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<Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren’t binary. </Quote> Is there a biological basis for this? I do not want "Gender Studies" references. I wan

<Quote> with the recognition that gender and sex aren’t binary. </Quote> 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.

csours 9y ago
Yup. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html
peterwwillis 9y ago
The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. 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-are-there https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-... http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are-there.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. 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.
  - toxik 9y ago
    Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also physics.
    - roninb 9y ago
      Some people, pedantically, agree xD https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > by that same token, all of psychology is also physics. 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.)
    - sndean 9y ago
      I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry. The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
  - claytonjy 9y ago
    Your first sentence seems like it's conflating correlation with causation. 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.
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    Biology is the study of living organisms. Psychology is the study of the human mind and its functions. A mind is a part of an organism, not a discrete one itself. The study of the part is not the same thing as the study of the whole. Psychology is not biology. This is not a controversial thing, every person who has graduated college in the past 30 years should know this, besides it being illogical.
- dang 9y ago
  Would you please not break the HN guidelines by (a) arguing snarkily and superciliously or (b) going on about downvotes? Trainwrecks though these recent threads have been, we're still trying for a higher standard of discussion on HN, and comments like this one make take us all in the wrong direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - peterwwillis 9y ago
    Someone posts an ignorant comment. I provide a relevant, actually helpful and fact-based reply and get downvoted. So I get pissed off, say something pissy, and then provide a ton of supporting evidence in response. But it doesn't affect the votes, and probably hasn't changed any minds at all. Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
tomp 9y ago
I wonder about this as well. Specifically, how does one define "gender" as distinct from "opinion", without being recursive (as in "a man is someone who feels like a man")?
- doubleshame 9y ago
  This is the worst damaging consequence of this whole charade. 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
  - msla 9y ago
    OK, define "male". 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 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.
    - doubleshame 9y ago
      Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues. 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?
Frondo 9y ago
Does this do it for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
yflu 9y ago
Gender is a semantic concept. Biology (and sex) is not. So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.
- nailer 9y ago
  It's not as simple as that. The word 'gender' has a history of being used for biology - think of every form you've ever filled out. The OED [1] says: > 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. [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
  - kemayo 9y ago
    Language is a living thing. The meanings of words change over time, and that's normally a helpful thing, which lets us express culturally relevant concepts. In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
    - nailer 9y ago
      Totally. It's just confusing when people were already using 'gender' to distinguish XX/XY from copulation (since 'sex' means both).
danharaj 9y ago
The Hijra have existed for millenia and now have legal status: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-gender-claims-place-in-law https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-... 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.
- angersock 9y ago
  Are the numbers of intersex individuals large enough to actually matter? And how many of them are fertile?
  - danharaj 9y ago
    It was a question about categories. Are there two categories of gender / sex? The answer is no. These people exist. They have entire lives which are as meaningful as any other. Why wouldn't they matter?
    - angersock 9y ago
      When it comes to policymaking, any prudent work requires the analysis of how many people would be impacted. It's not enough to just say "well there's like 100 people in a population of 300M we should change everything just for them".
      - tiles 9y ago
        The OP asked what evidence exists that gender and sex are non-binary. It's in reference to the words someone said in the article, not hypothetical policymaking.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rrmm 9y ago
There are people with XX, XY, XXX, XYY, XXYY, etc chromosomes. Also there are various hormonal insensitivities, so a person won't display the typical sexual characteristics associated with their chromosomes.
voidhorse 9y ago
Gender is usually considered indicative or coupled with cultural behavior and performative behavior, i.e. in the U.S. barbie dolls are 'toys for girls'. Sex begins and ends at the biological level and is strictly related to the organs and biological makeup you have and what you can do with those. I know less about how sex isn't binary, but in the case of gender it's fairly evident these days. 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.
AlexCoventry 9y ago
A good example is Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which Slate Star Codex has made so much of in this debate. Excess androgens from CAH can lead to ambiguous genitalia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia...
tanilama 9y ago
You can have XXY/XYY/XXX chromosomes, and appear normal though.
Retric 9y ago
Biology get's odd when you start looking at 0.01% cases. 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.
jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago
It's hard not to interpret this as a dishonest question with how you've phrased it and in particular your last sentence. This is a question you can answer for yourself trivially by googling the relevant terms as well as learning about intersex individuals.
ovao 9y ago
I'm not going to comment on gender, but doesn't hermaphroditism result a non-binary classification of sex?
mizchief2 9y ago
I think this misses the real point. The idea is presenting a reason why google (and all of tech) has more male engineers than female that aren't based totally on bigotry and discrimination. He is right. Google isn't hiring female engineers because they simply aren't applying. In reality their aren't enough trans-gendered people to really involve that in this conversation.
alpsgolden 9y ago
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. 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-gender-is-a-spectrum 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.
- fleetingmoments 9y ago
  | Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." 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.
e12e 9y ago
You might find https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 to be a decent starting point.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

csours 9y ago

Yup. http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/marriage.html

peterwwillis 9y ago

The best explanation you will get is from a medical doctor. They will explain to you how there are multiple sexes. Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. 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-are-there https://www.quora.com/Scientifically-how-many-sexes-genders-... http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are-there.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/12/opinion/how-many-sexes-are... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html http://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction

dragonwriter 9y ago
> Gender is not biological so there is no biological explanation. 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.
- toxik 9y ago
  Seems a tad reductionist; by that same token, all of psychology is also physics.
  - roninb 9y ago
    Some people, pedantically, agree xD https://xkcd.com/435/ https://xkcd.com/435/
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > by that same token, all of psychology is also physics. 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.)
  - sndean 9y ago
    I wouldn't go that far, but there are many studies that have looked at the genetic (biological) basis for brain function/behavior [0]. Once you're at the level of gene expression, which some of those studies go into, you're at a level of acetylation, methylation, etc., which is easily categorized as chemistry. The bigger argument I get into with coworkers is the blurry line between brain function/behavior stuff and psychology. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
- claytonjy 9y ago
  Your first sentence seems like it's conflating correlation with causation. 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.
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Biology is the study of living organisms. Psychology is the study of the human mind and its functions. A mind is a part of an organism, not a discrete one itself. The study of the part is not the same thing as the study of the whole. Psychology is not biology. This is not a controversial thing, every person who has graduated college in the past 30 years should know this, besides it being illogical.
dang 9y ago
Would you please not break the HN guidelines by (a) arguing snarkily and superciliously or (b) going on about downvotes? Trainwrecks though these recent threads have been, we're still trying for a higher standard of discussion on HN, and comments like this one make take us all in the wrong direction. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- peterwwillis 9y ago
  Someone posts an ignorant comment. I provide a relevant, actually helpful and fact-based reply and get downvoted. So I get pissed off, say something pissy, and then provide a ton of supporting evidence in response. But it doesn't affect the votes, and probably hasn't changed any minds at all. Comments are the problem if you find civility more important than rationality.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

tomp 9y ago

I wonder about this as well. Specifically, how does one define "gender" as distinct from "opinion", without being recursive (as in "a man is someone who feels like a man")?

doubleshame 9y ago
This is the worst damaging consequence of this whole charade. 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
- msla 9y ago
  OK, define "male". 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 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.
  - doubleshame 9y ago
    Thanks for your reply. I rarely get a chance to learn from someone who feels so passionately about these issues. 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?

Frondo 9y ago

Does this do it for you? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex

yflu 9y ago

Gender is a semantic concept. Biology (and sex) is not. So no, there isn't a biological basis for this, because gender isn't biological.

nailer 9y ago
It's not as simple as that. The word 'gender' has a history of being used for biology - think of every form you've ever filled out. The OED [1] says: > 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. [1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/gender [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
- kemayo 9y ago
  Language is a living thing. The meanings of words change over time, and that's normally a helpful thing, which lets us express culturally relevant concepts. In this case, it's pretty useful to have words which distinguish between biology and culture.
  - nailer 9y ago
    Totally. It's just confusing when people were already using 'gender' to distinguish XX/XY from copulation (since 'sex' means both).

danharaj 9y ago

The Hijra have existed for millenia and now have legal status: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-gender-claims-place-in-law https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/apr/16/india-third-... 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.

angersock 9y ago
Are the numbers of intersex individuals large enough to actually matter? And how many of them are fertile?
- danharaj 9y ago
  It was a question about categories. Are there two categories of gender / sex? The answer is no. These people exist. They have entire lives which are as meaningful as any other. Why wouldn't they matter?
  - angersock 9y ago
    When it comes to policymaking, any prudent work requires the analysis of how many people would be impacted. It's not enough to just say "well there's like 100 people in a population of 300M we should change everything just for them".
    - tiles 9y ago
      The OP asked what evidence exists that gender and sex are non-binary. It's in reference to the words someone said in the article, not hypothetical policymaking.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rrmm 9y ago

There are people with XX, XY, XXX, XYY, XXYY, etc chromosomes. Also there are various hormonal insensitivities, so a person won't display the typical sexual characteristics associated with their chromosomes.

voidhorse 9y ago

Gender is usually considered indicative or coupled with cultural behavior and performative behavior, i.e. in the U.S. barbie dolls are 'toys for girls'. Sex begins and ends at the biological level and is strictly related to the organs and biological makeup you have and what you can do with those. I know less about how sex isn't binary, but in the case of gender it's fairly evident these days. 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.

AlexCoventry 9y ago

A good example is Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH), which Slate Star Codex has made so much of in this debate. Excess androgens from CAH can lead to ambiguous genitalia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_adrenal_hyperplasia...

tanilama 9y ago

You can have XXY/XYY/XXX chromosomes, and appear normal though.

Retric 9y ago

Biology get's odd when you start looking at 0.01% cases. 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.

jasonwatkinspdx 9y ago

It's hard not to interpret this as a dishonest question with how you've phrased it and in particular your last sentence. This is a question you can answer for yourself trivially by googling the relevant terms as well as learning about intersex individuals.

ovao 9y ago

I'm not going to comment on gender, but doesn't hermaphroditism result a non-binary classification of sex?

mizchief2 9y ago

I think this misses the real point. The idea is presenting a reason why google (and all of tech) has more male engineers than female that aren't based totally on bigotry and discrimination. He is right. Google isn't hiring female engineers because they simply aren't applying. In reality their aren't enough trans-gendered people to really involve that in this conversation.

alpsgolden 9y ago

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. 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-gender-is-a-spectrum 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.

fleetingmoments 9y ago
| Then more recently some academics have re-defined gender again to mean "ones own innate conception of one's male/female identity." 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.

e12e 9y ago

You might find https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 https://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943 to be a decent starting point.

deleted 9y ago

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