Sad?

No, it is just a consequence of complex reality butting up against a "common sense" (including the quote marks) derived from incorrectly assuming that words accurately and unambiguously carve up reality.

If biologists instead used a different common definition such as "female == able to get pregnant, otherwise male" then birds would be all be male, and seahorses wouldn't be associated with the sentence "weird biology fact: the males get pregnant!"

See also: "There's no such thing as a fish", and "how many moons does the Earth have?"

Back when I was taught Biology in school, “female“ meant “having the larger gamete”.

Strange, I was taught that sex that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes.

You're describing anisogamy. Large males are sexually selected for in elephant seals because they can fight off other males, but small males are sexually selected for in spiders for they can mate with the female quickly while avoiding being eaten.

They said larger gamete, not larger adult size.

Huh, is this actually universal? I'd have guessed there'd be at least one or two exceptions.

There are no exceptions to it if you make it the definition. Which is what the comment of BuyMyBitcoins says was taught to them.

Yep, fair enough, if it's a strict definition. You could potentially then have weird edge cases in the other direction, though; if the same sex chromosome layout in related species X and Y leads to different sexes due to the size of the gametes (especially if the size of the gametes was pretty similar to start with), that seems very odd/confusing.

It looks like there are cases where the size of the gametes are identical. But when this happens they don’t refer the organism’s sex as “male/female” and instead use “+/-“. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isogamy

Going a step further I found this: >Depending on the group, different mating types are often referred to by numbers, letters, or simply "+" and "−" instead of "male" and "female", which refer to "sexes" or differences in size between gametes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mating_type

So it does seem to be a strict definition and anything outside of the strict definition is given an alternate identification scheme.

Here's a fun edge case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indotyphlops_braminus#Reproduc...

All individuals of this snake are female (presumably 'female' here is defined relative to other snakes) and reproduce parthenogenetically (sic?). By your definition, these wouldn't have a sex at all, presumably.

A closely-related species using the same or similar chromosomes, where male/female exist, is likely where it came to be that the observed individuals of these snakes have all been determined "female", even if no "male" has been observed.

And that's the definition used in the article. (Where "egg" = "larger gamete")

Birds are not mammals. Fish are not mammals. Mammals on the other hand have males that impregnate the females.

Producing a more complicated definition with a special case for mammals vs. not mammals doesn't really add anything, even if it weren't for the platypus or the echidna being further examples of things not working like that.

Biology is messy, the boundaries are messy, the words we use are merely for our own benefit to simplify a messy and complex reality.

Messy edge cases doesn't mean let's just throw everything away.

I didn't ask you to throw anything away.

Someone forgot that the platypus exists.

The exception is not the rule.

Abstractions are useful, this is true, but the exceptions are a reminder that they are not reality, they are just a categorization we overlay on top of reality to help us understand it. Their utility is contextual.

Your abstraction ignores all the sterile men and women too, by the way. That's because it is a particularly bad one.

The fact of the matter is that if someone is missing a leg they are absolutely human but they are broken nonetheless.

That analogy illuminates nothing.

To be sterile is to be broken but it doesn't reduce ones humanity.

Nobody's suggesting that it might.

You're the one who wrote:

> Mammals on the other hand have males that impregnate the females.

We're all saying "that's not a very useful definition".

someone forgot the echidna exists

> If biologists instead used a different common definition such as "female == able to get pregnant, otherwise male" then birds would be all be male, and seahorses wouldn't be associated with the sentence "weird biology fact: the males get pregnant!"

"Common definition"? I don't think so. If it was my post-menopausal wife would now be a man

I very much doubt that common-sense folks "assum[e] that words accurately and unambiguously carve up reality" either. Is it likely that a grown-up has never had a discussion about whether something was blue or green, or whether something is a fruit or vegetable?

> "Common definition"? I don't think so. If it was my post-menopausal wife would now be a man

I didn't say it was a good definition :)

In fact, the very point you're making here is also commonly brought up whenever someone uses this common definition to try to argue against trans issues, which is how I know it's commonly used.

I rather hopped that me saying "birds would be all be male" would be a hint that I didn't hold this definition in high regard.

> whether something is a fruit or vegetable?

Tom-ah-to, to-may-to, but either way I really need to figure out how to use it in a fruit salad.

Sure, almost everyone has had such an argument; but I've noticed many tend to say "it's common sense" and stop listening from then on.

I think you're straw-manning the "common sense" view. "Unable to get pregnant" is actually not a common definition of "male", afaics

At worse, nut-picking rather than straw-manning. This specific (bad) definition comes up a lot, though it's certainly possible I've mistaken frequency of observation for frequency of beliefs.

> animals do not have socially constructed genders.

How would we know? Are we able to communicate with animals yet?

Their behaviour could be grouped in ways not derived primarily by sex?

The article links to another one[1], which might be boiled down to

> [...] peacocks still do not have genders. And the reason is that peacocks do not have culture.

[1] https://nautil.us/no-animals-do-not-have-genders-237938/

If you define socially constructed to mean a _human_ sort of society (which is probably how most people will read this, and the most reasonable way to read it), then they don't by definition.

I suspect to some extent you could argue this either way for social insects, however; is their 'society' so biologically programmed in that the pseudo-gender identities it _appears_ to create don't count?

There are also some primates which have, if not societies, things which look suspiciously like societies, of course. Still, the statement is probably basically true, with a little fuzziness around the edges.

Probably just simple observation - if culture was an element then we would expect to see diverging behaviors in different groups. Wouldnt require communicating.

They're describing a difference in sex vs gender. From the linked article:

> Gender [...] involves a set of behaviors and norms that shape how men and women act, prescribe how they ought to be, and specify what it means to be a man or a woman

> ...Unlike in any other animal, gendered behavior in humans is wildly different across cultures

Sex needs a definition too:

> Sex appeared to be purely, simply genetic—until 1966, when a French zoologist discovered that the rainbow agama lizard did, in fact, rely on an environmental factor to determine sex

...no need to regurgitate the "anti-woke" talking points on this one.

The assertion that gender is “socially constructed” does merit the anti-woke talking point. Mammals have social roles based on biological sex: female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

Like everything else, humans have layered social and cultural constructs on top of sex and gender. For example, cultures have different ways of marking the transition from childhood to adulthood. But the fact that e.g. a bar mitzvah is a cultural construct doesn’t mean that the behavioral and social changes accompanying puberty aren’t rooted in biology.

> Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

It is fundamentally different.

The range of behaviors that Humans have is fundamentally far, far more broad than animals, because we are much more intelligent creatures. Example from a few thousand years ago: Farming, Cooking food. More recent examples: Fixing cars, doing taxes. Most of what Humans spend their time doing these days are things that animals don't do in nature.

Human cultures like to ascribe gender roles to most of these things, but in reality most of what people do doesn't have any implicit gender role associated with it, since it's pretty far removed from biological functions at this point.

Even in nature, the things people and animals do doesn't always neatly align with gender roles. For example, child rearing or even bearing live young is sometimes done by the male, even though it's usually a female gender role.

What's different between us and animals (as is usually the case) is our big thinky brains, and the things which follow on from that.

It is at this point, I believe, that it is entirely worth reminding ourselves that humans are, in fact, animals.

It's usually worth reminding ourselves of. I'm not sure what you're getting at here though.

They are getting at the point that as animals we can intellectualize all we want and will still have biological characteristics that fundamentally influence our behavior and culture.

> still have biological characteristics that fundamentally influence our behavior and culture.

I suspected as such. In my life, I've often heard this point trotted out to justify "Why men/women are good/bad at X thing", which is why I was asking what they were getting at, specifically. Even if they weren't getting at that, their comment doesn't add much by itself.

Research findings are not "intellectualization." Intellectualization is what those who don't actually research a subject do. However, I don't think anyone claims that there is are no innate biological effects on behaviour. It's just that its scope is hard to determine, and extrapolation one species to another has proven to be an unreliable means of making such determinations.

The point I think the parent is trying to make is that there are now many people who see all of human behavior as some sort of construct vs. innate behaviors that exist all over the animal kingdom.

In fact, very few behaviors are specific to only humans.

We aren’t that special. At the end of the day, we’re just very clever mammals.

>The range of behaviors that Humans have is fundamentally far, far more broad than animals, because we are much more intelligent creatures.

This is a difference in scale not a difference of kind.

Keep reading the post! You'll get there.

I'm sorry. I have read the post and I don't understand what you are referring to.

It is in the following three sentences from the one you quoted.

It's not an argument about scale. "Dogs Playing Poker" is not based on anything real.

Sorry I'm still lost.

I am saying there are many, many behaviors which human beings have which the rest of the animal kingdom does not exhibit.

I am positing that, in fact, most of how we spend our time as human beings (such as arguing on YC news threads) is behavior which does not exist in the rest of the animal kingdom.

That is not an argument about scale as you say, it is an argument about the type of behavior.

This would be fascinating to explore outside the context of the culture war. To what extent is a penguin's social role learnt from other penguins vs biological? Do penguins raised in isolation or in small groups show more divergent sex-correlated behaviour than those raised in large groups? Would that mean they align behaviour based on what other penguins do?

It would be interesting if male birds learnt how to put on more successful mate displays by watching other males, or if birds set their standards by those of the opposite sex they grew up around. Humans obviously do this, and I wouldn't be surprised if other primates did too, but which other animals might?

Gendered behavior in humans is different; it's wildly different across cultures.

> The assertion that gender is “socially constructed”

Who asserted this? A straw man?

> ...Unlike in any other animal, gendered behavior in humans is wildly different across cultures

The reason to bring it up was in the comment you replied to. This reaction seems very knee jerk.

I don’t think you thought this through any further once you felt you had a somewhat rational construct that meshed with your comfort zone. Human behavior has massive amounts of variation even within a culture, both sex and gender traits inhabit overlapping bell curves. Is there a biological reason for why dresses are considered feminine in the US, and states are constructing laws restricting cross gender usage of them, but kurtas or sarongs are acceptably masculine elsewhere?

That doesn’t mean that gender is socially constructed, it means that we have overlaid social constructs on top of gender. Which is a point nobody disagrees with.

It’s not true that biological sex is completely deterministic in the behavior of non-human animals. For instance: there are gay penguins where two males will adopt eggs to hatch and raise chicks. Homosexuality and associated behavior changes are observed in a wide array of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals

Conservatives trying to use biology to argue that gender and sex are fully equivalent is akin to 19th and 20th century attempts to use evolutionary theory to support racist social policies. It's not only wrong morally, it's bad science.

If your homosexuality, which is biologically rooted, is associated with behavior changes, doesn’t that support the conclusion that gendered behavior is rooted in biology rather than socially constructed?

Only if you're dumb enough to assume that all or most of behavior is biologically determined, instead of being a complex mix of biology, culture, and learned individual patterns that produces a spectrum of individual expression. The question isn't "is gendered behavior rooted in biology?" it's "how much / to what degree?" and the honest answer is, we don't really know with confidence.

The assertion in the article is that gender is socially constructed. You don’t seem to be defending that point. You’re making a different argument nobody disagrees with—that humans also express learned cultural and individual behaviors. You could walk into CPAC and say that women would still be women if the social convention was for them to wear pants. Nobody would disagree with you.

Ironically, the social changes in gender expression you’re referring to are actually premised on the opposite of the assertion you’re making. They posit that gender expression is biologically rooted—because otherwise it would be within the purview of society to regulate it as a matter or culture or individual expression.

The mainstream liberal interpretation is that gender is a social construct separate from sexual identity/preference, and you can’t constrain the expression of either to the historical Western norms, because that’s an attack on Constitutionally-protected individual rights. There’s a more extreme leftist interpretation that says both are fixed identities practically from birth, but it ends up with the same conclusion: let people be and do what they want, even if it doesn’t fit into heteronormative expectations about gender or sex.

My entire point is that’s the morally and legally correct framework, because we shouldn’t be using scientific determinism to make decisions about how individuals with free will and rights can express themselves. The article is correct to have the disclaimer, in this light.

What you characterize as the “more extreme leftist interpretation” is actually the more conservative view. You can get most conservatives on board with creating exceptions to social norms for biologically-rooted differences. Acceptance of same-sex marriage increased dramatically after the push in the 1990s and 2000s to educate the public that people are “born that way.” “Scientific determinism” is actually the lynchpin of the broad acceptance of same-sex marriage today.

By contrast, what you call the “mainstream liberal interpretation” is actually the radical position. It rejects society’s right and prerogative to impose norms and regulate voluntary self-expression. What generates concerted opposition from conservatives and moderates is the feeling that liberals are using sexual minorities as a vehicle for loosening restrictions on voluntary behavior.

You’re correct the two positions lead to the “same” outcome—but only initially. Eventually, a conflict arises between liberals, who want sanction for a broader range of voluntary self expression, and gay or trans people, who often simply want to fit in as best as they are able. You’re seeing that conflict of interest play out right now. Bostock, which granted equal civil rights to trans people, was immediately accepted by the majority of conservatives. That caused liberals to pivot to causes like drag shows involving voluntary non-conformance, which generated immediate backlash and opposition. For the reasons you explain, liberals can’t tell the difference—to them, it’s self expression, whether it’s voluntary or biologically rooted. But to everyone else that makes a huge difference.

It's almost LOL wrong to state that conservatives have gladly accepted that trans people are entitled to full and equal treatment under the law. Just one Tucker Carlson clip (https://www.foxnews.com/video/6324164359112) shows how American conservatives are completely frothing at the mouth over the existence of transgender people.

There is a huge wave of anti-trans laws being pushed through by conservative elected officials at the state level right now. They're specifically attacking trans children and school policy, as the soft underbelly that gets conservative parents riled up for a culture war and which is legally more vulnerable.

You don’t have to read tea leaves: https://www.kff.org/other/press-release/poll-large-majoritie... (“In each case, large majorities across partisan lines, including more than 7 in 10 Republicans, think such discrimination against LGBTQ people should be illegal.”). That’s from 2020. Does it make sense that the majority of conservatives are upset about “the existence of transgender people” but somehow support making it illegal to discriminate against them?

The culture war came later, when liberals tried to use trans people to promote their own view—which you aptly characterized above—that people should be allowed to express themselves free from traditional social norms and roles. Liberals rushed to promote things like drag shows, which have nothing to do with trans people, and everything to do with voluntary self expression. As RuPaul (a cis man) put it: “Drag says 'I'm a shapeshifter, I do whatever the hell I want at any given time.’” That liberalism is what has “conservative parents riled up for a culture war,” when they mostly didn’t bat an eye at actual advances in trans rights.

Yeah unfortunately for conservatives, the annals of history are generally a story of culture evolving more rapidly than traditionalists are comfortable with. We happen to live in a country where the core Constitutional answer to that problem can best be summarized as: tough shit, get used to it. You can move to Saudi Arabia if you want to live in a traditionalist autocracy that will protect you from the horrors of drag brunch.

> It’s not true that biological sex is completely deterministic in the behavior of non-human animals

I don’t think anyone claims it is completely deterministic.

But it is very significant, to the extent that is may as well as be completely for purposes of discussion or publishing papers.

While there are female lions that act in an atypical manner, the vast majority act similarly enough to say something like “female lions hunt for the pride” without need an asterisk.

Right, it's useful, realistic, and mostly uncontroversial to assume that there are typical vs. atypical sex differences in behavior in basically any population.

The problem is there are a ton of people who try to use that fact to justify forcing everyone to fit the typical trend. "Most people are right hand dominant, so everyone should learn to write right handed or be punished" is the milder historical example. The worst case scenario is "it's legally defensible to murder someone because they don't conform to expected gender roles" https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/member-...

If one penguin is trans, they could both be straight.

> female penguins do one thing, male penguins do a different thing. Gender in humans isn’t fundamentally different.

Do you know this to be true for the set of *all* penguins? Or just most of them?

It's an interesting concept that generalizations can be true without applying to every case. For example, the statement "humans have one heart" is generally true, but there are exceptions where people have had an additional heart surgically added to assist a failing heart. Similarly, while it's common to say that humans have ten fingers, there are variations where some people are born with more or less, or have lost fingers due to accidents. Eye color is another example where we can't make a universal claim about humans. Although brown eyes are common, the number of people with blue or green eyes is significant enough that we can't say all humans have brown eyes.

So, when we say "humans have X," it doesn't mean every single human has X. Rather, it means that a significant enough number of humans have X for us to consider it a characteristic of our species.

No argument here but I feel like you used penguins as an example knowing full well someone would respond with "oh yeah well penguins are well documented to exhibit homosexual behaviors!!"

I mean of all possible mammals to choose as an example for your point (presuming in good faith that your actual point was as stated), penguin is an unusual choice. Maybe you just happened to have penguins in mind as an example of a mammal, I don't know.

Oh, and by the way: penguins aren't mammals! Though I'm sure someone has already pointed that out, or at least I hope they did.

I started with lions and then switched to penguins because of Happy Feet and forgot to change the “mammals” part.

I hear this reasoning often but never see it being applied in practice.

For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial?

Similarly if gender and sex are entirely distinct. Does that not mean that the trans community is the strongest supporter of traditional gender roles? Afterall what does it mean to change gender if differing social attitudes to gender ought be extinguished?

Locker rooms? You see these exact talking points copy and pasted a lot, do they relate to this specific article?

The article brings it up quite early on.

It's introduction and parallel with sex means the article makes a wider point about a difference between sex and gender. I agree this article could have been written better without any mention of gender so as to avoid making an out of scope claim in a pop sci article.

Where does it mention locker rooms or "the trans community is the strongest supporter of traditional gender roles?" Did you read the article?

Please stop using the "that's a talking point of the enemy" dismissal tactic. It's lazy and harmful to actual discussion.

I didn't, stop paraphrasing me, it's lazy and harmful to actual discussion. I pointed out why it's irrelevant.

You asked a pointed question.

>For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial?

It denies the different "gender roles"

> Does that not mean that the trans community is the strongest supporter of traditional gender roles?

Um yes? That's been a sticking point for quite a while.

> For starters why are single sex sports and single sex changing rooms so controversial?

Because men are much stronger physically due to genetical differences. Just check out top records in various sports.

You're in violent agreement.

I think you may enjoy this classic text on the topic, it explores these questions in quite some detail: https://janiceraymond.com/the-transsexual-empire

(That page has a link to download the PDF if you're interested, but also here's a taster in the form of a book review at the time it was published: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/06/10/archives/male-and-female-....)

Seriously? If you have single sex sports, then there's a disproportionate representation among the sexes. If you can only televise the top 100 athletes in a given sport how many of that percentage do you think will be male versus female?

It's funny that many languages don't have this „gender vs sex“ separation. For example in my native language there's just one word to describe man/woman option. Some people try to bend over and invent new terms. That doesn't play well with claiming that somehow this „gender vs sex“ separation is not a new cultural phenomena.

Is Lithuanian your native language? Does this word not fit the defintion? https://www.techdico.com/translation/english-lithuanian/tran...

You're looking at a wrong word. The word man/woman option is „lytis“. Both „gender“ and „sex“ was usually translated as „lytis“. „Translytis“ is just a term made of two words and describing a person who is such. English translation would be literally „transgender“. And it's used for people who, well, transition.

There's an attempt to call „gender“ „socialinė lytis“ (= social sex). But doesn't make it sound like it's anything beyond socially constructed cultural phenomena.

> English translation would be literally „transgender“.

So you...do have a word meaning "transgender?"

Or „transsex“ if there's such English word? Word „translytis“ is used specifically for those who attempted transitioning man<->woman.

"transsex"/"transsexual" are English words, though they're seen as more archaic and non-inclusive.

I think you misunderstood what they were saying. They were trying to say that their language doesn't have two separate words to describe gender/sex, it is just one word, as they don't separate those terms.

That has nothing to do with the word "transgender" existing in their language (which I would bet exists in pretty much any widely-used language these days, most of the time as a borrowed word).

Not sure of their language, but it is the same in russian, with the single word "пол" (pronounced as "pohl") used to refer to sex/gender.

English didn't have it either until relatively recently.

The current usage of "gender" was introduced by American psychologist John Money in the latter half of the 20th century.

It's popularity in common speech was accelerated by "sex" becoming a synonym to "copulation," causing "gender" being used as a polite alternative.

--

But how is gender actually defined? Even now, the Oxford Dictionary: "gender: the male sex or the female sex"

https://www.google.com/search?q=gender+definition

We don't need the word gender.

Behaviour and norms used to be called 'manners'. Men bow, women courtesy. Princes and princesses.

Abstracting out a 'gender norm' across all cultures is a doomed exercise. There's too many different tones (genders) trying to be contained in the one song.

The vast majority of western humanity fits in man/woman straight spiritual manners.

Bikeshedding over gender definitions is something worth forgetting from the past ten years.

Let the third and fourth and fifth 'gender norms' be what they may.

> animals do not have socially constructed genders

Do people do?

Yes

Consider the various expected roles of men and women across time and culture, specifically where those expectations change as a consequence of the culture changing.

If people did not then you wouldnt really expect any differences that could not be better accounted for by environmental factors.

I'm impressed: the article is about the rich diversity of different sexes in nature (it does not even go into gender) but all you are getting out of it is some anti-woke sentiment?

Could you please re-read the article and at least absorb the complexity of sex and biology in nature in general? At least be a bit amazed how little we seem to grasp about reproductive processes even on a biological level. And then maybe even feel the need a little to reflect how the article might mean that you're not living in such "sad times" but (maybe) the opposite.

I think my biggest complaint about culture war topics is that it makes perfectly normal discussions (“let’s talk about this article”) turn into long back and forth on an unimportant topic like sex vs gender.

I think it’s just a shiri’s scissor [0] to draw energy away from productivity.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

That gender and sex overlap yet aren't identical is a relatively recent scientific discovery that many people haven't yet learned. It's helpful, therefore, to mention gender when discussing the related subject of sex.

This is not a disclaimer, this is a prompt to click a link to their another article [0].

[0]: https://nautil.us/no-animals-do-not-have-genders-237938/