Gender Roles

[Jokodo]

(At least to the extent that homosexuality exists--I'm in the camp that thinks there's no such thing, we aren't wired for opposite-sex attraction or same-sex attraction, but for male attraction or female attraction. "Homosexuality" is when the attraction for your own gender is turned on, "heterosexuality" is when the attraction for the opposite gender is turned on. It makes a much simpler model that does a better job of explaining what we see in the real world.)

WTAF? All you've done is swapped out sex for gender in your framing. So you reject "same-sex attraction" but you're okay with "same-gender" attraction? That's... silly. And there are a whole, whole, whole lot of lesbians out there who are very strongly opposed to your idea that they're not attracted to females, but instead are attracted to the performance of a set of social stereotypes.

Not what he was trying to say, but anyway.

I can only speak for myself, but while self-ascribed gender isn't a factor in what makes me attracted to a person initially, neither is what you call biological sex, i.e. the type of gonads a person has, or even their external genitals, and for the same reason too: those are things I do not see. I have no more x-ray vision than I have mind reading abilities. If I (as a cis hetero male, but I can only talk for myself) am attracted to a person I'm attracted by what I see: Their face, their movements, their body as seen, typically, through their clothes, their way of talking, their wits, how they look at me etc., and my attraction isn't predicated on creating a vivid imagination of what they have in their pants. I prefer real people over imagined vulvas.

I have had daytime fantasies or night dreams of hooking up with someone I had a crush on, but even those are never in closeup mode. They are about how neither of us can resist any longer, or about the feeling of total satisfaction we both get from it, never about what I imagine their vulva to look like. I can recall one instance where I hooked up with a woman who I had previously seen naked when we had gone skinny dipping (with some other friends around) years before, and even then, my memory of what I'd seen of her vulva wasn't what got me into taking her home. I have never been in the situation where the genitals once the person got undressed were radically different from what I had expected, but I can't imagine it would be a dealbreaker. Sure, it would require communication to find out how to get them off, but that's generally a good idea anyway. I don't think doing everything your ex loved exactly as they loved it best is generally a good recipe for a fulfilled sex life with a new partner, not even in a cis hetero context. I'm sure we could make it work, at least for a hookup, even if it might be unfulfilling in the long run.

That may be different for people whose preferred form of sex is having a rod stuck into one of their holes rather than sticking your rod into someone else's hole, as it is in my case. A woman once told me about a recurring dream where she picks a mate from looking at the penises alone. I have no idea about how common this is for women (and gay men) or how uncommon it is for men to have similar fantasies about vulvas, but from my small sample, this appears to be a female-biased trait

 

[Jokodo]

So in short, what gets me turned on is not primary sex traits, or "sex" as Emily defines it. It's a mix of secondary sex traits and behavioral patterns, some of which may be gender-stereotypical, but in either case the hyperfeminine pole is not the focal point of my attraction: I have a history of dating fairly broad-shouldered, assertive women who'll happily leave any sewing work to be done to me, and I'll get really annoyed and definitely not turned on when you pretend you can't even change a light bulb.

 

[Jarhyn]

Sure it is a new type reproductive system. To the extent that this phenotype is incompatible with the other systems around, it is a disfunctional one

And examined in other threads: individuals in a social species who cannot or will not reproduce at or above the "normal" rate present the opposite of an incompatibility, but improve the fitness of the species as a whole in the form of bringing extra resources to the family group and tribe, and having an outsized capacity to take larger risks to establish stable improvements for the group.

The individual's ability to reproduce is not a universal benefit to the species.

A social tool using species is best served by some latent holding of LGBT traits.

If "not believing" falls into the category of "beliefs" "not reproductive" falls into the category of "sexes", and I wager it is an adaptive category WRT the species.

 

[Jokodo]

Sure it is a new type reproductive system. To the extent that this phenotype is incompatible with the other systems around, it is a disfunctional one

And examined in other threads: individuals in a social species who cannot or will not reproduce at or above the "normal" rate present the opposite of an incompatibility, but improve the fitness of the species as a whole in the form of bringing extra resources to the family group and tribe, and having an outsized capacity to take larger risks to establish stable improvements for the group.

The individual's ability to reproduce is not a universal benefit to the species.

A social tool using species is best served by some latent holding of LGBT traits.

If "not believing" falls into the category of "beliefs" "not reproductive" falls into the category of "sexes", and I wager it is an adaptive category WRT the species.

Not sure it is. Evolution doesn't do optimal solution, it does local optima, and if any tweak in the system, any change to any of the genes involved, that could lower the rate of of intersex individuals or otherwise of individuals that do not reproduce, is offset by a cost in a potentially fairly unrelated domain, what selection produces isn't the absence of such conditions, but their presence at a rate at which their cost is offset by the benefits the same genes have in other domains. I don't think it's relevant though. Whether or not a trait is a real or a variant is part of the spectrum of variation in the species isn't determined by its evolutionary function.

 

[Jarhyn]

Sure it is a new type reproductive system. To the extent that this phenotype is incompatible with the other systems around, it is a disfunctional one

And examined in other threads: individuals in a social species who cannot or will not reproduce at or above the "normal" rate present the opposite of an incompatibility, but improve the fitness of the species as a whole in the form of bringing extra resources to the family group and tribe, and having an outsized capacity to take larger risks to establish stable improvements for the group.

The individual's ability to reproduce is not a universal benefit to the species.

A social tool using species is best served by some latent holding of LGBT traits.

If "not believing" falls into the category of "beliefs" "not reproductive" falls into the category of "sexes", and I wager it is an adaptive category WRT the species.

Not sure it is. Evolution doesn't do optimal solution, it does local optima, and if any tweak in the system, any change to any of the genes involved, that could lower the rate of of intersex individuals or otherwise of individuals that do not reproduce, is offset by a cost in a potentially fairly unrelated domain, what selection produces isn't the absence of such conditions, but their presence at a rate at which their cost is offset by the benefits the same genes have in other domains. I don't think it's relevant though. Whether or not a trait is a real or a variant is part of the spectrum of variation in the species isn't determined by its evolutionary function.

Well, I explore my basis for this discussion in another thread about the effect on childrearing success. Essentially, we need a fairly sizable supply of backup parents.

I have five nieces and nephews, and I'm already making plans to use my freedom from children to bring something of value to them in terms of tools and resources and knowledge.

Certainly such traits aren't exactly beneficial absent other aspects (like sibling reproduction), but they do provide a strong, of indirect, survival value for their locality (we can take risks others cannot; we are in some ways expendable, in other ways we serve as backup parents).

I agree that whether a trait appears or continues to appear or whether a trait first appears is often unrelated or only weakly related to survival mechanics vis a vis selection pressures; where we disagree is merely on the assessment of whether there are such species and local-group survival mechanics behind the trait. I wager that a group of 10 heterosexuals with 1-2 kids each will have a lower survival coefficient than a group with 8 heterosexuals and 2 homosexuals, even if that second group averages fewer kids: more will survive, in some time periods, and more will THRIVE in other time periods, of the group with fewer kids and more individual support.

Ants and other Hymenopterae are an extreme version of this, with most individuals serving expendable redundant support and only a few reproductively active individuals.

 

[Emily Lake]

Trimming, hopefully for clarity

Female and male reproductive systems have been the primary driver of the evolution of gametes, gonads, and genitals in most anisogamous species (but then there are species where large majorities are infertile) and have, of course, been under strong selective pressure.

This is backwards - two different sized gametes is the driver of male and female reproductive systems. Fertility within either of those reproductive systems doesn't make the systems into something else. Freemartins are still female cattle, they are not male cattle, nor are they some completely different sex of cattle - they're sterile females.

please react to what I wrote, not what you would prefer to argue against.

I am reacting to what you wrote.

You said that reproductive systems are the drivers for the evolution of gametes; this is backwards - gametes are the driver for the evolution of reproductive systems. You have the cart before the horse.
You mention species where many are infertile and frame it as if it were an exception to the existence of two distinct reproductive systems. This is incorrect - infertile females are still females, as they still have a female reproductive tract; infertile males are still males, as they still have a male reproductive tract.

My response is DIRECTLY relevant to what you posted.

There are loosely speaking two working types, as in two types that actually aid the species to reproduce. Ignoring anything that doesn't neatly fit either because that's not what evolution meant for us is still a teleological position.

There is no other *type* within anisogamous species, and whether it works or not is irrelevant. There is a reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of large gametes. There is a distinctly different reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of small gametes. There is no other distinct reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of some other kind of gamete, nor in-between gametes. There are only two evolved reproductive systems within anisogamous species.

Do you disagree with that? If so, please feel free to provide evidence of a reproductive system within ANY anisogamous species that has evolved to support the production of either a third type of gamete or to support the production of a sperg. Feel free to take your time, I'll wait.

In humans, arms are arms, legs are legs. An individual can develop a deformed arm, but that doesn't make it a leg.

Are you sure you want to run with that argument? That actually sounds more like a creationist argument than anything else.

It sounds nothing at all like a creationist argument, please don't resort to well poisoning.

Tetrapods, which includes humans, have four limbs (sometimes less, never more as any species' default). Depending on species and function, we may call some or all of those limbs "arms", "legs", "fins", "wings" etc. but that's really just a post-hoc classification by some kind of family resemblance of form and function. Of course their can be limbs that are intermediate between an arm and a leg - otherwise no arms-carrying creature could ever have evolved from a four-legged one.

Sure sure, there's totally no distinction in humans between an arm and a leg. And there's totally no distinction in horses between forelegs and hindlegs. They're totally identical, and nobody can observe any differences in structure at all.

This is blatantly false. Do I need to dig up where you used "normal range of variation" directly in reference to the full package of what we call primary sex characteristics, which two posts up you had explicitly demanded be treated as a binary attribute?

Oh ffs. Normal range of variation for the components. Which is a clear analogy to what I so painstakingly laid out. But I'll reiterate.
Within HUMANS (to avoid any possible confusion that we might be talking about cats), an arm is an arm. Arms are distinct from legs in many ways, even though they are both under the classification of "limbs". Similarly, male reproductive systems are distinct from female reproductive systems, even though they are both under the classification of "reproductive systems".

In HUMANS, arms are distinctly different from legs. There isn't a lerm or an arg, there's not something in-between an arm and a leg that periodically shows up in healthy human being. If a human is born with an upper body appendage that has a foot attached to the wrist, we would consider that to be a developmental anomaly - we would NOT consider that to be a "normal expression of the human form", and we wouldn't consider that to be part of the "typical development of human limbs". That doesn't imply that it cannot happen - gene expressions can and sometimes do go awry in many different ways. But none of us would consider that to be "just perfectly regular variation". Similarly, male reproductive systems are different from female reproductive systems. There isn't an in-between system that periodically shows up in healthy human beings. If a human is born with mixed reproductive anatomy, we do NOT consider that to "normal expression of the human form" or "typical development of human reproductive anatomy". That doesn't imply that it cannot happen - it does happen - but contrary to Jarhyn's position, we don't consider that to be "just perfectly regular variation of the human reproductive system".

Arms and legs are each comprised of several components. Arms have radius, ulna, humerus, elbow, biceps, triceps, etc. Legs have femur, tibia, fibula, patella, quadriceps, hamstring, calf, etc. Each of those components shows a normal range of variation in length, strength, density, and a host of other factors. A hamstring can be longer or shorter, stronger or weaker than the hamstring of another person. But that hamstring can't be a triceps. A triceps can be longer or shorter, stronger or weaker than the triceps of another person, but that triceps can't be a hamstring. Similarly, female and male reproductive systems are comprised of several components. Female systems have uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, cervix, vagina, etc. Male systems have penis, scrotum, testes, vas deferens, prostate, etc. Each of those components shows a normal range of variation in size, shape, and other factors. A uterus can be larger or smaller, more upright or tilted, thinner-walled or thicker compared to another female's uterus. But a uterus can't be a prostate. A penis can be longer or shorter, thicker or thinner, straighter or more curved than the penis of another male, but that penis can't be a vagina.

When I mention normal range of variation, I'm talking about the variation of the components of the system, as described above. That does not in any fashion whatsoever imply that there is some kind of "normal variation" between a male reproductive system and a female reproductive system.

I invite you to explain how any of this relates to what I wrote.

You jumped in late, in a post that was responding to fallacious things that other people wrote. You then proceeded to misunderstand both the content and the intent of my post and argued with it. That's fine... but the context also matters - and the context is what my post was relative to in the first place. Thus, it relates to the counterargument that you made.

 

[Emily Lake]

Yeah, like, why does she have any right to see some human beings become "sexually mature" in the first place?

This might be one of the least sensible things you've posted.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yeah, like, why does she have any right to see some human beings become "sexually mature" in the first place?

This might be one of the least sensible things you've posted.

What? You think you DO have some practical interest more prescient than the interests of the people involved, in their sexual maturity as you define sexual maturity? I would love to see the evidence of the validity of such a interest.

Is that just what you do? Claim ANYONE who disagrees with you is just senseless?

As Jokodo brings up:

The process of an individual mammal becoming a functioning adult member of its species does not require gonadal hormones, nor does it require such hormones to be endogenous, when they are available.

You're cobbling together 1) a wikipedia article about eunuchs in China, 2) an article about when to castrate male cattle to raise as steers for food and 3) Hijra in india.

On the other hand, there's an entire field of biology, wherein the attainment of an adult form of the species DOES rely on the actual process by which a juvenile becomes an adult of that species. In humans, that process involves sex hormones, because that's how we become adults. A human can reach the size of an adult without those sex hormones, but height alone isn't what denotes an adult version of a human. From the perspective of legality, it's based on chronology, and has nothing to do with development at all. But outside of that legal framework, when we're talking about biology in general, the adult form of a species is the one that has attained the body of a sexually mature individual.

You're correct that attaining sexual maturity as a human doesn't necessarily require those hormones to be exogenous. It does, however, require that those hormones be for the same sex, and it does require that those hormones be present. If a juvenile human being is denied those hormones altogether, they cannot become sexually mature humans. If a juvenile's sex-appropriate hormones are denied and they are given cross-sex hormones, they cannot become sexually mature humans.

Children who are castrated prior to puberty to make eunuchs never become sexually mature.

Are you, or are you not, saying that (biological) fertility is (or should be) a prerequisite for (legal) adulthood? It seems like a stupid thing to say and you don't seem like someone that stupid (that's not sarcasm, I really don't think you do). On the other hand, I'm failing to see how what you're writing here is much of an argument if you don't make that connection.

"Sexual maturity" is not a prerequisite to social maturity, or emotional security, or even interest in sexual contact among adult humans.

 

[Emily Lake]

Just picking out a couple points from your last post I failed to adequately respond to before.

The binary aspect is based on the phenotype - the *type of* reproduction system in place. While it's possible in rare cases for things to go awry in development, there are still only two *types of* reproductive systems. A system that has a mix of organs, or that is missing some organs, or that halted during development isn't a *new type of reproductive system*.

Sure it is a new type reproductive system.

And a person born with an upper body limb that lacks a humerus has a "new kind of arm". A person whose genetic expression gets interrupted in utero and is born with a foot attached to their wrist has evolved a "new kind of hand".

Do you think that actually makes sense?

To the extent that this phenotype is incompatible with the other systems around, it is a disfunctional one, and its occasional appearance, if frequent enough, will decrease the fitness of any of the genes conspiring to produce it, or if it is primarily caused by environmental factors, increase the fitness of any gene variant that makes the overall shared system more robust against such perturbations, or of any gene variant that contributes to avoidance behaviour towards the set of environmental factors that cause it, but those are facts about the meta-system embedded in a population of other systems. Those are not facts about the individual configuration of organs and features itself.

Using your logic, there are no such things as developmental errors, there are no deformities, there are no disorders. It's impossible for things to just go awry in development, it's all just "new kinds of" bodies. According to your approach, children exposed to thalidomide during gestation don't have any problems, we shouldn't consider them to have birth defects... it's just "new kinds of kids".

In humans, arms are arms, legs are legs. An individual can develop a deformed arm, but that doesn't make it a leg. They could even be born without an arm.

I kind of replied to this subpoint before, but missed an important aspect of why this isn't a good analogy. In humans, arms are derived from the common tetrapod forelimb, while legs are derived from the hindlimb. They share a similar but not identical blueprint. The clitoris and penis, or the labia and the skin covering it and the scrotum (complete with a visible joint in adult males) are analogous: They evolved from the undifferentiated sex organs of a distant hermaphroditic ancestor and continue to develop from an undifferentiated precursor in human embryos.

Those and gonads are pretty much the ONLY elements that arise from bipotential undifferentiated fetal elements. There is no common shared embryonic structure for fallopian tubes, uterus, cervix, or vagina. There is no common shared embryonic structure for vas deferens, prostate, epididymis, and seminal vesicles.

Most of the time, a variant phenotype that is intermediate between the two most frequent phenotypes of human genitals won't be compatible (or less so) for unaided reproduction with either of the frequent phenotypes so its frequency will remain low, but under specific selection pressures, even that doesn't have to be the case, as the existence of the hyena shows.

This is misleading. Female hyenas don't have penises. The psuedophallus of a female hyena is not identical to a male penis in that species. It *looks* very similar, but it doesn't function the same at all. You're trying to present it as if female hyenas have penises, which isn't true.

Again, there is no component of a human male reproductive system that arises from the embryonic elements that make up fallopian tubes. There is no component of a female reproductive system that arises from the embryonic elements of a prostate.

Only a very few elements of the human reproduction system being as undifferentiated elements. Gonads start out undifferentiated, and depending on whether a wolffian or a mullerian pathway is initiated, they generally become either ovaries or testicles. If that process is derailed or interrupted (or in cases of chimerism or mosaicism) those gonads can fail to differentiate as expected, or they can become streak gonads of one sex or the other. The penis and the clitoris start develop from the same fetal element, and differentiate as the fetus develops. The same is true for the labia and scrotal sac. But that is *not* the case for the other elements. Fallopian tubes don't turn into some part of a male reproductive system if the fetus follows a wolffian path. The epididymis doesn't turn into some part of the female reproductive system if the fetus follows a mullerian path.

The same is true for secondary sex characteristics - for example, antlers in most deer species and horns in some sheep breeds are a secondary sex characteristic of males, while in others both sexes have them. Male and female genitals are more parallel to male and female body hair patterns than they are to hindlimbs vs. forelimbs. A penis is a primary sex characteristic of males in humans like an antler is a primary sex characteristic of males in red deer

This is false. The penis in human males is like a penis in red deer stags. Penises in both of those species are primary sex characteristics - elements that are directly involved in sexual reproduction, and responsible for the functional process of merging two different sized gametes. Antlers in red deer are secondary sex characteristics - they're a phenotype expression that is directly associated with the sex chromosomes, but is not directly responsible for reproduction. Antlers correlate to facial and body hair in males, not to genitalia.

because it correlates with a package of traits individuals with motile gametes tend to have and is anti-correlated with a different package of traits individuals with sessile gametes tend to have, ultimately because in the species' typical environment is such that it confers an advantage for male carriers but a disadvantage for female carriers. When that changes and infrequent examples of a female carrier of the trait are no longer selected against, what used to be a sex-specific trait can become a shared trait and we get hyenas and reindeer. When the first female hyena with a pseudopenis or the first female reindeer with antlers was born (hopefully without antlers), we could arguably have called her an intersex individual. When they became more frequent, antlers/penises went from being a secondary sex characteristic to being a sex-correlated trait to being a shared trait with statistically observable difference in means between the sexes - because those are categories that have no meaning unless you look beyond the individual at the population.

You're conflating primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, and sex-correlated shared traits.

 

[Jarhyn]

Do you think that actually makes sense?

It absolutely makes sense.

Using your logic, there are no such things as developmental errors, there are no deformities, there are no disorders

Not naturally, no. Those are all social constructions.

Those and gonads are pretty much the ONLY elements that arise from bipotential undifferentiated fetal elements.

This is a ridiculously confident statement made without any evidence at all.

Female hyenas don't have penises

They have the organ they have. Whether you want to judge that as a "penis" comes down to social construction, not deep nature.

Penises in both of those species are primary sex characteristics - elements that are directly involved in sexual reproduction

Except for everyone for whom there is no direct involvement with sexual reproduction whatsoever, and you are the one pathologizing that condition.

You're conflating primary sex characteristics, secondary sex characteristics, and sex-correlated shared traits

No, you are inventing categorizations and distinctions between these where nature is silent on such.

Quit pathologizing non-reproductive bodies.

 

[Emily Lake]

(At least to the extent that homosexuality exists--I'm in the camp that thinks there's no such thing, we aren't wired for opposite-sex attraction or same-sex attraction, but for male attraction or female attraction. "Homosexuality" is when the attraction for your own gender is turned on, "heterosexuality" is when the attraction for the opposite gender is turned on. It makes a much simpler model that does a better job of explaining what we see in the real world.)

WTAF? All you've done is swapped out sex for gender in your framing. So you reject "same-sex attraction" but you're okay with "same-gender" attraction? That's... silly. And there are a whole, whole, whole lot of lesbians out there who are very strongly opposed to your idea that they're not attracted to females, but instead are attracted to the performance of a set of social stereotypes.

Not what he was trying to say, but anyway.

I can only speak for myself, but while self-ascribed gender isn't a factor in what makes me attracted to a person initially, neither is what you call biological sex, i.e. the type of gonads a person has, or even their external genitals, and for the same reason too: those are things I do not see. I have no more x-ray vision than I have mind reading abilities. If I (as a cis hetero male, but I can only talk for myself) am attracted to a person I'm attracted by what I see: Their face, their movements, their body as seen, typically, through their clothes, their way of talking, their wits, how they look at me etc., and my attraction isn't predicated on creating a vivid imagination of what they have in their pants. I prefer real people over imagined vulvas.

When you look at a random adult human on the street, do you feel that you have a good chance of accurately assessing their sex? Or is it all a giant mystery to you and you have no way of telling whether they are male or female?

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? Do you find that you're often attracted to people with beards, chest hair, large adam's apples, flat chests, and narrow hips?

Sexual orientation is about sex. It's not about gender. No, we're not inspecting (or even imagining I hope) other people's genitals before hand - but it's also entirely unnecessary that we do so. Beyond primary sexual characteristics of the reproductive tract, males and females of the human species have evolved a host of secondary sex characteristics that are visible and obvious even when we're fully clothed. Initial sexual attraction takes those visible indicators of sex into consideration.

It is possible for all of us to be *fooled*. People can *mimic* the characteristics of the opposite sex, through clever use of adornment, favorable lighting, filters, and staging... or through chemical and surgical intervention. If you had no prior knowledge, it's entirely possible and even likely that you might find Blair White or Munroe Bergdorf to be attractive. They've both put a lot of money and effort into cosmetic surgery in order to mimic the facial characteristics that are associated with females, and have acquired breasts, and have invested heavily into fashion-based social norms for female adornment and clothing.

The real question is whether or not you would continue to be physically attracted to them when they drop their pants and you see their genitals. As a straight man... how likely do you think you would be to enter into a sexual relationship with someone who has a penis?

 

[Emily Lake]

So in short, what gets me turned on is not primary sex traits, or "sex" as Emily defines it. It's a mix of secondary sex traits and behavioral patterns, some of which may be gender-stereotypical, but in either case the hyperfeminine pole is not the focal point of my attraction: I have a history of dating fairly broad-shouldered, assertive women who'll happily leave any sewing work to be done to me, and I'll get really annoyed and definitely not turned on when you pretend you can't even change a light bulb.

You should ask Jarhyn's view on this - previously, Jarhyn has opined that because you're attracted to the secondary sex characteristics of a person, then you should be quite happy to have sex with a someone who has a penis. If you are initially attracted to someone who has acquired the secondary sex characteristics of a female, but you end up being turned off by their penis when you get to the bedroom... Jarhyn has expressed the opinion that you have a "genital fetish" that you should work to unlearn.

What's your take on that perspective?

 

[Emily Lake]

Yeah, like, why does she have any right to see some human beings become "sexually mature" in the first place?

This might be one of the least sensible things you've posted.

What? You think you DO have some practical interest more prescient than the interests of the people involved, in their sexual maturity as you define sexual maturity? I would love to see the evidence of the validity of such a interest.

Is that just what you do? Claim ANYONE who disagrees with you is just senseless?

It's senseless because all of the implicit assumptions that you've made, as evidenced by this post, are complete nonsense.

We can start with your assumption that there is a "right" involved at all, let along that I have any interest in "seeing" humans mature. All I've done is to acknowledge that humans - just like every other sexually reproductive species on the planet - has evolved such that sexual maturity is the final stage of our development. All I've done is to recognize that puberty isn't a "choice" that children have a "right" to make.

Your entire premise is nonsense.

 

[Emily Lake]

Quit pathologizing non-reproductive bodies.

I've done no such thing. Stop maliciously mischaracterizing my position.

 

[Jarhyn]

Quit pathologizing non-reproductive bodies.

I've done no such thing. Stop maliciously mischaracterizing my position.

Yes you have. I'm not mischaracterizing anything here.

You are pathologizing non-reproductive bodies.

You wager that "sexual maturity" depends on endogenous hormonal exposure, and you demand this "sexual maturity" happen.

Therefore you are pathologizing the lack of this "sexual maturity".

How much clearer does anyone have to be about the fact that "sexual maturity" is not in fact necessary nor sufficient to be a "functional human adult"?

"Functional human adult" does not require "sexually mature" in the way you have defined it.

 

[Jokodo]

Trimming, hopefully for clarity

Female and male reproductive systems have been the primary driver of the evolution of gametes, gonads, and genitals in most anisogamous species (but then there are species where large majorities are infertile) and have, of course, been under strong selective pressure.

This is backwards - two different sized gametes is the driver of male and female reproductive systems. Fertility within either of those reproductive systems doesn't make the systems into something else. Freemartins are still female cattle, they are not male cattle, nor are they some completely different sex of cattle - they're sterile females.

please react to what I wrote, not what you would prefer to argue against.

I am reacting to what you wrote.

You said that reproductive systems are the drivers for the evolution of gametes; this is backwards - gametes are the driver for the evolution of reproductive systems. You have the cart before the horse.

The fact that there's one sessile large gamete and one motile small one is the most basic aspect of the reproductive system, sure. But everything more specific about their structure and function has evolved and continues to evolve in the context of the reproductory system as a whole, like how much nutrients the ovum needs to store, and what adaptations messenger proteins it needs to emit to facilitate the implantation in the uterus, and the anatomy of the sperm cell that helps it find its way to the unfertilized ovum. If we ripped the ova and sperm cell structure of our fish ancestors and plugged it into our gonads and genitals, we'd be infertile for sure!

You mention species where many are infertile and frame it as if it were an exception to the existence of two distinct reproductive systems. This is incorrect - infertile females are still females, as they still have a female reproductive tract; infertile males are still males, as they still have a male reproductive tract.

I'm not sure how much of a reproductive tract of any kind worker ants have.

My response is DIRECTLY relevant to what you posted.

There are loosely speaking two working types, as in two types that actually aid the species to reproduce. Ignoring anything that doesn't neatly fit either because that's not what evolution meant for us is still a teleological position.

There is no other *type* within anisogamous species, and whether it works or not is irrelevant. There is a reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of large gametes. There is a distinctly different reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of small gametes. There is no other distinct reproductive system that has evolved to support the production of some other kind of gamete, nor in-between gametes. There are only two evolved reproductive systems within anisogamous species.

All of this would be relevant if your argument had been that the fine structure of gonads have a binary distribution. That wasn't the claim you made and to which I responded, though. That was the claim @lpetrich had made, and which you "corrected" by saying that not just the gametes (and gonads) show a binary distribution, but primary sexual characteristics as a whole do. That's the claim you need to defend if you want to invalidate my argument. Please keep better track of what you're claiming.

Do you disagree with that?

I don't disagree, but neither is it relevant to the discussion you got us into. You're shifting goalposts.

If so, please feel free to provide evidence of a reproductive system within ANY anisogamous species that has evolved to support the production of either a third type of gamete or to support the production of a sperg. Feel free to take your time, I'll wait.

In humans, arms are arms, legs are legs. An individual can develop a deformed arm, but that doesn't make it a leg.

Are you sure you want to run with that argument? That actually sounds more like a creationist argument than anything else.

It sounds nothing at all like a creationist argument, please don't resort to well poisoning.

Tetrapods, which includes humans, have four limbs (sometimes less, never more as any species' default). Depending on species and function, we may call some or all of those limbs "arms", "legs", "fins", "wings" etc. but that's really just a post-hoc classification by some kind of family resemblance of form and function. Of course their can be limbs that are intermediate between an arm and a leg - otherwise no arms-carrying creature could ever have evolved from a four-legged one.

Sure sure, there's totally no distinction in humans between an arm and a leg.

You again failed to comprehend what I wrote. There is an obvious distinction between a human arm and a human leg: Human legs are derived hindlimbs, while arms are derived forelimbs. The two aren't even technically analogous structures.

And there's totally no distinction in horses between forelegs and hindlegs. They're totally identical, and nobody can observe any differences in structure at all.

I implied no such thing and you know it. But a clitoris and a penis, or a scrotum and the labia, aren't like a hindlimb of any species vs a forelimb of the same species, they are like the the arm of a bipedal ape vs. a foreleg of a quadruped leg: they are derivations of the same structure both in evolutionary and in developmental terms that got fine-tuned for different purposes. Except they are less cleanly separated in the sense that the two populations who have those two different adaptations continue to interbreed and share almost all of the genetic basis for developing both, just that part of the process is blocked in some individuals in a delicate balance of triggers and inhibitors that gets disturbed, almost by design, much more easily than the mechanisms that make sure your kid doesn't grow a baboon foreleg!

This is blatantly false. Do I need to dig up where you used "normal range of variation" directly in reference to the full package of what we call primary sex characteristics, which two posts up you had explicitly demanded be treated as a binary attribute?

Oh ffs. Normal range of variation for the components. Which is a clear analogy to what I so painstakingly laid out. But I'll reiterate.
Within HUMANS (to avoid any possible confusion that we might be talking about cats), an arm is an arm. Arms are distinct from legs in many ways, even though they are both under the classification of "limbs". Similarly, male reproductive systems are distinct from female reproductive systems, even though they are both under the classification of "reproductive systems".

In HUMANS, arms are distinctly different from legs. There isn't a lerm or an arg, there's not something in-between an arm and a leg that periodically shows up in healthy human being. If a human is born with an upper body appendage that has a foot attached to the wrist, we would consider that to be a developmental anomaly - we would NOT consider that to be a "normal expression of the human form", and we wouldn't consider that to be part of the "typical development of human limbs". That doesn't imply that it cannot happen - gene expressions can and sometimes do go awry in many different ways. But none of us would consider that to be "just perfectly regular variation". Similarly, male reproductive systems are different from female reproductive systems. There isn't an in-between system that periodically shows up in healthy human beings.

There can't be if you define everyone who has something else as "not healthy", but that's an exercise in scholasticism, not a scientific argument.

If a human is born with mixed reproductive anatomy, we do NOT consider that to "normal expression of the human form" or "typical development of human reproductive anatomy". That doesn't imply that it cannot happen - it does happen - but contrary to Jarhyn's position, we don't consider that to be "just perfectly regular variation of the human reproductive system".

Arms and legs are each comprised of several components. Arms have radius, ulna, humerus, elbow, biceps, triceps, etc. Legs have femur, tibia, fibula, patella, quadriceps, hamstring, calf, etc. Each of those components shows a normal range of variation in length, strength, density, and a host of other factors. A hamstring can be longer or shorter, stronger or weaker than the hamstring of another person. But that hamstring can't be a triceps. A triceps can be longer or shorter, stronger or weaker than the triceps of another person, but that triceps can't be a hamstring. Similarly, female and male reproductive systems are comprised of several components. Female systems have uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, cervix, vagina, etc. Male systems have penis, scrotum, testes, vas deferens, prostate, etc. Each of those components shows a normal range of variation in size, shape, and other factors. A uterus can be larger or smaller, more upright or tilted, thinner-walled or thicker compared to another female's uterus. But a uterus can't be a prostate. A penis can be longer or shorter, thicker or thinner, straighter or more curved than the penis of another male, but that penis can't be a vagina.

When I mention normal range of variation, I'm talking about the variation of the components of the system, as described above. That does not in any fashion whatsoever imply that there is some kind of "normal variation" between a male reproductive system and a female reproductive system.

Saying that phenotype X falls "outside the normal range of variation" of feature package Y implies that there is some kind of range of variation of Y that doesn't "normally" (in whatever interpretation of that word, but as explained it can't be the technical statistical one) cover X. That's how words work.

I invite you to explain how any of this relates to what I wrote.

You jumped in late, in a post that was responding to fallacious things that other people wrote. You then proceeded to misunderstand both the content and the intent of my post and argued with it. That's fine... but the context also matters - and the context is what my post was relative to in the first place. Thus, it relates to the counterargument that you made.

I specifically jumped in when you tried to correct @lpetrich who had written that gonads have a binary distribution while genitals have a strong bimodal one. You can call that a "fallacious thing" if you want, but bringing up gonads again and again (and again) isn't going to help you make your argument when that's the one thing we already agree upon, and nothing about the rest follows from there.

 

[Jokodo]

So in short, what gets me turned on is not primary sex traits, or "sex" as Emily defines it. It's a mix of secondary sex traits and behavioral patterns, some of which may be gender-stereotypical, but in either case the hyperfeminine pole is not the focal point of my attraction: I have a history of dating fairly broad-shouldered, assertive women who'll happily leave any sewing work to be done to me, and I'll get really annoyed and definitely not turned on when you pretend you can't even change a light bulb.

You should ask Jarhyn's view on this - previously, Jarhyn has opined that because you're attracted to the secondary sex characteristics of a person, then you should be quite happy to have sex with a someone who has a penis. If you are initially attracted to someone who has acquired the secondary sex characteristics of a female, but you end up being turned off by their penis when you get to the bedroom... Jarhyn has expressed the opinion that you have a "genital fetish" that you should work to unlearn.

What's your take on that perspective?

I think I answered that question above. I like piv stuff and might not want to enter a long-term strictly monogamous relationship with that person. But that's the full of it. I haven't been in the situation and likely won't be anytime soon given my current circumstances, but if I'm on the way home with a hot woman who's obviously into me and already quite horny and she tells me she has a penis, I can't imagine I'd run away on the spot. I have done anal (both active and passive, with a female partner and a strap on) and liked it. It's still going to be a hot night.

Sure, there are going to be men (as there are women) who are grossed out by the sight of someone else's penis no matter what else they see. Whether that's caused by strictly biological factors, or by previous trauma, or indeed a learned behaviour. Almost all of these are going to end up identifying as straight, but they don't make up the totality of straight men, and I even doubt they make up a majority. If and where they do, it is probably mostly due to learned behaviours, and we have evidence to back that up. The number of men who have at some point in their life jerked off another guy and enjoyed it (especially if it was mutual) is much larger than the number who identify as gay or bi, and it was larger than it is today in earlier decades when homosexuals and homosexuality were less visible and young straight guys felt less compelled to make it known that they are straight-straight. I vividly remember reading a study on this which compared results from two identical questionares in Germany two decades apart, but my google foo has left me tonight, so you have to take my word on it (or not).

 

[Jarhyn]

So in short, what gets me turned on is not primary sex traits, or "sex" as Emily defines it. It's a mix of secondary sex traits and behavioral patterns, some of which may be gender-stereotypical, but in either case the hyperfeminine pole is not the focal point of my attraction: I have a history of dating fairly broad-shouldered, assertive women who'll happily leave any sewing work to be done to me, and I'll get really annoyed and definitely not turned on when you pretend you can't even change a light bulb.

You should ask Jarhyn's view on this - previously, Jarhyn has opined that because you're attracted to the secondary sex characteristics of a person, then you should be quite happy to have sex with a someone who has a penis. If you are initially attracted to someone who has acquired the secondary sex characteristics of a female, but you end up being turned off by their penis when you get to the bedroom... Jarhyn has expressed the opinion that you have a "genital fetish" that you should work to unlearn.

What's your take on that perspective?

I think I answered that question above. I like piv stuff and might not want to enter a long-term strictly monogamous relationship with that person. But that's the full of it. I haven't been in the situation and likely won't be anytime soon given my current circumstances, but if I'm on the way home with a hot woman who's obviously into me and already quite horny and she tells me she has a penis, I can't imagine I'd run away on the spot. I have done anal (both active and passive, with a female partner and a strap on) and liked it. It's still going to be a hot night.

Sure, there are going to be men (as there are women) who are grossed out by the sight of someone else's penis no matter what else they see. Whether that's caused by strictly biological factors, or by previous trauma, or indeed a learned behaviour. Almost all of these are going to end up identifying as straight, but they don't make up the totality of straight men, and I even doubt they make up a majority. If and where they do, it is probably mostly due to learned behaviours, and we have evidence to back that up. The number of men who have at some point in their life jerked off another guy and enjoyed it (especially if it was mutual) is much larger than the number who identify as gay or bi, and it was larger than it is today in earlier decades when homosexuals and homosexuality were less visible and young straight guys felt less compelled to make it known that they are straight-straight. I vividly remember reading a study on this which compared results from two identical questionares in Germany two decades apart, but my google foo has left me tonight, so you have to take my word on it (or not).

And, I said no such things as Emily claims, insofar as I didn't say that people had any obligations to "unlearn" such a fetish.

Again, this is Emily painting the views of others with some form of pathology.

Yes, it's a genital fetish. I've expressed no problem with that. I just think that if someone has a genital fetish (or genital aversion), that's their own issue, not the issue of those around them.

It is still a particular non-universal sexual hangup, and so qualifies as a fetish.

There's nothing wrong with having a sexual fetish, but it is a sexual fetish. That's only a problem for those who pathologize fetish.

 

[Jokodo]

(At least to the extent that homosexuality exists--I'm in the camp that thinks there's no such thing, we aren't wired for opposite-sex attraction or same-sex attraction, but for male attraction or female attraction. "Homosexuality" is when the attraction for your own gender is turned on, "heterosexuality" is when the attraction for the opposite gender is turned on. It makes a much simpler model that does a better job of explaining what we see in the real world.)

WTAF? All you've done is swapped out sex for gender in your framing. So you reject "same-sex attraction" but you're okay with "same-gender" attraction? That's... silly. And there are a whole, whole, whole lot of lesbians out there who are very strongly opposed to your idea that they're not attracted to females, but instead are attracted to the performance of a set of social stereotypes.

Not what he was trying to say, but anyway.

I can only speak for myself, but while self-ascribed gender isn't a factor in what makes me attracted to a person initially, neither is what you call biological sex, i.e. the type of gonads a person has, or even their external genitals, and for the same reason too: those are things I do not see. I have no more x-ray vision than I have mind reading abilities. If I (as a cis hetero male, but I can only talk for myself) am attracted to a person I'm attracted by what I see: Their face, their movements, their body as seen, typically, through their clothes, their way of talking, their wits, how they look at me etc., and my attraction isn't predicated on creating a vivid imagination of what they have in their pants. I prefer real people over imagined vulvas.

When you look at a random adult human on the street, do you feel that you have a good chance of accurately assessing their sex? Or is it all a giant mystery to you and you have no way of telling whether they are male or female?

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? Do you find that you're often attracted to people with beards, chest hair, large adam's apples, flat chests, and narrow hips?

That's irrelevant to the argument you have been making. You claimed that sexual attraction, being attracted to male or female partners, is all about biological sex and that any notion of gender doesn't even start to feed into it. You have previously gone on record saying that what makes a person a man or a woman and what makes sure they can't change from one to the other is their gonads and the type of gametes they produce. If you combine these two claims, it logically follows that in the case of a mismatch between primary and secondary sex traits, it's the primary ones that define who is and who isn't a potential partner for a heterosexual male.

Well, this one heterosexual male here disagrees. I'm attracted to the whole package, of which the vulva is one part I typically haven't even seen when something in me decides I am attracted to that person. If there is no vulva, it makes matters more complicated, but how is it going to magically change the fact that I'm already attracted to that person? We can do ass stuff. We can switch up - I've done strap-on stuff and liked it. That's probably not going to be my first choice for a longterm relationship, but that's about it.

Sexual orientation is about sex. It's not about gender.

Yes, you said that before. You also said that sex, in case of doubt, is all about genitals or more specifically gonads. So the logical interpretation, unless you've switched your definition of "sex" halfway through the discussion (which would be an equivocation fallacy) is that you are claiming sexual attraction is all about genitals. Are you going to defend that claims or wiggle out again?

No, we're not inspecting (or even imagining I hope) other people's genitals before hand - but it's also entirely unnecessary that we do so. Beyond primary sexual characteristics of the reproductive tract, males and females of the human species have evolved a host of secondary sex characteristics that are visible and obvious even when we're fully clothed. Initial sexual attraction takes those visible indicators of sex into consideration.

It is possible for all of us to be *fooled*. People can *mimic* the characteristics of the opposite sex, through clever use of adornment, favorable lighting, filters, and staging... or through chemical and surgical intervention. If you had no prior knowledge, it's entirely possible and even likely that you might find Blair White or Munroe Bergdorf to be attractive. They've both put a lot of money and effort into cosmetic surgery in order to mimic the facial characteristics that are associated with females, and have acquired breasts, and have invested heavily into fashion-based social norms for female adornment and clothing.

The real question is whether or not you would continue to be physically attracted to them when they drop their pants and you see their genitals. As a straight man... how likely do you think you would be to enter into a sexual relationship with someone who has a penis?

I don't see why not. Sure, there are going to be plenty of men (and at least some women) for whom a penis is a definite turn off. There's also plenty of men and women for whom chest hair is a turn off. Given that chest hair is a secondary sex trait, do you think those women are all closeted lesbians? I'm sure there's also plenty of people of any sex for whom dirty talk in a British accent is a definite turn-off, and others for whom it is a turn-on. People's preferences, fantasies and traumas vary.

Let's turn this around: Are you claiming that any straight man who isn't immediately grossed out by someone else's penis is a a closeted gay or bisexual? Are you claiming that a woman who generally finds penises gross (except the one that's currently doing funky stuff to her, but maybe she still can't do blow jobs for that reason) is a closeted lesbian? If you do, can you defend that categorisation?

 

[Jokodo]

Yeah, like, why does she have any right to see some human beings become "sexually mature" in the first place?

This might be one of the least sensible things you've posted.

What? You think you DO have some practical interest more prescient than the interests of the people involved, in their sexual maturity as you define sexual maturity? I would love to see the evidence of the validity of such a interest.

Is that just what you do? Claim ANYONE who disagrees with you is just senseless?

It's senseless because all of the implicit assumptions that you've made, as evidenced by this post, are complete nonsense.

We can start with your assumption that there is a "right" involved at all, let along that I have any interest in "seeing" humans mature. All I've done is to acknowledge that humans - just like every other sexually reproductive species on the planet - has evolved such that sexual maturity is the final stage of our development. All I've done is to recognize that puberty isn't a "choice" that children have a "right" to make.

Your entire premise is nonsense.

Isn't technically the final stage of our development death? Does your argument about rights or the lack thereof extend to delaying death?