very few of us know what sex we are

[greenapplesred12]

Someone just said this to me.
They said that there are numerous ways to determine someone's sex apart from chromosomes. And that there are as many genders as there are people. And, this old chestnut " sex is assigned at birth"
How do I respond to this? This person is a health professional. This person posted on a health forum where about 80-90% of other professionals were in agreement with him. Why are people buying into this stuff?

Ask them to explain how the biological reality of sex throughout all mammals, including those who don't have the brain capacity for complex thought, is a social construct and watch them talk themselves into a hole.

Funny that men all seem to know exactly what a person's sex is when they need a prostitute or a surrogate.

I can feel my blood pressure rising. Why did I have to bite? I see so much of this stupidity and none of it is challenged. People just pile on like sheep to agree. It's utterly pointless though. It's like someone is holding a cat and saying 'look at the cute puppy' and refusing to see it. And everyone around them is doing the same.

@NotTerfNorCis the latter, I think. And perhaps the former too. I think they're confused. I feel a bit guilty exposing their lack of understanding.

@HandsOffMyRights

Those links. Terrifying.

I'd suggest they pop out onto the street, stop the nearest person and ask them what sex they are and what sex anyone else in sight is. Because yes, they will know.

Then suggest they have a chat to a local farmer and see if they sex baby sheep/cows/horses/cats/dogs via careful genetic tests and intensive interview or whether there's a quick, easy way they've figured out. And how long it's been working like that.

No one is actually confused about this at all, it's just currently fashionable wankery to pretend that confusion. But only to others of a certain class and educational group, while looking down on anyone not as enlightened and open minded as them.

Some people do talk the biggest piles of bollocks.

Of course we know what sex we are. Ambiguity is incredibly rare and in the Western world investigated when it occurs.

Where's a small boy to point and laugh at the naked emperor when you need one?

People who can't tell their arse from their elbow also struggle with their tits and bollocks.
This made me laugh out loud 😂

They're passionately defending their position and saying that both sex AND gender are a social construct.

Someone said exactly the same thing on the Moral Maze last night. When this stuff seeps into Radio 4, you know the world's going slowly crazy.

I don't see how anyone call sex a social construct when it's so scientifically testable and observable.

There are 8 billion people on earth and 353,000 babies are born every day. I'm guessing an awful lot of people have managed to work it out. Just tell them to go and milk a bull.

Funny that men all seem to know exactly what a person's sex is when they need a prostitute or a surrogate.

Best quote Ever.

Shameless steal!

Every time a man produces sperm he knows he's male, the sex that produces small motile gametes.

I'd also ask them "DO YOU HAVE A MOTHER?" because I don't think I'd be able to stop myself shouting. What an idiot. I hope they aren't a doctor.

I tried to write a serious, non-sarcastic response but I just couldn't. Sorry.

It's ridiculous that we're not supposed to mock this shit.

Emperor, may I introduce you to clothes?

Jux
Clothes? Nah!

He just loves flashing penis and showing it off to women. And women can't ever object, because that would be "transphobic".

Everyone knows who are the women born women, and who are the men born men, and we can always tell the difference.

Replacing sex with gender is like replacing modern medicine with prayer.
Doing it to yourself is foolish but doing it to others is inexcusable.

Tell them:

Every single human being who has ever stepped foot on this planet came out of a woman.

(For what it is worth I think this is why men hate us so much.)

Someone has probably already pointed out that every human on this Earth (and there are many) was delivered from the uterus of a female. We females do not always have every one of our female parts in full working order, just as not every human being does not always have every one of their body parts in full working order. Yet these women are still women, just as all humans are fully human.

Yet the male person who removes or renames his male body parts is still male, and the transwomen who have gestated number zero by any reckoning.

Sorry Pallisers you said it already

I once worked in a university that required pups from rats for experiments (nothing to do with me, I chose not to experiment with animals, but I was aware of it). The animal house knew what a female rat and a male rat were, and what to do x days prior to the pups being required.

My understanding is that a tiny number of people produce neither type of gamete but may have vestigial parts of the mechanisms to produce both. Or may for example internally have non functioning male gamete producing mechanisms but externally female looking anatomy so brought up and universally perceived as female.

That's not having 'vestigial parts of the mechanisms to produce both'. Female (or ostensibly female) external genitalia have nothing to do with gamete production. What matters are the parts that produce (or fail to produce) the gamete, i.e. the testes or ovaries.

Just noticed an important 'or' in the quote there, sorry. Still, never heard of anyone with both testes and ovaries, was my point. Not sure how it would ever happen. They develop from the same embryonic structure. If that structure doesn't develop in a way that makes it identifiable as an ovary or a testis (not sure this is a thing that happens), then you can still look at the chromosomes. If a baby is born with missing limbs, we don't pretend we don''t know it should have had two hands and two feet, or which limbs those should each be on the end of.

There are indeed extremely rare individuals resulting from eg the fusion of male and female fertilised eggs. However, no example of of fertility of both types of general tissues simultaneously (where present). Even if this were the case, it is not typical of our species, just as bipedalism is characteristically human. Importantly, trans individuals do not appear to have these DSDs at an increased rate.

gonadal tissue