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RE: Biological underpinnings of Human sexuality(part 2 - bypassing the evolutionary filters)
It's oversimplified but yeah, genitals generally define your sex. Sure there is that super rare condition when a woman might be born with a dick or whatever but that's why they call it a congenital disorder.
To explain it to you from another perspective. You sound like those people that when somebody says the earth is round they reply "actually the earth is an oblate spheroid". Yeah, no shit.
I won't call them disorders(I mean the gender dysphoria, not genetic conditions). The reason being that, it is quite debatable. For it to be a disorder, it should make people unable to function. However, this is generally how people are classified, but it is not necessary that they feel the way they are classified. Some studies shows that it is not the gender that people feel they belong that causes the dysfunction, but rather the stress caused by not being accepted. Hence, it is debatable. Anyway, my post was not regarding gender. It was more focused on sexuality, and pin pointing how natural and common homosexuality is in the animal kingdom, to people who says homosexuality is unnatural. If someone feels they are of opposite sex, doesn't garuntee that they are attracted towards same sex. So sexuality and gender are two different topics. My apologies if the words I used shifted the focus of the post.
Even if that's the case, I would totally call it a disorder. We are social beings. Being accepted by other humans is something we have a natural need for, hence with out it we can't function normally. E.g. a man with a totally disfigured face from birth (but otherwise totally healthy) can theoretically function "normally". The problem is he can't because the majority of people don't want to deal with him because... he is too ugly and humans are assholes! Worst case scenario, he will be ridiculed and made fun of, best case scenario people will feel pity for him and say "oh, the poor thing, it's ugly as fuck, let's keep a distance just in case it's contagious". Unless he has a face transplant or whatever, "normal functioning" is out of the book, regardless of how good they feel with themselves.
And to say it blantly, if somebody needs to have his dick chopped off, his breasts enlarged and his body injected with all kinds of hormones to feel "normal" and function "normally", yeah, I consider that a disorder. Extremely invasive surgery + over the counter drugs sounds to me like something you would give to a patient, not a healthy human being that "functions normally".
Whether it's actually treatable it's something I don't have an opinion for, since I haven't looked up on it. I have heard though that suicide rates on people who have reassigned their gender are quite high. IF (caps for emphasis) that's true it definitely needs further investigation. Is it because they still feel not accepted by other people? Or is it because something is really wrong on their head to begin with (hence a mental disorder)? If it's true, I incline to the latter cause we humans, much like all animals, have a strong inner will to stay alive regardless of how much our life sucks.
But of course I could may well be wrong and I would gladly hear a counter argument.
Makes sense. Was just pointing out the debate. Though on second thoughts, it makes me wonder that in this line of argument - even homosexuality would make an individual dysfunctional. They won't reproduce, if society doesn't accept their behaviour, they would as well fall into the initial description. However, we don't need treatment for it, while in case of gender dysphoria we go ahead and change the biological sex. Should social acceptance be used as measure of calling something a disorder?
PS: I know it's a sensitive topic, but we need a discussion backed by logic and scientific facts on this. If people can avoid getting angry and make logical contributions to the debate, it would be great and progressive.
fuck off with your 3rd grade understanding of biology
"super rare condition" all of gender and sex is a spectrum, it's not true just for specific people but for everyone
if you were born with a dick you are a guy, if you were born with a pussy you are a gal in 99,9 % of the cases, the rest fall on the spectrum of disorders or other ambiguous cases.
What you feel you are, what you like to have sex with or what you wished you were don't matter. Simple as that.
P.S.: Thanks for the flag. Strongly shows that you rely more on your feelings rather than real arguments and logic. Some would say that this is a female trait but I find this highly sexist and totally disagree.
When we are speaking about biological sex, almost everyone can be categorized as male or female. However, a few people are happen to be born with ambiguous sexual organs, a condition known as intersex. If we add secondary sex characteristics to the story, such as angular face and broad shoulders for men or rounded face and wide hips for women, we see that people do extend along a line from extreme manly male to extreme womanly female.
This doesn't mean that we have sex continuum resembling rainbow, with bands of equal width. Rather than that, biological sex can be represented in the form of bimodal distribution:
This means that most men have average male body features, but a few extend out into the extreme manly range, while others have somewhat female characteristics. Likewise, most women have average female body features, with some extreme womanly types and others with somewhat manly characteristics.
Now, let's add gender identity and gender expression to the whole story.
Almost everyone with the biological identity of male of female identifies as male or female, in the 99.7% of the cases. You could argue that is a little tighter than it would be if society was more accepting of gender variation, but even if it went down to 99% which would be almost an order of magnitude increase, you would still have an overwhelming number of people whose gender identity matches their biological sex. The same goes for the gender expression - almost everyone who is biologically male or female, who identifies as biologically male or female, expresses themselves as male or female, and then the vast majority of them have sexual orientation that's in agreement with their biological sex, gender identity and gender expression.
Based on these purely scientific facts and stats, there is no such perspective, which is based on scientific rationale and common sense, that would consider those as independent variables.
Gender identity, gender expression and biological sex do not vary independently.
Having that said, social constructivism view must be rejected as viable hypothesis.
Since @trumpman was tagged as someone with the "3rd grade understanding of biology", me, as a PhD holder in biology, support his claims 100% and confirm that they're based solely on biological/scientific facts.
PhDs are a social construct, checkmate.
Damn! Busted :(
Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley
😎😎😎
lol
Flagging me won't make you right :)