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Original poster

Help me get my ducks in a row here...

57 replies

GCSciFiFan · 23/12/2019 08:58

Ok so I seem to have some friends (who I thought had more brains but hey ho) who believe that because Alice Roberts says there's more than two sexes it must be true.

Anyway - I'm happy with the definition of your sex being to do with your reproductive class...but I can see a glaring hole in that one that she will find and I don't know an answer that will work....

If you are a woman because you are of the class of people who produce large, stationary gametes, how do you know you are a member of that class if you don't produce them (ie are infertile)? Why doesn't your class change (if we use that definition) if you have your ovaries removed?

How do you then say that "you are still a member of that class even though your biology is broken" without opening that up to men saying that they are actually a member of that class just with more badly broken biology?

(And no, I'm not saying infertile women aren't women - I'm preparing an answer to the argument).

My worry with this is that you are a member of that class because either it's blindingly obvious in the same way as the fact you are human is blindingly obvious - or we are back to a woman is someone without a Y chromosome (Do I mean a working SRY region on the Y chromosome here?) - at which point why use the reproductive class argument?

Then you get into the "but scientists say that it's more complicated than just chromosomes"...and I'll end up where we started. Plus she will then bring up sex-changing fish (apparently birds and mammals are unusual in having their sex linked to chromosomes rather than other factors - I checked) and will use the "if fish can do it then scientists in the future will be able to make humans do it - you'd never have predicted IVF etc" argument....

On a slight tangent does anyone know of anywhere in the world that has a useable, non-circular legal definition of sex?

OP posts:
Birdsfoottrefoil · 23/12/2019 09:47

And if you have congenital malformation and are born with just one leg, does this mean people with two legs can grow another one?

OldCrone · 23/12/2019 09:46

Nearly everyone (about 99% of people) have chromosomes which are XX (female) or XY (male). A tiny number of people have different chromosomes, but these are irrelevant when considering the majority of the population, in the same way the existence of people with 6 fingers on each hand is irrelevant when considering the normal number of digits is 5.

Chromosomes are fixed, so people can't change sex. A woman who has her womb and ovaries removed, or was born without them, is still a woman. A man who has his penis and testicles removed is still a man.

Scientists have classified all DSDs as either male or female. Their existence does not mean that a man who has XY chromosomes and has fathered children can become a woman if he takes female hormones and has his genitals reconfigured.

Birdsfoottrefoil · 23/12/2019 09:46

Humans have two legs, if you have to have one amputated are you no longer human?

MIdgebabe · 23/12/2019 09:39

DNA tests are quite cheap now for people who struggle.

koshkat · 23/12/2019 09:31

So sick of this shit and having to justify what we all know to be true. It is never the male sex that is called in to question - a man is a man is a man. But ask these idiots what a woman is and it is oh so very 'complicated'. Wankers.

PityParty4one · 23/12/2019 09:24

You cant argue with stupid OP.

I spent 2 years trying to do that on Twitter and it got so vaccum like I thought the whole world thought that humans could change sex.

I then left Twitterwas banned came back in to the real world and realised nope the huge majority of the human race know there are only 2 sexes and that we are not fish.

OhHolyJesus · 23/12/2019 09:12

Humans are not fish.

Intersex is best described as Difference of Sexual Development as people are not 'between sexes'.

A woman without the ability to reproduce is not a man. (A woman who chooses not to have children, therefore not using her gametes, is a man?)

If a male skeleton is found buried in a dress is it a female corpse? No.

There is a non-circular argument to discuss sex - sex is binary - but the people you are arguing with are unlikely to adhere to it as they don't think sex doesn't exists.