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389
Joined
7 mo. ago

Why?

  • Unfortunately there's a lot of misinformation floating around Lemmy. People claiming that gametes are a spectrum and other bad takes.

    It's a matter of academic debate if someone could exist whose sex could not be determined, even by experts. Even in the most extreme cases observed there's still an identifiable sex.

    https://theparadoxinstitute.org/videos/biology-of-dsds-otdsd

    Those with this condition do not have both sets of functioning reproductive anatomy, nor both sets of external genitalia, and therefore, cannot fulfill both reproductive roles.

    Thus, affected patients develop one reproductive role, and are therefore male or female.

    Sex development in humans and other mammals is mutually antagonistic: if one reproductive system starts to develop, it inhibits the other. This is why individuals with Ovotesticular Disorder still develop towards one or the other reproductive role—the genetic and hormonal mechanisms do not allow both male and female systems to fully develop in the same individual. Thus, the inability for the complete development of both systems means that individuals with OT-DSD will have one main reproductive system and one secondary system with partial non-functioning elements.

  • Why is it transphobic? Why is it an oversimplification?

  • They'll still have structures in their body that are necessary for producing gametes of one type, and not used for producing gametes of the other type.

    "Biologically capable" isn't specific to an individual here. You'll see variations on this term such as "biological function", "organized around", or "reproductive strategy". We know that testes are incapable of producing ova. They're biologically capable of producing sperm. One person's testes may not, but they're still male because testes are "for" producing sperm. "For" being a term that isn't prescriptive. It means the above, about structures necessary for one gamete type and not the other.

    An example being worker bees that don't participate in reproduction. They are still sexed, because they have structures in their body that are particular to one reproductive strategy.

  • The truth is that there is an observed binary in this case. N = 2. Gametic definition provides utility. That's why it's the only definition used in biology.

    Do you want to learn? Would recommend.

  • Why do you think the truth is transphobic?

  • I'm relaying what the overwhelming consensus is in the field of biology.

  • Those aren't exceptions. Castrated males, menopausal females, children, and anyone with complete infertility all have a clear sex.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

    Please read this link, as previously suggested

    https://theparadoxinstitute.org/articles/sex-development-charts

    Some more reading

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development

    Those are variations within the sex binary. Not an exception. You're confusing sex with phenotype and genotype.

    Please apply a proper skeptical review of your idea. I've saved you the effort of searching. Here is more:

    https://www.gwup.org/skeptiker-artikel/sonstiges/one-reality-two-sexes-and-many-endless-debates/

    There are only two sexes because there are only two types of gametes [in anisogamous species]. There’s no intermediate one. Therefore, there can only be two sexes that an individual can have.

    Nothing in the biology of the sexes makes sense except in the light of gametes.

  • What exceptions exist?

  • Since you mentioned Dickens :

    Probably the most alarming index of this was a study in which a group of English majors at two well-regarded public universities in Kansas were asked to read the first seven paragraphs of Bleak House by Charles Dickens, and explain after every sentence what they thought was happening. Only 5% of the students could produce a ‘detailed, literal understanding’ of the text. The rest were either patching together vague impressions from a bunch of half-understood phrases, or could not comprehend anything at all.

    One particular stumbling block was the novel’s third sentence, which describes London in December: ‘As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.’ The students found this figurative language impossible; they could only read the sentence with the assumption that Dickens was describing the presence of an actual prehistoric reptile in Victorian London. One respondent glossed it like this: ‘It’s probably some kind of an animal or something or another. So, yup, I think we’ve encountered some kind of an animal these characters have met in the street.’ The study assessed this person as a ‘competent’ rather than a ‘problematic’ reader, because they’d at least managed to form an idea of what the text meant, even if it was wrong.

    Bleak House is not an elitist text; not so long ago, it was mass entertainment. When Dickens visited America in 1867, over 100,000 people paid to see him speak. Delighted crowds mobbed him in the streets. Today, a person studying English literature at degree level responds to his work in essentially the same way as an illiterate Uzbek peasant in the 1930s, incapable of thinking outside of immediate sensory reality.

  • It's the other way around. Categorical simplicity is observed in nature. Gametic sex is the only coherent definition.

    Everyone has a sex. Some people don't produce gametes. Their bodies still contain sexed structures.

  • So's money. Wealth inequality is still bad.

  • You already lost. You think AI is a capitalist project. The propaganda worked.

  • Good motto

  • The latter. I enjoy having to think. I don't agree with everything that's posted

  • There's some good commentary here. Hopefully it will keep growing. We could stop copying from /r/stupidpol then. Starting a community is hard.

    To be clear: this is a community for leftists. Same as /r/stupidpol. It's OK here to criticize shitlibs, if it's from a leftist perspective. No tankies allowed. Socialism for sane people.