The Twofold Nature of the Sexes
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode, we talk about the nature of opposites, and how there are three types of opposite, and what they are, and why they are important. We also talk about gradients, which are gradients in which there are no clear demarcations between them.
Transcript
00:00:30.000
So, recently there's been a lot of horseshit being talked about.
00:00:34.980
Transsexuals and gendered bathrooms and ambiguous sexualities.
00:00:45.880
Let's just leave that at the front door and not touch it.
00:00:51.880
I'll tell you what I do want to talk about, though, is the nature of opposites.
00:00:56.760
Because this is actually a pretty interesting topic.
00:01:00.460
It's something I've devoted a lot of time thinking about.
00:01:03.840
And, you know, I've basically come to the conclusion that there are three types of opposites.
00:01:24.520
You know, and I first picked up on this in Breaking Bad, where they're talking about chiral molecules.
00:01:29.840
Because, well, let me give you a better example of chiral.
00:01:33.300
Well, chirality is when you have two things that are completely identical to each other.
00:01:39.920
They are built out of the exact same components.
00:01:42.440
They have the exact same design and the exact same function.
00:01:49.900
You cannot take a piece of one of them and replace a piece on the other one.
00:01:55.160
And the perfect example of chirality is your hands.
00:02:05.360
You know, maybe you're right-handed, maybe you're left-handed.
00:02:07.520
But there's no inherent intrinsic reason why being right-handed is superior to being left-handed.
00:02:22.060
And yet, you can't take a single bone from your right hand and replace a single bone in your left hand.
00:02:34.620
Another example of chirality is the mirror reflection.
00:02:38.280
Now, a lot of people, they think that the mirror flips an image left to right.
00:02:54.080
And when you flip around one of the three axes,
00:03:01.740
So, your left hand in the mirror looks like a right hand.
00:03:13.400
It is now a right hand in the flipped chirality in the mirror universe.
00:03:24.800
It's two things that are completely identical, but cannot be exchanged.
00:03:57.240
The next form of opposite is the one of degrees.
00:04:35.720
Because, like, there's a maximum amount of whiteness.
00:04:44.420
You can say that this is more white or that it's more black.
00:04:52.900
Then you have the form where it's bounded only on one side.
00:05:15.200
But brightness and temperature can always increase.
00:05:21.020
There is no limit to the amount of brightness or temperature that you can have.
00:05:29.160
And then, some of them are just completely unbounded.
00:05:57.900
And so, an example of the gradient system that we would see in real life would be forest, plains, desert.
00:06:13.420
If we have this gradient of greenery, how much chlorophyll is in the environment?
00:06:27.760
But where does one begin and where does the other end?
00:06:34.920
Like, okay, here's the forest and here's the...
00:06:37.820
But it's a bit of an arbitrary sort of a thing.
00:06:44.200
What's the difference between light gray and dark gray?
00:06:46.940
Is what we're talking about with those type of gradients.
00:06:54.780
But there's no clear demarcation anywhere between.
00:07:13.960
Now, the third type of opposite is the complementary.
00:07:30.080
Because the complementary opposites are the two opposites that are designed for one another.
00:07:46.220
You know, whether we're talking about USB or if we're talking about just your basic lamp plug-in.
00:07:56.520
You know, if you look at the plug going in to the socket and the socket it goes into.
00:08:03.060
Both of them have a cable coming out the other side.
00:08:06.180
You know, like a copper cable for electricity or a data cable for USB.
00:08:16.180
And the components of the plug are made up of the same things.
00:08:37.320
And yet no one piece can be replaced with the other.
00:08:48.020
Another, a simpler example of this might be the contact lens.
00:08:52.280
Because the contact lens is a convex, or a concave shell that goes on top of a convex eye.
00:09:07.640
And if you look closely at a contact lens, it has a right way and a wrong way.
00:09:23.080
It has a thickness, and it comes down to a flat point.
00:09:28.080
And if you flip it upside down, it won't quite work.
00:09:40.140
Because that's not the way it's supposed to be.
00:09:42.040
It has a specific manner in which it is supposed to be.
00:09:47.160
It is a concave, part sphere that's meant to meet up with the sphere of your eye.
00:10:05.120
The chiral, the gradient, and the complementary.
00:11:23.000
Now, our species, we happen to have quite a bit of sexual dimorphism.
00:11:40.360
You know, a female wolf and a male wolf about the same ability to go hunt an elk.
00:11:45.400
Whereas, we are very, very dissimilar from one another.
00:11:52.400
But on the most profound level, men cannot give birth.
00:11:57.060
It is functionally impossible for men to give birth.
00:12:18.140
And see, at first, you're probably going to think that you've seen some women that are abnormally strong or very, very butch or whatever.
00:12:37.320
Or you see a male dandy, who is, you know, an expert at fashion and fanciness and pizzazz.
00:12:46.740
And you think those are classically female traits.
00:12:52.640
Well, first of all, simplifying masculinity and femininity into such black and white extremes is just farcical.
00:13:01.220
Because, listen, when you think about the forest and the desert, those are both two distinct places.
00:13:09.500
But when you think about a masculine man, we'll take, you know what, Conan the Barbarian.
00:13:19.220
Conan the Barbarian is actually, if you read the stories, a very, very complex character.
00:13:29.900
All these things that, thanks to feminism, we think of as feminine and non-masculine, men have those traits as well.
00:13:41.840
And women throughout history, and throughout literature throughout history, okay, going all the way back to the ancient Greeks,
00:13:50.060
women have demonstrated what, according to feminists, is masculine behavior.
00:14:06.000
The fact of the matter is that the dandy, a good dandy, you take Oscar Wilde, very masculine.
00:14:12.440
And a woman that manifests, you know, that has large muscles, that is ferocious, is a big mama bear.
00:14:28.700
And yes, some of them are very confused, but some of them are just genuine, good quality women.
00:14:35.640
That happen to have a bit more natural muscle than most men do.
00:14:39.460
See, the thing is, with the gradient, you need to find the middle ground.
00:14:48.600
And now people will say, well, what about intersex people?
00:14:58.080
The fact that intersex exists is what demonstrates that this is not a gradient.
00:15:07.200
You see, there is no middle ground between male and female.
00:15:12.140
When you get intersex, you get, like, somebody with 3X chromosomes or an XXY chromosome.
00:15:27.140
Since humanity has been around, there's been the legend of the hermaphrodite.
00:15:36.360
Hermaphrodite actually comes from hermaphroditus, from the Greek legends.
00:15:39.700
If you look at the tarot cards, the world is a man with breasts and the genitals covered.
00:16:02.060
The interesting thing about the XXY, if I'm remembering correctly,
00:16:09.860
There's one of the, one of the intersex chromosomes.
00:16:20.920
because of that Y chromosome that wants to release testosterone,
00:16:35.400
is one of the most feminine creatures you will ever see.
00:16:40.400
Some of the most feminine women in Hollywood, in modeling,
00:16:55.440
And their body has reacted so harshly against the Y chromosome
00:17:08.680
Where a man, where what we would think of as a man has an ovary,
00:17:14.520
his testicles are actually ovaries because of genetic damage,
00:17:26.740
you will actually see genitals that are so damaged
00:17:47.400
And see, this reminds me of like a contact lens