101–110 of 182 posts
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Producing a more complicated definition with a special case for mammals vs. not mammals doesn't really add anything, even if it weren't for the platypus or the echidna being further examples of things not working like that. Biology is messy, the boundaries are messy, the words we use are merely for our own benefit to simplify a messy and complex reality.
Messy edge cases doesn't mean let's just throw everything away.
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> "Common definition"? I don't think so. If it was my post-menopausal wife would now be a man I didn't say it was a good definition :) In fact, the very point you're making here is also commonly brought up whenever someone uses this common definition to try to argue against trans issues, which is how I know it's commonly used . I rather hopped that me saying "birds would be all be male" would be a hint that I didn't…
I think you're straw-manning the "common sense" view. "Unable to get pregnant" is actually not a common definition of "male", afaics
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While I think it's an interesting question, I am not sure what this means. I can list plenty of other things that are temporally-localized that are more likely to explain an increase in diversity of sexuality and gender in modern societies, but I am more curious how transgender folks are affecting* economies.
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"(a system that’s distinct from our diverse gender identities)" Please don't take this the wrong way, this is a genuine question. Is there an explaination somewhere of what purpose gender identities serve and what benefits that provides (ie why don't animals need them)? Aside from reproduction, I don't see how gender would really influence anything.
The reason gender roles have evolved differently can be attributed to the costs associated with reproduction for each sex. In our species, females tend to bear significantly higher reproductive costs than males. For example, men have the ability to father multiple offspring simultaneously, whereas women must devote substantial time and energy to pregnancy and childbirth. These disparities in reproductive investment h…
Men are on average larger and stronger, making them more capable of manual labor.
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I hear this reasoning often but never see it being applied in practice. For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial? Similarly if gender and sex are entirely distinct. Does that not mean that the trans community is the strongest supporter of traditional gender roles? Afterall what does it mean to change gender if differing social attitudes to gender ought be extinguished?
> For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial? Because men are much stronger physically due to genetical differences. Just check out top records in various sports.
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You're looking at a wrong word. The word man/woman option is „lytis“. Both „gender“ and „sex“ was usually translated as „lytis“. „Translytis“ is just a term made of two words and describing a person who is such. English translation would be literally „transgender“. And it's used for people who, well, transition. There's an attempt to call „gender“ „socialinė lytis“ (= social sex). But doesn't make it sound like it's…
> English translation would be literally „transgender“. So you... do have a word meaning "transgender?"
That has nothing to do with the word "transgender" existing in their language (which I would bet exists in pretty much any widely-used language these days, most of the time as a borrowed word).
Not sure of their language, but it is the same in russian, with the single word "пол" (pronounced as "pohl") used to refer to sex/gender.
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Sad? No, it is just a consequence of complex reality butting up against a "common sense" (including the quote marks) derived from incorrectly assuming that words accurately and unambiguously carve up reality. If biologists instead used a different common definition such as "female == able to get pregnant, otherwise male" then birds would be all be male, and seahorses wouldn't be associated with the sentence "weird bi…
Back when I was taught Biology in school, “female“ meant “having the larger gamete”.
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Do you mean biological purpose? This may be the wrong question to ask; gender is arguably to a large extent part of _culture_, which is more or less the stuff that we've built on top of biology. There's no _biological_ reason that ancient Celtic women were allowed own property while contemporary ancient Roman women were a literal possession of their father or husband and ancient Greek women weren't really allowed lea…
I understand that historically. However, I would argue that those restrictions were actually by sex as changing gender was not really an option back then. Even if one tried, I assume most cultures would still enforce those ideas based on sex. We have very few restrictions on gender today, and the ones we do have still tend to exclude transgender individuals (combat roles, some levels of some sports, some bathrooms).…
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As gender dimorphism can influence external characteristics, I assume it can also influence personalities. If animals have any senses of identity (I think at least some non-human animals do) or beliefs about what their bodies "should" look like (passing the mirror test at least weakly implies so), then likewise. How much any of this is present in different species, and how much the range of personality traits can div…
I understand that. Then is this just an inherent cultural need for labeling of in-groups vs out-groups, or potential mates vs non-mates? In today's world, there's very little restriction on gender, and most of those restrictions do not change based on changing gender. For example, I can shave my legs and identify as a man, woman, or some other gender, but how does that change what I can and can't do?
When I first read about the topic in the newspaper aged about 13, noticing the existence of trans women despite the existence of sexism (transitioning to man comes with a pay rise, transitioning to woman with a pay cut) was enough by itself to make me realise that there was a deeper issue, but not to understand it.
For myself, I don't have any sense of gender identity; if we lived in a magical otherworld where waking up surprised to find yourself gender-flipped was just a thing that happened and not a sign of non-consensual invasive surgery, if we lived in that world and I woke up gender-swapped, I don't think I'd care.
It's like asking if I prefer Pepsi or Coke: whatever, to me all the sweetened carbonated phosphoric acid drinks with hints of caramel are much the same. Likewise with gender: bits on the inside, bits on the outside, whatever, don't care.
The fact that people are willing to go through invasive surgery, even though (unless you're literally a lab rat) it's form without function, is the second thing that tells me that there are powerful drivers besides in/out groups.
But what those are? I'm the wrong person to ask.