Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.
I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.
I can’t help thinking of the rather excited responses to DEI initiatives. My take is, this matters to the right wingers because it threatens the presumption of the natural superiority of white people. And I know this isn’t an idle threat – when I got out of grad school with a degree in public affairs, I could not find a job in government because I lacked any of the three necessary attributes – being female, being colored, or having an hispanic surname. Every government agency at that time already had exceeded their quota of white males. BUT I also know that those for whom DEI programs exist experience the same sort of barriers, and DEI programs are intended to counter this. Perhaps you noticed (if you watched MSNBC) that when the host of one prime time show was white, nearly all the guests were also white (and Democrats). When a black host took over, nearly every guest was black (and a Democrat).
The point, I think, is less WHY it matters than the fact that it does matter. Consider the hornet’s nest I shook up suggesting that the left is offended by the suggestion that there are only two sexes of people (which I consider nearly universal despite rare exceptions which are regarded as abnormal). This forum does lean left, and suggesting the ubiquity of an obvious pattern gets a response resembling a political defense of Trump! For this common sense observation, I’m accused of being a bigot, of parroting Fox News talking points, etc. To be a cultural flash point, you need two sides to flash, not just one. But you see it embedded ONLY in RW politics. Why, the left would never fall prey to anything like that (and pay no attention to the left’s defense of DEI initiatives. Which forced me to change careers, but no big deal, right?).
Let me recommend a book, now about 85 years old, called Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. He took medication to turn his skin a very dark brown (which poisoned him, and he eventually died of it), and he wandered the deep South for about 6 weeks in 1959 as a black man. Same guy, different color, totally different responses from people. We might speculate as to why this mattered so desperately, but matter it did. A LOT. Being a trans person rarely matters, and not being visibly different also matters. Maybe xenophobia has some deep evolutionary roots?
So, it has been confirmed by the world’s most influential, Donald Trump himself, that Convid Op was the best military operation ever that the orchestras has never gotten credit for it:
https://x.com/_TruthZone_/status/2013989949347954889?s=20
Here is a truly devastating thing for all those virus warshipers. Trump was informed that covid was a “dust flying in the air” he couldn’t stop becsue it was “flying in the air from where? China ? I gotta tell you that furin cleavage and HIV inserted in Smak-CoV-2 is a sure thingy…
https://x.com/AutistDivision/status/2014058806003499491?s=20
I’ve tried to do some reading, to educate myself somewhat. And I’ve been coming to the conclusion that we’re confusing two different categories – biological categories and social role categories. I regard these as very different.
DNA_Jock sees many different sexes, so the claim there are only two is false on the merits. I started reading about intersex people, who cannot be stuck neatly into either the male or female box. There seems to be a fairly wide variety of different anomalies included under the intersex term. Some intersex people can reproduce, some cannot. Those who can and do, produce male or female offspring, not more intersex people. Google is quite adamant that intersex is NOT a third (or more) sex. Usually, it’s the result of a glitch in the rather error-prone process of fertilization and development. But the position that there are only two sexes (let’s stick with humans) is far from being so limited as to be pointless. It includes somewhere between 98% and 99% of all people. That still leaves millions of people for DNA_Jock to specialize on.
Now, within that overwhelming majority, we find nearly all LGBT people. These are NOT intersex people, they are males and females whom we divide (and they divide themselves) into social categories. The LGB part refers to innate sexual preference (which is almost certainly not learned). But a sexual preference for the same sex does not preclude reproduction with the opposite sex (NOTE: “opposite”, not “some other”), and many do.
Trans people, as I’ve understood it so far, are people who WISH to be the opposite sex, and this wish is no more voluntary than sexual preference. More or less recently, techniques have been developed that make this possible at a social level, and physical steps such as hormone therapy and/or surgery make such a change at least plausible, though they don’t change the underlying sex – they can render reproduction impossible, but do not render trans people into intersex people. Trans people generally can reproduce, and indeed it’s not uncommon for them to do so – producing non-trans offspring.
Personally, I have no problem with people who wish to adopt the social role of the opposite sex and go through life playing that role. Nor do I think any of these categories should alter the basic rights of people. But despite this, they are still male, female, or intersex. And despite DNA_Jock, I’ll go with Google and not regard intersex as an actual sex.
Flint,
Framing it thus is exactly the issue. “‘The left’ can’t define a woman”, cries the Right. Incessantly. “They’re infected with the Woke Mind Virus”.
‘The Right’ merely bring it up All. The. Time, unprompted, because the Left has a position? The hornet’s nest was reactive.
One might think, in some circles, that the most pressing issue of the day was a bloke winning a women’s foot race. It seems to associate strongly with RW views (which distortion from the neutral, equilibrium position inevitably means that ‘the Left’ is enriched with people more shruggy about it).
J-Mac,
How can you insert things into things that don’t exist?
I think that you stated that a little differently, namely using the broad term “in nature” when you were clearly referring to humans. Due to the history of this site, it is crawling with biologists here that are sensitive to people abusing biology to further a socio-political agenda.
That is excellent news. Perhaps you can start by avoiding terms like “anomaly” and “developmental glitches” when referring to the actual people involved to whom these social roles probably matter a great deal.
This too is commendable. Let me suggest that from now on you frame that slightly differently: these people do not just “play” that role. They identify as that role. They feel trapped in the wrong body.
All teasing aside: I truly appreciate that you respect the rights of members of LGBTI+ community and that you are willing to put in the effort to educate yourself. But I think you need to be a bit more mindful of your choice of words.
From “Pave the Way” by Sam Bettens. Always loved his voice, even when he still was Sarah 🙂
ETA: I wish that Lizzy would chime in on this
And I’ll leave another thought here: There is a lot of mud-flinging going on in this thread between people perceiving themselves and others to be on opposite sides of the left-right political spectrum. This seems a bit pointless to me in the current geopolitical climate as the left-right dichotomy has become largely irrelevant. The new, more important, dividing line is democratic versus anti-democratic. So I suggest that the “lefties” and “righties” unite against the bigger threat: the return of fascism.
This is not an original thought by me by the way. It was formulated by former liberal politician Klaas Dijkhoff and former liberal campaign strategist Mark Thiessen. As examples of countries where dangerous movements are eroding the democracy they mentioned Hungary and … the US.
I wrote
You responded
I wrote “sex/gender” because they are NOT the same thing, and I hoped to avoid the utterly pointless argument about where one ends and the other begins.
I did not write that there are seven different sexes/genders. I was referring to the different levels at which the determination could potentially be made (and thus the different criteria that could be used to generate the dichotomy that you desire). Here’s a way of thinking about it:
Levels of sex/gender determination
1. Karyotype – XX, XY, XO, XXY, XYY
2. Genetic – SRY/TDF +ve or -ve
3. Hormonal – androgen synthesis / AMH
4. Hormonal Receptor – CAIS / AMHR
5. Gonadal – testes or ovaries or mullerian streaks
6. Genital – external genitalia – innie or outtie or both
7. Brain development – subject of debate (hormonal environment in utero believed to affect orientation, rather than identity)
8. Mental – identifies as male, female, other
9. Cultural – treated as male, female, other
I think the first 6 are sex and the last three are gender; reasonable people will disagree, but let’s avoid map/territory confusion.
Jackie is male, according to 1, 2, 3, and 5. But because 4 is a mixed bag, she presents as female for 6, probably 7, and (as a result of 6) 8 and 9.
Therefore, according to the definitions for sports competition that you want to use (1, 2, 3), she is a man, and removing her testes was gender-altering surgery.
Flint
Cool beans. I’m perfectly satisfied with the notion that there’s only one sex, except for the exceptions.
Oh, that’s where you’re heading. Not sure why that matters, given that the topic of conversation is the exceptions. I am afraid this comes across as “If you are sufficiently rare, then FUCK OFF.”
But you do think they are a different gender. When you first made this strange conflation, I let it pass. You wrote:
Gay men are still men, Flint. Their gender is male. They identify as male, some of them are quite hypermasculine. They just like to have sex with other men. In HIV epidemiology, this is abbreviated to MSM. You are conflating identity (cis vs trans) with attraction (straight, gay, bi, all the paraphilias). These are quite different things.
When you write
I genuinely don’t see what you are trying to say here. You appear to be arguing against the idea that some people are more masculine than others, then arguing that masculinity is different from maleness.
I don’t think that what-sex-one-is has anything to do with individual preference. I also don’t think that what-sex-one-is is a smooth spectrum: it starts out as a continuous variable, but typically resolves into one of a couple of popular outcomes thanks to positive feedback loops.
However, I DO think that sexual attraction is a smooth spectrum. I think that everybody is a bit bisexual. It’s just that most people are well over in the 90 – 95% straight zone, and they live their lives exclusively “straight”. People who are 90 – 95% gay opt for gay. People who are around the 50/50 mark either identify as bisexual, or become homophobes.
Finally
This reminds me of Erik, and his “This group is so rare that we are under no obligation to treat them decently.” As in “There’s 10 trans athletes in the NCAA, this is an outrage! There’s only 10 trans athletes in the NCAA, so we can de-humanize them”
My point is this. If these people are rare, then the potential problems caused by these people are also rare. People like Jackie Blankenship are rare. That does not make her any less deserving of common human decency. Corneel is politely trying to steer you away from some rather de-humanizing language.
Nobody is insisting that the exceptions mean there is no pattern; we are insisting that the exceptions mean that there are exceptions – don’t pretend otherwise.
So you agree that Jackie is not male and Jackie is not female, but you insist that she is not “an actual sex” either. You do you.
I appreciate the hierarchy of levels, it’s very helpful. My interest is in what you call level 9. What is NOT helpful is your very deliberate reading of what I’ve written to mean different is wrong, or undeserving of respect, or unworthy of ordinary human rights. I certainly never intended an implication that exceptions should be mistreated, or ignored, or defined away, or whatever is irritating you.
As far as I can tell, you are hyper defensive about what you regard as mistreatment (or misunderstanding) of those your profession focuses on. To the point where you seem to see bigots hiding under every bed.
So all I can say is, I’ve never meant to demean, or de-humanize, or deny human decency to anyone. I was very careful to distinguish LGB (by which I mean attraction) with T (which I regard as identity). I’m pretty sure I said I considered these different categories. In some very limited circumstances I think it makes sense to treat them differently, but differently does NOT mean worse. Allport was making the point that a minority must reach a certain percentage before it becomes a social; issue, not necessarily a legal issue.
Yes, I think said that. I don’t regard attraction as voluntary in all cases.
I’d like a bit more explication here. By “starting out” do you mean blastula stage, or some time after birth? Do the positive feedback loops occur before or after birth? How early in gestation do sexual characteristics start to differentiate, between males and females? I should think the distinctions clear enough so that sex-assigned-at-birth is accurate enough to be useful, though as you say it can miss the point. Maybe there are people who think the exceptions should be tossed in the discard pile, but I certainly do not.
As you go on to say, it’s a smooth spectrum with a very binomial distribution. I do wonder how much that’s due to biology and how much to culture.
And sheesh, saying there is a very distinct pattern is NOT the same thing as saying everyone must fit that pattern. Where did you get that?
Google tells me that intersex is not regarded as a separate sex. If you prefer to think of Jackie as belonging to a third sex, maybe that’s helpful for you. Both of us would think of her as human.
I think there are a couple of issues here. The issue I was referring to was that this particular area is a flash point, something very polarizing. And something I agree the Far Right has blown up all out of proportion. The winner of some foot race, or some state championship, or some Olympic gold medal, is the least of our reasonable concerns. But if I regard these incidents as both rare and undeserving of all the heated rhetoric, I’m immediately accused by DNA_Jock of minimizing the humanity of those involved. I feel that if I consider the foot race meaningless, I’m demeaning the athlete. If I regard it as meaningful, I’m focusing on something insignificant.
Corneel,
As I am one who may be in the cross-hairs of this, my defence is: my takes are observational, not mud-flinging. ‘The Right’ really do bring this up a lot, particularly when talking to or of ‘the Left’. And they really do seem to wish to (somehow) crush the ‘Woke Mind Virus’ that permits such an unacceptable version of the realities (free speech libertarians that they are, to fling un morceau de boue).
I think “the Right” considers the “two sexes” position sufficiently universal as to be useful. There is a reason why forms only have two boxes labeled “M” and “F”, a reason why there are only two rest rooms (no more and no less), two clothing stores or departments, two sports teams. The reality is that there really are two sexes plus exceptions, and that the exceptions are rare enough not to add additional sports teams, clothing lines, etc. Treating the population as though there are only two sexes is practical.
I don’t think it’s necessary to dwell excessively on the exceptions to find the “two sexes” notion useful. Here in Alabama, studies have found that for equal work, women get paid only 70% of what men are paid. Now, I find this wrong and unjust and in need of correction, without having to be concerned with how much DNA_Jock’s additional sexes might be paid, or how they might be defined or labeled. Women got the right to vote long after blacks did. Women tend to be passed over for raises and promotions. Women tend be steered into different fields or lines of work. And we can determine this because we know what we mean by what a woman is.
And so, I think “the Right” is defending the status quo, keeping women down in many ways. They might perceive women as a threat to their hegemony.
Flint,
I think there is more to it. It cannot surely be the case that ‘the Right’ are the defenders of biological exactitude while ‘The Left’ have no clue? Alternative views of sex/gender, non-dogmatic, non-partisan, but biologically informed, have been articulated here. I still cannot see a reason why people – as you have done – insert it into places it had no prior relevance. It is an odd obsession, and is made into a right/left thing by that very act of insertion in the specific context of what ‘the Left’ can or cannot do. It’s a standard jeer when someone can think of no rejoinder.
It is usually expressed as “You can’t even define a woman!” or “You think a man can get pregnant!” Implied: ‘and therefore all you say can be dismissed’. See also: flags/pronouns in bio. I can almost see the triumphant head-wobble as ‘send’ is pressed. “This’ll show ’em”. I think it’s a learned behaviour.
You are right: I might have phrased that a bit more diplomatically in a post meant to unify people.
So who are ‘The Right’? The politicians I mentioned above were members of the classical liberal party in my country and they self-identify as right-wing. But they are usually staunch defenders of the civil rights of the LGBTI+ community: Several of the members of parliament of that party joined the illegal pride in Budapest last summer, for example.
Liberals, conservatives, populists, right-wing extremists and fascists all are part of ‘The Right’, but only the latter two worry me and they have been steadily gaining political influence in Europe*. I rather draw the lines in the sand at places where it really matters.
* and they are running the US now, but that is for another thread
Uh, as I see it, it’s DNA_Jock who is concerned with biological exactitude, in impressive detail. I suspect this concern with exactitude is near the heart of the issue.
As I recall, I was talking about particular issues that tend to trigger left/right tensions. Sex was one example, a case where both left and right regard the other as obsessively concerned with sexuality. A fairly strong case has been made, by many observers, that all this concern with DEI and CRT are what cost Harris the election. As the Right sees it, what matters is uncontrolled immigration, and NOT whether there are people who can’t decide which rest room to use.
As I read it, the Right sees the “two sexes” position as inherent in what they consider traditional values, and regards a concern with variations, while ignoring practical reality, as wrong-headed and unhealthy. Above I wrote
The Right’s viewpoint seems to be a combination of “why is the Left so obsessed with these freaks” and “why is that more important to the Left than the economy, inflation, foreign affairs, immigration, law enforcement, etc.”? So while the Right really does believe in equal rights for everyone, they also wish that they didn’t have to pay any attention to those who don’t fit into the neat conservative boxes. You seem convinced that this concern is something the Right frets about. I agree they do, but it’s not the Right that puts pronouns in their bios.
Yes, in fact that makes quite a bit of sense. In most walks of life, there is no need for sexual differentiation, because the biological differences (including all the exceptions) are not relevant or important. People of both sexes (plus exceptions) either are or should be on equal footing. This applies to most workplaces, most classrooms and degrees, most discussions like this forum exists for. Unisex names are increasingly common, unisex clothing has always existed. There should not be any sex-oriented distinctions when it comes to voting, to working in most professions, to driving a car, to receiving raises and promotions, the list is extensive. Right now, the only relevant category in all these areas is “person” (though the day may come when artificial intelligences must be included.)
In those few areas where sex is considered to matter, there are only two sexes for practical reasons that derive from the fact that 99% of people can reasonably be considered male or female. There simply aren’t enough exceptions to justify the cost of separate facilities for those who do not fit either category. NOT that these exceptions are less human or less deserving of respect and human rights.
With that out of the way, maybe we can return to understanding why “the Right” is so concerned, and why wokeness has become a liability at the ballot box. My reading is that traditional-value conservatives regard sex and gender as synonyms, words to be used interchangeably. Back when America was Great, this entire issue didn’t exist, at least in the public sphere. Yeah, if pressed, most people would concede that there were people sexually attracted to those of the same sex, but they could safely be ignored because you couldn’t identify them by looking at them, and both laws and cultural norms kept them tucked away in the closet where they didn’t offend the common sensibility. You could work or live next to one for years and never know it.
What the “the Left” has done is open that closet, and basically MAKE others aware of gender and sexual variation. They’ve brought this variation out into the public square and flaunted it in the face of “traditional values”. People here express confusion as to why “the Right” is “obsessed” with all this, but in fact “the Right” is being reactive, responding to a serious challenge to their world view and undermining the way things “should be”, and were, back before women became politicians, blacks became uppity, and the world started going to hell. Trump didn’t get 77 million votes because he tried to overthrow the government, he got 77 million votes because he promised to “make America great again“, back before all these social and cultural changes broke the rules and the self-appointed self-important coastal elites started grabbing what is supposed to belong to the salt of the earth.