First I agree that these are people and must be treated with respect. I think you're too dismissive the the binary position.
There are two biological functions, male and female. The typical presentation of these align genotype and phenotype creating functionality for propagation of the species. Along with this comes an array of social and cultural institutions around gender and family.
Intersex people as you laid out either have a genetic disorder which happens and almost always leaves the individual infertile. Again, these things happen and we should respect the dignity of these people. Alternatively there is a misalignment not allowing expression which again loses function and infertility.
1) Intersex is compositional of a binary sex. Partially referencing one or the other. It is plausible to have binary categories and have cases of blend caused by obvious biological abnormalities (such at the atypical number of chromosomes).
2) The two sexes are functional. A third category explicitly lacks unique or sexual function. Again, this is a narrow statement as it relates to sexual categories and gender, and with the greatest respect for all of those struggling with infertility -- human capacity is not reducible to fertility and sex. However, if we're defining categories explicitly related to sexual function in biology and culture, the absence of function leaves a category without purpose.
If this was a logic puzzle the existence of an exception will destroy a binary. In the world of biology and cultural norms, weird things are expected and don't disassemble functional models. We have all sorts of biological disorders where we as humans lose function. Sometimes that happens in sexual function and we get blends and exceptions, not new categories. I guess I don't see this as a major philosophical challenge to a binary view of sex and gender, but maybe I'm a naive conservative.
Thanks for reading! It sounds to me like what you're describing is close to a bimodal distribution model—we have the two norms, male and female, and we should expect there to be some overlap because of biological imperfection. The kind of naive binary I had in mind is the literal "everyone is either fully male, or fully female, and there are no exceptions".
The questions at the end really are questions, by the way; I don't have answers to them yet, so I appreciate hearing thoughts from various perspectives.
I would be more aligned with two core functional categories with several exceptional blends. Bimodal implies some sexual continuum and because of the multi dimensionality of anatomy, genetics, physiology, and hormonal patterns I think the state space of a distribution is best reduced to two primary zones if functional sexuality and some small clusters of distinct blends, not a unidimensional (or bi dimensional) continuum.
First I agree that these are people and must be treated with respect. I think you're too dismissive the the binary position.
There are two biological functions, male and female. The typical presentation of these align genotype and phenotype creating functionality for propagation of the species. Along with this comes an array of social and cultural institutions around gender and family.
Intersex people as you laid out either have a genetic disorder which happens and almost always leaves the individual infertile. Again, these things happen and we should respect the dignity of these people. Alternatively there is a misalignment not allowing expression which again loses function and infertility.
1) Intersex is compositional of a binary sex. Partially referencing one or the other. It is plausible to have binary categories and have cases of blend caused by obvious biological abnormalities (such at the atypical number of chromosomes).
2) The two sexes are functional. A third category explicitly lacks unique or sexual function. Again, this is a narrow statement as it relates to sexual categories and gender, and with the greatest respect for all of those struggling with infertility -- human capacity is not reducible to fertility and sex. However, if we're defining categories explicitly related to sexual function in biology and culture, the absence of function leaves a category without purpose.
If this was a logic puzzle the existence of an exception will destroy a binary. In the world of biology and cultural norms, weird things are expected and don't disassemble functional models. We have all sorts of biological disorders where we as humans lose function. Sometimes that happens in sexual function and we get blends and exceptions, not new categories. I guess I don't see this as a major philosophical challenge to a binary view of sex and gender, but maybe I'm a naive conservative.
Thanks for reading! It sounds to me like what you're describing is close to a bimodal distribution model—we have the two norms, male and female, and we should expect there to be some overlap because of biological imperfection. The kind of naive binary I had in mind is the literal "everyone is either fully male, or fully female, and there are no exceptions".
The questions at the end really are questions, by the way; I don't have answers to them yet, so I appreciate hearing thoughts from various perspectives.
I would be more aligned with two core functional categories with several exceptional blends. Bimodal implies some sexual continuum and because of the multi dimensionality of anatomy, genetics, physiology, and hormonal patterns I think the state space of a distribution is best reduced to two primary zones if functional sexuality and some small clusters of distinct blends, not a unidimensional (or bi dimensional) continuum.