CellBioGuy comments on Stupid Questions May 2015 - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Gondolinian 01 May 2015 05:28PM

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Comment author: minorin 04 May 2015 03:44:30AM 2 points [-]

Presumably most people would agree that there are people who are confused about their sexuality.

"Confused about their sexuality" is a particularly uncharitable characterization of a transgender person. Many are not confused, rather absolutely certain. Unless you're using the term "confused" as a polite way of indicating that you believe such a person to be mistaken or delusional, in which case you would be begging the question.

By the way, gender is not the same thing as sexuality.

It would only be a counterexample to that model if the student was correct, but whether or not the student is correct is precisely what we are discussing.

If one models gender as a boolean switch that can be set to either "male" or "female", and encounters an individual who has a combination of "male" and "female" characteristics, their model may not accommodate the new observation. I have watched people (who I previously considered fairly sane) break into a yelling fit when confronted with someone undergoing a gender transition, demanding to know their "real" gender and hurling insults when the response was not what they expected.

Comment author: VoiceOfRa 03 July 2015 08:44:52AM 1 point [-]

If one models gender as a boolean switch that can be set to either "male" or "female", and encounters an individual who has a combination of "male" and "female" characteristics, their model may not accommodate the new observation.

So did the person have a Y chromosome or not?

Comment author: CellBioGuy 05 July 2015 05:01:35PM *  0 points [-]

This misses the point. There are other aspects that in a subset of the population get more complicated and not so clear cut.