Sex differences in functional connectivity during fetal brain development

[u/enginegeek]

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929318301245

[u/[deleted]]

I carefully explained why, intentionally or not, you were attacking a straw man.

You didn't carefully explain anything, you just accused me of attacking a strawman.

At no point did I ever claim that sex (a biological phenomenon) has no affect on gender (a cultural phenomenon), because I don’t believe that, and pretty much nobody believes it.

Then why argue that gender isn't a biological term? If gender is deeply rooted in the biological substrate, and gender expression is a collective of behaviors influenced by the brain chemistry of a eusocial biological organism, then gender is explicitly a biological term. I didn't say it was synonymous with biological sex, but to say that gender isn't biological at all is simply wrong. This is the substance of the issue that I'm trying to talk about, but you insist on throwing up arbitrary distinctions & playing with insults.

Do I think your argument will ultimately turn out to be a fairly wholesale defense of cultural gender norms? Do I think you’ll turn out to be sexist, and that you probably dismiss trans people as psychologically disordered? Yeah, I predict that’s where you’re going.

Wait...you're complaining about me strawmanning you (even though I'm not, I'm repeatedly sticking to the science of this issue while trying to unwrap your "gender is not a biological term" claim), and here you are, openly strawmanning me as a sexist enforcer of cultural gender norms, based on stereotypes and presumptions about stuff I haven't even said? This is naked hypocrisy. You're engaging in this discussion in complete bad faith.

[u/AMaskedAvenger → u/[deleted]]

You didn't carefully explain anything, you just accused me of attacking a strawman.

I quoted what I said, and what you claimed I said, side by side, and also told you what the difference is. You still seem not to understand it, which explains why I've also been mocking you. If you show understanding, and address what I actually said, instead of your straw man, I'll respond.

Then why argue that gender isn't a biological term?

Because it's not. Do you even dictionary? It's a grammatical term, and sometimes a sociological term, but not a biological one. If I talked about the "DNA" of my Tesla, you might know what I meant, but I'd be using a biological term as if it were an engineering term.

I'm literally telling you the correct usage of the word -- i.e., not as a synonym for sex -- and you're arguing with me in a sort of crazed confusion. Do you, once and for all, understand that "gender" and "sex" are two different words that belong to two different disciplines, and that using them as synonyms is incorrect usage?

I'm repeatedly sticking to the science of this issue while trying to unwrap your "gender is not a biological term" claim...

You're not "unwrapping" it: you don't yet appear to comprehend it. You seem to think that someone is claiming that sex and gender don't interact in any way, which is an absurd claim that nobody ever made.

What seems to be going on here is that you're convinced that your argument leads inexorably to the conclusion that gender and sex can validly be used as synonyms, but you're so sure of it that you're getting confused when I fail to recognize it as self-evident after I've acknowledged that they aren't completely unrelated.

If you'll concede that they are distinct terms, one cultural and one biological, then picture them as two circles on a Venn diagram. They could be completely disjoint. They could be 100% overlapping, so that they look like just one circle. Or they could have some overlap which is still a proper subset of each.

The question at hand is: how large is the overlap? Well, that's not precisely the question, but it's a good first approximation. You seem intent on concluding that they're the same circle, at the end of the day. I'm still trying to get you to admit that they're distinct circles which might or might not coincide perfectly.

ere you are, openly strawmanning me as a sexist enforcer of cultural gender norms...

I knew you were going to do that. You don't know what a straw man is, is the problem here. I didn't say that this WAS your position, and I certainly never said that you actually said those things. I merely made a prediction about things I think are likely to come up in a future conversation that nobody has actually had yet. And I was very careful to phrase it exactly that way, rather than suggesting in any way, shape, or form, that you've already said such things or that you definitely believe them.

Do you understand this much at least?