You and I exchange:
>
> > I know it's a leftist truism that gender has nothing
> to do with genetics. It's just not true.
>
> Genetics may play a part, but I do not think that you
> can draw a direct correlation between this gene or that
> chromosone and this or that enactment of gender.
> I think that is a simplification.
What I'm saying is that we should define things in a way that's definable. Gender is maleness and femaleness and those are characterized, not by graduated distinctions but by a large, objective difference - karyotype. We can absolutely draw a direct correlation between karyotype and, for example, having a penis or ovaries. There is nothing subtle or uncertain about it.
> > Science is there to test hypotheses and science says
> there are two genders.
>
> How do you test for gender? In a scientific experiment
> don't you need a control? What control measure can you
> create for gender? Gender is a performance. Are we
> going to say that Jason Robards is the defintive
> performance of Hickey and all other performances must
> be measured against it? Is Doug or Miles or you or me
> the definitve performace of maleness?
You test for gender by testing for genetic karyotype and 99.98% of the time you get an unambiguous answer. Gender isn't a "performance" because nobody has to perform any particular act to have a gender. They just have it because of the genetic material in their cells since conception.
>
> > ME: So a transexual never changes gender?
>
> > YOU: No.
>
> Then we are captives to biology.
Yes we are - biology and taxes.
> > How about we limit ourselves to comparisons with species
> with whom we have somewhat more recent common ancestors.
>
> But if birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it, why can't
> we do it, why can't we change our sex?
That's my point. Birds don't do it.
> > There are only two genders and pretending otherwise is a stupid
> way to try and get around the thorny issues we must deal with if
> we are to create political gender equality. Ultimately, it's
> irresponsible.
>
> According to you there are only two genders. Other people see
> things differently.
Many, many people think there is a man in the sky who created the world in six days about 5000 years ago. Doesn't make it true.
>
> > My first point was about male sexuality but the larger point is that
> you don't, in my view, create gender equality by muddying the very
> simple idea of gender until it has no meaning to Leftists.
>
> But I do not think that gender is a simple idea, and rather than
> muddying it, aren't we liberating it from the perceptual straight jacket
> of either/or into which it has been placed?
No. I think we're muddying it. I think it's a simple thing on which we have hung socio-political consequences that people often (rightly) reject and therefore we complicate it to try and avoid those consequences. Better we stop hanging social consequences on the notion of gender.
> > pretty much everybody else is comfortable with the biological
> definition of male and female and you just start to sound crazy.
>
> Pretty much everybody else is comfortable with the defintion of
> marriage as being between a man and a woman. Am I and those who
> support and help my effort for marriage equality crazy? Or are the
> crazy ones those people with a simple definition of mariage?
Pretty much most marriages are between a man and a woman. That doesn't mean people don't understand homosexual couplehood. They just have an overly narrow view of what couplehood should be.
> > I think male is biologically male. Female is biologically female.
> That's it for gender.
>
> But don't genes and chromosones just give an indication of what
> gender might be, and then biology and environment and friends and
> family all kick in to have their say in the manifestation/enactment of
> gender?
No. Gender manifests in the womb. Chromosomal karyotype defines it.
> > A gay man is no more or less a man than a straight man.
>
> My husband would fight you on that one. LOL.
I'm sorry he thinks that way.
> > Genetically normal individuals
>
> Can you define what a "genetically normal individual" is?
Yes, a person who has a normal karyotype and no genetic defects that manifest in abnormal gene expression.
> > . . . for whom having a particular social gender identity is so
> important that they alter their appearance or bodies can ask to be called
> whatever they like.
>
> And what they desire to be called is what they are. That to me would
> be the progressive stance.
No, what they desire to be called is not necessarily what they are. Wishing is not having.
> > They can't actually alter their gender or "reassign" it, but who am I to
> tell them not to try?
>
> But they do reassign it and successfully so. Who are you to say that
> they do not succeed?
I'm a person who understands how DNA works. Having your genitals cut off and getting breast implants doesn't make a man a woman. It makes him a man with no genitals and breast implants.
> > And if accepting a person's public declaration of gender benefits those
> few unfortunates whose biological gender is cryptic due to a genetic
> abnormality, so much the better.
>
> It is not cryptic, it is just not male or female. And why are they unfortunate
> to be neither male or female? Isn't is possible that they are advantaged
> in a way we have yet to understand?
"Cryptic" is a medical term. They are unfortunate because they experience illnesses, early death, and often can never have sex. What advantage that might be, I don't know.
> > I think gender is a very simple idea and society muddles it, rather than
> society narrowly defining gender and the truth being more complex.
>
> No, society has promlugated a simplistic notion of gender (which you seem
> to endorse) whereas the truth (as in all things human) is far more complex.
I promulgate a scientific notion of gender which is pretty clear, I grant you.. Many, if not most, societies have notions of gender which I find bizarre and barbaric.
boddi