Hermaphrodites are people too!

So I lied I'm doing this particular subject. WOW is it ever a huge and complicated subject if you let it be. I thought about it because in my days as a database designer I was never allowed to include hermaphrodite or "intersexed" as an option under "Sex". I thought it was weird because some places were involved in therapy and were supposed to be "sensitive" but even then it wasn't allowed. I thought this was odd. Hermaphrodites exist. A whole spectrum of in between variations exist so I always thought why not at least include an option for it.

So I was doing some research into hermaphrodites and learned about all kinds of interesting things about the definition of what medically defines sexes. First it was about external characteristics, then gonads and finally it was about the X and Y chromosomes. I'm not surprised by how hard it is to define things with "scientific" precision. What separates one thing from another can be so minuscule as to be undetectable but it has consequences on a larger scale. Sodium and chlorine are lethal to humans but when put together they create sodium chloride (table salt) which is essential to our nervous system.

Anyway before I digress too far hermaphrodites are human beings. No system in nature is perfect. Gender and sexuality functions on a spectrum. Most people basically fall into male and female heterosexuals (fall within a tolerance for what constitutes a heterosexual male or female for all you know that hot babe your trying to land is only superficially the gender you think they are but internally they are something else) but that's not all of the spectrum. It consists of all kind of in between gendering and sexuality. For reproduction all you need is a sperm and egg and a place to incubate. So as long as you're fertile you're in the game. Apparently while it is uncommon about less than 1% of hermaphrodites are actually fertile meaning those capable of reproduction are REALLY capable of reproduction. So since hermaphrodites and other "intersexed" individuals don't conform to the notion of two sexes with nothing in between it doesn't mean they aren't humans. Sexuality is just a spectrum with two complete distinct genders on each end. The reason for this as far as I can tell is simply because we start off androgynous with all the same parts that are then altered to fit what part of the reproductive strategy we are going to take.

I'm not sure what more to say without writing a book on the subject. I haven't touched on how not all cultures even modern ones view hermaphrodites as odd. I haven't touched on the medical alterations done to people to make them conform to a two gender idea or even the psychological damaged done to people by making them feel like freaks. Hell I haven't touched on the "blasphemy" of saying humans aren't perfect creations or even the politically correct blasphemy of implying that someone may be an "imperfect" creation.

I don't think I've managed to really capture the idea of the title of this posting so I guess I hope you come away from this with the idea that we group things by what we believe are their defining common characteristics. Hermaphrodites share all the traits of the rest of their respective species (actually some specicies of non-human animals are specifically hermaphrodite in which case only being able to perform one part of reproduction would be seen as abnormal) so the human ones are human and that's a fact. Hell for all you know you might be like Eric Cartman and your mom is actually your dad.