I’m not saying that all Catholics think this, but most do. also sorry if the seahorse is hard to see X—X
wooooooooooooooooooo over 300 lets go
I’m not saying that all Catholics think this, but most do. also sorry if the seahorse is hard to see X—X
wooooooooooooooooooo over 300 lets go
Male seahorse get pregnant, but that doesn’t make them trans, they’re unambiguously male. This is a great example of why sex is defined by gamete size. If it weren’t, we couldn’t talk about males and females in any useful way across the animal kingdom.
Clownfish would be a better example as they’re sequential hermaphrodites, but that doesn’t have any bearing on the human sex binary.
*the non-existent human sex binary
This is often a point of confusion, but human sex is binary. There’s edge cases that require clarification as to how they fit into the binary, but don’t disprove it.
Human sexuality overall is complex and that’s why we differentiate gender from sex. The sex binary and gender spectrum complement each other though, and don’t clash.
If you’re interested in learning more, here’s some background reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonochorism
We fall into that category, where we have two body plans, each organized around producing either sperm or ova. Other species have more body plans, such as recognizably distinct males, females, and hermaphrodites:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trioecy
Those species are a good contrast. Humans don’t have that variation, and so sex is binary in humans.
There’s literature that explains this specifically in detail, though most of it doesn’t really explicitly talk about it, much like math papers don’t generally explain that integers can be added together.
Ok, yes. That’s where I believe the binary is false.
You have red, you have blue, and then there’s a bunch of egde cases. To me that’s not the end of the story. I believe purple exists.
Do you have a particular edge case in mind? One that’s commonly brought up is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotesticular_syndrome, but that doesn’t fall outside the sex binary. Having a bit of nonfunctional tissue doesn’t affect one’s sex.
Colors aren’t a great analogy either, because in anisogamous species, gametes are strictly binary. There’s sperm and ova, with 0 overlap and 0 other options. “Purple gametes” just don’t exist.
This also isn’t my opinion, this is the accepted definition in the field of biology.
Not anymore, no.
Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic | Scientific American https://share.google/T8SeIlF6VVw1nWogD
From the author of that paper:
https://xcancel.com/ClaireAinsworth/status/888365994577735680
That last quote reads as “Red and blue. Don’t need a word for purple.”
But we do need a word for purple.
This is an English and categorization problem.
A better analogy for the author’s clarification would be “Red and blue, each with a continuum of variation in hue”. There’s still no purple, just different shades of red and different shades of blue. I don’t really have more to add beyond pointing out that this is the author of the paper directly clarifying that point.
You’re free to invent whatever categories you find useful of course. But biologists will continue to recognize human sex as binary, because that is a useful description of the reality they encounter.