TrackerNeil

My understanding is that the offenses mentioned in the bill need not have resulted in convictions, and that's my problem with this bill. That means the prosecution can dig up any and all accusations for presentation at trial, as long as they can be argued to be relevant. I'm not necessarily against prior convictions being admitted as evidence, but mere accusations? Nah. The defense cannot be expected to defend against the charges plus any and all allegations the prosecution is able to scare up, no matter how credible they may be. And, yes, I know the defense has the opportunity to cross-examine and challenge credibility, but I envision the effect that a parade of witnesses would have on a jury. Lots of people think that where there is smoke there is fire, and I don't think we should be sending people to jail based on folk wisdom.

Oh, New York, you are making a mistake.

I don't know what you mean by "sympathetic." I believe sex is binary because I think it makes sense to believe that, not because I think Colin Wright is hot (although he is) or that Luana Maroja is wicked cool (she might be). I sense a difference between you and I on the issue of association; that is, the movements or media with whom people are perceived to be aligned with. For myself, I no longer worry very much about that kind of thing; instead, I try to focus on the ideas people put forward. Keeping that model in mind, I can agree with, say, Colin Wright on the binary nature of sex, and disagree with him on pronoun usage. If he gives a talk to Moms for LIberty, I still feel the same way about both positions. I try to separate the message from the messenger, and hopefully I am successful more often than not. Others can pursue a different path, but that's mine.

This is a sword that cuts both ways, I think. If Jerry Coyne is to be disregarded because he doesn't like social-justice politics, than isn't Jack Turban in the same boat for his own advocacy? If we go too far down that road, there won't be many expert opinions we can consider at all. Also, other scientists who think sex is binary include Luana Maroja, at Williams College, Carole Hooven at Harvard, and Emma Hilton at the University of Manchester.

Exactly. I find the "argument to exceptions" to be odd. I mean, occasionally, there are human beings born without functional eyes, but we still say that binocular vision is a normal human trait. If very, very rarely a human is born with only one leg, no one would seriously argue that it can no longer be said that humans are bipedal. Yes, occasionally there is a Castor Semenya, for whom sex is more difficult to clearly ascertain, but I think it's strange to think that her existence means there's no binary.

Partricularly coming from gay people. For years and years we were suspected of either molesting children or trying to make them gay, or sometimes both. I guess Gays Against Groomers never got that lesson in history class.

Although I agree with Wright on many things, I disagree in this. I don't think that anything about biological sex requires us to use or not use this or that pronoun. He's absolutist about that. I understand whence that absolutism comes, but I don't ascribe to it. I have never heard Wright say, however, that science requires us to agree with that view. (I have heard him speak many times and I read his Substack and I've never seen anything like that.) My best guess is that he'd agree that he's expressing a personal opinion and not a scientific one. However, he occasionally does Q-and-A sessions, so I could ask him, see what he says.

I don't disagree with that, although I think that people who want to harm others need not settle upon science as an excuse--there are a world of other reasons. People have said that gays were corrupting morality, or that Jews were secretly controlling everybody's money, neither of which are scientific observations. In short, if one wants to be a terrible person, one excuse will do as well as any other. I appreciate your reply. I think I understand your thinking better than I did previously.

@Matrim Fox Cauthon, I'll admit this your response isn't what I expected, and I appreciate the effort you took to write this. I'll reply. These feel like social concerns, and as I stated upthread I never feel the need for science to tell me why I should be a decent person. I think there are explanations for these things to be found that lie outside the belief of sex as spectrum, or even sex as binary. But I am curious--can you cite some specific "evolutionary changes and adaptations in humans' that are explained by sex as spectrum that are not well explained by a binary approach?

Let's get the record straight before anyone gets too twisted up about this: Here's the Trevor Noah interview, and the comments that we're all referencing are at 2:57. This is just a bad argument, and getting hung up over my humility, or lack of same, is a derailment tactic. However, it is a good example of the level of discourse we often see on this topic. We don't talk about ideas; we scrutinze each other for hints of the foolishness/hypocrisy/bigotry/whatever we are sure must motivate what we are saying. That said, I will concede that I was gently mocking Ivy, and no matter how bad her argument is, that wasn't very humble of me, so accordingly I have removed that part of my comment. Hopefully, we can try to discuss the actual argument and not what I said about it.

I doubt we can, but, for the sake of the thread, I'll modify my original post so we can move away from a discussion of Just How Humble Trackerneil Is.

Oh, she was a piece of work on that program! Her argument was basically: "I am a biological creature and not a robot, and my identification cards/papers all say I am female. This is not a good argument. (Edited to ensure no topic derailment.) EDITED TO ADD: Something that bugs me about the notion of sex as spectrum is that I don't know where it gets us. I mean, germ theory teaches us how disease spreads, evolutionary theory helps explains the way species develop, but what does sex-as-spectrum tell us about the natural world? Sex is a reproductive strategy, and for nearly every animal on the planet, and (I believe) all mammals, and certainly human beings, reproduction requires a small-gamete producer plus a large-gamete producer. The binary explains how that works; the spectrum doesn't. If a notion put forward as science doesn't explain the natural world, I don't see the value.

Thank you. I understand a bit better.

DMC, I am curious. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to disagree with @Ran--and with Dawkins--about the binary nature of sex. Assuming I have that right, can you tell me why you disagree? Was there a time you thought sex was binary and then changed your mind? If so, what convinced you? I'd like to try to understand. EDITED TO ADD: I'm not asking you to persuade me; I just want to know what persuaded you.

I have not gotten into these back-and-forths, because they are often not the exchange of ideas but just jousting. However, this is just wrong, wrong, wrong. No one here has suggested that, and it's my understanding that the mods would not permit it. I really try to speak from a place of humility, but what you have said here is just not true.

Haha...like Satan, when my name is invoked, I appear! @Ser Scot A Ellison is right about the unemotionality of ST characters. I always swear that, just off-screen, the directly is yelling at the actors, "Give me less emotion! Less!" I don't expect these people to go around in deep depression, but, for crying out loud, they could act out once in awhile. The problem, I think, is that Roddenbery created perfected characters, who have no lessons to learn and no real struggles to contend with. How do you write drama around characters like that?

To add to what @Ran has said, we know that sex isn't about chromosomes because of what we see in nature. Although in humans chromosomes determine (not define) sex, there are some animals for which that is not the case. In some crocodiles sex is determined by the temperature at which the eggs are incubated, but crocodiles are still male or female. So sex is something else...it's gametes one produces or would have the function to produce. (That italicized part is there to head off "Are post-menopausal women still women?" objections.) Jerry Coyne, Emeritus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, has written a good bit on this topic, and I recommend him. (He is also a staunch defender of evolutionary theory, which you wouldn't think still needed defending but this is America.)

There are loads of scientists who understand how true this is: Jerry Coyne, Luana Maroja, Colin Wright, Carole Hooven, Emma Hilton, and even Richard Dawkins, just to name a few. It's odd to me that there's a new idea that sex is about hormones or chromosomes or secondary sexual characteristics. It's even odder to me that this biological fact is held to mean that trans people are somehow invalid or evil or whatever. I understand the urge to look to science to tell us how to live, but...well, back in the 90s, there was a lot of talk about the "gay gene", as if once that were understood, homophobia would melt away. No such gene has been discovered, and yet homophobia is much reduced since then--same-sex marriage even became legal! Clearly, nobody needed science to tell them that specific injustice needed to be corrected. Similarly, nobody needs to believe anything false about biology to understand that trans people deserve the same dignity, respect and opportunity that non-trans people expect for ourselves. In short, science can't tell us why we should be decent goddamn human beings.

I think it depends on the anyone and the anything. Sure, there are some people who have no real curiosity, are convinced they are always correct, and assume they know what those who disagree with them are thinking. But there are those, often on the sidelines of discussions, who aren't as emotionally invested in being "right", and thus are more willing to consider an issue with at least some humility. It's not always easy to see those people, but they're there. Or so I tell myself.

I'm honestly not sure. These are difficult questions, because I think that, often, there is no "right" answer. We're balancing the interests of one group against the interests of another. For example, I don't want someone refusing care from a trans doctor because that patient just doesn't like trans people--that's not a good reason to request a new doctor. That said, there are religions that require strict separation between the sexes, and that seems like a somewhat better reason for concern. Even leaving religion aside, there are other reasons one might specify the sex of a doctor, like women who prefer a female gynecologist, which seems perfectly reasonable to me. I don't think anyone is going to find a hard-and-fast rule that satisfies everyone; we as a society are going to have to ask difficult questions and accept that the answers may be non-perfect but the best that can be done. Thanks for the question. I hope I have answered it.

Looks like the Cass Review might have had an impact on the NHS, at least.

Ok, let me drop the example and ask the question once more. Am I required to change a specific belief because someone I find objectionable agrees with me on that specific belief?

Dick Cheney, a terrible vice-president to a terrible president, who has execrable views on most things, was pro-same-sex marriage, back when that was still a cultural debate**. Should I have abandoned my own support for SSM? I don't much care for the guilt-by-association approach to any topic, because it often assumes that people who arrive at the same conclusion made the same journey, and I think that's just not reflective of the human experience. People form their opinions in many ways, often without any real intellectual rigor, but that doesn't necessarily make those opinions bad. **I'll point out that, twelve years ago, SSM was hotly debated on this board, and not just by gay boarders. Everyone got a say, and even if I didn't always care for what I heard, I'm glad I heard it.

I want to say this is delicately as I can: these issues do not just affect trans people. Right now, a group of athletes is suing the NCAA over this. A group of athletes is suing Connecticut over this. A detransitioner is suing Kaiser Permanente. None of these litigants are trans (so far as I know), and all are claiming to have suffered losses from public or private policies about gender issues. It's easy to just shrug and say that these plaintiffs are hateful bigots, and that they are just whining or reacting from thwarted entitlement, but the fact is they exist and we as a society have to deal with them. The only way we do that is to have public discourse, and that means acknowledging that everyone, trans or cis, has a stake and gets a say. I don't know how these issues will ultimately be resolved, and to be honest I don't always have a strong opinion how they should be resolved, but I know that the best way to find that out is for us, on this board and in this democracy, to discuss it, hopefully respectfully and with the awareness that we're talking about lives, not chess pieces. What's the alternative?

One of the ways in which I have matured over time is that I no longer assume that people who have a opinions I disagree with, even opinions I think are ill-formed and absurd, are either fooled or evil. There is comfort in thinking so; the world makes sense when you figure that your opponents are either blind or base. Those are easy-to-understand explanations that enable you to quickly close the book. The world makes a lot less sense when you consider the possibility that some people aren't stupid, or malign, and they're not puppets dancing on the strings of some cosmic Karl Rove. They have odd life experiences, or different values, or personal idiosyncracies, all of which combine to produce convictions that don't always seem to add up. For myself, I assume that people actually believe what they say they believe, and go from there. Just because they aren't thinking like me doesn't mean they aren't thinking.