The vindictive pursuit and vilification of Cadwalladr whilst she dug away revealing all sorts of dodgy dealings around Brexit kind of tells us a lot more than we realise. Powerful forces pull strings to silence truth and truth-seekers. The Russia report is just one more dirty little secret miasma.

This then makes it clear that gender is irrelevant to the question. If sex can be understood apart from gender, a question about the number of sexes can be answered without reference to gender, in our culture or any other.

you say: "Gender isn't indistinguishable from biological sex" which could be rewritten as "Gender is not not distinguishable from biological sex" & thereby reduced to "Gender is distinguishable from biological sex"

If this concept is to substitute or override biological sex, it obviously has implications for issues such as women-only spaces.

unless you and your associate are implying that a sociological concept of gender supersedes biological sex. In which case, before we can return to the original question, we must clarify exactly what you mean by that.

the point of this thread is - are there any humans who are not either male or female? This question concerns biological sex, and whatever sociological epiphenomena exist that may or may not relate to biological sex, they are beside the point.

the pivot to culture and ideology came when a question about biological sex triggered an outpouring about culture and social constructs in lieu of an answer.
Any explanation offered was not "rooted in science". Acting with compassion requires facing the material realities causing suffering.

Gender isn't a scientific term - it's a term used in social science, which despite the name, isn't quite the same thing.

I recognize that I am constrained in society by an interacting system of social roles, of which gender is one - but those roles belong to society, not to me.
Are you talking about internalizing social roles and limiting oneself by making one or more roles intrinsic to one's sense of self?

it's not about what I know or don't know, it's about precisely what you mean by a gender.

I don't "fit" within any social construction of gender - nobody does and nobody should!
bsky.app/profile/geek...

I literally just said it's not a stable or universal concept.

so a "gender" is a set of social roles? So - let's say a person could have a set of roles encompassing "son", "American", "teacher" - would that set constitute a gender?

The question is - right now, when *you* say a "gender" - what do *you* mean? Not what Judith Butler said about in in 1990, or Augustin Fuentes in 2025, but you - right now?

no, i'm really not. I've taken many academic courses that focused or featured gender, enough to know it's not a stable or universal concept and has been debated and redefined since it first escaped grammar and entered sociology in the mid 20th century.

in all the to-ing and fro-ing I admit I myself got confused about the question, which was what is "a" gender - to you, right now, in this discussion. Personally, I have not internalized gender norms as part of my identity and so a lot of this really confuses me.

If we need an education in cultural diversity or linguistic evolution, we'll ask for it. What is the meaning and understanding of gender that you yourself are using for the purposes of this conversation?

It's difficult to learn from you when you refuse to answer questions and then pretend either that it wasn't a real question or that your non-answer addressed it.
It's impossible to discuss anything without agreeing on terms. The particular definition you are using for gender or "a gender" matters.