> "Sex is biological—i.e., which gametes a body is structured to produce. ... your actual sex, which remains chromosomally imprinted on every cell on your body."
Unmitigated horse shit. Anti-scientific claptrap and outright woo at best. Though you're in "good" company:
But you might actually try picking up a book on biology -- I've found the "For Dummies" series to be quite useful for quick and dirty introductions. Have several myself -- Logic, Genetics, and one on Quantum Mechanics, the latter of which is still too much of a stretch.
Methinks you're more a part of the problem than of the solution by peddling that claptrap.
No he most certainly isn't. Since you're ostensibly a philosopher of science, you might try reading this post by another one, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?":
I think there is a missing level within this subject that spans across Steersman's pov and the one he (?) is objecting to - the distinction between genotype and phenotype. This distinction trips up a lot of people within the gender/sex war. Sex is binary according to genotype in humans, but *appears to be a spectrum* from mistaken reading of variable phenotypes (either good-faith mistake or deliberate misreading for political gain).
What stands in between genotype & phenotype are chromosomal abnormalities and DSDs. On top of phenotype stand variations like sexual orientation, cultural reproductive norms (ie "gender norms") and psychological pathologies such as AGP. Discussion of this subject demands good faith - but within the current war this is impossible as everyone is angling for their preferred political outcome.
Though this comment of yours is very wide of the mark: "Sex is binary according to genotype in humans ... " But genotype plays absolutely no part in any of the standard biological definitions for the sexes. It's all about what type of gamete an organism is actually producing. And right now -- not a decade ago or some decades in the future.
You might take a gander at those definitions in both reputable journals and in popular dictionaries:
Maybe I expressed myself poorly - I should have written "there are only two healthy genotype variants in humans".
Where does the information come from which determines which gamete the body produces? Is it not the genotype? Isn't this the equivalent of the chicken & egg loop, just selecting a different stage at which to stick the label "sex"?
> "Where does the information come from which determines which gamete the body produces?"
From the genotype of course. But my point -- underlined by that Wikipedia article -- is that many different genotypes, many different sets of chromosomes, in many different species all lead to two and only two types of gametes. The gametes are more ubiquitous and common among all those species which is what justifies their choice as the essential and defining elements of the two sexes -- no gametes, no sex.
Period, case closed; there's really no debate. It's like papal encyclicals from the Pope or the axioms of geometry from Euclid.
> "... why there is so much dissembling supporting gender woo."
No doubt a lot of motivated reasoning and rationalization in that gender woo. Though one might say the same about what Lorenzo is peddling -- it sure ain't science.
But that is NOT what is happening with the standard biological definitions for the sexes. They are based on brute facts, solid reasons, and durable epistemological principles. Though they're not exactly easy to elucidate -- you might have some interest in one of my kicks at that kitty:
I didn’t find either of the pieces you recommended useful. I’d suggest instead of the dismissive and hectoring tone you’re employing, try explaining clearly and briefly what your view is. That might be persuasive.
I’ll briefly summarize my view: the everyday understanding of biological sex is pretty much correct, and Colin Wright does an excellent job of explaining sex as it exists in biology. Your piece and the Griffiths piece tie yourselves in knots discussing basically irrelevant details.
By all means explain the relevant details that show the problem. I’m always excited to learn new things.
I tried after Lorenzo’s last post, and this guy is just socially unable to engage. He is either just pushing his own stuff or so wildly socially inept that the typing equivalent of yelling “2+2=4!” over and over is all he is capable of.
I recommend just smiling and nodding while waking away.
🙄 I don't think you -- and too many others -- quite get that creating the biological definitions for the sexes isn't a free-for-all where anyone can weigh-in.
There are a great many solid reasons for those biological definitions. Unless you can put some better ones on the table, or even provide solid critiques of them, you simply don't have any say in the matter. Those definitions say that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
You and Lorenzo, and others like so-called biologist Colin Wright, can peddle your own idiosyncratic and self serving definitions if you want. But they ain't biology -- you and they are perpetrating a fraud to say otherwise.
> "... everyday understanding of biological sex is pretty much correct ..."
Your "everyday understanding of biological sex'" of "the man in the street" is probably not much above the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys (males) have penises, and girls (females) have vaginas. Maybe of some use for adjudicating access to toilets, but not much else.
> "... and Colin Wright does an excellent job of explaining sex as it exists in biology."
Wright is something of a fraud and a grifter. The definitions he's peddling are flatly contradicted by the standard biological definitions published in any number of reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.
> "Your piece and the Griffiths piece tie yourselves in knots discussing basically irrelevant details"
YOU think they're "irrelevant details". Are you a biologist? You have any clue at all about the principles that undergird the science?
If you'd actually pay attention to what Griffiths is saying then you'd maybe understand that defining the sexes based on the current production of gametes.is pretty much foundational to all of biology. A famous biologist once argued that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. A reasonable corollary is that nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction, i.e., the fusion of two types of gametes to create a new organism, i.e., sex.
‘Boys have penises and girls have vaginas’ is accurate for >99% of cases. That’s how human sex is assigned by doctors in the real world. It’s not a definition, just a useful generalization that is reliably true.
Wright’s definitions are completely ordinary. He says that a male has a phenotype structured to produce small gametes and females have a phenotype structured to produce large ones. That, again, is basically right.
Calling him a grifter and a fraud just reflects badly on you.
Defining sex based on current production of gametes has pretty obvious problems and doesn’t reflect the usage of biologists well. Juveniles and individuals with dsd still have a sex. It’s not super wrong, but its not really standard.
And generally not true at all -- the prepubescent are, by standard biological definitions, sexless.
You really might want to try reading Griffiths post in some detail.
Eugene: "Wright’s definitions are completely ordinary."
And wrong. Absolutely no reputable biological journal, encyclopedia, or dictionary says anything of the sort.
Eugene: "Calling him a grifter and a fraud just reflects badly on you."
I rather doubt his subscribers would stick with him if he agreed that the prepubescent and menopausees are sexless ...
Eugene: "Defining sex based on current production of gametes has pretty obvious problems and doesn’t reflect the usage of biologists well."
Don't think you -- and Lorenzo and too many others -- quite get that the sexes aren't participation trophies. They're "designed" to capture the "essence" of what it means to be male and female, to isolate the single property that defines the "universal" -- i.e., the working mechanism that "produces gametes".
And too many so-called biologists hardly deserve the title -- some insist that the sexes are spectra.
Eugene: "Juveniles and individuals with dsd still have a sex. It’s not super wrong, but its not really standard."
Nope. You're begging the question. Most of the intersex are infertile; they have no or non-functional gonads so they're sexless. See this Wiley Online Library article by a trio of reputable biologists:
Sex does not begin at birth. Sex begins with masturbation.
ROFL.
> "Sex is biological—i.e., which gametes a body is structured to produce. ... your actual sex, which remains chromosomally imprinted on every cell on your body."
Unmitigated horse shit. Anti-scientific claptrap and outright woo at best. Though you're in "good" company:
"Every Cell Has a Sex": https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222291/
But you might actually try picking up a book on biology -- I've found the "For Dummies" series to be quite useful for quick and dirty introductions. Have several myself -- Logic, Genetics, and one on Quantum Mechanics, the latter of which is still too much of a stretch.
Methinks you're more a part of the problem than of the solution by peddling that claptrap.
He’s correct.
No he most certainly isn't. Since you're ostensibly a philosopher of science, you might try reading this post by another one, Paul Griffiths, on "What are biological sexes?":
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
And my post on mechanisms in biology:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
I think there is a missing level within this subject that spans across Steersman's pov and the one he (?) is objecting to - the distinction between genotype and phenotype. This distinction trips up a lot of people within the gender/sex war. Sex is binary according to genotype in humans, but *appears to be a spectrum* from mistaken reading of variable phenotypes (either good-faith mistake or deliberate misreading for political gain).
What stands in between genotype & phenotype are chromosomal abnormalities and DSDs. On top of phenotype stand variations like sexual orientation, cultural reproductive norms (ie "gender norms") and psychological pathologies such as AGP. Discussion of this subject demands good faith - but within the current war this is impossible as everyone is angling for their preferred political outcome.
Nicely put.
🙄 But wrong ...
"Blessed be the peacemakers" ... 😉🙂
Though this comment of yours is very wide of the mark: "Sex is binary according to genotype in humans ... " But genotype plays absolutely no part in any of the standard biological definitions for the sexes. It's all about what type of gamete an organism is actually producing. And right now -- not a decade ago or some decades in the future.
You might take a gander at those definitions in both reputable journals and in popular dictionaries:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
You might also take a look at the Wikipedia article on sex determination systems, particularly in species other than humans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex-determination_system
Maybe I expressed myself poorly - I should have written "there are only two healthy genotype variants in humans".
Where does the information come from which determines which gamete the body produces? Is it not the genotype? Isn't this the equivalent of the chicken & egg loop, just selecting a different stage at which to stick the label "sex"?
I'll trade you this one: Marketplace Of Rationalisations https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philosophy/article/marketplace-of-rationalizations/41FB096344BD344908C7C992D0C0C0DC
It is a very good outline of why there is so much dissembling supporting gender woo. Instead of challenging gender ideology,
> "Where does the information come from which determines which gamete the body produces?"
From the genotype of course. But my point -- underlined by that Wikipedia article -- is that many different genotypes, many different sets of chromosomes, in many different species all lead to two and only two types of gametes. The gametes are more ubiquitous and common among all those species which is what justifies their choice as the essential and defining elements of the two sexes -- no gametes, no sex.
Period, case closed; there's really no debate. It's like papal encyclicals from the Pope or the axioms of geometry from Euclid.
> "... why there is so much dissembling supporting gender woo."
No doubt a lot of motivated reasoning and rationalization in that gender woo. Though one might say the same about what Lorenzo is peddling -- it sure ain't science.
But that is NOT what is happening with the standard biological definitions for the sexes. They are based on brute facts, solid reasons, and durable epistemological principles. Though they're not exactly easy to elucidate -- you might have some interest in one of my kicks at that kitty:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
I didn’t find either of the pieces you recommended useful. I’d suggest instead of the dismissive and hectoring tone you’re employing, try explaining clearly and briefly what your view is. That might be persuasive.
I’ll briefly summarize my view: the everyday understanding of biological sex is pretty much correct, and Colin Wright does an excellent job of explaining sex as it exists in biology. Your piece and the Griffiths piece tie yourselves in knots discussing basically irrelevant details.
By all means explain the relevant details that show the problem. I’m always excited to learn new things.
I tried after Lorenzo’s last post, and this guy is just socially unable to engage. He is either just pushing his own stuff or so wildly socially inept that the typing equivalent of yelling “2+2=4!” over and over is all he is capable of.
I recommend just smiling and nodding while waking away.
🙄 I don't think you -- and too many others -- quite get that creating the biological definitions for the sexes isn't a free-for-all where anyone can weigh-in.
There are a great many solid reasons for those biological definitions. Unless you can put some better ones on the table, or even provide solid critiques of them, you simply don't have any say in the matter. Those definitions say that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
You and Lorenzo, and others like so-called biologist Colin Wright, can peddle your own idiosyncratic and self serving definitions if you want. But they ain't biology -- you and they are perpetrating a fraud to say otherwise.
> "... everyday understanding of biological sex is pretty much correct ..."
Your "everyday understanding of biological sex'" of "the man in the street" is probably not much above the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys (males) have penises, and girls (females) have vaginas. Maybe of some use for adjudicating access to toilets, but not much else.
> "... and Colin Wright does an excellent job of explaining sex as it exists in biology."
Wright is something of a fraud and a grifter. The definitions he's peddling are flatly contradicted by the standard biological definitions published in any number of reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.
> "Your piece and the Griffiths piece tie yourselves in knots discussing basically irrelevant details"
YOU think they're "irrelevant details". Are you a biologist? You have any clue at all about the principles that undergird the science?
If you'd actually pay attention to what Griffiths is saying then you'd maybe understand that defining the sexes based on the current production of gametes.is pretty much foundational to all of biology. A famous biologist once argued that nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution. A reasonable corollary is that nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction, i.e., the fusion of two types of gametes to create a new organism, i.e., sex.
‘Boys have penises and girls have vaginas’ is accurate for >99% of cases. That’s how human sex is assigned by doctors in the real world. It’s not a definition, just a useful generalization that is reliably true.
Wright’s definitions are completely ordinary. He says that a male has a phenotype structured to produce small gametes and females have a phenotype structured to produce large ones. That, again, is basically right.
Calling him a grifter and a fraud just reflects badly on you.
Defining sex based on current production of gametes has pretty obvious problems and doesn’t reflect the usage of biologists well. Juveniles and individuals with dsd still have a sex. It’s not super wrong, but its not really standard.
Eugene: "It’s not a definition, just a useful generalization that is reliably true."
Yes, it's not a definition. Genitalia are just proxy variables and operational definitions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
And generally not true at all -- the prepubescent are, by standard biological definitions, sexless.
You really might want to try reading Griffiths post in some detail.
Eugene: "Wright’s definitions are completely ordinary."
And wrong. Absolutely no reputable biological journal, encyclopedia, or dictionary says anything of the sort.
Eugene: "Calling him a grifter and a fraud just reflects badly on you."
I rather doubt his subscribers would stick with him if he agreed that the prepubescent and menopausees are sexless ...
Eugene: "Defining sex based on current production of gametes has pretty obvious problems and doesn’t reflect the usage of biologists well."
Don't think you -- and Lorenzo and too many others -- quite get that the sexes aren't participation trophies. They're "designed" to capture the "essence" of what it means to be male and female, to isolate the single property that defines the "universal" -- i.e., the working mechanism that "produces gametes".
And too many so-called biologists hardly deserve the title -- some insist that the sexes are spectra.
Eugene: "Juveniles and individuals with dsd still have a sex. It’s not super wrong, but its not really standard."
Nope. You're begging the question. Most of the intersex are infertile; they have no or non-functional gonads so they're sexless. See this Wiley Online Library article by a trio of reputable biologists:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202200173?af=R