this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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I still don't understand what to do based on gametes with XXY genotype for instance
I'm not sure what you mean by "what to do". If someone has an XXY genotype, their sex is determined by the gametes their body is organized around producing, like everyone else.
To quote the NHS
but what about ovotesticular people? if they can produce both gametes what determines their sex? based on what gamete they were "supposed" to produce? but how do you determine what they're "supposed" to produce? chromosomes? phenotypes? a combination of all of these? but then we're back at square one where gametes may be binary but sex isn't?
Some species are hermaphroditic, but humans aren't. Nobody's body is organized around the production of both gametes. Ovotesticular doesn't mean what you're thinking. I'll copy from my other comment
but even then people who can't produce either can't be simply classified into what they were "supposed" to produce without involving karyotypes or other sex characteristics, which the paper you linked explicitly argues can't be used for sex definition:
so for someone with complete gonadal dysgenesis:
but then this is circular:
and I feel your lacking-an-arm comment doesn't really apply here as humans aren't solely defined by how many arms we have - the analogy would only work if:
but I think the bigger question this whole biological definition/determinism sidesteps is the one that seems close to heart of the very-same intersex people linked in that Wikipedia page:
when these things affect human beings we can't try to wash our hands by clinging to models that seem to give us simple answers - if we insist on monothethic definitions that don't recognize the complexity of sexual development - we end up forcing ambiguous cases into boxes and providing intellectual cover to deny people agency over their own bodies.
Thank you for actually engaging. Too many people on Lemmy are worryingly anti-scientific due to their politics. To anyone that needs to hear it, join us on the science-accepting Left. Life's easier without cognitive dissonance :)
To clarify, the fact of the sex binary doesn't have any strong implications for surgically altering intersex children. People simply don't understand that the sex binary is a limited, but factual claim. There's several different domains here, and people keep confusing them and then arguing with me. The fact of the sex binary doesn't mean that sex phenotypes or genotypes aren't a spectrum, nor that gender roles need to be tied to sex. It also doesn't mean that someone with a DSD needs "fixing", particularly surgically before they can reasonably consent. It is possible that interventions are the appropriate course of action, but not just because someone is "supposed" to be a certain way.
Even in the case of complete gonadal dysgenesis, a person's body is still "trying" to produce gametes, it's just failing. My arm example is still relevant. It's not about the number of arms, it's about what's missing. No person is born with a body that's "trying" to produce a fish instead of a hand. Nobody was born with a body that's "trying" to produce nothing instead of a hand. In both the case of a missing hand or gonads, the body was "trying" to do something and failed. Evolution is flexible, and it's possible that someday, a new body plan would emerge that does lack a concept of hands or gonads or whatever, but that's not the reality today.
Note that "trying" is a bit too anthropomorphic and loose of a term, but it's good enough. It doesn't imply that there's a deity or sin or anything like that, it's a description of a natural process, like gravity.
So experts can look at the correlates and determine the likely sex based on the apparent body plan. It's not just karyotypes, they can also look at nearby structures like Müllerian/Wolffian ducts. The important thing to remember though is that experts can be wrong, but that doesn't change reality. If an expert said "this person's sex is male", then gave that person a magic science pill that fixed whatever developmental issue they had, and they started producing ova, that says nothing about the sex binary. It merely means the expert was wrong and the person's sex was female the whole time.
So when you say "if sex is defined by gamete function", you're missing the crucial "biological function" bit (a.k.a. "organized around" as I've been using). Here's the corrected version:
That's an awful lot of words about trump's definitions before you admit that some people have scientifically unknowable sex even with your supposedly binary definition. And that's even before I put ten people I know in a room with you and you're unable to use your definition in your own terms on them, not even if you check what's in their pants.
Even of you were right, (which only you believe), it's irrelevant to actual people's lives. Stop trolling trans posts.
It's not unknowable, you're just being intentionally obtuse. It's knowable with better science, it's just possible that an expert is wrong. If they're wrong, that doesn't change reality.
Someone's sex exists regardless of my ability to discern it. Your example is bad faith trolling.
If it's irrelevant then just ignore it. You can't handle the truth and so you troll and try to derail and accuse and insult.
Again, not undiscernable. Are you able to understand that?
I love that you admit that you can't do it and even that the greatest experts mightn't be able to do it but yet still believe it's a useful definition! It's a useless and crap definition! Actually useless! Complete crap!
Chromosomes are testable. Verifyable. Take a blood sample, some time in the lab and it's done! This is why scientists use them to define sex. Your definition is untestable! It's not science. It's pseudoscience. It sounds plausible because it uses technical terms, and stupid people believe it because it sounds clever. But because you believed trump, who is famously very stupid, you have believed a stupid thing, and you can't stop talking about it, in public!
If I found out that trump had duped me into believing some pseudoscience, I would be ASHAMED. You, not so much.
Sadly I think you missed this. Again, not undiscernable. Are you able to understand that?
You should let the author of this text book know that his definition is complete crap lol:
Wow stop the press! The author of a textbook says there are only two sexes!
The. Author. Of. A. Textbook!
In addition to the other links I've already posted to peer-reviewed papers explaining the same thing, yes, the fact that you can find the same definition in any textbook on biology shows that is a useful definition that's used widely across the field of biology.
You can't cite anything to the contrary.
Nobody needs to cite a damn thing. You're not interested in science except where it suits you.
You on the other hand, making attacking trans people your daily mission rather than getting on with your life?
You will make a fascinating case study for a psychologist one day.
Closeted cowardly little attack dog scared of your own shadow.
Too true. Scared dogs bark a lot. Confident dogs accept and welcome.
It is pure tragicomedy that a person who has not done the work on themselves - who is full of self-doubt and self-loathing and does not know who they are - comes here to presume to tell those of us who have done the work and who do know who we are, that we don't know who we are.
In ten years time, when this person grows up and gets tired of running from themselves, when they finally face themselves honestly, they will come to realize that others spotted them a decade ago. That all that time they were fooling nobody, not even themselves.
That all that time, they could have had self-respect, friends and maybe even a love life, but instead they chose to be unpleasant, mean spirited, cowardly and dishonest, rather than look inward.
I tire of even insulting such a wretched individual, such an intellectual and emotional lightweight that I could eat for breakfast.
The singular reason that I take pity on this pathetic and confidently wrong individual is because I was once a bit like them (albeit not as much of an asshole).
Regret is forever.
Why do you think posting about scientific truth is attacking trans people?
Because it doesn't fucking matter a rats ass in the context of people living their lives.
You can't leave it alone? You need to be right?
Newsflash: You're autistic too!
Edit: I'm autistic myself and happy with it.
So you think science is anti trans?
Science is investigative discipline, it is neither for/against.
You cherrypicking science is anti trans.
In the context of people living their lives and being as they are, science isn't even relevant.
What's decidedly unscientific though is coming into a room full of people called "Brian" while telling them that nobody is called "Brian" because you're too much of a pussy to just face your own gender nonconformity.
The lady doth protest too much!
You're again confusing sex and gender. I am merely stating a widely recognized scientific fact that the original meme is incorrect about.
I would love nothing more than for this entire thread to have not happened. The response to my original comment should have been "Yep, that's true for sex, thanks for differentiating it from gender"
If you can't handle the truth, that's on you.
Why are you stating it? Why do you care? Why not let others just live their lives?
You're invested in being right because you're too scared to be honest with yourself.
Autistic, so gender nonconforming by definition.
Deal with it, pussy!
I'm correcting the meme, because it's wrong. Why do you think that's not letting people live their lives?
Because it self-evidently isn't letting people live their lives, is it?
You're on an obsessive autistic quest to be "correct" on a matter which has nothing to do with you. It wouldn't matter anyway even if you were "correct" - though you aren't. Wading into a room of empirical evidence, brandishing textbook, claiming "science"? Puh-lease!
Your opinion on other people's expression of their lived humanity is utterly irrelevant.
Why do you think you're not autistic?
Why do you think you're not trans?
You can lie to everyone but you can't lie to yourself.
Instead of getting therapy and living your best life, you'll continue being a mediocre, obsessive troll on this one particular subject, questioning nothing about your own desperate behavior, making the world a worse place for everyone who encounters you.
Absolute coward, who can't admit to yourself what's screamingly obvious to everyone you troll! You have no cover when surrounded by those who see right through it. You are naked!
Trans (across) genders and in denial, clinging desperately to reductionist incorrect "science" from cherrypicked sources because you think an incorrect science textbook is going to shield you from your true self?
Start by being honest with yourself, because it's you who has to live with yourself for the rest of your life, and you've got a lot of growing up to do.
You're a gender nonconforming autistic person, aren't you? How do you think I know? Because I am too!
Meanwhile you can't keep quiet about yourself and are literally going around outing yourself to everyone! Which WILL reveal your fakeness to everyone else, even if you're too in denial to face yourself honestly.
I don't care if you're too stupid to see how nakedly obvious you are. Carry on pretending, it won't work.
People can't live their lives because a meme is wrong?
People can't live their lives because pussy little online bullies such as you won't see a therapist and talk about your "power struggle" with your own transgender self, and your subsequent overflowing self-hatred and resulting inability to relate to anyone.
You're so clever.
Do you need help understanding?
I was being sarcastic. Secretly I think you're far, far more stupid than you begin to realise, because everyone who tries to explain what science or scientific method or scientific consensus means has wasted their breath because you'd rather cling to and defend daddy trump's pseudoscience than learn amything. It's willful ignorance and maybe the only cure is when trump's goons kidnap someone you actually care about in real life that you might begin to question him in any meaningful way.
Do you need help understanding?
I think I explained that one pretty well.
Do you need help understanding?
Organised around producing here means ‘should produce even if it never did’? You linked a list of disorders yourself, some of them do not allow a body to produce any form of gamete in severe cases
You can read that as "Would produce, if not for a developmental issue". Their body is trying to produce a certain type of gamete and failing.
A rough analogy is, if a person is born without a hand, we say they're missing a hand. We don't throw our hands in the air and say "Whelp, could be anything. Maybe it's a foot, or a wing, or a spider. There's just no way of knowing"
Even in the case of missing gonads, their body is still trying to build them and failing. It's not trying to build nothing
I now see better, but I still don't understand how are we supposed to determine the sex in edge cases where it's failing to produce both equally and has both, you mentioned the condition yourself, even though you say that it's not failing equally that's a possibility still. I mean, if we can't determine sex at all maybe the definition is too abstract?
There isn't a case where someone's body is "failing to produce both equally". I see what you're getting at, but that's not something that happens in humans. You're asking a question like "What if someone was born with their liver in their foot?" Neither one is a reasonable possibility, even if you can imagine it