On point one, a matter of biological fact: Intersex is rare in humans but not unknown, and a lot less rare than you might want to think. Because attitudes are changing, it may become less rare in years to come. In the past, medical staff worked hard to assign intersex babies to the "correct" gender and now they don't worry so much.
On point one, a matter of biological fact: Intersex is rare in humans but not unknown, and a lot less rare than you might want to think. Because attitudes are changing, it may become less rare in years to come. In the past, medical staff worked hard to assign intersex babies to the "correct" gender and now they don't worry so much.
You can dismiss this as a "developmental defect" but it's rather too frequently viable for that to be scientifically accepted. Intersex in other species is also not as unusual as you seem to believe. Many plant species - some of them very much part of the "higher phyla" - have individual plants that are both male & female; in fact the majority of plants are like this.
Fungi are a whole different game: I learned about a slime mould (which may or may not be fungi, depending on who you believe!) that lived in a hay field I managed that had, I'm told, 16 different sexual forms & could only reproduce if all 16 were represented in a single host. Now that's a complicated sex life... And fungi constitute a huge proportion of the living creatures on earth.
On point 2: It's becoming more common for people to honestly not give a flying f where anyone else puts themselves on the continuum between male & female, or why. That really annoys the militant trans folk - I recommend it as an attitude for that reason if no other. Personally I see it as none of my business, and I'm supremely uninterested.
The wish to impose clear binary distinctions as absolute truth is a sad one, when applied to the real world. They are rare enough in philosophy and almost never useful in reality except as approximate generalisations. There are always exceptions and counterexamples.
"It's becoming more common for people to honestly not give a flying f where anyone else puts themselves on the continuum between male & female, or why. That really annoys the militant trans folk - I recommend it as an attitude for that reason if no other. Personally I see it as none of my business, and I'm supremely uninterested."
Total agreement.
Sorry if I skipped over the complexity of plant uh sexes but I didn't want to get into the weeds ... of pistillate and staminate. Of course I know that some angiosperms can bear flowers of both sexes and others like marijuana have distinctly sexed plants.
But intersex has pretty much no intersection with the "non-binary" movement except in the more dishonest arguments about it.
On point one, a matter of biological fact: Intersex is rare in humans but not unknown, and a lot less rare than you might want to think. Because attitudes are changing, it may become less rare in years to come. In the past, medical staff worked hard to assign intersex babies to the "correct" gender and now they don't worry so much.
You can dismiss this as a "developmental defect" but it's rather too frequently viable for that to be scientifically accepted. Intersex in other species is also not as unusual as you seem to believe. Many plant species - some of them very much part of the "higher phyla" - have individual plants that are both male & female; in fact the majority of plants are like this.
Fungi are a whole different game: I learned about a slime mould (which may or may not be fungi, depending on who you believe!) that lived in a hay field I managed that had, I'm told, 16 different sexual forms & could only reproduce if all 16 were represented in a single host. Now that's a complicated sex life... And fungi constitute a huge proportion of the living creatures on earth.
On point 2: It's becoming more common for people to honestly not give a flying f where anyone else puts themselves on the continuum between male & female, or why. That really annoys the militant trans folk - I recommend it as an attitude for that reason if no other. Personally I see it as none of my business, and I'm supremely uninterested.
The wish to impose clear binary distinctions as absolute truth is a sad one, when applied to the real world. They are rare enough in philosophy and almost never useful in reality except as approximate generalisations. There are always exceptions and counterexamples.
"It's becoming more common for people to honestly not give a flying f where anyone else puts themselves on the continuum between male & female, or why. That really annoys the militant trans folk - I recommend it as an attitude for that reason if no other. Personally I see it as none of my business, and I'm supremely uninterested."
Total agreement.
Sorry if I skipped over the complexity of plant uh sexes but I didn't want to get into the weeds ... of pistillate and staminate. Of course I know that some angiosperms can bear flowers of both sexes and others like marijuana have distinctly sexed plants.
But intersex has pretty much no intersection with the "non-binary" movement except in the more dishonest arguments about it.
I think a lotta people are aware of intersex people. So, no, I don't agree that people wanna impose clear binary distinctions as absolute truth.
The problem comes when people don't wanna impose clear binary distinctions at all.
But if those clear binary distinctions aren't true, why would you want to impose them?
Generalisations are OK until you stumble across an exception. Isn't that the whole point of this discussion?
Real life is just complicated. Enjoy it. Play with it. Roll it about. It's what makes life fun.
I gave You a "like" because I agree:
"Real life is just complicated. Enjoy it. Play with it. Roll it about. It's what makes life fun."
Because the exception proves the rule. *Perfectly* clear binary distinctions aren't true. Clear binary distinctions exist.
Otherwise, a woman becomes incapable of defining what a women even is, right?