Comment on Metal Exclusionary Radical Astronomy
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 3 days agoThe author of that paper has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is well-qualified to talk about it, but also provides plenty of citations in the paper. His point is simply that trying to redefine sex in that way leads to a circular definition that isn’t useful.
To that point, what does “male gametes but with a female phenotype” mean? What does female mean? How can you define it without reference to gametes?
sukhmel@programming.dev 3 days ago
I still don’t understand what to do based on gametes with XXY genotype for instance
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I’m not sure what you mean by “what to do”. If someone has an XXY genotype, their sex is determined by the gametes their body is organized around producing, like everyone else.
To quote the NHS
zeezee@slrpnk.net 3 days ago
but what about ovotesticular people? if they can produce both gametes what determines their sex? based on what gamete they were “supposed” to produce? but how do you determine what they’re “supposed” to produce? chromosomes? phenotypes? a combination of all of these? but then we’re back at square one where gametes may be binary but sex isn’t?
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Some species are hermaphroditic, but humans aren’t. Nobody’s body is organized around the production of both gametes. Ovotesticular doesn’t mean what you’re thinking. I’ll copy from my other comment
sukhmel@programming.dev 3 days ago
Organised around producing here means ‘should produce even if it never did’? You linked a list of disorders yourself, some of them do not allow a body to produce any form of gamete in severe cases
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
You can read that as “Would produce, if not for a developmental issue”. Their body is trying to produce a certain type of gamete and failing.
A rough analogy is, if a person is born without a hand, we say they’re missing a hand. We don’t throw our hands in the air and say “Whelp, could be anything. Maybe it’s a foot, or a wing, or a spider. There’s just no way of knowing”
Even in the case of missing gonads, their body is still trying to build them and failing. It’s not trying to build nothing