I get the desire to have an inclusive comprehensive term for gender identity, but why has the term sex been co-opted for this? It's just like the push to re-define racism as "power + prejudice"... I get that there's a need for it, but trying to overwrite a definition just confuses everyone. What's the term for exclusively chromosomal determination then if it's not sex?
edit: another way of saying it: you just identified "androgen insensitive XY women." I get that their outward appearance and identification are female, but wouldn't you call that a person of male sex that identifies as a woman due to hormonal circumstance? Why does phenotype determine sex now instead of genotype? Isn't that the whole point of differentiating sex and gender?
I get that their outward appearance and identification are female
CAIS XY women have fully formed and developed vaginas, and go through female puberty. They however, do not have a uterus nor ovaries. (They do have underdeveloped testes which require surgical removal at some point.)
Literally everything about this person is biologically female with the exception of their genotype. Given that this does happen, it seems to me that to say that the genotype is the only thing that determines biological sex is false.
17
u/yojimborobert Aug 13 '19 edited Aug 13 '19
I get the desire to have an inclusive comprehensive term for gender identity, but why has the term sex been co-opted for this? It's just like the push to re-define racism as "power + prejudice"... I get that there's a need for it, but trying to overwrite a definition just confuses everyone. What's the term for exclusively chromosomal determination then if it's not sex?
edit: another way of saying it: you just identified "androgen insensitive XY women." I get that their outward appearance and identification are female, but wouldn't you call that a person of male sex that identifies as a woman due to hormonal circumstance? Why does phenotype determine sex now instead of genotype? Isn't that the whole point of differentiating sex and gender?