Thursday, May 29, 2025

“The law recognises two sexes: science recognises seven"

This is a quote that I saw from a biologist about what biology professors say to themselves. Rather than calling "bullshit" on the claim I think I'll take it at face value. 

So what are the other five sexes?

There is certainly a wide variety of sexual variations which makes it very difficult to precisely define what is a male or what is a female. But I wasn’t aware that even extreme variations, such as Swyer Syndrome, may be considered new sexes.

There seven biological karyotypes that do not result in death to the fetus and I suppose these could be categorized as sexes but they're really just variations to my mind.

X – Roughly 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 people (Turner’s )

XX – Most common form of female

XXY – Roughly 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people (Klinefelter)

XY – Most common form of male

XYY – Roughly 1 out of 1,000 people

XXX - Roughly 1 in 1,000 female births.

XXXY – Roughly 1 in 18,000 to 1 in 50,000 births

So, like I said, what are these other sexes?

As for gender. gender defines society’s expectations about the attitudes and actions associated with a given sex. In order to have more than two genders then one has to define more than two sexes. 

Gender is a continuum, ranging from man on one end woman on the other with varying degrees of gender nonconformity in between. But even radical gender nonconformity doesn’t result in a new gender. 

I can understand “gender fluid” as an individual that moves along the gender continuum for various reasons. I have no idea what “non-binary” means and transgender is the need, due to extreme dysphoria, to move from one sexual bucket into the other but isn’t itself a different gender.


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