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GC: Why do you think it's not biologically essentialist and biologically deterministic to define sex on the basis of gametes and sex organs?

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[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 6 fun1 insightful - 5 fun2 insightful - 6 fun -  (9 children)

It's perfectly reasonable to consider children essentially sexless.

Lmfao what. So there is no such a thing as a girl or a boy, because the difference is minimal and they're essentially sexless? Who on earth upvoted you?? You sound uneducated.

the other system hasn't been implanted so the most you can claim is that they've been desexed (as people used to say about eunuchs). No one changes sex. Also, it's very difficult to remove everything and not healthy if it's not a last resort. Beyond that, sex is embedded even more deeply than that - the shape of the skeleton, the size of other organs, the space left behind if things are removed, would all give away which sex the body was altered from.

Then children are not sexless and it would be unreasonable to say children are sexless because sex is not just about gametes.

Just because morons in the past who thought earth is flat thought enuchs are sexless doesn't make it true.

If you think children are sexless, then women who are past their menopause are not women and are desexed and sexless too, which I call bullshit. Who are you and why are you in my thread?

Wait your username is familiar. You must be the same TRA from the GCdebatesQT on reddit who said kids and people who remove their sex organs are desexed or sexless. You are as annoying as ever.

[–]emptiedriver 8 insightful - 6 fun8 insightful - 5 fun9 insightful - 6 fun -  (8 children)

Would you have sex with a child? A child has an immature reproductive system. They have the potential to become sexual creatures, but pre-puberty, their sex is not yet developed. Does that mean they are sexless? I don't really know, and the point is that it doesn't really matter. You can say they have a sex but it's nascent or you can say they don't have one yet, as clearly it's distinct from once it becomes an active system. I don't think it's terribly controversial to speak that way. But what you can't say is that they'll start as a boy and turn into a woman.

Of course there is such a thing as a girl or a boy - a girl will become a woman and a boy will become a man. What sex you have at some point in your life is inherent from conception. The haggling over exactly when lines are crossed to achieve sexed vs non-sexed seems like a red herring. The fundamental point is still, there is no shift from one sex to the other. The most you can claim, and I'm only offering it to make the point, is that some people could be defined as non-sexed if you like. Sure, call children pre-sexed, even say someone who has extreme surgery is neutered if you like, but you can never get to cross-sexed.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 6 fun2 insightful - 5 fun3 insightful - 6 fun -  (7 children)

Whot. You said it's reasonable that children have no sex. Girl means a female child. Boy means a male child. If children are essentially sexless, then there is no such a thing as a girl or a boy, because there is no such a thing as a male or female child.

It's not about an adult having sex with a child. Children have sex with each other all the time. They have crushes. And even masturbate. You're here telling me when a girl crushes on a girl (and both haven't reached puberty yet), it's actually a sexless creature crushing on another sexless creature.

And when a girl is molested, since there is no such a thing as a girl, because "it's reasonable that children have no sex, and are not male or female", or so you believe, police would have to record the incident as "sexless creature got molested".

You make GCs look bad. Or maybe GCs are this bad.

[–]emptiedriver 10 insightful - 3 fun10 insightful - 2 fun11 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

If children are essentially sexless, then there is no such a thing as a girl or a boy, because there is no such a thing as a male or female child.

I'm sorry I made this so ridiculously confusing for you. You asked why children aren't sexless and I said, sure, maybe they are since they haven't sexually developed yet. I shouldn't have indulged you. I think that in its strictest, most complete, fully functioning form, sex is evident in healthy adults. In children, unhealthy or other cases of abnormal, altered or degraded physical bodies, sex can be non-functioning or somehow incomplete. It is usually still recognizable. Fundamentally, it does not change to a different sex. Even if you argue that some people do not have a sex if they lose some parts or haven't developed them yet, so what? What difference does that make for trans people?

It's the difference between adult men and women that has caused women's oppression. That is why it does not matter to me whether girls and boys are sexed - they are physically comparable in size and strength, and do not deal with pregnancy and the division of labor issue, so it's largely bc girls will become women that they deal with expectations and different treatment. If we could ignore their sex as children, I can imagine it being a positive. The same cannot be said for adult women, because the physical realities need to be taken up communally.

or so you believe, police would have to record the incident as "sexless creature got molested".

What are you talking about? Do you think if people are not categorized by their sex they are no longer people? How do you even deal with non-binary or asexual people in the trans movement... Maybe the police could record it as "child got molested"? or "young human being"?

[–]MarkTwainiac 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

It's the difference between adult men and women that has caused women's oppression. That is why it does not matter to me whether girls and boys are sexed - they are physically comparable in size and strength, and do not deal with pregnancy and the division of labor issue, so it's largely bc girls will become women that they deal with expectations and different treatment. If we could ignore their sex as children, I can imagine it being a positive. The same cannot be said for adult women, because the physical realities need to be taken up communally.

I'm not sure this is the case. The division of labor occurs long before puberty. From a very early age in most cultures, little girls are expected to care for younger siblings & elderly relatives, and to take on various tasks in the household & on the farm - such as fetching water, gathering firewood, milling grain, preparing food - for the benefit of the family as a whole. Moreover, from an early age girls are taught to budge up & step aside to put male interests first. In many cultures, girls & women are only allowed to eat once all the males in the household have been fed.

Child marriage is a real issue for girls, one that affects female children much more than male children. In Iran, for example, the legal age of majority at which girls can be married off by their fathers is 8. By contrast, the age of majority for males is nearly 16.

Also, in many countries large numbers of female children under the age of 5 are killed through infanticide and abandonment. Not to mention through sex-selective abortion. Male children and fetuses do not suffer the same fate. At all.

it does not matter to me whether girls and boys are sexed - they are physically comparable in size and strength

I think if you knew more about the development of male & female children & the sports performance of boys & girls, you'd have a different view.

[–]emptiedriver 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

don't you think that's due to what is known to be in their future? I have always understood the treatment of girls to be due to the predestination of womanhood rather than the capacity of girls, and my understanding was that girls were fairly equal in sports until close to puberty when the differences became marked. Of course, I may be mistaken and I am not sure there are statistics. It's true that boys tend to be more active on the playground. Perhaps that is just more libfem hearsay I have picked up over the years...

[–]MarkTwainiac 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I have always understood the treatment of girls to be due to the predestination of womanhood rather than the capacity of girls

I don't understand your reasoning. Pregnancy & childbirth complications are the major cause of death for girls in the "third world." Nearly 800,000 girls under 15 give birth each year.

Sex differences in physical ability that matter in (most) sports are apparent well before the puberty of adolescence. These differences become enormous and unmistakable during/after the puberty of adolescence, but they are there beforehand.

http://legacy.usatf.org/statistics/Event-Records/JuniorOlympicTF.aspx

During the puberty of adolescence, males obtain enormous advantages. For example, the average male heart becomes 25-38% larger & more powerful than the average female heart. But prior to the puberty of adolescence, male children have a left ventricle that is 8% larger & stronger than in female children. In sports, an area where performance is measured in hundredths, thousandths, and millionths of a second, an 8% advantage is major.

[–]emptiedriver 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

I thought it was obvious I was talking about pre-pubescent children if I was suggesting we could speak about sexlessness. This is all so ridiculous, I should clearly never have entered this topic. It was just an abstract possibility.