Even if you make the distinction, "female" describes sex, not gender. So the acronym "AFAB" is a bit internally contradictory if you remember that it was created in order to underline the distinction. Then again, these days more often I see people denying the existence of sex, and replacing it with gender altogether, so maybe it's not that surprising after all.
> 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.
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 is a bimodal distribution that is so _extremely_ polar that calling it binary would be more accurate and helpful than bimodal. Calling sex bimodal is in the large misleading, even if correct in the narrow definitional sense.
That multidimensional physical reality is, in turn, layered on top of the binary reality that in adult, diploid mammals, the key chromosome pair is either XX or XY, and that every cell (except the somatic line) in that individual will have the same pair.
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?
The determination of sex in a biological context is based on chromosomes, hormone levels, and secondary sex characteristics.
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.
I agree with you regarding the chromosome possibilities. However, aside from rare mutations and developmental anomalies, mammals are either XX or XY. The exceptions prove the rule, and one doesn’t discard all that evidence just to accommodate minor anomalies which have adequate explanations. If you did, science would make no progress.
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.
Bimodal still implies that most things fall into one of two categories. Binary implies that they all do. You've basically admitted that the distinction is not binary.
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.
Male and female genotypes don't form a distribution, they are one or the other, modulo very rare transcription errors or mutations (which generally don't survive the first few cell divisions following fertilization).
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.
> binary reality that in adult, diploid mammals, the key chromosome pair is either XX or XY, and that every cell (except the somatic line) in that individual will have the same pair.
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.
How is being able to be a specific party in the reproduction process a social construct? Is the categorization of penguins into egg-layers and egg-fertilizers also a social construct?
> 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.
