Fausto-Sterling’s argument that human sexuality is a continuum, not a dichotomy, rests in large measure on her claim that intersex births are a fairly common phenomenon.
No, it does not. Whether the "true" intersex people are 1.7% or 0.02%, they do exist, and they are real people. 0.02% of global population is about 1.6 million people. You cannot possibly pretend 1.6 million people did not exist.
Just to be clear: most of the < 0.02% of the human population who have DSDs do not have DSD conditions that caused them to be born with genitals that looked so ambiguous that there was any question about their sex - or so much like the gentials of the opposite sex that they grew up mis-sexed and never had any idea that they have a DSD.
As to your contention that some of us are trying to "pretend that 1.6 million people [with DSDs] do not exist" - no one is saying that persons with DSDs don't exist. Nor is anyone saying that people with DSDs don't deserve full human rights, fair treatment, compassion and respect.
We are saying, however, that we don't believe the existence of people with DSDs means that human sex is not binary the way you keep claiming.
We also don't believe that the existence of the few particular DSD conditions which you constantly bring up - all of which, tellingly, occur only in people who are chromosmally and genetically male, and with the exception of Swyer syndrome, all of which cause affected persons to have well-developed, functioning testes - means what you say it does. Which is that female human beings do not constitute a distinct, easily definable biological sex class with phsyical characteristics that make us clearly distinguishable from the human male sex class - including members of the male sex class with the particular differences or disorders of male sex development you keep posting about.
Because you insist on seeing people with CAIS, PAIS and XY 5-ARD as women whose female sex development is atypical, of course in your eyes there is no coherent, consisitent way to define biolocial women. How could there be if some biological women have testes that pump out testosterone in or exceeeding the normal male range, need prostate checks, and can father children?
But if you were to take the view that I hold - which is that no matter how they are regarded socially, persons with those DSDs are biologically male with rare medical conditions that caused their male sex development to be atypical - then it is possible to hold on to and to articulate a coherent, consistent definition of biological women. (And it's possible to do this whilst stilll leaving room for persons with these extremely rare DSDs to socially define themselves and live and do as they wish in nearly all ways and areas of life.)
Another view that I and others disgree with is the one which says that because some male people today claim to have trans, non-binary, gender-fluid and other newfangled gender identities, this means that female human beings no longer can or should be viewed as distinct from trans-identified males in law, sports, healthcare and medical research, locker rooms, toilet provisions, workplace rules, prisons and life in general - and that to accommodate males who "identify as" girls and women, people who really are girls and women must forfeit many of the hard-won rights and protections that women over many generations had to fight tooth and nail to obtain.
In addition, I and others reject the view that because a bunch of selfish, pushy, grabby males with porn addiction, autogynephilia, narcissistic personalities and a colonialist mindset now like to think of themselves as female - and they've gone ahead and arrogantly appropriated the words "woman," "girl" and "female" for themselves - people like me must now redefined as and demoted to a subcategory of our sex and put up with being called "cisgender women" and "cis females."
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
Fausto-Sterling’s argument that human sexuality is a continuum, not a dichotomy, rests in large measure on her claim that intersex births are a fairly common phenomenon.
No, it does not. Whether the "true" intersex people are 1.7% or 0.02%, they do exist, and they are real people. 0.02% of global population is about 1.6 million people. You cannot possibly pretend 1.6 million people did not exist.
Yes, but they do not represent an additional sex category. To say that they do reveals a lack of understanding about what sex is.
No, they don't represent a separate "category" because human sex is continuum, not discrete categories.
Most of us are either 100% male or 100% female. A small minority of us are not. They are mixture of male and female characteristics. An even smaller minority are so close to 50% male and 50% female that it is impractical to determine whether they are predominantly male or female.
The society puts those people into one of two boxes (male or female) for the convenience of the majority. That's clear evidence that "gender" is social construct. Whether someone "male" or "female" depends on the social context, and it often does not necessarily reflect the underlying biological reality. Most people with DSD identify as either male or female. But that is often different from their karyotype. (Most notably, 98-99% of people with CAIS identify as female.)
Therefore, I think it is simplistic to think that defining a "woman" is easy. Some people are treated as "women" in some context and not in others. This makes conservative people very uncomfortable because they have low tolerance toward ambiguity. They want everything to be black and white, but the real world is shades of gray.
What exactly are the signs that you think they should have looked for that would have told them that Merager isn't really a bloke any more, he just looks and acts like a bloke?
Huh? I thought your argument was that how a trans person looks and acts like was irrelevant.
Then let me ask you this. Which of the people in the following photos should be banned from "women only" spaces?
In this 2014 breakthrough decision, Maine’s highest court ruled that denying a transgender girl the use of the girls’ restroom at her school violated her
For a number of years at my public elementary school in rural Maine, I was treated like all the other girls in school. That changed in September 2007 when a male classmate, set on a path by his grandfather, followed me into the girls’ restroom. The end result was that I had to use the school’s staff bathroom—just me, no one else. I was isolated and effectively classified as an “other.”
So it was a BOY (whose grandfather was a conservative activist), not any of the girls, who had an issue with Nicole using the girls' bathroom.
“I walked into my school and it was nine o’clock and I was greeted by hundreds of students,” she remembers. “They all had their hands out to me, ready to give me a hug. They were all wearing stickers, that said, “I Am DW.” They were handing out sheets to sign that they don’t mind that a transgender girl was sharing a bathroom with them… All these people, people that I didn’t even know, people were coming up to me saying, you’re beautiful, stay strong, all throughout the day. There were even lots of teachers that were wearing the “I Am DW” stickers.:
Yeah, but those teenage girls are clueless, right?
Yes, but they do not represent an additional sex category. To say that they do reveals a lack of understanding about what sex is.
No, they don't represent a separate "category" because human sex is continuum, not discrete categories.
Most of us are either 100% male or 100% female. A small minority of us are not. They are mixture of male and female characteristics. An even smaller minority are so close to 50% male and 50% female that it is impractical to determine whether they are predominantly male or female.
The society puts those people into one of two boxes (male or female) for the convenience of the majority. That's clear evidence that "gender" is social construct. Whether someone "male" or "female" depends on the social context, and it often does not necessarily reflect the underlying biological reality. Most people with DSD identify as either male or female. But that is often different from their karyotype. (Most notably, 98-99% of people with CAIS identify as female.)
Therefore, I think it is simplistic to think that defining a "woman" is easy. Some people are treated as "women" in some context and not in others. This makes conservative people very uncomfortable because they have low tolerance toward ambiguity. They want everything to be black and white, but the real world is shades of gray.
"This makes conservative people very uncomfortable because they have low tolerance toward ambiguity. They want everything to be black and white, but the real world is shades of gray."
This is ironic! RunRagged and others have repeatedly pointed out that this is not a liberal/conservative issue, but you insist on shoehorning all people who disagree with you into the conservative category and branding them as bigots. You have the black and white world view.
All of this talk of an alleged "sex spectrum" has little to do with people with DSDs; you're just using them to argue that it's safe and normal to allow males in female-only spaces. In fact, you don't have a nuanced perspective on this issue. You'll rationalize anything to get to your desired outcome.
I am very concerned about safety and freedom for women and girls, but I'm equally frustrated and baffled by the fact that a substantial minority of people in an advanced, educated society deny basic facts about reality. The things you're saying aren't true.
You are a science denier, an evolution denier, a secular religious zealot who believes that human beings are somehow exempt from the very biological forces that enable our existence.
PS: the question of whether sex is binary is different than the question of whether "gender" is. Most of the people denigrated as TERFS believe that gender is a social construct and that society ought to tolerate free expression, regardless of sex. Current trans ideology argues that the desire to wear panties and heels makes one a woman.
I have little confidence in my ability to tell them apart in any photo, even assuming there’s at least one trans, but if the premise was there may or may not be some trans in each photo, as is the case in the real world at bathrooms in airports, malls, restaurants, or pretty much any place except those like schools or workplaces where everyone already knows you, the only way to tell would be to ask to “show me your papers” (or worse). No wonder bathroom gatekeeping laws keep failing.
Just to be clear: most of the < 0.02% of the human population who have DSDs do not have DSD conditions that caused them to be born with genitals that looked so ambiguous that there was any question about their sex - or so much like the gentials of the opposite sex that they grew up mis-sexed and never had any idea that they have a DSD.
(etc.)
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
The article by Sax has the criteria, which I quoted. It was phrased in terms of defining intersex. The opposite is non-intersex, i.e. male or female: phenotype identifiable as male or female (does this really need to be enumerated?) and chromosomes consistent with phenotype covers 99.98%+ of the population.
Intersex is so rare that (AFAIK, as of X years ago, when I was regularly in educational institutions) there was no procedure specific to the situation other than handling with individual accommodation according to the nature of the disability. (Schools have procedures for a lot of rare things, for example how to complete a grade sheet for a student who dies during the term. Mortality rate for males in US age 15-24 about 0.1% in a year.)
Transgender is a kind of social expression. In some cases, that expression is partly fulfilled by body modification, whether surgical or pharmacological. It does not change a person's sex.
As far as bathroom use, in most cases, in most adult situations -- for example in a professional office -- no one cares. You do your thing quietly and leave. Have you never encountered one bathroom or the other out of order? Or hear someone remark "I'll stand guard" if a woman for some reason needs to use the men's toilet? It happens.
This should not obscure that there are a few people who abuse "most cases we tolerate" to do the intolerable.
Showers and locker rooms are not most cases. If a person is making a federal case of it, it is not quietly.
Women are in a physically vulnerable position relative to men. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.
"This makes conservative people very uncomfortable because they have low tolerance toward ambiguity. They want everything to be black and white, but the real world is shades of gray."
This is ironic! RunRagged and others have repeatedly pointed out that this is not a liberal/conservative issue, but you insist on shoehorning all people who disagree with you into the conservative category and branding them as bigots. You have the black and white world view.
I wrote "conservative peo[le are uncomfortable with ambiguity" or "people who are uncomfortable with ambiguity are all conservative." If you cannot tell the difference, maybe you need to work on your reading comprehension.
The rest of your post is yet another giant nonsequitur. I have asked repeatedly on this thread who exactly should not be allowed to have access to women's locker rooms or women's restrooms. All I read is "men" should not be allowed, and the only definition of "men" given here is people who were born with testes.
I have little confidence in my ability to tell them apart in any photo, even assuming there’s at least one trans, but if the premise was there may or may not be some trans in each photo, as is the case in the real world at bathrooms in airports, malls, restaurants, or pretty much any place except those like schools or workplaces where everyone already knows you, the only way to tell would be to ask to “show me your papers” (or worse). No wonder bathroom gatekeeping laws keep failing.
The last one is supposed to be easier because the trans person in that photo is a reality TV star that many people may recognize. (The other four have been exposed to the media in various ways. But they are probably not as easily recognizable.)
But if you were to take the view that I hold - which is that no matter how they are regarded socially, persons with those DSDs are biologically male with rare medical conditions that caused their male sex development to be atypical - then it is possible to hold on to and to articulate a coherent, consistent definition of biological women. (And it's possible to do this whilst stilll leaving room for persons with these extremely rare DSDs to socially define themselves and live and do as they wish in nearly all ways and areas of life.)
Do those areas of life include public restrooms and locker rooms? Neither you nor GD has answered this question. Who exactly should be excluded from those places?
What exactly are the signs that you think they should have looked for that would have told them that Merager isn't really a bloke any more, he just looks and acts like a bloke?
Huh? I thought your argument was that how a trans person looks and acts like was irrelevant.
Then let me ask you this. Which of the people in the following photos should be banned from "women only" spaces?
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
The article by Sax has the criteria, which I quoted. It was phrased in terms of defining intersex. The opposite is non-intersex, i.e. male or female: phenotype identifiable as male or female (does this really need to be enumerated?) and chromosomes consistent with phenotype covers 99.98%+ of the population.
Intersex is so rare that (AFAIK, as of X years ago, when I was regularly in educational institutions) there was no procedure specific to the situation other than handling with individual accommodation according to the nature of the disability. (Schools have procedures for a lot of rare things, for example how to complete a grade sheet for a student who dies during the term. Mortality rate for males in US age 15-24 about 0.1% in a year.)
Transgender is a kind of social expression. In some cases, that expression is partly fulfilled by body modification, whether surgical or pharmacological. It does not change a person's sex.
As far as bathroom use, in most cases, in most adult situations -- for example in a professional office -- no one cares. You do your thing quietly and leave. Have you never encountered one bathroom or the other out of order? Or hear someone remark "I'll stand guard" if a woman for some reason needs to use the men's toilet? It happens.
This should not obscure that there are a few people who abuse "most cases we tolerate" to do the intolerable.
Showers and locker rooms are not most cases. If a person is making a federal case of it, it is not quietly.
Women are in a physically vulnerable position relative to men. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.
I asked the question of T. Verbosa, and GD earlier, but you answered both times with pointers to Sax’s paper. You don’t appear to be either of the two. Neither has ever stated what they are arguing for for bathroom use policy. Why can’t they articulate it? Verbosa has made it clear that they don’t agree with Sax’s definition (eg, because of CAIS/PAIS and 5-ARD among others), but hasn’t made it clear what their definition is of the individuals that can enter a women’s bathroom.
Do they not know for what bathroom use policy they are even arguing?
It would be very easy to tell which people in the photos are trans if they were walking around a locker room sans pants.
That’s only if you assume they are non-intersex and pre-transition trans. If seeing a penis is what’s so bothersome, it’s easy to fix by providing changing cubicles that already exist in many gyms. Women’s showers already commonly have stalls or at least modesty barriers unlike men’s that are communal in the US, so it can’t be that much trouble to switch to an etiquette where everyone wraps a towel around themselves except behind closed doors, a pretty common etiquette in many countries.
Or they could change with a towel on like people often do at a typical (non-nude) beach or by a swimming pool in the US; just takes a little modesty acrobatics.
Or people could just stop being such prudes about occasional brief flashes of nudity.
Just to be clear: most of the < 0.02% of the human population who have DSDs do not have DSD conditions that caused them to be born with genitals that looked so ambiguous that there was any question about their sex - or so much like the gentials of the opposite sex that they grew up mis-sexed and never had any idea that they have a DSD.
As to your contention that some of us are trying to "pretend that 1.6 million people [with DSDs] do not exist" - no one is saying that persons with DSDs don't exist. Nor is anyone saying that people with DSDs don't deserve full human rights, fair treatment, compassion and respect.
We are saying, however, that we don't believe the existence of people with DSDs means that human sex is not binary the way you keep claiming.
We also don't believe that the existence of the few particular DSD conditions which you constantly bring up - all of which, tellingly, occur only in people who are chromosmally and genetically male, and with the exception of Swyer syndrome, all of which cause affected persons to have well-developed, functioning testes - means what you say it does. Which is that female human beings do not constitute a distinct, easily definable biological sex class with phsyical characteristics that make us clearly distinguishable from the human male sex class - including members of the male sex class with the particular differences or disorders of male sex development you keep posting about.
Because you insist on seeing people with CAIS, PAIS and XY 5-ARD as women whose female sex development is atypical, of course in your eyes there is no coherent, consisitent way to define biolocial women. How could there be if some biological women have testes that pump out testosterone in or exceeeding the normal male range, need prostate checks, and can father children?
But if you were to take the view that I hold - which is that no matter how they are regarded socially, persons with those DSDs are biologically male with rare medical conditions that caused their male sex development to be atypical - then it is possible to hold on to and to articulate a coherent, consistent definition of biological women. (And it's possible to do this whilst stilll leaving room for persons with these extremely rare DSDs to socially define themselves and live and do as they wish in nearly all ways and areas of life.)
Another view that I and others disgree with is the one which says that because some male people today claim to have trans, non-binary, gender-fluid and other newfangled gender identities, this means that female human beings no longer can or should be viewed as distinct from trans-identified males in law, sports, healthcare and medical research, locker rooms, toilet provisions, workplace rules, prisons and life in general - and that to accommodate males who "identify as" girls and women, people who really are girls and women must forfeit many of the hard-won rights and protections that women over many generations had to fight tooth and nail to obtain.
In addition, I and others reject the view that because a bunch of selfish, pushy, grabby males with porn addiction, autogynephilia, narcissistic personalities and a colonialist mindset now like to think of themselves as female - and they've gone ahead and arrogantly appropriated the words "woman," "girl" and "female" for themselves - people like me must now redefined as and demoted to a subcategory of our sex and put up with being called "cisgender women" and "cis females."
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
There are basically 3 categories. It's binary. You have XX female, XY males, and then extremely rare birth conditions like intersex.
However intersex or other birth conditions are irrelevant to this conversation. This is only about transgender.
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
There are basically 3 categories. It's binary. You have XX female, XY males, and then extremely rare birth conditions like intersex.
However intersex or other birth conditions are irrelevant to this conversation. This is only about transgender.
Seems like the self-proclaimed ladies on this thread can’t speak for themselves.
It should take far fewer words to state a precise refutable definition, if you have one, of your so-called “biological woman”, one that allows every human to be unambiguously be classified as a member or non-member of that class.
There are basically 3 categories. It's binary. You have XX female, XY males, and then extremely rare birth conditions like intersex.
However intersex or other birth conditions are irrelevant to this conversation. This is only about transgender.
I can give you credit for a good faith answer, but you seem to think XX, XY, and intersex are mutually exclusive terms, which they are not, and your answer if applied as bathroom policy would imply XX penises are allowed in the women’s bathroom but not XY penises, which is based on I don’t know what principle.
There are basically 3 categories. It's binary. You have XX female, XY males, and then extremely rare birth conditions like intersex.
However intersex or other birth conditions are irrelevant to this conversation. This is only about transgender.
I can give you credit for a good faith answer, but you seem to think XX, XY, and intersex are mutually exclusive terms, which they are not, and your answer if applied as bathroom policy would imply XX penises are allowed in the women’s bathroom but not XY penises, which is based on I don’t know what principle.
Not quite. XX penises would likely fall under the 'other' category. The category that is actually far more difficult to address, such as Mboma or Semenya. The primary point I think is 90% of people seem to agree that Lia Thomas, and XY penises, has no place in a female locker room, specifically. If you want to argue that Lia Thomas can be in a locker room, then you'd have to argue that there is no reason for gendered locker rooms at all, which even in our society would never be accepted.
You absolutely cannot equate or make policy under the assumption that trans people are in anyway the same as intersex, or chromosomal/sex characteristic anomalies. Using one to argue for the other is disingenuous.
It would be very easy to tell which people in the photos are trans if they were walking around a locker room sans pants.
That’s only if you assume they are non-intersex and pre-transition trans. If seeing a penis is what’s so bothersome, it’s easy to fix by providing changing cubicles that already exist in many gyms. Women’s showers already commonly have stalls or at least modesty barriers unlike men’s that are communal in the US, so it can’t be that much trouble to switch to an etiquette where everyone wraps a towel around themselves except behind closed doors, a pretty common etiquette in many countries.
Or they could change with a towel on like people often do at a typical (non-nude) beach or by a swimming pool in the US; just takes a little modesty acrobatics.
Or people could just stop being such prudes about occasional brief flashes of nudity.
Listen to yourself. Women are prudes for not wanting a trans penis parade in their locker rooms?
