Microblog Memes

My first thought too.

To anyone unaware, plato defined man as "a featherless biped" so Diogenes brought a plucked chicken

I think its meant sort of as physical intention aka the body doesn't have the ability to "hold eggs" (jfc) yet but will try to develop the capability in the future. A sneaky way to try and include infertile cis women but it still excludes many of them as there are various reasons for infertility. Interestingly the phrasing also excludes all women post menopause but that's to be expected given the amount of representation those usually get (the amount being zero).

Born with the intention to chew bubblegum & Rock n' Roll.

I think she already knew, why else would she mention the people born with the intent of holding eggs (whatever that means).

Or anyone from, you know, the rest of the world.

They're arguing from a religious perspective that understands God as providing intentionality

It shouldn't be that confusing, considering this is literally the challenge lawmakers (honest ones, as rare as they are) face.

There's a great blog post by Neil Gaiman (despite recent revelations about his misconduct) that talks about "why we must defend icky speech".

Long story short, the law is a blunt instrument. If you cannot clearly and accurately define the terms being used in the language of the law then you wind up with a law that can be applied beyond the intended scope. Like when you write laws about freedom of religion and then wind up with The Satanic Temple erecting statues of Baphomet in court houses. Or banning the Bible from library because it contains depictions of violence and sexual deviancy or promiscuity

These issues aren't just academic. They have real-world consequences. Like, there have literally been legal rulings made based on the presence or absence of an Oxford comma

Is that kind of pedantry useful to the average conversation? No, of course not. But there are people trying to make laws that target women, or trans women, and if they can't accurately define what a woman is then the law can be used to target people they didn't want targeted.

Which is one of many reasons why trying to target trans folks with legal authority is a fool's errand

Welcome to the joke.

That man is 100% in Germany. He's fine.

Ther is literally no definition you give that will not exclude any cis women at all.

Why do I get the feeling the "answer" you're talking about is just chromosomes

That's female, not woman, but it was a nice try

This is such an insane statement. In biology almost any kind of sexual behavior has been observed including male species who carry the young in their body (sea horses), species that are both male and female, species that change gender during a lifetime, species without gender etc etc. Literally anything goes in the biological world.

Actually more complicated than that. Sex is broken up into a bunch of factors. Phenotype is the word used to mean the grouping of characteristics we associate with either male or female. So that roughly covers genitals, secondary characteristics (boobs, body hair, build differences etc)... But it's actually wild.

• Chromasomal sex - On it's own means very little. If you have say an XY chromasome but for the sake of example an androgen insensitivity you develop as (phenotypically) female in the womb.

• Horomonal Sex - Is the mix of horomones that impact development. Whether you develop to appear male or female starts in the early stages of development in rhe womb and then kicks into high gear as puberty and can change unexpectedly. This means for example that there's people who were born appearing entirely female and yet naturally develop along male lines later and vice versa.

• Internal reproductive Anatomy - This one gets crazy where individuals don't always have internal organs that match their chromosomes. You can have opposite, none, both.

The precursor of trans medicine involved a lot of case studies seeing how naturally occuring variation in biological sex worked and the more it was studied the more scientists began to panic because they realized that the model of sorting into two strict sexes was flawed. There's a lot of people out there who live practically their entire lives only to realize at the doctor's office that they have surprise characteristics quietly existing hidden just below the skin. This lead to scientists realizing that for the most part the idea of phenotype and indeed a strict definition for biological sex is actually pretty wishy-washy.

The reason you weren't taught this in high school is more or less that they just don't prioritize it because they have to coach a group of students, many of whom are not scholarly material, through an overview of stuff. High school biology is basically all technically wrong because it's been simplified to give you a taste of the discipline. If you start going to med school the first thing they do is tell you to light everything you think you know about the body on fire, throw it in the trash and start from scratch because half the stuff you were taught is going to need be unlearned. "Chromosome = sex" is one of the things that goes in the burn bin.