OOPS sex is a social construct too
Comment on I don't hate Body Type replacing Gender, I hate laziness
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
To me, the obvious answer is to do away with the concept of “gender” altogether. It’s a societal construct that doesn’t really need to exist in video game character creation, anyway.
Everybody is born one of two biological sexes: male or female. There. Those are your choices. Call it “apparent sex” and include a pronoun option to allow for players who want to roleplay gender nonconforming characters.
TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
How so? Biological sex is a quantifiable fact. Every sexually reproducing species on the planet has two sexes, easily identified by gamete size - males have smaller gametes and females have larger gametes.
I don’t wanna start a flame war, but the science om this is sound. Sure, in science, nothing is absolute, but there’s never been any evidence of more than two sexes.
apotheotic@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
Biological sex is far more complicated than small and large gametes. You can choose (somewhat arbitrarily) to define biological sex by one or more of
- chromosomal sex (which has a variety of variations beyond just xx and xy, so you’re fucked for choosing a binary here)
- hormonal sex (which has a variety of variations beyond just “male hormones” and “female hormones”, so you’re fucked for choosing a binary here)
- reproductive sex (which is gonna leave you defining a lot of people quite incorrectly compared to the other criteria listed)
- how receptive their cells are to particular hormones (which will vary wildly from person to person, so good luck shoving this into a binary)
The only people who think biological sex is a simple categorisation are people who don’t fully understand the biology of sex.
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Man, I thought I’d found my people in this community, but my perfectly civil comment discussing scientific definitions of ‘sex’ was removed. That shows that this is likely just another echo chamber that can’t abide civil conversation around scientific facts when said facts make people feel icky.
The worst part is I’m on your side. I’m all in on inclusivity and representation. I’m trans. I’m bisexual. I’m just open-minded, seemingly unlike whichever mod removed my comment.
You, apotheotic, seem civil enough. I was looking forward to discussing biological sex with you, maybe expanding my understanding in the process, but it’s not worth trying to have a conversation if I have to worry about my responses being unceremoniously removed. For what it’s worth, your reply has inspired me to do some more reading on the subject.
Reddit mod practices seem to have bled into every corner of Lemmy. Community: blocked. Good riddance.
apotheotic@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
But like, not everybody is born one of two biological sexes, so if we’re doing away with societal constructs we may as well get rid of this nebulous concept of a rigid biological sex binary.
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Technically there is an extremely small amount of people born as both sexes (intersex), but they tend to have appearances that favor one sex over the other, so from a game development perspective, they’re covered by having two sex options.
apotheotic@beehaw.org 4 weeks ago
I think you’ll find a good many intersex folk would have something to say about being “covered” by being entirely excluded by your arbitrary choice of categorisation.
BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Eek, this reads like a white person getting upset about someone using “black” instead of “African American”
Who’s being excluded here? My suggestion was to change ‘sex’ in video game character creation to ‘apparent sex.’