Alex Byrne on the Trouble with Gender | The Good Fight with Yascha Mounk

[@richarddoan9172]

Aside from there being linguistic confusion around having two meanings for "gender" -- sex and sex norms -- there are real policy implications, because "man" and "woman" are widely assumed to be gender categories. So changing the meaning of "gender" will change who belongs in the social categories and spaces that are reserved for men and women.

[@jones2277]

In addition to the competitive advantage, what about the safety of female competitors???

[@281992pdr]

I have recently read "Trouble With Gender". It is a brilliant book. I recommend it without reservation.

[@RC-qf3mp]

That’s good. It’s so hard to get a reservation nowadays anyway.

[@cgpcgp3239]

I listened to an interview with a whistleblower who worked in a gender clinic. Liberal. Married to a trans ftm person. She said transitioning children “is all about the boys.” She said for all most all men to pass as women they need to medically transition as children to stop puberty. Women can easily pass as men when they medically transition as adults.

[@cgpcgp3239]

Boys before puberty to have a slight advantage in sports over girls at different ages. There is an age the girls have a slight advantage over boys. I think it’s around 8-10. Male athletes who medically transition to female to block puberty may retain advantage gained during childhood. Is it large enough to exclude them from women’s sports?

[@ambientjohnny]

@@cgpcgp3239 Why should males EVER be eligible for female sports? A male, whether boy or man, weak or strong, with all limbs intact or not, regardless of how they "feel inside" is STILL MALE thus it's beyond frickin obvious that they have no business in a category reserved for the opposite sex.

[@allisonbeth4678]

Part of the confusion about the definition of sex is that so few interviewees are biologists (who, in interviews, provide a very simplistic definition of sex which makes sense as the biological definition of sex is indeed exceedingly simple). Interviewees who are, say, philophers complicate and convolute the definition to an absurd degree. This is the only thing one needs to know to grasp the concept of sex: it is based on gametes. End of story. Since there is no third of type of gametes in humans (or any species) there can be no third sex. Again, end of story, though I will add that secondary sex characteristics, hormones, and chromosomes don’t define sex because, as mentioned, gametes define sex (and there are only two types of gametes hence two sexes). As for people who don’t produce gametes due to a disorder of sex development, menopause, cancer treatment, etc - just as humans are bipedal and being born without a leg (or having it removed due to bone cancer) doesn’t make you non-human, same goes with individuals who do not produce one of the two gametes. If not for the congenital or acquired condition of losing a leg you would have two legs as humans are supposed to (operative term “supposed to”), just as if there wasn’t an in utero interruption people with sex development issues are supposed to produce a certain gamete. So sex is based on either you produce a male or female gamete, or you are supposed to produce a male or female gamete, had the process not been interfered with. If there is a Y - whether it’s XY, XXY, XXXY, or XXXXY you were supposed to (and may) produce small gametes (ie., sperm) and are thus biologically male. Gender identity is separate from sex.

[@RC-qf3mp]

So if somebody were born with a penis and without testicles, had a vagina, a womb, grew natural breasts, and looked indistinguishable from an XX female, but turned out to have an XXY, where the Y was so defective as to be rendered inactive by this person’s body, so only the XX were used for development, would you call such a person a “male” because of the presence of the Y chromosome? Every time you say “end of story” you are acknowledging an intellectual laziness and refusal to engage with the tough questions. For 99.99% of human history, the understand of male and female was based on the presence or absence of a penis/testicles at birth. With science, we no know that a penis and testicles get produced by having a FUNCTIONING Y chromosome. That is a causal basis for developing a certain way. But what makes somebody a male is having successfully developed that way. If the Y chromosome is there, but the fetus doesn’t use that Y chromosome to develop in any way influenced by the Y chromosome, then the strong argument can be made the resulting baby born is a male, not a female, despite having the (defective) Y chromosome. Genotype is biological. Phenotype is biological as well. In some intersex people, the genotype could include a Y but the phenotype could be consistent with a typical biological female. It becomes an arbitrary exercise of classification at this point, because the biology doesn’t compel one criterion or another. And that’s not new or surprising. Science is full of anomalies that resist simple classification. Big deal. Is Pluto a planet or not? Scientists have spilled much ink over it, but who cares. It’s arbitrary line drawing. Is an embryo a human life, such that killing it would be murder? what does biology have to say about it? I could care less - because abortion is a legal, political matter, not a biological one. Same with how to classify at least some intersex people. Although human history and tradition weighs far more heavily on phenotype then genotype. Just look between the legs of a baby and THAT is the sex, for most of human history at least.

[@thierryf2789]

There are some anomalies linked to genetics or development in the womb. So why should this put everything into question. For instance some people are born with six fingers. This does not mean we should abandon the fact that humans have five fingers or that people with six fingers should adopt a separate political identity.