What is fair?
Another exchange with Alice Roberts:
I don’t seek to promote any ideology, just to make sure science isn’t misrepresented and misused to justify certain political ends. And biological essentialism is especially dangerous – having been used variously to excuse racist, homophobic and anti-trans ideology in the past.
Do you think it’s fair for transwomen to participate in female sports?
[an hour later] This is a very simple question. Did you miss it or are you ignoring it?
Here is Selina Soule. She used to win sprint races.
Now she loses sprint races. Now she fails to qualify for junior championships. Because now she has to race against males.
These males. These males who believe they are females (whatever, knock yourselves out). These males who have been given space in those female races by people like you.
Right. Because science says that men can be women. Got it.
… and my wife tells me I’m reading poison… :P
I believe the term “biological essentialism” is being misused and overworked. I hope it’s being paid extra.
I’m just a suburban white male boomer, but I don’t remember Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, or James Baldwin blaming gender essentialism for racism.
“anti-trans ideology”? What the hell is that? All the “ideology” here is coming from the trans* political agenda. It’s not an “ideology” to observe that males cannot become females, or that male athletes generally outperform female athletes in most sports, including running.
What is this science everyone has in mind when they say “TERFs are anti-science”?
The science that proves, proves I tell you, that male bodies can have female brains.
Even most female bodies don’t have “female brains”. The so-called female brain is estimated to be in fewer than 50% of all women. That means the trans community (at least FTM) must be enormous indeed.
@Ben;
There are several arguments re anti-science. Here’s one from Dr. Myers:
It’s interesting that both sides accuse the other of trying to fit people into boxes, of failing to take human diversity and nonconformity into account. One might think that’s a common ground. But that’s not what happens.
Selina ought to put a human face on the price paid for celebrating the uniqueness-of-every- individual. But I suspect many would be more likely to spit in her face, as a privileged mean-girl who wants to keep the marginalized off the team.
I’ve also seen claims that the science shows that hormone therapy ( or something else related to transitioning) evens the playing field.
Sastra@9: Thank you. I’m still confused, though.
Is she saying, “Sure, classifying people as one of two sexes is simple… if all you consider is their sex. But once you start adding other stuff into the mix, the picture looks more complicated”?
Well, I mean, yeah.
Is the argument that we only think there two—and only two—sexes? Because we’re too unsophisticated to recognize that people can be, say, 37% male, 54% female, and 9% other?
I see that she appears to use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably. Is that part of my confusion?
And what’s stopping us from saying, “There are only two sexes, but there’s more to someone than what sex they are”? Oh, wait. Maybe that’s TERF talk.
I am extremely sceptical of anyone claiming that they are not promoting any particular politics. The conservative hack pundits all posture themselves in this manner while spouting all sorts of politically motivated shite, and ‘big brain’ sceptics like Harris love saying that everyone else is political, but hey, I’m just using pure logic!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen PZ express similar scepticism, but why do I get the feeling that he will let it slide that this person has made the same claim…
@Ben:
I assume that’s a quotation from PZ Myers, who is not female. Although, since she arguing that sex is hyper-spectrumy, zer sex may not be what xe has always led people to believe.
The argument is essentially that all the unenlightened, benighted TERFs understand the sexes as “No males have female characteristics and all males have all male characteristics.” (swapped for females) As characteristics vary within the individual, there exists some male without at least one male trait or possessing at least one female trait. Checkmate, athei—er, TERFs! Also, QED.
It’s a very silly argument, really.
Oh. Oops. PZ. Right.
Nullius, the sad thing is, PZ once knew better. He himself was a feminist with the basic same view of a spectrum that he now has, but he understood that is what feminist thought embraced, the idea that there are not rigid definitions of who we are based solely on our gender. But then he became woke, and he forgot everything he ever knew about feminism – and, apparently, a great deal about biology.
@iknklast
I remember those days. Pretty sure I stopped reading his blog around the same time I stopped checking out fstdt, and for similar reasons. That would have been 2010, and looking back, the seeds of the Awokening were taking root in both places.
I’ve been trying to think of a phrase for the actions of those people who blindly follow the latest fashionable nonsense and remain deaf to those around them who try to get them to wake up and smell the coffee.
Sleepwoking, anyone?
Meanwhile, Strava is pumping out an utterly uncritical podcast with MacKinnon.
I saw that on Twitter. “Just for putting on a number” forsooth. Many angry retorts.
@Sastra, #9:
I linked to that post of PZ’s somewhere around here a few days ago and I accused him of manymuch disingenuous bullshit and one outright lie. The lie is right there in your quote. It’s this bit, and you were right to point it out:
That is just outrageously dishonest. He said it only to make the idea of a sex binary seem untenable or not supported by evidence, but it’s a simple and obvious lie on the face of it. Even if we put aside the fact that he’s already decided that a sex binary is “an illusion” anyone is trying to “maintain”, I hereby summon in my head two – YOU HEARD IT, TWO! – parameters that might be used to define something like a sex binary. But then there’s this bullshit slippery and slipshod use of “sex” and “gender” when they seem useful to make a point nobody can actually get a grasp on.
It’s dishonest, PZ knows it is and he should be ashamed of himself. But he still seems to feel like the guy who was – rightly – one of the first prominent atheists who started saying our atheism and skepticism should lead us to be nice. He was right about that, but he is an absolute fucktangle about this.
This is so frustrating. I’m a biologist (technically, I’m a statistical geneticist). Sex has a bimodal distribution because there are about 1-2% of the population who do not fit neatly into “male” or “female” due to chromosomal abnormalities, developmental problems, etc. What this means is the vast majority of humans fit into one of two sexes, with a little bit of smearing (or phenotypic heterogeneity if you like) because of the exceptions. Within a single sex, there is still some heterogeneity in terms of both visible and invisible phenotypic variation – breast size, vagina length and angle, penis size, hirsuteness, infertility, etc. Having a short vagina for example, does not make you more masculine any more than have a small penis makes you more feminine. And the concept of male brain and female brain is entirely false. Most of the differences observed between the two sexes appear to be mostly nurture not nature.
How you choose to present to the world is a whole other ball game. Society has always punished men who are homosexual or want to wear clothes historically considered feminine. Women have gained some latitude in dress (we can wear pants, yay!) but still have to deal with pressure to perform in a historically feminine way such as wearing makeup and heels (even with the pants) and being homosexual is still regarded as something of an aberration. In an ideal world, all of these ludicrous conventions would be stripped away. Without those conventions, I think trans people would still exist. There really are people whose conception of their bodies doesn’t match their reality (see body dysmorphic syndrome for a pertinent comparison). But I doubt there would be very many. Maybe 1-2% of the population, just like the other anomalous sex conditions. How you treat those people is outside of my expertise.
I worry about this not because of sport or bathrooms or other arguments (which are all important and valid). My concern as a scientist is that sex is an important modifier of many common physical ailments. I’m not talking about male-only or female-only cancers (although they are important too). I’m talking about diseases that affect both sexes but their clinical presentation is different. For example, heart attacks can present differently in women than men and are often missed until it’s too late and the woman dies.
There has been a historical bias towards using populations of white males in scientific research. Those of us interested in health disparities are fighting back against this, trying to build more population cohorts of people of color and women. This is why it is so important to maintain the distinction between sexes. If we start having trans-women in a study of female heart disease, it is going to totally skew the results. And women will keep dying unnecessarily.
Claire – what are you doing, trying to use facts? Shame on you! I suspect this is what Alice Roberts would call anti-science, because you are quoting things she does not believe. But oh, so much to unpack in your argument, and things I have been saying to people for a long time (myself a biologist with a good understanding of multivariate statistics).
I have made this exact argument to several people, some of whom nod their heads and agree, and then follow with ‘but’ and others who attack the argument as flawed. They are really what they feel, so their body would present as their identified gender. Say what?
I actually had to argue this with my insurance company when I presented to the emergency room with symptoms that could have been those of a heart attack in myself, a woman. They were not, and the insurance refused to pay, feeling my actual (irritable bowel) diagnosis was too trivial for a Sunday morning emergency room visit, even when I was in enough pain that I had to lie on the floor of the waiting room because I could not sit in a chair. I am a woman; I do not identify as a woman. The difference in those two things is a crucial one that every doctor should care about.
Claire, (#20)
I suppose the numbers are arguable, but I’ve seen a compelling argument that the 1-2% estimation is too high by about two orders of magnitude. That estimate seems to have been popularized by Anne Fausto-Sterling. If you have the time and inclination, I’d be interested in hearing your take on this:
http://www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/
From Sax’s article, linked above:
(I am not a scientist. Just a bit of a biology groupie with a particular interest in this subject.)
Lately, whenever people try to use the existence of intersex conditions as evidence that transgenderism is some sort of coherent thing we should all believe in, I think of this: