@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: Oh look, half the people have a dangly thing between their legs and the other half are way less weird looking. I wonder if this division is important?
RW: Nah, I don’t think so.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: But look, the majority of the little people seem to be associated with two big people, one of each type, and the really little people spend a lot of time inside then fixed via their mouth to just one type of big person.
RW: I don’t see it.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: If you look at all the other life around these parts, they also seem to be divided into two main groups of body type. This seems pretty universal, now I look deeper. Are you sure this isn’t important?
RW: Ignore it.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: I really think I should consider whether I’ve discovered something fundamental here. Someone might give me a prize.
RW: I think we should group people not according to whether they *have* dangly or undangly bits, but whether they *want* dangly or undangly bits.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: <doubtful look>
RW: Yes, that makes a lot more sense as a categorisation.
Scientist: OK, but I’m going to carry on studying the Danglies and Undanglies. <gets labcoat on and runs after passing Dangly>
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon RW: <calling> Hang on, how do you know that person is a Dangly?
Scientist: <points to dangly bits>
RW: That’s a bit presumptuous though.
Scientist: <bats dangly bits>
RW: What if this person is really an Undangly?
Scientist: <eyes dart between RW and gently swaying dangly bits>
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon Scientist: I’ve discovered something cool about Danglies. Wanna hear?
RW: You can’t call them that.
Scientist: W..what? Do you remember back there when I swatted one of them?
RW: That wasn’t a Dangly.
Scientist: It dangled.
@JaneSpeakman1@HJJoyceEcon RW: That’s not how we recognise Danglies. We recognise them by their internal sense of Dangliness.
Scientist: I can’t see inside their heads.
RW: They don’t have Dangly brains.
Scientists: <backing away slowly> But you clearly have a lot of dangle going on in your head. I’m off.
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Five years ago, I gave a speech comparing sex denialism to creationism.
At the time, my partner-in-crime, Colin Wright, and I were near-lone academic voices willing to stand up and say “Biology! We have a problem!”
@SwipeWright
Reflecting, back in 2020, on that state of affairs:
“[That] there are two sexes, male and female is apparently something that biologists do not think needs to be said.
I think they are wrong.”
Since then, biologists with far more authority than an unknown developmental biologist who was trying to work out how nerves navigate over muscles and an unknown evolutionary biologist who was studying what makes insects mad have spoken up.
Several people argue that if the metrics of a trans-identified male fall "within female range", it is fair for that male to compete in female sport.
But we need to look at what's typical .v. what's exceptional.
Male traits often overlap with female traits. Height, muscle mass and so forth all generate normal distributions within sex (bell curves), where the lower end of the male range overlaps with the upper end of the female range.