "gender identity" may be philosophically reasonable if it is taken as a fundamentally spiritual or theological claim rather than a scientific one.
"it refers to the spectrum of masculinity-femininity"
Exactly. You might have some interest in my Welcome post -- particularly the section on Rationalized Gender -- that develops that point in some detail:
"But 'gender identity' seems different than the above two, and is based on unfalsifiable subjective testimony,"
Not entirely. If you concede -- as you apparently do -- that gender usefully refers to masculine/feminine personality traits -- then it shouldn't be much of a stretch to see "gender identity" as, ideally, the subjective experience of those traits. Entirely consistent with general theories of personal identity:
"Who am I? Outside of philosophy, ‘personal identity’ usually refers to properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those properties she takes to “define her as a person” or “make her the person she is”, and which distinguish her from others."
The problem, or one of the main problems, is that many of the gender dysphoric use "male" & female" as labels for their whole personal identities -- or their genders -- the first of which is entirely subjective. Which conflicts profoundly with the definitions of those words as sexes which are entirely objective, which have specific objective criteria for category membership.
Haven't read much of that Stanford essay myself, but even the section quoted seems to provide a way off the horns of a dilemma created by sloppy definitions and a general unwillingness or inability to listen to what anybody else is saying.
The sex binary is indeed high school biology in that it's so simple even teenagers understand. It's beyond me why activists would think this is some kind of own, unless they mean to say schools are teaching disproven concepts like spontaneous generation as fact.
Can you supply some more scientific articles and data to help refute the “sex is a spectrum” argument? What stays the same even after puberty blockers and hormone therapy?
Saw this clip between Walsh and the trans identifying male. This is why the TRA would rather hurl vile names and resort to violence, because they would lose every rational, calm discussion.
a eays way to give people like me a eaosn to be radical and voilent towards Nonbelivers of Christanity, Judaism and biology. even if that means being as radical and violent as the Taliban and or ISIS
Justifying the violence of the Taliban or ISIS for whatever reason will never put you on the winning side.
and also im not justifying ISIS or the Talibans voilence im saying being as radicla and vpoilent as them. the cartels in mexico act the same way ISIS and Hamas do
not if you favor silencing the transgdner, Liberals, elftists, demcorats and amrxists even if it means being as radicla and voilent as the cartels who became this way from learning from ISIS or HAMAS and or repeating the same atrocities Lenin and Stalin committed such as the genocidal purges and Gulag slave labor camps
As a biologist, I just correct them to say Variations of Sex Development instead of 'intersex'. Variations occur across the genome in autosomes and sex chromosomes. The variations in autosomes, no matter how extreme in consequence, do not make the individual not human, e.g. a person born without legs is a legless human and their existence does not make human beings no longer a bipedal species & all humans on a leg spectrum. The variations in sex chromosomes do not make the individual neither sex or both sexes, and even if it did, it wouldn't put all humans on a sex spectrum. Another thing I like to ask is if a person with Down's is not human, because, following their logic of a karyotype of xxy, a sex trisomy, being not male or female, the logical conclusion would be that monstrous.
Thank you for this additional information. I curious whether a person with, for instance, XXY chromosome produce ova or sperm or neither?
Infertility is common for a person with a VSD. For some conditions, it is completely impossible to reproduce. Each one is different. XXY, Klinefelter, the SRY gene on the Y chromosome is expressed so the individual has male development and produces sperm.
Thank you.
Are there any subcategories or sub-subcategories where the individual does not produce either gamete, functional or not? I occasionally get into arguments about sex as a binary vs a spectrum and would like to narrow down the edge cases as much as possible.
Link to violent "Trans Day of Vengeance" in Los Angeles. Trans Resistance Network and Antifa attack, harass, menace, block traffic on main streets, marching to a police station. No police response. Anyone wonder why we trans widows, who have written our memoirs (In the Curated Woods, True Tales from a Grass Widow, iuniverse.com/bookstore, 2022) are a bit shaky that they might come and attack us in our homes, for simply and in straightforward manner, telling the narcissistic abuse we suffered from our cross-dressing (now ex) husbands? See for yourself in news video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crTO97hEM4E
Lotta "stochastic terrorism" on the part of various transactivists that get far too much of a free ride and blind eye by governments and media. I rather doubt any other group would fare as well ...
You are exactly right. And consider the timing. The local Nashville news stations are reporting that the shooter had reams of diaries going back months and planned this crime well ahead. Most likely, as an online gamer, loner who had a crush on a female former classmate, she was groomed, I pose, by these very extremists. Also, Steersman, they menaced the drivers of cars, putting posters over their windshields, they DID STUFF. That's not just words. That is proving there are no boundaries for this privileged class of psychopaths.
Thanks for the link, Ute. How fitting that the video starts with a shot of the Ripley's Believe It or Not tourist museum that invites guests of all ages to experience the unbelievable mysteries of our world." Yes, mysteries such as why anyone in their right mind would ever believe that "transwomen are women."
"Being sexually ambitious" is the greatest typo I've ever read. Please don't fix it.
Great article, as always!
lol, yeah I caught that later. I did change it, but it will live forever in the emails that were sent out when it was published!
Exactly! Built in to the whole misuse of "intersex" is the implication that people with DSDs aren't real men or women, but are some weird mishmash of the two. It's insulting as hell, not to mention flat-out wrong. Everyone male is a "real man", whether he's a trans "woman", or a man with a DSD, or a straight man, or a gay man, or whatever. It's an either/or - if you're male, that's what it takes to be a real man.
The whole "intersex" thing drives me crazy. It's so completely beside the point. Even if people with DSDs actually were some third sex, which obviously they are not, so what? How would that show that a trans person could actually change his or her sex?
Think of hybrid species - lions exist and tigers exist, and on rare occasion one of each will mate with the other and produce a baby liger/tion. But the existence of ligers does not in any way mean that if we take an adult male lion, shave off his mane, dye him orange, and tattoo black stripes on him, that he will become a tiger. He'll still be a lion. A shaved, dyed, and tattooed lion, but a lion nevertheless.
I knew a man who had a DSD that made parts of his anatomy smaller than average. But he was one hundred percent male and would be outraged if any of these "trans" idiots considered him to be "intersexed" or "trans" in any way.
Thanks Colin, I just joined your subscription to read this article. It was really helpful to have the points broken down in this way, and I appreciated it was easy to understand. Happy to support you to carry out such vitally important work debunking trans ideology pseudo science! There seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors on the TRA side and not whole lot of logic. I also think Matt Walsh can be quite polarising, but on this issue he’s on point. Look forward to reading more of your articles.
Excellent article.
Clear and useful, as always. Only one problem. The word "ambitious" should be "ambiguous."
Ahh, thank you for spotting that!
Biologist here. Scientific arguments are good up to a point. Let's just be careful not to engage in the co-opting of common sense. Nobody needs to be a biologist in order to be able to tell someone's sex in person.
We can all tell. And at the end of the day that is where the strength of our argument lies.
As a biologist, you may have some particular interest in the definitions for the sexes in the Glossary of this paper in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
They basically stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless.
You might also have some interest in my critique of various "binarists" and "spectrumists" here:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
No thank you. Under normal circumstances I am game to analyze the science sideways until Sunday, but at this point, to even engage in such discussion in a political context whether with a trans activist or anyone else is itself an act of giving into the BS tactics that are explained in this article. They are not trying to have a debate, they are just trying to bully and keep us on the defensive. Don't fall for it. People can't change their sex, there's no scientific basis for the idea of being born in the wrong body, DSDs are irrelevant to the question and they don't know what they're talking about.
Let's focus on the fact that our entire profession is being made a mockery of by political capture and the horribly low-quality, purely subjective junk social "science" being used to justify it. We need Studies using objective data sources, objective criteria and control groups. Evidence-Based Science!
I'm certainly not arguing any human can change sex. And I'll certainly agree that many people -- including various so-called biologists and philosophers -- "don't know what they're talking about". Being charitable.
But the reason that your "entire profession is being made a mockery of" is largely because most biologists and philosophers don't know their arses from a hole in the ground when it comes to the principles that undergird their fields. Whence the interminable squabble over whether sex is a binary, a spectrum, or -- gawd help us -- "socially constructed". A relevant quote from a paper by a well-regarded Belgian virologist that I'd linked to in the above:
"Sections 4–8 of this review followed a chronological presentation of recent developments in viral taxonomy which revealed that the field has been plagued by an uninterrupted series of conflicting views, heated disagreements and acrimonious controversies that may seem to some to be out of place in a scientific debate. The reason, of course, is that the subject of virus taxonomy and nomenclature lies at the interface between virological science and areas of philosophy such as logic, ontology and epistemology which unfortunately are rarely taught in university curricula followed by science students (Blachowicz 2009)."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309889266_Classes_taxa_and_categories_in_hierarchical_virus_classification_a_review_of_current_debates_on_definitions_and_names_of_virus_species
The bottom line of which is that there is NO intrinsic meaning to the words "male" and "female", that we can define those categories any way we wish -- pay the words extra. However, the point is that there are substantially sound and solid reasons to DEFINE those categories as does that article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
Good one. We are ranting in parallel.
"This claim is unfortunately common and even appears in top science and medical journals."
Why? I mean, I think I know the answer politically, and this TIM is definitely not a "medical expert" or scientist, but why does this ridiculousness pass muster among actual biologists and "top scientists"? What "scientific" reasoning are they using to support it?
The peer reviewed journal articles on trans issues in psychology are pervasively corrupted. The articles I looked at would not have been accepted from undergrad students prior to about 20 years ago. Scientific standards and ethics were openly disregarded, and the research designs indicated lack of competence.
Psychology was captured earlier and more thoroughly than bio science, but at this point I would be very skeptical of any data, analysis or conclusions reported in peer reviewed journals for any field of study.
"The peer reviewed journal articles ... psychology are pervasively corrupted."
Indeed, and absent the qualification. Apropos of which and ICYMI, you might "enjoy" an article by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender" -- an article that Colin had tweeted about several years ago.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
A relevant quote:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences [and by Emma Hilton and Company] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)."
Hilton's definitions are likewise "purely descriptive" and "lack a functional rational" -- i.e., by her definitions, one doesn't actually need to be able to reproduce to qualify as male or female:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
Whole field of psychology is culpable to a not inconsiderable extent for the corruption of biology.
Thank you, Steersman! I plan to go back through the articles I reviewed and make notes on their deficiencies. Need to wait until I finish my taxes. I’ll post more detailed critiques on this site after I do.
Yeah, I guess when I was pondering this I wasn't thinking of psychology as actual science... Sorry, lol, but I'm trained as a sociologist and I also don't think of any of the social sciences as even attempting to be scientific anymore. It's sad. And scary. :(
Great content as usual. It's helpful to get a case study of a trans activist using cliché arguments and pettifogging with false information. I'm sure many readers here can relate to this. It's also quite satisfying for an actual PhD in evolutionary biology to chime in and set the record straight. Why acolytes of identity politics feel they can speak on scientific consensus, while also crying bigotry on the science community, is beyond me.
I have to give the trans identifying man credit for going to an event which was obviously pro gender critical and go up against Matt Walsh. This is what good debate should sound and look like.
Fair point. He was brave to put his ideas out there and argue them, even if there was some intellectual dishonesty. Most trans activists retreat to name-calling, intimidation, and silencing opposing views.
Not only name-calling and intimidation but out right violence as has been demonstrated in recent events when women and their supporters tried to speak. They don't realize that these vicious actions peak people and steers others away from their infamous trope that trans people are facing violence or worse, genocide.
It’s bizarre and disturbing that women have become the target.
It makes me wonder how far trans activism will go. How violent it will get. The structure of the ideology doesn’t tolerate criticism that might allow it to self-correct. It also rejects empathy for those with dissenting opinions.
When you have the media, politicians and TRA wrongfully referring to gender critical women who want a voice in the game as Nazis, right-wing religious zealots, transphobes, TERFS, etc. we become fair game for any and all methods of silencing us, including violence. Too often, police stand by and let the violence happen.
I feel like we’re living in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
Queer Theory has transformed the left into a parody of itself. One that’s challenging to mock because it continually doubles down on it’s own stupidity and absurdity.
But you can tell they’re freaked out about mockery because they’re so aggressive in preempting personal attacks
Things will become simpler and saner when everyone realizes that the concept of "gender identity" is philosophically incoherent.
Not entirely. The British Medical Journal doesn't think so. Nor did the late Justice Scalia:
"Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically."
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
"The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gender&oldid=1066221698
I agree with both of these points. I understand the terms "gender role", "gender", and "gender identity" as referring to different things.
The BMJ quote seems to be referring to "gender roles", which does not seem incoherent to me.
The late Justice Scalia's reference to "gender" more generally may be useful as well, if we take gender to mean something like: where one falls in the statistical distribution of characteristics typically belonging to males vs females (for biological reasons). i.e. it refers to the spectrum of masculinity-femininity.
But "gender identity" seems different than the above two, and is based on unfalsifiable subjective testimony, endless category confusion, and ultimately a kind of mind/body dualism. To put it more charitably, "gender identity" may be philosophically reasonable if it is taken as a fundamentally spiritual or theological claim rather than a scientific one.
"it refers to the spectrum of masculinity-femininity"
Exactly. You might have some interest in my Welcome post -- particularly the section on Rationalized Gender -- that develops that point in some detail:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome
"But 'gender identity' seems different than the above two, and is based on unfalsifiable subjective testimony,"
Not entirely. If you concede -- as you apparently do -- that gender usefully refers to masculine/feminine personality traits -- then it shouldn't be much of a stretch to see "gender identity" as, ideally, the subjective experience of those traits. Entirely consistent with general theories of personal identity:
"Who am I? Outside of philosophy, ‘personal identity’ usually refers to properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those properties she takes to “define her as a person” or “make her the person she is”, and which distinguish her from others."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/#ProPerIde
The problem, or one of the main problems, is that many of the gender dysphoric use "male" & female" as labels for their whole personal identities -- or their genders -- the first of which is entirely subjective. Which conflicts profoundly with the definitions of those words as sexes which are entirely objective, which have specific objective criteria for category membership.
Excellent!
Thanks. 🙂
Haven't read much of that Stanford essay myself, but even the section quoted seems to provide a way off the horns of a dilemma created by sloppy definitions and a general unwillingness or inability to listen to what anybody else is saying.
I agree
The sex binary is indeed high school biology in that it's so simple even teenagers understand. It's beyond me why activists would think this is some kind of own, unless they mean to say schools are teaching disproven concepts like spontaneous generation as fact.
Can you supply some more scientific articles and data to help refute the “sex is a spectrum” argument? What stays the same even after puberty blockers and hormone therapy?
Very helpful, thank you.