In light of recent controversy and its handling, the twice-a-year FediForum unconference for April 1st and 2nd has been canceled by its organizer.
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Sex isn’t a “gender orientation” it is really simple biology.
Gamete size – its really simple.
Congratulations infertile people, you are now officially sexless.
That is usually how males and females of a species are differentiated in general: males have the small gamete and females have the large one. (As you said, some individuals may not produce gametes so it only applies in general).
Of course humans are a lot more complicated. We have a concept of gender which doesn’t necessarily align with biological sex, and many people modify their sex characteristics to match their gender, so applying generalizations blindly gets you nowhere.
Indeed, just as gender is a spectrum so is sex. I love when someone says “Its basic biology” because the best response is “and this is intermediate biology”.
With all due respect, sex is not a spectrum.
It’s a clearly a binary. Yes, there are many exceptions and edge cases, but they are all based around a universal binary biological structure.
You don’t have say three distinct sexes required for reproduction outside of sci-fi. It is a binary with some edge cases and variations in how exactly the two parts of the binary interact.
Sex is indeed a spectrum. Intersex presentation makes up a meaningful though small percentage, somewhere around the 0.05% range. If it were a binary there would be two options, mutually exclusive. This is a bimodal distribution, with two very strong peaks for XX or XY karyotype and a bunch of variation around either different karyotypes, XXY etc, or differing activation or expression of those karyotypes, eg androgen insensitivity etc.
On top of that, what would you say sex is exactly? Which gamete is larger? In seahorses the males have the smaller gametes but the females use something very similar to a penis to deposit the egg into the male who then raises it and performs all the roles we associate with females in humans.
Is it based on which chroonosomes? In some animals it is a WZ or W karyotypes, so that can’t be it. In others it is just a presence or absence of a sex chromosome. In some plants they have more than two sets of everything, like strawberries with 7 copies of each chromosome. In others they have one, two, or four in some parts of the life cycle, but sometimes the thing we see is the higher number, sometimes it is the lower number. Some have a mix of male and female parts, having sperm and egg producers on the same plant but separated, some have both right next to each other in groupings. Some animals can undergo sex changing due to environmental factors.
Nothing in biology is as simple as the models we use to represent them. Sex is complex and while it sometimes seems simple that is the less common state. Genes are not often all the way on or all the way off, they are usually moderated and running at different levels across the organism cell by cell, and changing with time. The same goes for traits.
I would recommend learning more about ut biology if you really do believe sex is a simple binary. The world of biology is far more complex and varied than that idea can capture and honestly it is fascinating, I find it extremely exciting to find the examples of my own ignorance, they are usually super cool. Good luck!
Stop confusing young autistic vulnerable people.
— Date Unknown
I’m old and autistic and not confused by the fact trans women are women. Hope that helps.
none of these transphobic losers who use autism to attack trans people even gives a flip about autistic people
none of these transphobic losers who use autism to attack trans people even gives a flip about people
Ftfy
I’m a bit confused about this, isn’t the whole lgbtq movement advocating for the distinction between terms “sex” and “gender” exactly the same way as those quotes do? Or do lgbtq people advocate for equating “sex” to “gender”? Honestly, this whole thing is always a huge mindfuck to try to comprehend.
Posting from another thread:
Her comments cover everything from “trans women are mostly autistic boys who have been gaslit” to “there are only two sexes” to “trans people are unfit to play in their gender’s sport.” However, there are far worse comments floating around out there that talk about genital mutilation and all kinds of other heinous shit.
It wasn’t just “I have a different opinion, we can agree to disagree”, it was full-fledged unhinged stuff that all followed the TERF playbook.
I was a bit confused too, but OPs answer to your comment clarified it quite well.
And after thinking a bit on it, and from my very basic knowledge of lgbt movment, here’s what i think they advocate for (pls correct me if i say bs) : sex and gender are indeed different, they aee not necessarily connected and both are spectrums rather than binary options. This means you could have a lot of options between what sex you are (male/female/intersex), what gender you are (a lot of options) and what gender you were assigned at birth (generally either male or female). Some trans people need their “physical” sex identity to match their gender, other don’t.
The problem in this case seems to me that she advocates for a strict binary conception of sex identity and that she pushed for it to be more important than gender in social situations such as sport. Part of the confusion also comes from the fact that she acknowledges parts of what the lgbt movment fights for but she fights against the rest, which happens frequently in TERF rethorics afaik
Yup pretty much. It’s… complicated if you really dive into it. I’m saying this as a trans person - there are biological differences between people. In literally everyone, though - it’s not just a sex thing. No two males, females, intersex, or otherwise are alike biologically. Everyone’s biological stats are different. Even twins are different.
These categories exist in science to easily communicate basic ideas based on medical observations. But once you get to the nitty-gritty of a person’s personal medical history it’s really hard to categorize certain things. You can have “true” females with more male hormones than “true” males and vice-versa. You can be born without any sex organs and still develop into an adult.
Bodies are weird. Medical science is very complicated and interesting. We really don’t know what we’re doing still or how a lot of our biology operates. Can you attribute someone’s sports prowess to their hormones? Maybe? I don’t know. I don’t think it matters in the grand scheme of things. I think someone’s determination to do something is a bigger indicator of how well they’ll do in the end.
Nothing’s certain in science. Disproving something is easy. Proving things is a lot harder lol.
