The concept of binary and static gender is as much "basic biology" as three states of matter are basic physics or numbers being one-dimensional is basic maths.
It’s an extremely simplified and archaic breakdown because 13 y/o usually aren’t smart enough for the actual uni-level stuff and the way we’ve seen these things for centuries usually are a good introduction to the topic.
Transphobes coming with the "it’s basic biology" just shows that they’ve mentally never progressed further than the 7th grade; that they’re either unwilling or incapable of grasping the fact that the world is more complicated than we tell teenagers.
Link to the article the image is from since I don't know how to internet well enough to make the image expandable. TL:DR genetics/biology show it's complex and there are many intersex possibilities on and the gender spectrum.
many intersex possibilities on the gender spectrum
Sex and gender are different, although often conflated because a lot of the times they're still used interchangeably, as in most contexts sex and gender do align, but not all.
Sex is usually categorized as female or male but there is variation in the biological attributes that comprise sex and how those attributes are expressed. (That's the part your article and image talk about; sex.) Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, expressions and identities of girls, women, boys, men, and gender diverse people
no offense but why did you phrase this as though you disagreed lol the graphic in the comment clearly lays out the same distinction just in a different way
In an additional layer of complexity, the gender with which a person identifies does not always align with the sex they* are assigned at birth, and they may not be wholly male or female.
I'm not disagreeing with the information in the picture, I'm reiterating it to someone who's use of language showed they either phrased themselves poorly or don't yet fully understand the distinction between "sex" and "gender".
"many intersex possibilities on the gender spectrum" is "funky"", yeah.
"intersex possibilities" don't exist on the gender spectrum, because the gender spectrum is about gender and not about sex, which has it's own (albeit more polarised) spectrum.
Hope that makes it clear (although I thought I made it clear that was what I was objecting to in my earlier comment)
i guess i gave them a more charitable framing of their comment like: “there are many possible states of being intersex; individuals of all sexes can find themselves anywhere on the gender spectrum regardless of sex”
without hearing what they meant, both your framing and mine are valid given such a short comment i just didn’t immediately see yours at first. cheers 🥂
For what it's worth thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt. Given that this whole post is about trans folks I think sex, sexuality, and gender are all applicable topics (with gender spectrum focal when talking about trans). I do understand the difference. To defend the person who wants clarification, perhaps I could have framed it better and I'll change it to "and the gender spectrum" instead of "on the gender spectrum". It's one word and what is meant is pretty apparent to anyone who reads the article or looks at the expanded graphic - which addresses concepts of sex, sexuality, and gender and explicitly uses the term "gender spectrum" when talking about trans choices/identity.
no problem! language is the key thing that trans people need to understand and represent themselves and so any and all discussion towards modeling language to support that need is a positive :)
It's important to understand the difference between sex and gender. Even within the trans community very few people understand the difference.
Gender is about societal roles, whereas sex is about biology. You can reject your societal gender role without wanting to change your body, and you can want to change your body while embracing your gender role.
Damn, we learned about intersex people in biology class. Probably sex ed. Although not explicitly transsexuality. That was in the late 90s or early 2000s.
You can have different genitalia than your chromosomes would indicate. Is it that hard to believe that you could have a different brain structure as well? I do believe that permanent changes should only happen once the individual is in their mid 20s, but at the end of the day I don't want governments making decisions on what others can and cannot do to their own bodies. Trans (and LGBTQ) people have been documented in history since language was first written, but somehow when the science is more definitive on these matters people become more phobic to reality.
I agree that it's a decision that should be made by the individual and their support network. (family, friends, doctors and psychologists.) And I'm behind those that need to change to salvage their mental health. I had to get lasik when I was 19 because I was having vision induced migraines. The recommendation is to wait until late to mid 20s to get the surgery, but my doctor knew I couldn't wait until my body was fully "developed". Your situation is far more complicated but I understand. It's none of my business what you do with your body! End of story ʘ‿ʘ
homosexuality has been seen in nature as well, we only dont see trans animals because gender is itself something only humans have
also, it doesnt matter what the body, dna or whatever says your gender 'should be'. the gender is defined by how a person thinks and nothing can change that
Evolutionary biologist here. I’d argue that, in the same sense as we see homosexuality in animals, we see trans animals.
Some animals physically transition - there are fish that will change their physical gender based on the current gender mixture in their local environment. Some behaviorally transition, with males taking on female roles. Sometimes a whole species is trans - like the female hyena developing male appearing genitalia.
Sexual orientation in the animal kingdom is not strictly analogous to that among humans (which has a much stronger social construct), and the same is true of gender (that is, human gender is a social construct). Because the range of adaptations are so diverse and so widespread, I’m very sure of the fact that they have different causes from each other as well as from humans, but the same is true of animal sexuality.
What about bees? I didn't know they had any sex changing or multiple different sexes, only that the males only existed for mating with the queen and then die
TL;DR: All fertilized eggs become female bees. Whether a fertilized egg becomes a worker or a queen is based completely on how much royal jelly they are fed by other workers as larvae. Drones (male bees) are born from unfertilized eggs and only contain one set of chromosomes.
Also, there are reptiles that change sex based on the temperature in which their eggs develop. Sex gets weird in the animal kingdom.
I'm absolutely a trans ally but what I don't understand about how science defines the sexes without reproduction. If those mushrooms have thousands of sexes, must they participate in gigantic fungal orgies every time they reproduce? Of course given that fungi are in an entirely different kingdom than mammals, I wouldn't be surprised if how sexes are defined is entirely different and irrelevant to how they're defined in animals.
My biology education ended at high school and unfortunately it was a high school that taught that the earth was 6000 years old so to say it was lacking would be an understatement.
Basically for these fungi, only different "sexes" can reproduce with each other. Still only need two for reproduction. They can't reproduce with the same sex. So A can mate with B, C, D, etc. A can't mate with A. Do dna sequencing on a few that you know can mate with one another and you can find where the sex allele/gene is. Then you can sequence the population at large to see how many different sex alleles there are. You can confirm or do old school observation to see which ones can reproduce with another.
