Talk:Sexual differentiation

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2020 and 29 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Pktka. Peer reviewers: Mjsalnic, TanishaT.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:05, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Ungrammatical and/or ambiguous sentences

In the Humans section, several sentence are ungrammatical and/or ambiguous in meaning due to bad or omitted words and punctuation. The result is awkward-looking constructions whose precise meaning is unclear. Please clean it up; since I’m not an expert on sex differentiation, I can’t figure out how what is meant in several sentences in order to correct them myself!! 24.154.117.79 (talk) 06:21, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Adding on to this:

The initial paragraph under the Humans section seems fine. It could be rewritten for clarity, but is not bad. However, the following paragraphs are nonsensical.

"Various processes are involved in the development of sex differences in humans. Sexual differentiation in humans includes development of different genitalia—and the internal genital tracts, breasts, and body hair—and plays a role in gender identification."

I believe this is incorrect in some ways. There are many processes involved in the development, but the addition of "and plays a role in gender identification" is not (wholly?) correct. If we are specifically talking about sex assignment at birth it is wrong— AGAB (assigned gender/sex at birth) is based on the external presentation of genitalia.

Even if in exclusive reference to how society perceives a persons' gender, it still is not fully correct. Yes, traits such as body hair and breasts do matter, it is far more complex. There are cisgender men who experience breast development, and people of every gender can grow body hair in any place.

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I think the text mentions gender identification unnecessarily, or at least in a way that has poor placement. The mention of gender identification and the last paragraph under the Humans section could be merged in a way that states that different cultures, beliefs, and societal norms will impact how those traits are viewed. Clarifying the main problematic paragraph would likely involve removing/moving mentions of gender identification, and rephrasing the general paragraph. Obviously, there are secondary sex characteristics that do develop more/less/differently depending on the basic stuff, but I (again) strongly suggest mentioning that there is many instances of variation or expression that falls outside the binary.

This would also allow for more expansion on the traits that vary more.

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Please note, the current citation for the topic does not have any mention of things like breast development/hair growth etc (based on my skimming). It also does not mention gender identification (especially not referencing these characteristics). In fact, it doesn't even seem to reference secondary sex characteristics at all.

It is possible that I am misunderstanding/misinterpreting what is written, and also a chance that I am misinformed. I do not want to personally make any edits to this section because I am not confident in my knowledge (and I've also been staring at it for far too long trying to understand what I'm looking at). Sorry if I'm going crazy, I would greatly appreciate any input from any person. Thank you. (This block of text is NOT proofread btw) EM 1NH3 (talk) 11:47, 1 April 2025 (UTC)