Gender Roles

[Bomb#20]

... Likewise, when we call a feature a "disorder" in one species and "atypical" in another species we aren't denying "disorder" and "atypical" are parts of a continuous gradation and there were ancestral animals in which whether the condition was a disorder or only atypical was ambiguous; we're simply taking note of the circumstance that the innumerable transitional animals in which it's not clear whether the condition was a disorder are dead.

Given all that, you can probably guess how this is going to go...

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

Ok, then I hope you can answer this: At what point in the evolution of humans did a monkey give birth to a man, and where did he find a woman to mate with?

Obviously, humans are just monkeys.

Um, you know cladistics is just a terminological convention that happens to be currently fashionable, don't you, Mr. "concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition"? Creationists' use of the term "monkey" for a paraphyletic taxonomic category is not an error, just a different dialect of English from yours.

Their error lies elsewhere: in taking for granted that if one thing changes into another then we should be able to identify a precise transition point. That's the same error you made when you wrote "Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?".

This might be the most generic, abstract, philosophical formulation if my main objection to some of the things being said be eg @Emily Lake , @TomC , and to an extent @Bomb#20 : concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition. We wouldn't be what we are without that ability. They are however useful for specific purposes only. Treating them as objective truths is a category error, and concluding they are useful for all purposes when they have proven so for one is a non sequitur par excellence. The acknowledgment that they are ultimately arbitrary and/or gradual is what ultimately distinguishes, for example, the modern concept of species from the creationists' "kinds", but that doesn't mean that the species is a useless concept.

Emily and Tom can speak for themselves on this point, but where the heck do you think you saw me concluding a concept is useful for all purposes when it proved so for one?

 

[Bomb#20]

You are making assumptions about me.

Indeed so. I'm assuming you are a fluent English speaking human and neither a million monkeys at keyboards nor a chatbot. I infer from this assumption that when you elected to ask "I have been lurking off and on. What definition of sex is Emily using now?" instead of the more sensible question "I have been lurking off and on. What definition of sex is Emily using?", you didn't do it by random chance or by mindlessly pattern-matching a large corpus of unrelated text. A fluent English speaking human would not tack on the superfluous "now" unless he was insinuating inconsistency.

Where is the definition?

As you may have gathered by now, I give a lot fewer rats' asses about satisfying your desire for your enlightenment on the topic of what Emily means by "sex" than about satisfying my own desire for your enlightenment on the topic of you acting like a civilized person if you wish to participate in the discussion.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You are making assumptions about me.

Indeed so. I'm assuming you are a fluent English speaking human and neither a million monkeys at keyboards nor a chatbot. I infer from this assumption that when you elected to ask "I have been lurking off and on. What definition of sex is Emily using now?" instead of the more sensible question "I have been lurking off and on. What definition of sex is Emily using?", you didn't do it by random chance or by mindlessly pattern-matching a large corpus of unrelated text. A fluent English speaking human would not tack on the superfluous "now" unless he was insinuating inconsistency.

None of which has anything to do with the assumptions where you are failing.

Where is the definition?

As you may have gathered by now, I give a lot fewer rats' asses about satisfying your desire for your enlightenment on the topic of what Emily means by "sex" than about satisfying my own desire for your enlightenment on the topic of you acting like a civilized person if you wish to participate in the discussion answering legitimate questions.

FIFY.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

You are making assumptions about me. Where is the definition?

In this and several other threads.

Can you provide a link to the most recent definition she has given since you said it was in this thread?

 

[TomC]

You are making assumptions about me. Where is the definition?

In this and several other threads.

Can you provide a link to the most recent definition she has given since you said it was in this thread?

Yes, I can.
I just don't care about your opinion enough to bother.
Tom

 

[Jokodo]

Well she did say this, in the post I was replying to: "What are the odds that you - as a heterosexual male - would meet someone, like them, and then be *surprised* to find that they have a perfectly typical male anatomy with perfectly typical male primary and secondary sex characteristics?"

That question is irrelevant to the issue we are currently discussing, unless she switched the definition.

Dude (or dudette, whatever, I don't care)... there is more than one single discussion going on here. Ferinstance...
<snip>
...
Z) Whether or not gender identity should replace or supercede sex in a variety of policies including athletic divisions, spaces in which people get naked, medical services and the right to specify the sex of a person providing intimate care, prison accommodations, and many more.

That's not one discussion, that's at least half a dozen, with potentially as many different optimal solutions. The set of people that should be allowed in the girls' locker room in middle school may or may not be the same as the set of people who should be allowed to join a ladies' night at the sauna, which again may or may not be the same set of people we want to sea in the women's division of professional sport, etc.

The default, for any venue or event that is open to members of the public, is that it should be open to members of any sex or gender. Legitimate exceptions to that general rule do exist, but they have to be based on specific needs that would go unanswered in a mixed-sex context. The need in the case of the girls' changing room in middle school is (probably) to save young girls undergoing puberty, or who have recently undergone puberty and are still very unsure about their "new" bodies the embarassment of presenting it in full to anyone who wouldn't understand. The need underlying sports divisions is to give people whose bodies haven't been modified by a testosterone kick a fair chance. And so forth, you get the drift. The assumption that all of these needs can be adequately addressed by the same bisection of people who should or shouldn't be admitted is just that, an assumption. Maybe you are making it, in which case I'd love to ask you to justify it. Maybe you aren't, but then it would seem that you are willing to accept non-optimal solutions to real life problems in the interest in the interest of ideological purity.

As for American bathrooms, the solution is probably quite a bit simpler than any of that: Get some fucking doors like the rest of the world! Not a single horizontal board that claims to be a door, but leaves your junk to be seen by everyone taller than 2 metres (6'6" for the metrically impaired - does that count as a disorder?), or anyone bending down to re-tie their shoes, but doors doors! A public restroom doesn't have to be a place where you see others naked. I'd be uncomfortable taking a shit under those conditions no matter the sex or gender of the other occupants, and I frequent nudist beaches and European saunas!

I mean it. I've seen quite a few women in the gents' in normal countries, whether to skip the line at the ladies', or because the stalls tend to be cleaner, whether because they are less frequented given the availabilty of urinals, or whether because most men don't give a fuck and just sit down rather than squatting 10cm above the surface and spraying everything for the next person in the process (more than one woman has given that as a reason to prefer the gents' even when there is no queue for the ladies'). I myself, a male-presenting person with a penis who has fathered children and has been wearing a beard almost continuously since age 19 (it's more of a beard now than it was then), have been in the ladies' occasionally, most often because few establishments have diaper changing tables in the gents (what else am I to do - ask the waitress to dig in the shit for me? or change it in the open of the dining hall?). I don't remember a single instance where anyone gave me shit for it, or tried to prevent me from entering. Noone ever even asked me to justify my presence, though I might indicate the reason unprovoked, e.g. by pointing at the changing table. In my understanding, me using the gents' or my partner using the ladies' isn't a legal obligation but an act of courtesy, unless specific circumstances require otherwise. Changing (or rather: clarifying in a direction you disapprove of) the definition of who is meant to go where, or even clarifying it in a direction you do approve of, isn't going to stop the overwhelming majority of people from going where they feel they cause the least fuss, nor is it going to stop assholes who just don't care who they might be making uncomfortable from being assholes.

To the extent that it is an issue that needs a hard-coded, legally binding solution, the most proper division line seems to be "go where you will cause the least fuss/the least embarassment for other regulars". Like it or not, that will lead to some trans women in the ladies'.

That last one is the ultimate discussion, the ultimate point of conflict. And it's that last item that has led to all of these other splits and winding roads. Because all of those other discussions are the basis on which we determine what sex is and when it matters.

Not only do the half dozen discussions you lump into one potentially have half a dozen different answers, but none of those answers are determined by biological science alone. Even if we agree yours is the only sensible definition of sex in biology, it still doesn't follow that using it as the sorting criteria causes the least harm overall for any of scenarios.

Maybe that isn't your objective though

... Likewise, when we call a feature a "disorder" in one species and "atypical" in another species we aren't denying "disorder" and "atypical" are parts of a continuous gradation and there were ancestral animals in which whether the condition was a disorder or only atypical was ambiguous; we're simply taking note of the circumstance that the innumerable transitional animals in which it's not clear whether the condition was a disorder are dead.

Given all that, you can probably guess how this is going to go...

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

Ok, then I hope you can answer this: At what point in the evolution of humans did a monkey give birth to a man, and where did he find a woman to mate with?

Obviously, humans are just monkeys.

Um, you know cladistics is just a terminological convention that happens to be currently fashionable, don't you, Mr. "concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition"? Creationists' use of the term "monkey" for a paraphyletic taxonomic category is not an error, just a different dialect of English from yours.

A definition is never wrong. A definition can be useless, or misleading, or it can refer to the empty set if it implies or requires attributes the system or object under consideration doesn't actually have, but not wrong. You may be able to find a quote from me where I said or implied that some definition or other was wrong, but if pressed, I'll always admit that's sloppy wording. Calling a definition wrong would be a category error. The definition of monkeys that excludes humans is useful for baraminology but rather useless for a taxonomy that is rooted in a deep understanding of evolutionary theory. So cladistics doesn't just happen to be currently fashionable, it's fashionable because it has proven to be useful given our current understanding of biology.

Similarly, a definition of "disorders" and "normal variation" that treat them as categorically distinct is useful for deciding what conditions do or do not warrant treatment, but useless for describing overall variation within and across species under a paradigm that takes seriously the proposition that those two types of variation are deeply connected.

The "wrong" only starts when someone starts to derive facts about the real world from a definition.

Their error lies elsewhere: in taking for granted that if one thing changes into another then we should be able to identify a precise transition point. That's the same error you made when you wrote "Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?".

I'm repeating myself: I'm perfectly fine with calling female red deer antlers or fused labia in a human female a "disorder", as long as "disorders" aren't claimed to fall categorically outside of "normal variation". A definition of "normal variation" that doesn't include "disorders" may be useful for triage purposes, but it is useless and misleading when describing the full extent of variation within a species. You get to say that a female red deer's antlers are a disorder and a reindeer's are a variant, but if you then go on and pretend away "disorders" in an attempt to describe the full extent of actual variation, you're equivocating.

This might be the most generic, abstract, philosophical formulation if my main objection to some of the things being said be eg @Emily Lake , @TomC , and to an extent @Bomb#20 : concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition. We wouldn't be what we are without that ability. They are however useful for specific purposes only. Treating them as objective truths is a category error, and concluding they are useful for all purposes when they have proven so for one is a non sequitur par excellence. The acknowledgment that they are ultimately arbitrary and/or gradual is what ultimately distinguishes, for example, the modern concept of species from the creationists' "kinds", but that doesn't mean that the species is a useless concept.

Emily and Tom can speak for themselves on this point, but where the heck do you think you saw me concluding a concept is useful for all purposes when it proved so for one?

Emily did so in the post I replied to right here. Tom did so about "disorders". You haven't directly done it in this thread, but you've been jumping in to their defense when I called them out for it.

 

[Jarhyn]

if you then go on and pretend away "disorders" in an attempt to describe the full extent of actual variation, you're equivocating

That's the thing. I think they are ultimately trying to go back to disorder somewhere to eventually reach the utterance "being trans is a disorder" and keying on a note of "purity principle" around all the other language linked to the use of the word "disorder"

 

[Bomb#20]

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

Ok, then I hope you can answer this: At what point in the evolution of humans did a monkey give birth to a man, and where did he find a woman to mate with?

Obviously, humans are just monkeys.

Um, you know cladistics is just a terminological convention that happens to be currently fashionable, don't you, Mr. "concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition"? Creationists' use of the term "monkey" for a paraphyletic taxonomic category is not an error, just a different dialect of English from yours.

A definition is never wrong. A definition can be useless, or misleading, or it can refer to the empty set if it implies or requires attributes the system or object under consideration doesn't actually have, but not wrong. You may be able to find a quote from me where I said or implied that some definition or other was wrong, but if pressed, I'll always admit that's sloppy wording. Calling a definition wrong would be a category error. The definition of monkeys that excludes humans is useful for baraminology but rather useless for a taxonomy that is rooted in a deep understanding of evolutionary theory. So cladistics doesn't just happen to be currently fashionable, it's fashionable because it has proven to be useful given our current understanding of biology.

Names for paraphyletic categories are useful for all sorts of purposes, not just pseudoscientific defenses of creationism. The definition of monkeys that excludes humans is useful for understanding anyone who says he saw a monkey on a unicycle, and every time time we hear the painfully awkward phrase "non-avian dinosaur" it's a testament to the usefulness of old-style terminology. All that business of "current" and "deep" understanding of biology is just cladist rhetoric left-over from the days when abolishing names for paraphyletic categories was a hot issue; cladists were the new kids on the block so they were predictably fond of implying the conservatives who wanted to stick with the familiar names so everyone would know what everyone else was talking about had a less deep and less current understanding of biology than they did. It was just a lot of pro-home-team trash-talking -- the whole dispute was a tempest in a teapot between two factions of academics who all understood biology just fine. Taxonomies are used for more things than merely reciting the current state of our knowledge of who is descended from whom.

The point isn't that when you said "humans are just monkeys" you were implying the creationists' definition of "monkey" was "wrong"; the point is that you focused on the wrong thing about the creationist argument. You focused on their belief that humans aren't monkeys instead of focusing on the equivalence of their inference procedure and your inference procedure. The point is that Tom was perfectly correct to recognize that "Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?" was a bad argument, and your "You have to understand evolution to see why it's a good argument, though" reply to him didn't make it any better.

Similarly, a definition of "disorders" and "normal variation" that treat them as categorically distinct is useful for deciding what conditions do or do not warrant treatment, but useless for describing overall variation within and across species under a paradigm that takes seriously the proposition that those two types of variation are deeply connected.

I suspect you are giving an offhand throwaway line in one of Emily's long-ago posts way more prominence than it warrants -- it does not appear to me to have been a critical element in her overall thinking about the problem. But that's enough kibitzing from me on that point.

This might be the most generic, abstract, philosophical formulation if my main objection to some of the things being said be eg @Emily Lake , @TomC , and to an extent @Bomb#20 : concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition. We wouldn't be what we are without that ability. They are however useful for specific purposes only. Treating them as objective truths is a category error, and concluding they are useful for all purposes when they have proven so for one is a non sequitur par excellence. The acknowledgment that they are ultimately arbitrary and/or gradual is what ultimately distinguishes, for example, the modern concept of species from the creationists' "kinds", but that doesn't mean that the species is a useless concept.

Emily and Tom can speak for themselves on this point, but where the heck do you think you saw me concluding a concept is useful for all purposes when it proved so for one?

Emily did so in the post I replied to right here. Tom did so about "disorders". You haven't directly done it in this thread, but you've been jumping in to their defense when I called them out for it.

Hey man, I jump in to their defense when you make unsound arguments against them. Stick to sound arguments and you'll get no objection from me.

 

[Bomb#20]

Dude (or dudette, whatever, I don't care)... there is more than one single discussion going on here. Ferinstance...
<snip>
...
Z) Whether or not gender identity should replace or supercede sex in a variety of policies including athletic divisions, spaces in which people get naked, medical services and the right to specify the sex of a person providing intimate care, prison accommodations, and many more.

...
As for American bathrooms, the solution is probably quite a bit simpler than any of that: Get some ... doors like the rest of the world! Not a single horizontal board that claims to be a door, but leaves your junk to be seen by everyone taller than 2 metres (6'6" for the metrically impaired - does that count as a disorder?), or anyone bending down to re-tie their shoes, but doors doors! A public restroom doesn't have to be a place where you see others naked. ...
...

I may not be the right person to mansplain to you what's wrong with you mansplaining to Emily how ladies' rooms should be designed, but I do know a number of women who would find your proposal an entirely inadequate "solution". And it's not clear to me why you or I or any man should get a vote on what qualifies as a "solution" to the problem that the existence of private spaces for women is incompatible with progressives' universal approach to "solving" conflicts of interest between different people: categorizing those people into groups and then checking to see which group outranks which on the progressive stack.

 

[lpetrich]

As to what is a phenotype, Richard Dawkins wrote  The Extended Phenotype - "The book’s main idea is that phenotype should not be limited to biological processes such as protein biosynthesis or tissue growth, but extended to include all effects that a gene has on its environment, inside or outside the body of the individual organism."

He proposes three forms:

The first is the capacity of animals to modify their environment using architectural constructions, for which Dawkins provides as examples caddis houses and beaver dams.

The second form is manipulation of other organisms: ... One example of this is parasite manipulation. This refers to the capacity, found in some parasite-host interactions, for the parasite to modify the behaviour of the host in a way that enhances the parasite's own fitness. ...

The third form of extended phenotype is action at a distance of the parasite on its host. A common example is the manipulation of host behaviour by cuckoo chicks, which elicit intensive feeding by the host birds.

A more pleasant form of the third kind of extended phenotype is flowers attracting potential carriers of pollen.

 

[Jokodo]

Dude (or dudette, whatever, I don't care)... there is more than one single discussion going on here. Ferinstance...
<snip>
...
Z) Whether or not gender identity should replace or supercede sex in a variety of policies including athletic divisions, spaces in which people get naked, medical services and the right to specify the sex of a person providing intimate care, prison accommodations, and many more.

...
As for American bathrooms, the solution is probably quite a bit simpler than any of that: Get some ... doors like the rest of the world! Not a single horizontal board that claims to be a door, but leaves your junk to be seen by everyone taller than 2 metres (6'6" for the metrically impaired - does that count as a disorder?), or anyone bending down to re-tie their shoes, but doors doors! A public restroom doesn't have to be a place where you see others naked. ...
...

I may not be the right person to mansplain to you what's wrong with you mansplaining to Emily how ladies' rooms should be designed,

I'm probably Europeansplaining as much as mansplaining here, but granted, I need to tread lightly here. I'm not saying doors remove all points of contention, but that they will take out much of the heat from that particular argument, and I fail to understand why anyone would think not having them is a good idea. I'm no social historian of bathrooms by any stretch of imagination, but if I have to take a guess, the original motivation was probably, perversly, puritanism: to minimise opportunities for nefarious acts between consenting adults.

but I do know a number of women who would find your proposal an entirely inadequate "solution". And it's not clear to me why you or I or any man should get a vote on what qualifies as a "solution" to the problem that the existence of private spaces for women is incompatible with progressives' universal approach to "solving" conflicts of interest between different people: categorizing those people into groups and then checking to see which group outranks which on the progressive stack.

I don't know about "progressives", I'm just one guy from Austria. Can you try to stick to arguments this one guy has made?

I will say, however, that what you're saying did apply to Emily, mutatis mutandi as the Romans say: if allowing people who are not unambiguously women into the ladies' causes discomfort or reduces the feeling of safety of some cis women, send those weirdos to the gents' and everyone else and their needs can go fuck themselves. A a matter of fact, trans women and non-binary people cause as much discomfort in the gents', and as I'm sure Emily will agree, toxic masculinity is a thing. Men who react to that kind of discomfort with violence are not rare. Ffs, men in Western countries were frequently assaulted out of the blue simply for having long hair within the lifetime if all major 2024 US president candidates. Things have gotten better since then, but if you think they have gotten to where the gents' is a safe place for trans women, I've got some prime property at a real bargain northeast of downtown Chicago you might be interested in (visitations start in December).

Yes, I know, this isn't just about discomfort but also about the fear of would-be predators using their professed gender to enter female spaces. But let's be honest, if you think a that kind of person would be prevented by a door sign, or by a law clarifying what that door sign means, let's talk about that property again.

A self-help group for female survivors of male domestic is a whole different story if course, but I'm not the one claiming there is a one size fits all solution, or that all female- only spaces are justified by the same need.

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

Ok, then I hope you can answer this: At what point in the evolution of humans did a monkey give birth to a man, and where did he find a woman to mate with?

Obviously, humans are just monkeys.

Um, you know cladistics is just a terminological convention that happens to be currently fashionable, don't you, Mr. "concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition"? Creationists' use of the term "monkey" for a paraphyletic taxonomic category is not an error, just a different dialect of English from yours.

A definition is never wrong. A definition can be useless, or misleading, or it can refer to the empty set if it implies or requires attributes the system or object under consideration doesn't actually have, but not wrong. You may be able to find a quote from me where I said or implied that some definition or other was wrong, but if pressed, I'll always admit that's sloppy wording. Calling a definition wrong would be a category error. The definition of monkeys that excludes humans is useful for baraminology but rather useless for a taxonomy that is rooted in a deep understanding of evolutionary theory. So cladistics doesn't just happen to be currently fashionable, it's fashionable because it has proven to be useful given our current understanding of biology.

Names for paraphyletic categories are useful for all sorts of purposes, not just pseudoscientific defenses of creationism. The definition of monkeys that excludes humans is useful for understanding anyone who says he saw a monkey on a unicycle, and every time time we hear the painfully awkward phrase "non-avian dinosaur" it's a testament to the usefulness of old-style terminology. All that business of "current" and "deep" understanding of biology is just cladist rhetoric left-over from the days when abolishing names for paraphyletic categories was a hot issue; cladists were the new kids on the block so they were predictably fond of implying the conservatives who wanted to stick with the familiar names so everyone would know what everyone else was talking about had a less deep and less current understanding of biology than they did. It was just a lot of pro-home-team trash-talking -- the whole dispute was a tempest in a teapot between two factions of academics who all understood biology just fine.

I'm sure the last professional biologists who defended paraphyletic naming conventions or continue to do so understood biology just fine. That does nothing to deny the fact that the terminology itself is rooted in an intuitive pre-scientific understanding that predates not just evolution but Linneus, and it does nothing to deny that it can be misleading to novices and interested laypeople who do not (yet) have a full understanding of evolution and all it implies, at least not an intuitive one.

Taxonomies are used for more things than merely reciting the current state of our knowledge of who is descended from whom.

Sure, but there's one taxonomy that is superior at doing just that.

The point isn't that when you said "humans are just monkeys" you were implying the creationists' definition of "monkey" was "wrong";

I was doing no such thing. The question is ill defined given arbitrary concepts: it can mean (1) "using your definitions of 'monkeys' and 'humans', when did humans stop being monkeys", or (2) "using the must pertinent commonly used definitions (ie the ones dominating expert discourse)...", or (3) "using my definitions...". Under (3), it's on you to specify your definitions as I can't read minds. I don't even know whether you want homo heidelbergensis included in humans, or neanderthals, or australopithecus. The fuzzy border isn't the problem, the lack is a definition is. Under (1-2), "they didn't" is the only correct answer, and you habe no reason to assume otherwise as I have no indication I consider them disjunct sets.

the point is that you focused on the wrong thing about the creationist argument. You focused on their belief that humans aren't monkeys instead of focusing on the equivalence of their inference procedure and your inference procedure. The point is that Tom was perfectly correct to recognize that "Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?" was a bad argument, and your "You have to understand evolution to see why it's a good argument, though" reply to him didn't make it any better.

Without context, the two questions are analogous. But I didn't ask my question without context. I asked in the context of both Emily and Tom insisting, repeatedly and even after being directly challenged on that point, that disorders can and should be safely ignored in a description of the spectrum of variation within a species. In that context, my question can be read as "given whatever definitions of variance and disorder-ness you prefer (but remember they have to allow you to discard disorders the way you are doing), when did female reindeer antlers stop being a disorder?" This, unlike your alleged parallel, is a well defined question, and if they are unable to answer it, that's sufficient grounds to discard their analysis as demonstrably incomplete.

Similarly, a definition of "disorders" and "normal variation" that treat them as categorically distinct is useful for deciding what conditions do or do not warrant treatment, but useless for describing overall variation within and across species under a paradigm that takes seriously the proposition that those two types of variation are deeply connected.

I suspect you are giving an offhand throwaway line in one of Emily's long-ago posts way more prominence than it warrants -- it does not appear to me to have been a critical element in her overall thinking about the problem. But that's enough kibitzing from me on that point.

This might be the most generic, abstract, philosophical formulation if my main objection to some of the things being said be eg @Emily Lake , @TomC , and to an extent @Bomb#20 : concepts and labels for arbitrary ranges over a group of similar things are useful, and being able to formulate them is an important part of human cognition. We wouldn't be what we are without that ability. They are however useful for specific purposes only. Treating them as objective truths is a category error, and concluding they are useful for all purposes when they have proven so for one is a non sequitur par excellence. The acknowledgment that they are ultimately arbitrary and/or gradual is what ultimately distinguishes, for example, the modern concept of species from the creationists' "kinds", but that doesn't mean that the species is a useless concept.

Emily and Tom can speak for themselves on this point, but where the heck do you think you saw me concluding a concept is useful for all purposes when it proved so for one?

Emily did so in the post I replied to right here. Tom did so about "disorders". You haven't directly done it in this thread, but you've been jumping in to their defense when I called them out for it.

Hey man, I jump in to their defense when you make unsound arguments against them. Stick to sound arguments and you'll get no objection from me.

Funny how you're letting their unsound arguments pass, though.

 

[Jokodo]

@Bomb#20 : wanted to add, ran into timeout, put it where you think it fits best. May also be relevant for @Emily Lake :

Whether the do-least-harm solution is sending trans women and people with partial androgen insensitivity to the ladies, or to the gents, or letting them pick based on their individual experience of where they are most welcome, or forcing them into a life or seclusion by barring them from both its an empirical question. Whether we care about them enough to implement measures that will make their life (much) better even if they make other people's life a little worse is a political question. The answer tu neither is fully determined by our understanding of the biology of sex - which I personally find is great because it allows us to discuss the matter as a apolitical one even if we disagree about the peripherally related political questions.

 

[Bomb#20]

As you may have gathered by now, I give a lot fewer rats' asses about satisfying your desire for your enlightenment on the topic of what Emily means by "sex" than about satisfying my own desire for your enlightenment on the topic of you acting like a civilized person if you wish to participate in the discussion answering legitimate questions.

FIFY.

If you think that qualifies as a FIFY, feel free to explain why "What definition of sex is Emily using now?" qualifies as a legitimate question.

 

[Bomb#20]

Emily did so in the post I replied to right here. Tom did so about "disorders". You haven't directly done it in this thread, but you've been jumping in to their defense when I called them out for it.

Hey man, I jump in to their defense when you make unsound arguments against them. Stick to sound arguments and you'll get no objection from me.

Funny how you're letting their unsound arguments pass, though.

Who am I, your referee? I kibitz when I think someone needs the help. That's not going to be you -- you're too skilled a debater. But I pointed out one of Emily's unsound arguments against another poster upthread, and have in earlier threads. As for Tom, I don't recall him making an unsound argument here; feel free to point one out. (Of course that may just be because he specializes in laconic observations rather than the sort of extended arguments you and I and Emily go in for.)

 

[Emily Lake]

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

This is the kind of argument that makes this discussion, IMHO, not worth bothering with.
Tom

This is exactly the kind of question you need to be able to answer if you want to categorically declare atypical combinations of sex traits as "disorders" and pretend that's a scientifically informed position.

Unless you're a creationist.

Ah yes, all those medical doctors peddling their creationism. You really should go set them straight, and re-educate them on why they're wrong to treat these disorders as disorders. Clearly, it might hurt the feelers of some randos in the internet who think it's mean to label congenital conditions with deleterious effects as "disorders".

 

[Emily Lake]

Ok, then I hope you an answer this: At what point in the evolution of reindeer did females having antlers stop being a disorder?

At the same point that you stopped beating your wife.

So an antler in a female of a species where only males have antlers isn't a disorder, but a beard in a species were only males have beards is? Can you justify that distinction?

What are you talking about? Both male and female reindeer have antlers. Are you assuming that at some point in their evolution, only male reindeer had antlers? Do you have support for that assumption?

Additionally, I haven't claimed that beards on females in the HUMAN species is necessarily a disorder. Most causes of hirsutism in HUMAN females are a side effect of a medical condition, but it's going to depend a lot on how many games you're playing, and whether or not you consider the dozen or so chin hairs that I've grown during perimenopause to qualify as a "beard" so you can snag a gotcha out of the internet today.

And viz hyenas, fused labia in a female of a species where the females have unfused labia is a disorder if the species will eventually evolve into humans but not if it eventually evolves into hyenas? Methinks your theory suffers from a massive lookahead problem...

Buddy, you seem to have lost the plot here. I don't know what you're trying to angle toward, but arguing from the perspective of what some species *might* someday maybe evolve into is science fiction speculation, not an actual argument.

 

[Emily Lake]

[Q

If biological sex is the sum of primary and secondary traits, she can no longer claim that people with androgen insensitivity are "just men" who suffer from a rare disease that makes them appear like women

I also don't claim this. A person with Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome develops a phenotypical female reproductive tract, with infertile gonads. Because they have a female reproductive tract, they are female.

And what's someone who doesn't develop a reproductive tract at all?

A miscarriage

 

[Emily Lake]

I knew males had larger ones (though technically, there's an overlap between "similar" and "substantially larger", and I didn't say "identical" or "near-identical"), I didn't know about the different shedding times. Thanks!

Nevertheless, "having antlers" is, in and of itself, a secondary characteristic of the male sex in most deer, and it isn't in reindeer even if typical male antlers and typical female antlers still differ very recognisably.

So that means one and the same set of unshed antlers on one and the same reindeer doe in one and the same winter are both a secondary characteristic of the female sex when we think of her as "having unshed winter antlers" and simultaneously not a secondary characteristic of the female sex when we think of her as "having antlers". You appear to be redefining "secondary characteristic" to be an aspect of our mental categorization scheme rather than an aspect of cervine biology. That seems like a recipe for making the concept useless.

We have a terminological abyss at play.

Primary sex characteristics are those that are directly involved in and required for reproduction. In humans, that means our internal and external genitals.

Secondary sex characteristics are those that are developmentally tied to and dependent upon the mechanism of sex differentiation within a species, but are not directly required for reproduction. In humans, those are usually directly tied to genes that differ on our sex chromosomes. This includes our secondary sex characteristics of breasts, pelvic opening, facial and body hair, and a handful of others like some muscle and tendon attachment points.

Everything else that shows some differentiation by sex is sex-correlated traits. In humans this includes things like overall height, lung size, hand and foot size, etc. These things are not located specifically on sex chromosomes, nor are they driven by hormones... but they do correlate with sex. Most of these are likely to be the result of sexual selection.

The thing that seems to be getting missed in Jokodo's approach is that all of these differ by species. Something can be a secondary sex characteristic in one species, and be a sex correlated trait in a different species, and show no sexual differentiation in a third species.

 

[Emily Lake]

Interestingly, the human pattern of sexual dimorphism its really the odd one out among apes. It's ridiculously exaggerated in traits that are (presumably) mostly the product of sexual selection, like our patterns of body and facial hair, our females' permanently enlarged breasts, or the ridiculously prolonged penis (almost to the point of being impractical) in our males. At the very same time, it is extremely reduced in other traits that tend to be more the product of natural selection, such as body size and dentition. The male-female average body size ratio varies somewhat by population, but it tends to be around 1.1 with s good overlap - the gorilla's and orangutan's are well above 1.5 and no overlap to speak of -, and a trained dentist with years of experience looking at thousands of human jaws will almost certainly have an easier time quickly assigning an adult chimpanzee jaw to one sex or the other with high accuracy after being shown one typical example of each, than for the human jaws she is so familiar with.

This might suggest that "gender roles", or if you will sex-biased behavioral poles of attraction, have been less divergent throughout much of our history than in other apes. Alternatively or concomittantly, it could be a side effect of human males being under strong selection pressure for lowered testosterone levels or sensitivity in order not to jeopardize our cooperative social structure through (even more) unpredictable bouts of aggression.

The exaggerated penis and breast and the beards could well have evolved in response to the lower overall body dimorphism as signals other apes don't need half a much.

Alternatively... at some point in our history a group of males decided they really really liked big boobs, and a group of females decided they really really liked exaggerated penises... and then sexual selection did its thing.

Because unlike natural selection, sexual selection actually *does* select.

 

[Emily Lake]

I have been lurking off and on. What definition of sex is Emily using now?

The same one everyone else does virtually all the time.
The problem is usually Jarhyn redesigning words to suit their agenda.
Tom

I have no idea why you would think that the average woman who chooses to go to the sauna on ladies night over mixed night would care about gametes more than about genitals and overall appearance. I'm pretty sure that's a false claim.

It's a false claim to present my view as being based solely on gametes.