Poll: How do you define someones sex?

[skeliton112]

My friends and i were talking about this the other day about what makes a (wo)man a (wo)man and i thought id ask the escapist.

Just a side note, if you said genitals, what is a person with mutilated/malformed genitals?

EDIT: Forgot to say my opinion. I think that it is mostly the presence of a Y chromosome that defines gender

 

[Steel_crab]

Your actual gender in my opinion is dependent the presence/absence of the Y chromosome - I don't think a man who has had a sex change is a woman, any more than I think a man with a prosthetic leg is a robot.

 

[infohippie]

I think you mean to ask how people define sex. Gender is a social construct (ie masculine or feminine), sex is physically being male or female.

 

[skeliton112]

I think you mean to ask how people define sex. Gender is a social construct (ie masculine or feminine), sex is physically being male or female.

I just looked it up and your right that it is more accuratly described as a construct and that sex would be more accurate

 

[iblis666]

if they can have give birth they are female, if they can impregnate a female to produce children they are male, anything else is an it and can be called what ever they like but in my mind they are still an it

 

[Aetera]

There is a big difference between sex and gender. Sex is your physical body, while gender is more psychological.

 

[thedoclc]

There is a big difference between sex and gender. Sex is your physical body, while gender is more psychological.

This person is correct. However, it is still an incomplete answer. An individual's genetics may be other than XY or XX, such as XXY, XYY, XO. Afterward, that person's genetics may contain mutations which fail to cause normal development in the brain, in the reproductive system, or both. For example, a mutation to proteins which convert testosterone to estrogen, a mutation in the genes that prevent female embryonic ducts from developing into female genitals, etc, etc. Likewise, the brain itself actually has receptors for male hormones which change its development from the default "female" to "male." If a person has a mismatch here, they may live all their lives feeling they physically are the wrong sex - there is a biological basis to it.

So how would you classify a person who is XY, has female genitalia which "work", but who claims to be a man because their brain responded to increased levels of testosterone during development despite the failure of their genitals to develop into those of the male sex?

I'm inclined to simply saying the real world does not fit the two ways we define gender and sex.

 

[retterkl]

Can I just point out that not everyone thinks that gender is socially constructed. What this social construction means is that girls act like girls because when they're children they are brought up to be girly. They're given Barbies and grow long hair and wear lots of pink, and this makes their gender a girl.

However this isn't necessarily true. If you brought a girl up to be a boy but she still had all the estrogen and oxytocin that regular girls had then she's still likely to share traits of higher levels of empathy, less physical strength, mothering instincts and other defining biological traits that girls have.

There was a case in the US where there were complications during the birth of these twins, and one of the two boys ended up with malformed genetalia. His parents decided they should give him a sex change because he/she could then have fully working genetalia and everything would be dandy. However, even though the parents tried to raise her as a girl she never felt that it was right (even though she wasn't told she should be a boy). It ended up that she got depression, then her parents told her when she was in her 30s or something, and got a sex change back to being a boy (since technology was better by this time).

Anyway that person ended up commiting suicide, but the point is that social construction cannot make up a persons gender fully, it's just there's not much evidence against it that people come to accept it.

However it's a classic nature vs nurture arguement. I believe more in a nature side of things myself.


This has nothing to do with defining the sex of a person, that should be objective really, with a 3rd option that there is a neuter between male and female which some people fall under.

(this means that all the people voting in the poll that it is what people want it to be are wrong, because that's gender, not sex)

 

[Queen Michael]

Unless it's 100% clear, I don't define it.

 

[EllEzDee]

Your gender is how you were born. "I feel like (the opposite sex)" doesn't cut it for me. I feel like being rich for a day, but if i used that to get into someone's pants, it'd be a hell of a thing to explain the night after.

 

[megaraccoon]

gender is dependant on genetics, xx or xy this is fact, however i maintain that sex is also up to the individual e.g. i have a male friend who considers himeself a woman and a lesbian. and want's the op so i consider him a her and refer to her as such.

 

[Thaluikhain]

There's quite a debate about this. Personally, I believe that what chromosomes the person happens to have defines their sex.

 

[retterkl]

gender is dependant on genetics, xx or xy this is fact, however i maintain that sex is also up to the individual e.g. i have a male friend who considers himeself a woman and a lesbian. and want's the op so i consider him a her and refer to her as such.

Lol people just don't read posts longer then 2 sentances any more....

That's the wrong way round, read what I wrote before.

 

[Griffolion]

Your actual gender in my opinion is dependent the presence/absence of the Y chromosome - I don't think a man who has had a sex change is a woman, any more than I think a man with a prosthetic leg is a robot.

Many psychologists would argue that your sex is merely defined by chromosomal presences. Your gender is a far more philosophical issue. You have to start looking at what defines gender, gender roles etc. What defines masculinity and femininity, are all these things simply the inventions of lesser minds (from thousands of years back) in order to create an ordered society where everyone has their place?

Yeah it's a very weird subject, one of my units in third year psychology was on this. Didn't like it at all!

 

[Wondermint13]

I'll take their word for it..

 

[thedoclc]

Your gender is how you were born. "I feel like (the opposite sex)" doesn't cut it for me. I feel like being rich for a day, but if i used that to get into someone's pants, it'd be a hell of a thing to explain the night after.

I'm going to attempt to change your mind rationally.

I will assume you are a normal male; should this not be the case, amend my argument appropriately.

During your embryonic and fetal development, your Y chromosome encoded for chemical messengers which caused at least three very big things to happen. First, a group of compounds called androgens, of which testosterone is just the best known, caused a group of cells called the Wulfian ducts to become the male reproductive system. Second, another messenger, Mullerian Inhibiting Factor (MIF) shut down the Mullerian ducts from making female bits. This meant that between your androgens and MIF, you developed a normal male reproductive system. This pattern seems to hold across mammals ranging from rats to humans.

In addition, there were chemical receptors in your brain which detected androgens and changed the sex of your brain.

Notice how this system can break down? If the brain and developing reproductive system do not get the same signal (become male), a "female" brain can develop inside a "male body", or vice versa. If all androgen receptors have failed, an individual with an XY genome can develop testicles, female genitalia, a female brain, but fail to develop internal female reproductive structures thanks to MIF still being produced. These these cases are quite real.

Naturally, I do not expect you to simply take my word for it. I just googled "Androgen Receptors in the Brain," skipped any articles on Wikipedia, and here are just the first five results. You can find thousands of more articles in scientific literature if you wish.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v282/n5736/abs/282308a0.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/101/6/1673.short
http://edrv.endojournals.org/content/4/2/171.abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1734159
http://www.jbc.org/content/251/13/4047.abstract

So, what do you make of a person whose genitals received the message and gave rise to male structures, yet whose brain during development did not? This person's brain does not develop like a male's; it develops like a female's. There was no choice in this; it's genetic weirdness which happens to human beings. They've made no decisions which changed anything. It is without exaggeration something that happened entirely before they were born.

 

[thedoclc]

if they can have give birth they are female, if they can impregnate a female to produce children they are male, anything else is an it and can be called what ever they like but in my mind they are still an it

So what do you make of a person who identifies as a woman, has female secondary characteristics such as breasts, has female external genitalia, lacks a uterus or ovaries, does not have menses, has an XY genome, and has small testicles hidden inside her abdominal cavity?

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=14430
http://www.jkscience.org/archive/volume7/testicular.pdf - warning, graphic
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001180.htm

Oh. An it. Yeah, nevermind.

 

[rokkolpo]

If they have a penis or not.
failing that, body build.

And if you had a sex change. good for you, but for me it's what you're born with that counts.