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On September 09 2026 05:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 04:58 oBlade wrote:On September 09 2026 04:30 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 04:11 oBlade wrote:On September 09 2026 03:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 03:40 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 03:18 Billyboy wrote:On September 09 2026 03:04 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 02:42 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 01:53 dyhb wrote:
[quote]Theres no biological basis for male and female that make them less ambiguous than man and woman? When I talk about disorders that ambiguate male and female, your response would be that both of those are already ambiguous?
I thought it was known and uncontroversial that the problem lies in traits that infer sex, not that sex itself is just as ambiguous as the wider categories of man and woman. If I ask a biologist if the term male is well-defined, the biologist would have to respond that No, it’s an ambiguous term? How would a biologist define male? Ask a biologist. I'm asking DPB if he thinks the biologist's answer would be the same ambiguous answer as if he had asked a biologist what a man is. What specific part(s) of DPB's definition do you disagree with? That male and female brings up the same issues of ambiguity as is contained in man and woman. I think it is a giant level of ambiguity removed. You're removing the ambiguity surrounding the mixed reference to sex and gender. So is the problem with "adult human male" that not all males are men, or that males are just as interesting/controversial/ambiguous as men? A biologist would give the standard and then note that it isn’t binary and note biological sex involves a combination of chromosomes, genes, gonads, and hormones. Natural variations, such as intersex traits, mean that not every individual fits neatly into standard categorical definitions. Because scientists don’t care about your politics. This is/was also my expectation yeah. This too, yeah. Sex is bimodal and not binary! I don't know if you've thought this through. This is what bimodal distributions roughly look like. So you think sex is distributed in a way similar to this. For the sake of simplicity without quibbling about details, we can just take this and say for example 0.5 might be a slight female, and 3.5 might be a "very" female (I would substitute "woman" but the name doesn't matter that isn't the point). Can you tell us all some examples of dimensions that you believe make a person more or less of a female? You have no idea what you're talking about, but thanks for trying to math-splain / stats-splain to me lol. Bimodal just means there are two responses that are more common than the rest (for sex, it's Men and Women). That fact doesn't require your image's distribution or anything else you assumed. Here's an example: 100 people with 49 men, 49 women, and 2 non-binary individuals. Bimodal data sets can also be discrete; they don't need to be continuous. You specifically went for sex instead of gender on this. You can certainly have a discrete distribution but you will be hard pressed to get more than 2 buckets because there are no speggs or otherwise non-binary gametes (?). If your non-binary bucket is just a catch-all extra, so your enlightened "bimodal distribution" that isn't binary is just limited to all of 3 discrete buckets instead of 2 so you can "ackshually" people, cool. Did you want me to send you my lesson plans on learning mean, median, and mode?
A distribution of unordered qualitative categories can't have a mean or median, professor.
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On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with Show nested quote +On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics.
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On September 09 2026 05:06 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 04:58 oBlade wrote:On September 09 2026 04:30 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 04:11 oBlade wrote:On September 09 2026 03:49 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 03:40 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 03:18 Billyboy wrote:On September 09 2026 03:04 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 02:42 Fleetfeet wrote:
[quote]
How would a biologist define male? Ask a biologist. I'm asking DPB if he thinks the biologist's answer would be the same ambiguous answer as if he had asked a biologist what a man is. What specific part(s) of DPB's definition do you disagree with? That male and female brings up the same issues of ambiguity as is contained in man and woman. I think it is a giant level of ambiguity removed. You're removing the ambiguity surrounding the mixed reference to sex and gender. So is the problem with "adult human male" that not all males are men, or that males are just as interesting/controversial/ambiguous as men? A biologist would give the standard and then note that it isn’t binary and note biological sex involves a combination of chromosomes, genes, gonads, and hormones. Natural variations, such as intersex traits, mean that not every individual fits neatly into standard categorical definitions. Because scientists don’t care about your politics. This is/was also my expectation yeah. This too, yeah. Sex is bimodal and not binary! I don't know if you've thought this through. This is what bimodal distributions roughly look like. So you think sex is distributed in a way similar to this. For the sake of simplicity without quibbling about details, we can just take this and say for example 0.5 might be a slight female, and 3.5 might be a "very" female (I would substitute "woman" but the name doesn't matter that isn't the point). Can you tell us all some examples of dimensions that you believe make a person more or less of a female? You have no idea what you're talking about, but thanks for trying to math-splain / stats-splain to me lol. Bimodal just means there are two responses that are more common than the rest (for sex, it's Men and Women). That fact doesn't require your image's distribution or anything else you assumed. Here's an example: 100 people with 49 men, 49 women, and 2 non-binary individuals. Bimodal data sets can also be discrete; they don't need to be continuous. You specifically went for sex instead of gender on this. You can certainly have a discrete distribution but you will be hard pressed to get more than 2 buckets because there are no speggs or otherwise non-binary gametes (?). If your non-binary bucket is just a catch-all extra, so your enlightened "bimodal distribution" that isn't binary is just limited to all of 3 discrete buckets instead of 2 so you can "ackshually" people, cool. Did you want me to send you my lesson plans on learning mean, median, and mode? A distribution of unordered qualitative categories can't have a mean or median, professor.
I'm so proud of you 
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On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
I guess the Hydrogen + Helium thing is slightly new?
The real question is whether it is more or less hostile to trans people than the last few times, and how aware people are of why people find the entire discussion as practiced here problematic.
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On September 09 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
I guess the Hydrogen + Helium thing is slightly new? The real question is whether it is more or less hostile to trans people than the last few times, and how aware people are of why people find the entire discussion as practiced here problematic.
I do notice that my interest in having the same discussion again and again is not massive.
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On September 09 2026 05:11 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. Show nested quote +"male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics.
You can do that, but that doesn't change the fact that you couldn't follow this very basic logic which was my point.
And ofc I can't speak for DarkPlasmaBall, but when you accept the premise that defining man is complicated, and have no issue accepting that male is therefore complicated as well, then there is nothing to challenge there. Or he was just making an example for why man is so complicated to define, and how blanket terms that we might jump to are not suffice, which is how I read his post. It helps to try to follow what the other person is saying and attempt to understand them instead of looking for gotchas whenever you aren't partaking disingenuously. Either you wanna discuss, so you want to understand the other persons point of view and should act accordingly, or you want to debate, so you want to be correct and therefore have to use the correct logic.
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On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
Yup, and the last time it also derailed the thread for a few days, and all the usual right wing suspects were here to share their expertise, showing exactly why this shit is effective and why they love it so much.
The funniest part is that it also demonstrates the 3 way horse shoe very well, the people most interested in prosecuting this are the extreme parts of their political spectrum's, I like LightSpectra but I do think that his willingness to engage with this demonstrates how we got into this place (globally/politically), rigidity in his (to some people) extreme views on gender makes him unwilling to concede any ground to the right and center ideologues, and round and round we go.
Of course, this whole thing starting, in both cases by GH who likes to present him self as the "why aren't we talking about revolution/organizing" poster is the cherry on the ironic cake.
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Norway28889 Posts
On September 09 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
I guess the Hydrogen + Helium thing is slightly new? The real question is whether it is more or less hostile to trans people than the last few times, and how aware people are of why people find the entire discussion as practiced here problematic.
Can't you be specific in terms of what here is hostile? I can totally be on board with thinking it's uninteresting but I really don't see hostility expressed towards trans people here.
Unless this is you saying 'at least it seems like the discussion is less hostile than the last few times', but that's not the vibe I'm getting.
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On September 09 2026 05:06 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:34 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 03:32 Introvert wrote:On September 09 2026 02:42 Fleetfeet wrote:On September 09 2026 01:53 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 01:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 01:46 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 01:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
[quote]One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. I don't think there is much disagreement in what an Adult is referring to (age-wise) or what a Human is referring to (species-wise), for the conversation surrounding the trans community. Ok, what is a male? I answered it in the post you replied to (the part you cut out). It's the very next sentence Theres no biological basis for male and female that make them less ambiguous than man and woman? When I talk about disorders that ambiguate male and female, your response would be that both of those are already ambiguous? I thought it was known and uncontroversial that the problem lies in traits that infer sex, not that sex itself is just as ambiguous as the wider categories of man and woman. If I ask a biologist if the term male is well-defined, the biologist would have to respond that No, it’s an ambiguous term? How would a biologist define male? What specific part(s) of DPB's definition do you disagree with? We went over this one time. Male produces sperm and female produces eggs. Other sex-associated characteristics are not part of the definition but they often go together. Objections are the one-legged man problem "how can you say humans have two legs that person was born with no legs!" Jettisoning perfectly reasonable and logical categories that apply to the vast majority of people is silly. But not always. His point still stands. Males have organs made to produce sperm, and if they don't, we have a one-legged-man problem. I have heard similar analogies from the animal world, with certain species changing their gender at will, for example. A single Queen Bee can also be the the mother of a whole colony, and ther are females who eat their partners after mating. What animals do is not relevant for humans.
That's kind of the distinction I was making though: the difference between a definition (which was the original request) and simply doing the best you can by listing common characteristics that often apply but occasionally do not (and recognizing that there are shades of gray and fuzzy boundaries). Most men have two legs, but having two legs isn't part of the definition of a man.
The original request was for the definition of a man. I think when we're talking about a characteristic that is required for a definition, the removal of that characteristic means that the definition no longer holds. So if producing sperm is required to be a male, by definition, then a young boy isn't a male (before puberty hits), and if that person eventually experiences a disorder or treatment that removes the ability to create sperm as an adult, then that person is no longer male by definition. I'm not so easily persuaded by those sorts of "definitions" where we might just be talking about the prototypical example of a man, because people are gatekeeping even though we know that there are exceptions to all these attributes that are common among most men.
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On September 09 2026 05:25 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
I guess the Hydrogen + Helium thing is slightly new? The real question is whether it is more or less hostile to trans people than the last few times, and how aware people are of why people find the entire discussion as practiced here problematic. Can't you be specific in terms of what here is hostile? I can totally be on board with thinking it's uninteresting but I really don't see hostility expressed towards trans people here. Unless this is you saying 'at least it seems like the discussion is less hostile than the last few times', but that's not the vibe I'm getting.
Well, while I'm sure this is just another honest mistake: On September 09 2026 05:19 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
Yup, and the last time it also derailed the thread for a few days, and all the usual right wing suspects were here to share their expertise, showing exactly why this shit is effective and why they love it so much. The funniest part is that it also demonstrates the 3 way horse shoe very well, the people most interested in prosecuting this are the extreme parts of their political spectrum's, I like LightSpectra but I do think that his willingness to engage with this demonstrates how we got into this place (globally/politically), rigidity in his (to some people) extreme views on gender makes him unwilling to concede any ground to the right and center ideologues, and round and round we go. Of course, this whole thing starting, in both cases by GH who likes to present him self as the "why aren't we talking about revolution/organizing" poster is the cherry on the ironic cake.
But some people might suggest that (regardless of the decision not to use GH/they/them..., which ties back to my point about discussing "defaulting to not assuming gender as a way we could have a relevant discussion that demonstrated progress rather than a regression/rehash of the same problematic nonsense") is an example.
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On September 09 2026 05:19 Jankisa wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
The funniest part is that it also demonstrates the 3 way horse shoe very well, the people most interested in prosecuting this are the extreme parts of their political spectrum's, I like LightSpectra but I do think that his willingness to engage with this demonstrates how we got into this place (globally/politically), rigidity in his (to some people) extreme views on gender makes him unwilling to concede any ground to the right and center ideologues, and round and round we go.
I'm not a politician, so I don't see any reason to pull my punches with regards to my intransigent yet unpopular beliefs about absolute egalitarianism. But I would vote for a Democrat that doesn't believe in trans inclusion in sports, easily, because I know the alternative want trans people dead.
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I will use them/they, I have no problem with that, additionally, I'd be willing to wager that between most posters here the ones that brought up Trans rights in the context of Trump and his cronies erasing them and demonizing them I'd be in the upper echelon.
I'm just not interested in "what is a woman" debate or debate about pronouns because it's been done to death and it's chum in the water for right wingers, plus, you know, I know fuck all about it, I know no trans folk in real life so it's not something I'd dream to go into, because I'm completely unqualified just like most others here are.
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Norway28889 Posts
I'll let Jankisa comment on whether that's a honest mistake but I'm guessing that yes, it is, because he definitely comes off as trans accepting in most of his posting. I also think they/them is extremely counter-intuitive to non native speakers and it's a super easy mistake to make- much more so than misgendering she as he, which I also think is generally quite understandable in an online forum culture where we are used to defaulting towards assuming we're discussing with a person identifying as a man because that has been the case in more than 95% of all our interactions.
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On September 09 2026 05:44 LightSpectra wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:19 Jankisa wrote:On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
The funniest part is that it also demonstrates the 3 way horse shoe very well, the people most interested in prosecuting this are the extreme parts of their political spectrum's, I like LightSpectra but I do think that his willingness to engage with this demonstrates how we got into this place (globally/politically), rigidity in his (to some people) extreme views on gender makes him unwilling to concede any ground to the right and center ideologues, and round and round we go. I'm not a politician, so I don't see any reason to pull my punches with regards to my intransigent yet unpopular beliefs about absolute egalitarianism. But I would vote for a Democrat that doesn't believe in trans inclusion in sports, easily, because I know the alternative want trans people dead.
Eerily similar to the rest of your pragmatic views and why I hold you in much higher regard then GH and believe you are an actual progressive.
One of the things I respect most in people in general is their ability to get over themselves, hold their nose and do the right thing, even if it's not perfect, it's usually much better then the alternative.
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On September 09 2026 05:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I'll let Jankisa comment on whether that's a honest mistake but I'm guessing that yes, it is, because he definitely comes off as trans accepting in most of his posting. I also think they/them is extremely counter-intuitive to non native speakers and it's a super easy mistake to make- much more so than misgendering she as he, which I also think is generally quite understandable in an online forum culture where we are used to defaulting towards assuming we're discussing with a person identifying as a man because that has been the case in more than 95% of all our interactions.
Yup, hit the nail on the head.
GH, if I misgendered you, I apologize, it wasn't intentional and I will try not to do it.
We might have our differences but I do believe you are sincere and generally nice person, even if I think you are misguided.
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On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 03:28 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 01:53 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 01:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 01:46 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 01:33 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On September 07 2026 11:54 ETisME wrote:On September 07 2026 11:14 KwarK wrote:
[quote]
Women’s sports is a misnomer. They’ve never been open to all women, a better name might be non men sports. What is a man One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. I don't think there is much disagreement in what an Adult is referring to (age-wise) or what a Human is referring to (species-wise), for the conversation surrounding the trans community. Ok, what is a male? I answered it in the post you replied to (the part you cut out). It's the very next sentence Theres no biological basis for male and female that make them less ambiguous than man and woman? When I talk about disorders that ambiguate male and female, your response would be that both of those are already ambiguous? I thought it was known and uncontroversial that the problem lies in traits that infer sex, not that sex itself is just as ambiguous as the wider categories of man and woman. If I ask a biologist if the term male is well-defined, the biologist would have to respond that No, it’s an ambiguous term? I think if you asked a biologist if 100% of all males (or men) absolutely must have testes, or any of the other "usually-but-not-always" examples I listed, I think they would say that it's not necessarily 100% and that it's usually-but-not-always present. It might be 99%. Or 95%. Or it could be much lower too, depending on the trait. If not having a 100% foolproof criterion for inclusion/exclusion makes the concept "ambiguous" or not perfectly defined, then okay, but to reiterate part of the post you left out: No definition is going to be completely satisfying or precisely all-encompassing, because the categories of sex become messier the more we understand about biology, genetics, psychology, and other related branches of science. Feel free to ask a biologist though! I am not one. Do you have a different perspective on this? Perhaps a criterion that is 100% perfect at splitting the men from the non-men? I'm not an expert in this field, and I'm open to hearing how you would define a man (or male). Interesting side notes from you, but I'm really just interested on you answering my post. I'll quote: 1) Theres no biological basis for male and female that make them less ambiguous than man and woman? 2) When I talk about disorders that ambiguate male and female, your response would be that both of those are already ambiguous? 3) If I ask a biologist if the term male is well-defined, the biologist would have to respond that No, it’s an ambiguous term? I think you're not understanding that you're wrong to say male/female is just as ambiguous as man/woman, since man/woman involves much more gender identity, gender expression, and cultural norms than biological sex. You seem to be tripped up by within-category differences.
I feel like this is already the second time in our short conversation where I've written out answers and then you've asked the questions to those answers anyway.
I think Artesimo did a great job explaining where I'm coming from. I'm just saying that it's a common trope for certain people (some of whom are transphobes, some of whom are not) to say "I can define a Man and you can't; I define a Man to be an Adult Human Male", and when asked how they define "Male", they either can't define it (meaning they haven't actually defined Man to begin with and are just moving the goalposts) or they give a definition for Male that has so many counterexamples that it ends up being meaningless or they accidentally include other groups they had been trying to exclude (perhaps trans men).
Sometimes it's easier or more persuasive to hear out someone else's definition (even if I don't agree with it) and poke holes in their logic on their own set of premises. Or sometimes I learn something new from tentatively following along, even if I'm ultimately not convinced.
On September 09 2026 05:11 dyhb wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. Show nested quote +"male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics.
Sure, and I think there might be some confusion. When I acknowledge that some other people have the Adult Human Male definition of Man, that doesn't mean I necessarily agree with them. Just because I might ask someone to elaborate on their definition of Male doesn't mean I think they're right or that I no longer support my own definition of Man.
What's your definition of a Man?
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On September 09 2026 05:49 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:38 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2026 05:25 Liquid`Drone wrote:On September 09 2026 05:15 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
I guess the Hydrogen + Helium thing is slightly new? The real question is whether it is more or less hostile to trans people than the last few times, and how aware people are of why people find the entire discussion as practiced here problematic. Can't you be specific in terms of what here is hostile? I can totally be on board with thinking it's uninteresting but I really don't see hostility expressed towards trans people here. Unless this is you saying 'at least it seems like the discussion is less hostile than the last few times', but that's not the vibe I'm getting. Well, while I'm sure this is just another honest mistake: On September 09 2026 05:19 Jankisa wrote:On September 09 2026 03:50 Simberto wrote:
I am having massive Dejá Vu. Didn't we have this exact discussion with basically exactly the same statements and arguments at least 2-3 times already?
Yup, and the last time it also derailed the thread for a few days, and all the usual right wing suspects were here to share their expertise, showing exactly why this shit is effective and why they love it so much. The funniest part is that it also demonstrates the 3 way horse shoe very well, the people most interested in prosecuting this are the extreme parts of their political spectrum's, I like LightSpectra but I do think that his willingness to engage with this demonstrates how we got into this place (globally/politically), rigidity in his (to some people) extreme views on gender makes him unwilling to concede any ground to the right and center ideologues, and round and round we go. Of course, this whole thing starting, in both cases by GH who likes to present him self as the "why aren't we talking about revolution/organizing" poster is the cherry on the ironic cake. But some people might suggest that (regardless of the decision not to use GH/they/them..., which ties back to my point about discussing "defaulting to not assuming gender as a way we could have a relevant discussion that demonstrated progress rather than a regression/rehash of the same problematic nonsense") is an example. I'll let Jankisa comment on whether that's a honest mistake but I'm guessing that yes, it is, because he definitely comes off as trans accepting in most of his posting. I also think they/them is extremely counter-intuitive to non native speakers and it's a super easy mistake to make- much more so than misgendering she as he, which I also think is generally quite understandable in an online forum culture where we are used to defaulting towards assuming we're discussing with a person identifying as a man because that has been the case in more than 95% of all our interactions.
So here's the thing, I specifically said that without that particular element (which I presumed was an honest mistake), it would still be problematic.
The mistake in light of (wrongly) declaratively saying how "this whole thing start[ed]" is quite emblematic though.
Beyond that, what you're describing is a form of structural hostility that LS was referencing when LS responded to your resistance to changing the status quo.
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Norway28889 Posts
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile.
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On September 09 2026 05:19 Artesimo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2026 05:11 dyhb wrote:On September 09 2026 04:22 Artesimo wrote:On September 09 2026 03:42 dyhb wrote:
You're skipping past the most important part. Is the person saying, "A man is an adult human male" committing an error by making it a simple substitution? I presume you disagree with the statement, since some people use man and woman to express a nuanced gender identity partially or entirely divorced from biological sex. But you haven't told me if you disagree and why.
Not at all actually. This started with On September 08 2026 20:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
One could simply say that a man is an "adult human male", but then "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. We could say that a man / someone who is male usually-but-not-always has XY chromosomes, usually-but-not-always has testes, usually-but-not-always produces sperm, usually-but-not-always can grow facial hair, and usually-but-not-always has a ton of other features. Which was followed up by you with On September 09 2026 01:16 dyhb wrote:
You don't think the controversy is saying that a man is an adult human male? I didn't know what male had all the baggage that man did. If you wanted to question if substituting man with "adult human male", you could have done so, but you didn't. Instead you straight jumped to "how is male controversial" in response to DarkPlasmaBall clearly laying out a logical construct where you either substitute the terms or one becomes a subset of the other and thus inherits all the complexity and controversy as I described in my response. You either failed to understand that, or asked the wrong question. Personally I don't really care of its definition past "sex and gender are 2 different things" and "what does the person I am talking to understand/mean when they hear/say the word". Having dabbled in some linguistics, and coming from a languages where its linguistics is descriptive rather than proscriptive, I am more open to contextual use of it and changing of it. As long as the intend is not stupid gatekeeping don't care how one uses the term. There is non stupid gate keeping, which I am also fine with. Overall I think I am fine with the definition DarkPlasmaBall laid out as long as we are talking about "man/male" being understood in the context of sex and not gender. My dream would be to live in a world where all we need is the "usually-but-not-always" definition by DarkPlasmaBall because we have completely done away with gender roles and thus its merely a question of sex where it matters, but we will never get there. So a more wishy washy definition with lots of "usually-but-not-always" is ok too. "male" ends up carrying all of the same interesting/controversial weight that "man" did. I am actually putting the question back to DPB and asking him why he doesn't challenge the substitution in the first place. That sounds like the appropriate thing to question. Once you go from the nuances of man/woman to the less-nuanced male/female, you lose the class of people that are biologically male, but have the gender identity of woman and might have taken hormones or undergone surgery to make their gender expression closer. Is it really true to say that chromosomal anomalies or sexual development conditions are equal ambiguities to that plus gender incongruence and genderfluid identities? I think that's core to the debate, and includes linguistics but isn't confined to linguistics. You can do that, but that doesn't change the fact that you couldn't follow this very basic logic which was my point. And ofc I can't speak for DarkPlasmaBall, but when you accept the premise that defining man is complicated, and have no issue accepting that male is therefore complicated as well, then there is nothing to challenge there. Or he was just making an example for why man is so complicated to define, and how blanket terms that we might jump to are not suffice, which is how I read his post. It helps to try to follow what the other person is saying and attempt to understand them instead of looking for gotchas whenever you aren't partaking disingenuously. Either you wanna discuss, so you want to understand the other persons point of view and should act accordingly, or you want to debate, so you want to be correct and therefore have to use the correct logic. Logically, if man is not a subset of male, then one's complications cannot be said to deductively apply to another. If men are adult human males, then maybe that definition excludes the majority of complications within a population, and the remaining cannot be said to be complicated. I don't understand if DPB understands either the subset issue or exclusionary issue. The definition is meant to exclude.
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On September 09 2026 06:37 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think that's nonsense. I have conversed with a lot of people (including very 'woke' people working at the English linguistics department in the university in trondheim) whose reaction to learning that 'they/them' was supposed to be used as a pronoun to refer to individuals was bafflement. I don't mind doing it because I'm not the president of languages and I'll go with whatever society goes with because like, that's how languages work, but it still fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.
But when I talk about not wanting society to be genderless because this to me is a change that is more trouble than its worth - languages is actually part of it, and this might be hard to understand because your native tongue is English, which isn't a gendered language. Norwegian however, has gendered nouns. While - to be fair - these are subject to change both based on dialect and sociolect (more radical left people have tended to use 'a' ending, indicating female gender of the noun, while more conservative people have tended to use more 'en' ending, indicating male gender of the noun), I think insisting that car should now, in Norwegian, be considered 'it' rather than he or she (this is one of the words where you're allowed to choose) is more trouble than its worth. This also applies to spanish, arabic, french, german - and many other languages. I mean - changing languages to make them more inclusive, like my aforementioned example of saying firefighter instead of fireman - totally, it makes sense, but a lot of it just isn't discriminatory, it just is.
Like, just because people disagree with you or your solutions doesn't mean they are hostile.
Here's my logical chain:
I accept that there are places in the world where we do not know gender, but assume gender. Right here is a noteworthy place, you can 'safely assume' the people you are interacting with are male.
I accept that this behaviour unnecessarily alienates non-males.
I accept that myself pushing towards using gender-neutral pronouns (Specifically they/them) when I don't know someone's gender is a small action I can take to counteract the above point.
I accept that if I'm willing to use they/them as someone's pronouns before I know better, I should be able to use they/them if requested.
I'm curious where we diverge. All of the above fundamentally makes sense, where does it not fundamentally make sense to you?
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EPT![[image loading]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Bimodal.png)
