Sex as a spectrum

[truthnothate]

A RL friend came up with the "sex is a spectrum" argument. I had a feeling this spectrum wasn't going to look very impressive so I made a picture. The bar is shaded red/yellow/blue according to the proportion female/ambiguous/male sex.

To show I did actually use more than 2 categories. I have used the data from I used the figures quoted from Fausto-Sterling by Leonard Sax here: www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/
I've followed Sax's description of who actually has ambiguous sex i.e. those with mixed genotype, or where phenotype does not match genotype. So I have not included men or women with LOCAH who are clearly and unambiguously men and women respectively, or Turner's, Kleinfelter (though LOCAH is the only one of these common enough to possibly show up on the graph). If I was unsure I put it in ambiguous e.g. Other non-XX non-XY is in my Other category and counting as ambiguous though in reality most of them aren't even slightly.

I am so sick of this argument.
Prove to me that a male who has literally completed the male reproductive role several times (like Caitlin Jenner) can become the same as a female (the kind with a womb/eggs) just by saying they "feel like" the opposite sex.
That's the actual claim of a trans activist.
It's bunk.
They just keep throwing irrelevant ideas out there to confuse people and prevent them thinking about basic principles.
You cannot change sex.
Intersex is not trans.
Next question.

Excellent bar chart and 'spectrum'.

Can you post higher resolution images? I'd like to save them, with your permission.

I'll have a go tomorrow jelly - it's just a screenshot so I should be able to do same bigger.
Agreed heresy, it's not at all relevant to trans discussions, a vanishingly small proportion of trans people are anything but straightforward male or female. It's about blurring lines I think. But I also get cross when people post a nice image of a bimodal distribution with two peaks and a big overlap and say sex is like this - it's not.

Even if sex was, hypothetically, on a spectrum, you're still talking about people at one end, saying they're at the other end.

But yes, good graphic !

No. Everyone, including people with intersex conditions, are still male or female - they just have developmental differences. Errors in the pathways associated with the normal development.,
They aren’t some kind of halfway Male and halfway female. What’s meant by ambiguous isn’t ‘halfway between the sexes.’ No one is producing sperm and eggs

Intersex conditions have NO bearing on the concept of being trans. The TRA interest in intersex conditions is not benign, it’s to use them as a kind of gotcha device.

Great diagram. Would also like to re use.

IWs assertion that biology gets it wrong sometimes has been playing on my mind and making me quite cross as it only gets it 'wrong' if you can call it that (I prefer different or an anomaly) in intersex and if you look at disability theory IWs assertion was really quite offensive.

This is a great diagram to show this.

Society gets gender wrong.

But I also get cross when people post a nice image of a bimodal distribution with two peaks and a big overlap and say sex is like this - it's not.

Hear hear :)

Clearly whoever said sex is a spectrum was confusing it with "personality". Simple mistake.

The other thing that gets me about this kind of argument is when people talk about other species that can change sex, like Clownfish, as if that’s evidence that trans-people can genuinely change sex too.

Just because a fish can spontaneously change from a fertile male fish to a fertile female fish under the right environmental conditions (or vice versa), it doesn’t mean that a human can too.

I read a Facebook comment yesterday that bisexual wasn't inclusive of intersex people.
How bloody dare these people promote this shit! Imagine being a teenage girl with a female body who has to discover that she can't have babies because she doesn't have ovaries, instead she has vestigial testes that might turn cancerous at some point. Then some dickhead on Facebook says that boys won't fancy you because you have an intersex condition! That homo and heterosexual orientations don't cover you because you're a third sex somehow! Fuck sake. Do they have any idea how offensive they are being?
Same with a man with Klinefelter. A bit chubby, small penis and balls, but still a man! Do we tell these guys 'hey, straight women won't fancy you, sorry, you're not really a man! Better look for a partner from the 3% of women who identify as pansexual'!
Fuck sake. The SJWs who think intersex invalidates homo, bi and heterosexual orientations have a) literally no idea what intersex actually means and b) no care for how offensive they are being.

no care for how offensive they are being

Pretty much covers trans ideology.

Bowl, in a small number of individuals with disorders there are various possible combinations, including "true hermaphroditism" where a baby is born with both ova and testis tissue. Or if you prefer genotype to determine your male/female, there are people with mosaic XX and XY. Whatever measure you use for "true sex" I think you are going to find some very rare exceptions where it's not well defined. I don't really know enough to argue with Sax's classification of the various disorders. I just wanted to illustrate just how rare these things are.

Fully agree with your second para too. I think basically the argument is, they want to overwrite sex with gender, which is not so much a spectrum as a full zoo, so when we point out that gender is not a simple dichotomy they want to claim that sex is no better. Which is blatantly nonsense.

I did a set of graphics on "science vet" s stupid pink /blue sex is a spectrum charts..... I can't believe number of apparently sensible people that have tweeted that shit around!

(order of the graphics should be read from right to left.... )

NotANotMan agree that's really offensive. Intersex people with ambiguity I would say are the only case where the phrase "assigned sex at birth" has meaning and importance. Does that make sense? I don't think I would want to be arguing that the teenaged girl in your post is actually a teenaged boy.

Candid, love it, lol at the negative number of penises in particular!

Fabulous graph OP. The bar chart, in particular, says it all.

TRA SJWs aren't arguing that the girl is a boy; rather that the girl is some kind of third sexed person it's just nonsense.

Most intersex conditions aren't visible at birth. Those which result in condition due to enlarged clitoris or micro penis at birth are extremely rare.

The mosaic XX XY cases (or case, I think I’ve only read of one) is fascinating. A poster here pointed out that it actually raises more questions about the nature of the organism as an individual. I’m not sure even those with true hermaphroditism produce both gametes though? Even if primordial tissues are present

Actually if you’ve given birth to a boy you are a mosaic - foetal cells transfer to the mother’s body and stay there for life. We still don’t understand everything they do, there seem to be beneficial effects and negative ones.

All this is fascinating - and it still tells us that sex is a binary.

The appropriation of intersex really annoys me. It also means I have to talk about it in a way which sometimes makes it sound like a ‘look at this fascinating specimen’ rather than people. People who have historically been treated pretty badly by the medical profession.

Bowl, I always enjoy your posts because their are both informative and well-written.

Thank you :)

I’ll save the graphs, OP, they’re a good illustration

Figures quoted in Sax's article:
(a) late-onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia (LOCAH), 1.5/100; (b) Klinefelter (XXY), 0.0922/100; (c) other non-XX, non-XY, excluding Turner and Klinefelter, 0.0639/100; (d) Turner syndrome (XO), 0.0369/100; (e) vaginal agenesis, 0.0169/100; (f) classic congenital adrenal hyperplasia, 0.00779/10; (g) complete androgen insensitivity, 0.0076/100; (h) true hermaphrodites, 0.0012/100; (i) idiopathic, 0.0009/100; and (j) partial androgen insensitivity, 0.00076/100. Of which he says the first 5 have no sex ambiguity.

Attempt at better image. Any good?