[lordCarbonFiber]

Two things here. 1. Sex isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. It's a bimodal spectrum of correlated traits; meaning there isn't a single marker you can choose to separate everyone into neat buckets that wouldn't misclassify some cis people (and jeez yall get mad when you get misgendered). [0]

2. None of this is even remotely new, Im not sure where you're getting that impression from. Germany had an entire institute dedicated to studying trans people at the turn of the 20th century [1]. I'd agree that for a variety of (usually discriminatory and religious) reasons it hasn't been well studied, but trans people certainly arent new.

[0] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/24702897188036...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_f%C3%BCr_Sexualwissen...

[jhrmnn]

1. I didn’t say that sex is binary, just that it’s objective. You’re male, female, or intersex, and this is decided by objective facts. Gender is not.

2. Transgender is not new. But the broader public debate about the distinction between sex and gender is recent.

[lordCarbonFiber]

Two limits with a large space of indeterminate in between sounds an awful lot like an analogue signal. A system that classifies as A, B, other: grab bag of unrelated conditions isn't particularly useful in a societal nor medical context (and why it isn't used anywhere). You can objectively measure certain karyotypes, measure how someone's body reacts to hormones (and what hormones they produce), how that makes them feel, what that body can then do reproductively, (almost like a spectrum of correlated traits) but not make nice neat boxes that fits in the reproduction section of the text book you had in the 6th grade. By that measure, gender is just as "objective". Ask a person what gender they are, exactly 1 measurement required boom you're done (and with better accuracy than trying to measure anything else to boot).

Your specific exposure to the public "debate" is recent, sure. But just because you hadn't heard of it before the heritage foundation spent millions of dollars to insure you did didn't mean it wasn't happening.

[orand]

Humans can only produce two different types of gametes (sperm or egg), and never both in the same body. And it’s never a “spectrum” with “speg” or “sperg” variants.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

Many people are infertile and make neither.

Surely, if we're trying to group people by biological sex, we'd use chromosomes and ternary logic: male / female / intersex.

[johnjj257]

This is full of false information about sex, it is most certainly NOT just a spectrum of traits that is one shallow dimension that you focused on for the benfit of your agenda and the least scientific approach.

You won't easily find support for that on hacker news =)

[lordCarbonFiber]

So, just to get the record straight this woman[0], md/phd, expert in gender and sex, is less right/qualified than you, unqualified programmer (who cites no sources for your claim) on a web forum?

Like yeah, Im aware HN (as a population) hates women, and GSM in general, but somehow im always surprised by how much yall do.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marianne_Legato

[johnjj257]

Haha, ok you can believe any "expert" you want if it makes you feel better. I have no idea who that is and I dont care. Try looking at the idea logically and within a body of science not out of context and cherry picked =)

You shouldn't believe me you should believe science. I'm not arguing any of that go read about it yourself.