This Is a Woman!

“In certain formal contexts — mathematical logic, for example, in which a definition is a rule for substituting one symbol for one or more others — definitions are crucially important, but in everyday life and in sciences such as biology their importance is highly exaggerated. It is simply not true that no discourse is possible unless all technical terms are precisely defined; if that were so, there would be no biology'.” – Peter and Jean Medawar, Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology 

Khelif preparing for her next big fight.

The recent bruhaha, which saw gold medal-winning Olympic boxer Imane Khelif misgendered and maligned in the apparent cause of protecting women, should have highlighted once and for all the problems with trying to reduce the squidgy messiness that is human sex and gender into neat little binary boxes. Nonetheless, the gender essentialists continue to raise the question, “What is a woman?” as a supposed gotcha against the expert consensus. What this actually reveals, however, is the anti-scientific stance of questioners who believe in such decidedly unscientific concepts as true meanings, ultimate truths, underlying essences and essential properties: an epistemic system which the great philosopher of science Karl Popper dismissed as essentialism.

Dawkins being essentially wrong, again.

“Definitions must be rejected as a fundamental way of establishing meanings because concepts can only be defined in terms of other concepts, the meanings of which are given.” philosopher of science Alan Chalmers says in rejection of essentialism in What Is This Thing Called Science? (2013). “If the meanings of these latter concepts are themselves established by definition,” he continues, “it is clear that an infinite regress will result unless the meanings of some concepts are known by other means.” And this can be clearly seen in the only seemingly acceptable response to the question: “adult human female,” merely raising further question about what exactly it means to be an “adult”, a “human” or a “female”.    

Galbraith (or whatever he's now calling himself) embodying essentialism.

The first of these seems particularly telling as while maturation is clearly a process firmly based in biology, it is one that exists on an apparent continuum which makes it all but impossible to neatly divide into the binary categories of adult and juvenile, at least without a somewhat arbitrary legal ruling on this. As to the second, it may seem easy to answer now, when modern humans are the last surviving species of the genus Homo, but even a cursory glance into the history of human evolution soon muddies that water. Which leaves us with the final question, highlighting Chalmer’s infinite regression by demonstrating that these additional complications have done absolutely nothing to aid any definition of the core issue. 

Davies failing to learn from science or history.

Illustrative of this, those who call upon biology to support their gender essentialist claims may be interested to learn, is the fact that biologists don’t even have an essentialist definition for the word (which one would assume to be core to biology} of “life”. “There is no true meaning,” confirm biologists turned lexicographers Peter and Jean Medawar in Aristotle to Zoos: A Philosophical Dictionary of Biology, “There is a usage that serves the purposes of working biologists well enough, and it is not the subject of altercation or dispute.” This working usage of “life” is what is termed an operational definition. Rather than providing true meaning, this operationalization specifies concrete replicable procedures to represent concepts. 

Ethicist Pike behaving unethically.

As biologists, the Medawars, of course, outline biological sex determination by chromosomal makeup, but to assume this to be the only possible operationalization of sex/gender would be essentialism. Such testing is, after all, uncommon (the agency claimed to have accredited Khelif’s testing, for example, confirmed it doesn’t) and far from deterministic (I formed my gender identity in ignorance of my chromosomal makeup and doubt shocking revelation from testing would make me reconsider). With regards to Khelif, unevidenced rumors from a disgraced functionary represent at best scurrilous lies and at worst the unauthorized release of private medical information (highlighting the ethical concerns of gathering such data). With such considerations in mind, the majority of non-medical studies operationalize human sex/gender by self-report.

O'Rahilly forgetting the evidential basis of endocrinology and doing science by proclamation.

The Olympics is, of course, not a scientific study and is thus not guided by a clearly defined research question (an apparent oversite which would have resulted in proposal rejection for my students). The inevitable outcome of this is that such confounders as drugs, equipment, and, indeed, genetics, are dealt with on a seemingly ad hoc basis. And it is well beyond my ability to judge the appropriateness of the decision to operationalize sex/gender by a simple passport check. But to claim, as some have, they joined the hate campaign against a talented young athlete as a reasoned protest against this policy decision actually makes them look worse than admitting that it was down to irrational prejudice and scientific illiteracy would.

“A principal purpose of definition is to bring peace of mind,” the Medawar’s conclude, “Sometimes, though, it is too dearly bought: a ‘definition,’ as the word itself connotes, has a quality of finality that is often unjustified and misleading and may have the effect of confining the mind instead of liberating it.”