Split Gendered spaces, split from Drag Shows

[repoman]

So the vast majority of transgender people who do not fall under these very rare physical conditions have ZERO reason to even talk about those conditions when talking about the gender spectrum. Their original bodies are smack in the middle of one of the bimodal humps.

It is a leaching that is similar to stolen valor for a fully male or female by birth transgender person to try to insinuate they are anything like an intersex person.

 

[Arctish]

So the vast majority of transgender people who do not fall under these very rare physical conditions have ZERO reason to even talk about those conditions when talking about the gender spectrum. Their original bodies are smack in the middle of one of the bimodal humps.

Do you never read what people post in these threads, or never remember what they posted?

 

[Politesse]

So the vast majority of transgender people who do not fall under these very rare physical conditions have ZERO reason to even talk about those conditions when talking about the gender spectrum. Their original bodies are smack in the middle of one of the bimodal humps.

It is a leaching that is similar to stolen valor for a fully male or female by birth transgender person to try to insinuate they are anything like an intersex person.

This would be merely incorrect if it were an uninformed opinion. But as we have been discussing the science of sex and gender expression throughout this thread, it's hard to make the case that a post like this one is anything other than a lie.

 

[Bomb#20]

If in fact the reason Professor Yearwood answered as he did was because he sincerely took the "a man and a woman" bit to mean that Gaines was asking him whether an archaeologist digging up two human skeletons could tell which person had identified as a man and which had identified as a woman, or was asking him whether the archaeologist could tell whether the humans would have been categorized by some unknown remote illiterate culture as man or woman, then Yearwood is an even more complete idiot than the transcript suggests he is. Gaines was plainly not asking him a question about gender identity or cultural gender.

Then she's illiterate on gender studies,

That's entirely likely, but utterly immaterial to whether Yearwood is an idiot who deserves to be laughed at. If he interpreted her question correctly then he's an idiot for claiming you can't tell sex from complete adult skeletons; if he misinterpreted the question and believed it was about gender rather than sex then he's an idiot for assuming a random member of the public was speaking in the private Humpty Dumpty language of gender studies, or, worse, being a gender studies professional without being aware that gender studies uses a private Humpty Dumpty language.

as are you.

That's a baseless inference, an ad hominem, an insult, and possibly a TOU violation.

Nonetheless, there is no other kind of gender than that which is circumscribed by cultural assumptions and values. Gender is a social construction by nature.

So what? Gaines asked a question about sex.

 

[repoman]

Yes, who asks scientists about science questions?

Oh ffs, scientists are not infallible. It really is a religion for you isn’t it? We must not question the high priests who bestow knowledge upon us with their immutable wisdom. Keep your mask on buddy.

So, between scientists, jackasses sitting on their couch, and jackasses sitting in congress do you think is the most.appropriate group to ask about the behavior of reality on a technical level?

If you want to question the high priest, study theology first. Several agnostics/atheists I know here know more about theology than any pastor I have ever met.

If you want to question the scientist, get a science degree.

If you want to quit representing yourself badly, you can probably manage that without doing either of those things, just by shutting up about the technical behavior of reality.

This science field is so political, this is not like quantum physics.

 

[Bomb#20]

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Given the facts you introduced, and bearing in mind that "a man and a woman" does not mean "persons who have not undergone puberty", and bearing in mind that intersex people are rare, and bearing in mind that the question said "two humans", not "partial remains of two humans with the pelvises missing" it appears the correct answer would be something along the lines of "yes, with 99%+ probability of being right." It seems you are calling that answer "no". Why? Are you assuming the question contained an implicit "with 100% certainty" qualifier?

Let's go over it point by point:

By all means.

Males tend to have certain features. Not all males have them, and males are not the only ones who can have them. Therefore, those features might indicate a male but not positively identify one.

Certainly. Two classes of males who can't be distinguished from females based on pelvis shape have been brought up: children and those with intersex conditions. Gaines specified in her question that she was talking about adults; intersex people are less than 2% of the population. Therefore, unless you can point out another category of indistinguishable people, it seems the correct answer is "Yes, with 98%+ probability of correctness".

A person who has not undergone puberty is probably a child but might be someone with Kallman syndrome. If a male person didn't go through puberty but still lived to be 89 years old, would his skeleton indicate he was an elderly child, or an elderly male with unusual features? Would an anthropologist be able to correctly identify their sex from their bones alone?

And wrt intersex conditions being rare:

The most thorough existing research finds intersex people to constitute an estimated 1.7% of the population*, which makes being intersex about as common as having red hair (1%-2%).

Here's a case study of a father of 4 who got a hysterectomy at age 70 <warning: contains graphic photos of the surgery>.

Here is a post from Toni linking to a report of a phenotypically male who fathered a child and apparently also ovulated.

I wonder what their skeletal remains, especially their teeth, would indicate about their sex.

Anyway, you might be able to say that the person whose skeletal remains you are studying was probably a male or a female, but you cannot say for certain, which is the entire point. And that doesn't even begin to address what is meant by the terms 'man' and 'woman' in the English language, or the variety of terms in other languages in cultures that recognize more than two genders.

Two things.

(1) Your "you cannot say for certain" appears to be a "Yes.", to my question, 'Are you assuming the question contained an implicit "with 100% certainty" qualifier?'. Why on earth are you assuming Gaines' question contained a "with 100% certainty" implicit qualifier? That is not how people normally talk. If I ask the pharmacist for a Covid test kit, she'll hand one over; she won't say, "Sorry, we don't carry any test kits with a 0% error rate.". Normal people regard a test with a 98% success rate as meaning you can tell which is which.

(2) As to how rare intersex conditions are, did you follow the links in your link? The source of your 1.7% statistic is Anne Fausto-Sterling.

* The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA), 1993-2008, popularized the “1 in 2000″ (.05%) statistic, but clarified on its website:
“Here’s what we do know: If you ask experts at medical centers how often a child is born so noticeably atypical in terms of genitalia that a specialist in sex differentiation is called in, the number comes out to about 1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 births. But a lot more people than that are born with subtler forms of sex anatomy variations, some of which won’t show up until later in life. Below we provide a summary of statistics drawn from an article by Brown University researcher Anne Fausto-Sterling….” (http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency).​

According to that summary:

Not XX and not XY one in 1,666 births
Klinefelter (XXY) one in 1,000 births
Androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 13,000 births
Partial androgen insensitivity syndrome one in 130,000 births
Classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia one in 13,000 births
Late onset adrenal hyperplasia one in 66 individuals
Vaginal agenesis one in 6,000 births
Ovotestes one in 83,000 births
Idiopathic (no discernable medical cause) one in 110,000 births
Iatrogenic (caused by medical treatment, for instance progestin administered to pregnant mother) no estimate
5 alpha reductase deficiency no estimate
Mixed gonadal dysgenesis no estimate
Complete gonadal dysgenesis one in 150,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening in perineum or along penile shaft) one in 2,000 births
Hypospadias (urethral opening between corona and tip of glans penis) one in 770 births​

As you can see, the 1.7% statistic is utterly dominated by one specific subtler form of sex anatomy variation, late onset adrenal hyperplasia.

That matters. Late onset adrenal hyperplasia gives people excess levels of androgens; it does not give women male-form pelvises. So it seems the right answer really is "Yes, with 99%+ probability", not just "Yes, with 98%+ probability".

(Incidentally, according to Wikipedia,

Anne Fausto-Sterling, an American sexologist, in a 2000 book "Sexing the Body" came up with an estimate that people with intersex conditions account for 1.7% of the general population.[58] These estimates are cited by a number of prominent intersex advocacy organizations.[59][60][61][62] Of these intersex individuals, according to Fausto-Sterling, 88% have LOCAH.[58] Leonard Sax, an American psychologist and a family physician, criticized these figures in a review published in 2002 in The Journal of Sex Research, stating that from the clinician's perspective, LOCAH is not an intersex condition.[63] Including LOCAH in intersex prevalence estimates has been cited as an example of misleading statistical practice.​

)

 

[Arctish]

How did you arrive at that conclusion? Given the facts you introduced, and bearing in mind that "a man and a woman" does not mean "persons who have not undergone puberty", and bearing in mind that intersex people are rare, and bearing in mind that the question said "two humans", not "partial remains of two humans with the pelvises missing" it appears the correct answer would be something along the lines of "yes, with 99%+ probability of being right." It seems you are calling that answer "no". Why? Are you assuming the question contained an implicit "with 100% certainty" qualifier?

Let's go over it point by point:

By all means.

Males tend to have certain features. Not all males have them, and males are not the only ones who can have them. Therefore, those features might indicate a male but not positively identify one.

Certainly. Two classes of males who can't be distinguished from females based on pelvis shape have been brought up: children and those with intersex conditions. Gaines specified in her question that she was talking about adults; intersex people are less than 2% of the population. Therefore, unless you can point out another category of indistinguishable people, it seems the correct answer is "Yes, with 98%+ probability of correctness".

A person who has not undergone puberty is probably a child but might be someone with Kallman syndrome. If a male person didn't go through puberty but still lived to be 89 years old, would his skeleton indicate he was an elderly child, or an elderly male with unusual features? Would an anthropologist be able to correctly identify their sex from their bones alone?

And wrt intersex conditions being rare:

The most thorough existing research finds intersex people to constitute an estimated 1.7% of the population*, which makes being intersex about as common as having red hair (1%-2%).

Here's a case study of a father of 4 who got a hysterectomy at age 70 <warning: contains graphic photos of the surgery>.

Here is a post from Toni linking to a report of a phenotypically male who fathered a child and apparently also ovulated.

I wonder what their skeletal remains, especially their teeth, would indicate about their sex.

Anyway, you might be able to say that the person whose skeletal remains you are studying was probably a male or a female, but you cannot say for certain, which is the entire point. And that doesn't even begin to address what is meant by the terms 'man' and 'woman' in the English language, or the variety of terms in other languages in cultures that recognize more than two genders.

Two things.

(1) Your "you cannot say for certain" appears to be a "Yes.", to my question, 'Are you assuming the question contained an implicit "with 100% certainty" qualifier?'. Why on earth are you assuming Gaines' question contained a "with 100% certainty" implicit qualifier? That is not how people normally talk. If I ask the pharmacist for a Covid test kit, she'll hand one over; she won't say, "Sorry, we don't carry any test kits with a 0% error rate.". Normal people regard a test with a 98% success rate as meaning you can tell which is which.

The question was "If you were to dig up a human — two humans — a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?"

You can tell that they are different individuals. You can make an educated guess about the sex of each individual with a high probability of being correct. But there is no definitive feature of bones that only males have, or only females lack, or that only males lack and only females have. Even the karyotype doesn't yield a clear, definitive answer.

 

[Jarhyn]

This science field is so political, this is not like quantum physics.

No, this science field is so attacked by politicians.

There is a difference.

Being biased as politicians still does not challenge the science, which has been discussed at least by me completely agnostic to ALL questions of gender, sexuality, and even considerations of "man" and "woman"

I look at it with the two actual scientific dimensions, reproductive chemistry, and hormone impacts on neurological structures.

Those are the two things that matter and because it is "people with eggs" asking for a safe harbor, the only ethical demand of safe harbors that the production of a chemical structure -- the egg -- yields is against chemicals that react in non-agnostoc ways to eggs.

This is exactly "sperms, and abortifacient drugs", due to the science which yields the very idea of female as a concrete category owing to a chemical structure.

That is the topic under which the spaces were split primarily. That is the safe harbor "female people" have a right to, because it is the only situation that is threat to the one necessary and sufficient element of "female anatomy" specifically (the egg).

Things which are agnostic to exactly "egg" have no leverage on "female" because that's the nature of biology.

If you wish to argue that there is some other factor than "egg", I offer you "testosterone".

Discussions of testosterone are also scientific: it is a chemical and it has a measurable concentration, with both mind altering effects and effects on the growth of muscle mass, assuming the person with testicles does not have a genetic resistance to testosterone.

This is the science. See it? Nowhere does it talk about man/woman. Everywhere, it bears concern and recognition only of actual physical structures with tight definitions that bind to chemistry and physical structures.

Already thought these two facts make for the world at least four categories, not two: egg/sperm (2) x (2) testosterone/not.

If you want to bring estrogen into the conversation, that brings us up to 8 categories; you just gotta love those geometric growth rates

None of that is political or politically motivated. It's just dry fact based on the scientific definitions and understanding of things.

The only thing I see bringing politics into it is when bad faith arguments are brought up over whether "women" deserve a league where they don't have to compete with "non-women", and whether people should be ejected from a space because people are afraid of their skin color genital shape.

If someone had between their legs a MORE effective mechanism for prodding at someone's genitals than a hand with many bony fingers covered with sharpish plates on the end of a long dexterous arm (like a gun), then maybe they would have an argument against those person's too, but then.

The fact here is that penises without testicles are being treated as "more dangerous/suspicious than a gun" for political reasons.

Whenever you bring up politics, the politics you bring up are your own.

I have exactly two ethical concerns: bodily autonomy to defer against deferrable developmental stages; the ability to, as a mentally developed adult, make ongoing decisions as to whether to defer or modify hormones within the range of observed human experience (assuming that this does not create an outsized social risk).

If you want to stop politicizing it, please, by all means, you and your friends should stop politicizing it.

 

[Politesse]

whether Yearwood is an idiot who deserves to be laughed at. If he interpreted her question correctly then he's an idiot for claiming you can't tell sex from complete adult skeletons; if he misinterpreted the question and believed it was about gender rather than sex then he's an idiot for assuming a random member of the public was speaking in the private Humpty Dumpty language of gender studies, or, worse, being a gender studies professional without being aware that gender studies uses a private Humpty Dumpty language.

If by "private Humpty Dumpty language" you mean the correct use of terms, a college is exactly where you should expect to find your "Humpty Dumpty language" spoken. And as I have noted, his statement was correct however you interpret her question, even though I am equally certain that no anthropologist is going to make the mistake of assuming that "a man" and "biologically male" are synonyms. "A man" is fundamentally a social term, not a biological descriptor. This is as true of "common usage" as it is of Egg People usage. No matter one's political bias: a lantana tree can be phenotypically male, it can never be "a man". Because "a man and male" are not synonyms. My father can decry me for crying after a football game on the grounds that I am not "taking it like a man" and be entirely correct from his perspective, but my genotype will not have changed due to my failure of expected gender roles.

And as you can't always determine biological sex from skeletal remains either, his answer is correct in any case, certainly not laughable.

That's a baseless inference, an ad hominem, an insult, and possibly a TOU violation.

I apologize for causing offense. If it makes you feel any better, I do not personally regard illiteracy as a personal quality, let alone a personal insult. It's a simple fact that both you and this presenter haven't actually done any reading on the subject of forensic anthropology, at least not that came from an academic source. She couldn't even correctly define the field, and you're both displayong wholesale unfamiliarity with its basic terms and concepts, "implying" without basis that without a political bias a scientist would magically be able to correctly sex every skeleton when it simply is not so. What such a belief implies about sex and gender -that there is a clear binary of two non overlapping categories of sexual expression on the biological level, and that this is always what cultural terms like "man" and "woman" refer to - is also simply not so.

I find it quite telling that you are obseessing over the presumed social intent over my postings rather than their scientific content. You find it insulting to be accused of politicizing the debate, but you aren't engaging with it scientifically, so what are we left with?

 

[TSwizzle]

The absurdity of it all;

This is the moment a male coach claims to be a woman and smashes the female bench press record at a powerlifting competition in Canada. Bearded Avi Silverberg is shown calmly approaching the bench in men's clothing as part of a protest against gender self-identification policies in sport. Silverberg then unofficially breaks the female bench press record for the 84+ kilograms women's category, which was a 270lbs press - officially set by a trans lifter. The Canadian rules allow anybody who self-identifies as a woman to compete in the female category, sparking concerns trans women who've gone through male puberty may have a considerable physical advantage over biological female rivals. Silverberg smashed the record set by transgender powerlifter Anne Andres, who has previously mocked women for being 'so bad' at bench pressing. 'Why is women's bench so bad?' she said in February. 'I mean not compared to me, we all know that I'm a tranny freak, so that doesn't count. 'I mean, standard bench in powerlifting competitions for women. I literally don't understand why it's so bad.'

Daily Mail

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This hair splitting is so far removed from everyday reality.

So weird.

It requires a decent amount of scientific knowledge to follow but it's a reasonable comparison, as is the comparison to programming objects. However, this discussion has made me realize that our categories were wrong.

class Atom()
class NobleAtom() : Atom
class ReducingAtom() : Atom
class OxidizingAtom() : Atom
class BackboneAtom() : Atom
// I don't really know what to call this one--carbon and the stuff below it, the midpoint between oxidizing and reducing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

When sexing skeletons, they are normally making an assumption that the case is normal, and we can observe while that is true of many, it is not true of every example.

There are XY folks born with ovaries and vaginas and who eventually go on to give birth.

There are XX folks who end up fertilizing and raising a child from their sperms.

When someone looks at bones, they may be looking at an XY female with particular structures that commonly but not universally are seen alongside ovarian tissue and call it a "woman", then do a DNA test and say "oops, XY, guess it's a man" and then see "oh, they are buried as a woman they must have been trans or gay" and then we get that wrong too, because all their life they were a woman and happy to be it and never thought differently from that, and they raised a child from their own womb.

Thought here--what happens with the pelvic girdles of the guevedoces? Google is not giving me anything.

 

[Toni]

It really is a religion;

An anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh denied the difference between male and female skeletons to derisive laughter from students during a speaking engagement from college swimming champion Riley Gaines.

Daily Mail

Gabby Yearwood is a professor whose research focuses on 'the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora' according to his bio.

Jeezus, what a pile of claptrap that lot is.

From that very same article:

According to the Smithsonian: 'Males tend to have larger, more robust bones and joint surfaces, and more bone development at muscle attachment sites. However, the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator, because of distinct features adapted for childbearing.

'The skull also has features that can indicate sex, though slightly less reliably.'

They note that sex-related differences are not obvious in the bones of pre-pubescent children.

However, Discover Magazine notes that skeletal studies regarding sex can lead to 'profound mistakes' and can ignore the existence of intersex people, who are born with a mix of X and Y chromosomes.

Males tend to have certain features (not always have and not only males can have them), skull features can indicate sex though less reliably, and sex-related differences are not obvious on the skeletons of persons who have not undergone puberty. Also, there's the matter of intersex people.

So the correct answer to the question 'If you were to dig up a human — two humans — a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?', is "no".

I don't know why members of the audience were laughing but I suspect it had something to do with ignorance and dogma.

You could not, no. You are correct.

It is, however, possible for some to see if they were strictly "male" or "female", through evidence of proteins that deposit in the teeth.

It would in fact be a smoking gun to whatever precursor, be it sperm production egg production, or hormone productions of some kind, in a way that bones alone, in a way that even DNA, is not.

It still won't tell you whether they were a man or a woman.

Not entirely accurate. If one skeleton had a pelvic girdle that indicated a term or near term pregnancy, it would be possible to determine that the skeleton belonged to a female individual.

 

[Jarhyn]

It really is a religion;

An anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh denied the difference between male and female skeletons to derisive laughter from students during a speaking engagement from college swimming champion Riley Gaines.

Daily Mail

Gabby Yearwood is a professor whose research focuses on 'the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora' according to his bio.

Jeezus, what a pile of claptrap that lot is.

From that very same article:

According to the Smithsonian: 'Males tend to have larger, more robust bones and joint surfaces, and more bone development at muscle attachment sites. However, the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator, because of distinct features adapted for childbearing.

'The skull also has features that can indicate sex, though slightly less reliably.'

They note that sex-related differences are not obvious in the bones of pre-pubescent children.

However, Discover Magazine notes that skeletal studies regarding sex can lead to 'profound mistakes' and can ignore the existence of intersex people, who are born with a mix of X and Y chromosomes.

Males tend to have certain features (not always have and not only males can have them), skull features can indicate sex though less reliably, and sex-related differences are not obvious on the skeletons of persons who have not undergone puberty. Also, there's the matter of intersex people.

So the correct answer to the question 'If you were to dig up a human — two humans — a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?', is "no".

I don't know why members of the audience were laughing but I suspect it had something to do with ignorance and dogma.

You could not, no. You are correct.

It is, however, possible for some to see if they were strictly "male" or "female", through evidence of proteins that deposit in the teeth.

It would in fact be a smoking gun to whatever precursor, be it sperm production egg production, or hormone productions of some kind, in a way that bones alone, in a way that even DNA, is not.

It still won't tell you whether they were a man or a woman.

Not entirely accurate. If one skeleton had a pelvic girdle that indicated a term or near term pregnancy, it would be possible to determine that the skeleton belonged to a female individual.

No, it would be possible to determine that the the skeleton belonged to an individual whose body contained a fetus-sized mass in a similar position to a fetus.

While that is "almost always", it is not certain. You still have to give error bars.

 

[Toni]

It really is a religion;

An anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh denied the difference between male and female skeletons to derisive laughter from students during a speaking engagement from college swimming champion Riley Gaines.

Daily Mail

Gabby Yearwood is a professor whose research focuses on 'the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora' according to his bio.

Jeezus, what a pile of claptrap that lot is.

From that very same article:

According to the Smithsonian: 'Males tend to have larger, more robust bones and joint surfaces, and more bone development at muscle attachment sites. However, the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator, because of distinct features adapted for childbearing.

'The skull also has features that can indicate sex, though slightly less reliably.'

They note that sex-related differences are not obvious in the bones of pre-pubescent children.

However, Discover Magazine notes that skeletal studies regarding sex can lead to 'profound mistakes' and can ignore the existence of intersex people, who are born with a mix of X and Y chromosomes.

Males tend to have certain features (not always have and not only males can have them), skull features can indicate sex though less reliably, and sex-related differences are not obvious on the skeletons of persons who have not undergone puberty. Also, there's the matter of intersex people.

So the correct answer to the question 'If you were to dig up a human — two humans — a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?', is "no".

I don't know why members of the audience were laughing but I suspect it had something to do with ignorance and dogma.

You could not, no. You are correct.

It is, however, possible for some to see if they were strictly "male" or "female", through evidence of proteins that deposit in the teeth.

It would in fact be a smoking gun to whatever precursor, be it sperm production egg production, or hormone productions of some kind, in a way that bones alone, in a way that even DNA, is not.

It still won't tell you whether they were a man or a woman.

Not entirely accurate. If one skeleton had a pelvic girdle that indicated a term or near term pregnancy, it would be possible to determine that the skeleton belonged to a female individual.

No, it would be possible to determine that the the skeleton belonged to an individual whose body contained a fetus-sized mass in a similar position to a fetus.

While that is "almost always", it is not certain. You still have to give error bars.

No: in humans, pregnancy and child bearing is a female thing.

This is not to say that the person considered themselves a woman or whether they lived as a man or as a woman or neither. We can tell some things about a person’s lifestyle, diet, health, occupation, where they lived, age at death and often, causes of death or likely causes. We cannot tell from a male skeleton if this individual fathered children, lived as a man or a woman, was gay or straight ir bisexual. Examination of dna might provide clues as to whether the person was typically male with XY chromosomes. But the skeleton would show whether it was typical male or typical female skeletal remains.

There are sometimes exceptional individuals who do not exhibit every characteristic associated with male or female. Unless the remains are discovered with items of clothing, jewelry, tools, etc. that confirm or contrast with what the skeletal remains tell us, we have only the skeletal remains, the shape of the bones, how the joints are formed, west on joints and bones, origins and insertions of tendons and ligaments, etc. we can tell a lot about diet and Agra’s well. Genetic analysis can confirm gross anatomical features—or not, providing other clues about the individual and how they lived. But probably not who they lived or if they lived or firmed a close relationship with others.

 

[Jarhyn]

It really is a religion;

An anthropology professor at the University of Pittsburgh denied the difference between male and female skeletons to derisive laughter from students during a speaking engagement from college swimming champion Riley Gaines.

Daily Mail

Gabby Yearwood is a professor whose research focuses on 'the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora' according to his bio.

Jeezus, what a pile of claptrap that lot is.

From that very same article:

According to the Smithsonian: 'Males tend to have larger, more robust bones and joint surfaces, and more bone development at muscle attachment sites. However, the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator, because of distinct features adapted for childbearing.

'The skull also has features that can indicate sex, though slightly less reliably.'

They note that sex-related differences are not obvious in the bones of pre-pubescent children.

However, Discover Magazine notes that skeletal studies regarding sex can lead to 'profound mistakes' and can ignore the existence of intersex people, who are born with a mix of X and Y chromosomes.

Males tend to have certain features (not always have and not only males can have them), skull features can indicate sex though less reliably, and sex-related differences are not obvious on the skeletons of persons who have not undergone puberty. Also, there's the matter of intersex people.

So the correct answer to the question 'If you were to dig up a human — two humans — a hundred years from now, both a man and a woman, could you tell the difference strictly off of bones?', is "no".

I don't know why members of the audience were laughing but I suspect it had something to do with ignorance and dogma.

You could not, no. You are correct.

It is, however, possible for some to see if they were strictly "male" or "female", through evidence of proteins that deposit in the teeth.

It would in fact be a smoking gun to whatever precursor, be it sperm production egg production, or hormone productions of some kind, in a way that bones alone, in a way that even DNA, is not.

It still won't tell you whether they were a man or a woman.

Not entirely accurate. If one skeleton had a pelvic girdle that indicated a term or near term pregnancy, it would be possible to determine that the skeleton belonged to a female individual.

No, it would be possible to determine that the the skeleton belonged to an individual whose body contained a fetus-sized mass in a similar position to a fetus.

While that is "almost always", it is not certain. You still have to give error bars.

No: in humans, pregnancy and child bearing is a female thing.

This is not to say that the person considered themselves a woman or whether they lived as a man or as a woman or neither. We can tell some things about a person’s lifestyle, diet, health, occupation, where they lived, age at death and often, causes of death or likely causes. We cannot tell from a male skeleton if this individual fathered children, lived as a man or a woman, was gay or straight ir bisexual. Examination of dna might provide clues as to whether the person was typically male with XY chromosomes. But the skeleton would show whether it was typical male or typical female skeletal remains.

There are sometimes exceptional individuals who do not exhibit every characteristic associated with male or female. Unless the remains are discovered with items of clothing, jewelry, tools, etc. that confirm or contrast with what the skeletal remains tell us, we have only the skeletal remains, the shape of the bones, how the joints are formed, west on joints and bones, origins and insertions of tendons and ligaments, etc. we can tell a lot about diet and Agra’s well. Genetic analysis can confirm gross anatomical features—or not, providing other clues about the individual and how they lived. But probably not who they lived or if they lived or firmed a close relationship with others.

Read my post. Then say the words "fetus sized mass". And then say the word "tumor".

As is said, conformity changes to the pelvic girdle as a direct result of pregnancy are not necessarily distinguishable from conformity changes to the pelvic girdle as a result of a massive sarcoma.

 

[Bomb#20]

whether Yearwood is an idiot who deserves to be laughed at. If he interpreted her question correctly then he's an idiot for claiming you can't tell sex from complete adult skeletons; if he misinterpreted the question and believed it was about gender rather than sex then he's an idiot for assuming a random member of the public was speaking in the private Humpty Dumpty language of gender studies, or, worse, being a gender studies professional without being aware that gender studies uses a private Humpty Dumpty language.

If by "private Humpty Dumpty language" you mean the correct use of terms, a college is exactly where you should expect to find your "Humpty Dumpty language" spoken.

"Correct use of terms" is a phrase that here means "which is to be master–that's all". When academics appropriate a word from the public and make up a technical meaning for it, they are creating a private language. They are not rendering the public's long-standing usage no longer "correct". You regarding yourself and your colleagues as the Academie Anglaise does not make it so.

And as I have noted, his statement was correct however you interpret her question,

Utter bosh. You are simply making up a "with 100% certainty" qualifier out of whole cloth and imputing it to her question, where there is no evidence that she meant anything of the sort.

even though I am equally certain that no anthropologist is going to make the mistake of assuming that "a man" and "biologically male" are synonyms.

Are you being deliberately obtuse for rhetorical purposes? Gaines asked about "a man" because she meant "a man", not because she meant "biologically male" and didn't know the difference. A boy is not a man. Boys' skeletons look more like girls' skeletons than men's skeletons look like women's skeletons, and therefore "you can't always determine biological sex from skeletal remains" is perfectly true; but that undisputed fact about children's skeletons has no magical power to make "no" the correct answer to Gaines' question, which was about adults.

"A man" is fundamentally a social term, not a biological descriptor.

That depends on context, obviously.

This is as true of "common usage" as it is of Egg People usage. No matter one's political bias: a lantana tree can be phenotypically male, it can never be "a man". Because "a man and male" are not synonyms.

And the reason you keep harping on that even though nobody here equated "man" and "male" is because you are strawmanning me. Gaines did not ask if lantana trees could be sexed from their skeletons.

My father can decry me for crying after a football game on the grounds that I am not "taking it like a man" and be entirely correct from his perspective, but my genotype will not have changed due to my failure of expected gender roles.

Oh for the love of god.

If either Yearwood or you believe Gaines was asking "could you tell which one cried when his or her team lost a football game strictly off of bones", then that itself is grounds for being laughed at. What "a man" means depends on context, and in the context where Gaines said it, she transparently meant a medically male adult.

And as you can't always determine biological sex from skeletal remains either, his answer is correct in any case, certainly not laughable.

And as Gaines didn't say "always", and as that's something you inserted in an attempt to make Yearwood's answer non-laughable by moving the goalposts, and as you also keep moving the goalposts by trying to expand the category to include children, and as complete adult skeletons can be sexed with reliability exceeding 99%, his answer is operationally incorrect, and laughably so.

as are you.

That's a baseless inference, an ad hominem, an insult, and possibly a TOU violation.

I apologize for causing offense. If it makes you feel any better

It's not about feelings and apologies; it's about you using those underhanded tactics because you can't make a rhetorical case for your opinion without taking the low road.

, I do not personally regard illiteracy as a personal quality, let alone a personal insult. It's a simple fact that both you and this presenter haven't actually done any reading on the subject of forensic anthropology, at least not that came from an academic source.

You made that up. Yes, I have, and you did not have a reason to think I haven't.

... you're both displayong wholesale unfamiliarity with its basic terms and concepts,

You made that up. I displayed nothing of the sort. You might as well infer that someone can't speak French because you observe him speaking English. I'm sure there are snobs out there who take for granted that if a person can speak French he'd regard speaking English as beneath him, but assuming others are as snobby as you does not qualify as a reason to infer wholesale unfamiliarity.

"implying" without basis that without a political bias a scientist would magically be able to correctly sex every skeleton when it simply is not so.

I implied nothing of the sort. That's just you moving the goalposts yet again.

What such a belief implies about sex and gender -that there is a clear binary of two non overlapping categories of sexual expression on the biological level, and that this is always what cultural terms like "man" and "woman" refer to - is also simply not so.

Your premise is false. Garbage in, garbage out.

I find it quite telling that you are obseessing over the presumed social intent over my postings rather than their scientific content.

Their "scientific content" was you introducing facts that do not refute the opposing position, and strawmanning the opposing position to make it appear to careless readers that you refuted claims you have not in fact refuted. You are trying to win a debate by rhetoric without earning victory.

You find it insulting to be accused of politicizing the debate,

You know, the exchange is right there where everyone can review it. What I said was insulting was you calling me "illiterate on gender studies". Feel free to accuse me of politicizing the debate; but we didn't start the fire. The "transwomen are women" folks politicized it first when you deprived women of their single-sex retreats, and used word-games like that one to bully women into putting up with it.

 

[Emily Lake]

You clearly don't know how to tell the difference between statistical categories which are imaginary (like data types) and things which are fundamental (like instruction types).

Data types are not statistical categories. Seriously, do you think there's some probabilistic uncertainty between integers and strings? Furthermore, this is completely irrelevant to this discussion.

Data types are defined elements that come with limitations on what can be included as well as strict requirements around how those data types can be manipulated within their analytic environment. They are representational... but there is no element of statistics involved in those representational categories. They share far less in common with statistics than with theoretical mathematics.

As far as instruction types being fundamental... please explain what this means. What are "instruction types" and in what way are they "fundamental", and while you're at it, what do you mean by "fundamental" in the first place?

 

[Emily Lake]

Except that I am not saying that we cannot know if anything is real. If you think I am, then you have misunderstood my position.

Perhaps I have. That remains to be seen

Categories are real and useful tools that help us to understand reality.

But they're not reality itself, and reality trumps any categorisation scheme we can come up with.

Okay... except these are not invented from nothing categories we're talking about, which we're trying to force things into. This isn't a cluster algorithm we're talking about. This is an observation of thousands of years and millions of species. Sex is one of the LEAST flexible elements in the kingdom animalia.

Your insistence that sex (or gender, or whatever) is strictly dichotomous and that all individuals can and must fit into one and only one of two and only two categories, is simply wrong - that is, it doesn't conform with the observed reality.

Gender is, in my opinion, utter balderdash. Gender is a socially constructed set of constraints, which have been tied to sex for most of our history.

Sex, however, is strictly dichotomous in humans, as it is in all other mammals, and the overwhelming majority of vertebrates. And given individual within a species can only be one or the other - but at no point have I suggested that this is always easy to determine.

If you wish to prove me wrong, all you need to do is find an example of a mammal which has a reproductive anatomy that has evolved to produce a sperg. Alternatively, you can produce an example of a mammal which has a reproductive anatomy that has evolved to produce a third gamete which is neither an egg nor a sperm. That's all that is required in order to prove that sex is not binary in mammals. Nothing more... but also nothing less.

Because the observed reality is that mammals are EITHER male OR female. They are never BOTH, nor are they ever SOMETHING ELSE. While it is incredibly easy to discern the sex of most mammals, there are some individual specimens that have disorders of development that make the expression of their sex-related characteristics ambiguous or confusing. But it remains true of observed reality that no mammal has a reproductive system that has evolved to produce a blended gamete or a third type of gamete.

Look, let's make a really bad analogy. Let's say I give you a really long decimal number, with thousands of decimal positions included. If that number is 3.1212121212121212 it's pretty easy for you to determine that it's a rational number. But I could give you a number that has a decimal component that is 50 spaces long before it repeats. It might be difficult for you to discern that it is a rational number... but it is still a rational number. By definition it is a rational number. On the other hand... you could stare at pi for every second of the rest of your life and it's not going to repeat. It is by definition an irrational number.

Just because it's difficult to determine whether a really long number is rational or irrational doesn't mean that it is both rational and irrational, and it certainly doesn't mean that it's neither.

It's not very wrong; The vast majority of humans do indeed fit easily into that dichotomy. But to demand or claim that every last single human does, for any given definition (and there are dozens of definitions, each useful in different ways and different contexts) is simply to make a demonstrably false claim.

There are a lot of definitions that people have crafted in order to support whatever pet beliefs they hold. There is also, however, a consistent and well-supported scientific definition that holds true across all known sexually reproducing species. Why should I be bothered with someone's made-to-fit narrative definition?

Not every human (or mammal) fits EASILY into the biological definition of male and female... but none fall outside of those definition. I never said every case was easy, and in fact I'm quite aware that some specific cases are more difficult to determine.

I once again invite you to present any single counterexample of a mammalian reproductive anatomy that has evolved to produce a sperg, or a mammalian reproductive anatomy that has evolved to produce a third type of gamete.

Let me remind you of the definition I am using: Males are those members of a species who are of the reproductive phenotype evolved to produce and deliver small gametes. Females are those members of a species who are of the reproductive phenotype evolved to produce and deliver large gametes.

This definition does not imply that any given individual within the species actually produces those gametes, only that they are of that reproductive phenotype. It doesn't even imply that every member of a sex has every single component of a given phenotype. What it implies is that there is not a third phenotype, nor is there a third gamete. There is not an in-between phenotype, because there is not an in-between gamete. The definition doesn't demand strict conformity, and it doesn't rule out developmental disorders, deformities, anomalies, or mutations. The definition doesn't imply that it is always easy to tell.

Reality (particularly in biology) is under no obligation to be a neat or as simple as we would like it to be. Your desire to have a simple model is not a sufficient reason to declare that your simple model is an exact match for reality.

Reality is under no obligation to do anything, sure. But reality is supported by the definition that evolutionary biologists use for sex... and reality is NOT supported by any of the other definitions that have been vaguely hinted at without actually being supplied in this thread. And reality certainly seems to be better explained by the definition I've provided than by any of the non-definitions and hand-waving "it's complicated" that have so far been presented.

But by all means, if you think my definition is wrong, please provide a counterexample. Any mammal with a thirds type of reproductive system, evolved for a third type of gamete is sufficient.

That's not solipsism, nor is it post modernism. Those are just insulting labels you're sticking on your opponents to avoid the risk inherent in thinking about what they're actually saying, which could lead to disastrous consequences such as your being forced to recognise that you are not one hundred percent correct about everything.

"Everything is made up, you can't actually tell what's real" is solipsism and/or post-modernism. And at present, it's an appropriate description of the approach that Jaryn and you have put forth. I've given a lot of thought to the definition that I have adopted. This is not my field of expertise, but it certainly seems to be the definition accepted and used by evolutionary biologists. The only biologists I've seen who fall back on "oh sex is super complicated, you just totally can't tell" approaches are those who disingenuously use disorders of sexual development as a magical gotcha in their quest to insist that gender identity is just as real and objective as sex. They obfuscate sex, they obscure reality in order to make everything seem squishy... all to reach support their errant conclusion that a person's subjective internal gender identity is just as impactful as the observable reality of material sex.

 

[Emily Lake]

Especially when this sophomoric and solipsistic foil is used to support such complete inanities are Jarhyn's claim that male and female are imaginary.

I don't think you're considering sufficiently the significant differences between "imaginary" and "useless". They are far from synonymous.

They're only "imaginary" in the sense that humans invented a word to describe the two observed sexes. Relying on the fact that humans invented a word to describe a material reality in order to dismiss that material reality is 100% silly games.

Seriously, humans made up the word "star" to describe what we saw in the night sky. Does that mean that the category of "star" is imaginary? There are fairly rigorous definitions of what makes an astronomical object a "star". Those definitions are based on millions of observations and analysis. I don't think it's even remotely rational or reasonable to say "the category of star is imaginary".

In fact, I think it's silly games to say such a thing. I think it's intentional obfuscation.

Male and female are certainly imaginary categories, though that's not a particularly interesting observation to make; They are, more interestingly, very useful categories - as long as nobody's stupid enough to think that they are sufficient to usefully describe every single person.

Your ultra-conservative position that says every human fits into one, and only one, of two, and only two, categories is just as nonsensical as the post-modernist position that nothing can be categorised at all. Both extremes are absurd. Accusing others of adhering to one extreme, so that you can justify adhering to the other, is also absurd.

Again, all you have to do to prove me wrong is to present a species of mammal that has evolved a reproductive anatomy that supports the production of a sperg... or the reproductive anatomy of a new and distinctly different gamete. Shouldn't be too hard.

Otherwise, calling my position "ultra-conservative" is nothing more than an attempt to poison the well by applying a partisan specter to what is actually a matter of scientific definition.