this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Biological sex is also a spectrum
Please can you explain this in genetic terms?
As I understood it, sex is determined by the presence, or absence, of a Y chromosome, at the 23rd pair.
While exceptions exist, they're incredibly rare genetic observations and I have never heard or read it referred to as a "spectrum".
It's not really about the genotype. Every context that uses sex to divide people into groups has its own definition of sex. Sometimes with a spectrum sometimes not.
Example car crash testing: When testing safety features of cars, you're not gonna care about whether the person has a vagina or not, but features like height, neck strength and other stuff will matter.
Since women are on average smaller and less muscular than men, small people with weak necks will be categorized as female. Tall people with strong necks will be categorized as male.
Example Condoms:
Two categories: has penis (male, can use) and has no penis (not male, cannot use [for inteded purpose]). So if you are XY genotype, but without a penis (idk cut off?), you're not a male in that context.
As you see both examples correlate with the gonosomes, but are not defined by it.
did you fully read my comment?
sex depends on context