Graham Linehan on the chapter about him in Jon Ronson's new book

It is not in anyway a convincing one. Rather it is again attempting to use language and natural and expected variations within a sex category to bolster a very weak point.

But it is really ‘plus ca change’.

It’s a new tactic I haven’t seen before. I’ll give it that.

Yep

It is attempting to convince by describing natural and expected variations to be described as significant attributes. As if removing testes from male cattle made them ‘not male’.

It really isn’t that hard to understand really. I grew up helping to ring male calves. We knew exactly which ones to apply the ring to and it was not the heifers. And removing the testes meant a slightly different development path, but that bullock didn’t suddenly grow udders and start delivering calves.

And fuck, if you have been chased by a castrated male of the species, you are just as fucking likely to be hugely injured.

It is similar to the ‘but some women are tall’ sports argument. Natural variation can be described as biological variations, or differences. But that language is really inaccurate and misleading.

That reminds me. I grew up on a smallholding & one of my jobs was holding the male piglets while my dad removed their testicles with a razor blade. We knew exactly which of the weaners were male & which were not. Likewise another of my jobs was helping put rubber rings round the testicles of young male goats so their testicles withered & died.

I'm curious as to what purpose a castrated billy goat serves, from a strictly utilitarian point of view? Were they raised for meat? Or as pets without the billy goat smell and/or aggression? Iirc, boars are castrated or the meat will be tainted, does the same thing happen with goats?

Meat. It's common to castrate males raised for meat whether it's goats, pigs, cattle or chickens. They grow quicker & are easier to manage.

The thing about needing to castrate boars or the meat will be tainted is tosh & nowadays it's hardly ever done.

Thank you. I was told about boar taint by an EHO! It was a while ago though and he thought cockroaches were beetles!

Wasn't it the Greens who were talking about "men" and "unmen" at one point?

It seems there are people who can't and won't see women as a positive category in their own right, but merely as a ragbag of everyone who isn't a "regular guy".

And a "transwoman" is not usually a eunuch. A eunuch, a castrated male, is however in a subcategory of men, as is any other "transwoman".

They do a lot of special goat head tilts and get really emotional. Lots of bleating.

It was 'non men', I think. Unwomen is the international humen rights organisation.

At least they've moved on from clownfish. It's good to switch things up every now and then.😀

I’ve experienced boar taint in Norway, where they don’t castrate and sometimes slaughter quite late. It absolutely does exist.

I found myself wondering though, if a bull that’s castrated is a bullock, why don’t men who get themselves castrated call themselves mannock? Instead they chose the entirely inappropriate “transwoman”. And yes, they did choose that, until it crossed someone’s mind that inserting a space would make it easier to pretend “trans” is an adjective.

I genuinely think some people believe in magic

this whole 'castrate a male animal and they become a different creature altogether' thing is so magnificently irrational

I think it could be said that someone who doesn’t analyse information, just superficially accepts something that someone or a group that they believe to be information leaders without question, is going to repeat misinformation as if it all makes perfect sense.

We keep seeing these false comparisons that some think are apt and insightful. But the reality is that the common denominator is that all these false comparisons are there to make the impossible appear credible.

If you have eaten pork in the UK in the last 30 years you will have eaten uncastrated boar flesh as only 2% of male pigs are castrated but pork pigs are slaughtered much younger than pigs destined for bacon.

You won't have eaten meat from a boar (adult male pig) in the UK.

Unless used for breeding, male pigs are slaughtered well before puberty precisely to avoid boar taint.

If Glinner should read this thread 👋 then this might be the derail of the century 😃

I am loving the information about pigs. Because I grew up with cattle and horses. Pigs are really interesting!

Me too and I'm chilled about derails for the most part, particularly if the thread subject has been exhausted. They're often interesting and frequently hilarious.

When these animals are castrationed - what happens to the testicles? Is there a big bucket of bollocks that goes to be made into cat food or so they just get composted?

Boar taint is a very interesting concept. Fully in support of farming digressions here.

Unless used for breeding, male pigs are slaughtered well before puberty

In decades past males pigs were also routinely castrated despite being slaughtered long before they became sexually mature allegedly to prevent boar taint when it was unecessary.

Still a digression but getting back to something a pp asserted. Many mammals, humans included, become sexually mature way before they become physically mature. In other species females rapidly reach adult size and/or are only in oestrus at specific times of the year which gives immature bodies some respite. They often give birth to litters of young which means each individual baby is relatively tiny. It's arguable that because humans don't have these mechanisms, we use our big brains (the cause of much of the birthing problems) to evolve cultural solutions such as an aversion to having sex with minors. Later codified into laws. It's notable that 'cultures' that still practice child marriage are widely considered backwards. Coincidentally(?) they often also seem to be backwards in women's rights.

Apropos of nothing I recently learned that lupron is used to prevent hormone induced feather plucking in parrots 🦜