You are currently browsing the monthly archive for October 2021.
Arguing with gender ideologues can be a very disparaging and fruitless task. Many of the argumentative styles they adopt are purely reflexive and will be based in goading or shaming the person they disagree with into silence or compliance. The ‘social pressure’ dodge will be part three of this series. However, the topic today is the ill considered use of the term “intersex” and intersexed people in general when used as rhetorical ammunition in a gender identity debate.
The Intersex ploy goes something like this:
There are several deformed ideas going on in this fine slice of twitter, so let’s parse them out.
1. The notion that intersex individuals are somehow outside of the sex binary.
2. That self identification somehow trumps the biological reality of sex (i.e non binary and trans men).
3. The notion that this third sex or sex spectrum is somehow supported by credible scientific sources.
Firstly, people with intersex conditions are genetically unambiguously male or female.
No third sex to be seen here. Also, from the Endocrine Society this definitive assertion:
“Sex is an important biological variable that must be considered in the design and analysis of human and animal research. The terms sex and gender should not be used interchangeably. Sex is dichotomous, with sex determination in the fertilized zygote stemming from unequal expression of sex chromosomal genes. By contrast, gender includes perception of the individual as male, female, or other, both by the individual and by society; both humans and animals have sex, but only humans have gender.”
Secondly, gender beliefs mirror religious beliefs. They have no root in the material reality we all share. Illustrated here.
A big hat tip to Logic vs Pseudoscience for accurately framing the belief in ‘gender identity’. We should not be expected to play a pivotal role in someone else’s self perception. Not ignoring the data our senses accurately report is not a crime, nor is it violence against a person with gender identity claims.
Just like we don’t have to accept the religious claim that is our jesus saviour, we can also show the same skepticism for a male that claims to be woman because he self-identifies or feels like it. Not going along with risibly outlandish claims about reality is a reasonable stance to take.
Thirdly, the bullshit that is mentioned most often in the intersex ploy is a piece by by Anne Fausto – Sterling. Claiming there are 5 sexes and the percentage of intersex people in the population is 1.7%. Fausto-Stirling’s claims have been debunked.
AFS ‘walks-back’ her claims –
Yeah, so I’m thinking ‘tongue-in-cheek’ assertions are not quite the rigorous science based arguments gender ideologists would like us to think they are. As for the second mistake, her figures are based on a category error and corrected in this paper here.
“Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling s estimate of 1.7%.”
Oops… So be wary of individuals quoting Fausto-Sterling’s ‘facts’ when it comes to the intersex ploy in particular and gender identity arguments in general.
So much ink has been spilled in the quixotic attempt to placate gender confused males. It would be sadly funny, but because trans ideology centres itself on the destruction of female boundaries and rights leaving little room for jocularity .
The very definition of women is under attack. Women = adult human female is now a controversial stance to uphold because it may injure the self perception of males who think they are women. It is a travesty that we would allow male gender feelings to take precedence over the very material realty of being actually female in today’s society.
This rhetorical dodge frequently appears in arguments about the preservation of female only spaces in society. It is simply this, do you want this trans identified female in female only spaces? We are presented with a picture of a female that has masculine features and dressed stereotypically male.
Can you see the false equivocation? It goes like this, since we expect trans identified males to use the male washroom then also, we must expect trans identified females (like the dudette pictured above) to use the female washroom. The ‘gotcha’ continues, sometimes alluding to butch lesbians being questioned in female only spaces.
What this argument glosses over is that, back in reality, the class of females and the class of males in our society are socialized in very different ways and despite any gender pretenses have roughly the same capacities of the sex they were birthed into. So, women do not (in most cases) represent a threat to men in society this holds true regardless of how they ‘identify’. (The solution the gender religious do not want to hear is that every male space should be ‘gender inclusive’ while female spaces remain protected.)
The contrapositve is not true though. Men, regardless of how they identify, inhabit the class of people that do present a threat to women. Male and female standing and socialization in society is not equal, and trying to fudge this fact in an argument about female safety and spaces is patently dishonest. Therefore trans identified males – since they are male – are a threat to female safety and thus should not be in female only spaces.
If there is one feature that so many gender ideologues gloss over it is the current material conditions in society that we live in still work regardless of how one identifies. We still live in a society that has many patriarchal features that do not magically disappear if we start erasing females and their boundaries. On the contrary, corrupting female autonomy and boundaries increases the oppressive features of society for women.
It would be nice if the gender-woo was consistent. But it isn’t. Quelle Suprise.
Well I’d like to think that our publicly elected officials actually gave a damn about the people that elected them. Obviously not.
“Wong says the messaging from policymakers and public health officials in the Prairies throughout the pandemic has been one of “individual responsibility” when it comes to following guidelines, getting tested or getting vaccinated.
“Now the narrative is very much pushing the societal blame and anger and frustration away from, frankly, policymakers and toward people who are unvaccinated,” Wong said. In his view, the “shifting of blame” may have further increased vaccine hesitancy.
“Even when the whole healthcare system is literally collapsing you’re just not going to get any kind of buy-in at a societal level anymore to actually care.”
Unlike Manitoba, Wong says Saskatchewan and Alberta will likely pay a “heavy human price” that will be “painful” in the weeks ahead, which he sees as unavoidable even if the government were to make the unlikely move of imposing another lockdown, or if vaccination rates climb.
Health-care systems in Alberta, Saskatchewan ‘broken’ by COVID surge, doctors say
6 days ago
16:41Dr. Aisha Mirza, an ER physician in Edmonton, and Dr. Hassan Masri, an ICU and critical care physician in Saskatoon, share how the provinces’ hospitals and medical professionals are struggling amid a fourth wave of COVID-19. 16:41“This is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated, this affects absolutely everybody — it’s everybody whose surgeries are cancelled, and who won’t have access to urgent surgeries if they get into an accident, or if their appendix bursts or if they have an aneurysm,” Schwartz said.
“And whether there is ever the sort of political reckoning that is required in order to actually change course, to prevent these lives from being lost — I’m starting to lose hope.”
![](https://thumbnails.cbc.ca/maven_legacy/thumbnails/186/383/1-nn-covid-sask-alberta-heath-care-270921.jpg?crop=1.777xh:h;*,*&downsize=510px:* 510w")
Whelp…
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…