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powerstruggle

@ powerstruggle @sh.itjust.works

Posts
755
Comments
327
Joined
6 mo. ago

Why?

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  • I correct misinformation, which is a small number of trans related posts. Why are you lying, troll?

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  • Separately from my other comment demonstrating the other biologists telling you that you're wrong, so it doesn't get lost:

    There's nothing to "reveal" and there's no "smoking gun". It's simply an easy to read paper, even if you have trouble reading. It's true, regardless of the author.

    You're trying to say "Look at this one paper, it has an author I don't like, so I'll obsess about that guy and ignore everything else!"

    If you really want, ignore that paper and read the many others telling you exactly how wrong you are. Please make sure to actually read them though. It was a waste of everyone's time to correct your failed understanding of your own link.

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  • You're very focused on that one person and apparently refusing to read the citations from the paper. Feel free to peruse the list of scientists that signed a statement affirming the same:

    https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/

    Or the author of Sex Redefined, which people have linked without reading:

    https://xcancel.com/ClaireAinsworth/status/888365994577735680

    Two sexes, with a continuum of variation in anatomy/physiology.

    Or another top biologist:

    I like to summarize this by saying that the biological sex definition/concept is both universal and explanatory. No other concept of sex, for example, can explain sexual selection and the differences in behavior and phenotype that appear in animals.

    It’s important to recognize that the recent reframing of the two sexes as needing revision did not result from any new discoveries about biology [..]

    It is not transphobic to recognize the two sexes that biologists have known for decades, but, unfortunately, we are dealing with ideologues who are largely impervious to both facts and reason, and so the five points above are aimed largely at those who don’t know a lot about the way biologists conceive of sex.

    That's you. You are the ideologue that is largely impervious to facts and reason. You demonstrated this by linking a paper and completely misunderstanding it to the point that you thought gametes are a spectrum, when it flatly contradicts you:

    (A) A strict binary, for which all individuals are unambiguously grouped into one of two categories. Whereas some traits, such as gamete size, operate this way, […]

    Or here's yet another person with plenty of credentials telling you directly you're wrong:

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

    This article says nothing novel. It discusses a fact as well-established as the billions of years of evolution that shaped our species. We live in a world, however, that increasingly ignores such truths, and in which the combination of awareness and courage to set the record straight appears rare.

    This isn't even a debate. You're just wrong. Would you like more citations to that effect?

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  • Man, really? The person that thinks there's 3 gamete types because they couldn't even understand the paper they linked? Them? I mean FFS, the paper they linked directly, squarely contradicts them:

    A strict binary, for which all individuals are unambiguously grouped into one of two categories. Whereas some traits, such as gamete size, operate this way, [..]

    I have to say that I'm disappointed that you found that eloquent, but to each their own. I hope that you some day find truth more eloquent.

    At any rate, just in case you're confused (since it's not clear from your comment if you understand this), sex is defined by the gamete types your body is organized around producing. Someone born without the ability to create gametes isn't a counter to the sex binary, their body is still organized around the production of sperm or ova, even if faulty. Nobody is born with a body organized around the production of both sperm and ova, not even in the case of ovotestis. See other comments for explanation.

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  • Well no. You're free to read the paper's citations. The field of biology has always used this definition of sex, and that paper cites this definition from 1888. Somebody also helpfully set up a project for scientists to sign that affirms the same view:

    https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/

    Feel free to post anything disputing the paper.

    EDIT: I didn't think I needed to spell this out so directly, but Project Nettie was set up by Dr. Emma Hilton, who has a PhD in Developmental Biology, collecting signatures on a statement affirming the sex binary from other scientists with relevant credentials. You can go look for yourself, and here's the description from the link:

    Project Nettie is an online and regularly updated record of scientists, medics and those in related disciplines who, by signing their support for the Project Nettie statement (below), assert the material reality of biological sex and reject attempts to reframe it as a malleable social construct.

    That it's published on wordpress doesn't matter, that was likely just a convenient place to publish. What matters is what the statement says, and who's signing onto it. I didn't think that needed to be said, but, some people 🫠

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  • Yep, and that exists in other species, but not humans. Nobody's body is organized around the production of both gametes, unlike other species

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  • Some species are hermaphroditic, but humans aren't. Nobody's body is organized around the production of both gametes. Ovotesticular doesn't mean what you're thinking. I'll copy from my other comment

    The closest you’ll find in humans is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis, but that’s not “fully functioning gonads of both types, producing healthy gametes of both types”. It’s “maybe a functioning gonad of one type, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type”. Their sex can still be determined, even if it’s not readily apparent.

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  • That's demonstrating the variation within the sex binary. You're confusing how sex is determined with how sex is defined.

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  • You're weirdly obsessed with the idea that anybody that disagrees with you is trolling. You're free to provide any evidence to support your position, but you're better suited to simply insult people that try to tell you facts.

    You're repeatedly insulting people trying to show you the truth and refusing to demonstrate anything that supports your position.

    You're a troll.

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  • Sorry, but the facts, knowledge, and understanding of the preexisting scientific consensus is that sex is binary, in exactly the way I've been saying. You're welcome to provide any citations to the contrary, but you can't. In fact, any sources that people have linked have ended up proving my point. Such as the paper Sex Redefined which is commonly linked to by people that didn't read it. The author themselves says that there's "Two sexes, with a continuum of variation in anatomy/physiology."

    Remember, just because you don't like the truth, doesn't mean it's "trolling" to speak it. You have nothing on your side but pseudoscientific grifters.

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  • That chart shows variation within a sex. That's all how sex is determined, but not how it's defined

    EDIT: As an example, it mentions "male characteristics" in the context of 5αR2D. If sex were defined by phenotypes, that would be a circular definition. You can't define "male characteristics" in a coherent way across species without referring back to gametes.

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  • You'd have to point to a particular case for a good answer. Nobody is simply born live and healthy and simply lacks any plumbing. You'd have to get into nonviable embryos or the like to get something with truly undefinable sex.

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  • You can read that as "Would produce, if not for a developmental issue". Their body is trying to produce a certain type of gamete and failing.

    A rough analogy is, if a person is born without a hand, we say they're missing a hand. We don't throw our hands in the air and say "Whelp, could be anything. Maybe it's a foot, or a wing, or a spider. There's just no way of knowing"

    Even in the case of missing gonads, their body is still trying to build them and failing. It's not trying to build nothing

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  • That falls into the "organized around" bit. They won't have any other structures necessary for supporting the bit of tissue, and their body won't be trying to create those structures. As a loose analogy, think of it like transplanting an ovary into a human male. You haven't changed his sex, you've merely created a man with an ovary grafted onto him. His body is still organized around production of sperm.

    In the case of someone that's infertile, if you fixed the issue that was causing their infertility, they would produce the normal gametes that their body is organized around producing. They wouldn't then magically start producing both gametes or gametes from the other sex.

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  • I'm not sure what you mean by "what to do". If someone has an XXY genotype, their sex is determined by the gametes their body is organized around producing, like everyone else.

    To quote the NHS

    Klinefelter syndrome (sometimes called Klinefelter's, KS or XXY) is where boys and men are born with an extra X chromosome.

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    Silicon Valley investor who went to Stanford explains how she is raising her son

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  • She's not wrong, but it's not something to aspire to. Same as "You can be a pedophile if you're a corrupt fascist dictator"

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  • That's the definition biologists have always used. It's just a description of the reality that they found in their field. Lay people have started using it recently because of culture wars, but they're not incorrect to do so.

    There still aren't "intersex" people as you're probably thinking. The closest you'll find in humans is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis, but that's not "fully functioning gonads of both types, producing healthy gametes of both types". It's "maybe a functioning gonad of one type, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type". Their sex can still be determined, even if it's not readily apparent.

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  • The author of that paper has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is well-qualified to talk about it, but also provides plenty of citations in the paper. His point is simply that trying to redefine sex in that way leads to a circular definition that isn't useful.

    To that point, what does "male gametes but with a female phenotype" mean? What does female mean? How can you define it without reference to gametes?

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  • That's confusing how sex is defined with how sex is determined. See the linked thread for a lot of this discussion, but you're talking about variations within the sex binary. Intersex people aren't in conflict with the sex binary, because they're either male or female with Disorders of sex development.