Addressing the 'sex is nebulous' position

[Brainworm]

Since 2015, TRAs have flip flopped between 'sex and gender are separate concepts' and 'sex is a pretty meaningless/unhelpful construct as it's difficult to define and/or determine- so we ought to ignore it in favour of gender'.

Recently, we have seen a resurgence of the latter position, as demonstrated in the current Peggie v Fife NHS Board.

Counter arguments based on gametes aren't particularly accessible to the general public m, whereas references to fertility are.

In developed countries, the infertility rate is approximately 9% of males and 11% of females. Of the 9% infertile males and 11% infertile females, 0% are infertile for reasons pertaining to their sex being difficult to determine.

People know that it must be vanishingly rare not to know whether a condom or the pill is a suitable contraceptive method for oneself and to suggest otherwise is glaringly bat shit crazy. These arguments link to concrete experience/action, whilst conversation about hormone levels and chromosomes refer to factors that are typically unconfirmed for a given person.

People with a much sharper mind than me (like Naomi Cunningham) will have good reason for not drawing upon fertility to evidence sex is not nebulous. This post is to try and understand why this is.

Can anyone help?

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

I still don’t understand how a man can say he ‘feels like a woman’ How?? How would he know?
Strikes me even if he says he feels like one he sure doesn’t behave like one. They want to be women but behave like men; it’s as if they just can’t help it.
If we are talking stereotypes perhaps they should behave/aspire to be gentle, sympathetic, kind, caring etc etc as they seem to be the qualities that most women have. The majority of carers are women aren’t they? Or does society assume they will do more of the caring (including child care) ???
(disclaimer; not all women feel maternal, some women are violent, some women commit murder and many men are carers; in case my post is regarded as sexist or inarticulate)

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.

But we can't see chromosomes for ourselves. Scientists tell us that they exist, and we each have either XX or XY. So we believe that since we are [insert sex] then we will have [insert appropriate chromosomes]. But unless someone takes a tissue sample and shows us the result under a microscope, we can't actually see it for ourselves. It's a matter of belief in science.

Gametes, while also too small for us to see for ourselves*, can be inferred from patterns we observe in humans and other mammals. Sometimes, after members of the group with external dangly bits (that produce a certain type of bodily fluid) get intimate with members of the group without external dangly bits (who don't produce the same type of bodily fluid but do spend part of their life expelling a blood-type fluid on a regular basis), members of the latter group develop an enlarged abdomen for a certain period of time and eventually their body expels a baby of the species. Science can explain how that happens and give words to the different elements, but even without that, we can still determine a pattern from what we see for ourselves, and infer from it that the dangly bit goes into the opening and something happens that results in a baby. Humans worked that out well before the invention of the microscope enabled them to see exactly what was going on.

Menopause and surgery etc isn't relevant if the definition is 'the type of body that would produce xxxxx or xxxxx, if everything were in working order'.

[* Actually Wikipedia says mammalian ova can be seen with the naked eye. Although probably not my eyes, as I need to wear reading glasses.]

Well yes, but unfortunately in the absence of that happening lots of gullible people are unquestioningly accepting this new assertion (I was going to say 'theory' but let's face it, it isn't a theory because there's no argument or research to back it up).

My view is that, if someone tells me that gravity isn't real, I'm not going to run around gathering evidence for them that it exists, I'm going to say to them, 'prove it' (preferably without jumping from an upstairs window).

And yes, I know that wouldn't change their mind but my point is that, if gravity deniers want to disbelieve settled science then that's entirely up to them but, without robust evidence, they have no right to expect the rest of us to take them seriously.

What's odd about all this "sex is nebulous" stuff is that it completely ignores what sex is for!
If you keep that in mind, then it's quite clearly a binary system (for producing babies) which has the occasional functional wobble or gets damaged in particular cases (DSDs, infertility, hysterectomy etc), a timeline in each sex (embryonic sexual development, puberty, menopause and so on), and an incidental penumbra effect on some things which aren't mission critical for producing babies, so can be more variable without being evolved out of existence altogether (height, voice type, muscular strength, hairiness etc).

We can see the evidence of those genes/chromosomes, though, by looking at the body. There's a direct link between the two. Male body ends up male because of the Y chromosome. The evidence of the y is right there. Penis and testicles.

There's an attempt to make it seem complicated but it's not.

I noticed with DU that he attempted to obfuscate things by listing all the different sex related markers that make it complicated- secondary sex characteristics, hormones, genes/chromosomes/DNA, genitalia, and then gender, his feelings.

What was absurd to me was that all of those markers are measurable bar one. All of them mark him male but one. And that was the one he chose to follow. I would go with something like that.

It's just such a bizarre thing to argue because everyone knows there is a fundamental biological difference between male and female. We all know.
It's like someone arguing that there's no real difference between the sun and the moon because they're both in the sky or no difference between the ocean and a puddle because they both consist of water.
It's hard to have a discussion with someone who point blank refuses to acknowledge something so absolutely obvious. You can't argue with crazy.

I had a conversation the other day that made me think that a lot of people confuse social norms with sex. I had said something, in reference to an earlier discussion, that sex existed for reproduction.

The people I was talking to were quite offended, saying that this was homophobic and people had sex for all kinds of other reasons like personal pleasure, love, etc, and in fact often tried not to reproduce.

Of course that totally misses the point, people do all those things at times, but the reason sexual intercourse happens and the reason people come in two sexes is in order to combine genetic material and produce a new generation. We wouldn't be having sex for fun if it wasn't a reproductive strategy.

It struck me that if people don't actually know what the word sex means, or what sexual reproduction is for, no wonder they get confused about the definition of sex.