[FRIAM] apophenia

[glen]

So my comment in response to this article:

Meet the Censored: Kara Dansky
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-kara-dansky?r=5mz1&s=w

was w.r.t. the arrogance of people like Dansky pretending to know all about sex (e.g. that "sex is grounded in material biology" whereas gender is not [pffft]), yet both her and Taibbi get so confused by all the confusion other people experience around sex and gender. It must be wonderful to be so confident and ignorant at the same time.

In any case, there are no coincidences. And this morning brought this to me:

One in 500 men carry extra sex chromosome, research suggests
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jun/10/men-extra-sex-chromosome-research-uk-health-issues

A biologist friend of mine, during a drunken argument with a couple of very robust and generous self-identified queer people, shouted a wonderfully memorable phrase, both triggering and true at the same time: "Gametes are real!" he shouted. Over many subsequent, calmer, conversations, I've proposed that we stop using "[fe]male" in a biological context at all and find some new terms, maybe "ovagenic" and "spermatogenic". That would even help avoid red herring distinctions by anatomical structures like false penises and ovapositors. This identification of [fe]male with genes is just fraught. If female = egg and male = sperm, but female → feminine and male → masculine, then if biologists *want* to be more objective, stop using the words "[fe]male". Just stop. Don't get all aggrieved and start a Dark Horse Podcast about how culture is changing your discipline. >8^D

The inverse map from phen to gen is like night in the Game of Thrones, dark and full of terrors.

-- 
ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ