John D wrote: ↑Wed Dec 12, 2018 7:01 am
My polyamorous pansexual daughter (yes .... she still thinks she is female) and I had a nice knockdown fight over this article in Quillette. She told me I was being hurtful to her friends (and sex partners) by posting it. I told her I thought it was interesting and if the subject was too hard for her to talk about that I could just not discuss it anymore.
Her boyfriend (a transitioning FTM) blasted me on Facebook saying how this whole article was "complete bull shit". Haha.
Quite a good essay there at Quillette; glad to see you "throwing down the gauntlet" with it. It is absolutely staggering the degree to which, as described in some detail there, any criticism of transdogma is anathematized, and those "guilty" are burned at the stake (PZ: metaphorically speaking). Which is why it's frequently necessary to make some effort to turn the tide, even if that seems not always particularly productive or effective.
John D wrote: ↑I have certainly reached one conclusion. The topic of gender is a branch of religion in the modern "Blue church" of progressive morality. Gender is simultaneously a "product of the environment", "defined by the individual", and "on a spectrum". This is like a holy trinity of gender. None of the pieces of this trinity can be denied by the true believer even though they must really be mutually exclusive..... "God in three persons... blessed trinnnniiityyyyyyy"!
https://quillette.com/2018/12/04/the-ne ... hemselves/
"religion", indeed; as bad as the trinity. As much sectarian warfare, and as many auto-da-fes. Although I think many people - even those not just ostensibly trans or trans-friendly, including but not limited to people like Jerry Coyne, & Debra Soh - have contributed to the mess by refusing to draw a line in the sand on precisely what is meant by, in particular, the terms "sex", "gender", "male", & "female". You may recollect from your mathematics textbooks that they were littered with definitions: as with the axiomatic method exemplified by Euclidean geometry, one simply cannot proceed without precise definitions of the terms in question. One can sort of wing it, and get by for awhile. But eventually careless or inconsistent definitions frequently lead to contradictions that necessitates a reformulation - as with the definitions for "class" that led to Russell's Paradox and, eventually, Godel's Proof.
And it seems manifestly clear that with "sex" and "gender" that there are two quite distinct categories of attributes that are in play, and that there is therefore quite a bit of justification for defining those terms to denote those different attributes. And it seems clear that that has already been done, more or less, by some relatively clear thinking biologists and lexicologists (may their tribes increase):
And while it might be somewhat moot as to what precisely undergirds the "reproductive functions" that are part and parcel of the definition for "sex" , it seems rather clear from many sources - including the
recent post by Coyne noted in a previous comment - that the consensus is that the
sine qua non of that definition is the actual production of either of two gametes. Which is why "sex" is NOT bimodal but binary by definition; it's the RELATED traits - weights, heights, various psychological aptitudes - that are bimodal, not the gamete production.
Although, somewhat relative to the dog's breakfast many have made of the issue, I think that both Jerry and Alex Byrne, the philosopher he discusses, as well as the author of the Quillette piece, are reluctant to face the fact that that implies or leads, more or less inexorably, to the conclusion that some people simply don't HAVE a sex. While the motive for that "delicacy" seems, as the Quillette article suggests, to be based "largely on compassion", it seems rather remarkably unwise to be letting feelings trump facts.
As for "gender", I think Merriam-Webster in particular manages to summarize it nicely:
You may wish to take a gander at this
chapter from Pinker's Blank Slate which, more or less, is based on that definition.
In any case, while "we" can certainly define those words any way we wish - pay them extra, it's not exactly a free-for-all; as you probably know, coherence and consistency across our definitions for various categories is more or less essential for any progress at all. You may wish to take a gander at a post of mine
at Post Millennial on the topic, and the analogy that I came up with to hopefully illustrate the relationship between those categories: