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Comment by EnergyAmy | Hacker News Reader

You can't legislate reality away. If you're tracking biological sex, then it doesn't matter what a court decides. If you're tracking legal fictions then you might.

I look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper. In the meantime, feel free to peruse the list here of people affirming the same stance:

https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/

Or someone else:

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/33/2/in-humans-sex-is...

You should ask the people you run with why no human is born with a body not organized around the production of gametes. You'll notice that when you read about conditions like anorchia or ovarian agenesis, the sex of the person with that condition is not a mystery, it's literally in the name.

Biology is messy indeed, and that's why finding such a universal definition was so useful.

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> You can't legislate reality away

So why are you trying to?

> I look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper.

Just look to his reputation in the field .. it's up there with Jo Nova on climate physics .. laughable.

> You should ask the people you run with why no human is born with a body not organized around the production of gametes.

So you're implicitly admitting that humans are born without gamates then? You've certainly dodged that question multiple times in your comment history.

You're also not admitting to yourself the existence of those humans born with conflicting organisation re: sexual reproduction - when the physical form, the chromosones, the gamates, et al don't align.

From an empirical PoV for people in field work here it's simply silly to claim that only two cases cover all variations - it's a mystery why any one would work so hard to force it.

The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality.

I continue to look forward to your citation disputing the truth of what he lays out in that paper, or the other links I provided that affirm the same stance. Ad hominems are boring, don't you have anything?

You unfortunately don't really understand the point here, but to reiterate, just because someone is born with nonfunctional/missing gonads doesn't mean their body isn't sexed. As an analogy, if someone is born without a hand, we don't just shrug and say that it could've been a fin, or antlers, or a firetruck. That's the point of saying that their body is organized around the production of one of exactly two gamete types.

There's no conflict, physical form and chromosomes are variations within a sex, which is entirely defined by gametes. Chromosomes are part of how sex is determined, but gametes are how sex is defined.

I look forward to your citations of these people doing field work that support your points.

> The gamete-based definition of sex is merely a description of reality.

An incomplete one that fails to cover all cases.

You unfortunately don't really understand the point here

I look forward to your citations supporting any of your points.

You must be living under a rock if you've missed out the past 140 years of debate on this subject.

There has been multiple definitions put forward, they all fall at a few (very few out of nine billion) edge cases.

I look forward to your explaination of why you feel that every human on on the planet must be assigned as either [M] or [F] at birth with no recognition of the real circumstances in the actual edge cases.

Not even the class of South African hermaphrodites cleanly all fall one way or the other.. there's furious individual by individual debate over which of the two potential gamate producing mechanisms is less mangled than the other - as you should be aware given your apparent singular obsession here.

I'm curious as to why so recently so much money has been spent on pushing Colin Wright as the new prophet of an old idea that doesn't provide a complete classification.

You're still not providing any citations, why is that? Surely you can ask some of the people in field work that you run with.

I'm also not sure why you're so focused on Colin Wright when I provided other examples of people affirming the same stance, as previously stated. Take your pick, or provide citations of your own.

Do you have a particular example in mind for the South African hermaphrodites?

And you're still not addressing anything that I have asked of you

I'm literally asking you to get specific so we can talk about particulars, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

I don't really get the point of this dance you're doing. Why not just admit that you don't have anything to back your comments up?

Specifically, then, why does it suddenly recently matter that every human birth be classed as exlusively [M] or [F].

I'm old, I've been about biology for a long time, it's never been that way.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_ice is a cracking read. Good science.

We observe one predominent form of solid water most often in our environment - but other forms exist and frequency varies elsewhere.

There are literal tomes on disorders of sex development, it's a subject with decades of solid research history and centuris of literary reference.

"Strongly bimodal with some outliers" has been an ideal summary for a complex domain until ... recently.

What motivates you to shoehorn every birth into one of two boxes despite the theorectical and practical issues?

You're still not providing any citations, why is that?

It's not about what motivates me, it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century. I've provided citations affirming this consensus, and you've refused to back up your comments. Why not just admit that you're wrong?

EDIT: Rate limited by HN, so I guess we are done here. I'm not sure why you think prompting you to get specific about the group means being unaware of it. I'm rather disappointed in your bluster, it makes me wonder in retrospect if I've been baited into arguing with a bot.

> it's about the scientific consensus in the field of biology. The same consensus that has remain unchanged for well over a century.

What rot, even a casual perusual of literature will confirm debate.

> I've provided citations affirming this consensus

You've cited a single faction that have only recently surged across public communications.

The fact that you're claiming to be unaware of the debate, the history, the SA hermaphrodite group to whom I refered tells me a great deal.

I suspect we're done here.

For now I've a cluster of 12 tonne lego pieces to fit together and seal up, I'll check in later to see if you've any reflection on the actual politics and culture trappings about this matter that are driving the presentation of a factional PoV.

I look forward to some grown up adult comment, not any childish gotcha traps.

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