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

@SwampWitchHerbalist

Notice the word defect doesnt even show up once in that long quotation you just pasted....

And no they dont only effect males or females.. some result in people on one end of the spectrum or the other, other conditions do not.

@a7

@pthenq1

Yup, it was an injustice, and expressing that in ways that doesnt kill large numbers of people are great... doesnt excuse the way most people responded however during a pandemic. I said it at the time as well. A hell of a lot of people died because people decided to ignore the life and safety of others in how they expressed their right to protest that injustice. There were better ways to do it.

@Science

@a7

Not everyone, just the actual morons that are talking like third graders.. Thankfully you and others with that level of maturity are a small dying minority.

@Agni @yarra @georgia

@meowski

None of what you just said is actually true in terms of biology and really never has been.. thats just you trying to fit an already well established concept into your preconception of what it should be..

What you are talking about is one of many sex characteristics, their genes. But they are not (by professional biologists) considered the defacto determinant of sex. In fact genetic expression is generally favored over the genes themselves when it comes to sexing organisms due to the contradictions that arise by looking solely at ones genes.

@StarAStar @icedquinn

@georgia

No your confusing the act of sex, with the sex of the organism engaging in it.. The act of sex does not define the sex of the organism engaged in it.. your trying to warp the actual science behind how animals are sexed with your own biases, and it doesnt match the reality.

Infertile women, for example are still women, they can not produce children, have no gametes to speak of, but are women because, quite simply, sex is not determines strictly by your gametes but by a whole list of features. Those features are not an "all or nothing" deal and thus sex, while generally favoring one end of the spectrum or the other, is still quite clearly on a spectrum.

@Agni @yarra @a7

@meowski

> 2% is a very high estimate and probably wrong. estimates are as low as .01% or less

No its not an estimate that is likely to be wrong or right, its a matter of definition that can give a pretty large variation on the number.

the 2% figure uses the broadest possible definition of intersex. If that is the definition being used its a perfectly reasonable figure and likely not overestimated at all. The thing is the definition may be too broad to be useful for some contexts, so not that its wrong, just that it doesnt apply to certain conversations. A more narrow definition of intersex can lead to much smaller numbers.

This is in fact a common problem when we talk about labeling things that exist on a spectrum... if we consider the 98% center part of the male-female spectrum as intersex and male and female (non-intersex) being the 1% extremes on either end you are going to get a very different figure than if you divide up that spectrum a very different way.

Its for this reason it isnt even useful to talk about who is or is not intersex, its a spectrum, there is no hard cut off point.

> birth defects are a spectrum. sex is not a spectrum. the way sexual reproduction works is there are 2 gametes, one from male and female.

No thats not at all correct or in line with the science. While sexual reproduction is one aspect of sex, and is one of the many factors that go into to determining how scientists identify and classify sexes, it is actually a much smaller part than you seem to realize.

for example by your definition any animals that happens to be infertile would not have a sex of male or female since they nether produce gametes nor reproduce, this would be wholly false of course and infertility doesnt negate your sex.

Likewise we have all sorts of situations where the animals themselves are sexed on the male-female spectrum yet do not require the opposite sex to procreate at all.

Literally nothing about this statement is true other than a grossly oversimplified grade-school explanation of sex, which is fine for little kids, but we are adults, and you should know better, it certainly doesnt match up with how scientists have always handled sex.

@StarAStar @icedquinn

@thestrongest

How does that expose a paradox... people disagreeing on which of two statements is fact, even within the same community, doesnt imply a paradox. It just means there are unanswered questions that are still open for debate.

I think its fairly obvious men and womens brains on average are different. The issue only arrises when one assumes a woman must have a brain identical to the "average" womans brain, or a man must as an individual have a brain identical to the average male brain.

@icedquinn @meowski @StarAStar

@meowski

The estimated number is usually a bit closer to 2%, but depends on what your defining as the criteria, so the percentage is hard to pin down.

With that said 1% is a huge number of people, we are still talking many many millions.

One can of course argue that intersex is a minority of the population and you wouldnt be wrong to do so.. Doesnt change the fact that sex is a spectrum and that these people exist on the spectrum at a point other than its extremes.

Its also important to note that while sex is a spectrum and being truely in the middle is the minority it doesnt make the importance of sex as a spectrum any less. There are males who will be close enough to the male end of the spectrum not be labeled as intersexed but still have some variation and female like qualities in low proportions (for example a lower than normal testosterone level or higher than normal estrogen levels).. We might call them men but recognizing the existance of the spectrum is as important for them as those in the middle.

@StarAStar @icedquinn

@georgia

Who said anything about a third sex? I have pointed out several times its not about there being a third sex, its about there not being 2 discrete sexes but rather a continuous spectrum of sexes between 2 extremes.

Likewise the existance of ovotestis **is** a spectrum, and I linked a scientific paper that even goes into the expectrum of the ovotestis and one way on measure wear on the spectrum a particular person's ovotestis happen to be.

This should be obvious as it has tissue with properties of each end of the spectrum and can develop closer to one end or the other to any degree at all on that spectrum.

@Agni @yarra @a7

@georgia

Thats actually not that far off from the science... though usually more like testical, ovotestis, ovaries. It is the gonads that exist on a spectrum more so than the gametes, though there are also abnormalities in gametes.

@Agni @yarra @a7

@icedquinn Well no one is under much obligation to teach anyone else. That is unfortunate of course, but you have to keep in mind scientists like myself usually have a lot of time demanded of us by conspiracy theorists like flat earthers, or the earth is only 4,000 years old or whatever, for the most part climate change deniers often (though not always) arent much different. It would be trivial to step someone through step by step how we can be certain of climate change (as I said the evidence and conclusion is relatively trivial).. The problem is most of the time these people arent there to learn why climate change is true, they are there to argue their side ad infinitum and just waste everyones time, and eventually after however long the debate evolves into "well how can I trust scientists they are paid mooonnniiieeessss".

If you or anyone has a sincere desire to understand why human caused climate change is real, and dont understand how the dots are connected I will always be happy to walk you through it, but if you already come in with your mind made up and without the expertise to validate that, then its likely going to be a waste of my time to try.

@icedquinn

Yes but its a big leap to go from "some scientists are working on bad theories" ... to "the overwhelming consensus, along with extremely easy to understand proof is just the result of everyone being wrong at the same time".

The fact is things like the earth being flat or global warming being human caused are very trivial things to confirm, there is a lot of science beyond that that is quite difficult, but just proving those two points is so trivial that you just arent going to get much disagreement.

@doktorzhivago@liberdon.com yea when the appstore alternatives first came out as a check on tyranny it sounded absurd... but now im glad they exist.

Odd to call them "progressive" though, I assume you dont mean in the political sense?

@a7

Whatever delusion you want to tell yourself buddy.

@Agni @yarra

@Agni

Yes all biological life exists on a spectrum, that is true, and hardly nonsense, its the scientific norm.

No it doesnt defy categorization, because scientists are smart people and are more than capable of categorizing things even when they exist on a spectrum.. in fact its not even tricky, when something is mostly on one side of the spectrum that is the label we use, whent hey are we call them intersexed.. boom, categorized, no problems at all... No different than we do with humans if your arent so ignorant to cause issue over it.

@yarra @a7

@a7

Except for the fact that that tomato happens to be hundreds of thousands of human beings who are constantly told their scientifically confirmed sexual state is nonsense.. so yea, not exactly the same.

@Agni @yarra

@StarAStar

I wasnt aware I insulted you (though I did insult several people in this conversation)... As far as I'm concerned I have had no reason to insult you and didnt intend to do so at any point, so sorry if it came across that way..

Do what you must though.

@icedquinn

@yarra

So the first thing to understand is that the intersex spectrum falls on a pretty wide set of variations and can manifest in different ways.

One simple manifestation is that a person can appear male or female yet internally have the other sex's physical components. For example a man can have ovarian tissue where his testicles would be (and they would feel and look like testicles) and a woman can have testicales where her ovaries should be. In fact its even more complex than that, a person can have what medical profesionalls call "ovotesties" which is tissue that is somewhere between the two and serves the function of each.

Here is a paper that talks about how specific hormones determine the development of the gonad tissue ont hat spectrum and how it can be measured as a non-invasive way to help measure ones natural place on the spectrum.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0303720703003277

@Agni @a7