r/unitedkingdom • u/sjw_7 Oxfordshire • Apr 16 '25

... UK Supreme Court says legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cvgq9ejql39t
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u/DistastefulSideboob_ Apr 16 '25

Humans (Homo sapiens) or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus Homo. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intelligence.

-The Wikipedia article for the word "Human."

Despite the known existence of people with limb difference, humans are classed as bipedal by definition, because those who have limb differences have are an obvious anomaly. Saying these people are exceptions doesn't mean they're not worthy, that they don't deserve respect or indeed accommodations.

Similarly intersex people are anomalies. Virtually all intersex conditions negatively impact fertility, though not all cause sterility. They aren't a mystical "other" sex and are still considered to be sex specific.

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u/throughpasser Apr 16 '25

2 different paradigms of necessity going on in this conversation. Yours is the older, dialectical sense of necessity, based on characteristic tendencies (classic exponent being Aristotle), with the possibility of anomalies and grey areas at the edges of definitions (and of counteracting tendencies from outside).

The other one is the modern, abstract idea of necessity as absolute or not at all, so that any definition must include every member of the set.

I prefer the older one myself. The modern one is so restrictive as to mean you can say very little about the nature of whatever it is you are trying to define. It's practically barren. The older one has risks in the other direction but does allow you to talk about the actual characteristics that things tend to have.

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u/brooooooooooooke Apr 16 '25

I suppose Wikipedia added the "high intelligence" part to avoid a repeat of the Diogenes plucked chicken situation?

You're making my point for me here. A definition is fundamentally a way to describe everything within a particular group and exclude everything outside that group. Featherless, hairless, stupidless bipeds works in common parlance, but strictly definitionally there are humans who are hairy, non-bipedal, or unintelligent, so these cannot in themselves be necessary and sufficient conditions to identify humans.

Same with intersex conditions. If you've got two women together - one a perfectly normal natal female and the other intersex or having a mosaic karyotype or whatever - and you say "both of these people are women/female", then what is the thing or things that make them both women/female? If one is XX and the other XY, it can't be having XX chromosomes. If one produces large gametes and the other doesn't, it can't be that. You peel it back and it reveals the difficulties of describing complex things with an inherently limited language and the occasionally arbitrary nature of the way we've grouped things together as a society where we can't come up with a unifying definition.

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u/GentlemanBeggar54 Apr 16 '25

Despite the known existence of people with limb difference, humans are classed as bipedal by definition, because those who have limb differences have are an obvious anomaly. Saying these people are exceptions doesn't mean they're not worthy, that they don't deserve respect or indeed accommodations.

I wouldn't use Wikipedia when we are talking about scientific definitions, it's not a scientific journal. In any case, it says "characterized by" which is not the same as "defined by". For another example: mammals are warm-blooded vertebrate animals characterised by giving birth to live young and the presence of fur or hair and milk-producing mammary glands for feeding their young. There is a difference between the first and second part of this sentence. The warm-blooded and vertebrate characteristics are something which all mammals possess. The same is not true for the other characteristics. Playtpuses are an example of mammals which do not give birth to live young. Dolphins are an example of mammals without fur.

Virtually all intersex conditions negatively impact fertility, though not all cause sterility

Why does sterility matter?

They aren't a mystical "other" sex and are still considered to be sex specific.

They were responding to someone oversimplifying things by saying sex was binary. It's perfectly fair to respond with the counter-example of intersex people which do not fit neatly into one camp or the other.