"Sex" isn't binary

[Edge]

"The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that."

www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943

[Deleted]

You two are rubbing off on me and I like it.

You've got me fired up now...

[Sisyphus]

I think that we have been trained to treat sex/biology as such a clear cut indicator of male or female that its hard to see it as a construct, but for me, once I started looking at the constellation of ingredients, it felt like once I saw it as a construct based out of a shifting sum of those ingredients, I couldn't unsee it as a construct.

[Ativan Prescribed]

There's a lot of that in how trans perceive the world. It is, after all, tilted to one side as it travels around the sun.
But even the language we use is primarily based around that binary finite description of the world.
It's been used so much and taken as not the simplistic view and description, that it has indeed become a description of fact for many.
It's a way of thinking without very much logic. Simplicity without room for an expanded definition.
The logic used that defines gender and sex as the same thing doesn't allow for any other explanations.
Whenever anything else is introduced to that thinking, it's viewed as an attack on the logic.
But there is much hope, sexuality that isn't male attracted to female and vice versa has changed quite a bit in the last few years.
So simply taking the idea of your sex and keeping it as separate from your gender isn't that much of a stretch.
Much of the defiance is from the same people who still see male as dominant over female, another construct.
It's a nice benefit of being trans, and I think as NB, that the world isn't defined in finite terms, but rather infinite variations are always possible.
It's one thing to ask the right questions, it's another to listen to all of the answers, and seek to understand the ones you don't.
It's always how civilization has advanced, good or bad, it isn't stagnant.
If we make mistakes they can be corrected, that's growth, lesson's learned.
I have cis friends who once they grasp that gender is for many a construct, they can't unsee it either.
It is kinda weird to watch them squirm as they question their own gender, when the realization hits. 

[Edge]

May 12, 2015 2:13:41 GMT 8 Sisyphus said:

I think that we have been trained to treat sex/biology as such a clear cut indicator of male or female that its hard to see it as a construct, but for me, once I started looking at the constellation of ingredients, it felt like once I saw it as a construct based out of a shifting sum of those ingredients, I couldn't unsee it as a construct.

As biology student/nerd the fact that people are trained to see biology of all things as clear cut annoys me to no end. Biology is very much not clear cut. There are many, many factors that contribute to things and no biological process is perfect. There is so much potential for variation.