Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 18, 2018 19:55 UTC (Wed) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
In reply to: Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader by mjg59
Parent article: Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Oh please, around 1 in 2000 babies is born with ambiguous genitalia, the numbers for gender dysphoria are comparable. That's not vast by any stretch of the imagination.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 18, 2018 20:13 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

If you're one in a million, there are seven thousand people just like you.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 18, 2018 20:41 UTC (Wed) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (18 responses)

Self-reported transgender identity is on the order of 1% of the population, and that's probably ignoring some number of people who are somewhere on the non-binary spectrum.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 6:50 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (17 responses)

> Self-reported transgender identity is on the order of 1% of the population,
Which means the vast majority of people are not trans. Thanks for confirming.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 7:10 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (16 responses)

No, it means that that's the lower bound on the error rate of the classification system you're using. There's a whole range of social factors that make it difficult to determine what the actual numbers are (eg, significantly more than 1% of the people I know are openly trans), and if your initial classification system effectively denies the existence of anything other than those two possibilities then you'll definitely tend to underreport people who feel like they fit in a different category.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 9:19 UTC (Thu) by paxillus (guest, #79451) [Link]

>Self-reported
Wouldn't they be using their classification system?

Significantly more than 1% of the people I know are openly software developers - although none identifies as openly Java dev

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 11:58 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (14 responses)

> eg, significantly more than 1% of the people I know are openly trans
Well, among the people I know it's significantly lower than that (0, as far as I'm aware). I don't claim that's representative, but I still don't believe it's a significant number. But even if the number were as high as 1%, you'd still have the problem that most trans people just want to have the opposite gender identity to their sex, thus supporting the idea of two genders.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 13:32 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (1 responses)

>Well, among the people I know it's significantly lower than that (0, as far as I'm aware). I don't claim that's representative, but I still don't believe it's a significant number.

If you don't claim your personal experiences are representative why even bother bringing it up into the discussion? It just muddies the water when discussing statistics on anything.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 13:49 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

I brought it up because mjg59 did it first. The point was to show that his personal experience isn't necessarily representative.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 19:34 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (11 responses)

> But even if the number were as high as 1%, you'd still have the problem that most trans people just want to have the opposite gender identity to their sex

You're still using an entirely arbitrary definition of sex here. If what you mean is "This person says they're a woman despite having XY chromosomes" then obviously yes you end up with a very binary concept of things because you're still ascribing meaning to chromosomal arrangement that doesn't exist.

> thus supporting the idea of two genders.

But also no - that tells you nothing about non-binary individuals, many of whom don't necessarily think of themselves as trans (and many of whom do)

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 21:25 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (10 responses)

> You're still using an entirely arbitrary definition of sex here. If what you mean is "This person says they're a woman despite having XY chromosomes" then obviously yes you end up with a very binary concept of things because you're still ascribing meaning to chromosomal arrangement that doesn't exist.
So if you don't like to define sex via chromosomes, feel free to use any other reasonable definition of sex and my point will still stand: most trans people are biological males who identify as female or vice versa. The number of “non-binary” people is vanishingly small.

Anyway, I'm tired of this discussion, it's clearly not going anywhere, so have a good weekend.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 21:31 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

> The number of “non-binary” people is vanishingly small.
The number of non-binary people outnumbers the number of software developers. Probably by an order of magnitude or so.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 21:32 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (8 responses)

> most trans people are biological males who identify as female or vice versa.

You can't use the phrase "biological male" without defining it, and we've already established that your definitions are bad.

> The number of “non-binary” people is vanishingly small.

Citation strongly needed.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 22:23 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link] (7 responses)

> You can't use the phrase "biological male" without defining it, and we've already established that your definitions are bad.
I already told you to feel free to use any other reasonable definition. The fact that you ignore this suggests to me that you're not arguing in good faith, hence there's no point in having this discussion. Have a nice weekend.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 22:29 UTC (Thu) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> hence there's no point in having this discussion. Have a nice weekend.

It seems to me that we have strayed pretty far from the topic at hand. Maybe we could all just drop this discussion at this point, at least here. From what I've seen, no minds are likely to be changed if it were to continue.

I do concur with the "Have a nice weekend" sentiment, however ...

thanks,

jake

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 22:31 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link] (1 responses)

> I already told you to feel free to use any other reasonable definition.

There is no reasonable definition of "biological sex". That's the point.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 20, 2018 8:12 UTC (Fri) by paxillus (guest, #79451) [Link]

What is sexual reproduction?

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 19, 2018 22:31 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (3 responses)

> I already told you to feel free to use any other reasonable definition.
How about "self-identifies as a male"?

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 20, 2018 8:15 UTC (Fri) by paxillus (guest, #79451) [Link]

Which means that the self-identifier is using some notion of what it is to be male (a classification) in order to identify with/as it?

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader

Posted Jul 20, 2018 13:00 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link] (1 responses)

If you equate "male" with "self-identifies as a male" (ditto for female) then by definition there are no trans people, which I'm afraid isn't particularly helpful either.

Guido van Rossum resigns as Python leader [From a campaigning T shirt: Some people are trans - get over it ]

Posted Jul 20, 2018 13:14 UTC (Fri) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

One of the editors has already requested that this thread cease. Biological/social/understood/felt gender varies and there are differences of opinion. Now can we get back to technical usefulness?