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
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.
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!
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.
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!
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?
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).
Explorar Trelew con una escort es la manera perfecta de aprovechar al máximo tu estadía. Nuestras escorts son hermosas y profesionales y brindan una experiencia inolvidable. Ofrecen compañía, conversación y entretenimiento mientras brindan un ambiente seguro y cómodo. Nuestras chicas están disponibles para servicios de llamadas externas e internas y tienen disponibilidad 24/7. Ya sea que esté buscando un acompañante para la cena o alguien que le muestre la ciudad, nuestras acompañantes de Trelew lo tienen cubierto. Reserva hoy y haz que tu estadía en Trelew sea inolvidable.
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.
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
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.
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!
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
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!
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?
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).
Explorar Trelew con una escort es la manera perfecta de aprovechar al máximo tu estadía. Nuestras escorts son hermosas y profesionales y brindan una experiencia inolvidable. Ofrecen compañía, conversación y entretenimiento mientras brindan un ambiente seguro y cómodo. Nuestras chicas están disponibles para servicios de llamadas externas e internas y tienen disponibilidad 24/7. Ya sea que esté buscando un acompañante para la cena o alguien que le muestre la ciudad, nuestras acompañantes de Trelew lo tienen cubierto. Reserva hoy y haz que tu estadía en Trelew sea inolvidable.
https://ar.oklute.com/escorts/trelew/
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.
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