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[cganya]

So what term can we assign to all persons whose duploid cells carry two X chromosomes?

And the obvious next question, what term can we assign those with an X and a Y?

It cleverly reduces all the confusion when the definition is genetic; one might mentally belong in many different categories and orientations, but one's DNA can only be one or the other or we slip into medical terminology like "Klinefelter's syndrome".

So what we've done here is make an easily-identifiable physical distinction, like a fingerprint; for official purposes you're either an XX or an XY, whichever politically correct terms we assign to those immutable cellular states, or you have a genetic disorder that puts you into the category of "disabled".  Whenever you are queried for your "sex" (or whatever politically correct term etc.) the meaning is simply "which set of chromosomes do most of your cells have?"  This distinction doesn't speak to the myriad ways people self-identify, it's just a convenient means of classification.

Am I naive in thinking we can cut the Gordian knot here?  Instead of asking how a person self-identifies, a complicated question for which new answers emerge every day, simply ask -- if a distinction must be made at all -- what the composition of their DNA is, a simple question for which the possible answers haven't changed since our species began.

but here is where the knot thickens (sorry for pun). a person can have more than just XX or XY. some of these people you are trying to regulate with this system have XXX, YY or XXY chromozones (iirc) which complicates your simple system

-edit - also iirc there are examples of single cromozones (X) and (Y) without forming a pair. If I were not at school trying to discreetly be lazy then I'd look up sources. untill then I could very well be completely misinformed

[Vector]

YY is nonviable, but X, XXY, XXX, XY, XYY, and XX are the standard viable human chromosome combinations.  You need at least one X and maybe two

[Aqizzar]

YY is nonviable, but X, XXY, XXX, XY, XYY, and XX are the standard viable human chromosome combinations.  You need at least one X and maybe two

All those extra combinations aren't exactly viable.  Sure, a person can be born with them and still have reasonable life expectancy, but they tend to create biochemistry problems, like gland expression, or good old retardation.

Also, why the fuck does Firefox not recognize "combinations" as the plural of "combination"?

[KaelGotDwarves]

It has an extra X chromosome. 

[Leafsnail]

Someone can have XXY without too many problems.  They'll look outwardly female (to the extent that even they probably won't realise), but will have internal testes and be infertile.  I've heard about the XYY "Hyper males", but this one causes pretty serious problems (after all, being male is the most dangerous common genetic variation ).

[cganya]

YY is nonviable, but X, XXY, XXX, XY, XYY, and XX are the standard viable human chromosome combinations.  You need at least one X and maybe two

All those extra combinations aren't exactly viable.  Sure, a person can be born with them and still have reasonable life expectancy, but they tend to create biochemistry problems, like gland expression, or good old retardation.

Also, why the fuck does Firefox not recognize "combinations" as the plural of "combination"?

the point I was trying to get across though is that categorizing people by their chromozones to avoid the "too many choices" issue, that apparently plagues goverment forms, falls flat because it is plauged with the same exact problem.

[Kitpup]

Sex and gender, no matter your definition, are simply to diverse for us to have a simplistic system to take care of them. Or at least, a system that covers all possibilities to everyone's satisfaction. But it's not like we try for everyone's satisfaction anyways, just that of the majority.
If the majority can agree a system based on your chromosomes wherein you have 'xx' 'xy' and 'other' as options, great. If they find another way, great. If they stick with what they have? Great.
As long as there is more knowledge about sex, gender and sexuality in general, I don't really care what I have to put on a form.

[Vector]

All those extra combinations aren't exactly viable.  Sure, a person can be born with them and still have reasonable life expectancy, but they tend to create biochemistry problems, like gland expression, or good old retardation.

Ah, I'm using the biological definition of "viable."  In other words, the fetus won't automatically be reabsorbed by the mother/born dead.  You'll generally get a living person, no matter how screwed up the individual is.

[Agdune]

Dammit, I want to comment on this quite a bit but I've clearly missed the initial phase of the thread.

My girlfriend and I were discussing this last night actually, in the context of prison sentances. The Northern Territories here in Aus currently only incarcerate individuals based on what their sex was at birth, this has led to a legal situation where a transsexual person (read: fake boobs, hormone therapy, penis turned into vagina surgically) will be placed in a male prison and vice versa becqause genetically, they're still male/female. This is incredibly wrong and a good indicator for just why this is an issue. Consider also the social implications of someone who is mentally a female being placed in a men's prison - you can't just turn manly and convince chopper or whoever that you're too tough to be raped every day. I sure as hell couldn't and I'm only mentally effeminate, physically I'm very capable of appearing tough. Of course, someone who has physically become a women will pretty much need to be in isolation/infirmary 24/7 or else they'll pretty much be raped to death.

By the same token though you can't just place a transexual male in with women, especially in any situation where there may be... those sorts of shenanigans. My girlfriend (note: she's a social worker and graduated last year, so she's actually well read on the matter, unlike myself) cited a case of a transexual male (pre surgery) who wished to be placed in emergency women's housing for personal reasons. She eventually won the right to do so as she was for all intents and purposes a female in her nature... apart from still having a penis. Once she was in, she refused to wear a towel after showering (since she was one of those willfull types and never did so at home). Since it was a group situation and most people who go to emergency housing aren't there for particularly fun reasons, this became quite an issue and she had to be removed. Couldn't be put with men because she's a she for all intents and purposes, couldn't be put with women because she still had male characteristics (a penis).

It's a really tough legal issue if you think about it. Prisons and institutes aren't there to make things hard(er) for transgendered/transexuals people. They're surprisingly common. It doesn't help that most of society (okay, western society, at least) is frustratingly narrow minded and ignorant about the matter.

Edit: Reading more of the thread, I can see that most people here are looking from it from a personal point of view, which is the one place where it actually doesn't matter in the slightest. It doesn't matter if you're comfortable with your sex/gender in the slightest, no-one cares about your self worth tbh. It will, however, always become an issue when you come to a situation where you have to be categorised and placed with others in your 'demographic', like when using government services -admittedly, most of you are likley from the USA, a land where government services beyond prisons and taxation offices are a fanciful dream of socialist commies and blah blah-. It ain't about how you see yourself and how you feel, it's how others view you and what actions they might take about their views. Prisons, shelters, workplaces, hell - even toilets. If you don't match one of the two categories, there will be issues arising at some point, as things stand. Issues rarely turn out well for everyone so it's generally a good idea to try and avoid the most obvious ones.

[Grakelin]

Gender identity is all about categorization, though, so how the person feels about what gender they are is actually very important to the issue. I agree with everything else you said, though.

I interpret the post as saying that 'inter-sex' doesn't make sense because you either identify as male or female, though this is just speculation based on your 'edit' section. This is not the case. Some people identify as genderless, and go so far as to surgically alter their genitalia to not exist.

[Jude]

 Splitting society into two different halves with different traits and responsibilities expected of them based on this one parameter is extraordinarily arbitrary.

Man, you hear this "abitrary" line so often that you'd think people would have examined it by now and seen its obvious flaws. I suppose it's because you mainly hear it from humanities or sociology types who wouldn't know a zygote from a spandrel.

There's a reason why there are differences between the sexes in most of the animal kingdom that has sexes and are k-selected, including humans: it's differential parental investment. In the case of humans, females invest far, far more in an individual offspring than males do.

At the minimum, males contribute some jizz which they have unlimited amounts of. Females contribute an egg (which they have limited amounts of, not to mention a lifetime biotic potential of 30 or so at the absolute max for an ordinary woman), the environment for the fetus to develop, all the nutrition and energy for the developing fetus, the lost opportunities to have offspring with better men for the whole period of pregnancy and often the period of nursing...need I go on? For a male, creating a child is a tiny and near effortless investment. He loses nothing by it if the female or others cannot obligate him to stay with her and help raise it. The female makes a HUGE investment and it nearly always pays her, in darwinian terms, to keep investing in the offspring.

This fundamental fact of reproduction is the reason why differences between gender roles are not arbitrary. This fact leads to evolution of different behaviors and desires in males and females. It's not just due to social conditioning that men are often willing to have sex with a woman they just met while women are far more conservative. It's not just due to social conditioning that deadbeat dads are far more common than deadbeat moms. or that men desire more sexual partners while women would rather have one devoted mate. And on and on and on.

In any case, I'm not sure what this imaginary "unigender" society would look like anyway. I just know that by any reasonable definition of gender, it won't happen. If you're saying you expect that men and women would think the same way about sex and offspring and mating and relationships, well, that unigender society would also have unicorns and wizards.

In any case, biological sex can be a messy business as people are discussing in relation to chromosomal or hormonal disorders (hell, a small malfunction in hormones could lead to you having a Y chromosome and still being female in all meaningful ways).

Gender is exponential MORE messy, mainly because it's the kind of concept only academics would talk about. If you think about it briefly, it doesn't make any sense to just say "there are two genders, male and female" because that leaves out trannies, hermaphrodites, eunuchs, etc. If you expand the number of genders to include each of those, there will STILL be people who can't be categorized due to rarer and rarer genetic anomalies. And then there's the question of, are gay men and straight men the same gender? How about man-whores and prudish men?

It really gets to the point where saying there is only one gender encompassing all humans, is as reasonable as saying there are 551 genders, to account for every possible permutation of sexual proclivity and genetic disorder, or as saying there are 6 billion genders because no two humans can be said to have the same gender. I'm really failing to see where the concept is even useful except as intellectual wank fodder for humanities professors. Yes society should adapt to the existence of gays, transsexuals, whatever else. I don't really see where trying to haggle out a definition of gender is useful there.

[cganya]

 Splitting society into two different halves with different traits and responsibilities expected of them based on this one parameter is extraordinarily arbitrary.

Man, you hear this "abitrary" line so often that you'd think people would have examined it by now and seen its obvious flaws. I suppose it's because you mainly hear it from humanities or sociology types who wouldn't know a zygote from a spandrel.

There's a reason why there are differences between the sexes in most of the animal kingdom that has sexes and are k-selected, including humans: it's differential parental investment. In the case of humans, females invest far, far more in an individual offspring than males do.

At the minimum, males contribute some jizz which they have unlimited amounts of. Females contribute an egg (which they have limited amounts of, not to mention a lifetime biotic potential of 30 or so at the absolute max for an ordinary woman), the environment for the fetus to develop, all the nutrition and energy for the developing fetus, the lost opportunities to have offspring with better men for the whole period of pregnancy and often the period of nursing...need I go on? For a male, creating a child is a tiny and near effortless investment. He loses nothing by it if the female or others cannot obligate him to stay with her and help raise it. The female makes a HUGE investment and it nearly always pays her, in darwinian terms, to keep investing in the offspring.

This fundamental fact of reproduction is the reason why differences between gender roles are not arbitrary. This fact leads to evolution of different behaviors and desires in males and females. It's not just due to social conditioning that men are often willing to have sex with a woman they just met while women are far more conservative. It's not just due to social conditioning that deadbeat dads are far more common than deadbeat moms. or that men desire more sexual partners while women would rather have one devoted mate. And on and on and on.

In any case, I'm not sure what this imaginary "unigender" society would look like anyway. I just know that by any reasonable definition of gender, it won't happen. If you're saying you expect that men and women would think the same way about sex and offspring and mating and relationships, well, that unigender society would also have unicorns and wizards.

In any case, biological sex can be a messy business as people are discussing in relation to chromosomal or hormonal disorders (hell, a small malfunction in hormones could lead to you having a Y chromosome and still being female in all meaningful ways).

Gender is exponential MORE messy, mainly because it's the kind of concept only academics would talk about. If you think about it briefly, it doesn't make any sense to just say "there are two genders, male and female" because that leaves out trannies, hermaphrodites, eunuchs, etc. If you expand the number of genders to include each of those, there will STILL be people who can't be categorized due to rarer and rarer genetic anomalies. And then there's the question of, are gay men and straight men the same gender? How about man-whores and prudish men?

It really gets to the point where saying there is only one gender encompassing all humans, is as reasonable as saying there are 551 genders, to account for every possible permutation of sexual proclivity and genetic disorder, or as saying there are 6 billion genders because no two humans can be said to have the same gender. I'm really failing to see where the concept is even useful except as intellectual wank fodder for humanities professors. Yes society should adapt to the existence of gays, transsexuals, whatever else. I don't really see where trying to haggle out a definition of gender is useful there.

one of the main problems you are facing is that gender and attraction are not dependent on each other.

what is this nonsense about gay men and straight men being of different gender? it makes no sense at all.

this is really getting more complicated than it needs to be don't you think?

[Jude]

one of the main problems you are facing is that gender and attraction are not dependent on each other.

what is this nonsense about gay men and straight men being of different gender? it makes no sense at all.

I'm saying that as long as you're coming up with more and more distinct genders, wouldn't it make just as much sense to start carving up the "traditional" genders as well? I mean, men who want to be women differ from most men in a pretty radical respect; so do men who are attracted to men. Why not consider them each their own gender?

My point isn't that we SHOULD, it's that the whole discussion gets stupid when you push it far enough...which isn't even that far.

this is really getting more complicated than it needs to be don't you think?

That was pretty much my whole point.

[cganya]

one of the main problems you are facing is that gender and attraction are not dependent on each other.

what is this nonsense about gay men and straight men being of different gender? it makes no sense at all.

I'm saying that as long as you're coming up with more and more distinct genders, wouldn't it make just as much sense to start carving up the "traditional" genders as well? I mean, men who want to be women differ from most men in a pretty radical respect; so do men who are attracted to men. Why not consider them each their own gender?

My point isn't that we SHOULD, it's that the whole discussion gets stupid when you push it far enough...which isn't even that far.

this is really getting more complicated than it needs to be don't you think?

That was pretty much my whole point.

the thing is that we have terms for all these different things already. gay men are "homosexual" which falls under the different kinds of sexuality. it also has no business being on any government form.

the problem I'm seeing here is your trying to say "gender could be anything if we push far enough" but it cant. a gender is someone's brain's sex. it is not always the same as their physical sex.

gender cant determine if someone is gay or straight or anything to do with attraction more than anything else.

putting "gay" as the answer to the question "what is your gender" is akin to commenting that the color orange smells like bananas.

just doesn't make any sense

reasonable answer to the "what gender" question would be male, female, something else. those three

all these other words like transsexual and two spirited/bi-gendered refer to more descriptive versions of "something else" usually consisting of a combination of the other two or a transition from one to the other.

it is the same with sex. we have words like inter-sex, hermaphrodite, neutered, androgynous. they all refer to being something other than "male" or "female" and while each of these terms are important on their own merits. they refer to a combination of, transition of or lack of the two "base" sex's.

my personal opinion?

sex: male, female, other
gender: male, female, other
sexual orientation: straight, gay, other

I feel these are the only sensible selections that should ever be on a form unless its exploring a more specific issue.

a form should never ask for more than is needed. If for some reason one of these things are required, past medical forms (of which sex should be the only needed question), the form should be confidential.

[Agdune]

Grakelin: Sorry, the edit part turned pretty incoherent, I'm running on very little sleep. It's meant to just mean that there's a category between male and female which has to be treated differently to either. I didn't know about genderless people though, I'd known of asexuals (sortof kindof the same deal... in a very round about way) but had never really thought that people might've established a lack of gender as being their identity.

Jude: way to argue a point that has almost nothing to do with the actual subject at hand and be able to make insulting, clearly uninformed generalisations at the same time. Read my post. 2 very simple examples where gender and sexuality are relevant to people other than 'humanities professors' and 'humanities and sociology types'. It's anything but intellectual wank fodder.