Comment on Metal Exclusionary Radical Astronomy

• 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?

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  • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨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

    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 ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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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      • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Thank you for actually engaging. Too many people on Lemmy are worryingly anti-scientific due to their politics. To anyone that needs to hear it, join us on the science-accepting Left. Life’s easier without cognitive dissonance :)

        To clarify, the fact of the sex binary doesn’t have any strong implications for surgically altering intersex children. People simply don’t understand that the sex binary is a limited, but factual claim. There’s several different domains here, and people keep confusing them and then arguing with me. The fact of the sex binary doesn’t mean that sex phenotypes or genotypes aren’t a spectrum, nor that gender roles need to be tied to sex. It also doesn’t mean that someone with a DSD needs “fixing”, particularly surgically before they can reasonably consent. It is possible that interventions are the appropriate course of action, but not just because someone is “supposed” to be a certain way.

        Even in the case of complete gonadal dysgenesis, a person’s body is still “trying” to produce gametes, it’s just failing. My arm example is still relevant. It’s not about the number of arms, it’s about what’s missing. No person is born with a body that’s “trying” to produce a fish instead of a hand. Nobody was born with a body that’s “trying” to produce nothing instead of a hand. In both the case of a missing hand or gonads, the body was “trying” to do something and failed. Evolution is flexible, and it’s possible that someday, a new body plan would emerge that does lack a concept of hands or gonads or whatever, but that’s not the reality today.

        Note that “trying” is a bit too anthropomorphic and loose of a term, but it’s good enough. It doesn’t imply that there’s a deity or sin or anything like that, it’s a description of a natural process, like gravity.

        So experts can look at the correlates and determine the likely sex based on the apparent body plan. It’s not just karyotypes, they can also look at nearby structures like Müllerian/Wolffian ducts. The important thing to remember though is that experts can be wrong, but that doesn’t change reality. If an expert said “this person’s sex is male”, then gave that person a magic science pill that fixed whatever developmental issue they had, and they started producing ova, that says nothing about the sex binary. It merely means the expert was wrong and the person’s sex was female the whole time.

        So when you say “if sex is defined by gamete function”, you’re missing the crucial “biological function” bit (a.k.a. “organized around” as I’ve been using). Here’s the corrected version:

        • sex is defined by the type of gamete one has the biological function to produce
        • in non-gamete-producing cases, experts would look at determination mechanisms to figure out the likely sex
        • those experts might be wrong
        • the sex binary remains unperturbed regardless of human hubris

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• 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

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  • 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

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    • sukhmel@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ 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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      • powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        There isn’t a case where someone’s body is “failing to produce both equally”. I see what you’re getting at, but that’s not something that happens in humans. You’re asking a question like “What if someone was born with their liver in their foot?” Neither one is a reasonable possibility, even if you can imagine it

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