LGBTQ+ Rights and America

Oh, I was agreeing with you, mate. But, also pointing out that extinction isn't the end of the world. It's a function of life on Earth working to spec.

People who bang on about gayness being unnatural because reproduction is the most important thing, evar — tend to forget that species can also over-reproduce themselves into the grave. On top of childless individuals still being able to contribute to group survival.

Human population is already two times higher than the Earth's capacity.

@Euodiachloris: Infertile phenotypes or behavioral adaptations deriving from genetics which reduce individual fitness can of course be selected for if they in some way benefit close genetic relatives, but the prevalence of intersex phenotypes is in the same ballpark as various spontaneously arising chromosomal anomalies, which isn't suggestive of a selective advantage, unlike say homosexuality, which has also been shown to have a genetic component, and exhibits a prevalence of perhaps 5-10%, which strongly suggests some sort of selective advantage to said trait.

But the issue I was addressing was not the question of whether intersex phenotypes are"natural" or not—that's a meaningless question to begin with*—but rather whether the concept of sexes (as opposed to gender) is a social construct, and while I would agree that a strictly binary conception of sexes (along with gender which is by definition the socially constructed differences enforced between sexes by social norms) is constructed, the underlying concept is biological in nature, not constructed.

* That comment about fitness was a bit of a lame walk-back when I realized I had overstated the severity of Klinefelter's Syndrome; it's not nearly as serious as say Turner's syndrome, particularly when talking about the 47,XXY aneuploidy that was mentioned, and is associated only with a moderately lowered life expectancy over the normal male karyotype due to an elevated risk of developing breast cancer. I wasn't intending to be dismissive of people falling outside of the most common sexual phenotypes, and apologize for any offense I may have caused.

edited 15th Mar '18 10:42:48 AM by CaptainCapsase

Isn't that a bit off-topic? Regardless, we've disproven the Malthusian hypothesis several times over, so I don't know why people keep bringing it up. Technology fixed that "capacity" problem for us, and will continue to do so.

@Eudiachloris: Still, extinction is something bad, even if it happens in nature, most species are programmed to fight against it. Anyway, even a growing homosexual population has no impact on that.

Going back to another thread, given homosexuality is probably genetic and has no negative consequences, in fact, surpressing it does, calling it an accident, like an undesirable disease that popped up through random mutation (not likely), feels like it comes from a place of prejudice.

edited 15th Mar '18 1:07:41 PM by Grafite

From what I understand, the science is still out on whether homosexuality and other sexual orientation/identity variations are genetic, determined by environmental factors in the womb, or some combination of the two.

One thing that is established fairly definitively is that one's sexual orientation and gender identity are fixed long before one has the ability to exercise any conscious choice in the matter.

I would be interested in learning more about how genderfluidity fits into that paradigm, but I have not studied the topic to any serious degree.

edited 15th Mar '18 1:25:33 PM by Fighteer

I'd argue that there's no evidence that the LGBT portion of the population "is growing". Increasingly coming out of the closet, yes. Willing to admit it, unless in Angola or Russia, sure.

Because if you can admit what you are without getting stoned to death for it, you're less likely to try hiding the truth about what you've always been.

edited 15th Mar '18 2:13:07 PM by Euodiachloris

Yeah, LGTB people are just coming out the closet instead of trying to supress it. They always existed, they just were afraid to admit it (with good reasons).

Are people here seriously trying to argue that sex is only about whether someone is able to grow a child or not? Because that's absolutely rife with Unfortunate Implications.

edited 15th Mar '18 2:24:33 PM by PhiSat

Biological sex is a fact, not a choice or a feeling. You have genes that determine your sex, expressed as physical features of your body. For the overwhelming majority of individuals, the features are standard and common among biological sexes. Males have a penis and testicles, produce sperm which fertilizes an ovum produced by the female. Females have ovaries, a uterus or equivalent, produce the egg to be fertilized, and (commonly) grow the zygote until it can be birthed, either as an egg or an infant. For almost all species with biological sexes, there are other dimorphic features that distinguish them (body hair, mammary glands, body shape, size, color, etc.).

This isn't a subjective matter; there's no opinion here. It is simple fact. Now, there are infrequent individuals who show different or no sexual features due to genetics, injury, or environmental factors during development. Those exceptions don't mean "there is no such thing as sex"; it just means that the definition of biological sex needs to include those variations.

Gender is a social construct, of course. There's no question about this: the assignment of roles, values, moral worth, etc., based on biological sex or the appearance thereof is a part of society and not something inherent to nature. Gender identity is an interesting one, because it's probably a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors. I'm not up on the latest research.

Sexual identity (on the het/bi/gay spectrum) is certainly not a social construct, since it appears to be determined absent conscious choice and probably has mostly genetic/environmental causes. We have built a whole lot of social constructs around it, but it appears as a constant across human cultures so is most likely a biological fact.

edited 15th Mar '18 4:34:29 PM by Fighteer

My point is more about the fertility component, since there are plenty of women and men with fertility troubles who are shamed for them and considered either less male or less female because of those problems. I'd be a lot more open to the chromosome explanation as long as it's mentioned people can have chromosome abnormalities that might make them fall outside those categories.

Being fertile is not a defining component of biological sex, so anyone who claims you aren't a "real man" if you can't father children is full of it. That's part of the social constructs around gender roles and has nothing to do with biology.

Now, sometimes infertility may be a symptom of an underlying genetic abnormality, but that's only true in a small subset of cases.

(Personal note: My wife and I adopted a child after being unable to get pregnant, although we did not attempt fertility treatment. I doubt anyone but the most hardcore nutjobs would challenge my status as a male or hers as a female.)

edited 15th Mar '18 4:32:44 PM by Fighteer

You can become infertile due to physical damage (it's a little hard to breed if your goolies got damaged in a car accident), environmental damage (heavy metals, for instance, aren't exactly fantastic for fertility), immunological damage (say, becoming allergic to your spouse's DNA — no, really) or damage due to illness (bacterial or viral infection can do a number on us).

Genetic fitness? Bah! Drop in the bucket!

Guys! John Oliver did it again! An exposé on Cotton Pence, with a sweet, sweet payoff in the end.

I bought the audiobook.

Cross-posting this from the US Politics thread because it's important: all four heads of the Armed Forces have gone on record, in Congress, to break with Trump and Mattis and state, unequivocably, that there are no reports of harm to units from transgender personnel serving. ^{Full article text} Emphasis mine.

for them.

What do they know, they're just the people who have to care if there are actually problems among the troops.

I would be very interested indeed in hearing the justification for banning specifically the folks who've had corrective surgery. I know what the real reason is, of course, but I want to hear them try to justify it.

Well done, gentlemen.

Vermont has passed a law mandating that all restrooms in public buildings and areas of public accommodation be marked as gender-neutral.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/13/us/vermont-gender-neutral-restroom-bill/index.html

Having them marked as separate based on gender is a bad idea according to queue theory anyway.

That'll be an interesting social experiment, if not a completely ethical one. Most of us are conditioned to use gendered bathrooms from very young childhood. Overcoming that conditioning is going to be a hard sell. I'd expect people to self-segregate by gender even if the bathrooms aren't specifically marked.

edited 13th May '18 8:05:45 PM by Fighteer

Where I live, bathrooms are often still gendered but most people have accepted that it's easier to stop caring and go to whichever one frees itself first, or else everyone would be there forever. But I live in a city, particularly an area with lots of young people, so it may have been easier for them to acclimatize.

In some areas of France bathrooms aren’t gender segregated, they weren’t at my boarding school (beyond a few exceptions) and I’ve seen at least one bar in the UK with a mixed gender bathroom, hell my work has had our bathrooms become semi-mixed depending on the gender balance of our customers.

Though I belive that US bathroom cubical offer a lot else privacy than in other countries, so it may be a difficult adaption for you guys.

US bathrooms in my experience are usually unisex if it's a single-occupancy type thing, but if you can get multiple people in there at the same time it's definitely going to be segregated by gender. And I note from the article that the bill only applies to the former, so I don't know that there'll be much of a change in practice.

Only single-occupancy bathrooms must be unisex? That's hardly a change at all. I thought it was for all bathrooms. Never mind my concerns, then.

edited 14th May '18 3:39:07 AM by Fighteer