More Than Two Sexes

            I spent a lot of time on Sunday writing my journal, but I also argued with a woman on Twitter about the sex chromosomes that combine outside of the normal XX and XY combination. I was suggesting that the additional Ys or Xs like the XXY of Klinefelter's syndrome might be a different sex. She insisted that Klinefelter's only affects males, and that is the same phrasing that geneticists use, but the language seems wrong to me. If the chromosomes create the sex, where is there a male to be affected? To say that males are “affected” implies a chronology, as in, the male was there to be affected and then the other X came along. It seems to me what they mean by the XXY “only affecting males” is that everyone with the XXY combination is born with a penis. I hold that each of these combinations might be a different sex, but I distinguish this from someone being transgender. Gender may be more about brain structure than chromosomes, since transgender women tend to have brain structures similar to those of cisgender women, and transgender men tend to have brains like men even though one may be XX and the other XY. Down the road though maybe they'll find chromosomal combos to explain the brain differences.

I watched a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory. It turns out that Raj, despite having a salary from his work as an astrophysicist, has never paid for anything. His rent, his car and his credit cards have always been paid for by his rich father in India. Raj decides to cut the strings and support himself, but immediately has to struggle and move out of his apartment. Something the writers overlooked though is that if Raj has never paid for anything he must have amassed a fortune of savings from his unspent salary.