How do we handle the science of sex/gender

[redbetta]

OP, I think it is best to think of sex as a phenotype (the practical consequences of genetics) as opposed to a phenotype. A woman with XXX genetics is for all practical purposes the same as a woman with XX genetics. Instead of having one Barr body (inactivated X chromosome) in each somatic cell, they have two. Either way, there is only one active x chromosome in each cell.

Having XYY and XXY carries more health consequences than someone with genotype XXX, but, for all practical purposes, people with that genotype are male and generally do not think of themselves as anything other than male.

 

[Anesti33]

redcatholic:

There are two sexes.
Sometimes biological anomalies happen.
I mean with all our technology and information in our pockets we are now a society that doesn’t know male or female.

Two sexes plus these other things adds up to more than two sexes, unless our theology gets in the way of our arithmetic.

The classification of binary sex is a taxonomy issue at its heart. Yes, if you want to calculate the number of sexes differently, then you could change the criteria and reclassify sex as a spectrum of 100 different types. That’s the nature of taxonomy, it is what it is because of a consensus of scientists, not because it necessarily represents a singular truth.

However, intersex people and abnormal chromosome configurations are not at the forefront of the LGBTQ+ movement. They are in fact exploited to advance the “transagenda”. LGBTQ+ don’t care about these people except to hold them up and say “look! More than two! We told ya so!”

LGBTQ+'s premise is that there are dozens of genders, not sexes. They have jettisoned biological sex as inconvenient, and seek to redefine the taxonomy of human social constructs instead. Lists of genders I’ve seen don’t tend to include “3 X chromosomer” but instead describe character types and roles that people play in relation to other genders.

They have asserted that orientation is fixed and immutable, while gender is fluid and something you choose for yourself, or chooses you. This is a remarkable inversion because we know that sexual attraction and fetishes are conditioned responses, and conversion therapy can work in limited cases.

The science of gender is essentially sociological and as far as possible from biology, although we have seen that even biology can be molded to match the transagenda. Gender ideology is both the final triumph and the final death knell for feminism, as we have seen the men rush in to beat all the women at sports. Nobody will care about female empowerment anymore, because female is whatever anyone says it is. The Battle of the Sexes becomes the War of the Genders, and the world keeps on spinning.

 

[Thorolfr]

Blue eyes must have been considered an abnormality in the first man who had the genetic mutation causing them since almost everyone else probably had brown eyes, but I have a hard time seeing blue eyes as being a result of a fallen world.

 

[Thorolfr]

we know that sexual attraction and fetishes are conditioned responses, and conversion therapy can work in limited cases.

So, are straight men only sexually attracted to women because of a conditioned response and could some of them be turned into homosexuals with the right “conversion therapy”?

 

[Anesti33]

Not “only” but yep.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

So I recently learned that science has actually shown that there are more than just two sexes mean there is more than XY and XX.

Not quite.

You need an XX and XY to create new life, which is what sexual reproduction is.
There is no “third” configuration needed to create life.
Therefore, there are only two sexes.

There are chromosomal anomalies and birth defects. These are not “extra” sexes.
If the individual produces sperm, then they are male no matter what outward appearance may suggest.
If they produce ova, then they are female. Full stop.
If they don’t produce either, and the chromosomes are inconclusive, it’s a birth defect.

Be very careful to pay attention to these distinctions.
There are a lot of agenda-driven people who have reasons other than science to cast confusion into the questions of sexuality, and will on purpose try to say “intersex, therefore trans”.
Even though they know better.

 

[Irishmom2]

Actually, you should provide a link to your claim. The other person does not have to disprove something you provided no evidence for.

 

[ewohdrol]

With all due respect extra sexual chromosomes is a genetic abnormality. I cannot comment on albinism as I’m unsure of the chromosomal causes.

During meiosis (generation of sex cells) occasionally there are errors with separation of chromosomes. If this egg or sperm happens to be involved with fertilisation process all subsequent cells will hold this abnormality (via mitosis). Thus the embryo will only have these defected cells.

We must consider those poor individuals with any autosomal chromosomes combination other than XX and XY as someone with a medical condition. Some are easier to mask than others.

 

[Montrose]

so then God did just make male and female? because those people with XYX or XXY are still people?

They are people with abnormalities.

 

[FaithHopeCharity]

I think uf we look back all the way to Adam and Eve, God had created Man (Adam) and from man he created Woman (Eve). If there had been alternate genders, would it make sense that it would have been revealed to us in the beggining of time?

 

[HomeschoolDad]

There are chromosomal anomalies and birth defects. These are not “extra” sexes.
If the individual produces sperm, then they are male no matter what outward appearance may suggest.
If they produce ova, then they are female. Full stop.
If they don’t produce either, and the chromosomes are inconclusive, it’s a birth defect.

So help me, I am not trying to be “cute” or “clever”, but what if a person had both types of gonads, and produced both? Not sure it has ever happened among human beings, but it does occur in nature.

Unless it is a teaching under the ordinary infallibility of the magisterium — and it doesn’t seem to be (I’ll welcome correction on that point) — I have to suspend judgment and assent of mind to the proposition that “every human person is essentially either male or female”. (Those may not have been the exact words, but that’s the upshot of the recent document.) There are some people who don’t neatly fall into either category.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

That would be specific to their species as designed, but doesn’t apply to us because that’s not how we were designed.
[/quote]

No, but I am just saying “what if it did happen?”. Our Lord is able to allow people, due to original sin, to be born with birth defects, this would just be one more of them. And to insist "yes, but that unfortunate person with both male and female generative abilities still has to be pigeon-holed into either ‘male’ or ‘female’ " seems to me, to be kind of narrow-minded.

That said, if the Church solemnly teaches such a thing, I shall follow Loyola’s dictum, and repudiate my “white” in favor of the Church’s “black”. But I don’t think that’s what has happened so far.

 

[skelly]

How do you classify mutations that result in sterility?

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

Still wouldn’t be a “third sex”.

A “third sex” would have to be directly involved in the producing a new life.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

LGBTQ+'s premise is that there are dozens of genders, not sexes.

And I’d like to point out that this is a very new concept.

The original claim of transsexuals when it first emerged in the medical literature a little more than 100 years ago was “trapped in the wrong body”.

Not that there were multiple sexes, but that they were born in the “wrong” one. And this is important because certain activists like to play with very slippery language.
It’s meant to confuse and manipulate you.

 

[Vico]

Males are XY and females are XX.

In answer to the OP’s question: anyone with a Y chromosome (regardless of how many Xs) is a male…more specifically it’s a gene on the Y chromosome (which is really small in comparison to the X chromosome) that determines maleness. There are men born with male genitalia who have an XX karyotype but also have a small part of the Y chromosome attached to an X…very rare but goes to show that it’s that gene that determines male features.

The Y gene and other genes such as AR.

There are also those with 46XY karyotype that have complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (the body cannot use androgens) which leads to female external sex characteristics yet without a uterus. In some this is partial insensitivity with the appearance of the genitals and breasts that may vary from person to person. Mutations in the AR located on the X chromosome are responsible for it.

The Lancet (https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/B01406736.svg)

Volume 380, Issue 9851, 20–26 October 2012, Pages 1419-1428
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[MNathaniel]

So I recently learned that science has actually shown that there are more than just two sexes…

So you were recently told*, and believed what this person told you. (Perhaps it happened in a formal educational institution, and that’s why you were inclined to believe what you were told there? Or you read it in a book from a source you usually trust, or heard it from a person you generally consider reliable, and that’s why you believed what you were told?) What source did you hear this from, and why do you consider this source trustworthy to make declarations as grand as there being more than two human sexes?

So how do us Catholics deal with this discovery

There has been no such discovery. Catholics were already aware of intersex and related phenomena, and while further developments of chromosomal science are as fascinating as most branches of science, what you seem to consider the key “discovery” (not the presence of genetic abnormalities among some individuals, but the interpretation of ideologues that we should call everyone who lives with an abnormality a fundamentally new type of human) is mere ideological interpretation. It’s not a ‘fact’, it’s part of a belief system embedded in a series of ideologies heavily invested in pushing for the general collapse of all sense of boundaries, categorization, and objective morality, so they can remake the world in a new image (which is whatever they’ll feel like at the time).

You need an XX and XY to create new life, which is what sexual reproduction is.
There is no “third” configuration needed to create life.
Therefore, there are only two sexes.

I think this is key to the whole question.

‘Gender’, though a word abused by ideologues these days who try to drag it into meaning merely surface cultural or social role occupation, points obviously towards biological realities, because of the root ‘gen’: Gender refers to the genitalia by which each human participates in generating the next generation of the human species.

We can identify a human gender by identifying which role they would biologically play in generating the next generation of humans, if their body were in good health. A woman being infertile doesn’t make her less a woman. This stays true if her infertility is related to a chromosomal issue. And if a given chromosomal issue doesn’t even cause infertility, that allows it to be even more obvious.

Anyway I’d agree with Scarlett’s point. The key seems to be that gender is about generation. There’s no such thing as a true third human sex unless it effectively occupies a brand new third role in procreating new humans. Unless it does that, mere infertility doesn’t count. And even if external features may seem confusing, if fertility is present? It’s certainly going to either manifest as insemination (the proof of maleness) or effectively nurturing the baby in the womb (femaleness).

 

[HomeschoolDad]

We can identify a human gender by identifying which role they would biologically play in generating the next generation of humans, if their body were in good health. A woman being infertile doesn’t make her less a woman. This stays true if her infertility is related to a chromosomal issue. And if a given chromosomal issue doesn’t even cause infertility, that allows it to be even more obvious.

This is positively brilliant! This cuts right to the core of the whole question.

0Scarlett_nidiyilii:

There are chromosomal anomalies and birth defects. These are not “extra” sexes.

If the individual produces sperm, then they are male no matter what outward appearance may suggest.
If they produce ova, then they are female. Full stop.
If they don’t produce either, and the chromosomes are inconclusive, it’s a birth defect.

So help me, I am not trying to be “cute” or “clever”, but what if a person had both types of gonads, and produced both? Not sure it has ever happened among human beings, but it does occur in nature.

Unless it is a teaching under the ordinary infallibility of the magisterium — and it doesn’t seem to be (I’ll welcome correction on that point) — I have to suspend judgment and assent of mind to the proposition that “every human person is essentially either male or female”. (Those may not have been the exact words, but that’s the upshot of the recent document.) There are some people who don’t neatly fall into either category.

Still wouldn’t be a “third sex”.

A “third sex” would have to be directly involved in the producing a new life.

I didn’t say that such a person would be a “third sex”. I was referring to the fact, as I see it, that they would not be either biologically male or biologically female, if anything, they would be “both/and” — kind of like a chimera of gender. To say "well, even with this unfortunate reality being what it is, the Church says that every human person is either male or female, so you’ve got to figure out, and we’ve got to figure out, ‘which one you are’ " seems like it is forcing a dichotomy that might be impossible to make. It very well could be that the person could say “yes, I have male genitals, in addition to female ones, but regardless, I pretty much ‘feel’ like I’m a woman, even though admittedly there is a lot of ‘man’ to me” (or vice versa). But it could also be “I don’t really know what I am, I’m as much one as the other, and I can’t come down clearly on either side”.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

At this point, my thought exercise is probably veering onto the rumble strips of sheer theoretical speculation. I have never heard of a person who has two fully functioning dual reproductive systems. They might have vestiges of one with a preponderance of the other, but that would be a different situation.

I am not one to “mute” threads, nor to “cut and run”, but I have really said all I can about this subject. I’ve run dry. All I can say, is that whatever gender a person is, or is not, they are still created in the image and likeness of God, with an eternal destiny, and a defect of birth is a morally neutral situation that just can’t be helped. Having committed even one venial sin in one’s life is a far greater tragedy than being a reproductive chimera.

 

[0Scarlett_nidiyilii]

I didn’t say that such a person would be a “third sex”.

Correct.

But the OP made the claim that scientists have “discovered” more than two sexes, and it was towards that individual and others who might be reading to clear this up