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https://archive.is/2025.02.21-160254/https://www.scientifica...
There are two developmental pathways for sexual reproduction: - one produces small mobile gametes - one produces large immobile gametes
There can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism in different species ends up on one pathway or the other, there can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism on either pathway develops, and there can be plenty of variation in how an individual on either pathway behaves. But in sexually reproductive organisms, there are only two pathways.
A male who wants to obey stereotypical feminine stereotypes in behaviour and dress is free to do so, but it doesn’t make him any kind of female, or a different kind of male.
When people get all up in arms being anti trans, they are not getting up in arms about people not respecting the gametes... They are getting up in arms because they don't like it that the expression of sex phenotypes is heterogenous, overlapping, and scary, and that makes their small minds feel funny. Because they want to pretend that the world can be categorized into simple boxes that alleviate their anxiety, and gives them a sense of control. No, they don't even fucking know what a gamete is, for the most, and we sure as hell didn't know 200 years ago.
If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes, fine. But that is a small thing. It's a definition that has little relevance. All the phenotypic variability in the expressed biology, phenotypic expression that depends on multifactorial developmental processes that can go in any of a billion different directions, that, while informed by sex chromosomes, are also affected by other non sex chromosomes genes, and also from variability in environmental exposures, which can affect the timing and dosing of sex hormones during development that actually DIFFERENTIATES thr biology? This article, and your perspective, only finds solid ground by limiting what biological sex encompasses to such a small piece of territory, that ceding that kingdom loses nothing meaningful, certainly not in how bodies are made, how sex is expressed and lived in, and to what matters in shaping their lives, personalities, who they feel akin to, and everything else. Have the gamete, who gives a shit? Get it?
This definition of sex is fundamental. It's the only one that applies across all sexually-reproducing species.
> They are getting up in arms because they don't like it that the expression of sex phenotypes is heterogenous, overlapping, and scary, and that makes their small minds feel funny.
They probably just disagree with the bizarre and false claim, made so often in recent years for reasons of ideology rather than fact, that humans can change sex and that there are medical interventions that supposedly make this possible.
Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."
A better example would be how many axles a road vehicle can have to be considered a road vehicle.
You might reasonably conclude that the number starts at one and essentially goes to infinity and you’d be right.
But somewhere, deep in academia, some critical theorists are going to get upset that you’ve excluded zero and excluded the all the real numbers. They are going to call this oppression, and they’re going to invent a theory that says “actually vehicle axle identities exist on a spectrum that includes zero and all the real numbers, irrational numbers, etc.” if you give them long enough, they will also tell you if you don’t consider a vehicle whose axle count is an imaginary number, then you are imaginary axle-phobic.
Out here in the real world it’s very obvious that vehicles can’t have half an axle or 4.29 axles.
And the point is not because you want to exclude or oppress any road vehicles, it’s simply that being able to count the number of axles is a useful categorization for humans who work with road vehicles, so it has to be possible to say how many there are in an objective sense, in the real world.
Similarly, knowing which of the two sexes an individual belongs to does not tell you everything about that individual, but it definitely tells you a few things that are very useful in policy, law and custom.
It’s one thing for a man to put an a dress, it’s quite another for us to allow the law to consider that by putting on the dress he is now the weaker sex.
Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have much exposure to real world trucking and lift axles at all.
It's not uncommon for heavy load truck trailers to have axles that are only dropped to the road to take up a heavy load and are retracted for lighter and no loads to extend the lifetime of tyres and bearings.
Operationally, over their road time, the number of axles in contact with tarmac becomes fractional.
If you're going to make sweeping claims about "the real world" it's best to be across all those pesky actual edge cases.
[More detail in reply to sibling-comment]
I'm saying that their attempt to reduce a human-categorization question to just-gametes is the same kind of stupid and incomplete as trying to reduce another vehicle-purpose question to gas-vs-diesel.
> “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”
-- H.L. Mencken.
Ah the classics!
“Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid”
If that is literally the only reason you can comprehend that someone doesn’t buy this ideology hook line and sinker, then you are the one with the small mind.
I have spent the last several months learning everything I can, and not just about trans, but about the academic undercurrents like queer theory, and of course about the concept of sex in biology.
Until earlier this year, my assumption was the trans rights was just gay rights 2.0 and that seemed pretty fine to me. I was aware that there was controversy, but I paid a little heed. Like you I assumed anyone who was fighting it was just a small minded bigot. Eventually, the good people would prevail and the world would go on.
But then I started actually listening to what trans activists and queer theorists were saying. And then I started reading from people with a wide variety of thoughts.
I came out the other end pretty much aligned with J. K. Rowling:
Wear whatever clothes you like.
Sleep with whoever will have you.
But sex is real and immutable in humans, and this has real consequences for policy and law that cannot be ignored in pursuit of a utopian fantasies of a world where everything is a spectrum and all categorization is interpreted as oppression.
The thing about reality is that it persists no matter how stridently one denies it.
Nope. Not what I said at all. Nothing I said in any way related to the idea that some combinations were “blessed”. Merely that there are two pathways. Individuals may travel those two pathways in numerous ways, but until someone discovers a third gamete, there are only two pathways.
> The thing about reality is that it persists no matter how stridently one denies it.
Very true! No matter how many drugs or how many surgeries or behaviour changes, reality persists - males in dresses are still male, females in suits are still female.
I’ll give an analogy. Male and female are to biology as orbitals are to nuclear physics. A really, really useful shorthand. But they do not describe actual physical electrons “orbiting” a nucleus. Don’t mistake the shorthand for the reality. Scientific shorthand is generally not useful for reasonably discussing edge cases.
Wrong.
https://archive.is/2025.02.21-160254/https://www.scientifica...
I happen to subscribe to bimodal - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLH-y2nLocw but I understand why the dimorphic viewpoint has utility.
There are exceptional individuals, in every population. Just like there is a non-zero chance that a baseball thrown at a wall will pass through a wall due to a quirk of quantum fluctuation (10^-10^32 chance or whatever), the utility of the differentiation point is a matter of perspective (including intent). Bimodal does not exclude these individuals, but does imply the spectrum has limits (which it does).
Arguing about what two people, of differing perspective, think won't change either's views without associating a utility that has not been considered.
For the record, various studies conclude the ratio of individuals that are neither 46,XX nor 46,XY as being anywhere between 0.02% to 1.3% of the population. Or roughly 10^30 more likely than throwing a baseball through a solid wall (based on your stated likelihood).
I specifically mentioned the purpose of the thought experiment as a matter of framing a perspective, rather than setting it as some kind of rough equivalency. This is reinforced by the endorsed video.
You've intentionally missed the point, which is disingenuous. Good luck with whatever.