[Serious] Please convince me gender is binary

[tackattack]

OK this is a serious thread to cut the side chat down, but I appreciate the taco break.

There were a lot of responses but I didn't want poly to think I wasn't addressing his points

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First of all, there is a range of biological possibilities: typically, XY people have penises and XX people have vaginas. But, there are conditions where a person might be, say, XXY. So there is a genetic question for such people.

Second, the development of sex organs is not an automatic thing based on the chromosomes. It is possible to have a condition known as androgen insensitivity that suppresses the development of male sex organs. This leaves the *default* female sex organs. Often such individuals, who have female external sex organs, do not learn of this condition until puberty (or even later). Again, these are people who are XY and *look* female.

Next, there are the developmental cases of hermaphrodites, where both male and female sex organs are present. often, these cases have surgical 'correction' at birth and are assigned a sex by a doctor.

Next, we have the cases where some more subtle aspect of development is affected and the brain develops characteristics common to one sex while the body develops characteristics of the other sex. It is often the case, for example, in trans-gendered people that the brains show the characteristics of the preferred sex.

All of these are biological, whether genetic or developmental.

But there are also all the *social* aspects of sexuality (called gender). Who takes care of the children? Who gets paid more? Who does the housework? What do they wear? Do they wear makeup? Shave their legs? Etc, etc, etc. NONE of these is biological. And people can have e range of preferences when it comes to these activities. There is certainly nothing biological that says an XY person with a penis can't enjoy putting on makeup, for example.

So, yes, there is much, much more than a simple binary division when it comes to sex and gender.

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Point one- riddled throughout your response is the same "suppresses male genitalia, leaving female genitalia" statements. You're still talking about the D and the vajayjay. You can have a rare outlier that doesn't have either organ, or has both, or two of one, etc. These are anomalies. We don't teach in school that people "normally" have 11 toes, hence normative.

Second point- you said it yourself "look male" or "look female" . I would feel these people are entitled to a birth certificate nomenclature sex change.
Third point- genetial mutilation is societal, and has been around for centuries. But then you defeated your own point in that you use "one sex" vs. "the other sex"

All very binary

Lastly, you're talking about gender identity as more than binary, so I'll address that with my response to DLJ's very nicely put points.

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I’ll have a go at elucidating you.

What is gender/sex? Is it chromosomal, hormonal, gonadal?

It needs a little bit of a break down of terminology and dividing “gender” into four parts (there might be more):
- Biological sex
- Gender identity
- Gender expression
- Attraction (to).

Biological sex (gonadal) forms at an early stage of pregnancy; gender identity (hormonal) develops at a later stage. And these may or may not align.

However, they both have a direct impact on the ability of a sexually dimorphic organism’s ability to reproduce.

Plotting occurrences on a graph we will discover a bimodal distribution (not binary) with the vast majority being male or female for both sex and identity but with outliers and crossover between the two main data clusters.



In contrast, gender expression (how one chooses to dress etc.) and to which sex/gender one is attracted have less to do with reproduction/continuity and more to do with selection and thus can be viewed as a spectrum (including attraction to neither and/or both).

Hope that helps.

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Yes it does thanks.
OK so with a bimodal distribution. We normatives don't usually spend a lot of time contemplating the definition of male/female because there is no dissonance. We see the "spectrum" at the line crossing the peaks, being 2 individual points, male and female. Where I assume that non-normatives see the "spectrum" at some varying line lower. What is the difference in this? It comes from their personal definitions of what is a man/woman. As other people have pointed to, when going from a personal identity to a societal identity usually requires defining terms.

K, so I can see that individual people, who are non-normative, don't categorize themselves as strictly male or female when addressing gender identity towards society. They believe this to be non-binary? What I was alluding to earlier was that instead of changing their definition of what a man is, they expect society to cloud definitions by categorizing every individual definition of what it is to be a man/woman. Bimodal graphs still only have 2 peaks. Sexual dimorphism is the differences in appearance between males and females of the same species.

First Question- Is the argument that there's not enough diversity of definitions, or that we are not a dimorphic species?

Second question- Why would society have to redefine its long standing definition or male or female (tied to sex) to accommodate every individual's personal definition of what does it mean to be a man/woman?

I don't care about gender expression or sexual preference, as I thought I stated earlier. Just about getting an understanding of how gender is some form of one or the other (being male/female). They're even classified as M2F or F2M, meaning that they were once X now they are Y. I might grant that gender could be changeable , based on numerous personal inputs and can change over time. At any one point in time though, you are either some version of male or some version of female, in both the individual's eyes and the eyes of society.

I'm pretty sure that no one expressing a non heteronormative position is talking about their genitalia.

Why not? I thought they were. I go to a restroom. If I say to Randy, "sup dude" I assume he is male and Randy has a dick. If Randy corrects me saying "but I'm a chick", then I'm assuming she doesn't have a dick. That would make me question internally why Randy chose the men's bathroom to pee in. To which I would respond, "Whatever Randy, just wash your hands after"