Everyone is either born a girl or a boy

Again, my position in this debate is to prove the fact that not all people are born strictly as either a boy or a girl. I have to address this right off the bat to ensure a respectful and productive debate: "I also have a weird feeling that everything you say is going to be opinionated, with no real factual evidence to support your statements, in which case I will leave this debate." Okay---take a deep breath. First of all, you don't know me. You know nothing about me or my debating style, and you need to STOP making judgments and START worrying about defending your side because I'd love to see you come up with one piece of factual, non opinion-based evidence to support the claim that there's no such thing as a person with two sexes. I was highly tempted to leave this debate and reopen it with the hopes of finding someone more mature to spar with---but I can't pass up the opportunity to prove wrong a few people who seem never to have bothered to pick up a textbook on biology in their lives. Let's act our age, hm? My argument will go as follows: 1) I will provide a definition of sex and explain the distinction between sex and gender. 2) I will provide examples of multi-sexed, interchangeably-sexed, and non-sexed non-human animals 3) I will bring up my main point: intersex individuals, and provide their existence as proof of the inalienable truth that sex, even from birth, is not as simple as male or female. There is a big difference between sex and gender. "Sex" is generally accepted to denote the biological properties of an animal in terms of reproductive organs and ability, while "gender" is a more broad term referring to the behavior, identity, and expression of human beings in a related but not necessarily parallel relationship to ones' sex [1]. According to the World Health Organization, "'Male' and 'female' are sex categories, while 'masculine' and 'feminine' are gender categories." It is my personal position that one can be born with a gender that opposes their sex, or with multiple genders, or with a fluidity of gender, or with no gender at all. But this debate is about sex---biological characteristics---and I will not be arguing for the grayness of gender. So how does one categorize a sex as male v.s. female? I start broad and get more specific as I eliminate categories for how one might define sex. Is sex defined by who gives birth, as my opponent suggested? My opponent stated as his main argument that "the definition of male is: of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring. While the definition of female is: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) that can be fertilized by male gametes. Basically, you either have something that fertilizes an egg, or you have the eggs." First, I will say that as far as the animal kingdom widely goes, the first half of this statement, that "[the male] produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring," is not entirely true. For this I will be using the example of sea-horses. In the case of sea-horses, it is true that the male produces sperm and the female produces eggs, but only in those regards is my opponent correct. In the act of sea-horse reproduction, a female is neither fertilized nor inseminated, nor does the female produce offspring. [2] Eggs are deposited by the female into the male, where they are fertilized by his sperm, he becomes pregnant, and eventually produces offspring. Now that I have disproved this part of my opponents statement as fallacious, since his definition of what separates the sexes was falsely based, I will move on, seeing as how in the case of sea-horses, a male and female still exist independent of each other. Is sex, then, defined by which individuals, when born, will eventually have the ability to reproduce in which way? Not always. There are those animals, such as the Clown Anemonefish, which can change sex during the course of their life. [3] They are all born male, and "[t]hey have the ability to switch their sex, but will do so only to become the dominant female of a group" [3]. This means that as birth, the individuals that will eventually come to play each role in mating are not yet determined. So is sex defined by the sexual organs that a creature possesses? Not necessarily. In the case of hyenas, females possess what science refers to as a psuedo-penis. While not technically a functioning penis but rather an elongated vaginal canal, the appendage does come with a greatly increased level of testosterone to those usually seen in females of any species, and the exhibition of dominant, "man-like" behaviours. [4] In the case of the rare gynandromorphic Antheraea frithi moth, both sexes exist in the form of "a partial set of female organs and [a partial set of male organs], neither part being functional," and a split in coloring down the middle of its body. [5] This sexual duality exists as well in larger animals such as the gynandromorphic cardinal [6]. Other animals, called biological hermaphrodites, have a working pair of each sex of organ, such as the snail [7]. So in animals, sex-duality exists, plain and simple. But these arguments are for the existence of non-humans with two or no clear sexes, and I am trying to argue that HUMANS aren't always born as a boy v.s. girl. My argument is clear, simply, and indisputable: intersex people exist. You don't hear about them often in popular media, and if at all, only in the throws of reality tv, labeled as freaks. But intersex people exist, and their invisibility in our culture does not negate their reality. An intersex person is any person born with ambiguous genitalia, two genitalia, or some other combination of sexual organs that has no definition in our society and within typical definitions of biology. According to MedlinePlus [8], "Intersex can be divided into four categories: 46, XX Intersex 46, XY Intersex True Gonadal Intersex Complex or Undetermined Intersex." Those who are True Gonadal Intersex, possibly the clearest example of those who are neither a girl nor a boy at birth, "may have XX chromosomes, XY chromosomes, or both. The external genitals may be ambiguous or may appear to be female or male." [8] This is my case. I feel that it is unbreachable, and I look forward to an amiable debate, if you feel that I have not already won. Sources: [1] http://www.who.int... [2] http://news.nationalgeographic.com... [3] http://animals.nationalgeographic.com... [4] http://en.wikipedia.org... (and the fact that I study Animal Behavior Theory and Biology in college) [5] http://www.nhm.ac.uk... [6] http://news.discovery.com... [7] http://www.snail-world.com... [8] http://www.nlm.nih.gov...