Thread:00d4n1/@comment-40256450-20190814131547/@comment-45618903-20200427174406

Part 2 Extra: I'd also like to clear up the issue of whether or not gender is binary. Again I'm not sure of commielizard47 is meaning "sex" when they say "gender", but either way I would argue they are incorrect. I'd also like to be clear upfront that while this may be an unconventional position when it comes to the general population, it is not unconventional when it comes to academia and scientific research. First you have to understand that when we speak of sex and gender, these refer to separate concepts. By sex we mean the dimorphism of phenotypes associated with reproductive sex roles. By gender we mean the socially constructed, prescriptive traits associated with men and woman, which would not exist without society. (For example the concept of women being stay at home parents, or the association with dresses and skirts.) I'll start by simply saying that no matter which common definition of sex you use, it cannot be viewed as binary. If you define sex by chromosomes: there are more than two possible configurations, xy, xx, xxy, xo. That's just a few examples. If you define sex by gonad type (as some states do), there are people born with gonads that posses both testicular and ovarian tissue, and cannot be categorized as one or the other. If you define sex by genital, then you should definitely know that the development of genitals is very much a spectrum, whether we're talking about micro penes or totally ambiguous genitalia that has aspects of both a vagina and a penis. And if you define sex by the reproductive gametes you produce, then you have to consider the people who just don't produce any gametes at all. The fact is that like many things in nature, the categories we impose on sexual dimorphism are no more objectively real than the line where we divide yellow and green. You may be tempted to suggest I'm referring to outliers, and claim that as a reason to exclude them from our description. But that's a brain dead fucking take. Put a single 2 in your binary code and see wtf happens. Fuck around and find out bitch. Gender on the other hand is the field of masculinity and femininity, which obviously lie on a spectrum. Some things are obviously more masculine or more feminine than other things which may be only slightly masculine or feminine. All it takes for gender identity to not be binary is for us to be able to identify with any point within that field.