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Comment by thelastparadise | Hacker News Reader

> Women typically have two X chromosomes

Isn't this actually the definition of female?

No, there are cases where males have two X chromosomes[1][2], cases where females have more[3] or less[4] than two and of course trans-women who most commonly have XY chromosomes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XXYY_syndrome

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trisomy_X

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turner_syndrome

> > Women typically have two X chromosomes

> Isn't this actually the definition of female?

‘Women’ and ‘female’ are not interchangeable; one is a gender characteristic, the other is a sex characteristic. The statement as made is valid: Women are statistically likely to be XX, rather than XY or XXY or no doubt many other variations. ‘XX is female’ is a convenient rubric that is easy to remember, but as is usual for such things, human bodies do not respect convenient rubrics regarding genetics and sexes.

Perhaps you meant "'XX is female' is a convenient rubric"?

Yep! Fixed, thanks.

No, they're both sex characteristics. It's just that there are individuals with sex chromosome aneuploidies who will develop a female phenotype, e.g. X0 (Turner syndrome) and XXX (trisomy X), and also XY individuals where the Y chromosome is deficient in specific ways, e.g. Swyer syndrome.

> ‘Women’ and ‘female’ are not interchangeable; one is a gender characteristic, the other is a sex characteristic.

That's not what most dictionaries say. They say a 'woman' is an adult female human.

Turner syndrome describes a biological female with just one X chromosome.

Come on man. This article is about autoimmune diseases, not witty quips about trans women.

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