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

I think I see what Debbie6666 is arguing. They're saying that because sex is not absolutely and completely binary in absolutely every human being, then, taking into account the vanishingly small number of individuals where sex determination is not straightforward, it might be possible to formulate a different definition of sex. And as such, the definition we have is constructed according to how we have decided our world is.

The problem with this approach is it's meaningless sophistry in terms of a useable definition that would be useful to human society and just about all science apart from the most recondite specialised parts.

^Debbie6666 Human males (XY) belong to the class that do not bestow mitrochondrial DNA on their offspring via their gametes.
Females (XX) belong to the class that do.^

So where does that leave infertile people?

Debbie6666 Human males (XY) belong to the class that do not bestow mitrochondrial DNA on their offspring via their gametes.
Females (XX) belong to the class that do.

The other thing with gender is that relies on the individual in question being present and conscious to declare it. Without them being present and able to tell other people what it is, no one will know. Unlike sex which is 99% of the time self evident even if the person is unconscious or has been dead for 1,000 years.

When they dig up ancient skeletons they say what sex it was based on biology. Gender is only in the mind and if that mind is not present to declare it, it ceases to exist.

Do animals have genders?

No they don't, because it's a social construct which they are unaware of.

They have 2 sexes. You've got male chickens and female chickens. Nothing in between. You might get some disorders or anomalies butt here isn't a third sex category for chickens. You might get a hen that is aggressive and dominant but it's still a hen. You might get or a cockerel that likes to sit on eggs but it's still a cock.

Same for humans. 2 sexes.

Gender is a social construct and nothing more. There's either no gender or there are as many genders as there are people in the world.

To me, gender means stereotypes + personality. There seems to be no other definition around really.

Yes, the "overall gender" a person has depends on the buy-in they have to gender stereotypes covering the whole myriad of aspects of their lives. The buy-ins can be different, say for clothing, for other aspects of presentation, for DIY, for sport, for, well, everything. For a person, the buy-ins, varying across this myriad of aspects, come from the personality.

This to me makes a unique gender for every individual. Which makes gender a flawed basis for laws.

Care to put together a scientifically backed justification to your claim which doesn't modify the data set with the model your trying to prove to be correct.

Sex is not a social construct.
Gender is a social construct.

Throwing out the concept of biological sex wont make intersex peoples lives more comfortable, and its making life extremely unpleasant for 99% of the population.
Its making it harder for women to talk about abuse for one thing.

Binary is not a natural phenomenon. Its a constructed model simplifying complex systems and data sets into approximations to two possible values. The underlying data is never identical and nature doesn't use numbers which represent discrete values. Nature is full colour glorious reality.

So if you accept sex and gender to both be social constructs then they can indeed be binary, but the scientific evidence if critically analysed does not support that view. Dealing with chromosomes as an example simply because they are scientific fact as opposed to identity which is a squishy amorphous undefined idea not easily quantified (how we can then make that binary i have no idea)

We have people here saying that atypical chromosome combinations are disorders of the binary xx and xy. What their arguments do not seem to take into account is they are applying their binary model to the data set in order to prove the binary model is true. This is not very sound science but its not really a surprising result. 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.

If today we were to throw away all historical baggage and come up with a model of sex and gender based on the scientific knowledge of humans we have today, i'm pretty sure we would come up with far more sex and gender descriptions than two. The chromosomal combinations would force it for one, before even getting into identity and ones sense of self.

Indeed there are many cultures of humanity which do not recognise the binary sex and gender system and those cultures have the language to describe the extra variations.

Our historical western christian society which was going out into the world conquering new territories and needing populations to fill those continents were not accepting of non procreating behaviours and as such suppressed homosexuality and gender variance in our society and often those we conquered too, something we are still struggling with to this very day.

So no sex and gender are not binary, but the model we hold onto with vicious doggedness is, and at the detriment to some of those forced to live within it.

*That makes any sense and does not muddle up sex/'gender'

I genuinely wish people would stop using 'gender' fullstop. Its people using gender when they meant sex that got us into tis ridiculous mess in the first place. I have no issue with 'gender' being about masculinity or femininity. But for this to happen, certain people need to stop pretending we segregate loos, changing rooms and the likes by how macsuline or feminine a person is

To me, gender means stereotypes + personality. There seems to be no other definition around really.

I suppose what I meant was that the word 'gender' used to have a comprehensible meaning which was easily explained but now it is being used to mean something very slippery and undefinable.

So I would dispute that there are infinite genders as that renders the concept of 'gender' meaningless.

Gender is essentially meaningless though. It is personality plus which stereotypes you adhere to (or don't ahere to). Nothing more. Which it why it is batshit to be creating laws based on 'gender'

I don't think you can define gender as just personality, otherwise we wouldn't need the word 'gender'. I mean, everyone has their own individual personality which will be influenced both by inherited characteristis and environmental effects. But gender means 'kind' and has its origin in grammar. So I would dispute that there are infinite genders as that renders the concept of 'gender' meaningless.

The word 'gender' as most people probably know is in grammar used to identify the way nouns behaved and is typically of two or three types, masculine and feminine, or masculine, feminine and neuter. These genders derived from the animate nouns that defined them - 'woman' has a feminine meaning and in most languages, nouns that behave like 'woman' are feminine. However inanimate objects that don't have a sex also have a grammatical gender.

That's why gender came to be used informally first as a synonym for biological sex and then over the last few decades as something slightly different from biological sex, the societal and cultural state of being male or female.

So it's a very new slippy-slidey definition that would allow a word originally intended for taxonomic purposes to become a word that means whatever you want it to mean.

Some excellent and clear explanations here. Even a biology ignoramus like me can follow.

I tend to think there are about 7bn genders (personalities). And two sexes.

Reproductive state/health and reproductive classification are two different things.

A persons reproductive state/health is determined by many factors such as age, congenital and developmental requirements, whether they have any injury and/or disease.

Their classification is determined by the functionality of that reproductive system i.e. Whether they potentially could produce sperm or ova.

It matters not one jot if a persons reproductive system does produce sperm or ova, only that it could (if it were in good enough state of health). Infertility is a description of health not classification.

In extreme cases of disordered sex development the health of the reproductive system is so degraded as to make classification extremely difficult, however people suffering these conditions are not a new/third sex, they are technically uncategorisable and mercifully a tiny, tiny percentage of the human race. This has no bearing on their humanity and should not impact the way they they are treated by society (although clearly it sometimes does).

Conflating health and classification does a disservice to those suffering from reproductive ill health and potentially compounds the psychological issues they have to face.

There are seven billion + people with a personality and preferences which they would be left to discover and decide for themselves but that doesn't change the fact that humans are sexually diomorphic.

There are 7.5b or so genders. Unless you are taking 'gender' to mean the same as sex. Which would make it correct that there were 2 ( and the existance of intersex people does not mean there are more than 2 sexes in humans)

Just because some cases of a are b, doesn't mean all cases of a are b.

Do agree with it debbie?

Yes but that also doesn't exclude some cases of A being C, especially if you cant give a better argument of what A and B are than "it just is"

Logic requires that if we cant define A and B then we cant know if C exists or not, but many here seem to think that logic doesn't apply, and they can eliminate C based on incomplete data or by ignoring any evidence that may lead to evidence of its existence.

If a = infertile people
& b = abnormalities in sex chromosomes
& c = other causes of infertility

Then that works doesn't it?

"Its shameful to mark a variation as a disorder"

It's really, really not. There are lots of variations that are mistakes in that they are chromosomal abnormalities. If you take offence to that then crack on but it doesn't make people who acknowledge it for what it is (without emotive thoughts surrounding the fact) wrong.

I used to think of gender that way resting but now I see it as a spectrum of phoney, irritating performances people engage in. You have to kind of opt in or opt out of gender. Most people I hang around with don't really bother, we have more important responsibilities to be getting on with - so maybe as people get older they are more confident in their own personalities, so they don't need to hide behind a gender performance like a bunch of grating teens?

Not all people (but 99.5% do) fit into the XX/XY sex binary system.

But all people are born from XX and XY parents, grandparents and ancestors. And to carry on the descendancy line, those progenitors will be XX or XY likewise.

What human beings do/present as/identify as outside the realm of reproducing offspring is purely down to them. However, the fact humans are biologically a sexually dimorphic species, has huge political implications for how both sexes navigate the world, balance earning an external income with family live and how much control they have over their own bodies. That is where feminism comes in. To say that being a woman, and feminist analysis is about feelings and identities around femininity is disingenuous. To strip biology out of feminism is to erase the means to discuss the roots of our oppression and how to overcome it. A woman is a material, objective state of being, not an ethereal, subjective feeling.

To be perfectly honest I have always thought of gender as a spectrum from feminine to masculine as the traditional social construct of gender dictates that men and women are diametric opposites.

But how does that work in practice? How can it be a spectrum? Mustn't it be a scatter plot? Or does society assigns a masc/fem index to a behaviour/hobby/piece of clothing, I then pick the bits and pieces I like/do/wear, and from the average (mean/mode/median?) I get my fem/masc index number?

I am an experienced knitter, but I also program computers. I can cook, but I wear boxer shorts etc.

Of course none of this really matters at all, because the crux of it is, if DP and I bump uglies, I get to gestate our young, and that'll never change

You might not care Debbie but the evolutionary process is based on sexual reproduction. One sperm, one egg. One male, one female. That's how babies are made.

We're not snails or worms or hermaphrodite bryozoans. We're people. Two sexes. And some 'noise' because we need generic variation to produce evolution. Some of that works, some is discarded by evolutionary process.

Gender is cultural bullshit. Feel free to adopt it, play with it, reject it or whatever. Doesn't mean that men can start gestating young.

GuardianLions

So how about:

Just because some cases of a are b, doesn't mean all cases of a are b.

Do agree with it debbie?

Yes but that also doesn't exclude some cases of A being C, especially if you cant give a better argument of what A and B are than "it just is"

Logic requires that if we cant define A and B then we cant know if C exists or not, but many here seem to think that logic doesn't apply, and they can eliminate C based on incomplete data or by ignoring any evidence that may lead to evidence of its existence.

To be perfectly honest I have always thought of gender as a spectrum from feminine to masculine as the traditional social construct of gender dictates that men and women are diametric opposites. However, one could argue that this is not very relevant or not as relevant in modern society so who knows.

Ultimately I think that gender is all in our heads (as opposed to sex which is in our DNA) so I don't see why there can't be as many genders as you like.