Gender Roles

[Emily Lake]

Wow. Just... Wow.

So, Emily you really don't see the difference between "far right groups have been gaining power" and "the country is fascist"?

One implies that even a minority with limited majority support could see success, and the other posits that fascists can only accomplish fascist goals while in complete power.

These are very different propositions and you have mutated my position "minority fascists can achieve some fascist goals through minimal majority support" into your straw man of "thinks the country is controlled entirely by fascists".

We can see where this political will principally flows from and it is the segment entrenched with goals towards fascism, particularly the the UK and the Tories who have infected much of Europe with their codswallop.

You are willfully refusing to go look at the research done, and the reasons for the reversal in position by those countries. Until you have actually bothered to look at the reports and the studies, you're making baseless assumptions.

 

[Politesse]

You - and a bunch of other people with degress that are irrelevant to the subject, as well as a crapton of activists and ideological proselytizers - are conflating the definition of sex with the proxy measures that we use to identify sex.

Wait... are you saying anthropology is a "degree irrelevant to the subject" of human evolution and biology? What would be relevant, Bullshit Political Spin Studies?

Judging by the inxomprehensible babble that is the rest of your post, I guess any degree at all is suspect. For the record, I'm not a sp---, but I have no animosity toward those who are on the spectrum, they are often a darn sight more rational minded than us normies.

Funny how anthropologists have never really had difficulty distinguishing an adult male skeleton from an adult female skeleton... at least not until gender studies decided to infuse itself into everyfucking thing, and now actual experienced anthropologists get ousted from presenting at conferences when they want to talk about identifying the sex of human remains.

I am not sure what to make of this post. It's certainly not true, whatever it is. No one has ever been expelled from a conference for sexing a skeleton, that's a routine part of the job. I did it routinely when I was working CRM in my younger days. But any experienced forensic anthropologist will quickly correct you on two points:

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- Sexing remains is only possible most of the time, and the same factors that complicate sexing living organisms tend to complicate clear sexing of remains, also. Indeed, best guesses at sex can really only be confirmed some of the time. How do you know whether you got it "right" or not? Usually by comparing two or more of the several criteria used to make that guess. If they all agree, great. If they don't you've got an ambiguous case, and often no way to determine what resulted in it.

If the pelvis is destroyed and many of the fragments are missing, perhaps. Or if the skeleton is of a young child, sure. But for adults? Are you actually claiming that anthropologists just have a horrible time telling what sex a skeleton is, and it's really just a "best guess"?

If I had meant that, I would have said that. What I actually said was that sexing is only possible most of the time. Which is both what I meant, and what nearly any anthropologist would tell you, as it also happens to be true.

Sex was correctly estimated by the experienced anthropologist in 100% of individuals using all of the 16 pelvic and cranial criteria. In fact, sex differences in pelvic morphology were large enough to allow sexing the individuals with 100% accuracy

- And of course, sex is not a aynonym for gender. The forensic anthropologist cannot tell you what someone's gender was with absolute certainty, only make a best guess at how they would most likely have identified. They're not always right, and transgenderism isn't the only reason a misidentification might happen, sometimes the remains themselves simply don't contain sufficient information to make such a determination, or in the case of archaeological materials, we know too little of their culture's gender ideologies to guess.

That would largely be because this newly pushed version of "gender" has only been around for a very short period of time, whereas sex has been around for millions of years. And up until very recently, anthropologists didn't actually give a fuck about "gender identity". They cared to some degree about gender roles within a given culture, but nobody gave a fuck about the "gender identity" of a thousand year old skeleton, no more than they gave a fuck about whether that skeleton was of someone who preferred strawberries over apples.

The modern notion of biological sex is barely more than a century old. Of the two, it is most certainly the newcomer. Whereas people had cultural and religious notions about "womanhood" and "masculinity" and "boyishness" and "male and female He hath made them" and all the rest for thousands of years before anything as concrete as a chromosome was ever discovered. Nor was there such a thing as forensic anthropology when your precious gender ideology was inchoate. But as soon as we started to unravel the osteological markers of sex at all, it was immediately recognized that there are occasional indeterminate cases, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the usually unknowable factor of gender. Your continued, belligerent confusion of sex and gender continue to obfuscate the conversation unnecessarily.

It's weird that you're simultaneously attacking anthropology as an illegitimate discipline, while also ascribing seemingly supernatural powers of detection to laboratory bio anthropologists that they neither possess nor claim to possess.

I'm not dismissing anthropology as a discipline - I'm dismissing the freshly invented notion that anthropology has a tough time determining the SEX of human remains based on some freshly invented mystical notion of a gendery soul making it really difficult to tell that the person with the tilted pelvis, with an oval opening, and angled femurs was a female.

So... you're dismissing your own argument? No one else has said anything of the sort.

 

[Politesse]

"Gender" and "sex" were synonyms in English for about six hundred years, and they still are in the common usage of normal people who haven't gone down the newspeak rabbit hole.

Otherwise known as having a high school diploma...

Do you say the smae thing about all specialized language? "Astronomy" and "astrology" meant the same thing back in the day, and still do to people who know jack shit about either, so let's just ignore science!

Just so we're clear... sex is synonymous with astronomy, and gender is synonymous with astrology.

If that's the case, what you're doing by confusing your gender ideology for the real biological sciences is the equivalent of demanding that other people acknowledge the scientific reality of horoscopes.

In what way do you think I'm conflating gender ideology for biological sciences? What have I posted that gives you this impression?

Because you keep insisting that your strictly binary ideology of gender is identicial with the scientific consensus on sex, indeed that your personal beliefs are somehow the scientific consensus on sex, despite not resembling that consensus in the slightest.

 

[Jarhyn]

Wow. Just... Wow.

So, Emily you really don't see the difference between "far right groups have been gaining power" and "the country is fascist"?

One implies that even a minority with limited majority support could see success, and the other posits that fascists can only accomplish fascist goals while in complete power.

These are very different propositions and you have mutated my position "minority fascists can achieve some fascist goals through minimal majority support" into your straw man of "thinks the country is controlled entirely by fascists".

We can see where this political will principally flows from and it is the segment entrenched with goals towards fascism, particularly the the UK and the Tories who have infected much of Europe with their codswallop.

You are willfully refusing to go look at the research done, and the reasons for the reversal in position by those countries. Until you have actually bothered to look at the reports and the studies, you're making baseless assumptions.

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[Emily Lake]

The modern notion of biological sex is barely more than a century old. Of the two, it is most certainly the newcomer. Whereas people had cultural and religious notions about "womanhood" and "masculinity" and "boyishness" and "male and female He hath made them" and all the rest for thousands of years before anything as concrete as a chromosome was ever discovered. Nor was there such a thing as forensic anthropology when your precious gender ideology was inchoate. But as soon as we started to unravel the osteological markers of sex at all, it was immediately recognized that there are occasional indeterminate cases, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the usually unknowable factor of gender. Your continued, belligerent confusion of sex and gender continue to obfuscate the conversation unnecessarily.

Yep, for millions and millions of years, it's been totally just random chance that any mammals have managed to successfully reproduce. It's totally been a complete and utter mystery as to which members of any given species are the ones that gestate the babies, and which are the ones that inseminate the gestators.

For tens of millions of years, across millions of species, sex has not been a random guess. And chromosomes are not what defines sex. In mammals, X and Y chromosomes are the mechanisms by which sex is determined. In this context "determined" doesn't mean "figure out", it means "causes to develop". In birds, it's W and Z chromosomes. In reptiles, it's temperature. The mechanism that any species uses to determine sex doesn't change the fundamental characteristic of sex. And just because we've only been able to identify those mechanisms relatively recently doesn't mean that the mechanisms themselves are new, nor does it mean that before that time we couldn't tell which of us were the men and which were the women.

You claim that even with knowledge of the osteological markers of sex, there are occasional indeterminate cases. Can you put some numbers to that? I don't need seven decimal places, just a reasonable approximation will do.

If you have an intact adult human skeleton, what is the likelihood that sex will be indeterminate?

 

[Emily Lake]

"Gender" and "sex" were synonyms in English for about six hundred years, and they still are in the common usage of normal people who haven't gone down the newspeak rabbit hole.

Otherwise known as having a high school diploma...

Do you say the smae thing about all specialized language? "Astronomy" and "astrology" meant the same thing back in the day, and still do to people who know jack shit about either, so let's just ignore science!

Just so we're clear... sex is synonymous with astronomy, and gender is synonymous with astrology.

If that's the case, what you're doing by confusing your gender ideology for the real biological sciences is the equivalent of demanding that other people acknowledge the scientific reality of horoscopes.

In what way do you think I'm conflating gender ideology for biological sciences? What have I posted that gives you this impression?

Because you keep insisting that your strictly binary ideology of gender is identicial with the scientific consensus on sex, indeed that your personal beliefs are somehow the scientific consensus on sex, despite not resembling that consensus in the slightest.

I don't subscribe to a binary concept of gender; and I reject gender ideology in its entirety. So you're completely wrong.

Gender is - as you say - a social construct enforced on top of sex. It's a set of stereotypes and confining roles that are foisted onto members of each sex, and result in social limits being placed on those sexes. But those stereotypes are not the result of sex - they are not driven by sex. And those social stereotypes and roles vary considerably by culture and by era.

What I take as the definition of sex is the definition used by the vast majority of evolutionary biologists. It's a definition that is universally applicable across all anisogamous species, and which is driven by the observable result of evolution in sexually reproductive species. It's not a "personal belief". Furthermore, the definition that I use does not contain even the tiniest whiff of gender, let alone gender ideology.

I will ask again: What have I posted that gives you the impression that I have in any fashion conflated gender ideology and biological sex?

 

[Jarhyn]

In mammals, X and Y chromosomes are the mechanisms by which sex is determined.

Except it isn't. It's the SRY gene that is involved in particular, and it is no more than "involved". The outcome can as much be an effect of something else triggering certain events, or by something causing the initial chain reaction started by the SRY to arrest.

The more accurate statement, but nonetheless a statement that kneecaps your agenda, is "in humans, the SRY gene is the mechanism by which many aspects of biological sex are most often determined". The issue with this is that there is no pathway from there to actualization of your pro-normalist agenda.

 

[Politesse]

"Gender" and "sex" were synonyms in English for about six hundred years, and they still are in the common usage of normal people who haven't gone down the newspeak rabbit hole.

Otherwise known as having a high school diploma...

Do you say the smae thing about all specialized language? "Astronomy" and "astrology" meant the same thing back in the day, and still do to people who know jack shit about either, so let's just ignore science!

Just so we're clear... sex is synonymous with astronomy, and gender is synonymous with astrology.

If that's the case, what you're doing by confusing your gender ideology for the real biological sciences is the equivalent of demanding that other people acknowledge the scientific reality of horoscopes.

In what way do you think I'm conflating gender ideology for biological sciences? What have I posted that gives you this impression?

Because you keep insisting that your strictly binary ideology of gender is identicial with the scientific consensus on sex, indeed that your personal beliefs are somehow the scientific consensus on sex, despite not resembling that consensus in the slightest.

I don't subscribe to a binary concept of gender; and I reject gender ideology in its entirety. So you're completely wrong.

Gender is - as you say - a social construct enforced on top of sex. It's a set of stereotypes and confining roles that are foisted onto members of each sex, and result in social limits being placed on those sexes. But those stereotypes are not the result of sex - they are not driven by sex. And those social stereotypes and roles vary considerably by culture and by era.

What I take as the definition of sex is the definition used by the vast majority of evolutionary biologists. It's a definition that is universally applicable across all anisogamous species, and which is driven by the observable result of evolution in sexually reproductive species. It's not a "personal belief". Furthermore, the definition that I use does not contain even the tiniest whiff of gender, let alone gender ideology.

I will ask again: What have I posted that gives you the impression that I have in any fashion conflated gender ideology and biological sex?

I have bolded the section is in which you do so, for clarity. You are unable to distinguish between your gender assumptions and what you believe biological sex to be, and imagine that "evolutionary biologists" back you up on this despite the fact that you are making claims most evolutionary biologists would not endorse.

 

[Emily Lake]

In mammals, X and Y chromosomes are the mechanisms by which sex is determined.

Except it isn't. It's the SRY gene that is involved in particular, and it is no more than "involved". The outcome can as much be an effect of something else triggering certain events, or by something causing the initial chain reaction started by the SRY to arrest.

The more accurate statement, but nonetheless a statement that kneecaps your agenda, is "in humans, the SRY gene is the mechanism by which many aspects of biological sex are most often determined". The issue with this is that there is no pathway from there to actualization of your pro-normalist agenda.

Yes, Jarhyn, I'm quite aware of the SRY gene's role, and have talked about it repeatedly. The SRY gene is located on the Y chromosome, except in cases of genetic mutation that cause it to be translocated onto the X. Its the activation of the SRY gene that causes the bi-potential fetal reproductive tract to diverge down either a mullerian or a wolffian pathway.

The fact that sometimes something goes wrong does not invalidate that chromosomes are the means by which humans evolved sexual determination.

Most reptiles have evolved so that temperature during egg incubation drives that determination. The fact that in some rare cases temperature fluctuations can result in strange things happening doesn't invalidate that temperature is the mechanism.

 

[Emily Lake]

I don't subscribe to a binary concept of gender; and I reject gender ideology in its entirety. So you're completely wrong.

Gender is - as you say - a social construct enforced on top of sex. It's a set of stereotypes and confining roles that are foisted onto members of each sex, and result in social limits being placed on those sexes. But those stereotypes are not the result of sex - they are not driven by sex. And those social stereotypes and roles vary considerably by culture and by era.

What I take as the definition of sex is the definition used by the vast majority of evolutionary biologists. It's a definition that is universally applicable across all anisogamous species, and which is driven by the observable result of evolution in sexually reproductive species. It's not a "personal belief". Furthermore, the definition that I use does not contain even the tiniest whiff of gender, let alone gender ideology.

I will ask again: What have I posted that gives you the impression that I have in any fashion conflated gender ideology and biological sex?

I have bolded the section is in which you do so, for clarity. You are unable to distinguish between your gender assumptions and what you believe biological sex to be, and imagine that "evolutionary biologists" back you up on this despite the fact that you are making claims most evolutionary biologists would not endorse.

What do you think evolutionary biologists use as the definition of sex?
In what way do you think that my view differs from that?
What part of my view of sex includes gender at all, let alone conflates the two?

There is literally nothing in the bolded section that conflates gender and sex. What you've bolded does not support your claim.

 

[Jarhyn]

Yes, Jarhyn, I'm quite aware of the SRY gene's role, and have talked about it repeatedly.

Clearly not enough because instead of using all those additional words and discussing SRY, you did not do any of those things.

except in cases of genetic mutation

So, your "is" is already a fail then, because you failed to actually say it correctly.

Every time you fail to make the correct statement, you are failing to understand that there is no "right" or "wrong" to "go to" there. There's a third behavioral cluster of options available to everyone who doesn't that you want to treat as weird mutations rather than actual important evolutionary behaviors.

What do you think evolutionary biologists use as the definition of sex?

A definition that isn't exclusionary to exceptions, but which is instead inclusive. We have some discussing of selection pressures in evolutionary biology specifically to "non-reproduction".

 

[Politesse]

The modern notion of biological sex is barely more than a century old. Of the two, it is most certainly the newcomer. Whereas people had cultural and religious notions about "womanhood" and "masculinity" and "boyishness" and "male and female He hath made them" and all the rest for thousands of years before anything as concrete as a chromosome was ever discovered. Nor was there such a thing as forensic anthropology when your precious gender ideology was inchoate. But as soon as we started to unravel the osteological markers of sex at all, it was immediately recognized that there are occasional indeterminate cases, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the usually unknowable factor of gender. Your continued, belligerent confusion of sex and gender continue to obfuscate the conversation unnecessarily.

Yep, for millions and millions of years, it's been totally just random chance that any mammals have managed to successfully reproduce. It's totally been a complete and utter mystery as to which members of any given species are the ones that gestate the babies, and which are the ones that inseminate the gestators.

For tens of millions of years, across millions of species, sex has not been a random guess. And chromosomes are not what defines sex. In mammals, X and Y chromosomes are the mechanisms by which sex is determined. In this context "determined" doesn't mean "figure out", it means "causes to develop". In birds, it's W and Z chromosomes. In reptiles, it's temperature. The mechanism that any species uses to determine sex doesn't change the fundamental characteristic of sex. And just because we've only been able to identify those mechanisms relatively recently doesn't mean that the mechanisms themselves are new, nor does it mean that before that time we couldn't tell which of us were the men and which were the women.

You claim that even with knowledge of the osteological markers of sex, there are occasional indeterminate cases. Can you put some numbers to that? I don't need seven decimal places, just a reasonable approximation will do.

If you have an intact adult human skeleton, what is the likelihood that sex will be indeterminate?

Intact skeletons are not the norm, and accuracy of sex determinations is extremely difficult to confirm. At the CRM lab I used to work for, we were able to put forward a confident sex determination for around 70% of the remains we examined. If we'd had "perfect", laboratory model-like specimens to work with every time, the proportion would have been rather different, likely more like 95%-99%. Some populations are easier to sex than others, and it matters what you have at hand, with pelvic remains being the most reliably diagnostic. But it's not as easy as you are thinking to confirm whether laboratory estimations of sex are accurate in any case. Accurate by what metric? We have greater or lesser degrees of confidence in such estimations, but only in a certain very specific cases - such as the when the taphonomic markers of pregnancy are present- can our guesses be confirmed with 100% certainty, even if we feel considerable confidence in those estimations.

 

[Emily Lake]

Yes, Jarhyn, I'm quite aware of the SRY gene's role, and have talked about it repeatedly.

Clearly not enough because instead of using all those additional words and discussing SRY, you did not do any of those things.

It's unecessary to go through seventeen pages of super-specificity every single time in order to discuss something that everyone - except you apparently - already understands. Especially when I have previously gone through that specificity multiple times.

except in cases of genetic mutation

So, your "is" is already a fail then, because you failed to actually say it correctly.

Every time you fail to make the correct statement, you are failing to understand that there is no "right" or "wrong" to "go to" there. There's a third behavioral cluster of options available to everyone who doesn't that you want to treat as weird mutations rather than actual important evolutionary behaviors.

Genetic transcription errors are errors. Mutations are mutations. Deleterious somatic conditions aren't "behaviors".

You're the only person here ascribing some kind of moral judgment to that.

What do you think evolutionary biologists use as the definition of sex?

A definition that isn't exclusionary to exceptions, but which is instead inclusive. We have some discussing of selection pressures in evolutionary biology specifically to "non-reproduction".

Selection pressures that drive toward non-reproducing members of the species do not actually change the nature of sex within that species. You're still male, even if you are no longer intact. I'm still female, even though I did not have kids and am fast approaching menopause.

Also, you didn't provide a definition of any sort. You merely handwaved in the direction of some vague notion and made a reference to something unrelated. Would you care to give it another go?

 

[Politesse]

What do you think evolutionary biologists use as the definition of sex?

There is no single answer to this question, as not all evolutionary biologists agree to a single definition of biological sex. This isn't the Vatican, there are no doctrines.

I find it interesting that you want me to critique what I think your personal definition of sex might be, rather than simply stating outright what that definition is.

 

[Emily Lake]

The modern notion of biological sex is barely more than a century old. Of the two, it is most certainly the newcomer. Whereas people had cultural and religious notions about "womanhood" and "masculinity" and "boyishness" and "male and female He hath made them" and all the rest for thousands of years before anything as concrete as a chromosome was ever discovered. Nor was there such a thing as forensic anthropology when your precious gender ideology was inchoate. But as soon as we started to unravel the osteological markers of sex at all, it was immediately recognized that there are occasional indeterminate cases, for reasons that have nothing at all to do with the usually unknowable factor of gender. Your continued, belligerent confusion of sex and gender continue to obfuscate the conversation unnecessarily.

Yep, for millions and millions of years, it's been totally just random chance that any mammals have managed to successfully reproduce. It's totally been a complete and utter mystery as to which members of any given species are the ones that gestate the babies, and which are the ones that inseminate the gestators.

For tens of millions of years, across millions of species, sex has not been a random guess. And chromosomes are not what defines sex. In mammals, X and Y chromosomes are the mechanisms by which sex is determined. In this context "determined" doesn't mean "figure out", it means "causes to develop". In birds, it's W and Z chromosomes. In reptiles, it's temperature. The mechanism that any species uses to determine sex doesn't change the fundamental characteristic of sex. And just because we've only been able to identify those mechanisms relatively recently doesn't mean that the mechanisms themselves are new, nor does it mean that before that time we couldn't tell which of us were the men and which were the women.

You claim that even with knowledge of the osteological markers of sex, there are occasional indeterminate cases. Can you put some numbers to that? I don't need seven decimal places, just a reasonable approximation will do.

If you have an intact adult human skeleton, what is the likelihood that sex will be indeterminate?

Intact skeletons are not the norm, and accuracy of sex determinations is extremely difficult to confirm. At the CRM lab I used to work for, we were able to put forward a confident sex determination for around 70% of the remains we examined. If we'd had "perfect", laboratory model-like specimens to work with every time, the proportion would have been rather different, likely more like 95%-99%. Some populations are easier to sex than others, and it matters what you have at hand, with pelvic remains being the most reliably diagnostic. But it's not as easy as you are thinking to confirm whether laboratory estimations of sex are accurate in any case. Accurate by what metric? We have greater or lesser degrees of confidence in such estimations, but only in a certain very specific cases - such as the when the taphonomic markers of pregnancy are present- can our guesses be confirmed with 100% certainty, even if we feel considerable confidence in those estimations.

You put a lot of words into this, and most of them are based around situations in which you DO NOT have an intact human skeleton.

"Accurate by what metric", sheesh. By the metric of "Is this INTACT ADULT skeleton one that belongs to the sex that bears children within the human species, or the sex that impregnates the child-bearers?

I am genuinely curious though. What populations of humans have pelvic structures that do NOT differ by sex in a material fashion? Is there a population of homo sapiens out there in which the pelvic opening, pelvic tilt, and attachment angle of the femurs did NOT evolve differently by sex?

 

[Emily Lake]

What do you think evolutionary biologists use as the definition of sex?

There is no single answer to this question, as not all evolutionary biologists agree to a single definition of biological sex. This isn't the Vatican, there are no doctrines.

I find it interesting that you want me to critique what I think your personal definition of sex might be, rather than simply stating outright what that definition is.

Can you provide a definition at all?

Right now, it looks a lot like you're busy saying that there's no consensus that humans have affected the climate of the earth, because not all climatologists agree.

And on the other hand, Jarhyn is busy arguing that there's totally a scientific consensus that the definition of sex is based on psychological attributes and gender identity and that our reproductive systems are totally unreliable for telling who is male and who is female.

 

[lpetrich]

My revised list of human sexed/gendered features:

• (Primary) Gonads and their gametes -- rigid binary. Are there any intersex gametes?
• (Primary) Genitals -- bimodal
• Secondary anatomical features -- bimodal
• (Secondary) Personality -- much less difference than in common stereotypes, but a little bit. Bimodal?
• (Secondary) Psychological gender identity -- bimodal
• (Tertiary) Gender presentation -- bimodal

We can have a mixture of sexings/genderings of these features.

 

[Jarhyn]

It's unecessary to go through seventeen pages of super-specificity every single time in order to discuss something that everyone - except you apparently - already understands.

No, it is absolutely necessary when discussing precisely whether things "are" or simply "are somewhat like", in a technical discussion of what sex is.

Precision matters when discussing something precisely.

It may not be important when discussing it I general terms with a 4 year old, for example, but it is extremely important when discussing it to the level of precision where the edge cases are the topic.

My revised list of human sexed/gendered features:

• (Primary) Gonads and their gametes -- rigid binary. Are there any intersex gametes?
• (Primary) Genitals -- bimodal
• Secondary anatomical features -- bimodal
• (Secondary) Personality -- much less difference than in common stereotypes, but a little bit. Bimodal?
• (Secondary) Psychological gender identity -- bimodal
• (Tertiary) Gender presentation -- bimodal

We can have a mixture of sexings/genderings of these features.

Gonads can in fact be non-strict binary. They are more like the A and B of blood types, and some people do produce both for various reasons.

I would also pose that personality and psych identity and behavioral drivers are more polymodal than bimodal, since there is set of "third roles" that can and will emerge among tool using species driven by NOT reproducing.

 

[Emily Lake]

My revised list of human sexed/gendered features:

• (Primary) Gonads and their gametes -- rigid binary. Are there any intersex gametes?
• (Primary) Genitals -- bimodal
• Secondary anatomical features -- bimodal
• (Secondary) Personality -- much less difference than in common stereotypes, but a little bit. Bimodal?
• (Secondary) Psychological gender identity -- bimodal
• (Tertiary) Gender presentation -- bimodal

We can have a mixture of sexings/genderings of these features.

I'll counter with:

Sexed features:

• Primary sex characteristics (binary): the reproductive system, comprised of gonads, internal and external genitals
• Secondary sex characteristics (strongly bimodal): those characteristics that are directly linked to the mechanism for determining sex - this includes breast growth, shape and angle of the pelvis, angle at which the femur joins the hip in females; facial hair growth, thickening of the larynx, thickening of leg and arm hair, growth of chest hair in males
• Sex-correlated characteristics (bimodal, often with significant overlap): those that are correlated with the sexes but are not explicitly linked to sex determining mechanism - this includes some behavioral tendencies, face shape, height, hand and foot size, etc. It also includes traits that have a materially varying prevalence by sex because of their recessivity being paired with one chromosome or the other, such as color-blindness being far more common in men because it's a recessive gene that is carried on the X chromosome with no dominant counterpart on the Y

Gendered attributes:

• Culturally imbued behavioral expectations (non-distributed, highly variable): those behaviors that are learned and conditioned, often enforced on the basis of sex, but which show considerable variance by culture and era, and are thus not considered innate behavioral tendencies. This includes things like boys not being allowed to cry, girls being praised for being quiet and docile, etc.
• Culturally created presentation norms (non-distributed, highly variable): Ways in which society defines the outward trappings that are used to visually signal sex. This includes things like trousers for men and skirts for women, hijab and burka, hair styles, shoes, even color selections

Somewhere in between:
This is more complex. There are some elements that are partially evolutionary in origin, but are also strongly influenced by social constructs.

• This includes some elements of expression, such as make-up, that are currently used predominantly by women, but which have supporting evidence of historical use being dominate by women as well. For example, reddening the lips and cheeks and lining the eyes are modes of ornamentation that are much more common among women. There are some reasonable arguments that this is an aspect of sexual selection that mimics ovulation and nubility in females, thus amplifying their attractiveness to males for reproductive purposes.
• It also includes a degree of social roles, based on the disparate burden of reproduction within our species. For example, women tend to be more drawn to social roles that involve caregiving, with could very reasonably be viewed as an innate characteristic based on the need to gestate and provide immediate care and nurturing for infants and young children. This can be exaggerated by social constraints, resulting in women being limited to only serving in care-giver and nurturer roles within a society, and being precluded from participation in roles outside of that.

 

[Emily Lake]

It's unecessary to go through seventeen pages of super-specificity every single time in order to discuss something that everyone - except you apparently - already understands.

No, it is absolutely necessary when discussing precisely whether things "are" or simply "are somewhat like", in a technical discussion of what sex is.

Precision matters when discussing something precisely.

It may not be important when discussing it I general terms with a 4 year old, for example, but it is extremely important when discussing it to the level of precision where the edge cases are the topic.

My revised list of human sexed/gendered features:

• (Primary) Gonads and their gametes -- rigid binary. Are there any intersex gametes?
• (Primary) Genitals -- bimodal
• Secondary anatomical features -- bimodal
• (Secondary) Personality -- much less difference than in common stereotypes, but a little bit. Bimodal?
• (Secondary) Psychological gender identity -- bimodal
• (Tertiary) Gender presentation -- bimodal

We can have a mixture of sexings/genderings of these features.

Gonads can in fact be non-strict binary. They are more like the A and B of blood types, and some people do produce both for various reasons.

There are only two types of gametes in anisogamous species; there are only two types of gonads and each type of gonad produces one or the other gamete.