this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works -5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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?

[–] powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 week ago

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