Here’s a headline at CNN Health that is seemingly confused about what a “woman” is. Note that the word, which means “adult human female” appears blatantly in the headlines, but perhaps the headline writer was ideologically different from the authors:
(click on screenshot to read)
This is the gist of the article, and, indeed, the word “women” appears seven times in the article. But look at the part in bold (my emphasis):
Polycystic ovary syndrome, known as PCOS, has long been known for symptoms such as missed periods or excess body hair. Now, new research has revealed another potential effect: cognitive dysfunction later in life.
The scientific report “is one of the few studies to investigate cognitive functioning and brain outcomes in those women at midlife,” said Dr. Pauline Maki, a professor and director of the Women’s Mental Health Research Program at the University of Illinois Chicago, via email. Maki wasn’t involved in the study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology.
Polycystic ovary syndrome refers to symptoms related to a hormonal imbalance in people assigned female at birth. Telltale signs can include “menstrual cycle changes, skin changes such as increased facial and body hair and acne, abnormal growths in the ovaries, and infertility,” according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.
The chronic condition affects around 8% to 13% of women and girls of reproductive age worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, but as many as 70% could be experiencing PCOS while undiagnosed.
So they use “women and girls” throughout, but slip in the “people assigned female at birth,” as if sex is assigned rather than observed. As Luana Maroja and I wrote:
Even in apparently objective discussions of sex and gender, individuals are often said to have been assigned their sex at birth (e.g., “AFAB”: assigned female at birth), as if this were an arbitrary decision by doctors—a “social construct”—rather than an observation of biological reality.
Yes, secondary sexual characteristics like genitals are usually used as a way to determine biological sex—a proxy for gamete type—but the annoying implication that sex is “assigned” is unnecessary. Why can’t they just stick with “girls” and “women”? What would have been wrong with using, in the sentence, “related to a hormonal imbalance in females”?
h/t: Reese
I am a person assigned female at birth, watch me grow
See me standing toe to toe
As I spread my lovin’ arms across the land
But I’m still a little embryo
With such a long, long way to go
Until I make my sibling assigned male at birth understand
Part of this is mystification – sort of like this :
The empirical observation of the material world mystifies the true nature of ourselves.
Gender (in this case) demystifies, and giving us consciousness of our true selves…
You get the idea. There are other examples out there – I think we all know some.
Elevated levels of testosterone caused by PCOS are often cited by those attempting to justify allowing men to compete in women’s sports (“see, women can have high levels of testosterone, too!”), even though those elevated levels are nowhere near those of men in any case.
The percentages of women experiencing PCOS (as many as 70%!) seem extraordinarily high, even allowing for the fact that so many medical conditions go undiagnosed in women.
I took the statement to mean that as many as 70% of women who have PCOS might not be aware of it, being just obese and a bit hairy. Your interpretation of the sloppy wording is also reasonable, and for a moment I thought that, too. I just picked an alternative interpretation that made common sense to me.
Your interpretation makes more sense – “sloppy wording”, indeed!
I have yet to understand why it is acceptable for one to change their sex simply by announcing it but not acceptable to change one’s race simply by announcing it.
If you accept that I can change my sex without any physical modification to my body…i.e. I’m a man with male reproductive organs who is now a woman based on my feelings, then implicitly you agree that sex has no basis in physical characteristics.
Similarly, if I am white and I feel like I am actually black, then what is your objection to me now identifying as black? Your only objection would be that I lack the physical characteristics of a black person, but that would mean a) rooting race in actual physical characteristics and b) admitting that race is more than a mere “social construct”.
Again, “I can change the sex assigned to me without reference to any physical modifications” should be compatible with “I can change the social construct racial category assigned to me without reference to any physical modifications”.
Yet that second statement would get you cancelled by the people who favor the first. Are these people just mushheads who can’t think properly, or is there something I’m missing?
Power. Self-identification of sex (as or as not “gender”) favours one totalitarian progressive agenda. Self-identification of race frustrates another tot-prog agenda. The first allows an oppressed person to gate-crash. The second allows oppressors to gate-crash. The difference is all you need. But it takes power to enforce the difference.
But do you think that they are aware of the contradiction, and are just ignoring it for their political reasons and hope no one sees it? I know that post-modern thought rejects objectivity and often embraces contradictions…could that be part of it?
Also, I’m not sure that a man claiming to be a woman and then dominating, lets say, a swim competition is a case of an oppressed person gate crashing the oppressors. More like the other way around!
But “she” is oppressed simply because “she’s” that super-oppressed type of woman called a transwoman. <-(Edited this sentence to make it clearer where the oppression comes from.)
That's why you see these rules against men self-identifying into women's sports described as "anti-trans athlete" laws as in "Federation votes to bar trans athletes from competition" when all they did was restrict women's sport to women.
You are correct that they don't need to be aware of the contradiction so they don't acknowledge it. That's what power is. It trumps logic and fairness because it can. That's what it means to be above the law. You arrange to accrue power to yourself to undermine the existing power structure.
+ 1
Dawkins said something about how reproduction is changing “race” all the time. I’d have to find the exact quote.
James Lindsay has a spoken exposition in which he explains it – using the woke / Marxist literature to some extent – in terms of where/how power and incentives are structured… I think… worth a listen.
Anyhow, readers can find those sources for themselves – links can hang up comments.
… and I see Leslie has also sniffed out the same shells as well as the shell game itself.
Yes, and why don’t they use “race assigned at birth”?
Perhaps soon – as a means to reveal political friend/enemy distinctions in specific racial categories.
At the moment, the ideology separates out Blacks who are Republican, or not authentic, etc. … or Whites who perhaps go to the correct Unitarian Universalist churches – to transform themselves….
Birth might itself be the object for transformation – Paulo Freire writes that his pedagogy aims for people (students, specifically) to undergo their own personal Easter. A rebirth… holy crap, I never considered that…
Anyway, I’ll have to get that quote ready.
Maybe we should start using that phrase to make this incoherence more obvious…which might lead to more people questioning whether you can really change your sex by wishing it….
That will be punished with severity – it is the design of the dialectical political warfare.
… you mentioned contradiction up top. Real crudely:
Pairs of contradictions are like the footballs in that warfare. Mao Zedong wrote a lot on contradiction. Hegel, and Marcuse wrote how to do dialectical synthesis. Spoiler : it doesn’t turn out good.
“And so the dialectic progresses.”
-Delgado and Stefancic
Critical Race Theory – An Introduction
2017
They can point to rare anomalies, like Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, which causes an XY newborn to look more or less female (although these individuals have no ovaries or uterus).
I think mushheads has something to do with it.
Many children of mixed marriages in the southern United States– during the era of slavery, reconstruction, and Jim Crow–would frequently “change” their race on census forms or in public presentation, as an attempt to avoid discrimination. So, yes, people have indeed changed race by simply by announcing it.
Secondly, the main objection of a white American identifying as black, doesn’t stem from the discordance in allelic frequency between the two groups, or rather anything biological– it’s simply that, on average, black and white Americans (specifically WASPs) have encountered different prejudices during their time in the country, so the Dolezalian transition is perceived as intrusive. There’s nothing objectively wrong with doing it, but people simply find it morally repellent.
RE: “on average, black and white Americans (specifically WASPs) have encountered different prejudices during their time in the country, so the Dolezalian transition is perceived as intrusive.”
Patrick, this also applies to women. On average, women and men “have encountered different prejudices during their time in the country.”
See also: The MacPherson Principle (defined by our host as: “whenever two liberal principles conflict, it’s always resolved in a way that the women lose”)
I was being circumspect. Yes, WASP women were excluded economically and subject to sexism, however not subject to violent chattel slavery and its lingering consequences. This is why the perceived offense is greater w.r.t. racial transitions.
Be careful with ethnic slurs applied to people not of your own kind. With names like ours, you and I are not WASPs. It is an ugly term except ironically and self-referentially.
“So, yes, people have indeed changed race by simply by announcing it.”
Not the same thing as a young white male, with no recent ancestry other than European, suddenly announcing that he is a black man, and perhaps arguing that he should be allowed to benefit from racial preferences in hiring, education, government programs, etc. I predict massive backlash from the woke left, and indeed everyone else, against any man that tries that stunt.
A lot of the backlash from the left would be based on a member of an oppressor class attempting unfairly to co-opt the identity of the oppressed…which is exactly what men do when they claim to be women. So the nature of the objection should apply both ways.
I gave a counterfactual to your argument, and you dismiss it because the reciprocal case doesn’t exhibit the same properties.
Besides that point, what does it matter what a hypothetical woke leftist would say or do? There is a rich tradition on the Left of criticizing means tested benefits and, instead, advocating universal programs. In lieu of this, affirmative action has stood as a half-measure. I don’t think anyone would begrudge a person trying to use government assistance to better their lives, but not, as in your example, if it costs a black person– the target of the program– a position.
Your counterfactual doesn’t address the central point and only raises further questions about the relationship between the “oppressor/oppressed”, as pointed out by a few others.
And, this is not hypothetical. Philosophy professor Rebecca Tuvel made this exact argument about transracialism, and was subject to vicious treatment by the Woke Left. Very little of their criticism attempted to engage with the substantive points that she was making.
The Left isn’t a monolith. Read Adolph L. Reed Jr. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/15/jenner-dolezal-one-trans-good-other-not-so-much
Could it be that the author wanted to be able to reach as many people as possible. Maybe to get this information to women who no longer identify as women.
I didn’t see anything particularly egregious, as the author decouples sex from gender. The author defined that PCOS applies to *biological* females (i.e., AFAB) and then continues to use the word “woman” metonymously for those with female reproductive organs, irrespective of how they identify (gender).
And possibly to explain to trans women who might be confused on the issue that unless you are AFAB, missing periods and excess body hair are not symptoms of PCOS.
Jerry, the reason that AFAB & AMAB (assigned F/M at birth) have spread is NOT that those who promote them believe that doctors assign sex to newborns.
Instead, these people believe that sex (which type of gamete your body is meant to produce) does not matter. It should be everywhere replaced by gender identity. In other words, the F & M in AFAB & AMAB refer to gender identity. According to radical trans activists, sex does not matter. There’s no reason to talk about it or have your personal identity documents (birth certificate, health insurance card, driver’s licence, passport, etc.) record it. Nor should the Census form ask about sex. Etc.
Most importantly, in all existing laws that mention sex, sex should be interpreted to mean gender identity. This is a blatantly anti-democratic attempt to abolish the sex category “woman” in the law. If one were to ask voters whether the sex category “woman” should be abolished by introducing self-ID, voters would reject it. That is what all the opinion surveys imply.
So the only chance to get sexual creationism into law is to bypass the democratic process. A very good example is the attempt by the Biden administration to reinterpret the meaning of sex in Title IX legislation which was passed in 1972 and does not define the term sex.
See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_IX
The Biden administration would not get a majority in Congress for amending Title IX by changing sex to gender identity. That is why it attempts to change things by administrative rule making. The process is stalled at the moment because if the Biden admin would come out now saying “sex in Title IX means gender identity” the Republicans would try to beat the Democrats to death with this. It could cost the Dems the presidency. (I predict nothing on this front will move until the presidential election has taken place. While the Biden admin is pressured by radical trans activists and their allies, Biden and his advisors won’t move because they know this is political dynamite. The polls on this are crystal clear.)
In short, nobody believes that doctors assign sex to newborns. Nobody is that stupid.
James Kirkup: The document that reveals the remarkable tactics of trans lobbyists. The Spectator, Dec 1, 2019
https://archive.ph/rFjqZ
James Kirkup: Revealed: the secret trans-rights lobbying operation in parliament. The Spectator, 10 March 2021
https://archive.ph/Iz8bA
Eliza Mondegreen: The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement. Oct 21, 2022
https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/10/the-falsehood-at-the-heart-of-the-trans-movement/
Thanks for the links. As I’ve noticed before these men who want to be women are an aggressive lot.
Thanks Peter:
Ms. Mondegreen is excellent. She attended the WPATH conference by stealth and reported on it.
It was bonkers, like amphetamine day at the mental hospital.
You can probably find her interview at the website you quote
https://freethinker.co.uk/2022/10/the-falsehood-at-the-heart-of-the-trans-movement/
WPATH isn’t a medical organization and its stances are in opposition to evidence based science. It is a collection of misfit toys and psychopaths.
D.A.
NYC
Under the gender identity paradigm, what makes a man different from a woman? If a person picks “woman” as their gender identity, is there anything physical that we can point to that makes them different from a man?
RE: If a person picks “woman” as their gender identity, is there anything physical that we can point to that makes them different from a man?
If you pick “woman” as your gender identity this would be because you have a female brain (irrespective of the type of your reproductive organs). The talk is literally of “brain sex,” which is, of course, a newly coined expression.
The ultimate agenda of radical transactivists and their allies is as follows:
1. Replace sex by gender identity in social life and in law.
2. Redefine sex. Hence all the talk about sex as a spectrum. Sex supposedly is “inherently knotty … its ‘variables’ are multiple, come in far more than two versions, and … no single biological factor is determinative.” And, “sex, as much as gender, is culturally contingent and produced.”
Katrina Karkazis: The misuses of “biological sex.” The Lancet, Vol 394, November 23, 2019, pp. 1898-1899
3. Make it a hate crime to bring up a person’s biological sex or to say that a person cannot change sex.
This is a very ambitious agenda. I think it will fail on all 3 points. The obstacle: democratic politics. This agenda is not like the issue of homosexuality. Homosexuality won widespread acceptance because, once religion had been weakened enough, tolerating gays and lesbians does not run counter to the interests of anybody else. This is not true for the radical trans agenda: its victims are women, children, homosexuals, and science.
“If you pick “woman” as your gender identity this would be because you have a female brain (irrespective of the type of your reproductive organs).”
“Male” brains vs. “female” brains are an extremely dodgy way to go about this, as these terms are very poorly defined.
Also, to the extent that there are general physical differences between male and female brains, I would wager that most men who pick woman as their gender identity would in fact have “male” brains.
So we are back to some non-physical, mystical difference between men and women under this rubric.
Babies are *observed* to be female or male at birth based on the appearance of their genitalia. These characteristics so are highly correlated with sex (defined by gamete size) that the word “observed” is appropriate. “Assignment” implies that the determination was made at the observer’s discretion, which isn’t the case.
Good to continue to point this out.
It’s not clear whether the phrasing originated with CNN or with one of its sources, such as the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Either way, it’s misleading.
And yet another egregious example from Medical News Today: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/232363#sex
Oh boy. That’s a whole garbage can full right there.
D.A.
NYC
I always thought the best comeback to Woke after “assigned…etc” was:
“Oh, you mean assigned by God when he puts a soul into a fertilized egg?”
Works best when an atheist hits it.
I don’t understand the upset here. The CNN writers are simply trying to be accurate. If they wrote that PCOS applied to women, it would be inaccurate, omitting trans men who grew up with ovaries and might have PCOS. If “people assigned female at birth” is too clumsy, maybe “people who have had ovaries” would be simple and descriptive.
I agree with Jerry’s repeated corrections re sex. That being the case, why not leave sex and gender out of it when it’s not needed. In this case, the issue involves ovaries and PCOS, not sex, gamete size, or gender.
“Trans men” are still women in the medical/biological sense of the word, so, no, that phrasing would not be omitting trans men.
Calling adult human females “trans men” because they identify as such concedes too much to trans activists.
It’s also insulting to women, at least those of us not taken in by the cult of gender identity.
Look at it this way: if the word “woman” is to be defined by one’s relationship to the norms attached to one’s sex (i.e., “gender,”) every woman who ever rebelled against social norms was a man. And, indeed, trans activists have claimed Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I, James Barry (Margaret Anne Bulkley), and Louisa May Alcott were all “trans men.”
When I hear the phrase “sex assigned at birth” I think of a doctor snipping off the “too small” penis of a newborn boy because it would be better for all involved if he didn’t put the kid through that. Given an ambiguous situation, Doc decides to make the call and take out the scalpel. “It’s a girl!”
The phrase “race assigned at birth” makes it sound like the doctor — and everyone else — is just going to pretend Baby doesn’t look suspiciously like the husband’s dusky best friend. “You’re a dad!”
Using those phrases for those situations is at least a bit more understandable.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with science being kinder. As a living creature identifying as a white, non-birthing, cis-heteronormative, misogynistic, neurodivergent, omnivoric, colonizer, it can only help our pursuit of the truth. I’ll be back in a bit after I’ve decided which pronouns to put on the cheap t shirt made by impoverished Chinese women and children. Until then…
I thought the hissy resignation of the NYer poetry editor would do it, then Marin county’s resolution….. but now it seems some local council in Chicago has called for a ceasefire ALSO. https://twitter.com/the48thward/status/1752797088667103474
That’s it, bring the troops home Bibi, all is lost. El Al better have space for millions of Jews leaving so they can turn over the State of Israel to its natural and just rulers Hamas.
So they can all live in peace now.
FINALLY!
D.A.
NYC
It’s interesting that you think a call for a ceasefire (as well as the release of hostages and provisioning of humanitarian aid) is also simultaneously a call for the displacement of Jews from Israel. I know you’re being facetious, but the satire has no target.
There’s increasing evidence that use of hormone/ puberty blockers damage IQ.
PCOS is often seen as a justification of being “trans”.
By the precautionary principle that casts a dark shadow on a lot of the genderwang nonsense surely.
D.A.
NYC
(sorry so many posts from me, I’m in Florida temporarily so the NYC winter isn’t freezing my head. Its nice!)
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/06/10/photos-of-readers-93/
I wish I could have been assigned a knighthood in Camelot when I was born. Alas in 2024 I still have been denied my identified birthright.
Trans knights are knights!
👏👏👏
Trans knights are human knights.
Dang! I so did not see that coming.
It is just as Helen Joyce said in one of her interviews, the gender identity movement is a linguistic movement. It strives to change your perception of reality through the manipulation of language. Every new term that comes out of this movement is meant to splinter your view of the world in some way or another, until you have no way of processing the information coming in through your senses. Once your worldview is in shambles, the activists and ideologues are there to feed you an alternative view of reality. In this new reality, a penis has nothing to do with the male sex, except when a woman wants one for herself so as to live her life authentically as a man. You are meant to believe that penises are not part of male anatomy, but also that penises are central in the definition of the male sex in those cases when a woman wants to become a man.