Excellent, Sarah. Much better use of your time than discussing the female penis with the owner of one. There is too much worship at the altar of the female penis. Methinks that owner knew that by talking with you he would expose his in a way he did not intend and went off in a huff.
Sarah Phillimore: “I don’t find being challenged or getting things wrong a genocidal attack upon my very essence. Opening yourself up to discussion and being prepared to be wrong, is how you learn. .... And I do think dialogue is the only way through ....”
Good for you, I quite agree with you about the need for dialogue, and thank you for transcribing some interesting discussions on some important issues. Rather too much to address in one go, but a few salient points bear emphasizing.
Sarah: “... there are still people popping up on my timeline saying ‘sex and gender are exactly the same thing and I’m not going to budge’. ”
A major part of the problem is in convincing such people – a rather pigheaded bunch, in fact – that, as you put it, the word “ ‘gender’ is actually quite useful to refer to this identity as opposed to an immutable reality [i.e., sex]”. Though I’d disagree with you on how to define each term, and on “immutable”, but it seems clear that, for all of the confusion over which definitions are the most scientifically accurate and thereby most useful, a great many people recognize that they refer to entirely different kettles of fish. For examples, see the late great American Justice Anton Scalia:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
And an editorial in the British Medical Journal [BMJ]:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. ...."
Though both were a bit vague on the specifics, but still a useful starting point.
Continuing with a particularly relevant point from another speaker:
Speaker: “I was told by my son last night nobody has ever said people can actually change sex. They are on the run and I think that is also our opportunity.”
Quite agree about “on the run”, although many transactivists and their various useful & useless idiots do, in fact, more or less claim that “people can actually change sex”. For instance, in a case that really chaps my hide, Wikipedia’s article on transwoman and Olympian weightlifter Laurel Hubbard claimed that “she” had “transitioned to female”. Their citations give the impression that they – along with various other transactivist fraudsters and scientific illiterates – are using “male” and “female” as genders. Which would be fine if they qualified the use of such terms: e.g., “female (gender)” or “female (sex)”. But the unqualified terms are the pretext and the “justification” for claiming that Hubbard has a right to compete against actual “biological females”. See my post on Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism for details:
Sarah: “So my definition of a woman is an adult human female and an adult human female is that person whose body developed with the potential to produce large gametes.”
I can sympathize with your efforts to promote that particular definition, even if it seems a bit disingenuous. However, as I've pointed out to you before, it conflicts rather badly with standard biological definitions for the sexes “promulgated” in reputable biological journals and dictionaries. Like standard Oxford Dictionaries, the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction, and the Oxford Dictionary of Biology:
So if you’re going to peddle your own rather idiosyncratic and self-serving definitions for the sexes then why shouldn’t transactivists be granted the same opportunity and rights? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
But apropos of which, you raised an important question in your discussions: “we have got to have a test haven’t we?”
Absolutely. If we’re going to give certain groups of people particular rights and access to various facilities and opportunities then we need to have objectively qualifiable criteria to ensure that they and only they can take advantage of them. Helen Joyce had a decent article in Quillette several years ago where she usefully underlined that point:
HJ: “The way you define something is to state criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t.”
And THAT is what those biological definitions DO: they specify that for ANY organism, of ANY species, to “qualify” as male or female it MUST then be able to produce large or small gametes. There is absolutely diddly-squat in ANY of those definitions about “potential to produce” – they’re all about being able to produce gametes right NOW, not next year when puberty kicks in or the previous decade. Functional gonads, of either of two types, ARE the "criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t.”
You can tout those definitions of yours until the cows come home. And they may well have some social utility. But they AIN’T biology. One might suggest, respectfully, that you – and far too many others – are just as bad, or almost as bad, as the transloonie nutcases in trying to bastardize and corrupt some crucially important principles of biology.
See a couple of my previous Notes for some details on those points:
Excellent, Sarah. Much better use of your time than discussing the female penis with the owner of one. There is too much worship at the altar of the female penis. Methinks that owner knew that by talking with you he would expose his in a way he did not intend and went off in a huff.
Fascinating. Thank you for transcribing these really interesting and thoughtful views.
Sarah Phillimore: “I don’t find being challenged or getting things wrong a genocidal attack upon my very essence. Opening yourself up to discussion and being prepared to be wrong, is how you learn. .... And I do think dialogue is the only way through ....”
Good for you, I quite agree with you about the need for dialogue, and thank you for transcribing some interesting discussions on some important issues. Rather too much to address in one go, but a few salient points bear emphasizing.
Sarah: “... there are still people popping up on my timeline saying ‘sex and gender are exactly the same thing and I’m not going to budge’. ”
A major part of the problem is in convincing such people – a rather pigheaded bunch, in fact – that, as you put it, the word “ ‘gender’ is actually quite useful to refer to this identity as opposed to an immutable reality [i.e., sex]”. Though I’d disagree with you on how to define each term, and on “immutable”, but it seems clear that, for all of the confusion over which definitions are the most scientifically accurate and thereby most useful, a great many people recognize that they refer to entirely different kettles of fish. For examples, see the late great American Justice Anton Scalia:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
And an editorial in the British Medical Journal [BMJ]:
BMJ: "Sex and gender are not synonymous. Sex, unless otherwise specified, relates to biology: the gametes, chromosomes, hormones, and reproductive organs. Gender relates to societal roles, behaviours, and expectations that vary with time and place, historically and geographically. ...."
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n735
Though both were a bit vague on the specifics, but still a useful starting point.
Continuing with a particularly relevant point from another speaker:
Speaker: “I was told by my son last night nobody has ever said people can actually change sex. They are on the run and I think that is also our opportunity.”
Quite agree about “on the run”, although many transactivists and their various useful & useless idiots do, in fact, more or less claim that “people can actually change sex”. For instance, in a case that really chaps my hide, Wikipedia’s article on transwoman and Olympian weightlifter Laurel Hubbard claimed that “she” had “transitioned to female”. Their citations give the impression that they – along with various other transactivist fraudsters and scientific illiterates – are using “male” and “female” as genders. Which would be fine if they qualified the use of such terms: e.g., “female (gender)” or “female (sex)”. But the unqualified terms are the pretext and the “justification” for claiming that Hubbard has a right to compete against actual “biological females”. See my post on Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism for details:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
Finally, an earlier comment of yours:
Sarah: “So my definition of a woman is an adult human female and an adult human female is that person whose body developed with the potential to produce large gametes.”
I can sympathize with your efforts to promote that particular definition, even if it seems a bit disingenuous. However, as I've pointed out to you before, it conflicts rather badly with standard biological definitions for the sexes “promulgated” in reputable biological journals and dictionaries. Like standard Oxford Dictionaries, the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction, and the Oxford Dictionary of Biology:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
So if you’re going to peddle your own rather idiosyncratic and self-serving definitions for the sexes then why shouldn’t transactivists be granted the same opportunity and rights? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander.
But apropos of which, you raised an important question in your discussions: “we have got to have a test haven’t we?”
Absolutely. If we’re going to give certain groups of people particular rights and access to various facilities and opportunities then we need to have objectively qualifiable criteria to ensure that they and only they can take advantage of them. Helen Joyce had a decent article in Quillette several years ago where she usefully underlined that point:
HJ: “The way you define something is to state criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20200714210100/https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/
And THAT is what those biological definitions DO: they specify that for ANY organism, of ANY species, to “qualify” as male or female it MUST then be able to produce large or small gametes. There is absolutely diddly-squat in ANY of those definitions about “potential to produce” – they’re all about being able to produce gametes right NOW, not next year when puberty kicks in or the previous decade. Functional gonads, of either of two types, ARE the "criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t.”
You can tout those definitions of yours until the cows come home. And they may well have some social utility. But they AIN’T biology. One might suggest, respectfully, that you – and far too many others – are just as bad, or almost as bad, as the transloonie nutcases in trying to bastardize and corrupt some crucially important principles of biology.
See a couple of my previous Notes for some details on those points:
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-22385074
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-36833135