Ada

btw I am not downvoting you

My instance doesn’t have downvotes, so it makes no difference to me. They’re disabled precisely because they get

My argument is that the discussion around the nature of sex is irrelevant to promoting transphobia. The far right (English-language or otherwise) will find something else to latch on to.

Yes and no. I transitioned 8 years ago. Before the current wave of transphobia had settled on us for politcal gain. And transphobes were around then. The same arguments were around then. However, the only people who used those arguments and the only time those discussions came up, was when transphobes were talking about trans folk. What wasn’t happening then, was regular folk, unconnected to the trans and gender diverse community, weighing on on what their opinions on sex and gender were. Mostly, folk didn’t even distinguish between sex and gender.

What has changed since then, is the politics. And yeah, the politicians didn’t come up with these arguments out of thing air. They didn’t create the transphobia. But what they did was popularise and normalise it, and that is the reason that a Ukranian is arguing with an Australian, about the actions of a transphobic American.

The fact that you (and I) are having this conversation, or that you’re even aware of the topic enough to have strong opinions on it, is absolutely shaped by the transphobic political environment around the world.

Forget Ukraine, what about say Pakistan or India or Uzbekistan?

That’s the point I was making! You’re talking about sex using absolutes. I’m saying there are no absolutes. Sex has multiple definitions, some are cultural, some are physical, some are genetic, some are medical, some are legal. And they all overlap, and they often contradict each other. There is no clear cut definition of sex that can apply a consistent standard. The cultural contexts you highlight are actively a part of the reason that is so!

You are welcome to disagree with me and say I am wrong in my understanding of the binary nature of sex. It is what is. I am just trying to show you that my worldview has a level of nuance and it’s not a mere matter of wanting “neat solutions” while ignoring the weaponization of this discussion by the English-speaking far right.

To be honest, your reasons don’t matter. What matters is that you are parroting the arguments actively used by the transphobic folk, in a time when trans folk are facing ever growing abuse. The fact that you think you have good reasons for holding those opinions doesn’t change the fact that in this environment, choosing to share those opinions, especially in the context of arguing with folk actively pushing back against transphobia, isn’t harmless.

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We are not discussing the strategies used by the far right to demonize trans folk (or anyone else). We are discussing something completely different that has no bearing on the strategies used by the far right.

Yes we are. The only reason these discussions come up in the first place is because of that.

You thinking that this has nothing to do with the far right doesn’t make it so. Normalising the idea that sex is black and white, and conversations about that only occur in a wide spread way because there is political reward in presenting things that way. 10 years ago you weren’t having these discussions. Today, you are, because the politics of transphobia has made it happen.

You are the one who claimed that I was diverting in to irrelevancy. I bring up the political context, because it’s not irrelevant.

This whole conversation, the thread you are talking in, exists, because a transphobe was using the same talking points you are arguing for, to normalise transphobia. You doing it, also normalises transphobia, whether that is your intent or not.

You want a sex binary to exist. It doesn’t, unless you smooth away the edges and ignore some of the data and the lived realities of people. Evolutionary biologists don’t share your perspective. Geneticists don’t share your perspective. This whole conversation exists for political reasons, designed to push exclusion. In a topic about a person using these exact talking points to push for exclusion, you have arrived, repeated the talking points, and then tried to argue that actually, it’s ok, because your perspective is correct, so long as we ignore some of the details.

Which is exactly what the next transphobe will do too.

Even if you don’t agree with me, and to you, this is all about the purity of ideas, your choice of getting involved in this discussion, in this context, isn’t removed from reality. It’s not detached. It’s actively empowering the exclusionary voices by talking over and fighting with the people pushing back against that exclusion. That’s a choice you made that has nothing to do with the truth of your idea

Changes in legal or morphological sex is not relevant. This is not what we are discussing.

Of course they’re relevant. Sex being immutable, easy to define and binary is at the core of the tactics that transphobes use to exclude and legislate against trans folk.

So the fact that it’s not easy to define, has multiple definitions in different contexts, and has no single definition that works in all instances is very relevant.

You talked about “genetic bio-chemical reproduction” earlier. There are women who have literally given birth, who have XY chromosomes. Similarly, there are XX men with SRY genes. Using your “genetic sex is the truth” approach, they are both folks with a different genetic sex to their physical and legal sex. A transphobe would catch those people and throw them under the bus too whilst they target trans people.

The bio-chemistry of terrestrial life is built upon a binary sex framework

Yep. I’ll agree with that. But the framework it is built on is not the end result. There is no meaning or intent behind the framework. There is nothing about it that is more “real”.

The real part isn’t the genetic plan that was used to create someone. The real part is the body they’re actually walking around in.

To you, this is all an interesting argument. You’re arguing about things in black and white, because none of it actually matters to you. So you can argue for how you think things should work.

The very same arguments you are using are being weaponised and turned against gender diverse folk and intersex folk. Your re-use of them, arguing about some sort of ideal that exists only in your head isn’t harmless. The fact that sex is nuanced, that gender is nuanced, that they both have multiple, contradicting definitions, and neither have a single definition that is more true than the others is incredibly important, because the only reason to ignore that is either to hurt people, or because you’re so far removed from the reality of what’s happening, that you place a higher priority on things being neat and tidy than on the people that false belief hurts.

I admitted there are edge cases.

Then it’s not binary.

When you flip a coin, there is a chance that it will land on the side, yet we still use a coin flip for a 50:50 probability scenario because it is close enough.

Absolutely. For day to day life, “there are two outcomes” is safe way to describe coin flips. But given that a coin landing on its side can happen, it’s not a binary system. It only becomes binary when we ignore the edge cases. Just like sex…

And that’s before we get to the point that there isn’t even a single definition of sex that accounts for all scenarios. People can change their legal sex, people can change their morphological sex, “genetic sex” isn’t foolproof, as it doesn’t always correlate with morphological sexual characteristics, or even gamete production.

Calling sex binary is either a generalisation, or something you want to be true. At no point is it reality of the situation though…

It is a binary with some edge cases

So in other words, not a binary? What you’re describing is more accurately described as a bimodal distribution.