• AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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    2 days ago

    I never discriminated trans people.

    You directly replied to a post talking about biological essentialism and a misunderstanding of sex as a mechanism for discriminating against trans people, telling them “get a grip” and that caring about that scientific reality is “stupid fucking shit.”

    Whether you believe it is or not, that is a form of discrimination, as it essentially posits that we should just ignore these facts to appease closed-minded individuals to “win” the culture war, even if that “win” comes at the expense of… being trans not being considered “real” or “biologically accurate” by those who entirely misunderstand what being trans is.

    You need to realize that pushing scientific fact to the margins to appease other people fighting the ‘culture war’ does nothing but harm people so those other people can continue to live in ignorance.

    Your mentality is the same as someone arguing that we shouldn’t have talked about there being no biological evidence for black people being dumber than white people because that would “lose us the culture war” against white slave owners that think they should get to own slaves because black people are dumber than them. Maybe you win their votes, but you’ve done nothing but enable the continuation of slavery by not confronting its widely believed yet incorrect ideological backing.

    Not talking about things like intersex individuals and the unknowns about the links between sex and gender doesn’t win you anything in the long term if it comes at the cost of every single trans and intersex person’s (millions of people in just the USA, and that’s likely an undercount) rights by backsliding on public understanding of the subject.

      • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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        15 hours ago

        Variation within a binary makes it, by definition, not a binary system.

        Binary is 1 and 0. If you can have 1.5, or 1.234098723, you don’t have a binary system, you have a spectrum.

        For example, take this beautifully complicated diagram from Scientific American:

        image

        Typical biological males and females are on either end of the spectrum, yet other options exist in between. Hence, not a binary, but a spectrum.

        What do you call someone with XY chromosomes but female reproductive structures? How about someone with XX or XY chromosomes but ambiguous genitals, or someone with XXXYY chromosomes? What about someone with mosaicism that causes some cells in their body to have just the X chromosome, and some to have XY, with varying changes in what % each makes up of their body throughout their life?

        All of those are real conditions, and that’s just a fraction of them.

        The reason this essentialism is stupid is because it assumes a spectrum can in fact be boiled down to a binary, and also that the spectrum must specifically begin, end, and be defined by what is “typical”, and assuming anyone’s sex must solely be determined by its proximity to one of the two options, rather than simply… being allowed to be its own thing that isn’t binary, because the reality, obviously, isn’t.

        • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works
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          12 hours ago

          2 disjunct spectra form a binary. This is fact.

          Those conditions all are male or female DSDs. You can see that here:

          https://theparadoxinstitute.org/articles/sex-development-charts

          For example, a male DSD:

          XY female:

          The binary exists. Biologists have observed it.

          It’s not about “typical”. In anisogamous species, there’s sperm and there’s ova. Zero overlap. That’s what sex is. Any other definition is incoherent across species.

          • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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            4 hours ago

            Should have figured you’d cite a known anti-trans organization that distorts scientific reality to make a point. (oh boy, I sure do wonder why they have an article titled “8-Step Action Plan to Eliminate Gender Ideology”, surely because they actually understand broadly accepted and heavily researched science and not because they just want to make a political point while sounding scientific!)

            They think sex can only be determined by gametes. This ignores the fundamental reality that many humans do not produce either of them while retaining wholly ambiguous or non-ambiguous reproductive organs, that some humans can produce both (albeit rarely), or that some humans lose or gain the ability to produce one throughout their lives. (not producing ova until puberty? Tough luck, guess you’re not a female! Body hasn’t fully developed internal reproductive organs until later in life? Guess you’re sex-less until then! Does your body never produce sperm or ova because of a genetic issue? Guess it’s impossible to assign you a sex!)

            It also ignores the fact that we tend to classify sex based on phenotypic characteristics. If someone has a penis, generally masculine face and fat distribution, but XX chromosomes and is still able to sometimes produce ova while not producing sperm, even if they’re missing the rest of the necessary reproductive functions, for all intensive purposes, you would call that person male. If every other part of their body is typically male, there is no reason to continually insist that person is actually a female because somewhere inside their body they can produce ova that don’t do anything.

            If sex is determined by gametes, there are exceptions to the rule that can’t be classified solely as one or the other.

            If sex is determined by chromosomes, then any exception from XX or XY disproves the rule.

            If sex is determined by phenotypic characteristics, then we see a spectrum in how they present.

            This also simply ignores the fundamental reality that even if you can oversimplify a complex condition into one of two more common options, it doesn’t mean that is correct or accurate to do so.

            To use the analogy I used before, you could say that all numbers for simplicity, should be rounded to either 1 or 0, even if it’s 0.9, 0.2, or 0.2398547293875. That could be useful shorthand, and it could generally describe semi-closely how those numbers would operate within a broadly binary system, but at the end of the day those numbers are not 0 or 1.

            Claiming that “0.9 = 1” would be stupid.

            Claiming “0.9 is basically 1 so why bother ever giving it a different label” would be stupid.

            Claiming “0.9 is close enough to 1 to not make a huge difference in outward perception and day-to-day use, so we can rely on it for shorthand while understanding 0.9 is not 1” would be very reasonable.

            You cannot look at a spectrum, say “they’re still within the other 2, therefore there’s only 2”, and call it a day.

            It’s true these conditions can present similarly to one of the two typical male or female sets of characteristics, or that they can derive from what are often the typical chromosomes of either group. It’s not true that they are male or female and there is only a binary and nothing else.

            • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works
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              4 hours ago

              To borrow your analogy, gametes range from 0 - 1 and 100 - 101. That’s a binary.

              If every other part of their body is typically male

              What makes the rest of their body “typically male”? What does “male” mean? How can you define it in a way that make sense for humans, chickens, bees, and plants?

              When you’re done thinking very hard, you’ll realize the answer.

              Gametes.

              Welcome to the scientific consensus. We’ll be here when you’re ready to accept the truth. And yes, someone that produces ova is female (or hermaphroditic in other species), regardless of secondary sex characteristics.

              As detailed in many other comments, not being able to produce gametes does not mean one is sexless. Everyone is born with sexed structures in their bodies. No human is capable of producing fully functional gametes of both types. Even in the extreme case of ovotestes, they will have a semi-/non- functional gonad of one type, and nonfunctional bits of tissue of the other type.

              Trying to introduce this argument displays your ignorance. Please stop embarrassing yourself.

              Other animals do have hermaphrodites and other reproductive systems, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androdioecy. Humans don’t. Those other species are a good example of what humans aren’t.

              Oh, and good thing those charts included sources which you ignored. Here, I’ll zoom in on them for you.

              • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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                4 hours ago

                To borrow your analogy, gametes range from 0 - 1 and 100 - 101. That’s a binary.

                There is also the absence of gametes entirely. Hence, you can’t just rely on gametes to determine sex unless you also think humans can be sex-less.

                You’re also presupposing, again, that gametes must be the sole way we determine sex, therefore if they are a binary, sex is a binary. You can have something that is a binary that is also irrelevant or not the sole determiner of what something is as part of another category.

                What makes the reset of their body “typically male”?

                This is broadly considered by most people for most purposes to be the phenotypic characteristics we most often associate with people considered male. We determined that a group of people commonly had a similar set of phenotypic characteristics, and applied the term “male” to it. This is subjectively determined by society. We could have additionally defined sex based on skin colors, the size or shape of reproductive organs, eye color, etc. We just decided we wanted a category to broadly define people’s phenotypic characteristics, so we looked at the two most distinct, broad groups, and didn’t bother splitting up further. The category does not have a sole, objective determiner, as I’ve demonstrated to you multiple times now. You can have one gamete, both gametes, neither gametes, or only have or stop having a particular gamete at a different point in your life. They do not make for a bulletproof framework underlying sex determination.

                It is like asking me to define what a “chair” is. I could say something with a flat surface, back, and 4 legs, but that could accommodate a bench or a bed, for example. it has objectively measurable characteristics, most chairs will be readily identified as a chair and not a bench or a bed by most people, but you will also find some pieces of furniture that are just close enough for people to have differing opinions on. There is no objective measurement. This is annoying to our human brains that love to have a more concrete understanding of things, which is why the outdated idea of the sex binary persists in spite of all evidence of those who don’t land neatly on either side.

                Later, as science has progressed, we have found that many people do not solely have this similar set of phenotypic or genotypic characteristics, or have the same phenotypic characteristics with different genotypic ones. Thus, we have expanded our understanding of what sex is to clarify that we know it is not a binary, since we can see that individuals exist without fitting neatly into these groups. This is why the term intersex exists. Science changes when we learn more about the natural world, you are just refusing to acknowledge the advancements we have made in our understanding of human sex over time.

                Welcome to the scientific consensus.

                I could say the same to you, but you seem intent on rejecting what we’ve learned because it’s not as neat and simple as you want it to be. Sex is messy, sex is a spectrum, nearly all scientists agree on this fact.

                I can tell this isn’t a productive conversation, and you seem to be dead set on staying exactly where you are, comfortably holding the same beliefs irrespective of all evidence, so I’m going to mute this thread for myself now. Feel free to respond, but you won’t get another response from me, it’d be a waste of my time.

                • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works
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                  2 hours ago

                  You really, truly don’t understand what you’re talking about.

                  What is common between a male human and a male bumblebee?

                  Think about it hard.

                  I’ll wait.

                  And no, the overwhelming consensus in biology is that sex is binary. That is truth. You’re spreading misinformation

      • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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        2 days ago

        Get a fucking grip on fucking reality you stupid fucking idiot. Stop inventing things in your head to disagree with you putrid rotting dog cunt.

        I see you’re not exactly into constructive conversation. Maybe chill out instead of getting so angry at comments online that it sends you into a fit of swearing rage?

        justify it

        Sure. Any time, any day. I doubt you’ll even read past the first sentence given how irrationally angry you seem to be, but maybe you’ll prove me wrong.

        • The vast majority of people do not even know there are sexes that could be defined outside the binary of male and female. They don’t know that chromosome combinations outside XX and XY exist at all.
        • When people are told this, many of them refuse to accept it, and simply cast it as “outliers” that in the end, don’t change their belief that “there are only 2 sexes”, sometimes because their religion simply states there’s only 2 against all currently known evidence, or even if they are just more broadly liberal and would still say gender is separate from sex. It is an uncomfortable thing for some to come to terms with to understand that something so deeply ingrained into our culture is much more complicated than it seems at a glance.
        • This has been a known fact for centuries, and yet society broadly still assumes, by default, that it is “abnormal” and “undesirable”, so surgeries are often performed on intersex individuals as babies to “correct” their sex characteristics to match just the two binary options most people are familiar with, even if that individual later finds out and would otherwise have not wanted the surgery.
        • To this day, people like you are continuing to call people like me a “putrid rotting dog cunt” for explaining this well-researched, broadly demonstrated topic with widespread occurrences across the globe, when the more reasonable answer to being told such a fact would be to spend even a minute on any search engine to find out you’re going against the whole of medical consensus and seemingly getting incredibly incensed over the fact that nobody agrees with you.
          • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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            2 days ago

            You aren’t adressing what they said

            Every part of their statement was either reaffirmed or backed up with additional supporting statements in what I wrote. Either you didn’t read what I typed, or you simply don’t have the greatest reading comprehension and can’t see how my statements back up what they originally posted.

            you are just stating random facts I never disagreed with.

            Those ‘random facts’ are directly reaffirming the other person’s statements, which you called “the stupidest fucking shit I have seen today.” Is it safe to say that you calling something stupid probably means you disagree with it?

            You are disingenuous

            Keep telling yourself that, I’m sure you gotta fuel that anger somehow. It’s not you who is wrong, it must be everyone else!

            • CovfefeKills@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              calling something stupid probably means you disagree with it?

              Jesus fucking christ dude biological sex is everything you have describe what are you even disagreeing with because I am disagreeing with the sentiment of a fucking idiot I am not talking about gender.

              • AmbitiousProcess (they/them)@piefed.social
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                2 days ago

                biological sex is everything you have describe what are you even disagreeing with

                Someone said, at least to summarize, that it’s stupid to think there’s only two sexes, and that people are intentionally ignorant of that fact.

                You called that statement “stupid fucking shit”, then in another comment said “I disagreed with this fucking idiot that’s the extent of it.” as if that changed the fact that what you were disagreeing with was their statement.

                Thus, the understanding is that you think those ideas are stupid, and thus incorrect.

                Even now, you just said “I am not talking about gender.” Guess what? I’m not either. I’m talking about societal understanding of sex characteristics and how they get classified, just like the original comment you said was stupid was doing.

                Of course I’m talking about biological sex, that’s the primary component of the thing you called stupid. What else am I supposed to be addressing here? You literally re-stated your point again, saying “This is the stupidest fucking shit I have seen today” while specifically quoting the part of the original comment addressing biological sex. Do you need a refresher on what you yourself quoted? Here it is:

                In conclusion, “biological sex” is just another gross simplification created by people who’s minds are so pathetic they can’t comprehend reality and so choose to live by mantra founded in disproven pseudo-sciences, religion, and other excuses to avoid critical thinking, and then put themselves in positions of power.

                Does that statement not literally begin by addressing biological sex?

                Do you even know the topic of the argument you’re having right now? Are you just blindly disagreeing with people without reading the words you’re quoting? I’m not sure if you’re simply angry for the sake of it and ignorant of what you’re talking about, or if you’re just trolling on purpose, but regardless I’m done with this comment chain. You clearly aren’t acting in good faith, and you clearly don’t have a grasp on what it is you even started arguing about.

      • himezero@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        This just goes to show transphobes and bigots refuse to learn about the reality we live in and instead lash out because something doesn’t fit their worldview.

          • himezero@lemmy.world
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            2 days ago

            I only see you lashing out. Op is 100% correct and you are refusing to learn anything. Instead you call people a putrid rotting dog. Honestly I bet a putrid rotting dog smells better than you do.

            • CovfefeKills@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Op is 100% correct

              Why? Because it fits your worldview?

              you are refusing to learn anything

              I am not being taught anything I don’t already know.

              • himezero@lemmy.world
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                2 days ago

                Because science and peer reviewed data helped to inform me of reality. As well as living with non-binary and trans people, not to mention dating a trans man.

                I am not being taught anything I don’t already know.

                I think you need to take a logic class or read logic primer. Let’s remove the negatives, “I am being taught everything I already know” hmmm yeah that makes sense. You should try learning things you don’t already know. This is what I ment by refusing to learn. Not challenging your own beliefs doesn’t lead to growth, it leads to ignorance.

                • CovfefeKills@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  Uhm this is the new stupidest thing I have seen today.

                  The information provided to me in these posts is not new to me. I am aware of this information already.

                  “I am being taught everything I already know” hmmm yeah that makes sense

                  You invented something to disagree with good job buddy you are so smart.

                  • himezero@lemmy.world
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                    2 days ago

                    Oh so you haven’t looked in a mirror today then.

                    Sure… I taught you about logic and you promptly dismissed it because you don’t understand it. I gave you the negated form of the statement you said. It’s still the same logical meaning, I just removed the double negative to make it easy for you to understand why that is an illogical statement. Take my statement “not challenging your own beliefs doesn’t lead to growth” now the negated version “challenging your beliefs leads to growth.” It’s seriously not that difficult. I didn’t invent something just to disagree with it. That’s called the strawman fallacy, instead I used logic to prove your statement illogical. If you understood logic you could have used much better reasons to argue with the original statement you had issues with to begin with. Instead you name call and demean everyone, an ad hominem fallacy.