Excellent essay – remember reading bits and pieces of it a year and a half ago; have it bookmarked for ammunition as situations call for it. 🙂 But welcome to Substack – subscribed.
Though I was curious about, and somewhat surprised by this statement:
“I’ve been working on a legal document and was discussing with a colleague about my efforts to find a citation for the statement: ‘there are two sexes, male and female’.”
Maybe you’ve never run across the 1972 paper by biologist Geoff Parker (FRS) who coined, or maybe promulgated the stipulative definitions that now seem to constitute the standard biological definitions for the sexes?
Paywalled, but he and Jussi Lehtonen published a paper in 2014 that further solidified those definitions; see their Glossary for example:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
And those definitions seem to be part and parcel of the standard definitions for the sexes in most credible dictionaries such as Lexico and OED – hardly chopped liver – and encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, “male” for example:
“male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.”
What is rather surprising is that I see absolutely nothing in any of those definitions about any of the “past-present-or-future functionality” that you – and Heather Heying and Colin Wright - seem to think should qualify as trump:
Seems to me that those definitions – of Parker, Lehtonen, Lexico, OED, and many others – qualify as “intensional definitions”; they specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for sex category membership: no gametes, no sex:
😂🙄 Talk about judging a book by its cover. Just because most TRA's are madder than hatters doesn't mean everything they say is null and void.
And your "male jawbone" only means "jawbone OF a male" - or typical of a male. It doesn't mean that the jawbone itself is a male, is able to produce sperm.
English a second language for you? You might try getting your head out of your arse and take close look at the definition for "male":
"male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
Note the "of" as the first use - followed by "or denoting ...." as a second usage
Presumably organ transplants work better when the sex of the individual from which the organ comes is the same as the sex of the person in which it is being transplanted - when karyotype of the one - XX or XY - is the same as the karyotype - XX or XY - of the other.
You own article - which you seem incapable of understanding yourself - emphasizes the point:
"The most successful transplant based on donor-recipient gender was observed in male donor to male recipient."
They're talking about the sex of donors and the recipients, not the organs themselves.
Though they cluelessly insist on using "gender" instead of sex.
No wonder "science" is such a dog's breakfast. Bit of a joke - some "biologists" claiming it's a binary, some a spectrum. And some thinking one can have a sex while having no gonads at all.
🙄 You're tying yourself up in knots - largely because you're fixated on the "idea" that everyone has to have a sex.
The cells in your test tube came from people or animals with karyotypes typical of males or females. If a vasectomee or an XY eunuch donated some cells it's immaterial whether he was actually a male at that time. Probably why it might make sense to mark cell lines by actual karyotype rather than sex - particularly as I gather there is a dozen or more different ones in humans.
And organs are basically transplanted on the basis of compatible karyotypes - genitalia probably being a reasonable proxy for karyotype.
Yup - includes prepubescent "boys", and even "vasectomees".
That is what follows logically from those definitions. Too many are trying to make the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" when really they're just labels for quite transitory reproductive abilities.
You might enjoy, particularly with your background, a rather cogent essay by Paul Griffiths - university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics and Philosophy - at Aeon. A relevant quote:
"Nothing in the biological definition of sex requires that every organism be a member of one sex or the other. That might seem surprising, but it follows naturally from DEFINING each sex by the ability to do one thing: make eggs or make sperm. Some organisms can do both, while some can't do either [ergo, sexless]." [my "editorializing"]
Bit long-winded and goes off into some maybe unnecessary detail, but I think the concluding paragraphs are right on the money:
"Human societies can’t delegate to biology the job of defining sex as a social institution. The biological definition of sex wasn’t designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. .... On the other hand, whatever its shortcomings as an institutional definition, the concept of biological sex remains essential to understand the diversity of life. It shouldn’t be discarded or distorted because of arguments about its use in law, sport or medicine. That would be a tragic mistake."
A large part of the reason why I try to champion the biological definitions - rather important to call a spade a shovel and let the chips fall where they may.
But I had been following her on Twitter for a coon's age, at least since her classic series of tweets on "how to recognize the female (of all sexually-reproducing species)":
(Emma: blink 3 times if you're being held captive or are under duress ....)
Basically she, and her partners in crime are endorsing non-functional definitions for the sexes that are profoundly incompatible with and contradictory to the standard biological definitions. For example, see this essay by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
Lady: "brilliantly articulate and scientifically accurate"
I'll readily and cheerfully concede Emma is often "brilliantly (and amusingly) articulate". But her quite idiosyncratic definitions are so much antiscientific claptrap. You might look at my earlier comment here for details, but consider, for example, the standard biological definition for "female" from Lexico but virtually the same in OED, Parker & Lehtonen, & Wikipedia:
"female (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
I see absolutely diddly-squat there about any of Emma's "past-present-future functionality" nor about Heather Heying's "will, would, did, or does ... produce eggs":
The standard biological definitions make function - present tense indefinite - into the necessary and sufficient condition for sex category membership.
Lady: "Every cell has a sex."
If you really do have a PhD in molecular biology then you should know that cells most certainly do NOT have a sex - they typically only have karyotypes including sex chromosomes. And that many different species have very different sets of chromosomes while still having males and females. But look again at the Lexico definition above - producing ova is THE essential property of females. And no cell produces ova.
I think you should also take a look at the first tweet of Emma's that I included above - it emphasizes, in spades, that "makes large gametes" is the sine qua non to qualify as a female - no large gametes, not a female.
Lady: "why you think she is at odds with what that guy Marco says"
Because Marco emphasizes that the presence of a function - produces ova, or produces sperm - is what is essential to qualify as male or female. Emma and Heying say the complete opposite, that one can have no gonads at all - may never have had them in the first place - but can still qualify as male or female.
A very profound and problematic difference that pretty much everyone seems bound and determined to sweep under the carpet.
You should - if y'all insist in getting stuck in your ivory towers to the point that you can't even communicate with anyone outside of them then you shouldn't be surprised if they get pulled down around your ears.
But you haven't addressed anything of what I've said - particularly Emma's own emphasis on "produces large gametes" as the essential qualify for "female".
Lady: "I’m only writing this at all to amuse Emma anyway since she and Colin would make mincemeat of you if they bothered to reply. Good day to you."
I rather doubt either of them would insist that "every cell has a sex".
A considered piece. Hang on in there against the social media trolls. You are doing an incredibly good job.
Flat earth, make it "gender"
This piece fails to explain WHY the counter factual belief is stated. Rob Henderson argues that holding obviously false beliefs is a status symbol. https://nypost.com/2019/08/17/luxury-beliefs-are-the-latest-status-symbol-for-rich-americans/
Excellent essay – remember reading bits and pieces of it a year and a half ago; have it bookmarked for ammunition as situations call for it. 🙂 But welcome to Substack – subscribed.
Though I was curious about, and somewhat surprised by this statement:
“I’ve been working on a legal document and was discussing with a colleague about my efforts to find a citation for the statement: ‘there are two sexes, male and female’.”
Maybe you’ve never run across the 1972 paper by biologist Geoff Parker (FRS) who coined, or maybe promulgated the stipulative definitions that now seem to constitute the standard biological definitions for the sexes?
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022519372900070
Paywalled, but he and Jussi Lehtonen published a paper in 2014 that further solidified those definitions; see their Glossary for example:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
And those definitions seem to be part and parcel of the standard definitions for the sexes in most credible dictionaries such as Lexico and OED – hardly chopped liver – and encyclopedias such as Wikipedia, “male” for example:
“male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.”
https://www.lexico.com/definition/male
What is rather surprising is that I see absolutely nothing in any of those definitions about any of the “past-present-or-future functionality” that you – and Heather Heying and Colin Wright - seem to think should qualify as trump:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
Seems to me that those definitions – of Parker, Lehtonen, Lexico, OED, and many others – qualify as “intensional definitions”; they specify the necessary and sufficient conditions for sex category membership: no gametes, no sex:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
😂🙄 Talk about judging a book by its cover. Just because most TRA's are madder than hatters doesn't mean everything they say is null and void.
And your "male jawbone" only means "jawbone OF a male" - or typical of a male. It doesn't mean that the jawbone itself is a male, is able to produce sperm.
English a second language for you? You might try getting your head out of your arse and take close look at the definition for "male":
"male (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
Note the "of" as the first use - followed by "or denoting ...." as a second usage
https://www.lexico.com/definition/male
"male brain" - the brain OF a male, or typical OF a male;
"male gametes" - the gametes OF a male or typical OF a male;
"male chromosomes" - the chromosomes OF a male or typical OF a male.
See how that works? 🙄
What unmitigated horse crap.
Presumably organ transplants work better when the sex of the individual from which the organ comes is the same as the sex of the person in which it is being transplanted - when karyotype of the one - XX or XY - is the same as the karyotype - XX or XY - of the other.
You own article - which you seem incapable of understanding yourself - emphasizes the point:
"The most successful transplant based on donor-recipient gender was observed in male donor to male recipient."
They're talking about the sex of donors and the recipients, not the organs themselves.
Though they cluelessly insist on using "gender" instead of sex.
No wonder "science" is such a dog's breakfast. Bit of a joke - some "biologists" claiming it's a binary, some a spectrum. And some thinking one can have a sex while having no gonads at all.
🙄 You're tying yourself up in knots - largely because you're fixated on the "idea" that everyone has to have a sex.
The cells in your test tube came from people or animals with karyotypes typical of males or females. If a vasectomee or an XY eunuch donated some cells it's immaterial whether he was actually a male at that time. Probably why it might make sense to mark cell lines by actual karyotype rather than sex - particularly as I gather there is a dozen or more different ones in humans.
And organs are basically transplanted on the basis of compatible karyotypes - genitalia probably being a reasonable proxy for karyotype.
Yup - includes prepubescent "boys", and even "vasectomees".
That is what follows logically from those definitions. Too many are trying to make the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" when really they're just labels for quite transitory reproductive abilities.
You might enjoy, particularly with your background, a rather cogent essay by Paul Griffiths - university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics and Philosophy - at Aeon. A relevant quote:
"Nothing in the biological definition of sex requires that every organism be a member of one sex or the other. That might seem surprising, but it follows naturally from DEFINING each sex by the ability to do one thing: make eggs or make sperm. Some organisms can do both, while some can't do either [ergo, sexless]." [my "editorializing"]
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
Bit long-winded and goes off into some maybe unnecessary detail, but I think the concluding paragraphs are right on the money:
"Human societies can’t delegate to biology the job of defining sex as a social institution. The biological definition of sex wasn’t designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. .... On the other hand, whatever its shortcomings as an institutional definition, the concept of biological sex remains essential to understand the diversity of life. It shouldn’t be discarded or distorted because of arguments about its use in law, sport or medicine. That would be a tragic mistake."
A large part of the reason why I try to champion the biological definitions - rather important to call a spade a shovel and let the chips fall where they may.
🙂 Emma is a going concern - I'd go too! 😉
But I had been following her on Twitter for a coon's age, at least since her classic series of tweets on "how to recognize the female (of all sexually-reproducing species)":
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1133120326844506112
Marvelously informative, and often sardonically amusing:
"Yeast are pretty lazy when it comes to sex. .... Hardly worth a shared cigarette, to be honest."
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1110254156705644549
Though I'm rather disappointed in her for her endorsement of rather decidedly unscientific definitions for the sexes:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
(Emma: blink 3 times if you're being held captive or are under duress ....)
Basically she, and her partners in crime are endorsing non-functional definitions for the sexes that are profoundly incompatible with and contradictory to the standard biological definitions. For example, see this essay by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce [present tense indefinite] small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce [present tense indefinite] large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
No gametes, no reproductive function, no sex.
Lady: "brilliantly articulate and scientifically accurate"
I'll readily and cheerfully concede Emma is often "brilliantly (and amusingly) articulate". But her quite idiosyncratic definitions are so much antiscientific claptrap. You might look at my earlier comment here for details, but consider, for example, the standard biological definition for "female" from Lexico but virtually the same in OED, Parker & Lehtonen, & Wikipedia:
"female (adjective): Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes."
https://www.lexico.com/definition/female
https://emmahilton.substack.com/p/sex-denialism/comment/8511640
I see absolutely diddly-squat there about any of Emma's "past-present-future functionality" nor about Heather Heying's "will, would, did, or does ... produce eggs":
https://twitter.com/HeatherEHeying/status/1508834511877918720
The standard biological definitions make function - present tense indefinite - into the necessary and sufficient condition for sex category membership.
Lady: "Every cell has a sex."
If you really do have a PhD in molecular biology then you should know that cells most certainly do NOT have a sex - they typically only have karyotypes including sex chromosomes. And that many different species have very different sets of chromosomes while still having males and females. But look again at the Lexico definition above - producing ova is THE essential property of females. And no cell produces ova.
I think you should also take a look at the first tweet of Emma's that I included above - it emphasizes, in spades, that "makes large gametes" is the sine qua non to qualify as a female - no large gametes, not a female.
Lady: "why you think she is at odds with what that guy Marco says"
Because Marco emphasizes that the presence of a function - produces ova, or produces sperm - is what is essential to qualify as male or female. Emma and Heying say the complete opposite, that one can have no gonads at all - may never have had them in the first place - but can still qualify as male or female.
A very profound and problematic difference that pretty much everyone seems bound and determined to sweep under the carpet.
"Do you know the sex of your cells?"
What a pile of self-serving and ignorant horse crap.
Lady: "Scientists don’t consult dictionaries."
You should - if y'all insist in getting stuck in your ivory towers to the point that you can't even communicate with anyone outside of them then you shouldn't be surprised if they get pulled down around your ears.
But you haven't addressed anything of what I've said - particularly Emma's own emphasis on "produces large gametes" as the essential qualify for "female".
Lady: "I’m only writing this at all to amuse Emma anyway since she and Colin would make mincemeat of you if they bothered to reply. Good day to you."
I rather doubt either of them would insist that "every cell has a sex".
Cheerio.