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@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a Sex refers to large or small gametes, the reproductive systems that produce them and the individuals that house those systems. There are two discrete categories; nothing different, nothing in between.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a The main determiner of sex - genetics - exists as qualitative, not quantitative, data. The various chromosome anomalies and gene mutations exist as categories with no intrinsic ordering. They cannot be arranged as a spectrum.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a Attempts to squash together, between the contrived poles of ‘female’ and ‘male’, various qualititative and quantitative data to produce a - tadah - spectrum are illogical and, IMO, scientifically dishonest.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a You can superimpose 999 continuous data series and generate a ‘mega plot’ of continuous data. However, the addition of one single series that is *not* quantitative - gonad identity, chromosome conformation - collapses the entire plot into categories.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a I also have no idea how one legitimately plots a series of continuous data between two poles of ‘female’ and ‘male’ without some reference definition of what those terms are.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a It would be intellectually dishonest to use the data achieved in other plots to define those terms, as they themselves would have required reference definitions.
@sasha4th @ErinJNash @valerica_marine @my_real_name @aytchellesse @byrne_a The whole thing becomes a self-referencing tautology.
