#biological sex

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Pretending like biological sex isn't real is ridiculously stupid. You say that you believe in science but you think that humans are the one primate to not have two sexes?

Also stop using intersex people as pawns, it's actually offensive

a) I'm intersex. what is with tumblr anons and assuming I'm not in a particular group I talk about with experience? Ffs. First ableism now this.

b) Biological sex *isn't* real. It's a model. Much as species aren't real. Yes, there are "two sexes", but sexual characteristics don't form two pillars on either end they form a reverse bell curve, with much variation in the middle.

c) I don't believe in science. I know science. I am a scientist. which means I know it's not as simple as "two sexes" for any organism whatsoever.

nice try.

[she-is-ovarit]

Advantages to being female ("AFAB").

Biological differences in being female are often discussed negatively in order to indicate our disadvantages and where and how we are exploited within patriarchal societies.

On Ovarit, there was a thread in which users shared some biological differences to being female that illuminated our strengths. While of course biological differences in males vs. females is directly rooted in reproductive evolutionary strategy (whether someone develops down a reproductive pathway geared towards an overall reproductive system that supports gestating life and creating larger ova vs. not) I thought I would share some examples of advantages not directly connected to childbirth and childbearing. This is not an exhaustive list.

We are more flexible than male people.

We have better stamina and endurance in some extreme long-distance sports in comparison to male people (such as in ultra-marathons).

Some animals (especially other mammals such as wolves, horses, cats, etc.) are instinctively threatened by males, even if they have never been harmed by them. This is not the case with women.

We have better immune systems and survive viruses better than male people.

We survive famines and epidemics overall better than male people.

We survive variations in temperature overall better than male people.

We have better sense of smell than men.

Our chromosomes provide us with extra protection against certain genetic diseases like hemophilia, and we have more genetic diversity.

We have better balance due to our center of gravity being lower, in our pelvis's, while males have their center of gravity in their torsos. This makes us naturally better at sports like rock-climbing, gymnastics, certain martial arts, etc.

"The male fetus is at greater risk of death or damage from almost all the obstetric catastrophes that can happen before birth.2 Perinatal brain damage,3 cerebral palsy,4 congenital deformities of the genitalia and limbs, premature birth, and stillbirth are commoner in boys,5 and by the time a boy is born he is on average developmentally some weeks behind his sister: “A newborn girl is the physiological equivalent of a 4 to 6 week old boy.”

Women and girls have better color perception than males.

Multiple orgasms.

We're biologically better suited to being astronauts and living in space (note: and this was discovered 15 years ago yet this work was never published)

Some articles (debatable on credibility) suggest that we are better able to withstand complete sensory deprivation for several hours in comparison to men, who were able to withstand complete sensory deprivation for minutes.

For unknown reasons, we do not experience the same percentage of macular degeneration that men do in space.

We have a different adrenaline response. Our hormone systems work differently and so we do not lose as much decision making ability and fine motor control as men do in a crisis, making us better snipers and pilots thanks to our reaction time.

We have better life expectancy overall.

[justdavina]

Such a amazing transgender woman! Her face is absolute perfect! I love her long sweet blonde hair and brown eyes! Her lovely skin tone is delicious! With her adorable yellow dress she's magnificent!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Colin Wright

Published: May 3, 2023

The transgender movement has left many intelligent Americans confused about sex. Asked to define the word “woman” during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings last year, Ketanji Brown Jackson demurred, saying “I’m not a biologist.” I am a biologist, and I’m here to help.

Are sex categories in humans empirically real, immutable and binary, or are they mere “social constructs”? The question has public-policy implications related to sex-based legal protections and medicine, including whether males should be allowed in female sports, prisons and other spaces that have historically been segregated by sex for reasons of fairness and safety.

Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union frequently claims that the binary concept of sex is a recent invention “exclusively for the purposes of excluding trans people from legal protections.” Scottish politician Maggie Chapman asserted in December that her rejection of the “binary and immutable” nature of sex was her motivation for pursuing “comprehensive gender recognition for nonbinary people in Scotland.” (“Nonbinary” people are those who “identify” as neither male nor female.)

When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, or small gametes; females, ova, or large ones. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.

Intersex people, whose genitalia appear ambiguous or mixed, don’t undermine the sex binary. Many gender ideologues, however, falsely claim the existence of intersex conditions renders the categories “male” and “female” arbitrary and meaningless. In “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex” (1998), the historian of science Alice Dreger writes: “Hermaphroditism causes a great deal of confusion, more than one might at first appreciate, because—as we will see again and again—the discovery of a ‘hermaphroditic’ body raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies. The questioned body forces us to ask what exactly it is—if anything—that makes the rest of us unquestionable.”

In reality, the existence of borderline cases no more raises questions about everyone else’s sex than the existence of dawn and dusk casts doubt on day and night. For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.

Gender ideology seeks to portray sex as so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people as simply either male or female is grossly outdated and should be abandoned for a revolutionary concept of “gender identity.” This entails that males wouldn’t be barred from female sports, women’s prisons or any other space previously segregated according to our supposedly antiquated notions of “biological sex,” so long as they “identify” as female.

But “intersex” and “transgender” mean entirely different things. Intersex people have rare developmental conditions that result in apparent sex ambiguity. Most transgender people aren’t sexually ambiguous at all but merely “identify” as something other than their biological sex.

Once you’re conscious of this distinction, you will begin to notice gender ideologues attempting to steer discussions away from whether men who identify as women should be allowed to compete in female sports toward prominent intersex athletes like South African runner Caster Semenya. Why? Because so long as they’ve got you on your heels making difficult judgment calls on a slew of complex intersex conditions, they’ve succeeded in drawing your attention away from easy calls on unquestionably male athletes like 2022 NCAA Division I women’s swimming and diving champion Lia Thomas. They shift the focus to intersex to distract from transgender.

Acknowledging the existence of rare difficult cases doesn’t weaken the position or arguments against allowing males in female sports, prisons, restrooms and other female-only spaces. In fact, it’s a much stronger approach because it makes a crucial distinction that the ideologues are at pains to obscure.

Crafting policy to exclude males who identify as women, or “trans women,” from female sports, prisons and other female-only spaces isn’t complicated. Trans women are unambiguously male, so the chances that a doctor incorrectly recorded their sex at birth is zero. Any “transgender policy” designed to protect female spaces need only specify that participants must have been recorded (or “assigned,” in the current jargon) female at birth.

Crafting effective intersex policies is more complicated, but the problem of intersex athletes in female sports is less pressing than that of males in female sports, and there seem to be no current concerns arising from intersex people using female spaces. It should be up to individual organizations to decide which criteria or cut-offs should be used to keep female spaces safe and, in the context of sports, safe and fair. It is imperative, however, that such policies be rooted in properties of bodies, not “identity.” Identity alone is irrelevant to issues of fairness and safety.

Ideologues are wrong to insist that the biology of sex is so complex as to defy all categorization. They’re also wrong to represent the sex binary in an overly simplistic way. The biology of sex isn’t quite as simple as common sense, but common sense will get you a long way in understanding it.

[redditreceipts]

Wow, that's interesting! I didn't know that HRT is a biological sex change, please tell me more about why that's the case!

Okay, please tell me how HRT can change your phenotype and make you the opposite sex! I've never heard that before, but you seem to be quite sure of yourself

Well, that's not entirely true. Not every part of phenotypically male development is dependent on testosterone production. Even before testosterone production, the Y chromosome leads to the development of testicles in a fetus. This is why people with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome will develop testicles (whose information is stored in the Y chromosome), even if they are never exposed to testosterone. So the male phenotypic development is not entirely dependant on testosterone, but also genetic information on the Y chromosome.

So what does he mean with "female genetic programming"? Under HRT, men develop secondary sex characteristics that are typical for women. They are not exclusive to females, however, because men can also develop these characteristics without HRT or any other medical intervention. Yes, breast growth is more often found in women, but men can also get breast growth, for example those affected by gynecomastia. Saying that breast growth is "female genetic programming" is just false, because even though it is primarily females who are affected by breast growth, there are males who are also affected. If you grew a vagina and a uterus from HRT, you would be right in saying that the female genetic programming was activated, because a vagina is consistently found in the female phenotype. But breasts? Everyone can get them. It's not special and it doesn't make you more female, just as a woman who hasn't grown breasts for whatever reason isn't any less of a female.

You are not developing female physiological traits, though. Female physiological traits are about gamete production. If your balls went up again into your body and became a uterus, and your penis would recede and become a clitoris and you would stop peeing through it, that would be a sex change. Your biology on HRT is not any more female than the biology of a guy with a hormonal imbalance. Also, you're not going through a second puberty, you're purposefully inducing a severe hormonal imbalance and changing your fat distribution and other physical characteristics. For it to be a puberty, you would have to re-change into a child and then reach sexual maturity as the opposite sex again. But you have already reached sexual maturity as a male, and therefore you are not going through puberty. You aren't even going from sexual maturity as a male to sexual maturity as a female. You are just going from being a sexually mature male to being a sexually mature male with self-induced erectile dysfunction. Congratulations on that though lmao

You haven't even touched on genetics 😭 please tell me how your genetic sex is affected by taking HRT

PCOS is not intersex. Only people who have a phenotype organised around the facilitation of the function of the large gamete can be affected by PCOS. For it to be an intersex condition, it would have to be impossible or very hard to tell what type of gamete production your phenotype is organised around. And HRT is not inducing and intersex condition 😭😭😭 please stop throwing intersex people under the bus, everyone can clearly tell what type of gamete-production your phenotype is organised around, and it's not ova

Inverting a penis will not make it a vagina, and there was no advanced biology found in your argumentation.

almost two thousand upvotes for that bullshit

lmao

I mean I could be wrong here, of course, and if anyone more knowledgeable about biology told me about that, that would be cool - but from what I can tell, this entire thing was just offensively stupid

[gales-of-scng]

[starberrywander]

I'm tired of people debating semantics and derailing conversations so y'know what I'm gonna express my frustration by making shit up. I'm just gonna make up gibberish words, give them definitions, and start using them to confuse people.

Join me if you'd like. I would be very happy if people helped me spread chaos. Like hey, if they're gonna complain and be petty about inclusive language, lets just go all out and really make a whole new vocabulary that they have to learn if hey wanna fight us on this. Make them regret complaining about easy to understand word changes.

I can and will make an entirely new language if that's where this leads.

Process:

Keysmash

Make it pronouncable

Make it sound more englishy (optional)

Add the desired definition

Violá

So topic number one is Sex

Hiksu = The group of categories describing bodily features or functions related to reproduction.

Coiheb = A person who was born with a vagina, uterus, and ovaries. (regardless of their functionality) A person who was, at birth, identified as the phenotype associated with the production of egg cells.

Cewu = A person who currently has a vagina. (does not have to be naturally occuring)

Oweb = A person who is capable of becoming pregnant.

Rucrex = A person who was born with a penis and testes. (regardless of their functionality) A person who was, at birth, identified as the phenotype associated with the production of sperm cells.

Ruedi = A person who currently has a penis. (does not have to be naturally occuring)

Xeituk = A person who is capable of getting another person pregnant.

Cygria = A person of unspecified hiksu.

Edits: Tweaks to the definitions of Coiheb and Rucrex to better address the phenomenon of reproductive-role based physiology differences. This is intended to emphasize the health aspects of hiksu while Cewu & Ruedi emphasize the aesthetic aspects and Oweb & Xeituk emphasize the reproductive aspects.

[must-be-mythtaken]

Okay this is a really smart article and I learned so much, but this passage was particularly nice to run into:

"Before getting into the evidence, we need to first talk about sex and gender. “Sex” typically refers to biological sex, which can be defined by myriad characteristics such as chromosomes, hormone levels, gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. The terms “female” and “male” are often used in relation to biological sex. “Gender” refers to how an individual identifies—woman, man, nonbinary, and so forth. Much of the scientific literature confuses and conflates female/male and woman/man terminology without providing definitions to clarify what it is referring to and why those terms were chosen. For the purpose of describing anatomical and physiological evidence, most of the literature uses “female” and “male,” so we use those words here when discussing the results of such studies. For ethnographic and archaeological evidence, we are attempting to reconstruct social roles, for which the terms “woman” and “man” are usually used. Unfortunately, both these word sets assume a binary, which does not exist biologically, psychologically or socially. Sex and gender both exist as a spectrum, but when citing the work of others, it is difficult to add that nuance."

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Quid ergo dicemus, cum et silentii et orationis magna utilitas sit? *

- Sallust

What then should we say, considering that there is great utility in both silence and in speaking? *

Prof Kathleen Stock, a university professor of philosophy was hounded out of her post by trans activists for her gender critical views. In her work she tackled the relation between sex and gender identity, arguing among other things that: womanhood and manhood reflect biological sex, not gender or gender identity; the claim “transwomen are women” is a fiction, not literally true; sexual orientation (being gay, being lesbian) is determined by same-sex attraction, not attraction to gender identity; spaces where women undress and sleep should remain genuinely single-sex, in order to protect them; and children with gender identity disorders should not be given puberty blockers as minors. For holding such views she was subject to torrential abuse and subsequently hounded out of her academic position by a vocal minority of student trans right activists for holding such ‘transphobic’ views.

Stock was invited first by the Cambridge Union and later the Oxford Union to debate her views. At Oxford, trans activists tried to get her invitation rescinded on the basis that her views constituted ‘hate speech’. The Oxford Union was threatened by the Student Union to deny her a platform. To their credit, the Oxford Union held fast to their free speech principles while a petition signed by many Oxford academics, including Richard Dawkins and Nigel Biggar, came out in support for Prof. Stock.

Trans activists did their best to disrupt the event outside with a march while also offering ‘safe spaces’ for triggered Oxford students in a nearby college room complete with energy bars, ear plugs, and bottled water.

Inside the chamber, one activist, Riz Possnett, glued her hand to the chamber floor, in an attempt to disrupt Stock’s talk, until she was removed by police. The privately educated Possnett (£41,000 year private school in Hong Kong) reading PPE at Wadham College, Oxford, is no stranger to controversy as ‘they’ was known to be an Extension Rebellion activist and Republican agitator, having previously broken into Windsor Castle to frolic on King Charles’ bed with ‘their’ partner.

Prof Stock told the Union that some universities were “becoming propaganda machines for a particular point of view”. She said she did not find it “traumatic” to have protesters outside the event and said that students in her generation staged similar protests. “Generally what I find more worrying is when institutions listen to protesters and take that voice through into the institution and basically become propaganda machines for a particular point of view and then everyone else in that institution feels that they can’t say what they want to say,” she said. She said that had happened in some universities. She told the Union said it would “take courage” for people to realise that “the world does not end” when you have disagreements.

Photo: Prof Stock brought the severed head of a trans activist to display in an attempt to trigger her critics. Is there no end to this woman's evil?

[genderqueerdykes]

Hey in regards to the posts/asks about endometriosis and being intersex/sex variant, the very first thing that my OB/GYN wanted me to do to treat mine was to get on testosterone (because she knew that I was trying to for gender reasons anyway).

Aside from birth control, she was confident that testosterone was my best bet at treating it without needing surgery (again).

I identify as intersex for other reasons, but I would not be surprised whatsoever if my endometriosis contributed to that.

thank you so much for stopping by and giving your story!

your situation sounds so much like a lot of other people i know! im glad that testosterone ended up being the right choice for you, and that it is helping! i hope that you are able to avoid further surgeries and that T will take care of the negative symptoms you were experiencing.

thank you for telling us a bit about yourself and your experience with endometriosis, it's really important and means a lot to us! best of luck in your health journey, take care, feel free to stop by again any time!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Nathan Williams

Published: Apr 27, 2021

Pseudoscience has become a serious problem. From Covid conspiracy theories to climate change denialists, the spread of scientific misinformation threatens our health and the health of our planet. Now there’s a new pseudoscience as bogus as flat-earthism or creationism. But this time there’s something different: those who you might expect to fight against pseudoscience are turning a blind-eye — or in some cases spreading it. This is the phenomenon of sex denial: the rejection of one of the most basic facts of biology in the name of ideology.

I’ve spent much of my career fighting against pseudoscience. I worked with the legendary sceptic James Randi to debunk homeopathy; I’ve also battled climate denialists and anti-vaxxers. I know pseudoscience when I see it. Sex-denial is a classic of the genre, using all the same techniques to sow confusion and misinformation. Their target is the seemingly uncontroversial, indeed obvious, fact that humans can be female or male.

Here’s what the science says: there are only two human sexes. That’s because there are only two types of gamete (the sex cells — egg and sperm). Humans (like all mammals) can develop along one of two pathways: towards making eggs (female) and towards making sperm (male). If anyone ever finds a third sex it would be a discovery on a par with finding a new continent — with a guaranteed Nobel prize. Until you see those headlines, you can rest assured there are exactly two sexes.

A small number of people have disorders or variations in their sex development (VSDs) meaning some aspect of their anatomy or genetic makeup may be atypical. But most people with VSDs are still clearly and unambiguously male or female. Indeed, most would consider it offensive to say that just because some part of your body is atypical that you are less of a male or less of a female. In a tiny subset it can be difficult to distinguish whether someone is male or female — sometimes called intersex conditions — but these likely account for less than 0.02 per cent of births. So, the overwhelming majority of people are unequivocally female or male, with their sex fixed from before they’re born to the moment they die. None of this is remotely new or controversial (at least in science).

Biological sex exists and it matters — most obviously because the existence of the human race depends on it. You can’t make a human baby without a male and a female — yet the sex-denialists hardly ever mention reproduction. Which is odd since that’s precisely why sex exists. Sex also matters for a host of other reasons. It influences your height, weight, strength and lifespan. It determines your likelihood of getting breast cancer or testicular cancer, heart attacks, mental illness, even your chance of dying from Covid-19. Denying sex is dangerous as well as disingenuous.

So what exactly do the sex-denialists claim? Like climate-deniers or flat-earthers, there’s no single alternative theory — rather a hodge-podge of different claims designed to confuse the public and push an ideological agenda. At the most extreme there are those who flat out deny the reality of sex. “It is not correct that there is such thing as biological sex”, says Prof Nicholas Matte at the University of Toronto. Dawn Butler, a British MP and the Labour Party’s Shadow Minister for Women and Equalities, said on national television: “A child is born without sex.” What is so extraordinary about this claim is that it is so obviously untrue. At least the flat-earthers have some degree of everyday experience on their side: it’s easy to forget we’re on a spinning ball of rock. But to deny something that everyone knows and experiences every day is bizarre — and of course not supported by any science.

Another approach is to accept that the sexes exist but imply they’re a human invention, like faiths or football teams. For instance, Chase Strangio of the ACLU says, “The notion of “biological sex” was developed for the exclusive purpose of being weaponised against people.” This is a classic pseudoscience confidence trick. Of course it’s true that all scientific concepts are in one sense human creations. Mammals, atoms, temperature and earthquakes are all concepts created by scientists. However, those concepts are useful precisely because they describe real aspects of the physical world. Surely no one would claim that these exist purely in our minds. Similarly, the reality of biological sex is a fundamental fact about all mammals that existed long before humans did — just as gravity existed long before Newton.

A third approach is to accept that sex exists but claim it’s so complicated that you really shouldn’t bother your pretty little head about it. A recent article in The Skeptic took this approach — drawing an analogy between the concept of sex and the concept of species. It’s true that there are cases where the borderline between species can get fuzzy — for instance hybrid polar and grizzly bears can exist with the delightful name of pizzly bears. But such rare cases don’t invalidate the concept of species — indeed biology would be impossible without it. The overwhelming majority of vertebrate animals are members of a single species — just as most humans are members of a single sex.

Whereas most popular science articles are trying to take a complex subject and make it seem simple, articles like these strive to take a simple concept and make it seem complex. The evidence is clear in one of the most unusual corrections I’ve ever seen. “This article was updated as it previously omitted a reference to primary sexual characteristics.” That’s right — an article all about the reality of biological sex “forgot” to mention the primary sexual characteristics. This is deliberate scientific obfuscation.

So why would anyone want to deny something as important and obvious as sex? Perhaps it is the misguided belief that obscuring the reality of sex will help trans people. It is of course important to distinguish between sex and gender or gender identity (someone’s internal sense of who they are and the social roles they fulfil). There are people whose biological sex and gender identity do not match: trans people. I believe people should be free to self-identify as whatever gender they wish. However, one can no more self-identify one’s sex than you can self-identify your height.

This needn’t be a problem — we can celebrate that there are people who want to break out of the traditional roles and social expectations associated with their sex. But the new ideology says that a trans person doesn’t merely change their gender, they change their sex — even if they’ve had no surgery or hormone treatment. This means believing that someone can have a body identical to that of a typical male and yet in fact be female purely through the act of identifying as such. The only way to make that falsehood true is to demolish the very notion of biological sex.

Without the truth on their side, the sex denialists’ only option is to shut down discussion. Anyone who dares question the ideology faces insults, abuse and even violence. It’s an approach that has proven highly successful. Despite this being an issue of great public interest, very few scientists or science journalists have made any attempt to communicate what the science says. When I approached the Science Media Centre, which prides itself on being able to find scientists to talk on even the most controversial subjects, they said they were unable to provide a single expert. Places that once championed rationality and evidence like the Freethought Blog now explicitly ban those who dare present views on the existence of biological sex that they consider heretical.

When a biologist tweeted that stating biological facts is not bigotry, she was attacked by the very body you might expect to support her — The Royal Society of Biology — which labelled her comments as “transphobia”. Perhaps there was some detail of the science she got wrong — in which case you would expect this learned society to point out the error. But despite numerous attempts to find out what was incorrect about her statements, they have refused to answer. Even at its most censorious — the Catholic Church would tell blasphemers what their crime was. The modern witch-burners won’t even do that — they will rarely even discuss their claims with anyone who does not already share their beliefs.

Even one of the world’s best-known biologists isn’t safe. Prof. Richard Dawkins recently tweeted to ask whether there was a difference between self-identifying your race and self-identifying your sex/gender. This was the final straw for the American Humanist Association which duly stripped him of a 25-year-old lifetime award — something they’d only done once before when a recipient was accused of serious sexual harassment. Humanism is supposed to stand for rationality and freedom of thought, but for the AHA it seems heresy is still a crime punishable by excommunication. These are far from isolated examples. Many academics, particularly women, have faced threats and harassment merely for daring to talk about biological sex. There is no clearer demonstration that sex denialists are charlatans; their only weapons are creating fear and confusion. It’s time the rest of us stood up to them.

[redditreceipts]

Isn't it strange to define sex in terms of phenotype (genetics + environment) rather than sexed physical characteristics one has? Because that's like saying that a person still has 2 legs because of their phenotype, even if they've lost both legs.

There is a difference between primary and secondary sex characteristics.

Primary sex characteristics are the factors that are used to determine one's biological sex. These are typically chromosomes, gonads and genitalia.

Secondary sex characteristics develop during puberty and are for example:

breast growth or lack thereof

beard growth

heigth

strength and muscle development

hormone levels

voice

etc.

Secondary sex characteristics vary from person to person. If we determined biological sex by secondary sex characteristics, a tall woman would be less of a woman than a short woman, or a man without a beard would be less of a man than a man with a beard. A woman with her breasts amputated would not be as much of a woman as a woman who has not had her breasts amputated. Arguably, this would not be the ideal case.

So a female is a person whose phenotype includes:

having a uterus

having fallopian tubes and ovaries

having a vagina, labia and clitoris

having XX chromosomes

etc.

A male is a person whose phenotype includes:

having a penis and erectile tissue

having testes

having a scrotum

having XY chromosomes

etc.

If you have a mix of both, you are intersex.

It is not possible to acquire primary sex characteristics later in life. For example, a neovagina is not a vagina, as they have wildly different anatomical features.

Unless you would consider a male with secondary female sex characteristics (like gynecomastia) "less of a man", or a woman with secondary male sex characteristics (like mustache hair) "less of a woman", it's not a good solution to determine sex by anything but primary sex characteristics.

[nando161mando]

'It’s pretty obvious that the Library made this a Pride Month thread to celebrate the fact that “biological sex” is a beautifully varied thing across species, and that a static dimorphic sex binary is not actually a default or natural state — in fact, that’s not even true for humans. But the Library got totally ratioed by transphobes.'

[emrosedeleon]

To all transfems who self-describe as MtF/biologically male:

You don't have to do that. People will try to make you but they can't, and you don't have to. "Biological sex" is an incoherent binary which includes countless factors all the way down to the length of your hair, your posture, the manner in which you carry your voice and the name that you call yourself - it is literally just a more scientific-sounding way to misgender you.

It is not true that all women are slight, dainty, hairless things with birdlike voices and long, following hair - even among cis women. You wouldn't consider a cis woman to be less authentic in her gender just because she fails to meet a couple of these white supremacist patriarchal standards, there's no reason having been born with a penis should be any different except to hurt you. That's the only reason anybody has.

Binary human sex categories is a scientifically bankrupt concept which literally just boils down to gendering chromosomes and endogenous hormone production. There are XY cis women and cis women who endogenously produce above-average T - there is no reason to consider yourself anything other than female, if you so choose, besides transphobia and transmisogyny.