Sexual Identification: Genotype, Phenotype, and Sociotype

An amazing cuttlefish trick: underwater cross-dressing in body coloration. Wow.

Sexual identity is a cognitive, intentional state about ourselves. Like all intentional states, it may need to be subjected to error correction. On the other hand, the sexual classification of living things is an aspect of biology. In biology, a given organism may be identified as to its gender by genotype (determined mostly by XX versus XY chromosomal analysis in humans, with the usual border cases), or by phenotype (primary and secondary mammalian sexual characteristics in the case of humans).

In humans, the postmodernist conceit that gender is different from the biology of genotype and phenotype suggests that what we need is a sociotype of sex. A sociotype would be male and female as self identified or identified by one's society (for example, the M or F on the driver's license or birth certificate, which is one's legally defined gender).

Denying that biology is destiny here is mere foolish conceit on the part of the postmodernist. It is like saying that the cuttlefish is changing its sex by altering its color patterning. No biologist would agree that it does that.

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