Talk:Biological sex

From RationalWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Icon bioDNA.svg

This Biology related article has not received a brainstar for quality. Please consider expanding the article appropriately. See RationalWiki:Article rating for more information.

Steelbrain.png

New topic[edit]

The chromosome gambit (transphobia)[edit]

All males have XY and all females XX, right? That depends on what's more important, the empty shell of the Y chromosome or its function of giving genitals. Turns out if you play with genes on the Y chromosome, you can have functionally female rodents (yes, this can work for humans), that produce even ovum1. Indeed, some of these mice even gave birth. So much for that whole "muh chromosomes" argument. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, the cold hard reality is that chromosomes almost unanimously determine one's sexual phenotype, so it's safe to say that one's sex is determined by this factor in the vast, vast majority of cases. — Unsigned, by: 2a02:a456:1fda:1:10d0:a3b0:2e73:24ce / talk / contribs

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: SigButt.png on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. —cosmikdebris talk stalk 23:20, 12 May 2023 (UTC)
the cold hard reality is actually more complicated than that and that oversimplies sex determination in mammals a bit. The only reason why the Y chromosome typical results in the development of testes and related external genitalia is the presence of the SRY gene which works in tandem with various other genes that produce proteins that allows cells to respond to the presence of related androgens to trigger that development of penis, scrotum, testes, etc. Sometimes an SRY gene is translocated onto an X chromosome so you get similar development of testes and related anatomy but on someone with a XX karyotype. The absence of the SRY gene on a Y chromosome can also result in the absence of testes, penis, etc. Even sometimes with the presence of the SRY the genes it work with may be faulty or absent resulting in membrane proteins insensitive to androgens. Sure in the “majority” of cases XY karyotype results in the expected functional sex development but that doesn’t discount the unexpected or less probable cases. Sounds an awful lot like the argument that the vast majority of people who catch covid don’t die from it. It kind of misunderstands that working with large enough populations the “small minority” to start to add up and neglecting them would have sizeable externalities on the majority. Also it’s not how things work in science. If there existed even one oxygen atom that somehow had more or less than 8 protons in it’s nucleus it would refute the atomic number of oxygen. These definitions are supposed to be universal, not merely highly probable. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Homologous structures[edit]

Relevant to the topic of transgender people and biological sex: List of related male and female reproductive organsWikipedia

So, sexed organs develop from the same prenatal structures, making them homologous. Now, the curious thing to me here is the phenotypical appearance seems to be at least a little bit flexible in response to cross-sex hormones: if a trans man is on testosterone long enough the clitoris will grow significantly, and as such, in some individuals grows enough that it looks and even sort of acts kind of like a penis. (There's no way to say that which isn't sort of crude.) Obviously he isn't going to produce sperm from that transition (maybe in some intersex cases), but I just wanted to mention, there is some plasticity to primary sex characteristics even with nonsurgical options. It makes me wonder if there's value to the "medically-induced intersex" (rather "altersex") type narrative. As well, there are some papers showing that transgender hormone replacement therapy causes cell-level changes in gene expression towards the desired sex, which makes sense, though at least one found it to be the case in cells not even known to have androgen receptors.

I'm still learning about such things so wouldn't necessarily be confident to insert anything about it into the article. Chillpilled (talk) 21:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Source consideration:[edit]

Here's another source that sort of digs deeper. [1] TheEternalOutsider (talk) 06:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

"digs deeper" is quite the description for a publication that has been cited only twice and includes "sex is binary" in its title. "Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts" ....oh boy. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
That abstract is cringe, already sounding the alarms to a moral panic and framing the topic in response to a strawman fallacy. Rejecting sex as being binary is not the same thing as rejecting the existence of generally sexually dimorphic species. Also, it is important to understand what it is that people are actually objecting to when they say they reject the binary model. The objection is not to there existing two types of gametes that are produced by species under the kingdoms of Plantae and Animalia. Nor is it to claim that outside fungi, species produce gametes that are neither spermatozoa nor ova. When people say something like "sex isn't binary" what they mean is that sex does not delineate into two mutually exclusive categories that exist as a binary opposition. That is a simple biological fact considering the strong degree of developmental overlap in the generation of our sex organs, the existence of human beings that can exist in "opposite sex" ranges for hormone production, intersex individuals, etc. Sex is not a fixed category that is embedded in some platonic essence outside the material world. It is a living process that develops over time and is subject to change. If that is "denying biological facts" then so much for the existence of fucking puberty and prenatal sex differentiation. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
Got to love it when authors cite Judith Butler and completely misrepresent them. Butler doesn't argue that sex is merely a social construct that's an oversimplification. Also, this gamete gambit has already been done before and it is complicated by the fact that some animal species include individuals who do not produce gametes and yet we still classify them as having sex. It is not always pathological either. For many colony insects, it is normal for the vast majority of females to not be fertile and produce no gametes whatsoever. There is no universally accepted definition of "biological sex" that exists across the sub-disciplines of biology. The gamete definition is one of many different definitions used by researchers, the Entomologist is not using the same operational definition as the Ornithologist. This is likely what people mean when they say "sex is contextual". It is not genuinely relativist in any anti-objectivist sense. There can still be mind-independent mechanisms that exist physically in the world that are being described even if the language used to describe it varies by research context. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC)