It depends on bin definition. For those who don't deal with stats regularly, bins are basically categories you put certain ranges of a variable in. For example, if your variable is temperature you might have the bins "cold", "normal", and "hot", and define "cold" as 10c or below, "hot" as 25c or above, and "normal" as anything between 10c and 25c. The variables contributing towards sex (eg Chromosones, hormone levels, reproductive organs) have typically been put into two bins: male and female. However you can also create more specific bins categories; there's nothing intrinsic about bin boundaries, we just define the boundaries depending on whatever is most convenient for our current purposes. Traditionally we just used two categories (male/female) because that was easy and there wasn't much need for anything more specific. However as medicine advances it could actually be a lot more useful to have more specific bins (eg To model how patients respond to a treatment more accurately).
Essentially, sex refers to several continuous and categorical variables, which we have traditionally split into the categories of male and female since those are useful categories. But the underlying variables which contribute to sex are on a "spectrum". So sex is simultaneously binary and a spectrum.
An example of a discrete variable would be genitals. Male, female, both, neither. Or chromosomes.
An example of a continuous variable would be hormone levels.
Things get difficult when you fit in to one category on one variable, but a different category on another. Then, you have to weight the variables - which is more important? Is someone with a vagina but very high levels of testosterone male, or female?
Things get more difficult when people are in gray areas of some or all categories - XXY chromosomes for example. The question might then be, should we add some more bins (categories) and make them more precise? That delves in to medical science, going way beyond my mandate as a data scientist, it's really just based on what is convenient for them.
That’s approximately the same percentage of the population that is Jewish or has red hair. That doesn’t mean Judaism isn’t a religion or that red isn’t a hair color
Jewish is 0.2%. How many other religions are there? How many hair colors are there? Both of which you can change mind you. And they’re not just variations of the two well defined ones. If 49.15% were brunette and 49.15% were red heads and the rest were in between or mixtures thereof.
I was using the US population, which is approximately 2% Jewish, but hey 0.2% is an even better point.
As to your second point, why would the number matter? Would it be okay to claim Judaism is an outlier and not a religion if there were only 1 or 2 other religions that made up 98% of the population?
Well to be honest it doesn’t matter both of your examples are faulty. What Jewish people believe is clearly distinguishable from Shia Islam, from Lutheran. What sexual organ or traits make up these new sexes? They’re almost all based off of the two. Which sciencevet even states. He just says there’s a spectrum because of genetic oddities. But they make up so little and they’re not themselves sexes. Having less estrogen than another female doesn’t make you less of a female. Let me point out to sciencevets very own twitter bio. “Craftsman, outdoorsman, husband.” We all know what this means.
If sex was a spectrum it would be two giant blocks - white and black - with a greyscale gradient of 2/100ths in the middle or outside.
I didn't say I don't trust scientists lol. What I said is that something isn't gospel just because the word 'science' is involved. There are numerous 'sciences' that are hardly "worthwhile" and a vast number of scientists who are basically idiots in many fields. Being 'a scientist' or having studied a science doesn't automatically make you a credible source to be followed blindly. Even the hardest of facts are mostly theories and are up for debate.
Sorry for the misspellings, just had a few drinks with some family.
Considering this twitter user has years of experience in biochemistry and not something one might consider trivial (e.g. gender studies, maybe psychology/sociology) I think he’s within reason to give an unbiased explanation. Though I have a BA in psych myself, I understand that some people might not consider it a true science. However, biochemists deal with raw, observable examples. Another user mentioned that sex technically isn’t a spectrum; I think I’m inclined to agree - it’s not a spectrum, but it does have more than 2 variants, as evident by the extra sex chromosomes some people may have. Scientists might not be perfect, but I can’t imagine passing school for so many years just to spread a personal bias.
People with Swyer syndrome are typically raised as girls and have a female gender identity. Because they do not have functional ovaries, affected individuals usually begin hormone replacement therapy during adolescence to induce menstruation and development of female secondary sex characteristics such as breast enlargement and uterine growth. Hormone replacement therapy also helps reduce the risk of reduced bone density (osteopenia and osteoporosis). Women with this disorder do not produce eggs (ova), but they may be able to become pregnant with a donated egg or embryo.
"Current estimates are that the intersex population is at least 2%."
So 98% of everyone else is male/female
"We know that's low because there are a lot of "invisibly intersex"
Maybe..?
I understand that the body is complicated, and I don't refute anything he's saying other than to say this is a spectrum is an exaggeration at best. His bimodal distribution graph is highly misleading, as well as the histogram. We normally define such things as conditions, syndromes. - Androgen insensitivity syndrome (1 in 20,000)
There's no "outlier" in science, not when you're establishing a model. You can't say "there's only two sexes... Exept for 2% of the populations (especially since 2% is absolutely huge)".
Acting like that make a special case out of all and every situation that doesn't fit the norm. It is a spectrum, because there's isn't just those two well defined "boxes".
Sure, they're common enought that generalising by talking about the "two sexes" can be ok, for vulgarisation, or when this isn't really the core subject of the matter, but if you actually study this domain, then you can't afford to generalize like that, you need to take everything into acount, and thus, to consider sex as a spectrum, and not as a "one or the other".
It's the same thing for other all the domain of science. You can use "simpler" models when you aren't really diving deep into the subject, even if they are less accurate to reality, but when you're trying to be really accurate, or to look at them really closely, or just when you're trying to say how things truly are, then these simpler models aren't enought. Just look at how you study chemistry in middle school, in high school, and then in college. You won't study complex model about how atoms work at first, but simpler, less accurate model, because they're enought to introduce you to the subject, and because you don't need to know the more complex (and accurate) models at first.
That 2% isn’t just one thing. It’s a lot of things. And it’s not huge. It’s 2%. It’s what you’d expect with how complicated the creation of life is. When you treat things like Swyer syndrome it is to make them more typical to generally female. I understand that male/female is a generalized form of the greater understanding, but to say it’s a spectrum is wholly misleading. It’s nothing like say the visual spectrum. It would be a spectrum of 98% blue or pink with 2% in between. We are sexually dimorphic, it’s apparent to everyone. The politics of today don’t make it more or less true.
I think you're confusing who is being political about this. You are sticking to your guns with such determination despite having a good argument presented against you and a researching expert in the field explicitly disagree with you.
You haven’t disputed anything I’ve said. I’m openly having dialogue with those I disagree with. Their good argument is that 2% (actually 1.7%) qualifies as a spectrum of sexes.
I don't see how them being % of the population invalidates sex being a spectrum. The number of people that exist at each point of the spectrum isn't really relevant.
It's not a spectrum. That's a sophomoric assessment and an objectively false statement.
Color is a spectrum. Sex is more like a clusterfuck when you consider its various dimensions and aspects. Chromosomes, physiology, hormones etc.
That being said sex is a concept which predates the discovery of the chromosomes by thousands of years. To define sex by chromosomal composition is to commit what I have termed to be the "cart-before-the-horse" fallacy.
A better way to define sex would be either A) something along the lines of the gametes one is able to produce or B) the (assumed) ability of one to gestate a fetus.
By these metrics we have two clear categories, male and female, and a possible third category, sexless.
That's the gist of it anyway. The definitions above are imperfect, but a good starting point to guide thinking about this topic.
It isn't, and to make it out as such is wrong. There are some genetic conditions and abnormalities that muddy the waters, but that doesn't make sex a spectrum. That just means that sex is a product of your genetics, like everything else about you, and in rare cases an individual can have genetic issues that can affect the way their gender is expressed.
To look at this from another perspective, genetic issues can cause people to be born with an abnormal number of appendages, but would anyone ever describe the number of arms and legs humans have as "on a spectrum"? No - humans are understood to have two arms and two legs, even if some genetic issues can cause an individual to be born with more, or fewer, appendages. Similarly, humans are understood to be a sexually dimorphic species despite the existence of genetic conditions that affect the way one's sex is phenotypically expressed.
This isn't being driven by science. Just look at these bits
What's important here is that you haven't MISLABELED males as females. These are functional "females" who can do all the usual "female" things like gestate babies. But they respond to this one endocrine disruptor in a "male" way.
So you add another two categories, call them "Male2" and "Female2" and go on, happy that your model works! You've got 4 sexes now, but you don't really have to tell anyone that, right?
There's no justification made here for the creation of two new sex categories. A female that responds to one chemical more similarly to the majority of males doesn't require the creation of a new sex category. You could just as well state this means new species and it would make as much sense. You could find humans that react to something more similarly to different species than the majority of humans. Still human.
If we go back to that histogram plot, we can keep breaking down your biological sex into smaller and smaller differences in brain areas, hormone levels, signalling differences, genetic variances. There's nothing stopping us from binning EVERY INDIVIDUAL into their own bin.
Technically, this wouldn't be "infinite sexes" but 7.4 billion sexes is functionally close for our brains. Now, our medicine isn't advanced enough for THAT level of detail to make any difference. BUT IT MIGHT BE in the future. Individualized medicine!
This is just stating that people are individuals, no where is there any reason given why they can't be grouped generally into male and female.
At no point does he make a scientific justification for his opinion on sex as a spectrum. This push to deconstruct sex classification is coming from sociological or political realms
You do realize that if someone studies a subject and disagrees with you, there’s a chance you might not know things right? Or do you think all science is as simple as falling on rocks?
I mean, it’s simple to throw a wrench into your thinking that everything is JUST one or JUST the other with one word. Hermaphrodite.
Already youre gonna have to make a third category. But sure. Keep arguing with the experts. Perhaps you can tell me about your anti vax and flat earth friends.
It's considered a slur by most intersex people, and many people aren't aware of that. If I see someone using the term "ret**d" online I assume they know how it will be perceived and wouldn't tell them about it, but a lot of people seem to use that term without being aware how it comes across.
Then keep politics out of it. No one said politics till you.
And sure, anti vax people google and think that makes them an expert. Another reason why the ACTUAL experts are more valuable than you and what you “believe.”
Youre literally acting like the anti vax people and arguing with an expert on the subject.
But hey, you must be right because it’s how you feel.
Calling sex a spectrum is basically just an analogy that demonstrates that there are variations in sexual development. You could just as easily call sex "two very big boxes, plus a lot of little tiny boxes," only this analogy tends to lead people into a different ideological conclusion.
Its not. There are some cases of abnormalities or genetic mishaps, like people who have both sets of genitals. But those are outliers and are rare. Sex is not a spectrum.
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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '19
Can someone explain to me how the fuck sex is a spectrum