5 ms·

How exactly do you determine who is a woman though? Because appearances alone don't cut it, and the more you pick things apart, the less you can make any hard l

by diag 5y ago

How exactly do you determine who is a woman though? Because appearances alone don't cut it, and the more you pick things apart, the less you can make any hard lines. Simply put, trans women are women.

leephillips 5y ago
If the people running the app were determined to screen reliably they would have to require documentation, because anyone can submit any real or synthetic photograph. You’re mistaken about the lack of “hard lines” distinguishing the sexes, though. The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women. That is emphatically false. There are innumerable biological differences between men as a whole and women as a whole, and while these different factors largely correlate, they do not necessarily fit neatly into one box or the other. Is an XXY individual with a penis but undescended testes and low levels of blood testosterone and few androgen receptors "biologically" male or female? What about an XX individual with ambiguous external genitalia, high circulating testosterone, and a high number of androgen receptors? What do you make of the fact that females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are far more likely to identify as LGBT? You are oversimplifying the biology. That said, the right to create an exclusive space is a fundamental constitutional right. En plus, for socially marginalized groups, it is a societal benefit for them to have a space exclusive to them. I support the creators of this social media app.
  - braingravy 5y ago
    Those cases are worth considering, socially. But generally speaking, biology isn't defined by edge cases. There is a clear biological definition of sex, which a small percentage of examples do not fit into. That doesn't negate the existence of biological sex.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - xupybd 5y ago
      Exactly. We say a human hand has five fingers, this is not the case for every human however.
      - torstenvl 5y ago
        ...And it would be equally bullshit to encounter someone missing a finger and start berating them. "You don't really have four fingers, biologically you're still five-fingered!" It's appropriate to discuss generalities. It's appropriate to discuss individual cases. What is inappropriate is dismissing individual cases to come to a general conclusion, and then insist that it applies universally.
        xupybd 5y ago
        No it's appropriate to dismiss individual cases to come to general conclusions. We do this all the time with outliers. That's how we classify large sets of data. Classifications are very useful and should not be thrown away. That said you treat an individual as who they are not with generalizations. You don't say to a six fingered individual you're five fingered. But if you want to make gloves for a living you're going to sell more volume if you make five fingered gloves. This is also in the context of trans people the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex.
        torstenvl 5y ago
        > the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex To make this claim, you would have had to find an exhaustive list of biological sex differences, and check a large representative random sample of transgender individuals to see whether all of those biological sex traits aligned "unambiguous[ly]" with their assigned birth sex. Since I am quite confident that this work has not been done, may I suggest deferring to individual people to tell you what is going on in their bodies? While imperfect, self-reporting is still epistemologically far superior to you just pulling this claim out of your ass.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    You’re conflating disordered or atypical sexual development with sex itself. In your examples, the XXY is male and the XX is female.
5ESS 5y ago
- smt88 5y ago
  You are wrong[1][2]. > "Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD." 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8 2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
  - 0xy 5y ago
    Intersex people are 0.018% of the population using the precise definition (not the wishy-washy definition that has been debunked from your study). [1] So a city of 1,000,000 people has merely 180 intersex people in it, the rest conform to their sex assigned at birth. Seems pretty flimsy to claim a 99.99% match rate is wrong because of extreme outliers. It's like claiming the coronavirus PCR tests are worthless because of their (much higher) rate of false negatives/positives. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
    - smt88 5y ago
      > (not the wishy-washy definition that has been debunked from your study). [1] Your single study isn't a debunking. Leonard Sax is a gender activist. He's also just one person who has no degree in genetics. I provided citations of actual research institutions with actual geneticists working for them. > Seems pretty flimsy to claim a 99.99% match rate is wrong because of extreme outliers. I didn't claim it was wrong. I claimed it wasn't "cut-and-dry". Nothing you said refutes that. In fact, pointing out any kind of controversy on this topic proves that I was right: there is no clear, undisputed genetic test for someone's sex.
coolso 5y ago
- staticman2 5y ago
  Characters in Shakespeare comedies regularly have trouble telling who is male or female. A woman puts on pants and everyone thinks she's male.
  - coolso 5y ago
    What does comedy theater have to do with the real world?
    - staticman2 5y ago
      It doesn't, but your analogy of pretending you were talking to a schoolchild about 2 + 2 has nothing to do with the real world either, so I thought I'd respond in a whimsical way.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. Your comments here are a noticeable and dismaying step in that direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jandorn 5y ago
If trans women are women why are you calling them trans?
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  Operations engineers are engineers, just as much as other engineers. But when you’re discussing the subgroup (opseng) in specific and whether it’s a member of the overall group (engineers), it’s logical and appropriate in conversational English to refer to the subgroup by specific label, as the comment you’re replying to does. Women can be sexed at birth as female, male, intersex, neither; women can have genes for XX, XY, XXY, etc; women can have zero or more genitalia; women can have masculine, feminine, androgynous, mixed facial bone structures. Each of these is a valid subgroup of women which can, if necessary, be described as a subgroup. Normally, just “women” should suffice, but the app linked by this post actively excludes at least one of those subgroups from the label “women”. So it becomes necessary to discuss those subgroups by name, such as “trans women” and “black women”, in order for discourse to occur.
  - Minor49er 5y ago
    Do you also consider "trans women" to be a subgroup of "men"?
    - floatingatoll 5y ago
      Generally, no; if one represents as binary gender “woman” with subgroup “trans”, it is implied and understood that they are not a member of binary gender “man”. That they are a member of subgroup “trans” is not relevant to resolving their binary gender either-or, in your example. They might be “male at birth” or “intersex at birth” on certain medical paperwork, and those physical sex characteristic will remain unchanged in subgroup “at birth” regardless of any shift in gender or medical alterations to their present-day sex characteristics. (To avoid any possible confusion, I’m keeping in mind that “male” is sex and “man” is gender, as this is often confused in discussion of these topics. One’s sex is a physical characteristic like one’s eye color or skin tone; most people assume that everyone has just one and that it doesn’t change, neither of which are true. One’s gender is a behavioral characteristic like accent or musical tastes; it can’t be reliably guessed from any physical characteristic, and it can change at any time, either gradually over years or all at once at a coffee shop or anywhere in between.)

by diag 5y ago

leephillips 5y ago

If the people running the app were determined to screen reliably they would have to require documentation, because anyone can submit any real or synthetic photograph. You’re mistaken about the lack of “hard lines” distinguishing the sexes, though. The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women.

torstenvl 5y ago
> The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women. That is emphatically false. There are innumerable biological differences between men as a whole and women as a whole, and while these different factors largely correlate, they do not necessarily fit neatly into one box or the other. Is an XXY individual with a penis but undescended testes and low levels of blood testosterone and few androgen receptors "biologically" male or female? What about an XX individual with ambiguous external genitalia, high circulating testosterone, and a high number of androgen receptors? What do you make of the fact that females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are far more likely to identify as LGBT? You are oversimplifying the biology. That said, the right to create an exclusive space is a fundamental constitutional right. En plus, for socially marginalized groups, it is a societal benefit for them to have a space exclusive to them. I support the creators of this social media app.
- braingravy 5y ago
  Those cases are worth considering, socially. But generally speaking, biology isn't defined by edge cases. There is a clear biological definition of sex, which a small percentage of examples do not fit into. That doesn't negate the existence of biological sex.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Exactly. We say a human hand has five fingers, this is not the case for every human however.
    - torstenvl 5y ago
      ...And it would be equally bullshit to encounter someone missing a finger and start berating them. "You don't really have four fingers, biologically you're still five-fingered!" It's appropriate to discuss generalities. It's appropriate to discuss individual cases. What is inappropriate is dismissing individual cases to come to a general conclusion, and then insist that it applies universally.
      - xupybd 5y ago
        No it's appropriate to dismiss individual cases to come to general conclusions. We do this all the time with outliers. That's how we classify large sets of data. Classifications are very useful and should not be thrown away. That said you treat an individual as who they are not with generalizations. You don't say to a six fingered individual you're five fingered. But if you want to make gloves for a living you're going to sell more volume if you make five fingered gloves. This is also in the context of trans people the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex.
        torstenvl 5y ago
        > the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex To make this claim, you would have had to find an exhaustive list of biological sex differences, and check a large representative random sample of transgender individuals to see whether all of those biological sex traits aligned "unambiguous[ly]" with their assigned birth sex. Since I am quite confident that this work has not been done, may I suggest deferring to individual people to tell you what is going on in their bodies? While imperfect, self-reporting is still epistemologically far superior to you just pulling this claim out of your ass.
- leephillips 5y ago
  You’re conflating disordered or atypical sexual development with sex itself. In your examples, the XXY is male and the XX is female.

5ESS 5y ago

smt88 5y ago
You are wrong[1][2]. > "Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD." 1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8 2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the...
- 0xy 5y ago
  Intersex people are 0.018% of the population using the precise definition (not the wishy-washy definition that has been debunked from your study). [1] So a city of 1,000,000 people has merely 180 intersex people in it, the rest conform to their sex assigned at birth. Seems pretty flimsy to claim a 99.99% match rate is wrong because of extreme outliers. It's like claiming the coronavirus PCR tests are worthless because of their (much higher) rate of false negatives/positives. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
  - smt88 5y ago
    > (not the wishy-washy definition that has been debunked from your study). [1] Your single study isn't a debunking. Leonard Sax is a gender activist. He's also just one person who has no degree in genetics. I provided citations of actual research institutions with actual geneticists working for them. > Seems pretty flimsy to claim a 99.99% match rate is wrong because of extreme outliers. I didn't claim it was wrong. I claimed it wasn't "cut-and-dry". Nothing you said refutes that. In fact, pointing out any kind of controversy on this topic proves that I was right: there is no clear, undisputed genetic test for someone's sex.

coolso 5y ago

staticman2 5y ago
Characters in Shakespeare comedies regularly have trouble telling who is male or female. A woman puts on pants and everyone thinks she's male.
- coolso 5y ago
  What does comedy theater have to do with the real world?
  - staticman2 5y ago
    It doesn't, but your analogy of pretending you were talking to a schoolchild about 2 + 2 has nothing to do with the real world either, so I thought I'd respond in a whimsical way.
dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell. Your comments here are a noticeable and dismaying step in that direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

jandorn 5y ago

If trans women are women why are you calling them trans?

floatingatoll 5y ago
Operations engineers are engineers, just as much as other engineers. But when you’re discussing the subgroup (opseng) in specific and whether it’s a member of the overall group (engineers), it’s logical and appropriate in conversational English to refer to the subgroup by specific label, as the comment you’re replying to does. Women can be sexed at birth as female, male, intersex, neither; women can have genes for XX, XY, XXY, etc; women can have zero or more genitalia; women can have masculine, feminine, androgynous, mixed facial bone structures. Each of these is a valid subgroup of women which can, if necessary, be described as a subgroup. Normally, just “women” should suffice, but the app linked by this post actively excludes at least one of those subgroups from the label “women”. So it becomes necessary to discuss those subgroups by name, such as “trans women” and “black women”, in order for discourse to occur.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  Do you also consider "trans women" to be a subgroup of "men"?
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    Generally, no; if one represents as binary gender “woman” with subgroup “trans”, it is implied and understood that they are not a member of binary gender “man”. That they are a member of subgroup “trans” is not relevant to resolving their binary gender either-or, in your example. They might be “male at birth” or “intersex at birth” on certain medical paperwork, and those physical sex characteristic will remain unchanged in subgroup “at birth” regardless of any shift in gender or medical alterations to their present-day sex characteristics. (To avoid any possible confusion, I’m keeping in mind that “male” is sex and “man” is gender, as this is often confused in discussion of these topics. One’s sex is a physical characteristic like one’s eye color or skin tone; most people assume that everyone has just one and that it doesn’t change, neither of which are true. One’s gender is a behavioral characteristic like accent or musical tastes; it can’t be reliably guessed from any physical characteristic, and it can change at any time, either gradually over years or all at once at a coffee shop or anywhere in between.)