I don't want to be a TERF

No biology decided our uses or we would be extinct wouldn't we?
You are clutching at straws now tiptop

mrskeats yes its another issue but it relates in the fact that some of these people are saying they are neither male nor female and actually they arent born specifically male or female. So that adds weight to the argument that maybe we do have more than two sexes. It may be a very small number but it does exist and it does show that sex is not always clear even if you are just looking at genitals.

people used to say there werent any gay animals and use that as a statement to back up homosexuality as unnatural and being a lifestyle choice.

The concept is that humans created the terms 'male and female' and decide on their uses. Im nitpicking your numbers because those animals that do not mate could be not mating for any number of reasons. Some of which may be that they are not actually the sex they are assumed to be. What im saying is that yes, mammals tend to break into two groups that we could label with sexes but its not all of them. We just dont know whats going on with some of them so it doesnt really prove anything. If it was 50/50 constantly then it might. but its not.

Approx 1% according to recent data.
That's a whole other issue.

Being intersex is incredibly rare

sophoclesthefox
www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/02/male-and-female-what-is-it-like-to-be-intersex

No they arent all either male or female.

Agree Bertrand half of this is about men wanting a new way of holding back women in whatever way they can

And the actual behaviour is not the concept the naming and framing of that behaviour is the concept

What does that mean? Sexual reproduction is a fact. The 'framing of the behaviour' sounds suspiciously like what I understand to be gender. Which is not the same as sex.

They are literally disorders
That's what they are. It's not a value judgement to say so.
Don't nitpick on my numbers for goodness sake. The FACTS are that mammals are sexually dimorphic, with males impregnating females who birth offspring.

adalindscahde

It wouldnt be 50% would it. Some of them just wouldnt mate for whatever reason. Its certainly not clear cut in the animal kingdom. And the actual behaviour is not the concept the naming and framing of that behaviour is the concept.

people who are born men could end up being able to give birth

I hope that this will never, ever happen. The ethics of what unknown and unknowable trauma and intervention you would have to subject the foetus to are so mind bogglingly unethical I don't know where to start.

I am happy to be a TERF if it means I think a)lesbians should be allowed to choose who they want to have sex with, b) amazing women from the past are not retrospectively identified as trans,c)women do not have to compete in sport against male bodied people d)the numbers of women committing crimes are not artificially inflated by the inclusion of trans women in the statistics.

Exactly, adalinde.

Intersex conditions are disorders of sexual development. They don't mean that humans are not generally sexually dimorphic. It's not a sliding scale between male and female: there are males with intersex conditions and females with intersex conditions.

And none of it has anything in the slightest to do with being trans.

adalindscahde no they arent always 'disorders' they were traditionally thought of as such because it was thought those people would struggle to fit in socially so they would be given surgery to appear more like one gender or the other. This is how much societal views effect science. Children were given surgery they didnt medically need and a gender was chosen for them. Yes the fact that science understands these situations better now does mean that definitions might change. It certainly means that now days they do not preform these surgeries until the child is old enough to understand them and consent to them.

concepts of sex are also subject to change

Put 100 mice in a tank and about 50% of them will impregnate the other 50% who will then give birth to offspring.
This isn't a 'concept'. Concepts of sex are not 'changing'.

Tiptop not really
Disorders of sexual development are still rare and they are disorders
The fact that medical science now understands these disorders better does not mean they are 3rd or 4th or Xth sexes. There are 2 sexes with a very small number of outliers with a developmental disorder.

Bit of back story; I am a loud and proud leftie feminist, massively pro gay rights, I am known in my circle of friends (I've been told) as being a champion for minorities, I've been to 12 gay prides and counting.

Have you honestly asked yourself how much of your reluctance to accept being gender critical is about not wanting to lose this reputation or lose face with friends and perhaps lose some of them if they don't accept your point of view?

Datun I remember that poster.

Bahhumbygge excellent post!

Buttonloon, And I do use the label TERF because I've got none other to use - I can help you out there. The correct, polite, neutral phrase is "gender critical feminist". That works pretty well, and isn't actually an insult, unlike terf.

Pullup, I think a lot of people started out where you are. Some stay there. Some move into a more gender critical space. There's a common misconception that people start off bigoted about trans people, then read a load of stuff that cements that view. Actually for your average Guardian reading type (me included) what happens is that you reflexively align yourself with the underdog and are uncritically pro-trans. Until something happens (Caitlyn Jenner's woman of the year award for me) that makes you think, "hey, hold on a second", then you do some reading, find out what transactivists actually want and suddenly the emperor has no clothes...or, for some people, the cognitive dissonance is too much, and they turn aggressively pro-trans, and just start yelling and trying to shut down debate.

It's hard to say "I've changed my mind". It took me a lot of wrestling, but now I'm happy to say it: I changed my mind. And I'm good with that. I got more information and it changed my view.

lancelottie but even the traditional science is not that black and white. People can be born with genitalia combinations. People can have hormone combinations/issues.... theres all sorts of variables that sometimes make the line between man and women quite arbitrary or people choose to have medical assistance to push them more towards one sex or the other.
Now days they are doing research into artificial wombs and maybe people who are born men could end up being able to give birth. You dont know whats going to happen!
Its just not all as clear cut as people seem to want to believe. Concepts around it are changing. As ive already detailed i have my own worries about that and can see other peoples worries but you cant just deny its happening. Concepts of gender have been changing constantly throughout history and now they are changing more and concepts of sex are also subject to change. Its not about how people are born but how we interpret how they are born and what that means in society.

But that's kind of the point, it almost doesn't matter what the term is because these two categories will always exist.

I do feel quite saddened that the current rancid, hypersexualized debate makes almost any topic off limits with the five (oh Christ, so many?) sets of family friends who now have a transgender member. I've given up on trying to persuade my brain to ignore my eyes and past recollections of their daughters (or father in one case) in order to remember that they are now their sons and mother. We talk about work or cats instead.

Actually, one family has a member with Alzheimer's who everyone tacitly agrees can't be expected to remember the new name and pronoun, so gets a free pass for all mistakes. Looking at their small gruff serious-minded teenager, I really hope this gives them a link and a route back to their birth sex, should they need it.

Yes men have penises and women have vaginas. Was that a rhetorical question?
They also have a differing set of chromosomes. This is a fact i'm afraid. Pesky science is not what the Trans community want to deal with.
Based on this (flawed) logic we can also be Transracial.
All the faffing about with labels (the Trans community being the ones so keen on them) does not alter simple biology.

But things aren't really changing in that sense, Tiptop. If babies are to be born, they will still be born to those with vaginas. If sperm are to be created, they will still be created by those with penises. Centuries later, what will be identifiable from a skeleton will be its sex, not its self-definition.

We might as well keep the same words we've always had for those categories.