I need a really solid article proving our sexual dimorphism.

[forbiddenfruitcrumble]

I've read several, but I need to locate the ultimate one. DH is saying TWAW and I need to close this shit down fast.

FWIW, he is no dumb-dumb. He has a Dphil from Oxford and has written (and lectured) about identity. I know, right?

He doesn't suffer from wokeness in any other area, quite the contrary.

Any suggestions?

Did he ever think that he could get impregnated and bear a child?

If not why not?

He talks a lot about hormones.

I think he's winding me up. It's working a treat.

Oh no, not the fucking hormone washes in utero shite! (His DPhil was deffo not in sciences, was it? Though having said that, I have a colleague who quite sincerely believes young earth creationism, despite being a physical scientist by training. A science background is not actually a magic vaccination against being totally and utterly barking mad.)

He talks a lot about hormones.

The definition of male and female still depends on the gamete (egg vs. sperm). The type of gamete is not influenced by hormones (except for a small window during foetal development. But that is all water down the bridge when the Baby pops out).

But, yeah, let's hope he is just winding you up. That would be cruel. But funny.

A mate said she'd read an article that talked about how some pregnancies might have had a twin that then died (very early, before it becomes a proper foetus) and absorbed into the living foetus, and that the DNA of the dead twin is found in body parts of the living twin when they are adults. The example (I think!) was an adult female having a hysterectomy that was tested and found to have male DNA which was a remnant of the dead embryo.... her argument was "well that shows that we all could have bits of male and bits of female as many pregnancies could have these unknown second embryos" - I disputed that as a conclusion, but lacked the scientific knowledge to say why! it sounds extraordinarily far fetched but came from a reputable publication so am assuming is based on some sort of real scientific theory. Does anyone with actual scientific knowledge have any idea what I'm talking about?!

I have a colleague who quite sincerely believes young earth creationism, despite being a physical scientist by training.

I once had a colleague, very Christian, who believed in creationism who worked in directed evolution!!! She basically copied the technique of evolution in the lab that nature had deviced to improve the fitness of proteins (and ultimately organsims) and didn't believe in evolution!!!

DPhil is a doctorate in philosophy.

No he hasn't mentioned hormone washes, for that we must be grateful. I must be careful not to mention them!

It's as if he thinks that women with very high testosterone (i.e. Caster S, who I believe has a sexual development disorder) are more manly than a man with very low testosterone. It hurts to listen tbf. So a hormonal spectrum is evidence of an overall spectrum. I've explained that hormones are a secondary sexual characteristic.

He does full agree that broadening the GRA is bad, because it will be abused.

I've told him up not giving up, he'll have to answer.

I disputed that as a conclusion, but lacked the scientific knowledge to say why!

Well that would fall under cell mosaicism (e.g. trisomia 21 can also be a mosaicism, it means not all cells in the body are affected.) Possible mosaicism can happen by absorption of a twin. There is also a recent study out of a woman with a lot of XY cells who had a daughter with again a lot of XY cells in the body.
However, she could only have a daughter, because her body produced an egg=female gamete (she must have had an uterus and a vagina, too, to do that I suppose). Female gamete ->female->woman.

Oh, a doctorate in philosophy? Surely he must know that words have definitions? Let him define 'female' and 'male' in the case of mammals. (Spoiler: the type of gamete define it, egg or egg-fertilizing gamete. End of story.).

deepwater, I did this. Philosophy is all about accuracy! He denies my view that woman is a perfect description of an adult female human. He denies that it's all about biology, because apparently it's more complex than that. Which is where it gets murky, because that way stereotypes lie.

If he has a DPhil it should be easy.

Tell him to apply some critical thinking. Tell him to use his damn logic module, replacing 'woman' and 'man' with A and B and do some bloody maths.

Hormones, hey?

I used to have somewhat elevated testosterone due to PCOS. (I've no idea what it is now, post menopause).

This merely made me a somewhat spotty female who needed a bit of help to ovulate.

The treatments for hormonal abnormalities are always in the direction of normalising wrt the person's sex. Of which there are two. The treatments are in the direction of aiding fertility, not destroying it.

No woman with PCOS will ever produce a sperm.

Philosophy is all about accuracy!

Is it? Some philosophers manage to cloak this in incomprehensible obscurity.

He denies that it's all about biology, because apparently it's more complex than that. Which is where it gets murky, because that way stereotypes lie.

Then he needs to give his definition. I bet he cannot define it.

It is actually quite insulting of him to insinuate that somebody like, say, Peachy Yoghurt, isn't a 'real woman'. It is absurd that some man's projections of what a woman is should be tha arbitrer of saying 'what a woman is'.

Peachy Yoghurt:

I remember a thread where someone was trying to imagine how reproduction in humans might work with a third gamete.

The dating scenario is as amusing to envisage as the mating.

No.

Take it back to reproduction. The root of male and female and the reason the descriptors exist is reproduction.

Undeniable (intersex people are male or female, nor a third sex)

Ask him to what these descriptors apply, if not human reproductive role.

Point out that the descriptors male and female can apply only to gender identity OR the reproductive role, as the two can be in direct opposition.

So for example, he believes gender identity overrides the reproductive role, so the XY person is female, therefore cannot have a male body, the body must be female

(at this point he may say it's a female brain and a male body, in which case you say, what are the objective criteria for a female brain, and what does female mean if it isn't attached to reproductive role, and also note down that he accepts the body is male, for use later on in your thrashing good argument)

So if male and female are completely detached from reproductive role as required by faith in gender identity then there is no 'male' or 'female' meaning for the gender identity to be ascribed to.

At this point he will be forced to describe the female brain in terms gender stereotypes and you win the argument.

Also once he's accepted that the body is male, you win every argument on sex specific spaces.

Oh, and ask him, if he truly believes that sex in cows (a mammal like us) is a spectrum.

Any and I meant any biology or medical textbook.

Yes ask him about farming. If mammals could change sex farmers would've been making male dairy calves into cows long ago.

A friend has recently told me they believe in the theory of hormone washes, and I had no idea that this was a 'thing' .

How about the:

2d + 69 = L?

Paradox?

I presume (if he's a philosopher) he has in mind something like vagueness and the existence of "edge cases."
plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/

In this sense, a woman like Caster Semenya is a genuine edge case - externally appearing female, brought up and socialised as female, discovered in adulthood to be intersex (probably suffering from PAIS).

However your typical late-transitioning, already fathered several children and left a very confused transwidow behind them type trans person typically is not an edge case in this sense - the person was born unequivocally biologically male and continues to be unequivocally biologically male, regardless of surgery to create the simulacrum of a female body.

Which is one of many reasons why intersex is irrelevant to the trans debate. (The best of these reasons being that intersex people have repeatedly asked to be left out of this argument).

Similarly, to use that example much beloved in philosophical arguments about vagueness, while there may have been a point between being pleasingly hirsute and equally pleasingly billiard-ball like when it was vague as to whether Patrick Stewart was bald, it is now unequivocally true to say he is a bald 70-something man, while Harrison Ford is a 70-something man still in possession of a full head of hair. Edge cases don't mean the underlying concepts are meaningless.

Ooh yes, the "brain in the wrong body" point is a good one. Ask him if he buys into Cartesian dualism. Mwa ha ha.