I don’t think science can really touch non-binary. Socially valid? Sure. Once we start letting ‘science’ validate human social constructs you’ve stumbled into the same sort of fallacy that the “it’s not natural” people have.
Science can describe cancer, but that doesn’t make it valid in any social sense. My body loves using tnf-alpha to signal my immune system to fuck me, but being able study and explain those things doesn’t make them valid. I think you could swap either into your argument and it wouldn’t change the structure of it. I’m not saying anyone is as bad as cancer/RA (or bad at all), but being able to swap abnormal biological functions in kinda shows science isn’t good at assigning value to the things it describes.
You are right that we don’t need to reinforce an essentialist view of sex or gender for it to be valid, and every time I write about the biology behind the social construct I cringe a little because I feel like I’m reinforcing the idea that we do. Still, many people can start with the reality that sex and gender is a spectrum on the biological side and then learn more about the social side. I think the cost of framing it like this is ultimately worth it
I absolutely disagree that the circumstances I mentioned are abnormal. They are thousands of steps away from what you are mentioning. These cases extend into the natural kingdom, including other animals (see: Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow), and they constitute valid evolutionary reproductive and social strategies.
Just as I need to be careful when explaining the biological basis of sex and gender to avoid reinforcing the idea that “you’re only valid if we find the queer gene”, you need to be sure you don’t have internalized bias about the relative “naturalness” or validity of these alternative strategies!
I don’t think science can really touch non-binary. Socially valid? Sure. Once we start letting ‘science’ validate human social constructs you’ve stumbled into the same sort of fallacy that the “it’s not natural” people have.
Science can describe cancer, but that doesn’t make it valid in any social sense. My body loves using tnf-alpha to signal my immune system to fuck me, but being able study and explain those things doesn’t make them valid. I think you could swap either into your argument and it wouldn’t change the structure of it. I’m not saying anyone is as bad as cancer/RA (or bad at all), but being able to swap abnormal biological functions in kinda shows science isn’t good at assigning value to the things it describes.
Two takes:
You are right that we don’t need to reinforce an essentialist view of sex or gender for it to be valid, and every time I write about the biology behind the social construct I cringe a little because I feel like I’m reinforcing the idea that we do. Still, many people can start with the reality that sex and gender is a spectrum on the biological side and then learn more about the social side. I think the cost of framing it like this is ultimately worth it
I absolutely disagree that the circumstances I mentioned are abnormal. They are thousands of steps away from what you are mentioning. These cases extend into the natural kingdom, including other animals (see: Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow), and they constitute valid evolutionary reproductive and social strategies.
Just as I need to be careful when explaining the biological basis of sex and gender to avoid reinforcing the idea that “you’re only valid if we find the queer gene”, you need to be sure you don’t have internalized bias about the relative “naturalness” or validity of these alternative strategies!