If anyone tells you that there are 2-3 sexes in the world I want you to just go ahead and slap them.
I was making a chart this morning, but by the time I got to the twentieth configuration of primary sex characteristics, I got bored and angry, so just fucking slap them. Don’t bother giving them a chart, it’s a pain in the ass to produce anyway.
Here’s some non-chart-form lists.
Primary sex is defined by taking one or more item from each list (roughly, because just as there are double dominant intersex conditions there are double recessive ones too and it’s a whole thing). All potential combinations of these options can be said to constitute their own primary sex category.
Chromosomes:
XX
XY
X/X0
Mosaic
XXY
XXXY
XXX
XYY
Others (there are so many, like I think you can live with up to five chromosomes? So many)
Hormones
Estrogenized
Androgenized
Double dominant (high levels of both estrogenic and androgenic hormones)
Double recessive (low or no sex hormones)
Gonads
Testicle/es
Ovary/ies
Ovotestes
Gonads
Testicular agenesis
Gonadal dysgenesis
Probably more, I’m not a professional here
Genitals
Penis
Vagina
Pseudovaginal pouch
Clitoromegaly
Micropenis
Hypospadias
Diphallia
Definitely more but I am Tired™
There’s like at least several dozen primary sexes, and that’s before secondary characteristic development comes into play and the point is biological sex is a fucking mass hallucination. Slap anyone who says otherwise.
(This is not a professionally sourced and cited resource post please do not treat this like it’s some kind of all powerful reference work I literally just made it in a fit of rage in abt ten minutes based on stuff I already know I didn’t even research it be careful use google etc and so forth)
It so is? Like it’s just ridiculously confusing and complex.
WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE WHO SAY IT’S SIMPLE AND COMES DOWN TO “MALE OR FEMALE”/”MALE, FEMALE, OR INTERSEX” NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP AND ACCEPT THEIR SLAPPING PEACEFULLY INSTEAD OF SENDING ME DOZENS OF ANGRY LETTERS
This has gotten more attention than expected so I figure I will put it here as well.
My favorite is that there’s a good chance that people so insistent on the existence of a binary may be intersex and never know unless: they don’t get a first period, develop unexpected secondary sex characteristics during puberty, or struggle with infertility later in life, or GET KARYOTYPED
These are also very human-centric! There are vertebrate animals that don’t use chromosomes as their sex-determination system (reptiles and some birds can also use the environment to determine sex) and there are vertebrate animals that use different chromosome arrangements.
Birds for example, don’t use XX/XY, they’re ZW/ZZ. In birds, the egg determines the sex (not the sperm) and females are the heterogamous sex (with ZW chromosomes). There is plenty of room for variation, too - a ZZW bird who presented as female successfully laid and hatched her own eggs (x)
Platypuses, meanwhile, have a system that resembles both XX/XY and ZW/ZZ in function, but the form is a little baffling. Platypus males are XYXYXYXYXY, and females are XXXXXXXXXX.
Clearly, there is nothing perfect, universal or holy about XX/XY - and anyone who insists there is has demonstrated that they don’t know anything about biology.
And it’s a fluid system even once you grasp the idea of chromosomes - we know that you can hack sex in lizards to create “superfemales” (by incubating an egg with “male” chromosomes at a temperature that hatches “female” babies). Superfemales present as females and can lay viable eggs. You can do it with lizards that happen to use the XX/XY system, and hatch fertile males with XX chromosomes. You can do this with chickens as well - take a “genetically male” fertilized egg and incubate it at the perfect temperature, and you can hatch a “male” chicken that will lay eggs for you. The difficulty is that this only works some of the time in chickens - the cooler temperatures that hatch female chickens tend to kill the male embryos that don’t transition, which is wasteful. Otherwise, this would revolutionize the poultry industry.
So now we know that XX/XY is like the Windows 7 of sexual determinism (lots of people use it, but would be silly to call it the only operating system in the world) how fixed is “sex” anyway? Well, most of us know that clownfish can change sex - if there are changes in their social structure, the dominant female can transition from a reproductively functioning egg-fertilizing male to a reproductively functioning egg-laying female. Bio textbooks say that clownfish “don’t have” sex chromosomes, but I think it’s more likely that they do, but that they don’t have any function. At any rate, the change is down to hormones, which change in response to the social environment the fish is in.
So are hormones, then, the Thing That Totally Definitely Determines What Men and Women Are? Not really. Before puberty, human children don’t have many sex hormones circulating in their bodies, and human children are often quite clear about their own gender. Humans who have had ovaries removed, or who go through menopause, no longer have waves of “female” hormones sloshing around - but we still call most of them “women.” Humans who have had their testicles removed or their androgens depleted (usually because of testicular or prostate cancer, which can feed on hormones) are usually still called “men.” And ovaries produce natural levels of testosterone quite happily, because they need to - just at lower levels! Pregnant humans often have particularly high levels of testosterone. Weirdly, “male” partners of pregnant people often drop to lower levels of testosterone than usual - their pregnant partner’s hormones influence their own biology. But a cisgender father of a fetus does not stop being a male just because he has less testosterone.
Pregnancy gets weirder, too - decades after the fetus has moved out, a pregnant person who once harbored an XY fetus will have XY cells in their body and brain. If you looked at, say, Molly Weasley, you’d be able to find “male” tissue in her brain - where her body traded for some fresh young stem cells from her fetuses, and used them to replenish her own older tissues. So a cisgender person born XX can exhibit microchimerism later in life and never know it. But having XY tissue in your brain doesn’t make you a man.
Okay, so what about gender roles? Surely those are clear - surely those are necessary for sex and sexuality and the Natural Order and all those things?
Well, we also know that animals practice a range of gender roles. Again, a lot of it is more obvious in fish, reptiles and birds, partly because sexual dimorphism tends to be more pronounced in these animals. But there are plenty of species in which you get multiple “types” of sexes. The most common is the territorial/satellite male arrangement, in which there are multiple distinct types of males, with different genetics, behavior, life history, physical appearance and courtship strategies.
Ruffs, a type of sandpiper, have distinct territorial and satellite males, plus “faeder” males that were only recently discovered to be male; faeders are identical to females in appearance and most behavior, and plenty of previous sightings of lesbianism in ruffs were probably faeder/female matings. Satellite and territorial males top faeders, but as faeders also top satellite and territorial males, researchers have interpreted this as “ruffs are perfectly aware that faeders aren’t the same as females, and none of them give a shit.”
Above are some different forms of masculinity in ruffs. The bird on the top left is a female; the birds below are the different male types. In the picture on the right, the independent and satellite male are vying for the attention of the female; the faeder is the brown one on the left. The territory belongs to the territorial male, who will defend it from other territorial males, but he doesn’t attack the satellite and faeder males, because they aren’t in competition. (Imagine your OT4.)
Outside of that, gender roles aren’t as important as humans pretend they are. There isn’t really a Breadwinner/Housewife divide in the animal kingdom because most animals don’t practice capitalism. Performative masculinity only benefits species that gain an evolutionary advantage from it. Non-human mammals don’t find mammary glands to be sexually arousing. Mostly, animals just try to survive in complicated, complex environments that are constantly trying to kill them. The rules are: 1) adapt to changes in environment by being resilient, adaptable and diverse; and 2) successfully pass on the genes that succeed in your environment. You don’t need to be “fit” or fierce or have lots of bright plumage - those are not your objectives and may, in fact, distract you. You don’t even need to mate, or be fertile, or have children of your own - you just need to make sure that your traits survive, and hopefully help your species after your death.
There is nothing in the rules about the superiority of special genital configurations, which animals are allowed to touch the color pink, and who gets to grow a beard.
Tl;dr : every time a human tries to come up with a hard-and-fast rule about what “sex” or “gender” or “male” or “female” means, there is a bird somewhere that has quietly devoted the past 2 million years of its existence to proving that person wrong.
everyone here secretly harboring a massive science!crush on elodie raise your hand now plz
Honestly I feel sort of ridiculously lucky re: potential ships in the upcoming Star Wars movies, and I’m realizing that it’s possibly just me? But LET ME LAY THIS OUT FOR YOU.
MOST LIKELY: Finn/Rey. These two children are cute as shit. They’re just so damn excited about the world and the universe and green and the Force and each other. Finn is all star-eyes and bear hugs, and Rey is all toothy grins and fierce protection. It’s fucking precious. Sit with me and think about Rey coming back from Fuckety Nowhere to find Finn recovered from his injuries and learning how to be Resistance, and she bounces off the Falcon and runs up to him and throws her arms around his neck for a hug like they did in Starkiller, and when she pulls away she holds onto one of his hands and they smile at each other like the adorable little fucks they are. BONUS: interracial relationship between a white woman and a black man, which is still something that’s considered more than a little taboo. Racism is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in such a big-name franchise as Star Wars. Finn is affectionate, self-determining, and allowed to show emotions like fear and anxiety without any in-narrative penalties, and that is NOVEL, unfortunately. And Rey is…well, Rey. Come on, guys, I want to be Rey when I grow up and I’m sure you do too. She’s able to be the hero, and not in the sense a lot of us are familiar with: there’s no assault, no rape, nothing like that. She just finds a droid, and then she finds a lightsaber, and then she has the Force, and then she fights for the people she cares about, which is the same way that Luke became a hero. No one criticizes her for being female. THIS WOULD BE A GREAT COUPLE.
SECOND MOST LIKELY: Finn/Poe. The jaCKET? That is all? No, seriously, though, this would be a great ship: the dashing pilot and the rogue Stormtrooper. The entire base would ship it. Poe would shout down anyone who talked about Finn being a spy, and Finn would learn Droid to talk to BB-8, Poe’s best friend. This would be a ship with a lot of teasing smiles and laughing, arms around shoulders and warm support. It would be about Finn learning to be an independent person and Poe welcoming someone new into his family. BONUS: interracial gay relationship between a Guatemalan man and a black man, which is a little taboo in a different way. Homophobia is a thing guys, and it’s SO IMPORTANT that representation of this sort of relationship be in the media, especially in cuh a big-name franchise as Star Wars. Finn is everything I described above, and Poe is dashing, confident, intelligent, skilled…and caring toward his squadron, kind to a stranger, and respectful toward women, including those who have authority over him like Leia (insert battle hymn about the greatness of General Leia here). Poe is a whole other thing from the standard cocky bastard of a pilot we know from movies and TV. And please sign me right on up for this new type of dashing heroic gentleman, I am on this bullet train to a brighter future and you should be too. THIS WOULD ALSO BE A GREAT COUPLE.
OTHER MORE UNLIKELY COUPLES: The Damerons (Finn/Poe/Rey). It would be great for all of the reasons above, with the addition of the Poe-Rey dynamic of, I imagine, “Look at how beautiful and powerful and glorious this girl is” from Poe’s angle and “You are nice to me and handsome and I’m not sure what to do with any of that” from Rey’s. Technically the best of all worlds (interracial! everyone is bi except possibly Rey!), but unlikely because, well, it’s a threesome, and that renders it frankly improbable for Hollywood to make it a thing.
And of course, THE ONE PAIRING I’M NOT EXCITED ABOUT: Kylo/Rey. Um. No. Not least because things are looking like she’s going to be Rey Skywalker and that makes them EITHER first cousins OR siblings, depending on which twin is Rey’s parent, and yes, Luke and Leia were almost a thing, but let’s just take a hard line on No Incest this go-round, shall we? But also because that would, I think, be wildly unhealthy unless they pulled off some sort of miracle. And because honestly my main interest in a redemption arc for Kylo is the one that is Entirely For Leia’s Benefit, and I’ve read enough stories about poor damaged boys whose actions weren’t their fault at all being saved from themselves by the purity of love and…like…give the man the dignity of his own choices, okay? I can feel sorry for Kylo because of the way he’s so clearly been manipulated and groomed by Snoke, but unless there’s evidence of actual legitimate mind control it’s still his choice to side with the Dark. I have a lot of firm opinions about human dignity and free will and even though he’s currently a spectacular bastard, Kylo Ren still has free will and he has exercised it and as a human being he deserves to have his choices recognized as his own.
ANYWAY. My point here is that no matter what you ship hardest, it needs to be recognized that either of the two most likely ships to happen will be almost groundbreaking in the representation they’ll offer. I will make no judgements and fight no wars about what kind of representation is ‘most important’ because, you know what, it’s ALL important. It matters that kids see interracial relationships on the big screen, presented as grand sweeping romances rather than comedy or tragedy. It matters that kids see gay relationships that way. It is important that teenagers and adults and children look at the characters they love and see themselves there, see the people they love there, see their friendships and relationships there. Duking it out about who is more oppressed and therefore more deserving of that representation lessens us as people. You, as a person reading this, deserve to see yourself in a character, in a hero, and so do the other people on the street, friends, strangers, enemies.
I want us to have it all, guys. I want you to have everything: trans characters who are fierce and strong, women who can save galaxies, men who can be gentle and emotional and heroic, gay and lesbian romances full of light and laughter, racial diversity because, hey, when your copilot is covered in ten inches of hair what’s a little melanin between friends. I want you to have ace characters with adoring husbands and wives, nonbinary characters and genderfluid characters whose friends would die for them no matter what their pronouns are today and vice versa, aro characters with badass spaceships full of loyal crew they love, characters with ADHD and autism and schizophrenia and depression going out to save the world with the people who care about them, physically disabled characters with blasters concealed in their prosthetics or souped up hoverchairs. ALL OF IT. And this movie series isn’t going to give us all that, because all of that is…it’s a lot to ask, and I know it, but I want it anyway. But this movie is virtually guaranteed to give us something, some starting point, and you know what? I’m ready to take what I can get while I work on finding a way to give you guys everything.
