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These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female, and that these norms are not exclusive to humans.

As an example, gay people are perfectly normal and natural.



Normal is a poor description of what you’re getting at. The rate of homosexuality has no bearing on the morality or how natural homosexuality is.

People generally don’t assign moral implications to unusual genetic conditions like Albinism which are described as abnormal even though they are literally natural.

Homosexual exists across the animal kingdom, it’s literally both natural and abnormal mammalian behavior. That isn’t normally seen as being relevant to people’s acceptance of it.


> These days we understand that “normal” extends far beyond male and female.

No. It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female. This can be stated as truth, just as a scientist would claim that humans are bipedal, even while acknowledging exceptions do exist.


> It is normal to have a penis or a vagina. So, humans are either male or female.

False logic - you might want to work on your syllogisms there.

By normal you mean common place.

It's normal for crust material to not be gold.

Statistically it's more likely for a human to be neither male nor female than it is for crustal matter to be gold.

We do not, however, conclude that the crust does not contain gold.

Indeed we value the rare.


Webster's dictionary:

Normal: conforming to a type, standard, or regular pattern : characterized by that which is considered usual, typical, or routine.

Gold is not normal material in the crust. The crust is not gold. Gold is not the crust. And it is normal to have a penis (male) or a vagina (female).

This has nothing to do with what we value, be it rare or otherwise, it has to do with biological facts.


Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other.

This runs contrary to your claim.

I am principally chiding you for your sloppy logic and poor grasp of facts here, to be clear.

Intersex people are more common than gold.


> Yes, it's fact that humans are male, female, or other.

And it is a fact that humans have zero, one, two, or more legs. But you would never argue with the scientific claim that humans are a bipedal mammal. The exceptions do not invalidate the norm.

> This runs contrary to your claim.

It does not run contrary to my claim. My claim is that humans are either male or female. And this is wildly, overwhelmingly true.

I don't feel any need to qualify the statement that humans are two-legged creatures either.

There are exceptions in both cases, but they're not the norm.

> Intersex people are more common than gold.

It was your analogy, not mine.


Regarding the bipedal claim it is not specific enough, what is the quantifier? "All"? "Most"? "Some"? Your second claim (humans are either male or female) uses "All". If there are exceptions then we have a contradiction.


Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female?

What about a man who loses his penis in an accident? Is he no longer a man? Would he still be allowed to identify as a man? Would a woman born without a vagina still be allowed to identify as a woman?


> Are you saying that a penis is what makes you a male? That a vagina is what makes you a female?

As a rough approximation, yes.

> What about a man who loses his penis in an accident?

He's a man who lost his penis. Statistically insignificant and doesn't change the fact that the vast majority of humans, by far, have either a penis or a vagina.

Again, the exceptions do not invalidate the norm that we all know is true. For thousands of years we've understood human reproduction and the role of males with penises, and females with vaginas.


But it's okay for society to destigmatize sexual and gender minorities, right?


More specifically it is development of testes or ovaries that makes an individual male or female. This concept applies across all gonochoric species, not just humans.


Why do you care what genitals people have?

The strongest argument about why it matters is women's sports which conservatives always derided and still deride. But weirdly now people like you care about the purity of women's sports.

Maybe ask yourself why you give a s** about putting people into category A or B?

Or go read one of the famous blog posts about the assumptions that programmers make about people's names and then apply that to gender


We live in a culture where it matters a lot. We possess biology where it matters a lot. If we were robots which are about to be designed and programmed from scratch, you could ask if it's worth it to make us sexually dimorphic and ingrain it in our cultural programming. But you're too late, it's done already. Pretending it doesn't exist because you'd like it not to won't get you very far.


Not just women's sports but many other women-only spaces too. The key question is, should men be permitted to ignore women's boundaries and consent if they say they are women? If your answer is yes, then you're likely a misogynist who sees men's desires as more important than the dignity and safety of women and girls.


Why do scientists make a distinction between the different types of galaxies? Because taxonomy, and recognizing differences, can lead to better scientific understanding.

How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue.


> How that translates to the social realm is really a separate issue.

Is it? Seems like very literally the realm in which you brought up this topic in the first place:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38094098




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