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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

"We have always been here"

599 replies

DiamondThrone · 22/06/2025 14:34

Been noticing this a lot. It seems to be the new #TWAW #nodebate #bekind, after those didn't work.

I mean - lots of things have "always been here". Like women, for instance 😄

Just interested in new terms that arise, and how they are used to try and shut down comment.

OP posts:
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shrewdasserpentsinnocentasdoves · 22/06/2025 22:15

What has actually happened is that after centuries of everyone knowing what male/female is, for a very brief period of time everyone has got confused about it for a bit, and society has experimented with having males in women's changing rooms/sports teams/hospital wards, and giving drugs to children to mess with their puberty.

The experiment has lasted a few years because "no debate" has very successfully prevented anyone from actually talking about this or questioning it. But eventually, debate has happened, and a large number of people don't like the idea of male/female being a feeling, or of having men in women's spaces or giving cross sex hormones to 9 year olds.

So after "no debate" has failed, the next thing is to try to pretend that this whole thing isn't a new experiment at all, that there have always been men passing unnoticed in women's changing rooms. It makes it sound like those people who think there are two sexes are the ones changing the rules by banning men from women's spaces which they have always been in throughout history, whereas what is actually happening is that we are going back to the way things have always been apart from a few brief years of crazy.

"No debate" was clever, and "We have always been here" is clever too.

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:15

I blame Judith Butler, well I blame her for most things on general principle, but she's made popular this idea that if you say something is really complex, in fact so complex that nobody really knows what it means, then cleverness rests in your ability to come up with fashionable buzzwords.

There are people who find this really attractive. Some are friends of mine. These are people with PhDs coming out of their ears who, to listen to them talk, don't know where babies come from.

But the sex binary isn't complex at all. It's very very basic.

Lots of these have children, so I presume they actually know where babies come from, but they think it makes them look clever to pretend they don't.

And I know they're pretending because they don't do this in other contexts. They aren't silly enough to try lecturing cops on the theory of relativity when they get pulled over for doing 87 in a 55.

nutmeg7 · 22/06/2025 22:17

springbirdss · 22/06/2025 20:30

I ask this politely (seriously, I'm not trying to wind people up here or cause offence, I'm just genuinely curious)

Surely differences in sexual development (once known as intersex conditions) prove that there isn't a biological sex binary?

If it's possible to be born with sex hormones or chromosomes that don't correspond with your genitals, doesn't that mean that nature is more mysterious than you give it credit for?

Surely if our existence hinged solely on our reproductive function, we would all be heterosexual?

You mention child bearing as a defining characteristic of womanhood. I would argue that it can be, but that women who are born without wombs (MRKH syndrome for example) or other causes of infertility, are no less 'woman' than I am. Would you agree?

Edited

There is a lot here.

DSDs it sounds like you don’t know enough. All DSDs are either male or female which means they have reproductive organs that were geared toward making eggs OR sperm but not both. There is no third gamete or spectrum of gametes. Something goes wrong in the development (exactly what goes wrong is well understood by biologists) so that external genitalia might not look normal, or be easily identifiable as male or female. In the same way that other parts of the body can develop wrongly in the womb. They are a fraction of 1% of the population. Some people are born with extra fingers, but we don’t suggest that the number of fingers on a human is on a spectrum.

A spectrum implies continuous variation from one end to the other. There are only two sexes, and a tiny tiny number of people where there is a problem located on the sex chromosomes.

It is not necessary for a woman to have a womb or give birth to be female. Of course not. Female means XX chromosomes (except in rare DSDs) and a body designed to make eggs (rather than sperm). Even if that body doesn’t make any eggs or has no womb because of a medical problem. It doesn’t make that person male. They don’t have testicles, they have ovaries, or partly developed ovaries if something went wrong. A male person is designed to make sperm, even if there is a problem and they are infertile.

But the important thing is that even if not all women bear children, or are able to bear children, or choose to bear children, ONLY women bear children. And so in society we are treated differently at work (don’t hire her she might go off and have a baby; let’s make her redundant as she’s part time now she has kids, so she’s not as valuable to the company; let’s pay her less, she’s not as committed because she has to leave at 5pm to pick up the kids from school), and are vulnerable to male violence because we are smaller and weaker. It’s just fact, it doesn’t mean we are less clever or less human.

We can’t identify out of this, even if we “present masculine” or work in engineering. It is to do with our sex, not anything to do with gender presentation.

A man who presents as “female” might take hormones, have plastic surgery and wear a skirt and lipstick, but it does not change his sex. He is still on average bigger and stronger than most women. This is his gender presentation. I don’t care if that’s what he wants to do, other men should be more accepting of gender non-conformity.

But I do not think that toilets, changing rooms, women’s groups, rape crisis, prisons, sports should be organised by whether a person is wearing a skirt and make up or not.

These spaces were separated by sex for a reason; humans have understood for ever that women are vulnerable to male assault, vulnerable to rape and impregnation, we can be physically hurt by almost any man who chooses to do so. It is just that most men don’t choose to do this, but we do not know which men are a problem, so
in public life, places where women are vulnerable or need privacy have been historically separated by sex.

Transwomen are still male, they mostly do not pass as female, and do not have female patterns of criminal behaviour.

Gender presentation is not the same sex.

spannasaurus · 22/06/2025 22:19

If people are going to link to Wikipedia they should really read what they've linked to. A freemason cow is a sterile female.

It also helps if you understand that all cows are female

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:21

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:10

Of course farmers are very aware of the complexities in sex - why don't you ask them about freemartin cows?

"Genetically, the animal is chimeric: karyotypy of a sample of cells shows XX/XY chromosomes. The animal originates as a female (XX), but acquires the male (XY) component in utero by exchange of some cellular material from a male twin, via vascular connections between placentas: an example of microchimerism"

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemartin

Srsly?

🙄

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:22

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:15

I blame Judith Butler, well I blame her for most things on general principle, but she's made popular this idea that if you say something is really complex, in fact so complex that nobody really knows what it means, then cleverness rests in your ability to come up with fashionable buzzwords.

There are people who find this really attractive. Some are friends of mine. These are people with PhDs coming out of their ears who, to listen to them talk, don't know where babies come from.

But the sex binary isn't complex at all. It's very very basic.

Lots of these have children, so I presume they actually know where babies come from, but they think it makes them look clever to pretend they don't.

And I know they're pretending because they don't do this in other contexts. They aren't silly enough to try lecturing cops on the theory of relativity when they get pulled over for doing 87 in a 55.

But of course, you will be aware that the BMA have called the Supreme Court Judgement 'scientifically illiterate ' - and I imagine they are more likely to have a better grounding and education in science and the human body that the panel of judges.

FWR often presents intersex conditions / DSD as all ultimately either male or female, but of course this is certainly not the scientific consensus.

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 22/06/2025 22:22

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suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:24

spannasaurus · 22/06/2025 22:19

If people are going to link to Wikipedia they should really read what they've linked to. A freemason cow is a sterile female.

It also helps if you understand that all cows are female

I thought I would make it more accessible, but here is some further info about the XX/XY chimerism.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15885443/

The freemartin syndrome: an update - PubMed

The freemartin condition represents the most frequent form of intersexuality found in cattle, and occasionally other species. This review considers the current state of knowledge of freemartin biology, incidence, experimental models, diagnosis, uses fo...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15885443/

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:26

Some of us do know about variations in other mammals.

Tortoiseshell cats are almost exclusively female. But not quite exclusively. Very rarely you find a male tortie, but they're invariably sterile. Whatever gene causes the tortoiseshell coat, which normatively appears only in females, is a DSD when it appears in males - it's roughly a feline Klinefelter syndrome.

Cats don't have three sexes. They have a sex class that produces large gametes and a sex class that produces small gametes, and that's how kittens are made.

The same goes for every other mammalian species, including the human species.

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:28

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:22

But of course, you will be aware that the BMA have called the Supreme Court Judgement 'scientifically illiterate ' - and I imagine they are more likely to have a better grounding and education in science and the human body that the panel of judges.

FWR often presents intersex conditions / DSD as all ultimately either male or female, but of course this is certainly not the scientific consensus.

You do know, don't you, that there's a difference between "doctors" on the one hand and, on the other, "a subcommittee of the BMA stuffed with politicos who have too much time on their hands and probably got bored writing resolutions about Gaza"?

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:30

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:22

But of course, you will be aware that the BMA have called the Supreme Court Judgement 'scientifically illiterate ' - and I imagine they are more likely to have a better grounding and education in science and the human body that the panel of judges.

FWR often presents intersex conditions / DSD as all ultimately either male or female, but of course this is certainly not the scientific consensus.

Can you link to doctors in the field who argue for an 'in between' sex?

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:34

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:30

Can you link to doctors in the field who argue for an 'in between' sex?

Nobody needs to posit a third sex to agree that there are intersex conditions that do not fall neatly in a binary.

springbirdss · 22/06/2025 22:36

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 22/06/2025 22:09

‘Someone born with a variety of 'male' and 'female' traits might identify as a woman for example, but by some of your logic they wouldn't qualify as a woman’

And next on the bingo card we have ‘regressive, sexist, stereotypes’!

They wouldn't qualify as a woman, according to your logic, because they would have the wrong chromosomes, or some other feature that doesn't align with your idea of a biological woman. No?

shrewdasserpentsinnocentasdoves · 22/06/2025 22:38

On the DSD issue: Humans have two legs and ten toes. Some humans are born missing leg(s) or toe(s), because something went wrong in their development. Not because of a new kind of human, or because there is a broad spectrum of how many legs/toes a human has. Similarly, humans are born with XY chromosomes and produce sperm, or XX and produce eggs. Some people are born with chromosomal abnormalities which means that they don't produce eggs/sperm, but this doesn't mean that biological sex is a spectrum.

LadyBracknellsHandbagg · 22/06/2025 22:38

springbirdss · 22/06/2025 22:36

They wouldn't qualify as a woman, according to your logic, because they would have the wrong chromosomes, or some other feature that doesn't align with your idea of a biological woman. No?

The thing is, I know what a woman is and so do you, and no amount of word salad is going to change that. There are no ‘wrong chromosomes’.

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:39

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:34

Nobody needs to posit a third sex to agree that there are intersex conditions that do not fall neatly in a binary.

Ok so at least you will concede that much.

But further clarification. All bodies evolve on a pathway to produce small gametes or large gametes. Humans do not produce a bit of both.

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:41

There seems to be more than the usual amount of "hey, have you heard about DSDs?" this week.

Notably, the people who want us to agree with them that biological sex is a spectrum will never explain what this has to do with Jack, 50, who has been cross-dressing for masturbatory purposes since his teens and now wants to live his fetish full-time.

They will however scold us for not wanting Jack in the ladies.

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:46

SionnachRuadh · 22/06/2025 22:41

There seems to be more than the usual amount of "hey, have you heard about DSDs?" this week.

Notably, the people who want us to agree with them that biological sex is a spectrum will never explain what this has to do with Jack, 50, who has been cross-dressing for masturbatory purposes since his teens and now wants to live his fetish full-time.

They will however scold us for not wanting Jack in the ladies.

Well quite 🫠

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:48

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:39

Ok so at least you will concede that much.

But further clarification. All bodies evolve on a pathway to produce small gametes or large gametes. Humans do not produce a bit of both.

That's a bit of a wooly description, and I don't think everyone in the scientific community would agree with you if you were attempting to use that as an ultimate definer of 100% of mammals as either binary female or male. Well, they clearly don't, plenty happily acknowledge intersex conditions without attempting to label everything as ultimately male or female.

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:51

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:48

That's a bit of a wooly description, and I don't think everyone in the scientific community would agree with you if you were attempting to use that as an ultimate definer of 100% of mammals as either binary female or male. Well, they clearly don't, plenty happily acknowledge intersex conditions without attempting to label everything as ultimately male or female.

Nothing woolly about it.

Every person with a DSD is ultimately male or female. Their sex will be identifiable when medically tested.

shrewdasserpentsinnocentasdoves · 22/06/2025 22:52

The issue of DSDs is complex, but it has zero to do with trans.

If you break down the logic, it goes like this.

A tiny minority of people are born with physical differences in the development of their sex organs, a condition which can now be recognised at birth and identified by medical testing
The existence of these people somehow proves that another group of people, with no physical differences in the development of their sex organs, can actually have brains that are the opposite sex to their bodies, despite there being no medical evidence for this and no reliable medical test to identify it.

Furthermore, the state of "having a brain that is the opposite sex to one's body" can develop at any time, and can change back and forth over the course of a person's lifetime, or indeed over the course of a day.

And despite the fact that almost all single-sex provision is in place to accommodate the physical differences between the sexes, a person with "brain opposite sex to body" should be allowed to use the provision which matches with their "brain sex" rather than their "body sex".

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:54

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:51

Nothing woolly about it.

Every person with a DSD is ultimately male or female. Their sex will be identifiable when medically tested.

I mean you can say that as much as you like, but you are not stating a scientific consensus when you repeat that.

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:55

suggestionsplease1 · 22/06/2025 22:54

I mean you can say that as much as you like, but you are not stating a scientific consensus when you repeat that.

I am though.

Can you point me to examples of humans who have produced both gametes or an 'in-between' gamete?

CassOle · 22/06/2025 22:58

Siggestions never fails to disappoint.

WithSilverBells · 22/06/2025 23:01

TheKeatingFive · 22/06/2025 22:55

I am though.

Can you point me to examples of humans who have produced both gametes or an 'in-between' gamete?

Whose turn is it to load the spegg image (again)?