Sex is basically binary in mammals (do you have the gene that triggers producing sperm versus the gene that triggers you producing eggs), the only exception being incredibly rare intersex disorders. Read more here: http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gende...
Based on sex, people have different traits, physical and mental. Some of these traits are close to binary between the sexes (having a uterus, etc.). Some traits are a matter of distributions (such as differences in physical strength, or willingness to take risks).
Society then considers certain behaviors and traits more masculine or feminine, and creates norms and roles around these. Some of these norms and roles exist on a spectrum, some are more binary.
Gender for a long time was used either as a synonym for sex, or only this case of describing language (gendered pronouns). In the mid-1900s academics in the social science used it to mean "the social norms and roles society creates based on biological sex." Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." There isn't any scientific proof that such a thing exists or doesn't exist, nor can there be, because we don't have mind reading machines.
Sexual identity has also been redefined recently. So now if you were born with the egg producing equipment, but are taking male sex hormones some people will now define you as of the male sex. Frankly, I find this redefining of words to be pretty Orwellian.
Nope. What you are talking about is Gender Identity. There is pretty good evidence for this being real and linked to prenatal testosterone exposure at certain periods in the womb, as with traits like digit ratio. Between cases like David Reimer's (a biological boy who was raised as a girl after a surgical accident as an infant, but whose gender identity stayed true to his birth sex - with tragic consequences) and the phenomenon of Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (where genetically male XY are born with female-looking genitalia and raised as any other girl, but overwhelmingly continue to identify as women even after the condition is discovered in puberty), the existence of a gender identity that is separate from both chromosomal sex and social influence is not really in doubt.
So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.
> Either of the two sexes (male and female)
before following up with:
> especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones.
And also notes:
> The sense denoting biological sex has also been used since the 14th century, but this did not become common until the mid 20th century. Although the words gender and sex are often used interchangeably, they have slightly different connotations; sex tends to refer to biological differences, while gender more often refers to cultural and social differences and sometimes encompasses a broader range of identities than the binary of male and female
If it's unclear, I'm not saying either is correct. Many people don't like saying 'sex' as its also a verb for copulation hence use 'gender' as a polite alternative. The idea of gender as an entity separate from biology is from Dr John Money, who has his own sad and controversial history [2], though his ideas have gained more popularity recently.
"b : the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex
(...)
Origin: Middle English gendre, from Anglo-French genre, gendre, from Latin gener-, genus birth, race, kind, gender — more at kin. First use: 14th century"
So it would seem gender has started out as a term that groups "indivuduals that are of a kind" - not necessarily based on (biological) appearance, but just as much on behaviour/social grouping.
In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
This is a question you can answer for yourself trivially by googling the relevant terms as well as learning about intersex individuals.
The words themselves no longer have any meaning.
- "Man" is to no longer define any category except for people who self identify as men.
- And at the same time, it is sexist to say that girls prefer dolls.
Regardless of the correctness of either statement, to say both in the same breath is simply contradictory.
Here are some definitions:
Man: Adult human male
Woman: Adult human female
Is it chromosomal, such that XY makes you male? Wrong. People with total androgen insensitivity are XY but look and act and feel female, because the androgens they produce never took effect. Their bodies and minds feminized, so they're female in every respect except their karyotype.
There's a ton of other conditions which make the definition of sex complex. Read this essay, which lists a lot more of them: http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Essays/marriage.html
Your simple definition is only simple because you punted the complex part, and no amount of screaming about how words don't have meanings anymore is going to change the level of complexity surrounding this subject.
You are too ignorant to know what you don't know, so you think you're a goddamned expert.
These range of conditions are interesting, we are truly a varied species.
Let us do a thought experiment.
We have 10 humans and 10 monkeys. Now, let’s say 5 humans want to be called monkeys. Now, if I say the word “monkey”, what comes to mind? If the 10 monkey-monkeys AND the 5 human-monkeys does, then that means I no longer have a word to describe what I originally thought was a monkey! The word itself has been destroyed by making it stretch beyond the category which it originally described. Words by their very nature are to form categories, to differentiate is their power, and why we find them useful.
Now, we can both agree that the range of conditions you listed are rather rare, and this is the crux of the matter. If we use the word man to stretch beyond the more stereotypical definition, what does it even mean to be a man anymore? What does it mean to be masculine? That is, what do the WORDS mean?
The word man is, as words work, defined by the average man. The fact that it allows us to speak of a large category of people is what gives it its utility. That is why you can say things like “their bodies and minds [are] feminized”, you must have the words to express such a thought! If you proceeded down the self-identification path, how would you make that sentence? That is why we have words like “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome”, which describes another idea.
First of all, let me say that I am in no way opposed to men dressing in women’s clothes, or men being effeminate, or women having sex with women, or any other non-conservative human expressions; they are what lend colour to humanity, and we would be much poorer without it, and without letting humans be fully expressed.
Now, what about the rarer cases, what do we do here?
But how should such a person describe oneself?
Just because a man cannot have the confidence to be effeminate and own that identity, does not mean that he needs to redefine the word woman to accommodate himself. I think the problem here is that people want to fit into categories that are traditionally recognised by society. Instead people should just appreciate that everybody is unique, and that they should be comfortable owning their own unique identities. They should not have to derive their own identities from the words that other people call them, worse off by forcing other people to use specific words, in a meaning that they want other people to use them in, because then everything is reduced to just noise.
What do you think?
Bad analogy. Really bad analogy. The boundaries between species can be fluid, but they're nowhere near as fluid as the definitions of 'male' versus 'female' in either sex or gender.
My whole point is that even if you restrict everything to verifiable biological observation, with no reference to psychology, there are still myriad corner cases which cannot be classified in a simple dichotomy. Therefore, insisting the division is simple is obtuse.
The division is not simple, there's no way to make it simple, and bringing in this analogy with monkeys versus humans as your proxies for the sexes is misunderstanding the subject. There is no overlap between humanity and any species of "monkey" as the term is commonly understood, although I have known a biologist who would insist that "monkey" was synonymous with "ape" and therefore all humans are monkeys. That's not the common understanding of the term "monkey", certainly.
There is overlap between "male" and "female" regardless of what you define them to be, assuming you define them in any useful fashion. There is no boundary anywhere in this subject which is impermeable. That's why gender studies is an entire field of study, like astrophysics or English literature.
In short, you could write entire textbooks on one aspect of being "male" or "female" and still be incomplete even in terms of that aspect. So you'll forgive me if I'm not prepared to define either term in this forum, or bothered by how people describe themselves.
Linguistic precision is nice where you can get it, and we can't get it here. Not if we're being entirely honest.
On the topic of monkeys: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mvxgwa/from-dragons-to-fo...
A transexual speaking of genders as a rainbow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drSXRW-4j5o
Let's say you have a new born child. Since there is so much overlap between men and women, how can we EVER attribute gender to the child?
Whatever gender the child chooses, won't it still have a huge overlap with all the other genders?
If that's so, on what basis can the child choose?
There are several cultures that have arisen independently and have had more than two genders. Many of them are still extant today, despite the best effort of colonialists.
So that's gender down.
Intersex individuals exist. Intersex conditions range from physiological to karyotypes with variant sex chromosomes.
Transgender individuals are very varied but there are indications that it is partially heritable with genetics and the prenatal environment hypothesized to explain some of that.
And that's biology.
I could write a 100 page essay about how loaded your question was, the implicit assumptions in the way it was written, the way that "BIOLOGICAL" is implied to be a way to ignore social conditions, and the contempt for ""Gender Studies"". But I won't, it's very tiring and there will be 10 other people like you tomorrow.
What seems reasonable to me is M/F/N where N is not capable of reproduction due to some kind of outlying error, so they cannot be a part of sexed reproduction. Are they omitted?
Sex and reproduction seem binary to me and most people. We should ignore technological or medical assistance and sort those results through the gender buckets which are more important to how they are perceived semantically, as you said.
In biological terms, sex may be determined by a number of factors present at birth, including:
the number and type of sex chromosomes; the type of gonads—ovaries or testicles; the sex hormones; the internal reproductive anatomy (such as the uterus in females); and the external genitalia.
People whose characteristics are not either all typically male or all typically female at birth are intersex.
My concern is that people are attempting to use the existence of intersex folks (at widely varying claimed incidence rates) to make faulty arguments about what is and is not normal physiology.
The criticisms are more about terminology than the core argument though - they mostly argue that "intersex" should only cover a small number of conditions that result in an arbitrarily substantial differentiation from a "normal" male or female, rather than any significant differentiation. So if the question is about sexual dimorphism, those criticisms are mostly irrelevant.
But here's a question: why is it important that they can reproduce? Gay men and women are unlikely to reproduce either, so should we ignore them in policy-making too? Are gay people abnormal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia...
Also there are various hormonal insensitivities, so a person won't display the typical sexual characteristics associated with their chromosomes.
At least that's how I've understood it in layman's terms and with my very basic knowledge--it's very complex, as with anything worth studying. The seminal text on the issue in the eyes of many is Judith Butler's Gender Trouble--If you truly are serious about wanting to learn about this stuff I suggest you check it out.
Some people have both sets of reproductive organs at birth. Others lack many such structures which is arguably just sterility but in some cases no gender is closer to the truth.
Genetically you have XX (female), XY (male) but also XXY or XXXY. There are even Chimera where you can have both male (XX) and female (XY) cells in the same body.
For people who are downvoting me and are either too lazy to talk to a doctor or use Google: Fine, here are some links. Please educate yourselves about simple biology you should have learned in school.
https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-...
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
There is considerable evidence of gender identity different from biological sex lining up with biological features in several areas more typical of the other sex, so it seems that gender identity is tied to biology.
Which, if you think about it, it has to be: humans are biological machines, everything about them is biology, on one level or another. All of psychology is, ultimately, biology.
As for the second, saying psychology is ultimately biology is reductionist in a way that dismisses the context and environment biology gets expressed in. You would be a much different person if the same set of genes was born in a different place, or at a different time, or if your life circumstances were different in any mild way.
The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology.
Yes, it is, which would be relevant if someone suggested there was no physical explanation for a psychological phenomenon (which is, in fact, what they are usually claiming when they claim it is not biological.)
Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I want real BIOLOGICAL, you know code mother nature put in you.