Comment by thrance

> take a sample of their saliva, run it through a very expensive machine for a few days and decode the results with a supercomputer

You are probably thinking about PCR [0].

The PCR thermocycler is now a very very cheap machine (~ 200$). You could even build one at home. All the other things you need are also cheap. The reaction takes a couple of hours at most and the results are read with an ordinary chemical stain for DNA, possibly an electrophoresis machine and an ordinary computer flatbed scanner, if you want to get fancy. There's no need for a supercomputer - a 486 could do it (and they did, back then).

But you don't even need PCR. There's a very simple Barr Test [1] that you can perform with a glass slide, a chemical stain and a microscope. Result ready in less than an hour.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction

[1] https://labpedia.net/barr-bodies-detection-and-drumstick/

> I just think it's weird insisting that someone that looks like a man, talks like a man, acts like a man is actually a woman

So suppose that someone looks like, talks like, and acts like a man, but nonetheless feels with certainty that their actual gender identity is a woman. Is it still strange to insist that they are actually a woman? Because the form of your argument is literally identical to that used by transphobes; the only difference is in your definition of terms.

> I feel like the "new" definition of man

But what is that "new" definition? Suppose we could finally arrive at a consensus of what a "man" or a "woman" really is, beyond saliva and other mere biological markers. Would it be fair to insist that those who fail to "pass" or meet those criteria, yet very strongly identify as a particular gender, are actually some other gender?

Rather, mainstream scholarship on the issue would suggest "that self-identities ought to be definitive in terms of the question of sex membership and gendered treatment [0] [1]." In which case, why do you find it strange for someone to self-identify as a woman, even when they look like, talk like, and act like a man?

> is just that much more natural than the "biological" one

The difference is that the "biological" definition is objective, independently verifiable, and assertions of one biological sex vs. another can be readily falsified through experiment. This has implications for healthcare at the least, among other things.

Meanwhile it's not even clear that a single "new" definition exists with widespread acceptance, since two people with incompatible ideas about what a gender is can nonetheless subjectively identify as the same thing. This is due to the ability to self-identify and declare gender by fiat, which makes it not only impossible but also morally wrong to even attempt a falsification of someone's gender. Additionally you run into problems of furnishing evidence for the existence of "genders" or "identities," similar to how it's not clear how one can prove that "souls" or "gods" exist.

One of these definitions can more properly be regarded as "scientific," while the other cannot be, and enters more into the realm of "intersubjectivity" (which, interestingly enough, finds definition in an Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion [2]).

Arguably, since biology is a branch of "natural science," the "biological" definition is far more "natural" than the intersubjectival one that relies on higher order cognition, human agency, and free will (which have too frequently opposed nature with dire consequences, c.f. climate crisis and environmental catastrophe).

[0] https://sci-hub.se/https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/6730...

[1] https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/hypa.12327

[2] https://sci-hub.se/https://link.springer.com/referenceworken...