Sex, if defined by genitals, cannot be binary, as there are many different possibilities for genital development, and people’s genitals might change (injury, medical transition, etc) over time. If defined by chromosomes, it again cannot be binary, as there are other chromosomal patterns than XY and XX, and chromosomal testing is not terribly accurate either. If defined by hormone levels, well that’s not going to be binary either. What amount of T before you are Male? What if you have both T and E in equal amounts? What if your hormones levels are just entirely out of balance? And we’re not going to be able to define it by secondary sex characteristics, which are even more varied (depth of voice, amount and thickness of facial and/or body hair, whether you have breasts or not) just amongst cis, dyadic people.
All of these things exist on continuums. There is no clear binary here, except ones we force ourselves unnaturally into.
There is no need for a “biological sex binary”. Literally. None. If your doctor needs to know what your genitals are for whatever reason, you can tell them, or show them. If they need to know something about your chromosomes, well you’re gonna have testing anyway. If you know what’s up with your hormones, you can tell them, if you don’t, and it’s pertinent, they can do tests. They’d be doing tests anyways, if it’s important.
and on top of all that the whole “separation of sex and gender, sex being immutable and gender being the thing you can change” is employed hugely by TERFS to delegitimize, harrass, and brutalize trans women, because their “biological sex” is “male”. It also harms intersex people, as they are often surgically altered before they can consent to any such thing, to fit into this arbitrary standard of binarism.
We, as humans, come up with words to describe our experiences. We are not the creators of the universe, but the describers of it. If we have language that is unreasonable or limiting, we should change it, expand upon it. We do not need these concepts, and they are being used against us in violent ways. We can move on. We can be better.
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