Addressing the 'sex is nebulous' position

I think the onus is on people who believe that sex, in humans, is nebulous to provide a robust argument for their case.

What’s the issue with using chromosomes?

There're XY people (Swyer's syndrome) where the male develops a female body and even uterus. So in that case these people are more female than male. I read about 1? case of a man who had both male and female organs ( so v rare).

In which case, someone might argue you don't know what chromosomes you yourself actually might have.

However, this is all irrelevant.

I would go back to basics and argue if you have a male body (balls and 2 veg whether or not there's any surgical modifications/accidents/DSD etc ) you shouldn't be in the women's changing rooms.

What’s the issue with using chromosomes?

One issue is that the type of chromosome varies with species (for example, birds and flowers and bees do it differently - not xx,xy. Sometimes, as with turtles, it's ambient temperature and not chromosomes at all, I understand), but small mobile vs. large immobile is much more widespread. Gametes are much more generalisable.

I don’t think fertility or gametes work as a sex definer due to eg menopause, pre puberty etc.

The point is your body is of the configuration which produces one or the other irrespective of local circumstances which may prevent it.

What’s the issue with using chromosomes?

You say chromosomes are unconfirmed for a given person - yes ok most have never had their chromosomes checked.

But most people will be pretty sure what chromosomes they have, based on their birth genitals. Same way the midwives do it.

Yes there are a few DSD people out there who may be mistaken as to their chromosomes, but they are are a bit of a red herring in the trans debate, as I don’t think most trans people are seriously doubting what chromosomes they have. Their argument is more that chromosomes and other inherent biological characteristics aren’t the be all and end all, because feelings.

For those of us who like biology based definitions rather than feelings based - I think chromosomes work pretty well.

I don’t think fertility or gametes work as a sex definer due to eg menopause, pre puberty etc. External sex organs and secondary sex characteristics don’t work due to possibility of surgery or developmental differences. But chromosomes are always there.

My MS laptop will talk to my printer, but the printer just rolls its eyes and gets really passive aggressive. So I transfer files to my Chromebook and print from there. Dunno why.

Don't! My printer won't talk to my laptop full stop.

Sex also isn't nebulous in itself. For every "gotcha" and "whattabout" that trans privileges advocates bring up, it doesn't undermine our understanding of the sex binary, but instead allows us to refine and more accurately describe the concept.

Like with all of the trans talking points, there is deliberate confusion about what "defines" and "determines" means in terms of sex, and "bimodal distributions" of secondary sex characteristics, but underlying all of the genetic complexity remains a clear and unambiguous binary with a framework for identifying when things have gone wrong developmentally.

Sex is less than immediately obvious in less than 1% of cases. For more than 99% of transgender individuals, there is no ambiguity whatsoever over what sex they are.

(And the vast majority of the not immediately obvious cases still have straightforward diagnostic procedures available.)

I think the starting point should be that every human being has one mother and one father - one parent provided the sperm and one parent provided the egg. there are no humans who produce both or who switch over the course of a lifetime.

there are a very small proportion of people who don't produce either or who have atypical development of their reproductive systems. this could be a chromosome problem or something else. These are disorders of sexual development and they may require medical treatment.

Critically, those people who have these medical conditions are NOT the same as people who are transgender or who want to change their gender. So arguing about DSDs is not relevant to the question of the health of trans people, because these are completely different groups of people.

I agree. TRAs always come up with crazy arguments like "what if a woman is past menopause, is she no longer a woman?" "what if a man has lost his penis in an accident?" etc

What I always say is this. There are two sexes. Everyone in the world either belongs to the sex that produces sperm, or the sex that produces eggs. Even people with disorders of sexual development belong to one of those two sexes. People who are infertile for any reason also belong to one of those two sexes. There is no intermediate sex producing spergs or speggs.

person says they are not that sex, based on their feelings.

You hit the nail on the head there - one definition of sex is based on facts, which are objective, the other on feelings, which are subjective.

Important things like medicine, the law, education, etc are best based on objective facts, otherwise anything could mean anything in hospitals, courts, schools, universities, and they might as well just disband and go home if they started accepting anything as anything.

Imagine your laptop and your printer weren't speaking the same language - the laptop sends out the code for the letters w-o-m-a-n, but the printer isn't using the same protocol and interprets the letters, and prints them, as x-g-u-e-h. Total failure of communication, isn't it?

Some things need an agreed standardised understanding of the language used.
'Sex' is one of them. As has been illustrated at the Fife/SP tribunal.

Baby is seen to be female or male at birth, based on their genitals.
Later on the person says they are not that sex, based on their feelings.
To explain further, they talk about stereotypes - clothes, hair, interests, work etc.
This is the case, whatever the age of the person.

Why is the world so weird that those things are accepted as indicators of sex more than people's actual bodies?

Are you asking why fertility isn't used as a marker of sex?

Firstly, fertility changes over the course of someone's life. It would be like the "Is a woman who's had a hysterectomy no longer a woman?" question.

Secondly, everyone would need to have their fertility tested to see if they were fertile or not. Which, like for chromosomes, we don't test everyone. Why would we?

I don't see why gametes are inaccessible to the public, if you just explain what they are. Small, mobile gametes = sperm. Large, immobile gametes = ova. A description of "the type of body that, if everything were in working order, would produce sperm or ova" is easy to understand.

Sorry, "It'sightmare" should be "it's a nightmare", but my edit failed....

I think the argumentum ad rabbits is a good one to an extent. But a weak spot is that there is no way of accounting for any rabbits who may fail to correctly identify the sex of other rabbits (who are clearly nebulous rabbits) and consequently fail to produce little rabbits. And then you've got those gay rabbits who also incorrectly identify sex and unintentionally end up producing little rabbits. These don't get included in the numbers.It's a nightmare!

More seriously, I don't think gametes are that inaccessible. And the arguments for nebulousness are based on basic errors such as being unable to understand a probability distibution and what it means to be "bimodal", or a straightforward refusal to define what you're talking about coherently. I'll stick with gametes because you can see them on a slide.

Well, it can't be that nebulous. Even rabbits seem able to find the right other sort of rabbit to make little rabbits with. They're notoriously good at it.