Definitions Versus Spectrums - Tumblr Posts

I think one of the major issues in getting people to understand what radfems (or any group, really) believe in is the idea that outliers in a data set suddenly redefine any given concept. People will say that biological sex is a spectrum due to the fact that people with DSDs exist. But that's not how a spectrum works. A spectrum is when all possible options are distributed across an axis and with statistically significant occurrences for all options. If, for example, 10% of the population had Turner's Syndrome, then the spectrum for biological sex would probably be XX, XY, and X, because common occurrences have to be on our radar in order to understand the biological differences and their effects on medical treatment etc. All other chromosomal occurrences would be outliers. It doesn't mean that the outliers don't exist, it just means it is considered abnormal.

I think a better way of understanding it is to look at how we define the human body. If you asked anyone on the street to describe the human body, they would probably say a human has two arms, two legs, a head, two eyes, etc. Every day, lots of children are born missing a vital organ or with too many toes or some other anatomical anomaly. But baby Sally having 13 toes doesn't suddenly make it so that we have a "spectrum of toe counts from 1 to 13". That would require a large portion of the population to have too many or not enough toes. The reality is that she has 3 extra toes. It doesn't make her non-human, it makes her toes an EXCEPTION to the rule of 10 toes.

I just wish people would understand this mindset and how it has such a huge impact on the way data is recorded and thus on health outcomes.