William Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

Fascinatingly frank admissions in this transphobic brief to the Supreme Court. They admit that "sex" is not sustainable as a reductionist scientific concept!

Because there's just too much causal messiness (in genes, expression, hormones, etc) under the rule-of-thumb. https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24/24-43/374986/20250918112750820_24-38%20and%2024-43%20Amici%20Brief.pdf

Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

Amazingly, the brief centers its argument around irreductive conceptual classifications being higher in "naturalness" than reductive ones.

Now, of course, irreductive notions of "sex" can be more pragmatically and perspectivally *useful* to humans, BUT USEFULNESS IS NOT NATURALNESS!!

Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

The actual structures of underlying nature are infamously not aligned with human intuitions, cognition, or usefulness in everyday life. Indeed one of the ways we can tell quantum mechanics is REAL, is how alien it gets.

By contrast, "sex" is, of course, not real.

Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

Sex is a cluster concept, a crudely aggregate "rule of thumb" that humans constructed to smush together countless dynamics for a variety of reasons.

Pragmatics and political perspectives are baked in. And such are the OPPOSITE of naturalness.

Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025
And the brief is very explicitly attempting to leverage 'naturalness' in ways that appeal to facts of hard sciences like physics and chemistry, because they compare trans people to "fool's gold" -- a situation where "gold" can have a far more exactly reductive definition.
Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

Note the contradiction: the brief admits that "sex" defies a validly reductionist definition, but then appeals to an intuition pump example wherein the sharp distinction between gold and iron pyrite IS validly reductionist.

Gold is a natural category, "sex" is not!

Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025
Now the reason that the brief doesn't want to allow for reductionism is because reductionist analyses of "sex" immediately point out the tangled arbitrariness of genes and hormones. Unlike the 79 protons specific to Au atoms, there is nothing firm underneath on which to prop "sex."
Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025
And of course, while the authors of the brief are big mad at self-identification not being very "natural" as a category, they know that that chromosomes and genetics are invasive to measure and messy to categorize and really really do not want to accept hormone regimes as a base.
Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025
Now I'm not a partisan of hormone regimes somehow being the one true underlying determinant of "sex" -- sex/gender is irreducible and nonnatural because it is socially constructed for human ends -- but it's worth noting how absurd the brief's anti-reductionist "naturalness" is:
Show threadMorgan ⚧️
@rechelon I'll acknowledge that making room for a single trans individual does break down those boxes a bit. However, scientists keep talking too much about whether we *could* force athletes into binaries and not enough about whether we *should*. If a categorization can't sort 1-3% of the population, maybe we should simply not be using it to sort people. Female athletes are either fine to compete with male athletes, or would be fine with a size class 🤷
Sep 25, 2025 at 8:34pmWeb
Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Sep 25, 2025

@raphaelmorgan

If a categorization can't sort 1-3% of the population, maybe we should simply not be using it to sort people. Well this is both the moral and the scientific position.