• Cethin@lemmy.zip
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    10 hours ago

    Biology is a term used to describe how your body functions. Hormones changing your body is biology, whether they’re natural or otherwise. “Biological sex” is a dog whistle. It is not a term used by people who are being honest. It’s just sex, or sex assigned at birth. “Biological sex” is a term for bigots to sound like they have science on their side.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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        6 hours ago

        Sure it does, it’s the sex you have biologically.

        Exactly what I said, there’s no other kind

        Biology is how the body is functioning and growing. This is defined by what hormones are in the body, as hormones tell cells how to function. In this way, biological sex is the sex defined by what hormones are in your body. Sex assigned at birth does not necessarily match this.

        Biological sex is not a term that has any meaning. It is a term invented to lend the air of scientific authority to a certain group of people making a bad faith argument. Sex is the term that is more commonly used, or sex assigned at birth to be more specific (which implies it changes and is not just gender).

        Iff (if and only if) we’re using the words as their definitions imply, biological sex = what hormones are in your body. Hormones define how your body functions, meaning their biological activity. Then it follows that hormone replacement therapy changes biological sex. It isn’t the bullshit static thing the people typically using the word to mean, as a replacement for “sex assigned at birth”. That term they won’t use because it lends credence to the idea it can change, rather than something that makes them sound as if their opinion is based in science.

        • PapaStevesy@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          To be clear though, hormones don’t define how your body functions, that’d be DNA. You wouldn’t have hormones or the ability to process them into meaningful signals without DNA. Ultimately, “biological sex” is determined by the sex chromosomes, which never change. I’m not arguing whether or not right-wing chuds co-opted the term (I’ve no clue, I don’t listen to right wing chuds), but it does have an objective, scientific, apolitical, societally functional meaning.