GC: With the potential for future advancements in medical technology, what does this mean for the immutability of biological sex?

submitted by transwomanHesitantly QT? from self.GCdebatesQT

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[–]transwomanHesitantly QT?[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Right, so the internal reproductive organs of a person are ultimately responsible for what role a person would play in reproduction. So doesn't that mean the role of reproduction is just a subclassification of a primary classification for how we establish male vs female?

[–]Jizera 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

You only try to repeat Plato's nonsense with the featherless biped. Sex, gender, male, female, man, woman are not mathematical concepts and we don't establish male vs female. I wrote in the my first comment above

Sex is a general term denoting the possible role, male or female, that an individual can play in reproduction. Sex refers the complex abilities the individual has, not only to some particular characteristics.

We observe phenomena and the system of concepts represents them in our brain establishing model's following the structure of the observed phenomena and their observable relationships. It is night 03:30 where I live. I will try to explain it better tomorrow if it is still necessary.

[–]transwomanHesitantly QT?[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I am curious about your perspective, and would love to hear more if you're willing to go into detail ☺️

I understand the idea of sex being observable roles a person can play in reproduction, however, I think I'm still not understanding how this can be detached from physical characteristics of one's biology.

As in, if there are observable roles to be played, we must ask, "how do we determine what role a person plays in reproduction?" The answer must lie in the reproductive organs a person has which allow them to take on said roles to begin with.

I'm interested in how a person who lacks the ability to reproduce would fit into this idea. The issue only seems to solve itself in my mind if I turn to the reproductive organs which are responsible for the concept of these observable reproductive roles.

[–]Jizera 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It this moment I can write only incomplete response, because I will be next week offline and just now I have not time enough for the complete explanation.

I'm still not understanding how this can be detached from physical characteristics of one's biology.

I didn't write that the roles are detached from physical characteristics of one's biology. I wrote

Sex refers the complex abilities the individual has, not only to some particular characteristics.

The complex abilities are abilities of the whole body that are related also to the reproductive system.

Back to Plato for a while. A human being can’t be “defined” as a featherless biped, despite human beings don’t have feathers and typically they have two legs. Human beings are not “defined” by their observable body features. A human being is somebody who is a direct descendant of two other human beings. Therefore a person having Down syndrome or other conditions related to a genetic disorder is also a human being despite various differences from other humans. But we can recognize that someone is a human based on his characteristics and behaviour.

There are two different pairs of basic questions related to sex:

  1. Why do we differentiate people by sex and why is it extremely important?

  2. How do we recognize sex of a particular person and why does it seem so complicated?

We need to answer the first pair before we can answer the second pair.

Differentiation of people by sex is implicated by the way how we reproduce. Reproduction is a fundamental complex ability of every living species, and individuals of each animal species are equipped with a system of various particular body features and abilities that allow them to participate successfully in reproduction. Parts of the abilities are inborn brain functions, based on which further mental abilities or skills are developed and improved based also on experiences.

To reproduce successfully, we must be able to recognize individuals of our species and in them identify the right potential mating partners and also individuals who are our rivals in mating. Such functions can process simultaneously information which we obtain by senses of vision, hearing and smell; processed information generally includes particular visible body features and behaviour, voice pitch and colour, pheromones and similar sex dependent chemicals spreading around persons. In a particular situation we often don’t obtain the full range of information we are able to use to identify potential mating partners and rivals; we even don’t need to see outer genitalia appearance. This evaluation of other people is fast and mostly subconscious, we are aware only of the result. If we identify some contradictions we are disquieted and we are looking for more information to find out the real situation. Therefore we need and we are able to distinguish two groups of people, potential mating partners and mating rivals, to which we naturally behave in different ways. Based on experience we consider those identified as the mating rivals being of the same type as we are; we identify with them. Similarly, we consider the identified potential mating partners as being of a different type; we don’t identify with them. Such functions must be inborn and culturally independent and all other similar species (like mammals) have them, otherwise they would not be able to reproduce. However in humans, they are also accompanied by recognition abilities gained by experience using criteria that can be culturally conditioned, as for example, type attire, haircut, body decoration, or certain behaviour. Also not all humans we consider potential mating partners or rivals; typically sexually immature or old individuals are not included in these groups.

A partial summary: The notion of sex is related to our natural inborn ability to identify our potential matting partners and rivals. Identification of partners and rivals is generally based on complex information obtained by senses of sight, hearing and smell.

However the human brain has the ability of thinking in concepts (notions) which is closely related to use of the language. Our brain creates inner representation of observed and experienced phenomena using various systems of concepts and their relationships to build models that help us to understand the phenomena and keep complex structured systems of information and share them with other people. Since time immemorial humans participate in reproduction, observe all related phenomena and build corresponding system concepts trying to have a consistent model representing all important aspects of the reproduction process. The basic part of this model is very old and it precedes scientific research and it is based on elementary easily observed phenomena which can be summarized in a simplified way like this: To start development of a new human being, two existing human beings must perform together a special activity in which each of them has a special role very different from the role of the other participant. One participant must ejaculate a special fluid, which he produces, inside of the body of the other participant. If this activity is successful, which is not always the case, the new individual starts to develop in the body of the participant in which the fluid was ejaculated. Both participants must have a special set of organs necessary for the role they have in the activity and the participant, in the body of which the new individual develops, must also have special organs providing an environment for the developing new individual. Each human being, able of successful reproduction, can realize only one of the two roles for his whole life and has only one type of the reproductive organs. Therefore we can divide all human beings able to reproduce into two groups based on their potential role in reproduction and we can recognize the potential role based on the type of reproductive organs they have. We can include into these two groups all human beings whose type of genitals we can clearly recognize, because they definitely are not able to realize the role related to the other type of genitals. Doing this, we negatively relate the groups also to the role which is impossible for the members of the group.