we're not pure of heart but we're fine of ass

Our neighborhood is near a field that happens to be home to at least one coyote. I have seen that coyote wander down the road and people have even spotted it in fenced backyards before. I'm sure one reason it dares to wander into backyards is because it knows there are cats wandering freely around here.

The red tailed hawks in the area may not be large enough to carry off most full grown cats, but that doesn't mean they won't try.

Raccoons aren't exactly nice to cats either.

And i can easily point out several houses, including my own, with flowering plants out front that could absolutely make a cat sick or worse. Lilies, for example.

Even before tackling the problems of cars, malicious people, poison from pest control, or the ecological damage cats themselves cause, just the fact that other people will decorate their own yards with plants that can poison a cat should be enough of a reason to keep them inside!

okay lemme just

Including the exact same one my city buses have!!

take these tags, on somebody else's post (condolences pip)

the thing is. this is what i would call an inside thought. nobody would have known you didn't get it if you didn't tell them that. if you recognised that it was important but didn't have the headspace to process it, you can reblog without commentary for others, or to come back to later. or you can save it somewhere and wait until you DO have the capacity to read it over a few more times, ponder it, consider what it might mean, figure out how to understand it, and THEN reblog it

but no. rushing to reblog while it is still opaque. rushing to admit to ignorance rather than spend the time to achieve understanding. perhaps hoping that somebody will break it down for you more simply, though to my mind it was quite simply phrased in the first place. never stopping to take the time first

comprehension is not always instant! sometimes it takes a bit of time for something to percolate after you read it; sometimes you need to read it a few times; sometimes you realise you don't have the context for it and either go and get the context or accept that it's not for you right now

They banned people with the SRY gene.

The SRY gene is typically found on the Y chromosome, although occasionally it appears on an X chromosome. People with an SRY gene may or may not have a testosterone-based puberty. They may or may not have a Y chromosome. They may or may not have a penis. They may or may not be amab. They may or may not be men. It is not scientifically reasonable to say that "biological male" and "SRY positive" are equivalent.

Sexual dimorphism in humans means there are clusters of traits that tend to appear together in two groups. Sperm vs egg production. Low vs high voice. Presence vs absence of Y chromosome. Presence vs absence of SRY gene. More facial hair vs less. Tall vs short. Longer vs shorter penis/clitoris. High vs low androgens. Low vs high estrogens. Et cetera.

On average, someone who has some traits that look more like the first than the second in these pairs will also likely have other traits that look more like the first than the second in these pairs. Traits that are correlated in this way are considered primary and secondary sex characteristics, and we call one of the correlation classes "male sex characteristics" and the other "female sex characteristics."

But, while it can be useful to refer to individual sex characteristics by their correlation class name (as in, male hormones, female genitalia, et cetera) it does not make sense to refer to an individual human person as male/female. Because all human beings come with a mix of primary and secondary sex characteristics. I would argue that the vast majority of people do not have every single one of their primary and secondary sex characteristics present as clearly solidly in the same correlation class, especially since the correlation is much weaker when it comes to many secondary sex characteristics. That doesn't mean the majority of people are intersex, although "just what mixtures of traits count as intersex?" is a question that doesn't have a clear cut answer. I will not pretend to have an answer for it.

The point is, though, that presence of SRY gene is not any more valid of an idea of "biological male" than using any other single sex characteristic. I'm not sure exactly what percentage of people have an SRY gene but suppose it's 49.8%. I could come up with a testosterone threshold that cuts the population at 49.8%. I could come up with a height threshold that cuts the population at 49.8%. I could come up with a variety of tests on a variety of sex characteristics that cut the population at 49.8%. Or any other percent. And they would not produce the same partition of the population. There would always be some people who land on one side of some tests and the other side of others. And none of them would be a good test of "biological male" because no single sex characteristic defines the "male" correlation class. It is defined by its rough correlation of characteristics.

People have to stop writing headlines (or anything else) with the nouns "biological male" and "biological female" in them as if those mean something. Those literally don't mean anything.

IT IS

there was :3 ^_^ >_< and god

saw that it was good