I used to subscribe to the New York Review of Books, which, while sometimes a repository for boring academic cat-fights, often included engaging and illuminating articles—until fabled editor Bob Silvers died in 2017. Now, under the leadership of editor Emily Greenhouse, the magazine, always Left-leaning, seems to have become more progressive.
The article by gender scholar Paisley Currah in the December issue, for example, fully accepts the argument that trans people are fully and legally equivalent to the sex that they transitioned to or think they are, not their natal sex. While for most issues trans people should have the same legal rights as cis people, I’ve argued that in a few cases, like sports, confinement in jails, and right to have a rape counselor or battered-woman’s helper the same as one’s natal sex, trans “rights” conflict with women’s “rights”. Further, an enlightened resolution of those “rights” involves accepting the biological definition of sex, based on gamete type, rather than the self-identification of sex adopted by many gender activists and “progressives.”
You can read the NYRB article by clicking below, or find it archived here.
What’s useful about Currah’s article is its summary of the history of legislation involving both biological sex and self-identified gender, as well as discrimination against women if they stepped outside what was seen as their “proper roles”. What’s not so useful is that Currah swallows the whole hog of “progressive” gender activism, arguing that those who hew to the biological definition of sex are not only endangering feminism (in fact, the opposite is true), but buttressing the Right, including Trump and Team MAGA. Here he is wrong, for he neglects the many liberals who question the view that you are whatever sex you think you are. (Most Americans, for example, do not think that trans-identified men (“trans women”) should compete on women’s sports teams.) Currah further argues, also mistakenly, that legislation accepting that biological sex can matter legally, is really “anti trans”. I would argue that, at least in the cases I mentioned above, it is in fact “pro woman.”
There’s no doubt that much of the legislation involving trans people is meant to buttress a conservative, religious-based agenda, and I disagree with a lot of it (I think, for example, that there’s no good reason to ban transgender people from the military). But when there are real clashes of rights, what we need is discussion and argumentation, not name-calling or claims that adherence to a definition of sex based on biology is designed to “erase” trans people—or rests at bottom on bigotry.
You can see where Currah is going at the outset:
On April 27, 2023, Kansas became the first state in the country to institute a statewide definition of sex. “A ‘female’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce ova,” the law declared, “and a ‘male’ is an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to fertilize the ova of a female.” Since then dozens of state legislatures have introduced similar bills; sixteen have passed. In Indiana and Nebraska governors have issued executive orders to the same end. Each of these measures effectively strips transgender people of legal recognition.
While Currah, tellingly, never gives a definition of “man” or “woman,” he seems to tacitly accepts the self-identification principle: “a woman is whoever she says she is,” regardless if that person has had no hormone therapy or surgery, and has a beard and a penis. He rejects the biologicaL sex definition on the grounds that so many seemingly intelligent people do. People like Steve Novella and Agustín Fuentes, for example, argue that gamete-based sex is associated or can be disassociated from many other traits, including chromosome type, hormonal titer, chromosome content, and morphology, so there is no one way to define biological sex. I won’t go into the arguments about how a gamete-based defintion is both nearly universal and also helps us make sense of biology; I’ve gone through that a million times. If you want a good take on sex, see Richard Dawkins’s Substack article). Here’s Currah again:
There is no single sound definition of “biological sex.” Even if you know the chromosomes of a fertilized egg, you can’t definitively determine which type of reproductive cells will develop. . . .
But that definition, too, flies in the face of current knowledge. Biomedical researchers have come to recognize that sex is not a single thing but an umbrella term for a number of things, including sex chromosomes, internal reproductive structures (prostate, uterus), gonads (testes, ovaries), and external genitalia. For most people, these characteristics generally align in a single direction, male or female. But they won’t for everyone. At birth some people, often labeled intersex, don’t fall neatly into the male or female column.
Currah’s implicit definition of “sex” based on self-identification leads him to reject all forms of discrimination involving biological sex, including the “hard case” of sports, where biology makes the crucial difference:
That coercion isn’t confined to trans people: the current wave of efforts to enshrine biological definitions of sex pressures cis people, too, to conform to a conservative vision of gender difference. A sports ban in Utah led officials to investigate the birth sex of a cis girl after parents of her competitors complained.
And while he’s again not explicit about gender medicine—at a time when “affirmative care” is being recognized as harmful and is being rolled back for young people—he seems to buy that, too, and without age limits:
A blitz of anti-trans executive orders requires that passports list birth sex, trans women in federal prisons be housed with men and denied transition-related medical care, and federal employees use bathrooms associated with their birth sex.
I am not as concerned with bathroom bills (though single-person bathrooms are one solution) as with medical care. No, allowing a 12-year old girl to have a double mastectomy, or a teenage boy to start taking estrogen or testosterone blockers, or any adolescent to take pubery blockers, do not comprise an “enlightened” form of care. What about therapy—objective therapy? What about the fact that the vast majority of gender-dysphoric adolescents not given hormones or surgery eventually resolve as gay people as opposed to trans people?
Currah’s main conclusion is that accepting a biological definition of sex, and thinking that biological sex matters, are not only bigots bent on erasing trans people, but also are doing severe damage to feminism:
By campaigning to make birth sex the sole basis for legal distinctions between men and women, advocates of a “gender critical” feminism evidently hope to cordon off trans women from the rest of womanhood without jeopardizing cisgender women’s access to the rights and freedoms that feminism won. But the logic of this position in fact aligns with—and ultimately serves—the desire to roll back feminism itself. That trans and nonbinary people have been able to move beyond their birth sex classifications is due precisely to the successes of the women’s liberation movement. And that movement’s most influential social victory, the decoupling of ideas about biology from ideas about how women ought to be, is precisely the achievement under threat today.
Currah doesn’t realize that liberals like me don’t give a damn about women’s “roles” or “how women ought to be,” but do care about the difference that biology makes when rights clash between groups. He doesn’t realize that those on the Left who emphasize biology are not “transphobes,” but accept trans people but also care about women’s rights—the rights of natal women. (Note that if you think you can be whatever sex you think you are, there is no such thing as “women’s rights”; there are just “people’s rights.” This goes along with the inability of those favoring trans rights, including the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Skrmetti case, to even define “man” and “woman”.)
In fact, what does “feminism” even mean for those who think that you’re whatever sex you think you are? Does a biological man who suddenly identify as a woman gain a new set of “rights”? If so, what are they beyond the “right” to be called whatever pronouns you want? Tarring one’s opponents as conservatives, bigots, or transphobes accomplishes nothing; in fact, it’s counterproductive. And society is beginning to realize this.
I will tar people like Currah, though, with one word: “misguided”.
I completely agree, as PCCE states, that ‘those on the Left who emphasize biology are not “transphobes”’ but it seems that almost everyone on the left disagrees, and that the demands for trans rights do not refer to the civil rights we can all agree that all citizens should have, but the right to deny biological facts and declare personal identity as to sex. I cannot understand why people do not understand the significance of reproduction, and hence sex, in the evolution and development of animals including humans.
(And the argument for sex as diffuse, undefined spectrum seems to imply that DSDs, intersex conditions, etc., have some role in the development of trans individuals, whereas i have not seen any data indicating that these or related conditions, occur at greater frequency among the trans identifying population.)
The women’s rights movement was largely, i think, associated with the gaining of basic civil rights for women, not so much for the separation of spaces. But if we are going to have separate categores in sports for males and females, then of course sex has to be defined on the basis of biological sex. But again, the trans activists insist that adhering to this common sense approach would “erase” them.
There’s seems to be some progress at the Olympics on getting men out of women’s sports but it’s an uphill climb.
The left in general is highly sympathetic to trans “women,” putting their presumably delicate feelings over everything else. I’ve given up trying to argue with them.
But it’s not 100%, even there. There are green shoots.
I wonder what set or sets of circumstances cause mass psychosis events to happen. The Holocaust for example? Or the Dutch tulip craze? Or Chinese foot binding, a practice that apparently lasted for a thousand years? Or the groups that wandered through Europe flogging themselves and each other to glorify their God? Or that humans can mentally or emotionally determine their biological sex? Why do groups of humans lose their moorings and go bat shit crazy? Wish I knew.
“Why do groups of humans lose their moorings and go bat shit crazy?” Postmodernism taught several academic generations that reality and subjective fantasies are just two different narratives, between which it is somehow unjust to discriminate. This craziness became a fashion, just as smoking cigarettes did for 50 years.
The craziness, of course, lies in the rejection of experience before everyone’s eyes. If the scientific/empirical outlook is just another story, then modern life—from the electric light switch on the wall to the 2.3-fold increased lifespan since 1900—all of it is an astoundingly improbable coincidence.
The puzzle is how overlooking this became fashionable. But, then again, so did smoking.
Thank you Jon. You’ve given me an idea to explore. Love that.
I was going to write something similar. It is as if a substantial segment of the population has gone completely nuts. Surely pervasive postmodernist indoctrination plays a role in this, but it can’t be the whole story. Something in the water, perhaps? Quick, call RFK Jr.!
Delusion and fantasy do not define reality. I may “feel” that I am the most handsome man and greatest chick magnet of all time, but that delusion does not oblige women to sleep with me. Likewise just because a man “feels” he is a woman does not oblige the rest of us – women included – to treat him as an actual woman in all respects. Here in Australia it was recently revealed that the Victoria government paid off a female prisoner who was raped by a trans “woman” housed in the women’s prison with her. The victim was paid off for her silence. Can’t contradict the preferred narrative now, can we – even if that narrative is utterly at odds with reality.
By campaigning to make birth species the sole basis for legal distinctions between humans and wallabies, advocates of “species critical” definitions evidently hope to cordon off trans wallabies from the rest of wallabyhood.
NYRB (old copies of which I get from a friend) still has some interesting articles. It would be of sociological interest, some day, to trace its capture by “Progressive” superstitions regarding genderwang and the perpetuals sins of Israel. Was it a single editor? Junior staff, fresh from miseducation in our
now postmodernist groves of academe? Or a fashion trend, like jeans, affecting both upper and lower editorial personnel?
An archived version of Currah’s article is here:
https://archive.ph/mmLeI
I did give an archived link in the post above.
I agree with PCCE, and this seems to me to be the consensus, as well as logical and common sense.
The NYRB view seems to hark of Lysenko.
I’m going to flatline his arguement by saying Currah is basically, advocating for MENS’ rights.
We men can be anything we like and to say otherwise is transphobic bigotry. No consideration for womens rights or biological differences matter and certainly when it matters. Sport being, as pointed out, the prime example amongst others.
My extreme and legitimate case against trans ideology… if Mike Tyson turned up as Michelle at a womens’ boxing tournament what women apart from those with a death wish would get in the ring.
Oh, that is mean. But good. 🙂
“A woman is whomever she says she is” is an incantation entirely consistent with the “worldview” (Weltanschauung) of Critical Constructivism (see below). It is exactly what it says : creation of a new world through critique of the old world as the product of a broken system.
Critical Constructivism – A Primer
Peter Lang, Inc.
2005
Joe Kincheloe
All the details in various -isms and other wacky stuff – which theology directly competes with – tie together transparently with Critical Constructivism. Trying to argue against any one by itself can be like whack-a-mole, or the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. This also explains how pushback is guaranteed from theologic religious activism – it is Gnostic – escape through gnosis, but not necessarily repair (which is Hermetic). Churches abhor Gnosticism and Hermeticism.
James Lindsay reads along through Kincheloe’s book sentence-by-sentence across a few podcasts so fat, in particular :
The Book of Woke : Production of the Woke Self
https://youtu.be/czt80V2xjE4?si=IjbyFcinr5_cyZcE
Just lately, IMHO : Critical Constructivism explains mostly all things at all Woke, better than any of its older ‘source code’ e.g. from Marxism to Behmenism (Jakob Böhme).
The phrase “a woman is whoever she says she is” doesn’t make sense. I think it should be, “whoever says she is a woman, is a woman.”
It’s wrong though: trans people belong on the gay spectrum, not in the opposite sex.
What is this “gay spectrum”? “Gay” refers to people who are attracted to members of their same sex. What does “trans” have to do with that?
Gays and lesbians can be very masculine, very feminine, and everything in between. Transwomen, for example, are at one end of the gay spectrum: they’re super-gay—they are obsessed with being attractive to men, and liking to provoke jealousy in women. Super gay. Women are a lot more diverse, and much less obsessed with sex.
Straight people can also be very masculine, very feminine and everything in between. You’re talking about gender expression. “Gay” refers to homosexual attraction. Some trans women are homosexual males but most nowadays are heterosexual.
@FB That trans-identifying males are gay is a both myth and a stereotype.
Most men who think they’re women are autogynephiles (AGP), heterosexual men who are sexually aroused when people treat them as women. The DSM lists AGP as a paraphilia. A foot fetish is the most common paraphilia, BTW.
For example, AGP teachers openly describe “education boners” when students call them “Miss.” Riding public transport, I see a lot of men wearing dresses and openly masturbating or having full erections.
AGPs are extremely dangerous to women because these men vociferously demand to be allowed in women’s facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms. They enjoy forcing women to watch the AGPs undress and want to undress in front of women. The number of AGPs on lesbian dating apps is disgusting and appalling. AGPs get off from any attention from lesbians. They openly admit this. Some AGPs even consider sexual harassment and rape as positive because then they’re treated like women.
Trans agitators have enthusiastically embraced AGPs under their alphabet-soup umbrella. And if claiming to be trans gets them into women’s private facilities, AGPs are equally enthusiastic to be under this umbrella.
We TERFs say that men of quality do not demand to be in women’s sex-segregated facilities. The men who demand this are precisely the men whom we need to keep out. They do not respect women or our right to set boundaries in any situation.
Anyone can have a paraphilia, like a foot fetish. Engaging in a paraphilia privately amongst consenting adults is harmless. However, no one has the right to force participation in their paraphilia, especially in public.
I wasn’t talking about perverts—who could be heterosexual or homosexual—but about people like Brianna Wu or Buck Angel, the so-called “real trans”. Brianna is a bio man married to another man. Buck is a bio woman who has married three bio women. It’s same-sex attraction: gay spectrum.
Wow that’s a long article. I used to subscribe to the New York Review of Books, so I knew what to expect.
Yes, the author seems to accept that a person can specify one’s sex at will. If one accepts that a priori, then the rest of the article follows for the most part, and recent legislation, court actions, and Presidential executive orders put the trans movement in peril. I do care about that, the chaos it brings, and the heartache that it brings as well.
But facts of the world still exist, and one of them is the gametic binary. The holy grail (for me) would be a solution that recognizes the validity of sex as a gametic binary, while at the same time protects the rights of people who would like to live otherwise or feel that they must live otherwise. The only limitation would be where the rights of others would be abridged—including the rights of biological women to engage in fair and safe competition in sports and the rights of biological women to female-only spaces. I don’t know if these are “rights” in a legal sense, but they are principles that promote fairness.
With the tangled web of laws, beliefs, and emotions, is a tolerable solution even possible?
Beyond biological women’s right/protection to fair and safe competition, and female only spaces, what else is there?
I also started out believing in a middle ground. And this is the thing that mostly collapses under scrutiny.
Would the ideal solution include social and even legal penalties for refusing to participate in (or being terrible at) the real-time Stroop Test of the pronoun game? Endorsement and promotion of Drag Queen Story Hour for children?
Would drastic revision of medical, legal, and penal language and record-keeping be open for inclusion in a good solution?
Should health insurance pay for breast augmentation and hair removal for males who endeavor to appear feminine, while remaining out-of-pocket cosmetic expenses for females?
There’s no snark in my question. I’m genuinely curious as to what accommodations society should search for to support individuals in their transing efforts.
It’s interesting to hold up the light of an inescapable fact to all this: There are no other ailments, physical or mental, that have any societal obligations anywhere close to analogous to the things that come up in the discussions of what we “should” do for trans people.
“Even if you know the chromosomes of a fertilized egg, you can’t definitively determine which type of reproductive cells will develop. . . .”
True, but still:
XX: Probability of developing ovaries (ovarian pathway) ≈ 99.995% or higher..
XY Probability of developing testes (testicular pathway) ≈ 99.99875% or higher
So, as Jerry has repeatedly said: for all practical purposes, biological sex is binary
Since it’s all so complicated ( that is: sex), the only solution for these gender scholars is: to avoid harming marginalized people is to state: your sex (and gender) is whatever you say it is at the moment you are asked.
“Since it’s all so complicated ( that is: sex)…” The party line of Fuentes, Currah & Co.—it is all just too too too too complicated—is rather like the “God of the gaps” of believers, isn’t it? Let us call it the argument from turbidification— based on making the issue as turbid as possible rather than as clear as possible.
There are principled reasons for agreeing with the purge of trans people from the U.S. military.
A person who enlists as a sex he is clearly not is demanding that his superiors honour a charade they know is not real. Every commander he will ever meet will know the trans member can get him into career-ending trouble if “she” complains the commander misgendered “her”. This is objectionable everywhere, particularly in the military where it undermines the authority of the superior officer or NCO: the trans-gendered soldier or sailor now has improper leverage over his commander, which is prejudicial to good order and discipline.
A male recruit who enlisted as “F” under the Biden policy was lodged in barracks and ship berthing spaces with (“other”) women who were under discipline not to complain about it because the military brass wanted the policy to “work”. This is analogous to the prison situation which we all seem to agree is unfair to female prisoners. What about female soldiers and sailors? All military roles are now open to women who can do them. But that doesn’t mean they have to shower and pee in front of men in their regular routine of military life.
Standards. A “transwoman” will (or should) far exceed the physical performance requirements for a female recruit, which gives him an incentive to slack. But a “transman” is not going to meet the male standards and will have to be graded on how well “he” meets the female standards. (Isn’t that misgendering, though?) Yet when “he” gets sent out to a unit, “he” is not going to be able to keep up with the “other” men on a foot patrol unless they carry some of “his” stuff in their packs or let “him” drive the medical truck.
If a transwoman was simply regarded as a man in a dress and a transman as a woman with hair on her face, and absorbed into the military just as “diverse” examples of the sex they really are, then maybe you could have trans people in the military (or anywhere else.) But if they demand to be regarded as really the sex they aren’t,….Nope.
“A person who enlists as a sex he is clearly not is demanding that his superiors honour a charade they know is not real.” This, of course, is the basic logical defect at the root of the whole transgender “movement”. In its way, it is akin to Putin’s insistence that ALL Ukrainians are born in the wrong body, i.e. the body they should be is Russian. Maybe his Special Military Operation should have been labelled “Affirmative Care, Russian Style”.
But Feminism is based on the view that the difference between men and women is reduced to their biological sex. It’s not behavior, or abilities, or intelligence, or wiggles and giggles. It’s all open. The only thing a woman can’t be — is male.
Note the deepity in the phrase “ideas about biology.” True but trivial vs extraordinary but false.
Feminists decoupling “ideas about biology from ideas about how women ought to be” meant that being female doesn’t scientifically or morally entail all women being feminine. The “ideas about biology” were the fixed sex binary, which isn’t thrown out. The female – > ;submissive femininity connection is thrown out.
In order for trans women to be women, however, the “ideas about biology” – the sex binary – is assumed to be just “ideas,” tentative and disposable. But that’s not what feminism was doing. It’s not how the phrase ought to be interpreted.
The first interpretation, the actual one, is not under threat if males aren’t considered females. The writer is pulling a sleight of hand.
they will deny that you can define a woman biologically even though they – and everyone else – was conceived and borne by a biological woman. they will make you squeeze through definitional hoops the size of a pinhole, but they offer nothing more than the self-referential ‘a woman is anyone who says the are’. care to define what these ‘womanly feelings’ are? but they won’t do it. not once, not ever. they rig the came and set two standards for the debate. .
Intersex people are very real and very rare. They are also male or female in all (?) cases. Using a very broad definition of intersex, I am actually intersex (perhaps was is a better statement). Intersex people should not be seen as exceptions to the sexual binary. They are (with exceptions?) part of it. They do have one of the many DSDs.
I apologize in advance for the length of this post. Prior to retirement, I was a prof in an institute in an Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty. (When we were established, that seemed the best way to preserve our independence.) Anyway, like other faculty, I had to serve on committees, and for a time I served on the committee that reviewed new courses of study.
And there came a time when Gender Studies introduced their course of studies for a 2 year M.A. program, IIRC.
Now I had of course heard of Gender Studies, though I was unaware of all the controversies involved. So, I reviewed the program of study, and when the 2 faculty members from the gender studies came to the committee meeting to present it, I listened carefully, and raised my hand.
I asked why, in the entire program of studies, there was not one course on biology. Not endocrinology, not genetics, not development, –nada. I was not suggesting that gender was solely determined by sex, but surely no one could deny that biology has something to do with it, right? Wrong. The faculty member replied ” we don’t believe that biology has anything to do with gender.”
Her colleague was a bit more diplomatic, not to mention clever: “We don’t have anyone on the faculty who is capable of teaching any of that. Do you want to teach such a course for us?”
Not wishing to increase my teaching load, I replied that I would design a biology course for their students, one that a biology Ph.D. Student could easily teach. They replied that they could only make such a course an elective, and frankly, no student in their department would want to take it.
Nor did they care about my suggestion that they include a statistics/research methods course. After all, their students would need to be able to evaluate studies, right? Wrong. Clearly this was a field that such expertise was not required.
Okay, so I voted against the program, and was outvoted by the people from the social “sciences” departments on the committee.
I spoke about this with colleagues in other universities, including at least 2 Ivies. All of them had similar stories to tell.
That’s when I realized that the people who should be responsible for knowledge in certain fields were deliberately ignorant. And as such, what do we expect of the people that they “educate”. And so what can we expect from journalists, politicians, and other such folks?
While for most issues trans people should have the same legal rights as cis people, I’ve argued that in a few cases, like sports, confinement in jails, and right to have a rape counselor or battered-woman’s helper the same as one’s natal sex, trans “rights” conflict with women’s “rights”. Further, an enlightened resolution of those “rights” involves accepting the biological definition of sex, based on gamete type, rather than the self-identification of sex adopted by many gender activists and “progressives.”
I’m a bit confused. If “have the same rights” means that they are not barred from owning a car, can watch sports events, etc., then are there any exceptions except serving in the military? On the other hand, if it means “play along as long as it isn’t dangerous”, then that is a very slippery slope.
The confusion is deliberate, Phillip. People don’t lose any rights against the state when they say they are trans. So the question about “trans rights” is really, Must other people ever be compelled to regard a person as a member of the opposite sex merely on his say-so? Since no person really can be a member of the opposite sex, the answer has to be No. There are therefore no such things as trans rights any more than there are “witches’ rights” because the basis of the claim is false. If a man who says he’s a transwoman demands admittance to a violence shelter that says it will serve only women, the only proper response of the guard at the door is, “No men. Go away.”
Where the confusion comes in is through the summoning of the personality feature of gender. It’s fine to believe you have a gender that doesn’t match your sex, just as you can believe you’re an accomplished musician. Society must reject the notion that your sense of gender (bona fide or grifting) trumps the reality of your sex, though, because unlike musical talent, sex is objectively defined and is the basis for the rights of women and the safeguarding of children. This means rejecting the notion that “misgendering” is a civil rights violation instead of a truth statement. As soon as we say we should respect people’s pronouns, HR will demand that we do, and fire us if we don’t.
The upshot of this common sense is that people who say they have a transgender personality will not be able to claim they were unlawfully discriminated against when an employer says she doesn’t want that kind of personality quirk in her workplace, just as she won’t want people who can’t accept direction, supervision, and criticism from superiors or who don’t work well with others. There is nothing about the “transgender personality” that ought to entitle those with it to special civil rights.
The Supreme Court found in Bostock that unlawful discrimination by sex does include discrimination by sexual orientation and gender identity, so there is work to do here. (Bostock himself is homosexual, not transgendered. The transgender plaintiff died before the Court heard the case.)
Yes, I pretty much agree. My take is that we are where we are now because too many people have played along too far for too long.
Please stop calling them “trans people”. The authoritarian woke tactic of language (and thought) policing undermines open discussion and critical thinking.
Humans cannot change sex, hence there’s no such thing as a “trans person”.
There are only two gametes (male and female), so there’s no such thing as “non-binary”.
“Gender identity” doesn’t exist as the null hypothesis has not been disproven.
And the entire “trans craze” is explained, without the need to invoke these metaphysical concepts, when you apply Occam’s Razor.
The language control is not just a trap, it’s THE trap. Orwell warned us in his explanation of Newspeak. Lifton describes the method in Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism (1961).
I object to being forced to use woke language as strongly as I would refuse to discuss Xenu and thetans as if they were real with a Scientologist, and I think that I am not alone in my objection.
“Biomedical researchers have come to recognize that sex is not a single thing but an umbrella term for a number of things, including sex chromosomes, internal reproductive structures (prostate, uterus), gonads (testes, ovaries), and external genitalia. For most people, these characteristics generally align in a single direction, male or female. But they won’t for everyone”
They do love to use people with disorders of sexual development as props for their narrative. But in fact, DSDs are rare, and DSDs that make it difficult to classify the individual as one sex or the other are even rarer.
But of course people who identify as trans are an entirely different population. They’re people who are unambiguously one sex, who wish to be the other, and, usually (but not always!) “present” that way, via cross-dressing, hormones, surgery, or some combination of these.
What the Intersex Gambit does is define “sex” as a bunch of traits, so that genderists can say that a “trans woman”, say, having some female-typical traits, is as much a woman as any other, or at least some other, women. (They love to point to neuroimaging studies that have found sex atypical brain anatomy in some transsexuals–though they ALWAYS leave out the inconvenient fact that this has only been found in same-sex attracted transsexuals: gay people.)
But sex isn’t a bunch of traits. Sex is a reproductive category. There are lots of sex-linked traits; being sex atypical in one or more doesn’t affect one’s sex at all.
My favorite example is height. There are men who are sex atypical in height. They’re shorter than the typical range for grown males of their ethnic group. They may fall into the range that’s typical for females.
–And? So? They’re still men. They’re males. Being sex atypical in a sex-linked characteristic doesn’t make them women, and it doesn’t make them closer to being female on some proposed sex spectrum. Don’t be silly.