Categories that now contain their erstwhile opposites

[Mermoose]

Updated by MNHQ with a tweaked version of the OP provided by @Mermoose. That's why the thread appears to go a bit peculiar halfway down.

It's argued that existence of people with DSDs (or intersex people) means that the female category now contains males, and vice versa.
There are two problems with this that I can see, the first being that DSDs don't literally make people 'intersex', they're conditions that affect male people and female people.
The second problem is that even if it were true that some people were neither male nor female but somewhere in between, that wouldn't support the idea that male people now belonged in the female category.
If we did this with sex, why not do it with other categories? I've decided to put together a list of other categories that, due to fuzziness at the edges, should now contain their erstwhile opposites. Feel free to add affected categories.

• Green exists, therefore blue is also yellow

• The exact moment of death is very hard to define - it used to be that when the heart stopped, you were dead, but now it's usually when your brain stops working. Dead people are now alive and vice versa

*Species. I mean, we just can't keep species as meaningful categories if we're getting rid of sex. This is Richard Dawkins:
"so-called ‘ring species’. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The ‘herring gulls’ gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world."

Many people don't understand that "species" is something defined in the way we choose, or if they are told and understand it, that it doesn't therefore mean that it is made up. It seems difficult for many people to think in that way.

In my worse moments I sometimes think that the problem is that there are now many people like this who still manage to go to university and consider themselves educated. They no longer have street smarts or common sense but they really haven't got whatever might replace it.

The thing is, when you look at categories that now contain their opposites, despite their being different categories, they always contain the exact same thing.

Women
Girls
Lesbians
Girl guides
Single sex spaces
I could go on. And on.

To be fair, I think most people could live their lives perfectly happy & well without knowing exactly how species are determined - not knowing that doesn't prevent them distinguishing a cat from a dog. Alice Roberts knows it, it didn't seem to help though.

But no, DSD does not mean the female category now contains males at all. Transgendered people are not people with DSD.

Michelle Yes, I know. I was being facetious. This is the argument that is being used.

To be fair, I think most people could live their lives perfectly happy & well without knowing exactly how species are determined - not knowing that doesn't prevent them distinguishing a cat from a dog. Alice Roberts knows it, it didn't seem to help though.

For sure. The problem seems to come when people try and manipulate concepts that they don't totally grasp. I think most people are really fairly concrete and practical in their orientation, they tend to treat concepts as more fixed than they are, and weirdly they end up losing the boundaries altogether. Like if woman, or species, isn't a totally concrete term with sharp edges it has no shape at all.

I feel like kind of a snob for thinking about it like this though, like I am saying some people just shouldn't try and think through some ideas. Maybe I am a snob .

I could tell the difference between men and women when I was 2 or 3. Long before I started learning any science. People knew the difference between men and women way before formal education existed. I don’t know why the TRAs think I care that a woman with a medical condition may not have the same chromosomes as me. That doesn’t disprove that biological sex exists.

They are a really special kind of stupid.

The problem seems to come when people try and manipulate concepts that they don't totally grasp.

Nobody can have a deep understanding of everything, and if we tried to do that we'd grind to a halt. Specialisation is what makes human society so good. The downside to this, is that we're vulnerable - we need to be able to trust the people who are expert in a particular area. Experts have a responsibility to be honest, not to abuse the trust that's placed in them to forward their own agendas. That's the problem here.

Deepak Chopra (even though he's not a physicist) talks about physics, because he knows most people don't have a confident grasp of it. Once he brings people onto shaky ground where they can't confidently refute his claims, he can claim what he wants. It's the same with the intersex argument. Make people feel like they're out of their depth, that this is an area in which they have to defer to an expert, and then push your agenda. People shouldn't really have to manipulate concepts they aren't familiar with.

There are solids and there are liquids.

"Jelly".
Oh yes, there's jelly, and because ice melts, ice is a liquid and because jelly feels wet it's a liquid and therefore ice, jelly, water and blood are all the same thing scientifically.

^ using their logic

"Girl" originally meant child of either sex.

Baby boys wore dresses until the twentieth century.

*"Girl" originally meant child of either sex.
Ooh, I never knew that!

• Evening exists, therefore day = night
• Some people are 5ft5 therefore 5ft = 6ft
• There is a full spectrum of directions between north and south, therefore north = south
• Some animals use their hands like feet and their feet like hands, therefore hands = feet and legs = arms
• there is no clear and universal point where your legs turn into your torso, or your torso turns into your head, therefore your head = your feet
• Monotremes exist therefore mammals = reptiles
• Elephants and Manatees share a common ancestor, therefore elephants = manatees.
• There is no clear consensus on when life begins, therefore a zygote = a baby (omg, the TRA logic can also used by the religious right, I'm sooooooo shocked).

I think about this a lot actually, because there's basically nothing that POMO logic can't "prove" to be true.

there's basically nothing that POMO logic can't "prove" to be true.
You just need to wrap it up in enough words. That's Hines' mistake, she sometimes says things in short sentences, and reveals the barking-ness of it all.

Hi all,
We're going to take this down because we've had reports that the opening line isn't particularly sensitive towards the DSD community and, having looked, we can see the point. It is rather open to interpretation.
That said, we can also see the point that @Mermoose is making, so we'll wait a few minutes in case you want to copy the first post to tweak and restart the thread with somewhat more care for our MNers who have DSD or members of their family with DSD.

Hi, that's absolutely fair enough. It wasn't my intention at all to be disrespectful to people with DSDs. I'll see if I can re-word it so it's clearer that I'm being satirical.

Great! Are you all set, can we go ahead and delete?

in fact @mermoose, if you want you could just send us in the tweaked post and we can edit?
Or if you've already started a new thread, givvus the URL here and we'll put it in the deletion message?

How about...
It's argued that existence of people with DSDs (or intersex people) means that the female category now contains males, and vice versa. There are two problems with this that I can see, the first being that DSDs don't literally make people 'intersex', they're conditions that affect male people and female people. The second problem is that even if it were true that some people were neither male nor female but somewhere in between, that wouldn't support the idea that male people now belonged in the female category. If we did this with sex, why not do it with other categories? I've decided to put together a list of other categories that, due to fuzziness at the edges, should now contain their erstwhile opposites. Feel free to add affected categories.

• Green exists, therefore blue is also yellow

• The exact moment of death is very hard to define - it used to be that when the heart stopped, you were dead, but now it's usually when your brain stops working. Dead people are now alive and vice versa

*Species. I mean, we just can't keep species as meaningful categories if we're getting rid of sex. This is Richard Dawkins:
"so-called ‘ring species’. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull. In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The ‘herring gulls’ gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls. At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world."

So, yeah. Blue is yellow, Elvis is alive, and I'm a parakeet.

Let's do this offline... BACK IN A MO, everyone!

The downside to this, is that we're vulnerable - we need to be able to trust the people who are expert in a particular area.

This is a huge problem in so many areas. And I am sympathetic, I am often suspicious of the "experts". How could I not be?

Let's do this offline... BACK IN A MO, everyone! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to message you or something, sorry! (I tried to but it didn't work). Anyway - lookit, I don't want to upset people. I was trying to satirise the argument that femaleness is determined by gender identity because some women have DSDs. But maybe it's too sensitive a topic to use satire (or, maybe it can be done, but not by me). I'm happy for it to be edited/deleted.

As a mathematician I'd like to add 2=3

Right, apologies for the confusion everyone, we had a bit of a thing to deal with in the office. We've gone with @Mermoose's recent tweaked version, and hope that our interruption hasn't completely killed the thread.