How about chickens? If you have some hens without a rooster, you've got good chance that one of them will "transform" into a rooster. Especially if you had a rooster but it died.
Comment on Being Trans Isn't Normal or Part of Nature...or is it...?
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
Male seahorse get pregnant, but that doesn’t make them trans, they’re unambiguously male. This is a great example of why sex is defined by gamete size. If it weren’t, we couldn’t talk about males and females in any useful way across the animal kingdom.
Clownfish would be a better example as they’re sequential hermaphrodites, but that doesn’t have any bearing on the human sex binary.
zout@fedia.io 12 hours ago
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
I’m not aware of that being an actual change in sex. The hen can develop male characteristics, but won’t produce functional sperm.
Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
Neither does trans surgery?
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 9 hours ago
I think we agree. Maybe I was misreading the above comment, but I was just clarifying that “transform” in that sense for chickens is not actually changing sex, and so is a different situation than clownfish.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
*the non-existent human sex binary
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
This is often a point of confusion, but human sex is binary. There’s edge cases that require clarification as to how they fit into the binary, but don’t disprove it.
Human sexuality overall is complex and that’s why we differentiate gender from sex. The sex binary and gender spectrum complement each other though, and don’t clash.
If you’re interested in learning more, here’s some background reading:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonochorism
We fall into that category, where we have two body plans, each organized around producing either sperm or ova. Other species have more body plans, such as recognizably distinct males, females, and hermaphrodites:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trioecy
Those species are a good contrast. Humans don’t have that variation, and so sex is binary in humans.
There’s literature that explains this specifically in detail, though most of it doesn’t really explicitly talk about it, much like math papers don’t generally explain that integers can be added together.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Ok, yes. That’s where I believe the binary is false.
You have red, you have blue, and then there’s a bunch of egde cases. To me that’s not the end of the story. I believe purple exists.
ewigkaiwelo@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
It is binary if you define it as a concept of reproduction, which it is. Every human that has ever been born had two parents. Looks pretty binary. Intersex people and edge cases cannot reproduce naturally, to my knowledge. So only those belonging to those two specific biological categories of sexual reproduction (males & females) can reproduce.
powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Do you have a particular edge case in mind? One that’s commonly brought up is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotesticular_syndrome, but that doesn’t fall outside the sex binary. Having a bit of nonfunctional tissue doesn’t affect one’s sex.
Colors aren’t a great analogy either, because in anisogamous species, gametes are strictly binary. There’s sperm and ova, with 0 overlap and 0 other options. “Purple gametes” just don’t exist.
This also isn’t my opinion, this is the accepted definition in the field of biology.