"There are only two genders, change my mind".

[Childrenofthestones]

Not my words but Steven Crowder's (like him or loathe him). in this interesting experiment on a campus.

[nauticant]

As far as I'm concerned there are as many genders as there are people's personalities. There are only two sexes though.

[AdalindSchade]

There are two sexes. Gender is a socially constructed system so there are neither two nor two million as far as I'm concerned.

[nauticant]

That's why I don't like the approach of Steven Crowder. The Christian Right are very keen for there to be two genders and for these to be strongly associated with the two sexes by strict enforcement of gender stereotypes.

The Christian Right and the TRAs are like mirror images: gender must conform to sex, sex must conform to gender.

[catgirl1976]

Agreed gender is bollocks. It means 'sex roles' or 'personality' or 'how to behave' - it's a construct and a regressive and oppressive one at that.

There are only 2 sexes however. There may be other combinations of XX and XY but they are chromosomal abnormalities and do not change the fact there is male and there is female.

[Debbie6666]

You cant just mark the very evidence that breaks your binary model as outlying and irrelevant. The mere existence of intersex people is the proof that there is more to sex than the binary.

[DJBaggySmalls]

There are 2 human sexes; intersex people are not a third sex. Intersex disorders are not a third kind of reproduction, any more than other genetic disorders which make people infertile.

Biological sex is not a predictor of sexual orientation or drive.

[Debbie6666]

That's only because your forcing them into your preconceived model

Are there any other facets of nature that are pure binary,

Nature is analogue and analogue has infinite variation.

[AsMenDclaredWomenTheirInferior]

Still those people fall into one sex or the other and there is nothing outside of that!

[DJBaggySmalls]

Thats an interesting belief system, its not one that can be backed up by facts.
Nature does not have infinite variety; there are no winged humans.

[Debbie6666]

So chromosomes do not define sex then. Glad we agree on that

[DJBaggySmalls]

Its shameful to use a disorder as 'proof' for an ideology.

[Debbie6666]

But infinite variation through evolution gave us winged birds

[Debbie6666]

Its shameful to mark a variation as a disorder

[Lancelottie]

What do you mean, Debbie?

In humans, when discussing sex (the means of reproduction, not the act) there are two forms of gamete, one type from the male and one from the female.

There aren't a million and one different types ranging from Very Spermy to Very Eggy.

It's binary.

[DJBaggySmalls]

Where are the winged humans?
You dont have infinite variety coded into your DNA. If that were true you could cross breed with any other species.

[curryforbreakfast]

That's only because your forcing them into your preconceived model

Not, it's because it's a biological fact/

[Squirrler]

This is what I don't get on this debate. As far as I can tell, science has not yet unravelled all the mysteries of the human brain. There is no definitive answer as how all this shit works. And yet....

On both sides of this issue (not in the middle, where the majority of us sit in mounting bewilderment) there are people - most of whom are not biologists or psychologists or whatever - swearing blind that they have it all worked out.

I can't help but conclude that these people are driven, not by what they know, but what they want to be true. Their opinions are not scientific opinions, but political ones.

[NineFortySixPM]

Genuine question, if the two biological sexes are male and female, then what are the two most recognised genders? Because I thought they were male and female too...in which case sex and gender would be the same thing?

Please be gentle in responses, I'm asking from a place of genuine confusion and would like to be educated

[SylviaPoe]

I have physical variations that cause me health problems. There are no benefits to those variations. Why shouldn’t I call them a disorder?

[GuardianLions]

And chromosomes do indeed define sex. The sexes are female and male, or ova and sperm producing. There are people with chromosomal abnormalities which make them infertile (ie- producing neither sperm or eggs) and appear sexually indistinct, but they do not fall into a separate sex category, since a person needs either eggs or sperm to sexually reproduce.

[DJBaggySmalls]

NineFortySixPM
There are 2 main genders; male and female. Gender is a sociological description of how we are expected to act and dress depending on our biological sex.
People who dont fit the expected pattern may be androgynous or gender non conforming.

Society expects us to model certain behaviours in specific situations to increase trust, and decrease stress and aggression. Thats true for all complex, sociable animal species.

[BahHumbygge]

There are only two sexes. Of course there are additional intersex conditions, but only XX and XY can cause the continuous replication of the species.

There are either 7.5 billion genders or there are zero genders. We all have our unique personalities and preferences, which may be shaped to a greater or lesser degree to societal forces, but none of us are pure stereotypes. Let's abolish those forces that shoehorn people with either convex or concave genitals into stacked boxes, with those in the lower box considered inferior and servile to the superior box inhabitants.

I agree that right wing conservatives and the liberal pro-genderists are two sides of the same coin. When you parse their rhetoric, they are remarkably similar. Recently I looked up some stuff about shieldmaidens in the Viking era. Compare this quote from Saxo Grammaticus 12thC Danish historian, secretary to Archbishop of Lund, to Kathleen Self, third wave genderist feminist (image file below). Both arguing that the phenomenon of "shieldmaidenery" is so far removed from standards of femininity and expected attributes and activities of women, they have become so separated from their sex that they constitute a new gender in their own right. So the existence of badass female warriors, rather than disproving that all females must be demure and feminine, actually upholds that idea, by putting those who don't conform into a new category of gender. Both are as regressive as the other And Kathleen Self continues that shieldmaidens transition back to female when they marry, as if having a male spouse validates their femininity.

“There were once women in Denmark who dressed themselves to look like men and spent almost every minute cultivating soldiers’ skills. …They courted military celebrity so earnestly that you would have guessed they had unsexed themselves. Those especially who had forceful personalities or were tall and elegant embarked on this way of life. As if they were forgetful of their true selves they put toughness before allure, aimed at conflicts instead of kisses, tasted blood, not lips, sought the clash of arms rather than the arm’s embrace, fitted to weapons hands which should have been weaving, desired not the couch but the kill…” (Fisher 1979, p. 212).

www.tor.com/2015/06/08/viking-warrior-women-did-shieldmaidens-like-lagertha-really-exist/

[MentholBreeze]

Open a book on grammar, point to masculine, feminine, neuter.

Job done.

Ohhhhhhh you mean 2 sexes! And I'm going to assume you mean in humans...

Open a biology book turn to the section on reproduction. Job done.

[BahHumbygge]

sorry images didn't work, try again

[AdalindSchade]

There are two main 'genders' - masculine and feminine. These are posited to be binary as if most female people are totally feminine and most male people are totally masculine but obviously this is nonsense. There are lots of other 'new' genders such as genderfluid, non binary etc. They incorporate elements of masculine and feminine I guess.
However all the genders are subjective and socially constructed.