If "there's no such thing as race," is there such a thing as gender?

[Rand_Rover]

@Belowjob2.0

What you’ll find is that continental ancestry as determined by DNA has decoupled from phenotype. That is to say, many people who look “black” by physical appearance will actually have majority European DNA markers. And many people who look “white” will have majority African DNA markers.

Cite? Thanks.

[elucidator]

You would like me to prove a negative (i.e., that there is no objective definition of “male” or “female”)?

Have you made some recent self-discovery that you are reluctant to share with the group?

[CannyDan]

@Rand_Rover

And what I’m saying is who cares whether there is objective criteria. A person doing a study could draw circles (or spheres, if we are still talking 3D) around the different attraction points and say that people within the sphere are one race. There’s nothing wrong with doing that as long as they say how they decided to draw the spheres. In this sense–i.e., that someone could draw these spheres if they want to, there is absolutely “such a thing as race.”

If you don’t care about objective criteria, then sure, anybody can define races by identifying any arbitrarily chosen set of criteria. And I can define a bicycle as a motorized vehicle having seventeen wheels. I’m sure we will communicate quite well as long as you remember that every time I say “bicycle” I am not talking about a two wheeled pedal powered conveyance. But what is the point of so encumbering our communication?

Similarly, your circled “attraction points” aren’t the same as the commonly accepted biological use of “race”. There is nothing “wrong” with the practice you suggest except for the assumption on the part of any probable audience that the identified group shares characteristics *in addition to *those selected by the person drawing circles. As a matter of fact, such an assumption would be as contrary to reality as a seventeen wheeled motorized “bicycle”. This is what is meant by the statement that race is not applicable to modern humans. You seem to be working very hard to avoid this – almost as if you, like your hypothetical “person doing a study”, are simply drawing circles in the air.

I suggest you read **Blake’s **postagain.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Rand_Rover

You would like me to prove a negative (i.e., that there is no objective definition of “male” or “female”)?

No, I’d like you to explain on what basis you dismiss the objective definitions that are known to exist.
Of course, I’ll still accept the possibility that the point you’re trying to make continues to elude me though some oversight on my part.

[John_Mace]

@Belowjob2.0

Analyze the population of each country in two separate ways: by DNA, and by phenotype (skin color, facial features, hair, etc.). What you’ll find is that continental ancestry as determined by DNA has decoupled from phenotype. That is to say, many people who look “black” by physical appearance will actually have majority European DNA markers. And many people who look “white” will have majority African DNA markers.

I don’t know about that last statement, but the previous one also depends on who is doing the looking. If you showed an African a picture of an African American who is 3/4 white, the African is probably going to notice the white aspects of the person’s appearance more than a typical white American would. We are largely conditioned in the West to think of mixed race African/Europeans as being “black”, and so any hint of African ancestry makes the person black. An African is going to have a different starting point, and so isn’t going to come to the same conclusion.

[Heart_of_Dorkness]

@Rand_Rover

Self-reporting is just one way of drawing the sphere–it doesn’t mean that the study is entirely useless.

Sure, the study may still be useful, but you can’t draw the same conclusions using self-reported race as you could with a biological definition of race (if one were possible).

Let’s say, for instance, that we have a study that finds that black people in their 30s and 40s have 20 times the risk of heart disease of their white counterparts.

If the researchers had used some biological definition of “black”, based on genes and/or appearance, then we might say, “Okay - if you are ‘black’ as defined by this study, you’re at high risk for heart disease, and if you’re ‘white’, you’re probably not.” And we can use that definition to help determine how we approach black people’s health care vs. white people’s.

But in this study, there was no independent definition of “black” that was highly correlated with heart disease. Rather, it was that self-reporting as “black” is highly correlated with various other health conditions (which themselves are highly correlated with behavioral choices) that are risk factors for heart disease:

The black adults who developed heart disease early had at least one of four risk factors — high blood pressure, being overweight, chronic kidney disease or low levels of “good” cholesterol (high-density cholesterol, or HDL). Blood pressure and heart risk rose in step: for each 10 mm increase in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number of the ratio), the risk of having heart failure in their 40s doubled. For each 5.7 increase in body mass index (BMI), a ratio of weight and height, the risk of developing heart failure increased by 40%. And each 13.3 mg/dL drop in HDL levels also boosted the risk of heart disease by 40%.

But the largest risk factor for heart failure among this group was chronic kidney disease, a condition that is often triggered by untreated diabetes and obesity. Black adults with chronic kidney disease experienced a stunning 20-fold jump in their risk of heart failure, compared with black adults without kidney disease. “Here we have tangible evidence that heart failure in the young is a real dilemma,” says Dr. Clyde Yancy, president-elect of the American Heart Association.

So again, it’s not that being black is correlated with heart disease per se; most of the black people studied did not have heart disease in that age range, and some of the white people did. It’s that kidney disease, high blood pressure, etc. are correlated with heart disease, and people who self-report as “black” have higher rates of these risk factors.

Yes, this could mean that people’s choice in self-reporting has some basis in biology, and therefore, reflects some underlying biological category that also has a predisposition to these risk factors. But it could also mean that people who identify culturally as “black” also engage in other cultural behaviors that lead to a higher incidence of these risk factors. Some examples might be higher-stress lifestyles, diets higher in salt and/or “bad” fats, and failing to seek medical treatment:

Although young black adults in the study were more likely than whites to have risk factors for heart disease — on average, the baseline blood pressure of blacks who went on to develop heart disease was 10 mm higher than that of whites — Bibbins-Domingo and her co-investigators also showed that this population did not get appropriate medical treatment for their conditions, if any at all. At the beginning of the study, 75% of black participants with hypertension were not taking medication for their condition; 10 years later, 57% still remained untreated.

In short, there’s a big difference between “People who have X genetic or physical characteristics are at a higher risk for Y than those who don’t have those characteristics” and “People who call themselves X tend to do A, B, and C, which lead to conditions that, in turn, lead to a higher risk of Y.” And if you’re relying on self-reporting, there’s a chance that you’ve stumbled across an instance of the former, but it’s more likely you’re looking at an example of the latter.

[Blake]

Rand Rover, you are not a fool. We all know from your posting history that you are quite capable of comprehending moderately complex topics. Yet you have quite clearly ignored everything I posted, and continue to assert that there is no objective standard of sex, despite that fact that I proved to you, with examples, that there such standards are trivially simple to construct.

I am not pleased with this behaviour, and it is hardly doing your position any good when you blatantly ignore what has been shown to be the case, with evidence, and repeat claims that have been debunked, with examples.

Your case hinges entirely on your belief that there is no objective standard of sex. That belief is utterly and completely wrong. There are multiple objective standards of sex.

@Rand_Rover

Just as a reminder of what someone mentioned above, there really is no objective definition of “male” or “female”–a person could be “male” under one definition and “female” under another.

Wrong. You clearly do not understand what “objective” means.

Objective means that the phenomenon is based upon quantifiable characteristics present within consensus reality.

Nothing more.

If a phenomenon is based upon the presence of a penis, and a penis is a quantifiable characteristic that is present within consensus reality, then the phenomenon has an objective existence.

There is no truth at all in your claim that there really is no objective definition of “male” or “female”. That claim is a load of horse hockey.

I have explained to you in previous threads, with references, what “objective” means, but it is becoming quite clear that you refuse to listen. You are still working under your misguided belief that “objective” is synonymous with “unique”. That is not simply correct. A phenomenon can be both subjective and plural.

@Rand_Rover

The whole point is that there are no objective definitions of those terms.

Wrong.

There are objective definitions of those terms, and you have been presented with at least 5 in this thread alone.

A person with XX chromosomes, testes, and a uterus may be either male or female depending on how someone defines “male” and “female.”

So what?

How does this in any way support your claim that “male” and “female” are not objective categories?

Once again, you are displaying a total lack of understanding of what “objective” means.

@Rand_Rover

The point is that some people believe that “there’s no such thing as race” because there’s no objective way to say that a person is one race or another.

Wrong.

That is a strawman.

Everybody accepts that you can create arbitrary races based upon objective criteria such as skin reflectance. The problem is that such categories are perfectly self-referential. They tell you nothing whatsoever about the people in such groups beyond the very criteria that you used to create the group.

In science, self-referential groups have no utility, and having no utility they have no logical validity. Circular arguments are never logically valid, yet all objective racial classifications are inherently circular.

Science doesn’t credit logically invalid suppositions.

But it is also true that there is no objective way to say that a person is one gender/sex or another…

Wrong.

You have been presented with multiple ways in which a person may be objectively assigned to one sex or another.

But that’s exactly what they do for race even though, biologically speaking, race and gender/sex are equivalent in this regard (in that there’s no objective biological definition of either).

Honestly, did you even bother to read my post? Because if you did, you failed to understand it at even the most superficial level. I specifically explained to you, with examples, that there is an objective biological definition of sex. I explained that at great length, with numerous examples.

Did you not understand the examples, or do you somehow disagree with them?

Because “everything with a penis is male” doesn’t seem that hard to understand.

So I assume you dispute that a penis is a quantifiable characteristic present within consensus reality. Maybe you think that penises only exist in your head? Or perhaps you think that they can’t be measured?

Because if you accept that penises exist in the real world and can be measured. Then there’s a really simple objective standard of “sex” right there.

[Rand_Rover]

@Bryan_Ekers

No, I’d like you to explain on what basis you dismiss the objective definitions that are known to exist.

OK, what is the objective definition of a man? If you see a person with a penis, testes, uterus, and XX chromosomes, is that person a man or woman?

I’m not trying to play gotcha, so here’s what I think the answers are to the above questions:

1. There’s no such thing.

2. Different people will come up with different results.

[Rand_Rover]

Blake, I’ll respond to your entire post later, but for now can I get a link to this:

@Blake

I have explained to you in previous threads, with references, what “objective” means, but it is becoming quite clear that you refuse to listen. You are still working under your misguided belief that “objective” is synonymous with “unique”. That is not simply correct. A phenomenon can be both subjective and plural.

I think you must be talking about someone else. I’m well aware what “objective” means, and it is “able to be determined without use of human judgement.” Which is why “male” and “female” are not objective terms–a person with testes and XX chromosomes is not either a male or a female in the same way that water is either at 100 degrees F or 34 degrees F. Someone must look at that individual and decide whether chromosomes matter more than genitalia to determine if that person is male or female.

[Jas09]

Just because different people come up with different results doesn’t make a criteria non-objective. What makes a criteria non-objective is if it can’t be measured objectively.

There are also objective definitions of race - they are just generally bad ones in that they miscategorize large segments of the population or fail to categorize others. They also tend to be subjective - like asking people what race they identify as.

The objective definitions for sex do not have either of these deficiencies. The number of people miscategorized is extremely small, as is the number of people that are indeterminate.

[Jas09]

@Rand_Rover

I’m well aware what “objective” means, and it is “able to be determined without use of human judgement.”

Could you provide a cite for this definition? I’ve never heard it used this way, and certainly not in any scientific context.

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Rand_Rover

OK, what is the objective definition of a man? If you see a person with a penis, testes, uterus, and XX chromosomes, is that person a man or woman?

That person falls into a small intermediate category which in no way invalidates the soundness of calling someone who has a penis, testes and XY chromosomes a man. It’s like you’re arguing that existence of a rare blue rock invalidates the labeling of hugely more commonplace red rocks. At this point, the impression I get is:

• You believe racial differences do exist and are immutable.

• You’re trying to prove this by contradiction by claiming that, logically, if racial differences don’t exist, we must accept something seemingly ridiculous - that sexual differences don’t either - because sex and race are similar.

If there’s another point you were trying to make, I cheerfully admit it eludes me. Red rocks (i.e. “men”) and green rocks (i.e. “women”) divide the landscape pretty clearly, with a small handful of blue rocks scattered randomly about (i.e. “people who through genetic anomaly have some characteristics of both”). The racial equivalent is an wide field of grey rocks, with small quantities of randomly-coloured flecks in them.

[gracer]

@Bryan_Ekers

That person falls into a small intermediate category which in no way invalidates the soundness of calling someone who has a penis, testes and XY chromosomes a man.

The category is not as small as you think. Like I said above: it is the same size as the category “red heads”, and we don’t take that to be category of hair colours we don’t really mention because it is that rare.

Calling someone “man” is just that: a name, a label, a category. Useful for some situations, seriously flawed for others.

Sex (in a binary sense) is definitely defined subjectively, as different doctors will define it differently. Doctors themselves don’t seem to be all too aware of this, they tend to think they can define it. Then they start looking at the various possible definitions and realise that between hormones, chromosomes, external characteristics and a person’s feelings there is no final rule. Again, I refer to the case of Caster Semenya. It’s just not the case that in The Big Book of Doctors it says “and by the way, go with chromosomes over genitals of you’re not sure”.

[Blake]

@Rand_Rover

OK, what is the objective definition of a man? If you see a person with a penis, testes, uterus, and XX chromosomes, is that person a man or woman?

Depends on what scheme you are using. In most schemes they are neither.

What is your point here?

There’s no such thing [as an objective definition of a man].

Well you have been given multiple definitions, and you keep denying that they exist. You refuse to explain whether you believe they are not objective, or whether you simply do not believe they exist at all. You just keep refusing to acknowledge that they exist.

There’s no *argument *here on your part. You are simply repeating *ad nauseum *that such definitions exist, despite being shown multiple examples. There’s nothing for us to work with. You are providing no actual argument. Just repetitive assertions that such definitions don’t exist, in the face of endless examples that quite clearly do exist.

Different people will come up with different results.

So you are claiming that if I produce a classification scheme based upon the presence of a penis, and I asked two people to divide a random sample of 100 humans into male and female based on that scheme, the results would vary by greater than 5%?

Seriously?

You are saying that if two people look at the same randomly selected 100 subjects, at least six of the subjects would such have an ambiguous penile status that they would be placed into different sexes by each observer.

I call bullshit on that claim and ask for your evidence for it.

@Rand_Rover

I’m well aware what “objective” means, and it is “able to be determined without use of human judgement.” Which is why “male” and “female” are not objective terms–a person with testes and XX chromosomes is not either a male or a female in the same way that water is either at 100 degrees F or 34 degrees F.

WTF?

You are seriously claiming that water can’t exist at 67^oF? That it must exist at either 100^oF or 34^oF.That there are no intermediate temperatures?

Or perhaps you are claiming that temperature is subjective?

Both claims are so bizarre that I can not work out which one you are making here.

Someone must look at that individual and decide whether chromosomes matter more than genitalia to determine if that person is male or female.

Wrong.

Someone might make such a decision *before *the scheme is applied to the individual. Or they might decide that such rare individuals do not fall into either male or female groupings *before *the scheme is applied to the individual.

But they would never, ever, ever decide whether chromosomes matter more than genitalia to determine if an individual is male. That is the very antithesis of an objective classification scheme.

Since you claim that you understand what what “objective” means, perhaps you can explain to us how the scheme you just described is in any sense objective? How can this scheme be objective if it requires case-by-case human judgment on whether chromosomes matter more than genitalia?

Because if you can’t explain that to us, this is a blatant strawman. You are trying to prove that sexual classification is never objective, by constructing a classification that isn’t objective and then pointing out that the scheme you constructed isn’t objective.

Classic strawman.

[gracer]

@Bryan_Ekers

That person falls into a small intermediate category which in no way invalidates the soundness of calling someone who has a penis, testes and XY chromosomes a man.

The category is not as small as you think. Like I said above: it is the same size as the category “red heads”, and we don’t take that to be category of hair colours we don’t really mention because it is that rare.

Calling someone “man” is just that: a name, a label, a category. Useful for some situations, seriously flawed for others.

Sex (in a binary sense) is definitely defined subjectively, as different doctors will define it differently. Doctors themselves don’t seem to be all too aware of this, they tend to think they can define it. Then they start looking at the various possible definitions and realise that between hormones, chromosomes, external characteristics and a person’s feelings there is no final rule. Again, I refer to the case of Caster Semenya. It’s just not the case that in The Big Book of Doctors it says “and by the way, go with chromosomes over genitals if you’re not sure”.

A doctor can objectively determine what chromosomes a person has, what hormones they produce, then he can see what their genitals most look like, he can ask what they feel. Then he can use that information to give them a subjective label of sex.

[andros]

@gracer

It is actually not rare at all that sex is not as simple as we usually think: it occurs as often as red hair.

Ok, I’ll bite.

What’s not that rare? What is as common as red hair? People of indeterminate sex? I find that awfully hard to believe.

-a-

[Blake]

@gracer

The category is not as small as you think. Like I said above: it is the same size as the category “red heads”…

Utter rubbish.

Redheads make up ~2% of the human population. In contrast “those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female… is seen to be about 0.018%”.

In short, less than 1 person in 5000 has genitalia that is inconsistent with their chromosomal sex. That is nothing like the one person in 50 who has red hair.

[gracer]

@Blake

Utter rubbish.

Redheads make up ~2% of the human population. In contrast “those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female… is seen to be about 0.018%”.

In short, less than 1 person in 5000 has genitalia that is inconsistent with their chromosomal sex. That is nothing like the one person in 50 who has red hair.

I’m taking the statistic from the BBC documentary Me, my sex and I. I think they take it to be broader than chromosomal sex being inconsistent with phenotypic sex. As I remember it, they used about four scales: chromosomes, hormones, genitals and a person’s own description (though I might not remember correctly). Watch the documentary, it’s interesting!

[Blake]

Rand Rover, since the point you are trying to make is eluding others as well as myself, perhaps I can help you to clarify by asking a few of simple questions:

1. Do you believe it is possible for me to build a machine that could analyse photographs of people’s genitals and assign those photographs to “pictures of vaginas”, “pictures of penises” and “pictures of something else”? If you do not accept this, can you explain what you see as the physical limitations on building such a machine?

2. If you do believe I can build the machine described above, do you believe that, with a random sample of photographs, the machine would assign >99% of them as either penises or vaginas? If you do not accept this, can you explain what you see as the physical limitations on building such a machine?

3.  If you accept both the above points, in what sense isn’t this classification scheme perfectly objective? If it can be done by a machine, doesn’t that prove that the classification scheme programmed into the machine is perfectly objective?

[DocCathode]

@gracer

I’m taking the statistic from the BBC documentary Me, my sex and I. I think they take it to be broader than chromosomal sex being inconsistent with phenotypic sex.

Even if you count all chromosomal anomalies (XO, XXY, XYY), all cases of ambiguous genitalia, and all cases of transsexedness (and anything else I forgot) I still don’t see how you get the number of intersexed humans being anywhere close to the number of redhaired humans.