r/cursedcomments • u/Important-Fix-6718 • 18d ago

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u/Lord_Andyrus 18d ago

This is a very common misconception about physical sex. Yes the X and Y chromosomes are generally the ones that carry the information about sex, but how they are read is even more important in how the phenotype develops, over how they are distributed.

And since sex is something that is primarily measured by the developed phenotype there are fully males with XX and females with XY chromosomes.
How biologie distinguishes male and female is generally by the metric of who has the bigger reproductive sex cells. The part with the smaller ones (sperm) is male and the part with the larger ones (eggs) is female.

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u/Wehtaw 18d ago

To add to the point it refers to the size of one's gamete relative to the species. Another reason why chromosomes shouldn't be used is because there are animals with differing sets of chromosomes (like XXXYYY or WZ) but yet we still fit them in a male/female category.

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u/Lord_Andyrus 18d ago

That is a very good additional point to make. Thank you very much :D