Debate: Is Sex Binary? Co-hosted by the MIT Free Speech Alliance & Adam Smith Society 

well in some parts of the world, during certain seasons, it's always night. so........yeah, basically spewing nonsense like the gender people on this panel

That’s bluephobic!

Sometimes is blue, sometimes is skyblue, sometimes is orange, sometimes is gray... Funny.

Seems the differences always reference the binaries..

@@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220 Yeah. Can't know what "male typical" is before establishing what "male" is.

You tell them sex is binary and then they describe secondary sex characteristics and if you point out that's what they're doing they get mad. It doesn't even make sense to say sex is a spectrum with secondary sex characteristics unless you want to get into really weird positions where children start somewhere in the middle, Dreger is less female than she once was because of her age and reproductive capacity, a man who has testicular cancer becomes less of a man once he gets it removed etc.

Oh like the oldest agenda saying that the 2 sexes are interchangeable in almost every way ? The one pushing humans are born blank slates ? Yeah that one is great it begot Judith Butler, Andrea Dworkin .. "constantly changing the meaning of existing words to fit your latest agenda." Does family mean the same thing as 50 years ago ? No doubt you are referring to woman, that is what people call me. It's called a working exception & not being dogmatic. As close friend on the phone just said to me she thinks women are feeling threatened, i said they should worry about robots.She agreed.

How do you decide if the binary is between, say, gametes, or just saying girls have vaginas and boys have penises?

Worse is that every law on the books is being reinterpreted AS IF it meant gender identity all along. It would be fine to advance policy to give trans protection if its lacking, but we should not be applying these incoherent definitions retroactively.

That's not true. It is only through proper examination of all sides of an issue that you can discover the truth about it. And you can only get all sides if you engage those with differing ideas. That happens in debate.

@@dawnphenomenon5737 That is the problem with trying to have sex based rights on gametes /genetics alone. Human rights should be universal, everything else a negotiation of conflicting interests , accomodations agreed upon , voted on by society.

@@PhokenKuul so, you think the flat earth theory is, at this point, still worth debating? Seriously?

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 at least sex can be nailed down to the actual science of biological facts, things that are verifiable. You can't do that with subjective self identification (anybody can claim to feel a certain way). Self-identification CLAIMS are not among those considered to be a human right. To do so would dilute the notion of rights into uselessness. Claims do not equal rights.

I love this analogy and will be using it in the future.

I agree with your thrust. However, it is possible that one day there will be humans who don't live on Earth. But sex is determined by prospective reproductive role, no matter the planet on which humanity lives.

They are more common than red hair people

@@alejandrarodriguezsanchez6667 That's another irrelevant comparison. Red hair isn't common outside of northern European ancestry.

But she seems to know the swimmer chap is male.

I've seen her do this in her debate with Colin Wright. I'd like to see her put up in debate against someone who was a really great debater and speaker and thinker... someone like Christopher Hitchens but with biology and philosophy PhD's.

@tbessie yes... the decisive victory.. I must say I found the ..doubt the reality of the sex binary pretty unconvincing... seems us humans have very developed instincts, and preferences around this.... ie.. typically there is never any confusion.

@@thurstonhowellthetwelf3220 Additionally, the vast majority of people are biologically sex-conforming and cis, so that kind of makes it easy to be right the vast majority of the time. i really appreciate though in this debate that they acknowledge trying to respect, and protect as many types of people as possible, the majority and the minorities. additionally, making that distinction between public and private rights to restricting users for otherwise publicly available "spaces".

@MoSho23 yes they are thinking about that/taking it seriously. Although Alice's hormone argument for women's sport is plain wrong.. they are much less trans ideological than many governments, US, Australia, Canada, for example.

It should not, in any way, replace sex. One is real and definitive, one is whatever anyone says it is, and this has no role whatsoever in law and policy.

Yes, though that agreement is unfortunate, for the debate. It was good to have the two points of view that were present, but as the debaters said, the third point of view-- that what matters is what you declare you are rather than anything objective-- was unrepresented, and its advocates never accept invitation to debate. We at MFSA did try hard to get people like Judith Butler to join the debate, but they refuse to defend their position in public if anyone is there to answer them back.

@@erasmuse2 Many of us would love to see a debate between the author of Gender Trouble and the author of The Trouble With Gender, or some other such paring, and it is very unfortunate that this likely will never happen. Your efforts to engage "the third point of view" are much appreciated.

Seems all participants are not as radical as the US government and various Australian governments w.r.to the primacy of gender identity as a protected class indicator .

@@truthisnthate7034 How would that be constructive or informative at all when all waves ,streams of feminism deny known biological differences above the neck or ONLY acknowledge certain limited things ? Judith Butler was by no means AT ALL the first feminist to think this way or the only one since 🤣🤣 . WHAT are you talking about ?

You know she wrote a book about how bad TRAs are amongst other things ? 😆She is not a TRA infact i wish she was because she has advocated for Intersex people very well over the years . The reason that she takes a specific position that she does on HSTS transsexuals that she does is 👇 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-q3Ub65CwiRI.html

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 Then why is she using their arguments? and advocating for the same things? Sounds like someone who wants to have her cake and eat it too. I also don't understand how that last point you mentioned is relevant to the discussion, or why you're linking to a video of someone else to reference her position?

@@jovialnobody Because the arguments that she is making are not based on Queer theory or gender ideology but on known variations and choice. At no times did she demand for people to use pronouns for example . You are entitled to not like her arguments which are very simply to allow for exceptions such as myself. The link of the video had two purposes . One evidence of a far outlier and that it is a known, studied phenomenon yet not called intersex because it is not known to be genetic & has biological causes . She specifically made the point many times that we are still learning...Few people actually know that HSTS transsexuals are thing or that there is a biological basis because it is mixed with other groups, conflated with other groups. When you pretend that it is as simple as large gametes or "sex is immutable " it becomes much easier to control the narrative every bit as easily as feminists or TRAs & Queers theorist do simply in a different direction.

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 I think what GC folk are trying to say is that when it comes to sex, you don't get a choice; when it comes to gender, maybe you do, depending on your definition of "gender". And as far as "variations", it's irrelevant. A rare incongruity of sexual development has no bearing on the bigger topic, whether sex is biological, binary, and immutable. That is the proposition under debate here.

@@uncleskipsprairiejustice9367 The interesting thing is that it is Terfy radfems or radfem influenced "GC"s that want the legal certainty of gamete sex , occassionally agreeing to allow XY intersex females in so that rights can be held on to by sex alone ,hoarded ( look at the WDI ) . Alice referred to specific known brain differences in HSTS transsexuals ( sexual inverts ) which Radfems dispute as being different from typical males ( so they can exclude by the nature of all males being capable of great violence ) but in fact there are decades of data ,live MRI studies recently to back it up. Radfems and almost all feminist deny any brain sex differences to "help" their argument. Denying any such thing as gender or what you want to call it as representation of what people read as a sex is to revert back THEIR argument that a determination must be made by gamete sex alone...no other criteria ever. I am gender incongruent more correctly sex incongruent ( but feminist like that even less). People like myself are diagnosed with two primary things early onset gender dysphoria which has a specific meaning and Gender identity disorder ( GID ) which means we desperately want to live as the opposite sex. For over 30 years most all radical feminist have wanted to push back on our legal accomodation where we obtain a gender recognition certificate allowing birth certificate change thru a now lax process. .Radfems have written whole books on it ( again they want only XX gamete sex ) so they they can exclude us from any place that they determine a "female / women's space" including medical care , to remove what has been allowed under law for over 70 years unofficially and 30 officially in western countries and a few others. When Terfs and GC say that sex is immutable they mean that you cannot possibly live as the opposite sex ( we do ) and they do not want us to be able to. There are many thousands of us as distinct from "transwomen", all the ones that i know pass easily as do i living as women for anywhere up to 40 years and Terfs , GCs , radfems simply do not like it and see us as a territorial threat. No woman i know or have ever talked to about this thinks the same as the tiny number of women that do. Normal women are concerned with the trans in sport , self I.D ,affirm policy that's it . Gender ideology , Queer theory being taught are a separate issue. We should be talking about the feminist ideology as well which has done far more harm over decades. When the politics allow for it sexual inverts will be recognized as a form of intersex it is simply a matter of time only slowed by the nonsense of the "transgender umbrella " and gay vs homosexual politics. Sorry for the long response

Do you think it's a conflation with respect to her own position or just one in virtue of the biological model?

What is stated that is a conflation of the 3?

Because they do vary independently and are not set in stone. You selectively ignored one important aspect in that grouping which is average psychological profiles between males and females.

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 That isn't relevant.

@@Dr.Ian-Plect Ok Mr gas lighter . It's EXACTLY relevant. You are a clown

the term “intersex” needs to be replaced by something else. It seems to suggest a third sex, a third box. Humans started evolving into mammals 200 million years ago, and all mammals have only two sexes. We are not clownfish, we are not snails. We are mammals, male or female, with or without developmental anomalies.

Exactly.....yet here we are.....banging our heads on a wall😂

​@@pamelaroyce5285It already has been. The correct term is Disorders of Sex Development. Nothing to do with the ideological concept of 'gender'.

@@Mel-wn9gb I think the term intersex might be an example of what George Carlin called “soft words.” Shell shock became battle fatigue became PTSD. Starting in the 1980’s self-help self-esteem (self-absorption!) era, there has been a trend to soften the harsh realities of life. Birth defects became disorders became differences as in “difference in sexual development.” You’re right: we should go back to “male with DSD” or “female with DSD.” They are still either male or female, that is, on the developmental pathway that would ordinarily produce small gametes or large ones.

Irrespective of gender ideology people automaticaly sex me as female for a reason. That has nothing to do with transgenderism & the "Trans Umbrella". She was trying to make some points how we exist as we do that it will be considered a form of intersex, just a matter of time.

Great points 👏

Grasping for straws. Exploiting a small minority's severe health issues to say anything meaningful about the vast majority is both manipulative and unethical in my opinion. And it doesn't even stop there since they also overstate the number of people suffering from these rare conditions. The only thing proven here is that nature sometimes f'***s it up which we already knew. Sometimes people are born without an arm but nobody concludes that actually humans only have one arm or that arms exist on a spectrum.

It's not about biology strictly speaking in terms of gamettes . I have lived as a woman very easily for many years. I am still "technically" a biological male. This would not be possible it what you said was actually important. This is far more about phenotype & genetics. BTW two of these people have your view largely speaking if you know anything at all about this group who i know from the past are respectful and actually want real dialogue and a deeper understanding than "THAT'S A MAN"

Perhaps if they had some disagreement on the biological data, featuring a biologist would help. But they both seem to agree on the biological data that uses a binary sex framework. They just disagree on whether or not we as a society should adopt such a framework so as to construct day life systems and identity etc.... This seems like a humanities question, at least with a background in biology.

If that's the case then the title of the debate is wildly inaccurate. Is gender binary. Is sex an important societal differentiator? The role of biological sex in gender. Titling as used, and lack of biologists being involved seems to be designed to conflate gender and biology?

@@Narapoia1Bingo

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 So, in regard to the topic of the sex binary, and specifically responding to; 'Why is there not a biologist in this debate', you state; "It's not about biology strictly speaking in terms of gamettes" - gametes are, what? Biology. What is sex? The arrangement of specific reproductive organs in a system. What system? A biological system. SO, what is the non-strictly biological aspect you claim? "I am still "technically" a biological male." - so, there you go stating biology "This is far more about phenotype & genetics." - that comment alone exposes your ignorance on the whole topic. Phenotype and genetics are, what? BIOLOGY! ---------------- You haven't a clue.

There's only 2 sexes though. Even intersex are still classified as male or female.

Exactly what I am thinking! Someone should pin them down and look how they squirm when they should explain how 5 genders actually procreate. 😂 I bet there are some esoteric answers coming around. It’s simply NUTS. AND THE FACT that we even have to discuss this is a disgrace.

@@Kipzi I don't disagree but she was operating with a "medical" definition of 5 sexes so pushing her to clarify further can help where she's being intentionally disingenuous.

@@dawnphenomenon5737 That was simply her pointing that things do change over time as to EXACTLY how things are classified. Awful isn't it 🤭 things being reclassified does happen in the sciences ALL THE TIME.

Yes, the cross-examination from the +ves was a bit weak. Alex explained the misunderstanding of a binary well at the beginning - despite there being only two "boxes", there may be some in neither box and some in both, but there's no other box. The five sex redefinition is a bit like having the definition of human as "bipedal talking ape", and then adding new species for those who can't talk or have fewer than two legs. Disturbances in the development of sex aren't new sexes, they're just disturbances in the development of sex.

Isn't that an arbitrary choice? You could also say man = penis or something else

Thank you!

Appreciated!

26 mins Alice Dreger childishly refuses to participate in the process and respond to the questions asked

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Actually, that's a good topic for debate, and is the kind of thing one learns about in law school. There are a lot of fine points. Self defense, defense of third parties, mistake, ...

@@erasmuse2 In comes the guy with Asperger's...lol. It's called humour. The topic (is sex binary) is so preposterous that it defies the goals of the enlightenment (rationality and reason).

@@erasmuse2 yeah, the answer is clearly "no" (unless you are some dogmatic deontologist)

​@@SilvioPorto Call me dogmatic, but if you have a legitimate defence to the charge of murder, you are not guilty and therefore haven't committed murder.

Absolutely. You might as well try and capture mist in your hands.

Policies and laws cannot and do not protect everyone from bad behavior of any kind only reduce it a little . That is the problem with feminism amongst other delusions of utopia . #Universalhuman rights not sex based rights . Any rights at all could be taken away from anyone tomorrow morning by big strong men, they enforce laws

You're welcome. But we're not MIT, we're the MIT Free Speech Alliance, and MIT has so far been unwilling to recognize us as an official alumni organization, despite us being one of the biggest ones (second biggest, maybe, after the MIT Alumni Association?).

Yeah, she’s lost the plot, hasn’t she? She had that one good book…

@@slacktoryrecords4193 test comment

Their answer is "vibes". I mean, genuinely, sincerely that is their position. It's a mystical feeling.

Right, we're supposed to allow predictable harm to occur and then police the behaviour afterwards.

Phenotype and politeness was her response to that.

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 Manipulators can be very polite if it gets them what they want. There are a variety of strategies, and not all use brute force.

@@liberality Almost none use brute force. Men have created a mostly safe society. You are stating the obvious & females are much better at it .

Gender and sex are very connected. "gender is the software to sex" Evolutionary biologist . This is not all about women , why should it be ?

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 Women are the ones put in danger when sex is ignored. We have 100 years of history to protect women as a vulnerable class. Safe guarding and anti-discrimination was enacted for women to allow them to participate in society equally. The converse is not true for men.

She and her tribe have conflated gender (sex) with gender behaviour (persona). Gender is binary, persona lies within sex/gender and is non-binary. The populace considered 'gender' as a genteel synonym for sex. As it is a synonym, the word 'gender' is redundant.

@@martinharries3047 Ok boomer we get it you don't like it

? It’s not a question of liking or not liking. Making gender something other than sex leads to a path of incoherence. It’s like putting your hand in a cloud and grabbing ‘gender’ and showing others what’s in your hands, with accompanying pronouns. There is gender (binary) and within each gender, many behaviors/personas primarily affected by one’s masculine/feminine mix. One’s masculine/feminine mix (one’s ’behavior within one’s gender) does not affect sex/gender.

The 19th century is the worst of all times for followers of Foucault. It became necessary for government to make laws against various forms of exploitation and abuse, following urbanisation in the West.

Gravity is very balloon-phobic. It's got to go!

​@@n.y.f2490yeah physicists need to check their white settler colonialist smartness privilege and stop imposing all these unfair and harmful "laws" on marginalized...balloons...

How do you explain recognized DSD being seen as a gamete sex other than they are or me then ?

@@liberality Blame feminists and communist for that

Yes far too many are dogmatic and not grounded in reality

If you think this is justified, you need to be isolated from society, not talked to. We've never lost the ability to isolate abominations so they cannot mess with our genome

Tripe, from the few clips I watched and having heard her before, the woman beside the woman in the yellow shirt waffles incoherently everywhere.

@@Dr.Ian-Plect The "man in the yellow shirt" is actually female.

@@n.y.f2490 Oh, she's trans? Didn't know; edited, thanks.

@@Dr.Ian-Plect She has an intersex condition. I forget which, but she does say.

@@n.y.f2490 Thanks, yes I looked her up after your first message. She does have a DSD (Disorder of Sexual Development), regardless of which she's a woman.

Mostly i agree but there is over lap in a number of ways. Alice did try to elaborate why.

We did! 😊 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Rk1vXsHtx8c.htmlsi=f7BYCfYf7GziMWzc

Excellent summary.

The red herring is that people only see others sex only based on their gametes. That is the big feminist "sex realist" lie. People phenotype is a stand in for actual sex which is EXACTLY what Alice was trying to layout.

utter tripe

Oh really . Talk about how women have done that with reproduction reducing it to a minor function of what a women is by living synthetically thru birth control in all it's forms .You block anyone that challenges your suss ideas in absence of 100 plus years of feminist drives . It is feminism and it's ideas that have damaged the west

I think that’s because the truth is - the 2 sides are not that far apart The huge divide is an illusion intentionally created by the unreasonable too far right and unreasonable too far left who are both insanely intolerant.

If you go and look up Gender dysphoria alliance they have some interesting nuanced conversations. For that reason trans activists hate Aaron and call him transphobic.

Exactly. And we were on our way there until this movement came along. The 'trans' movement is in reality a conservative backlash to the progress that women, gays and lesbians have made over the last decades. It's not a coincidence that it effects the lives and rights of these two groups more than anyone else.

@@Mel-wn9gb The problem with your argument is that the LGB started much of the push pretending sex differences are minimal on average with feminists . Where do you think intersectionality & queer theory came from ? The LGB is not a group of people that are simply "same sex attracted" that was a political lie . HSTS Transsexuals are the homosexuals ( sexual inverts ) . Straight people in the LGB & now LGBTQIA+++ have caused even more problems with intersectional sex positive feminists .

​@@non_ideological_transexual7414Intersectionality comes from feminism. It was meant to acknowledge the differences between women in terms of class, race, abilty, sexuality etc. But then 'transwomen' came along and appropriated it, like they appropriate intersex conditions, language and womanhood itself, and made it all about them. New dress, same old patriarchy.

@@Mel-wn9gb Bs I now exactly where it came from. sex positive intersectional feminist included transsexuals as another way to break heteronormativity because we are assualted for the same reasons as some women are. Feminists with TRAs just expanded things to include queer theory & gender ideology and the trans umbrella in it. Women who are intersectional feminist outnumber you by the tens of thousands. A few males could not have done this. J Butler is pleased with her results so STOP lying. You are at fault for this. Bet you still support equity hiring and reserving positions don't you ? 🤡

Try 70 years + second wave

Please do start. WTF is up with that woman? I just listened to an old Heterodorx podcast with her to find out and…I started to like her! Then…she started acting like she does here…and I don’t again. She’s disingenuous to the max!

The other confusion on the opposition side is that they seem to take 'sex' as a cluster concept. That is, sex is determined by whatever mixture of sex characteristics one has, such that sex appears to be a continuous concept (but really, if this were graphed out, one would find sex characteristics lumped into two "hills" of the bell curve... I wonder why). But the concept of sex the affirmative team speaks of, and the most utilitous concept of sex (I would argue) is organised according to gamete production (functional or not). Actual manifestations of sex characteristics IS varied and complex. But our best *concept* of sex is binarised, nonetheless.

Far from that simplistic view . Your statement is based on prepositions and conflating different issues . Just as one example the "sex realist" sexist bigots would have denied me medical care and treatment for a breast cancer scare 2 years ago .

Nonsense. Everyone knows men can get breast cancer.

They had the "philosopher" playing that exact part, making those arguments which are mostly irrelevant to the subleties of how humans see the world and each other.

Because the hormones do many things those are just easily identifiable. We could talk about the different effects of Estradiol , Progesterone compared to Testosterone and out some long standing feminist lies. Would you like that conversation ? Maybe the differences in how they affect crying or orgasm...yes more lies from feminist around those as well. Carole Hooven told me she is afraid to write a book on females like her book on Testosterone . Who do you think she is afraid of ? Certainly not MRAs .😂

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 I am happy to hear your views on this. I'm no radfem. I'd love it if Carole Hooven wrote the book you say she's too scared to write. I'm interested in what we know and what we can find out, and also where I am wrong.

@@amaryllisequistra If you are sincere where are you on X platform ?

@@non_ideological_transexual7414 I am sincere or i wouldn’t have bothered replying. I don’t have social media. I’m not asking you to go out of your way (spend your time) explaining anything to me, but i can see from your comment how some women’s views seem harsh, annoying and self serving (eg, focusing on some facts and ignoring others).

@@amaryllisequistra Sorry i meant no personal insult. Many times people simply troll me and then start repeating back to me line by line feminist theory & text as if i know none and think it came from their mouth. I have talked to so many women in life and recently on twitter where some real conversations can be found. I understand shying away from social media and also just having a life. For quite a few years i simply tried to present a view & share some actual information that TRAs nor feminists/ Radfems/ GCs/ etc do in between bans and being threatened ,doxxed. Jennifer Bilek posting here is one of the worst in misrepresenting to only a narrow thread of the range of things happening all at one time in order to blame men only, stereotypical feminist .

Disorder (or Difference) in sex develoment

@@AGKimberlyah, ok thanks

I totally agree we need to do away not just with Queer "theory" , Gender Ideology by also the cult of feminism

A scatter-brained mess.

@@Dr.Ian-Plect Yes, but also tired of seeing this stuff. In the end everyone has preferences and people will try to take. The imprinting kids seems sick, but societies are sick in ways. Gets to why people should protect themselves from such creatures.

@@LaboriousCretin I see scatter-brained is all you can do. Muted.

Yes and Alice was trying to elaborate on phenotypes , how people recognize them as a sex. The man pretending to be a biologist said it is as simple as gametes . In the real world and humans it's not