The app for independent voices
Very thorough and quite comprehensive. ICYMI, you might have some interest in Sam Harris's kick at the same kitty, even if he subsequently snatches defeat from the jaws of victory with some intellectual frauds of his own:
But this statement of yours is somewhat problematic or maybe simply careless: "... a person who was fired from a job in a funeral home after transitioning from male to female." Absolutely no one changes sex.
However, much more problematic is this other statement of yours:
"This new ubiquity in scientific publishing of 'sex assigned at birth' notwithstanding, it is an unscientific term. Sex is, in fact, observed at birth."
Nope, sorry. The ONLY thing observed at birth is genitalia which are reasonable markers, or proxies, for PROBABLE sex, but they are NOT what it MEANS to have a sex. Why Khelif was competing in women's sports -- at birth he had genitalia that LOOKED like those of actual females. A fairly common phenomenon, in fact:
Technically speaking, we're ALL "assigned a sex at birth" and don't actually ACQUIRE one until the onset of puberty:
Wiley Online Library: "Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles ....
Another reason for the wide-spread misconception about the biological sex is the notion that it is a condition, while in reality it maybe a life-history stage. For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET." [my emphasis]
And US "biologist" -- the jury is still out on the question -- PZ Myers:
Myers: " 'female' is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female."
Standard biological definitions -- the ones Myers was alluding to -- STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
Definitions based on genitalia "observed at birth" are no more than antiscientific claptrap, the Kindergarten Cop movie writ large: "boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas". No wonder so many people "think" that "sex-changes" are within the realm of possibility: "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon! 🙄"
But such unscientific definitions obscure if not repudiate the bedrock foundational and defining difference between men and women: men have functional testicles and women have functional ovaries. No way that any transwoman is EVER going to acquire any of the latter.
But those differences have far-reaching consequences that society will be ill-served to lose sight of. As Oscar Wilde put it when asked, by a woman, what was the essential difference between men and women:
"Of that, madam, I cannot conceive." ...
