tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post5600575767998170189..comments2024-02-24T18:30:26.749-07:00Comments on prairiemary: AS MANY GENDERS AS STARS IN THE SKYUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11838465.post-57750809682300026272009-08-26T07:04:47.393-06:002009-08-26T07:04:47.393-06:00Certainly the human story has many dimensions. We ...Certainly the human story has many dimensions. We cannot take blame or credit for how we are constructed, just how we choose.<br /><br />Currently the furor is over an African runner who is competing as a woman but looks suspiciously masculine and runs faster than a typical woman runner. The assumption seems to be the runner is perpetrating fraud and a hoax to win trophies. But what hasn't been mentioned is, what if this individual is actually an intersex person? In the U.S. such babies are assigned a gender, and manipulated to conform physically ("cut") and hormonally to fit into that box (see, I am afflicted by puns as well). I don't think many poor Africans have that medical option.<br /><br />Be that as it may, the final test is in reproduction. If the genes involved can be passed on through either direct sex by intersex individuals with whatever conventional gender, or each other, than we have a definite "other" gender. Or if conventional genders pass on the intersex trait like they do for single vs twin births, then again, we may have a genuine "other" gender(s). <br /><br />But if it is only a chance mutation, not passed on by genetic selection as such to create a new gender option for human beings in a sustainable way, then it is not a genuine gender, no more than the tragic Elephant Man was not a new genuine "race" of human being.<br /><br />Ah, but life is full of tragedies and mysteries, isn't it?<br /><br />I saw this book yesterday by Emily Wilson: "Mocked With Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton": "...there is a central thread in the tragic tradition that is concerned not with dying too early but with living too long..."Lance M. Fosterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17404310713482611952noreply@blogger.com