[RD] What is gender ?

[Lemon Merchant]

Saying "disorders exist" is hardly the same as claiming to be able to define and diagnose them...

Agreed.

Sex is a medical definition based on observable data. Gender is a largely psychological construct.

 

[uppi]

But if we deem sex as a 'primary reproduction unit' in biology, then yes, we have two sexes*. Sperm and egg. It's a fork in a two-dimensional plane. There are a host of humans that don't have a sex under this definition, children and old people, for example. I struggle with whether to call this third option a 'null option' along the same two-dimensional plane, or a factor in a third dimension. If this were a question in vectors, I'd use a third dimension, and not just add a third force along a two-dimensional plane.

I don't think sex should be reduced to the reproductive system and much less to its the function. There are hormonal and physiological differences that are part of sex as well. If you exclude that from the definition, you would need to introduce an additional classification beyond sex and gender, which would only add to the confusion.

I don't get what your second dimension is. The way I see it, sex is one-dimensional, no matter how many possible values you think this dimension can take.

 

[El_Machinae]

You can't really call it a one-dimensional spectrum. It is vastly more complex than that. As far as maleness goes, how do you specifically lineup a case where a man is biologically capable of fathering, enjoys rutting with women, but lacks the desire to create or nurture The Offspring. In comparison, a man that wants children, is biologically capable of it, but has no desire to have sex with women. Both are absolutely examples of male, but as to which is more? No idea. Especially not along one dimension

As you know, sex is expressed along a large number of biological features. There is not a perfect correlation, which requires an arbitrary ordering when classifying

 

[innonimatu]

Gender is generally taken to be something like "the cultural aspects of masculinity and femininity." It's distinct from gender identity which is a person's internal experience of their own gender.

That's a curious distinction. It raises the question, is a person's internal experience of its own gender a private matter? Or are both social and therefore public matters? This seems rather relevant to some contemporary discussions.

You can't really call it a one-dimensional spectrum. It is vastly more complex than that. As far as maleness goes, how do you specifically lineup a case where a man is biologically capable of fathering, enjoys rutting with women, but lacks the desire to create or nurture The Offspring. In comparison, a man that wants children, is biologically capable of it, but has no desire to have sex with women. Both are absolutely examples of male, but as to which is more? No idea. Especially not along one dimension.

Funny how this difference has been observable throughout human history and nobody seems to have thought it was a "gender issue". It was just different ways of being a man. Now apparently it is "an issue" - perhaps because some people don't have anything more important to worry about? Used to be the domain of theologians, arguing about the sex of angels and such... Are people so obsesses with "identity" that they must mint new ones just to feel special, and them claim to be oppressed if everybody else does not go out of they way to give them attention? Spend their lives worrying about building and being recognized as "#identity" in forms and whatever, instead of, you know, actually getting on with their lives?

It used to be that people demanded freedom to live and let live. Now, they demand to be paid attention to and treated as precious unique flowers... damn identity politics. Losing sight of the practical for the sake of satisfying the imaginary.

 

[Lexicus]

That's a curious distinction. It raises the question, is a person's internal experience of its own gender a private matter? Or are both social and therefore public matters? This seems rather relevant to some contemporary discussions.

I mean, I don't think that private matters are necessarily not social matters.

It used to be that people demanded freedom to live and let live. Now, they demand to be paid attention to and treated as precious unique flowers... damn identity politics. Losing sight of the practical for the sake of satisfying the imaginary.

It's weird, when I see people aiming beyond mere survival, my reaction is love, not contempt.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

*And then, Henrietta Lacks has cloned herself into thousands of freezers around the world. So, as a human reproductive unit she's actually a third choice along the two-dimensional grid. One can be sexually male and clone oneself. Same with female. Same with neither of those two options.

Minor quibble: she wasn't given a choice though.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yup, no choice. That really could change soon.

Funny how this difference has been observable throughout human history and nobody seems to have thought it was a "gender issue".

We were discussing sex, not gender, and whether it was binary along one dimension or two.

Throughout history, people talked about how animals "reproduced after their kind". We know more now. HeLa cells are an example of a human person evolving out a separate branch of life, the human microbe. We need additional words as we learn new things.

 

[Yeekim]

It's weird, when I see people aiming beyond mere survival, my reaction is love, not contempt.

Page 4 and no Godwin yet? Time to remedy that.

Love is your reaction to anything and everything beyond mere survival? That would be weird indeed.
I mean, aiming for a genocide or kicking as many puppies as possible is also "aiming beyond mere survival"...

 

[warpus]

Even for sex you need to have at least a third option for people of biologically non-binary sex. Otherwise you would be forcing some people to lie.

By default I would create three buttons for gender: Male, Female and Other. If the client isn't happy about that, he should provide a list of what genders he wants to ask about (including 'Other' for those not covered by the list)

Most forms I've seen do have those 3 options for Gender. Most seem to not ask for Sex anymore, but maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention.

What are some examples of non male and non female sex? I thought biological sex was binary, and it was gender that was open to many more options (since it's a social construct and not biological in nature)

 

[schlaufuchs]

Which then raises the question of what does it mean to change one's sex (I.e., just declaring desire to change, hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery, surgery + hormones, or nothing at all).

As an anecdote, the best female volleyball player in Brazil right now is a transwoman (she's had her surgery and hormone therapy). She broke all records, some of which have stood for decades, in a country with a huge female volleyball tradition. It's a very complex issue.

2. I firmly believe that Men’s sports should be open to all and Women’s sports only open to cis women. Ronda Rousey was severely injured by a Trans woman who obviously had an advantage of muscle & bone density of previously being male. Really, when most gold medalists in the women’s sports are trans, it puts natural women at a distinct disadvantage.

Bethany Alice Jones et al., "Sport and Transgender People: A Systematic Review of the Literature Relating to Sport Participation and Competitive Sport Policies" in Sports Med 2017; 47(4): 701–716. (link to abstract: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5357259/)

Whether transgender people should be able to compete in sport in accordance with their gender identity is a widely contested question within the literature and among sport organisations, fellow competitors and spectators. Owing to concerns surrounding transgender people (especially transgender female individuals) having an athletic advantage, several sport organisations place restrictions on transgender competitors (e.g. must have undergone gender-confirming surgery). In addition, some transgender people who engage in sport, both competitively and for leisure, report discrimination and victimisation.

To the authors’ knowledge, there has been no systematic review of the literature pertaining to sport participation or competitive sport policies in transgender people. Therefore, this review aimed to address this gap in the literature.

Eight research articles and 31 sport policies were reviewed.

Currently, there is no direct or consistent research suggesting transgender female individuals (or male individuals) have an athletic advantage at any stage of their transition (e.g. cross-sex hormones, gender-confirming surgery) and, therefore, competitive sport policies that place restrictions on transgender people need to be considered and potentially revised.

"Gender Transports: Privileging the “Natural” in Gender Testing Debates for Intersex and Transgender Athletes." in American Journal of Bioethics (AM J BIOETHICS), Jul2012; 12(7): 19-21. (3p)

Karkazis and colleagues provide a thorough, wellargued case in the service of elite female athletes with intersex conditions or disorders of sexual development (DSD), bearing in mind recent revisions to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) policy on gender testing of female athletes. They persuasively demonstrate that higher levels of testosterone do not correlate to better athletic performance, effectively undermining any claims that female athletes with intersex conditions have an unfair advantage. For example, citing compelling scientific studies, they argue that women with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS: high androgen levels, but no testosterone receptors at all) are “overrepresented among elite athletes” (Tucker and Collins 2010), while women with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH: who have very high androgen levels) don’t tend to be elite athletes and are “disproportionally affected by short stature, obesity, dysregulation of mood hormones and unpredictable, salt-losing crises” (Eugster et al. 2001). Karkazis and colleagues also effectively argue that there is no known optimal level of testosterone that ensures a high-level athletic performance.

Scott Skinner-Thompson and Ilona M. Turner, "Title IX's Protections For Transgender Student Athletes." in Wisconsin Journal of Law, Gender & Society, Fall2013, Vol. 28 Issue 3, p271-300. 30p.

Several concerns are frequently raised in opposition to the inclusion of transgender students on athletic teams consistent with their gender identity. In addition to concerns regarding competitive advantages or disadvantages, addressed above, concerns regarding privacy in locker rooms and the alleged lack of an objective standard for determining whether a student is a boy or girl for athletic purposes are often raised. However, each of these concerns is dramatically overstated, and such fears can be easily addressed by common sense, practical solutions. These unrealistic fears cannot justify denying transgender youth the equal opportunity to participate in sports.

[...]

Even among adults, the range of physical differences within each sex is far broader than the average differences between men and women.92

[/quote=NCAA Policy]Transgender women display a great deal of physical variation, just as there is a great deal of natural variation in physical size and ability among non-transgender women and men. Many people may have a stereotype that all transgender women are unusually tall and have large bones and muscles. But that is not true. A male-to-female transgender woman may be small and slight, even if she is not on hormone blockers or taking estrogen. It is important not to overgeneralize. The assumption that all male-bodied people are taller, stronger, and more highly skilled in a sport than all female-bodied people is not accurate.93

[...]

Even after puberty has begun, young people develop at different rates, and high-school-age students exhibit a wide range of physical characteristics.96 Therefore, by necessity, high school sports, already accommodate students at vastly different levels of development.97 The assumption that transgender girls will be inherently bigger, stronger, and more skilled is “especially inaccurate when applied to youth who are still developing physically and who therefore display a significantly broader range of variation in size, strength, and skill than older youth and adults.”98 Accordingly, age or physical development alone should not impede the integration of transgender students.

Brendon Tagg, "Transgender Netballers: Ethical Issues and Lived Realities", in Sociology of Sport Journal, 2012, 29, 151-167

More recent literature continues to debate the ideological constructions surrounding the discussions of fairness of transgender athletes’ entrance to women’s sport. Nevertheless, these studies tend to advocate transgender inclusion within competitive sport by arguing that male-to-female transgender athletes have no biological advantage over female athletes. Sarah Teetzel (2006), for example, argued that transgendered athletes may in fact have no significant athletic advantage over nontransgender athletes as many endocrinologists take the view that “sexreassignment surgery and hormone therapy negate any advantages” (p. 237). More specifically, even if transgender females, on average, are likely have larger hands, feet, hearts, and lungs when compared with biological females, Teetzel pointed out that there was no evidence that this actually improved performance. For example, Canadian mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq (quoted in Cavanagh and Sykes, 2006, p. 95) suggested that her sex change actually “made things harder because … I no longer had the muscle mass to support my bones.”

Pablo S. Torre, "The Transgender Athlete" in Sports Illustrated 5/28/2012, Vol. 116 Issue 22

There is no published medical data on precisely how long it takes to negate the athletic advantages of a lifetime of testosterone exposure. But one athlete has tackled the question in a personal way. Medical physicist Joanna Harper, 55, who was born male, began hormone therapy in order to transition to female in August '04. Harper had been competing as a male age-group distance runner for years, and she carefully documented the impact that suppressing testosterone and taking estrogen had on her running. "I thought I would get slower gradually," Harper says. Instead she started losing speed and strength within three weeks. "I felt the same when I ran," she says. "I just couldn't go as fast." In February, Harper won the 55-to-59 age group at the women's national cross-country championship in St. Louis, but she is a shadow of her former athletic self. As a man in 2003, Harper ran the Helvetia Half-Marathon in Portland in 1:23:11; in '05, as a woman, she finished the same race in 1:34:01, a difference of nearly 50 seconds per mile.

Factoring in age and gender-graded performance standards, though, Harper is almost exactly as good a female runner as she was as a male--and it took less than a year of hormone therapy to get that way. Data that Harper has collected from a half dozen other male-to-female runners tell a similar story. "It doesn't answer definitively the question of whether I have an advantage or not," she says. "But it's certainly strong evidence that my performances in both genders are approximately equal."

Abstract from Andria Bianchi "Transgender women in sport" in Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, Jul2017, Vol. 44 Issue 2, p229-242. 14p.

This paper considers whether transgender (trans*) women should be permitted to compete in female categories in sports. Trans* women are often criticized for competing in female categories because they are seen as having an unfair advantage. Specifically, they are seen as having high levels of testosterone that unfairly enhance their performance in comparison to cisgender competitors. In this paper, I argue that trans* women should be permitted to compete in female categories. I suggest that if we want to maintain the skill thesis as a guiding principle of sports and allow trans* women to compete in female categories, then we need to take relevant genetic advantages into consideration by introducing a handicap system. I claim that a handicap system should consider both cisgender and transgender women’s effective testosterone levels.

Emphases mine. Most of the articles I found were quick to point out the variation within gender as being far greater than the variation between genders or between trans- and cis- athletes. And if you're going to plant your flag on the hill of physical/hormonal attributes giving an athlete an unfair advantage over their competitors, then maybe we should do away with segregation altogether and start implementing an integrated handicapping system based on hormone levels/physical attributes.

 

[Yeekim]

Emphases mine. Most of the articles I found were quick to point out the variation within gender as being far greater than the variation between genders or between trans- and cis- athletes.

So why are male and female athletes competing separately?
EDIT: Also, huge variation within genders is entirely irrelevant, considering we speak of competitions between absolute top performers, often decided by a fraction of a second...

And if you're going to plant your flag on the hill of physical/hormonal attributes giving an athlete an unfair advantage over their competitors, then maybe we should do away with segregation altogether and start implementing an integrated handicapping system based on hormone levels/physical attributes.

Er... how would "an integrated handicapping system based on hormone levels/physical attributes" look like, exactly?
Say, in weightlifting?
Contestant receives a penalty because he was found to be too strong?
That said, I find professional (as opposed to amateur) sports to be a huge waste of money in general. For me, it primarily associates with corruption, doping, match-fixing, human trafficking and other "nice" phenomena.
So if the whole thing becomes even less tenable by issues such as these, it's not necessarily a dealbreaker for me - possibly the opposite even.

 

[schlaufuchs]

So why are male and female athletes competing separately?

Cultural and gender bias, mostly. But just in case you're missing what I'm saying here: the difference between, e.g. Usain Bolt running 100m and me running 100m is many many times greater than the difference between Usain Bolt running 100m and Carmelita Jeter or Marion Jones running 100m.

The question is more a matter of the ethics of sport. What is a 100m race supposed to be a measure of. If it's a measure of "who is the fastest"? Then why have segregation? If it's a measure of "who is the fastest given certain biological/physical/hormonal constraints" then why only segregate on the basis of "has a penis vs does not have a penis/other".

Er... how would "an integrated handicapping system based on hormone levels/physical attributes" look like, exactly?
Say, in weightlifting?
Contestant receives a penalty because he was found to be too strong?

I mean, isn't that basically what the current segregated system is? To use your example, a handicap system in weightlifting would go by, off the top of my head, % of weight lifted rather than absolute weight, or % of weight lifted above the average for a given testosterone/muscle mass/height weight. I mean we're in the world of big data. If the point of these sorts of competitions is to identify exceptional human beings and acknowledge them for their exceptionality then we should be grading them against expected outcomes, rather than absolute ones, right?

So if a 5'2" guy with x levels of testosterone and y muscle mass was expected to press z kg of weight and he lifted 150% of that weight, that would be far more incredible and laudable than at 6'6" guy with higher levels of testosterone and muscle mass lifting 114% of the expected weight, even if that 114% set a "world record"

It should, moreover, be noted that Weightlifting actually does do this: they create separate categories based on weight of the lifter in addition to male/female.

 

[Yeekim]

the difference between, e.g. Usain Bolt running 100m and me running 100m is many many times greater than the difference between Usain Bolt running 100m and Carmelita Jeter or Marion Jones running 100m.

Unfortunately for them, Marion and Carmelita would not be competing against you or me. They would be competing against Usain Bolt...

 

[Azem.Ocram]

In my post you quoted, @Owen Glyndwr , I said that the men’s olympics should be open to all. If natural women want to compete against men they should be able to. However, if transsexual or intersexed athletes want to compete against natural women, they should also be competing against men (and the natural women can opt out of competing with men).

 

[luiz]

Cultural and gender bias, mostly. But just in case you're missing what I'm saying here: the difference between, e.g. Usain Bolt running 100m and me running 100m is many many times greater than the difference between Usain Bolt running 100m and Carmelita Jeter or Marion Jones running 100m.

The question is more a matter of the ethics of sport. What is a 100m race supposed to be a measure of. If it's a measure of "who is the fastest"? Then why have segregation? If it's a measure of "who is the fastest given certain biological/physical/hormonal constraints" then why only segregate on the basis of "has a penis vs does not have a penis/other".



I mean, isn't that basically what the current segregated system is? To use your example, a handicap system in weightlifting would go by, off the top of my head, % of weight lifted rather than absolute weight, or % of weight lifted above the average for a given testosterone/muscle mass/height weight. I mean we're in the world of big data. If the point of these sorts of competitions is to identify exceptional human beings and acknowledge them for their exceptionality then we should be grading them against expected outcomes, rather than absolute ones, right?

So if a 5'2" guy with x levels of testosterone and y muscle mass was expected to press z kg of weight and he lifted 150% of that weight, that would be far more incredible and laudable than at 6'6" guy with higher levels of testosterone and muscle mass lifting 114% of the expected weight, even if that 114% set a "world record"

It should, moreover, be noted that Weightlifting actually does do this: they create separate categories based on weight of the lifter in addition to male/female.

Female categories were created so that females can actually compete at top level sports. Put it this way: how many women would have ever won an Olympic medal if they were competing in the equivalent male category?

If you just want to find out who the best are irrespective of sex, you'll find out that the fastest runners are the fastest male runners. So are the fastest swimmers. And the people who jump higher. The best boxers are the best male boxers. So are the best football and volleyball teams. The huge overall intra gender variance doesn't mean much if you're looking at Olympic level sports.

Let me put it this way: the all time female record for 100m wouldn't even qualify for the Male Olympics. The slowest guy there is faster than the fastest woman in history.

All that said, I don't know why some sports like shooting are segregated. Clearly some Olympic sports should be integrated.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Female categories were created so that females can actually compete at top level sports. Put it this way: how many women would have ever won an Olympic medal if they were competing in the equivalent male category?

And what I'm saying is if that's our objective then gender, while a decent heuristic, seems incomplete given the state of our science, data collection, and knowledge about gender. You could just as easily frame it as: "If the competition was a matter of determining who is the best at sprinting then only people over 5'11" would win/people with a testosterone over x level would win, etc.¹" The controversy over trans athletes, from where I'm standing, serves only to highlight how much of a farce of the whole endeavor was to begin with.

¹I mean if we really want to get technical here, for a lot of these sports (particularly things like swimming, gymnastics, etc.) it becomes more a matter of "people coming from countries with the most disposable income/best infrastructure/best ability to secure elite coaching personnel would win".

 

[Berzerker]

Some Texas wrestler born female but taking hormone treatments for male won the championship again. The girls he's wrestling cant take those drugs. He wanted to wrestle the boys but they wouldn't let him. Some people booed his victory...

 

[Ryika]

We were discussing sex, not gender, and whether it was binary along one dimension or two.

But all of this...

As far as maleness goes, how do you specifically lineup a case where a man is biologically capable of fathering, enjoys rutting with women, but lacks the desire to create or nurture The Offspring. In comparison, a man that wants children, is biologically capable of it, but has no desire to have sex with women. Both are absolutely examples of male, but as to which is more? No idea. Especially not along one dimension.

...is Gender, not sex. This has nothing to do with the categorization of "man" and "woman" at all.

 

[schlaufuchs]

In my post you quoted, @Owen Glyndwr , I said that the men’s olympics should be open to all. If natural women want to compete against men they should be able to. However, if transsexual or intersexed athletes want to compete against natural women, they should also be competing against men (and the natural women can opt out of competing with men).

Yeah but why do that at all? Why not just design a heuristic that evaluates all athletes as if on an equal playing field? Baseball long ago gave up looking solely at absolute numbers because they tend to simply be a factor of playing time - both in terms of starts and in terms of years spent in the league. It's far better to look not only at rate stats, but rate stats normalized for league performance. Honus Wagner's 10 homeruns in 1908 seems prima facie to be equaled by Alex Rios's 2005 season in which he got the same number of homeruns. But if you compare offensive contributions of each relative to the respective leagues they were playing in, you find that Honus Wagner's 10 homerun season was 190% of the average offensive output for his league, while Rios's was 70% for his.

 

[El_Machinae]

It absolutely does, if you believe that there is a sexual component of neuroanatomy. If you want to trim out sexual dimorphism from neuroanatomy, that's fine. Just say so

Again, we were discussing sex and whether it's on a one-dimensional line or a plane.