Thank you for this very informative essay. In principle, I agree with you. However, with all due respect, I think that many of the assertions are too simplistic (and some inaccurate) to move the conversation along. That's much of the problem with the ongoing debate. For instance, "eyes are specialized tissues that produce sight" is not sufficiently nuanced to make the point that sight is an emergent property of an intact functioning brain (eyes don't ''produce" sight). And, reptiles DO have sex chromosomes. Likewise, drawing analogies to the genetics of other animals is beside the point... even though I've been teaching biology and physiology for decades, I've always wondered how precisely to define the sex of the hydrozoan Obelia, but that has nothing to do with the sex of my children. Similarly, the two species of rat about which you wrote apparently have 10 genes that function in gonadal differentiation. They're just not on a 'Y' chromosome. I would also like to point out that the issue about aneuploidies has been discussed ad infinitum (even I put in my 2 cents)...
"If Aneuploidies = Sexes, Then Two-Headed Turtles Aren’t Turtles"
...and simply reiterating these explanations will not change people's points of view. None of the broader arguments will ever resolve until people on both sides openly recognize the ambiguities of the edge cases, and there are some. That's just biology. As I tell my students, life is full ambiguities… get over it. However — and I want to make this quite clear, as I did in the article cited above — the ambiguities do not mean that the basic categories are illegitimate (Homo sapiens have two sexes). It just means there are rare ambiguities. So, in short, until the discussion becomes more nuanced and biologically accurate, it will simply remain an ongoing back-and-forth. Thank you again for this very interesting read. As I said, I do agree with you in principle. Sincerely Frederick
Frederick: "... I've always wondered how precisely to define the sex of the hydrozoan Obelia ..."
Easy peasy. If they produce sperm they're male, if they produce ova they're female, and if they produce neither they are, by definition, sexless 😉🙂:
Wikipedia: "The next generation of the life cycle begins when the medusae are released from the gonozooids, producing free swimming male only medusae velum with gonads, a mouth, and tentacles. The physical appearance of the male and female medusae velum, including their gonads, are indistinguishable, and the sex can only be determined by observing the inside of the gonads, which will either contain sperm or eggs."
Though I think you're barking up the wrong tree with your "ambiguities of the edge cases", apparently because you refuse to accept the standard biological definitions for the sexes by which to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. See the Glossary in this article in the (Oxford) Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
You quite reasonably argue that "this controversy is really about language", about which definitions are going to qualify as trump. But your questions seem readily answered, have no "ambiguities" at all in them if one starts from those biological definitions:
Frederick: "So, let me ask you. In your opinion, is a person with four X chromosomes a unique sex, or a female with a biological anomaly? Is a person with three X’s and a Y chromosome a unique sex, or a male with a biological anomaly?"
Do they produce sperm? Then they're males. Do they produce ova? Then they're females. Do they produce neither? Then they're sexless.
That's the utility and value of those biological definitions -- there are clear-cut and objectively quantifiable criteria that must be met, properties that those organisms must possess to qualify as members of those first two categories, to qualify as referents of the terms "male" and "female":
My dear friend, we've had this conversation before. As I said, I understand your position. And, I think you understand mine. Fundamentally, we agree on the big issues. If you want to wait until you dissect the obelia's medusa to determinate sex, that's fine. I don't see the medusa stage as separate from the whole organism. The whole organism takes three distinct forms over the course of its life. If you want to say it only has sex at the instant the medusa has matured gametes, that's fine with me. But, of course, you're never going to be able to determine the exact instant that occurs, or arrive at an unambiguous definition of having functional gametes — eventually the argument will be pushed down to the molecular level — and you will be locked in an unending debate with other obelia enthusiasts about that moment forever, and forever, and forever. So, we have two choices. We can understand that sometimes cases are ambiguous (and not easily determined), and human beings can be both reasonable and differ in their opinions. Or, you can argue forever. I see biology has more nuanced than do you. We have a different set of intellectual presuppositions. That's cool and I enjoy listening to your arguments. But, that doesn't change the fact that Homo sapiens have two sexes and sometimes there are developmental and anatomical ambiguities in morphology. If you want to argue that a human being has no sex if they do not produce gametes, that's fine with me. I understand how you define the term. The important question is how we treat other people… which is completely separate from the details of the obelia or one's definition of aneuploidies. So, to answer your question, I think that someone with Klinefelter's syndrome is male, even if they do not produce gametes. You know, based on my writings, that I do not think aneuploidies constitute separate sexes. And, by the way, about the snake thing, I wasn't late to the party… The University of Adelaide researchers were. Thanks, as always, for your comment! … And thank you for keeping me on my intellectual toes.
Frederick: “Fundamentally, we agree on the big issues.”
Not sure that we really do. You say it’s “fine” with you that I argue that a “whole organism only has [a] sex at the instant [it] has matured gametes”, that “a human being has no sex if they do not produce gametes.” Yet you turn around and insist that “someone with Klinefelter's syndrome is male, even if they do not produce gametes.”
Any number of problems with that rather profound, far-reaching, and fundamentally antithetical dichotomy, one which is clearly predicated on quite different definitions for the sexes. Do you have any definition at all for the sexes that stipulate any necessary and sufficient conditions for sex category membership? A citation of reputable journals that explicitly endorse them?
That is, maybe arguably, one of the proximate causes for the whole transgender clusterfuck – that the biological community is more or less crippled by controversy and incapable of agreeing on a single definition for the sexes that apply in all cases, at least to all anisogamous species. What is missing, and is sorely needed, is a common reference point. Such ambiguity, such “dissension in the ranks” only gives free rein to the charlatans, grifters, scientific illiterates, and political opportunists to argue that sex is a spectrum, that it is as changeable as our socks.
Further, you insist – sans evidence or justification – that “Homo sapiens have two sexes”. If you’re unable or unwilling to justify that choice – and it IS a choice; there is NO intrinsic meaning to “male” and “female” – then it seems “not quite cricket” to deny the spectrumists the same option. Sauce for the goose and all that. Lots of options “on tap”, but they’re not all created equal. Refusing to justify yours only gives weight to the spectrumists’ case that you’re just being arbitrary without cause.
But, en passant or to backtrack a bit, I think you’re attempting to thrash a strawman, are throwing out a bunch of red herrings with your reliance on "ambiguity", and are also seriously misunderstanding the definitions stipulated in that Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction. Though many do – carelessly, intentionally, cluelessly, or pigheadedly. But when they say “produces gametes”, they mean – as per standard linguistics terminology – “on a regular basis”:
Grammarly: “We use the simple present tense when an action is happening right now, or when it happens regularly ...”
Analogously, we don’t say that a car manufacturing plant is only such at the instant a new car comes off the end of the production line, and is something entirely different in between those times. That the facility produces cars regularly is sufficient to qualify it as that type of plant. Similarly, organisms of various species are still male and female in between the times that functional gametes are actually “delivered to the production floor” – so to speak.
In any case, you in particular might have some interest in this paper on the topic by Paul Griffiths – university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics & Philosophy – and this passage in particular:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
Entirely antithetical to your argument that an obelia’s sex applies to the “whole organism”, over its entire lifespan. I seriously wonder what sex you think that clownfish are on hatching since they can, by the standard biological definitions, become both, sequentially, over their lifespans. That is largely one of the major claims to fame of those definitions: they’re readily applicable, without qualification, to ALL anisogamous species. In notable contradistinction to the ones Emma Hilton had published in the UK Times – a decent enough newspaper, but hardly a peer-reviewed biological journal – and which are no better than folk-biology.
But, somewhat more briefly, you might also have some interest in both Griffiths’ comments about operational definitions – apparently what you’re using – as well as another philosopher of science on the problems entailed by such definitions:
Griffiths: “Like chromosomal definitions of sex, phenotypic definitions are not really ‘definitions’ – they are operational criteria for sex determination underpinned by the gametic definition of sex and valid only for one species or group of species. …. Research on the origin, variation and distribution of sexes uses the definition above (Box 1). Moreover, as I have briefly sketched above, the operational definitions of sexes used in biomedical fields all rely on the more fundamental definition that comes from evolutionary biology. …. Medical definitions of sex in terms of chromosomes are not definitions of biological sex, they are at best operational definitions of biological sex in humans.”
Swartz: “But it suffices to say that Bridgman's so-called 'operational definitions' which were adopted by a few physicists for a time, and by many more psychologists for a rather longer time, eventually came to be seen not only as sterile but as being stultifying to the progress of science.”
Then, Houston, we have a problem. One that you seem to be more a part of than of the solution.
You -- and too many others -- can't or won't defend your position or definitions, but rather "obstinately" refuse to consider the alternatives that offer some ways off the horns of a seriously problematic social dilemma.
Seems that social progress is contingent on developing a workable consensus. Which you -- and too many others -- seem bound and determined to frustrate, largely because of "prior commitments" to idiosyncratic and quite untenable anti-scientific claptrap and outright dogma.
You might at least give some thought to philosopher Will Durant's elaborations on Voltaire's quip:
Durant: “ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
I’m sorry, but that’s unkind. I’ve always been thoughtful and respectful in my comments and discussions. I simply have different point of view than you.
There’s a lot of trans individuals who claim they have true hermaphrodism however, it’s worth remembering they fetishize genitalia particularly unusual combinations. So just like they claim to be women, they also claim to have these conditions. True hermaphroditism is not an edge case. It’s a problem featuring many health complications.
This is yet another unreasonably overly complicated view.
1) No one cares about other species. The debate about male and female is exclusively about human male and human female.
2) No one cares about the small number of exceptions. Yes, there are exceptions - but these are errors of development and construction. No one should confuse the categorization of male and female by these errors.
Chromosomes do set up the male and female categories.
Agree. Comparing reptiles a fish with environmentally driven sex development to mammals with genetic sex that’s immutable from conception us insane. Also, if there were ever a fertile XX “male” then the author would have a point, but the fact that there is no single fertile XX person with Speth shows that the condition mentioned is a female deformity that resembles male anatomy, but is not and will never actually be male.
Also, trying to claim deformities break the binary is absurd. One in 10,000 kids is born missing at least one out ear. Paul Stanley of KISS is an example of grade III microtia with complete atresia. No ear canal. No conductive hearing through an ear. We don’t go around saying humans have zero, one, or two ears. Anything short of 2 ears is a deformity of the human craniofacial structure.
You left out turtles and possibly other reptiles, who apparently are male or female depending on the temperature of the egg at some point. That's possibly true for turtles (I'm not even 100% sure about that) but it's irrelevant to human sex issues.
The exceptions are being used by trans activist to confuse people and advance a political agenda, so an article like this is useful to clarify the issue. I do agree that the explanation can be simplified to "sex is a phenotype, not a genotype, regardless of species".
The exceptions kind of prove the rule. That is why a scientific explanation has to be provided when someone with a Y chromosome in the mix turns out phenotypically female.
Apparently only those inside the scientifically illiterate and benighted backwater that you seem to be stuck in ...
"universality" is more or less a foundational principle of any science, of any biology that's worthy of the name. All that you -- and Zach and Colin and far too many other so-called biologists and wannabees -- are peddling is no better than folk-biology:
Wikipedia: "Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal."
I have always had a strong identity as an animal, because I love animals and because I have enjoyed a lifelong fascination with their behavior. I had a serious interest in becoming a comparative psychologist or an ethologist, but finally chose to focus on humans instead. I find it natural, interesting and important to compare behavior of mine that I think might be species behavior to similar patterns of behavior in other species.
I remember reading Konrad Lorenz's "On Aggression" probably some 50 years ago 😳😢🙂 -- long ways back in the rear view mirror, even accounting for the claim that things are closer than they appear. 🤔🙂
But one passage that has always tickled my fancy was about some grey lag geese (?) that Lorenz had in his home and that he was studying. Apparently one of them used to go up the stairs and stop at a midpoint landing and look out a window that was there. But one day it was in a rush, missed that step, got to the top, realized that, turned around, went down to the midpoint landing, did its survey, then proceeded again to the top. Fascinating and incredibly illuminating. 🙂
But you may not know he also did some useful work on imprinting which I think is part and parcel of the transgender clusterfuck:
Wikipedia: "Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a 'critical period' between 13 and 16 hours shortly after hatching."
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on imprinting (1968). The work of Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen inspired me in that direction. At the time I reviewed the literature, the scientific definition of imprinting was indeed: The tendency of a baby bird to follow the first moving stimulus it sees within a critical period shortly after hatching. The tendency is obviously a "hard wired" or "instinctual" behavior with a relatively small learned component, which is the recognition of the bird, human or whatever the duckling followed first.
Human attachment behavior is much more complex and involves tons of learning. Human infants are born with a brain that has most of its development ahead of it, and what babies learn through social interaction is a major part of that development.
What are your thoughts about how the work on imprinting relates to the transgender cf.?
Sandra: "... how the work on imprinting relates to the transgender cf.? ..."
Good question, though one I haven't delved much into, just thought there were some possible parallels that might provide some illumination -- on a "debate" characterized more by heat than by light ...
But I've also thought that Woody Allen's "mocumentary" Zelig is also part of the puzzle:
Seems we have a natural tendency to emulate, and to empathize with those around us -- part and parcel of mirror neurons in some views. But there's also a problematic if not pathological tendency to lose our senses of self, our individuality, either because it's easier to "go with the flow", with the crowd, or because the crowd has a tendency to impose "the lowest common denominator" -- which can be rather low indeed.
Geezus, what a fucking stupid comment. Universality is not always present because not everything is universal. And, no, universality is NOT the goal of all sciences. The goal is accurate representation, not universality, because universality is not universal. I thought that was obvious, but not to some.
🙄 Only in your fucking opinion, an entirely unevidenced one in fact.
Wikipedia: "In philosophy, universality or absolutism is the idea that universal facts exist and can be progressively discovered, as opposed to relativism, which asserts that all facts are relative to one's perspective."
"if you didn't edit in 'present tense indefinite?' " -- that IS the tense of "produces gametes". That phrase of mine is only to emphasize a point that many people -- like you -- apparently haven't a flaming clue about, and are too pigheaded to even try learning about:
Grammarly: "We use the simple present tense when an action is happening right now, or when it happens regularly (or unceasingly, which is why it’s sometimes called present indefinite). Depending on the person, the simple present tense is formed by using the root form or by adding s or es to the end."
"have not convinced a single person" -- Griffiths was convinced of it several years ago, even before I spoke to him about the issue:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
And it's implicit, by way of the verb tense, in the definitions in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
And "self-evidently absurd" is only your entirely unevidenced OPINION.
But you might try getting out of the benighted backwater you're apparently stuck in -- being charitable -- by reading a source that Zach usefully linked to on the fundamental dichotomy between structure & function -- the latter clearly being an essential element, a defining criteria for those biological definitions:
American Physiological Society: “ 'Function' is defined as '(biology) The special, normal, proper physiologic activity of a body part or an organ.' ..."
The individual La Scapigliata referenced in the article, along with others, has raised this issue. However, it seems to be a concern only in their minds, leading to a considerable amount of time wasted on extraordinarily rare health conditions. Furthermore, many people have been subjected to harassment for conditions they were born with and over which they had no control. This matter should be addressed directly with those individuals.
What is the point you are making about the "harassment"? This is not the Woke space you are looking for. I'm not concerned with the harassment. This is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Thanks for this. I'd like to ask a question. For those of us not steeped in the science, but who often find ourselves in the position of having to make the point quickly and move on, is the following statement accurate? "Every single human being is either female or male. In the vast majority of cases, the sex of a person is determined by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, though in rare cases it's determined by other factors such as the presence or absence of a SRY gene." I'm sorry if this seems like an oversimplification of a complicated topic! It's just that sometimes (like if you've got a total of three minutes to communicate a bunch of arguments to a large and diverse audience) simplification becomes necessary. Thank you!
Based on this essay, I guess your question boils down to whether there are any documented cases of an individual human being producing both eggs and sperm. Despite my biology PhD, this is not my area of specialization, but Dr. Google brought me this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6737443/. From the abstract:
"Ovotesticular disorder of sex development, which is formerly known as “true hermaphroditism,” is the most rare form among all disorders of sex development in humans. It is characterized by the simultaneous presence of both ovarian and testicular tissues in the same individual and characteristically presents with ambiguous genitalia in neonates or infants.” So there may be (vanishingly few) humans that might be considered to be both male and female.
That said, I agree with the other commenters that edge cases like this may distract from the core message that 99.9% (if not more) of humans are unambiguously male or female, and their chromosomes and anatomy align.
And, further, none of this has anything to do with so-called “gender identity”; just by the numbers, it’s clear that there are far more people identifying as “trans” than can be accounted for by DSDs.
Yep. It's also worth noting that people born with DSDs—particularly those with clearly male or female phenotypes—are by no means automatically gender dysphoric. While, as you point out, most people claiming gender dysphoria are phenotypically, anatomically, and chromosomally male or female. IOW, DSDs have nothing, actually, to do with gender ideology, despite the claims and tortured logic of ideologues.
I don't know what "really were transgender" means. They have a delusion, one which may serve a purpose at some point in their lives, but a delusion nonetheless. We don't call someone who thinks they are Napoleon "transhistoric", we call them schizophrenic and treat the mental illness, not give surgery to make the person more comfortable in their body.
"the core message that 99.9% (if not more) of humans are unambiguously male or female ..."
Nope, sorry.
You at least should be ready, willing, and able to read -- and understand -- the standard biological definitions for the sexes, as promulgated in the Glossary of this article in the (Oxford Academic) Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
By those standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have FUNCTIONAL gonads of either of TWO types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS -- the last subcategory (of "reproductive functions") encompassing about a third of us at any one time, the prepubescent in particular.
Good question. Maybe "he" for kids who look like a typical penis-haver, and "she" for a typical vagina-haver?
With a PhD under your belt you should understand the concept of proxy variables [PVs]: genitalia and karyotypes are PVs for PROBABLE sex, but not a guarantee. For example, based on typical demographics, some third of penis-havers are not males:
As for your question about deciding whether a child is sexless or not, it seems likely that if they're below the age of puberty onset then they're likely to be sexless, and if above then probably of the sex for which their genitalia is typical.
But a more important question is maybe why one wants to know that. If one wants to segregate kids then reproductive abilities -- which is what "male" & "female" denote -- seem totally irrelevant. For toilets and change rooms, the issue seems to be genitalia -- which is largely if not entirely what the birth certificates are based on. Our sexes aren't "assigned at birth 🙄"; we're given promissory notes that we can probably cash in for genuine, gilt-edged sex category membership cards at the onset of puberty. Until then our genitalia can serve as those PVs.
But I wonder whether you read that MHR article, and whether you accept the definitions for the sexes in its Glossary. As I've often argued, there are NO intrinsic meanings to "male" and "female", but those definitions, and their logical consequences seem like the rules of the road, the common reference point that unites all of biology, the bedrock on which the entire edifice is built.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" -- Dobzhansky. But nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction.
That's the sine qua non of sex category definitions that various Lysenkoists -- of one stripe or another -- are trying to sweep under the carpet, if not abrogate, bastardize, distort, or "transmogrify" beyond all recognition or use for its intended purpose.
I think this can be made simpler and the ambiguity could be removed. The point is that the SRY gene resides on the Y chromosome. It's rarely displaced. The SRY gene products begin a hormonal cascade that de-feminizes and masculinizes the urogenital system of the embryo. Under normal circumstances, there are two separate and distinct developmental pathways.
This is completely correct. For a given individual, they are either male or female, and this is determined by the sex chromosomes - XX is female, XY is male.
All of these exceptions mean nothing with 99.99% of all individuals who are human beings.
The unwillingness of biologists to agree to this obvious truth is due to a desire to have a "unified field theory" of sex throughout the animal kingdom. But that is unnecessarily universal. The entire discussion is about human male and human female.
"troll" -- the go-to replacement for playing the race card, the parting shot of those disappearing up their fundaments because they're too "intellectually weak and lazy to ... counter a logical argument or factual data":
Sure! I’d say - “for most people, XY is a man and XX is a woman. There’s a small number who aren’t either XX or XY or something happened in embryonic development, but they’re still men or women.”
The overwhelming majority of individuals are classified as either male (XY) or female (XX). If anomalies occur in these chromosomes, they may lead to infertility or sterility, along with lifelong health issues for the affected individual. Down syndrome is a prime example of such a situation. Individuals with Down syndrome often face fertility issues, and the distinctive physical characteristics associated with this condition are a result of specific chromosomal abnormalities affecting fetal development. They also typically experience health problems, bone issues, and in some cases, kidney problems. Individuals with Klinefelter's syndrome, or XXY, often have kidney problems. Mosaic conditions, such as XXXY, frequently result in newborns with heart defects.
Kara: "... is the following statement accurate? 'Every single human being is either female or male.' ...."
Nope. Absolutely NOT. In no uncertain terms.
At least by the standard biological definitions, i.e., those promulgated in reputable, peer-reviewed biological journals. Not the letter section of newspapers. See the Glossary in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction [MHR] for an example of the former:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
A case of the latter by several so-called biologists in the UK Times letter section -- a decent enough newspaper, but hardly what anyone would reasonably call a peer-reviewed biological journal:
UK Times: "Individuals that have developed anatomies [gonads?] for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present or future functionality, are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
But to directly answer your question, by those standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have FUNCTIONAL gonads of either of TWO types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS -- the latter subcategory encompassing about a third of us at any one time, the prepubescent in particular.
As for your "simplification" comment -- a more or less useful modus operandum -- you might reflect on Einstein's quip:
Einstein (apocryphal): "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler"
If a definition doesn't describe reality, the definition is wrong. Your clinging to these poor definitions that, by a peculiar twisting of their clear intention, renders some humans sexless simply because they don't yet produce, or have stopped producing whichever gametes are appropriate to their sex is, frankly, illogical. Sex is determined within hours of conception when Mullerian or Wolffian development takes place. From that point on, sex is identifiable and fixed, male or female, through to death (and identifiable for much longer.
Jeremy: "If a definition doesn't describe reality ..."
What "reality" are you talking about? The ONLY thing that's "real" is that those organisms, of all anisogamous species, which produce either small or large gametes can reproduce, and those which produce neither can't. THAT is what the biological definitions encapsulate.
The definitions for the sexes are largely arbitrary, a matter of social construction. There's no intrinsic meaning to "male" & "female" -- or maybe you think the definitions for them were in the first dictionary that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z? 🙄
Jeremy: "Your clinging to these poor definitions that ..."
"poor definitions"? 🙄 The ones published in reputable peer review biological journals? That some 525 people have tweeted some 2000 times?
But I sure don't see that Tomas or any of those other tweeters were endorsing or promoting the folk-biology definitions that Emma Hilton had published in the UK Times letter section -- a decent enough newspaper but hardly any sort of reputable biological journal:
Jeremy: "Sex is determined within hours of conception ..."
What unmitigated horse crap. The only thing that's "determined within hours of conception" is karyotype. And many posters here -- including Zach Elliot most recently in this very post -- have gone out of their way to emphasize that sex is NOT defined by karyotype. It's the type of gametes produced -- which babies don't do until they hit puberty:
Joint flexibility and the differences between males and females is a detail I've not seen here. Women are looser in the joints for reasons of childbirth. Hormone spikes at the end of pregnancy give us the looseness necessary to push the baby to birth through the vaginal canal. I've experienced this late pregnancy phenomenon twice. Women experience more shoulder and knee injuries than most men due in part to this flexibility of tendons and ligaments. Men who cross dress use this detail as they shimmy their too big shoulders and sit into one hip, while glancing side to side to notice if they're being noticed. They want to "pass" but they don't if you are aware of the "tells." They also pose with a head tilt, so commonly seen in staged photos. Honesty regarding this false "femininity" is the best policy. Don't flatter them with stories about how real they look.
Ute: "Honesty regarding this false 'femininity' is the best policy. Don't flatter them with stories about how real they look."
Yeah. Though there ARE feminine males and masculine females, AKA "genders" ...
But ICYMI, "trans widow" Shannon Thrace recently had some interesting observations along the same line:
Shannon: "He [Shannon's ex] cried because someone 'misgendered' him. He cried because his shoulders were too broad for his new dress. He cried because he couldn’t completely eradicate the stubble on his face. He cried because his new habit of flipping his hair back with a limp wrist had gotten him mistaken for a gay man."
I'm familiar with her. I didn't stay long enough to hear Neddy cry about not passing. These dudes need to know all the ways in which they do not fool anyone regarding their sex. This disconnect of mind and body is likely to be helped with an intense combination of the following, supported by the medical ethics that should govern this psychiatric illness. To heal and reconnect: 1. Cease internet exposure for weeks/months. 2. Feldenkrais physical therapy and/or acupressure chiropractic as recommended for veterans at the Veterans Administration YouTube channel 3. Quality psychoanalysis to deal with porn addiction/childhood trauma/sexual abuse history 4. Nature engagement in hiking, gardening, restorative outside work. 5. Volunteerism that avoids the constant self-involvement, with an understanding that no one is obligated to act as a prop to an "identity." Some of this is from detransitioners' stories of what they did to exit the cult.
I signed up there about a month ago though I doubt I'll stick around -- she seems to find the biological definitions for the sexes somewhat "unpalatable":
Though a lot of that goin' round these days, even here which is particularly "disconcerting".
Ute: "This disconnect of mind and body ..."
Yeah, a lot of that goin' round too. I blame video games -- and smartphones, at least in the hands of the young -- which more than a few are now recognizing is the case.
But somewhat apropos of which, and in a note from our sponsor, see my Medium post on "Reality and Illusion: Being vs Identifying As":
A great many people these days seem unclear on the difference between substance and appearance, between "being X" and "identifying-as X", between reality and illusion.
Houston, we have a problem, a "mission-critical" one, one the size of a Titanic-sinking and civilization-sinking iceberg.
BTW, what I find fascinating is the way that all this biological complexity is used by the woke to deconstruct sex when in fact all this biological complexity rather screams out to the universe exactly the opposite. Sex might be produced a half a dozen different ways but still nature insists that there will be two sexes: males, producing sperm, and females producing eggs. A male crocodile is still absolutely recognizable as a male the same way a bull is, notwithstanding the different mechanisms for producing either.
So fundamental is this biological property than even in the teeth of dozens (?) of genetic or other disorders, nature will still insist on producing either boys or girls. It is as if sex were so fundamental that it manifests itself in spite of 'mere' genetics. And the exceptions in fact prove the rule: what is fascinating is how *rare* 'intersex' conditions are -- nature will labor to produce a male body or a female body almost every time in spite of all obstacles.
It sorta feels like sex is a fundamental property of the universe. God calls himself male. The more politically correct Greeks said that the first things to emerge from chaos were a male and a female deity. Me, I think Relativity is male and QM is female and the universe is their child.
Did I mention that I thought the essay was bang-on perfect?
As a "non XX" woman who you'd never suspect of not being "XX" thanks so much for pointing this out. It does confuse "markers of" with "determiners of" and doesn't apply to 100 percent of people.
George says this is over complicated and Frederic says it's simplistic. Perhaps it's impossible to please everyone all the time and we should remember that what matters is that we're all on the side of sanity. I doubt the author would dispute Frederick's points, but one can't say everything that can be said in a short essay -- the author develops a point sufficiently well to make the point.
And I'd ask George to remember that all definitions are tested at their edges by various outliers -- to some degree we need to belabor these things. Humans are not in some special category biologically and their mechanism for developing sex is not the only one. It is quite relevant that reptiles do not have Y chromosomes when we are defining what sex IS. Yes, biologists want a 'unified field theory' of sex, because that's what scientists do. The thing is to realize that there will be outliers and exceptions and difficulties and to not try to push the round peg thru the square hole if it in fact does not want to go.
"It is chromosomes."
No, it is whether the body is phenotypical of sperm production or egg production. If it was chromosomes you'd be on the side of the nutters, and you aren't. Because as discussed, there are folks with Y chromosomes who are females by all sane appraisal. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot!
Persons with Y chromosomes who appear as females are edge cases. These are persons like Caster Semenya. They are increasingly recognized as male, perform like males in the athletic situation, take the male role (in Semenya's case at least) sexually, and are males. These males with female SSC are now banned from sprints to middle distance events.
The chromosome is the key driver.
The chromosome comes first. It defines the egg-sperm production. To say that the chromosome is irrelevant is to ignore the fundamental information about the development of the person.
In most mammals the chromosome is indeed the driver, but as the author points out, and as Colin himself has explained over and over again, the *mechanism* is not the same thing as the *definition*.
I might carry water from my well to my bathtub in a bucket, or it might be pumped, or it might be rainwater from my roof. The mechanism might change, but I do not define water as 'whatever is in my bucket'.
We had no trouble identifying boy babies and girl babies long before anyone had ever heard of chromosomes. Chromosomes are now understood to be the *mechanism* but they are irrelevant to the *definition* of sex. C'mon George, you're on our side, but you're giving comfort to the enemy here.
The facts are what they are. When our particular ideology demands we ignore them, then the trouble starts. I'll pay attention to that probably for the rest of my life when I see a cat.
Caster Semenya possesses one of the rarest disorders on the planet. It's so rare that governments often need to locate these individuals in impoverished African villages for training. This issue primarily presents itself in the Olympics and is seldom encountered elsewhere. It's a red herring, and these individuals often lead challenging lives, with some having no external genitalia.
What's your point? These individuals are chromosomally male, and function as males. I'm aware that they are very rare. However, until quite recently, they have dominated the female category of the Olympics. If you watched the finals of the W 200M race, you saw the impact - Mboma came from the middle of the pack to take second in a manner that I have seldom seen. Since he Mboma is externally female, but chromosomally male, he is a male, and competes like one.
Individuals with DSD are now banned from increasing numbers of running events. This will continue until they are completely excluded.
It’s a problem in the Olympics and the government should be punished for exploiting these people. And that’s where you should take your anger toward the governments were using these people because they have an advantage
That's the point. Nature quibbles. As George says, there are any number edge cases and somehow our entire culture now obsesses with the exceptions and ignores the 99.99% of people who are unambiguously male or female. Obviously *disorders* might fool people in one way or another but disorders do not define sex. I think we are on the same side.
I think this is an informative article and I enjoyed reading it, but one should also keep in mind that the vast majority of the people pushing this ideology and even those suffering from gender dysphoria fall into the normal XX or XY (without any swapped genes) category, and only bring up these highly uncommon edge cases to muddle (or queer, in their parlance) the issue.
So, when I am interacting with individuals who are pushing "What is a woman beyond a word?" do I respond with "A woman is the phenotype that makes large gametes"? This doesn't get down to what people really think. Most people believe that people are whatever sex they always have been. They looked like that sex when they were born, and they were that sex at conception, with the rare exceptions of the abnormal developments described in the article. (Correct?) The understanding of the reality that sex cannot be changed is sufficient to discredit trans ideology, is it not, without getting into the gametes?
Sandra: "... do I respond with 'A woman is the phenotype that makes large gametes'? ..."
Very good question. The problem is generally that there are several different definitions for "woman" on tap, one as a sex -- i.e., "adult human female [makes large gametes]" -- and one as a gender -- i.e., pretty much anyone who has any passing resemblance to a typical "adult human female". For example, see Merriam-Webster's Usage note on "gender" and their definition for "woman" -- entirely different kettles of fish:
MW Gender-usage: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
And, as you suggest, neither of those really "get down to what people really think". Which seems to be more or less based on the most salient feature, i.e., "adult human vagina-haver". Sort of the "Kindergarten Cop" definition: "Boys Have A Penis And Girls Have A Vagina"
But rather childish and quite enervating squabbling over those definitions obscures the crux of the matter, i.e., that "Objects are usually categorized for some adaptive or pragmatic purposes":
Which then raises, or should raise the question as to exactly what "adaptive or pragmatic purposes" do we have in mind. Seems to be many on the table, but the ones most exercising the body politic are largely the questions of segregating toilets, change rooms, and sports on the basis of some criteria. Something of an interesting essay here on "Contrasting Sex Segregation and Racial Segregation" by Carolina Valencia:
But "producing large gametes" is entirely irrelevant to "gatekeeping" access to "women's" toilets, change-rooms, and sports. And is actually counter-productive, a case of barking up the wrong tree -- one not even in the right forest, particularly since prepubescent XXers and menopausees aren't capable of "producing large gametes". Will they be excluded from those facilities? Leads to logical absurdities -- as Zach, more or less reasonably, argued -- or at least practical ones.
Largely why Paul Griffiths -- University of Sydney, philosophy of science, co-author or genetics & philosophy -- quite reasonably argued, in effect, that the biological definitions for the sexes are simply the wrong tool for the job. Like pounding nails with a screwdriver -- not very effective and is likely to damage the screwdriver beyond use for its intended purpose. See the concluding paragraphs in his Aeon article:
Why I've argued -- partly as a Devil's Advocate -- that there should be one set of toilets for the penis-havers, and one set the vagina-havers -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof in each case. And for women's sports -- no XY need apply; it's basically the karyotype that is the most useful "no/no-go" gauge:
Sandra: "The understanding of the reality that sex cannot be changed is sufficient to discredit trans ideology, is it not, without getting into the gametes?"
Yes, quite true. But how is it that we "understand" that "sex cannot be changed"? There's no intrinsic meaning to "male" and "female" -- we can define the terms any way we wish; pay the words extra as Humpty Dumpty famously put it. We COULD say penis=male, & vagina=female -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof. In which case, sure, people can change sex -- how dare you say they can't?!!! 🙄
The point is that the biological definitions for the sexes are the most useful ones, the ones that are more or less universal, that apply to literally millions of anisogamous species, and are more or less foundational to all of biology. And by those definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types -- i.e., those that are capable of producing large or small gametes, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. Of course humans can't EVER change sex -- at least until medical science "advances" to the point of changing out "Lia" Thomas' testicles for functioning ovaries of his own.
It's the biological definitions, the ones based on gametes and functional gonads that unhorse the transloonie nutcases and all their rather odious useful/useless idiots and fellow-travelers.
There are some additional issues that are not being covered in the public arguments about trans exclusion from women's spaces. I hesitate to introduce them, but they are the ones that are most relevant to women.
In my office building there are women's restrooms with 3 stalls. One of the tenants is a trans woman who is charming, likable, and easily read as a male. When this person is in the restroom with me I have no concerns, but that is because I know her. I do not feel comfortable generally with having unknown males in a women's restroom while I am in it. This concern is based on the knowledge that trans-identified males have attacked girls and women in restrooms and elsewhere, and that some males are turned on by being in a bathroom while women are using toilets. I would rate my level of fear about this as being relatively less than what a lot of other women feel about the same situation, but I would not knowingly share a public restroom with an unknown man.
Another reality is that girls separate themselves from boys' play groups on playgrounds, apparently because boys tend to dominate playgrounds and they play different kinds of games from those the girls tend to choose. (I am of course talking here about frequency distributions that overlap to some extent). While some athletic girls enjoy the same activities as the boys, girls generally play in groups that are less rowdy and physical. When boys move into the area where girls are playing these kinds of games, the girls move to a different area.
Girls and boys tend to have same sex friendships in grade school onward, again with exceptions, but the pattern has been documented cross-culturally. This implies that there are hard-wired, sex-linked variables involved. These factors must include recognition by both sexes of children of the sex of the other children, and a lack of attraction or existence of feelings of wanting to avoid the other sex. This general feeling might not be based entirely on a dislike for the other childrens' play styles, but may be simply a hard wired, species-specific pattern of behavior. I am reminded of herds of elk who live near me. The mature bulls can be observed lying or grazing in same sex groups, and the cows doing the same with each other, accompanied by the immature animals.
My point here is that humans and many if not all other species have ways of recognizing which sex is which, and many species, including ours segregate themselves on that basis. We don't need a chromosomal analysis to get there, although I agree with you that we many need a technical definition of sex to keep males out of athletic events intended for females.
I will close by sharing a personal experience that occurred decades ago at a feminist meeting that was intended for women, but without formally excluding men. The agenda was to discuss some controversial legislation being considered that pertained to womens' healthcare. One of the doctors who attended brought with her a gaggle of trans women, without consulting any of the rest of us in advance about her decision. The trans women started dominating the meeting immediately by aggressively and repeatedly seizing the floor for their own speech, which consisted of loud masculine voices (voice training was not a thing then for trans women). They rudely interrupted or talked over the women in the meeting to the point that we could not focus the conversation on our concerns. The trans women did not engage in the kinds of social behaviors that we would have done had they not been there disrupting our interactions. They in fact ignored everyone in the room except themselves. After the meeting was over, women gathered in small groups and voiced their anger to each other and to the woman who had brought these narcissistic, dominating males to our meeting.
I have seen males engage in these same behaviors in many other meetings that include large numbers of men and are not focused on women's issues. I recognize that these men are more narcissistic and more dominant than most of the other men and that is why they end up running everything. I also recognize that there are a lot of loud mouthed, dominating females. Nevertheless, the propensity of the dominating asses to silence all the women in a room, including professional women who function as leaders in the women's community is good enough reason for me to either exclude them or place serious limits on their behaviors.
So the issues around segregation by sex are not just about sexual assault and superior male athletic performance. And neither women nor men are confused about which is which. Neither are elk, birds or cats. There is more going on here in the way of biologically hard-wired sex differences than we can fully explain.
Sandra: "(I am of course talking here about frequency distributions that overlap to some extent)."
Seems that most people don't have a good handle on the concept which tends to preclude understanding important aspects of the issue. Not that it's a terribly difficult idea, just that there isn't much call for it in most people's lives.
There was a couple of articles that attempted to illustrate it during the Damore-Google-Manifesto Incident, though not sure that the one I have really provided much in the way of illumination:
You might have some interest in a pair of graphs that I'd uploaded to Wikimedia before getting defenestrated there that compares "agreeableness" -- one of the "Big Five" personality dimensions -- between men and women:
And an article at "4th Wave Now" co-authored by Colin has a nice illustration of that for a bunch of "personality traits", many of which might reasonably come in under the rubric of "gender" -- even if the authors seemed to balk at that hurdle:
4thWaveNow: "The original essay had distribution curves showing an 85% overlap of personality traits between males and females. This comparison was based on earlier studies that have been criticized for having design limitations that underestimate sex-related personality differences (link). More recent studies show the overlap to be more in the 30% range."
Which is why it seems essential to have criteria that allow us to categorically say who is male, who is female, and who is neither. And only the standard biological definitions do so, even if many balk at the logical consequences.
Just as an afterthought, if anyone is interested in the comparative animal stuff... for instance, why reptiles have two "naughty bits" and humans only have one, you might be interested in this: "JUST DISCOVERED: Female Snakes Have Two ‘Naughty Bits’… but that’s exactly what I expected" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/just-discovered-female-snakes-have ...it points out how complicated it is to make comparisons between animal and human physiology (as is frequently done on both sides of the aisle).
Even better than the 46XY girl is the 46XY woman who gave birth to a (46 XY) girl: "Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
It's a really fascinating study, and the family tree is amazing too. (Found via Katie Montgomerie's blog; who claims sex isn't binary. Oh well.)
Is there clear-cut biological explanation why some humans (or other mammals) become exclusively homosexual as adults (androphilic when male, etc), and another explanation why some small children (very small percentages) do seem to have legitimate gender dysphoria? I've read numerous NIH papers talking about maternal birth-order epigenetics, about unusual X-based genes (matriarchal) and sexual orientation (as if the instinct to procreate has to be "turned on" by still another obscure gene), and about other genes affecting CNS development leading to unusual sensitivities to body sensations. I've also seen many claims that the brains of male v. female children can be distinguished by scans 95% of the time. It's hard to find any paper that can explain any of this very clearly if true.
There are no explanations at the present time regarding what causes some children or adults to be distressed, obsessed and depressed about their own biological sex. It is not possible to find out what causes a disorder like this without a longitudinal research design that continues for years. In addition, the investigators must be fortunate enough to select the correct causes even before the research begins. If they don't measure the causative variables in fetuses for example, they won't know 5 years later if those variables were significant contributors to the development of gender dysphoria. This kind of research is very expensive and is also dependent on the sustained commitment of most of the original participants. There are also ethical issues: For example, if the researchers are working with the hypothesis that gender dysphoria is caused by child abuse in the home, they can't assign groups of newborns to abusive families.
Joint flexibility is an aspect of female/male comparisons I haven't seen in these articles. Women are more flexible than men, a function of the looseness required in our hips during natural childbirth. There's a hormone spike at the end of pregnancy (I experienced this twice) and the baby's head descends for the last days/weeks until labor. Women have more knee and shoulder injuries than men, related to this looseness. Men who crossdress make a show of "demonstrated" joint looseness, thinking that helps them "pass." It does not. The micro-choreographies of false femininity are actually a tell. A tall "woman" with a large shoulder girdle is slightly shimmying the hips while glancing side to side, then sitting into one hip? He is a man, signaling, pretending and play acting a female persona.
Thank you for this very informative essay. In principle, I agree with you. However, with all due respect, I think that many of the assertions are too simplistic (and some inaccurate) to move the conversation along. That's much of the problem with the ongoing debate. For instance, "eyes are specialized tissues that produce sight" is not sufficiently nuanced to make the point that sight is an emergent property of an intact functioning brain (eyes don't ''produce" sight). And, reptiles DO have sex chromosomes. Likewise, drawing analogies to the genetics of other animals is beside the point... even though I've been teaching biology and physiology for decades, I've always wondered how precisely to define the sex of the hydrozoan Obelia, but that has nothing to do with the sex of my children. Similarly, the two species of rat about which you wrote apparently have 10 genes that function in gonadal differentiation. They're just not on a 'Y' chromosome. I would also like to point out that the issue about aneuploidies has been discussed ad infinitum (even I put in my 2 cents)...
"If Aneuploidies = Sexes, Then Two-Headed Turtles Aren’t Turtles"
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/if-aneuploidies-sexes-then-two-headed
...and simply reiterating these explanations will not change people's points of view. None of the broader arguments will ever resolve until people on both sides openly recognize the ambiguities of the edge cases, and there are some. That's just biology. As I tell my students, life is full ambiguities… get over it. However — and I want to make this quite clear, as I did in the article cited above — the ambiguities do not mean that the basic categories are illegitimate (Homo sapiens have two sexes). It just means there are rare ambiguities. So, in short, until the discussion becomes more nuanced and biologically accurate, it will simply remain an ongoing back-and-forth. Thank you again for this very interesting read. As I said, I do agree with you in principle. Sincerely Frederick
Frederick: "... I've always wondered how precisely to define the sex of the hydrozoan Obelia ..."
Easy peasy. If they produce sperm they're male, if they produce ova they're female, and if they produce neither they are, by definition, sexless 😉🙂:
Wikipedia: "The next generation of the life cycle begins when the medusae are released from the gonozooids, producing free swimming male only medusae velum with gonads, a mouth, and tentacles. The physical appearance of the male and female medusae velum, including their gonads, are indistinguishable, and the sex can only be determined by observing the inside of the gonads, which will either contain sperm or eggs."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obelia
Though I think you're barking up the wrong tree with your "ambiguities of the edge cases", apparently because you refuse to accept the standard biological definitions for the sexes by which to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. See the Glossary in this article in the (Oxford) Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
You quite reasonably argue that "this controversy is really about language", about which definitions are going to qualify as trump. But your questions seem readily answered, have no "ambiguities" at all in them if one starts from those biological definitions:
Frederick: "So, let me ask you. In your opinion, is a person with four X chromosomes a unique sex, or a female with a biological anomaly? Is a person with three X’s and a Y chromosome a unique sex, or a male with a biological anomaly?"
https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/if-aneuploidies-sexes-then-two-headed
Do they produce sperm? Then they're males. Do they produce ova? Then they're females. Do they produce neither? Then they're sexless.
That's the utility and value of those biological definitions -- there are clear-cut and objectively quantifiable criteria that must be met, properties that those organisms must possess to qualify as members of those first two categories, to qualify as referents of the terms "male" and "female":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions
Think you -- and far too many others -- are making heavier weather out of the issue than is really necessary or justified:
Arthur Conan Doyle: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/arthur_conan_doyle_134512
My dear friend, we've had this conversation before. As I said, I understand your position. And, I think you understand mine. Fundamentally, we agree on the big issues. If you want to wait until you dissect the obelia's medusa to determinate sex, that's fine. I don't see the medusa stage as separate from the whole organism. The whole organism takes three distinct forms over the course of its life. If you want to say it only has sex at the instant the medusa has matured gametes, that's fine with me. But, of course, you're never going to be able to determine the exact instant that occurs, or arrive at an unambiguous definition of having functional gametes — eventually the argument will be pushed down to the molecular level — and you will be locked in an unending debate with other obelia enthusiasts about that moment forever, and forever, and forever. So, we have two choices. We can understand that sometimes cases are ambiguous (and not easily determined), and human beings can be both reasonable and differ in their opinions. Or, you can argue forever. I see biology has more nuanced than do you. We have a different set of intellectual presuppositions. That's cool and I enjoy listening to your arguments. But, that doesn't change the fact that Homo sapiens have two sexes and sometimes there are developmental and anatomical ambiguities in morphology. If you want to argue that a human being has no sex if they do not produce gametes, that's fine with me. I understand how you define the term. The important question is how we treat other people… which is completely separate from the details of the obelia or one's definition of aneuploidies. So, to answer your question, I think that someone with Klinefelter's syndrome is male, even if they do not produce gametes. You know, based on my writings, that I do not think aneuploidies constitute separate sexes. And, by the way, about the snake thing, I wasn't late to the party… The University of Adelaide researchers were. Thanks, as always, for your comment! … And thank you for keeping me on my intellectual toes.
Frederick: “Fundamentally, we agree on the big issues.”
Not sure that we really do. You say it’s “fine” with you that I argue that a “whole organism only has [a] sex at the instant [it] has matured gametes”, that “a human being has no sex if they do not produce gametes.” Yet you turn around and insist that “someone with Klinefelter's syndrome is male, even if they do not produce gametes.”
Any number of problems with that rather profound, far-reaching, and fundamentally antithetical dichotomy, one which is clearly predicated on quite different definitions for the sexes. Do you have any definition at all for the sexes that stipulate any necessary and sufficient conditions for sex category membership? A citation of reputable journals that explicitly endorse them?
That is, maybe arguably, one of the proximate causes for the whole transgender clusterfuck – that the biological community is more or less crippled by controversy and incapable of agreeing on a single definition for the sexes that apply in all cases, at least to all anisogamous species. What is missing, and is sorely needed, is a common reference point. Such ambiguity, such “dissension in the ranks” only gives free rein to the charlatans, grifters, scientific illiterates, and political opportunists to argue that sex is a spectrum, that it is as changeable as our socks.
Further, you insist – sans evidence or justification – that “Homo sapiens have two sexes”. If you’re unable or unwilling to justify that choice – and it IS a choice; there is NO intrinsic meaning to “male” and “female” – then it seems “not quite cricket” to deny the spectrumists the same option. Sauce for the goose and all that. Lots of options “on tap”, but they’re not all created equal. Refusing to justify yours only gives weight to the spectrumists’ case that you’re just being arbitrary without cause.
But, en passant or to backtrack a bit, I think you’re attempting to thrash a strawman, are throwing out a bunch of red herrings with your reliance on "ambiguity", and are also seriously misunderstanding the definitions stipulated in that Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction. Though many do – carelessly, intentionally, cluelessly, or pigheadedly. But when they say “produces gametes”, they mean – as per standard linguistics terminology – “on a regular basis”:
Grammarly: “We use the simple present tense when an action is happening right now, or when it happens regularly ...”
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/simple-present/
Analogously, we don’t say that a car manufacturing plant is only such at the instant a new car comes off the end of the production line, and is something entirely different in between those times. That the facility produces cars regularly is sufficient to qualify it as that type of plant. Similarly, organisms of various species are still male and female in between the times that functional gametes are actually “delivered to the production floor” – so to speak.
In any case, you in particular might have some interest in this paper on the topic by Paul Griffiths – university of Sydney, philosophy of biology, co-author of Genetics & Philosophy – and this passage in particular:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
Entirely antithetical to your argument that an obelia’s sex applies to the “whole organism”, over its entire lifespan. I seriously wonder what sex you think that clownfish are on hatching since they can, by the standard biological definitions, become both, sequentially, over their lifespans. That is largely one of the major claims to fame of those definitions: they’re readily applicable, without qualification, to ALL anisogamous species. In notable contradistinction to the ones Emma Hilton had published in the UK Times – a decent enough newspaper, but hardly a peer-reviewed biological journal – and which are no better than folk-biology.
But, somewhat more briefly, you might also have some interest in both Griffiths’ comments about operational definitions – apparently what you’re using – as well as another philosopher of science on the problems entailed by such definitions:
Griffiths: “Like chromosomal definitions of sex, phenotypic definitions are not really ‘definitions’ – they are operational criteria for sex determination underpinned by the gametic definition of sex and valid only for one species or group of species. …. Research on the origin, variation and distribution of sexes uses the definition above (Box 1). Moreover, as I have briefly sketched above, the operational definitions of sexes used in biomedical fields all rely on the more fundamental definition that comes from evolutionary biology. …. Medical definitions of sex in terms of chromosomes are not definitions of biological sex, they are at best operational definitions of biological sex in humans.”
Swartz: “But it suffices to say that Bridgman's so-called 'operational definitions' which were adopted by a few physicists for a time, and by many more psychologists for a rather longer time, eventually came to be seen not only as sterile but as being stultifying to the progress of science.”
https://www.sfu.ca/~swartz/definitions.htm#part5.5
I understand your point of view. But, alas, we still disagree.
Then, Houston, we have a problem. One that you seem to be more a part of than of the solution.
You -- and too many others -- can't or won't defend your position or definitions, but rather "obstinately" refuse to consider the alternatives that offer some ways off the horns of a seriously problematic social dilemma.
Seems that social progress is contingent on developing a workable consensus. Which you -- and too many others -- seem bound and determined to frustrate, largely because of "prior commitments" to idiosyncratic and quite untenable anti-scientific claptrap and outright dogma.
You might at least give some thought to philosopher Will Durant's elaborations on Voltaire's quip:
Durant: “ 'If you wish to converse with me,' said Voltaire, 'define your terms.' How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task. — Will Durant"
https://quotefancy.com/quote/3001527/Will-Durant-If-you-wish-to-converse-with-me-said-Voltaire-define-your-terms-How-many-a
I’m sorry, but that’s unkind. I’ve always been thoughtful and respectful in my comments and discussions. I simply have different point of view than you.
There’s a lot of trans individuals who claim they have true hermaphrodism however, it’s worth remembering they fetishize genitalia particularly unusual combinations. So just like they claim to be women, they also claim to have these conditions. True hermaphroditism is not an edge case. It’s a problem featuring many health complications.
"Edge case," as I used it, refers to an unusual anomalous condition.
This is yet another unreasonably overly complicated view.
1) No one cares about other species. The debate about male and female is exclusively about human male and human female.
2) No one cares about the small number of exceptions. Yes, there are exceptions - but these are errors of development and construction. No one should confuse the categorization of male and female by these errors.
Chromosomes do set up the male and female categories.
Agree. Comparing reptiles a fish with environmentally driven sex development to mammals with genetic sex that’s immutable from conception us insane. Also, if there were ever a fertile XX “male” then the author would have a point, but the fact that there is no single fertile XX person with Speth shows that the condition mentioned is a female deformity that resembles male anatomy, but is not and will never actually be male.
Also, trying to claim deformities break the binary is absurd. One in 10,000 kids is born missing at least one out ear. Paul Stanley of KISS is an example of grade III microtia with complete atresia. No ear canal. No conductive hearing through an ear. We don’t go around saying humans have zero, one, or two ears. Anything short of 2 ears is a deformity of the human craniofacial structure.
You left out turtles and possibly other reptiles, who apparently are male or female depending on the temperature of the egg at some point. That's possibly true for turtles (I'm not even 100% sure about that) but it's irrelevant to human sex issues.
Short, and to the point!
The exceptions are being used by trans activist to confuse people and advance a political agenda, so an article like this is useful to clarify the issue. I do agree that the explanation can be simplified to "sex is a phenotype, not a genotype, regardless of species".
The exceptions kind of prove the rule. That is why a scientific explanation has to be provided when someone with a Y chromosome in the mix turns out phenotypically female.
"1) No one cares about other species."
Apparently only those inside the scientifically illiterate and benighted backwater that you seem to be stuck in ...
"universality" is more or less a foundational principle of any science, of any biology that's worthy of the name. All that you -- and Zach and Colin and far too many other so-called biologists and wannabees -- are peddling is no better than folk-biology:
Wikipedia: "Folk taxonomies are generated from social knowledge and are used in everyday speech. They are distinguished from scientific taxonomies that claim to be disembedded from social relations and thus more objective and universal."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy
I have always had a strong identity as an animal, because I love animals and because I have enjoyed a lifelong fascination with their behavior. I had a serious interest in becoming a comparative psychologist or an ethologist, but finally chose to focus on humans instead. I find it natural, interesting and important to compare behavior of mine that I think might be species behavior to similar patterns of behavior in other species.
I remember reading Konrad Lorenz's "On Aggression" probably some 50 years ago 😳😢🙂 -- long ways back in the rear view mirror, even accounting for the claim that things are closer than they appear. 🤔🙂
But one passage that has always tickled my fancy was about some grey lag geese (?) that Lorenz had in his home and that he was studying. Apparently one of them used to go up the stairs and stop at a midpoint landing and look out a window that was there. But one day it was in a rush, missed that step, got to the top, realized that, turned around, went down to the midpoint landing, did its survey, then proceeded again to the top. Fascinating and incredibly illuminating. 🙂
But you may not know he also did some useful work on imprinting which I think is part and parcel of the transgender clusterfuck:
Wikipedia: "Lorenz demonstrated how incubator-hatched geese would imprint on the first suitable moving stimulus they saw within what he called a 'critical period' between 13 and 16 hours shortly after hatching."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprinting_(psychology)
I wrote my undergraduate thesis on imprinting (1968). The work of Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen inspired me in that direction. At the time I reviewed the literature, the scientific definition of imprinting was indeed: The tendency of a baby bird to follow the first moving stimulus it sees within a critical period shortly after hatching. The tendency is obviously a "hard wired" or "instinctual" behavior with a relatively small learned component, which is the recognition of the bird, human or whatever the duckling followed first.
Human attachment behavior is much more complex and involves tons of learning. Human infants are born with a brain that has most of its development ahead of it, and what babies learn through social interaction is a major part of that development.
What are your thoughts about how the work on imprinting relates to the transgender cf.?
Sandra: "I wrote my undergraduate thesis on imprinting (1968). ..."
👍🙂 Interesting coincidence though -- synchronicity and all that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity
But good thing I didn't try to tell my grandmother how to suck eggs, so to speak ... 🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teaching_grandmother_to_suck_eggs
Sandra: "... how the work on imprinting relates to the transgender cf.? ..."
Good question, though one I haven't delved much into, just thought there were some possible parallels that might provide some illumination -- on a "debate" characterized more by heat than by light ...
But I've also thought that Woody Allen's "mocumentary" Zelig is also part of the puzzle:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/15/movies/film-zelig-woody-allen-s-story-about-a-chameleon-man-034845.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelig
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUW8JsLDsNo
Seems we have a natural tendency to emulate, and to empathize with those around us -- part and parcel of mirror neurons in some views. But there's also a problematic if not pathological tendency to lose our senses of self, our individuality, either because it's easier to "go with the flow", with the crowd, or because the crowd has a tendency to impose "the lowest common denominator" -- which can be rather low indeed.
Geezus, what a fucking stupid comment. Universality is not always present because not everything is universal. And, no, universality is NOT the goal of all sciences. The goal is accurate representation, not universality, because universality is not universal. I thought that was obvious, but not to some.
🙄 Only in your fucking opinion, an entirely unevidenced one in fact.
Wikipedia: "In philosophy, universality or absolutism is the idea that universal facts exist and can be progressively discovered, as opposed to relativism, which asserts that all facts are relative to one's perspective."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universality_(philosophy)
Who knew that you were a proponent of post modernism? 🤔🙄
Chris, I agree with you 99% of the time, but there is at least one mammal that produces venom: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus_venom
And, AFAIK, no known venomous birds, but some do produce toxins: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25839151/#:~:text=Poisonous%20birds%20are%20rare%20(or,Bronzewings%2C%20and%20the%20Red%20warbler.
But certainly the % of mammalian and avian species producing toxins/venom is exceedingly small. (Kind of like the % of humans whose sex is ambiguous.)
Isn’t biology wonderful?
🙄 Ipse dixit. "So let it be written, so let it be done."
You couldn't "debate" yourself out of a wet paper bag; lack the intellectual honesty to even enter the ring.
🙄 And your mother wears army boots ...
"if you didn't edit in 'present tense indefinite?' " -- that IS the tense of "produces gametes". That phrase of mine is only to emphasize a point that many people -- like you -- apparently haven't a flaming clue about, and are too pigheaded to even try learning about:
Grammarly: "We use the simple present tense when an action is happening right now, or when it happens regularly (or unceasingly, which is why it’s sometimes called present indefinite). Depending on the person, the simple present tense is formed by using the root form or by adding s or es to the end."
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/simple-present/
"have not convinced a single person" -- Griffiths was convinced of it several years ago, even before I spoke to him about the issue:
Griffiths (PhilPapers): "Individual organisms pass in and out of these regions – sexes – one or more times during their lives. Importantly, sexes are life-history stages rather than applying to organisms over their entire lifespan. This fact has been obscured by concentrating on humans, and ignoring species which regularly change sex, as well as those with non-genetic or facultatively genetic sex determination systems."
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
And it's implicit, by way of the verb tense, in the definitions in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
And "self-evidently absurd" is only your entirely unevidenced OPINION.
But you might try getting out of the benighted backwater you're apparently stuck in -- being charitable -- by reading a source that Zach usefully linked to on the fundamental dichotomy between structure & function -- the latter clearly being an essential element, a defining criteria for those biological definitions:
American Physiological Society: “ 'Function' is defined as '(biology) The special, normal, proper physiologic activity of a body part or an organ.' ..."
https://journals.physiology.org/doi/full/10.1152/advan.00108.2021
No "activity", no membership card; no tickee, no washee.
The individual La Scapigliata referenced in the article, along with others, has raised this issue. However, it seems to be a concern only in their minds, leading to a considerable amount of time wasted on extraordinarily rare health conditions. Furthermore, many people have been subjected to harassment for conditions they were born with and over which they had no control. This matter should be addressed directly with those individuals.
What is the point you are making about the "harassment"? This is not the Woke space you are looking for. I'm not concerned with the harassment. This is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Thanks for this. I'd like to ask a question. For those of us not steeped in the science, but who often find ourselves in the position of having to make the point quickly and move on, is the following statement accurate? "Every single human being is either female or male. In the vast majority of cases, the sex of a person is determined by the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, though in rare cases it's determined by other factors such as the presence or absence of a SRY gene." I'm sorry if this seems like an oversimplification of a complicated topic! It's just that sometimes (like if you've got a total of three minutes to communicate a bunch of arguments to a large and diverse audience) simplification becomes necessary. Thank you!
Based on this essay, I guess your question boils down to whether there are any documented cases of an individual human being producing both eggs and sperm. Despite my biology PhD, this is not my area of specialization, but Dr. Google brought me this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6737443/. From the abstract:
"Ovotesticular disorder of sex development, which is formerly known as “true hermaphroditism,” is the most rare form among all disorders of sex development in humans. It is characterized by the simultaneous presence of both ovarian and testicular tissues in the same individual and characteristically presents with ambiguous genitalia in neonates or infants.” So there may be (vanishingly few) humans that might be considered to be both male and female.
That said, I agree with the other commenters that edge cases like this may distract from the core message that 99.9% (if not more) of humans are unambiguously male or female, and their chromosomes and anatomy align.
And, further, none of this has anything to do with so-called “gender identity”; just by the numbers, it’s clear that there are far more people identifying as “trans” than can be accounted for by DSDs.
Yep. It's also worth noting that people born with DSDs—particularly those with clearly male or female phenotypes—are by no means automatically gender dysphoric. While, as you point out, most people claiming gender dysphoria are phenotypically, anatomically, and chromosomally male or female. IOW, DSDs have nothing, actually, to do with gender ideology, despite the claims and tortured logic of ideologues.
I don't know what "really were transgender" means. They have a delusion, one which may serve a purpose at some point in their lives, but a delusion nonetheless. We don't call someone who thinks they are Napoleon "transhistoric", we call them schizophrenic and treat the mental illness, not give surgery to make the person more comfortable in their body.
"transhistoric" -- LoL
"the core message that 99.9% (if not more) of humans are unambiguously male or female ..."
Nope, sorry.
You at least should be ready, willing, and able to read -- and understand -- the standard biological definitions for the sexes, as promulgated in the Glossary of this article in the (Oxford Academic) Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
By those standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have FUNCTIONAL gonads of either of TWO types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS -- the last subcategory (of "reproductive functions") encompassing about a third of us at any one time, the prepubescent in particular.
So what pronoun do you use when referring to a prepubescent child? How do you decide, given that, by your argument, that child is sexless?
Good question. Maybe "he" for kids who look like a typical penis-haver, and "she" for a typical vagina-haver?
With a PhD under your belt you should understand the concept of proxy variables [PVs]: genitalia and karyotypes are PVs for PROBABLE sex, but not a guarantee. For example, based on typical demographics, some third of penis-havers are not males:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics)
As for your question about deciding whether a child is sexless or not, it seems likely that if they're below the age of puberty onset then they're likely to be sexless, and if above then probably of the sex for which their genitalia is typical.
But a more important question is maybe why one wants to know that. If one wants to segregate kids then reproductive abilities -- which is what "male" & "female" denote -- seem totally irrelevant. For toilets and change rooms, the issue seems to be genitalia -- which is largely if not entirely what the birth certificates are based on. Our sexes aren't "assigned at birth 🙄"; we're given promissory notes that we can probably cash in for genuine, gilt-edged sex category membership cards at the onset of puberty. Until then our genitalia can serve as those PVs.
But I wonder whether you read that MHR article, and whether you accept the definitions for the sexes in its Glossary. As I've often argued, there are NO intrinsic meanings to "male" and "female", but those definitions, and their logical consequences seem like the rules of the road, the common reference point that unites all of biology, the bedrock on which the entire edifice is built.
"Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" -- Dobzhansky. But nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction.
That's the sine qua non of sex category definitions that various Lysenkoists -- of one stripe or another -- are trying to sweep under the carpet, if not abrogate, bastardize, distort, or "transmogrify" beyond all recognition or use for its intended purpose.
I think this can be made simpler and the ambiguity could be removed. The point is that the SRY gene resides on the Y chromosome. It's rarely displaced. The SRY gene products begin a hormonal cascade that de-feminizes and masculinizes the urogenital system of the embryo. Under normal circumstances, there are two separate and distinct developmental pathways.
This is completely correct. For a given individual, they are either male or female, and this is determined by the sex chromosomes - XX is female, XY is male.
All of these exceptions mean nothing with 99.99% of all individuals who are human beings.
The unwillingness of biologists to agree to this obvious truth is due to a desire to have a "unified field theory" of sex throughout the animal kingdom. But that is unnecessarily universal. The entire discussion is about human male and human female.
It is chromosomes.
😂🤣😉🙄
"troll" -- the go-to replacement for playing the race card, the parting shot of those disappearing up their fundaments because they're too "intellectually weak and lazy to ... counter a logical argument or factual data":
https://twitter.com/adamcarolla/status/1421138069026074628
Sure! I’d say - “for most people, XY is a man and XX is a woman. There’s a small number who aren’t either XX or XY or something happened in embryonic development, but they’re still men or women.”
The overwhelming majority of individuals are classified as either male (XY) or female (XX). If anomalies occur in these chromosomes, they may lead to infertility or sterility, along with lifelong health issues for the affected individual. Down syndrome is a prime example of such a situation. Individuals with Down syndrome often face fertility issues, and the distinctive physical characteristics associated with this condition are a result of specific chromosomal abnormalities affecting fetal development. They also typically experience health problems, bone issues, and in some cases, kidney problems. Individuals with Klinefelter's syndrome, or XXY, often have kidney problems. Mosaic conditions, such as XXXY, frequently result in newborns with heart defects.
Kara: "... is the following statement accurate? 'Every single human being is either female or male.' ...."
Nope. Absolutely NOT. In no uncertain terms.
At least by the standard biological definitions, i.e., those promulgated in reputable, peer-reviewed biological journals. Not the letter section of newspapers. See the Glossary in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction [MHR] for an example of the former:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes"
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
A case of the latter by several so-called biologists in the UK Times letter section -- a decent enough newspaper, but hardly what anyone would reasonably call a peer-reviewed biological journal:
UK Times: "Individuals that have developed anatomies [gonads?] for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present or future functionality, are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
Entirely different kettles of fish, if not of entirely different species if not "domains":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species
But to directly answer your question, by those standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have FUNCTIONAL gonads of either of TWO types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexLESS -- the latter subcategory encompassing about a third of us at any one time, the prepubescent in particular.
As for your "simplification" comment -- a more or less useful modus operandum -- you might reflect on Einstein's quip:
Einstein (apocryphal): "Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler"
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/
If a definition doesn't describe reality, the definition is wrong. Your clinging to these poor definitions that, by a peculiar twisting of their clear intention, renders some humans sexless simply because they don't yet produce, or have stopped producing whichever gametes are appropriate to their sex is, frankly, illogical. Sex is determined within hours of conception when Mullerian or Wolffian development takes place. From that point on, sex is identifiable and fixed, male or female, through to death (and identifiable for much longer.
Jeremy: "If a definition doesn't describe reality ..."
What "reality" are you talking about? The ONLY thing that's "real" is that those organisms, of all anisogamous species, which produce either small or large gametes can reproduce, and those which produce neither can't. THAT is what the biological definitions encapsulate.
The definitions for the sexes are largely arbitrary, a matter of social construction. There's no intrinsic meaning to "male" & "female" -- or maybe you think the definitions for them were in the first dictionary that Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai on tablets A through Z? 🙄
Jeremy: "Your clinging to these poor definitions that ..."
"poor definitions"? 🙄 The ones published in reputable peer review biological journals? That some 525 people have tweeted some 2000 times?
https://oxfordjournals.altmetric.com/details/2802153/twitter
A hot topic and discussion which has included philosopher Tomas Bogardus who has defended it:
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1667582897266515970
And pretty much the same definition championed by transwoman & evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden -- "making gametes (present tense)":
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1665846236837040129
ICYMI, you might also note that Bogardus has posted an article here, although I don't think he'd "seen the light" then -- maybe still hasn't:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/how-our-shoes-can-help-explain-the
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/how-our-shoes-can-help-explain-the/comment/8287665
Although some of his recent tweets suggest he's seen a glimmer on the horizon:
https://twitter.com/TomasBogardus/status/1667682343811702785
But I sure don't see that Tomas or any of those other tweeters were endorsing or promoting the folk-biology definitions that Emma Hilton had published in the UK Times letter section -- a decent enough newspaper but hardly any sort of reputable biological journal:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
Jeremy: "Sex is determined within hours of conception ..."
What unmitigated horse crap. The only thing that's "determined within hours of conception" is karyotype. And many posters here -- including Zach Elliot most recently in this very post -- have gone out of their way to emphasize that sex is NOT defined by karyotype. It's the type of gametes produced -- which babies don't do until they hit puberty:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/sex-isnt-all-about-chromosomes
You might try reading it a bit closer ...
Joint flexibility and the differences between males and females is a detail I've not seen here. Women are looser in the joints for reasons of childbirth. Hormone spikes at the end of pregnancy give us the looseness necessary to push the baby to birth through the vaginal canal. I've experienced this late pregnancy phenomenon twice. Women experience more shoulder and knee injuries than most men due in part to this flexibility of tendons and ligaments. Men who cross dress use this detail as they shimmy their too big shoulders and sit into one hip, while glancing side to side to notice if they're being noticed. They want to "pass" but they don't if you are aware of the "tells." They also pose with a head tilt, so commonly seen in staged photos. Honesty regarding this false "femininity" is the best policy. Don't flatter them with stories about how real they look.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N3UIMRL2Cs&t=1s
Ute: "Honesty regarding this false 'femininity' is the best policy. Don't flatter them with stories about how real they look."
Yeah. Though there ARE feminine males and masculine females, AKA "genders" ...
But ICYMI, "trans widow" Shannon Thrace recently had some interesting observations along the same line:
Shannon: "He [Shannon's ex] cried because someone 'misgendered' him. He cried because his shoulders were too broad for his new dress. He cried because he couldn’t completely eradicate the stubble on his face. He cried because his new habit of flipping his hair back with a limp wrist had gotten him mistaken for a gay man."
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/termination
A rather serious "pathology" ...
I'm familiar with her. I didn't stay long enough to hear Neddy cry about not passing. These dudes need to know all the ways in which they do not fool anyone regarding their sex. This disconnect of mind and body is likely to be helped with an intense combination of the following, supported by the medical ethics that should govern this psychiatric illness. To heal and reconnect: 1. Cease internet exposure for weeks/months. 2. Feldenkrais physical therapy and/or acupressure chiropractic as recommended for veterans at the Veterans Administration YouTube channel 3. Quality psychoanalysis to deal with porn addiction/childhood trauma/sexual abuse history 4. Nature engagement in hiking, gardening, restorative outside work. 5. Volunteerism that avoids the constant self-involvement, with an understanding that no one is obligated to act as a prop to an "identity." Some of this is from detransitioners' stories of what they did to exit the cult.
Ute: "I'm familiar with her."
I signed up there about a month ago though I doubt I'll stick around -- she seems to find the biological definitions for the sexes somewhat "unpalatable":
https://shannonthrace.substack.com/p/what-is-radicalization/comment/16355413
Though a lot of that goin' round these days, even here which is particularly "disconcerting".
Ute: "This disconnect of mind and body ..."
Yeah, a lot of that goin' round too. I blame video games -- and smartphones, at least in the hands of the young -- which more than a few are now recognizing is the case.
But somewhat apropos of which, and in a note from our sponsor, see my Medium post on "Reality and Illusion: Being vs Identifying As":
https://medium.com/@steersmann/reality-and-illusion-being-vs-identifying-as-77f9618b17c7
A great many people these days seem unclear on the difference between substance and appearance, between "being X" and "identifying-as X", between reality and illusion.
Houston, we have a problem, a "mission-critical" one, one the size of a Titanic-sinking and civilization-sinking iceberg.
BTW, what I find fascinating is the way that all this biological complexity is used by the woke to deconstruct sex when in fact all this biological complexity rather screams out to the universe exactly the opposite. Sex might be produced a half a dozen different ways but still nature insists that there will be two sexes: males, producing sperm, and females producing eggs. A male crocodile is still absolutely recognizable as a male the same way a bull is, notwithstanding the different mechanisms for producing either.
So fundamental is this biological property than even in the teeth of dozens (?) of genetic or other disorders, nature will still insist on producing either boys or girls. It is as if sex were so fundamental that it manifests itself in spite of 'mere' genetics. And the exceptions in fact prove the rule: what is fascinating is how *rare* 'intersex' conditions are -- nature will labor to produce a male body or a female body almost every time in spite of all obstacles.
It sorta feels like sex is a fundamental property of the universe. God calls himself male. The more politically correct Greeks said that the first things to emerge from chaos were a male and a female deity. Me, I think Relativity is male and QM is female and the universe is their child.
Did I mention that I thought the essay was bang-on perfect?
As a "non XX" woman who you'd never suspect of not being "XX" thanks so much for pointing this out. It does confuse "markers of" with "determiners of" and doesn't apply to 100 percent of people.
George says this is over complicated and Frederic says it's simplistic. Perhaps it's impossible to please everyone all the time and we should remember that what matters is that we're all on the side of sanity. I doubt the author would dispute Frederick's points, but one can't say everything that can be said in a short essay -- the author develops a point sufficiently well to make the point.
And I'd ask George to remember that all definitions are tested at their edges by various outliers -- to some degree we need to belabor these things. Humans are not in some special category biologically and their mechanism for developing sex is not the only one. It is quite relevant that reptiles do not have Y chromosomes when we are defining what sex IS. Yes, biologists want a 'unified field theory' of sex, because that's what scientists do. The thing is to realize that there will be outliers and exceptions and difficulties and to not try to push the round peg thru the square hole if it in fact does not want to go.
"It is chromosomes."
No, it is whether the body is phenotypical of sperm production or egg production. If it was chromosomes you'd be on the side of the nutters, and you aren't. Because as discussed, there are folks with Y chromosomes who are females by all sane appraisal. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot!
Persons with Y chromosomes who appear as females are edge cases. These are persons like Caster Semenya. They are increasingly recognized as male, perform like males in the athletic situation, take the male role (in Semenya's case at least) sexually, and are males. These males with female SSC are now banned from sprints to middle distance events.
The chromosome is the key driver.
The chromosome comes first. It defines the egg-sperm production. To say that the chromosome is irrelevant is to ignore the fundamental information about the development of the person.
In most mammals the chromosome is indeed the driver, but as the author points out, and as Colin himself has explained over and over again, the *mechanism* is not the same thing as the *definition*.
I might carry water from my well to my bathtub in a bucket, or it might be pumped, or it might be rainwater from my roof. The mechanism might change, but I do not define water as 'whatever is in my bucket'.
We had no trouble identifying boy babies and girl babies long before anyone had ever heard of chromosomes. Chromosomes are now understood to be the *mechanism* but they are irrelevant to the *definition* of sex. C'mon George, you're on our side, but you're giving comfort to the enemy here.
The facts are what they are. When our particular ideology demands we ignore them, then the trouble starts. I'll pay attention to that probably for the rest of my life when I see a cat.
Caster Semenya possesses one of the rarest disorders on the planet. It's so rare that governments often need to locate these individuals in impoverished African villages for training. This issue primarily presents itself in the Olympics and is seldom encountered elsewhere. It's a red herring, and these individuals often lead challenging lives, with some having no external genitalia.
What's your point? These individuals are chromosomally male, and function as males. I'm aware that they are very rare. However, until quite recently, they have dominated the female category of the Olympics. If you watched the finals of the W 200M race, you saw the impact - Mboma came from the middle of the pack to take second in a manner that I have seldom seen. Since he Mboma is externally female, but chromosomally male, he is a male, and competes like one.
Individuals with DSD are now banned from increasing numbers of running events. This will continue until they are completely excluded.
It’s a problem in the Olympics and the government should be punished for exploiting these people. And that’s where you should take your anger toward the governments were using these people because they have an advantage
"anger" huh.
Not everything in the world is about reaction, or emotion. Work on that.
"You are quibbling. "
That's the point. Nature quibbles. As George says, there are any number edge cases and somehow our entire culture now obsesses with the exceptions and ignores the 99.99% of people who are unambiguously male or female. Obviously *disorders* might fool people in one way or another but disorders do not define sex. I think we are on the same side.
I think this is an informative article and I enjoyed reading it, but one should also keep in mind that the vast majority of the people pushing this ideology and even those suffering from gender dysphoria fall into the normal XX or XY (without any swapped genes) category, and only bring up these highly uncommon edge cases to muddle (or queer, in their parlance) the issue.
So, when I am interacting with individuals who are pushing "What is a woman beyond a word?" do I respond with "A woman is the phenotype that makes large gametes"? This doesn't get down to what people really think. Most people believe that people are whatever sex they always have been. They looked like that sex when they were born, and they were that sex at conception, with the rare exceptions of the abnormal developments described in the article. (Correct?) The understanding of the reality that sex cannot be changed is sufficient to discredit trans ideology, is it not, without getting into the gametes?
Sandra: "... do I respond with 'A woman is the phenotype that makes large gametes'? ..."
Very good question. The problem is generally that there are several different definitions for "woman" on tap, one as a sex -- i.e., "adult human female [makes large gametes]" -- and one as a gender -- i.e., pretty much anyone who has any passing resemblance to a typical "adult human female". For example, see Merriam-Webster's Usage note on "gender" and their definition for "woman" -- entirely different kettles of fish:
MW Gender-usage: "Among those who study gender and sexuality, a clear delineation between sex and gender is typically prescribed, with sex as the preferred term for biological forms, and gender limited to its meanings involving behavioral, cultural, and psychological traits. In this dichotomy, the terms male and female relate only to biological forms (sex), while the terms masculine/masculinity, feminine/femininity, woman/girl, and man/boy relate only to psychological and sociocultural traits (gender)."
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender#usage-1
MW: "woman (noun): an adult female person"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woman
And, as you suggest, neither of those really "get down to what people really think". Which seems to be more or less based on the most salient feature, i.e., "adult human vagina-haver". Sort of the "Kindergarten Cop" definition: "Boys Have A Penis And Girls Have A Vagina"
https://screenrant.com/kindergarten-cop-best-funny-quotes/#not-so-tough-without-your-car-are-ya
But rather childish and quite enervating squabbling over those definitions obscures the crux of the matter, i.e., that "Objects are usually categorized for some adaptive or pragmatic purposes":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization
Which then raises, or should raise the question as to exactly what "adaptive or pragmatic purposes" do we have in mind. Seems to be many on the table, but the ones most exercising the body politic are largely the questions of segregating toilets, change rooms, and sports on the basis of some criteria. Something of an interesting essay here on "Contrasting Sex Segregation and Racial Segregation" by Carolina Valencia:
https://redfollowsred.substack.com/p/contrasting-sex-segregation-and-racial
But "producing large gametes" is entirely irrelevant to "gatekeeping" access to "women's" toilets, change-rooms, and sports. And is actually counter-productive, a case of barking up the wrong tree -- one not even in the right forest, particularly since prepubescent XXers and menopausees aren't capable of "producing large gametes". Will they be excluded from those facilities? Leads to logical absurdities -- as Zach, more or less reasonably, argued -- or at least practical ones.
Largely why Paul Griffiths -- University of Sydney, philosophy of science, co-author or genetics & philosophy -- quite reasonably argued, in effect, that the biological definitions for the sexes are simply the wrong tool for the job. Like pounding nails with a screwdriver -- not very effective and is likely to damage the screwdriver beyond use for its intended purpose. See the concluding paragraphs in his Aeon article:
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
Why I've argued -- partly as a Devil's Advocate -- that there should be one set of toilets for the penis-havers, and one set the vagina-havers -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof in each case. And for women's sports -- no XY need apply; it's basically the karyotype that is the most useful "no/no-go" gauge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go/no-go_gauge
Sandra: "The understanding of the reality that sex cannot be changed is sufficient to discredit trans ideology, is it not, without getting into the gametes?"
Yes, quite true. But how is it that we "understand" that "sex cannot be changed"? There's no intrinsic meaning to "male" and "female" -- we can define the terms any way we wish; pay the words extra as Humpty Dumpty famously put it. We COULD say penis=male, & vagina=female -- or reasonable facsimiles thereof. In which case, sure, people can change sex -- how dare you say they can't?!!! 🙄
The point is that the biological definitions for the sexes are the most useful ones, the ones that are more or less universal, that apply to literally millions of anisogamous species, and are more or less foundational to all of biology. And by those definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types -- i.e., those that are capable of producing large or small gametes, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless. Of course humans can't EVER change sex -- at least until medical science "advances" to the point of changing out "Lia" Thomas' testicles for functioning ovaries of his own.
It's the biological definitions, the ones based on gametes and functional gonads that unhorse the transloonie nutcases and all their rather odious useful/useless idiots and fellow-travelers.
Thank you for reviewing the above arguments!
There are some additional issues that are not being covered in the public arguments about trans exclusion from women's spaces. I hesitate to introduce them, but they are the ones that are most relevant to women.
In my office building there are women's restrooms with 3 stalls. One of the tenants is a trans woman who is charming, likable, and easily read as a male. When this person is in the restroom with me I have no concerns, but that is because I know her. I do not feel comfortable generally with having unknown males in a women's restroom while I am in it. This concern is based on the knowledge that trans-identified males have attacked girls and women in restrooms and elsewhere, and that some males are turned on by being in a bathroom while women are using toilets. I would rate my level of fear about this as being relatively less than what a lot of other women feel about the same situation, but I would not knowingly share a public restroom with an unknown man.
Another reality is that girls separate themselves from boys' play groups on playgrounds, apparently because boys tend to dominate playgrounds and they play different kinds of games from those the girls tend to choose. (I am of course talking here about frequency distributions that overlap to some extent). While some athletic girls enjoy the same activities as the boys, girls generally play in groups that are less rowdy and physical. When boys move into the area where girls are playing these kinds of games, the girls move to a different area.
Girls and boys tend to have same sex friendships in grade school onward, again with exceptions, but the pattern has been documented cross-culturally. This implies that there are hard-wired, sex-linked variables involved. These factors must include recognition by both sexes of children of the sex of the other children, and a lack of attraction or existence of feelings of wanting to avoid the other sex. This general feeling might not be based entirely on a dislike for the other childrens' play styles, but may be simply a hard wired, species-specific pattern of behavior. I am reminded of herds of elk who live near me. The mature bulls can be observed lying or grazing in same sex groups, and the cows doing the same with each other, accompanied by the immature animals.
My point here is that humans and many if not all other species have ways of recognizing which sex is which, and many species, including ours segregate themselves on that basis. We don't need a chromosomal analysis to get there, although I agree with you that we many need a technical definition of sex to keep males out of athletic events intended for females.
I will close by sharing a personal experience that occurred decades ago at a feminist meeting that was intended for women, but without formally excluding men. The agenda was to discuss some controversial legislation being considered that pertained to womens' healthcare. One of the doctors who attended brought with her a gaggle of trans women, without consulting any of the rest of us in advance about her decision. The trans women started dominating the meeting immediately by aggressively and repeatedly seizing the floor for their own speech, which consisted of loud masculine voices (voice training was not a thing then for trans women). They rudely interrupted or talked over the women in the meeting to the point that we could not focus the conversation on our concerns. The trans women did not engage in the kinds of social behaviors that we would have done had they not been there disrupting our interactions. They in fact ignored everyone in the room except themselves. After the meeting was over, women gathered in small groups and voiced their anger to each other and to the woman who had brought these narcissistic, dominating males to our meeting.
I have seen males engage in these same behaviors in many other meetings that include large numbers of men and are not focused on women's issues. I recognize that these men are more narcissistic and more dominant than most of the other men and that is why they end up running everything. I also recognize that there are a lot of loud mouthed, dominating females. Nevertheless, the propensity of the dominating asses to silence all the women in a room, including professional women who function as leaders in the women's community is good enough reason for me to either exclude them or place serious limits on their behaviors.
So the issues around segregation by sex are not just about sexual assault and superior male athletic performance. And neither women nor men are confused about which is which. Neither are elk, birds or cats. There is more going on here in the way of biologically hard-wired sex differences than we can fully explain.
Sandra: "(I am of course talking here about frequency distributions that overlap to some extent)."
Seems that most people don't have a good handle on the concept which tends to preclude understanding important aspects of the issue. Not that it's a terribly difficult idea, just that there isn't much call for it in most people's lives.
There was a couple of articles that attempted to illustrate it during the Damore-Google-Manifesto Incident, though not sure that the one I have really provided much in the way of illumination:
https://s8mb.medium.com/understanding-averages-253394f3512c
You might have some interest in a pair of graphs that I'd uploaded to Wikimedia before getting defenestrated there that compares "agreeableness" -- one of the "Big Five" personality dimensions -- between men and women:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Joint_probability_distribution_by_sex_and_agreeablenes.jpg
And an article at "4th Wave Now" co-authored by Colin has a nice illustration of that for a bunch of "personality traits", many of which might reasonably come in under the rubric of "gender" -- even if the authors seemed to balk at that hurdle:
4thWaveNow: "The original essay had distribution curves showing an 85% overlap of personality traits between males and females. This comparison was based on earlier studies that have been criticized for having design limitations that underestimate sex-related personality differences (link). More recent studies show the overlap to be more in the 30% range."
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
Sandra: "And neither women nor men are confused about which is which."
In many cases. But not all:
Wikipedia: "Persons with a complete androgen insensitivity have a typical female external phenotype, despite having a 46,XY karyotype.[16][17]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome
Which is why it seems essential to have criteria that allow us to categorically say who is male, who is female, and who is neither. And only the standard biological definitions do so, even if many balk at the logical consequences.
Just as an afterthought, if anyone is interested in the comparative animal stuff... for instance, why reptiles have two "naughty bits" and humans only have one, you might be interested in this: "JUST DISCOVERED: Female Snakes Have Two ‘Naughty Bits’… but that’s exactly what I expected" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/just-discovered-female-snakes-have ...it points out how complicated it is to make comparisons between animal and human physiology (as is frequently done on both sides of the aisle).
Late to the party pal ... 😉🙂
"Biologist" PZ Myers addressed the phenomenon in humans some 11 years ago:
PZ: "This is Hazel Jones. She has two vaginas."
https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/02/21/not-as-much-fun-as-it-sounds/
Twice the woman of her "sistern" ...
Even better than the 46XY girl is the 46XY woman who gave birth to a (46 XY) girl: "Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
It's a really fascinating study, and the family tree is amazing too. (Found via Katie Montgomerie's blog; who claims sex isn't binary. Oh well.)
Is there clear-cut biological explanation why some humans (or other mammals) become exclusively homosexual as adults (androphilic when male, etc), and another explanation why some small children (very small percentages) do seem to have legitimate gender dysphoria? I've read numerous NIH papers talking about maternal birth-order epigenetics, about unusual X-based genes (matriarchal) and sexual orientation (as if the instinct to procreate has to be "turned on" by still another obscure gene), and about other genes affecting CNS development leading to unusual sensitivities to body sensations. I've also seen many claims that the brains of male v. female children can be distinguished by scans 95% of the time. It's hard to find any paper that can explain any of this very clearly if true.
There are no explanations at the present time regarding what causes some children or adults to be distressed, obsessed and depressed about their own biological sex. It is not possible to find out what causes a disorder like this without a longitudinal research design that continues for years. In addition, the investigators must be fortunate enough to select the correct causes even before the research begins. If they don't measure the causative variables in fetuses for example, they won't know 5 years later if those variables were significant contributors to the development of gender dysphoria. This kind of research is very expensive and is also dependent on the sustained commitment of most of the original participants. There are also ethical issues: For example, if the researchers are working with the hypothesis that gender dysphoria is caused by child abuse in the home, they can't assign groups of newborns to abusive families.
Joint flexibility is an aspect of female/male comparisons I haven't seen in these articles. Women are more flexible than men, a function of the looseness required in our hips during natural childbirth. There's a hormone spike at the end of pregnancy (I experienced this twice) and the baby's head descends for the last days/weeks until labor. Women have more knee and shoulder injuries than men, related to this looseness. Men who crossdress make a show of "demonstrated" joint looseness, thinking that helps them "pass." It does not. The micro-choreographies of false femininity are actually a tell. A tall "woman" with a large shoulder girdle is slightly shimmying the hips while glancing side to side, then sitting into one hip? He is a man, signaling, pretending and play acting a female persona.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-N3UIMRL2Cs&t=1s