Male / Female

Male

/

Female

Ask the couple coming out of the church if they can tell the difference between right and wrong. Of course they can. They'll also assure you that they can tell god from devil, sacred from profane. Their youngest child standing on two legs will likewise assure you that they can tell not only good guy from bad guy, but man from woman! So when Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis shoot the scenes in drag for Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe sharing the camera time, everybody is shaking with laughter, with disbelief.

We'll come back to that in a moment: show the kindergarteners a still of Arnold Schwarzenegger from Conan, ask them if he's man or woman, all the kids will answer "Man," and answer right away. Even the retard will be only slightly behind the main crest of certainty.


Do the same with the pic of Marilyn from The Seven Year Itch with her dress blown up over her um, er female central.


They'll all say woman! or female! or dame! or blond! and they'll say it right away. Now show a picture of a robin, ask what kind of a creature it is. They'll all answer "bird" readily enough. OK: in your Arnold, Marilyn sequence, show a picture of Paul Reubens in his Pee-Wee getup. In your robin sequence show an ostrich. The kids will still say "bird," but the answer will come slower. Robin will get a quick crest; ostrich will get a slow crest: fuzzier. The same is true in your Arnold-Marilyn-Reubens sequence if you slip in a picture of Fran Liebowitz. Or Amélie Mauresmo.

Try a picture of world champion South African runner Caster Semenya, the one in the current gender row.


When her performances were mediocre, no one bothered her; when she got better, and got better fast, uncertainty, doubt, hostility blossomed around her. That article offers a sad litany of gender doubt over a series of athletes, all supposedly female. The article just linked tells stories of school athletes who had to have a teacher accompany them to the bathroom to check their genitalia.

Guess what folks, most teachers are not qualified to judge gender even with a gander behind the briefs.

Read Jared Diamond on the subject in his great book Why Is Sex Fun? I'll summarize a fast word, but I mean it, read Diamond, savor the whole argument:
Diamond the physiologist reports that his specialty has decided that the difference between male and female boils down to one thing: testes. If testes are present, even dud testes, undescended, non-functioning: it's a male; no testes: it's a female.

Without the male gonad pumping out male hormones a human body will develop as "female": smooth face, broad hips, pronounced breasts ... With testes, male! but if the testes malfunction, the technically male body will also mature as female! "He" will "be" "male" but will appear to be "female."
The blond knocks your eye out, what a face! what a bod! Get her clothes off, she's got a pleasant face, great boobs, a slender waist, a lovely mons veneris, a darling vulva ... no penis; but look closely, look up inside: there's no vagina! She's a he! Your average teacher, in South Africa or in Queens NY isn't likely to notice the one essential. In an undeveloped male, the testes remain hidden, they never descend into a scrotum. Still, physiologically, scientifically, he's a male.

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2009 09 11

Update: A Reuters article just confirmed exactly that result in Semenya's case:... tests had found Semenya had no womb or ovaries, but that she had internal testes, the male sexual organs which produce testosterone, and her levels of the hormone were three times that of a 'normal' female.The report didn't elaborate on the presence or absence of a penis or a vagina. The article reported on a charge of Semenya being a hermaphrodite. But that term remains ambiguous without the specific definition of the physiologists: testes: male!

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PS: Don't you just love Conan pictured above, Arnold in his shoulder-length hair? far longer than Marilyn's!

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2009 09 12

The latter points in the above relate well to pk points developed for decades (and at the censored Knatz.com since 1995), but under Linguistics: specifically under the fork between natural language and artificial language. In this case, once again, scientists, using artificial languages as well as natural languages (biology, zoology, physiology ... within "English") make clear distinctions (only one distinction is needed: if there are testes, it's male, whether or not the testes are visible or functioning) and the rest of mankind, not rehearsed in physiology, getting heated over ambiguities. Politicials, legislators, lawyers ... may use artificial languages, the law, for example (legal English has its own, separate, history) to generate heat while shedding no light.

Note: I am not automatically and wholly on the side of "science." The South African politician who defended Semenya's trophies by pointing out that she had been accepted in the races as "female" and had won the races makes sense to me. By the physiologists' standards, "she" is male; by the rules of the track her having been accepted as female should not be held against "her." The poor hermaphrodite should not be victimized: the non-scientists should be wailing and gnashing their teeth over their own fuzziness, their emotionalism, their prejudice ...

I believe that mankind would do well to learn a little science, but I try not to confuse my "ought" with something accomplished. I do not want bureaucrats labeled "scientists" to restrict future meaning or discussion. I do not want natural languages controlled, supervised, by experts claiming to represent artificial languages.

On the other hand, if the public doesn't voluntarily smarten up and smarten up fast (by achieving some command of artificial languages like "physiology"), we should not be surprised or complain too loudly when we spin down extinction's drain.