First, there are not Platonic ideals in biology or science. Nature is what nature is and we try to characterize it as best we can, knowing that we will always fall short. The number of births you cite is very high and does not conform to any studies that I know of. The most common abberant karyotype is Down's syndrome which does not affect the sex chromosomes. Sex chromosome abnormalities comprise much of the other abberant karyotypes and this is a far smaller number of births than you cite. Moreover, many individuals who are born alive exhibiting birth defects that affect the gonads also have other significant health problems that result in early death and disease.
To use the very small number of people who are born with problems that affect the sex organs and androgenic hormones to try and make the case that there is a "continuum" of gender is statistically wrong, scientifically wrong and morally wrong.
I dare say that most of these individuals would very much like not to have the problems they have.
To define male and female as XY and XX karyotypes, respectively, does not deny any significant number of people a gender identity. First, people can claim whatever gender they want, as far as I'm concerned. Second, there is no reason to characterize people who suffer from genetic disease as anything but people who suffer from genetic disease.
Finally, the point you make about homosexuals is well-taken. I do not define gender by sexual practice. In fact, that is the idea I am arguing against. I think the social fetishization of gender is the problem. The truth is there are two genders and attempts on the Left to muddy this are no better than attempts on the Right to over-define these categories and hang them with a bunch of taboos in an unscientific way.
boddi
On 11/18/05, Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> boddi satva lbo.boddi at gmail.com
> Thu Nov 17 13:55:53 PST 2005:
>
> > What I'm saying is that we should define things in a way that's
> > definable
>
> Human beings can define ourselves in potentially infinite ways.
> After all, biology is continuum, even at the level of chromosomes.
> "Approximately 1.7% of all live births do not conform to a Platonic
> ideal of absolute sex chromosome, gonadal, genital, and hormonal
> dimorphism" (Melanie Blackless, Anthony Charuvastra, Amanda Derryck,
> Anne Fausto-Sterling, Karl Lauzanne, Ellen Lee, "How Sexually
> Dimorphic Are We? Review and Synthesis". American Journal of Human
> Biology 12, <http://bms.brown.edu/faculty/f/afs/dimorphic.pdf>, p.
> 161). That's about 110 million individuals who don't fit into "male"
> and "female" categories. Considering the large number, we might say
> that two sexes capture biological differences less adequately than
> three sexes -- male, female, and intersex -- can.
>
> By now, it's a convention -- across disciplines, from natural to
> social sciences -- to refer to biological differences as sexes and
> distinct social roles and statuses in a society's particular division
> of labor (which changes over time and varies across cultures) as
> genders.
>
> Here is an example of momentous social change:
> <blockquote>Historically, fathers had the right to custody and
> control of their children. This right complemented the father's
> obligation to support and discipline the child and stemmed from the
> original assertion that wives and children were men's property. The
> father custody rule was attacked in the latter part of the nineteenth
> century by feminists and social welfare advocates who urged placing
> the child's interests above paternal privilege. Maternal custody
> became practical only when the system considered paternal financial
> obligations to be appropriately fulfilled through the institution of
> child support payments. The primary judicial inquiry as to custody
> thus became what was "in the best interest of the child."
>
> Courts quickly evolved rules to assist in making the best-interest
> determination. Fit mothers were given custody of children under the
> age of seven or so and the "same-sex" preference dictated that
> preparation for adult roles mandated older boys went with their
> fathers while girls remained with mothers.
>
> For most of this century, maternal custody has been the norm, with
> over 85 percent of children residing with their mothers after divorce.
>
> <http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/women/html/
> wh_010100_divorceandcu.htm></blockquote>
>
> No change in men and women's bodies caused the big change in
> assignment of custody. It was a social movement that changed
> distinct rights and duties assigned to men and women respectively --
> in other words, genders.
>
> That is not to say that our bodies and our biological experiences of
> sexuality, unlike genders, are unchanging. Probably the most
> significant change is that average life expectancies in rich
> countries have become so long. In ancient Rome, life expectancy at
> birth was about 25, and even the Romans who managed to survive till
> 15 could expect to live till only about 52 (at <http://www.utexas.edu/
> depts/classics/documents/Life.html>). Today in the United States,
> life expectancy at birth is 74.5 for men and 79.9 for women (<http://
> www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf#027>). On one hand, that
> means men and women today have longer sexual lives than they used to
> (well-nourished, their bodies mature sexually faster than their
> ancestors' and they live much longer than their ancestors); on the
> other hand, men and women today live for a long time -- about three
> decades (cf. <http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/pipermail/lbo-talk/Week-of-
> Mon-20051114/024833.html>) -- after their hormone level declines
> diminish their sexual capacity and sometimes interest as well.
> That's the changed biological reality that today's men and women have
> yet to fully assimilate well into their conceptions of themselves.
> Far from putting sexuality into perspective and enjoying the last
> years of their lives non-sexually, they are expected to remedy their
> "problem" through pharmaceuticals.
> > Yoshie,
> > Again, GAY.
> > boddi
> The idea that there are distinct categories of human beings --
> homosexuals and heterosexuals -- who have distinct group sexual
> personalities is a really historically new one -- it was born in only
> the late nineteenth century, and to this day it is not a universally
> accepted idea. Some pre-modern societies approved of and even
> philosophically exalted same-sex love and sex -- (e.g., ancient
> Greece and pre-modern Japan) -- while others disapproved of it (e.g.,
> much of the Christian West from at least the 12th century till the
> mid-20th century), but among pre-modern societies, whether they
> approved or disapproved same-sex love and sex, none had a notion that
> some are homosexuals while others are heterosexuals.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi
> <http://montages.blogspot.com>
> <http://monthlyreview.org>
> <http://mrzine.org>
>
>
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