Thread: Actually serious on this one.

HellBent said I'll admit I'm dumbing this down a bit because I made the foolish assumption that no one here would be familiar with the hard sciences. I'm sorry to say I was wrong. You seem to have some familiarity with biology, if I may respectfully say, not enough. Click to expand... Of course not enough. I'm working through physics into chemistry and then biology. As of such, most of the things you mentioned are above my head, which is delightful. Gross oversimplification. In order to be a genetic male, you have to have an XY chromosome and contain no active Barr bodies in your somatic cell nuclei. That's why someone with Androgyn Insensitivity Disorder is not considered to be a genetic male per se but an anatomical female. Click to expand... Now this is going to sound like nitpicking, but can't Barr bodies not be active? I never did find the word for what someone who is XXY to be. That's one of the things I oversimplified the most. I did not then nor do I now feel like explaining every single aspect of embryology. Here are a few basics in sex determination, though. !-- m --a classpostlink relnofollow href m -- !-- m --a classpostlink relnofollow href m -- The latter link describes the role of antibodies in sex determination as well as giving concrete definitions for each sex being determined. Click to expand... I'll have to read that once I'm done with finals. I've already looked over it, and most of the terminology is way over my head. I need to sit down with a dictionary of biological terms and translate. Male inguinal canal !-- m --a classpostlink relnofollow href m -- ... 17075.jpg If you look right where the uterus would be on a woman, you'll see that there's just about room enough for one. Click to expand... I looked and I just don't know that I see it. I mean, in the picture, maybe, but I'm so used to seeing the way actual bodies are not the same as anatomy text book examples. I won't say that I'm right, but I'll try and remember this until the day I'm in an actual cadaver lab. ... Of course, then I'm dealing with non-living bodies, so that won't be exactly right, either? Unfair as it is, if Billy Tipton were to have undergone surgery and hormone treatments, he'd still have been Babyface Tipton. This is not to undermine anyone's gender identity but simply to show how silly the concept of sex is as a scientific axiom. Click to expand... This part I'm still not agreeing with. I've seen transguys that look really masculine. Like, I wouldn't know they were born with female sex parts. I mean to show that we did not get here through a binary system of sexual reproduction and we may not even evolve that way. The binary concept of biological sex goes hand in hand with discrimination in athletics. Now I suggest you read the articles I posted closely, then do some research into reproductive behavior in spiders and fish. Then we can discuss the myths surrounding reproductive behavior in mammals. Click to expand... I'm not entirely sure that I would find researching spiders and fish useful. For one thing, sex determination isn't... exactly exciting to me. Except for perhaps the antibodies part. And for the most part, isn't two sexes roughly right? I mean, we get some variance, but two is roughly the number?