What is it with conservatives and this "there are only two sexes" nonsense... Are they trying to convince us they arent any smarter than a grade schooler or something. Anyone who has had more than an elementary school education knows full well its not that simple...
@freemo biologically there are only 2 sexes, male and female. If people feel like they identify with certain traits not normally associated with their biological gender, they should be free to.
But it is absurd on its face to attempt to redefine what gender is biologically. Conservatives are pushing back against the attempt to redefine natural law.
@StarAStar No you are confusing Gender and sex.. biologically sex is not as simple as male and female and there are a huge range of bio9logical physical variations (XX, XY, XXY, XYY, XXX, etc etc).. what you describe when it comes to how people identify, thats called gender and is a different topic than what we are discussing, which is sex.
@freemo look. You can get fancy with the chromosomes, lol. But at the end of the day, either you have the ability to father a child, or you have the ability to mother a child. You either run on testosterone or you run on estrogen. No amount of makeup or surgery is going to change your ability.
Its not a rights issue at all to me. It is a logic and truth issue.
I don’t give a crap what people do to themselves. But don’t push your agenda on me trying to change the truth
@StarAStar No matter how much you might want biology to be as simple as a 3rd grade biology lesson it wont be.. There are plenty of men or women, even ones with perfectly common sex expression, who cant give birth to a child.. are you going to seriously tell me a woman who is infertile is suddenly not a woman... Sorry but its not that simple.
these are just people who cant understand anything more complicated than elementary school, so they insist everything must fit their grade school lessons... its just confirmation bias in its most extreme form.
I agree entierly, but one thing I like to emphasize which you didnt touch on (though your points very important all the same) is this isnt even a transissue alone.. There are a **lot** of intersexed people, born somewhere in the middle on the spectrum who have no desire for surgery or therapy, they just want to live the way they were born, which happens to be intersexed... These people arent trans but they are intersexed.
The spotlight always seems to be on the trans part of it, and thats a big issue so I think its great people bring up that part. But I think the non-trans intersexed community typically gets ignorred and people forget they are a big part of it too. Even the people doing the hating seem to only think about the trans people and forget that its not just about trans.
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.
> 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.
And that is incorrect.. the genes are of course one aspect that determines sex, it is NOT the only one. The expression (what you physically develop) and your function (how you behave and what you can do) are all aspects of what determines sex, and in fact the more common definition you will find.
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.
According to biologists sex characteristics are how sex is determined yes.. saying it isnt so doesnt make it so.
Sure thing I can post a source. In fact I already did earlier in the conversation, it has almost the exact wording I use (reporductive organs, function):
"Either of the two divisions, designated female and male, by which most organisms are classified on the basis of their reproductive organs and functions"
-- The American Heritage Medical Dictionary
Notice the definition says nothing about genetics.
Your link literally disagrees with you and says pretty much exactly what I already said, that sex is determined by your reproductive organs (gonads) and your function.. The image you just posted says exactly that, it is determined byt he gonads.
As we determined earlier the genes is certainly something that determines that, and often goes hand in hand, but it is not the defining quality (as your own image you just pasted states).
Here is a more nuanced paper that disagrees with what your saying and goes into details about how sex detmination is **not** strictly chromosomal but depends on the **expression** of those genes and thus must consider the entire pathway (literally what I said earlier):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4880855/
It goes into some detail as to how various sexes can and do arise contrary to their genes.
No gonads (sex organs) are primary sex characteristic, your own image says it int he first line.
No the number is 2% if we use the broadest definition of intersex, small when other definitions are used.
Thre is no specific % however that is "right" since sex is a spectrum, so the percentage is defined wholly by where you place the cutoff. So its a self referential measure that really doesnt help much.
Funny, was thinking the same thing about you.. you literally pulled percentages out of your ass twice (mine came from actual numbers published by doctors)... go figure.
2% is a very high estimate and probably wrong. estimates are as low as .01% or less
>Doesnt change the fact that sex is a spectrum
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.
2 sets of chromosomes combine, one from the mother and one from the father. under normal circumstances, you have inherited one of each.
anything else is a birth defect.
end of story. it's evolved to be binary.