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

[Childrenofthestones]

Not my words but Steven Crowder's (like him or loathe him). in this interesting experiment on a campus.

If you think there are more than 2 sexes, could you name them for us please? Numbers 3 4 and 5 would be fine.

You know it kind of boils my piss when people argue that people with sex chromosomal disorders are just some groovy third sex human unicorn.

I had a family member with a sex chromosomal disorder and not only did it significantly shorten her life due to heart and lung problems, but it impacted her whole life from hospital stays, to surgery, to physical pain that she lived with day to day, to never being able to participate in anything remotely athletic, to dealing with being neurologically atypical and having to find adaptive behaviours to cope with social expectations, to never having a romantic or sexual relationship, to never experiencing parenthood etc, etc.

She was a sweet, lovely, funny, talented, kind person who was greatly loved by her friends and family and her presence made the world a better place but her condition was costly to her physical comfort, her self esteem and it limited her experiences. It is a testament to her spirit that she made the best of it while she was here, but it was not a life path that anybody would wish upon someone and she wasn't a cool human variant and it's highly inappropriate to suggest she and people like her are because it invisibles the struggles they face and their grief at not being able to have the experiences that some of us perhaps take for granted.

That's rough, Pixies. She sounds fab. Sorry to hear you no longer have her with you.

BelligerentGardenPixies

I agree. And if my participation in this thread is causing offence by the very nature of the thread, I apologise.

It’s an argument that is relentlessly brought up to shore up the trans ideology.

Most people now just deflect it with the reminder that trans is not intersex and that intersex people don’t want to be co-opted.

(Apart from this thread), I do believe that the appropriation of intersex is lessening as a result.

You may as well argue that the integers do not exist as their existence requires imposing an arbitrary system of classification on the set of real numbers.
It would be pointless, though, for all practical purposes. How would we count?

If an alien came to earth they would, by observation conclude that humans fell into 2 categories for sex categorisation purposes.

They would after scientific experiment conclude that there were exceptions to this caused by disorders or that some females had more testosterone than would normally be expected etc but they would still come away using a binary classification.

As a non-biologist, I'd just like to say that this is a really interesting thread and I'm learning a lot.

I'd also like to ask some questions. Could somebody who has spent time observing chromosomes under a microscope say a bit about X and Y chromosomes? My (ultra-basic) understanding of chromosomes is that they are strings of genes, made out of DNA. Every human being who has developed normally has 23 pairs of chromosomes in every cell of the body except the gametes. One set of 23 comes from the mother in her egg, the other set of 23 comes from the father in his sperm and they marry up when the egg and sperm fuse at conception, hence why the gametes have to have 23 single chromosomes, not 23 pairs.

Now, is it right that all the chromosomes except the Y one are X-shaped, or are the other 22 different shapes? (Trivial detail but I realise now I don't know.)

And is it also right that the Y chromosome is the X chromosome with part of a leg missing? Hence diseases like haemophilia being more common in boys because if the mother passes down a defective gene on that leg of her X chromosome that's the only copy of that gene her son will get, there being no equivalent gene to inherit from his father. By contrast, her daughter would probably have got a good gene from her father's X chromosome.

And finally - X and Y chromosomes - once scientists had the technology to see chromosomes, presumably they collected thousands of images of them, published them, studied them and gradually came to a consensus based on those observations that about 50% of humans have two chromosomes shaped like an X and almost all the other 50% have one shaped like an X and one shaped like a Y. And guess what, humans with XX almost invariably have clearly female anatomy and XY are almost always clearly male.

It is presumably not the case that they wanted to find two sex chromosomes and went through looking at a wide range of shapes saying 'More like an X than a Y, into the X pile' and 'Well, it's more like a Z but let's say Y for this one'.

I'm not sure that's clear. It's just that reading Debbie's posts it seemed to me that she is suggesting that scientists have rigged the theory to support the conclusion they wanted to find, and I doubt that.

Getting back to original question as to whether there are more than 2 genders. Until recently, this was not questioned because of the very strong tie to biological sex. It is only in recent times that we've even started to seriously consider the question. Since gender is a societal construct, this will not change until a major part of society agrees something different. That a small minority thinks differently makes no difference to the overall society belief. So right now, today, I'd have to say that yes, we have only 2 genders.

I'd also add that, ironically, transgenderism will probably increase belief in the binary classification, as you can only change gender if there is another gender to change to.

But @Jaxhog on the same planet there is a gender expression for women that has make up, heels, skinniness and shiny hair AND one that has facial tattoos AND one with veils and black clothes and no hair showing. Clearly all 'female' gender expression but completely different.

So are they the same gender and different expressions or are they different genders? It's all semantics (unlike sex) but interesting nonetheless.

Bad science is to use the rules of the result your trying to prove to manipulate the data used in the analysis

Like using the existence of DSDs to 'prove' that the nebulous subjective concept of gender identity is a real true honest to goodness biological fact?

I'd also add that, ironically, transgenderism will probably increase belief in the binary classification, as you can only change gender if there is another gender to change to.

Agree 100%. Just as society is embracing all spectrum of gender identification, along come the TRAs to insist there are only two, and they are the other one.

Debbie

What happens if you try to disprove your theory yourself? Does it increase or decrease your confidence in your position?

Its quite possible ignoring intersex chromosomes variances is the ideological argument as the science backs up that there are more than two sex chromosome types, not that there are only two. We ideologically wont accept that though

It's theoretically possible. But it's a theory so easily challenged that I can't help but bracket a belief in it with creationism (I realise that you are legitimately interested in challenging/testing accepted wisdom and not necessarily stating what you believe). OTOH, binary sex with various disorders of sex development over the generations seem to fit evolutionary and other robust, testable bio theories. So why wouldn't this be the more likely scenario? It's possible that existing paradigms of sex are wrong. But the challenges here seem philosophical rather than scientific.

I think that this is an important discussion though. What seems obvious to many of us is no longer set in stone for huge swathes of people.

Pixies I wish that people didn't have to cope with these things.

Hi Gasp0de. The Y chromosome is much smaller than the X chromosome. I vaguely recall that all chromosomes look X shaped when replicating but none of them do when they are not replicating, not even the X. The Y is not Y shaped.

@BlindYeo, thanks! I might have to brace myself and head over to Wikipedia. O level Biology was 40 years ago and things may have moved on a touch since then.

My evolutionary psychology lecturer told the class that the Y looked like a small, sad, deformed X. That got a laugh from about half the lecture theatre.

Chromosomes 1 to 12 look like they're having so much more fun than the poor old sex chromosomes, BlindYeo.

I find the quibbling over the material observability of sex classes particularly overstated when compared to the cheerful acceptance of much ropier evidence for a sexed brain binary. Unless these are distinct positions?

On a side note, You and Yours on R4 today did a feature on men increasingly wearing makeup. I wasn't listening with full attention but the whole tone of the piece and several of the vox pops was very 'What will they think of next?! '.

This surprised me because it implies that the whole genderfluid, nonbinary, trans trend is even more niche than I'd thought. I don't think that aspect of things was even mentioned in passing. I had thought there might have been a reference to glam rock or the 80s too.

@MrsTerryPratchett there in lies the dilemma. There are wide variations in different societies as to what 'female gender' means, but all of them would call that gender 'female'.

I see what you mean lance

X and Y look a bit like they've had an argument and are not speaking to one another. Or perhaps they are fed up with all the cobblers that goes on in their name, while the others just get to make kidneys and toenails and stuff.

GardenPixies

That is a weird karyotype. It looks like they cut the actual condensed chromosomes in half.
Did they catch them post mitosis?