ClaphamFox

Shout out to the Palace ultras for their Dad’s Army tifo last night…

It’s occasionally nice to remind ourselves of those timeless human values that can unite even sworn political enemies….

Ha ha - fair enough. That Enzo thread though

Our two Italian managers walked in the door and immediately delivered titles, which probably helped to cut them a little slack.

I don't think even our owners would be that stupid.

Medical intervention can change some secondary sex characteristics such as hormones, but it cannot change the underlying chromosomal sex, which remains XX or XY (or another karyotype, in intersex variations) This matters because “biological sex,” is defined by gamete production and reproductive role, not just by phenotype. DSDs like Swyer syndrome are exceptions, not redefinitions. People with Swyer syndrome have a nonfunctional Y chromosome (46,XY) but develop phenotypically female because the SRY gene or related pathways don’t trigger testicular differentiation. Biologically, they are intersex (a rare variation in sexual development). This is not evidence that sex itself is “mutable”. Comparing a post-op trans-identified male to someone with Swyer syndrome conflates phenotypic similarity with developmental equivalence. The argument that “if we define sex by fertility, then infertile women are a different sex” is a specious false dichotomy. Infertility is a functional limitation within a sex, not a different sex category. A bird that cannot fly due to an injured wing is still a bird; infertility doesn’t change one’s sex any more than injury changes one’s species. Finally, regarding your comment about ‘intelligent design’, the biological definition of sex is empirical and descriptive, not teleological. Scientists don’t argue that there’s a “design” behind sex; they observe that sexually reproducing species have consistent patterns of reproductive differentiation, which form the basis for the category “male” and “female”. That pattern doesn’t rely on purpose or creation — just reproductive role.

As far as I’m aware, no scientist has even claimed to have discovered the existence of a third gamete, which is about as consensus as it gets. This article provides a very good explanation of how activists have tried to use the existence of rare biological abnormalities to falsely claim that sex is a spectrum. It’s worth reading in full if you have time, but here are a couple of key paragraphs: “It is important to note here that the binary nature of sex is compatible with sex ambiguity because ambiguity with respect to sex is not itself a third sex. However, many gender activists falsely assert that the “sex binary” must mean something like “every human who has ever existed and will ever exist can be unambiguously categorized as either male or female.” Given this, they contend that providing examples of people with ambiguous sexual anatomy (i.e., “intersex” conditions) not only disproves the sex binary but also demonstrates that biological sex is a meaningless and even oppressive categorization scheme. (We will leave aside for now the fact that many of these same activists do recognize an alternative version of “biological sex” in the form of gender-identity bio-essentialism, or the theory that a person’s subjective self-conception of male or female is rooted in the brain itself.) “This desire to extrapolate a small blur at a boundary to the entire picture is rooted in the postmodern impulse to “queer,” and thereby eliminate, natural categories. In the queer-theory worldview, categories are themselves oppressive, and human liberation requires the “troubling” of categories (to borrow Judith Butler’s term), including those of sex. Yet…the existence of “questionable” cases with respect to sex classification does not automatically cast a degree of doubt onto everyone’s sex. For most people, their sex is obvious. “Besides, our society is not currently experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people stricken with ambiguous genitalia; we are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex, or neither sex.” And with regard to your wider point, yes, I believe that scientific evidence should always be prioritised when it comes to crafting policy.

Tonight was on Marti. That absolute dross in the first half is on him and him only. What an utterly inexcusable team selection.

I actually hate Jordan Ayew.

It really isn’t. It’s about the fact that sex is binary, it is etched in your chromosones and biology, and you cannot change it. The existence of rare conditions such as DSDs are biological anomalies. They do not amount to a third sex. Some people prefer to present in a way traditionally associated with the opposite sex - and good luck to them. Nobody should be allow to discriminate against them because of this choice. But the ‘rights’ that trans people believe they have are not the only rights, and in a pluralistic society when subjective notions of identity collide with objective reality, most people would agree that it is reality, not identity, that should inform law and policy. As a general rule, the demands of a tiny minority of people should not force the vast majority to make profound changes to customs, law and policy. So trans-identifying people are welcome to believe that they are the opposite sex, and present as such if they wish, but that does not mean everyone else has to go along with it.

Caster Semenya has a disorder of sexual development (DSD). DSDs are very rare. The vast majority of people, including trans-identified males and females, do not have DSDs. The existence of DSDs in leas than 1% of the population in no way challenges the fact that more than 99% of the population is unambiguously male or female.

Acres of space.

Indeed. It’s like the moment in Trading Places when Dan Ackroyd sits on the bus in his filthy Santa outfit, eating the stolen salmon covered in his mangy fake beard fluff.

No McBurnie for them is good.

After the game on Saturday Marti was going on about how Carranza needs a run of games to get up to speed, so it would be a bit odd if he dropped him to the bench after his first start.

Probably an old one but I only heard it the other day so am sharing here. A man walks into a doctor's to receive some test results. The doctor says, "I'm afraid I've got some bad news and some even worse news." Crestfallen, the man slumps in his seat and says, "Ok, so what's the bad news?" "You've got cancer," the doctor replies. The man takes a few moments to take this in, but then composes himself and asks, "So what's the worse news?" The doctor replies, "You also have Alzheimer's." The man groans and holds his head in his hands. "Oh God that's terrible," he says. Then, suddenly brightening up, he adds: "But hey—at least I don't have cancer!"

Win, prompting a wave of renewed optimism and comments that 20 points from 11 games isn’t such a bad start after all. Then an absolutely doggo performance and loss at Millwall.

I'll still be very surprised if it's nine.

A very predictable but nonetheless welcome outcome to this: the Met is no longer going to investigate non-crime hate incidents. https://news.sky.com/story/comedy-writer-graham-linehan-has-case-dropped-after-arrest-over-social-media-posts-13454029

I doubt he could think of one either.

His name is Min-Hyeok Yang. It’s hard to think of a more un-Japanese name

Say what you like about Sean from Enderby, but he’s a damn fine troll when he wants to be….

That’s exactly what he’s advocating. Vile, isn’t it?

I've given the owners the benefit of the doubt until now, but no more. They can do one if they think we'll take this lying down. King Power out!