Well male and female generally do refer to sex, the dispute happens when people reject the notion that you can change your gender, that's a philosophical position tbh...
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Well male and female generally do refer to sex, the dispute happens when people reject the notion that you can change your gender, that's a philosophical position tbh...
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Is this only a human thing though? a bit random, but even plants have male and female variants don't they?
Are there any intersex plants and animals in the world?
Take monkeys for example?
Are there any intersex plants and animals in the world?
Take monkeys for example?
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At 63 I'm supposed to be set in my ways but even at 14 I knew there were males & females and 50 shades of them.
We didn't have names back then.
"woman" also refers to sex. It literally means "female person" (it's directly from an Old English compound word with that meaning), has been used that way for the entire existence of English (and probably in earlier Germanic languages since the word for 'person' is the same in almost all of them and probably goes back all the way to proto-Germanic) and is still used that way today.
The disputes are a lot less simple than a single dispute of "when people reject the notion that you can change your gender". For example, one dispute is when people aren't sexually attracted to people of a sex they're not sexually attracted to. That's about sex (in both meanings of the word), not gender. Sex and gender are being conflated and I think that's a root cause of many issues. Another dispute is the nature of gender. For example, I regard gender as mostly fake, never relevant to any individual and a collection of a vast number of spectrums on which it's commonplace for any individual to occupy different positions on different spectrums and to change position on any given spectrum at different times and for the spectrums themselves to change. The position that there are only two genders (man, woman) and that they're discrete groups is nonsense to me.
If you're talking about sexual attraction etc.. then that's a somewhat different dispute. The point was that male/female are used to refer to sex, it's the gender aspect that is in dispute - ergo we have man/woman referring to gender identity or sex.
Incorrect, it would however show the DNA to be that of a biological male.
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Seems very much 2 + 2 = 5 to me, an otherwise very simple binary thing turned into an overly complex use of pointless words.
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I got called out this week for using the word females interchangeably with the word women. Apparently this was condescending and highlighted my male privelage. In a world with that kind of logic the fight is already lost....
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I’m not the best at writing succinctly but perhaps the words you’re looking for is hermaphrodite and asexual reproduction? Most fauna and some flora (like flowering plants) on Earth falls under the dimorphic sexual binary. However some creatures (going back to bacteria and the start of life itself) can reproduce by themselves or change sex fully (clownfish are a famous example) or are just monomorphic with one form like a lot of plants. You find asexual reproduction in several vertebrate (e.g. some fish) and invertebrate species (e.g. snails).
Intersex is an umbrella term to describe the various developmental sexual disorders that exist (affecting around 0.02% of the human race), some of which can make the sex of a person difficult to ascertain externally, or which create non-standard chromosomal variation. Some of these conditions only affect males and some only affect females, but the conditions are collectively grouped because they are all “disorders that affect normal sexual development in humans”. No third sex exists - your plumbing/framework is either set up to produce sperm or to produce eggs and carry children through to birth… Same with all mammals AFAIK.
Some DSDs can result in a person having both testicular and ovarian tissues, however as said the person will still ultimately be a male with a disorder or a female with a disorder and in either case neither produce both gametes (sperm or ova) at the same time and most often don’t produce viable gametes at all, whether it’s one or the other. No human can get themselves pregnant, or both have ova to be fertilised and sperm to fertilise with. Not part of our evolution and reproductive biology; in mammals like humans the successful genomic imprinting required to reproduce successfully depends on the complementary material of maternal and paternal genetics with each code shaped by the different natural and sexual selection pressures men and women underwent over millennia. Pressures that have led to things like the average differences in height, muscle mass potential, bone structure between the sexes, for example.
So yes TL;DR these things have happened in some evolutionary pathways of life on earth.
This is what gets me. Everyone is on a spectrum. Some people are super straight, other people are bi, other people are gay and other people are somewhere in between. This has been the way since I was in school and no one ever felt the need to put labels on their sexuality beyond the obvious 3 which basically told everyone who you were interested in when looking for a partner.
Just smacks of people who don't have much going on in their lives when they are so obsessed with the world bending to their desire to be noticed and be special. No one really cares what your sexual preference is. Get on with it like everyone else does and just try to be happy. If you ask most people to tell you about themselves they probably wouldn't come straight out with "I'm a straight white male" as their defining trait yet for some people, their sexuality is their defining personality trait.
Yea, a man. One of the two genders/sexes.
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My problem is with those bigots who will not accept that humans can be male & female with 50 shades in between and think it's down to the individual choosing.
Like my Trans mate said "Do you really believe I chose to be like this, that I want to be 6ft 2ins with size 12 feet and put a dress on?".
I've had gay friends in the past say similar "Do people really believe I want to be attacked for how I'm made? Life would be easier if I was straight"
Because they are separate things only for a small percentage of the population.
For the rest of us, the majority of people on the planet, Man/Woman and Male/Female are exactly the same thing or at least interchangeable and we don't have to pander to the minority who want to force the rest of the world to use their newly defined terminology. If they want to use new words while talking about their problems, all good, but they are not going to force the rest of us to comply with their subjective needs for validation that go entirely against the norms the rest of us live with.
Using hyperbole like 'denying existence' and claiming 'hate' or 'bigotry' when people are more likely mildly annoyed or ambivalent is just manipulative and should be called out as such. I don't hate anybody - not even the person who nearly killed me when I was a teenager and if I don't have any hate for them you can be damned sure a man in a dress doesn't get to lay claim to my hate either.
If someone want's to present themselves as the opposite gender to that which matches the biological sex they were born with, that's fine, I have no issue with that. Live and let live I say. However if they then want me to pretend along with them that they are not gender that matches their biology, then depending on the circumstances, that's going to be a big fat no. To clarify my comment about the circumstances, it will be a 'yes' to be civil, polite, kind, etc. in general day-to-day life, and I'll use their preferred gender pronouns (unless it's this Xir/Xe nonsense) in conversation. But get into a rational debate and it's back to no and when males start taking things away from females (like medals) it's an even firmer NO.
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Its like all things. There are nearly 8bn humans on earth. There will be every kind. Most people just want to be left to live their lives as best they can. No one should be punished for their sexual preferences or the way they are dressed etc. The issue is when we are encouraging people to divide themselves into smaller and smaller and more specific groups and rewarding them for it. Its fundamentally divisive and dangerous. The current racial divide is not healthy, the current gender divide is not healthy. People are not happier when they are constantly told they are the victim and that the world is against them. We have gone from trying to deal with actual issue to dealing with perceived issues and completely made up issues. Your perception of the world is probably not the reality of it. Was that person a bit of a dick to you because you are black or because they were having a bad day or perhaps you just rubbed them up the wrong way.
I fundamentally don't like emotion based policy and decision making where the feelings of someone are more important than the objective facts. Assume the best of people and you would be surprised how few issues are actually nothing but point of view and interpretation rather than targeted hate.
Its hard to articulate your views and feelings sometimes when each side is automatically looking to be offended or jump on the smallest ambiguous statement and extrapolate your entire belief system based on a single word. Twitter is full of "debate" in 280 characters. The world is also rewarding the most ridiculous, most extreme views with the most promotion and attention so naturally the scum rises to the top. The people that we shouldn't be listening to are suddenly the champions of each side. The moderates in the middle are just ignored as their views are not divisive enough.
it makes you wonder how a female knows what a male feels like (and vice versa)....... for them to say they are in fact male or no gender.
welcome to clown world, where people take this seriously
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I think you'll find most people don't really care either way, what they do have issue with though is people imposing those beliefs on others, demanding they address them in a specific way. When in reality they are just going to not acknowledge them at all or just completely ignore them.
This is probably the most succinct synopsis of the situation I've read for a while. Ironically [or not] on the subtopic of articulation.
Yes, it's the whole compelled speech argument.
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They weren't for thousands of years it is an entirely modern mess that has been pushed by extremists.
It is polite to call a trans person by their preferred pro nouns but it doesn't change biological reality. Pretending sex is a continuity rather than largely binary with a tiny proportion of genetic anomalies is a deliberate attempt to push this ideology. Sexual preferences is a continuity, sex is not. I'm happy to that society is accepting or becoming more accepting to trans people it is a good thing. But the trans bigots are happy to destroy decades of progress in women's rights at the altar of their ideology.