"Biological sex is a multidimensional variable with various components" - Discuss

[dunBle]

To save further derailment of the Sandie Peggie tribunal threads with people debating Tandora's statements on the above theme, I've started this thread to point them to instead.

@Tandora

I think you and I agree on the facts, but not on their import (except, the evidence for 'brain sex' does look a bit shonky, tbh).

But our laws and customs are based on bodies, not minds. An adult human male is someone who has been through male puberty. Irrespective of what their mind is up to, their body is of the type that is faster, stronger, more aggressive, more criminal, and capable of impregnation whether consensual or not. And has the appearance associated at all times in history with superior worth and political power.

This is why females need protecting from the other sex, and measures such as positive action. Reclassification of an AHM as female undermines that. How can you possibly justify doing that on the basis of a psychological attribute?

Well, it’s pretty entertaining that’s for sure. What ‘great job’ is Tandora doing? I can’t see it myself.

The categorisation of people as male and female, men and women etc is objective. A subjective definition is meaningless and pointless.

It never makes sense.

It is like declaring that humans being bipedal is 'complicated'. It is not. Whether a person has one leg or two, humans are bipedal. Variations happen.

I don't care what anyone's credentials are, but doctors and nurses are not claiming that any babies are anything other than male or female so until they are, and can list the multidimensions they can choose from, it is on those making wild claims to show their working.

TRAs regard women as support staff and themselves as the only true women, correct @Tandora?

We don’t need tandora’s credentials.

any sheep farmer knows the basics.

we are interested in the evidence tandora has to present to give reasons as to why we should allow physically healthy males to “identify as” female and thus be awarded all the legal and social rights of females.

The drive to pretend that vanishingly rare disorders of sexual development are standard biology is really about destroying women’s ability to organise as a sex class, right @Tandora? You can then further reduce and belittle them by defining women by biological functions - gestatators, bleeders, birthers, chest-feeders. In doing so you also isolate pre and post-menopausal women as though they are different species. That’s part of the appeal, isn’t it?

(Need to note a good friend states regularly that farmers are generally the most sensible people she knows.)

So are we seriously expected to believe that Mr & Mrs Upton are a lesbian couple, yet definetly not specualte that various things have carried on as usual?

So your assertions are:

1. Every poster here who knows that the universal biological definition of sex is due to gamete type - with small, mobile gametes = male, and large, immobile gametes = female - only have GCSE biology?
2. The people who understand this UBD are 'working very hard to undermine any scientific knowledge'.
3. Any source that can be classified as on the 'right' politically is wrong due to not being 'left', but not because of what the source actually says or how accurate it is.
4. Debating on a talk forum is an 'attack' on those who disagree.
5. Posters who understand this UBD want to 'stoke outrage' purely because they are unhappy (related to the SC clarification of the EA2010).
6. They have lost friends due to understanding this UBD of sex.
7. When people on a forum agree with a poster, this is 'lovebombing'.
8. They are 'bigots'.
9. They need to use Google Scholar to educate themselves.

Well, I would like to see the sources that back up this list of assertions.

I'm interested in @Tandora's credentials as she/he/they claimed to work 'in research', as a way of giving weight to her/his/theys posts.

I've had a fun morning watching the tumbleweed rolling across the desert...

Indeed

"Insisting that trans people are not who they know/say they are, despite zero insight into the lived experiences of trans people or transness as a biopsychological, neurodevelopmental experience."

I believe that there are many people who describe themselves as supporting transgender people and who have declared that they will educate posters on MN on who is and is not transgender often end up being someone who is the one arbitration who is and is not transgender.

I believe there are posters on this very thread who have arbitrated who is and isn't transgender all while declaring themselves to be fully supportive, some even 'qualified in a relevant field'.

So, when I see statements such as this, I am almost immediately thinking about hypocritical positions.

@rosa17 sure crammed a lot into that post.

Shoulda had my bingo card ready.

She did miss out 'Evangelical Christian' and 'old'.

@Tandora what do female humans, female apple trees and female spiders have in common?

ABSOLUTE BOLLOCKS there are ONLY 2 developmental sex pathways, even when it goes wrong.

Give it up, you're not convincing educated adults (I have a BSc in Molecular Biology and Genetics, you?) with your vague assertions of sex being spectrumy.

This exactly. I also really like @Tandora's unemotive tone and factual perspective.

Also some other very interesting posters.

"Insisting that trans people are not who they know/say they are, despite zero insight into the lived experiences of trans people or transness as a biopsychological, neurodevelopmental experience."

This is a good time to post this reminder. Because this really is hypocritical in that it is forgetting that male people are declaring that they can describe themselves as being 'female', based only on their own belief of how a female person 'feels' / interacts with the world.

No male person can ever experience life as a woman. They can only ever experience life as a male person who believes they are a woman.

Even when they 'act' like a woman, they are acting as they believe a 'woman' should act. Which is an act of misogyny by the way.

Even if they are treated 'as a woman' by some people, they are being treated as a 'male who presents as a woman and believes they are a woman'. Because their every reaction is based on that. Not on them being female in any way.

Even when they have extreme body modifications, it is to be their own concept of what a female looks like to them. It is not what a female is.

How can it be?

The only way a person can experience life as a woman, is to have a female body, formed around the production of large gametes, even if it doesn't produce those and to navigate their life based on the decisions they and society makes that revolve around them having that body.

And no male can have that body, not matter what chemicals or surgeries they have.

A male can conceptualise what it might be like to be a female, but that is all it ever is - their concept of being female.

They may do it because they don't feel they fit into how they conceptualise how a male person interacts with the world (ie. their own stereotypes around being male) or they do it because they want to be seen as a female (using their own stereotypes of how a female navigates life). It really doesn't matter though. Their motivation is irrelevant to the outcome. And I consider the outcome can only be described as misogyny.

Which is that they will always be just a male who believes they are something they are objectively not.

How can the material reality be any different?

The logic cannot be any different than that I am afraid.

A previous discussion with Tandora.

Tandora - “I’m so knowledgeable about this subject (unlike you plebs) that I can confidently claim that Transpeople know they are the opposite sex and you just have to bloody well accept it.”

Me - “What about my colleague who was a Transwoman for two years and then detransitioned? Is he a man or a woman?”

Tandora - “I can’t comment on your colleague”

Oh no! Poor rosa17 won't be happy to read that you don't just have GCSEs.

I certainly don’t want Tandora to stop posting. And yes, Tandora is doing a great job. Just not in the way you and Tandora think.

Ah, very interesting @Tandora

"'gender identity' (which is simply the sense/ knowledge of one's own sex)"

It's all down to language and logic isn't it.

Assumptions:

1. gender identity comes in "green" and "yellow"
2. knowledge that one's sex is male means one's gender identity is yellow.

Scenario:
A) my sex is male

Therefore, based on definition from Tandora and my assumptions above, my gender identity is yellow.

How can I ever have a gender identity of green then? If your definition is that "gender identity" is the knowledge of one's own sex?

The only way I can be green is if I can change my sex.

So, @Tandora, is it possible to change sex?

"Insisting that women with CAIS are “male” , in contradiction of medical knowledge/ practice, the physical health of the person in question, their psychological wellbeing, their social relationships and the law."

"All because of some dogmatic insistence that all people must be labelled using words that signify some theoretical notion that their body was “supposed” or “intended” to be other than it actually is (intended by who exactly? God?) (but they were supposed to be able to produce small gametes don’t you know!)"

This is a good example of the disconnectedness of this poster's position.

The first sentence includes 'medical knowledge / practice'? Really... those with the responsibility of providing health care to a male person with a DSD is contradicting that that person is male?

The sentence then continues with fallaciously. Because it is vital for a clinician in many aspects of this male person's life to fully understand this person is male, but this poster has written, that insisting that the person is 'male' is contradicting the physical health of the person in question. This is not true because to provide care for the physical health of that person, the team involved need to understand that the person is male and other aspects of that male person's medical condition and medication to make safe recommendations for their care.

Pyschological wellbeing? If that person cannot accept their medical condition then they do really need all the support we can give them. It is dangerous for them to not acknowledge their medical condition. Their social relationships, are we discussing that aspect here? Or has that just been wedged in to try to add credibility to the other aspects.

Law? I believe that this group of people may need to have specific laws to protect them in the future that will indeed be insisting that they are recognised as being male for specific purposes where it matters.

"All because of some dogmatic insistence that all people must be labelled using words that signify some theoretical notion that their body was “supposed” or “intended” to be other than it actually is (intended by who exactly? God?) (but they were supposed to be able to produce small gametes don’t you know!)"

This is a weak attempt to characterise recognition of established science as being theoretical. It also deliberately continues to miss some significant aspects of how people have defined sex, including experts.

It is intended to remove important aspects of the definition of sex by resting it on a body producing the gametes that it has been formed to produce. This means we get into a spiralling discussion about whether someone not producing the gametes should or shouldn't be classed as the sex their body's productive role is formed around or not.

Trans men have been notably missing from this discussion, unsurprisingly.

it would be interesting to know more about this mysterious unidentified brain factor that forms part of someone’s sex (as per Tandora’s earlier posts). And how it fits into the vast majority of trans men are girls transitioning in their teenage years and trans women are men transitioning in middle age in western countries, but seems to express differently in other countries and cultures.

If it is a universal human characteristic then surely there would be a universal expression regardless of culture, location or even time in history.