Why sex and gender are not binary, but our thinking is
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Way back in the day, like days of Neanderthals, humans had their eyes and ears and fingers with which to examine and evaluate the world. And for understanding the nature of humans, our explorations were limited to our external surfaces. And they had no way to study what goes on inside our bodies, like prenatal development. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were like animals in the sense that cats and dogs, if they give birth to deformed progeny, abandon them to the elements when they have obvious deficiencies. Our thinking has changed a lot, but those of us with European or Asian ancestry have received 1-2% of our DNA from our Homo neanderthalensis ancestors.
By then they had probably concluded that sex precedes pregnancy precedes birth of babies. And that babies either were born with or soon developed a penis or a vagina, which made sex possible, but we know not whether they had names and words for all those concepts yet.
The concept of gender may not have preceded a conception of the world and how it came into being and how things operated in the world, a world view, if you will. The concept of morals, right and wrong, how things should be, probably came much later, but we may never know. But maybe it is a more recent development being differentiated from sex.
But surely by the time individuals came along who thought themselves to be in a position of status with the wisdom to suggest how things should be in their world, the relative strength of those with a penis and the necessity for those with breasts to nurse newborns was obvious, and so they decreed that those with a penis should be called man and those with breasts women and so gender roles were socially defined for all time.
Within the past century, humans have developed the tools to explore the inner workings of our bodies, record faithfully our observations of human development to improve upon memory, and note and study the range of differences evident in humans, and the binary views of human beings have been called into question. Now we know everything from life itself, autism, intelligence, sex, gender, as well as height, weight, and color occur within humans around the world in a spectrum.
Unfortunately, our thinking works best in dealing with dichotomies. We easily distinguish dark and light, especially black and white, tall and short, thin and fat, young and old, smart and ignorant, dead or alive (not breathing or breathing).
To emphasize the importance of the distinction between dichotomous thinking and spectrum thinking, lets look at the dead or alive issue. Probably forever humans have recognized that when somebody stops breathing, it was safe to assume they would no longer do anything else, and they probably gave it a name like dead. And apparently, it has long been a practice to spank a newborn if they did not emerge from the womb breathing and crying, and it was clear that if they were breathing, they were alive. Modern medicine has learned that sometimes the brain is still alive though breathing has stopped and techniques have been developed to restart breathing and even heart-beating.
It has been rather recently that the autism spectrum was recognized. People on the spectrum vary a great deal from having islands of intelligence that earned them the label of Idiot Savants, whereas those on the opposite end of the spectrum may be incapable of speech or self care. There is a vast range of differences along the spectrum between those extremes. They vary in degree of speech and intelligence, sociability. learning ability, ability to maintain eye gaze, practice of repetitive motions, etc. And each of those dimensions of difference exists on a spectrum of degree of difference. Some will be so mildly affected that their diagnosis may be questionable. They will be so high functioning that the few mild differences make no real difference in their being.
The gender spectrum is like that. At one end of the spectrum are the obviously female, feminine girls and women, having XY sex chromosomes and all the female reproductive organs, having been happily raised as a girl and behaving in all the girly ways that are typical; and they are proud and happy to be girls and women. At the other end of the spectrum are the male boys and men with XY sex chromosomes and fully functioning male reproductive organs, having been happily raised as a boy and behaving in all the boyish ways we deem typical; and they are proud and happy to be boys and men.
In between are an enormous variety of individuals that may be difficult for themselves as well as other to categorize as one or another.
CHROMOSOME VARIATIONS
Some variations are due to the combination of sex chromosomes they have, most of which do not produce secondary sexual characteristics that would make one suspect that they are atypical.
Having a single X chromosome produces a condition known as Turner’s Syndrome, which produces a few physical changes that mayor may not be recognized as atypical. Their differences likely would not be noticed before puberty.
Having XXX, XXY, XYY or some other combination of X’s and Y’s may not produce conditions that would be seen as atypical before adolescence or adulthood generally. That whole subject would require a chapter of its own.
These other traits that contribute to the non-binary also will each require a chapter with more references.
Hi Sandy, I love this introduction to this topic. Glad I get to take your course this way. I would like to report this in my Facebook page. Do I have your consent?
Also, I think there is a typo “XY” in the first citing and you may mean “XX” for female identification. If t can’t make that change when posting to FB, could I ask you to resend with that correction?
Hi Sandy, I love this introduction to this topic. Glad I get to take your course this way. I would like to report this in my Facebook page. Do I have your consent?
Also, I think there is a typo “XY” in the first citing and you may mean “XX” for female identification. If t can’t make that change when posting to FB, could I ask you to resend with that correction?