A spectrum of stupidity

[proximalhumerous]

I'm not a scientist, but I am struck by what appears to me the profound illogicality of people stating that sex is a spectrum.

Are people (intentionally or otherwise) confusing all members of a group not being identical (i.e. having differing hormone levels, etc.) with there not being a clear binary of gamete-producing pathways?

I've just read this utter twaddle on the website of the Crab Museum in Margate:

"Today the Supreme Court voted to exclude a group of persecuted people from equality legislation. Their ruling centred on the word "biology", with the judge stating that biological sex is "assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation." Speaking in a professional capacity as museum of biology: this is not how biology works.

There are no binaries in nature, and biology, like all sciences, should never be taken for granted or assumed to be "self-explanatory". Even worse, it should never be used to justify weaponised culture war issues. This ruling is an abuse of science.

We have spoken many times before about this - there is immense variation between individuals within a biological sex. Biological sex itself (not just gender) is a spectrum - and it really shouldn't be a big deal.

If you don't like trans people then just be honest about your prejudices. But don't use biology to support your views in the same way that racists do.

Our trans siblings must be defended at all costs. If we allow the limitation of their rights then other minorities won't be far behind.

Maybe you'll be next?"

Nobody is excluded from equality legislation, surely?

Speaking as museum of biology? What does that mean, exactly?

No binaries in nature? Really?

Trans people must be defended "at all costs"??

I mean some backlash was inevitable, but how can so-called biologists be so deluded?

Oh, I was talking of carcinization and thinking of things crawling from under stones.

And anyway, no matter how determined some people are to use their knowledge of biology to "prove" sex is a spectrum, how can the definition of a woman possibly be (or even include) someone who has a penis? A woman can only have a penis if a man has decided to label himself as a woman, and that is not a scientific endeavour.

Also, looking at things logically, an inherent spectrum doesn't disprove there is still a clear binary. Take velocity, compared with whether an object is moving or not. It could be moving very fast or at a barely perceptibly slow speed, but either way it will eventually travel some distance. If it is stationary, however, it won't move even a millimetre no matter how long you wait. That doesn't stop 0 mph being on the same "spectrum" as 60 mph, but there is still a binary distinction.

Of course it isn't over. Sexism never is.

There are two sexes and there are deep tensions between them and anyone who tries to question or discuss the boundaries i.e gay people, feminists, gender questioning folk, even men's advocates are going to have a difficult time.

However what is over is the whole attempt by genderists in conjunction with academia and the world's biggest corporations to create a new locked in gender system to parallel the one that used to exist 100 years ago only with different categories. A system which you were not allowed to question which was run by the most obnoxious people you can find. Even the trans people hated it look at their own arguments about who or what is trans and the fact the more harmless "trans" people always got sidelined by the predators and the ego maniacs. It was a stupid plan because it relied on a medical scam which has a finite life and dysfunctional people who undermined their own ideas.

There isn't going to be any happy gender land. Instead we are going to have a lot of people arguing and discussing forever. There will be better safeguarding. Also remember gender and sexual differences are FUNNY. There was a reason there is a deep tension between drag and trans.

Trust crab lovers to want to sidestep the law!

Sex in all higher lifeforms is definitely binary. Prove me wrong. Show me the third gamete. However if someone wants to identify with fungi and slimemoulds I'm not going to stop them,

The Guardian reported on them last year. Apparently they don't have any background in marine biology at all:

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2024/mar/11/margate-crab-museum

Looking at the accounts of the museum (they are a limited company not a charity). They had a turnover of £139k in the latest accounts. There is nothing to say whether any of that was public money.

Isn’t it astonishing - given the impossibility of determining someone’s sex - how many people still manage to produce children 🙄

In our society, everyone knows what sex they are - even those born with DSD’s. Thanks for the laugh though Mishy,

Waiting lists of 5-10 years to see an NHS Gender clinic, just for a first appointment.
It took me a similar amount of years before a doctor finally took my symptoms seriously and I was diagnosed with PCOS. It's shit, not sure it's discrimination though.

Biological sex is complicated. Before you discriminate against someone on the basis of “biological sex” & identity, ask yourself: have you seen YOUR chromosomes? My TRA ex-friend tried this one with me recently. Apparently I have no way of knowing. The fact I've been pregnant more than once, miscarried and given birth to live babies makes me certain enough that I'm female. They also tried to claim I was some kind of 'intersex' (their word not mine) because I have PCOS and elevated testosterone. They can fuck right off with that. So fucking offensive.

Queues out the door? There must be fuck all to do in Margate.

To pick up some of Mishy's points

1. The vast majority of articles on trans people in the daily press are negative.

Given that most of the press stories about trans people that I've seen are either protests involving other people being harassed or threatened by trans people/their supporters (via signage or in person) or anti-social behaviour, or - in the case of people like Isla Bryson/that nappy man - because they are accused of crimes, I think we can file negative press under "And whose fault is that?"

1. Assaults and reported abuse on the rise.

Citation needed. And how much of that is due to everything being a perceived slight/hate crime/actual genocide?

1. No treatment options for transkids who go through an extensive process before even accessing blockers signed off by experts in the field. (The Cass Review has not been followed anywhere in the world, and instead criticised for a biased methodology). Even Baddenoch confirmed she was pleased with what her appointment had acheived.

Maybe that's because giving children surgery and hormones that have permanent, life-changing effects when there may well be other factors at play, is recognised as wildly unethical. Cheap jibe at Kemi B aside, the "biased methodology" has been debunked. It's just not what you wanted to hear.

1. Trans people now to be tested for Autism. Why?

Because it's widely understood that a lot of kids who "identify as trans" are actually autistic, alongside other co-morbidities such as struggling with puberty, repressed homosexuality or other trauma.

1. New toilet rules proposed by a biased EHRC stacked by the previous government (kemi/Liz) again. Who will employ a trans person now if they have to build a new facility for their bathroom?

Oh stop with the "biased" and "nasty Tories" shite, it's tedious. It isn't necessarily the case that a new facility is needed, by and large trans people can just use the facilities for their biological sex. They just don't want to, which is tough.

(I have no idea why the formatting made every section "1"!)

You are not wrong. Dear Mishi is (as usual).

Sex is binary: small motile gamete and large immotile gamete.

How each group of living organisms configures itself to produce said gametes, and to deliver that gamete to its opposite number, is variably wild and wonderful.

In mammals, we house the gamete production system in two separate types of body, equipped with the relevant mechanisms to deliver or receive, and determine the two types of body at conception using a yes/no SRY gene switch. If something has gone awry with, say, the switch mechanism or the signalling pathway or embryo development or the phase of the bloody moon, it does not mean that sex is not binary.

And even if sex in humans (uniquely amongst the living world unless you are a fungus) was a magical glittery spectrum of incomprehensible ineffability, the Righteous wordcloudy obfuscators don't ever actually explain how then we could define the ladies' and gent's facilities, let alone decide which people were being persecuted by going or not going in which facilities.

Someone's just congratulated Eluned Morgan on being the first Welsh female Labour leader 😲 They can't possibly have seen them's chromosomes.

Re the funding, it seems they crowd-fund and use the founders' own savings.

https://www.spacehive.com/crabmuseum "We want to improve what we do and offer more people in the community access to free, independent science education." Science education, eh?

It's a shame, they all look like they have academic science backgrounds and the museum sounds great. So why the gender nonsense? Are the crabs rising up in support of their trans-crab siblings or something?

Everything in the extended drivel Mishy quoted has been extensiblcely debunked many times before, so I won't bother repeating. I will merely point out that US universities have a regrettable tendency to call everyone in a college or university teaching role 'professor'. An assistant professor in their terms is a very long way from being senior and respected authority (although as we've seen over here, 'genuine' professors can still be utter idiots in this topic).

No treatment options for transkids who go through an extensive process before even accessing blockers signed off by experts in the field. (The Cass Review has not been followed anywhere in the world, and instead criticised for a biased methodology). Even Baddenoch [sic] confirmed she was pleased with what her appointment had acheived [sic].

Well of course there should be an extensive process to go through before giving a drug which could lead to infertility and osteoporosis to healthy children. Jeez.

They're a CIC.

https://www.crabmuseum.org/theteam

How do you know they’re men though?

Well, quite. They may identify as crustaceans.

What a patronising crock of shit 🤣🤣

If biological sex were a spectrum you’d think patriarchy would have been difficult to establish, and yet the oppressors had no problem knowing who to oppress 🧐

Gender clinics stopped genetic testing because, guess what, all the blokes who wanted to be ladies turned out to be blokes. Without two sexes how would they know what sex they were and which one they wanted to emulate?

Can I have "magical glittery spectrum of incomprehensible ineffability" as my next username, please?

Seriously though, I find the number of apparently otherwise intelligent, sensible, scientifically/medically-trained people who buy into this nonsense quite mind-blowing. Can they not see the fallacies, or do they just not want to?

This is such a load of utter nonsense.

Lets get back to first principles. What does ‘sex’ actually mean, (when used to describe a person, not the act)? What does it refer to?

It refers to the individual’s potential role in sexual reproduction. It refers to the sex category they belong to in terms of the roles in sexual reproduction.

So how many roles/ sexes are involved in sexual reproduction? Two. What are those? Male and female.

Sex is a rare example of a true binary in nature. There are no other sex classes involved in sexual reproduction. That is why it is a binary.

There is only one primary sex characteristic. Gamete’s ( sperm and egg). It is which primary sex characteristic one has that determines one’s sex.

Everything else is a secondary sex characteristic.

Intersex conditions are abnormalities. They are no evidence of a ‘spectrum’ as they have no distinctive additional roles in sexual reproduction. They offer absolutely no challenge to the binary of sex.

Every time I hear someone saying that sex is not binary, I want to ask them what they think the third gamete is that humans produce, and whether it is shown in this diagram.