cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18302836

I’m just picturing that robot from Star Trek (the one thinking about “this sentence is false”) going “huh” and then blowing up…

    • RandomWalker@lemmy.world
      50·
      4 months ago

      One reason is because your chromosomes don’t control genital development, your hormones do. So if you’re born with XY chromosomes and your testosterone receptors don’t work then you’ll develop female genitals and a generally female physiology (minus reproductive organs).

      This is all separate from gender expression obviously, but things are hard because the world is complex. If you haven’t seen or experienced this complexity in your life, that’s fine. But don’t diminish the complexity of other’s experiences just because they don’t match your own.

      • Badabinski@kbin.earth
        131·
        4 months ago

        I personally know someone like that. She’s currently raising a kid she gave birth to thanks to a donated egg and IVF. Chromosomes are useful for first order approximations, but biology is a glorious fucking mess that cares not for simple binaries.

        I hope that the person you’re responding to will be able to form a new opinion after seeing these very measured and thoughtful responses. I’m really pleased with how calmly the community is handling this particular comment.

    • zout@fedia.io
      28·
      4 months ago

      Nothing. But there are cases of men with XX, women with XY and some others like XXY or X0.

      • 🇦🇺𝕄𝕦𝕟𝕥𝕖𝕕𝕔𝕣𝕠𝕔𝕕𝕚𝕝𝕖@lemm.eeEnglish
        5·
        4 months ago

        So we have 4 independent variable

        Chromosomal sex Genetic sex Hormonal sex Cells sex

        Put it all into a matrix I would love to see the population distribution across this table.

        Surly we can simply define a subset of the combinations. Cos the only other solution is to simply through out the concept of gender divisions but that just ain’t gonna work.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          71·
          4 months ago

          Put it all into a matrix I would love to see the population distribution across this table.

          That would be an interesting thing to see.

          However, biology is still learning about human sex. IIRC last year there was a cancer study that put in question a large number of biology studies in general… because many only focused on XY cell lines, to save time, reasoning that “if it has an X, and it has a Y, then all variables are covered”. Well, turns out that XX cells don’t use both chromosomes at the same time; instead, the genes from one of the Xs get inhibited via epigenetics… but not always all of them, or in the same way, and not always on the same X. That means some genes that didn’t activate in XY cells, sometimes would in XX cells, causing different mutations and reactions to cancer medication.

    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      17·
      4 months ago

      As a general rule, when it comes to any science, the version you learn in grade school is extremely simplified to the point of being almost entirely useless. To draw a parallel to physics, if you ask a physicist “how many states of matter are there?”, they’d probably consider it a difficult and poorly defined question, the exact distinction between a distinct state and a subset/variant of a state is up for discussion, but any coherent model has at least 20 states. What you’re saying is the equivalent of “what’s so hard about solid, liquid and gas?”

    • AShadyRavenEnglish
      13·
      4 months ago

      Nothing at all

      This post is talking about people born XXY or X0 (just one x chromosome and nothing else)

      or people born with a mixture of XY and XX chromosomes, such as discordant chimerism

      Genetic sex is not binary, its a bellcurve. This is not a theory or an idea or a matter of debate among biologists.

      The only people on earth who think its only XX and XY are those who are uneducated on the topic

      but now you know better!!

        • Laurentide@pawb.socialEnglish
          10·
          4 months ago

          How big does a minority need to be before it’s “relevant” enough to be acknowledged and its members’ rights respected? People with 4 or 6 fingers exist. People whose chromosomes don’t match their physiology exist. People whose gender identity doesn’t match their genitals exist. It doesn’t matter how many of them there are, because every single one of us is a unique minority of one.

          But you asked for numbers, so I’ll give you some numbers.

          According to this article, around 1.7% of people are intersex, meaning they have physiology that doesn’t fit neatly into the common conceptions of male or female. That’s close to the number of people with red hair, which is estimated to be 2% of the world population. I have never heard anyone suggest that redheads are too small a percentage to matter.

          I think you were asking specifically about chromosomes, though. There’s a table in the linked article that breaks down intersex conditions by cause. The first entry is “Non-XX or non-XY (except Turner’s or Klinefelter’s)”. This refers to people with XY chromosomes whose bodies developed female characteristics (Swyer syndrome) and people with XX chromosomes whose bodies developed male characteristics (de la Chapelle syndrome). It does not include people with X, XXY, or XO chromosomes. (Those are the next two entries in the table.)

          The estimated frequency for this condition is 0.0639 per 100 live births, equivalent to 0.0639% of population. That looks like a really low number, right? Surely not enough to be “relevant”! Except… There are 8.1 billion people on this planet. 0.0639% of 8.1 billion is 5,175,900 people, which is roughly the current population of New Zealand.

          Remember, that is only women with XY chromosomes and men with XX chromosomes. If we include all intersex people that number rises to 140 million, which is nearly the population of Russia.