There Are Only Two Genders - Change My Mind

Yes, only two.

There are only two sexes.  There are as many genders as people will delude themselves into believing in.

Two sexes, yes.

@YeshuaBought I implore you to address the biological statements I've made above that makes the argument that biology isn't simple, it's not black and white, it's shades of grey. There are far more sex chromosome combinations other than XX and XY. If you go purely biological then you already have many genders because you have many possible sex chromosome combinations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_chromosome_disorders

Look into each of these "simple biology" possible sex chromosome combinations. You will find XY individuals who can't possibly ever develop as male, and individuals who lack a Y chromosome yet still develop as male.

@YeshuaBought a little rude at the end there. Forget gender for this discussion. I am talking about biology. For instance take androgen insensitivity syndrome. 
I went ahead and grabbed the most relevant bit, but you should check the site out. 

"Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome occurs when the body cannot use androgens at all. People with this form of the condition have the external sex characteristics of females, but do not have a uterus and therefore do not menstruate and are unable to conceive a child (infertile). They are typically raised as females and have a female gender identity"

https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/androgen-insensitivity-syndrome

This is purely biology. Now tell me does biology tell you the gender of those affected by this? Biology says XY so you would say male, yet the majority of those affected by this say female. It's often that this syndrome isn't even discovered until that individual reaches puberty but never begins to menstruate.

I don't even intend this response to convince you that there is more than two genders, but instead to show you that biology does not translate into gender.

@YeshuaBought not only rude but you completely ignored my last post

YeshuaBought said:

@WordsMatter I am not going for this sjw crap. We are defined by our genetic code. You can't change your genetic code which is given by god.

You talk about "basic biology" and "our genetic code", yet you clearly disregard both. Basic biology says that our sex is defined by specific physical traits, so what happens if those traits vary from the standard ones found in men and women? If we're going to get to the genetic level, how would you classify someone with complete androgen insensitivity, who is genetically male and physically female, beyond the lack of certain reproductive organs? If genetics is everything, how do you classify someone with an extra sex chromosome? If you want to default to God, then do that, but don't pretend that the science backs you up on this. There are people that do not fit neatly into either sex, and the reason for that is based entirely in biological fact.

And, by the way, the "sjw" stuff you're talking about has to do with gender identity. This is about concrete characteristics, i.e. something that can be objectively diagnosed and does not have anything to do with a specific psychology. Recognizing that these types of people exist has nothing to do with political persuasion or even agreement with personal choices. There's no choice involved here to any degree - these people are what they are, and develop how they develop, regardless of their choices. If your choice is to deny the existence of these disorders, then you're fundamentally denying the existence of these people, and thus excluding from humanity anything that doesn't meet your definition of what makes a person a person.

Hi this is PyromanGaming I changed my account sorry I didn't get to responding to all of these arguments earlier I thought that this debate was abandoned.

@WordsMatter:

I don't believe that gender is a social construct. Gender for thousands of years meant the same thing as biological sex and it makes no sense why it was changed other than to have an indoctrination device for the transgender movement. If I define a donkey as a penguin, does it make it a penguin? I also would like to talk about Transgenderism in this debate because of its relation to this topic and because I think that people are straw manning the opposition (Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, me).

@Whiteflame:

I do understand the tiny population of intersex people. However, when we look at these people they will have a majority of characteristics being that of one sex, and from what I am aware there is no exception. Intersex people wouldn't be classified as a different gender, rather a state where you are in between genders. If there are people who we can't say which gender they are most closely related to, than we can let them decide. However, this doesn't mean that everyone should be allowed to decide what sex they are of.

@Agility_Dude

Alright, it seems as though you're angling to shift the discussion, so I'm going to address those efforts and then come back to the issue at hand.

The first of the shifts you're going for is with regards to the gender vs. sex debate, i.e. how is gender defined and is it distinct from sex? I realize your response was directed at someone else, but this is likely to be a sticking point. I've already had that debate, at some length, here: https://debateisland.com/discussion/1791/are-there-only-two-genders-sexes/ So, rather than having it again, I'm just going to angle to short-circuit it. Opinions on the matter of what gender means range, and they're based on clearly separate definitions of the term that both have merit. The idea that the definition you disagree with is wrong because it's the result of some "indoctrination device" sounds... vaguely conspiratorial and likely lacks any significant support... but I feel like this whole problem gets solved rather easily by simply shifting the term "gender" to "sex." From what I gather, at least for your purposes, the two are synonyms, so I don't see any problem with simply changing the title to "There Are Only Two Sexes - Change My Mind". The only thing that shifts is the term you're using to get your point across, which inherently muddies the debate and turns it into a definition war. If you want that kind of debate, go ahead, but it doesn't serve to answer your question in any meaningful way.

The second of the shifts is more puzzling, and it's in response to me. You start off by conceding the fact that there are intersex people. Regardless of how small that population is, they exist, and they are separate from the two sexes (male and female) in meaningful ways. I'll come back to that. You then switch gears and argue that the vast majority of people shouldn't be allowed to select their sex (though you acknowledge that cases may exist where this is necessary). Again, I feel like this is just making things more complicated and distracting from your central question. Sex isn't really something people assign to themselves (at least outside of the transgender movement, though, again, I feel like that's a distraction from this topic), it's a set of physical/genetic characteristics that allow a person to be classified by others. If you want to talk about gender or sexual fluidity, then we're talking about personal perceptions of oneself, which strays outside of the realm of physical/genetic characteristics and into the realm of psychology. I don't think there's any question that people exist who psychologically align with a different sex than that they were assigned by genetic roulette at birth, but regardless of whether or not you agree with them, you're straying into the territory of gender identity by arguing it. This runs contrary to your views on the definitional debate, as your argument there solely regards biological sex. Again, it's a separate debate, and if you want to have a discussion over fluidity in gender and sexuality, then you necessarily have to open up your definition since biology alone cannot address the issue.

Finally, back to the question at hand. It really seems like you're conceding the issue in your response to me. You acknowledge that a separate sex, namely "intersex," exists. You acknowledge that some of them bear more characteristics of one sex than the other, and that they thus exist on a sort of sliding scale between male and female. I'm not sure how you'd go about weighing each of those characteristics in an endeavor to grant them either sex as part of their identity (this isn't exactly a game of "count the female/male parts"), but regardless, by acknowledging that they exist and are separate from male and female, you're acknowledging that more than two sexes exist. Regardless of whether you'd lump all intersex people into a single sex, force them to be assigned one of the other two sexes, or acknowledge that even intersex itself is variable and thus allow each intersex person to not be definitively grouped into any sex based on their characteristics, intersex people are clearly not either male or female. From my perspective, an unwillingness to define intersex as separate from male or female doesn't erase their status as separate from male and female, and thus doesn't erase the need for a separate classification, regardless of what that classification looks like. Beyond that (and I hate to shift back to the identity aspect, though it seems I must), if you're of the mind that any group of people can define their sex themselves based on a select set of characteristics, I'd have to wonder why you're so against gender identities and transgenderism as a whole. Why should that capacity to be granted solely to individuals who draw closest to the line between male and female? How many characteristics of each do you have to have until you're granted that capacity? What if, as they develop, the other sex becomes more prominent? Would they have to shift to the other one? It seems like this allowance creates more questions than answers for me.

@WordsMatter:

What I'm talking about is how it is in western society that we have known that there are two genders for thousands of years and then suddenly changed that without any scientific evidence?

@whiteflame:

For clarity, I used the term gender as opposed to sex because there is an ever growing culture that says that there are infinite genders but only two sexes. However, these terms have been defined as the same for thousands of years and I don't think that the infinite number of genders claim is legitimate. This wasn't a debate on if intersex should be considered a sex (even though I don't think it is), rather a debate on the claim that the Transgenderism movement makes that gender is separate from sex. As for my indoctrination device claim, it has been used as a dismissal whenever someone points out that cutting your balls off has no basis in biology. This is the claim that I am attacking in this debate because I think that a growing number of people are being forced into it uncritically (thus indoctrination) through the internet and now (at least in Canada) the education system.

About intersex, yes, they exist, but they like I said always will be dominantly male or dominantly female, thus the two classifications, male and female. In the same way as when say, a dog is born with two heads we don't classify it as a separate species, we shouldn't classify an intersex person as having a separate gender.

"if you're of the mind that any group of people can define their sex themselves based on a select set of characteristics"

I decided to only quote this part of your rebuttal because I feel that this is a Strawman (whether intentional or unintentional). I'll repeat myself again, if the problem arises when an intersex person cannot be identified as having more characteristics of one gender which as far as I know has never happened before, then we can let that person choose what their sex is. That is the only exception to the rule because it does not completely contradict biology. What sex your are is determined by whether or not you have a Y chromosome. XX is the most common form of female and XY is the most common form of male, however, you can have people with X or Y or XXY, which can have their gender determined through asking the question of if they have a Y chromosome.

As for why I'm against gender expression, I have two reasons:

First of all, you're lying about your gender. This has absolutely no basis in biology and it gets to the point where men claiming that they're women in hospitals get a different treatment than what they're supposed to because the doctor doesn't want to "misgender" the patient.

And lastly, the suicide rates among transgenders is (according to Steven Crowder) higher than Jews in the holocaust and only comparable to people with severe psychiatric conditions. So why are we continuing the potential self destruction of gender dysphoric people instead of doing something about it? We don't let people with depression or with cancer roam the streets we help them get better.

As for transitioning, all that happens during the transition is hormones and slicing and or adding sexual organs. It doesn't matter how many milometers you shave off of a man's penis it doesn't make them a woman.

@MayCaesar:

"Biologically, exactly two sexes exist in human species - however, every individual exhibits traits of both. Usually one of the sexes dominates in the given individual, making it easy to determine their "overall sex" - but this is not always the case, with hermaphrodites being a notable exception."

Not really. As I was saying with Whiteflame your sex/gender is determined by if you have a Y chromosome, which can be observed within every individual.

"Gender, however, is a societal category: it is not about what the given individual is biologically, but about how the role defined by their biological sex traits is perceived manifests in the society. This leads to the situation where there can be as many genders as the society wants to define. And when we consider that the societal categorization does not have to equate the individual categorization, we come to the conclusion that there are as many genders as one decides to define."

It's only a societal category in western society. In other societies and many religions they have a clear definition on what gender is. Even if this is correct I don't think that we should have it because the consequences can be damaging (see the fourth last paragraph to the second last in may response to Whiteflame for why). Even with the idea of this being a subjective thing this becomes a problem because of people such as trans individuals and trans supporters forcing their perception onto others. I also find it suspicious that people say that gender and sex are different because gender encompasses everything that sex is, but goes above sex in all situations. Pronouns, bathrooms, and laws (especially in Canada) being just three examples. This doesn't sound like a proper definition, rather an indoctrination device made by the Transgender movement to force their agenda upon others.

As for everything else, I do believe that the burden of proof is on the individual who is making the claim that there are less or more than two genders, for practical reasons, thus why I formatted the debate this way.


Thanks everyone for participating in this discussion. When I first posted this debate nothing was happening so I thought that it died, but I guess it didn't.

@Agility_Dude

Alright, thank you for clarifying your position. Before I move onto addressing each point, I do feel it's necessary to recontextualize this whole post because, much as these positions somewhat relate to the topic you initially posted, I think you've got enough tangents in here that it needs to be clarified what specific issues are up for debate. As I see it, you're arguing three specific positions:

1) Gender is physical and not psychological
2) Viewing gender as psychological is net harmful to society
3) Transgender people are mentally ill and require psychiatric care

As with your initial topic, there is overlap between these, and thus there may be points that apply to all of them. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to break these down to the core issues you're getting at, and address them individually. If I've misrepresented or misunderstood your arguments, please feel free to re-clarify.

1) Gender is physical and not psychological

This actually breaks down to two separate points.

The first is the definition debate: how do we define gender and why should we define it a certain way? I think, out of all of the issues you've presented, it's probably the most tangential to the question of gender in society because this is focused on semantics. Essentially, you're just miffed with the idea that certain cultures and groups have sought to put a dividing line between gender and sex. Maybe I'm reading what you're saying here wrong, but it doesn't appear to me that you're against having a term to establish what some would call "gender," but rather you're against the usage of this specific term when you feel that it has a history of being synonymous with sex. If that's the case, we'll just call this "identity" for the rest of my argument on the matter. "Identity" refers to a person's private and psychological sense of self as they relate to their physical state, and in particular, focuses largely on how they relate to those traits that define their sex. If you want to have a debate over the usage of the term "gender" in a similar context, we  can do that, but I don't feel like that's something I or anyone else can convince you of. Language is, in many ways, subjective because we experience and interpret words differently. There's nothing wrong with your interpretation of the word gender, so it's not something that you can be convinced is wrong.

The second part of this argument, and the more relevant one to the other issues you've folded into this debate, is essentially arguing that the way that personal identity fundamentally cannot be different from their physical characteristics. Dropping the intersex issue out of the debate for the moment (I'll need to come back to that later), essentially you are arguing that someone with female characteristics cannot see themselves as non-female (I will not say "as male" because that assumes that that is the only alternative to viewing oneself as female). Using your own words, they may not "completely contradict biology" in their determination of their identity, or, put another way, you're arguing that biological classification of sex cannot stand in opposition to one's personal identity. I'll get down to why you think this is harmful in a moment, as I think that is a separate argument and I see this as more fundamental. You're arguing that is basically isn't allowed, though I'm not sure who provides the allowance for psychological impressions of oneself. Why, when someone looks in the mirror, can they not have the perception that what they see staring back at them doesn't fit their ingrained views of self? Is it that they're incapable of doing so, or that by doing so, they have done some kind of wrong to themselves or others? Are you arguing that the people who say this happens to them are lying to everyone else about those perceptions?

2) Viewing gender as psychological is net harmful to society

This seems as good a point as any to move onto your second argument. I'll leave the point about transgenders for the third section, mainly because that actually doesn't address this issue, since what you're arguing there is that transgender people aren't being regarded correctly in society rather than that they are harming society. But you do provide a specific argument to this effect, so let's get down to it.

You say that having an identity that is distinct from your gender is "lying". To whom are they lying? Are they lying to the world around them by saying that they see themselves this way? Are they lying to themselves? What makes you think they're lying? The following sentence doesn't give me any indication of why you think they're lying, instead just stating that you don't think their position is based in biology. Considering this is a psychological issue and not a biological one, that doesn't really answer the question. If I'm being generous in my interpretation, it sounds like your argument is that they're confused about their gender since their perception of it runs contrary to their biology. That's not lying. Lying requires some intention, and you haven't provided any support for that notion. And intent is rather important because it usually comes with a clear goal in mind. Considering that the process of establishing an identity that does not match their biology puts them in opposition to the vast majority of society, what incentive to do they have to lie? You point to getting different treatment in hospitals (I've never heard of that and I don't believe it's true that treatment is markedly different, since the differences are largely biological and who you get to room with, the latter of which is the only thing that changes with identity), but I'm not clear on where the incentive is there. Is there incentive in fighting with hospital staff to get different placement? Or incentive in dealing with roommates who may not be comfortable with the arrangement? Why are they lying to get this placement if there is no incentive to do so? And why bother keeping up the charade outside of a hospital if it no longer benefits them? 

3) Transgender people are mentally ill and require psychiatric care

Onto transgender people. I'll start by fact-checking your argument and then move into the broader issues involved.

You start by comparing suicide rates between transgender peoples and Jews during the Holocaust. Much as you provide Steven Crowder as a source, I can't find any specifics from him regarding this comparison, and he certainly doesn't post any actual numbers. So, let's get to the numbers.

The transgender attempted suicide rate is 41%, according to a study from 2011.[http://endtransdiscrimination.org/PDFs/NTDS_Report.pdf]
The successful suicide rate for those in Nazi concentration camps is estimated to be about 25%.
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13811110490271425?needAccess=true&journalCode=usui20]

I couldn't find the number of attempted suicides in Nazi concentration camps or the number of successful suicides among transgenders, but consider the odds. 1.1 million people attempted suicides in 2008, and only 33,000 succeeded.[http://lostallhope.com/suicide-statistics] That's just a 3% success rate. Applying that to the 41% number, that's just 1.23% of all transgenders who have successfully committed suicide, which makes the rate in Nazi concentration camps over 20 times higher. What's more, I find myself balking at the comparison between transgender peoples and Jews subjected to the horrors of the Holocaust. The former feels like a stranger in their own bodies and often as an outcast from their families and society in general. The latter was forcibly removed from their communities, subjected to the worst dehumanizing treatment and killed en masse on the whims of a brutal dictator who saw them as subhuman. Both experiences are awful, but they elicit very different kinds of responses. Comparing the two in an effort to establish that one is "lesser" and therefore should have fewer associated suicides is wrong on so many levels because it essentially treats their pain and experiences as unimportant or, at the very least, not important enough to warrant depression and the resulting effects.

Still, I acknowledge that the number of transgender individuals attempting suicide, and therefore also those successfully committing suicide, is higher than the general population. So, given that, let's focus in on the two issues relating to this that you presented.

You argue that people who experience gender dysphoria should be treated by psychiatrists instead of being accepted into society. I have a lot of problems with this, but I'll just focus on one. You're assuming that all of their depression and any related self-destructive behaviors result from something internal, i.e. they are mentally ill and so they need to be treated for that illness. Part of the reason transgender peoples want to be accepted is that they experience discrimination, which just happens to be a major risk factor behind suicide attempts in any population. Racial stigma, poverty, unemployment, less education, "outness" (i.e. the degree to which other people could perceive their being trans), homelessness, bullying and violence, family rejection, and health care discrimination are all risk factors that contribute to increasing suicide rates among trans populations.[https://thinkprogress.org/study-discrimination-may-be-a-risk-factor-for-transgender-suicide-attempts-9639fcd056b8/] Many of these are directly the result of discriminatory actions or perceptions, and others are secondary. Acceptance in society would dramatically reduce all of these as factors, and while that may not be enough to bring suicide rates into line with the rest of the population, it's clear that these play a massive role. Providing psychiatric care, particularly for the resulting depression and anxiety, doesn't contradict efforts aimed at acceptance. Even the psychiatric community appears to agree, as the American Psychiatric Association has removed gender dyphoria disorder from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dorders as of 2012, as well as the uncertainty with regards to how to treat these people and their clear position against discrimination, prejudice and victimization of transgender people.[https://thinkprogress.org/apa-revises-manual-being-transgender-is-no-longer-a-mental-disorder-8b0321f775d2/]

As for the second issue, I'm having some trouble understanding your position regarding biology and how it essentially forces a specific role on us. You keep going back to the Y chromosome, treating it as the key feature that demarcates what is a male, despite the fact that there are clear examples (some of which we've discussed in this very debate) that showcase how a single chromosome may not dictate how a person develops. You acknowledge that there is a spectrum of individuals (albeit they are small) that develop somewhere between male and female, and that some of those individuals should be allowed to determine their own sex because developmental biology has not divined it for them. So, I'll paraphrase: so long as your natural biology (i.e. what you are born with and how you develop) is definitive, your gender is defined for you by that natural biology. Again, I feel like I have a lot of problems with this, but I'll scale it down to a single response. It seems pretty clear from the scientific evidence that brain development differences and differences in the production of specific hormones play major roles in a person determining that their physical gender doesn't match their perceived identity.[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/brynn-tannehill/how-much-evidence-does-it_b_4616722.html] Those are biological features, many of which we are born with and many more of which develop with us. Many of these sample people develop clearly male or female sex organs and other characteristics. However, you would argue that it's those characteristics that define them, not their brain development or the effects of their hormone production. Why do those physical characteristics outweigh all of these other factors in all cases? Moreover, your argument assumes that only natural aspects of development should play a role in determining gender. Why? If physical characteristics are what makes us male or female, why can't they be changed? You're the one who's treating gender as based entirely on superficial characteristics (because, let's face it, we can't base it solely on the presence of a Y chromosome). Why can't people alter those characteristics and become a different gender? Let's take it a step further. Let's assume that one day, we are able to genetically engineer full-grown humans to change an X chromosome to a Y, or do the opposite. Why couldn't someone do that and change their gender? What is it about natural development that makes the result so immutable?