Sexes are biological: chromosomes, hormones, body morphology.
Genders are social: baby boys and girls have definite sexes, but their gender identifies are not the same as of grown-up straight men and women, to say nothing of genderqueer people, etc
My hope is that the biological aspects are still in the realm of science.
Personal attacks are not ok on HN. We ban accounts that do that.
There are lots of (correctly) flagged comments in this miserable thread, but I'm afraid you've been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site to heart so we don't have to ban you again?
Yes. Gender is arcane, fuzzy, some inscrutable configuration of the brain. Sex is concrete, logical, your allosome configuration.
Phew. A bastion of sense in this crazy w--
>Genetic women with Turner syndrome have only one X chromosome; they often display less-developed female sexual characteristics than other women. And people with a genetic mosaic possess XX chromosomes in some cells and XY in others. So how do we determine if they're male or female? Hint: Don't say that it depends on the chromosomal makeup of the majority of their cells, since women with more than 90 per cent XY genetic material have given birth. [0]
I--
>Sex can be much more complicated than it at first seems. According to the simple scenario, the presence or absence of a Y chromosome is what counts: with it, you are male, and without it, you are female. But doctors have long known that some people straddle the boundary—their sex chromosomes say one thing, but their gonads (ovaries or testes) or sexual anatomy say another. Parents of children with these kinds of conditions—known as intersex conditions, or differences or disorders of sex development (DSDs)—often face difficult decisions about whether to bring up their child as a boy or a girl. Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of DSD. [1]
>When genetics is taken into consideration, the boundary between the sexes becomes even blurrier. Scientists have identified many of the genes involved in the main forms of DSD, and have uncovered variations in these genes that have subtle effects on a person's anatomical or physiological sex. What's more, new technologies in DNA sequencing and cell biology are revealing that almost everyone is, to varying degrees, a patchwork of genetically distinct cells, some with a sex that might not match that of the rest of their body. Some studies even suggest that the sex of each cell drives its behaviour, through a complicated network of molecular interactions. “I think there's much greater diversity within male or female, and there is certainly an area of overlap where some people can't easily define themselves within the binary structure,” says John Achermann, who studies sex development and endocrinology at University College London's Institute of Child Health. [1]
>These discoveries do not sit well in a world in which sex is still defined in binary terms. Few legal systems allow for any ambiguity in biological sex, and a person's legal rights and social status can be heavily influenced by whether their birth certificate says male or female. [1]
Sexes are biological: chromosomes, hormones, body morphology.
Genders are social: baby boys and girls have definite sexes, but their gender identifies are not the same as of grown-up straight men and women, to say nothing of genderqueer people, etc
My hope is that the biological aspects are still in the realm of science.