An acquaintance on FB recently posted an article from Nature.com suggesting that biological sex is more of a spectrum. The article is from 2015 and the closing paragraph is as follows:
"So if the law requires that a person is male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash? “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,” says Vilain [ Eric Vilain, a clinician and the director of the Center for Gender-Based Biology at the University of California, Los Angeles.] In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask."
Here's a link to the full article:
http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
On a first read it seems to me the more complicated cases are very much in the minority but would be interested in people's thoughts on this.
Feminism: Sex and gender discussions
Now biology is a spectrum? Thoughts please
addictedtocereal · 31/03/2017 13:42
DJ Children play as perpetration for adult life, they try on many personas. We know that, its why we talk about them going through stages. The protestor or goth stage dont come as a surprise to most sensible parents.
It makes me feel ancient to say this (am only early 30s!) but it does strike me it's a "phase" for an awful lot of trans teens/young people. Despite the horrors of puberty, I found there was a certain delight in realising I was becoming a woman, becoming "sexy", I enjoyed experimenting with my appearance... and in a strange way, where geuinine enjoyment morphs into some weird gaslit Stockholm syndrome thing, I "enjoyed" performing femininity. I don't think I am alone in this! It strikes me from reading blogs etc by transwomen that they are doing the same thing; having a sort of experimental type stage, but crucially, they haven't come out of the other side. But whereas I had waist-length black hair and lots of eyeliner (And I still protest 
), they have missing body parts and sterility. Yay.
Argh, now I've typed that it seems stating the obvious and I don't know if it's worth posting! My main point is that I have read stuff by transwomen that I can really relate to; it sort of reawakens some teenage thing.
Also, re. intersex - it wouldnt matter if half the population were intersex, it still wouldn't be a reason why the definitely males should be labelled definitely females or definitely intersex.
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