Six biological sexes

[WhateverWhatsapped]

I'm currently studying for a degree and on the WhatsApp study group a discussion about sex and gender came up.

One comment said that sex is not binary but is a social construct with six biological sexes currently identified. Sex doesn't materially exist, we made them up and then applied them to naturally occurring phenomena (not even sure what that last bit means)

I feel like I'm a player in The Emperor's New Clothes, I know it's bollocks but I'm too scared of the consequences to challenge it.

I'd love for people to be able to embrace the fact they are a feminine looking man or a masculine looking woman, without feeling the need to chop off body parts or change pronouns.

Well absolutely. But that certainly doesn't require any artificial and arbitrary divisions into 'ova producing masculine body' etc.

I'm a bit disappointed, looking at chromosomes only is such a boring way to consider whether there's more than two sexes.

Strange choice of words... sex is what it is. It's a matter of fact, regardless of how we might feel about it.
I've observed before that MN is probably particularly well-grounded on the realities of sex because its roots are as a parenting forum. Sex is kinda fundamental.

I'm a bit disappointed, looking at chromosomes only is such a boring way to consider whether there's more than two sexes.

Boring?

Fact: there are 2 sexes

Fact: those 2 sexes have a range of 'missteps' but each misstep is still either male or female.

What you want would lead, as I said upthread, to there being 7billion+ sexes.

Sometimes their body shape clashes a lot with their primary sex, and there is a stigma around that.

Yes and that is key; there's a lot of homophobia around it.

Everyone is unique. And 2 sexes. Just that.

As soon as you start labelling "feminine male" etc it becomes a pigeon holing labelling exercise where someone somewhere falls foul for not "fitting in."

Which is exactly how we ended up in this mess.

You could look at their sexual organs to take a guess of what could have been... but what if they have a set of both? Intersex can produce very ambiguous phenotypes)

This is offensive. People with DSDs aren’t a different sex. Nobody “takes a guess”, ffs. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people with DSDs have ambiguous genitalia and need further investigation. I get so bloody sick of people using those with DSDs as some kind of trump card to prove additional sexes. Leave them alone!

And a woman is a woman whatever body type she has, and a man is a man. Their sex is determined by the gametes their body is designed to produce, not whether they have a small bust, hairy legs, long hair or whatever.

There are two sexes - because there are only two gametes. That’s what Sex is.

I haven't got the foggiest idea how anyone can look at nature, life in all its glorious diversity and how it evolved and think it's all a bit boring, so they make up some nonsensical claims by stringing words they don't quite fully understand together to make it more "interesting". Just why?

You could make an argument that in some (rare) cases a person's phenotype is markedly more like that of the other sex, and for social/legal purposes they could potentially be treated as a member of that sex, or could do so in some settings. At one time that was pretty commonly what happened with such people.

It does nothing to undermine sexual dimorphism though nor does it have anything much to do with gender.