Jan 08, · Long Essay on Cultural Diversity is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and Other unethical practices as recognized by WHO and UN including polygamy, child marriages, human sacrifice, female genital mutilation are strictly unethical. They should not be practised under the name of “cultural diversity” Her essay, Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex? is the origin of the term, "pro-sex feminism". The response to the anti-pornography strand of feminism by the sex-positive feminists was one that promoted sex as an avenue of pleasure for women, seeing anti-pornography positions as aligned to the political right-wing's war on May 02, · Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation
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I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. The backlash on Twitter has been swift and cacophonous, and headlines have followed. Non-binary people menstruate. I, a year old woman with a uterus, have not menstruated in a decade. Women female genital mutilation essay not defined by their periods. Till now, even the most thematically ambitious feminist theorists have acknowledged that sex itself is a real biological phenomenon, and that sexual dimorphism is an important component of human existence as well as human rights.
In the emerging view, the very notion of males and females existing as real biological entities is now seen as obsolete. The view that sex is a spectrum is not confined to fringe critical theorists. It has made inroads into mainstream culture, thanks in part to a highly sympathetic media environment. In February of this year I co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed on the subject, entitled The Dangerous Denial of Sex.
Along with my co-author, developmental biologist Emma Hilton, I highlighted the harms that sex-spectrum pseudoscience can impose on vulnerable groups, including children, women, female genital mutilation essay, gay men, and lesbians. Since we were confined to a newspaper op-ed format, Dr. Hilton and I had scant space to explore in detail the actual science of biological sex and the pseudoscience that is sex spectrum ideology. That is the subject of this essay. This argument claims sex cannot be binary if some individuals have sexual anatomy that appears to fall somewhere between male and female.
Credit: Pitch Interactive and Amanda Montañez; Source: Research by Amanda Hobbs; Expert review by Amy Wisniewski University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. The second argument typically offered in defense of the sex-spectrum model is based around secondary sex organs and characteristics. Secondary sex organs encompass all elements of our reproductive anatomy—apart from the gonads, which are the female genital mutilation essay sex organs.
Secondary sex characteristics, on the other hand, are sex-related anatomies that differentiate during puberty, such as enlarged breasts and wider hips in females; and facial hair, deeper voices, more musculature, and broader shoulders in males. Because the female genital mutilation essay of these female genital mutilation essay sex characteristics can overlap between males and females, it is argued we should therefore view biological sex as a continuum.
This way of thinking about biological sex is now frequently presented to children in school using such cartoon illustrations as The Genderbread Person shown below. Conspicuously absent from this chart is any mention of primary sex organs gonads, i. ovaries and testes in the case of females and males, respectively or the typical functions associated with sex, such as menstruation in females and ejaculation in males.
There is also no mention of eggs or sperm produced by ovaries and testes, respectively. As a broad concept, males are the sex that produce small gametes sperm and females produce large gametes ova. There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no spectrum of sex. Biological sex in humans is a binary system. ovaries or testes that develop for the production of sperm or ova, regardless of their past, present, female genital mutilation essay future functionality.
The evolutionary function of ovaries and testes is to produce either eggs or sperm, respectively, which must be combined for sexual reproduction to take place. That above-cited The actual figure is estimated to be about 0. The existence of only two sexes does not mean sex is never ambiguous. But intersex individuals do not demonstrate that sex is a spectrum. By way of analogy: We flip a coin to randomize female genital mutilation essay binary decision because a coin has only two faces: heads and tails.
But a coin also has an edge, and about one in 6, 0. This is roughly the same likelihood of being born with an intersex condition. Almost every coin flip will be either heads or tails, and those heads and tails do not come in degrees or mixtures. The existence of edge cases does not change this fact. Heads and tails, despite the existence of the edge, female genital mutilation essay, remain discrete outcomes.
Likewise, female genital mutilation essay, the outcomes of sex development in humans are almost always unambiguously male or female, female genital mutilation essay. The development of ovaries vs testes, and thus females and males, are also qualitatively different outcomes that for the vast majority of humans are mutually exclusive and do not come in mixtures or degrees.
Males and females, despite the existence of intersex conditions, remain discrete outcomes. The existence of intersex conditions is frequently brought up in an attempt to blur the line between male and female when arguing for the inclusion of trans women in female sports and other contexts. But transgenderism has absolutely nothing to do with being intersex. For the vast majority of individuals claiming female genital mutilation essay trans or non-binary identities, female genital mutilation essay, their sex is not in question.
Remember, secondary sex characteristics are anatomies that differentiate during puberty. In females, these include among others the development of breasts, wider hips, and a tendency for fat to store around the hips and buttocks.
In males, secondary sex characteristics include deeper voices, taller average height, facial hair, broader shoulders, increased musculature, and fat distributed more around the midsection.
The different developmental trajectories of males and females are themselves a product of millions of years of natural selection, since secondary sex characteristics will contribute to evolutionary fitness in males and female genital mutilation essay in different ways.
Females with narrower hips had more trouble delivering large-headed children, and so those with larger hips had an evolutionary advantage. Analogies help, female genital mutilation essay, so let me offer another one. Bikers ride motorcycles, and cyclists ride bicycles. While these two vehicles share many similarities two wheels, handlebars, seats, spokes, etc.
Motorcycles are powered by engines and fuel, while bicycles are powered by pedaling legs. Whether someone is a biker or a cyclist depends entirely on the binary criterion of whether they are riding a motorcycle or a bicycle. This is the primary characteristic that defines bikers and cyclists, female genital mutilation essay. However, there are also many secondary characteristics associated with bikers and cyclists.
Bikers, for instance, are more likely to wear leather jackets, jeans, and bandanas. Cyclists are more likely to wear skin-tight spandex. Bikers wear heavy helmets that contain the entire head and include a face-shield, female genital mutilation essay. Cyclists typically wear lightweight helmets that cover only the top of their heads. Many of the secondary characteristics of bikers and cyclists are not arbitrary or coincidental. Like male and female secondary sex characteristics, we can map the utility of biker and female genital mutilation essay secondary characteristics to their primary characteristics.
Bikers wear tough clothes because they travel at higher speeds, which necessitate female genital mutilation essay clothing in case of an accident and to mitigate windchill. Cyclists, on the other hand, exert great physical effort pedaling their entire body weight plus the weight of their vehicle, which necessitates lighter, breathable, wind-breaking clothing and protective gear.
Just as these secondary traits do not define bikers and cyclists, secondary sex characteristics do not define males and females. Because biology is complex, people can be easily swayed with graphs and drawings, especially if they purport to prove something we want to believe anyway—such as the supposedly liberating notion that sex is a spectrum instead of a binary. But a spectrum implies a quantitative axis and, when this is taken seriously, leads to troubling conclusions.
A viral tweet by Twitter user ScienceVet2, now with over 17, retweets, female genital mutilation essay, conveyed the bimodal sex spectrum female genital mutilation essay using a figure similar to the one below. You can see why this sort of representation would prove popular: It accords with our intuitive sense that most of us cluster around a male or female typology, while also preserving the conceit that there is a vast, inhabitable continuum between these two categories.
Presumably, one could even take various measurements to determine exactly where along the spectrum we reside. Again, this all sounds very progressive in theory. But the consequences are regressive in practice, since the indicia of male-ness and female-ness invoked by sex-spectrum enthusiasts will always be based on sexist ideals female genital mutilation essay stereotypes that our grandparents would have recognized.
Imagine the following scenario: James, 16, is a very effeminate boy. He gets relentlessly bullied in high school for his feminine appearance and mannerisms. To be fair, most sex-spectrum advocates decry surgical intervention on intersex infants and rightfully so, in my opinionbut fail to consider how their doctrines may encourage female genital mutilation essay practices.
In Sex Redefineda article that appeared in Natureauthored by sex-spectrum advocate Dr. Claire Ainsworth, the final paragraph reads:. In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask. Here Dr. This is a baffling conclusion since, even if the sex spectrum model were correct, it in no way follows that one can choose where along the spectrum they reside.
According to this understanding, a person may literally reimagine their biology, as if by alchemy, by merely stating so. What an astounding power for humans to claim. If only it actually existed.
Some trans—rights activists have asked why female genital mutilation essay should be that people like me are so fixated on an issue where the stakes seem so small. Advocates of the sex-spectrum model no doubt meant well when these theories originally were developed.
When one attempts to achieve equality and justice by distorting reality, inequality and injustice are never eliminated, just relocated.
Colin Wright is an assistant editor at Quillette and holds a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of California, female genital mutilation essay, Santa Barbara. You can follow him on Twitter at SwipeWright. Previous Post The Battle for Russian Journalism. Next Post PODCAST Professor Glenn Loury on Racial Unrest in America.
The Truth About Female Genital Mutilation
, time: 3:16JK Rowling Is Right—Sex Is Real and It Is Not a “Spectrum” – Quillette
Jun 14, · Explore our collection of life-changing charity gifts that are perfect for saying 'thank you' to a special teacher at the end of term. Read more Photo Essay. During COVID, FGM is on the rise UNICEF advocates against FGM while facing dramatic increase of cases during the pandemic See the story. Press release. 01 April , COVID vaccine doses shipped by COVAX to Egypt Visit the page. Article May 02, · Taboo subjects: ordinary domestic scenes, love between Africans (unless a death is involved), references to African writers or intellectuals, mention of school-going children who are not suffering from yaws or Ebola fever or female genital mutilation
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