this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2025
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Technically no. They aren't male or female, they're undifferentiated. Since we're neither male nor female at conception, this order means males and females don't actually exist at all.
Get out of here with that big science speak that isn't allowed in American now
he talked science! Get 'im!
At conception the future sex is determined by the chromosomes that the sperm contributes. Once fertilized, there are either X and X or X and Y, which will be XX and XY once meiosis occurs for the first time.
So technically once fertilization occurs(conception), sex has been determined.
No, it isn't. Every Bio textbook I have that discusses it (more than a dozen), is very clear that sex is determined by gonad function/gamete production. Some XY individuals will never produce sperm. Some will produce ova. Some XX individuals will never produce ova. I would bet there is probably at least one case out there where an XX individual produced sperm through some kind of insanely unlikely nondisjunction. And none of this even begins to touch on the variability within the XXY and XO groups. Even if you want to not consider other species, chromosomes ain't it.
They donβt seem to understand that even if XX/XY differentiation is right 99.99% of the time, there are a fuck ton of humans in the world and even small improbabilities are likely to be represented. We obviously shouldnβt make laws that discriminate against minorities, and these people really exist all over the place.
Republicans want to erase the idea of nonbinary people because their tiny minds canβt handle the scientific nuance.
Yup. A huge amount of people grow up to adulthood not knowing they're intersex until they get tested. Talking percentages ain't shit when your population is an entire dominant species!
.01% of the US population is over 33k. That's the population of a mid-sized county in a red state.
You don't define the norm with characteristics of edge cases. The X and Y chromosome groups define biological sex be it male, female, or intersex.
Some people are born with vestigial tails, does that mean that humans may or may not have tails? No, a few hundred people have been born with a vestigial tail in recorded history.
Some people are born with a cleft pallette, does that mean humans can be born with or without a cleft pallette? No, 1 in 1,600 people are born with a cleft pallette.
1 in 1500 to 1 in 2000 people are born intersex. The other 1499 to 1999 people are XY or XX and 98.5% of those have a gender identity that conforms with their biological sex.
You are daft if you take an XX that identifies as a woman and say she isn't female because her ovaries don't produce an ovum. That woman is a sterile female, not intersex.
Hormones are the thing that defines development, more or less. There's lots of things that effect hormones, and everyone has verying degrees of testosterone and estrogen, and other hormones. Chromosomes are associated with hormones, but do not totally define what hormones are in the body when and where. That's even ignoring the fact we can control what hormones are in the body now manually, which directly changes how the body develops.
The issue is that you claim that a causes b. So at a, we can know that b will follow. Therefore we can identify b when we see a.
They say, a don't cause b for certain. So at a, we can't know that b will follow. Therefore we can't identify b when we see a, as we could misidentify.
That is not defining the norm at all. That is pointing out that it is logically invalid to identify b at a.
Think about it like this, most people who are born will be 23yo at some point but not all. So while it is a fair assumption to assume that a child will be 23yo, it would be wrong to claim that it will be 23yo. So when the child is born, there is no way to determine whether or not a child will be 23yo. it probably will but it might not. The norm is still that the child will be 23yo, but that doesn't change the reality that some won't.
Exactly. So what are you made of, hydrogen or helium?
haha thats gold
I'm helium. 3/4 of you wish you could be me.
Good thing I didn't do that.
This is the whole point, no, they don't. Biologists do not define sex in terms of chromosomes because there are multiple different chromosomal systems in use to achieve the function of sex cell differentiation.
I just...fucking wow. Reread what you wrote here.
Clearly people born with a cleft pallette aren't human to them. Which is kind of a weird thing to say and believe.
If you ever get the chance, I recommend the book A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities: A Compendium of the Odd, the Bizarre, and the Unexpected by Jan Bondeson.
The book talks at length about medical conditions, including the human tail, the cleft pallet and also intersex. It talks about XY females, SRY transposition/deletions, the Guevedoche males from Dominican Republic who are indistinguishable from females until about the age of 12 when their testes drop, and the prevalence of more subtle forms of intersex that go under-diagnosed. It also touches in fetal development and general genetics including the inversion of sexual chromosomes in birds and reptiles.
It's a great dive into the complexity of biology and particularly sexual development. I suspect you won't be so sure of what you think is normal after exploring its barrage of edge cases that deeply contemplate the nature of genetic sex that creates these deviations: Nothing in biology is set and it's all subject to change.
There are many more people today who have incorporated a hybrid gender precisely because they don't fit into neat categories. People call them femboys and tomboys because everything about their gender expression is mixed. You can't tell me with a straight face they're just pretending. The whole category is called "gender non-conforming".
Some people being born with a vestigial tail and most being born without, does mean people are born with or without a vestigial tail. I don't know how to respond to this, what part aren't you understanding exactly?
I'm guessing it's the parts about biological sex and humans. They're clearly not very familiar with either.
The correct explanation on which the gender depends.
Explain that to XY individuals with a mutated SRY, meaning they never develop male traits at all, even though they're XY.
According to the wording of the order, at conception you are female if you are "producing larger reproductive cells" or male if you are "producing smaller reproductive cells". Since at conception no one is making either reproductive cells, then I agree with the stance that the order says no one is male or female now.
Weβre all non-binary
I think everyone involved with the orders are a bunch of jackasses, but that simply isn't what it says. It doesn't speculate at all about the timing of the production of the reproductive cells, merely that the individual belongs to a a sex that does produce them. It's a fun joke, but going to the mat defending it just makes it look like you don't read well.
Except that interpretation ends up being circular in a way. They don't have the characteristic, but one day they will belong to a sex that is associated with producing them, even if they personally never do. The wording is very weird because they think they are sidestepping chromosomal and hormonal anomalies, but end up in either taking them literally at their word (no one is any gender) or applying some looser interpretation that becomes flexible since "belonging to a sex" is then not tethered to any objective fact since the timeframe is then up for grabs.
For example, they could have said "if the sperm contributed a y chromosome, then male, else female". But they probably were thinking of things like Morris, Kleinfelter, and Swyer and wanted to have wording flexible enough to account for those. But it results in enough ambiguity to allow for things.
It literally specifies "at the time of conception". At which point nobody has developed any sexual characteristics.
Competent lawmakers write bills and executive orders VERY carefully in order to cause the least confusion and unintended conclusions possible.
Trump has once again proven to be the polar opposite of competence.
Only correct comment here. Genetically, all things are already set in stone at conception. People parroting the 6 week thing are conflating genetic determinism with development of external traits.
There's also the issue with intersexed individuals and other individuals with chromosomal differences... I suspect they are out of scope of the order as they really don't fit either definition