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Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum

submitted by Shadow_Lurker from blogs.scientificamerican.com

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[–]NutterButterFlutterStill waving into the void[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Removed for rule 2. This would be better suited for s/ThereAreTwoGenders or s/GenderCritical

[–]OPPRESSED_REPTILIANIntersex male | GNC | Don't call me "a gay", "twink" or "queen" 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The vast majority of intersex people are male or female; the few cases that do fall between are not only exceptionally rare, they are NOT a healthy "third sex" or hermaphrodite, they're more like an incomplete mix and these people suffer with serious social & physical lifelong difficulties.

In most "progressive" countries that are pro-transgender and have "trans rights" (read: privileges), intersex people especially infants lack basic bodily autonomy, and it is often perfectly legal to force cosmetic "sex reassignment surgery" on children with a visible intersex condition, ie, genital defect. (It should be noted that not all intersex conditions will be spotted at birth, a lot also only become obvious during or after puberty, as mine did.)

It is absolutely disgusting to me that transgender people want to push the narrative that they are the most oppressed and lacking rights, and use intersex people as a stepping stone to prove their point like we have it better, when the reality is that while they're campaigning for stupid trivial privileges like being able to "choose their pronouns", intersex people can quite literally lack the right to their own bodies and be butchered at birth, and there's no law stopping it. Some countries like Iceland tried to introduce a law banning it, but then withdrew because the government believed that if they added in intersex rights along with their "nonbinary gender bill", it would make the bill less likely to be approved. TRANS FEELINGS ARE QUITE LITERALLY PRIORITIZED OVER INTERSEX LIVES.

It hurts me knowing how many people have suffered due to this and due to SRS, which privileged trans people go for willingly but not everyone is given the choice. Trans people whine that they have to pay for dangerous cosmetic surgery that can fuck up their genitals (or even other parts of their body) but a lot of people are given it AGAINST THEIR WILL and suffer for life. It's a barbaric practice and I long for the day that it's outright banned. For EVERYONE. "Sex reassignment" is nothing but a cosmetic joke, it doesn't change one's sex, it doesn't "fix" intersex disorders, and it has no place in a civilized and rational world.

Also, specifically FUCK this graphic and that it equates males born with XXY to FTMs. No. Not even fucking close. You think that just because some intersex guys can develop breast tissue (gynecomastia) it's the same as being a normal biological female who LARPs as a man due to a yaoi fetish? Fuck you. I've seen this shitty fucking argument before, I've posted about my experiences as an androgynous intersex guy only to get replies from non-transitioning female-presenting FTMs like "yes I can relate I'm trans", no you absolutely fucking cannot.

A FTM can quite literally choose to stop being trans at any time, and most likely, will. But I can't choose to stop being intersex if things get too rough for me. I can't just go "huh I'm gonna be a normal male now" and magically look, sound, and behave like a regular guy. This stuff is quite literally in my genetics, and even something like taking testosterone would probably cause me health problems.

I've struggled all my life with not being seen as a guy and not being considered "One of the boys," having guys tell me that I'm basically a girl and that it's not gay for them to fuck me because of it, being considered to be weak, dumb, incapable etc because of the way I developed. And yet, look at where we are now, in the 2010s-2020+ the so called "progressives" are reinforcing this.

[–]Shadow_Lurker[S] 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was waiting for your imput on this, and what can I say? I'm not disappointed in the slightest.

Some countries like Iceland tried to introduce a law banning it, but then withdrew because the government believed that if they added in intersex rights along with their "nonbinary gender bill", it would make the bill less likely to be approved. TRANS FEELINGS ARE QUITE LITERALLY PRIORITIZED OVER INTERSEX LIVES.

Intersex people depend on the category of sex for their rights to be recognized. TRAs don't understand this and because of this they like compare themselves to intersex people, or even worst, use them as props for their own ends.

Also, specifically FUCK this graphic and that it equates males born with XXY to FTMs.

There are some MtF that also like to compare themselves with woman with PCOS, which is also disgusting in its own right. They pick a woman who was born with an real, concrete medical condition and say: "they are totally comparable to Mr Dress go Spinny over there, the same thing in fact.

Fuck them and fuck their progressive enablers.

[–]Shadow_Lurker[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

As promised, I finally managed to find this chart!

Some things to hightlight:

  • The way they organize the items is totally arbitrary, so there's no quantitative logic that constitutes the so called "sex spectrum", so basicly: there's no spectrum

  • They, as expected, use intersex people as just a tool to talk about transgenders.

  • DSDs—which, broadly defined, may affect about one percent of the population—represent a robust, evidence-based argument to reject rigid assignations of sex and gender.

What a clusterfuck...

[–]fuck_reddit 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

That's a really complex infographic that 1) does not prove sex is a spectrum, 2) continues the rude line of thought that intersex people aren't male or female, 3) makes >99% of the population look like just a small portion (I know it's focusing on intersex conditions and traits, but if it's trying to sell sex as a "spectrum" they have to minimize the prevalence of 100% male and 100% female people otherwise it becomes flat obvious how bs their claim is).

[–]motss-pb 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The infographic is deliberately meant to obfuscate and confuse. Looking at this image:

https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/164FE5CE-FBA6-493F-B9EA84B04830354E_source.jpg

you can see that the third info box in the Birth row, "Female external structures, male internal structures", has two long white arrows coming into and out of it that crisscross several other arrows and make the graphic look jumbled. Shifting this box a few places to the right would have made the diagram much less complicated. As it stands, the diagram looks like a tangled knot of flow chart arrows, but it could have been greatly simplified by just moving the boxes around.

And if you remove the intersex complexities (since transgender =/= intersex), the flowchart collapses to two arrows, the XX and XY paths.

[–]GConly 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You'll notice it's obfuscating just how uncommon these intersex conditions are.

It's also putting PCOS into intersex conditions, which is personally insulting.

[–]Smolders1Cock is god's greatest gift. 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

This topic has always confused me lol.

Wouldn't saying "sex is a spectrum" imply that there is some sort of third sex that exists?

[–]our_team_is_winning 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Spectrum" is totally not the word they want. Even the rainbow pride flag does not show a spectrum. It shows discrete bands of color. An actual spectrum has one color blend slowly into another. You can't draw a straight line where the red becomes orange. It's gradual.

If sex were a "spectrum," you'd have a person with one female breast, a partial vulva, one poorly formed testicle, etc. like they were slowly morphing. With the exception of medical conditions, we have two very distinct sexes. And they know that.

[–]Shadow_Lurker[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wouldn't saying "sex is a spectrum" imply that there is some sort of third sex that exists?

No, it's much more than that my friend.

Did you notice that the chart didn't only include three sexes (male, female and "hermaphrodite") but multiple ones? This is because they literally believe in he existence of multiple degrees of male and female, with each one constituting a separate sex.

In terms of reproductive biology, this is bullshit because it would turn the process of reproduction into a big convoluted mess. Think about it: each degree of female would be able to only bear children with their male equivalents and they only, with the same being valid for the males.