Re: University of Sussex's vice chancellor defends professor after protesters tried to have her sacked Archived Message
Posted by Sinister Burt on October 9, 2021, 10:08 pm, in reply to "Re: University of Sussex's vice chancellor defends professor after protesters tried to have her sacked"
I probably explain/understand it wrong, but: If we consider all the characteristics that make someone appear/behave male/female, there's apparently a load of different influences from different places in the genome (plus epigenetics etc) which interconnect and can be turned on/off or mutate in complex ways, even when not considering the usual chromosomal abnormalities, just normal genetic variation - a singular focus on certain bits of the biology like the gametes/sex chromosomes in isolation doesn't tell the whole story of the organism as a system - is my understanding of it (this is cribbing from the forest valkai vid above, so maybe he's wrong in his summary - seems convincing to me, but I didn't check his sources (and it's just a YouTube video)). According to that summary the particular genetic mixture of influences on gender expession/appearance in individuals vary enough that talking in terms of a spectrum/spectra of how that genetic environment translates to the whole organism seems appropriate scientifically (that was a bad sentence) - this doesn't mean we have to believe absurdities like the gamete itself being on a spectrum between egg and sperm, or that trans women have ovaries (some trans men do though as a statement of fact), just to ackonwledge at organism-level, it's more fuzzy and complex than a simple binary, like biology/science usually is. I agree about the censorship and the censorious tendency of some trans activists (there are cool ones too), but twitter's a microscope for that sort of shit (for the anti's too) - I also agree with all about this being an obvious heffalump trap for the left in the culture war - I just think that, like other wedge issues, this necessitates we get more sophisticated in our tactics, not less (that includes knowing when not to fight as well as better ways to distract and shape the discourse towards class stuff ourselves (he says as if he does anything like that)). @John - on the brain bit, yes I was repeating something form the vid I posted which didn't emphasise those contradictions as much - noted. I've also thought that some trans people/activists could be thought of as reinforcing gender binaries with their desire to achieve their ideal gender (NB's less so), but these are often suffering people who may be overcompensating (though it's not for me to say really). The bottom line for me is that they've always been with us in the same way gay people have (the trans people I know were doing it 'before it was cool'), and I wonder why we can't be as cool with it as some of those 'indigenous' cultures in the other vid.
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