Zoe Ellen Brain
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

“ If humans stop breeding (something that will happen if we finally mix and match and loose are gender diversion) we will be extinct.”

And your evidence for this is? That if we acknowledge biological reality that will lead to humans no longer breeding?

Consider the naked mole rat. They have 3 sexes, one of the few mammals that do. 2 of the sexes are fertile. One is not. Yet somehow they continue to exist.

Or consider ants, that have a similar setup. They seem to be doing quite well, don’t they? And have done for some considerable time.

Intersex people exist. Some are not completely infertile — a few are biological parents. Some of them naturally change sex too.

Science 1974 Dec 27; 186 (4170): 1213–5

In an isolated village of the southwestern Dominican Republic, 2% of the live births were in the 1970’s, guevedoces…. These children appeared to be girls at birth, but at puberty these ‘girls’ sprout muscles, testes, and a penis. For the rest of their lives they are men in nearly all respects. Their underlying pathology was found to be a deficiency of the enzyme, 5-alpha Reductase.

That’s 5ARD. 17BHSD is similar. 3BHSD can cause a natural change in either direction, though usually before birth, only rarely later in life.

Such people — such human beings — exist. They have enough medical issues on their plate without religious or ideological believers claiming they are “un natural” — they’re not — or “against” any particular god or supernatural entity.

“ But we should accept that this is NOT NATURAL. It is a mutation.”

Mutations are natural. They are one of the drivers of evolution. Without continually replenishing genetic diversity, extinction is inevitable when conditions change too much. The downside is that most mutations decrease rather than increase survivability in the current environment, hence species are relatively stable in the short term. On an individual level, a mutation may be good for the species as a whole, but not so good for the individual with it. A worker ant for example can’t breed, yet is necessary for the hive to thrive.

“ And I also do not believe that you can “choose” what sex you belong to because that is dictated by your hormones during puberty. You DO NOT CHOOSE if you like men or women! It just so happens because of hormones.”

Nope, well, not completely. Hormones play a huge role, but they’re not the complete story, and many of the effects happen long before birth. Think about it — that’s why doctors can look at a newborn, and tell its sex correctly in the majority of cases. Not always, but often.

Maybe this will aid understanding. One of the many scientific papers the author refers to.

Sexual Hormones and the Brain: An Essential Alliance for Sexual Identity and Sexual Orientation Garcia-Falgueras A, Swaab DF Endocr Dev. 2010;17:22–35

The fetal brain develops during the intrauterine period in the male direction through a direct action of testosterone on the developing nerve cells, or in the female direction through the absence of this hormone surge. In this way, our gender identity (the conviction of belonging to the male or female gender) and sexual orientation are programmed or organized into our brain structures when we are still in the womb. However, since sexual differentiation of the genitals takes place in the first two months of pregnancy and sexual differentiation of the brain starts in the second half of pregnancy, these two processes can be influenced independently, which may result in extreme cases in trans-sexuality. This also means that in the event of ambiguous sex at birth, the degree of masculinization of the genitals may not reflect the degree of masculinization of the brain. There is no indication that social environment after birth has an effect on gender identity or sexual orientation.

You’re right that it’s not a matter of choice. But sex is not a strict binary, there are many counterexamples that disprove that. Even one would be enough.

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    Zoe Ellen Brain

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