Comment on Metal Exclusionary Radical Astronomy

• powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

  Klinefelter syndrome (sometimes called Klinefelter’s, KS or XXY) is where boys and men are born with an extra X chromosome.

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  • zeezee@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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?

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    • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

      The closest you’ll find in humans is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis, but that’s not “fully functioning gonads of both types, producing healthy gametes of both types”. It’s “maybe a functioning gonad of one type, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type”. Their sex can still be determined, even if it’s not readily apparent.

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      • zeezee@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        but even then people who can’t produce either can’t be simply classified into what they were “supposed” to produce without involving karyotypes or other sex characteristics, which the paper you linked explicitly argues can’t be used for sex definition:

        Here I synthesize evolutionary and developmental evidence to demonstrate that sex is binary (i.e., there are only two sexes) in all anisogamous species and that males and females are defined universally by the type of gamete they have the biological function to produce—not by karyotypes, secondary sexual characteristics, or other correlates

        so for someone with complete gonadal dysgenesis:

        • they produce no gametes
        • their sex is defined by… which gamete they have the "function to produce"
        • we determine this function by… looking at their chromosomes (XY = male function, XX = female function) or other correlates

        but then this is circular:

        • if sex is defined by gamete function
        • and gamete function can only be identified via determination mechanisms in non-gamete-producing cases
        • then determination mechanisms are also doing the definitional work

        and I feel your lacking-an-arm comment doesn’t really apply here as humans aren’t solely defined by how many arms we have - the analogy would only work if:

        • sex were defined like humanity - as a cluster of traits with gametes being just one feature
        • but the paper explicitly rejects that (arguing the monothethic model is the only true one when the polythetic clearly covers more cases)

        but I think the bigger question this whole biological definition/determinism sidesteps is the one that seems close to heart of the very-same intersex people linked in that Wikipedia page:

        Paradigms for care are still based on socio-cultural factors including expectations of “normality” and evidence in support of surgeries remains lacking.

        “Nearly every parent” in the study reported pressure for their children to undergo surgery, and many reported misinformation.

        The report calls for a ban on “surgical procedures that seek to alter the gonads, genitals, or internal sex organs of children with atypical sex characteristics too young to participate in the decision when those procedures both carry a meaningful risk of harm and can be safely deferred.”

        when these things affect human beings we can’t try to wash our hands by clinging to models that seem to give us simple answers - if we insist on monothethic definitions that don’t recognize the complexity of sexual development - we end up forcing ambiguous cases into boxes and providing intellectual cover to deny people agency over their own bodies.

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  • sukhmel@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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    • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ 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

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      • sukhmel@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        I now see better, but I still don’t understand how are we supposed to determine the sex in edge cases where it’s failing to produce both equally and has both, you mentioned the condition yourself, even though you say that it’s not failing equally that’s a possibility still. I mean, if we can’t determine sex at all maybe the definition is too abstract?

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