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Comment on Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi

LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

I’m not conflating them, I am showing that a textbook definition and working definition are not the same thing. Human society functions on working definitions of sex, which are almost universally appearance based. It all comes down to what a doctor sees when you’re born. Thats the functional definition of sex in terms of human society. Thats what sex means to people in day to day life. What your physical body looks like upon visual examination.

You’ve still refused to answer for the shortcomings of your provided textbook definition. What sex is an organism that produces no gametes? What sex is an organism that produces both? Both of those things are things that can and do happen, to humans as well. Does someone’s sex change once they no longer produce any gametes? Your definition of binary sex must necessarily account for every single one of these cases and still find a way to sort them all into 2 categories without any exceptions.

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chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I’m talking about a working definition for biologists in a research setting, not for colloquial use. We’re in the science memes community. The original meme in question is about mycologists and botanists, both working scientists in biology.

What a doctor sees when a human baby is born has nothing to do with plants or fungi. And if you’re studying plants (for example) and happen to produce one that can’t produce gametes of its own (such as a seedless watermelon) you just refer to that as sterile offspring. It doesn’t factor into your working definition of sex, it’s just one of many variations that happen to (in this case adversely) affect reproduction.

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- LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  Since I don’t think fungi have a social structure, those are sexes. Humans have two Sexes but also gender expression, conflating those is how transphobes come to their views.
  
  This is the comment I was responding to. Rejecting an organism as sterile offspring does literally nothing to answer what sex that organism is. What sex is the “sterile offspring”?
  
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  - chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Well in the case of the plant, most plants have both male and female parts. Asking “which sex is this plant?” is a meaningless question, even if one of those parts is absent or improperly formed.
    
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    LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I’ll now return to your original comment.
    
    No, we only have 2 sexes. Sperm producers and egg producers. We call those male and female. All of the other stuff is window dressing.
    
    Some people do not produce a gamete. Some people can produce both. What sex are each of those people? One person is assigned female at birth and another person is assigned male at birth, but they are both sterile and incapable of producing any gametes. Are they the same sex? What sex are they?
    
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