Boycott IETF 127

Re:Boycott IETF 127 by jl6 on Saturday March 22, 2025 @04:29AM (#43444354)

I mention reproductive role (gametes etc.) because that’s what sex is, not because it’s the sole feature of interest. Why we care about someone’s sex is a different matter. Sometimes we don’t! You can sell someone a coffee, and their sex has little bearing on the situation. But sometimes we do care about their sex, because their sex has material consequences. Perhaps sports are the most relevant example to this discussion about passports. The IOC uses “passport gender” to assess eligibility, which is possibly why the current administration is insisting that passports reflect sex, not gender, because sex is what matters to sporting competition. Gender is far less relevant.

There are many other situations where sex and its material consequences matter more than gender. Yes, it’s not gametes that make a man run faster, but there’s a clear causal chain between gametes, sexual differentiation pathways, gonads, and testosterone.

Incidentally, it’s a really weird idea that we can’t tell someone’s sex without looking in their pants, or without some advanced scientific analysis. In reality, outward appearance is extremely highly correlated with sex, and humans (and a lot of animals!) have evolved to be experts at detecting sex, sometimes at a great distance. Visual appearance, gait, voice, behavior, and more, are enough clues to not just make a guess at sex, but to do so with very high accuracy. Probably upwards of 99%. Official documentation is there to clarify the 1%.

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Re:Boycott IETF 127 by throwawayk7h on Tuesday March 25, 2025 @02:32PM (#43474348)

Well, the justification for the visa ban is sports, so I could agree that your definition of sex is what matters in this case. But I think in the majority of cases, sex is listed on the passport just to help with identification. If not, then why is it on the passport at all?

There are many definitions of sex. Some would say that sex should be defined chromosomally. I think it would be very unhelpful to put an M on a passport for an XY cis woman -- it should be an F, or maybe an X, if X were just a marker to indicate an unusual edge case. If so, shouldn't transgender people at least be afforded an X on their passport?

And then there's what's between your legs. Well, this is surgically alterable to some extent, so do you mean what's currently between your legs, what appears to be your legs, what was between your legs at birth, etc.? Or do you mean reproductive function? Maybe someone might say that a regular surgery isn't sufficient to change sex, but stem-cell-grown genitals do count as changing sex.

Regarding outward appearance (etc.) being correlated with "sex" (however it's been defined) -- that's exactly my point! In fact, because outward appearance is what is important nearly always -- except possibly in dating, reproduction, and sports -- and because there are a plethora of different meanings when sex is defined as "biological truth," I honestly think that outward appearance (etc.) is what most people actually mean when they say someone is a "man" or a "woman." Therefore, sex, in common usage, is appearance (etc.). This matches with how a tomato is a vegetable culinarily (i.e. colloquially), but a fruit botanically (i.e. "biological truth").

(Anyway, all this is really beside the point of this thread. You can disagree with everything I've said -- I'm just trying to argue that the U.S. is presently a difficult destination for transgender travellers.)

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