KsuviKhor
131837
3167
151
Sauce: https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1207834357639139328
Most Viral Edit: Those last two sentences in Rebecca’s thread are so simple yet so profound, and bear repeating:
“Biology is complicated. Kindness and respect don’t have to be.”
TheWormthatWalks
I was unaware of a lot of this. This was quite informative.
spiceass9000
Ya instead of worrying about all this just do whatever you feel is right and let others do that also. Pretty simple
Kiore
I think people ultimately mean reproductive function, but are stuck thinking that correlates invariably and immutably with so many things.
januarylover
It's estimated up to 1.7% of the population is intersex, which is like the percentage of red-heads
Dagordae
Biology 101, pretty much the first thing when actually studying any biology: It's a damn clusterfuck of kludged together bullshit.
SmashySashimi
Biologist gal biologist gal does whatever a biologist shall. Does some science any size catches dumb people's lies look out Biologist gal!
complicitbystander
This is an eye-opener as well as fascinating
dudehiemer
Just wait until people learn how earthworms reproduce.
MariJuquandra
The only real question is… are you fucking SRY
KsuviKhor
SRY NOT SRY!
memimi
I feel like letting people see their own chromosomes for a 10-point assignment might be a good way to have fewer
memimi
people make the argument of "its simple biology."
redundancy
Tweet thread in a single picture:
OrigamiBeetles
"If only I could believe or understand that!" -- low information voters.
AnythingMuchShorter
yep, the main people who need to hear this are the ones who instantly dismiss any explanation longer than 5-7 words. And love the phrase:
AnythingMuchShorter
"that's all I need to know"
Arenlor
And then there's XXY: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome
redundancy
At the bottom of that page is a table called "Chromosome abnormalities", where you can find info on Trisomy X, 47-XYY, etc
ICampOntheFirstDate
I often think of the first organism that made the leap from cell division to sexual reproduction.
Frederf
Step-cell what are you doing?
iristhorne
And how upset all their cell-division friends were when it makes the leap at what was supposed to be a casual work mixer.
idiotcube
It made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.
Girl1inturrupted
I tried explaining my gender identity to my grandmother and she literally couldn’t get past what my genitals look like. Feelsbadman.
Strype
I can't even get my grandparents to be in the same room with me! Joys of bein trans
Girl1inturrupted
I guess it’s a good thing it’s just a choice we made! /s
billstranger
It's wild to me that anyone even needs to hear any of this. A person is allowed to feel how they want, and it affects me none.
Gamer4125
idk i get male/female i just get lost when people pull out gender fluid, xe/xer, and other stuff
billstranger
I get that, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but i also don't understand 98% of what everyone else is feeling, so, go with it.
XEndeadX
"I don't care, everyone born with a penis needs to act exactly like me in order to validate my existence" - some asshole
ItHappenedInThe20thCentury
Couldn't help but imagine an actual anus saying that penises should act like him. Made me chuckle.
JohnSmithterms
I don't care what anyone does with their body or how they view themselves. But as far as I am concerned 99% of people fall into a 1/?
MorrighanWolf
Nah it's not even 80%. PCOS is a condition exclusive to intersex people. and that's 20% of the population, right there just that we know of.
JohnSmithterms
biological category of 1 of the 2 sexes. I am sure there are grey areas for some people both biologically or perceptively and that is 2/?
JohnSmithterms
all good to me too. 3/3
FloridaMansNeighbor
Now I want to look at my own chromosomes to see if they match my gender. Is there a way to do this besides just 23 and me or similar?
5amNonsense
AFAIK you have to get a karyotype done and those are expensive. Just my personal experience though, not an expert at all
KsuviKhor
Not sure - but here’s a good starting point to better understand genetic testing: https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/gtesting/genetic_testing.htm
Tindselle
Check if 23andme actually does this before you try them. I doubt they tell people about this. If they did, you'd have heard about it!
kaeldra
This thread literally made such an impact on me the first time I saw it. Keep sharing this stuff
KsuviKhor
I don’t share much - I comment much more than I post - but I felt the same as you about this thread and felt compelled to share it.
itsjustplaid
I can see why conservatives want to ban science. And anything else that's inconvenient to their limited worldviews.
KsuviKhor
Exactly - it’s infuriating, and frustrating, and entirely the reason for this post.
KsuviKhor
Specifically, this ignorant sticker on a car is what prompted me to dig up this Twitter thread I remmebered:
KsuviKhor
As if these sorts of people ever truly “trust the science” on anything…
huffnpuff72
Gender is confusing. There’s what’s in your pants, what pants you want to wear, what’s in the pants of the people you are attracted to /1
huffnpuff72
What pants they want to wear and other combinations of pants. BUT it’s none of my business which pants you wear or want and I don’t care /2
huffnpuff72
As long as its legal, you don’t harm anyone and you don’t want me to change my pants to suit you.
DomeGuy
your first two statements here are either redundant or reductive; in many places, non-heteronormitivity is (still) illegal.
KsuviKhor
idiotcube
Is there a convenient way to examine your chromosomes as an adult without access to a biology lab?
ImCommanderShepardandthisismyfavoritepostonthefrontpage
Yeah I personally would find such a thing fascinating
KsuviKhor
Not sure - but here’s a good starting point to better understand genetic testing: https://www.cdc.gov/genomics/gtesting/genetic_testing.htm
idiotcube
Looks like it's not something you can do on a whim. I was hoping I could just stick a swab up my nose, like with those home COVID tests.
KsuviKhor
I think the closest you can get to that are the services you’ve most likely already considered, like 23andMe. Sorry!
JohnSmithterms
I would leave a comment but it's pointless as imgur just deletes them if it goes against this view. So no point in discussing it here.
KsuviKhor
I’m always open to reasonable discussion. Try me.
JohnSmithterms
There is no point. As soon as I say that 99% of people can biologically be classified into two sexes my comment gets deleted. And its 1/?
JohnSmithterms
a boring and pointless discussion for me to have anyway. I don't care how people classify themselves, I don't care what adults do with 2/?
JohnSmithterms
their bodies and every adult should have the autonomy and freedom to do whatever they want with their own bodies. I am aware there is a 3/?
JohnSmithterms
spectrum of biology to some extent for a very few select people and chromosomes are not as binary as most people think they are. And 4/?
PenguinPete
As I always put it, nature is chaotic. HUMANS want to come along and force everything into categories, labels, and pigeonholes.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
Look at biology in general. Look at the goddamn platypus. Basically every categorization we come up with has exceptions. It's not nice /1
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
and neat because it's not designed. It's just, whatever works. You're exactly right, and it's our "boxes" that are the problem, not the /2
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
people that we keep trying to force into them. /3
PenguinPete
Exact-a-mundo!
ItHappenedInThe20thCentury
As a musicologist, I can tell you that music, which IS designed by humans, is already MEGA CHAOTIC to categorize. Nature? Helll no, I'm out.
BenjyX55
What if I'm a parrotfish?
Pseudosim
Then I, as an Attack Helicopter, will fire my surgically attached hellfire missiles at you because I found Oil under where you live.
SpaceJew
Asking the real questions
mwe3
Then, as you know, you'd be one of them sex-changing fishies. Born female then become male unless in the rare case you were born a 1° male
Helixninja333
I feel like I should get this reference....
AGuyThatPoops
Source: Cardwell, J R, and N R Liley. “Hormonal control of sex and color change in the stoplight parrotfish, Sparisoma viride.”
BriefausdemGeist
Then your poop makes wonderful beaches.
StarSumiaki
Yup. Biology is a kluge and our binary is actually just an observed statistical mode of physical traits with who-knows-what underneath. 1/2
TheJuiceLoosener
Yeah, biology is 100% the "Forget everything you learned in school" science.
5amNonsense
I think they all are, but I agree with your point and the message all the same
StarSumiaki
It's an infuriating irony to see bigots invalidate trans folks when they don't even know what fucking constitutes their own [wo]manhood.
JackalopeElope
FishDimension
Life is just the universe trying to understand itself.
ChillaAquila
Physicists are just a bunch of atoms trying to learn more about atoms
graehall
The brain is the only organ that named itself
fridolin
What about the mouth?
GeneralAnubis
Also named by the brain, but pronounced by itself
fridolin
Oh yeah, +1 for you, you got me
HorseDeepInADragon
TeeArrLikesPizza
What soon to be banned book is this?
Dormanius
Gentics
Strype
Keeping that one on lock for the ignoramuses that spout about grade school biology
SilverNicktail
Won't work, they'll just start screaming about how this is "librul indocternation"
RevolutionOnHerLips
Problem with that is it equates gender w/gender roles and I don't know anyone who feels that's true. TERFs love to make this argument - that
Micah1966
I agree. Gender is what the brain says you are. Gender roles are the behaviors expected/connected to a certain sex.
RevolutionOnHerLips
trans men are just confused women rebelling against the patriarchy, and trans women are appropriating women's identities. In a
RevolutionOnHerLips
"gender critical" world, no trans people are given medical treatments whatsoever.
FINNSTAR7
TL;DR Nothing is truly binary. And while gender and sex are two very different things, even sex is a spectrum and not always male or female.
drunkcat
The number of limbs on a human is a spectrum too.
ArthurT
We have 8 billion people on the planet. I cannot even comprehend what 'Body Count' means. Its simply a miracle that we get the chance to ...
ArthurT
just simply hold someone in our arms.
HalstenTorqThorkelson
It seems less like a spectrum, more like points on a Cartesian plane. Like that political compass test. Most people land near 1/2
HalstenTorqThorkelson
Or relatively near one of two points, but there's a whole bunch of outliers all over the place. Rare, but plenty when you consider 8 billion
astrangehop
Plenty of things are binary. Something is either binary, or it isn't.
Anfalicious
Lots of non-binary things look binary at a low enough resolution, so it depends.
channelranger
Sex is bimodal. Falls on a spectrum with results that *tend* to collect in two areas. But even in those two areas there's variation.
channelranger
Anyone who says it's simple just doesn't want to understand.
doesntmatter
I dunno your explanation was pretty simple
MorrighanWolf
As a intersex person lmfao there's at least three
IPoisonedDorcasMutton
Intersex falls between the two modes. That's all bimodal means, it's like the "mode" in a collection of numbers. Whatever appears most often
MorrighanWolf
intersex is a lot more common then most folks think.
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
There's a woman who is a chimera, and MOST of her cells are actually "male", including, get this, the cells of her ovaries. She looks /1
[deleted]
[deleted]
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
like a woman, and got pregnant naturally twice, actually bringing one of the babies to term. The people who say "it's chromosomal" would /2
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
have to come to the conclusion that this person is a man, wouldn't they? A man who naturally conceived and birthed a child. Source: /3
InkyBlinkyPinkyAndClyde
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
spossistheboss
Fascinating article! Thanks
BenjyX55
As a computer scientist, I dislike your conclusion.
TastyBrainMeats
I'd bet you've seen plenty of phantom glitches that you were never able to reproduce. Even computers don't follow their own rules 100%.
ArthurT
Quantum Computers, Analog computers...
JesaraB
*looks at qubits*
PhailRaptor
When you're processing super important binary code and you stumble across a 2...
ThriceGreat
*quantum computing has entered the chat*
mithiwithi
The whole point of digital computing is to force analog signals into binary. Fine for electrons, not so great for people.
CommentBot3000
It's a fuzzy boolean
Markuspsyches
1, 0, & Null?
Mewlies
And when he woke up he thought he saw a "2"...
bullestock
You clearly forgot FILE_NOT_FOUND.
LetumComplexo
Don’t forget NaN and -0.
SirButcher
Oh god, once I had a stupid -0 error and it just broken me.
thorinc
You forgot undefined and therefore your javascript broke.
IntensiveCareBear
I'm !undefined and this is offensive to me