08/26/2023
Did you know? There are only two gametes.
Fertilization occurs when a male and female gamete combine and make the worst decision of their young lives.
Biological sex is the way organisms organize their sex characteristics for the purpose of reproduction. It is a bodily reality. Sex is not determined by any one specific sex trait; the ability to reproduce relies on certain sex characteristics working together in order to function. One’s biological sex is a constellation of different traits working together. We find two forms of biological sex characteristics that are needed to successfully reproduce the species: male sex characteristics and female sex characteristics. For biological reproduction, males have mostly male sex characteristics and females have mostly female sex characteristics.
We distinguish between primary sex characteristics and secondary sex characteristics. Primary sex characteristics are directly involved in reproduction, including the production of gametes which are mature haploid germ cells that have undergone the process of meiosis. Secondary sex characteristics are the physical characteristic of an organism related to or derived from its sex, but not directly part of its reproductive system. Sex characteristics exist in a hierarchy of importance or value depending on the purpose. For the purposes of biological reproduction, primary sex characteristics are at the top of the organizational hierarchy in comparison to secondary sex characteristics.
On either end of this binary, you have people with the ideal organization of sex characteristics for reproduction, people that are the most fertile, i.e., that have the best pathways & relations for a male gamete to encounter a female gamete. This ideal organization for reproduction is unique in each person, as things like genetics, environment, hormone levels will always differ with each individual. So you have many different variations on the organization that can still produce the outcome of maximum fertility. This is because everyone’s body has a degree of novelty when compared to other bodies. If you want to bring mother nature into this—and you do—each individual is an experiment of organizational tactics to reproduce, and may the fittest survive.
Between the two ideals, you have a spectrum of different ways bodies organize sex characteristics. Some of these organizations have significantly lower rates of reproduction, some require human interventions to become a fertile organization, and some are entirely infertile. Even in infertile cases, we still consider these organizations male or female, not because of some higher purpose they failed to achieve, but because these organizations still contain mostly male or female traits and all the maladies and misfortunes that they entail.
To say that biology is unchanging is utterly absurd and one of the least scientific statements you could possibly make. The fundamental characteristic that biological things have that non-biological things don’t have is the ability to change and adapt on one’s own. Biological sex is not immutable, it naturally changes over time, and is malleable. We are born with traits that can have the function of reproduction, but are immature and have other functions besides reproduction. For instance, genitals are used for a variety of things, most importantly urination. A phallus is morphologically a male sex characteristic that under the right circumstances can have the function of sexual reproduction, but does not always have that function.
We enter puberty, experience crippling existential angst, and we gain additional sex traits including the activation of processes, functions, and/or new networks of relations. The endocrine system dramatically increases the amount of steroids in our body, especially testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, Follicle Stimulating Hormone, Leutropin. These are steroids, meaning they stimulate organs in the body to grow. These hormones not only cause growth in your reproductive system but also cause growth in most organs throughout your body. Furthermore, all of these hormones exist in both male & female bodies, the sexual difference is the levels of each hormone. Because of the adaptability of the human body, if you give someone with XX chromosomes male hormone levels, the XX chromosome cells will respond similarly to cells with XY chromosomes and vice-versa with female hormone levels & XY chromosomes.
As the ravages of time continue, the organization of our biological sex continues to change often leading people towards infertility.
If you wanna go way back—and by wayback I mean the womb—the OG sex characteristics are genes & chromosomes, and yes these actually are two different characteristics.
Regardless you find two proto-reproductive organs in an embryo, the Wolffian Ducts & the Mullerian Ducts which exist by about the third month of gestation. At this period, there is only one proto-genital organization. Around the 3rd-4th month of gestation, based on a combination of genetics, chromosomes, and hormones, sexual dimorphism begins. One of the ducts will grow and develop, and the other will atrophy. The uni-proto-genitals will also begin to dimorphize into the many organizations we know & love.
In the middle of this spectral binary, you begin to find incongruent organizations that mix female & male sex characteristics together in ways hitherto unknown. We call these organizations intersex.
While there are only two kinds of gametes, we find multiple forms of chromosomal organization, multiple genetic variants, multiple ways genitalia are constructed, and so on.
Intersex organizations often can be categorized as more female than male or vice-versa because of the propensity of one set of traits over the other. What is key to the category of intersex is the inclusion of sex characteristics we typically do not find in male or female organizations. For instance, a person with primarily female sex characteristics having an XY karyotype, or a person with primarily male sex characteristics having an XX karyotype.
It is a misnomer to simply say intersex organizations are disordered, because if we’re talking about for the purpose of biological reproduction, many intersex organizations are fertile to a greater or lesser degree. So, in order to make sense of biological sex, we to have add to our spectral binary between male & female, another spectral binary of fertile & infertile. With this new map the different organizations are looking far more complicated than a strict male-female binary.
As was mentioned, sex characteristics can be changed through human interventions. Not all sex characteristics can be changed via artificial means, but many can.
A person’s gonads, gametes, germ cells, various reproductive organs can be removed. A person’s genitals can be changed to a morphology more similar to another sex. The levels of the various sex hormones one has can also be altered which dramatically changes one’s various sex characteristics.
A person who changes their sex characteristics away from their birth sex is called a transsexual, though one does not have to change all of their alterable sex characteristics in order to be transsexual. Medically transitioning typically renders a person infertile. A transsexual person’s sex characteristics are organized so that one’s secondary sex characteristics are at the top of the organizational hierarchy. So, there are multiple ways one can organize their sex characteristics for different purposes entirely unrelated to biological reproduction.
Another purpose of biological sex is sexual desire, and this also shows us unique ways of organizing physical traits and functions independent of reproduction. While sexual desire can exist as a powerful incentive to reproduce the species, many times reproduction is irrelevant to the production of desire.
Erogenous zones are areas of the human body that have heightened sensitivity, the stimulation of which may generate a sexual response, such as relaxation, sexual fantasies, sexual arousal and orgasm. Beyond genitalia, nearly every part of a person’s external body can be an erogenous zone, which includes but is not limited too: lips, mouth, neck, ears, armpits, thighs, feet, anus, buttocks.
None of these body parts have anything to do with biological reproduction proper but are nevertheless ways in which sex characteristics can be organized to fulfill the purpose of sexual desire. And, each individual person will have their own unique ways of organizing these bodily characteristics in order to achieve maximum pleasure.
In conclusion, while there are only two gametes and reproductive sex characteristics normatively fall within the two categories of male & female, there are innumerable ways in which these characteristics can be organized for a wide range of purposes.
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