A contradiction, I think, between "gender is a social construct" and trans-ness

[Gary Childress]

they just want to be the sort of arse-wipe that would deny a rape victim a termination pill.

Do you wish rape victims to be given "termination pills". I don't understand your words. Does your heart bleed for rape victims or must rape victims bleed for your heart?

I suggest that if a woman is raped she should be free to take a pill to prevent a pregnancy if she wishes. And not compelled to carry the rapists brat in her body.

What do you think? Are are you exactly the sort of person I am talking about?

I agree that a woman who is raped should have the option to terminate the fetus of the one who raped her. That is about as clear to me as I know of. I have yet to encounter anyone who has suggested otherwise. Are you sure such people even exist?

[Sculptor]

Do you wish rape victims to be given "termination pills". I don't understand your words. Does your heart bleed for rape victims or must rape victims bleed for your heart?

I suggest that if a woman is raped she should be free to take a pill to prevent a pregnancy if she wishes. And not compelled to carry the rapists brat in her body.

What do you think? Are are you exactly the sort of person I am talking about?

I agree that a woman who is raped should have the option to terminate the fetus of the one who raped her. That is about as clear to me as I know of. I have yet to encounter anyone who has suggested otherwise. Are you sure such people even exist?

Yes I think it is one of the many proposals now going into law in Florida.

[Sculptor]

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4359430

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/hospita ... traception

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3088033

[Gary Childress]

I suggest that if a woman is raped she should be free to take a pill to prevent a pregnancy if she wishes. And not compelled to carry the rapists brat in her body.

What do you think? Are are you exactly the sort of person I am talking about?

I agree that a woman who is raped should have the option to terminate the fetus of the one who raped her. That is about as clear to me as I know of. I have yet to encounter anyone who has suggested otherwise. Are you sure such people even exist?

Yes I think it is one of the many proposals now going into law in Florida.

I see. Yes. Upon googling the question regarding Florida and abortion for rape victims, it appears that rape victims are being asked for proof before having an abortion. It also appears that De Santis (the governor of Florida) is proposing that 6 weeks is the cut-off time for such people to choose an abortion.

https://people.com/health/rape-incest-v ... rtion-ban/

https://people.com/health/florida-legis ... oe-v-wade/

Note, the "15 week abortion ban", applies to having an abortion after 15 weeks. Women can still get an abortion, however, it would require doing so before the 15 week period after pregnancy is reached. So they can abort up to about 2 months and 3 weeks into a pregnancy.

It's a complicated issue but one which needs to be resolved. Personally, I don't hold any woman accountable for a decision she makes before carrying through with a pregnancy. I do feel uncomfortable if it's decided to abort say, just minutes before naturally giving birth. Aborting a child minutes before birth seems like a reasonably clear threshold that I would rather not see crossed. Where to draw the line, whether at 15 weeks or perhaps later is a question of much contention. I don't know enough about human reproduction to draw an absolute line anywhere in the stages but there is something disturbing about deliberately aborting babies who are approaching birth. Or perhaps I am wrong?

[Consul]

Let's assume that the two sexes are non-essentialistic "polythetic classes" or "cluster kinds" rather than essentialistic "monothetic classes" or "essence kinds". If the species at issue is homo sapiens, we must then formulate two sex-defining lists of sexual traits—one for human males, one for human females—such that "each [male/female] individual possesses a large number of the properties (…), each property is possessed by a large number of individuals and no property is possessed by all individuals." (See below!)

Here are such lists. One problem with a non-essentialistic property-cluster definition of sex is that it is vague with regard to how many properties on the list an individual must possess in order to count as male/female: "…a large number…" – but how large is large enough?

A. HUMAN MALE
1. XY chromosomes
2. primary sex characteristics:
2.1 gonads: testicles
2.1.1 gamete type: sperm
2.2 genitals:
2.2.1 external: penis, scrotum
2.2.2 internal: epididymis, ductus deferens, seminal vesicle, ejaculatory duct, bulbourethral gland, prostate.
3. hormones (males have higher levels of testosterone/lower levels of estrogen than females)
4. secondary sex characteristics (body shape, facial hair, size of larynx [voice], subcutaneous fat, etc.)

B. HUMAN FEMALE
1. XX chromosomes
2. primary sex characteristics:
2.1 gonads: ovaries
2.1.1 gamete type: ova
2.2 genitals:
2.2.1 external: vulva, clitoris
2.2.2 internal: vagina, uterine cervix, uterus, Fallopian tubes
3. hormones (females have lower levels of testosterone/higher levels of estrogen than males)
4. secondary sex characteristics (body shape, breasts, size of larynx [voice], subcutaneous fat, etc.)

[Consul]

The simplest view of what people are is that they aren't anything in particular (while taking reductionism as far as it can go) AND that we are everything; and perhaps even more (while taking holism as far as it can go). Identity is an infinitely malleable concept with many linguistic uses.

Nobody is everything! Nobody is nothing! So the question is: What kind of entity am I? My answer: I am a body, a biological kind of body: an animal organism (an animal).

On the other hand Judith's simplistic view of the world suggests that amputees are no longer themselves;…

If mereological essentialism were true, I would be necessarily identical with my body as it is now with all its parts, and hence couldn't survive the loss of any part of me = my body. But I think mereological essentialism (especially about biological organisms) isn't true. An animal can lose body parts and continue to exist as one and the same animal.

Alternatively, if you regard bodies and organisms as four-dimensional (4D) objects having both spatial parts and temporal parts, then you can happily accept mereological essentialism about temporal parts of bodies or organisms. I as a 4D body would then be a mereological sum of numerically and qualitatively different temporal parts of me.

…and that my corpse will still be me.

I do think I will continue to exist after my death as a corpse. I will be buried or cremated when I am dead.

[Consul]

One problem with a non-essentialistic property-cluster definition of sex is that it is vague with regard to how many properties on the list an individual must possess in order to count as male/female: "…a large number…" – but how large is large enough?

Moreover, it will run into trouble when it comes to classifying intersexuals as male or female.

[Trajk Logik]

One problem with a non-essentialistic property-cluster definition of sex is that it is vague with regard to how many properties on the list an individual must possess in order to count as male/female: "…a large number…" – but how large is large enough?

Moreover, it will run into trouble when it comes to classifying intersexuals as male or female.

It's much, much simpler than that. One simply needs to have a majority male or female versions of each trait. To falsify this, all you need to do is find a human being that has an equal number of equally developed male and female versions of each trait. I gave five properties, so it would be impossible to find an equal number of traits. There will always be an odd number of either version and majority/minority by default so even intersex would fall within one of two clusters.

[Consul]

The problem with this is that you are not really thinking through the implications of that word counterintuitive.

You really could have just opted for spermy-swimmers versus ova and just said that baby boys and girls belong to gender classes but not sex ones until puberty. But you didn't want to do that because it seems obvious that the babies have both sexes and genders, no? So your gamete definition needs an artifical extension such that an object M is male iff in any possible world it could produce spunkybois and in no possible world could it produce ova. But it only needs that because you know what needs to be rules into the definition of male and what needs to be ruled out before you started. So you apply a Procrustean leg breaking fix to the problem.

Thing is, you went into this gamete thing for a couple of reasons as far as I can see. On the one hand you weren't happy with chromosomes or gonads as definitive, and on the other you really really really want to use a science definition because you have got the notion into your head that being sciency is the same as being officialy true. Your gamete thing has the same basic weakness as the gonad thing, but you happen not to have via science any next step so the gamete thing is the one you chose to clumsily patch. But you have blundered with the science assumption anyway; that sort of move only works if it resolves an ambiguity, whereas you are merely introducing unwarranted new ambiguities.

What we can learn from this is that we choose which sort of definition to use according to circumstances which have very much to do with what sort of conversation we are engaged in. If you keep an eye on these things you will note that they are highly movable over time - they reflect us as much as the object being described.

How many confusingly context-relative concepts of sex do you want to have and use? I'd like to have and use one absolute, universal concept of it—and fortunately there is one, namely the biological standard concept:

"By definition, males are the sex that produces small gametes (sperm), and females are the sex that produces large gametes (eggs)."

(Stearns, S. C. "Why Sex Evolved and the Differences It Makes." In The Evolution of Sex and Its Consequences, edited by S. C. Stearns, 15-32. Basel: Birkhäuser/Springer, 1987. p. 17)

(Stearns' statement is not ambiguous! Anyway, ambiguity isn't the same as vagueness.)

Definitions aren't true or false, but adequate/appropriate or inadequate/inappropriate. From the scientific perspective, the above definition of sex is the most adequate/appropriate one, and that's why it has become the standard definition in biology.

"Biological sex reflects two distinct evolutionary strategies to produce offspring: the female strategy is to produce few large gametes and the male strategy is to produce many small (and often motile) gametes. This fundamental definition is valid for all sexually reproducing organisms. Sex-associated genotypes or phenotypes (including sex chromosomes, primary and secondary sexual characteristics and sex hormones), sex roles and sexual differentiation are consequences of the biological sex. Genotypic and phenotypic features, as well as sex roles are often used as operational criteria to define sex, but since these traits differ vastly between sexually reproducing species, they only work for selected species."

(Goymann, Wolfgang, Henrik Brumm, and Peter M. Kappeler. "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles." BioEssays 45/2 (February 2023): https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10. ... .202200173)

"The chromosomal and phenotypic ‘definitions’ of biological sex that are contested in philosophical discussions of sex are actually operational definitions which track gametic sex more or less effectively in some species or group of species. Neither ‘definition’ can be stated for species in general except by defining them in terms of gametic sex."

(Paul Griffiths, "What are Sexes?", 2021)

However, the gametic definition as formulated by Stearns is best read as a generic generalization allowing individual exceptions rather than as a universally quantified proposition. That is, "Males are sperm-producers, and females are egg-producers" is not synonymous with "All males are sperm-producers, and all females are egg-producers," but rather with "Males are normally/typically sperm-producers, and females are normally/typically egg-producers."

Generic generalizations aren't entirely free of vagueness—especially when they are interpreted in terms of what is normal or typical for an individual member of its kind (species)—, but the problem of semantic vagueness is a general and apparently inevitable one; so it alone gives us no good reason not to accept the gametic definition as the most adequate/appropriate one.

It may be that "[d]efinitions in biology are never perfectly precise" (Alex Byrne); but any non-gametic biological definition and any non-biological definition of sex isn't perfectly precise either—and is arguably less precise and less adequate than the gametic definition.

That said, I cannot help but admit that when it comes to sexually classifying a given individual (in a certain stage of his life), things can get pretty complicated or, in the worst case, even undecidable.

"The fact that a species has only two biological sexes does not imply that every member of the species is either male, female or hermaphroditic, or that the sex of every individual organism is clear and determinate.
……
Assigning sexes to pre-reproductive life-history stages involves ‘prospective narration’ – classifying the present in terms of its anticipated future. Assigning sexes to adult stages of non-reproductive castes or non-reproductive individuals is a complex matter whose biological meaning differs from case to case.
……
The idea of biological sex when applied to a species is unequivocal - biological sexes are regions of phenotypic space that implement gametic reproductive strategies. But when applied to individual organisms this idea becomes more complex. Individual organisms, and specific life-history stages of those organisms, can stand in various different relations to the gametic reproductive strategies that define sexes. These various relations each provide good, but different, reasons to assign a life history stage of an individual to a sex.
……
We have already met some individuals that it makes no biological sense to assign a sex: embryos in species that switch sex as adults, early embryos in species with environmental sex determination, and individuals who are in the middle of switching from one sex to another.
More generally, in the previous section we saw that once we move away from the core case of individuals who can produce gametes, the sex of an individual is not a simple biological fact but a defensible interpretation of a complex biological reality."

(Paul Griffiths, "What are Sexes?", 2021)

By the way, Griffiths thinks that "[t]he idea of biological sex is critical for understanding the diversity of life, but ill-suited to the job of determining the social or legal status of human beings as men or women."

But note that by "the idea of biological sex" he means the gametic conception; and he mustn't be misunderstood as meaning that when sociologists, psychologists, or philosophers are talking about sex, they should use a different biological conception or a non-biological one reducing sex to socially constructed gender. All he's meaning to say is that it doesn't follow from the biological definition of males and females that all human males/females must be socially and legally classified correspondingly as men/women.

[Consul]

It may be that "[d]efinitions in biology are never perfectly precise" (Alex Byrne); but any non-gametic biological definition and any non-biological definition of sex isn't perfectly precise either—and is arguably less precise and less adequate than the gametic definition.

That said, I cannot help but admit that when it comes to sexually classifying a given individual (in a certain stage of his life), things can get pretty complicated or, in the worst case, even undecidable.

"Regardless of there being intersex conditions, male and female do seem to be natural biological kinds, but how, exactly, are they defined? The definition should be broad, since there are male and female plants, male and female animals. Some biologists assert that it is extremely simple: males produce sperm (gametes that are mobile and numerous), and females produce eggs (gametes that are immobile and large). But maybe it’s not quite that simple. A better, but only slightly more complex, definition might be this: a male typically has sperm and a body tailored to using them reproductively. A female typically has eggs and a body tailored to using them reproductively.

On this definition, an individual’s sex is a question of gametes, but also a matter of other body parts and features. It would make sense to add one more qualification, in light of the vicissitudes of life. If we want to think of sex as a generally stable characteristic of individuals, then we’ve got to say being male is a matter of being equipped to use sperm reproductively at least for a part of the individual’s lifespan. Male humans are male before they mature; they’re still male into impotent old age. Female humans are female on the fertile days of their fertile years, but also on the other days, and before they become sexually mature and after menopause. On a definition like this, an individual could be both male and female. But being both doesn’t occur in every case where an individual has a mixture of male and female parts.

Of course, in different species, which have evolved in different environments, sexual differences vary. Male gonads and genes boost male size in some species much more than in the human species; they make for colorful plumage in many bird species but horns or antlers in many ungulates; they cause all sorts of different instinctive behaviors in many species. The stage of life when gametes can be used varies as well (human females are among the few animals who go through menopause). But the underlying sameness is this: females are equipped to use eggs reproductively and males are equipped to use sperm reproductively.

What if the equipment has been modified or isn’t working well? Is a gelding a male horse? What about men with low sperm counts or beta-males in a wolf pack who will always be prevented from using their sperm reproductively? Which individuals are anomalous or altered or subverted males or females, and which are “other”? Can an individual undergo a change of sex? A durable definition of “male” and “female” will need a little more work before it can yield a clear verdict on every single case. Should the definition allude to the way an organism could function, or is supposed to function, or stick to its actual (past, present, and future) functioning? Whatever we say, the hard cases needn’t threaten the basic idea that, as a matter of plain biology, there are two major sex categories. They don’t threaten the reality of the male-female distinction, any more than teenagers threaten the distinction between children and adults."

(Kazez, Jean. The Philosophical Parent: Asking the Hard Questions about Having and Raising Children. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. pp. 192-4)

Maybe no definition of "male" and "female" "can yield a clear verdict on every single case," but she is absolutely right that "[w]hatever we say, the hard cases needn’t threaten the basic idea that, as a matter of plain biology, there are two major sex categories. They don’t threaten the reality of the male-female distinction, any more than teenagers threaten the distinction between children and adults."

[Consul]

Recommended reading:

* Robert Lynch: From Sex To Gender: The Modern Dismissal of Biology

An excerpt:

"Male and female are not capricious categories imposed by scientists on the natural world, but rather refer to fundamental distinctions deeply rooted in evolution. The biological definition of males and females rests on the size of the sex cells, termed gametes, that they produce. Males produce large numbers of small gametes, while females produce fewer, larger ones. In animals, this means that males produce lots of tiny sperm (between 200 and 500 million sperm in humans) while females produce far fewer, but much larger, eggs called ova (women have a lifetime supply of around 400). Whenever scientists discover a new sexually reproducing species, gamete size is what they use to distinguish between the males and the females.

Although this asymmetry in gamete size may not seem that significant, it is. And it leads to a cascade of evolutionary effects that often results in fundamentally different developmental (and even behavioral) trajectories for the two respective sexes. Whether you call the two groups A and B, Big and Little, or Male and Female, this foundational cell-sized difference in gamete size has profound effects on evolution, morphology, and behavior. Sexual reproduction that involves the union of gametes of different sizes is termed anisogamy, and it sets the stage for characteristic, and frequently stereotypical, differences between males and females." – Robert Lynch

[Consul]

…That said, I cannot help but admit that when it comes to sexually classifying a given individual (in a certain stage of his life), things can get pretty complicated or, in the worst case, even undecidable.

Nonetheless, the hot question of whether "transwomen"/"transmen" are (biological) women/men is very well decidable—especially given that they aren't intersexual people: They are not!

[Consul]

"By definition, males are the sex that produces small gametes (sperm), and females are the sex that produces large gametes (eggs)."

(Stearns, S. C. "Why Sex Evolved and the Differences It Makes." In The Evolution of Sex and Its Consequences, edited by S. C. Stearns, 15-32. Basel: Birkhäuser/Springer, 1987. p. 17)

…
However, the gametic definition as formulated by Stearns is best read as a generic generalization allowing individual exceptions rather than as a universally quantified proposition. That is, "Males are sperm-producers, and females are egg-producers" is not synonymous with "All males are sperm-producers, and all females are egg-producers," but rather with "Males are normally/typically sperm-producers, and females are normally/typically egg-producers."

I just learned that generic generalizations such as "Males produce sperm" can be transformed into universally quantified propositions:

"Roughly, a generic is true iff all normal members of a kind conform to it."

(Nickel, Bernhard. "Dutchmen are Good Sailors: Generics and Gradability." In Genericity, edited by Alda Mari, Claire Beyssade, & Fabio Del Prete, 390-405. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 391)

"I will analyze generics in the first instance not in terms of characteristicness, but in terms of normality. To a good first approximation, a generic As are F is true iff all normal As are F."

(Nickel, Bernhard. Between Logic and the World: An Integrated Theory of Generics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. p. 8 )

Let's consider Stearns' statement again:

"Males are the sex that produces small gametes (sperm), and females are the sex that produces large gametes (eggs)."

Following Nickel, this can be interpreted as a generic generalization meaning:

"Males are the sex all normal members of which produce small gametes (sperm), and females are the sex all normal members of which produce large gametes (eggs)."

Or, more precisely:

"Males are the sex all normal members of which produce small gametes (sperm) during some stage of their life cycle, and females are the sex all normal members of which produce large gametes (eggs) during some stage of their life cycle."

Of course, the question is still what exactly it is for a member of its kind to be normal. Nickel offers a very technical definition of normality in the context of his account of generics, which I think needn't be mentioned and discussed here. For it suffices to say that the normal males and females are those which are normally developed and equipped (from the biological perspective):

"Males are the sex all normal(ly developed and equipped) members of which produce small gametes (sperm) during some stage of their life cycle, and females are the sex all normal(ly developed and equipped) members of which produce large gametes (eggs) during some stage of their life cycle."

The truth of this statement is perfectly compatible with the existence of some biologically abnormal (deviant) males/females (men/women, boys/girls) who don't produce any gametes during any stage of their life cycle.

[Consul]

The properties I gave are not distributed in the way shown in the table. Again, 99.9% of all humans fall neatly into one of two clusters given that they have one version of each of the five traits. Even intersex that have both types of gonads, one is under-developed. Using a definition of sex where you simply need to have more than half of the traits (3 out of 5), even intersex would fall within one of the two clusters because they would have at least three (more than half) of the traits.

You wrote:

"…This is why I propose that biological sex is based on a combination of traits:
- chromosomes (in humans, XY is male, XX female)
- genitals (penis vs. vagina)
- gonads (testes vs. ovaries)
- hormones (males have higher relative levels of testosterone than women, while women have higher levels of estrogen)
- secondary sex characteristics that aren’t connected with the reproductive system but distinguish the sexes, and usually appear at puberty (breasts, facial hair, size of larynx, subcutaneous fat, etc.)"

You are right, your fivefold sex-specific property clusters are found in most people, because the vast majority of people is sexually normally developed and equipped. Intersex conditions are even rarer than ~0.1%, because their frequency is only ~0.02%.

But the question is still whether the species-independent gametic conception of sex should be replaced with various species-dependent property-cluster conceptions. My answer—and the answer of virtually all biologists—is no. Such species-relative property clusters certainly do exist naturally in humans and other animals, but the fundamentally and universally sex-defining characteristic in the biological sphere is nothing but an organism's gametotype: which of the two types of gametes it produces determines its sex.

Which is to say that the scribble, "gender" is useless because it could mean anything. It's just a scribble. If the scribble can mean anything, then just say what you mean instead of using the word and we could move the conversation along much more quickly and efficiently.

Being highly ambiguous, "gender" means many things to many people; but having many meanings doesn't mean being meaningless. If there is a neat list with a number of different definitions, I can deal with it. I just need to know which one on it is the one used by the person I'm having a discussion on gender with.

[FlashDangerpants]

If there is a neat list with a number of different definitions, I can deal with it.

I think we've all worked that out by now.