Dr. Wright, I am increasingly impressed by your patience and stamina in debating asinine beliefs like those held by Zizek. I also love it that you spent years studying insects. I am a lifelong admirer of ants.
In 1991, I published an article in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled, "Can Females Rule the Hive? The Controversy over Honey Bee Gender Roles in British Beekeeping Texts of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries." (I'm sure most of you have read it... that was a joke). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1slmFCgxtIhDcUMGo52sYMV4UzL2-iSjx/view?usp=sharing ...The point is that the honey bee sex controversy was settled about 300 years ago. Prior to that, the 'woke social warriors' of the day were arguing that the ruler of the hive had to be male, and the workers did, too. They figured that God would never create a "perfect" society and put a female in charge, and he would never arm the workers with "swords" (stingers) unless they were males. So, my question is, "How far have we progressed intellectually in the last three centuries... and why didn't Slavoj read my article?" Oh, well.
FP: "He explains that when isolated with a drone, the queen must stimulate and caress the indolent, insensitive male into the act of love; once aroused, the drone will obey until he dies, exhausted by his passion. Hence, by choosing only one husband at a time, the queen maintains her virtue."
But kind of amused by your description of 1780's England where many were trying to "distort fact in the service of social ideology". The more things change ...
Though kind of intrigued by this passage also:
FP: "However, the way Bazin [1681-1754] handles the issues of reproduction and gender roles is as unique and interesting as is Thorley's. Through his character Eugenio, Bazin states that the hive consists of a single queen (the only female in the hive), 200-1,000 males or drones, and fifteen thousand or more worker bees of no sex."
That's the French for you -- depriving all those workers of their god given right to claim membership in the female category ... 😉🙂
But that lead me to do some digging into some of the "biochemistry" that undergirds that phenomenon, particularly as Colin's argument and graphic from Ian Alexander at least suggested that all of the workers were capable of laying eggs which seems not the case:
NCBI: "Honeybee workers are generally obligatory sterile in a bee colony headed by a queen, but the inhibition of ovary activation is lifted upon the absence of queen and larvae."
Seems most if not all of those workers are "non-functional females" as opposed to the queen who is the only "functional female" in the hive. Which is more or less what some acolytes of Judith Butler were obliged to do in their "updating" of the Wikipedia article on sequential hermaphrodites:
Wikipedia: "... allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female. .... If the female dies, in many cases, the reproductive male gains weight and becomes the female for that group. The largest non-breeding male then sexually matures and becomes the reproductive male for the group."
If there are functional males and functional females then there pretty well has to be non-functional varieties of those two categories. I guess one can redefine those categories as we wish, but that basically turns each sex into a binary -- functional and non-functional subtypes. But, if sex is all about reproduction -- as is clearly the case -- then one might reasonably argue that, for example, "non-functional male" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Though I'm not sure that many "women" -- i.e., "adult human females" -- would be much enthused by having those adjectives tacked on: "non-functional woman"? .... 🤔 What tangled webs we weave and all that.
In any case, I was also amused by your, and your sources' use of "gender", apparently to denote different roles. Though, on something of a quick skim, even that seems moot or murky. But the workers may well have different "feminine" roles to play and might then be said to have different genders, but they can't really be called females, can't really be said to have a sex, at least by the standard biological definitions [MHR] by which to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types.
But you might be somewhat amused by this article I ran across that describes similar "confusions" in various fisheries-related publications:
Taylor & Francis: “We searched for 'gender' in the main text … of all issues of all American Fisheries Society journals, the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, and Fisheries Research (FR) published before 2011 to assess the use of the word ‘gender’ in fisheries-related scientific publications. ‘Gender’ was used incorrectly in 308 of the 311 (99%) articles reviewed and was used correctly only once in a nongrammatical usage …”
For heaven's sake, why does anyone think the reproductive and sex determination mechanisms of other species have any relevance at all for human social policy?!
Or clownfish or Martians. Just irrelevant. Just insanity how far the trans ideologues have to reach.
If a crazy wants to identify as a clownfish well it’s a free country I guess. I think I’ll identify as a bonobo. They are very libertine. From now on, I demand that you refer to me as “Mr. Bonobo. And if you don’t you’re a Bonobophobe.
Rather doubt there are any TRA nutcases so "crazy" as to actually "identify as a clownfish".
The issue is whether -- in discussing the transgender clusterfuck -- we're going to be using the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- as promulgated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction -- or those based on a mishmash and dog's breakfast of folk-biology, scientism, and pigheaded ignorance -- being charitable.
Too many dogmatically insist on the "adult human female" definition for "woman" -- trying to burnish the definition with a dishonest genuflection to respectable biology -- while not having a flaming clue that an honest application of these standard biological definitions deprives many XXers of their membership cards in the "female" and "woman" categories once they hit menopause.
Clownfish only underline and highlight the questions of whether we're going to base our definitions and social policies on brute facts and durable principles of logic and epistemology or on subjectivity, butthurt, and who's most offended by those facts and principles.
In public health policy, what's deemed the Left or "Progressive" side usually points to "every other advanced industrial nation" , i.e. European, as the example to follow, but not here, not that I've seen recently. When it comes to "affirming" approaches, however, there's not a word from the trans lobby or the popular news media about the way the countries that were most aggressive have been pumping the brakes and now limiting the medical treatments to supervised clinical trials. More important, the reasons for the about face are the poor evidence in favor of the treatments and evidence the treatments have been widely used in violation even of the most favorable or liberal standards and protocols. It sure seems deceitful to me.
Part answer is that scientific illiteracy is ubiquitous -- even among various so-called biologists and philosophers -- which various grifters and political opportunists use as a pretext to ride roughshod over various social policies which segregate on the basis of ostensible or putative sex category membership -- like access to toilets, change rooms, and sports leagues.
Maybe more importantly, that riding roughshod is part and parcel of the corruption and distortion of biological principles and terminology that still have far reaching impacts and consequences. Think Lysenkoism, the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable" which set back Soviet biology by several decades, apart from leading to the murder or imprisonment of several thousand Russian biologists:
Though one might suggest that they're somewhat more a part of the problem than of the solution in peddling what is no more than the folk-biology definitions for the sexes as opposed to the far more universal ones stipulated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction.
At least *try* thinking about the principles behind the creation of definitions. See:
Wikipedia: "An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
When the MHR definitions SAY "the female sex is defined as the ... phenotype that produces [present tense] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems", they are SAYING that "produces large gametes" is THE property that ANY member of ANY anisogamous species MUST have to be counted as a referent of the term "female". No large gametes, not a female. Similarly with male.
There's a syntax there in the structure of the definition. It's not arbitrary, it's not open to the interpretation of every last Tom, Dick, and Mary on the planet. In the same way that there's a syntax in the structure of an integral -- the pieces fit together in a precise way. You'd no more insist on your own idiosyncratic interpretation of different integrals than you should in the structure of such definitions:
Chris: "The vernacular and scientific definitions of the sexes are the universal ones and they are not 'folk biology.' ..."
Nope, they're not; yes they are. You're too effen pigheadedly stupid to even read, much less try to understand the facts as to why that is the case. Despite my laying out the evidence many times. Look at what Wikipedia says:
Wikipedia: Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal."
The MHR definitions are "universal" because they apply to ALL of the many millions of anisogamous species; there are billions if not trillions of "particulars" to which they apply. The "vernacular", the colloquial definitions are folk-biology, are folk-taxonomies because they apply only to a limited and quite circumscribed set of those species; they lead to "special pleading", and risible contradictions when applied to many species outside that set.
You're a bloody narrow-minded, dogmatic, clueless, anti-scientific, and anti-intellectual philistine. For starters.
Chris: "It’s your moronic 'functioning gonads' horseshit that is unscientific and bizarre, which is why you can’t find a single piece of actual corroboration."
You can keep repeating that until the cows come home -- like saying "2+2=5" -- but it's no more true the last time than the first. Particularly when you're too much of a intellectually dishonest cretin to deal with the facts, as I've pointed out several times, that "functioning gonads" are an essential precursor to "produces gametes".
Chris: "... nobody on Substack takes you seriously, nobody ever has, nobody ever will."
You've surveyed all Substackers? Even just those I subscribe to, that subscribe to me, that I interact with? Do tell ... :roll-eyes: 🙄 ...
Here's one -- of many, if not hundreds ... -- who have explicitly endorsed my arguments:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people.
I also fully agree that the colloquial understanding of 'male/female' remains a useful sorting mechanism, but we should be more honest about how fuzzy the definition is. Right now the best we really have for justifying putting infertile individuals as male/female is a vague allusion to their 'potential' functionality or generalized body plan'. I’m fairly confident I know what people are trying to say, but it’s ok to expect better."
At what point do we conclude it's a waste of time and breath to discuss an issue with someone who is beyond any facts or logic? Everyone will quickly conclude it's useless to argue with a paranoid about his elaborate explanation of an event. Starting with the assumption "trans women are women", you can prove absolutely anything as well as its opposite, just as Bertrand Russell proved to a mathematical certainty he was the Pope.
Here's four seconds of a bee disappearing into an American wildflower called Beard Tongue. Don't let them mess with bees and please do grow flowers, even in a windowbox!
If "trans" and "nonbinary" are gender identities, and "gender identity" is human social construct (which it is) isn't it a given that nonhuman life forms don't have gender identities?
The other day some podcaster argued that the Left advances their various causes by getting intelligent people like Colin bogged down in these debates so that these issues become normalized. It was an interesting idea.
If bee hives approximate anything like communism, it would be barracks communism; but I doubt that’s anything like what Zizek has in mind by communism.
Dr. Wright writes: “As someone who studied social insects as a scientist for nearly seven years and published over a dozen peer-reviewed papers on them, including the most comprehensive review of collective personalities in eusocial insects and arachnids to date, I can say with confidence that he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Perhaps it is the very familiar structure of this sentence, reminiscent of my own preferred style, that made me grin upon reading. Or, most likely, it is merely because it is a glorious prelude to your fierce rebuttal that followed in the essay. Either way, to be sure, everyone has to love it! Thanks for cleaning up the author's "scientific" mess.
Thank you! This not only dispels a bad argument, but gives me a great idea for a Dungeons and Dragons monster that is female but needs no males to birth her wicked young. She just needs time to breed a haploid army!
Interesting, but methinks much of it is based on definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk biology.
Y'all might have some interest, "unhinged" or not, in some observations thereon by Paul Griffiths and Tomas Bogardus:
Griffiths: "So worker bees are ‘female’ in the extended sense that they would develop into fertile females if they weren’t actively prevented from doing so. …. Workers and soldiers are both ‘female’ in an extended sense, but not in the full-blown sense that queen ants are female. There is a human imperative to give everything a sex, as mentioned above, but biology doesn’t share it."
About the most one can get out of “extended sense” is no better than “nominally speaking”, or for reference purposes only.
Those "female" bees really aren't; they just look like them -- the way Jenner "looks" like an adult human female (if one was blind drunk). But they are -- as you've agreed -- missing the "functional gonads" that are, by the "universal" definitions stipulated in the MHR, the sine qua non for sex category membership. They're sexLESS, neither male nor female -- arguably, "non-binary".
If I'm understanding your argument correctly, by extrapolation you're saying that human females missing reproductive organs due to developmental problems are not really female, they just look like females.
Then they're sexless too. Like the prepubescent -- pre-males, and pre-females, but both sexless.
"male" and "female" aren't identities; they're just labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
Try reading this Note by Yassine Meskhout ["Public Defender", "Saracen Invader"] which supports that argument:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people.
I also fully agree that the colloquial understanding of 'male/female' remains a useful sorting mechanism, but we should be more honest about how fuzzy the definition is. Right now the best we really have for justifying putting infertile individuals as male/female is a vague allusion to their 'potential' functionality or 'generalized body plan'. I’m fairly confident I know what people are trying to say, but it’s ok to expect better."
You might also try reading this essay from Paul Griffiths, even this bit from the Abstract:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
But the problem there is that many if not most "women" -- and various other scientific illiterates -- get their knickers in a twist when faced with the logical consequences of that definition. They've more or less bet the farm on defining "woman" as "adult human female (produces ova)" so, on the basis of those standard, universal, biological definitions, they lose their membership cards in both categories once they hit menopause.
If they were sensible -- a lot to expect ... -- they would come up with better and more useful, if maybe less "flattering", definitions for "woman". Maybe, "adult human vagina-haver"? Or "adult human with ovaries of past, present, or future functionality"? 🤔🙄
It seems your emotions may have led to your scientific illiteracy. You also seem to have a problem with reading comprehension, as adult human female is not defined as "producing ova." Women are designed to produce ova just as men are designed to produce sperm, but sometimes there are complications. That doesn't change their sex anymore than having Downs Syndrome (an extra chromosome) doesn't make someone "not human." The so-called delicate flowers some refer to as "transwomen" love to attack infertile women, something decent women would never do to their sisters. It takes male aggression that's been twisted in order to be that nasty.
"You also seem to have a problem with reading comprehension, as adult human female is not defined as "producing ova."
Nope, I can read what's clearly stated. Yup, those are the standard biological definitions. You too might try reading a guest post here by Zach Elliott which asserted:
Reality's Last Stand; What are sexes (Nov 16, 2022):
"Universal Biological Definition: In biology, the two sexes are defined this way:
Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems.³"
Quoted from the Molecular Human Reproduction Glossary, and linked thereto.
I sure don't see anything there about gonads of past or future functionality. Maybe I missed those phrases there? Maybe you can point them out to me? TIA ... 🙄
Why don't you ask that of good "ol' Zach"? Fire off a tweet to him.
Could it be that (gulp) you and he are both ... wrong? That he realizes his "arguments" aren't as solid as he first claimed? That he realizes much of it is based more on feelings than facts and biological principles? 🤔🙄
Zach 1: "Sex spectrum activists argue that if you do not have anatomy considered appropriate for your sex, then you're not male or female. But this is completely regressive.
2: Out of a desire to show compassion to those who have been discriminated against for being different, they uphold and celebrate difference, yet forget true compassion requires not only the acceptance of difference, but also the integration of it into established categories.
3: Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
Not quite sure how he "thinks" that "morally problematic claims" have much bearing on whether any one is a member of objectively quantifiable, solidly defined, and well-regarded scientific categories. Like those for the sexes as stipulated in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
But WTF does "compassion" have to do with whether one is a member, or not, of the categories of those who produce sperm, or who produce ova? However one might want to name those "natural kinds". Apropos of which, you might take a gander at the definitions for the sexes according to the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- not quite sure how one can get much more "authoritative" than that:
Oxford: "female: (denoting) an individual organism whose reproductive organs produce only female gametes".
Do let me know where they say anything about gonads of past or future functionality. I've looked really, really closely and can't, for the life of me, see anything of the sort. TIA ... 🙄
But you might also note another tweet in the same thread by Killeen -- apparently, according to his Linked-In profile, a "Philosopher researcher and Information Systems Manager":
Killeen: "Strictly speaking [male/female is] the sex that an individual is disposed to develop into that is determined at conception, i.e. the sex that a person will become *if* they develop the ability to produce gametes. This is one of the few contexts where that particular distinction matters."
IF they "become" male or female when "they develop the ability to produce gametes" THEN what else are they but sexLESS if they don't have that ability? That is, from conception to puberty? Riddle me that, MR. Fox ... (:roll-eyes:) ... 🙄
🙄 Yours seems to be rather "unhinged" -- being charitable -- and scientifically illiterate responses to my defense of standard, universal, biological definitions.
"misogynist"? For stating standard biological definitions? Which I don't see that you've provided any rebuttals to.
But the pair of you would probably make a good "tag team" since you too fall back on a go-to replacement for "playing the race card" -- you with "misogynist", him with "troll":
But you might at least give some thought to the idea that, in particular, there's really no magic in the definitions for "woman" and "female", though many seem to think that is the case. In the case of the latter, it used to mean "she who suckles" -- by which Jenner & his ilk might qualify, though the milk is probably unfit for human consumption:
We can define those words any way we want -- pay them extra. The issue is which definitions we are going to accept as trump. Although endless squabbling over them often seems like a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, like fiddling while Rome burns.
Anyone who isn't scientifically illiterate -- or who hasn't disappeared up their fundament, or those of their equally illiterate buddies ... -- will understand that an essential precursor to producing gametes, on a regular basis, is to have functional gonads.
Dr. Wright, I am increasingly impressed by your patience and stamina in debating asinine beliefs like those held by Zizek. I also love it that you spent years studying insects. I am a lifelong admirer of ants.
You might find some amusement in a famous quip by E.O. Wilson:
"Wonderful theory, wrong species. (On Marxism, which he considered more suited to ants than to humans."
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson#Quotes
I love it!
Thus is just so good and so rich. Thank you for exposing insanity, lying and destruction
In 1991, I published an article in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled, "Can Females Rule the Hive? The Controversy over Honey Bee Gender Roles in British Beekeeping Texts of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries." (I'm sure most of you have read it... that was a joke). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1slmFCgxtIhDcUMGo52sYMV4UzL2-iSjx/view?usp=sharing ...The point is that the honey bee sex controversy was settled about 300 years ago. Prior to that, the 'woke social warriors' of the day were arguing that the ruler of the hive had to be male, and the workers did, too. They figured that God would never create a "perfect" society and put a female in charge, and he would never arm the workers with "swords" (stingers) unless they were males. So, my question is, "How far have we progressed intellectually in the last three centuries... and why didn't Slavoj read my article?" Oh, well.
Quite a "risqué" article there Frederick ... 😉🙂
FP: "He explains that when isolated with a drone, the queen must stimulate and caress the indolent, insensitive male into the act of love; once aroused, the drone will obey until he dies, exhausted by his passion. Hence, by choosing only one husband at a time, the queen maintains her virtue."
But kind of amused by your description of 1780's England where many were trying to "distort fact in the service of social ideology". The more things change ...
Though kind of intrigued by this passage also:
FP: "However, the way Bazin [1681-1754] handles the issues of reproduction and gender roles is as unique and interesting as is Thorley's. Through his character Eugenio, Bazin states that the hive consists of a single queen (the only female in the hive), 200-1,000 males or drones, and fifteen thousand or more worker bees of no sex."
That's the French for you -- depriving all those workers of their god given right to claim membership in the female category ... 😉🙂
But that lead me to do some digging into some of the "biochemistry" that undergirds that phenomenon, particularly as Colin's argument and graphic from Ian Alexander at least suggested that all of the workers were capable of laying eggs which seems not the case:
NCBI: "Honeybee workers are generally obligatory sterile in a bee colony headed by a queen, but the inhibition of ovary activation is lifted upon the absence of queen and larvae."
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22483170/
Seems most if not all of those workers are "non-functional females" as opposed to the queen who is the only "functional female" in the hive. Which is more or less what some acolytes of Judith Butler were obliged to do in their "updating" of the Wikipedia article on sequential hermaphrodites:
Wikipedia: "... allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female. .... If the female dies, in many cases, the reproductive male gains weight and becomes the female for that group. The largest non-breeding male then sexually matures and becomes the reproductive male for the group."
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sequential_hermaphroditism&oldid=1152608777
If there are functional males and functional females then there pretty well has to be non-functional varieties of those two categories. I guess one can redefine those categories as we wish, but that basically turns each sex into a binary -- functional and non-functional subtypes. But, if sex is all about reproduction -- as is clearly the case -- then one might reasonably argue that, for example, "non-functional male" is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
Though I'm not sure that many "women" -- i.e., "adult human females" -- would be much enthused by having those adjectives tacked on: "non-functional woman"? .... 🤔 What tangled webs we weave and all that.
In any case, I was also amused by your, and your sources' use of "gender", apparently to denote different roles. Though, on something of a quick skim, even that seems moot or murky. But the workers may well have different "feminine" roles to play and might then be said to have different genders, but they can't really be called females, can't really be said to have a sex, at least by the standard biological definitions [MHR] by which to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types.
But you might be somewhat amused by this article I ran across that describes similar "confusions" in various fisheries-related publications:
Taylor & Francis: “We searched for 'gender' in the main text … of all issues of all American Fisheries Society journals, the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, and Fisheries Research (FR) published before 2011 to assess the use of the word ‘gender’ in fisheries-related scientific publications. ‘Gender’ was used incorrectly in 308 of the 311 (99%) articles reviewed and was used correctly only once in a nongrammatical usage …”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03632415.2012.687265
Tower of Babel, Part Deux ...
Hahaha! Good question.
For heaven's sake, why does anyone think the reproductive and sex determination mechanisms of other species have any relevance at all for human social policy?!
Or clownfish or Martians. Just irrelevant. Just insanity how far the trans ideologues have to reach.
If a crazy wants to identify as a clownfish well it’s a free country I guess. I think I’ll identify as a bonobo. They are very libertine. From now on, I demand that you refer to me as “Mr. Bonobo. And if you don’t you’re a Bonobophobe.
Rather doubt there are any TRA nutcases so "crazy" as to actually "identify as a clownfish".
The issue is whether -- in discussing the transgender clusterfuck -- we're going to be using the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- as promulgated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction -- or those based on a mishmash and dog's breakfast of folk-biology, scientism, and pigheaded ignorance -- being charitable.
Too many dogmatically insist on the "adult human female" definition for "woman" -- trying to burnish the definition with a dishonest genuflection to respectable biology -- while not having a flaming clue that an honest application of these standard biological definitions deprives many XXers of their membership cards in the "female" and "woman" categories once they hit menopause.
Clownfish only underline and highlight the questions of whether we're going to base our definitions and social policies on brute facts and durable principles of logic and epistemology or on subjectivity, butthurt, and who's most offended by those facts and principles.
I agree... it's interesting (in an odd way) that people do...
When you’re desperate to prove a lie , you use anything at all to prove it.
In public health policy, what's deemed the Left or "Progressive" side usually points to "every other advanced industrial nation" , i.e. European, as the example to follow, but not here, not that I've seen recently. When it comes to "affirming" approaches, however, there's not a word from the trans lobby or the popular news media about the way the countries that were most aggressive have been pumping the brakes and now limiting the medical treatments to supervised clinical trials. More important, the reasons for the about face are the poor evidence in favor of the treatments and evidence the treatments have been widely used in violation even of the most favorable or liberal standards and protocols. It sure seems deceitful to me.
Good question.
Part answer is that scientific illiteracy is ubiquitous -- even among various so-called biologists and philosophers -- which various grifters and political opportunists use as a pretext to ride roughshod over various social policies which segregate on the basis of ostensible or putative sex category membership -- like access to toilets, change rooms, and sports leagues.
Maybe more importantly, that riding roughshod is part and parcel of the corruption and distortion of biological principles and terminology that still have far reaching impacts and consequences. Think Lysenkoism, the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable" which set back Soviet biology by several decades, apart from leading to the murder or imprisonment of several thousand Russian biologists:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
Largely why Colin and Emma Hilton quite reasonably and commendably wrote their Dangerous Denial of Sex in the WSJ:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex
Though one might suggest that they're somewhat more a part of the problem than of the solution in peddling what is no more than the folk-biology definitions for the sexes as opposed to the far more universal ones stipulated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction.
At least *try* thinking about the principles behind the creation of definitions. See:
Wikipedia: "An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
When the MHR definitions SAY "the female sex is defined as the ... phenotype that produces [present tense] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems", they are SAYING that "produces large gametes" is THE property that ANY member of ANY anisogamous species MUST have to be counted as a referent of the term "female". No large gametes, not a female. Similarly with male.
There's a syntax there in the structure of the definition. It's not arbitrary, it's not open to the interpretation of every last Tom, Dick, and Mary on the planet. In the same way that there's a syntax in the structure of an integral -- the pieces fit together in a precise way. You'd no more insist on your own idiosyncratic interpretation of different integrals than you should in the structure of such definitions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral
See also: "Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
With your linguistics background you might also have some interest in this broader overview or summary of definition types, including those ones:
https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm#part5
Chris: "The vernacular and scientific definitions of the sexes are the universal ones and they are not 'folk biology.' ..."
Nope, they're not; yes they are. You're too effen pigheadedly stupid to even read, much less try to understand the facts as to why that is the case. Despite my laying out the evidence many times. Look at what Wikipedia says:
Wikipedia: Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy
And see their linked article on "universal":
Wikipedia: In metaphysics, a universal is a proposed type, property, or relation which can be instantiated by many different particulars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universality_(philosophy)
The MHR definitions are "universal" because they apply to ALL of the many millions of anisogamous species; there are billions if not trillions of "particulars" to which they apply. The "vernacular", the colloquial definitions are folk-biology, are folk-taxonomies because they apply only to a limited and quite circumscribed set of those species; they lead to "special pleading", and risible contradictions when applied to many species outside that set.
You're a bloody narrow-minded, dogmatic, clueless, anti-scientific, and anti-intellectual philistine. For starters.
Chris: "It’s your moronic 'functioning gonads' horseshit that is unscientific and bizarre, which is why you can’t find a single piece of actual corroboration."
You can keep repeating that until the cows come home -- like saying "2+2=5" -- but it's no more true the last time than the first. Particularly when you're too much of a intellectually dishonest cretin to deal with the facts, as I've pointed out several times, that "functioning gonads" are an essential precursor to "produces gametes".
Chris: "... nobody on Substack takes you seriously, nobody ever has, nobody ever will."
You've surveyed all Substackers? Even just those I subscribe to, that subscribe to me, that I interact with? Do tell ... :roll-eyes: 🙄 ...
Here's one -- of many, if not hundreds ... -- who have explicitly endorsed my arguments:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people.
I also fully agree that the colloquial understanding of 'male/female' remains a useful sorting mechanism, but we should be more honest about how fuzzy the definition is. Right now the best we really have for justifying putting infertile individuals as male/female is a vague allusion to their 'potential' functionality or generalized body plan'. I’m fairly confident I know what people are trying to say, but it’s ok to expect better."
https://substack.com/@ymeskhout/note/c-15841572
Which is more or less exactly what Griffiths was getting at with his "extended" sense as I had indicated in my most recent Note:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-17399839
Does any of them stop and think, well, yeah, but they don't need dangerous chemicals and brutal surgery to do it. And are the "trans females" fertile?
At what point do we conclude it's a waste of time and breath to discuss an issue with someone who is beyond any facts or logic? Everyone will quickly conclude it's useless to argue with a paranoid about his elaborate explanation of an event. Starting with the assumption "trans women are women", you can prove absolutely anything as well as its opposite, just as Bertrand Russell proved to a mathematical certainty he was the Pope.
Here's four seconds of a bee disappearing into an American wildflower called Beard Tongue. Don't let them mess with bees and please do grow flowers, even in a windowbox!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wYL9No5fA18
I've grown quite a lot from these seed mixes. It does take time, and weeding out grass and other nonnative invasive plants is necessary.
If "trans" and "nonbinary" are gender identities, and "gender identity" is human social construct (which it is) isn't it a given that nonhuman life forms don't have gender identities?
I take some hope from the reality that nonhuman life forms are not a human thought construct.
Hahah! “ Does a chicken cry?”
Consider for a minute that a medical doctor said that. I wouldn't let her prescribe me an aspirin.
She should be in jail.
The other day some podcaster argued that the Left advances their various causes by getting intelligent people like Colin bogged down in these debates so that these issues become normalized. It was an interesting idea.
If bee hives approximate anything like communism, it would be barracks communism; but I doubt that’s anything like what Zizek has in mind by communism.
Haha!
How long before the wokesters take a torch to all things reality?
Dr. Wright writes: “As someone who studied social insects as a scientist for nearly seven years and published over a dozen peer-reviewed papers on them, including the most comprehensive review of collective personalities in eusocial insects and arachnids to date, I can say with confidence that he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Perhaps it is the very familiar structure of this sentence, reminiscent of my own preferred style, that made me grin upon reading. Or, most likely, it is merely because it is a glorious prelude to your fierce rebuttal that followed in the essay. Either way, to be sure, everyone has to love it! Thanks for cleaning up the author's "scientific" mess.
I clicked on the link to the article. Slavoj has added an addendum in response to Wright's rebuttal.
Thank you! This not only dispels a bad argument, but gives me a great idea for a Dungeons and Dragons monster that is female but needs no males to birth her wicked young. She just needs time to breed a haploid army!
I get SO TIRED of all these people who bend over backwards to uphold the trans ideology, I just can’t read it all anymore. The propaganda is so
pervasive and so perverse!
I’m sure there are teams of Stalinist propaganda papers that prove Lysenko was right in saying that genetics is bunk.
It’s just literally sickening! Just stop all the crap that makes trans the best thing since white bread! 🤢🤢
Interesting, but methinks much of it is based on definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk biology.
Y'all might have some interest, "unhinged" or not, in some observations thereon by Paul Griffiths and Tomas Bogardus:
Griffiths: "So worker bees are ‘female’ in the extended sense that they would develop into fertile females if they weren’t actively prevented from doing so. …. Workers and soldiers are both ‘female’ in an extended sense, but not in the full-blown sense that queen ants are female. There is a human imperative to give everything a sex, as mentioned above, but biology doesn’t share it."
About the most one can get out of “extended sense” is no better than “nominally speaking”, or for reference purposes only.
Those "female" bees really aren't; they just look like them -- the way Jenner "looks" like an adult human female (if one was blind drunk). But they are -- as you've agreed -- missing the "functional gonads" that are, by the "universal" definitions stipulated in the MHR, the sine qua non for sex category membership. They're sexLESS, neither male nor female -- arguably, "non-binary".
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-17377478
If I'm understanding your argument correctly, by extrapolation you're saying that human females missing reproductive organs due to developmental problems are not really female, they just look like females.
Exactly ! Nothing like erasing females ,but how about men that are sterile .. no sperm ?
Then they're sexless too. Like the prepubescent -- pre-males, and pre-females, but both sexless.
"male" and "female" aren't identities; they're just labels for transitory reproductive abilities.
Try reading this Note by Yassine Meskhout ["Public Defender", "Saracen Invader"] which supports that argument:
Yassine: "I totally agree with your comment. If we’re sorting people based on reproductive capacity, we should be comfortable acknowledging 'sexless' as a category bin because clearly it applies to a lot of people.
I also fully agree that the colloquial understanding of 'male/female' remains a useful sorting mechanism, but we should be more honest about how fuzzy the definition is. Right now the best we really have for justifying putting infertile individuals as male/female is a vague allusion to their 'potential' functionality or 'generalized body plan'. I’m fairly confident I know what people are trying to say, but it’s ok to expect better."
https://substack.com/@ymeskhout/note/c-15841572
You might also try reading this essay from Paul Griffiths, even this bit from the Abstract:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
Exactly; you got it Pontiac 👍🙂.
But the problem there is that many if not most "women" -- and various other scientific illiterates -- get their knickers in a twist when faced with the logical consequences of that definition. They've more or less bet the farm on defining "woman" as "adult human female (produces ova)" so, on the basis of those standard, universal, biological definitions, they lose their membership cards in both categories once they hit menopause.
If they were sensible -- a lot to expect ... -- they would come up with better and more useful, if maybe less "flattering", definitions for "woman". Maybe, "adult human vagina-haver"? Or "adult human with ovaries of past, present, or future functionality"? 🤔🙄
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
It seems your emotions may have led to your scientific illiteracy. You also seem to have a problem with reading comprehension, as adult human female is not defined as "producing ova." Women are designed to produce ova just as men are designed to produce sperm, but sometimes there are complications. That doesn't change their sex anymore than having Downs Syndrome (an extra chromosome) doesn't make someone "not human." The so-called delicate flowers some refer to as "transwomen" love to attack infertile women, something decent women would never do to their sisters. It takes male aggression that's been twisted in order to be that nasty.
"You also seem to have a problem with reading comprehension, as adult human female is not defined as "producing ova."
Nope, I can read what's clearly stated. Yup, those are the standard biological definitions. You too might try reading a guest post here by Zach Elliott which asserted:
Reality's Last Stand; What are sexes (Nov 16, 2022):
"Universal Biological Definition: In biology, the two sexes are defined this way:
Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems.³"
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/what-are-sexes
Quoted from the Molecular Human Reproduction Glossary, and linked thereto.
I sure don't see anything there about gonads of past or future functionality. Maybe I missed those phrases there? Maybe you can point them out to me? TIA ... 🙄
Why don't you ask that of good "ol' Zach"? Fire off a tweet to him.
Could it be that (gulp) you and he are both ... wrong? That he realizes his "arguments" aren't as solid as he first claimed? That he realizes much of it is based more on feelings than facts and biological principles? 🤔🙄
Zach 1: "Sex spectrum activists argue that if you do not have anatomy considered appropriate for your sex, then you're not male or female. But this is completely regressive.
2: Out of a desire to show compassion to those who have been discriminated against for being different, they uphold and celebrate difference, yet forget true compassion requires not only the acceptance of difference, but also the integration of it into established categories.
3: Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1592711689438662656
Not quite sure how he "thinks" that "morally problematic claims" have much bearing on whether any one is a member of objectively quantifiable, solidly defined, and well-regarded scientific categories. Like those for the sexes as stipulated in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
But WTF does "compassion" have to do with whether one is a member, or not, of the categories of those who produce sperm, or who produce ova? However one might want to name those "natural kinds". Apropos of which, you might take a gander at the definitions for the sexes according to the Oxford Dictionary of Biology -- not quite sure how one can get much more "authoritative" than that:
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441
Oxford: "female: (denoting) an individual organism whose reproductive organs produce only female gametes".
Do let me know where they say anything about gonads of past or future functionality. I've looked really, really closely and can't, for the life of me, see anything of the sort. TIA ... 🙄
But you might also note another tweet in the same thread by Killeen -- apparently, according to his Linked-In profile, a "Philosopher researcher and Information Systems Manager":
Killeen: "Strictly speaking [male/female is] the sex that an individual is disposed to develop into that is determined at conception, i.e. the sex that a person will become *if* they develop the ability to produce gametes. This is one of the few contexts where that particular distinction matters."
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039829533392822272
IF they "become" male or female when "they develop the ability to produce gametes" THEN what else are they but sexLESS if they don't have that ability? That is, from conception to puberty? Riddle me that, MR. Fox ... (:roll-eyes:) ... 🙄
🙄 Yours seems to be rather "unhinged" -- being charitable -- and scientifically illiterate responses to my defense of standard, universal, biological definitions.
We are in an episode of The Twilight Zone. I keep repeating this to myself and hoping for the day when we leave behind the episode.
You have me belly laughing.
We can be a tag team. As a middle-aged female completely confident in my neural functioning, I have a tendency to trigger misogynists like him.
"misogynist"? For stating standard biological definitions? Which I don't see that you've provided any rebuttals to.
But the pair of you would probably make a good "tag team" since you too fall back on a go-to replacement for "playing the race card" -- you with "misogynist", him with "troll":
https://twitter.com/adamcarolla/status/1421138069026074628
But you might at least give some thought to the idea that, in particular, there's really no magic in the definitions for "woman" and "female", though many seem to think that is the case. In the case of the latter, it used to mean "she who suckles" -- by which Jenner & his ilk might qualify, though the milk is probably unfit for human consumption:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/female#etymonline_v_5841
We can define those words any way we want -- pay them extra. The issue is which definitions we are going to accept as trump. Although endless squabbling over them often seems like a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, like fiddling while Rome burns.
It's not effing necessary.
Anyone who isn't scientifically illiterate -- or who hasn't disappeared up their fundament, or those of their equally illiterate buddies ... -- will understand that an essential precursor to producing gametes, on a regular basis, is to have functional gonads.
🤣😅😂🤣🙄
You're just peddling the folk-biology definitions, not the "universal" ones stipulated in the MHR and endorsed by Zach Elliott in a guest post here.
🙄 :roll-eyes: for those who've disappeared up their fundaments or those of their buddies ...
Suck it up buttercup.
That's only a small down payment on what I owe you:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/worker-bees-are-female-not-nonbinary/comment/17441378
Tit for tat and all that -- you might consider that that is more or less an optimum strategy in game theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat