I have little doubt that we have all heard the line that transphobes use, that your gender is what you're born with, you can't change it, etc, and needless to say this is stupid, almost as stupid as the time I saw someone on reddit trying to convince someone diagnosed with NPD they didn't actually have it (the stigma surrounding that condition is absurd). But while I'm assured most of us know that this is wrong, I still think it's important to know why, and what better way to do this than by using the very same 'basic biology' these people try to uphold?
To begin with, it's quite easy to see that the very concepts of 'male' and 'female are vague when you get into the specifics. As I have mentioned several times in the past, 'maleness' as we usually think of it is not in fact determined by the entire y chromosome, but by only a segment of it. If that segment is lost, as it sometimes is, the person in question develops as female but is chromosomally 'male', by the definitions of transphobes. So are they actually male or not? Either way, their criteria are completely broken down. And this problem isn't just limited to the Y chromosome; what about XXY men? They bear some female secondary sexual characteristics, but they are undoubtedly recognizably developmentally male. And X, XXX, and XXX+ women do exist. What about them? Should XYY men be banned from sports as well due to their supposed heightened testosterone?
To make matters more complicated, development of sexual characteristics is more complicated than just one gene. If anything downstream malfunctions, someone can end up with both male and female reproductive structures, also known as intersex people. What about them? Are they supposed to play male sports half the time and female sports the other half?
Even ignoring all this, the very conclusion that the existence of trans people is 'unscientific' is false. The consensus in the scientific community is that sex and gender are indeed separate, and can be misaligned for an individual. If they're willing to deny what actual scientists are saying for their own ideology, they're free to do that, but they have no excuse to pretend to uphold science. How do I know what scientists agree on? My anatomy and physiology textbook. From 2006.
An entire decade before the whole wokemongering bullshit started. It's not as if the authors are particularly progressive either; several other textbooks I own from the early 2000s to a few years back agree on this.
I think it's quite clear that anything transphobes say isn't based in fact, but only their own delusions. They can't deny that they don't give a shit about biology at all, which is perfectly fine to me. However, they shouldn't go around masquerading as triumphant 'experts' when they don't understand what they're trying to use as a cudgel. The sad thing is, many uninformed people will see their rhetoric online and fall for their bad faith arguments, and I think it's the responsibility of those who know better to not only tell them not only that they are wrong, but also why they are wrong.
I apologize for the terrible structure and awkward phrasing.
I think she means the stuff we all have between legs, that definitely defines sex. Gender and how you feel and act is other thing, but for mammals, there's definitely a definition of 2 sexes and sexual dimorphism is clearly present.
Ok, but like, it doesn't. See this comment I made yesterday.
Edit: I'm actually going to copy the comment here, so no one has to click on a link to read it:
What do we mean by "sex"?
Do we mean chromosomes? If so, there aren't two sexes, there are a whole bunch, look at the list on this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_anomalies
Do we mean genitals? If so, again, there aren't two distinct sexes, instead it's more of a spectrum between "this is obviously a penis" and "this is obviously a vulva". In fact, infants with genitals that can't be neatly classified as a penis or a vulva frequently have surgery forced upon them and these (completely unnecessary) surgeries cause all sorts of issues later in life.
Do we mean hormonal profile? Again, it's not as straightforward as testosterone = male, estrogen = female. The endocrine system is wildly complicated and the ratios of sex hormones people have can vary wildly. A person's hormonal profile is also extremely changeable, which is something shitty right-wingers don't want "biological sex" to be.
Do we mean size of gametes? This is the only option that even remotely makes sense, because it is true that in humans there are only two kinds of gametes, small gametes (sperm) and large gametes (eggs). Furthermore, there has never been a case of a human who produces both eggs and sperm, every human produces at most one of the two. But lots of people are completely infertile, producing no gametes. So if by "sex" we mean the size of gametes someone produces, then there are a whole lot of people who are sexless because they produce no gametes.
But ok, size of gamete produced almost works as a definition of "sex". So maybe we could look at the gonads in people who don't produce gametes and make a determination of their sex that way. Well, it turns out that doesn't work either, because there are people with both ovarian tissue and testicular tissue, and sometimes these tissues are even mixed together in the same organ (called "streak gonads").
So what are we left with? Nothing. There's nothing to "sex", it's a meaningless term. Listen to any shitty right-winger try and define "biological sex" and you'll hear them eventually say something like "a male is someone whose reproductive system is geared towards producing sperm". But what does that mean? Fuck all, I'd say. What shitty right-wingers mean is "a female is someone who I think is a woman". They're all of them, to a person, talking about gender every time they say "biological sex". They'll deny it, but ask them about intersex people, or people with ambiguous genitalia or streak gonads, and you'll get nonsense in response.
I've whiled away many a hilarious hour reading terfs (on ovarit, before it shutdown) arguing about which particular intersex people count as women. They never agree, there is no "party line", it's all vibes and always has been.
We mean dick and balls or vagina, that's what she's thinking of.
Gender is another thing and her problem is that she can't separate the 2 and thinks that it can't be changed through surgery, but she is absolutely right in the fact that mammals are born with either of these and that sexual dimorphism and sex definitely does exist. Gender is societal, and open to vast interpretation so there's the possibility of zero or infinite genders, but there is only 2 sexes.
Biological sex refers to an organism’s role in sexual reproduction. From the species level, this involves the possible gamete forms that are conducive to reproduction.
The human species only has two viable gametes: spermatozoa (male gamete) and the oocyte (female gamete). There are no other viable gametes.
There are no other viable gametes, thus the human species only has two sexes.
Individuals who do not produce a viable gamete (for whatever reason), do not have a unique viable biological sex; they have a medical condition that prevents them from expressing one of the two gametes.
Individuals with kleinfelters, Turner, or Triple X syndromes are by-and-large infertile. They do not produce viable gametes.
In the rare cases in which they are fertile, they still produce one of the 2 gametes. They do not produce a unique, third gamete.
Thus, there are still 2 biological sexes.
There are only two biological sexes in the human and every mammal species, and there is no scientific evidence indicating otherwise.
Are you a gymnast by trade? Because you're really bending over backwards to defend your (very wrong) transphobic mom.
She is transphobic but she isn't wrong about this, there are only 2 sexes in mammals and everyone who thinks otherwise is literally denying the reality.
Consequently, people who are infertile do not have a sex? You are just demonstrating the point: that your attempts to define "biological sex" are faulty. People who recognize this fact are not denying reality; you are.
Infertile people still have one of the 2 certain things between legs. I know few of them personally.
Are you too stupid to recognize the contradiction in your own position?
So is it "what's between your legs" that makes sex, or is it gametes?
Hermaphroditism exists, clitoromegaly and micropenis exist (and can be remarkably hard to tell apart), CAIS exists where gametes and anatomy can literally contradict each other in the same individual.
It seems like you're about to say "there is a third group that has 'neither' as a sex" (which is true) but you immediately shy away from that conclusion and revert to anatomy.
The whole existence of "abnormal" is a normal part of evolution, amd in fact it is why we could become what we are today. Genetics and transcription are not fixed systems in place since 1 billion MYA, they mutate and cluster and without that mutation process none of it could ever exist. Without an in-between sex, the system of sexuality cannot develop and all animals just stay reproducing asexually forever. It's not something with a fixed or deep cosmic meaning, it's literally a bunch of accumulated errors that end up coincidentally making something that's internally coherent most of the time.