Do You Not Believe In Biological Sex? I’m Confused.

Do you not believe in biological sex? I’m confused.

Hoo, boy. Apologies in advance, but this is gonna have a long answer.

The thing about "biological sex" is, it's a complicated science with a lot of nuance involved, and people who don't actually know anything about it love to use it to mean "penis is boy, vagina is girl".

Which, on the surface, makes sense to a lot of people. Its what we're taught our whole lives, and it's difficult to listen to any argument that contradicts our worldview. It's scary and confusing, and people automatically resist scary and confusing things.

The thing you need to know, though, is that what we call "Biological Sex" can actually depend on a range of factors: 

First off, primary sex characteristics: the bits directly involved in reproduction, what most people consider the defining indicator of gender.

Primary sex characteristics include the penis and testes, which are predominantly associated with men, and the vagina and uterus, associated with women.

This seems fairly simple on the surface, scientifically speaking, but bodies aren't that simple. People can and are born with combinations of these things and live long, happy, healthy lives with few or no medical complaints. Many don't even know they have undescended testes or ovaries at all, and only find out accidentally through unrelated procedures. Is a mother of three who's known herself to be a woman her whole life suddenly a man because she has 'male' sex characteristics? No? Then why should any other woman?

Someone who is still new to this might be experiencing a cognitive dissonance right now, trying to reconcile "penis is boy, vagina is girl" with "people can have both (or neither)", and they may try to do this by saying, "Well, this could be caused by mutations or deformities, so intersex people (people with mixed characteristics) are outliers, not to be included with "valid" genders."

Which brings us to the next factor: hormones.

Testosterone is Boy, Estrogen is Girl. That's what people know, so they don't want to accept any different. Different is confusing, confusing is scary, scary is bad.

But, like primary sex characteristics, these things can fly in the face of common understanding.

A woman, for example, who considers herself cisgender, who has breasts and a vagina and a uterus and all that, might have high testosterone. Because people have both! And because testosterone can give people body hair, among other things, this woman has chest hair and a beard. She LOOKS a lot like what we think of as "male", so do we tell her she's wrong about her gender? 

On the flip side, plenty of cis men with a penis and testes can have high estrogen for any number of reasons, and can develop breasts- does that mean they're women, now? 

Of course not. We have to listen to them to tell us what their pronouns are, what their gender is, and how is that any different from someone who's trans? It would be incredibly ride to tell anyone that "oh, you SAY you're a man, but you look like a woman to me, so I'm going to ignore everything you tell me and call you a woman until you can prove to my satisfaction otherwise."

So if primary sex characteristics aren't the final word on gender, and secondary characteristics aren't either, then what's left? DNA, right? Genetics don't lie, everyone knows that.

So, chromosomes, then. The barest evidence of human biological sex. XX means "female", XY means "male", forget all that mess about vaginas, breasts, and testes. Our chromosomes are the holy gospel of gender.

Except, again, nature isn't that simple.

Picture in your head a cisgender woman. She hits everything on our personal little checklist: breasts, vagina, uterus, minimal body hair, small jawline, high voice, everything. But she has XY chromosomes. 

Because, surprise! That happens! And it happens more often than you think! People can and do go their entire lives not knowing it! Because it isn't important to how we view our gender. We don't care. 

If you went to a lab today, got tested, and found that you had the "wrong" chromosomes- would you suddenly be fine with Becoming A Different Gender? Being treated like you're a different gender? Having to dress different, talk different, redefine your sexuality, because your DNA says you're wrong about your identity? How would that feel? Probably pretty shitty, huh? 

So, when we get down to it, what is the one true indicator of gender? We can't trust genitalia, because it presents on any number of variations and combinations. Secondary sex characteristics are out too, because hormones do whatever they want without rhyme or reason. Chromosomes do whatever the hell they want, fuck them, they're useless.

If we are to open our minds to what the science is telling us, then, what is it saying?

If we are to put our faith in "Biological Sex", then what does is dictate to be the truth?

That physical sex isn't just "boy or girl", it exists on a spectrum. It's not "pink or blue", it's magenta, mauve, violet, lilac, periwinkle, cyan, cobalt, or vermilion, and our idea of "boy or girl" is almost entirely a construct of our imaginations, of the society we live in. It's an illusion that dictates how we experience our lives, how we're treated, what makes us happy and comfortable or how we feel at ease.

Biological sex cannot dictate gender because they're different concepts with different rules grounded in separate realities, and no amount of pointless fussing can force them to cooperate. 

Sex is one spectrum, gender is another, and they don't know each other.

You can accept what the science says, or you can find excuses to justify the beliefs you're comfortable with. It really doesn't matter. 

Just don't be a dick about things that make you uncomfortable and the world will keep on spinning.