Thread by @bogiperson

For the record, I disagree with both "there are two sexes" and "there are three sexes":

How sex as a biological phenomenon is divided up into concepts is entirely *cultural*

One of my cultures has historically had 4 sexes + 2 more variations on M/F (+1 of those with 2 subtypes)

Fellow intersex people, I know it is very tempting to go all in on "there are THREE sexes" in response to bigots saying "there are TWO sexes".

But please remember these are *both* Anglo-Western conceptualizations in these discussions.

Yes, the "three sexes" is certainly an improvement over "intersex people don't exist, ever"

But these are not the only two possibilities.

If we subscribe to these being the only two possibilities, that erases *all* non-Western and/or Indigenous sex systems.

And yes, there are also non-Western and/or Indigenous *gender* systems too, but there are some that are clearly *sex* systems, or a combination of gender and sex.

I would like to note that there *are* three-sex systems that are not Anglo-Western, but those have ALSO been entirely ignored in the current debates so far.

And historically, cultural anthropology tried to shoehorn every single non-Western and/or Indigenous gender/sex system into "third gender" or "third sex"

This is primarily THE reason why I do not prefer any of those terms wrt myself, and this is a not uncommon view.

(If someone comes in who doesn't follow me already - I'm not Indigenous, I'm a Hungarian Jewish intersex trans person; I do have a culturally specific sex, it's in my profile :) )

And one more thing to add: often the most pushback we experience is within our communities, I think that applies quite broadly to different culturally specific sexes AND genders in many different cultures.

That is because of how history has played out wrt oppression...

And often that oppression was externally imposed, then internalized.

This is probably not the most coherent thread, but I have strong feelings and also don't very much want to discuss this topic (very painful experiences), but I felt like I had to say something.

Thank you for listening; also, please link me if you had a related thread (keyword search brings up a huge amount of porn, which I would prefer not to look at - so I probably missed a lot of related threads).

Oh, one more thought!

"Third sex" also heavily implies the usual priority order of 1. M 2. F 3. intersex.

Somehow it's never the "first sex" or even second.

At least "intersex" doesn't have this implication. Just a form of between-ness (which can be separately discussed)