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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[Trekkin]

A few examples following your example - "all else being well, a lion would be a tiger." "All else being well, the man who thinks himself to be Einstein would be Einstein."

There's a critical difference here, and I feel like people overlook it a lot: we know what lions and tigers are well enough to produce a set of criteria under which 100% of what we think are lions are classified as lions and the same for tigers. (Before someone brings up ligers, there's a genetic way around that, but forgive me for not going into molecular genetics right now.) Similarly, we can define Einstein such that only Einstein is demonstrably Einstein.

We can't do that with sex; every time people propose a way to classify humans into two sexes, there's always someone who falls outside those categories. Intersex people are the usual example because they're about 1 in 1500-2000 births, although it's not always obvious; if your theory has four million outliers, it probably needs work. So the way I look at it is this: if someone knows they're a gender other than the one they're assigned at birth, and they know that with such certainty that they're willing to go through all the crap transgender people go through, I'm inclined to have some humility and take them at their word, not being in their head.

We brought that up earlier. Those are "outliers" not to be considered, apparently.

I explicitly said that outliers should be considered, but... sure?

I meant McTraveller's claim that it's disingenuous to point them out. Looking back,he called them corner cases; apologies for the confusion.

[smjjames]

One could use multiple criteria to reduce the number of outliers that would completely fall outside the set, but then it starts becoming, as trekkin implied, 'how many outliers are acceptable for this system?'. Then it'll probably start going into the ridiculous zone with people going 'okay, how many boxes need to be checked off for x to be y gender'. Or maybe you start going weird stuff like a% y gender and b% z gender.

The point being that you can't get rid of outliers no matter what, it's just not mathematically possible. It also wouldn't be the first time people (not you guys specifically as I know this is just a philosophical argument) erroneously used science to justify things.

[Trekkin]

One could use multiple criteria to reduce the number of outliers that would completely fall outside the set, but then it starts becoming, as trekkin implied, 'how many outliers are acceptable for this system?'. Then it'll probably start going into the ridiculous zone with people going 'okay, how many boxes need to be checked off for x to be y gender'. Or maybe you start going weird stuff like a% y gender and b% z gender.

There's also the behavioral component to consider if you go down that route; if we're going to posit a natural reproductive role, there are of course people who are attracted exclusively to people with whom they're anatomically incapable of procreating, and whose "natural" reproductive role would logically therefore be not to reproduce. Are they sexless?

At what point is assuming that everyone naturally has one of two sexes as defined reproductively to allow for classifying people into two sexes begging the question?

[TD1]

I'm inclined to have some humility and take them at their word, not being in their head.

That's our key difference, then. If someone tells me their religious experience, I smile, nod .... and don't buy a word of it. Similarly, [name] at work who is a perfectly rational fella yet also often mentions that he's repeatedly haunted (the freezer at work in particular seems to be the place for a supernatural visitation) gets treated as a reliable source up to (but not including) said stories.

As for the example of intersex people, it should be noted that the figures are by no means concrete. It's certainly an issue which challenges the definition of sex, but the extent to which this is so is not clear-cut. I'm no biologist, but the term 'intersex' seems to be an umbrella term for many different things. So, yes, a number of people, many (most?) of whom are intersex, pose a challenge to the typical binary. It's just such a large and varied grouping that I'm at a loss trying to make a general statement concerning it.

It is also the case that LGBT people are not intersex as a general rule, of course. A transgender person, typically, fully fits within the aforementioned male/female divide, one which it is impossible to fluctuate between.

Perhaps we should add a third sex? Male, Female, Neuter (intersex)? The question is how many people truly fall into something which deserves its own category, and how many have something like Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, which appears (again, me no Biologist, hyuck hyuck) to be a hormonal imbalance that would fall under "all else being well..." or, similarly, Vaginal Atresia (for lack of a better description, 'vaginal obstruction'). It's a tricky issue, that's for sure, and one which requires more thought and time than I'm currently willing to dedicate. It also seems to require more (and more accurate) studies.

Though, it should be noted that if 'Intersex' were to be acknowledged as a separate sex-definition (perhaps defined as a natural lack of reproductive capabilities?) it would likewise not be strictly (though idealistically, sure!) possible for someone who is intersex to become someone who is male, or female. Perhaps the reason we don't have such a three-way sex system is because it's rare.

[smjjames]

Rare biologically or culturally? Not sure what you mean there. Anyways, no, the reason why we don't culturally have a third gender is because the Abrahamic religions, which dominate things so much, insist there are only exactly two genders, no ifs, ands, ors, buts, or ufjhjs*.

I'm not sure how common cultures that accept intersex and culturally have a third gender are, but they're out there.

If you mean biologically, it just happens to be the dominant system that evolved. Theres certainly a few other systems out there, like some fungi for example.

*random keyboard spasm to represent every other variation

[Frumple]

If you mean biologically, it just happens to be the dominant system that evolved. Theres certainly a few other systems out there, like some fungi for example.

There's also a good few that actually are straight up capable of changing sex under the right circumstances, iirc. The first rule of (non-micro) biology club is fuck your heuristics, I do what random mutation hasn't stopped me from doing hard enough.

[TD1]

Hey, do you know why there are no transexual fungi? Because they're all funguys!

[McTraveller]

What I meant by the "outliers" was that, for instance, we say that humans have 5 fingers on each hand, even though there are many people who do not have 5 fingers on each hand.

Laws of large numbers come into play with the current human population - 0.1% is still close to ten million individuals.  Even if you're talking just pure biological fitness functions, you can have a huge absolute number of non-reproducing members of a population and have a stable or even growing overall population number.  So I agree that just considering "reproductive fitness" is a non-starter because it is irrelevant.  Moreso it just gives people an avenue to alienate people instead of develop meaningful relationships.

[Trekkin]

I'm inclined to have some humility and take them at their word, not being in their head.

That's our key difference, then. If someone tells me their religious experience, I smile, nod .... and don't buy a word of it. Similarly, [name] at work who is a perfectly rational fella yet also often mentions that he's repeatedly haunted (the freezer at work in particular seems to be the place for a supernatural visitation) gets treated as a reliable source up to (but not including) said stories.

I don't either, but I do believe that they believe it, and in the specific case of LGBT issues, that's enough for me. I don't need to search for a scientific reason to call some people's identities invalid, which is good, because as you correctly point out, that's a tricky and exhausting thing to have to do, and furthermore it doesn't really help anyone. By the time you're done shoehorning people into different genders there are so many caveats that it's stopped being an informative distinction.

Funnily enough, I am a biologist, although my PhD isn't in endocrinology or anything immediately relevant. That's why I have the view I do: about the only relevant thing I can say is that if you're uncertain of your premises but certain of your conclusion, you're going the wrong way, so I'm nowhere near confident enough in the uncertainty of the science surrounding the cognitive aspects of gender and the less-than-concrete figures and the inadequacy of every proposed classification scheme to tell someone their identity is a lie.

What I meant by the "outliers" was that, for instance, we say that humans have 5 fingers on each hand, even though there are many people who do not have 5 fingers on each hand.

That's certainly better than I'd feared. I still say that it isn't disingenuous to insist that a concrete definition of finitely many human genders either accommodate all humans or admit that it's incomplete -- and, in the latter case, it's not a great basis for telling trans people what their gender is. If we're going to tell people they're wrong, we need to be provably right, and we can't be about this yet.

[Rolan7]

Happy National Day of Prayer, my fellow Americans!  Enjoy your religious freedom, as long as it supports state-sponsored prayer.

Trump said a few words, thanking himself for massively expanding religious freedom (Now people can use that beautiful word "God"!) and pushing the expansion of laws letting people deny life-and-death services based on personal revelation, or at least state-recognized religion.

But Trump antics aside, this is a day when all Americans are inspired (by our federal government) to pray or meditate.  So let us do so.
...
...Hrm, no daemonettes yet.  Maybe next year.

[Egan_BW]

Me and my mom have a ritual where we shake our fists at the sky before eating, nonspecificly calling out the sky jerk(s) for their behavior.
Does that count?

[TD1]

Hail Satan!

[Egan_BW]

Nah, fuck that guy.

[TD1]

Ahhh, good plan.

Hail the resulting Anti Christ!

[Urist McScoopbeard]

"That won't be necessary..."

[leans in real close]

"Hail Hydra."