Comment on That's a whole lotta hydrogen!
Binette@lemmy.ml 1 day agoFew examples of biologists arguing against it:
www.asrm.org/…/just-the-facts-biological-sex/ www.biorxiv.org/content/…/2023.01.26.525769v1
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40199245/
radcliffe.harvard.edu/…/ideology-versus-biology
By the way, when I look towards more sources for your claims, I often find christian institutions and TERF adgacent sources. Some even argue for teleology. This, again, contredicts the theory of evolution, which we are still abiding by, correct?
Also, your section on determination vs. definition (in your last message) is cyclical. People determine based on definition. To say the opposite would beg the question: “determined based on what?”, and the answer will be a definition, right or wrong.
I’m not the one saying “it could be a baboon, who knows”. You are lol. I’m saying that there is no such thing as a “could be” in concrete empirical analysis of nature, just a “be”. We can make educated guesses based on the empirical data, but they’re just that: guesses. We can say “they are missing a foot”, but it is a shorthand for “this person has no foot. Usually, people have a foot there. It might allow them to walk more stabily, so let’s try sollutions that mimic the structure of a foot”.
Because how can they be lierally “missing a foot” if they never had one in the first place? The supposition that something is “supposed to be there” is a cognitive shortcut, but nothing is supposed.
It is teleological, because there are two options in interpreting this sentence:
A human body tries to build a foot at the end of the leg.
- The empirical one, which, as you should know, is a concrete observation of what is going on. You’d rephrase the sentence as:
This person has no foot at the end of their leg. Typically, humans have feet at the of their leg.
Using this interpretation, it would be ridiculous to define a human empiricaly around the fact that they have 2 legs. Remember, right now we are using terms in order to explain something more concrete.
- The human body actually tries to make a foot at the end of the leg -> same teleological argument as I explained in my previous reply.
The “stable, iherited body plan” is still a teleological sentence lmfao. You’re basically disaproving my argument on the basis of it not being teleological.
Since you’re arguing for teleology, I suppose that you have a fickle understanding of evolutionary biology. Tne human body doesn’t “try to do something”. It either doesn’t or it does. Ascribing a certain attempt or will to the body is a shorthand, like i’ve said several times, but it is not accurately depecting the experience.
As a thought exercise, can you describe your definition of sex without using teleological language? But then again, your reply shows a lack of understanding on what teleology is, so if you reply with anothe misunderstanding of the concept, I’ll just move on from this.
You also stated that you’re autistic in your bio. As someone that is also autistic, you might want to reflect if you’re actually arguing for science, or rather for a more rigid worldview that you want to stay the same. This argument of yours seems repetitive and circular, so I’d suggest reflecting on
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 11 hours ago
One of those papers gets to the heart of your confusion and is interesting to consider, but first:
You’re confused about what determination means. It’s not cyclical, please read and understand
Your other link isn’t saying what you think it’s saying (radcliffe.harvard.edu/…/ideology-versus-biology). I’ll start off by noting that it agrees with me:
It’s also frequently incorrect (unsurprising since the article was written by a PR person), “binary definitions of biological sex fail to account for roughly 1.7 percent of the population according to one estimate” is false and relies on work from a deeply unserious person, Anne Fausto-Sterling, who got called out on her bullshit and said she was being “tongue-in-cheek” and “ironic”.
But this is the real claim from that link:
It’s not actually disputing the sex binary. It’s basically a dispute about the term “Disorders of sex development” vs “Differences of sex development”. So it doesn’t disagree with me, though the question of “disorder” vs" difference" loops back to your confusion.
You’re confusing the various meanings of the word “should” (or supposed to, or take your pick of terms). It can be used descriptively or prescriptively. You’re saying that incorrect prescriptive use invalidates descriptive use, and that’s wrong.
Humans aren’t defined that way. Someone missing a foot is still human. You have the definition the wrong way around and complaining that it doesn’t make sense, when in fact it doesn’t make sense because you’re thinking wrong.
A completely non-teleological definition is that sex is defined by what structures one has in their body that are required for production of one gamete type that are not required for production of the other gamete type.
Binette@lemmy.ml 2 hours ago
For the first link i am sorry, i confused my pubmed links in my copy tray: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34096131/
I read the text debunking second link. The author writing this is more concerned with the usefullness of the gamete size definition for us than the actual definition of it.
Flattening it has never been useful to this. Knowing people’s sexual characteristics as a whole instead of just figuring out which gametes should be produced is more helpful
Another case of semantics vs actually understanding what the authors are saying. They argue that since they acknowledge that they called the hyena “female” that they recognise the sex binary. They were actually calling the hyena female because the wider scientific community calls them that, not because they believe it is. It’s a bad faith argument.
The author keeps also talking about ideology and, in tfe end, mentions how the paper got through because of DEI. Like seriously??? That’s not how DEI works 😭
Your claim about ASRM is quite disengenuons i feel. Saying that medical doctors are “non-biologists” disregards their education in biology and anthropology.
Either way, my point is that there are biologist that have contested it.
Then if you were talking beforhand about the sex determination mechanism, then you’d be off topic. My argument has nothing to do with how the body determines it’s sexual function, but simply the end result, as you say it. The sex determination process is a process that, again, doesn’t have a strict set of rules, other than, at best, the patterns that we observed and used as norms. Sex determination doesn’t “fail” because, on it’s own, it doesn’t have any goals. We only say it has a goal to explain things easily, but concretely, it just does stuff
For the havard link, I want to empasise: you say that it wants to dispute the terms “disorder” and “difference”. But this is exactly what we’re arguing about. Just put in another context.
The paragraph on Fausto-Sterling is also not helpful. You didn’t even reply with what she said, so why can’t I asume she was just being ironic about it? Like what are you even talking about?
You’re confusing the natural extention of the thesis of the author for their thesis: sex is not binary. I want you to not only undrestand their argument as to why it isn’t, but also recognise that a significant amount of biologists are against your claims. Here is the paragraph directly against what you’re saying:
My point isn’t that humans are defined this way by the general population. But if they were the fact that people without feet at the end of their legs would be proof that humans cannot be defined with that, the same way that sex can’t.
Your teleological definition is slightly beter at explaining what you’re getting at, but contains quite the contradiction.
If by “stucture”, you mean everything that is directly invoved in the creation of the gametes, then I can just show someone that doesn’t have ovaries or testes. No organs in their body are creating them, so that person has no sex?
If by “stucture”, you mean that including the rest of the sexual characteristics, then someone that has traits of two different structures is both sexes? Since I can just say that someone with Swyer syndrome was trying to make a structure organised around making small gametes, but failed, because the SRY didn’t activate.