RitterVonRitter (imported) wrote: Wed Apr 04, 2018 1:44 pm I hardly think I was "flippant."

I simply stated my opinions. All the other arguments following that are about semantics and the plain, natural meaning of words (which, for some reason, people find offensive).

But let's look at the facts.

I did not go into hysterics.

I did not use profanity.

I did not use personal attacks.

I even stated, more than once, that abnormal did not mean bad.

Flippant in that you used "normal" without thinking through what it meant in the context, it seemed clear that it could be taken in quite a derogatory way as you used it despite your note.

I started my input saying it was good that the thread had not become a flaming mess and I don't think you were accused of going into hysterics were you?

I completely agree you did say abnormal did no mean bad but despite this I am afraid that the word abnormal has connotation of bad within it so it was construed that way by people.

It is important to consider the terms you use when debating a topic that has such strong social and personal implications such as sexuality. Use terms like abnormal and normal at your peril despite your annotations.

I feel they were not even the correct terms to use so it was not just semantics or "natural meaning" once you started to mention percentages. Your idea of something like sexuality deviating from the mean by a certain percentage and therefor not being "normal" could only be applied once some values have been assigned and data collected. I mean how "Gay" does someone need to be before they fall into your definition of gay that constitutes just 15% of the population? I think that would be another book worth of work altogether.

@tjstill

It was other people who went into hysterics. TopMan claimed that I was referring to intersex people as "defective." While I called it a birth defect, based entirely on the definition (https://www.google.com/search?client=op ... 8&oe=UTF-8). He was the one who was using the term "defective." I never used the term. This is a term applied inanimate objects, not people. Calling a human being "defective," which I never did, would simply be asinine. He later went on a rant about eugenics, something no one mentioned and is totally off topic.

The only reason I didn't correct TopMan on the matter (in hindsight, I clearly should have) is because his responses were rather verbose and I prefer to be terse in my responses.

gay2girl (imported) wrote: Wed Apr 04, 2018 8:33 am so basically you agree that there are non-binary forms of sexuality - you just call it "metaphysical" instead of "gender"!

I don't agree with that at all. I reject the modern (post-modern) classification of 'gender.'

Sex should be classified according to biology. The whole purpose of a classification is to order and group things in order to better understand the world.

The creation of non-binary genders does not meet this purpose. It only leads to misunderstanding and confusion.

Gender, if the term is to be used outside of linguistics, needs to be used in a way that allows us to better understand and classify the world. The non-binary thing only causes unnecessary complication.

A better definition of gender would be the expression/identity of male or female.

If it was not your intention to get peoples backs up or cause offence, then perhaps an apology for any unintentional offence caused wouldn’t go amiss.

Without very careful use of language describing people as ‘abnormal’ is inflammatory to say the least, and likely to provoke a strong reaction.

But perhaps that was your desire all along?

RitterVonRitter (imported) wrote: Wed Apr 04, 2018 3:12 pm TopMan claimed that I was referring to intersex people as "defective."

I had made up my mind that I'd only read this thread from now on. I was not going to post. Yeah, that didn't work out so well.

My use of the word defective did not ascribe it to @RitterVonRitter. I was referring to why an non-binary person would hide from the world out of fear of being labeled as defective. I quoted the author correctly

One example:

TopManFL (imported) wrote: Tue Apr 03, 2018 6:58 am Why, would someone hide such a thing? because people use terms like "abnormality and a defect" to describe them.

When I used quotation marks in my verbose posts, I quoted correctly.

As @Paolo said, we are most likely being trolled.

No matter if we are or are not being trolled, I understand the argument being made against the existence of a any sex beyond male or female - I just don't agree with the intolerant logic.

Alright, now I am done posting in this thread. And resign the last word to whomever disagrees with me.

From a purely and most basic biological sense, males and females can be defined by the sexual organs they possess, or by their ability to reproduce, or by their chromozones, as the most clear factual proof.

Eunuchs cannot reproduce in the future without frozen sperm in a sperm bank. But many, if not most, eunuchs already had children before they got castrated. Their chromozones do not change after castration. They still have a penis, prostate, and the same internal male sex organs such as cowper s glands, seminal vesicals, and similar. Even nullos retain many male sexual organs internally.

Overall, a eunuch is not much different from an infertile male with non functioning testicles in a purely biological sense of reproduction and which sex organs they have. A man with no penis can still reproduce by impregnation. So, I think some people are looking at this question from a basic biological function viewpoint and some from a much more complicated personal sexual identity or cultural viewpoint. Talking past each other in different lanes of traffic.

I m assuming most eunuchs alive today did not freely choose to be castrated in the modern societies of today. Most lost their balls to medical problems or injuries. Those eunuchs and most infertile and intentionally sterilized men of today would identify themselves as men and still sexually as males.

RitterVonRitter (imported) wrote: Wed Apr 04, 2018 3:19 pm I don't agree with that at all. I reject the modern (post-modern) classification of 'gender.

Sex should be classified according to biology. The whole purpose of a classification is to order and group things in order to better understand the world.

The creation of non-binary genders does not meet this purpose. It only leads to misunderstanding and confusion.

Gender, if the term is to be used outside of linguistics, needs to be used in a way that allows us to better understand and classify the world. The non-binary thing only causes unnecessary complication.

A better definition of gender would be the expression/identity of male or female.

Some people are confused by the fact that gender in humans relates to the presence of XX chromosomes in the female and XY chromosomes in the male. The X and Y binary identification leads one to assume it is a simple binary system. However the expression of the combination of the X and the Y after fertilisation is what truly creates the gender and it is not a binary expression. If it were truly a binary system we would only have MALES XY and FEMALES XX.One only has to look around to see that this is not the case. "Gender" as a term is generally (but loosely) used to differentiate between male and female and in its simplest form this is true.

When speaking in the context of the biological sciences and medicine where perhaps classification is required to be formal then this simple case does not hold. Sex (gender) is determined by genes, there are genetic disorders whereby the X and Y chromosomes are not represented by the simple binary male /female system (XY is male XX is female). An individual who inherits chromosomes XXY for example is has underdeveloped genitals (Klinefelters syndrome). An individual with X- has Turners syndrome and develops similar to an immature female. When the X and Y chromosomes are not a simple XY male /XX female category then gender is clearly a non binary description for the process of classification purely because there are more than two! I do not understand how you can hold to a definition of the term that predates the discovery of the genes that control the expression of sexual characteristics. I have clearly listed four separate genders XY, XX, XXY, X- already, just because there are only two chromosomes used to create these four individuals does not make the expression of the genes a simple binary sytem. If you wanted to round it up to just two, for your convenience, by picking male or female, depending on which they most closely resembled with their genitals then I feel this would be a poor way to classify things scientifically. We may as well call anything that can fly "a sparrow" for the sake of simplicity.

So loosely speaking you get away with "gender" meaning male or female, but surely in the context of this forum where the specific topic revolves around this we should be clear it is non- binary in the correct scientific sense?

Speaking of expressed gender in a social sciences context, it is very unhelpful to limit yourself to only two genders. Here you have all the social and environmental aspects that combine to determine gender expression. The expressed gender of an individual is the genotype (for example XY) after all the other aspects of development from egg to individual have been taken into account ( this is called the phenotype). It is clear that even with my simple example of 4 different genotypes being acted on by myriads of environmental and social factors that gender expression is more of a continuous variety from what you would call male all the way through to female.

If we assigned a gender score in a very crude way as below

An individual you would class as VERY male scored 50.

An individual you classed as VERY Female scored at 50

An individual with male genitals but very female character attributes scored 0

An individual with female genitals and male character attributes scored 100

And then score indivuduals across this range depending on their percentage of the two extremes

Plot the graph and you would get a classic bell shaped curve. The vast majority would be in the 40 to 60 score range. For sure there are not only two points on the graph showing a BINARY separation of gender.

So back to the OP and the question of is "Eunuch" a third sex. I hope it is clear now why I found the question too open to be answered without considerable clarification. If we take any male genotype or phenotype individual and remove the testicles what effect does that have on the individuals concept of their sex or gender or even our interpretation of their sex and gender?

Lets take a simple example of an individual with XXY chromosomes, this individual may well present as male but have underdeveloped genitals. Upon castration this individual may well change in terms of character due to depletion of any T the underdeveloped testicles were making. On top of this there would be the social impact of castration and their own evaluation of their sexuality, the age of the operation and their personal circumstances (married or with a male partner if gay etc). As you can perhaps understand the gender definition for this individual would have blurred boundaries and may not fit a binary definition.

Your assertion that individuals fit neatly into a simple binary classification very poorly models the population and serve no purpose in any serious investigation into the manifestation of a variety of gender expressions that we experience.

There are undoubtedly people reading the forum who do have genders that fall into the tails of the Bell curve I mentioned. Some of these people may have had elective surgery to try and align their physical state with their mental one. In the past there have been ill advised medics who have forced their concept of what is right onto people, and there are crimes committed against groups of people by a majority who do not comprehend what it means to be different and want to either change those who are different or get rid of them. The negative reaction you have received I feel has it roots in in the core assumptions of your posts which through their simplistic outlook would seem to align with the views of those who are either ignorant, bigots, or worse.

Sorry for the long post, I could have some of this wrong of course and would welcome constructive criticism but I have put forward my views as clearly as I can on this very interesting subject.