Okay, sticking to biology for the first part here. Biologically, normally, there are only two genders. These are controlled by which combination of the two sex chromosomes you possess, as passed down by your parents. However, there are legitimate cases where errors happen during the fertilization process, or even the meiosis process that creates your sex cells. Sometimes people have more copies of sex chromosomes than they should, or they don't work properly. There's a pretty well-known case of this woman who was anatomically female by all appearances, but instead of ovaries, she actually had internal, vestigial testes and never knew it until well into adulthood. Apparently she had an XY chromosome combination like a normal male, but one of the key parts of her Y chromosome was not functional, so the X chromosome overcompensated and she expressed almost totally feminine traits.Politrukk said:So lately I've been coming across all types of discussions on the internet.
Supposedly at the moment I'm supposed to accept that there are like what 64 gender types?
I'm sorry to say people but I think that's ridiculous.
You can be a man
You can be a crossdressing man
But you're still in your essence a man that's just biology.
You didn't grow a new reproductive organ or create new hormones that justify you being a new gender.
BUT WAIT
You were born a man, but you feel like a woman.
What does that make you then?
Well if you have a sexchange.
That makes you a woman.
If not... that makes you a man who feels like a woman but doesn't dress that way nor willing to change his gender.
Same goes the other way around ofcourse.
This is my opinion obviously, but what do you guys think?
And can someone even explain to me what in the world qualifies something to be a new gender outside of biology?
There are quite a few different biological issues, with varying degrees of seriousness and various phenotypic expression.
What you're talking about here (and what most people really mean when they talk about this sort of thing) is sexual identity (or... gender identity? I'm honestly not sure what the best term is, as both aren't quite completely accurate). That, is a whole other issue all its own, and I don't believe we truly actually understand the mechanisms behind it all that well yet. The most compelling ideas I've seen on the subject have to do with brain chemistry, and different hormones and signals expressing in ways that are not quite the norm for the given gender. I feel like it's important to remember that there is a distinction between cross-dressers and drag queens (which tends to be more along the lines of a fetish), and actual transgender people (which does seem to be a legitimate biological issue related to brain chemistry and likely many other factors we don't understand yet).
It's definitely an interesting thing to study though, since it does seem to imply that sexual identity may actually be more dependent on how your brain is wired than your actual, physical chromosomes (although, under normal circumstances, those chromosomes are likely some of the main driving factors behind the brain chemistry), and understanding how neurology and biology interact in regards to sexual identity could shed more light on things like homosexuality, bisexuality, and various other ways people look at sexual identity, gender identity and attraction. It's interesting stuff. So yes, most of the time, you're either physically male or female, but when you get into the actual brain chemistry and neurology behind how you mentally identify... that's just, a whole mess of stuff we don't quite understand fully yet.