I think a basic problem is that there are four underlying polarities. Biologic sex, which is quite binary with only a few exceptions that basically prove the rule (XXY in mammals for example). Sexual preference (who you want to have sex with) which as Kinsey showed is much less binary. Social functioning on a "stereotypical" masculine / feminine scale, a concept that we do not have a decent word for but basically means that we posit that male and female behavior admits to a binary polarity. But clearly individuals do not. For most mammals this polarity has considerable truth. Humans are very atypical mammals and no one fits the extreme, in fact one who did would seem quite pathological. The most "masculine" man will nurture children and the most "feminine" woman run marathons. Lastly there is the desire to fit into a gender "role". The vast majority of humans have no issue here, partly I think because social functioning (and sexual preference) are not binary. A lesbian weightlifter can "identify" as a woman and a stay at home dad can "identify' as a man with out any deep "gender dysphoria". All these distinctions have some biological input, women with high testosterone levels are more likely to be athletic,"masculine" and lesbian. but all except biological sex have social input too. Trans is different. Why trans individuals are not comfortable fitting into one of these flexible roles is not clear.
I think many trans identifying teens do it for the attention and affirmation from liberal peers. I'm not saying there are zero children who have gender dysphoria; however, I believe the vast majority have succumbed to a social contagion and may very well live to regret their choices as they age. Unfortunately, it's going to take a decade for the pendulum to swing on this issue.
XXY persons are male. They are not a separate or new sex. Chromosome anomalies are quite rare, but real. They don't result in any new sexes. CAIS is also very rare, but CAIS persons are typically XY males with a defective SRY gene. They look female, but never have any children. I would say, they are outside of the male/female binary. I should add, that they view themselves as female (which they are not), and (in my opinion) should be treated as females, with the possible exception of sports.
Correct. They are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. They are not "between" male and female and almost all "identity" as the biologic sex they resemble. This really has nothing to do with trans folks.
The idea that 'exceptions prove a rule' was a commonplace theme of my youth. These days 'exceptions disprove rules' is more like it. The prior generalization was better. A good analogy might be 'you can't fight City Hall'. At one time, that was basically true. No longer.
I agree with your points, but I see a lot of overlap between social functioning (masculine & feminine) and gender roles. Back in the early 90s in sociology, we spoke of “gender expression”. Biological sex was binary. Sexual preferences (Kinsey) and gender expression (Camille Paglia) were more flexible. Indeed, social markers of male & female expression have shifted across time and cultures.
Some medical decisions are easy. If you have hypothyroidism, take levothyroxine for the rest of your life. If you are going blind, get cataract surgery. Some medical decisions are more difficult, but we do have treatment histories. If you need a kidney transplant, go ahead if you can get a kidney with the understanding that you will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life and, therefore, immunocompromised. If you have stage 4 cancer, consider treatment versus quality of the rest of your life. Some medical decisions should be made only after careful consideration of at least all known risks and benefits. I suspect gender affirming therapy for children should be one of those decisions.
However, all medical decisions are made more difficult because the public does not understand that there are risks and benefits to taking any medication and/or having any medical procedure.
This is such an example of a good conversation. Yasha, who I suspect shares a lot of perspective with Byrne, methodically and genuinely poses the counter arguments so that Byrne can make his view clear and we can see the contrast. What a refreshing break from the usual siloed "can you believe those idiots?" discourse among even the most intelligent thinkers.
Great conversation between Yascha and Alex and excellent comment stream.
Who decided that children as young as..... I don’t know .....6 or 7 or 5 are now taught that ‘gender’ is a real thing and they might not be the ‘gender’ that they think they are and then they come home and tell their parents at age 7 that they want to use they/them pronouns.
Who decided that it was good to confuse the children?
Just tell the children that some boys play with trucks and some boys like pink and sparkles and the same for the girls… Some girls like to play with dolls and some girls like trucks and mechanical things. We contain multitudes.
The problem is this: In the past we were told that we shouldn't burden kids with gender roles, let them be who they are and sort it out later. Now we use those gender roles as "proof" that kids are really the opposite gender. Ridiculous thinking.
2 + 2 = 5, and everyone knows it. The Earth is flat, and everyone knows it. The Sun orbits the Earth and everyone knows it. Sex is a spectrum and everyone knows it.
Although I am profoundly frustrated that we need this level of complex conversation on topics that should otherwise be quite simple to define and understand, I appreciate what I just read.
"So the first line of treatment should really be to encourage people to be comfortable living in their own sex bodies."
Bravo. Isn't this the key? Instead of throwing a big empathetic shroud of acceptance over confused hormonal kids, maybe they just need some guidance and time to develop their sexual orientation. Hell, I was confused when puberty hit. I remember being alarmed being aroused seeing my best same-sex friend naked during and sleep-over. But later I realized in my out of control flood of hormones I would get aroused over many things.
Lately I have been addicted to fantasy fiction novels written primarily by female writers with a female perspective. The better of these books do a fantastic job with the female and male characters; juxtaposing traditional male-female sexual tension and passion, but also challenging the typical warrior-hero vs saving-victim gender stereotypes.
It seems to me that this is the correct orientation that has been corrupted and lost by current gender ideology narrative from the 3rd wave postmodernist feminist hive. Somehow we have allowed that power to convolute the simple sweetness of male-female sexual behavior into a conflict of gender identity. The correct orientation, I think, should be to promote and value that sweet simplicity while also promoting progressive deconstruction of unhealthy bias in traditional societal gender roles.
Sex is sex... biologically functioning for species reproduction, but for humans also serving some of our deeper sweet emotional and psychological needs. Made too complex, we lose that sweetness and miss out on our related needs fulfillment. Gender bias seems a completely different topic and one that more people could get behind accepting progressive concepts if sex wasn't woven into it.
> "Mounk: So perhaps there’s two natural kinds, which are organisms that produce large sex cells and organisms that produce small sex cells. The question though is why is that the definition of male and female .... Why is it that the question of whether we are large sex cell producing or small sex cell producing creatures should be taken to be definitive of our understanding of sex?"
Good point and good questions. Apropos of which, you in particular might have, and Byrne should have, some interest in this PhilPapers article on "Are sexes natural kinds?" by Muhammad Ali Khalidi:
Khalidi: "The distinction between females and males in the animal kingdom is based on the relative size of the gametes they produce, with females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). This chapter argues that the properties of producing relatively large and small gametes are causally correlated with a range of other properties in a wide variety of organisms, and this is what makes females and males natural kinds in the animal kingdom. .... The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences."
As indicated there, the article argues that the type of gametes we produce -- as millions of different anisogamous species -- apparently has had a great many consequences among all of those species which justifies the term "natural kinds". The "mechanisms" of producing different size gametes are ubiquitous, are properties that are shared between all those millions of species. Though it is maybe moot whether there's a more fundamental "essence" -- maybe there are some "cis" and "trans" genes that we've all had for the last billion years or so that has driven all of that anisogamy, and all of the subsequent sexual dimorphism on the planet?
But even if those cis and trans genes turns out to be the case, the actual production of large and small gametes seems like a useful starting point and a "definitive" basis. Related thereto, you might also have some interest in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] article on "Mechanisms in Science" -- an idea which Khalidi touches on at several points -- and my own elaboration on the theme:
However, while Byrne makes some useful observations on that dichotomy, I'm rather profoundly disappointed that he seems totally clueless about the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- if he's not actively engaged in grinding an axe for fun and profit, in peddling what is hardly more than folk-biology:
Byrne: "... here I just lean on the absolutely standard textbook account of what the two sexes are. In a nutshell, to be male is to have a body plan that is designed to produce small gametes, sex cells, i.e. sperm. And to be female is to have a body plan that's designed to produce large gametes or sex cells, i.e. eggs."
Absolutely NO reputable biological journal, encyclopedia, or dictionary says ANYTHING about "designed to produce". Profoundly ridiculous, incoherent, inconsistent, and quite unscientific. For one thing, designed by who? How can you tell? What are the objective criteria that quantifies and differentiates those two separate "designs"? And in all of those millions of species? 🙄
All of those substantially more reputable sources are all stipulating "produces gametes" -- present tense, right now; not in the sweet by and by, nor some time in ancient history. Which is why reputable biologists talk about sequential hermaphroditism: many species --hundreds if not thousands of them, clownfish in particular -- change sex because they change the type of gamete they're actually producing. Technically speaking -- and if we wanted to follow suit on the claptrap that Byrne and too many so-called biologists are peddling -- we would have to say that those clownfish are "designed" to produce both large and small gametes, and are therefore both male and female right from the moment of hatching if not conception.
But more particularly, you might have some interest in exactly how some of those more reputable sources define those categories:
And even more popular and online dictionaries -- like Google/OxfordLanguages -- endorse the same definitions. The more general problem -- which you might want to consider tackling -- is that far too many charlatans, grifters, political opportunists, and scientific illiterates are engaged in peddling folk-biology. And largely because too many -- not just transgender ideologues -- have turned the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" -- Byrne's "designed to produce" being no more than a thread-bare fig-leaf.
The closing sentence in Khalidi's Abstract touches on that wider problem:
Khalidi: "The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences."
Though he also points out that those differences have had, and continue to have significant "social consequences". But bastardizing and corrupting the biology in furthering various social policies-- as Byrne and too many others are engaged in doing -- is rather counter-productive at best. And, in fact, is no better than egregious Lysenkoism, i.e., the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable":
I think a basic problem is that there are four underlying polarities. Biologic sex, which is quite binary with only a few exceptions that basically prove the rule (XXY in mammals for example). Sexual preference (who you want to have sex with) which as Kinsey showed is much less binary. Social functioning on a "stereotypical" masculine / feminine scale, a concept that we do not have a decent word for but basically means that we posit that male and female behavior admits to a binary polarity. But clearly individuals do not. For most mammals this polarity has considerable truth. Humans are very atypical mammals and no one fits the extreme, in fact one who did would seem quite pathological. The most "masculine" man will nurture children and the most "feminine" woman run marathons. Lastly there is the desire to fit into a gender "role". The vast majority of humans have no issue here, partly I think because social functioning (and sexual preference) are not binary. A lesbian weightlifter can "identify" as a woman and a stay at home dad can "identify' as a man with out any deep "gender dysphoria". All these distinctions have some biological input, women with high testosterone levels are more likely to be athletic,"masculine" and lesbian. but all except biological sex have social input too. Trans is different. Why trans individuals are not comfortable fitting into one of these flexible roles is not clear.
I think many trans identifying teens do it for the attention and affirmation from liberal peers. I'm not saying there are zero children who have gender dysphoria; however, I believe the vast majority have succumbed to a social contagion and may very well live to regret their choices as they age. Unfortunately, it's going to take a decade for the pendulum to swing on this issue.
XXY persons are male. They are not a separate or new sex. Chromosome anomalies are quite rare, but real. They don't result in any new sexes. CAIS is also very rare, but CAIS persons are typically XY males with a defective SRY gene. They look female, but never have any children. I would say, they are outside of the male/female binary. I should add, that they view themselves as female (which they are not), and (in my opinion) should be treated as females, with the possible exception of sports.
Correct. They are the rare exceptions that prove the rule. They are not "between" male and female and almost all "identity" as the biologic sex they resemble. This really has nothing to do with trans folks.
The idea that 'exceptions prove a rule' was a commonplace theme of my youth. These days 'exceptions disprove rules' is more like it. The prior generalization was better. A good analogy might be 'you can't fight City Hall'. At one time, that was basically true. No longer.
I agree with your points, but I see a lot of overlap between social functioning (masculine & feminine) and gender roles. Back in the early 90s in sociology, we spoke of “gender expression”. Biological sex was binary. Sexual preferences (Kinsey) and gender expression (Camille Paglia) were more flexible. Indeed, social markers of male & female expression have shifted across time and cultures.
Some medical decisions are easy. If you have hypothyroidism, take levothyroxine for the rest of your life. If you are going blind, get cataract surgery. Some medical decisions are more difficult, but we do have treatment histories. If you need a kidney transplant, go ahead if you can get a kidney with the understanding that you will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of your life and, therefore, immunocompromised. If you have stage 4 cancer, consider treatment versus quality of the rest of your life. Some medical decisions should be made only after careful consideration of at least all known risks and benefits. I suspect gender affirming therapy for children should be one of those decisions.
However, all medical decisions are made more difficult because the public does not understand that there are risks and benefits to taking any medication and/or having any medical procedure.
This is such an example of a good conversation. Yasha, who I suspect shares a lot of perspective with Byrne, methodically and genuinely poses the counter arguments so that Byrne can make his view clear and we can see the contrast. What a refreshing break from the usual siloed "can you believe those idiots?" discourse among even the most intelligent thinkers.
Great conversation between Yascha and Alex and excellent comment stream.
Who decided that children as young as..... I don’t know .....6 or 7 or 5 are now taught that ‘gender’ is a real thing and they might not be the ‘gender’ that they think they are and then they come home and tell their parents at age 7 that they want to use they/them pronouns.
Who decided that it was good to confuse the children?
Just tell the children that some boys play with trucks and some boys like pink and sparkles and the same for the girls… Some girls like to play with dolls and some girls like trucks and mechanical things. We contain multitudes.
The problem is this: In the past we were told that we shouldn't burden kids with gender roles, let them be who they are and sort it out later. Now we use those gender roles as "proof" that kids are really the opposite gender. Ridiculous thinking.
2 + 2 = 5, and everyone knows it. The Earth is flat, and everyone knows it. The Sun orbits the Earth and everyone knows it. Sex is a spectrum and everyone knows it.
How I see it:
Traditional Values: if you're a gender non-conforming man you're not really a man, if you're a gender non-conforming woman you're not really a woman.
Feminism and gay liberation: if you're GNC, you're as much of a man or a woman as anyone else.
Trans ideology: if you're GNC, you're not really the sex you were "assigned at birth".
We're going backwards.
Although I am profoundly frustrated that we need this level of complex conversation on topics that should otherwise be quite simple to define and understand, I appreciate what I just read.
"So the first line of treatment should really be to encourage people to be comfortable living in their own sex bodies."
Bravo. Isn't this the key? Instead of throwing a big empathetic shroud of acceptance over confused hormonal kids, maybe they just need some guidance and time to develop their sexual orientation. Hell, I was confused when puberty hit. I remember being alarmed being aroused seeing my best same-sex friend naked during and sleep-over. But later I realized in my out of control flood of hormones I would get aroused over many things.
Lately I have been addicted to fantasy fiction novels written primarily by female writers with a female perspective. The better of these books do a fantastic job with the female and male characters; juxtaposing traditional male-female sexual tension and passion, but also challenging the typical warrior-hero vs saving-victim gender stereotypes.
It seems to me that this is the correct orientation that has been corrupted and lost by current gender ideology narrative from the 3rd wave postmodernist feminist hive. Somehow we have allowed that power to convolute the simple sweetness of male-female sexual behavior into a conflict of gender identity. The correct orientation, I think, should be to promote and value that sweet simplicity while also promoting progressive deconstruction of unhealthy bias in traditional societal gender roles.
Sex is sex... biologically functioning for species reproduction, but for humans also serving some of our deeper sweet emotional and psychological needs. Made too complex, we lose that sweetness and miss out on our related needs fulfillment. Gender bias seems a completely different topic and one that more people could get behind accepting progressive concepts if sex wasn't woven into it.
> "Mounk: So perhaps there’s two natural kinds, which are organisms that produce large sex cells and organisms that produce small sex cells. The question though is why is that the definition of male and female .... Why is it that the question of whether we are large sex cell producing or small sex cell producing creatures should be taken to be definitive of our understanding of sex?"
Good point and good questions. Apropos of which, you in particular might have, and Byrne should have, some interest in this PhilPapers article on "Are sexes natural kinds?" by Muhammad Ali Khalidi:
https://philarchive.org/rec/KHAASN
Of particular note from the Abstract:
Khalidi: "The distinction between females and males in the animal kingdom is based on the relative size of the gametes they produce, with females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). This chapter argues that the properties of producing relatively large and small gametes are causally correlated with a range of other properties in a wide variety of organisms, and this is what makes females and males natural kinds in the animal kingdom. .... The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences."
As indicated there, the article argues that the type of gametes we produce -- as millions of different anisogamous species -- apparently has had a great many consequences among all of those species which justifies the term "natural kinds". The "mechanisms" of producing different size gametes are ubiquitous, are properties that are shared between all those millions of species. Though it is maybe moot whether there's a more fundamental "essence" -- maybe there are some "cis" and "trans" genes that we've all had for the last billion years or so that has driven all of that anisogamy, and all of the subsequent sexual dimorphism on the planet?
But even if those cis and trans genes turns out to be the case, the actual production of large and small gametes seems like a useful starting point and a "definitive" basis. Related thereto, you might also have some interest in a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] article on "Mechanisms in Science" -- an idea which Khalidi touches on at several points -- and my own elaboration on the theme:
https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/win2021/entries/science-mechanisms/#toc
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
However, while Byrne makes some useful observations on that dichotomy, I'm rather profoundly disappointed that he seems totally clueless about the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- if he's not actively engaged in grinding an axe for fun and profit, in peddling what is hardly more than folk-biology:
Byrne: "... here I just lean on the absolutely standard textbook account of what the two sexes are. In a nutshell, to be male is to have a body plan that is designed to produce small gametes, sex cells, i.e. sperm. And to be female is to have a body plan that's designed to produce large gametes or sex cells, i.e. eggs."
Absolutely NO reputable biological journal, encyclopedia, or dictionary says ANYTHING about "designed to produce". Profoundly ridiculous, incoherent, inconsistent, and quite unscientific. For one thing, designed by who? How can you tell? What are the objective criteria that quantifies and differentiates those two separate "designs"? And in all of those millions of species? 🙄
All of those substantially more reputable sources are all stipulating "produces gametes" -- present tense, right now; not in the sweet by and by, nor some time in ancient history. Which is why reputable biologists talk about sequential hermaphroditism: many species --hundreds if not thousands of them, clownfish in particular -- change sex because they change the type of gamete they're actually producing. Technically speaking -- and if we wanted to follow suit on the claptrap that Byrne and too many so-called biologists are peddling -- we would have to say that those clownfish are "designed" to produce both large and small gametes, and are therefore both male and female right from the moment of hatching if not conception.
But more particularly, you might have some interest in exactly how some of those more reputable sources define those categories:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
And even more popular and online dictionaries -- like Google/OxfordLanguages -- endorse the same definitions. The more general problem -- which you might want to consider tackling -- is that far too many charlatans, grifters, political opportunists, and scientific illiterates are engaged in peddling folk-biology. And largely because too many -- not just transgender ideologues -- have turned the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" -- Byrne's "designed to produce" being no more than a thread-bare fig-leaf.
The closing sentence in Khalidi's Abstract touches on that wider problem:
Khalidi: "The claim that sexes are natural kinds in the animal kingdom does not imply that the biological differences among female and male humans do and should have social consequences."
Though he also points out that those differences have had, and continue to have significant "social consequences". But bastardizing and corrupting the biology in furthering various social policies-- as Byrne and too many others are engaged in doing -- is rather counter-productive at best. And, in fact, is no better than egregious Lysenkoism, i.e., the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable":
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lysenkoism&oldid=1119906609