Andreas Egeland
Jul 20, 2017 · 2 min read

This appears to be an attempt at strawmanning your opponents position, presumably so it does not become apparent that you believe essentially the same things or that your position is self-refuting.

Going from the fairly innocuous rendition of the position you oppose in the first paragraph (although this was incorrect, the idea that biological sex has to be purely biological for this argument is nonsense), you then decide that, really, any sexual dimorphism can be used as an example of what is considered biological sex. This is not only illogical, as I outline later, but represents a massive strawmanning of your opponents. Do you genuinely think that bearded ladies is impossible according to this view of biological sex? Or men with boobs?

As I suggested, this is entirely ridiculous. The leap has gone from ‘Many sexual dimorphisms are not wholly explained by genetic factors’ to ‘All sexual dimorphisms are non-genetic’. Firstly, this is patently false (and is a necessary belief to your argument). Mentioning chromosomes should trivially discount this strawman (chromosomes, despite their vast potential for rearrangements, are discrete, not continuous). This is used because you seem to believe this argument is necessarily essentialist, which it doesn’t have to be.

Now to step a bit back, I would ask: Acknowledging that humans are sexually dimorphic, to what category do you define these various biological traits? I know I scoffed at your beards and breasts examples earlier, but how do you categorize these traits? Sex is dimorphic right? So there’s two broad categories, taking this literally. Some traits are more commonly associated with one of two kinds or categories of human being.

I’m deliberately avoiding stating the obvious here: You already biologically categorise people according to the view that there is such a thing as biological sex, which is distinct from gender, the social construct. The categories for sexual dimorphism you outline an understanding of relies on this conceptual difference. Your definition of sex as a sum of sexual dimorphisms (paragraph 6, using the Nature article as supporting evidence) is absolutely correct. This is something you more explicitly go into with the concept of “brain sex”. Here, you categorically sort attributes into female

I also definitely agree that there are fringe cases and overlaps. Cases where biological sex might not be clear cut*. You seem to realise this

You are arguing, using the underlying ideas of biological sex which this article purports to criticise. In doing so you are effectively contradicting yourself. To use your own words, “These examples demonstrate that biological sex can influence gender”.

Yes. Exactly.

There is one categorisation of sex/gender identity based on biological factors which is distinct from, but which can influence, the other categorisation, the social construct of gender.

As an aside: I noticed upon writing this that the word “biological” had to be used a lot, occasionally with different meanings. May I suggest the word genetic instead (this also highlights your reasoning better, as biological is a much wider concept).

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    Andreas Egeland

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