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Are there more than 2 sexes?


WillyWehr

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2 minutes ago, iNow said:

Why would we say that intersex is NOT different from the male sex and the female sex? That would be absurd, yet that’s your stance. 

Different does not equal to a 3rd sex. Ofcourse theyre different. Your dishonesty in discourse is amazing. 

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8 minutes ago, mistermack said:

No, you provide me your link. Here is what wiki says :

Genetic recombination and recombinational DNA repair also occurs in bacteria and archaea, which use asexual reproduction.  And

Asexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that does not involve the fusion of gametes or change in the number of chromosomes. The offspring that arise by asexual reproduction from either unicellular or multicellular organisms inherit the full set of genes of their single parent. 

Oh science is now done in links? How brilliant. If I knew that I could have finished my PhD in a weekend. And of course it shows that you are missing the mark entirely as you only provide links to asexual reproduction. My question was aimed to help you understand what sexual processes are and where the overlap within the broader aspect of genetic recombination is.

How about you read some Lederberg and Tatum who were among the first to characterize recombination in bacteria. (Nature volume 158page558 (1946)). From then onward they described sexual processes in bacteria, specifically E. coli.

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In a world that only has black and white colours, you can have an infinity of grey SHADES. 

If you confuse shades with colours, this is what you get. 

People here are confusing characteristics with an actual sex. Like the greys, you can have as many characteristics as characters, all from two actual sexes. 

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Oh science is now done in links?

How does that not surprise me? You made a silly post, and now comes the bullshit cover-up, consisting of smoke and wind. If you hadn't noticed, I backed up my posts.

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27 minutes ago, koti said:

Just spit it out and say it through the downvotes, the subtle accusations and implications of homophobia, racism, conspiracy theory throughout the previous transgender thread and this one, just please f say it - "Individuals who are e.g. sterile from birth, are intersex or have other deviations from the standard distribution are NOT a 3rd SEX in homosapiens !"

I have enough of you already. I have not downvoted you once, despite the fact that you keep calling me names and accusing me of some innuendo that appears to be entirely in your head. I have done my best to lay out my arguments, but you keep going down your ideological arguments.

You are not even reading what I am saying. Nowhere I said that there was a third sex. In contrast, I laid out a couple of classifications that would create two categories. The big issue being that they do not cover all individuals and hence are incomplete definitions. Whether we need to define new ones or not is entirely contextual, but it just a fundamental truth in science, we only create representations of reality, not reality itself. Whatever else you think is going in is independent of my arguments I have it with your projection.

It is ironic that I am the one being accused of PC that or postmodernism that or downvoting folks, whereas it is others that keep doing that. It is just clear to me that apparently many folks claiming to be science minded are only so as long as the science agrees with their worldview or is sufficiently intuitive for them to grasp. Confronted with even minor variations there is a lot happening that makes folks lose their ability to reason. It seems to me that many using science to argue against certain dogmatic aspects only do so not because they believe in scientific discourse, but rather because they are just against the dogma (or religion).

 

16 minutes ago, mistermack said:

How does that not surprise me? You made a silly post, and now comes the bullshit cover-up, consisting of smoke and wind. If you hadn't noticed, I backed up my posts.

You freaking did not, you just know to little on the subject to know that you missed by a mile.

Quote

ANALYSIS of mixed cultures of nutritional mutants has revealed the presence of new types which strongly suggest the occurrence of a sexual process in the bacterium, Escherichia coli.

That is the abstract of the paper as googling seems to be beyond you. Have you googled sex pilus, for example? Read just a couple of papers on conjugation, or on the evolution of sex. What the heck do you think is sex in the first place but a means of genetic recombination? You can also find a summary from both authors summarizing their efforts in Science, 1953 118:3059 pp.169-175. Assuming you are able to find it, check out the title.

 

16 minutes ago, mistermack said:

n a world that only has black and white colours, you can have an infinity of grey SHADES. 

Yes and that is why we obviously do have crated names for mixtures. After all we are (mostly) trichromatic so we therefore only have categories three colours.

I think I am done here.

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1 hour ago, koti said:

Different does not equal to a 3rd sex. Ofcourse theyre different. Your dishonesty in discourse is amazing. 

You say there are two sexes only. Male and Female. Into which of those two buckets are you placing Intersex individuals?

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11 minutes ago, iNow said:

You say there are two sexes only. Male and Female. Into which of those two buckets are you placing Intersex individuals?

Into an anomaly, a deviation from the normal distribution within our species, like any non ideology infatuated person would. And no, it doesn't mean I'm transphobic, homophobic, xenophobic, or whatever other phobic your hand waving instead of clapping marble brain thinks.

Edited by koti
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10 minutes ago, koti said:

I'm done here.

Why?

If intersex exists… if you call them anomalies… or call them defective… what we call them doesn’t matter. What DOES matter is they don’t fit into either the male bucket or into the female bucket.

If another bucket is needed, that means there are more than 2 categories. It means there are at least 3 categories. 

You sure are getting super emotional over this. I’m simply asking a simple question, but you keep evading it and calling me and Charon names instead.  

Edited by iNow
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There are two sexes required to create a human, correct?

No human can do it alone, and a third (or more) is never required, facilitation of the other two notwithstanding.

But not all can take part in reproduction. Could be age, to young or old or another reason.

It doesn't mean those individuals should be less respected, but for purposes of biological reproduction human sexuality is binary.

edit: or have i missed something? Has there ever been an individual that can sucessfully reproduce on more than one side of the equation?

Edited by J.C.MacSwell
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11 minutes ago, iNow said:

Appreciate you sharing. It seems tangential to the topic, though. 

Are there more than 2? Yes, in both the animal kingdom and also in humans. 

If you want to define sex that way yes. More than 2. If you prefer a different definition where it's just 2, then it's just 2, and this can be a reasonably justified definition for humans.

It depends on how you define sexes. A detached scientist could use either. If you are emotionally attached to one in particular...you're probably trying to compensate for human biology rather than doing human biology.

 

 

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5 hours ago, CharonY said:

Please go ahead and define a good classification scheme that allows us to capture the whole diversity in human sexual development using only two categories. If nature is strictly binary, there must be technical characteristics that we can use to build these classification without selectively throwing out things that don't fit (which is the very definition of a biased approach).

The argument that you may have missed is not that there are three sexes, rather that any classification we use is artificial and, while it captures much of nature, is always incomplete. If folks here think that they have such an impeccable understanding of biology, I would really like to see some evidence of an unambiguous definition that we can use.

What people fail to see is that nature does not define "normal" or "exceptions". Those are human constructs. Or alternatively we could argue that we are all exceptions as we all carry some form of mutations or "abnormalities". However, at this point the distinction is at least equally meaningless. What we can define are frequencies (i.e. how common certain traits are- e.g. most humans are bipedal, all viable humans have a brain etc.) and roughly outline the range of variability.

The idea of (strict) normality runs against the very idea (and basic understanding) of evolutionary processes where a huge range of variety is generated. If nature adhered and forced a given norm, we would still be normal single-celled organism with a decent separation of sex and reproduction. 

As I mentioned, one can force an accurate binary definition (e.g. every human with a Y chromosome is male, everyone without is female) and as definitions go, it would neatly and completely separate a given human population into two groups. The issue is that this definition then runs across other definitions used by posters here, which rely on traits such as female outward features. 

Ok, I got your schedule. I have already defined a scheme about what a Man and a Woman are, in short: Individual who has an ability to produce male gametes (Spermatozoa) > Male. Individual who has an ability to produce female gametes (Eggs) > Female. Of course, again for exceptions where individuals don't  produce gametes or produce both, and I reiterate again, EXCEPTIONS, the Biologist doesn't research a species based on exceptions, furthermore, nor does he do research based on deleterious mutations, Anyway, the your argument was based on a magic to say that sex is a specter, nor am I going to waste my time answering the rest of your messed up dissertation, but allow me to reinforce my idea through the text I'll write now: As more and more people look for themselves as trans, non-binary and are in gender non-compliance, have an impulse towards classifying as obsolete the notion that males and exist as real biological entities. Instead, some argue, we have only varying degrees of “masculinity” and “femininity”. And getting into a deeper idea: Based on this reasoning, the very idea of segregating any space or sport using binary sexual categories is seen as illegitimate, since if no definitive line can be drawn, who can say that a supposed “ male “ isn't it actually a female? Many even claim that we should let people decide for themselves which sex they are, as if that were a matter of personal choice.

I noticed two types of arguments here in this OP, already answered in my first text, but I will make a point of detailing it further. Both arguments - that of intersex conditions and that of secondary organs and characters - stem from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of biological sex, which is related to the distinct type of gametes (sexual cells) that an organism produces. Ser, males are the sex that produces small gametes (sperm) and the necessary large gametes (eggs). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no sexual spectrum. Biological sex in humans is a binary system and therefore there are only two.

However, it is crucial to keep in mind that the sex of respondents within a species is not based on the individual's ability to produce certain gametes at any given time. Prepubertal men do not produce spermatozoa, and some adults sterile of both sexes are don't produce gametes due to various infertility problems. Still, it would be incorrect to say that these have no discernible sex, as individual sex corresponds to one of the two distinct types of reproductive anatomy (ie, ovaries or testicle) that develop to produce sperm or eggs. , regardless of past, present or future functionality. In humans, including here transgenders and so-called “non-binary”, which are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unmistakably male or female in 99.98% of cases. (1).  

By analogy, we flip a coin to randomize a binary decision because a coin has only two sides: heads and tails. But a coin also has an edge, and at about 1 in 6,000 (0.0166%) (2) thrown (with a nickel) it will fall into that edge. It's practically a the same probability (3) of someone to be born with an intersexual condition. Almost all heads or tails will be heads or tails, and those heads and tails don't come in grades or blends. That's because heads and tails are qualitatively different and mutually exclusive outcomes. The existence of extreme cases does not change this fact. Heads and tails, despite the existence of the border, remain discrete results.

Likewise, sexual development outcomes in humans are almost always unmistakably male or female. The development of ovaries versus testicles, and therefore of female and males, are also qualitatively different outcomes which, for the vast majority of humans, are mutually exclusive and unqualified or to varying degrees. Male it's persistent, despite the existence of intersex conditions, continue to be in different categories.

The existence of intersex conditions is often taken into account when arguing for the inclusion of trans women in women's sports and other contexts. But transgenderism has absolutely nothing to do with being intersexual. For the vast majority of inidividual claiming trans or non-binary identities, their gender is not an issue. It is the primary sexual organs, not identity, which determines a person's sex.

The different male and female developmental trajectories are,  themselves, a product of millions of years of natural selection, since secondary traits will contribute to evolutionary fitness in males and second in different ways. Women with narrower hips had more problems giving birth to children with larger head and those therefore with  larger hips had an evolutionary advantage in childbirth, of course, humans who remained in the tropics did not acquire wider hips as they had no evolutionary advantage. for that, walking with the hips together allowed a fast locomotion, which may have allowed more distant destinations. This is observed in the difference between sub-Saharan African and African-American women, who in general have a smaller hip than white women, but this is beside the point of what is being discussed, consider this as a curiosity, returning to the topic : That (Big hips) wasn't relevant for men, which is one of the reasons their bodies tend to look different. But that doesn't mean that a person's hips—or any of their characteristic secondary categories, including beards and breasts—defines their sex biologically. These characteristics, although they have evolved due to sex-specific selection pressures, are completely irrelevant when it comes to defining a person's biological sex.

Advocates of the sexual spectrum model no doubt meant well when these theories were developed. After all, who wouldn't want an explanation of human biology that validates all of our mutable forms of self-conception and understanding? But over time, it became clear that they created a false theory of biology that distorts the human nature and harms the vulnerable. When you try to achieve equality and justice by distorting reality, inequality and injustice are never eliminated, only reallocated. But anyway, this is my argument basically, I hope I managed to synthesize it well.

And one more thing before leaving:

121212.png

If you can prove to me the existence of these gametes I will give up in this debate. That's it, see you later XD

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16 minutes ago, J.C.MacSwell said:

If you prefer a different definition where it's just 2, then it's just 2, and this can be a reasonably justified definition for humans.

Into which category will you place intersex individuals? Are they male, or are they female?

7 minutes ago, Luiz Henning said:

transgenderism has absolutely nothing to do with being intersexual.

It could, but that’s off topic, has nothing to do with this thread, and nothing to do with any of the actual arguments being made here. 

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Just now, iNow said:

It could, but that’s off topic, has nothing to do with this thread, and nothing to do with any of the actual arguments being made here. 

I only covered it because it fits into the topic, but read it all, I refute any ideas developed here that sex is a "spectrum", or, as you claim, there is a third sex

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Just now, iNow said:

It could, but that’s off topic, has nothing to do with this thread, and nothing to do with any of the actual arguments being made here. 

121212.png

XD

Just now, iNow said:

You’ve share opinions and made assertions, but calling it a refutation does violence to the meaning of words. 

Basic science, in my opinion, is not "Opinion". I think it's amazing how this was cutting-edge biology in the 1600ths, but today, in the middle of 2021, in a forum that was supposed to be a science forum, this is controversial and the disagreement on this issue.

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