There are Only Two Genders

"Language use can be wrong. Just because the majority of people use language in a specific way doesn't make that language use right. A majority of nations have been at war at some point, that doesn't make war right" Though somewhat tangential to the motion itself, I feel this terrible analogy needs to be addressed. The question of whether war is *morally* right is very different to whether descriptive language is *logically* right. Yes, it is true to say that though the majority of nations have participated in war at some point, that doesn"t make war inherently morally right. However, this is wholly irrelevant as to the case of whether descriptive language is the logically right option to go for. By definition, more people will understand what you mean if you use descriptive language rather than prescriptive, and this makes it inherently more efficient as a means of communication. Neither prescriptive nor descriptive language can be considered "right" or "wrong" as my opponent suggests, but rather both are valid ways of determining the meanings of words, with the latter being more effective as it produces less misunderstanding. "A better analogy would be that 99.9999% of all dogs were somewhere on a spectrum between being wholly dalmatian or wholly alsatian" That is not a better analogy. Is a rottweiler closer to being wholly dalmatian or wholly alsatian? What about a chihuahua? The question itself makes no sense- it is not either, and nor is it a mid-point between the two. The same goes for masculinity and femininity: the two are not always opposed. If I were to ask someone: "What is your favourite activity?", they may reply as follows: Very masculine person: "Drinking beer and watching football." Very feminine person: "Drinking wine and painting my nails." Very masculine AND very feminine person: "Painting my nails while watching football." Someone who is not very masculine or very feminine: "Reading." To take the dog analogy further, just as a dalmatian-alsatian cross is clearly both more dalmatian and more alsatian than a rottweiler is, so too can someone be both more masculine and more feminine that another person simultaneously. Masculinity and femininity are not opposed. Rather, they are just different categories from which one could be rated from being 0% at "not at all masculine/feminine" to 100% "wholly masculine/feminine". 100% in one does not imply 0% in the other and vice versa. Masculinity and femininity are also completely arbitrary, by the way, as in some cultures it is considered very masculine to cry at the beauty of a lotus flower, or to ask for directions, both of which are considered relatively emasculating in western culture. My opponent also makes the mistake of conflating masculinity/femininity with being a man/woman. There are feminine men, and there are masculine women: Gok Wan is more feminine than Fatima Whitbread, but he is a man and she is a woman. I am glad to see that we are no longer in disagreement about the difference between sex and gender, as my opponent has switched from arguing wholly about sex to arguing about masculinity/femininity, which is much closer to gender than sex is, in that it is a psychological difference rather than a physical one. Once again, I would like to reiterate the point that if a single sex/gender can be shown to exist beyond the typical male/female binary, the motion is necessarily defeated. This is done by the existence of intersex people and people whose gender deviates from the typical "man/woman" binary, such as third gender or genderfluid people.