Answer to Question #302846 in Psychology for Rodjina

Question

Please watch the Molly Webster Ted Talk 

Groups will respond to the following questions and prompts:

• How is sex typically determined?
• What other combinations of the x and y chromosomes occur and what were scientists examining in relation to xyy combinations?
• Any issue with the thinking that generated the hypotheses about xyy combinations? 
• What is androgen insensitivity? What example is provided in the Ted Talk?
• What are the concerns with identifying X and Y chromosomes as determinants of sex? Why is this a faulty or flawed proposition?
• How might we think differently about assignment of sex and gender identification? 

Answer 1

(i) A sex-determination system is a biological system that determines the development of sexual characteristics in an organism. Most organisms that create their offspring using sexual reproduction have two sexes. Sex is determined at conception by the combination of an egg, which has an X chromosome for sex, and a sperm, which can have either an X or Y chromosome.

(ii) Diplosome and heterochromosome. They were doing genetic analysis.

(iii) No.

(iv) Androgen insensitivity syndrome is a genetic condition which affects a child's sexual development before birth and during puberty. If you assign sex to a specific place in the body, it somehow makes us think that we can into a body.

(v) The X and Y chromosomes, also known as the sex chromosomes, determine the biological sex of an individual: females inherit an X chromosome from the father for a XX genotype, while males inherit a Y chromosome from the father for a XY genotype (mothers only pass on X chromosomes).

(vi) Although the terms sex and gender are sometimes used interchangeably and do in fact complement each other, they nonetheless refer to different aspects of what it means to be a woman or man in any society. Sex refers to the anatomical and other biological differences between females and males that are determined at the moment of conception and develop in the womb and throughout childhood and adolescence.