How accurately do humans identify biological sex?

[Acorninspring]

I often see the claim that people are very good at identifying biological sex, regardless of what gender someone is presenting as. I agree with this. However, I did wonder if we actually had any empirical evidence to back it up? Any research studies etc? It would also be interesting, if for example, men and women were significantly different in their ability to identify biological sex.

Ophelia I'm not sure scientific studies are needed. It'd be one of those "Oh look scientists have discovered that humans need water".

Agreed, I just wondered in light of some of the arguments in favour of self id.

I find the inter-species thing really interesting. When my cat was a few months old, she started following my prepubescent son everywhere and doing this strange thing with her tail. (I'd never seen a cat in heat before.) I took her to the vet, who said that cats in heat seek attention from male humans if they have no access to a tom. It seems to be a scent thing. I'm sure cats have a better sense of smell than humans but I still think I can distinguish between an adult woman and an adult man by smell. Or maybe I identify as a cat.

Body shape is the big one, very difficult to change that, esp if the narrow hip and long torso, just ain't nothing going to hide that. But there are other tells, like adam's apple (unless they had that surgery), and other things like the brow line, and sometimes even the shape of the clavicle (women don't have the real V shape, but alas some males can have the wide, flat one).

But all in all, late transitioners, rarely ever pass.

I won't say you can tell 100% of the time, but you can tell a lot of the time. And some people are super androgynous, regardless.

As a PP said though, pre-puberty it is quite hard to tell if a child is male or female without stereotypical visual cues.

It would be interesting to know how good humans are at correctly guessing sex with trans people who have been on puberty blockers and then cross sex hormones, who them become adults who have not gone through puberty.

But what's teh point?

Poeple keep saying that sex is a social construct. Gender is real. There are no such thing as sexed bodies. You can't tell teh difference between men and women nearly as well as you think...

It's not true though is it. Clearly sexed bodies exist and wihtout the trappings eg hair makeup clothes - clearly it's pretty obvious which are male and female due to the whole cock / cunt thing.

Animals that don't have sexual dimorphism have other, non visual clues to determine biological sex. Such as scent or behaviour.

Humans are sexually dimorphic, and adult males and females look different. Even animals can spot the difference, they don't have to rely on their sense of smell to work out what sex humans are.
Its such a fundamental social signal that people get confused and angry when they feel they have been hoodwinked or fooled.

Children don't look different because they take a long time to mature, and it would not be in their best interests - they are not sexually available.

I'm pretty crap at remembering faces, following directions, etc. But even I have only inadvertently "misgendered" someone twice. They were:
A) a prepubescent boy with long hair
B) a woman dressed as a jellyfish.

not sure scientific studies are needed

They are absolutely needed as there is money to be made from technical applications of machine learning ie identification of individuals

When I walk alone after dark I'm constantly on the alert for potential threats. Not paranoid, just a woman who has been attacked by male strangers on more than one occasion; sadly, this is pretty standard if you talk to your average female. And I can tell from a great distance if someone is male - their height, shape, gait, body language. It feels encoded but probably also from accumulated vigilance and risk assessment. I'm pretty sure this is quite common.

You know how scientists have been trying to decipher dolphin speech for years? It turns out that 95% of the speech content is discussion about pronouns. I mean, come on, how can one dolphin figure out the sex of another one, they all look practically the same!

Why would like sort of research be more complex than other similar types of research? I'm sure there are lots of variables but that doesn't usually prevent research entirely. I'm no expert though.

Nauticant they probably say the same about humans!

This might be relevant, it's unclear whether it's ongoing: opl.apa.org/Experiments/About/AboutGenderPerception.aspx

In general, hands are a dead giveaway unless the trans woman is very small. Funnily enough a lot of trans women seem to be pretty big - even for blokes.

Nauticant, that made me laugh!

Why would like sort of research be more complex than other similar types of research?

There are too many variables: height, weight, build, age and race being just the ones that I can think of off-hand.

Does anyone remember a short series shown on Channel 4 about 18 or so years ago when a small group of men and were in their 20s were asked to dress up and try to 'pass' as people of the opposite sex?

The 'winner' was a man. Going by a very hazy memory - he was Brazilian, named Pablo, had a short, slight-ish build and was a student at the then-named Thames Valley University (now University of West London). The women were the first to be 'unmasked'.

I think tbh the only time you genuinely can't tell with adults are when the individual is very severely under or over weight and dressed in baggy clothing. That masks secondary sexual characteristics, and a lot of fat around the face can mask jaw lines and potential Adams apple, while being very severely under weight also makes the bone structure look unfamiliar and females lack the differentiating curvier blunting of edges which a woman with enough body fat to menstruate has at a healthy weight.

Even then it's usually clear which sex someone is. But those are the only body shapes that sometimes mask biological sex, and even then of course only in combination with being covered up in baggy shapeless gender neutral clothes.

With children pre puberty you can't necessarily tell if hair and clothes are the same, but prepuberty that's unsurprising as most of the differences aside from actual genitals and chromosomes only manifest at puberty.

Terfs research has been done to assess the many factors in early years and the impact on educational outcomes. Surely that's of the same level?

My 10 year old DS walked in when I was watching Munroe Bergdorf being interviewed by Andrew Neil

He studied the screen for maybe 10 seconds, and said "He must spend a lot of time on his hair"

I have no problems telling which sex someone is.

I knew a transwoman in passing in childhood, they lived near me. I remember questioning it all with my Mum, when the transwoman was out of earshot. I remember I was fascinated by them as a child, how they moved mostly. I remember they always seemed so sad and my safety instinct was on high alert.

There's a study that had women smell a t-shirt and decide if the person was attractive to them. Screw height and Adam's apples, I'm fairly sure that I could tell blindfolded if I got to sniff an unperfumed neck .

My DGF's was aggressive to men and the only woman he ever went for was wearing her boyfriends jumper.

Dog. Not my DGF, he was a very nice man!!!

Terfs research has been done to assess the many factors in early years and the impact on educational outcomes. Surely that's of the same level?

Nope. As I said, there are too many variables.

But the other research had hundreds. I don't see why this one is so different

Oh, FFS. For the third time, there are too many variables to account for. The number of participants is not the same as the number of variables.