Legal definition of woman is based on biological sex, UK supreme court rules

[laughing dog]

And if you support puberty blockers and surgery for minors, as per the gender affirming model, you are supporting the sterilisation and mutilation of children.

Own it.

Reducing complex psychological and medical treatments to slogans is the hallmark of bigotryand propaganda not intelligent analysis.

 

[Arctish]

One of the founders of Free Speech TV, Jon Stout , has a video on the channel talking about spending nights on suicide hotlines trying to get help for their despondent son who was experiencing severe mental health issues. The son finally admitted to Jon and his mother he felt he was trans, not feeling compatible as a boy.

They addressed the situation through medical intervention, he doesn't specify what, but after about two years of medical treatment, his now daughter became a very fine, calm and mentally healthy person.

States are banning such treatment. People will die because of that.

The video is not available at the site nor on YouTube but it plays frequently during show breaks.

I have a relative who had a lot of depression and self isolation in their teen years, and who, after a lot of counseling sessions and attempts to correctly diagnose and treat the cause, eventually received hormone therapy. They, too, are now happy, healthy, and engaged with the people around them.

 

[TSwizzle]

Also, the cultural recognition of Two Spirits persons is ongoing among the Native American peoples of the American Southwest. And they are still being targeted for violence by people of the European American Christian culture who refuse to accept anything but the male-female heteronormative social roles they hold dear. That's regressive.

ffs, an article from 2009 about an isolated incident in 2001. Weak sauce.

 

[Arctish]

Also, the cultural recognition of Two Spirits persons is ongoing among the Native American peoples of the American Southwest. And they are still being targeted for violence by people of the European American Christian culture who refuse to accept anything but the male-female heteronormative social roles they hold dear. That's regressive.

ffs, an article from 2009 about an isolated incident in 2001. Weak sauce.

It's not an isolated incident. Violence against LGBTQ people is commonplace.

Are you arguing that Two Spirits presentations are rare? They are, but not so rare that it's okay to pretend they don't exist, or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

 

[TSwizzle]

Also, the cultural recognition of Two Spirits persons is ongoing among the Native American peoples of the American Southwest. And they are still being targeted for violence by people of the European American Christian culture who refuse to accept anything but the male-female heteronormative social roles they hold dear. That's regressive.

ffs, an article from 2009 about an isolated incident in 2001. Weak sauce.

It's not an isolated incident.

Of course it was.

Violence against LGBTQ people is commonplace.

Not hardly.

Are you arguing that Two Spirits presentations are rare? They are, but not so rare that it's okay to pretend they don't exist,

ffs, who’s pretending?

or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

Pretty funny a supposed atheist who rejects religion will indulge exotic mumbo jumbo because it suits their dumb narrative.

 

[Bomb#20]

Guevedoce means "penis at twelve". The testicles can remain underdeveloped and undescended.

According to wiktionary:

from Dominican Spanish güevos a los doce (“testicles at twelve”).​

(Actually "güevos” literally means "eggs", but it's common slang for testicles, rather like "balls" in English. Have you ever heard of Spanish-speakers using "güevos” to mean "penis"?)

Apparently you were right -- a native Spanish speaker tells me eggs actually is slang for penis in the Dominican Republic.

She calls herself a "different kind of woman". If you want to get rid of gendered pronouns, that's one thing. But if you're just being a dick, that's not cool.

Want it or not, English has gendered singular pronouns, and Semenya's gender is male, so using "he" is correct English.

Semenya has male sex traits. She also has female sex traits. Her gender is female.

What evidence is there that Semenya's gender is female?

Semenya's statements.

Sex is not the same thing as gender. In the past the terms were used as synonyms but even so, a sex role wasn't ever confused with a gender role during my mid-1950s to early-1970s childhood.

So your argument is what, that gender is the same thing as gender identity because it's a different thing from sex?!? That's a false dilemma fallacy. Sex, gender, and gender identity are three different things. Sex not being the same thing as gender doesn't magically make Semenya's statements authoritative.

Someone's sex was determined by their genetics and sex organs. Someone's gender was assumed to be the one that usually went with their sex (male-boy-man or female-girl-woman) but even my father's generation knew about "queers".

And in that generation "queer" meant gay. God knows what it means now -- we live in a Humpty-Dumpty era -- but it sounds like now you're also conflating sexual orientation with gender and gender identity.

Whether you accept someone's word about their gender is your business.

It's the same as accepting someone's word about anything else -- it depends on if one thinks the person has a reason to lie or a reason to be mistaken, and on whether one has any conflicting information throwing the claim into doubt. Getting consistently treated as a girl in childhood gave Semenya every reason to be mistaken, and being a guevedoce, having male testosterone levels, flunking an IAAF sex verification test, and fathering two daughters are all conflicting information.

And whether you would accept into the Man Club someone with a vagina or vagina like opening where a man's scrotum is usually found, is also your business. I think most guys would give that a hard "no" but perhaps your ideas about men and the importance of man parts nowadays are more correct.

"Man Club" isn't a thing -- men have no more authority than women to rule on who is or isn't a man. You sound like one of those men from patriarchal societies who denounce Western cultural imperialism every time Westerners tell them to stop being misogynist dicks, as though their societies' ruling caste is more expert on what's culturally appropriate than their servant caste.

In any event, I'm not privy to Semenya's private parts but Google tells me guevedoces have scrotums.

despite Semenya having stated her gender very clearly.

That sounds like an argument from authority. Can you offer us any reason we should accept Semenya as an authority?

No one knows the thoughts, feelings, self-image, and concepts in Semenya's head better than Semenya herself.

True, but I wasn't asking for a reason we should accept Semenya as an authority on the thoughts, feelings, self-image, and concepts in Semenya's head. I was asking about Semenya's gender. Can you offer us any reason to think being an authority on the one makes someone an authority on the other?

According to PFLAG, "Broadly, gender is a set of socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate related to a person’s assigned sex."

How the bejesus do the thoughts, feelings, self-image, and concepts in Semenya's head determine the set of socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate related to a person’s assigned sex?

If Semenya isn't an authority on her own gender, then no one is an authority on theirs, either.

No one is an authority on his or her own gender. The criteria for a gender are up to society to determine collectively. That's what "socially constructed" means.

Tell me something Bomb#20. If you asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina could ever be a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

You mean random Western guys? Probably about twenty-five. Ten of them would be left-wing gender ideologues who'd take it to be a question about self-id transmen, and another ten would be normal people taking it to be a question about female-to-male bottom surgery, and another five would think of DSDs on their own without prompting. If you mean random guys from all over the world, I have limited experience with how non-Westerners tend to think about subjects other than electrical engineering so I won't venture a statistical guess. But that wasn't really the kind of answer you were looking for, was it?

It was.

Your estimate is higher than I would have guessed, but I'm old. Perhaps you young 'uns talk about man parts and vaginas more than folks my age ever did. You did have the internet growing up. All we had was Playboy, Penthouse, and a few other "dirty" magazines.

Same here -- I'm older than you think -- but you didn't ask about random guys my age. 100 random guys will certainly include some "transwomen are women" left-wingers. as well as a lot of people who've heard of sex-change operations.

Even so, by your estimate the guys who would say "no" outnumber the ones who would say "yes" 3-1. And if Semenya agrees with the majority that means she would not consider herself a man.

True; and that would be substantive evidence for your conclusion re Semenya's gender, if only you hadn't biased the thought-experiment up-front to force the outcome you wanted. You gave your imagined jury a deliberately skewed subset of the information they'd want and need, just like that corrupt judge Breyer, the one who tricked a jury into giving him the conviction he wanted by forcibly withholding from the jury the fact that the defendant was operating a medical marijuana dispensary authorized by the city government, misleading the jury into thinking the guy was just a common street pusher. That judge should have been disbarred.

Pace Loren and his recurring "People on the phone mistake me for a woman" canard, gender is not determined by first impressions. It's determined by applying socially constructed criteria to all the facts people in the society generally consider relevant. Just like those jurors who after the fact regretted their decision because they considered "medical marijuana" relevant, a hundred random people judging someone's gender would typically consider "penis" relevant. So you don't get to withhold that information from them and then have their judgment count as establishing truth.

Your question appears to be based on some implicit unsupported assumptions. First, that what Semenya has is in fact a vagina. Second, that it's reasonable to ask a jury to reach a verdict after hearing only one litigant's witnesses. And third, that judging a territory based on a map is a reliable strategy. So let's turn it around. If you asked 100 random guys to examine 100 random adult guevedoces' genitalia and say whether they thought what was behind the person's penis was an actual vagina, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Before puberty? I think it would be near unanimous that the opening in the body between the legs was a vagina.

And? I said "adult" for a reason. Semenya is 34, and we aren't debating whether Semenya was a girl in the 1990s.

After puberty? I think there would be a lot of confusion, but I believe most would assume they were looking at a picture of what used to be called a hermaphrodite (assuming they had heard of such) or that the picture was a photoshop mash up of a genuine vagina and a pubescent boy's penis.

Very probably. I think 100 random jurors would mostly react not by deciding on the spot but by wanting more information. They'd want to know if it was photoshopped. On finding out it wasn't, they'd want to hear about DSDs, and then they'd start asking about testes and ovaries and chromosomes and so forth.

If you referenced DSDs and asked 100 random guys if someone who has a vagina and a penis and testes and a prostate and no ovaries and no fallopian tubes and no uterus and no cervix could ever be a man, how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Again, I think there would be some confusion but I think nearly all would give a qualified "yes". If you asked if they would consider that person a man if they had their vaginal opening permanently sealed shut and the vaginal channel removed, then I think the answer would be a unanimous "yes". Once all the "lady parts" have been removed and the naturally developed penis and testicles aren't sharing space with a vagina, then IMO folks would feel a lot more confident about guessing the person in question could be a man.

Yes, I think so too. That in a nutshell is why I argue that Semenya is a "he". Juries should be fully informed if we want to use them to decide truth. Judges conceal information from them for the sake of maintaining power, not for the sake of justice.

And if you asked 100 random guys if Semenya is a man, and didn't reference DSDs or chromosomes or vaginas or penises or any conceptual map at all, and instead just asked them to examine Semenya's naked body (with Semenya's consent of course), how many of them do you think would say "yes"?

Impossible to guess without knowing how much Semenya's penis grew during puberty and if there was any enlargement of the scrotum around the vaginal opening (there wouldn't be if the testes remained underdeveloped and/or didn't descend),

True -- since we can't actually examine Semenya I'm just going by what Google tells me is typical in guevedoces.

but I think it's unlikely more than 1 in 10 would be comfortable saying "yes" once they noticed Semanya has a vagina.

But no more would be comfortable saying "no" once they noticed Semenya has a penis. The other 80 would want more information, and we'd need to let them have it for the whole exercise to mean anything.

Who died and put the gender ideology subculture in charge of defining "dick" and "cool" for the whole Anglosphere? ... Is there some way you're an iota different from the Christians of my childhood? Do Emily and the other gender critical people here have some unscientific opinion of our own that you're volunteering to pretend to agree with for the sake of politely respecting our sensibilities? This "cool" non-"dick" lying you're advocating -- is it a one-way street? Is it a mission you'd send your troops on but wouldn't go on yourself?

What about Emily imposing her belief about Semenya's gender on everybody else, including Semenya?

Setting aside the language abuse involved in calling opinions "imposing", what makes her saying 'he" any more an imposition on everybody else than you saying "she"? Quite the reverse -- Emily didn't call you an uncool dick for saying "she". Looks to me like Emily's the one exhibiting the live-and-let-live attitude here. She uses the pronouns she wants to use; you use the pronouns you want to use; what's the problem? It's a free country. You're still sounding like the Christians of my childhood, telling me atheists shouldn't impose atheism on others while thinking it was perfectly hunky-dory for them to tell me to bow my head and say Our Father with them.

Bitch, please.*

Hey, "dick" was your word, not mine. If you mean Emily can be a bitch but not a dick, because she's female, that comes off as kind of a regressive and sexist attitude.

Emily Lake posts in declarative statements all the time. She tells us what she thinks, which is fine, but she also tries to tell us what _to_ think, which can be inflammatory. And she can be very intolerant of people who disagree with her assessments.

It's a discussion forum -- telling one another what to think is what we do here! I don't see how Emily's declarative statements are any more "what _to_ think" than yours, or how she's any more intolerant. She didn't suggest it was dickish for you to say "she".

She has been deliberately calling Semenya "he" even though she knows Semenya was raised as a girl, accepted herself as a girl,

I.e., she's rejecting your religion's dogma that those things are what determine correct pronoun use, and blasphemously declining to pretend it's true. If that's dickish (sorry, bitchy), does Emily have some religious belief that you're volunteering to pretend is true, to avoid bitchily blaspheming? This is IIDB. Blasphemy is our speciality.

and now lives as a woman.

Semenya fathered two children. What does "lives as a woman" mean, wears earrings? Conforms to some other regressive sexist stereotype?

Sure, Semenya isn't a typical woman. But she has a vagina, a body part that is widely considered to be the defining characteristic of a woman. And it's a body part that a lot of women have gotten a lot of belittling ... about having for most, if not all, of our lives.

So how come "vagina" settles the gender issue when you say it, but when I say "penis" I get a lecture about sex and gender being two different things?

Emily Lake can think what she likes. She and I agree on a lot of things, and she has very good information on the biological aspects of sex and sexual development. But she's very rigid when it comes to gender, and I believe she's pretty conservative about gender norms.

Are you serious? Emily the "Agenderist"? Emily who expresses contempt for gender roles six ways to Sunday? Emily who named herself after a sci-fi character who violated every gender norm known to her Victorian background? That Emily Lake?

Yes, that Emily Lake.

The one who raged at me for mansplaining things because I disagreed with her until I let her know I'm a woman. Then it was okay for me to have an opinion, I guess.

On what planet is having an issue with "mansplaining" a conservative gender norm?!? It's feminist as all get out! The conservative gender norm is women should keep quiet and if they don't understand ask their husbands to explain later.

That's fine for her to believe and advocate. But it's disrespectful and IMO pretty fracking arrogant to declare someone is mistaken about their own gender, especially when their self image conforms with social norms.

Yeah, and the Christians of my childhood figured it was pretty fracking arrogant to declare Jesus was mistaken about being the Son of God. I think it's pretty fracking arrogant to declare people are dicks because they won't accept an argument from authority. Do you have any substantive reason to think a person cannot be mistaken about his or her own gender?

You don't appear to understand why I used the word dick, or what behavior I was calling dickish.

Maybe in another post I will go over it. This one's long enough.

Okay, now would be a good time. What behavior were you calling dickish?

 

[Emily Lake]

I agree that enforcing gender roles is regressive. I am not talking about enforcing gender roles, I am talking about people who live as men and women in their societies and whether that is, or must be, strictly tied to their sex organs.

This is the core of the issue. Let's make this very straightforward: Do you believe that prisons should be:

1. Completely shared, with everyone mixed together sharing cells and showers and other spaces
2. Separated based on biological sex
3. Separated based on a person's professed gender identity

 

[Emily Lake]

And if you support puberty blockers and surgery for minors, as per the gender affirming model, you are supporting the sterilisation and mutilation of children.

Own it.

Reducing complex psychological and medical treatments to slogans is the hallmark of bigotryand propaganda not intelligent analysis.

Ignoring the long term risks, the destruction of future fertility, the inability of children to fully comprehend what they're consenting to, and the extremely mixed results of a highly popular socially driven medical intervention in order to support a different set of slogans is ideologically driven child abuse.

 

[Emily Lake]

I.e., she's rejecting your religion's dogma that those things are what determine correct pronoun use, and blasphemously declining to pretend it's true. If that's dickish (sorry, bitchy), does Emily have some religious belief that you're volunteering to pretend is true, to avoid bitchily blaspheming? This is IIDB. Blasphemy is our speciality.

I'm a gender infidel

 

[bilby]

I agree that enforcing gender roles is regressive. I am not talking about enforcing gender roles, I am talking about people who live as men and women in their societies and whether that is, or must be, strictly tied to their sex organs.

This is the core of the issue. Let's make this very straightforward: Do you believe that prisons should be:

1. Completely shared, with everyone mixed together sharing cells and showers and other spaces
2. Separated based on biological sex
3. Separated based on a person's professed gender identity

4. Controlled spaces in which prisoners are not at liberty to harm others - including other prisoners.

 

[Politesse]

I agree that enforcing gender roles is regressive. I am not talking about enforcing gender roles, I am talking about people who live as men and women in their societies and whether that is, or must be, strictly tied to their sex organs.

This is the core of the issue. Let's make this very straightforward: Do you believe that prisons should be:

1. Completely shared, with everyone mixed together sharing cells and showers and other spaces
2. Separated based on biological sex
3. Separated based on a person's professed gender identity

4. Controlled spaces in which prisoners are not at liberty to harm others - including other prisoners.

That does not describe any American prison... 4% of US prisoners report being sexually assaulted by either a guard or a fellow inmate within their first year of internment, and most experts would agree that this is under-reporting the real scope of the issue.

 

[Emily Lake]

I agree that enforcing gender roles is regressive. I am not talking about enforcing gender roles, I am talking about people who live as men and women in their societies and whether that is, or must be, strictly tied to their sex organs.

This is the core of the issue. Let's make this very straightforward: Do you believe that prisons should be:

1. Completely shared, with everyone mixed together sharing cells and showers and other spaces
2. Separated based on biological sex
3. Separated based on a person's professed gender identity

4. Controlled spaces in which prisoners are not at liberty to harm others - including other prisoners.

Elaborate on this. Do you mean that all prisoners are placed in solitary? Or that someone is evaluating who is likely to harm others when they're deciding which man gets to share a cell with which woman?

 

[seanie]

Semenya's sex is male. But whether the presence of testicles makes it impossible for someone to be a woman - not a female but a woman - is something else.

No, it isn’t.

If your sex sex is male, and you’re an adult human, you’re a man.

Everything else is presentation, personality, how you identify, what social stereotypes you align to.

Not being female but still being a “woman” is absolute horseshit.

It might be acceptable horseshit for some situations, but not all.

Sometimes a person’s sex matters.

 

[ZiprHead]

^^^ That's not my quote.

 

[laughing dog]

And if you support puberty blockers and surgery for minors, as per the gender affirming model, you are supporting the sterilisation and mutilation of children.

Own it.

Reducing complex psychological and medical treatments to slogans is the hallmark of bigotryand propaganda not intelligent analysis.

Ignoring the long term risks, the destruction of future fertility, the inability of children to fully comprehend what they're consenting to, and the extremely mixed results of a highly popular socially driven medical intervention in order to support a different set of slogans is ideologically driven child abuse.

You just proved my point. Gender affirming treatment is best left to responsible medical professionals and their clients not sloganeers.

The medical profession, not state legislators, needs to come up with a set of best practice which includes not just physical medical treatment but intense psychological assessment and analysis.

 

[Arctish]

Guevedoce means "penis at twelve". The testicles can remain underdeveloped and undescended.

According to wiktionary:

from Dominican Spanish güevos a los doce (“testicles at twelve”).​

(Actually "güevos” literally means "eggs", but it's common slang for testicles, rather like "balls" in English. Have you ever heard of Spanish-speakers using "güevos” to mean "penis"?)

Apparently you were right -- a native Spanish speaker tells me eggs actually is slang for penis in the Dominican Republic.

She calls herself a "different kind of woman". If you want to get rid of gendered pronouns, that's one thing. But if you're just being a dick, that's not cool.

Want it or not, English has gendered singular pronouns, and Semenya's gender is male, so using "he" is correct English.

Semenya has male sex traits. She also has female sex traits. Her gender is female.

What evidence is there that Semenya's gender is female?

Semenya's statements.

Sex is not the same thing as gender. In the past the terms were used as synonyms but even so, a sex role wasn't ever confused with a gender role during my mid-1950s to early-1970s childhood.

So your argument is what, that gender is the same thing as gender identity because it's a different thing from sex?!?

No.

Fuck no.

No to the Nth degree.

That's a false dilemma fallacy. Sex, gender, and gender identity are three different things.

Indeed.

That's why we don't use just one word for sex, gender, and gender identity.

That's why it's important to be very clear when we are talking about one of those things to distinguish it from the others. And why it's important to pay attention to qualifiers, conjugations, tenses, gerunds, participles, and other fine details in other people's posts.

For example: suppose I posted that a ten year old child has a sex. That's a non-controversial statement about a non-controversial condition. But if I say a ten year old is having sex, that's very controversial as both a claim of fact and a situation of such concern it's illegal in this country. The difference in meaning a participle and the form of the verb "to have" makes is huge.

That's why I proposed we use the term perthos to distinguish gender identity from gender. . But I don't have any hope for this conversation. We are not communicating well and it's really frustrating.

Sex not being the same thing as gender doesn't magically make Semenya's statements authoritative.

Who is more authoritative on Semenya's gender identity, their perthos, than Semenya?

How do you propose to assess the validity of anyone's gender identity? Are you simply using sex as the determinant, that sex = gender therefore the "correct" gender identity for any individual is the one that matches their sex regardless of their own assessment?

Research into gender identification of people with DSDs, and the neurobiology of gender indicate that gender is linked to sex, culture, and how a child was raised, but not so strongly that we can predict what a child's gender will be.

It was a possibility that Semenya could have developed the gender identity of 'man' despite being raised as a girl. She didn't, though. She developed the gender identity of 'woman'. It is difficult to differentiate that from being 'female' (which she isn't) in the English language, although it would be easy in some other languages spoken here in the United States.

Someone's sex was determined by their genetics and sex organs. Someone's gender was assumed to be the one that usually went with their sex (male-boy-man or female-girl-woman) but even my father's generation knew about "queers".

And in that generation "queer" meant gay. God knows what it means now -- we live in a Humpty-Dumpty era -- but it sounds like now you're also conflating sexual orientation with gender and gender identity.

Whether you accept someone's word about their gender is your business.

It's the same as accepting someone's word about anything else -- it depends on if one thinks the person has a reason to lie or a reason to be mistaken, and on whether one has any conflicting information throwing the claim into doubt. Getting consistently treated as a girl in childhood gave Semenya every reason to be mistaken, and being a guevedoce, having male testosterone levels, flunking an IAAF sex verification test, and fathering two daughters are all conflicting information.

You are assuming Semenya is mistaken about her gender because the adults around her were mistaken about her sex and raised her wrong.

Also, you are arguing gender is a social construct, not an aspect of self awareness and self identity, so people don't get to tell society what their gender is, society tells them. What I find most interesting about that is the current social trend of recognizing and respecting variations in sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identities and presentations (including non-binary) is rendering the old system of gender designation obsolete. Some people are having a difficult time adjusting to that.

 

[Arctish]

I agree that enforcing gender roles is regressive. I am not talking about enforcing gender roles, I am talking about people who live as men and women in their societies and whether that is, or must be, strictly tied to their sex organs.

This is the core of the issue. Let's make this very straightforward: Do you believe that prisons should be:

1. Completely shared, with everyone mixed together sharing cells and showers and other spaces
2. Separated based on biological sex
3. Separated based on a person's professed gender identity

4. Segregated for reasons of security, safety, minimizing chances of recidivism, and maximizing the chances of successful reintegration of prisoners into society.

Sex and gender are important factors to consider. They don't outweigh mental health or predisposition towards violence, though. A violent person should not be in unsupervised proximity to potential victims regardless of whether they're male or female. But if it's possible for prisoners to have normal social interactions in mixed sex spaces, then I think our prison system should aim for that. It's much healthier for them and better preparation for release/re-entry into society.

 

[Bomb#20]

Semenya's sex is male. But whether the presence of testicles makes it impossible for someone to be a woman - not a female but a woman - is something else.

No, it isn’t.

If your sex sex is male, and you’re an adult human, you’re a man.
...

^^^ That's not my quote.

Yes, seanie messed up the attribution -- the quote is from Arctish.

 

[Bomb#20]

or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

Pretty funny a supposed atheist who rejects religion will indulge exotic mumbo jumbo because it suits their dumb narrative.

Arthur Koestler said philosophy is the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose. He might as well have been talking about gender ideology.

 

[Arctish]

or to decide for them which aspect of their identity is real and which isn't, to claim you know more about their perthos than they themselves do.

Pretty funny a supposed atheist who rejects religion will indulge exotic mumbo jumbo because it suits their dumb narrative.

Arthur Koestler said philosophy is the systematic abuse of a terminology specially invented for that purpose. He might as well have been talking about gender ideology.

There is nothing exotic or mumbo-jumbo about neurobiology or the scientific study of cognition and the sense of self.

Your inability to understand my point might be due to my inability to explain it in terms you understand, or it might be due to your inability to understand it at all.

Either way, it feels like I'm trying to explain static electricity to a cat.