If sex is a spectrum, then so what?

[WombOfOnesOwn]

The "spectrum" argument seems to have become the dominant argument of transactivism lately.

But even if human sex could be reasonably thought of as a spectrum, why would that lead to "trans women are women"?

culturallyboundgender.wordpress.com/2018/10/10/on-sex-ribbons-and-why-cows-still-arent-bulls/

I've returned to blogging after a three-year absence in order to do some cunty-woman things like childbearing and infant care, but I am back.

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If sex were a spectrum, there would be no meaningful categories of man and woman, because many people would be a mixture of both, and it would probably even be hard in many cases to say who is more woman and who is more man. Because it is all so multi faceted and complex and who is to say that there is not a pink brain science just doesn‘t know about, and so the best approach is to just believe people, when they say what sex they are....

But the fact of the matter is that sex is not a spectrum and defined by the organism‘s gamete.

But that's exactly the point -- no one says about any other spectrum, including the visible light spectrum that the word was invented for, "well, if it's a little of this and a little of that, who's to say what it is at all?"

People are perfectly capable of distinguishing red from blue, even though there's a spectrum of colors, and no one says "well, this is a little of each, and that means the whole thing is meaningless and we may as well just call things whatever makes us happiest."

If sex is a spectrum, then why are they so convinced they lie at one end of it?

The principle argument is, whether sex is defined by the gonads/gamete (-> not a spectrum) as biology sees it, or whether it is by a mix of things, including - artificially changeable - hormone levels and brain sex (-> a spectrum, hard to say what weighs most. Best to let people self-id, for how else should we know....).

You are thinking of the spectral colors of white light, each color defined by a wavenumber (frequency, wavelength). What the TRAs mean is some watercolors mixed together, with all kinds of pigments making all kinds of colors in the mix, so that even when you have one color identifiable on some color scheme, it is impossible to say, whether the color results from pigments xyz or pigments abc, because the perceived color can be achieved by quite distinct mixtures of colors. At which point you either have to analyze the pigments in this mixture and the complex spectrum they give, or you say, ok, I perceive a color that matches color card G5, no matter what spectral colors really contribute to said perception.

There is no evidence whatsoever for human sex being a spectrum. None.

Advocates for people with intersex conditions have said that their medical conditions should not be conflated with trans issues. Every time someone brings up intersex WRT trans, or talks about sex as a spectrum, they are not listening.

Eg here, based on a quick Google. The UK CAIS page says something similar IIRC:

www.isna.org/faq/transgender

Love your blog

It really annoys me that they've stolen the phrase used for autism. When it isn't even a linear spectrum in autism. Autism is genuinely a circular spectrum as there are many, many traits. Many, many differences.

Sex is a choice of two and a few intersex conditions which are anomalies.

Have you missed me?

YES!

I feel a bit fangirly, your blog is excellent! Didn't know you were here.

Welcome back!

If sex is a spectrum, why the need to undergo surgery and take artificial hormones? Just dismantle the stifling gender boxes - all sorted.

Oh, and hello! I haven‘t been here so long as to be familiar with your writings but am happy to give it a shot.

Deepwatersolo: thanks for the analogy about colour pigments, something I understand.

It's like colour dye - indigo is a good example. Indigo is a natural plant dye that gives strong shades of blue, unique to that plant and not produced by other natural dyes. Then synthetic dyes came along that can produce the same shades of blue, but by a different process. And most people don't care, because they are just interested in the outward appearance of the blue colour and don't care how it came into being. But the indigo purists are jumping up and down in indignation because the synthetic dyes are saying their blue colours are indigo. And the indigo purists say, your blues might LOOK the same as indigo dye but they weren't MADE with indigo dye, therefore you can't call them indigo. And the synthetic dyes just shrug and say, it's the colour that defines the name, not how it was made. If it looks indigo, then it is indigo. Maybe that's how TRAs see it?

Whereas the bewildered GCs see it like different objects that are the same colour suddenly deciding to define themselves by their shared colour instead of their physical properties. Let's take orange as an example. Orange exists as a physical thing (a citrus fruit, 'an orange', noun) and also a colour (adjective). And up to now everyone has managed to differentiate when the word orange is used for the citrus fruit and when used for a colour. But now other objects that are orange in appearance (adjective) are calling themselves orange in name (noun). Eg carrots, some flowers, even part-time oranges, like the Sun in specific atmospheric conditions, are saying "We demand that you call us oranges (noun) too. Do not mis-species us by calling us carrots etc". The oranges (citrus fruit) reply "You misunderstand. The word 'orange' is used as both noun and adjective. Your appearance is orange in colour but you're not actually 'an orange'." The carrots et al say "We are orange therefore we are oranges". And the oranges (citrus fruit) reply "But the words 'an orange' refers only to citrus fruit. You can call yourselves 'orange carrots' etc but you are in fact still carrots." And the carrots et al say "Shut up you bigots!".

If sex were a spectrum, we wouldn't be able to breed.

On Intersex appropriation by TRAs:
threadreaderapp.com/thread/1013106135002476544.html

I don't think we need to get into colour analogies, because it's honestly perfectly simple.

There are two sexes. That is just a fact. There may be some very rare exceptions, but it is very rare. There is no evidence for male/female brains, all of the outward signs of having two different sexes are perfectly obvious eg genitalia, breast tissue, internal organs etc.

Gender is a social construct. There is no need, with an advanced species as we are (well, comparatively), to start labelling certain traits/preferences/habits/tendencies as masculine and others as feminine since it is perfectly obvious that those are learned and socialised.

I don't know how much more obvious people need it to be. Wear a dress, wear overalls, wear full make up, never shave anything, have a career, have a baby. We should be able to do all of those things and none of them, regardless of which body we were born into.

The only thing on sprectrum here is the level of autogynephilia experienced and expressed.

Sex is not a spectrum, we have small gametes and large gametes, the male sex produces small gametes, the female sex produces large gametes. This is binary. There is nothing in the middle.

It's my understanding that for the hard-boiled trans idealogues sex has to be a spectrum because to them gender and gender identity is immutable, and you can't have both the same at the same time. This is some profound mental gymnastics going on and to me signposts not-very-wellness. Or a lie

Welcome back!

I think if it was a spectrum in any meaningful way, that would indeed be problematic for society as it is currently arranged because presumably then there would exist significant numbers of people who couldn't go into the women's changing facilities or the men's, for example, because they would be somewhere in between male and female. Luckily sex isn't a spectrum.

But you're completely on the money that even if sex WAS a spectrum, that wouldn't be a meaningful piece of information in the debate over whether someone at the male end of the spectrum could actually be someone at the female end of the spectrum. You're right, it's a complete non-sequitur.

yetanotherusernameAgain Ah I didn't know about the indigo, interesting. I believe the point I was trying to make was even simpler:
visible violet light has a specific bandwith around 320 nm, but you can also arrive at violet by mixing the color red (~700 nm) and blue (~480 nm). It looks violet, and yet, you won't find any violet light (320 nm) in it but only components of lower energy.

What the sex=spectrum people mean, as far as I gathered from discussions, is that sex is not just gamete / gonads but additionally:
hormone status, brain structure (even if science hasn't yet demonstrated it, 'there are pink and blue brains' they say), uterus....

Now think that through (let's award one point for each feature):

Transwoman gets one point for pink brain and one for hormone status: 2/4

A postmenopausal woman, who has had a hysterectomy and is the Peachy Yoghurt type of 'unfeminine' person gets only one point, for her gonad system that once produced female gamete: 1/4

This is how their 'spectra' idea works. That estrogen shots make them 'more of a woman', and postmenopausal women or those who do not conform to stereotypes 'are not real women'.

Most TW don't actually look or sound or smell anything like women though. So all analogies pointing to other spectrums are meaningless. They are simply determined to change what the word 'woman' means.

Yetanother love that. you think like me in a wildly kooky way I love indigo 💙

The electromagnetic spectrum is a continuous band of wavelengths stretching from smaller than an atomic nucleus (theoretically the Planck length) to as long as the universe (however long that is).

What we refer to as visible light is just the tiny band of wavelengths we can see.

Even if you count ‘intersex’ as an actual ‘sex’ the analogy would only work if we thought light consisted almost entirely of blue at one end and red at the other with a tiny band of purple in the middle.