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It's time to take advantage of Reddit's decline
(mander.xyz)
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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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I mean, it depends on how you define the term "biological sex", which really is a fuzzy term that can refer to distinct things. There's two types of gametes in humans and intersex people and everyone else still has X or Y chromosomes not Z or something. In that sense there are very much two sexes. Phenotypically of course there's tons of variations but unlike with plants an individual carrying both male and female gametes in one body is exceedingly rare, that is, our biology does generally speaking prefer our reproductive phenotypes to be dimorphic whereas the biology of most plants is happy to have individuals carry both types, switch around, and whatnot. It's wild over there. Imagine you're hanging out with the gals and because there's so much gal pheromones floating around your body decides to switch into hairy woodchuck mode and grow a dick. That kind of flexibility is generally not what enbies mean when identifying as enbies.
...because that's just the reproductive aspect. It gets progressively more complicated and less sensible to talk about a binary the further you get away from that, what we get instead is bimodal distributions: Distinct peaks, but also overlap. Sticking to easily measurable things: The height of an individual human (within a single population and social class i.e. let's ignore malnourishment) is not entirely useless as a predictor of that individual's sex. Once you get to general behaviour, let's say "enjoys walks on the beach more than going clubbing" all bets are off.
I said "there are only two sexes". I got my post removed, and got banned.
In general, you should have enough tolerance to host discussions and debates for people you disagree with. Especially when you claim to be a viable Reddit alternative. You can't ask the wider population to join your platform when you are this extreme and on the fringe. As I said, Lemmy is in the same camp as Raddle.me, not Old Reddit.
There is a benefit to not start muddying the waters when it comes to sexes.
The benefit is the conceptualization of reality, which allows us to put things that are similar into the same box (let’s call it X). Then we can say things that are in X tend to have a, b, c, … features. We can then talk more about the objects in X in a social or academic setting, and draw logical conclusions based on their features and other premises. This helps us decide which treatments to give, how to behave, how to build homes, which products to develop, which services to give and much more.
When you refuse to acknowledge that the objects in the box can be similarly referred to, and instead enforce a system where object 1 belongs in box “A”, and 2 in “B”, and 3 in “C”, etc. you challenge people’s ability to conceptualize reality efficiently. This makes medicine harder, it makes socialization harder, and other things we do as human beings that differ based on sex much harder.
It’s simply not realistic to enforce this on wider society because
I therefore believe that the whole idea of non-binary is pushed primarily as a grift by the medical industry to sell “treatments” for gender dysphoria, and as a type of fetish. It’s not something most people are interested in validating, because it’s wrong, harmful and not based on reality.
It depends on the subreddit. Several subreddits that you surely would not agree with did just fine for years.
I will repeat myself... I said "there are only two sexes". I got my post removed, and got banned.
That's a lot of eloquent words to describe how you have to put people into strictly defined categories, otherwise you get confused and angry.
You put things into categories all the time, we all do. Take plates for example. If someone told you that you are not allowed to call two plates with different colors "plates", then you would likely have considered it a bit wired. Wouldn't you?
Also, tone down the arrogance.
You weren't looking for a discussion, you were looking to make a statement. You weren't there to listen, just to preach. If my opinion was "slavery was good, so I don't see why you're complaining about it" I'd be shown the door in plenty of good communities due to the inflammatory nature of my discourse. It would also be clear I'm not there to discuss anything.
I've also shown you it's not an opinion rooted in science as they do classify more sexes, so in the end it's a social opinion you hold, and tbh that's not worth a lot (and definitely not worthy of the discussion you crave).
You know Pakistan & India also recognizes a third gender? The Hijra. I guess the medical community has a long history of this grift all the way into antiquity such as Ancient Egypt (they wrote and described their notion of a third gender) or even somewhat recently the Mughal Empire (15th century). But yes it's totally a grift.
Your lack of knowledge isn't mine to fix though. You've set your opinion to be something malicious because you want it to be, but even a quick glance at a wiki page would tell you the much longer history.
The rest of your comment veers off into randomness mentioning religion and how you talk about human nature as if you're an expert, and I think we've spoken enough already. I'm not going down a long windy irrelevant discussion on the matter.
You're free to have the last word, I will be going further with my day, my best to you.
I did not know about this term, so let's take a look.
Wikipedia says: "In the Indian subcontinent, hijra is the generic term for trans women and may include eunuchs and intersex people [...] Hijras are officially recognised as a third gender throughout countries in the Indian subcontinent"
It goes on to say: "Some hijras may form relationships with men and even marry,[32] although their marriage is not usually recognized by law or religion"
So the institution of marriage did not entertain the idea of "hijras", that seems pretty significant to me! It begs the question which other norms, customs, practices and laws pertaining to sexes were not taking this idea into consideration. Again, you can make up a sex ad-hoc for specific purposes (fetishes, guarding harems, etc.) but you will not find it being truly recognized as another sex.
If we forward to today, you see the same thing. Medical doctors, architects, clothing designers, etc. all mostly operate according the concept of two sexes. Because that's what's practical, and that's what's most in line with reality.
Doctors will switch to "person with prostate" type of categories as soon as an intersex person walks in. "Man" and "Woman" are just convenient short-hands for "the common configuration". We can also usually sort pieces of cutlery into "spoon" or "fork" (let's ignore knives and chopsticks) but once upon a while you come across a spork and it'd be nonsensical to insist that there's only spoons and forks while you're straight-up looking at the exception in your very hand.
And fuck clothing designers they think all men are storks meaning I have to buy pants for overweight people then hem arse and waist. They also think that women never carry stuff around and thus don't need pockets. Seriously, fuck them.
You're not understanding what I'm trying to say. This ideology attacks the very idea that the conceptualization of things is bound to reality, ad-hoc, to justify fetishes, making money or other limited personal gains. Outside of these limited gains, these people must deal with reality, so they reintroduce concepts as if nothing happened. That's why it's ad-hoc. It's hypocritical, anti-truth and illogical. Your example, just like other attempts to dismantle the idea of a sex binary (male and female) is fundamentally flawed. A "spork" has the function of being compact and easy to carry & distribute. Being an intersex person has no benefit, it's a disability. It's like being born blind or deaf. It's unfortunate, and should not be fetishized or compared to being a transexual. It's also highly uncommon to be intersex, so uncommon that redoing how society functions is simply too impractical. Introducing sporks has no such burden on society, and can be easily referred to in terms of a spoon and a fork, because it combines the function of both (albeit lackingly).
It doesn't end there. They claim that there is a spectrum, not 3 sexes. So they further muddy the waters, and any attempt to categorize things can be waved away in a similar fashion to satisfy some people's personal whims and desires. Not practical, not acceptable.
Whatever grievances we have with clothing designers or fashion, the point still stands that we will never move away from naturally putting things into boxes, especially when it comes to sex. We naturally see two sexes, and doing so turns out to be what is most in line with reality.
That's a lot of words to justify calling people "unnatural", "mistakes", and "wrong", for the way they were born.
Have you ever tried accepting people as they are, without disgust? To accept in your heart that exceptions are not abominations, but precious opportunities to make sure we did not close ourselves off to see wonder of the world?