Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
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Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#2Good article but disagree strongly with the title, why have sex twice when you have experience the full spectrum? :P
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#3Intersexuality (XXY, XYY, YYY, and other phenomena) is a biological reality, so sex isn't quite binary.
It's fair to say it's a whole lot more bimodal than gender identity, though!
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#4Intersexuality (XXY, XYY, YYY, and other phenomena) is a biological reality, so sex isn't quite binary. It's fair to say it's a whole lot more bimodal than gender identity, though!
As a person who is on the intersex spectrum I wholly disagree, sex really is a binary. "Male with a transcription error" (Me) isn't something else it's just a malfunction. A voltage spike doesn't give you a working trinary computer, it just gives you a less functional binary computer.
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#5Intersexuality (XXY, XYY, YYY, and other phenomena) is a biological reality, so sex isn't quite binary. It's fair to say it's a whole lot more bimodal than gender identity, though!
As a person who is on the intersex spectrum I wholly disagree, sex really is a binary. "Male with a transcription error" (Me) isn't something else it's just a malfunction. A voltage spike doesn't give you a working trinary computer, it just gives you a less functional binary computer.
I think the conclusion of the article is pretty spot on:
>At the top of the cascade, nature works forcefully and unilaterally. Up top, gender is quite simple—just one master gene flicking on and off. If we learned to toggle that switch—by genetic means or with a drug—we could control the production of men or women, and they would emerge with male versus female identity (and even large parts of anatomy) quite intact. At the bottom of the network, in contrast, a purely genetic view fails to perform; it does not provide a particularly sophisticated understanding of gender or its identity. Here, in the estuarine plains of crisscrossing information, history, society, and culture collide and intersect with genetics, like tides. Some waves cancel each other, while others reinforce each other. No force is particularly strong—but their combined effect produces the unique and rippled landscape that we call an individual’s identity.
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a person who is on the intersex spectrum I wholly disagree, sex really is a binary. "Male with a transcription error" (Me) isn't something else it's just a malfunction. A voltage spike doesn't give you a working trinary computer, it just gives you a less functional binary computer.
I think the conclusion of the article is pretty spot on: >At the top of the cascade, nature works forcefully and unilaterally. Up top, gender is quite simple—just one master gene flicking on and off. If we learned to toggle that switch—by genetic means or with a drug—we could control the production of men or women, and they would emerge with male versus female identity (and even large parts of anatomy) quite intact.…
I prefer to take a view that cuts out gender and identity wholly. I don't see a need for them in a conceptualization of sex.
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#7IMO the broad ranges of gender and sexuality makes the definitions explored here relatively pointless and draws lines where the benefits are not scientific but catagorical and ultimately exclusionary.
Re: Why Sex Is Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum
#8Intersexuality (XXY, XYY, YYY, and other phenomena) is a biological reality, so sex isn't quite binary. It's fair to say it's a whole lot more bimodal than gender identity, though!
The binary described in the article isn't XX / XY, it's SRY gene / no SRY gene.