alt-text for thumbnail: The words: ““biological” sex is the gender binary” on a 2d digital art wooden background next to the non-binary flag
I think this video will be a nice complement:
Chromossomes, genes and hormones have their roles. It’s never simple.AMAB and AFAB are really only what a doctor decided. I was sure Mia Mulder had a video talking about how sex is a social construct based on this fact, but I can’t find it anymore.
more than the content of the video, which i am already pretty much sold on, is a passing line mentioned in the video - “resilience is built on uniqueness”. that’s an idea i’ve never encountered before, would love to hear other people’s opinions on it
it is clear when you look at ecosystems for example, if a single disease can wipe out all adult trees in a forest it kills all new sprouts and it stops being a forest. (Tree sprouts tend to not do well in direct sunlight because they expect the shade of trees above them and all that)
so if you only have one kind of trees you are on a timer
this is the same with how we interact, and why organizing in systems that can coexist with as many other systems as possible is a requirement for survival. This is one of the biggest reasons why I’m an anarchist, because the point of the state is to force everyone to exist within one set of rules and such
I’m queer and basically a gender abolitionist so I am not disagreeing about the social nature of gender, but I think phrases like that are pretty reductive and depending on the context in which you hear it. You can think of just as many supporting examples as contradicting ones. Though, in my opinion we really don’t need to “show” that gender is a social construct, for many reasons, but mostly because so many people don’t care, and they think social constructs are good, actually.
Those who can have babies
Those who cannot
That’s where the difference comes from, biologically
stepping in here to say: you are not making a very good impression in this thread. people are trying in good faith to explain why you are mistaken here—and how even biological sex is better understood as bimodal rather than binary—and you keep going to somewhat eyebrow-raising, contrarian places and not really engaging with their arguments. we are permissive to a degree of ignorance/lack of knowledge/genuine curiosity that might be prickly for some people, but your current conduct in this thread is pushing the line and likely to get you removed from at least this section if you continue.
That’s pretty comical I’m not gonna lie. I will stand by every statement I’ve made, and I’ve made them without insulting or degrading anyone. If that’s enough to remove me, go ahead.
Our rule is to be nice. Being nice is more than just ‘not insulting or degrading anyone’.
You entered the LGBTQ+ community to pick a fight with the very population this community serves over a quite literally pedantic idea - what a specific word means in a specific context. You need to rethink your behavior. I’m going to give you a 7 day ban during which you can rethink how you interact with our instance.
Of note, since I do have an advanced degree in a biological field, I’d like to point out that you are incorrect. In biology there’s are systems of sex determination. As you’ll see in the non-exhaustive but quite extensive Wikipedia article linked, there are many ways in which sex can be classified which were invented by the field of biology. What you won’t find, however, is much of anything talking about babies themselves or who has the capacity to physically give birth. This is not particularly surprising to anyone who has a formal training in biology because mammals are rather odd in the scope of all that is biological. In fact, sex determination in humans does not actually have anything to do with the capability to bear children at all and in the field of biology is typically based on the x-y sex determination system (of note here- related biological fields such as the medical sciences do not typically use this system for determining or classifying sex).
Also of note, because you incorrectly ended up dismissing it as not an issue of pedantry, the words male and female can be used interchangeably with both sex and gender. Humans have this wonderful lexical quirk in that we invented language to serve amorphous ideas, not as a means of science, and because of such words mean different things to different people. We have definitions in order to keep some semblance of shared understanding, but even these vary from dictionary to dictionary and are really just a reflection of how the word is being used by humans at the date of printing. Dismissing any discussion about gender because you wish to focus on sex without acknowledging the fact that this language is intertwined is acting in bad faith, but perhaps more importantly it misses out on the fact that the confusion between sex and gender is a regular human action. Governments assign and record what they call sex, through a process in which chromosomes are not measured but rather genitals are observed (and in some cases, surgically changed). Even within the medical sciences where I am employed, people frequently misspeak and mislabel sex as gender and vice versa. The fact that you dismiss or ignore this is either an indication of your ignorance or an indication of coming in here with a specific goal and purposefully acting in bad faith.
You have such good responses ☺️
That’s a pretty arbitrary and also flimsy categorisation. Watch the video.
It’s not arbitrary at all, it’s just how reproduction works.
I agree gender is a social construct but let’s not dismiss basic science to make us feel better
There are plenty of people who are, in every biological sense, a woman who cannot have a baby.
Its not “basic” science at all, the concept of a strictly defined “biological sex binary” is a fucking nightmare of complexity with edge cases all over the show.
From your post history you seem to at least be an ally if not directly part of the lgbtqia+ community so I am giving you the benefit of the doubt that you simply haven’t thought about this very much, but please take the time to reassess.
That’s true, and I’m not arguing any of the above. I’m pointing out where the concept of biological sex comes from, two sides of the sexual reproductive cycle.
You’re confusing me. You seem to be conceding that its a silly classification that fails to successfully categorize humans into biological sexes. And at the same time, heralding it as the definition of biological sex.
Biology is far more complicated than you make it out to be. You are also invalidating cis people with your terfy logic about producing babies
Biology is extremely complicated, but childbirth is kind of an undeniable, fundamental to the continuation of humanity concept. Literally just acknowledging that is not “terfy” or whatever flavor of victim complex you’d like to use.
I’m not saying anything about gender, gender roles, etc. I’m arguing we need to have similar basis of reality in order to have a productive discussion.
Binary gender as a social concept is harmful. However it does stem from the concept of biological sex, which primarily comes from one sex’s ability to make babies. Calling someone xyz-phobic when they acknowledge that is asinine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
Biological sex is not binary, and the purpose of women isn’t just squeezing children out. I called your logic terfy because your talking points are eerily similar to theirs.
None of your articles are really making an argument against my statement. The second two are super interesting though.
doctors in India were able to help the woman conceive and give birth to the children through treatment that helped develop her uterus, which was described as infantile.
She was then treated via IVF. The NCBI study is a little dense so I didn’t read all of it, but it pretty clearly describes a woman, albeit with genetic abnormalities, giving birth. Sooo…. Not sure what the statement there is.
Your issue is you have two boxes, female and male, when intersex conditions are the result of sex being a spectrum. Intersex conditions can happen in a multitude of ways, and many are not very outwardly detectable.
Masulinization and feminization is a complicated and messy process which results in people with sexual characteristics outside the binary, and sometimes this means that people are born infertile or less fertile, which invalidates your point. Biologically it’s asinine to say that bio sex is binary.
You say if someone belongs to the sex which can have babies then they are biologically women. How do you define if someone belongs to the sex which can have babies? Your definition doesn’t describe this, you just arbitrarily put someone into the woman box.
Did you watch the video I put in my comment? It explains the different processes involved in sex differentiation.
Your argument has the same issues as many of the others of the same kind, it doesn’t reflect reality. You say there are biological differences, which we can accept, but, when a baby is born or when you see someone, those biological differences are assumed instead of being tested.
What I see is colloquial language and scientific language being equated.
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Society divided sex into A and B, doctors forced and keep forcing everyone into those categories.
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Science divides into A, B, C, D, E…, which are not easily perceived.
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Society, instead of adapting or accepting its limitations, decides to choose a characteristic to be scientific, but they don’t test anything. They are just being prescriptive with their language.
In other words, you can’t tell the gender or sex of someone by just looking at them. One piece of anatomy is not enough, one specific chromosome is not enough, one specific gene is not enough.
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It’s pretty clear you didn’t watch the video.
Just did a second time, I don’t see anything in there that is counter to my point. The video conflates gender identity with the existence of biological sex, and doesn’t actually define what they mean by “biological”.
Then say that instead? You started a completely irrelevant discussion
