Is Sex Binary? A conversation with Alex Byrne and Holly Lawford-Smith

[@River10081]

I watched the debate. It was really helpful. So much common ground. I learned that the great divide on sex and gender is an illusion. My understanding is that most moderate people do not support hormones and surgery for kids. My hope is that we realize how unreasonable extremists who politicize issues can do great harm, it matters not whether they are extreme left or extreme right.

[@NAScholars]

I too was struck by how much people agreed with one another. Will the drivers of the present insanity listen? One can only hope ...

[@gzoechi]

Tons of such discussions in my feed lately. On one hand it's depressing that we need to discuss the number of genders, on the other hand it's refreshing that people wake up and realize they were told a load of dumb shit.

[@NAScholars]

Harshly put, but true 🤨

[@Tawny593]

What a stupid question. That's like asking if gravity exists.

[@zgobermn6895]

Insightful. Thanks.

[@NAScholars]

I really enjoyed my conversation with them. Alex Byrne's book is a must read, and Holly Lawford-Smith's Gender Critical Feminism was an interesting look into the history of feminism and how we got to where we are today.

[@roaddawwgg]

Interesting conversation

[@NAScholars]

Thanks! I also found them an interesting pair to talk to.

[@ninalorenlee]

Bringing up clownfish at least shows that they know that a sex is reproductive category, not perceptions or hormones or chromosomes

[@NAScholars]

I think we're approaching the biology of sex in a fundamentally wrong way.

[@ninalorenlee]

​@@NAScholarsby we do u mean Holly and Alex? If you do, I heartily disagree with you, I thought they approached it clearly, logically, and correctly.

[@macrotermiteman]

@@ninalorenlee I meant me.

[@Tybold63]

Indeed

[@Tybold63]

My instant thought see the title of video was and still is - why are we having a debate at all as there is no fact that support that sex is not binary. Funghii might be a different case though lol. We have to understand that we are basically humans and share a huge amount of similarities between the two sexes and besides that objective facts we have to realize that this gender debate is actually more about "mind" not matter. A thing is that the "activists" are predominately male individuals that cannot cope with the sexual attention females get as they often also are gay and compete with women and have some delusional idea that women resonate with their psyche more than male psyche.

[@NAScholars]

Yes, the remarkable thing to me is how irrelevant tropes from biology are dragged in to support the narrative. Sex and its origins are a fascinating area, but we are talking about humans with their own evolutionary history. While clownfish and fungi have their own fascinating evolutionary histories, they have little meaningful to offer for social policy.

[@moif_velocita]

Your instant thought reveals your bias, and your ignorance. What I find interesting in the gender debate is how often journalists and academics fail (or refuse) to understand what biologists and neuroscientists are saying. Watch this same debate taking place in those circles, amongst scientists who deal with the actual subject itself and not some preconceived philosophical or political perspective, then you find the opposite conclusions being made. Human beings do not have 'binary sex' - listening to the actual experts it seems no known organism does. There is always variation, even in humans where mutiple factors determine whether or a human being is male, female or indeed both.

[@moif_velocita]

@@NAScholars Wow. I guess this tells me why this channel is so heavily biased at least. Good luck with that closed mind 😅

[@oliverhug3]

Most so called "transwomen" are straight AGPs (cross dressers).They reveal their "true selves" to their wife and chilfren after many years. Rachel Levine ,Martine Rothblatt, Catlyn Jenner, Jennifer Pritzke, Debbie Hayton, Marci Bowers from WPATH, Erin Reed, Jane Ellen, the chair of a cross dressing group known as Tri-Ess...the list goes on. Jane Ellen said in an interview"Men are still being trained-well you know, as Virginia Prince( the founder of Tri-Ess) says,"men are always trying to become what women are content to be". Stop blaiming everything on gay men and strart listening to trans widows.

[@ambientjohnny]

@@moif_velocita NO ONE shares some exact "experience" of being a man or a woman, that is why we define a woman as an adult FEMALE, they are all of the same sex, that is what defines them. "Man" or "woman" are not some moral judgement or evaluation of how masculine or feminine they feel or present, it's simply about having a term to describe any adult human male and any adult human female. This obsession that the "trans" community has with redefining the terms to reflect how they feel etc. is totally pointless. There are no people who truly feel 100% comfortable all of the time, the idea of labelling people "cis" or "trans" is completely unnecessary, there is no "cis" experience and there is no "trans" experience, people are individuals, and as a whole the community fails to come up with any coherent explanation to define their redefinition of "woman" because you cannot come up with a definition that caters to every possibility. That is why the terms "man" and "woman" being rooted in physical reality is the only thing that makes sense, if there are no clear parameters for a definition then it cannot function as a definition. If anyone can identify as a grablar, and the only definition of being a grablar, is feeling like identifying as one, then you haven't defined grablar as anything at all. This is why it is also an obsession with creating more and more boxes. The terms "man" and "woman" encompass every possible personality, within physical boundaries, any man or woman is free to act, think, look, behave however they want, that they as individuals are labelled as men or women is purely about the physical - saying a man is an adult human male, and a woman an adult human female does not restrict anyone's self-expression, not wanting to acknowledge one's physical reality is a fool's errand, the sex someone is doesn't change based on how anyone feels or dresses - so it is the "trans" side that 100% is creating this false narrative that acknowledging a person's sex is somehow restrictive, they are the side saying men or women behave like this or that. I mean if they weren't doing that, then they would agree that the umbrella terms based on sex, man and woman, were perfectly fine - but they don't! They say no no, if someone doesn't FEEL like the sex they are, they can't be it, though they cannot explain what "feeling cis" even really means, because NO ONE shares the exact same experiences emotionally. What "they" are trying to do is swap a definition that has a physical basis, for a definition that is entirely rooted in feelings and often in validating sexist stereotypes associated with either sex. This "woman is a social construct" thing IS the part that validates and perpetuates sexist stereotypes - woman isn't a social construct in that sense, it is a word society has chosen yes, but to describe a PHYSICAL state of being, not anyone's emotional states or where they fall on some spectrum of masculinity or femininity. There is a fundamental misunderstanding here of what the definition of man and woman means. The notion that people need to live up to sexist stereotypes of what "real men" or "real women" are, is complete fantasy. The fact that many people act as if sexist stereotypes were valid ways of measuring "real men" or real women" is a problem with the individual and their sexist bias, not with the terms themselves, as the terms themselves have none of the expectational baggage that people who internalise sexist stereotypes associate with them. Also, what an egregious lie about sex not being binary - the entire basis of human sexual reproduction is contingent on there being two sexes!!!

[@DesereBarnard]

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[@DesereBarnard]

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