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MarkS's avatar

This is terribly confused, to the point of being wrong. "Transexual" is not a term that belongs on a mutually-exclusive list with "heterosexual", "homosexual", and "bisexual"; the latter three refer to sexual attraction, not to one's own gender perception.

I recommend https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-is-not-a-spectrum for a clearer explanation of the science facts.

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PhDBiologistMom's avatar

Agreed. “LGB” and “T” are not part of the same spectrum. Sexual orientation may have a somewhat continuous distribution, from exclusively same-sex to exclusively opposite-sex attraction, with a gradient in between (passing through bisexuality in the middle, those who are indifferent to the sex of their partner). And gender expression can be a spectrum, with people presenting as vey masculine, very feminine (whatever those words mean -- it’s very stereotype-dependent). But SEX is binary. Male (producing small, motile gametes: sperm, pollen) or female (producing large, immobile gametes: ova). In some organisms, a single individual may do both, either simultaneously (e.g., snails, some plants) or at different life stages (e.g., some fish). The vast majority of humans are unambiguously male or female; a tiny percentage have disorders of sexual development in which both male and female sexual organs may be present. But there is no other sex than male or female.

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Peter R. McCullough's avatar

I interpreted the original article as follows. Its TLDR as "the distribution of LGBTQ+ is not like the symbol of the rainbow." The last paragraph describes an illustratively non-flat distribution of a hypothetical community with heterosexual fraction H=0.9, L+G=H/10^1, B=H/10^2, T=H/10^3, and Q+=H/10^4, i.e. arranged according to the LGBTQ+ acronym.

The article also made me think of metagenomic studies of a community rather than of specific individuals.

The realityslaststand blog was good reading. I especially liked the article linked therein (at "1660s") about the early history of the microscopic studies. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1439-0531.2012.02105.x

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Coel Hellier's avatar

Nice analogy! However, the piece (e.g. last paragraph) rather confuses “sex” with “sexuality”. Sexuality is, as you argue, a form of spectrum. That doesn’t show that “sex” (roles in reproduction) is a spectrum.

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Ugo's avatar

You misused the word "comprised".

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Tomas Maldonado's avatar

This was thought-provoking and so clear! Thanks for posting! 🙏🏽

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