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

debbie you seem to be getting confused between coding and biology. We aren't 'transhuman' yet....

Why not get out - breathe fresh air, feel the sun on your skin. Misusing your brain is doing you and no one else any good.

binary
ˈbʌɪnəri/Submit
adjective
1.
relating to, composed of, or involving two things.
2.
relating to, using, or denoting a system of numerical notation that has 2 rather than 10 as a base.

Sex is binary in terms of the first definition. The second meaning of the word applies to numbers.
Perhaps that's where the confusion is arising.

There is no way to convince closed mind of a view that is doesn't already hold. There has only been one person who has even attempted to understand the arguments put forward.

I'm still waiting for examples of true binary systems in nature, not ones that are only binary because we ignore the facets that mean they are not by applying the threshold and equalisation rules necessary to make binary work.

Binary is a number system, nature does not use numbers, they are too clumsy and ill defined and binary is the clumsiest off the lot.

And your response is "I'm a victim". Not "my arguments are unconvincing".

lol triggered

So the answer to the thread premise is "of course" because we simply won't entertain any challenge our preconceived and established ideas ideas and will berate and shut down the debate of anyone who does and then complain about debates being shut down!

irretating: Is it really helpful to tell that 16 yr old that they are disordered though.

Disorder is a medical term, not a personal assessment of individuals.

Would you be doing this pearl-clutching if we were talking about heart rhythm disorders?

the very people it affects say that intersex and trans are nothing alike
exactly. People with intersex conditions have a whole separate battle.

then your argument would have merit

by the way, that turn of phrase is a signpost of a fledgling misogynist keyboard warrior... next you'll bring up the 'I know a woman who shouted at a man for holding the door open' myth...

I am looking forward to your explanation of male vaginas and female penises...

Given intersex people prefer to be called intersex, than to be associated with trans, this is a pretty silly argument. Transactivists have behaved in a really shoddy way towards intersex support groups. And such groups have put out public statements distancing themselves from 'transgender' as the very people it affects say that intersex and trans are nothing alike.

It kind of annoys me to see the 'but intersex' argument being brought up in relation to trans stuff tbh.

And no biological sex is not a social construct.

GuardianLions Chromosomes are physical reality i agree, but they are not binary, they are not one of two possible values. They are a combination of many different arrangements, this it not how binary works. If there were only two possible combinations xx and xy they your argument would have merit, but we know that is not the biological reality, there are many other combinations.

Eh? Excuse me!?!

I said that chromosomes were observable, I did not say binary, no one has denied that chromosomal abnormalities occur (in a small percentage of the population) - where did you pull that out?

I do assert (not in that particular post mind) that there are two observable reproductive sexes in humans. And that the sperm which fertilise the egg are produced by males and the egg that is fertilised by the sperm is within the female. There is not a third sex required, observable or possible in human reproduction.

Debbie6666

Good lord, Debbie. Disorder doesn't mean a moral judgement. It just means "not working as expected". I have a disorder of the immune system. I go to the doctor to get it treated. I don't take offence because the doctor says "something is wrong with your immune system". And it doesn't mean that there is a glitter rainbow of immune systems which are all perfectly valid.

It's not about feelings: it's about objective, material reality. Human beings are a sexually dimorphic species. It's how they reproduce. There are two sexes and a small number of development disorders. That's it. Fin.

The dishonesty in Debbie6666's approach is to argue that the current definitions of sex are no longer relevant because of extremely rare incidences of individuals where sex is difficult to determine and then to conflate this with "female penis" which we all know will be possessed by a gaslighting XY man with no chromosomal abnormality and no intersex condition whatsoever.

Yet again, it comes down to using people with an intersex condition as objects to support something wholly unrelated and scientifically nuts. Good luck to those who will continue to argue.

We have, you just wont accept it. The standard definitions dont involve any convoluted double think either.

Why dont you devise better ones that accommodate the self contradictory concept of a male vagina and female penis first before berating everyone else?

I think pretty much everyone here has been able to define sex.

catgirl1976

Of course there is a line of thinking that neither of them are changeable and that transgender people do not change sex or gender but rather always were both all along, they just suppressed and played along with another gender role to fit in.

Of course that then brings in the female penis and male vagina and definitions of sex that people are not comfortable with. But as we can see here, no one has yet completely defined sex without causing unintended divisions

irretating: Is it really helpful to tell that 16 yr old that they are disordered though. Something which by its very definition puts that person on the back foot and feeling wrong. A societal system that inherently tells people who don't fit the reproductive "ideal" that they are disordered and need fixing is inherently more cruel than one that accepts them and has a place for them but can also use its medical understanding to do whatever the individual needs to meet their own reproductive goals whilst not marking them out as disordered.

I think

Sex = observable, objective, unchangeable

Gender = unobservable, subjective, changeable

Sums it up for me. And I don't think we should base laws on the unobservable, the subjective or the changeable.

GuardianLions Chromosomes are physical reality i agree, but they are not binary, they are not one of two possible values. They are a combination of many different arrangements, this it not how binary works. If there were only two possible combinations xx and xy they your argument would have merit, but we know that is not the biological reality, there are many other combinations.

The Binary system concept itself is the social construct and as such anything we put into it like sex for instance must also be socially constructed in its binary understanding. That doesn't change the fact that underneath the binary model is the ever variant natural world which exists and which knows no binary.

The binary sex system has existed for 1000's of years before we discovered chromosomes, it is not unexpected that when we discovered that there were more things that define sex than genitals, that society forced its well established model onto the new data and consequently made the approximations that are key to forming binary systems and labeled all those variations as disorders of the established model, which is entirely unfair on those who they represent.

Do you really think so? If you're a 16 year old girl wondering why the hell you haven't started your period yet, or a bloke who has discovered the reason he and his wife have failed to conceive is because of his low sperm account, would it really be helpful to be told ''this is all part of the human experience, there's nothing the matter here, biological sex is a spectrum''?

We call things a disorder to acknowledge that people living with these conditions usually have difficulties not experienced by the rest of the population.

We know which children are girls and which are boys, and they are not fertile. Do you not understand the concept of belonging to a class?

So if you accept sex and gender to both be social constructs
Debbie - no-one accepts that sex is a social construct. Here's a way to think about it.
Some things, can be physically observed, for example - you can put sperm cells or ova on a slide and observe them with a microscope. That means that they are not a social construct, they are a biological reality, not requiring a human action, thought or opinion to actually exist. Human sex, our chromosomes and our conception and reproduction all fall into this category.

However, social constructs are not similarly fact based and observable because their existence depends on interactions between individuals - ie - they are the behaviours and strategies that facilitate living together as a group which are not fixed and are subject to revolution and change over time. They are abstractions such as politics, tradition, religion, economics, etc. Gender falls into this category.

nauticant Hallelujah, But re your last sentence. That is only the case because its the system we have derived to fit our binary model. Maybe without the binary model there would be less/no discrimination needing those laws for instance as there wouldn't be the same historical divisions. Just saying and trying to challenge the thread premise.

7 Days All arguments still rely on a model that only works if you use the model under test to force the data.

DJBaggySmalls. I know that all those things do not stop people being who they are but your test for sex that you posted which relied on reproduction and fertility does. Any test of what makes a sex which is a binary result only succeeds when there is a leap of assumption and generalisation to force the subjects into the model. It so ingrained in society you cant even see your making it.

Intersex people dont 'break the binary model'. Neither do infertile people such as pre pubescent girls or post menopausal women, or men who have had their testicles removed because of cancer, or men who have had a vasectomy.

Definitions are exclusionary. That does not make them harmful.

Addressed upthread Debbie

@Debbie6666 Can you link to the many cultures in humanity that do not recognise the binary sex system? (Please don't include the countries whose economies rely on contrived variations for sex tourism)