Why are there two sexes, two genders?

Well…there aren’t.

Sex is a biological construct, gender is a social construct. Some people believe the latter is pre-determined by the former. I am not one of those people. The beautiful thing about children is that they don’t know they have either and can enjoy life without restrictions that come with these binary categories (unless their parents are gendering them which more parents do, religiously). In terms of the ‘beginning of the world’, you will get a range of answers because not everyone believes in a single beginning – if someone likes the Adam/Eve story, they’ll explain sexes and genders and gender roles (unfortunately) in terms of that story and so on. On a biological level, many animals have two major sexes, for reproductive purposes and one can question whether mating is a waste of time but, again, you’ll have different perspective on whether sex can be a part of ‘consummation of mind’. I’m not of the group that believes that one must give up sex in order to reach some sort of communion w/God or enlightenment or what have you. I am also a gender non conforming person who, though I’ve made no physical changes to my sexed-as-female body, doesn’t feel either of the two accepted genders (in our Western society) fit who I am.

As far as a scientific rather than social answer-

Sexual reproduction facilitates genetic variation. Genetic variation facilitates offspring survival. Therefore, evolution favors organisms that can reproduce sexually. That’s the short answer :>)

Sexual reproduction appears to have begun in Eukaryotic organisms (single celled organisms with nuclei) around 1.2 billion years ago. There are organisms that reproduce asexually even today, so that branch of evolution was never pinched off. Prokaryotic organisms like bacteria, which are presumed to predate Eukaryotes, do not reproduce sexually, nor do viruses, which are presumed to predate the Prokaryotes. As such, sex did not develop for more than ⅔ of the time there has been life on Earth.

It isn’t clear how sex developed, or why. However, the role of sex in reproduction is to assure a variety of individuals. Organisms that reproduce asexually tend not to differ from one another. A diversity of genetic characteristics among individuals likely serves some evolutionary purpose, making it easier for some species to survive.

Plus it makes life a lot more interesting if you are more complex than a Eukaryote.

I don’t know if it’s accurate to claim that evolution favors sexual reproduction as opposed to asexual reproduction – it ensures more diversification in life, but there are drawbacks to it that make asexual reproduction highly beneficial.

I don’t know how these would possibly exist, but I think that we’d have to show that species that reproduce asexually go extinct to a statistically significant greater degree than those reproducing sexually.

The OP’s question as to why there are two genders is different from, though related to, the question as to why there is sexual reproduction. There is a type of flatworm that reproduces sexually, but is hermaphroditc. In a sexual encounter each flatworm battles to impregnate the other.

I don’t think anyone knows for sure why we have two genders. It would seem to be more efficient to have one gender specialized to get impregnated and carry the child to birth, to have one gender gather while the other hunted. Perhaps there is even survival value in having one gender engaged in warfare while the other takes care of children.

@LostInParadise The hunter/gatherer paradigm is only one of many that people have extrapolated on ancient peoples, yet it is used most often because it’s been given so much more press and energy. There have been other arrangements, in the past, even though females still birthed and males contributed semen.

@iamthemob

I did simplify quite a bit. :>)

There are situations where asexual reproduction works. There are also many situations where sexual reproduction works better- such as when you are subject to attacks by parasites, as most multicellular organisms are. There’s a constant immunological arms race between hosts and parasites, and without the genetic variation of sexual reproduction in hosts, the parasites will win out.

@LostInParadise

Sexual reproduction arose long before divisions in labor, and in most organisms the male gives absolutely no care to his offspring. What does seem to be relatively consistent is that the parent with the largest gametes provides the most care, because that parent has invested the most energy. We have termed those organisms “females.”

@LostInParadise yuss, penis fencing…as a mating strategy among flatworms.

Unlike Simone I don’t think gender is an entirely social construct. And children do have naturally occurring gender identities. I think one of the best examples of this is transgendered children. There certainly are plenty of societal influences on the expectations of certain genders, but genders themselves, at least a significant amount of the time seem to be inborn. This is one of the reasons transgendered people experience so much misery in their natural bodies, they can change their physical appearance to match their gender identity, but it is a losing battle when they try to conceal or change who they are. Fortunately we live in a time that even if people (or most people at least) have a fixed gender identity they can express that identity more freely and completely than in past times. Though we still need a lot more acceptance of sexual diversity.

As for why we have genders, I suppose it serves our species well. Different genders can fill complementary roles sexually and otherwise, but I suspect the benefits from having diverse genders goes much further than sex and child rearing. As someone not schooled in the nuance of sexual adaptation I’m just going to assume that as in other traits diversity of gender identity is a positive thing for our communities and survival.

@fundevogel Trans children and invididuals vary in their experiences – they aren’t an example of gender being one way or another (in terms of whether it’s a social construct or not) – historically, trans and intersex children and invididuals have been ‘studied’ by all kinds of researchers and there is evidence (sometimes based on the same set of subjects) that gender is completely due to rearing (Money et al, I believe, around 1950s-1960s began this kind of work) and that it’s more complex than that, as well. Youth, these days, are a lot freer to not just be one way or another so there are more genderfluid and gender non conforming individuals – I believe that if kids didn’t grow thinking that if they don’t feel like what they’re told, they must be the opposite, there’d be a lot less grief. As to why some trans people experience misery in their bodies, that’s got a lot more to do with what they are conditioned to associate with those bodies. I don’t think I am a woman but I have female parts – yet I never wanted to cut off my breasts like some of my FTM friends – how do you account for that?

The bottom line for me on this question and so many others like it that begin with “why…” is that your answer is going to be to a large extent faith-based.

Why are we here?
Why is the sky blue? (As opposed to some other color that it could be.)
Why did God make us? (Assuming you believe in God.)
Why do bad things happen to good people?
Why do people make the choices they do?

Nearly any question that you start with a “why” is going to have a faith-based answer of some type. That, or a guess by others who have their own faith, their own agenda or their own plan to sell to you. This is mine; you can have it for free.

There are more than two of both sexes and genders.

I’m also not certain that gender is an entirely social contstruct. If it was then I, who was raised as a girl, ought to consider myself female.

@downtide I find the variety I spoke of before fascinating – I often wonder about why someone begins a struggle against the gender identity with which they were raised – people’s answers vary – it’s hard to untangle because everything is embodied, the way you feel socially and physically. You don’t ‘ought’ to consider yourself anything because no one was supposed to hammer into your head that you were supposed to be feminine and all that. However, I will always be glad that in the sex and gender of male and man, you found your home.

Because 3’s a crowd?.....

No, genders were not formed at the beginning of the world. Genders were created to solve an evolutionary problem, to fill a niche of some sort. Use your imagination to figure out what that might have been.

No, mating is not a loss of time, it is absolutely necessary for the propagation of the species. Mating is essential for evolution to occur as changes within eggs/sperm must produce offspring in order to stay in the population. As for the consummation of mind, not really sure I understand what you mean, so I’ll leave that to someone else to explain.

Because it generates variation. It might work better with three. Can you imagine if three distinct sexes were necessary for procreation? Male, female and numale.

@tigress3681

I’m gonna hafta disagree a little -

(1) gender is the social construct related to sex (although sex is also, arguably, a social construct).

(2) in the evolutionary model, nothing is created for a purpose.

(3) mating is not essential for evolution, considering that asexual reproduction results in evolution regardless (otherwise, we wouldn’t be here).

So the phrase “Go fuck yourself” still retains some power as a great insult.

@iamthemob Maybe I am old fashioned, I still use gender and sex interchangeably.

And you are right, the horse does not follow the carriage. However, gender (not identity :P ) was formed and then a niche was filled.

As for mating not being essential for evolution, you try changing your sperm or egg genetics, and not mate… I am interested in how you plan to pass the changes along, please do share with me that technique.

@tigress3681

“I am interested in how you plan to pass the changes along, please do share with me that technique.”

Well, you could take some lessons from the bdelloid rotifers.

@tigress3681 – sex isn’t essential for evolution generally. For species that reproduce sexually, sure. But considering that the evolutionary model mandates that we evolved from organisms that reproduced asexually, asexually reproducing organisms had to evolve themselves into organisms that did reproduce sexually…and they continue to reproduce and evolve to this day (see what @crisw said).

@iamthemob “In human race,...”

@crisw Haha, I’d love to see iamthemob or anyone else for that matter attempt those strategies.

@tigress3681 – Ooooh…no…you first…tell me how it is….;-)

@iamthemob No no, it was your idea to reproduce asexually or via parthenogenesis or budding, I think you should go first!

@tigress3681 – I don’t really think it was anyone’s “idea” – it just kind of happened, you know.

I think it is a passing phase, soon we will be androgynous, then the perpetual argument of who is better, stronger, smarter, whatever will be eliminated!

Viva la difference!

@LostInParadise – just out of curiosity do you identify as male or female?

Male, why?

@LostInParadise – mostly curiosity but it does always seems to me as if the “viva” line is used by males.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
“I believe that if kids didn’t grow thinking that if they don’t feel like what they’re told, they must be the opposite, there’d be a lot less grief. As to why some trans people experience misery in their bodies, that’s got a lot more to do with what they are conditioned to associate with those bodies.”

Of course there is a lot of variation in human experience and certainly some trans people were exposed to polarized views of gender growing up, but to me it seems a rather sweeping statement to say that because they couldn’t identity with a cartoonish version of feminity or masculinity they decided to to switch genders. I loathed the preppy girls in my highschool, but it didn’t make me want to be a man, I just didn’t want to be like them. You know what I mean, not identifying with a particular group is not the same as identifying with another group. From what I understand of trans people its not that they want to switch because they don’t identity with the sex they were born with, but because they do identity with a sex they weren’t born with.

“I don’t think I am a woman but I have female parts – yet I never wanted to cut off my breasts like some of my FTM friends – how do you account for that?”

I don’t discount the significance of social pressure, nor do I equate your satisfaction with your own body as meaning that you must fit into the female gender. My position is that both culture and biology shape a person. However in this particular segment of the nature vs nurture debate (as with all the rest) I don’t think the role of nature of nurture are always equal.

Nurture, or culture in this case, does a phenomenal (and sometimes frightening) job of shaping of attitudes towards sexuality and the manner in which we approach our own sexuality. However while our environment and culture can make us feel really good or bad about our sexuality, or gift us with interesting fetishes none of these things change who we are or who we desire. They just alter our comfort level with those things. In this sense I would say our culture and environment can offer positive reinforcement of who we are and what we want or it can be tantamount to total aversion therapy leading to all sorts of awful feelings of guilt and self loathing. However, as much as certain identities and orientations can be glorified and others shunned it doesn’t seem possible for culture change a person’s sexual identity or desires, just how they feel about them and their willingness to embrace them.

I imagine your objection to this is that efforts made by people to alter sexual orientation or identity happen late and that culture forges a persons gender identity and orientation at a very young age. And that’s some thing worth talking about. I would agree that the ground work of a person’s sexual inclinations are laid very early. But when it comes to the role of culture in this I am convinced this comes predominately, if not completely, in the form of establishing an attitude toward sexuality and perhaps laying the ground work for specific sexual preferences, like eye color or the scent of peppermint or what have you. The strange little triggers that for reasons unknown become important to us sexually.

Why I don’t think culture’s influence extends further than this comes down to two things. Materialism and my anthropology class. My anthropology class didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing sexuality. The class was dedicated to the study of chimpanzee society and what it could tell us about how early human society may have evolved. This of course meant we were talking about the foundation and development of culture. Culture does not exist in a vacuum. Culture initially evolved to perpetuate behavior that gave it’s members a greater ability to survive. And while it has accumulated plenty of stuff that seems counter-productive or distasteful over time it should be remembered that for all their flaws those distasteful bits of culture didn’t just appear out of thin air any more than culture at large did. They were selected for just as biological traits were, sometimes through environmental pressures, sometimes specifically with biology. This was a major issue for my anthropology professor. Nature and nurture aren’t competing pressures in human development, they fuel each other. Biology lays a ground work for culture and culture reinforces that functionality of that biology.

I’m certainly not someone that would ever give a behavior or culture a pass simply because it was “natural”. Nature is an amoral force that has, curiously enough, selected behavioral and biological traits that allow us to be moral. I am not making a value judgment on whether or not it is preferable for something like gender identity to be established by phyiology or culture. What I am coming down as is a materialist. Everything I am as person is determined by the 2 odd pounds of brain matter in my head encased in considerably more flesh and bone. What I feel is the product of chemical processes that were put in place long before I was born and are beyond my ability to alter. These are processes that were selected for surviving in a social group. My brain is set up to feel empathy and predisposed towards cooperative action. And should I get pregnant it will be flushed with bonding chemicals to ensure that I will protect and care for my offspring, and thus give my genes a greater chance to survive. These things are all built into me biologically, culture merely enforces them.

Last I heard sexual orientation and identity was being traced to the hormones a fetus is exposed to during pregnancy. A certain cocktail of hormones makes a boy straight. A different cocktail results in a feminine mind paired with a masculine body. This is all pretty new stuff so I would not be surprised if future study shows this to be incomplete information. However even if the mechanics are shown to work differently down the road I suspect this particular issues will always come back to something physiological, after all, there’s now escaping that two pounds of brain.

I do hope that in the future culture will embrace the full scope of human gender identity and I expect that when the negative pressure is released we will see much greater vibrancy of identity as the our differences are no longer stifled or the subject of ridicule.

I apologize for this not addressing specific genders as the question does. The fact of the matter is I’m not overly concerned with how many different genders they are. I think it’s up to an individual to know who they are rather than have me impose who I think they are on them. I don’t think anyone is qualified to impose a gender identity on anyone other than them self. Ultimately we may not agree on how gender identity is established but I don’t think it need be an issue so long as we remain respectful of it.

@fundevogel – I feel like there’s a conflation of identity and orientation in your above analysis. Not a significant one, and not one that undermines your assertions regarding physiological influences.

Identity is about public interaction…and is dependent on the cultural “language” we’re given. Orientation may be tied to physiology to a significant degree, but we translate orientation into sexual identities, behaviors, etc. based on the cultural linguistics we have available to us. We can accurately say that the homosexual didn’t exist before the nineteenth century. The statement that homosexuality doesn’t exist in Iran is, I argue, accurate.

@iamthemob “I feel like there’s a conflation of identity and orientation in your above analysis. Not a significant one, and not one that undermines your assertions regarding physiological influences.”

I didn’t intend to equate gender identity and sexual orientation, I spoke of them together because they seem to have similar origins in development.

“Identity is about public interaction…and is dependent on the cultural “language” we’re given.”

I don’t entirely agree. There is more to who a person is than their public face. According to your reasoning hermits and prisoners in solitary wouldn’t have any identity at all since they don’t experience human interaction. Certainly we are affected by human interaction but we don’t cease to have identity it’s absence.

“We can accurately say that the homosexual didn’t exist before the nineteenth century. The statement that homosexuality doesn’t exist in Iran is, I argue, accurate.”

This seems to be a semantic argument. I presume you mean that because homosexuals were not recognized as a demographic no one identified as homosexual. However the definition of homosexual refers to orientation, not gender identity. And orientation exists regardless of recognition. I expect there are a fair number of homosexuals in Iran that would disagree that homosexuality doesn’t exist in their country. To suggest that visibility is equivalent to existence is troublesome to me. It devalues those that are pressured to keep themselves hidden for one reason or another, uses their anonymity to write them off entirely and perpetuates a culture a suppression.

The thing is, long before a cultural definition existed for homosexuality, transsexuality and so on people still managed to embrace those life styles or at least know that they didn’t fit with the vocabulary imposed on them. I’ve got a book about one such individual sitting on my bookshelf for me.

@fundevogel

I didn’t intend to equate gender identity and sexual orientation, I spoke of them together because they seem to have similar origins in development.

The conflation was more in relation to this statement: “Last I heard sexual orientation and identity was being traced to the hormones a fetus is exposed to during pregnancy.” A sexual orientation is just that – physical desire. Whether or not someone claims a gay identity because of those physical desires is choice, or it is something that is thrust upon them in many ways.

There is more to who a person is than their public face. According to your reasoning hermits and prisoners in solitary wouldn’t have any identity at all since they don’t experience human interaction. Certainly we are affected by human interaction but we don’t cease to have identity it’s absence.

I think you’re taking identity out of context here. Identity as it relates to sexual orientation, gender, etc., is inextricably linked to identity politics. Therefore, the identity of a hermit or someone in solitary confinement isn’t relevant except in terms of how certain physiological mechanisms produced a feeling that induced them to identify with a certain group. Certainly, a hermit has an identity as a gay man has one – a hermit has chosen to be a hermit, and therefore indentify himself or herself as not part of a social group. A prisoner in solitary is an odd example, as I can’t really think of a physiological mechanism that would specifically motivate one to become a prisoner in solitary confinement.

This seems to be a semantic argument. I presume you mean that because homosexuals were not recognized as a demographic no one identified as homosexual. However the definition of homosexual refers to orientation, not gender identity. And orientation exists regardless of recognition. I expect there are a fair number of homosexuals in Iran that would disagree that homosexuality doesn’t exist in their country.

Sure, I would agree that it’s a semantic argument. But semantics are an essential part of the discussion. When you discuss homosexuality you bring up a variety of possible definitions, so it becomes unclear unless you lock down what the important elements of the definition are. Talking about orientation as something which leads one to be grouped in a particular sexual or sex category requires that we look at the parameters of that category to see if we’re making useful determinations. Sexual orientation is a complex interaction, and cultural and social environment become essential in determining what we mean when we talk about what it means. For example, in Mexico, passive men or “bottoms” are considered homosexual, whereas the active or “tops” are considered to be perfectly heterosexual, as they are the sexual subjects. This example also shows how concepts of masculinity and femininity are inextricably tied up much of the time with sexuality. The passives are considered to be sexually objectified and therefore feminine. They are not really men. This is completely separated from their biological sex in that context. In Afghanistan, there is the phenomenon of the dancing boys – young boys sold into sexual slavery for the entertainment of wealthy masters. The Catholic molestation scandal has motivated the church to make claims that it is homosexual priests that molest not gay priests as the majority of the victims were young boys. So, much behavior that is considered to be homosexual is out in the open, but isn’t considered homosexual in either our perception of it or their perception of it, or wouldn’t be solely from their perspective and completely from ours.

To suggest that visibility is equivalent to existence is troublesome to me. It devalues those that are pressured to keep themselves hidden for one reason or another, uses their anonymity to write them off entirely and perpetuates a culture a suppression.

Again, this requires we determine what we mean. Sexual desire exists. It is visible through sexual behavior, for the most part. This is regardless of whether it was deemed acceptable or legal. And it can exist without behavior, although if it did so completely separate from behavior, people wouldn’t be around long ;-). But if one is raised in a place where homosexual desire or transgender identification is considered to be a “trick of the devil” or “evil temptation,” how does that person see that impulse as different from the desire to steal a wealthy man’s money? Whether we know that an internal impulse can be expressed as something requires that we understand the thing to exist – and therefore, a category needs to be visible in order for us to understand who outside us or if we ourselves fit into that category. And in modern western society, there are plenty of people who live out a straight lifestyle because homosexuality is not considered a viable or healthy option to heterosexuality. Recognizing this doesn’t devalue anything nor does it use anonymity to contribute to suppression. Rather, it separates the physiological impulse that can be considered orientation from any category which discusses a pattern of behavior. Once that happens, it is difficult to claim an impulse as unnatural – impulses are just that. Thereafter, we can see how the expression of the impulse is either harmful or not. If one is generally attracted to men and is a man, but is forced to reject that, is that harmful and why? Why do we come to that conclusion? How does that attitude contribute to hiding the behavior? And in the end, it shows how disconnected our ideas of sexual and gender identity actually are from biology.

In simple terms, the “female” creatures more than a billion years ago invented a new type of “health insurance” for their offspring being faced with ever-changing environmental conditions. The insurance came in the form of a male partner.

Instead of relying on a small number of mutations for dealing with change, this innovative step offered a combinatorial explosion of possibilities.

Sex was the greatest invention since the advent of nucleic acid.

People still enjoy it today.

And guys, our species appreciates this health insurance.

It’s time we give health insurance the positive connotation it deserves.

And men should be proud of this.

It started off as Adam and Eve because that is the way The Creator made it. Same as the computers we use to even connect to Fluther, it takes software, and hardware, to do it; two disc of software and nothing to run the data on, you have a pair of drink coaster, two laptops with not software to run them and you have a pair of electric bookends that blink nicely with a fan whirl, but you will not get any work from it. That is why you have man and woman, so something productive can come from the mating.