[fups set to the most general of the three groups --- IMVHO! :-]
On Tue, 1 Mar 2005, gerard46 wrote: > | TGOS wrote: > |> spinoza1111 wrote: > |> This taxonomy would discriminate against transgendered people and at a > |> minimum needs a fourth category of "indeterminate" for gender. > | > | Every human being has only one sex. It is determined by the presence or > | absence of a Y chromosome. Presence means male, anything else female.
> Not quite. Some human beings have both, er, as you say, sex. You are > assuming that an XX is a female, and XY is male. How about YY ?
Looks like "the presence of a Y chromosome" to me. That would mean "male," in the taxonomy TGOS provided immediately above your response. (Note that there may or may not be a correlation between primary or secondary sex characteristics and the chromosomes present in each cell --- offhand I'd suspect there is, but I'm no biologist.)
> In any case, this all breaks down when you can't determine what the sex > is, and it happens more than you think. After all, how many humans had > their chromosome's checked ? A lot of certain atheletes, of course. > Most of us know what we are by just looking. Sometimes, that's not > enough. Think hermaphodites. _________________________________Gerard S.
Given that this thread has already seen proposals for the recording of birthdates down to the millisecond, I don't think something as relatively commonplace as a DNA test is worth dismissing out of hand. ;)
