I’m tired, so I’m not looking it up but iirc intersex is WAY more fucking common than you think and there are SO MANY ways it can happen. It’s not very rare outliers, but people also fuckin mutilate their kids over that shit and plenty of stupid shit so here we are thinking it’s like .01% of people.
Anecdotally, one of my friends eventually discovered through a lot of digging that he was very literally assigned female at birth, as he was born intersex and surgically “corrected” at birth without even his parents being told. They only discovered it when the family did DNA tests for some family history thing.
Ya there is that one guy Brian D. Earp who talked about how babies who are born intersex are mutilated like its nothing to assign them a certain sex . And then of course we have babies that are born with perfectly healthy genatalia who are also mutilated like its nothing. THATS what happened to me. And to so many other babies in our world today as I type this…
Even physical sex being a binary is a construct, basically taking a series of dynamic characteristics that occur as bimodal distributions and reducing them down to two categories. These categories have explanatory utility, but shouldn’t be essentialized.
All of which makes the idea of a strict gender binary seem that much more ridiculous.
The outliers are the exception that prove the rule though. The very fact that intersex people exist at all shows that the physical process of inducing the development of sexual characteristics is complicated and messy, and not a simple switch. It’s just that evolution has fine-tuned the process enough that in the majority of cases it leads to people who are within ranges that can be considered “wholly male” or “wholly female”. So the sexual binary model isn’t useless, but it’s important to be aware that it is just a model and not reality.
Way out of my scope of knowledge but I think a hypothetical unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity would be the next big model. Hasn’t happened yet but it’s probably possible
There are also big variables that general relativity predicts but that we don’t know much about, like dark matter, which suggest potential for an alternative or updated model.
For most of our use cases, though, it has a lot of utility and seems to be super accurate
That’s true. But also, for 99.9% of physics problems people use day to day, Newton’s model works great.
If people need the “relativistic model” of gender to understand their own situation, i.e. if they’re intersex, thats great and im glad thats available. But theres no need for people to account for relativity if they’re just trying to determine how fast a pendulum is swinging or something, and if someone meets the generally accepted definition of male or female biological sex (which 99.9% of people do), i dont think there’s much need to complicate things.
Rare, sure, but keep in mind that even a 0.2% incidence rate means that 16 million people wouldn’t fit the binary gender model. And that’s the most conservative estimate for the condition given in the article. 6% puts it closer to half a billion people.
And the sad truth is that we dont even know if its 0.1 or 0.2% or even higher than 6% cause we are curreently choosing not to and have not chosen to research the commonality and impact of this type of person being born deeper.
We are for some reason choosing to be stuck on these estimates when we should be trying to be as caring and exact as possible, ESPECIALLY when it comes to a babie’s gender and their bodily autonomy!
This is a science community that should be open to reasoned and reasonable debate, the moderator that removed my reply has no scientific education and no place here.
If youre going to debate CITE research of your own. Dont just come in with random opinions with little research backing them.
The point of scientific debate is that YOUR science is larger and /or more rigorous than your opponent’s thus proving thst youre probably more correct on the matter than they are.
If someone or I say ‘im the reincarnation of Mao-Tse-Tung!’ , does anybody hare have to believe me unless I can prove it? How would I be able to prove that without medical records that prove that it is the undeniable truth?
But you do not know what my original response was because it was removed, is that what your proposal is? To remove any counter views without any discourse at all. Is that your idea of debate within a community or how research is reviewed.
Removed by mod
That’s an interesting reply to make with no further details, in response to an article that directly contradicts you.
I’m tired, so I’m not looking it up but iirc intersex is WAY more fucking common than you think and there are SO MANY ways it can happen. It’s not very rare outliers, but people also fuckin mutilate their kids over that shit and plenty of stupid shit so here we are thinking it’s like .01% of people.
Anecdotally, one of my friends eventually discovered through a lot of digging that he was very literally assigned female at birth, as he was born intersex and surgically “corrected” at birth without even his parents being told. They only discovered it when the family did DNA tests for some family history thing.
Ya there is that one guy Brian D. Earp who talked about how babies who are born intersex are mutilated like its nothing to assign them a certain sex . And then of course we have babies that are born with perfectly healthy genatalia who are also mutilated like its nothing. THATS what happened to me. And to so many other babies in our world today as I type this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQQTIpBWqvY
The thing that makes me think is that these are such MAAASSIVE issues and yet most of society chooses to …sweep them under the rug?..Why?
Why are we choosing to not confromt such important issues right now?! Why not before?! What are we doing!?
Even physical sex being a binary is a construct, basically taking a series of dynamic characteristics that occur as bimodal distributions and reducing them down to two categories. These categories have explanatory utility, but shouldn’t be essentialized.
All of which makes the idea of a strict gender binary seem that much more ridiculous.
The outliers are the exception that prove the rule though. The very fact that intersex people exist at all shows that the physical process of inducing the development of sexual characteristics is complicated and messy, and not a simple switch. It’s just that evolution has fine-tuned the process enough that in the majority of cases it leads to people who are within ranges that can be considered “wholly male” or “wholly female”. So the sexual binary model isn’t useless, but it’s important to be aware that it is just a model and not reality.
Indeed its a model. A somewhat accurate model. BUT An outdated one
Like I think about it like this .
We have newton’s model of the gravitational equation, right? Its just a model .A somewhat accurate model… But An outdated model.
…Then we have Einstein’s… which is far more accurate.
And who knows? Who is to say thar einstein’s model is COMPLETELY accurate? There could be faults in it we havent encountered yet
Way out of my scope of knowledge but I think a hypothetical unification of quantum mechanics and general relativity would be the next big model. Hasn’t happened yet but it’s probably possible
There are also big variables that general relativity predicts but that we don’t know much about, like dark matter, which suggest potential for an alternative or updated model.
For most of our use cases, though, it has a lot of utility and seems to be super accurate
That’s true. But also, for 99.9% of physics problems people use day to day, Newton’s model works great.
If people need the “relativistic model” of gender to understand their own situation, i.e. if they’re intersex, thats great and im glad thats available. But theres no need for people to account for relativity if they’re just trying to determine how fast a pendulum is swinging or something, and if someone meets the generally accepted definition of male or female biological sex (which 99.9% of people do), i dont think there’s much need to complicate things.
Rare, sure, but keep in mind that even a 0.2% incidence rate means that 16 million people wouldn’t fit the binary gender model. And that’s the most conservative estimate for the condition given in the article. 6% puts it closer to half a billion people.
That’s what I took from it as well 0.2 is 1 in 500, ok its quite a lot, but 6% is just over 1 in 16 people.
And the sad truth is that we dont even know if its 0.1 or 0.2% or even higher than 6% cause we are curreently choosing not to and have not chosen to research the commonality and impact of this type of person being born deeper.
We are for some reason choosing to be stuck on these estimates when we should be trying to be as caring and exact as possible, ESPECIALLY when it comes to a babie’s gender and their bodily autonomy!
Removed by mod
This is a science community that should be open to reasoned and reasonable debate, the moderator that removed my reply has no scientific education and no place here.
If youre going to debate CITE research of your own. Dont just come in with random opinions with little research backing them.
The point of scientific debate is that YOUR science is larger and /or more rigorous than your opponent’s thus proving thst youre probably more correct on the matter than they are.
If someone or I say ‘im the reincarnation of Mao-Tse-Tung!’ , does anybody hare have to believe me unless I can prove it? How would I be able to prove that without medical records that prove that it is the undeniable truth?
But you do not know what my original response was because it was removed, is that what your proposal is? To remove any counter views without any discourse at all. Is that your idea of debate within a community or how research is reviewed.