🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@wiggles

As we already covered, an infertile individual still has a sex, so the argument that some of these people may be infertile is not a valid one.

Moreover having any of the genitalia on this chart does not guarantee you are infertile, though it is more likely to coincide with ambiguous genitalia... so its really not a very good argument on either front.

If your going to say its "unhealthy" in what sense, I think you can say its not "normal" but thats already covered by the fact that its less common to be intersex and close to the middle of the spectrum than it is to be towards the extreme ends of the spectrum.. so not being common (aka not normal) isnt saying anything useful either.

I think there comes a point where you have to admit to yourself your tryign desperately to fit the reality to your world view rather than the other way around.

@realcaseyrollins

@mittimithai

thats the chromosomes, we are talking intersexed, that includes ambiguous genitalia (regardless of your XY makeup) as well as hormone sensitivity, and a host of other qualities.

According to peer reviewed papers (I'll be happy to link one) depending on which of several scientificially accurate definitions of intersex you use your looking at anywhere from 1 in 50 people being intersexed to about 1 in 1000... even at 1 in 1000 your probably encountering them more than often enough to be significant.

@realcaseyrollins @wiggles

@wiggles

they refers to male-female.. Literally doctors grade male-female on a spectrum.. im not making this shit up, its literally a continuous scale for each sexual characteristics (which together form the overall sex).

Take the attached image as an example, it is a continuous transition from one to the other, the fact that 1 and 7 are the most common and 2 - 6 are less common doesnt make it any less of a continuous spectrum, there is no abrupt difference between one or the other, nor any one point you can say "this is when you stop being male".. This particular image is only about the genitalia, but if you consider every sexual characteristic whether its hormones, hair, figure, breasts, or reproduction, each and every one exists on a similar scale, a spectrum and none of them are discrete.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

They do change smoothly, the percentages you indicate show a particularly small variance value, but that doesnt make the transition non-continuous (not smooth)... your trying desperately to redefine words to fit the language and view you really want to have. The slope is steep when variation is low, but it is still continuous and not disjoint, so your assertion doesnt apply here, if it were non-continuous you'd be correct.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

Also while it isnt common it isnt so extremely uncommon either... You probably pass at least one significantly intersexed person every day, and have worked with them and had them as friends and never even knew it.. They are more than common enough to be part of everyday life.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

I do? where did I imply it was common?

As we covered early on the spectrum is non-uniform.. non uniform spectrums are still spectrums.

Individuals cluster closely to being strongly on one end of the spectrum of the other.. it is a bimodal distribution with low variance, thats all.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

> I agree, but they are everything when it comes to taxonomic goals when describing our species at a biological level.

Except that simply isnt true. Even a scientist will recognize an infertile female as being a female.. because even if we are taxonomically classifying the sex of an individual their ability to reproduce is not the only determining factor, if it was a scientist taxonomically identifiying an individual of a population would not be able to sex infertile members

The fact is, reproduction is only a part of how we define sex, it is not the whole of it.

> An individual may exhibit sex traits along a spectrum of expression of those traits, however there are only two categories from which each trait is drawn.

Yes thats just a fancy way of saying "every spectrum has two ends".. no one is "drawing" from a category there is no category.. there is a spectrum, and the category is drawn from the spectrum (you are referred to by the end of the spectrum you are closest to, nothing more).

Again most of what you are saying isnt wrong, its that you keep trying to force a continuous spectrum into discrete categories, which simply isnt how it works

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

> the fact that sometimes an intersex person has enough sex traits from one of the two categories to successfully reproduce doesn’t imply that there are other sexes along some spectrum.

Why do you keep saying this when several times now I told you and reiterated over and over again that neither I nor anyone who discusses the topic for the most part, are claiming there are other sexes.. yet you keep saying it like your arguing against that point which was never made.

There is a spectrum, a spectrum that has two ends, male on one, female on the other, period. There is not more than 2 sexes, sex is a spectrum consisting of those 2, and only those 2 ends on either side of the spectrum

> What spectrum? A man who produces slightly less testosterone than another is not, in fact, more of a woman, unless he also has a uterus and bleeds monthly

he is though, but only slightly, hormones as I said is such a small part.. however if is a man and has a uterus even if he doesnt bleed, then even more so, if he bleeds too, even more so than that, if he fertile, again more so... every male or female characteristic adds to where you are on the spectrum. No one thing makes you a woman but it will push you to one end of the spectrum or another.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

> no, this isn’t true, sex isn’t just hormones

I never said it was just hormones, in fact I listed a whole bunch of characteristics that define sex, hormone was just one of them.

> You pump a guy full of estrogen and he will never menstruate and he will never be able to bear a child.

No but he will grow breasts and even be capable of lactating and breastfeeding. Guess what, thats a female trait and yes, it would make him closer ont he spectrum to a female than someone who didnt have large breasts and didnt lactate.

The fact that he cant bear a child just means that hormones arent the **whole** picture, yes it makes you **closer** to one end of the spectrum or the other but hormones alone will not be enough to change your sex, because sex is a list of qualities and hormones is just one aspect of that.

> sex, unsurprisingly, is about sex! and babies!

No, thats just part of it, not the whole picture. A woman who is born infertile is still considered a woman... why? Because sex and babies are not everything to defining ones sex.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

Well no, your still trying to apply discrete thinking to a spectrum.. you were closer with your lead-in statement about it being a bimodal distribution.. it is still continuous and even in the majority where we like to simplify things and say "male" there is still a spectrum there, we just dont really bother to make the distinction in any useful way.

you will have some males that are more male than others, women who are more women than others. Its rude to point that out in humans, but no less true. A guy with a larger penis, more testosterone, less estrogen, bigger muscles, broader shoulders, more facial hair, he is closer to to the extreme end of male than someone who has much less of those qualities.

Moreover there isnt some point where all of a sudden its intersex, the point on the intersex part of the spectrum as you call it that is closest to the part where you start saying "male" isnt all that different either.

You are discribing a **continuous** spectrum, bimodal as you said, but with relatively low variance, thats all. The fact that you want to categorize things into discrete terms is imaginary, there is no cutoff where if you step a toe over the line and have just a little less testosterone your suddenly intersex or something. its continuous but the distribution is not uniform, thats **all**

@realcaseyrollins

I see good ol' joe is already at it trying to start wars.. Not even 2 months in and he is already bombing Syria... was a nice 4 years there for a minute without too much talk of bombing and wars.. biggest complaint anyone had is Trump engaged in peace talks people disapproved of or some nonsense... and now were back to bombing the world..

As much as I hated Trump it really hasnt taken Joe long to prove he is the worse evil of the two :(

@a7

Thanks, love it.

@wowaname @meowski @ArdanianRight @SwampWitchHerbalist @wishgranter14

@wiggles

Generally that is what we would say.. yet by olympic standards she would be considered intersex, for example, and excluded from participating.

@realcaseyrollins

@pthenq1

What about it? I dont approve of that public gather either, or the inaugration, or many other public gatherings.

The main difference however is by comparison to the Floyd protests they were much smaller and short lived. So while they were still uncalled for, their effects were minimal compared to the death that resulted from the floyd protests.

Because their effects were far more minimal it also means that doing any analysis to actually prove out and quantify the death toll that resulted would be much more difficult (and thus I cant make a similar post showing that, or else I might have).

@Science

@wiggles

your mincing terms.. I think you may misunderstand what continuous means.. an "even distribution" means something entirely different than a "continuous distribution" and I suspect your confusing these two may be where the problem lies.

A spectrum implies a continuous distribution NOT an even (uniform) distribution.

and no they arent one-time aberrations, there are literally 20 million intersexed people on the planet, far from one time aberrations. They arent all that exceptionally rare, just uncommon.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

There is no "between the categories".. the categories dont define which region they exist on the spectrum clearly.. so there is no between.. its like saying "less things are warm than they are hot and cold"... that statement doesnt mean much when hot and cold are not strictly defined regions

@realcaseyrollins

@a7

Says the persons who's first and most common counter point is "your retarded"... lol I love how you make fun of people for the same shit you do and think your clever or something.

@wowaname @meowski @ArdanianRight @SwampWitchHerbalist @wishgranter14

@wiggles

Why do you keep going on about more than two categories, no one said anything about multiple categories... again we are talking about a spectrum, spectrums always have two ends.

@realcaseyrollins

@wiggles

Sort of, the sexes are two ends of a spectrum, most people are closer to one end or the other so we identify them with that end of the spectrum, nothing more.. Usually we define people in simplistic terms more for social reasons than science.. it helps people feel like they fit in if you create discrete groups your either in or not in.. if you tell sally with a beard she has high testosterone and has qualities of a male and a woman sally might not like that very muhc, she much prefers to just say she is a woman, and society usually follows along.

@realcaseyrollins