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6:33pm June 20, 2014

madeofpatterns:

ajax-daughter-of-telamon:

blood-and-vitriol:

ajax-daughter-of-telamon:

madeofpatterns:

iguanafish replied to your post “Also using really really long phrases isn’t an effective way to…”

I saw someone suggest micro- and macrogametic but it’s still not that great…too technical, and you can be microgametic and have breasts and all the same problems as “male” and “female” do kinda…

is there a problem with XX/XY? 

What I can think of is that it’s incomplete and potentially inaccurate.

There are people (who probably largely fall under the category of female) with only one X chromosome (but no Y), with XXX, XXXX, or XXXXX chromosomes, and even XY with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.

There’s also XXY, XYY, XXYY and XXXXY.

There’s also just the fact that XX/XY are especially likely to devolve back to “female/male” in a normative way for most folks.

Personally, I’m in favor of abandoning the type-oriented approach and just referring to whatever is relevant to what you want to address, when talking about bodies. I try to refer to organs or hormones or whatnot when and as it’s relevant, and ignore other potentially-shared features unless they’re obviously connected. “Folks with X,” “people who have X,” that sort of thing. And not trying to carry any unreasonable assumptions about what is supposed to be associated along for the ride; like I don’t say “people with endogenous estrogen” and then assume that having a uterus or breasts is part of that.

Basically, don’t use biological features in an essentialist way. If you wanna talk about bodies and biology, talk about *bodies and biology*, not the cultural norms and default assumptions that often come with them. 

Yeah, that’s the approach I try to use, too.

I need a general word for my body type. Piecemeal doesn’t solve the problem; it’s also the interaction between all the different parts. I don’t always *know* which part is the relevant part.

I mean, I can talk that way when it’s clearly about a particular part. Like, if I’m talking about sexual attributes of vulvas, I can say people with vulvas. If I’m talking about the systemic effects of medication on my body, that doesn’t work.

I can reasonably presume that I’m XX, and I can often be reasonably sure that’s relevant in some way. I can’t always pinpoint exactly which organ is relevant.

This is why I *do* use something along the lines of “biomale” and “biofemale” even though I know it causes huge amounts of problems (and yes, I know what the problems are).  Because right now we *do not* have an alternative that covers all the basis, no matter how much people want to think we do.  These terms used to be *normal* in the trans community, like not even controversial in the slightest, and I kind of wish that it had stayed okay to use them, given we’ve never found something to replace them with that either didn’t actually refer to biology, or was a long-ass acronym.