Non binary people think those gender roles don't make sense for themselves, and in that respect, I think almost everyone is at least a little non binary. Maybe not enough to feel it's worth declaring, but I've never met anyone who really loves everything about their gender role.
Sex is determined at conception and parents today often know what it is before birth.
> Non binary people think those gender roles don't make sense for themselves, and in that respect, I think almost everyone is at least a little non binary.
You only say that because of rigid thinking about what boys and girls are.
When someone says to a boy "stop crying like a girl" he's displaying a rigid definition of what a boy is. Instead of saying that some boys can be very sentimental too, you're saying he's non-base-2. That's no different from the person saying boys shouldn't cry.
That's only a part of it. Embryonic development plays a part too.
>and parents today often know what it is before birth.
They don't know for sure. Not even the doctors can determine it 100%. The estimation is done by looking for a penis with ultrasound. Sometimes the estimation isn't correct and the opposite gender is assigned after.
Sex is a multidimensional spectrum. "Sex" categories are, in fact, genders--social constructs.
Sex is not a multidimensional spectrum. There are two sexes: male and female, this is statistically observable as a binary. Deviations from this binary are not "third" or "fourth" sexes. It's not a social phenomenon.
The reason why people seem incapable of saying this today, is for political and legal aims (if you can't change legislation that refers to "sex", change what the word means), or a misguided attempt to be progressive.
Sex consists of multiple different traits which have a bimodal, not binary, distribution.
> There are two sexes: male and female,
Those binary sex categories are a social construct layered on top of the multidimensional physical reality.
Sex traits in most cases follow a binary distribution, unless you take something like phenotypical height. In the aggregrate, they also form "sex" which is binary. Differences in sexual traits do not create "third, or fourth" sexes.
> Those binary sex categories are a social construct layered on top of the multidimensional physical reality.
This is an ideological perspective, which is pushed forwards by those who want to change the law around sex, by redefining what sex means.
For example, under the Equality Act 2010 (UK), hospital wards are allowed to keep sex segregated for reasons of privacy and dignity, which to some is unacceptable.
Sex is an observation of a physical reality, not a "social construct". It would have been unremarkable to say this even 5 years ago. The physical reality around sex has not changed, rather the ideology around it has, which is why I'm going to leave this discussion there, as there's no reasoning with that.
> Sex traits in most cases follow a binary distribution
Which is exactly saying they, in the whole, actually follow a bimodal, rather than binary, distribution.
The issue is that you are saying that the sexual phenotype is primary, while I claim, on the basis of biology, that the sexual genotype is primary.
You appear to reject the existence of sexual genotype. On what basis?
(Edit: s/haploid/diploid/)
For a 101 understanding of biology, by far the most common chromosome possibilities are XX and XY, but XXY is possible, as are mutations in one chromosome that combine pieces of X and Y such that a mix of secondary sex characteristics appear. It's also possible for someone with XX chromosomes to have abnormally high levels of testosterone, or someone with XY chromosomes to have abnormally low levels of testosterone and high levels of estrogen, with results such that a visual inspection would not be able to accurately guess the underlying chromosomes.
Hence, bimodal, not binary.
Regarding your first paragraph, replace “biological” with “sociological”. Then, that is what has been done traditionally, in the absence of the recent ability to determine sexual genotype by DNA analysis.
The Wikipedia pages on Sex[0] and Phenotypic trait[1] are actually pretty neutral.
Further, we still don't do DNA analysis on the vast majority of people to determine whether they are biologically male or female, certainly not before making a determination for a birth certificate. Even if we did, there's not one true X chromosome and one true Y chromosome that all XY people have, which a strictly binary interpretation would imply. Genetic crossovers between the two are a natural part of reproduction.
The biology of this is really fascinating, and I think it's both disingenuous and incurious to attempt to reduce all of this to a strictly binary model.
So, talking about "bimodal" as if they were a combination of two normal distributions is not reflective of objective reality, since neither one is stochastic. There is no normal distribution of male genotype-ness, and no super male chromosome.
All X chromosomes differ from all other X chromosomes, but there are no half-X, half-Y chromosomes.
Because of this, in virtually all cases sex at birth is obvious to a medical practitioner. In questionable cases exhibiting abnormal genitalia we can, these days, do a quick DNA test to decide the matter. Wishful thinking is unnecessary.
And, yes, biology is absolutely fascinating.
Unless one adopts a different definition of “individual” than the one usually applied to humans, this is wrong (germline chimerism is a thing), and right or wrong it's a weirdly narrow claims, as most cells are in the somatic line, anyway.
> The issue is that you are saying that the sexual phenotype is primary, while I claim, on the basis of biology, that the sexual genotype is primary.
Biology and medicine refer to people with phenotypical traits more associated with maleness despite XX chromosomes as “biologically male” and “XX male” (and those with traits associated more with femaleness despite XY chromosomes as ”biologically female” and “XY female”), and similarly (with variations by karyotype) based on phenotype for individuals with non-(46,XX or 46,XY) karyotypes, so even in the sense of the way biology and medicine bucket people into a forced binary, you are wrong.
And karyotype (which is what you seem to mean when you say “genotype”) still isn't binary even if you view it as “primary”, and actual genotype is even less so.
> Female (symbol: ) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the male gamete during sexual reproduction.
Applying it to the population at large is absurd, but has become popular within some social circles.