Using gender when studying Biology! What are they teaching.

[Confusedmumannoyedson]

So was talking about getting a pet and my son said what gender. I said not gender just boy or girl and he said we aren't 'allowed' to say that anymore we have to use gender. I explained that gender is something you can pick and there are lots people use including them/they which is fine for how someone identifies but not for animals or when talking biology. I am thinking he is confused because he said they use gender in biology now and don't use sex. I checked with a friend who said he is right.

AIBU? Surely sex should be used for a science subject like biology, and gender should be kept for personal use for how someone thinks they are.

Have you read my comments? If not, it sounds like you’d find them interesting as I’ve addressed your questions- though I’m puzzled at why you slathered them in sarcasm.

And you can be male because you have two X chromosomes, but your heart and brain are male

I am baffled by this! Can you really have a “male brain” or a “male heart”?

@Studyoflife

"We don’t usually call biological sex a spectrum, although I suppose you could consider those exceptions as being at some point between XX and XY- it’s not something I’d ever considered to be honest.

I think though you’re thinking of the gender spectrum? Sociologically and psychologically we use the term gender to distinguish from XX and XY sexes- gender is how the person experiences life (how they feel, for example), rather than what chromosomes they have. That is referred to as a spectrum as there are many variations that someone may identify with."

I think what you're missing is that's there are, in fact, a lot of people trying to claim biological sex in humans is a spectrum based on the disorders/exceptions you listed up thread.

You can be male because you were born female, but you have 5-alpha-reductase deficiency and so you grew a penis at age 12.

That's not right though, is it?
They aren't born female and miraculously change to male.
They may have been misidentified as female at birth but they were never actually female.
They were born male and remain male. (See Caster Semenya who has 5-ARD).

Sorry, this quote was from Studyoflife

I missed that part.
A female with XX chromosomes but has a male brain and heart? Are they blue instead of pink or something?
No, that's not right at all and makes me doubt that poster has anything to do with biology.

I’m maybe not the best person to explain, but:

• Sex is used in a scientific sense to describe someone’s chromosomes (XX for female, XY for male). This is their DNA and what determines the genitals they are born with and the hormones they release, for example (with some medical exceptions).
• Gender is used in a social sense to mean how someone interprets themselves, how they feel and identify, and how they interact with the world. For most people, their gender tends to align with their sex, but for some people how they feel does not match up with their DNA so they may be of a different gender to what would be anticipated based on their chromosomes.
• Sexuality is separate again; I know you didn’t ask, but just for clarity’s sake sexuality is who you are sexually attracted to and is entirely separate to both sex and gender.

What characterises a male brain or heart? 🤔

Which gender matches up with which sex? How do I know what gender I am?
https://gender.fandom.com/wiki/List_Of_Genders

@Studyoflife Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain. I am still slightly confused. The poster above said "There are more than 2 sexes in a lot of other animals though". Lots of posters picked this up (some in not particularly kind ways). You then said that the poster was correct. However, it still seems to me that there are only two sexes. Would you say it is correct to say that there are two sexes in animals, but they are physically expressed in more ways than just XX and XY chromosomes or the size of gametes?

I am aware of different meanings of sex and gender, but I have come across the phrase "sex as a spectrum", eg. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/ . This graphic mixes biology and ideology and claims people with DSDs are less female or masculine than people without DSDs, which of course is problematic.

"but the beautiful thing about biology is that there are no perfect definitions and there are always exceptions to the rule."

The thing is, the exception does not in any way negate the rule. My son is a human child. Human children have 10 toes. My son does not. Nobody believes this makes him a dinosaur.

So should "gender reveal parties" be re-named "sex reveal parties" - serous question??!

I'd love to see the reactions of some elderly family members when they first receive an invite to a "sex reveal" and get the wrong end of the stick 😂😂😂😂

In theory, it should be a sex-reveal party but I can understand why people use gender in the old-fashioned way, which was as a polite synonym for sex.
At some point, gender has come to mean something completely different and a lot of people haven't caught up yet.

Sex is biological fact

gender is a concept

for a long time, the two terms were used to mean the same thing, as some people were too prudish to say “sex”, as if it was a dirty word. But now people acknowledge the two are not interchangeable and that sex matters and denying this leads to unfair treatment and oppression.

@ItsFunToBeAVampire made me chuckle anyway!!

Gender is used in a social sense to mean how someone interprets themselves, how they feel and identify, and how they interact with the world. For most people, their gender tends to align with their sex, but for some people how they feel does not match up with their DNA so they may be of a different gender to what would be anticipated based on their chromosomes

IMO most people don’t ever consider if they do or do not have a gender.

i don’t identify as a female - I am a female. I don’t feel like a woman - I am just me.

@Studyoflife I'm thinking hard about it. The explanation isn't new to me, but thank you for breaking it down. It's gender that confuses me. I am really sorry, but don't we interpret ourselves by observation of our bodies and by confirmation from others? That's how I came to the conclusion I am female. Identity comes partly from that interpretation. How we interact in the world is just a result of personality, life experience and social conditioning, I thought. I don't understand how people can have a separate man or woman feeling that's nothing to do with the observable reality. I do understand someone might have a strong desire to be the opposite sex, but that's a bit different. You sound very informed and well meaning, but I can not comprehend this set of ideas at all.

I think it’s important to distinguish between all living organisms, animals, and humans. We tend to think about humans (because we are human!) but most biologists think more about the variety of species as a whole- I know I do. So when we’re describing billions of species, we don’t bother to include all the anomalies and exceptions in those species, except when it’s relevant. So there are many more than two sexes in lots of species, but if we’re describing the human species, we’d say XX and XY, but with exceptions (like you’d find in other species too). We just don’t bother to caveat all the time by referring to those exceptions.

That article is interesting, but I suspect different people may interpret it differently. My interpretation is that it focuses on those exceptions- the genetic disorders- and attempts to map them alongside the norm. I don’t feel that it’s claiming we should entirely redefine sex, and it does distinguish between sex and gender. I think it is aiming to consider the exceptions and present them as evidence for not assuming sex and gender must always align perfectly with ‘XX means girl and XY means boy’- because as they’ve shown, there are exceptions. I think it’s more of a thought exercise than an attempt at redefining sex, and is showing that actually sex and gender are not as black and white as some people like to imagine.

Could you please explain about the male heart? How could that be possible in a female body?

@Studyoflife - thank you for trying to define gender -
I am puzzled by this : "For most people, their gender tends to align with their sex"
Given that gender and sex are different concepts then what does it mean that they are aligned? How would I know if my gender is aligned with my sex, apart from through sexist stereotypes?

Your comments weren't sarcastic?
Refusing to define what a woman is?

Mammals not amongst them.

How do we define what a woman is?

I entered this as a biologist intending to clarify sex in different species as people were asking- I’m afraid I’m not a gender expert and am shattered at this point in the evening so don’t think I’m the person to be answering this!

From my understanding of human development, you’re right that we base a lot of how we feel on social conditioning etc. There’s actually very little difference in male and female bodies and brains before puberty, so the gender stereotypes we see developing in children are almost entirely down to social conditioning, but with a normal distribution (bell curve) so there will always be extremes and overlaps. Hormones kick in mostly in puberty. Someone’s psychological gender development and interpretation of their gender is separate to this, and I don’t know enough about the current evidence on what drives this so I won’t try to explain it. Similar to you, I don’t entirely understand it because it’s not my experience, but I am absolutely confident that if those people, and medical experts, tell me they feel different, I believe them. It would be ludicrous for me to deny someone else’s experience. In the same way that there are exceptions and limitless variation when it comes to everything in our bodies and psychology (whether that be genetic or environmental variation, or disorders), it makes perfect sense to me that there would be exceptions and variation in terms of people’s gender. It’s just that I have a better understanding of what drives physiological variation than my understanding of psychological variation, and I think that is the case still within the medical evidence base.

@TheShellBeach Maybe a woman now is what society has agreed to call a set of socially constructed roles and stereotypes? I think it used to be linked to things like menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, but now I wonder if the definition changed when I wasn't looking.