Why does it matter how we know when it is obvious we can? We pick up myriads of cues about people's sex - any combination of which can be a give away. It is why people with trans identities are rarely successful in fooling people about their sex. It is a hard thing to do.
I think he may have read the study I posted and ran away!
Well, at least two reasons. First, because it’s a claim you made but can’t defend, and more than anything it’s been entertaining watching you chase your tail about it. But more importantly, it matters because it leaves you with no clear basis to say a person is not the sex they claim to be.
You can say it’s basic biology, but you can’t define that biology. You can say 96% of people will validate your intuition, but that other 4% matters. You’re trying to fight for a binary reality. Either there are no exceptions, or not. And “not” is a big deal for you.
What utter nonsense on stilts. The central fact you wish to deny is that humans are a sexually reproducing species with two sexes: male and female. Those sex roles are distinct, objective and observable which is why your mum and dad were not surprised which one of them got pregnant.
We have distinct sex organs for each role. But as moderately dimorphic mammals we do nto have to observe directly those sex organs as we can take in the myriad of clues from our body shapes, gait, voice, hair, facial structure and so on. And rcognise sex in adults in the high 90's%.
The reasons we get a few wrong can be due to several factors: Secondary sex characteristics do overlap - not much, but enough to introduce a percentage point of errors or so. That does not mean such people are not male or female, but atypical in body characteristics.
Younger people who have not matured are less dimorphic and may introduce a little error. Older people may lose some body shape etc. And some people try to disguise their sex with varying degree of effort - including surgery. Another tiny percentage of error.
None of these errors requires us to abandon the sex binary - two reproductive roles based on a gamete type. This is the fact you so much wish to deny so that men who say they are women can transgress into women's spaces.
See, you’re doing that thing where you fight tooth and nail against a claim that no one actually made, while hoping we don’t notice as you gloss over the parts that you don’t know how to deal with.
People who are “atypical in body characteristics” aren’t a footnote. They’re your core problem. Those are real people with real bodies that you don’t know how to define. You’re loud and confident about how easy you think it would be. But you can’t even do it in the abstract.
We recognise male and female bodies by which of the two development pathways they have undergone. Example: a male baby with 5-ARD may have ambiguous genitals. And may be mistaken fir a girl.
That has implications for the real-world policy that you think is such a no-brainer to implement. You’re more concerned about bathroom predators that statistically don’t exist than about real women. Even cis women, with all the bits you’re expecting to see, but have PCOS or intersex conditions that
It means that, even on your own terms, you do not know what a man or a woman “is.” You think 96% is good enough to effectively deprecate millions human beings as equal members of society. Which tells me that safety and dignity aren’t really what your beliefs are grounded in.