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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Sex is not binary?

29 replies

accessorizequeen · 09/02/2020 18:22

I'm feeling quite lost in a conversation on another forum (I'd rather not name it). This person said in a discussion that there are no sexes. When I queried this, this was the response. I haven't read all of the citations in this Nature article but I scanned the article.

No, it's false to say sex is entirely binary and that individuals are either 100% female or 100% male.
For a quick summary: "Sex redefined""_
Also, please be careful that you are not conflating intersex with transgender—they are two separate (but occasionally related) conditions. Intersex folks may be cis or trans; trans folks might not have any identifiably intersex traits.

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GammonWithAHardR · 08/04/2020 19:11

Humans are sexually dimorphic, which means that they have traits that skew in one of two directions, typically thought of as masculine or feminine, this is where the concept of the sex binary comes from. The poster is correct to tell you that no human actually has a binary sex though.

Some examples of sexually dimorphic traits might be:

Body hair
Genitals
Secondary sexual characteristics like breasts
Facial hair
Endocrinal systems, hormones etc
Chromosone karyotype

Now some of those dimorphic traits are pretty straightforward binaries, like chromosone karyotype, whilst others are spectrums, like facial hair, the presence of breasts, or how much testosterone you're running on an average day.

They all lean in one direction or another, which is binary, but how far they lean, and in what assortment, is not binary. It's much more complicated.

You can think of a person and their sex as a big spectrum with needles all over the place, some might be smack right on female or on male, and others leaning one way or another to varying degrees.

When we try to define someone's sex we're essentially eyeballing all those needles and trying to take an average, but it would be silly to suggest that someone is just 100% male or female, since there's so much information at play.

When those needles are calibrated in particularly uncommon ways, or ways that prevent the taking of that "easy average", we refer to that as an intersex condition.

accessorizequeen · 09/03/2020 19:26

You're probably right. I found the lecture about intersex hard enough to swallow! I found the author on twitter and she said she didn't think sex wasn't binary so it would seem that some people are using the article mistakenly.

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OhHolyJesus · 08/03/2020 18:56

You are either a man or a woman with a DSD condition.

Sex is binary.

Debating with those who argue it is probably a pointless exercise though.

accessorizequeen · 09/02/2020 18:24

To clarify I didn't actually say sex is binary although I have always thought it is. I didn't mention intersex.

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