Biology is not binary? Social construct is not binary, I get that, but reproduction pretty much gates biology as binary (in mammals anyways)
Edit: the key word being BIOLOGY. Gonads vs Ovaries.
I understand that some people have both or none, I am not claiming that intersex people don’t exist. But good luck reproducing a mammel without a gonads and an ovary, a binary system.
Geesh, take a biology class people
Out of curiosity, does this new-age biology concept also apply to all mammals, or are humans special?
Intersex people are born with sex characteristics (such as sexual anatomy, reproductive organs, hormonal patterns and/or chromosomal patterns) that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. Experts estimate that up to 1.7 percent of the population are born with intersex traits.
In the US, in 2023, there were about 3.6 million births. That means that ~800 babies were born this way that year. There’s probably 50,000 people in the US right now who were born with atypical genitalia.
I get you point, but biological sex is either male, female, or a combination of male and female. I see your perspective that there are three options. But something like testicle vs ovaries is binary, with the option to have both, or none I guess.
You just listed four options, but still argue that’s a ‘binary’. Every time you look closer, you’re going to find another outlier to categorize. Eventually, it starts to make more sense to look at it as a spectrum instead of a rigid set of ‘either A or B or AB or {NULL} or …’
See, I think you may just need a dictionary. Binary means there is one or the other, there is no “both or neither” option. If you have more than a forced “either/or” choice, then by definition it’s not binary.
True, false, and neither isn’t binary by any definition you’ll find in any dictionary.
So, no, definitionally that is not binary. Can’t have four options in a binary.
What you’re describing is actually a bimodal distribution. This is when the data congregates strongly around two peaks, but there are also many entries along a spectrum between them
What you said is like if you just took an algebra 1A class in high school and said there are no curved lines because you’ve only done linear equations.
Just because your introduction into an extremely broad subject matter did not go into other details to not mean they do not exist. Especially in science, holy hell do we dumb down SO much in science to teach it.
But please, don’t be discouraged, people are wrong all the time, it’s cool. Just learn from it.
Just to be clear, I never said that intersex people don’t exist. My perspective is that intersex people are a combination of male and female. Gonads vs ovaries. Xx vs xy chromizones. Male vs female biological anatomy (boobs vs penis etc). It’s a binary system with some mixing in between.
Not intended to be offensive.
Analogy: RGB is based on 3 primary colors. I am not saying that teal doesn’t exist.
Okay so… binary means just zeroes and ones. Not that the number system starts at zero and ends at one and includes every real number in between. That’s a spectrum.
It seems that way if you don’t look closely, but there are outliers that don’t fit the binary in some way or another. Around 1 in 200edit: apparently this has been revised from the 0.5% number I’d heard in the past, and is closer to 1 in 5500 people are born intersex - meaning something about their biology makes them not fit within the biological norm for their gender. For example, there are people born with a Y chromosome, but are born with only female genitalia. Some are born with both sets of genitalia (historically when this happened the parents would pick a gender and the baby would be operated on to remove the other genitals). Biology really only fits into our perfect boxes of gender until we look at the rare outliers, and see the nuance.
This is part of the reason that Trans rights matter, because while some would have you believe that it’s all just people who were born in one box, wanting to have been born in the other box (which IMO is still a choice people should be able to make), there’s also people who genuinely, biologically don’t fit in our neat little boxes either who have just as much right to exist as those of us who do.
Conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female, occur in 0.018% of the population [1].
The claim that 1.7% of the population is ‘intersex’ [2] includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex [1], and is often wrongly used to back up the ideological assertion that ‘sex is a spectrum’, or that biological sex is not dimorphic.
Thank you for this, I had heard/read a ~0.5% statistic in the past, but apparently the current estimate is lower. I’ll edit my original comment to reflect this.
I do know that intersex people exist, obviously, but even in the explanations mammals have X vs Y chromizones, or male vs female genetalia, from a biology perspective. What is the 3rd chrmozone, or third type of genetalia? Or are chromizones a spectrum, genetalia a spectrum?
The reason there’s a spectrum is that the simple “rules” like Y chromosome = male genitalia, aren’t rules nature plays by. It’s just the first pattern we noticed when we looked at DNA, that holds true most of the time. The actual instructions to make genitals aren’t even fully located on the X or Y chromosome, they’re all over our DNA.
The “third option” is “doesn’t follow the rules we thought it was supposed to” - which is more about our lack of understanding how it works. Then saying the people who don’t fit with our idea about how we think it works are the problem, instead of something we’ve oversimplified and don’t fully understand. Then you get those unwilling to accept that maybe we don’t understand nature, so we’re going to force any outliers to fit into the neat boxes we made up before we knew better.
I’m pretty sure that when OP said “biology is not binary” they meant “biology does not mean that you are either 100% male or 100% female” (true) as opposed to “people with Z chromosomes exist” (false)
Biology is not binary? Social construct is not binary, I get that, but reproduction pretty much gates biology as binary (in mammals anyways)
Edit: the key word being BIOLOGY. Gonads vs Ovaries.
I understand that some people have both or none, I am not claiming that intersex people don’t exist. But good luck reproducing a mammel without a gonads and an ovary, a binary system.
Geesh, take a biology class people
Out of curiosity, does this new-age biology concept also apply to all mammals, or are humans special?
https://www.ohchr.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity/intersex-people
Biology is absolutely not binary.
Removed by mod
And 1 in 4500 births have atypical genitalia.
In the US, in 2023, there were about 3.6 million births. That means that ~800 babies were born this way that year. There’s probably 50,000 people in the US right now who were born with atypical genitalia.
Removed by mod
I get you point, but biological sex is either male, female, or a combination of male and female. I see your perspective that there are three options. But something like testicle vs ovaries is binary, with the option to have both, or none I guess.
Is it the primary sex organs that determines sex? Or is it hormone levels? Or is it chromosomes?
Each of these are non binary and have outliers and exceptions. All three together play a role in determining what we think of as being sex.
It’s not binary, unless your looking at it with a grade school level understanding of biology.
You’re so close.
You just listed four options, but still argue that’s a ‘binary’. Every time you look closer, you’re going to find another outlier to categorize. Eventually, it starts to make more sense to look at it as a spectrum instead of a rigid set of ‘either A or B or AB or {NULL} or …’
See, I think you may just need a dictionary. Binary means there is one or the other, there is no “both or neither” option. If you have more than a forced “either/or” choice, then by definition it’s not binary.
True, false, and neither isn’t binary by any definition you’ll find in any dictionary.
So, no, definitionally that is not binary. Can’t have four options in a binary.
What you’re describing is actually a bimodal distribution. This is when the data congregates strongly around two peaks, but there are also many entries along a spectrum between them
Not trying to come out swinging here, but do you know what intersex is?
I guess it’s what used to be call hermaphrodite? I didn’t realize that they could reproduce, but apparently they can.
Why do they need to be able to reproduce for their sex to count?
They keep happening, even if they don’t have children. It’s just a fairly common mutation.
There are plenty of genetic conditions that aren’t hereditary. Like Down’s Syndrome for instance.
That’s like saying black and white is binary while everything is in grayscale.
Is a ying-yang grey?
So you don’t understand metaphors. Got it.
So uh, I want to put this in perspective.
What you said is like if you just took an algebra 1A class in high school and said there are no curved lines because you’ve only done linear equations.
Just because your introduction into an extremely broad subject matter did not go into other details to not mean they do not exist. Especially in science, holy hell do we dumb down SO much in science to teach it.
But please, don’t be discouraged, people are wrong all the time, it’s cool. Just learn from it.
Just to be clear, I never said that intersex people don’t exist. My perspective is that intersex people are a combination of male and female. Gonads vs ovaries. Xx vs xy chromizones. Male vs female biological anatomy (boobs vs penis etc). It’s a binary system with some mixing in between.
Not intended to be offensive.
Analogy: RGB is based on 3 primary colors. I am not saying that teal doesn’t exist.
Get it?
Lmao. You realize the rainbow is a SPECTRUM, right? If I show you a rainbow, can you draw the line where green stops and teal begins?
Okay so… binary means just zeroes and ones. Not that the number system starts at zero and ends at one and includes every real number in between. That’s a spectrum.
It seems that way if you don’t look closely, but there are outliers that don’t fit the binary in some way or another. Around
1 in 200edit: apparently this has been revised from the 0.5% number I’d heard in the past, and is closer to 1 in 5500 people are born intersex - meaning something about their biology makes them not fit within the biological norm for their gender. For example, there are people born with a Y chromosome, but are born with only female genitalia. Some are born with both sets of genitalia (historically when this happened the parents would pick a gender and the baby would be operated on to remove the other genitals). Biology really only fits into our perfect boxes of gender until we look at the rare outliers, and see the nuance.This is part of the reason that Trans rights matter, because while some would have you believe that it’s all just people who were born in one box, wanting to have been born in the other box (which IMO is still a choice people should be able to make), there’s also people who genuinely, biologically don’t fit in our neat little boxes either who have just as much right to exist as those of us who do.
1 in 200? Do you have a source for that? Seems like a much larger number than I would have thought possible.
Conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female, occur in 0.018% of the population [1].
The claim that 1.7% of the population is ‘intersex’ [2] includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex [1], and is often wrongly used to back up the ideological assertion that ‘sex is a spectrum’, or that biological sex is not dimorphic.
https://statsforgender.org/it-is-not-true-that-1-7-of-the-population-is-intersex-the-proportion-of-people-with-dsds-intersex-conditions-is-0-018/
Thank you for this, I had heard/read a ~0.5% statistic in the past, but apparently the current estimate is lower. I’ll edit my original comment to reflect this.
I do know that intersex people exist, obviously, but even in the explanations mammals have X vs Y chromizones, or male vs female genetalia, from a biology perspective. What is the 3rd chrmozone, or third type of genetalia? Or are chromizones a spectrum, genetalia a spectrum?
The reason there’s a spectrum is that the simple “rules” like Y chromosome = male genitalia, aren’t rules nature plays by. It’s just the first pattern we noticed when we looked at DNA, that holds true most of the time. The actual instructions to make genitals aren’t even fully located on the X or Y chromosome, they’re all over our DNA.
The “third option” is “doesn’t follow the rules we thought it was supposed to” - which is more about our lack of understanding how it works. Then saying the people who don’t fit with our idea about how we think it works are the problem, instead of something we’ve oversimplified and don’t fully understand. Then you get those unwilling to accept that maybe we don’t understand nature, so we’re going to force any outliers to fit into the neat boxes we made up before we knew better.
I’m pretty sure that when OP said “biology is not binary” they meant “biology does not mean that you are either 100% male or 100% female” (true) as opposed to “people with Z chromosomes exist” (false)
Removed by mod
Yeah I guess so 😂