[wanorris]

Given that they're identical twins, I think it's also pretty clear that this case undercuts the argument that it's all just genetics as well.

Oh, and "decided he'd rather be a girl" is generally considered offensive to trans people. She believes that she's always been a girl, and did not "decide" anything of the kind. Her physical characteristics were simply misleading regarding her true gender.

[pbhjpbhj]

>"is generally considered offensive to trans people"

Isn't that just being delusional. If I decide that I should have been born as superman, does that mean you now all have to refer to me as the Man of Steel and ignore the fact that I wasn't born with the organs (X-ray eyes, etc.) that would make it possible for me to be said person.

Except in cases of genetic sex indeterminacy a person is born either male or female regardless of what they think they should have been or currently want to be.

You're welcome to adopt your own self-vision but imposing unreality on others is beyond reasonable expectations of society.

[dalke]

The heart of the matter is, what is gender? It's clearly not the case that gender is identical to being biologically male or female, eg, based on which sex organs are present, or on the chromosome. You need only read the Wikipedia pages on "intersex" and "third gender" to see some of the diversity in the world. Sex indeterminacy is only one of many possibilities.

Go back to the original Turing Test. In "The Imitation Game", the questioner must determine which of two people is male and female based only on written notes. (Presumably typewritten or some other means which doesn't even reveal handwriting.) If the only way to tell that a person who looks like a female is actually a male is through a close physical examination, then will you at least agree that they are doing a good job of acting as a female?

Of course there are many people who do that, including actors and cross-dressers, who see it as a different persona which they can put on or take off. For those who work hard at it, it's a sign of respect to be called "she" because it's a recognition of the effort needed to get the body language, and voice patterns, and dress style down.

But some people feel that being born male was a mistake, a birth defect. A cleft palate is a birth defect which is easily fixed nowadays. Nose jobs and breast implants and LASIK are usually voluntary procedures to change a genetic characteristic. Gender reassignment isn't as simple, but much easier pre-puberty. One worry is that the person, decades later, may decide that the choice made as a child was wrong, or at least deluded. That's why there's a lot of counseling involved.

If someone considers themself a female, takes on female gender roles, and to every extent possible acts like a female, then can you see why there's some offense that some side effects of some stupid little chromosome still make others call them a "he" instead of "she"?

That person may still be deluded. The question for you is, how do you tell the difference between a delusion and (what you consider to be the impossible case of) actually being born as the wrong sex? What are the negatives and benefits of encouraging vs. denying that delusion? Bear in mind that clearly a number of transgender people are happier having made that change.

As to your Superman example, "Superman" is a specific person from a fictional world. But suppose you thought you were Kryptonian, and you underwent hypothetical genetic tinkering and technological augmentation to get x-ray vision, super-strength, and so on. Then yes, I would call you a Kryptonian, or a human transformed into a Kryptonian if I wanted to be more precise. Just like my Dad, born Canadian, is now a US citizen. But if you just decide one day that everyone should call you "Superman", without making any effort at it, then don't be surprised if people don't agree with you. What would that effort look like? I saw a Superman impersonator on the Strip in Vegas, and would have no problems calling that person the Man of Steel.

[einhverfr]

Gender is entirely a social construct very loosely tied to biology but not at all determined by it.

I personally think the same thing is probably true of sexual orientation (which really is sexual attraction to gender not necessarily the same sex).

I would add that many anthropologists don't think people are born with a gender.

[bermanoid]

Gender is entirely a social construct very loosely tied to biology but not at all determined by it.

This doesn't sound plausible.

[tl;dr: If evolution didn't build in a powerful urge to make our gender behavior match our reproductive sex, then it made a huge error and missed a very easy and effective optimization.]

It may be the case that gender could be very loosely tied to biology in a philosophical or theoretical sense, but in the world that we're in right now, there are very strong adaptive reasons that gender expression and reproductive sex tend to stay close (statistically, of course) in any sexually dimorphic species, which I'd call a very strong "tie to biology".

Evolution 101-wise, gender can only be allowed to diverge from reproductive sex to a limited enough extent that it's more or less irrelevant to reproductive success. Evolution will make sure of that on a long enough time scale (at least up until the modern era, where we can to some extent decouple reproduction from sex).

If the two diverged commonly enough that animals were often foregoing sex with reproductively compatible partners in favor of incompatible ones that nevertheless matched the gender role they were interested in, then an adaptation that better facilitated reproductive matchings would easily emerge and dominate the population.

Note that such a compensating adaptation might even emerge as some form of social behavior, even if the impetus to that behavior was genetically driven; IMO, this doesn't make it any less tied to biology.

As an example, one suggestion [1] to solve the "gay problem" in evolution (why has full homosexuality, where a person is not at all attracted to members of the opposite sex, not been eradicated from the gene pool, since it should be so devastating to reproduction rates?) is that getting rid of the "gay gene" (or genes, or whatever) is actually a very difficult task for evolution to carry out (I'm anthropomorphizing evolution here for ease of speaking, not because I don't realize why that's wrong) for some reason. Difficult enough so that accepting the ~10% homosexuality rate was a better option, though obviously not ideal. So instead of getting rid of homosexuality, evolution tried to mitigate the "damage" that such behavior causes by enhancing an inclination for people to disapprove of it, which meant that even when people/animals were fully homosexual, they still tended to mate with members of the other sex due to social pressure. Thus the seemingly fitness-devastating 10% homosexuality rate was bumped down to a more ignorable number via social effects, and the presence of the gene was a net win. This is not to say that there's a "homophobia gene"; if this theory is correct, I'd guess that evolution more likely leveraged existing social behaviors (like wanting to fit in, or hating people that act differently) and turned them up to a slightly higher level.

In the case of gender identity, I suspect that there is a heavy dosage of social conformity involved in training people to signal their reproductive sex through gendered behavior. But I think it's biologically driven, or at least that it would be extremely surprising if it wasn't, since it's such low-hanging fruit. I'm sure that these biological imperatives are somewhat flexible, and that if pink was considered a boy color then boys would flock to the pink section of Toys R Us, rather than these things being hard-coded into the genome (though certain behaviors are definitely going to be hard-coded, since sex signaling had to take place before higher-level thought centers could be leveraged). But the inclination to figure out what these socially derived sex-signaling behaviors are is not a social construct - that's an evolutionary imperative, so while we may be able to change the particular expressions of gender that we see in the world, it's probably going to be rather difficult to prevent people from seeking them out and conforming to them.

This is why I'm always uncomfortable with nature vs. nurture questions - the environment that evolution optimizes any particular genome to succeed in includes the entire existing social structure, which was also influenced by previous rounds of evolution. So picking apart what is a "social construct" and what is "biological" is really a fool's errand, when it comes down to it - there's a delicate interplay between the two, and they always play off of each other.

[1] I should mention, there are other theories as well, the simplest being that even with the "gay gene", a person is only sometimes fully homosexual (twin studies have shown that homosexuality is definitely not 100% determined by DNA, though it's not 0%, either), so they do rather limited damage, and if tied to useful adaptations, there would be no particular evolutionary imperative to get rid of such a gene; the point, though, is that such arguments only hold up to a point, and if a large percentage of the population was gay, there would be much more selection pressure against that behavior, tamping down the ratio rather quickly to a lower level.

[dalke]

"If evolution didn't build in a powerful urge to make our gender behavior match our reproductive sex, then it made a huge error and missed a very easy and effective optimization."

That's not how evolution works! Evolution works at the level of genes, and not individuals. It's easy to construct a model where a 10% gay population ends up being overall better for a population. Consider this made-up hypothesis: gay people are better at caregiving than non-gay people, so a population with gay people ends up with healthier adults who are able to have more, and healthier, children. For this scenario, gayness won't be "optimized" away because that leads to worse reproductive success for the population of genes involved. Nor is the presence of gay individuals "damage", because the result is an evolutionarily better population than one without gay individuals.

As another example, why does Down's syndrome exist? By your logic, shouldn't evolution have optimized that case away? That it hasn't means that changing how the 21st chromosome works is much harder than the impact of having a 1:733 failure rate. Why do you assume that any genetic component to being gay would be easy to change, without having negative consequences elsewhere in the population?

So your error is the belief that evolution emphasizes the reproductive success of individuals, when it deals instead with the reproductive success of genes. Some individuals don't need to reproduce so long as the overall gene population reproduces itself.

BTW, 100 years ago, pink was a boy's color, and young boys wore dresses too. Quoting from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/When-Did-Girls-St... "yet social convention of 1884, when FDR was photographed at age 2 1/2, dictated that boys wore dresses until age 6 or 7, also the time of their first haircut. Franklin’s outfit was considered gender-neutral."

[wanorris]

> "If evolution didn't build in a powerful urge to make our gender behavior match our reproductive sex, then it made a huge error and missed a very easy and effective optimization."

I think this is actually a pretty reasonable statement, as long as it includes the caveat "on average" or "most of the time". Just as Down's syndrome isn't a huge problem for a population -- as long as it stays relatively uncommon.

A population comprised largely of people with Down's syndrome would likely be poorly adapted, and that's probably the case with a population comprised largely of gay people or transgender people as well. (Obviously, this is complete speculation, so I could be utterly mistaken.)

But yes, a population with a certain percentage of gay people could be better adapted just for having them, or alternatively, it could be better adapted because the same genetic diversity that leads a percentage of the population to be gay could be desirable in other ways.

[bermanoid]

That's not how evolution works! Evolution works at the level of genes, and not individuals.

Yes, of course, though in many cases genes achieve their own survival by boosting the survival and reproduction rates of their hosts.

It's easy to construct a model where a 10% gay population ends up being overall better for a population. Consider this made-up hypothesis: gay people are better at caregiving than non-gay people, so a population with gay people ends up with healthier adults who are able to have more, and healthier, children.

You're invoking group selection here, which is exactly what The Selfish Gene debunked in great detail; given your comment above, I'm surprised that you would make this argument.

From the point of view of the gene, in a society that contained a 10% gay population who were better at caregiving, a gene that selfishly reduced the probability of its host's homosexuality would thrive, because not only would its carriers benefit from the caregiving boost thanks to the other members of society without that gene, they would not suffer from the reduced reproductive potential. Only in the long term, as the gene spread throughout the population, would the caregiving benefits start to fade, and that's not a present-enough change in fitness to apply any evolutionary pressure against the gene (more precisely, it can't apply evolutionary pressure because it depends on the prevalence of the gene in other members of the population; it's a classic prisoner's dilemma situation, and if you're going to take one lesson from Dawkins, it's that evolution always chooses to defect).

As another example, why does Down's syndrome exist? By your logic, shouldn't evolution have optimized that case away? That it hasn't means that changing how the 21st chromosome works is much harder than the impact of having a 1:733 failure rate.

Down's syndrome would be exceedingly difficult to optimize away, because it falls into the category of commonly-reproduced-mutation; it is not the result of code that specifically causes Down's syndrome, it's the result of our genetic material being evolutionarily close to a state that results in Down's syndrome, so whenever something goes wrong, the maladaptive trait is rediscovered over and over. Same thing with most other chromosomal disorders (most of which end up filtered out very quickly, well before birth).

FWIW, that's another common theory about how homosexuality has survived, that normal people are "one mutation away" from being gay (or rather, of having the mutation that makes them potentially gay). Both of these cases still presume, however, that the negative consequences of the trait, when combined with the probability of the trait manifesting, are negligible enough compared to the genetic changes that would be required to move us more than "one mutation away".

Why do you assume that any genetic component to being gay would be easy to change, without having negative consequences elsewhere in the population?

I quite explicitly assumed exactly the opposite. My whole comment on that matter was predicated on the assumption that it is not easy to change susceptibility to homosexuality, and that social mitigation was a workaround.

The main reason I brought up homosexuality at all was that it is often pointed to as a counterexample to the idea that reproductively negative traits are weeded out of the gene pool; I wanted to make the point that evolution doesn't necessarily need to weed out such traits directly as long as it can find some way to control their side effects.

BTW, 100 years ago, pink was a boy's color, and young boys wore dresses too.

Yup, that doesn't surprise me. I absolutely believe that much, if not most, of what signals male/female in today's society is arbitrary. However, I think that the existence of some set of traits that each sex uses to signal reproductive class is very much innate.

[einhverfr]

Culture is not determined by biology though. If it did, third-generation Chinese immigrants would be more Chinese than American.

The problem here is that culture determines gender. Some cultures have two, some three, some even have more. Many cultures treat children as genderless and initiate them into genders in rites of passage. In some cases gender is contextual, so among the Norse and among the Greeks, there was a specific gender-based stigma attached to being the penetrated partner in male-male sex. Male-male sex was not stigmatized, only crossing the gender line and being penetrated as a woman.

I think it is a grave error to look at one's own culture and assume that it is biologically determined.

As for the "gay problem" we have to recognize at some point that every culture addresses human sexuality differently, and human sexuality is remarkably malleable. For example there are tribes in Papua which make young boys give oral sex to tribal elders as a part of a rite of passage as a way of them literally ingesting manliness in order to become men.

Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal.

[bermanoid]

The problem here is that culture determines gender.

Absolutely. I never claimed otherwise.

All I think is that some sort of robust signaling mechanism that displays a person's (or animal's) reproductive "team" should be expected to exist in any sexually dimorphic species. In many animals, this is hard coded, but I suspect that in humans that was generalized to a high level imperative, "figure out what sex you are, and clearly display the appropriate characteristics so that mates can find you".

Once we look at our own sexual taboos involving who and what we are forbidden to have sexual relations with, and we recognize that these are socially contextual, not innate taboos, things change a great deal.

But this is exactly my point: the fact that these social sexual taboos so often go against behaviors that reduce evolutionary fitness suggests that supporting those social behaviors may, in fact, be precisely the way that evolution ended up most easily controlling those behaviors.

To be very clear about this: the fact that behavior is influenced socially rather than genetically does not necessarily mean that it's an accident of history. It very well could be a direct evolutionary adaptation that leaned on social behavior to implement itself. Nature tunes nurture, and nurture tunes nature, so arguing for one to the exclusion of the other is usually wrong.

That doesn't, of course, mean that we shouldn't try to overcome such evolutionary imperatives. But we should be aware of the fact that in such cases, the social behaviors are not completely arbitrary, and that we have an uphill battle to fight.

[wanorris]

As people who have been in certain kinds of accidents or been treated for certain kinds of medical conditions can tell you, having a certain set of body parts is not a requirement for being a member of either gender.

The overwhelming majority of people are born with a certain set of chromosomes, a set of parts between their legs, and an idea in their head that all agree with one another on what gender they are. It's a large enough majority that it's easy to think that these are the same thing, because for most people, they are.

But for trans people, these things disagree, and the gender that they think of themselves as in their heads wins. Since they are being treated by the world at large as something they don't consider themselves to be, they take steps to correct how the world views them by transitioning. Given money, access to treatment, and other constraints, this may include surgery, hormones, etc. But even in the absence of these things, they can still be trans people who know what their true gender is.

[einhverfr]

I don't know what "true gender" means scientifically. Physical characteristics are objective. I would expect something we can say is intrinsic, like true gender would also be, but I can't find a way of determinign it objectively or even intersubjectively, can you?

In fact, anthropologically I am not even sure anyone is born with a gender.