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lbonnell's picture

Diversity

As we discussed in class, there is definitely diversity in sex and gender, but the terms man/woman and male/female do not take this diversity into account. I think that such terms are used to simplify how we think about complex topics. These terms allow us to deduce the spectrum of sex and gender to a simple binary.  

I think it is part of human nature to look at patterns and create categories based on them. For example the male/ female dichotomy was probably based on anatomy. Before the biology existed, I can imagine it was easy to separate people into categories based on very obvious anatomical differences. 

At the same time I don't think biology is free from this drive to create categories. After all, Linnaeus' classification was considered a huge step forward for science. I understand that it is useful to simplify the huge array of diversity in nature into discrete categories for academic purposes, but I am beginning to question if discrete categories can accurately represent nature. Evolution doesn't occur in categories and I am starting to think that in general, nature does not occur in categories. Diversity is an inherent quality of nature. 

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