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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15960 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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they are reliably stumped by the "what's a woman" question.

And thousands, perhaps millions, are reliably stumped by the "is a hotdog a sandwich" question, because most people still think of words as living in the Platonic Realm Of Forms rather than being pointers to fuzzy-edged categories. (I am once again asking you to Read the Sequences.)

Bad analogy. The question "is a hotdog a sandwich?" is a query about whether an edge case falls inside a category. In the sex/gender debate, equivalent questions might include "is an emasculated male with breast implants a woman?" or "is a person with androgen insensitivity syndrome a woman?"

It's also a bad analogy because nothing actually hinges on the question of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich. Quite a lot does hinge on the question "what is a woman?"

The third reason it's a bad analogy is because "is a hotdog a sandwich?" is a question which inspires disagreement, but which no one feels the least bit of discomfort about answering, and will be happy to present arguments for or against ("it's a piece of meat surrounded by bread, so it's a sandwich!" "but it's only one piece of bread, while a sandwich has two pieces!"). By contrast, among progressives the stock response to the question "what is a woman?" is a sputtering refusal to answer, usually attempting to dodge it by changing the subject ("I'm not a biologist", "I take care of people with many different identities"). This is not because it's a complicated question, but because progressives know that one answer ("an adult human female") will anger woke people, while the other answer ("anyone who identifies as one") will make them look like a lunatic.

It's also a bad analogy because nothing actually hinges on the question of whether or not a hot dog is a sandwich.

...until some arcane point of tax or tariff law depends on it (this was why the Supreme Court had to weigh in on whether a tomato is a fruit), and the Red Tribe and Blue Tribe converge on different answers.

among progressives the stock response to the question "what is a woman?" is a sputtering refusal to answer

Again, that might be different if progressives had read the Sequences.

Another possible response might be "With what purpose do you inquire?".

an adult human female

And what is a 'female'?

Even limiting ourselves to biological factors, there are at least five possible definitions.

Another possible response might be "With what purpose do you inquire?".

I have a hard time envisioning a helpful "purpose" for which the answer to the question "what is a woman?" includes people with penises.

It's been awhile since I read the Sequences, but my recollection is that Big Yud put a lot of stock in the idea of definitions that "cleave reality at the joints". Like Zack Davis, I think he ought to take his own advice: I'm baffled as to how he (or anyone else for that matter) could think that the definition "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman" is one that cleaves reality at the joints, as opposed to "a woman is an adult female human".

And what is a 'female'?

An entity born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes.

I have a hard time envisioning a helpful "purpose" for which the answer to the question "what is a woman?" includes people with penises.

Any purpose that does not involve anyone interacting with said penes.

Big Yud put a lot of stock in the idea of definitions that "cleave reality at the joints"

Sometimes reality has multiple sets of joints, and at which ones we choose to cleave reality can be a function of our goals; e. g. the currently accepted definition of 'fish', excluding whales, cleaves reality at the joints of 'evolutionary relatedness', whereas older definitions which include whales cleave reality at a different set of joints, namely body shape and habitat.

An entity born with the organs associated with the production of large gametes.

So you would consider someone with XY chromosomes, who, due to some hormonal-response factor, developed ovaries instead of testicles, to be female?

Any purpose that does not involve anyone interacting with said penes.

Well, that's just sort of stupid, isn't it? Male people have an insurmountable advantage in strength and speed over female people, and this advantage doesn't disappear even if the male people in question have "medically transitioned". Ergo, any definition of "woman" which includes people with penises will make it impossible for female people to have a fair shot at winning sporting competitions. This is true even though none of the people involved will ever interact with any of the penes involved at any point.

I know they're the same word, but the concept of "sex" has meaning and predictive power beyond the narrow domain of "sexual intercourse" and "sexual gratification".

Sometimes reality has multiple sets of joints, and at which ones we choose to cleave reality can be a function of our goals

True. And I think the goals of the trans activist movement are incoherent, quixotic and disturbing. You'll note that, unlike the various definitions for "woman" proposed by trans activists, both the current definition and the older definition of "fish" were coherent, self-consistent and non-circular. I have a hard time believing that any circular definition can possibly cleave reality at any of its claimed joints.

So you would consider someone with XY chromosomes, who, due to some hormonal-response factor, developed ovaries instead of testicles, to be female?

Does such a person exist in reality, or is this a hypothetical?

Does such a person exist in reality, or is this a hypothetical?

Caster Semanya comes close, but does not have ovaries. I'm not aware of an 46,XY DSD condition which results in ovary development -- all I know of result in either testes (as with 5-alpha reductase deficiency, which Semanya has) or non-functional undifferentiated gonads.

Doesn't matter, though; those are intersex conditions, and are rare enough to simply be taken as exceptional cases. That there are a few edge cases that blur the lines doesn't mean the lines don't exist.

And thousands, perhaps millions, are reliably stumped by the "is a hotdog a sandwich" question

AFAICT no one's lost their job, been hounded out of their hobby, lost an election, rewrote decades of a social movement, etc over this one.

Give it time.

The correct analogy would be if people were stumped about the "what is a sandwich" question. Once you have a definition for a category, you can have a debate about whether a specific instance belongs to one category or another. If it the category really is fuzzy, you'll have actual arguments for why that is, and why a specific instance falls somewhere in the middle, making it difficult to classify.

We've head these sorts of conversations countless times: what is a race, or a species? Does an animal belong to one or the other? What is a planet? Is Pluto one?

What you don't normally get is the Blue Screen of Death when you ask someone to define their terms.

I am once again asking you to Read the Sequences.

I'm yet to hear a good argument for doing so.

What you don't normally get is the Blue Screen of Death when you ask someone to define their terms.

Because you aren't setting off Admiral Ackbar with a 'Gotcha!' question. (Is it possible that we were a little too hard on Sarah Palin?)

I'm yet to hear a good argument for doing so.

Because the particular sequence A Human's Guide to Words covers the precise meta-level issue at hand, that there is no True Definition of 'sandwich/planet/woman' floating in the aetherial realm.

You have to speak a little more clearly. Is the question itself supposed to be a trap? How? The only way I see it as one is that any answer exposes some contradiction in the ideology, at which point you're admitting the person setting the trap is correct.

The trap is that they are hoping to get a soundbite that looks bad when taken out of context, which they can run endlessly in attack ads.

Every single question asked by a political opponent has this goal, and yet only this question produces a segfault crash. Also, the opponents are getting a lot of play out of the refusal to answer as well, so it's not a it's not even working to avoid the issue. And also, if this was the case, there should be someone, somewhere who came up with a good answer, and I haven't seen one yet, even in contexts where soundbites aren't a threat (like, say, this forum).

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