You are conflating sex with gender. They are not the same thing.
"Is there a vagina?" is a question about sex.
I was following your lead! You're the one who proposed asking a hundred men about a vagina to settle a gender question. So if I'm conflating sex with gender, so are you.
No, I wasn't conflating sex with gender, I was asking a more nuanced question than that.
I didn't think you were conflating them, and neither was I. If you disagree, what makes my question an inch more of a conflation than yours? Your question being more nuanced than mine? What nuances are you talking about? You asking men and me asking women? You asking them if the subject is a man and me asking them if the subject is a woman? You giving the focus group half the information about the subject's genitalia and me giving them both halves? Those don't seem like nuances to me.
Clearly we are not communicating well.
We can measure someone's height. We can't measure their gender even though we can observe that most people have one.
How the heck do you figure we can observe they have one but can't measure what it is?!? That's like saying we can observe the sky has a color but can't measure it to be blue.
In any event, yes, of course we can measure their gender, the same as sociologists can measure class or anything else they study. When you wrote "She's got a vagina. ... 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"?", that was you proposing a method to measure Semenya's gender.
We can measure their weight. We can't measure the impact their perceived sex has had on their upbringing, although we can observe that in general, persons of one perceived sex are treated differently than persons believed to be of the other sex.
We can make reasoned guesses how a person with what looks like a vagina would have a different childhood, different social circle, different expectations, and different treatment if their penis didn't look like a clitoris and their scrotum didn't look like labia. We can do that because we can observe different treatment given to boys and girls on our culture, and in other cultures as well.
Well, we wouldn't be able to observe different treatment given to boys and girls on our culture, and in other cultures as well, if we couldn't tell who was a boy and who was a girl.
While we're at it, you still haven't explained why Emily telling you Semenya is mistaken is an imposition on Semenya. What makes you think that?
The Pope identifies as infallible. I'm telling you straight up that the Pope is not in fact infallible. Do you regard me saying so as "imposing my ideas on the Pope himself"?
Interesting question.
We can test the infallibility of a Pope when he's speaking of matters of fact and speculate about his infallibility in matters of religion by examining the history of papal decrees. We can ask "Did the Pope get it right the first time?"
How do you propose we test someone's sense of self when it comes to their gender? What would make you more of an authority on someone's gender than they are?
In the first place, you're clearly as usual equivocating between gender identity and gender. If we ever really need to test someone's sense of self when it comes to their gender, well, ever since trial-by-ordeal was abolished 800 years ago courts of law have been evolving techniques for recognizing liars and they've mostly gotten pretty good at it, and if necessary FMRI and AI are showing promise at giving us better polygraphs; but that needn't concern us here since nobody is disputing Semenya's sense of self. For present purposes we can take your "having stated her gender very clearly" criterion as an adequate test of "someone's sense of self when it comes to their gender". What I disputed was Semenya's gender, not Semenya's sense of self when it comes to his/her gender. I am of course no no more of an authority on someone's gender than anyone else is; society as a whole is the only authority on social constructs. What makes me more of an
expert on someone's gender than someone else is my willingness to pay attention, educate myself as to society's criteria, and apply them.
But in the second place, you're missing the point. Even if the Pope really were infallible, my saying he isn't infallible would just mean I was wrong; it wouldn't mean I was imposing my ideas on him. He could go right on being infallible to his heart's content without my mistake interfering with him in any way. Likewise Emily and Semenya. Even if you were correct about Semenya's gender, and even if you were correct that Emily was claiming to know more about Semenya's sense of self than Semenya knows, so what?!? How the bejesus do you figure Emily's errors on those points would be "imposing her ideas about Semenya's gender on Semenya herself"?
Would it be okay for me to refer to you as "it", as in "I was trying to have a conversation with Bomb#20 and it kept missing the point"?
Free country. Poli used to have "All pronouns okay" under "Gender:"; that meant you had his permission to call him "it". What "It's a free country." means is you don't need my permission.
I have more reason to use that pronoun than Emily Lake has to use "he" to describe Semenya. Your self identity on this board is sentient non-human[
Anybody calling me "it", I'll take as homage to "Dark Star".
It was about whether someone who was told as a child that they had a vagina, who appeared to have a vaginal opening in the place where vaginal openings are found, would think they might be a man when they grew up
No it wasn't! You asked about what other people would think, not what the guevedoce would. "100 random guys". You are as usual conflating gender identity with gender.
and what other people would think was possible for them. Because if they and the people around them didn't think it was possible for them to be a man, that only leaves being a woman, being nonbinary, or having no gender identity at all as possibilities.
...
and what other people would think
Don't snip off part of a sentence and then act like I didn't include that part. I might not have been clear but I clearly said it.
Oh for the love of god! I didn't snip it off; I included it
and you quoted me quoting it. I cut in in the middle of your sentence because that was where you said something wrong; you immediately following it up with something right doesn't fix the wrong part.
If you tell me the moon is cheese and the sky is blue, I'm going to reply with:
"The moon is cheese" Wrong. "and the sky is blue."
and not;
"The moon is cheese and the sky is blue." Wrong.
because the first one is a lot more informative about where your error is. If you don't like that literary style, do it your way when you point out others' errors. It's a free country.
But this isn't about what anyone told Semenya as a child.
Yes, it is.
It's about growing up with the notion that some things simply aren't possible for you to achieve.
I am not an expert in childhood development but even I know there are stages that people go through as their brains develop, their emotions become more complex. the social circles expand, hormones affect their cognition, etc. Growing up as a girl has lifelong consequences. So does growing up as a boy. So does growing up in a different culture, or a dysfunctional family, or a war zone, or an isolated community that doesn't watch TV.
By the time Semenya discovered she had a penis she already had the self identity as a girl. She already had the culturally enforced expectation that she couldn't grow up to be a man but she could be an accomplished, strong, and admirable woman.
That's not something that can simply be dropped like outgrown clothes.
None of that is in dispute -- nobody is blaming Semenya for identifying as a woman. Half of us would no doubt do the same if we were born without penises and grew them at 12. But you keep taking for granted that Semenya's self-perception is
relevant. If you want us to believe it's relevant, show your work.
Semenya is no longer a child. Everything Semenya and others believed before 2003 is now past its sell-by date. They all have more information now. If you want to limit your claim to saying Semenya was a girl back in the 1990s, then we can have a whole different conversation about that -- there's a reason one of the things Dominicans call guevedoces is "girls who become boys". If you want to lecture Emily about calling a 6-year-old guevedoce "he", you should probably wait until she does it. This is a discussion of what Semenya is now.
How do you propose to evaluate Semenya's self-identity and gender?
Self-identity? I'll take gagwe word for it.
Gender? I said "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"?", and you said "Again, I think there would be some confusion but I think nearly all would give a qualified "yes".". That was a gender evaluation.
Or are you just going to stick with sex as the final word on the matter and ignore the immaterial reality of self identity?
Translation: "If you don't go along with conflating self identity with gender then you're conflating sex with gender." It's a false dilemma fallacy. Sex, gender and self identity are three different things.
Sex is relevant to gender but is not the final word on the matter. The final word is determined by society's criteria for categorizing people into genders. Sex is relevant because our society habitually uses sex as its main criterion. Self identity is irrelevant because our society habitually ignores self identity in its categorization criteria. In pre-women's-suffrage times, how many women were authorized to vote because they said they thought of themselves as men? In conscription times, how many men were exempted from the draft because they said they thought of themselves as women?
Emily and seanie's contention that a "woman" is a "biologically female adult human", where "female" means having taken the Mullerian developmental pathway, is something they haven't adequately argued for; but neither have the trans-rights-activists here adequately argued against it. As a matter of logic, it is of course entirely possible that there is some rare DSD that creates adult Mullerian bodies that western civilization has been generally categorizing as male for the last 1500 years, or Wolffian female. If so, the people with that condition are respectively male men or female women. That is their gender; more than that, that is their
sex, going by common usage. Biologists don't own the words "sex", "male" and "female" any more than trans-rights-activists own the words "men" and "women". If such a DSD exists, then biologists calling such a common-usage man "female", or such a common-usage woman "male", are using those terms as
technical jargon. Biologists are of course perfectly entitled to make up and use any technical jargon they please; it doesn't make the rest of us wrong to stick to common usage. But then, as a matter of logic it's also entirely possible that there's a teapot orbiting Jupiter. So far nobody here has exhibited such a DSD.
So no, biological sex isn't the final word. But if you want to show the actual final word agrees with you and not with biological sex about whether Semenya is a woman, you have a ton of work to do collecting empirical evidence for your claim. "Biological sex isn't the final word; therefore self identity is the final word." is an invalid inference.
Why is it that you call Semenya's take on gagwe* gender "is", but call other people's take on it "want"? You could equally well describe the situation as "Apparently Caster Semenya wants to be a she all of the time but not everyone judges such things by wishful thinking. Some people acknowledge Semenya is a he regardless of what anyone wants."
(* Sepedi for "his or her".)
For the same reason I take my own gender as an "is" and anyone's attempt to change my gender identity to be their "want".
I.e., because you equivocate between gender identity and gender. The multitude who called you "he" weren't attempting to change your gender identity; they were mistaken about your gender. Emily was not saying a bloody thing about Semenya's
gender identity. Using "he" is saying Semenya's
gender is male. Emily has given no indication that she
wants Semenya to
identify as a man. To all appearances, Emily couldn't care less about that.
Emily was saying
everything about Semenya's gender identity
Why do you believe that? It's absurd. It's absurd on a level with claiming a patriarchy murdered uppity women's rights activists "for identifying as women", as though if only they'd been transmen the patriarchy wouldn't have killed those uppity women. Emily made a claim about Semenya's gender (while probably intending to make a claim about sex -- Emily sometimes conflates those two.) You only think she was saying something about gender identity because you conflate gender identity with gender. If you have any empirical evidence showing Emily was focused on how Semenya self-identifies, quote her.
and was being pretty rude about it,
Emily didn't say it was dickish to disagree with her about gender. That was you. What makes progressivism the authority on what is or isn't rude?
apparently because she doesn't respect anyone's gender identity and thinks no one else should either.
Quote her. I haven't seen her offer any objection to you continuing to call Semenya "she" if that's what floats your boat. If by "respect anyone's gender identity" you mean put men in women's sports, women's single-sex spaces, and women's prisons, then yeah, she thinks no one else should either. If you're suggesting that society ought to choose its policy on those weighty matters by considering what's rude, that really seems like a case of letting the tail wag the dog.
Math isn't even a science at all. Depending on what level you're at, it's more akin to either a language (arithmetic and algebra, etc.) or to a philosophy (set theory, number theory, etc.). It's a well-defined language and a highly consistent philosophy... but it's not actually a science by itself.
