g6civcx

I am curious about what each person considers to be a human "male".

We can easily determine if you are a human being, i.e. Homo sapiens.

I'm interested in knowing what you would consider to separate a "male" from other types of human beings.

I'll start with the dictionary definition. Webster defines "male" as "an individual that produces small usually motile gametes (as spermatozoa or spermatozoids) which fertilize the eggs of a female".



Please answer the following questions:

1. In your personal opinion, what is and is not a human "male"?

2. How did you come up with the answer to #1?

zeitgeist

Im not sure why this is a question haha
I think you're either thinking way too hard or Im missing some grand picture

I just think of a male as a person with a penis. and i came up with that answer cause well thats the common conception that man has used to describe this type of human since the beginning of our existence

Matej

Are you 'unsure'?
'Confused'?

kingkilburn

It would be unfair for you not to give the proper context for your question.

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HalveBlue

This question is actually more complicated than it appears.

But I'm not willing to go down the rabbit hole...

kingkilburn

I will ask this;

Are you speaking physical appearance wise, genetically, hormonally, socially . . .

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g6civcx

This definition doesn't agree with the dictionary definition. Webster requires that you be able to produce sperms. Having a penis is not enough to produce sperms.

Do you have any documentation or did you just learn by watching TV, talking to people, listening to radio, etc.?

g6civcx

The context can be whatever you want. If I showed you a person, how would you determined if this person is "male" or not?

g6civcx

It can be whatever you see fit. I'm looking for an all-inclusive definition regardless of context.

aznpoopy

at its core, i believe the dictionary definition is correct, since that is really the core distinction between male and the opposite (i.e. female)

i'm not sure it (or any definition) can really capture the whole range of context however... i'm sure there's some weird hermaphrodite something or other that can fertilize itself etc.

ineedone

1. Penis + Testicles = Male
2. Nat. Geo Channel!

However, it is impossible to speak in absolutes about this topic. I do, however, feel this is more of what is a "man" and not a "male" conversation. If you look at what goes on in the wild, the male is the one that gets the female pregnant, and that is about where it begins and ends.

g6civcx

I neither agree nor disagree that this is the "core" distinction, but I understand what you're saying.

This. Given any human being, based on our current knowledge of science, it is not possible to provide a checklist that can be used to detemine if this person is "male".


Interesting story for you. I attended a seminar where a rep from the Solicitor's General was giving a presentation about law and biotech.

I asked her, "how do you differentiate human sex?"

Her response was, "Male. Female. What's left?"

I then asked her what the legal standard was for determining if a person is one or the other.

She thought deeply and declined to comment.

I think I just invalidated half of the biotech patents



Yes, I have seen rare cases where a human being can produce both sperms and eggs. These people don't have fully developed utarus though, and can't bring a fetus to term without artificial means.

DALAZ_68

well, wouldnt that falter back to ye ole saying "Justice is blind"?

in other words justice doesnt judge by gender, but by the acts of the person, whether male or female...?

so technically...there is no "legal" standard way to define it...?

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g6civcx

This definition appears to be narrower than Webster's. Webster's doesn't require the penis; it only requires sperms produced by the testicle.

Yes, but why is it impossible?

Human male is not "man"?

Since you watch Nat Geo, they were showing how endangered species were having problems reproducing because the males were infertile (pandas and primates mostly).

So in the wild you have animals with penis unable to impregnate females. Does it end here?

g6civcx

In patent law, we need to clearly disambiguate the terminology in order to determine if a particular thing or act is enveloped by a word.

For example, there are a lot of patents directed towards male and female genetic sequencing.

We need to know if a particular gene sequence would be considered male or female in order to determine patentability and infringement.

If we don't actually know what is and is not included by "male" or "female", then we don't know the scope of the patent coverage.

DALAZ_68

***blew my mind***

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g6civcx

I'll give an example. We'll use this one from 1973 since it's expired now: MALE URINARY INCONTINENCE DEVICE - Google Patent Search

The patent talks about "a male urinary incontinence device comprising an elogated tubing for fitting over the male organ".

If you can't tell what is and is not a "male" organ, then you can't tell if someone is infringing this patent or not. The patent is worthless because it is ambiguous.

sirfallsalot243

Dick n Balls.

/thread

kingkilburn

Define what is and is not pornography.

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ronmcdon

this is the most convincing explanation so far imo.

there's a grey area.
the grey area is made up of hermaphrodites for the most part.
maybe there's also some percentage made up of ppl suffering from defects/mutations/other conditions that makes the Webster distinction ambiguous.

Most definitions are almost always ambiguous.
There are almost always exceptions to the rule, however rare.

Webster was thoughtful to make their definition likewise ambiguous & brief.
At the very least you can't blame them for bieng incorrect,
even if slightly unscientific (can neither prove nor disprove).

In terms of what's practical/common, the Webster defintion is also convincing.
Rule applies to perhaps well over 99% of mammals, without researching the specifics.

amdnivram

1. Male: designating the sex that has organs to produce spermatozoa for fertilizing ova.

2. Well if your looking for just a specific definition for male, as a sex then i don't see any other definition besides the biological one. Having a penis doesn't necessarily mean your not a male because it can be absent due to many circumstances. Now if you want to talk about gender in which characteristics and physical appearances that we deem to be man then that has nothing to do with sex. Since sex and gender are not mutually exclusive certain gender characteristics can be seen in the other sex or produced by other means. So you can change from man to women or vice-versa in terms of gender, but in terms of sex you can only be what you started off with. You are either a male, female, or in rare cases hermaphrodite.

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ronmcdon

gender is completely meaningless imo, as you can say whatever you want.
for instance, I can say I identify with both ( I am both man & wo-man),
and nobody can refute that

drift freaq

Male or Female is determined by the number of X and Y chromesomes in the human body. Now given that a male would have a penis and testicles, though would not immediately need to produce sperm to still qualify. Men can be impotent and it has no bearing on the fact that they still genetically are men.

Now socially certain traits are attributed to males vs females. Higher voices for females lower voices for males etc...
as well as men having an Adams apple and the female not.

Females having pectoral muscles like a male but being much differently shaped i.e. the Female breast, which has a unique function that male pectorals lack.


Now if the legal definition is not clear on this perhaps the lawyers working on Biotech law( you I assume) should indeed be asking the Biotech people and or medical professionals the clear definition and establishing it.

As far as sexuality itself goes that is a whole other can of worms open to lots of debate.

Though for the hard and fast definition of male vs female sex that is clearly a chromosomal situation and technically the women you debated it with,should have been aware of that.

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kingkilburn

You can be genetically one and hormonally the other. Your body will listen to the hormones and not care what the genes say.


None of this has to do with what the OP is looking for though.

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g6civcx

How did you come up with this?

aznpoopy

i thought of this as well and looked into it

turns out there are men with XX and women with XY

not that i understand the intricacies of these disorders

XX male syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Swyer syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

g6civcx

Traditionally scientists have set an arbitrary length when a Y chrom becomes an X, i.e. how much the arm length needs to crossover to become an X.

Graphically we tend to think of Y as one length intersecting two equal lengths. We tend to think of an X and two equal length bisecting each other.

In the past we neatly grouped chroms into X or Y without really measuring the arm lengths.

But recently they have found that the distinction between Y and X is smaller than previously thought.

We have unequal length arms and the arm lengths are much more varied than we think.

With the advent of biogenetics, we're discovering new things about chroms and it's become much hard to neatly classify a chrom as an X or Y.

I need a chalkboard

amdnivram

I'm not exactly sure what your asking. Now if your asking , about gender traits not being mutually exclusive then i can just say that since gender is socially constructed and that nowhere in nature are any personality based characteristics set based on each sex. Now we say that being a man is exclusive to the male gender but its not because only males can act that way but because we say that it is so. I've talked to some males who act like females and have real identity issues and that is enough to say that sex and gender are not mutually exclusive. You can look at people who try to become a different sex because they don't identify with that gender which is another example. When people get a sex change they change their gender, but nothing else. Nothing biological has actually changed since their new organ isnt actually a vagina or penis, just some flesh shaped to be it. I really don't want to get in detail, but in the actual sex organs certain cells respond to testosterone or progesterone( Even if someone takes high amounts of testosterone as a female, their new organ's cells will not react to the hormones as they should). Now there are always cases when some of these are missing or not as they would normally be, but for the most part these are outliers and cant be used to account for the majority. I might be misunderstanding what your asking, but im pretty sure i went through everything i typed.

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zac 3ne2nr

I think and belive it's defined by anatomy and further compounded by male hormones being present in the system which aid in the physical,psychological and social traits.

g6civcx

Where did you learn this information? Did you learn it in school? Random research? Some other way?

Did somebody teach you this?