Great articles. Wonder why nobody seems to realize these chemicals will be getting into the infants' bodies and causing god-knows what harm? Well, I guess it's because the infants here are just accessories, part of a costume, to show that the male "chestfeeder" really is, really really is, female.
CAIS men shouldn't be breastfeeding. TBF I don't think women should be breastfeeding if it requires taking a medication that could be passed through breast milk like domperidone or synthetic hormones. Estrogen might stimulate breast growth but it's not the necessary hormone for lactation. It's like people forget that a baby is a whole other human and shouldn't be given random medications that aren't studied, or worse, are known to have health complications.
I agree though the thing is due to these anatomical differences between the male and female breast, women who use this protocol can then discontinue the drugs and generally self sustain production.
I would be worried about titration of these drugs. Especially in the psych medications which are known to exist for months in detectable levels in the blood. Domperidone is already off label for lactation, probably in part because it causes hormonal disruption. If you have to take it for any length of time before production you're kind of missing the most important early window of breastfeeding as well. If you can't take it during pregnancy and would have to take it for potentially weeks postpartum before starting to breastfeed, and then pump for potentially weeks after to get the trace levels out after, I find it a stretch that this is a good therapy option for women struggling to feed. Women who don't initially have supply problems but that have to pump often develop supply problems because it's disconnected from the infant. It worries me that women are even told this is a good route rather than absolute last resort. And I'm in the "breast is best" camp where if you can you should.
The cynical part of me also thinks medication like this comes up because we've disrupted mothers and babies so much. Having time with an infant is important for these biological signals but rather than fix the system to allow for human biology doctors just do this shit instead without a second thought.
Domperidone is banned here in the US as well, which I believe is the main way lactation is established. I know that some women obtain it illegally here in the US, and I guess maybe for research purposes it can be obtained. But I have to think it's hardly common. Women have 9 months of huge hormonal changes to fully develop their breasts in order to be able to breastfeed, along with the hormonal changes from birth. Induced lactation is more of a vanity thing for sure, as I believe it's extremely rare to be able to exclusively breastfeed from it.
But La Leche League is all for men breastfeeding. I got hounded out as a Leader for trying to speak against this stuff. But oh no, anyone who says he is a woman IS a woman and we would never question the composition of a woman's breast milk so no questions can be asked. Not to mention a baby's right to its mother.
Once again, it's the children who lose big time. The babies here are nothing more than props, used in a play that only supports the parent's narcissism.
However, I think this bit of your post is rather "problematic", and that you need to follow your own advice:
"... canceled in 2022 for suggesting that people with the DSD 46XY CAIS, formerly known as testicular feminization syndrome are men, if we have agreed they are adult male humans"
Nice that you put in the hypothetical "if", but that raises the questions as to whether you think CAIS people are in fact male, and exactly what you think qualifies anyone, any member of any anisogamous species, as either male or female.
There really is no credible biological definition that justifies calling CAIS people either male or female. In fact, the logical conclusion that follows from those actual biological definitions is that they -- along with most if not all intersex -- are, in fact, neither, that they are sexless. Even the "biologist" Jerry Coyne apparently recognizes that, and the "biologist" Colin Wright at least opens the door to that being "theoretically possible":
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
Eva Kurilova: "With great patience, Wright answered that an individual could theoretically be sexless, but that doesn’t mean sex itself is no longer binary."
Well who the hell is "Claire Graham"? Does she have a biology degree?
Jerry Coyne does have such a degree and he has explicitly said, "intersexes [are] neither male nor female".
People generally don't get to make up their own definitions. Unless you want to let the transloonie nutcases into the game?
There are sound logical, biological, and philosophical reasons for the biological definitions for the sexes. And all of them say that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither -- e.g., the intersex -- are sexless.
You might actually try reading those definitions, the sources of, and the reasons for them:
We can all pick and choose which biologists’ definition we want to quote in order to fit our preferred world paradigm, and this argument could go back and forth for months and months on end. But why? You call them sexless, another identifies them as a category of men— whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that if you cannot naturally breast-feed, and you must take a pharmaceutical regiment in order to do so, and that regiment produces a lactating substance that is not equal to that of natural breast milk nor nearly enough to sustain growth of the baby, and via lactation passes on to the growing baby– is what you’re doing GOOD for the BABY or is it just something to feed one’s own ego? Because if it’s just to feed an ego or fulfill a fantasy or an expressed desire of the parent— then that would be classified as a fetish and unequivocally wrong to involve a child in. Period.
I am a biological woman who breast-fed my son and enjoyed that bonding immensely. I also saw the health benefits for him as he didn’t get a single sniffle, much less a flu or severe cold, until he was at least four years old. So 14 years later when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was very excited to be able to breast-feed again. Unfortunately, mother nature had different plans. My milk did not come in. (I don’t want to get distracted by a side conversation of why; so let’s just suffice to say that it did not.) We tried extensively pumping, upping my intake of certain nutrients and fluids— and yet, I only got a steady trickle of the colostrum that comes before the actual milk. My ducts were damaged and not able to properly provide what I had expected them too. And yes, it emotionally sucked.
The doctors, gave me the option of pharmaceutical interventions, but warned that those medications DO stay in my bloodstream and would very likely pass through the breastmilk in some unknown amount. And you know what I chose to do? I chose to get donated breastmilk instead of forcing my child to become a pharmaceutical experiment or suck on a milkless nipple just for my own satisfaction.
Why is the basic advice given to women suddenly changed when a non-woman, or a “sexless person” as you prefer to call them, have that same desire to breast-feed? This is not about the baby’s caretaker or identified parent. This is about a human in the infant stage of life who is their own person, and who should be protected by its own basic human right to not be used as a therapeutic tool for a grown damn adult. 🤨
So rather than argue semantics about what a person who is clearly intersex should be classified as, why don’t we just talk about the crux of the argument in itself? If they are sexless, as you propose, that just further validates the argument that they should not be attempting to breast-feed a human baby. Will that “emotionally suck” for them? I’m sure it might. But as adults tasked with caring for a vulnerable human who doesn’t get a say in the matter— we must get over it and do what is best for the child, regardless of our own desires and feelings.
I can certainly sympathize with much of your argument, particularly your, "... why don’t we just talk about the crux of the argument in itself?" I've often argued that the definitions for the sexes are something of red herring -- a whole boat-load of them -- and that squabbling over those definitions is not far removed from a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, a case of Rape of the Lock (Part Deux): straining at the gnat while swallowing the camel whole:
"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." [Matthew 23:24; KJV]
Lotta that goin' on these days -- and, presumably, for at least the last 2000 years. 🙂
Thought that's a bit of a murky or somewhat "forced" analogy or dependent on various interpretations. However, one might argue that the "gnat" in question is something that should be manifestly obvious, and that has far reaching social, moral, and legal consequences which too many seem to have some difficulty in "swallowing": some 49% of us have ovaries, and some 49% have testicles -- in various stages of functioning which is, to a first approximation, somewhat academic at best.
And the "camel"? Largely those definitions, some of which too many have "swallowed whole" without much thought to their justifications, motivations, or purposes. No wonder then that so many have such "indigestion". So to speak ... 🙂
The problem with that "camel" is that far too many have turned those definitions into matters of identity -- identity politics writ large. And it's not just the transactivists who do that -- various intersex advocates do so, and a great many "women" likewise. For an example from those intersex advocates, see this tweet from Zach Elliott -- a fairly knowledgeable architectural student, wanna-be biologist, and guest poster on evolutionary biologist Colin Wright's Substack (Reality's Last Stand):
ZE: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
He's not "worried" about "scientific accuracy"; he's worried that many of the intersex are going to be "deprived" of their membership cards in the categories "male" and "female". But since when do "morally problematic claims" get to trump brute facts, scientific theories, and the definitions that describe them? Galileo, Darwin, and his bulldog T.H. Huxley are rolling over in their graves.
Talk about straining at the gnat -- scientific accuracy -- while swallowing the camel whole: the sexes as mere "participation trophies", as "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences". A complete repudiation of those brute facts about the profound and far-reaching differences between the "ovary-havers" and the "testicle-havers" -- more or less regardless of their functional state.
Which brings me around to your, "We can all pick and choose which biologists’ definition we want to quote in order to fit our preferred world paradigm", and to your, "... rather than argue semantics". Not to give you too much of a hard time there, but you might just as well argue that all of the definitions are arbitrary, that it's just a matter of "semantics" whether we drive on the left-hand side of the road or on the right-hand side. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter much which side we choose, just as long as we agree -- chaos being the result if we don't. Which seems a fair description of the "debate" over sex as a binary or as a spectrum:
But biologists have chosen those "functional gonads" definitions because there are solid reasons to do so -- it's more or less a central organizing principle in all of biology, it's a way of getting a handle on the profound differences -- across literally millions of species -- between the "ovary-havers" and the "testicle-havers". Information which has a great deal of relevance to human society and to how we, more or less, organize it.
However, those "debates" have so muddied the waters that the words "male" and "female" are largely meaningless -- just "empty signifiers". When they mean everything, they now mean nothing. They no longer "pick-out" any of the salient differences between those ovary-havers and testicle-havers -- no wonder then that too many of the latter are riding roughshod over what might reasonably be considered some justified rights of the former.
No doubt the folk-biology definitions -- "boys ('males') have penises and girls ('females') have vaginas" -- have some rough-and-ready applicability. But the problem is that those rather risible squabbles over toilets and sports and "self-identification" and definitions -- gnats and camels, camels and gnats -- are muddying the waters to the point where biology itself is being corrupted. Really not to anyone's benefit.
I don’t disagree at all. I am 100% on board with everything you stated. I think my overarching position was simply that this wasn’t what I considered the proper thread to get into the nitty-gritty of the binary debate because that’s going to take an entire, and very in-depth, conversation. (whichyou did a fantastic job of articulating, btw! Hit all the same points that I would’ve made myself, lol).
I agree with you, there are undeniable differences between males and females— and those differences stretch down to, quite literally, every single cell that makes up our body. Whether or not a person’s sexual gonads are functional, and/or if they have abnormalities due to the specific building structure of their chromosomes, does not magically and suddenly make the person unclassifiable and “outside of the binary.” Yes, there are biological differences amongst the sexes, but that does not provide proof that they have no sex at all; quite the opposite, in fact. This is why every person we call “intersex” today are actually not— they are all either men or women when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all. 🤷♀️
Bottom line: I think we are in complete agreement, and I really enjoyed reading your breakdown of why you have concluded the same things that I have. (And I’m sorry it took me more than a few days to respond. I got back as soon as I had time to sit down and read your response in its entirety.)
Thanks muchly for the vote of confidence. 👍🙂 And likewise for the comment -- no problemo on the delay; often takes some time and effort to respond to various comments.
However, I would be somewhat "remiss" 🙂 if I didn't emphasize that I think that too many people -- on all sides of this "debate" -- are turning the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" instead of recognizing them as labels for transitory reproductive abilities. ICYMI, see my kick at that age-old question -- the one that has confounded philosophers, philanderers, and politicians through the ages 😉🙂 -- "What is a woman?":
Claire Graham is a self-identified gender critical and DSD activist from the UK who I've made a few videos about (Clairevoyance is the name of the series with at least 5 parts).
So what? Does that bestow some cloak of papal infallibility on her that she can "promulgate" her own definitions for the sexes that are wildly at variance with those from reputable biological journals?
You might actually try reading the definitions I've quoted, and try to understand their rationales and logical consequences.
Seems that many if not most people don't have a flaming clue how categories work or what it takes to qualify as members. Since you seem to have some linguistics background, you might try reading this for reference:
Wikipedia: "An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
Don't get to qualify as a "referent of the term 'teenager' " unless one is actually 13 to 19. See this post of mine on what it takes to qualify as a female and as a woman:
While some might say you can supplement with formula (which I did do infrequently with both of my sons, whom I nursed until almost 2) there is a risk when an infant must work so hard for an inadequate flow of milk. The baby will get tired fall asleep while still lacking the nutrition they need. In successful breastfeeding of a newborn, the mother will have an overflow of milk. If the baby sleeps too long, you wake up with dripping nipples. I sometimes had to pump to avoid engorged breasts. As well, this focus on males lactating takes away from the many considerations for a mother of a newborn. We have to eat a diet rich in protein and nutrients and drink plenty of fluids. Plugged ducts put a new mother in danger of mastitis, an infection of the milk ducts, which can be painful and risky. I am most concerned about a general neglect of the needs of mothers of newborns as a result of the focus on the circus sideshow of men "lactating."
Sorry to disappoint but I‘m not a supporter of „make any desired experience accessible to everyone.“ We are talking about babies here! A baby, having no choice, relying on parents to make responsible decisions for that fully dependent little one. If we start to focus on the parents‘ desire as priority, I‘m generally not in! Some conditions come with consequences and yes, that is tough in some cases. The individual problem is not solved by pretending that there is no problem bc the individual can be treeted to seem genetically normal for a while bc they look like any other woman in the mentioned case. What about the baby?!? Maybe a baby that isn‘t genetically the mother‘s just shouldn‘t be breastfed by that non biological mother. I‘m not supporting the surrogate „model“ either. If the wish to have a child is so huge although the man/woman can‘t produce a child, there‘s a way through adoption of one of the many children in orphanages in the own country.
I think to make everything possible for couples who want to have children by pretending „natural family“ can be dangerous because the focus is on thr adults only or mainly! We should stop pretending that everything we want is possible. It‘s the usual human arrogance and ignorance of nature which should give us a moment to think about when we are about to rush into anything we so madly wished to be true but is not…
This ' breast' ( chest)feeding rapidly expanding mania is, to put it mildly, a
rampant fetish for men looking for higher 'kicks'.
This abhorrent abuse is blatantly clear, yet, in spite of this, it is seemingly being encouraged under ' medical science', ignoring the shouts of extreme child and female abuse----
#ItsAFetish
"psychosis" might be more accurate ...
"Trans-women’s milk as good as breast milk, says NHS trust" -- says the Telegraph:
https://archive.ph/7xhyk
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/18/trans-womens-milk-as-good-as-breast-milk-says-nhs-trust/
Not so fast say supposedly more reputable sources:
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/information-drug-class/information-about-domperidone
https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a684035.html
Courtesy of:
https://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=14263070&postcount=776
"A small price to pay to 'chest-feed' your infant." ... 🙄
No lies detected
Great articles. Wonder why nobody seems to realize these chemicals will be getting into the infants' bodies and causing god-knows what harm? Well, I guess it's because the infants here are just accessories, part of a costume, to show that the male "chestfeeder" really is, really really is, female.
100% with you on this.
Shoving a random nipple into a baby's mouth is not "feeding" anything but the nipple owner's ego.
CAIS men shouldn't be breastfeeding. TBF I don't think women should be breastfeeding if it requires taking a medication that could be passed through breast milk like domperidone or synthetic hormones. Estrogen might stimulate breast growth but it's not the necessary hormone for lactation. It's like people forget that a baby is a whole other human and shouldn't be given random medications that aren't studied, or worse, are known to have health complications.
I agree though the thing is due to these anatomical differences between the male and female breast, women who use this protocol can then discontinue the drugs and generally self sustain production.
I would be worried about titration of these drugs. Especially in the psych medications which are known to exist for months in detectable levels in the blood. Domperidone is already off label for lactation, probably in part because it causes hormonal disruption. If you have to take it for any length of time before production you're kind of missing the most important early window of breastfeeding as well. If you can't take it during pregnancy and would have to take it for potentially weeks postpartum before starting to breastfeed, and then pump for potentially weeks after to get the trace levels out after, I find it a stretch that this is a good therapy option for women struggling to feed. Women who don't initially have supply problems but that have to pump often develop supply problems because it's disconnected from the infant. It worries me that women are even told this is a good route rather than absolute last resort. And I'm in the "breast is best" camp where if you can you should.
The cynical part of me also thinks medication like this comes up because we've disrupted mothers and babies so much. Having time with an infant is important for these biological signals but rather than fix the system to allow for human biology doctors just do this shit instead without a second thought.
Domperidone is banned here in the US as well, which I believe is the main way lactation is established. I know that some women obtain it illegally here in the US, and I guess maybe for research purposes it can be obtained. But I have to think it's hardly common. Women have 9 months of huge hormonal changes to fully develop their breasts in order to be able to breastfeed, along with the hormonal changes from birth. Induced lactation is more of a vanity thing for sure, as I believe it's extremely rare to be able to exclusively breastfeed from it.
But La Leche League is all for men breastfeeding. I got hounded out as a Leader for trying to speak against this stuff. But oh no, anyone who says he is a woman IS a woman and we would never question the composition of a woman's breast milk so no questions can be asked. Not to mention a baby's right to its mother.
How despicable of La Leche. It was entirely different 3 decades ago when I had my sons.
Once again, it's the children who lose big time. The babies here are nothing more than props, used in a play that only supports the parent's narcissism.
"Show your work", indeed. Might save a lot of grief if more were obliged to do so ... 😉🙂 :
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Where-AI-stands-today-Then-a-miracle-occurs-C-Sidney-Harris-in-American-Scientist_fig2_333061528
However, I think this bit of your post is rather "problematic", and that you need to follow your own advice:
"... canceled in 2022 for suggesting that people with the DSD 46XY CAIS, formerly known as testicular feminization syndrome are men, if we have agreed they are adult male humans"
Nice that you put in the hypothetical "if", but that raises the questions as to whether you think CAIS people are in fact male, and exactly what you think qualifies anyone, any member of any anisogamous species, as either male or female.
There really is no credible biological definition that justifies calling CAIS people either male or female. In fact, the logical conclusion that follows from those actual biological definitions is that they -- along with most if not all intersex -- are, in fact, neither, that they are sexless. Even the "biologist" Jerry Coyne apparently recognizes that, and the "biologist" Colin Wright at least opens the door to that being "theoretically possible":
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/04/sf-chronicle-sex-and-gender-are-not-binaries/#comment-2048737
Eva Kurilova: "With great patience, Wright answered that an individual could theoretically be sexless, but that doesn’t mean sex itself is no longer binary."
https://www.thedistancemag.com/p/for-the-last-time-humans-are-not
Claire Graham says they're male. Adult male humans are men.
Well who the hell is "Claire Graham"? Does she have a biology degree?
Jerry Coyne does have such a degree and he has explicitly said, "intersexes [are] neither male nor female".
People generally don't get to make up their own definitions. Unless you want to let the transloonie nutcases into the game?
There are sound logical, biological, and philosophical reasons for the biological definitions for the sexes. And all of them say that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither -- e.g., the intersex -- are sexless.
You might actually try reading those definitions, the sources of, and the reasons for them:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
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://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
We can all pick and choose which biologists’ definition we want to quote in order to fit our preferred world paradigm, and this argument could go back and forth for months and months on end. But why? You call them sexless, another identifies them as a category of men— whatever. It doesn’t change the fact that if you cannot naturally breast-feed, and you must take a pharmaceutical regiment in order to do so, and that regiment produces a lactating substance that is not equal to that of natural breast milk nor nearly enough to sustain growth of the baby, and via lactation passes on to the growing baby– is what you’re doing GOOD for the BABY or is it just something to feed one’s own ego? Because if it’s just to feed an ego or fulfill a fantasy or an expressed desire of the parent— then that would be classified as a fetish and unequivocally wrong to involve a child in. Period.
I am a biological woman who breast-fed my son and enjoyed that bonding immensely. I also saw the health benefits for him as he didn’t get a single sniffle, much less a flu or severe cold, until he was at least four years old. So 14 years later when I was pregnant with my daughter, I was very excited to be able to breast-feed again. Unfortunately, mother nature had different plans. My milk did not come in. (I don’t want to get distracted by a side conversation of why; so let’s just suffice to say that it did not.) We tried extensively pumping, upping my intake of certain nutrients and fluids— and yet, I only got a steady trickle of the colostrum that comes before the actual milk. My ducts were damaged and not able to properly provide what I had expected them too. And yes, it emotionally sucked.
The doctors, gave me the option of pharmaceutical interventions, but warned that those medications DO stay in my bloodstream and would very likely pass through the breastmilk in some unknown amount. And you know what I chose to do? I chose to get donated breastmilk instead of forcing my child to become a pharmaceutical experiment or suck on a milkless nipple just for my own satisfaction.
Why is the basic advice given to women suddenly changed when a non-woman, or a “sexless person” as you prefer to call them, have that same desire to breast-feed? This is not about the baby’s caretaker or identified parent. This is about a human in the infant stage of life who is their own person, and who should be protected by its own basic human right to not be used as a therapeutic tool for a grown damn adult. 🤨
So rather than argue semantics about what a person who is clearly intersex should be classified as, why don’t we just talk about the crux of the argument in itself? If they are sexless, as you propose, that just further validates the argument that they should not be attempting to breast-feed a human baby. Will that “emotionally suck” for them? I’m sure it might. But as adults tasked with caring for a vulnerable human who doesn’t get a say in the matter— we must get over it and do what is best for the child, regardless of our own desires and feelings.
I can certainly sympathize with much of your argument, particularly your, "... why don’t we just talk about the crux of the argument in itself?" I've often argued that the definitions for the sexes are something of red herring -- a whole boat-load of them -- and that squabbling over those definitions is not far removed from a Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols, a case of Rape of the Lock (Part Deux): straining at the gnat while swallowing the camel whole:
"Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel." [Matthew 23:24; KJV]
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/strain-at-a-gnat-and-swallow-a-camel
Lotta that goin' on these days -- and, presumably, for at least the last 2000 years. 🙂
Thought that's a bit of a murky or somewhat "forced" analogy or dependent on various interpretations. However, one might argue that the "gnat" in question is something that should be manifestly obvious, and that has far reaching social, moral, and legal consequences which too many seem to have some difficulty in "swallowing": some 49% of us have ovaries, and some 49% have testicles -- in various stages of functioning which is, to a first approximation, somewhat academic at best.
And the "camel"? Largely those definitions, some of which too many have "swallowed whole" without much thought to their justifications, motivations, or purposes. No wonder then that so many have such "indigestion". So to speak ... 🙂
The problem with that "camel" is that far too many have turned those definitions into matters of identity -- identity politics writ large. And it's not just the transactivists who do that -- various intersex advocates do so, and a great many "women" likewise. For an example from those intersex advocates, see this tweet from Zach Elliott -- a fairly knowledgeable architectural student, wanna-be biologist, and guest poster on evolutionary biologist Colin Wright's Substack (Reality's Last Stand):
ZE: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
He's not "worried" about "scientific accuracy"; he's worried that many of the intersex are going to be "deprived" of their membership cards in the categories "male" and "female". But since when do "morally problematic claims" get to trump brute facts, scientific theories, and the definitions that describe them? Galileo, Darwin, and his bulldog T.H. Huxley are rolling over in their graves.
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1592711689438662656
Talk about straining at the gnat -- scientific accuracy -- while swallowing the camel whole: the sexes as mere "participation trophies", as "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences". A complete repudiation of those brute facts about the profound and far-reaching differences between the "ovary-havers" and the "testicle-havers" -- more or less regardless of their functional state.
Which brings me around to your, "We can all pick and choose which biologists’ definition we want to quote in order to fit our preferred world paradigm", and to your, "... rather than argue semantics". Not to give you too much of a hard time there, but you might just as well argue that all of the definitions are arbitrary, that it's just a matter of "semantics" whether we drive on the left-hand side of the road or on the right-hand side. To a first approximation, it doesn't matter much which side we choose, just as long as we agree -- chaos being the result if we don't. Which seems a fair description of the "debate" over sex as a binary or as a spectrum:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
But biologists have chosen those "functional gonads" definitions because there are solid reasons to do so -- it's more or less a central organizing principle in all of biology, it's a way of getting a handle on the profound differences -- across literally millions of species -- between the "ovary-havers" and the "testicle-havers". Information which has a great deal of relevance to human society and to how we, more or less, organize it.
However, those "debates" have so muddied the waters that the words "male" and "female" are largely meaningless -- just "empty signifiers". When they mean everything, they now mean nothing. They no longer "pick-out" any of the salient differences between those ovary-havers and testicle-havers -- no wonder then that too many of the latter are riding roughshod over what might reasonably be considered some justified rights of the former.
No doubt the folk-biology definitions -- "boys ('males') have penises and girls ('females') have vaginas" -- have some rough-and-ready applicability. But the problem is that those rather risible squabbles over toilets and sports and "self-identification" and definitions -- gnats and camels, camels and gnats -- are muddying the waters to the point where biology itself is being corrupted. Really not to anyone's benefit.
I don’t disagree at all. I am 100% on board with everything you stated. I think my overarching position was simply that this wasn’t what I considered the proper thread to get into the nitty-gritty of the binary debate because that’s going to take an entire, and very in-depth, conversation. (whichyou did a fantastic job of articulating, btw! Hit all the same points that I would’ve made myself, lol).
I agree with you, there are undeniable differences between males and females— and those differences stretch down to, quite literally, every single cell that makes up our body. Whether or not a person’s sexual gonads are functional, and/or if they have abnormalities due to the specific building structure of their chromosomes, does not magically and suddenly make the person unclassifiable and “outside of the binary.” Yes, there are biological differences amongst the sexes, but that does not provide proof that they have no sex at all; quite the opposite, in fact. This is why every person we call “intersex” today are actually not— they are all either men or women when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it all. 🤷♀️
Bottom line: I think we are in complete agreement, and I really enjoyed reading your breakdown of why you have concluded the same things that I have. (And I’m sorry it took me more than a few days to respond. I got back as soon as I had time to sit down and read your response in its entirety.)
Thanks muchly for the vote of confidence. 👍🙂 And likewise for the comment -- no problemo on the delay; often takes some time and effort to respond to various comments.
However, I would be somewhat "remiss" 🙂 if I didn't emphasize that I think that too many people -- on all sides of this "debate" -- are turning the sexes into "immutable identities" based on some "mythic essences" instead of recognizing them as labels for transitory reproductive abilities. ICYMI, see my kick at that age-old question -- the one that has confounded philosophers, philanderers, and politicians through the ages 😉🙂 -- "What is a woman?":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Claire Graham is a self-identified gender critical and DSD activist from the UK who I've made a few videos about (Clairevoyance is the name of the series with at least 5 parts).
So what? Does that bestow some cloak of papal infallibility on her that she can "promulgate" her own definitions for the sexes that are wildly at variance with those from reputable biological journals?
You might actually try reading the definitions I've quoted, and try to understand their rationales and logical consequences.
Seems that many if not most people don't have a flaming clue how categories work or what it takes to qualify as members. Since you seem to have some linguistics background, you might try reading this for reference:
Wikipedia: "An intensional definition gives meaning to a term by specifying necessary and sufficient conditions for when the term should be used. In the case of nouns, this is equivalent to specifying the properties that an object needs to have in order to be counted as a referent of the term."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
Don't get to qualify as a "referent of the term 'teenager' " unless one is actually 13 to 19. See this post of mine on what it takes to qualify as a female and as a woman:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
While some might say you can supplement with formula (which I did do infrequently with both of my sons, whom I nursed until almost 2) there is a risk when an infant must work so hard for an inadequate flow of milk. The baby will get tired fall asleep while still lacking the nutrition they need. In successful breastfeeding of a newborn, the mother will have an overflow of milk. If the baby sleeps too long, you wake up with dripping nipples. I sometimes had to pump to avoid engorged breasts. As well, this focus on males lactating takes away from the many considerations for a mother of a newborn. We have to eat a diet rich in protein and nutrients and drink plenty of fluids. Plugged ducts put a new mother in danger of mastitis, an infection of the milk ducts, which can be painful and risky. I am most concerned about a general neglect of the needs of mothers of newborns as a result of the focus on the circus sideshow of men "lactating."
Sorry to disappoint but I‘m not a supporter of „make any desired experience accessible to everyone.“ We are talking about babies here! A baby, having no choice, relying on parents to make responsible decisions for that fully dependent little one. If we start to focus on the parents‘ desire as priority, I‘m generally not in! Some conditions come with consequences and yes, that is tough in some cases. The individual problem is not solved by pretending that there is no problem bc the individual can be treeted to seem genetically normal for a while bc they look like any other woman in the mentioned case. What about the baby?!? Maybe a baby that isn‘t genetically the mother‘s just shouldn‘t be breastfed by that non biological mother. I‘m not supporting the surrogate „model“ either. If the wish to have a child is so huge although the man/woman can‘t produce a child, there‘s a way through adoption of one of the many children in orphanages in the own country.
I think to make everything possible for couples who want to have children by pretending „natural family“ can be dangerous because the focus is on thr adults only or mainly! We should stop pretending that everything we want is possible. It‘s the usual human arrogance and ignorance of nature which should give us a moment to think about when we are about to rush into anything we so madly wished to be true but is not…
This ' breast' ( chest)feeding rapidly expanding mania is, to put it mildly, a
rampant fetish for men looking for higher 'kicks'.
This abhorrent abuse is blatantly clear, yet, in spite of this, it is seemingly being encouraged under ' medical science', ignoring the shouts of extreme child and female abuse----
I am so very raging!!