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Comment by kdmccormick | Hacker News Reader

In full anticipation that HN will jump to the defense of the canceled speakers, here's a quote from the canceled speakers' response (emphasis mine):

> UK anthropologist Kathleen Richardson’s abstract highlighted issues surrounding material disparities between the sexes in the tech industry that are being erased by counting men who identify as trans as women rather than by having more women enter the field.

The assumption here is that trans women are actually just "men who identify as trans." If that's the attitude that these scholars have, it's no wonder their paper was flagged as transphobic.

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She's not wrong though, is she. Having 'male women' in the demographic doesn't make the field any less male-dominated.

Unfortunately, it's common on HN for commenters here to see things primarily from a male viewpoint, and assume that female-centred perspectives are less valuable or less intelligent or even bigoted in some way. Please do keep an open mind when listening to women share their experiences and perspectives.

My view, and AFAICT the view of most academic organizations in the US at this point, is that there is no such thing as a "male woman". A trans woman is female, a trans man is male. Trying to separate gender from "biological sex" trivializes the reality of trans people. Even if you don't care about that, it's just not very correct: intersex people exist; chromosomes don't always line up with assigned-at-birth gender; and transitioning can involve physical changes that you might consider changing someone's "biological sex".

For situations where one's birth-assigned gender is relevant, the terms "assigned male/female at birth" (AMAB/AFAB) can be used. The researcher's claim about tech diversity could have been framed as, e.g., "a recent uptick in tech diversity can be ascribed to counting trans women by their self-identified gender rather than the gender they were assigned at birth". That comes across as much more sensitive and academic than "men identifying as trans", which just has TERF written all over it.

> Trying to separate gender from "biological sex" trivializes the reality of trans people.

The reality of trans people is that their gender identity does not match their biological sex, either at birth or at any time thereafter. That's what being trans is.

And no, you cannot change your biological sex. Gene therapy and brain transplants aren't there yet.

None of this trivializes trans people, rather it is your argument that trivializes the experience of women who were born and raised female and the distinct experiences and perspectives stemming from that.

Our base disagreement is whether human gender and sex are distinct things. I don't think there's anything I do to change your mind and convince you that they're not, so I recommend you do some research or talk to a trans person in your life and see if it updates your understanding of the topic.

I know trans people, I've including a couple I worked with for years and remain in contact with. Neither would ever claim that sex and gender are the same thing, because they don't have brain rot.

Gender is cultural. There are cultures with more than two genders, but they continue to have the same distribution of X and Y chromosomes because sex is biological.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_gender

https://www.coe.int/en/web/gender-matters/sex-and-gender

Sex is biological and multidimensional; but the construct assigning a binary categorization based on some (not necessarily static over time) sex traits is, even though the category assigned is often described, even in law, as the described-person’s “sex” is, in fact, a form of socially ascribed gender.

Put another way: sex is a bunch of physical attributes. People are generally assigned a gender at birth (usually male or female) based on those attributes. As they grow, each person may find that the intitial assignment fits them or doesn't. If it fits they are cis; if not they are trans.

Exactly. The gender can change, but the sex classification remains. Trans women are women by gender and men by sex, thus different than those who are both women in gender and sex.

I'm saying "man/male" is a gender, not a sex trait.

When transitioning, some sexual traits may change, some may stay the same. That doesn't mean a trans woman is still a "man" in any sense.

Male = sex, man = gender

> Put another way: sex is a bunch of physical attributes.

No, it's an organised system of different parts whose development is coordinated to deliver a specific function: that of reproduction.

We have sexed bodies - female and male - because of our differential reproductive roles, and have evolved molecular mechanisms to drive development of those sexed bodies to support each reproductive role.

Describing sex simply as a "bunch of physical attributes" completely ignores that it is an evolved system function for reproduction, predicated on female and male gametes.

> None of this trivializes trans people, rather it is your argument that trivializes the experience of women who were born and raised female and the distinct experiences and perspectives stemming from that.

I have thought about this, and as a cis male, do I have the right to deny any other human their experience of being male ?

If someone lost their male reproductive organs in an accident, from disease or at birth - should I single them out and police their gender ID ?

Is someone more male than me ?

Am I more male than someone else ?

After this mental exercise I realized I can’t gatekeep another person’s experience. Everyone alive has paid the price of admission to exist as best they can with whatever they have.

It's a statement of fact and science versus psychology.

> Trying to separate gender from “biological sex” trivializes the reality of trans people.

I think this basically gets it, but I would say it somewhat misstates the case: gender is easily distinguished from biological sex (maybe not separated from it; the general correlation and the fact that behavior necessarily has a biological basis suggests that gender identity may itself be among the many dimensions of biological sex traits), but the categorization of people into two groups based on a subset of biological sex traits is not, itself, biological sex, it is ascribed gender. Biological sex is multidimensional (in the usual sense of the entire spectrum of traits that are considered within the ambit of sex) or not binary (in the narrower sense of ability to perform in one, both, or neither of two possible sexual reproductive roles.)

Sex essentialism, like race essentialism (whose arguments and methods it generally apes) defends social constructed exclusive categorization by misrepresenting social statuses ascribed based on some subset of physical traits as essential biological categories.

Well explained, thanks for the insights.

Your view completely ignores the reality of trans people.

>A trans woman is female, a trans man is male.

These are explicitly biological terms. A trans woman is NOT female. Even if you only argue the lesser claim that "trans woman are women", I have never seen a convincing follow up to the inevitable response, "what are women".

That may be your view. But it’s out of step with most of the Earth’s population of humans and most of the history of humanity. In that context, it can only fairly be described as controversial and radical.

I am amazed at how people who claim to care about their fellow humans can so easily demonize a huge swath of them in favor of a tiny minority. Just admit it: you are engaging in power politics, just like everyone else.

Let’s suppose the motive of wanting more women in tech is to rally against historic prejudices and institutional biases, in order to assist an otherwise marginalised group towards a more equal footing with the traditional power brokers, men. If you can’t see how this extends to trans women, a group that is almost inarguably as oppressed as cis women, regardless of whether you view them as ‘true’ women, then I can only assume bad faith.

Yeah, this is one of those decisions where the aggrieved party's defence makes me feel it was the right decision.

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