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Society needs a better understanding of sex

A basic primer on how sex is determined

Christine Penn
10 min readJan 1, 2025
Photo by Julia Keirns on Unsplash

At one point in time, everyone was taught there were just boys and girls or males and females. In fact, it is one of the first question someone asks when someone is pregnant or just gave birth. Is it a boy or a girl? And this over simplification of what was always just a typical (or most common) biological outcome, has been taught to most in basic education.

Problem is, that it was a generalization of something that would require a bit more explanation. In reality, biology is quite a bit more complicated and since the beginning of time, there have always been some anomalies that didn’t quite fit into that binary choice. And was it a crime to not teach all of the variations that could occur to young children; No. The variations were instead reserved for those seeking more advanced studies on the subject. But this handling has helped to create a problem in todays society, and the history of how those variations were categorized, hasn’t help either.

However, with inventions like the Internet and the ability to share more complicated information, people are slowly being exposed to those variances in this area. And as a result, most people maybe more aware of people who may not quite fit into that basic definition. But still, many are adamant to hold onto…

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Christine Penn
Christine Penn

Written by Christine Penn

Trans woman, parent, cyclist, software engineer, author, chef, and many other things.

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