From: dyer@spdcc.com (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: talk.philosophy.misc,rec.arts.books,alt.politics.homosexuality
Subject: Re: Morally good necessary possible sometimes possible reprodictiveness
Date: 19 Dec 92 04:04:32 GMT
Article-I.D.: spdcc.1992Dec19.040432.19449
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Consulting, Cambridge MA

In article <1992Dec18.111915.18664@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Michael Zeleny) writes:
>MZ:
>>>From the standpoint concerned with the essential nature (admittedly
>>>neither legal, nor social), as represented by the genotype, your
>>>protagonist would be male, appearances and phenotype notwithstanding.
>
>Is it bothering you that someone can appear as a woman without being
>one?  Surely it is not a task of moral philosophy to validate every
>commonplace moral judgment.  Female phenotype corresponding to the XX
>genotype is the prevalent norm; and furthermore, if femininity is a
>natural kind, there is no option for its essence but the genotype.

There are women who are genetically XY; their external appearance is
completely female, and they quite naturally are raised to be and think
of themselves as women.  A problem is not usually noticed until
puberty, when they fail to menstruate.  This is known as the syndrome
of "complete testicular feminization", and is an X-linked genetic defect
which results in the complete absence of any cellular androgen receptors.
That is, the cells in their body don't respond to the male sex hormones
which are produced by their undescended testes.  Produced in copious
amounts, I might add, because the ordinary hypothalamic feedback which
shuts off sex hormone production isn't operative.  This unopposed
stimulation of the testes also causes them to produce large quantities
of estrogen, and the liver also converts much of the secreted testosterone
into estrogen.  These individuals have perfectly functioning cellular
estrogen receptors, and in the absence of any opposing actions of
androgen, their phenotype is unabashedly female, as is their gender
identity.

Phenotypic "maleness" or "femaleness" arises out of a synthesis of the
opposing actions of estrogen and androgen in both men and women.  If
you declare "femaleness" as being the accident of lacking a Y chromo-
some (note sarcasm, please), isn't that simply drawing the line too
early?  One could argue that the cellular "defect" of lacking the
androgen receptor yields, if anything, a uber-female, since they don't
even react to the small amount of androgen found in normal women.
Indeed, it is only in the last 40-odd years or so that these young ladies
have stopped being considered "women" by certain groups (for example,
the International Olympic Committee.)

In any case, even though I think the premises of Zeleny's argument on the
moral imperative of sex are laughable, if we allow ourselves a bit of
license and postulate that Zeleny might find himself dating such a woman
(admittedly quite a leap of faith, whatever the prevalence of this syndrome)
we might also reassure him that he needn't presume that such a coupling
would be "essentially sterile", anymore than sex with a woman sterile for
some other reason would be, or anymore than if he himself might find that
his sperm count were low from too many years of drinking nuclear reactor
waste water growing up in Odessa.

Of course, the poor woman in this position might express an opinion or
two about Mikhail's "essential sterility", without any appreciation of
Aristotle or Plato or Aquinas.

-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@ursa-major.spdcc.com aka {ima,harvard,rayssd,linus,m2c}!spdcc!dyer
Xref: sparky talk.philosophy.misc:2992 rec.arts.books:22582 alt.politics.homosexuality:8056