Maybe I'm guilty of not paying attention, but lately I've noticed there's (apparently) considerable pushback to the notion that human sex is binary. But it is: Women have the capacity to produce eggs and men to produce sperm. At a biological level, that's pretty much all there is to it despite the existence of a few very rare chromosomal disorders.
Gender is a whole different thing. In modern use, gender refers to a person's preferred expression of gender stereotypes, which can vary wildly and don't always align with biological sex. That's where we get the panoply of trans, questioning, genderfluid, agender, etc. etc.
With apologies for my possible obtuseness, what's the point of fighting against the reality of binary biological sex? It doesn't have any impact one way or the other on society's acceptance of gender existing on a spectrum. Does it? Help me out here.
This look less than 5 seconds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
A tiny ratio of genetic error - and it is from mamellian biology error - does not in any way remove the reality that mammels dual sexed.
Biology doesn't have "errors", and what number would count as "real" and not "a tiny ratio"? Be careful or those goalposts might have to be moved again.
Biology doesn't have "errors"
Idk about that. Biological evolution allowed humans to emerge, and from the POV of every other species on the planet, that might’ve been a huge error if we end up destroying the planet for all species.
Have environmental changes due to the industrial revolution, war technology, agricultural pesticides, etc. had any effect on "male/female" developmental dynamics? Do we know about this? Just wondering.
We have historical data to show that these have occurred all along. It's irrelevant to this topic if there are environmental consequences - because even if there are, laws have to be made to consider these humans.
Individuals often have developmental disorders. Lots of ways something as complicated as a body can form incorrectly.
Polydactyly - 1 in 500 people.
Red-green color blindness - 1 in 12 males.
Congenital deafness - 1 in 1000 people.
When the reproductive system develops in a way that renders it unfit for its purpose, then it makes sense to describe that development as disordered. Same logic as applies to other bodily systems.
what a gross way to describe people
It's not a disorder if it doesn't cause a problem.
That's it in a nutshell.
And let me note that I was pretty much at the same place as Kevin when my daughter came out to us 16ish years ago.
It seemed like a gene expression error. A lack of transmission fidelity.
Now, I'm not so sure. Thing is, trans people have been around as long as there have been people. In some cultures, they are shamans - persons of value - not mistakes.
The trans people I know know things. Things I can't know.
Yeah. I wouldn't go so far as to say we're shaman o-O
Even if it's a random fluctuation in biology - we exist. And that breadth of experience and existence is valuable to the whole.
You're playing silly dictionary games. Trisomy-21 is a result of a meiosis error, specifically failure to separate the 21st chromosomes in the cell undergoing meiosis. Many genetic mutations are the result of transcription errors, where a "copy" of a chromosome is not identical to the original. It is an error when an embryo has a sex chromosome karyotype other than XX or XY. It is an error when a human XX embryo does not develop a female physique, or when a human XY embryo does not develop a male physique. Biology does, according to biologists, have errors.
Silly dictionary games? Words mean things. They're how we communicate nuanced layers of meaning.
You've defined processes that you expect to happen. Sometimes they don't happen the way you expect. Saying "X didn't happen" is one thing. Saying "X failed to happen" or "X was an error" has a different meaning. One is purely descriptive, the other connotes a value judgment.
Yes. Biologists, especially geneticists, make that value judgment all the time. "Error" is an entirely valid scientific description of genetic dysfunctions.
That's why they don't call people or conditions 'errors'.
Your logic is circular. Yes, errors describe dysfunctions. But a human who's chromosome did not follow the path you expect (based on...what?) is not necessarily dysfunctional.
It's funny how in one breath you claim a trans person is dysfunctional and in the next you'll say the same person is too functional and should not be allowed to compete in sporting events.
Dude, trans an intersex people still exist, whether or not you call us 'errors'.
+1. Why do crackpots argue otherwise? Plus most find the transgender stuff very strange. I don't get the attention such a tiny % even get.
If the general public ignored the existence of trans people, that would be a big improvement over the current demonization.
Meanwhile, I have found the trans people I know to be a positive good, rather than something icky. I mean, yeah, at first it seemed strange.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/01/19/rachel-levine-transgender-biden-hhs-pick/
Whatever you personally think about this, it cost Dems a lot of votes. Now NFL players are doing "the Trump dance" when they make a good play. Anti Trans ads on TV sporting events were a big influence on young men voting R.
Whatever you think personally, you're advocating bigotry.
Trump still lost young men,
Rachel is still a human and qualified for that job.
Here's the thing. The word "error" comes from you. It doesn't come from nature. It doesn't come from biology. In biology, there is no judgement, no right and wrong. There's just what happens.
And that makes a statement such as your end up being heard as "You are an error" sort of like "God made a mistake when he made you".
I think you can understand why this might be a problem, right?
What's a mammel?
There are a couple of hotspots in the world with a significant ration of intersex births. However, for the most part they are rare.
The basic distinction, though, is as Kevin points out: eggs vs. sperm. There's very little value in arguing with that.
But whether someone produces eggs, sperm, or neither has no bearing on their gender.
Sure, 98% of people are fine with what they got, but there are 2% who got dealt something else.
Something like 10% of women suffer from PCOS, which sure, they make eggs, but that 'natural' rhythm is killing them.
Not to be nitpicky, but eggs are not produced. Women are born with all the eggs already there.
Agreed, gender can be different from the person's biological sex, and people should be able to pursue a path of self-discovery. This argument should not be conflated with the existence of the biological sex.
Trans people don't deny the existence of sex, tho.
That's a straw man.
Eggs are produced, during the normal course of development of female fetuses. Males don't produce sperm until they hit puberty.
Eggs develop as part of normal fetal development. Female infants are born with all the eggs that they will ever have. They don't produce them. It's a body part.
This is nonsense. The cells may exist but they are not eggs yet, nor are egg cells immune from division.
You're just repeating Kevin's point; sex is binary, gender is not.
That's not what binary means.
Binaries don't have exceptions or modal overlaps - Human sex expression does.
Interesting point: Is *anything* in the physical world truly binary?
I would've said a light switch can be on or off. But an electrician in my home recently measured the voltage in an "off" line at 20 volts, and was fine with that. That was "off enough."
Computer bits are binary? Nah, google row hammering attacks. They push a "binary" bit far enough (modal overlap!) to make it read differently.
Humans sort things into binaries for our own convenience/comfort. The physical world, not so much.
I think you need a better electrician but yes. The world is analog with lots of exceptions.
Which is the point of the entire question about *sex*.
The wikipedia article discusses phenotypic sex. I think Kevin's refers to chromosomal sex as binary. From what I recall if you have a Y chromosome you are chromosomally male. If you are X only you are chrosomally female.
Identification and manifestations of phenotypic sex are separable from chromosomal sex, or so I thought.
But even if you define sex as chromosomal, there is more than just XX and XY (like XXY-Kleinfelter's or XO-Turner's or XXX or even 46XX/46XY mosaicism). And if you define sex as the ability to produce sperm or eggs, there are plenty of people who can't do either, and couldn't do either at any point in their life. So basically, nothing is neat and easy.
"At a biological level, that's pretty much all there is to it despite the existence of a few very rare chromosomal disorders."
Kevin, just taking your premise, even so: biology is messy. Edge cases exist. With a national population north of 330 million and a global population of more than 8 billion, there are a lot of edge cases in an absolute sense.
Mammelian sexual reproduction is male-female.
Genetic error does not change that (nor is it a comment on the individuals).
The fact the US elite uni Left of non-science backgrounds have gone off the deep-end with over-extrapolation (from the racial subject) does not change mamellian biology.
The confusion of human identity (gender, sexuality) with biological and genetic sex is a category error (and like the error of your over-reach / over-correction relative Trump I and immigration in the end going to do you harm not help)
It's awesome when someone who doesn't know how to spell mammal tells everyone else what to think about biology.
Thumbs up.
-2
That was supposed to be a plus!
That's pretty snarky. Doesn't elevate the discussion. It makes you look small. You may be a rare person who has never committed a typo. Think bigger.
It's snarky because even at the base level, Louns' copy-paste errors are throughout their posts.
My whole point, dear Lousbury, is not that sex is a freewheeling indefinable thing, or subordinate to "the US elite uni Left of non-science backgrounds" (whatever the fuck that might mean) but simply that biology is a lot messier than what it might appear to be from the simple models we use even if those models work quite well in the great majority of cases. Which I'd happily concede that for sex in humans, they do--that doesn't mean that there aren't a nonzero number of instances where the model doesn't work.
If you go around defining the small number of cases where the model doesn't work so well as dismissible genetic "error," all you're really doing is ascribing a normative function to the model. Which hey, that's what religion does, so have at it I guess, but recognize that's what you're arguing.
A lot of variations happen on an individual level. None of those variations affects the basic biology of the matter. And that is not to say that transgender people should not have full rights and be able to live their life to the fullest.
The concept of Disorders of Sexual Development generally captures these "nonzero" instances.
And the reproductive system serves a purpose. Development inconsistent with that purpose is disordered. Religion has nothing to do with it.
"And the reproductive system serves a purpose. Development inconsistent with that purpose is disordered."
Wait, so somebody born infertile is, in your mind, neither male nor female--just "disordered"?
"disordered" is a word I've pretty much only seen in Catholic descriptions of various things people do that they don't like.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/disorders-of-sexual-development
You skip over the fact that part of the definition of disorder is that it's causing a problem.
If it's not, it's not.
There are many reasons for being infertile. One rarer reason is a disorder of sexual development.
Educate yourself:
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/disorders-of-sexual-development
Myself, I wouldn't call it "disordered". Seems like an odd term to use. An individual organism, though, have certain conditions that make it diverge from the biological template.
Disordered, definitely. "Neither male nor female" is a glaring non sequitur.
Except such people exist.
Louns... We still fucking exist, asshole, whether or not you call us 'errors'.
The fact that a person suffers from a developmental or genetic disorder does not make the person an error, but the disorder is an error, just as much as cancer is a biological error but that does not make Kevin an error.
It's not a disorder if it's not causing trouble.
It's not an error if random chance includes it as a possibility.
Evolution wouldn't happen without random chances.
But we're social animals, not all of us need to be directly involved in reproduction.
Random chance can and most certainly does produce errors. The paradigm example in genetics is transcription errors. Mitosis usually produces exact copies of a cell's chromosomes; that is what the system is "designed" (note the quotation marks; I am aware that evolution is not teleological) to do. From time to time an error occurs and a copy is produced that is not quite identical to the original. That is random chance producing mutations through error.
Now you' e moved the goalposts to cellular biology.
We're talking humans. And humans exist with these 'errors' as you call them. They exist, the the law needs to accept that they exist.
I remember when I was your age -- about 15. I was sure I knew everything about everything, and the best way to approach any discussion was aggressively and with overwhelming confidence. Now many years later it turns out I didn't know everything, and yes, I was a jerk that only ever got invited to parties once.
But at least I spelled all my words correctly.
If only Louns was 15 and showed the ability to learn.
I've wondered if Lounsbury is some sort of art experiment-- somebody doing a bit performatively on a blog. Like, somebody sat down and said "what if I built an online persona like a pastiche of British hoity-toity stereotypes, like a character in a skit in a three piece suit sipping tea in some sort of stuffy London gentleman's club, reading one of those newspapers printed on pink paper and attempting dry wit? Would that be fun?"
But they seem to have been at it for a very long time, so either they're locked in, or it's a real set of affectations.
...what if I built an online persona like a pastiche of British hoity-toity stereotypes, like a character in a skit in a three piece suit
Of all the hoity-toity Brits to troll us from time time, we had to get stuck with the one whose prose is harder to parse than the Dead Sea Scrolls.
FWIW here is an article I found helpful (defending a view of sex as a binary):
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
Yep.
Gender isn't sex. Highly correlated, but the human species has a fair number of our population who aren't there for direct reproduction - children, elderly, queer, trans, intersex - but they're still human.
+1
+1, also
Thanks for the link — fascinating article.
In a way you answered your own question: there ARE rare conditions, both chromosomal (eg XXY and XYY individuals) and physical (eg people with characteristics of both biological sexes -- eta per jeffreycmcmahon above), so it's not QUITE "binary," just mostly.
BUT the theocrats and the (other) right-wing political authoritarians try to abuse the (almost) binary nature of biological sex, first by claiming it IS indeed entirely binary, and then -- and this is the larger problem -- using THAT to claim that GENDER (as you use it here) is ALSO binary, blah blah God blah blah nature blah blah blah. That is, they falsely conflate gender with biological sex AND they falsely characterize biological sex, all in order to advance a POLITICAL agenda. The pushback therefore is part -- though not the most important part -- of the pushback against that agenda.
So the Left US response ... is to response with conflation and confusion on a political basis with its own conflation and confusion. The fact of one side making incoherent politically founded arguments is hardly a proper reason to make shite argument in return (particularly when it shows zero traction outside the people who already agree with you so not serving the purpose.
This process you end up with a slowing losing narrative by looking like arch elitists delusionals.
Mammals are evolutionarily dual sex for reproduction - male-female - biological and genetic reality in that area (sex) simply needs to be separated - from sexuality/gender - as has already occured in practice as rather evident the popularity of contraception, in falling birth rates.
and not in making ridiculously over-drawn argumentation off of "edge cases" - that is genetic error from an evolutionary PoV (again individuals value having nothing to do with evolutionary value - which at 6 billion is hardly any real concern - it is howevr biological systems logic - the same as for other non-human mammels)
No, it is not the case, nor do I say, that the "US Left," or as you characterize it above the "US elite uni Left," "respon[ds] with its own conflation and confusion." (The rest of the barely coherent and insulting characterizations we can leave aside.) Rather, noting CORRECTLY that biological sex is not QUITE binary is PART -- and as I note, a minor part -- of the pushback against "incoherent politically founded arguments" of the US Right (arguments, which, by the way, not only demonize people and are intended to strip them of basic human rights but also routinely lead to violence against them).
Indeed, it is the case that "biological and genetic reality in that area (sex) simply needs to be separated - from sexuality/gender," but that is an AWFULLY glib and frankly politically naive statement in the current US environment, and as noted it's not the "US Left" who are confusing that separation or using it for political purposes.
So, NO on pretty much every point -- or at least the coherent ones.
In humans, sex is binary. There is no "quite" about it. Any paradigm that argues that sex is not binary is going to struggle with other basic assertions about humanity, such as:
Humans have 10 toes.
Humans can distinguish red from green.
Adult humans are more than 3 feet tall.
Humans can hear sound.
Humans have arms.
Individual humans exist who confound each of these assertions. But we recognize that a basic human body plan exists, and classify variations (particularly those that inhibit function) as disorders of development.
But by saying it's binary, those of us who aren't - become inhuman.
We are not inhuman.
And no, bigots don't recognize that there are people who don't fit these categories. That's why they're against ADA requirements and allow people their own gender expression.
The bottom line is that sex is binary because humans (and as far as I know all other animals) are chromosomally diploid. You have two parents who each contribute a set of chromosomes; that's the fundamental basis of "sex is binary".
I am aware that there are departures from chromosomal diploidy; most of them are swiftly lethal and those that are not are severely dysfunctional e.g. Down's Syndrome.
You need to read the article linked to by cdunc123 above. Chromosomes correlate strongly but not perfectly with biological sex* in humans, less so in other species.
*biological sex is determined by the gametes produced by the individual; males produce small gametes, females large ones. Not what you thought, is it? Me neither.
Why are you so stuck on some first mover's use of the word "disorder"? Why not call them "variations" of development? After all, if some lucky egg-bearer hadn't developed the variation of an amniotic sac, we'd all still be living at water's edge.
Louns, you repeated for the third time - but humans with a wide varied sex traits expression exist. Some 2% of the population.
What percent more includes gender? More! Because there are many overlapping people with different ideals of who they are.
Good comment.
I found this Wikipedia page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies
Probably there are folks being pedantic about it being literally a binary given the rare intersex cases.
I haven't seen that much in terms of sex as a spectrum, without specifics it's hard to say.
Given that there are intersex people and all sex linked traits overlap in their variations, that means it's not literally a binary.
For the vast majority of the population? Yes, but.
There are people like Caster Semenya. She has 46 XY 5-alpha-reductase deficiency.
"Semenya told BBC Sport that she was "born without a uterus" and born "with internal testicles" and said: "I am a woman and have a vagina"."
She was required to take medication in order to compete when they changed the rules about people with DSDs.
Sex is not binary. It is bimodal. Not quite the same thing.
How is it bimodal? Along the values of what variable does it form a distribution with two modes?
There are a bunch of sex-linked yet not binary traits. Size, weight, height, muscle mass, even penises and vaginas.
I read a piece that described how, in various mammals, there are several brain structures that are sex-linked but not binary. The researcher stated that she preferred to remain low-profile, since her work was so likely to be misunderstood/misused.
Intersex is a real thing, as noted above. Historically, intersex births run to around half a percent, 3-5 per thousand with very spotty data. Also, there are historical cultures that have long recognized them as a distinct minority, e.g. the Indian Hijra and Indonesian Bissu genders among others. The unwillingness to consider the non-binary is not universal.
In addition to the law of large numbers and population meaning there are just plain MORE such folk, USDA data from farms is showing an increase in all-female and sterile litters in pigs. The pig endocrine system is close to ours, and they eat a lot of human scrap. The endocrine disruptor chemicals that are in our food (e.g. Teflon, preservatives) may also be disrupting our endocrines to the extent that the intersex percentage is rising from its historical level. No one on either side actually wants to look at this situation: one side wants no one to look at food production, and the other wants everyone to understand that some trans folk have been there all along (true) and don't want to believe that there may be a rising number and a cause.
There’s a lot of evidence that the incidence of intersex is underestimated. Genetic testing at birth is far from universal and most intersex people don’t present as different from the genetically typical. Many people discover they’re intersex as adults when they get tested for fertility problems.
Regardless, the percentage is irrelevant. Sex isn’t binary, gender isn’t real, and Kevin needs to stfu about things that don’t affect him.
"nd Kevin needs to stfu about things that don’t affect him."
That sounds pretty intolerant. Mr Drum asks for clarification on something he finds genuinely bewildering. And why not? The whole "debate" consists of folks slinging insults and slogans at one another.
There's no requirement that a person needs to have a dog in the fight to comment on the competition.
Intolerance of intolerance is not a vice, dear.
It is when one is a guest. I find that removing myself and not continuing the relationship is the best response to intolerance repeatedly expressed, at least for me.
Now I admit that as a result I don't have a lot of active friendships.
We're Kevin's "guests" here.
Kevin invited us to comment on his posts, for good or ill.
A good friend will tell you when you're full of shit.
Counterpoint: Sex is binary. The fidelity with which that binary is implemented in particular individuals can vary, but that is beside the point.
The notion of intersex as an identity is absurd. Disorders of Sexual Development have a wide range of etiologies and presentations.
That's not what binary means, dear.
That isn't how YOU define binary, dear.
Weirdly words mean things.
You can't just choose new definitions when the situation arises.
Exactly.
Exactly: sex isn't binary.
It has two modes which, unfortunately for bigots, overlap.
Personally, I am not looking for silence, but a bit more humility. From everyone.
And I would like more posts like this from Kevin, as it is less of a pronouncement, and more of a question.
+1
"In addition to the law of large numbers and population meaning there are just plain MORE such folk, USDA data from farms is showing an increase in all-female and sterile litters in pigs. The pig endocrine system is close to ours, and they eat a lot of human scrap. The endocrine disruptor chemicals that are in our food (e.g. Teflon, preservatives) may also be disrupting our endocrines to the extent that the intersex percentage is rising from its historical level. "
+1 to this.
In the 1980s I was reading studies on fish in the Hudson river. Unprecedented numbers of intersex fish were observed and reproduction success was impacted.
Further study suggested the rise of intersex numbers was due to antidepressants and hormones in the river water, from human waste.
That was nearly 50 years ago now. I'm sure the changes have not slowed down.
Also note humans are descended from fish, and the fish world is entirely full of species that are hermaphrodite. Some change sex daily, for no very good reason that we know.
See, https://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives
my favorite fish story is the Australian barramundi - they become sexually mature as males at about three to four years old. Males turn into females from about five or six years of age onwards, but require saltwater for this sex change. Barramundi in freshwater remain male all their lives, and so freshwater barramundi are entirely artificial, created by man.
TL, DR: sex is not and never has been binary
The Tiresias fish. (Oedipus Wrecks)
There's no evidence this is changing the sex distribution in the human population... or that it's the function in the pig population, either, since the vast majority of those are being artificially inseminated for specific traits.
"In addition to the law of large numbers and population meaning there are just plain MORE such folk, USDA data from farms is showing an increase in all-female and sterile litters in pigs. The pig endocrine system is close to ours, and they eat a lot of human scrap. The endocrine disruptor chemicals that are in our food (e.g. Teflon, preservatives) may also be disrupting our endocrines to the extent that the intersex percentage is rising from its historical level. "
+1 to this.
In the 1980s I was reading studies on fish in the Hudson river. Unprecedented numbers of intersex fish were observed and reproduction success was impacted.
Further study suggested the rise of intersex numbers was due to antidepressants and hormones in the river water, from human waste.
That was nearly 50 years ago now. I'm sure the changes have not slowed down.
Also note humans are descended from fish, and the fish world is entirely full of species that are hermaphrodite. Some change sex daily, for no very good reason that we know.
See, https://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives
in particular see
https://humoncomics.com/reef-fish
my favorite fish story is the Australian barramundi - they become sexually mature as males at about three to four years old. Males turn into females from about five or six years of age onwards, but require saltwater for this sex change. Barramundi in freshwater remain male all their lives, and so freshwater barramundi are entirely artificial, created by man.
Another good fish story: Colorado biologists have created Trojan brook trout. These are male trout that have only YY chromosomes.
Their descendants will all be male. Eventually the population of brook trout will dwindle to a few lonely incels, and the native trout populations will recover.
See, https://www.biographic.com/the-tale-of-the-trojan-trout/
TL, DR: sex is not and never has been binary
Awesome!
THIS. Big Food is running an uncontrolled experiment on the American people, flooding us with estrogen-analog fats, thickeners and emulsifiers. When people say they feel like the sex other than their biological one, they are probably expressing the feelings associated with greater levels of these estrogen-like chemicals.
Does any of this fucking matter, Kevin? The people who don’t believe in gender or sex including anything but males and females are in power and will do whatever they want to do with regards to gender/sex definitions and with everything else for at least the next 4 years. Nobody who believes any different will hold any levers of power in the US to make anybody else do anything. So let it the fuck go until 2028, please?
Four years is not a long time. Also, it's only two years until the next mid-terms, when one hopes Congress will be controlled by Democrats. Further, this issue is largely dealt with at the state level so federal politics are not that important.
It's a long time when it involves your ability to get a passport, school, or work.
You kind of answer your first question when you point out that sex is a binary if you ignore the exceptions. But that is a way of saying it isn't quite a binary. Of course most people fall easily within one of two categories. Your claim that the exceptions are genetic also seems to oversimplify things since some cases are considered to be hormonal, and some seem to have no known cause. You can make it more genetic if you define the two sexes in terms of genetics. That has the advantage of making women who cannot produce eggs and men who cannot produce sperm fit the categories. But it also makes the people who do not have the common genetics starker exceptions.
But it is the case of most of these almost dichotomies that most people fit in the two main categories. That is most people are cis gendered straight males or cis gendered straight females. And the question is just about how do deal with the exceptions. And the answer is generally to respect the exceptions because it has nothing to do with you unless you fall under one of the exceptions.
But your last paragraph is off as well. Pretty much the entire argument that the right uses against transgenderism turns on the fact the sex is a binary (and of course is backed by a biblical sense that God crated Adam and Eve and that means everybody fits one of two categories, because God doesn't make mistakes, if one ignores the mistakes). If one accepts the complexity of even sex in humanity then the general right wing arguments concerning gender fall apart completely.
How does transgenderism implicate sex? We have been assured that sex and gender are completely different things. Even if you conceptualize transgenderism as transexualism -- a person of one sex who wants to live as if they were the other sex -- there is no incompatibility with sex being a binary.
That's not how 'binary' is defined, dear.
Also, intersex and transgender people do exist.
Well, now you made me go to my favorite bible commentary. The Bible does not support the idea that there are two sexes. In fact, an ancient teaching (going back at least to the 5th century) is that Adam was a hermaphrodite.
This teaching helps resolve the two stories of the creation of Eve - one that she and Adam were created together and the other that she was created from Adam’s rib.
Read all about it here: https://forward.com/community/356899/was-adam-a-hermaphrodite/
"biblical sense that God crated Adam and Eve"
So they came from Amazon?
Kevin, you are correct. "Sex" means "potential role in sexual reproduction," and there are only two of them. Some people have large gametes and the potential for gestation, and some people have small gametes and the potential for insemination. You need one person with eggs and a uterus and one person with sperm in order to reproduce. That's what "sex" means. ("Asexual reproduction" requires only one organism, hence, those organisms don't have a sex.)
Intersex conditions are a red herring. First of all, and this cannot be emphasized enough: Any combination of gametes / chromosomes / gonads / genitals where all four do not align with one of the two sexes is *vanishingly* small. That's why sex is meaningful. Second: Even if a person has a disorder of sex development thanks to, say, an extra X chromosome or whatnot, that person is still either male or female. Klinefelter syndrome (XXY) affects males. Turner syndrome (X) affects females. People with these conditions do not constitute a third sex or a segment of a spectrum. There is no third gamete or third gonad; only the two.
And *of course* sex is real and important. Apart from anything else, it's how babies are made, and it can't be ignored. There are other implications too (like male people winning women's track meets, or male people insisting lesbians should sleep with them, etc.), but the reproductive aspect alone means that sex can't be wished away.
Thank you.
Bigot tanks bigot.
If you had a good argument, you wouldn't need to call names.
Uh huh. Well, she's had plenty of good arguments; you just mischaracterize or refuse to address them. What's left but mocking you?
What's that, you say? That you -- and only you -- get to decide whether an argument is good or not? Yeah, that's what I thought you said.
+10
Bigot knows bigot.
Thank you.
Uhh, no.
At no point do humans interact with others by first shaking gametes. Sure, it's real and important for reproduction, but gender is separate.
Calling trans women 'males who want to sleep with lesbians' is a bigoted statement. Lesbians aren't using gametes to reproduce, or to verify who is who. It also ignores that the vast majority of lesbians support trans rights because the same rights that allow trans people to go as they wish also allow lesbians to dress and act in any gendered manner they wish.
I never said the word gender, so not sure how any of this is relevant to my comment.
Weirdly, you not saying gender is irrelevant to the bigoted things you did say. But you ignored the response to an actual quote.
Bigot.
You don't understand Turner syndrome. There is also the mosaic form in which some cells are X and others are either XX or XY. In the last case, the phenotype is usually male, but the spectrum of phenotypes is very broad. I wouldn't expect that to matter to you, however, because all forms generally cause sterility, and so there is no "potential role in reproduction."
45,X/46,XY mosaicism is a condition where some, but not all, cells lack a Y chromosome.
Where does that fit into your schema?
Intersex conditions are "vanishingly rare" and so are a red herring that doesn't need to be considered but transwomen competing in women's sports is such a massive issue that it constitutes roughly 75% of the discourse from anti-trans activists (the remaining 25% being about how men are inherent rapists and worrying about bathrooms).
Real question here. If intersex people make up about 1% of the population (roughly 80 million people) are therefore so rare as to be considered a red herring, then why are transwomen in girls sports (of which there are less than a dozen in the US) such an essential issue that it requires a full media apparatus and movement to combat. It's kind of wild that you can wave off tens of millions as not counting while spending absurd amounts of time worrying about 10 kids somewhere. Truly wild.
MMMM????
Was thinking of "I need a tat" or "I don't need a tat".
OK, the comments have covered one of the cases (where biological sex can involve gene expressions, mutations, and other changes: after all, unless you believe in God creating directly, sex differences evolved as an advantageous genetic mutation, they are not intrinsic to life forms).
But there's more than one:
"But it is: Women have the capacity to produce eggs and men to produce sperm. At a biological level, that's pretty much all there is to it despite the existence of a few very rare chromosomal disorders."
OK, fine. You can define men and women this way and be done with it. You are not the legal system.
Suppose laws define men and women in this way you propose:
1. Young boys do not produce sperm. What sex are they? If a young boy ages but does not yet produce sperm, is he not legally a man?
2. Women do not "produce" eggs (they start with what they have), they ovulate, so your initial definition is biologically flawed. But let's ignore that: maybe you meant "produce" as in ovulation. OK. Is a woman who is not ovulating a woman (on birth control preventing ovulation, for example)? If a woman has her ovaries removed surgically, is she no longer a woman? If a woman is sterile, is she not legally a woman?
3. Some men are sterile (produce no sperm); men may have their testicles removed or otherwise undergo medical treatment such that they do not produce sperm. Do such men not qualify as men?
And what sex are all these people instead?
The law and biological sex definition matter: as we've seen, Republicans are passing laws right now restricting people's rights or expanding them based upon the sex they were assigned at birth. There are laws but also a ton of other things (scholarships, for example) that use sex as a differentiating factor. Without a clear and specific definition of what constitutes "male" or "female," the law cannot adjudicate. "Assigned at birth" is especially suspect: by whom, using what criteria? "I saw a pee pee" is not really a good legal standard. What if your birth records get destroyed in a fire? Could someone challenge your right to compete in women's sports by claiming you were assigned male at birth and get you disqualified because you can't substantiate that you weren't (regardless of your biological equipment now)?
Either your sex is determined by your body parts, which CAN CHANGE OVER YOUR LIFE, or it's determined at a specific point in your life and never changes regardless of what body parts you end up with, or it's defined (as you're trying to do, Kevin) by factors to do with reproduction which are themselves less stable than we think. And the results matter legally.
Or its determined by inspection, and in the vanishingly infrequent instances in which that fails, through medical tests. Some incredibly rare (e.g., 1 in 100,000) disorders, such as complete androgen insensitivity syndrome, can be handled however one sees fit, but these cases prove the rule.
You have no right to check the panties of any woman..
"Right" is a slippery term in this context. Doctors routinely examine their patients' genitals, especially their newborn patients, and determine their sexes from that examination. Do they have a "right" to do that, or would you prefer to characterize it as a "licence". I frequently see my wife's genitals, sometimes from very close range. Again, this may be described as a right she's given me, or a licence she's given me, or as a privilege she's give me; the semantics is unimportant.
As a general rule, if the question arises, which is not often, I will accept a person's word that they have inspected their own genitals and they know which sex they are. Every woman has the right to check her own panties.
Long paragraph to fail to disagree with me.
If you replace "capacity" in Kevin's statement with "potential," that takes care of the questions you raised. Perhaps the capacity is not currently there; but the potential is there, or has been there, or will be there.
Someone who has no functioning testes or ovaries - so every prepubescent and menopausal person - has no fucking 'potential' to to produce either.
This is disgusting.
I said "*has been* there or *will be* there." That covers the situations you mention.
You conveniently move the goal posts...
But no, it doesn't. In your world sterile or PCOS women aren:t human.
You're kinda gross.
"Potential" is not biological reality. "Potential" is a perceived patterning - perceived by the bias of the viewer - imposed over biological reality and then pretended, by the viewer, to be part of biological reality. "It looks like N to me, therefore it must be N" is an entirely subjective argument.
How does one determine if the "potential is there, or has been there, or will be there"? Inspecting genitals and determining if they are in working order might be feasible in some animals. But you've moved to a handwave-y "I'll know it when I see it" nonsense.
Over a thousand years ago, the Rabbis of the Talmud grappled with these issues, and came up with four or five different sexes. They were patriarchal and hardly "woke," but they recognized realities.
(sigh) When words are used in a scientific context, they have a particular and generally specific meaning based on characteristics that can be observed.
When words are used in a legal context, their meaning can be defined and redefined by statute.
When words are used by careless lay persons on the street, definitional mutations occur all the time, as well as sloppy usage through carelessness and ignorance.
Mr Drum was, I presume, asking about the scientific definition. You want a different legal definition? Fine. You can lobby for it. And on the street, you can say anything you want.
You carelessly exclude existing trans and intersex persons from your definitions.
No, I just didn't mention them at all. Why not? Because there's a fair amount of scientific discussion of them. Legally, apparently not so much, and inconsistent.
But what some folks here are yelling about is the socio-political aspects. Basically, the street. Where there are no rules, and everybody has their own opinions. Not to mention constantly hurling epithets like "bigot."
+1
Yes, you were careless.
We exist even if that ruins your 'words means things in legal...' you can't just write laws which fail to consider all the existing people who will encounter them.
Kevin, you're asking a question that brings out all sorts of atavistic responses in people, eh? You're a brave man.
There are people who believe that sex and gender are one: that the way we treat people in society should be and MUST BE determined by their sex. Period. These people are almost (but not) always the same people who believe that female and male gender roles are strictly different, and that we must preserve those differences. Back into the kitchen wit' yez! [yes, I said "almost but not" -- there are also TERFs.] There's no arguing with those people, except to convince others that those people are bigots and a threat to all people's freedoms.
So now, we come to males who wish to live in society as women, females who wish to live in society as men. What does that mean? Y'know, I'm no longer in the gene pool, so it's all a matter of politeness and societal norms to me. So I'll write down mine:
I let older people (men or women), disabled people, and pregnant people, go before me thru doors, into and out of buses, take my seat in buses/trains, etc. I don't get up when women enter or leave a room, nor do any of a number of things that, in an earlier time, were part of the rules of politeness. I treat women pretty much as I treat men. If a male wants to be treated as a woman, why should I complain? It isn't any skin off my nose. Have at it!
If I -were- in the gene pool, things would be different. Would I want to dance socially with a transwoman? Most emphatically no. Am I gonna get bent outta shape b/c some other men do want to dance with transwomen? Why would I care? Also, I would want to know whether the woman I was pursuing was a male, and I think I'd find out long before I swapped-spit with them, b/c .... y'know, I'm not going to be doing that after I roofie their drink. I'm enough of a red-blooded small-town Texas boy that I can recognize what all this paranoia is among men, about transwomen, and since I knew a (now former) friend who said what I describe above (except for the roofie -- he did it the old-fashioned way with strong drink, what a gentleman!) happened to him (haha, don't you love that way of describing it?), and got to hear his reaction, I can believe that these transphobes mean what they say.
I haven't written about transwomen and transmen competing in sports, b/c it's not my pitch. I think it's perfectly reasonable to leave it to the associations that regulate those sports.
These are complicated issues, and I'm not going to make any apologies for my position. As you can see, I'm not exactly completely "enlightened" when it comes to trans issues. But I'm a far cry from where these bigots are, believing a priori that male and man are synonymous, (here comes the one the all care about, let's be real) female and woman are synonymous.
Cisgender people are also infertile. Does that affect their dancing desirability?
I don't know why you're pretending that the reason I don't wish to dance with trans women is because they're infertile. I would have hoped that it was clear that that wasn't. it. Social dancing for me has always been related to courtship, and I don't have to justify my preferences to you or anybody else, about my preferences in courtship. That is to say, my preference in courtship has always been *female* women.
In just the same way that I respect the right of trans folks to choose the gender they present to society, I also have the right to have a preference in partners for courtship and more generally for social connections. These are very personal, and frankly, they're none of your business or anybody else's.
The reason I raised those issues, is to point out that that's where such preferences should stop. Once we're out into the regular world where people interact as citizens and neighbors, we have no business treating trans folks differently than we treat cis folks. And also, of course, I raise those issues to point out that one can be completely accepting of trans folks in that regular world, while drawing a line in one's personal life.
I mean, you wouldn't expect me to date a fundamentalist Christian, would you? I mean c'mon ......
I don't know why you're a bigot, but there you are.
You're the one who wrote,
Gee. I wonder why I came to the thought that what you wrote was the truth.
Perhaps you think that social dancing has nothing to do worth preliminaries to intimate relations. I guess perhaps on that view it is bigotry to not wish to dance with a trans woman.
Sure,I guess you can think that.
So you admit you're a bigot.
Got it.
You do not get to check any woman's genitals for their desirability before you dance with her.
Kevin usually documents sources in his posts, but no source on the "pushback" he is claiming exists here.
Still intersex is a thing and there are real people out there who physically do not fit into the sex binary. It is part of why the individual getting to choose where they want to try to fit into society and society giving them space to do so is so important.
Why is Kevin pretending he doesn’t know how to research???
Maybe the reason there has been considerable pushback on the notion of binary sex is …science?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-redefined-the-idea-of-2-sexes-is-overly-simplistic1/
+1
Seems to me just another of Kevin's posts complaining about progressives when it comes to social issues, while of course trumpeting his sanity and moderation. He starts by saying there's an obvious distinction between sex (or what some call biological sex) and gender, although it's actually a distinction that seems to have arisen quite within gender studies. And then he has to ask why the left can't get that.
But it's conservatives who deny the distinction. If they admitted there's anything other than sexual reproduction and thus freer to question or assert identifying with social stereotypes, sexual desire, etc., then those things might not be so easy to paint as abhorrent, and abhorrence inflicted on kids by schools. Sorry, Kevin, it's not the left that's loaded the dice and broken with a broader consensus. It's wingnuts.
People, when arguing about 'Sex' are not arguing about 'Reproduction'.
Kevin's point is all about reproduction, which no one is arguing about. A person may have eggs and a womb and another sperm. One may fertilize the other, and barring some difficulty the first may give birth.
No one is arguing about this when they assert that "Not everyone is one of those two". And the proportions of who is or isn't are irrelevant to the fact some are not.
Alas, actual gender critical people do make those arguments.
What about people who don't have eggs and don't produce sperm? Given the proposed definition, wouldn't they be a third sex?
General point: we group a lot of biological characteristics together, and how we should categorize people when they don't all occur together is a social decision. Consider someone with XY chromosomes but complete androgen insensitivity. Are they male or female? See for example Anne Fausto-Sterling's description of Maria Patino's treatment by the IOC (in Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, updated edition, chapter 1). She had no ovaries and XY chromosomes, so in 1988 she was categorized by the IOC as male. But she appeared female, had always been considered female, and had a typically female physiology. She was allowed to compete as female in the 1992 Olympics.
Also, Fausto-Sterling (and others) distinguishes sex (the purely biological), gender (the purely social), and gender/sex (affected by both). Lots of characteristics we might think of as purely biological are affected by culture (for example, testosterone levels), and recognizing that they're not based solely on biological sex is important.
Isn't it enough that those who wish to mandate that sex is a binary question are doing so for despicable reasons?
Saying "what's the big deal" is carrying water for them, and you should fucking stop.
I find that the general tone of the comments says more about us than about the issue that is being discussed.
Knowing that (a) there are species out there that can spontaneously change gender and (b) others use parthenogenesis to procreate, and (c) that in the future, humanity will eventually figure out the function of every gene and combination...
What is the importance of a binary sex ID system -- is it solely (or primarily) for the purpose of parity in competitive sports?
This discourse is really something to behold.
Just because humans have two legs doesn't mean a person with one leg isn't a human. More to the point, just because some person has one leg doesn't mean it's false to say that humans have two legs.
Just because stubble exists doesn't mean there's no difference between having a beard and being clean-shaven.
Words still mean things. It's truly bizarre that anyone wants to claim otherwise.
Weirdly words still mean something.
But you're the one defining people by genitals they may or may not have.
Sigh. This will all be moot, sooner or later. If anyone hasn't already read Chip Delaney's Triton (An ambiguous Heterotopia), I suggest you do so immediately. For those who have, read it again anyway. A classic dissection of sex, gender, and desire. Plus, the man can write.
Sex covers a range of features: gonads, associated reproductive structures, secondary sex characters, sex-specific hormone levels, differential sexual development of the brain. Brain sexual development covers brain structures, sexual response to stimulus, sexual expression and behavior.
These features are commonly set together in individuals, but each has a large range and they are set by different developmental processes. The most binary part of this (and the easiest to observe) are external gonads and secondary sex characteristics, and they are clearly male/female in only 98% - 99% of individuals. Add in the other aspects of biological sex, and the number of people who check all the boxes male or female goes down.
Kevin seems to think that the visible parts: external gonads and secondary sex characters in adults are binary (98% is roughly equal to 100%) and the only aspects of biological sex.
Male and female are the two human archetypes, this is true, but it is mainly a matter of culture and bureaucratic convenience that people insist everyone check one of two boxes.
Well, the chromosomes that make up sex are binary, but they don't combine in an exclusively binary way. Since the genetics that determine sex have quite a few health implications, we can't just pretend it's not real. But it's also not binary.
I find the conflation of chromosomal sex and gender to be quite annoying, no matter who is doing it. I wish we'd just treat chromosomal sex like we treat blood type. It is something you can test for and is immutable in humans, and while it's not binary, there are a finite number of options. Gender and gender expression are very different from that. It's really not hard to record sex and gender separately. And it's not hard to have multiple options available on the dropdown menu.
The bigger problem is that most of those who insist on only two sexes conflate sex with gender. To them, insisting on only two sexes means there can only be two genders.
I'll leave the question of how many sexes there are to biologists, but the issues relating to gender are plainly of great societal importance.
One obvious point is that development of our genitalia in utero occurs long before our primary brain development. It is perfectly possible for sex-related hormone levels to fluctuate over that time.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17875490/
People who argue about it are people seeking to control the narrative about sex/gender, to set the definitions, from which they can then weaponize against trans people and anyone not fitting that "norm." This even get used as a club against otherwise normal women and the choices they make.
That's all, it's weaponizing.
Well said!
The answer, in part, is in the question. Kevin dismisses some of the known deviations from the strict view of binary sex but arguing they rarely occur, but rarely is still not never.
There are also definitional issues. Are we looking at Gametes? Chromosomes? Existing or absence of sex organs? Nature has, in all of those definitions, shown variances. If we know in other species they are not always so binary, why do we insist that humans need to be binary and can’t even consider it may be more complicated than just 2?
There is even evidence that a social species with nonxreproductive members is an evolutionary advantage. Queer couples who raise foundling eggs. Worker ants and bees that dance and collect and strive with the group. A group with a wider breadth of experience will perform better over time even in our capitalist systems!
So yeah, that would mean trans people might not be errors, but part of what made our species so adaptable.