Sex is arbitrary
Some fool on Quora: sex is not an arbitrary label. Sex is a biological descriptor. One is free to say that gender is a social construct, and therefore arbitrary and fluid. Sex is not a social construct, neither is it arbitrary or fluid, anymore than eye color is.
Me: Ask a scientist who specializes in intersex conditions whether sex is an arbitrary label or not. There are sooooo many different ways to be intersex, there are cis females with XY chromosomes, and some of them can even get pregnant! There are XYYY males, XYY males, I believe there are people who are just X (not XX or XY but just X), and there are hundreds maybe thousands of ways for genitalia and secondary sex characteristics to differ.
And then there are other species. There are species where the female has something like a penis and uses it on the male. There are bees, who technically have three sexes: Male, Female, and Neuter. But so many people, even scientists, are so hung up on these meaningless human sex labels that they say BS like “All bees are females except for the drones, and only the queen can reproduce” which is patently false.
Male and female are human labels, humans are social animals, and humans developed male/female labels for social reasons regardless of why scientists use them, thus male/female ARE social constructs. And the fact that intersex people and animals exist, transgender people and animals exist (which could be considered a form of Intersex, given findings about transgender people’s brains), and the fact that even non-intersex cisgender vary so greatly that nobody can really define gender or even sex without basically going “I’ll know it when I see it” means that yes, sex IS fluid and largely arbitrary.
It’s just that almost nobody really talks about how weird this whole sex/gender thing is unless they happen to be a scientist or a doctor or learning to be one of the two, or if they happen to be intersex or know someone who is. Also, Intersex people almost always get genital mutilation (sorry, “correction”) surgery as infants without the doctors even having to INFORM the parents, and heaven forbid they should have to actually ASK PERMISSION before mutilating a baby’s genitals! People have this ridiculous notion that there’s just male and female, and it’s always clear and obvious, but it’s all just BS.
It’s all very weird and confusing, but it gets a lot less confusing when you finally sit back and admit to yourself that sex and gender are human labels, largely arbitrary, mostly meaningless, and Nature’s response to such labels is going to be a whole lot of “Eff you and your arbitrary BS labels.”
This was cross-posted from http://alex-antonin.dreamwidth.org/283640.html
You can comment either here or there.
Me: Ask a scientist who specializes in intersex conditions whether sex is an arbitrary label or not. There are sooooo many different ways to be intersex, there are cis females with XY chromosomes, and some of them can even get pregnant! There are XYYY males, XYY males, I believe there are people who are just X (not XX or XY but just X), and there are hundreds maybe thousands of ways for genitalia and secondary sex characteristics to differ.
And then there are other species. There are species where the female has something like a penis and uses it on the male. There are bees, who technically have three sexes: Male, Female, and Neuter. But so many people, even scientists, are so hung up on these meaningless human sex labels that they say BS like “All bees are females except for the drones, and only the queen can reproduce” which is patently false.
Male and female are human labels, humans are social animals, and humans developed male/female labels for social reasons regardless of why scientists use them, thus male/female ARE social constructs. And the fact that intersex people and animals exist, transgender people and animals exist (which could be considered a form of Intersex, given findings about transgender people’s brains), and the fact that even non-intersex cisgender vary so greatly that nobody can really define gender or even sex without basically going “I’ll know it when I see it” means that yes, sex IS fluid and largely arbitrary.
It’s just that almost nobody really talks about how weird this whole sex/gender thing is unless they happen to be a scientist or a doctor or learning to be one of the two, or if they happen to be intersex or know someone who is. Also, Intersex people almost always get genital mutilation (sorry, “correction”) surgery as infants without the doctors even having to INFORM the parents, and heaven forbid they should have to actually ASK PERMISSION before mutilating a baby’s genitals! People have this ridiculous notion that there’s just male and female, and it’s always clear and obvious, but it’s all just BS.
It’s all very weird and confusing, but it gets a lot less confusing when you finally sit back and admit to yourself that sex and gender are human labels, largely arbitrary, mostly meaningless, and Nature’s response to such labels is going to be a whole lot of “Eff you and your arbitrary BS labels.”
This was cross-posted from http://alex-antonin.dreamwidth.org/283640.html
You can comment either here or there.