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POLL Ed Talks - Episode 2: Are there really just two sexes? - YouTube

Religions and society are structured around the idea that there are only two sexes, but this is biologically inaccurate.

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  • 2 votes
Ravenwing 5 Nov 14
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From what I read about the differences in male and female brains it seems to me that the science is not clear about there being distinctly male and female brains. I'm not really invested in either point of view but I have read a lot of conflicting views on this. Some scientists say there is a clear difference some studies say otherwise (https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/201511/the-male-and-female-brain-are-more-similar-once-assumed). I think right now it is too early to jump to any conclusions either way. So that makes the issue even more complicated than it already is.

Dietl Level 7 Nov 15, 2018

@Ravenwing
It also doesn't work for me anymore. Here is another article: [theatlantic.com]

@Ravenwing
I agree with you. I'm not an expert and I don't know all the studies. All I can say is that experts don't seem to agree on many things when it comes to sex and gender issues. I haven't really looked too much into differences in brain development so you surely know more about this than me.
In case you haven't digged deeped on the article, this is one of the studies the neuroscientist is referring to from what I can gather: [pnas.org]
This is a very complex issue that you can probe from multiple different angles. When I saw you talking about male and female brains I wanted to make you aware of some newer research that at least calls into question this binary distinction.

@Ravenwing I'm totally on board for what you are saying. I made pretty much the same experiences as you. I never really saw a fundamental difference in the behaviour of people of different sexes that couldn't easily be explained by upbringing. But of course we have to recognize that our personal experience are never universal so we have to try to be cautious and look for all kinds of studies before getting to any conclusions. And yes, especially in this field a lot of research is biased which very often isn't even avoidable by the scientists because the way we learn to perceive the world has such a big influence on us. And we wouldn't even have to take religions and other cultural power structures into consideration for this whole thing to be pretty messy. I'd really like to know how people will see this in 100 years or so when these things will have been studied for a longer amount of time.

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This will get me into trouble, but yes; biologically there are 2 sexes if you don't count extra chromosomes.

Trangendered people usually don't have this mutation. As far as what trangeder is and where it comes from, we're still working on that, but so far there is little evidence of it in biological terms.

"...if you don't count extra chromosomes."
Why wouldn't you count those people? From what I can gather the number of of intersex people might be up to 1.7%. That would still be millions of people.
Biological sex and gender are two different things. You shouldn't conflate them. There is a clear relationship between them but there are a lot of exeptions to what is considered normal by our society today.

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Of course not.
Many things in life thought to be binary or black and white are on spectrum.

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As a scientist I would like to know the numbers of different human sexes. Unfortunately the little data I've seen seems to be highly biased. I think that people won't answer the questions. Does anyone know of a good database that gives lots of data on human sexes?

@Ravenwing Thanks. That makes it more complex than I thought. I am looking for actual data not only of the kinds but also the number of people who fall into those categories.

@Ravenwing Ok, thanks for the head's up. The fact that people may not even know their own status invalidates even surveys where people feel comfortable. So it looks like we may need to wait a long time for data or there might have to be direct objective biological measures discovered.

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According to Vonnegut in Slaughter House Five it takes 7 sexes to reproduce on Trafalgador

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