There are quite a few people who argue for sex as a spectrum. Which doesn’t make biological sense and is neither helpful for intersex people nor for transgender people.
The person you’re replying to is wrong, translating the word as gender makes the most sense here. That said, sex isn’t strictly binary ~1.5% of people are intersex, which means when they’re born, they don’t fit the typical definition of male or female.
In my experience, the conservative side of it tends to be reductive like that, trans advocacy has been getting better at including intersex advocacy as well because the two groups have overlapping needs. I mostly mentioned it because it was interesting and relevent though.
Again, this is all well and good, it just fails to grasp the discourse and tries to establish a topic the other side has no interest in. Its literally miscomunication.
I’m just sick of all the people talking past each other hoping that if they do it long enough the other side will come back to the debate on their turf which never happens.
FYI, most medical literature will refer to intersex genotypes as male or female still with the presence of the Y chromosome generally defining the sex. For instance if you look up XXY on Wikipedia or similar, it will usually say “XXY male”. On crossover events, it’s still characterized as male and female but usually as “XX male” and “XY female”
Those are literally abberations and detract from the actual discussions. Nobody cares about those edge cases, discussions only go there if there is a “but actually…” thing going on
But its literally the same as if someone asks „how many fingers are on a human hand?“, the answer being 5 and you going „actually the answer is 0-10“ because some people with deformations got born with more or less fingers than usual.
The problem isnt uninformed people, the thing is most people are more than aware about these things but are just able to see whats the point of the discussion and dont want to derail it.
But even hardcore gender social constructivists don’t argue for more than 2 sexes? Or have I misread the literature?
There are quite a few people who argue for sex as a spectrum. Which doesn’t make biological sense and is neither helpful for intersex people nor for transgender people.
The person you’re replying to is wrong, translating the word as gender makes the most sense here. That said, sex isn’t strictly binary ~1.5% of people are intersex, which means when they’re born, they don’t fit the typical definition of male or female.
1.5% of people are not intersex. It’s closer to about 0.02%
I got my numbers from Amnesty International.
It’s a common figure that you will often see but it’s wrong.
It’s based on an academic paper that included a large range of non-intersex conditions that affect phenotype.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
Actual chromosomal difference (which is what intersex refers to) is about 0.02%.
Why does it make the most sense? The word Geschlecht can mean both sex and gender.
that means 98.5% of all people have either xx or xy karyotypes, right?
The discussion always hinges upon disagreements what to do with those 98.5%. Not about what are those 1.5%.
Thats what I mean.
In my experience, the conservative side of it tends to be reductive like that, trans advocacy has been getting better at including intersex advocacy as well because the two groups have overlapping needs. I mostly mentioned it because it was interesting and relevent though.
Again, this is all well and good, it just fails to grasp the discourse and tries to establish a topic the other side has no interest in. Its literally miscomunication.
I’m just sick of all the people talking past each other hoping that if they do it long enough the other side will come back to the debate on their turf which never happens.
Why do people do that?
Alright, lay it out for me. What am I debating against then? I will try to give a nice thorough answer.
There are definitely more than 2 sexes. There are XX, XY, XXY, and XYY.
FYI, most medical literature will refer to intersex genotypes as male or female still with the presence of the Y chromosome generally defining the sex. For instance if you look up XXY on Wikipedia or similar, it will usually say “XXY male”. On crossover events, it’s still characterized as male and female but usually as “XX male” and “XY female”
Those are literally abberations and detract from the actual discussions. Nobody cares about those edge cases, discussions only go there if there is a “but actually…” thing going on
like you just did
No one cares, except for all the people who do.
Maybe the problem is that people don’t care and make uninformed statements?
But its literally the same as if someone asks „how many fingers are on a human hand?“, the answer being 5 and you going „actually the answer is 0-10“ because some people with deformations got born with more or less fingers than usual.
The problem isnt uninformed people, the thing is most people are more than aware about these things but are just able to see whats the point of the discussion and dont want to derail it.
The difference there is that no one discriminates or denies the existence of people with more or less than 10 fingers.
I don’t know what a “gender social constructivist” is, but I do know that from a medical standpoint there are more than two biological sexes.