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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

If the people running the app were determined to screen reliably they would have to require documentation, because anyone can submit any real or synthetic photograph.

You’re mistaken about the lack of “hard lines” distinguishing the sexes, though. The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women.

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> The difference between male and female is unambiguous in biology. “Trans women” are, by definition, not women.

That is emphatically false. There are innumerable biological differences between men as a whole and women as a whole, and while these different factors largely correlate, they do not necessarily fit neatly into one box or the other. Is an XXY individual with a penis but undescended testes and low levels of blood testosterone and few androgen receptors "biologically" male or female? What about an XX individual with ambiguous external genitalia, high circulating testosterone, and a high number of androgen receptors? What do you make of the fact that females with congenital adrenal hyperplasia are far more likely to identify as LGBT? You are oversimplifying the biology.

That said, the right to create an exclusive space is a fundamental constitutional right. En plus, for socially marginalized groups, it is a societal benefit for them to have a space exclusive to them. I support the creators of this social media app.

Those cases are worth considering, socially. But generally speaking, biology isn't defined by edge cases. There is a clear biological definition of sex, which a small percentage of examples do not fit into. That doesn't negate the existence of biological sex.

Exactly. We say a human hand has five fingers, this is not the case for every human however.

...And it would be equally bullshit to encounter someone missing a finger and start berating them. "You don't really have four fingers, biologically you're still five-fingered!"

It's appropriate to discuss generalities. It's appropriate to discuss individual cases. What is inappropriate is dismissing individual cases to come to a general conclusion, and then insist that it applies universally.

No it's appropriate to dismiss individual cases to come to general conclusions. We do this all the time with outliers. That's how we classify large sets of data. Classifications are very useful and should not be thrown away. That said you treat an individual as who they are not with generalizations. You don't say to a six fingered individual you're five fingered. But if you want to make gloves for a living you're going to sell more volume if you make five fingered gloves.

This is also in the context of trans people the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex.

> the vast majority are not biological outliers simply people identifying as something different to their unambiguous biological sex

To make this claim, you would have had to find an exhaustive list of biological sex differences, and check a large representative random sample of transgender individuals to see whether all of those biological sex traits aligned "unambiguous[ly]" with their assigned birth sex.

Since I am quite confident that this work has not been done, may I suggest deferring to individual people to tell you what is going on in their bodies? While imperfect, self-reporting is still epistemologically far superior to you just pulling this claim out of your ass.

You’re conflating disordered or atypical sexual development with sex itself. In your examples, the XXY is male and the XX is female.

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