Help explain non binary

[Educationneeded]

Hi, thread was inspired by the other about coming out as GC. I have name changed as I’m not ready to be outed so just incase.

I am GC, although only have expressed my views to close friends and family. My younger sister is due to go up to high school in September and six months ago came out as non binary. We all believe this decision was heavily influenced by TikTok and the wokeness on there.

My parents don’t really understand. My Dad just rolls his eyes but my Mum wants to learn however doesn’t know much on the subject and has asked me to talk to my sister. I have no idea how to even approach the topic with her. Anyone have any guidance? Anything I can tell or show my Mum? I’ve read a lot on trans and women’s right but not much on non binary and don’t really know where to start with this minefield. I guess I’d like to educate myself too.

@midgedude

Exactly which is why beards are not used to determine sex

They are commonly associated primarily with males , so there is a greater probability that the person with a beard is male but that's all

That's right, and the same argument can be made for any sex characteristic you care to name.

You can act as muddled as you like but there’s no ability to change your chromosomes.

Your sex cannot change.

@MarshaBradyo

People can try to warp the language but the biological reality can’t be changed wrt to XX or XY

www.scientificamerican.com/article/beyond-xx-and-xy-the-extraordinary-complexity-of-sex-determination/

@MarshaBradyo

You can act as muddled as you like but there’s no ability to change your chromosomes.

Your sex cannot change.

Well, at least you agree that someone who is, by your definition, male, can fall pregnant and give birth:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/

I can see you holding onto an incredibly rare case.

But no XX is still female and XY male and you can’t switch. It might be a tough reality for you I don’t know, but that’s the biological reality.

That's one way of attempting to divide people into sexes, but it's not the only one, and it's not the one I, and many other people use.

What is the one you use?

The rest of your post is derived from your assumption that it's all about reproduction.

If sex isn't about reproduction, what is it about?

Using your definitions, what makes a person trans? If there aren't two distinct categories to transition between, then how can anyone be trans?

some women have beards.

Please stop politicising female medical conditions like this. It is simply offensive now because you have tried this one before. This exact example if I believe.

Females who have beards suffer from medical conditions. Some of them incredibly debilitating. They are not there for you to use as examples.

Each visible characteristics comes with a probability of being associated with one or other sex and for some of those characteristics if they don't work we would say there is something wrong . So no beard no problem , no period for a female is a problem

But in many cases, most trans people for example , the visible characteristics all point the same way , there is nothing wrong and no ambiguity

I think it's pretty rubbish to essentially be saying that some people have disabilities and therefore people who don't have a disability can use the fact that others have disability to suggest an ambiguity when there isn't one

Like , some people are blind. You are not blind but you expect to taken seriously when you say you can't see , or that you would like your eyes removed as you identify as blind

Pretty disgusting actually

academic.oup.com/edrv/advance-article/doi/10.1210/endrev/bnaa034/6159361#.YG386Eqj1v4.twitter

Helleofabore

That article you posted makes a simple but very interesting point about how the word gender came to replace sex and then cause confusion: that (often American) tendency to opt for euphemisms instead of meaningful words eg “passed” instead of “died” etc.

It isn’t as harmless and genteel as it seems, even at its best, because its aim - to be polite, not cause offense- muffles reality and thought. Then Chinese whispers set in.

Now there is this tangled mess of thought mistaking sex for gender and all that goes with the confusion.

( quote from that article below)

“Sex Versus Gender

Much of the American public is surprisingly prudish about the word sex; it has now become commonplace to use the seemingly more genteel term gender when one really means sex. “

What is the one you use?

This is important. If we can establish this, we can compare it with my definition.

And we can see which one has better predictive value for a range of things.

The reason we use sex (reproductive class) to separate other things that are not reproductive is because sex strongly correlates to a lot of other things. Better than anything else we've got.

If Shizuku's definition correlates less strongly for those things, then clearly my definition is superior and should be retained. If Shizuku's definition correlates more strongly for those things, then we should look into adopting for such purposes.

But we need to know what it is first.