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More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

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Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#81

Post by [deleted] »

andoando wrote: post #44
kulahan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in biology is really binary anyways. Male and female are just useful groupings because we’re a sexually dimorphic species, but as with anything in nature, that’s mostly a spectrum anyways, with strong representations at the anchoring ends.

I mean having an X or Y are pretty damn binary. DNA strand has binary pairs (A-T, C-G). The resulting codons have anitcodon pairs. Then within biological functions you have the parasympathetic system vs the parasympathetic system which do opposite things across the whole body, pro vs anti inflmmatory agents, activators vs inhibitors nearly on every level of biology. Its actually rather astounding how much binary pair…

[deleted]

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#82

Post by kijjun »

r14c wrote: post #27
otterley wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haven't we already established that chromosomes do not determine gender? This statement is extremely controversial. The gender attribution wars are still burning like the Springfield tire fire.

controversial, sure, but its mostly people being upset that their cultural norms don't match the traits we observe in humans. we have already established that chromosomes do not determine gender, whether people accept it is a different question. we're also nearing the point where the earth being a spheroid is controversial so I'm not sure controversy really has anything to do with how factual something is.

Who is "we"? That is not established at all, in fact the opposite is objectively true and widely understood. Chromosomes are the key determinant of "gender", by even the most progressive definition of the term.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#83

Post by sunshowers »

gruez wrote: post #68
sunshowers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…

>Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves. What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does tha…

I deliberately did not include any normative information on my post. Also, I didn't say the distinction was totally arbitrary (because it's not — social constructs rarely are totally arbitrary). I said the boundaries are fuzzy.

I think a regime where intersex cis women, as well as trans women who have been on testosterone suppression for a long period, would probably be most fair. I don't think categorical bans are fair in any respect, not is forcing intersex cis and trans women to compete with men (because they're likely to be much worse due to not having as much testosterone), nor is creating a third category (because it would have too few people to be truly competitive). But I'm not an expert and most likely neither are you, so I try to keep my opinions here relatively loosely held.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#84

Post by csours »

gruez wrote: post #68
sunshowers wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…

>Now, which biological advantages are fair and which are not is determined by society. We have somehow decided that chromosomal advantages are unfair, even though people have exactly as much control over them as they do over the amount of lactic acid they produce or how their amygdala behaves. What's the implication here, that because the distinction is totally arbitrary, that we should do away with it? What does tha…

For myself, it means that I should have some patience and humility. Of course, I don't participate in women's sports anyway, so that should be pretty easy for me.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#85

Post by CoastalCoder »

blueflow wrote: post #67
Aurornis wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can't know what is a disorder is or not when you don't know whats "normal" I hesitate to wade into this discussion, but in the case of the conditions listed in the article there are a number of additional symptoms and medical difficulties that go along with the genetic variants. It's not a simple matter of confusion about sex. As for "normal": The biological systems involved are not functioning normally because a g…

Your answer is recursive and sort of leaves the question unanswered, so my reply is kinda an repetition of what i already asked: How do we know what the normal function is? How do we know how things are intended to work? (Intended by whom ?)

Some people use "normal" to mean "typical".

Some others use "normal" with a connotation of "proper" with regards to the designer's intent or (maybe?) some moral framework.

The ambiguity might cause trouble in this kind of topic.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#86

Post by lagadu »

andoando wrote: post #44
kulahan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in biology is really binary anyways. Male and female are just useful groupings because we’re a sexually dimorphic species, but as with anything in nature, that’s mostly a spectrum anyways, with strong representations at the anchoring ends.

I mean having an X or Y are pretty damn binary. DNA strand has binary pairs (A-T, C-G). The resulting codons have anitcodon pairs. Then within biological functions you have the parasympathetic system vs the parasympathetic system which do opposite things across the whole body, pro vs anti inflmmatory agents, activators vs inhibitors nearly on every level of biology. Its actually rather astounding how much binary pair…

Having and X or Y (or even multiple of each, as some people do, XXY and XYY are real, even single X or Y too) is binary, what's not binary is how it doesn't perfectly correlate with the sex (not even getting into gender here) that the person in question belongs to.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#87

Post by gruez »

KittenInABox wrote: post #73
Empact wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Mediocre men-who-purport-to-be-women beating outstanding actual women, is analogous to a mediocre athlete juicing to beat his more talented competitors. Does this actually happen? I remember seeing the first transgender woman competing in weightlifting, on the olympic stage. So like the most elite of the most elite competition, in a sport where you'd think muscle mass, skeletal size, and testosterone would matter t…

>I remember seeing the first transgender woman competing in weightlifting, on the olympic stage. So like the most elite of the most elite competition, in a sport where you'd think muscle mass, skeletal size, and testosterone would matter the most. And she finished dead last.

What happens when other transgender women (sincere or not) realize that they can compete in women's completions, and that their past testosterone levels gives them an advantage over the typical cis women? The first transgender women contestant might only be 90th percentile, but surely her success will attract people from the 99th percentile and beyond?

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#88

Post by abeppu »

sunshowers wrote: post #40
pseudosavant wrote: post #12

Very interesting. Relates to conversations I've had recently regarding trans people in sports. Turns out that conversation isn't simple, because gender is way more complex than the binary M/F options society has tried to act like it is. Between reasons like in this article, or being born intersex, etc, there are definitely people with female chromosomes who have competed in men's sports, or people with female sex org…

The important thing to recognize is that fairness is a pretty fuzzy concept and a lot of the boundary between fair and unfair is defined by particular societal norms (socially constructed, if you will). All elite athletes have biological advantages not afforded to ordinary humans like us. People like Michael Phelps and Alex Honnold are specific examples of course, but even after years of training most people cannot p…

Absolutely lots of factors actually influence competitive advantage and it's arbitrary which ones we decide to use to group competitors!

I think a helpful reframing is to note that some sports do segregate by factors other than sex, generally bodyweight. If boxing, wrestling, judo, weightlifting etc all benefit from weight classes so that we can have more fair competitions among competitors in comparable weight bands, why not have height classes for various sports? Why not have cycling races with tiers of people at different points on the vO2 max scale?

I actually think it would be interesting to watch competitions for some sports that are based around who does "better than expected" by some model that predicts baselines. What if every marathoner was still trying to get the best time achievable, but we celebrated the person who most out-performed expectations? Critically, you wouldn't just stop paying attention when the first cluster of people cross the finish-line -- the winner might arrive later. I would also love to see if different styles of play would emerge in, e.g. an under-6-foot basketball height class.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#89

Post by Kye »

KittenInABox wrote: post #63
OutOfHere wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously you took it maximally out of context, just as someone operating in bad faith would do. To restate with more clarity, if "she" doesn't menstruate (at a valid of menstruation) or doesn't develop natural breasts, she may not be able to give birth.

I'm merely responding with the bad faith reading you're presenting here, as woman is a squishy and cultural word to describe an additionally squishy biological set of states. At no point does the article declare them not to be women, only that they are women with genetic conditions from having a Y chromosome (or even just a section of the Y chromosome), a shorthand of which they call "genetically men".

I forget the details, but someone asserting clear lines on Twitter some years ago was asked to define woman, and people kept hitting them with examples that matched the proposed definition like chairs and horses.

Re: More women than expected are genetically men (2016)

#90

Post by andoando »

lagadu wrote: post #86
andoando wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean having an X or Y are pretty damn binary. DNA strand has binary pairs (A-T, C-G). The resulting codons have anitcodon pairs. Then within biological functions you have the parasympathetic system vs the parasympathetic system which do opposite things across the whole body, pro vs anti inflmmatory agents, activators vs inhibitors nearly on every level of biology. Its actually rather astounding how much binary pair…

Having and X or Y (or even multiple of each, as some people do, XXY and XYY are real, even single X or Y too) is binary, what's not binary is how it doesn't perfectly correlate with the sex (not even getting into gender here) that the person in question belongs to.

Sure what I was responding to is "Nothing in biology is really binary anyways". Certainly not everything is binary, we don't have two simple models of all people despite nucleotides having binary pairs, but there is a lot of damn binary in biology.
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