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Comment by snotrockets | Hacker News Reader

trans* people aren't crossdressers, and no, you wouldn't.

Pick a random thirst-trap influencer: on almost every post on their TikTok or Insta you'd see multiple comments suggesting they are trans.

Simply, there isn't a way to tell because as there is no biological marker that is a binary, as much as some would like to believe otherwise. Sex is a bimodal distribution, and as such there are people, cis and trans, that don't look like the gender you'd imagine them to be.

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Sex is not bimodal, it’s binary. We as a society have to be able to just get past this. I, for example, am a male (sex) - but I identify as a woman (gender identity). These two things can be true at the same time, and do not conflict.

Biological sex markers are bimodal. Just ask the nearest health researcher: there isn't a single one that is strictly male or female.

That’s fine, but sex itself is still a binary concept and is very well defined, and is not controversial. For example, my sex is “0” (and not “1”) because my body is capable of producing “0”-style gametes, not “1”-style gametes (feel free to substitute the usual names for each sex, but you get the point).

One of your sexes, perhaps: there isn't a single marker for sex (and some of those we like to think of such markers aren't binary, but we can drop those for this exercise)

“Markers” are irrelevant. Either your body is capable of producing male gametes or it’s capable of producing female ones.

That's just trivial to debunk. Infertile people may produce neither.

Less trivial: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46,XX/46,XY

https://academic.oup.com/bjs/article-abstract/69/5/279/61857... "Ovulation in a cytogenetically proved phenotypically male fertile hermaphrodite"

Ovotesticular syndrome: https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/ovotesticular-disorde...

There are still only two types of gametes, and a body may produce only one. Infertility and other disorders don’t change that fact, and your linked material says nothing to contradict this.

You could at least bother to read the titles; "Ovulation in a cytogenetically proved phenotypically male fertile hermaphrodite" is pretty clear.

> Histology of his removed ovary suggested that ovulation had, at some time, occurred. He had also fathered a child and this is believed to be the first case of a cytogenetically proved true hermaphrodite who is fertile as a male.

That's a single human body that produced both forms of gamete.

People of ambiguous sex exist, and there are only two sexes. I suspect you’re more than capable of accepting these two truths simultaneously.

> For example, my sex is “0” (and not “1”)...

So, which is this individual, who produces both forms of gametes?

Am I, with no gametes, a null?

I’m confident that you’ll figure it out on your own.

Identifying as a woman (gender identity) does not mean you are a woman (female sex). Being male precludes this in reality.

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