Sunday, 18 January 2009
Today's Battles
Zoe Brain at 1/18/2009 08:11:00 PM
http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/todays-battles_18.html (http://aebrain.blogspot.com/2009/01/todays-battles_18.html)
What is the diffrence (sic)in male and female? That's a question asked at Yahoo Questions. Nice, simple, obvious... except it's none of those.
Sex can be determined on the basis of several biological criteria:
1. Genitalia - primary sex characteristics
2. Secondary sex characteristics
3. Endocrine (Hormonal) balance
4. Genes, either XX vs XY, or presence/absence of SrY complex
5. Neuroanatomy, sexually dimorphic development of the brain.
None of these are strict binaries though. They all have gradations with 2 distinct peaks, one for female, one for male, but some in the middle.
The Gender Binary is an excellent approximation, where all 5 criteria align 59 times out of 60. The difficulties begin when we try to make an approximation into an absolute: biologically, this is senseless.