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The issue seems to be confusion of the word gender and trans. The term "gender" has traditionally referred to the sex of the person when say someone is asked "what is the gender of your new baby?". It's never been common to ask "what is the sex of your new baby?".
The trans movement is trying to redefine "gender" as "gender identity". That's a mistake. When using the term "gender" they should always add "ID" to it. But they don't. Thus when writing something like "trans gender" would be better, and clearer, to write "trans gender ID".
In this way it would be clear that the trans movement acknowledge that sex can not be transitioned, but gender ID can. Thus when speaking say of a "trans woman" it would be more correct to say "trans ID of a woman".
No disagreement from me, but that's not really touching on an argument for or against the thread topic.
Just because sex is binary (which it definitely is), does it then follow that gender always has to = sex? I don't know if a biologist can really weigh in on that one.
No disagreement from me, but that's not really touching on an argument for or against the thread topic.
Just because sex is binary (which it definitely is), does it then follow that gender always has to = sex? I don't know if a biologist can really weigh in on that one.
Since sex is indeed binary, rights and privileges that flow from sex also are binary. Only biological females should compete in female sports, for example. Actuarial calculations that are the underpinnings of insurance must be based on biological sex and not muddied. Clinical trials of medicine must contemplate biological sex. Etc, etc etc.
When [we] biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.
Intersex people, whose genitalia appear ambiguous or mixed, don’t undermine the sex binary. Many gender ideologues, however, falsely claim the existence of intersex conditions renders the categories “male” and “female” arbitrary and meaningless.
And
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In reality, the existence of borderline cases no more raises questions about everyone else’s sex than the existence of dawn and dusk casts doubt on day and night. For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.
No disagreement from me, but that's not really touching on an argument for or against the thread topic.
Just because sex is binary (which it definitely is), does it then follow that gender always has to = sex? I don't know if a biologist can really weigh in on that one.
Since sex is indeed binary, rights and privileges that flow from sex also are binary. Only biological females should compete in female sports, for example. Actuarial calculations that are the underpinnings of insurance must be based on biological sex and not muddied. Clinical trials of medicine must contemplate biological sex. Etc, etc etc.
That's so "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Leave it to Beaver." You need to change with the times, even if biology hasn't. Oops, I'm falling for it too.
That's so "Ozzie and Harriet" or "Leave it to Beaver." You need to change with the times, even if biology hasn't. Oops, I'm falling for it too.
It has changed with the times because they know more about the biological bias of sex. In humans the Y chromosome or more specially an gene on the Y chromosome causes the fetus to develop male genitals.
The short in order to be come a "Normal" male a sequence of events has to start and they are triggered by the SRY gene on the Y chromosome. Otherwise a female will develop. So the default gender for humans is female unless the SRY gene triggers. In addition to that triggering additional steps involving hormone production is needed to complete the task.
For things like broad shoulders deep voice, hairiness, formation of the external male genitals and the decent of testis many things must happen both in the womb, childhood, and puberty. This says nothing about any brain development or other things involved with sexual attraction or how one feels about their sexual presentation.
When that sequence does not happen you can get a woman with XY chromosomes. She develops normal looking external genital but the internal ones are often not functional. In this case actual hormone replacement therapy may be needed to get breast development and for her health. A side effect of this is that depending on the development of the uterus she may even be infertile (no egg) but have menstruation! She can even get pregnant via the implantation of a donated egg.
Anyway the biological concept of sex is more complicated than simply male or female and there are some social concepts of gender such as what makes a skirt appropriate for a woman but not a man but a quilt appropriate for a man but not a woman.....they are both pieces of material worn round the waste.
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Originally Posted by moguldreamer
Since sex is indeed binary, rights and privileges that flow from sex also are binary. Only biological females should compete in female sports, for example. Actuarial calculations that are the underpinnings of insurance must be based on biological sex and not muddied. Clinical trials of medicine must contemplate biological sex. Etc, etc etc.
The Soviet Union screened for XY females to compete in Olympic sports because they thought that they had an edge!
Last edited by Mike from back east; 04-17-2023 at 02:34 PM..
Reason: Merged 2:1
No offense but I'd like to see stats on the bolded part (I like to see stats on everything). I'm only 62 so too young to remember the 1950's and earlier when children were punished for writing left-handed. Then again, my wife's brother is left-handed and 71 years old, and has no stories of being punished in his Appalachian schools, that I know of. Gerald Ford, Reagan, Bush 43, Clinton, and Obama all seem to have turned out OK. My younger son is a lefty, and I notice these things. Are stories of left-handed suppression overblown? IDK.
Historically, all kinds of conformity "used to be" forced on people, especially children, but I have not seen the militancy surrounding other formerly suppressed groups that I've seen with the trans community.
I'm in my 30s and teachers tried to stop me from writing with my left hand. I think it was my granny who went up to the school to tell them about themselves. I was actually ambidexterous because of it, until about sixth or seventh grade, when I stopped writing right handed. I admit that being left handed seems to keep from writing fluently by order of pushing the utensil, than pulling it, like it's harder to write fast- or at least fast and legible. I'm told I have good handwriting, though, probably because I'm good with cursive and don't write lowercase manuscript.
Right, after testing especially, it would be identified as a male, because sex is a fact of biology. People who are saying that you can identify as one or the other sex, are plain crazy, in my opinion. We can't identify as physically being things that we are physically not...
I think there's no doubt that male/female is a physiological fact. But, the question is, can a male be a woman? Could it be possible that this male skeleton lived as a woman in their society, and was considered to be a woman, because gender-ness in their conception of the idea, would be social construct not unlike "race".
Yeah. We are all individual human beings of the same species, with various attributes. One attribute may be that our genetic lineage comes mostly from a specific continent and not another continent, and so we have lighter skin, or darker skin, or different eyes or hair, or whatever the other differentiators commonly used of 'race'- which is a non-scientific term, that we still use in our vocabulary and understanding nonetheless.
Most of us are various degrees of mutts, who are mixed between different groups in our genetic history, and so if there is a such thing as being 'white' or being 'black' or belonging to a 'race', then one should be able to choose to identify in society as the one they choose to identify as. It's completely just a social construct.
And even if there is no real scientific or whatever identifiable reason for why some people are gay, it doesn't really matter, since we know simply that, clearly, some people are gay. I don't see any reason for why gay people should get any less acceptance or respect or rights in society than anyone else.
Sexual orientation seems to clearly be an attribute of a person, just like any other attribute.
I most definitely agree with that.
I'd like to think that it will probably be less novel and less hot-button of a topic than it is right now. I don't know if 'fad' is an accurate description, but it definitely does seem like a fad, to me.
Well, I always thought of gender as meaning the same thing as sex, but I also did always think of 'sex' as the more factual, biological, scientific type term, and 'gender' as the more socially 'polite' term, if that makes any sense.
Now, with the recent rise in acceptance of trans-gender people, what I'm wondering (and not claiming to know the answer), is if it is possible or logical or makes sense, that a male could be anything but a man, or that a female could be anything but a woman, and that maybe this means that we should no longer consider these two concepts as necessarily equivalent or synonyms.
And I haven't really decided my opinion on it. I definitely agree with kindness and open-mindedness first in all things, and I'm more than happy to call someone whatever pronouns they identify as, as that costs me nothing. But in my mind I can't say that I'm ready to accept that "trans women are women".
I find it a little easier to accept that a trans woman does not necessarily have to be considered a man. It could be that man, woman, trans man, and trans woman are 4 different things altogether. A trans man would be considered a female living as a man, and a trans woman would be considered a male living as a woman.
I definitely tend to agree that this is the case, lately.
I'll give you one example. Friend of mine from work that I've known for over 10 years now, and when I originally met and knew them, they were a man and went by a man's name. Then around about 10 years ago or so, they came out as a trans woman (when this was still pretty novel and rare, before it became quite this trend now), I believe started up on whatever hormonal therapy (not sure about surgery), and started going by a woman's name, dressing as one, etc.
And I had no issues with this, or with respecting their pronouns and all that. They were still the nice and friendly person, and good and respected coworker that I knew before. And maybe even a seemingly happier version of themselves. And they were not a very masculine looking person beforehand, almost seemed kind of androgynous. So I had no objection to their being a trans woman (whether that makes them a woman, or not). And now, after a decade of transitioning, I think she is actually one of the best looking and most woman-looking trans woman that I know of, and could probably even fool some people, if they didn't know. Very respectable and likeable trans women.
But...
She's been dating this man, for almost as long. And it's a guy that I've known for a long time. And he was not so androgynous. Beard, and all that. But he was obviously very progressive, dating a trans woman.
And now, that man, is now identifying as a woman, as of recently. So, she, is now going by a woman's name, presumably getting the hormone therapy, dressing as a woman, etc. (I don't ask about surgery, as that is none of my biz.) And so now, they are lesbian lovers. 2 trans women, who I originally both met when they were men.
If I'm a true left wing politically correct, one-true-opinion, progressive person, then I'm supposed to accept that this person (who I think is around 40 years old) has always been a woman, and was just trapped in a male body for all of their life, and has finally now come out as their true self.
But I just can't reconcile that, in my head. I don't know why, exactly. But to me she seems much less genuine than her girlfriend, who I always considered as legit an example of a trans person as you can find.
Yeah, tell this to the Politics forum, with like 10 threads a day on this topic, and most of the posts are various degrees of "anything related to trans is conceptually totally invalid/they're all sickos/they're all perverts who are trying to groom children", etc. And people freaking out because a trans woman was in a women's space, even though they were allowed to be by law, and were minding their own business.
Acceptance of trans people in society is creating a conflict of interests right now, mainly because of questions of women's sports, and questions of women's comfort and safety in bathrooms/locker rooms/etc. And whatever other hot-button culture war things going on right now.
I think the hesitance, reluctance, or refusal to accept transpeople now, is partially, if not mostly their own fault, especially transwomen. Specifically the far left ones. It's that small number screaming the loudest, that are ruining it for the rest. Saying things like; you're transphobic if you won't date them, or doing what I think is not only disrespectful, but in a way removes a bio womans agency by saying that periods don't belong to them, or calling them birthing persons, threatening to punch people in the face for missgendering them, or flipping out over the slight of a stranger. Miss Torres with the Sonic manager and Miss Ma'am with the GameStop employee are two examples.
Gender is different than sex. This was widely discussed in the mid 1700's. Thomas Jefferson noted that the English language ties gender and sex together where other languages don't. For his writing on this: https://founders.archives.gov/docume.../98-01-02-5792
His contemporary Dr. Anderson of Scotland thought there were 12 genders. He would not have known about Thomas(ine) Hall of Virginia. In 1629, Hall's indenture was for sale; the sex would determine the duties. Problem was that Hall, an English Army veteran, was sometimes dressing as a man and sometimes a woman. In the end, the Quarter Court (composed of the colony's Privy Council) physically examined Hall and determined Hall was both a man and a woman; Hall was ordered to wear a woman's skirt and a man's breeches. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/ent...-april-8-1629/
What was General Pulaski's sex and gender? Pulaski is known as the Father of the American Calvary - he died in combat in 1779. There was some question as to whom was buried in his grave so the body was exhumed. After forensic analysis by the Smithsonian, it was determined that it was Pulaski and that Pulaski who passed as a man and who had a man's facial hair, was likely intersex.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...sex-180971907/
When people are curious, or being a bigot, I simply explain it like this; if sex and gender are two different things, sex being biological, gender being social. a transwoman is a woman, but she isn't female, a transman is a man, but he isn't male. Male and female being the sex, man and woman being the gender, thus a transwoman is biologically a male, but they are a woman. If we're going to subscribe to this, then we need to get the terminology right, and stop using the terms tradable. Then it starts making more sense. As far as either being binary, I agree, sex and gender is mostly binary, the exception being hermaphrodites, and even they lean one way or the other, genetically.
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