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Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

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Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#71

Post by ajkjk »

copsarebastards wrote: post #57
coldtea wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70 million people. You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves. Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation. 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars. 70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that…

I can't believe you're having this conversation either. You're correct, obviously; you've thrown out tons of trivially correct examples to make it clear to everyone just how right you are, none of which have anything to do with this. You are of course aware that 1% out of a population has nothing to do with the concept of a 1% error on your taxes or 1% blood alcohol. Alcohol does not affect you 1% of the time if you have a 1% BAC.

Everyone here knows that if you make the population arbitrarily large, the 1% sample becomes large too. But can you really argue that being able to represent 99% with a binary spectrum isn't a pretty good approximation? What percentage would be good enough for you? Or are you going to say "99.9% isn't good enough because 7 million is a lot of people. that's more than died in X'?

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#72

Post by DiffEq »

copsarebastards wrote: post #27
simon_ wrote: post #8

"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and…

1% of the world's 7 billion people[1] is 70 million people. That's a little less than the population of Congo, a little more than the population of France. [2] I'll admit that what you're willing to call a "highly accurate approximation" is pretty arbitrary. There are some systems where I would call an approximation with a 1% margin of error a highly accurate approximation. But it's a pointless argument to make when…

Not being mean here, but purely looked at, these "atypical sexes" are deformities. I don't think it is accurate to call them anything else.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#73

Post by facepalm »

Even when I was a child (35 years ago) it was already common knowledge that hermaphrodites exist. So this is really not shocking news. It's interesting that they have new biological insights, but I'd say it's biologically interesting, not socially. Although it certainly seems wrong to operate babies to fix them on a gender - but I doubt there was ever a scientific rationale behind it.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#74

Post by copsarebastards »

esrauch wrote: post #63
copsarebastards wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves. Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation. 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars. 70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that…

> 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars Not that I necessarily disagree with your sentiment, but the world population was lower when those wars happened, so the the same number of people dying was far more than 1% at the time. Looks like WW2 alone was 3-4% of the global population. The world wars were also important for reasons other than number of deaths anyway.

That's a fair point on the change in population since WW2.

However, I think that the atypically-sexed population is important for reasons other than numbers, too.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#75

Post by Retric »

threatofrain wrote: post #54
copsarebastards wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% of the world's 7 billion people[1] is 70 million people. That's a little less than the population of Congo, a little more than the population of France. [2] I'll admit that what you're willing to call a "highly accurate approximation" is pretty arbitrary. There are some systems where I would call an approximation with a 1% margin of error a highly accurate approximation. But it's a pointless argument to make when…

I would still take issue with the usage of spectrum. A spectrum is a scale with escalating/deescalating and predictable variation. As you go "up" and "down" the spectrum, I don't think you can say how you're supposed to interpret that. In my opinion, we should be supporting or phasing out concepts depending on its usefulness as a predictive instrument. I don't think the "spectrum" lens offers any power over "two majo…

Testosterone is a good example where just because there is a M/F differences does not mean that all M have more Testosterone than all F. So, within the Male designation there is a range of how Male someone is.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#76

Post by panzagl »

xxxyy wrote: post #26
simon_ wrote: post #8

"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and…

Also there is the fact that not all forms of atypical sexual development are really relevant to daily life. For example it did not surprise me that the woman described in the beginning had no idea about her chimerism - after all her sexual organs were straight female (proved by the fact that she got pregnant, three times), so her blood was probably circulating lots of estrogen instead of lots of testosterone. Sure, h…

Yeah, from reading some of the comments here they act like it's the height of inhumanity that places only have 2 bathrooms instead of nine.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#77

Post by Retric »

ajkjk wrote: post #71
copsarebastards wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%. Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves. Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation. 70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars. 70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that…

I can't believe you're having this conversation either. You're correct, obviously; you've thrown out tons of trivially correct examples to make it clear to everyone just how right you are, none of which have anything to do with this. You are of course aware that 1% out of a population has nothing to do with the concept of a 1% error on your taxes or 1% blood alcohol. Alcohol does not affect you 1% of the time if you…

Context is important, a 1% rate of serial killers would be a ridiculously huge issue for a country.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#79

Post by JoergR »

Torgo wrote: post #50

There is a spectrum of how many legs a human is born with. Some people are born with two, some with none, some one, some with three. Some people are born with between one and two legs that enable them to walk upright on the side of a slope. The idea of two legs is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that. What I am getting at is, there is science and then there is the social context for a…

You should not be talking about other people's ability to understand things if you so blatantly lack it yourself.

Re: Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

#80

Post by JoergR »

jklinger410 wrote: post #40
Animats wrote: post #30

Some of the unusual situations mentioned are birth defects. About 3% of babies have birth defects.[1] [1] http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects...

So if you count out birth defects and dimorphisms that have no weight on "gender" you have an insignificant amount of variance. Sounds to me like someone is reaching to make science match the way they feel about gender.

The article is about sex, not sure why you talk about gender.
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