Anonymous asked:
a comment you made about sexual dimorphism has been screenshot red and discussed in another post and I seriously doubt anybody else is going to mention anything about it to you personally although if you do get terfs on your page that's probably why.
I just wanted to ask you - why do you think humans aren't sexually dimorphic? we very demonstrably are. male and female anatomy is different, and I feel like the idea that it isn't leads to ingrained medical misogyny. I don't know what you've been taught, but it wasn't taking into account the full range of human diversity. I know it's easy to say "eh, we all kinda look the same" but it's not really the case. idk I'm really not trying to be rude but I wanted to say that you don't have to say in on discourse. it's okay to stay neutral, it's okay to stay out, it's okay not to make comments when you're not sure you have all the facts. idk I'm rambling now. you're also very young. you don't have to weigh in to every discourse on Tumblr, and making comments when you're uninformed can end up spreading misinformation
Hello! Thank you for the warning abt the fact that terfs might start going for me, I appreciate it!
I will admit that I did not get everything right when I made the comment- at the time, my phone was glitching out and I kept losing the comments I was trying to make so the comments ended up being a shortened, summarized version of what I actually wanted to say. And you are right, humans do have sexual dimorphism! I probably should have specified that my intention was to say that human sexual dimorphism does not work in the same way the terfs were trying to say it was. That is no excuse for the misinformation I unintentionally allowed to spread and I apologize for that.
Rather, let me be more specific now- human sexual dimorphism does, on a level, exist, but not to the kind of degree that the terfs were making it out to be. The way they were saying it, they were making the “we can always tell” implication, which is not true! A lot of features considered “masculine” or “feminine” overlap in a way that makes our sexual dimorphism hard to see.
So, what kind of sexual dimorphism do we have?
The basic stuff- afab people tend to more frequently grow larger chests and amab people tend to frequently grow facial hair. We do also have some structural differences- afab people tend to have wider hips, for example, to make way for the organs that live down there. I really, really should have specified this and I apologize for that, but I was very much referring to the more major examples of sexual dimorphism present in many animals when I said that sexual dimorphism doesn’t really apply to humans.
And you are also absolutely right about the medical misogyny- heart conditions and the like very much effect afab and amab people very differently, and that is a good example of our dimorphism! Afab people tend not to be taken as seriously when they are having something like a heart attack because the symptoms are different due to our differences.
Afab people also tend to have more natural strength in the legs and hips due to the birthing process, and the opposite applies to amab people who have more strength in the upper body. There are many other differences, but they are all small enough that they do not effect the human appearance as drastically as, say, the difference between a male and female cardinal or a male and female pine grosbeak. Humans present their sexual dimorphism in a way that is more similar to something like a cat- you’re going to have to look a little closer, even if you think you can tell from a glance if somebody is amab or afab.
Of course, this doesn’t even mention intersex people and how this would apply differently, but there is unfortunately not that much information out there on how this kind of stuff applies to intersex people.
Thank you for the ask! And again, apologies for the careless nature of my comments. I really should have just cut my losses and not made the comments if it meant the exclusion of particular important information but hindsight is 20/20 and since the screenshots are being shared there is not much I can do to remedy it since it is too late to delete them.
I also appreciate the message on just staying out of online discourse, too! You are also absolutely right about making commented when you’re uninformed, I really should have thought more.
I can only hope that people who see the comments might come to my blog and at least see this post that gives more specification. And, hey, if I made a mistake at all in this post let me know! I’m open to learning new information and revising stuff I think I already now. I’ll be pinning this post and if I ever change out my pinned post in the future I will leave a link to it on the new pinned post.