Cambridge University Press The Biology of Reproduction
When you're able to produce a 3rd kind of gamete, or a human that can produce the other kind too or in sequence, then you can change my mind and claim your Nobel prize.
FYI, intersex is a misnomer because it gives those who don't seem to understand the basics of human biology the idea that there is a 3rd sex (at least) when actually, it means that someone may have ambiguous gender, but they are still either one or the other.
Many people result a null in this category in this without any medical intervention. Unless you intend to imply that someone is genderless if they produce no gametes?
> FYI, intersex is a misnomer because it gives those who don't seem to understand the basics of human biology the idea that there is a 3rd sex (at least) when actually, it means that someone may have ambiguous gender, but they are still either one or the other.
That is inaccurate. Humans can be born with both, or neither, sets of genitals, and chimerism can occur resulting in different portions of the body containing different genetics - it's possible for some portions to be XX and others to be XY. In addition, conditions such as klinefelter syndrome typically lead to individuals appearing closer to the XY end of the scale, their genome is actually XXY and doesn't match either.
Sex is defined by the gametes one produces. Female for few large gametes, male for many small gametes. If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
> Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
I'm more aware than most :P
I just find it easier to start with the concept that people don't even understand even the biology they claim to tout before getting into that.
E: I did poorly phrase that line in my last comment though.
I may be ignorant of history on some pedantic definitional level, but every single thing I know or am aware when it comes to this topic is that there have always been two of this "thing" whatever you want to call it, barring small odd cases or medical conditions. Two. Likewise, sex and gender were always seen as one in the same and interchangeable.
This is very much a new, modern thing that's been thrown into the mix. And don't get me wrong, everyone should have the right to express themselves freely as long as they don't hurt others.
But this whole "gender" being something different to sex seems very much a spanner thrown in the works to confuse and back something as being "fundamental" as if it's needed in the fight for equal rights for the affected individuals. Whether a person gets to act as the other sex/gender is irrelevant, they are a human being and get rights as such.
Various cultures always have had different norms and rules for the sexes. What might appear manly manly in one culture might seem effeminate in another culture. Just see how makeup was considered manly in ancient Persia and how it was ridiculed as woman-ish in Greece.
There have always been different interpretations and manifestations of what it means "to be a man" or "to be a woman" - that's gender. Some cultures - like some native American people - recognize expressions of sexual identity disconnected from their biological sex.
So no; sex and gender were not "always seen as one in the same and interchangeable".
I agree that sex/gender are irrelevant and that every human has the same rights as every other. Including the right to not be discriminated against based on sex/gender.
They’re often used interchangeably, but they’re two separate concepts:
Sex is the body’s reproductive role - males produce sperm and inseminate females who produce ova and gestate fertilised eggs into mini-humans.
Gender is a set of socially constructed stereotypes concerning how men and women should generally look, think, act and feel - traditionally men are masculine and women feminine.
At least in the UK 2nd wave feminism sought to reject gender on the basis that it was sexist (discriminated between the sexes) in a way that limited and harmed particularly female people as individuals, but also males. They saw gender as part of a masculine / patriarchal (rule of the father) system of female oppression.
I won’t write an essay (not what HNs is about) but that’s why some people have issues with gender being used as a synonym for sex.
> The first title in SCI to use gender in a nongrammat- ical sense was Hermaphroditism, gender and precocity in hyperadrenocorticism: Psychologic findings (Money, 1955).
John Money[2], as it happens, was a sex abuser who performed experiments, sick experiments, on a pair of brothers that led to them both committing suicide. I wouldn't usually go with the genetic fallacy of dismissing an idea because of its origins, but I have no problem with it here because I see no valid point for its novel use.
This quote is at the end of the Wikipedia article, and it sums him up and, perhaps, the movement that seems so desperate to use his work:
> If I were to see the case of a boy aged 10 or 12 who's intensely attracted toward a man in his 20s or 30s, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual, then I would not call it pathological in any way.
Edit:
Additionally
> If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
Being unable to produce a gamete does not make one asexual, all humans are either male or female. If you lose your genitals in an accident that doesn't make you asexual, it means you're male or female who had an accident. Humans are bipedal but if you don't have both legs you don't stop being human either.
[1] The Inexorable Rise of Gender and the Decline of Sex: Social Change in Academic Titles, 1945–2001
So what? The way we use words changes all the time. We discovered that we want to differentiate between the innate sexual reproductive capabilities and their expression in society, now we use words differently.
That's what language does; it changes with time.
> If you lose your genitals in an accident that doesn't make you asexual
You don't have to go as far as accidents; menopausal woman lose their ability to produce gametes. They lose their sexual reproductive capabilities. Does it make sense to speak of a sex if you don't have sexual reproductive capabilities? Seems weird to me.
Additionally; there have always been differences in how various cultures expressed sexual identity. And what seems effeminate in one society is seen as manly in another one; expression of sexual identity and sexual identity are two different things. We're not dung beetles that only have instinctive behavior; we also have cultural and individual behaviors that are added to that.
That's why it makes sense to me to differentiate between sex and gender.
No one has to accept it, that’s what’s what.
> You don't have to go as far as accidents; menopausal woman lose their ability to produce gametes. They lose their sexual reproductive capabilities. Does it make sense to speak of a sex if you don't have sexual reproductive capabilities? Seems weird to me.
Pre-pubescent boys do not produce gametes either but that doesn’t stop them being male. A male cannot produce large gametes but may not ever produce small gametes or may never again, and the opposite for females. Whether that’s weird or not to you has no bearing on anything but your ability to process the logic, that’s the way it is.
Sure; language is an agreement. No one can force you to communicate clearly and if it is your desire, you can go all day long babbling nonsensical syllables. No one can stop you; do as your heart commands you.
> Pre-pubescent boys do not produce gametes either but that doesn’t stop them being male.
So, you're arguing that we should not only consider the current state of an organism to determine its sex but rather the normal lifecycle and what kind of gametes the organism would have produced?
Sure, we can go with that, if you prefer that.
Does it change anything?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
I again ask; does it change anything?
I gave you the definition of anisogamety, from something a bit better than Wikipedia, but since this is the level we're at, from [1]:
> Anisogamy is a form of sexual reproduction that involves the union or fusion of two gametes that differ in size and/or form. The smaller gamete is male, a sperm cell, whereas the larger gamete is female, typically an egg cell. Anisogamy is predominant among multicellular organisms. In both plants and animals gamete size difference is the fundamental difference between females and males.
It goes on:
> Anisogamy is a core element of sexual dimorphism that helps explain phenotypic differences between sexes.
I hope this is the end of this.
I still don't see why your distinction between the formulations of
> If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
and
> In both plants and animals gamete size difference is the fundamental difference between females and males.
makes any difference to the argument I made, namely:
> It makes sense to differentiate between sex and gender
Does it make any difference?
Thanks!
Oh, I see. My mistake, you wanted me to read the actual URL! /s
No, you wanted me to read part of the article but since you lazily posted a URL instead of that then the URL stands in for the entire article as I have no way to read your mind to work out which part of the article you wanted read.
Please, keep the pedantry, and the laziness, to an absolute minimum.
Secondly, humans are not asexual. Asexuality is a reproduction strategy not involving gametes. Humans produce gametes. Talking about asexuality with regard to human sexuality is a) erroneous, and b) irrelevant. If we were involving plants in this discussion it might make sense, but we're not.
Please stop mentioning it.
Lastly, you claimed that I had conflated two concepts when - quite ironically - your novel use actually conflates its new meaning with an existing psychological concept known as temperament or personality.
So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
That humans are sexually dimorphic does make a difference (the word is relevance), because you've taken a word that describes that and applied it erroneously (again) while mixing it up with a different word, and largely based on gender stereotypes to boot!
There are many temperaments and personalities, they certainly have a spectrum (or something far more profoundly complex). Gender does not, and I have no interest - except to oppose it wherever necessary - in the pseudo-science from which silly claims like "sex and gender are fundamentally different" that it cannot validate or support, beyond borderline fraudulent citations and repetition among those with not the first clue about biology or basic reasoning.
I think this would be a good opportunity for you to get off your high horse; to me, all these responses of yours are pedantic rants about the correct use of "asexual" and complaints about changing language. Let's try to give each the benefit of the doubt.
> Lastly, you claimed that I had conflated two concepts when
No, that was a reply to Shared404. You for some reason felt the need to jump into the conversation - which is perfectly fine, this is a public discussion board. But please - don't lie; that response was not aimed at you.
> So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
Sure, that's why I'm so confused why you get so hung up about it. I can go with either definition, I think I wrote that, eh, two replies ago. Let's stick to the actual question.
> That humans are sexually dimorphic does make a difference [...]
That was not my question. My question was:
> [..] why [should] your distinction between the formulations [..formulation A..] and [..formulation B..] make any difference to the question of "It makes sense to differentiate between sex and gender".
I think you answered that now; you admitted that the definition of asexuality doesn't make a difference to my question above.
> There are many temperaments and personalities, they certainly have a spectrum (or something far more profoundly complex). Gender does not [...]
I don't really comprehend what you are trying to say here. Can you maybe rephrase it?
That in turn was a reply to me and I'm the one who replied to the top level comment that leads to here, from my comment, so you are the one jumping in, and if you're "correcting" a reply to me while agreeing with the gist of their comment, then it is, in essence, still a reply to me but with enthusiastic notes left in green ink.
> > So, your use of asexual in this conversation, no it makes no difference because it is wholly irrelevant.
> Sure, that's why I'm so confused why you get so hung up about it.
I might rejoin that I care about truth, and if you get to add corrections why don't I? But no, you made said point in support of a larger point (a new understanding of human sexuality). Since said point is irrelevant, and incorrect, it doesn't support the larger point. That's how reasoning works.
I do appreciate you moving so deftly to disown your own point though, I wouldn't call it moving the goalposts unless you are the posts. Perhaps goalposts are an identity now. Speaking of which:
> I don't really comprehend what you are trying to say here. Can you maybe rephrase it?
Gender is sex. Therefore it is not a spectrum. However, you claimed it is different, that things like asexuality exist in humans. Since, as pointed out, that is objectively wrong but since there are people who believe in "gender identity" who claim to be asexual and that asexuality is a gender identity different from one's sex then we should examine that too. From What is asexuality?[1]:
> Asexuality is a sexual orientation, just like homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality.
Orientated towards what? Nothing? And yet:
> While most asexual people have little interest in having sex, they may experience romantic attraction. Others may not.
Contradictions are fine in this world of illogic. Furthermore:
> Asexual people may be attracted to the same sex or other sexes
This is clearly nonsense, predicated on other nonsense, but it also already comes under the classification of that known as temperament or personality. I can imagine Samantha Jones in her scathing and nonchalant manner explaining "Yes, my darling, I know that you say you're asexual but what you really are is an uptight, slightly ugly girl who wants to be a housewife but needs an excuse for failing to attract anyone, anyone at all." Presumably she'd throw in something about blowjobs too.
As to the pseudo-science part, that's been covered elsewhere[2].
[1] https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/327272
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair (yes, the whole article)
Let's have a look at my original reply
> Sex is defined by the gametes one produces. Female for few large gametes, male for many small gametes. If you don't have the capacity to produce functional gametes, you're asexual.
We can leave away the part about asexuality, the point still stands; sex is a biological trait related to the gametes ones genes and biological does (or would) produce.
Whereas gender is
> [..] the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex. Your gender does not necessarily have to correspond to your biological sex.
You on the other side take the position;
> Gender is sex.
You can go with that. But I've found it more useful to distinct between gender and sex since there's a lot more to human sexual behavior than just the biological mechanism underlying the dimorphism. Human's have culture - vastly different cultures - that all have a different interpretation of what it means to behave like a male or to behave like a female. And some people have the desire to not behave like their biological sex.
An example; wearing a skirt is considered female, in western societies. So if I - as a male - wear a skirt, I'm drawing attention and potentially ridicule upon myself. Why is that? My sex is unchanged, I'm still male. But I don't behave according to the societal expectations of how males have to behave.
> From What is asexuality?[1]:
This links represents neither my position nor my arguments about asexuality, so I will just ignore all said about them.
Yes, let's, because it didn't support your point, though I see you continue to assert its validity based on a claim to usefulness. Let's address that.
> > From What is asexuality?[1]:
> This links represents neither my position nor my arguments about asexuality, so I will just ignore all said about them.
Actually, it does, because it points out (via its inane existence) that the distinction you make between sex and gender is really a repurposing of the word gender where temperament or personality already sit.
> An example; wearing a skirt is considered female, in western societies. So if I - as a male - wear a skirt, I'm drawing attention and potentially ridicule upon myself. Why is that? My sex is unchanged, I'm still male. But I don't behave according to the societal expectations of how males have to behave.
Firstly, "wearing a skirt is considered female" is an equivocation. "Female" as an adjective is entirely different to female as a noun. Even if your statement is true, applying the adjective does not bestow noun-status on the object. Licking your feet may be feline but it does not make you a feline.
Additionally, males have certain strongly associated temperaments and personalities (e.g. lower disgust response, higher aggression), as do females in turn. These lie on a spectrum, if not some multi-dimensional shape. There are feminine men, or men that have higher disgust response than most other men, or men that enjoy musicals (I'm one), or men that hate sport… or men that enjoy wearing women's clothing. These are not gender, these are temperament and personality. Male is their gender. Enjoying X is their temperament or part of their personality. Expressing higher levels of disgust than most males is temperament. Being disagreeable or aggressive is personality.
Taking up the stereotypical behaviour of other people is not a "gender identity" or an identity at all. The clothes do not maketh the man a woman, and I only used to hear that kind of nonsense from those mired in stereotypical thinking who were often truly bigoted. Plus ça change.
So, grammatically it's not useful - and that's even before discussing pronouns (Lord, save us, this atheist begs you!); in biology it's entirely erroneous; and in life it's undermining free speech, endangering actual females, confusing the hell out of children, and helping close to no one.
It can be, it can be defined other ways; biomedically for humans its not usually defined exclusively by gametes, since humans who do not produce gametes are usually assigned a sex (recently, in medical practice, assigning more than one, scoped to a particular purpose, and potentially involving narrative rather than simple labels has had some adoption and more discussion, because “sex” broadly is a multidimensional space of correlated, but not perfectly correlated, traits.)
> Gender is the social expression of the set of behaviors typical for a given sex
That’s specifically gender expression, which as distinct from gender identity and ascribed gender as it is from any of definitions of ”sex”.
Humans only have the potential to produce one type of gamete. Whether they actually are able to produce that at any given moment is a different matter.
> Humans can be born with both, or neither, sets of genitals
Again, unless they are able to produce gametes of both types from them then it doesn't matter, and we have no recorded instances of this occurring.
> and chimerism…
is irrelevant unless it leads to the production of both types of gamete at the same time or in sequence, which it does not. There are only 2 sexes because there are only 2 types of sex cell. Each sex produces one type, that is why they are of that sex. There is no 3rd, there are no humans that produce both. Hence, humans are sexually dimorphic.
In addition, as noted elsewhere in the thread, sexual dimorphism is typically used to discuss more than just gametes in study of other species, so why not ourselves?
You seem focused on actual when it should be potential. That individual, if one were to exist, would not be able to produce both if their disorder could be fixed. There have been no such individuals recorded so the scientific community waits with baited breath.
> In addition, as noted elsewhere in the thread, sexual dimorphism is typically used to discuss more than just gametes in study of other species, so why not ourselves?
As pointed out in the quote written by the zoology professors, anisogamety is determined thus. Whether other aspects of biology can be determined or inferred from sexual dimorphism is irrelevant to anisogamety. I know you want to make the “we are more than our genitals” argument but it’s just not relevant.
Sex does have several meanings, and form is one of them.
The situation isn’t helped by Americans often using the word gender as a direct substitution for the word sex. Gender is the set of social expectations around how the different sexes should look, feel, think and act.
Originally this was rigidly imposed (two genders - males obliged to be masculine / females feminine - or suffer negative social consequences) but now in the West people are free to construct their own gender from a set of infinitely variable gendered characteristics.
[disputed ideological view] Someone’s expressed gender doesn’t alter what sex they are, though - nor is someone’s ‘true sex’ that which their gender identity might suggest. I say this because it doesn’t seem logical to complicate sex (the process by which new humans are created) with the infinite complexity of human personality and culture. Sex doesn’t determine character, and character doesn’t determine sex - would be my TL;DR.
We're actual a bimodal distribution. Even not accounting for intersex folk it's a lot less binary than most people assume or was covered in 8th grade bio.