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?

Well that explains a lot

We visited Margate a couple of summers ago having heard that it’s the place to be. DH and I agreed that it is in fact really depressing with very obvious poverty and deprivation. We found the rainbow flags very oppressive too so won’t be going back to visit the crab museum.

There are no binaries in nature

Human reproduction is a very obvious example of a binary in nature.. Small gamete. Large gamete. Binary.

God these people are thick.

I find lots of these British seaside towns pretty depressing, especially if the weather is anything other than glorious sunshine.

Did you go to Ramsgate? Just wondered if that's any nicer.

No we’d had enough of overpriced coffee, blue hair, shouty sweary parents and dog shit streets by 3pm and couldn’t wait to get out.

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.

I've seen it argued that it is not a binary, using a definition of binary as an "A/not-A" opposition, including by Jane Clare Jones.

That might be part of the talking at cross-purposes here - a particular sociological meaning of binary in that sense. As opposed to a narrower meaning of "thing that has two values".

So yes, maybe "woman" or "female" are not the opposite of "man" or "male". A woman is not a non-man.

But there are still only two gametes and sexes.

JCJ piece here - I recommend it:

janeclarejones.com/2018/10/01/a-note-on-smashing-the-binary/

Key paragraphs:

"Now we get the conceptual clanger made by intersectional feminists and adherents to trans ideology. The whole point of binaries is that they are conceptual discursive oppositions laid on top of natural differences. The effect of laying a binary on top of a difference is that it effectively denies being to, or erases, the inferior pole of the binary, because the inferior term in defined only as a negative mirror-image of the superior term, and is not granted reality, or given worth, in itself."

"The remedy for this, according to French feminist thought – that is, the way you ‘deconstruct binaries’ according to the intellectual tradition that thought hardest about it – is to insist on the reality of both parts of a natural difference, and to refuse the way they are hierarchically constructed in discourse. That is, according to French feminism, what you do is to spend a lot of time thinking through what women are, and what women’s lived experience tells us, in order to challenge the construction of ‘Woman’ as simply ‘the Other of Man.’"

"And this is where it goes completely, utterly off the rails for the woke. Instead of granting reality to both sides of the difference, and working to move our discursive structures away from the way our culture codes those differences, trans ideology has decided to try and abolish the difference itself. That they can’t grasp the distinction between ‘a difference’ and ‘a binary’ is demonstrated by the fact that they keep referring to the sexual difference between male and female humans – which is a difference in kind between two types of humans – as ‘a binary,’ or even worse, as the ‘gender binary.’ (Headdesk)."

I usually use the dead-alive analogy

One could argue that there are instances where it is not 100% 'obvious' whether someone is dead or alive (ie brain death), or we could also spend hours philosophising about what it truly means to be alive, or even whether you might feel 'dead inside' etc etc
but I do not think for a second that anyone would claim that, therefore, life and death are actually indistinguishable and a bloody spectrum!

I am not sure how much of this is Rebecca Helm's or your own stupidity?

I am very sorry I ususally do not swear, but the 'sex is complicated' mantra truly infuriates. Yes, the developmental processes leading to sex differentiation are complex and fined tuned, but the end result, ie the male/female categories, are very simple in 99.9% of the cases - otherwise we would not be here as a species!

It means you may be genetically male or female, chromosomally male or female, hormonally male/female/non-binary, with cells that may or may not hear the male/female/non-binary call, and all this leading to a body that can be male/non-binary/female. Try out some combinations for yourself. Notice how confusing it gets? Can you point to what the absolute cause of biological sex is? Is it fair to judge people by it?

Yes. Gamete production.
HTH

Did you know species boundaries are somewhat fuzzy?

That makes cats and dogs totally indistinguishable.

Be careful out there.

If nobody can distinguish between sexes accurately anyway, why is there any need for trans-rights?

On the other hand, lovely feminist believe:

• there is a difference between the sexes,
• that there are people uncomfortable with their natal sex,
• and (at least until we can figure out a more effective and less brutal treatment regime) trans rights should be a thing

just not including transpeople in spaces etc which need to be single sex

Oh wow, another blast from the past! We've had the shit recycled TRA talking points from 2018 and now we're getting visits from the proper bam TRA posters from a while ago!

First Butterfly, now Mishy...anyone seen any more? Marghy is probably next.

They sound like the stupid Vagina Museum or that awful Jack the Ripper museum Linda Riley opened.

Marg is always around but I think has had a name change.

@Glamourreader
You win the internet today!

It’s mostly Rebecca Helm’s cringey facepalm moment. I remember when this twattery was smugly posted on Twitter.

I’m not going to quote all of Mishy’s long post I’m pulling out this bit-

“have you seen YOUR chromosomes? Do you know the genes of the people you love? The hormones of the people you work with? The state of their cells?
Since the answer will obviously be no, please be kind, respect people’s right to tell you who they are, and remember that you don’t have all the answers.”

Would it be a safe bet most of your coworkers and loved ones ALSO haven’t seen their chromosomes/genes/hormones- so why should we assume they’re any more correct? Presumably most simply won’t know.

And there is no stigma in testing for, or even having a diagnosis of autism- have you any idea how long it can take families to actually get to the assessment stage? It varies throughout the UK but it’s always TOO LONG.

Do you mean furry?

“have you seen YOUR chromosomes?

I have.

I think if you haven't looked into it but are vaguely aware of "intersex conditions" you might believe relatively large numbers of people genuinely exist in some kind of ambiguous in-between state.

The thing that requires you to really switch your brain off is to somehow conclude from this that people who are unambiguously male in every way should be allowed into women's toilets.

1.7% of the population, the TRAs would have it. Except according to various things I've read (including Kathleen Stock in Material Girls) that figure is vastly inflated. And if I hear the line about red hair again...!

So when the drivel about how we all have disorders of sexual development doesn't wash - lets take gender out of the world of grammar and language studies and decide that people all have Gender which mysteriously enables them to be the clearly the opposite sex and not the actual complex sex that they do own.

Do not say that name 3 times

What part of the so called "spectrum" of biological sex do they transition to? That's what I want to know along with what treatment they recommend for crabs infections.

Mishy Mishy Mishy

Without denying anything in your post, somehow, somehow, despite all this unknowable unkownyness, somehow society managed to set some criteria that defined "women" and "men" well enough to be pretty damn consistent when it came to who to deny the vote to, or who couldn't open a bank account, or who needed to stay a virgin til marriage, or who needed to do the housework, or whose father had to pay a dowry, or who could not be a priest, or who could not inherit if they had a younger brother, or who could get their bottom slapped in the office, and which bodies are the ones men like to see young and crying in their porn.

Now clearly that criteria must have been wrong, obviously that is what your post claims, and those fools - fools! - were oppressing the wrong people all along!

BUT IT STILL HAPPENED TO THOSE PEOPLE. EVEN IF THE CRITERIA BY WHICH EVERYONE BELIEVED THOSE PEOPLE TO BE "WOMEN" WERE LAUGHABLY WRONG, THOSE CRITERIA WERE REAL ENOUGH AND OBVIOUS ENOUGH TO OTHER PEOPLE THAT REAL HURT AND REAL MARGINALISATION WAS BASED AND STILL IS BASED UPON THEM.

So even if you just can't see how it could have ever been done, even despite all this unknowable unkownyness, somehow society was able to marginalise and hurt people who met that boring old simplified version of "woman" just fine.

And that is why when it comes to the language, rights and protections we have a moral right to and now confirmed a legal right to, that boring old simplified version of "woman", the one that everyone CAN see and CAN assume about other people without a chromosome check, is exactly the right one, because the people who were oppressed are the people who need the mitigations, not a different group who happen to demand the same name for entirely different reasons.

Because this is not a navel-gazing exercise for women. This is not a "how clever can I be in finding exceptions and variations". This is our lives, and our rights, and our protections in a world that somehow, somehow, somehow, even though apparently no one can really say for certain who they even are, still favours men.

Oh dear. She has rather wasted her education hasn't she. I hope she doesn't have too many students.

Sex is defined with reference to gametes, not chromosomes.

Sex relates to sexual reproduction, and is defined to describe how species reproduce, not to determine identity/worth/personality. (I think this is why she is confused - she relates sex to value).

So snails are hermaphrodites because they produce both kinds of gamete, male seahorses are male because although they carry the fertilised eggs in their pouches and have a seahorse equivalent of a placenta, they produce sperm.
Humans are mammals, so gonochoric and only produce either eggs or sperm, and females carry young.

Women bear a disproportionate reproductive burden (and this impacts them whether they are having infertility treatment, experiencing miscarriage, are pregnant, or just might become pregnant) but because we understand the reproductive process, women can control their fertility. This is fundamental to women's rights.

I can only assume that immense privilege has led to Rebecca Helm stumbling around in a la la land where we pretend we don't know who might have the babies.

Of course any developmental process can go wrong, and we can determine whether that is because either the female or male developmental path has been disrupted. DSDs aren't the result of a random hormone generator. They are specific, and at the very least lead to infertility. Sometimes they are life threatening.

Even if you want to believe that there are thousands of different sexes, could you at least accept that human females are a sex that needs specific rights.