https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34096131/: Not biologists, and not really relevant. The main thrust is saying “Don’t binarize phenotypes”, which sure makes sense. If you see a more specific claim in there it can be evaluated, but I don’t think it’s really worth getting into.
The author writing this is more concerned with the usefullness of the gamete size definition
Yes, that’s a biologist talking about why biologists define sex that way. That definition of sex is useful in biology. If it were redefined to something else, biologists would just invent a new term that meant the same thing, because they need it.
Regarding hyenas, what makes a hyena female? How can we talk about “female”, particularly across species? What makes the class of seahorses become pregnant “male”?
My claim isn’t about ASRM. It derives from this committee, which was tasked with a data collection task and did not have any biologists on the committee. You can see the people on the committee at the bottom. It wasn’t meant to be a committee to define sex, so it’s weird that they’re being cited as such.
Your specific claim was “notable amount of biologists argue against this”, but that has not been substantiated. The authors are not notable and there aren’t a notable number of them. The paper has not resulted in any change to the consensus, and has been ridiculed by the rest of the field.
concretely, it just does stuff
Right, and biologists have defined sex around the end results.
Sun finds Geoff Parker’s gametic explanation of biological sex
The PR person that wrote this doesn’t really understand what the person is actually saying. The cited paper from Geoff Parker is “The origin and evolution of gamete dimorphism and the male-female phenomenon” and considers how the sex binary came to be. Lixing Sun is saying that, even if you don’t produce gametes, you can play a role an evolutionary role.
No organs in their body are creating them, so that person has no sex?
There would still be structures in the body that only appear in one sex and not the other, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramesonephric_duct. That’s what “organized around” captures. It also includes other structures like uterus, that allow an individual to participate in one of the reproductive strategies for the species.
Ovotesticular syndrome isn’t what you probably think it is. It’s not “perfectly healthy gonads capable of producing both sperm and ova”. It’s “maybe one working gonad, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type”. An (imperfect) analogy is that transplanting an ovary into a male just makes him a male with a transplanted ovary, not a hermaphrodite or female. He can still only participate in the male reproductive strategy and lacks the rest of the structures necessary for participating in the female reproductive strategy.
It might help to think about what humans aren’t. There are trioecious species, with males, females, and hermaphrodites coexisting. That just doesn’t exist in humans.
The first article is specifically talking about gender AND sex, and to reconsider our conception of both. It is quite relevant. You are technically turning phenotypes into binary. Again, look at your model and ask “Who is this helping?”. It’s helpful to those that want to impose a strict binary, not those that require nuance. Also, Zachary dubois has a PHD in biological anthropology: https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/anthropology-faculty/all/zdubois. You’re straight up lying now
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? Imposing a binary on other people, especially children. “Your body is organized around producing small/large gametes, but it is not functional, so we’ll fix you by making you closer to something that works, whether you like the side-effects or not”. It wasn’t usefull for me, wasn’t usefull for intersex people, and will not be usefull for others in the future.
Again for the hyenas, that is not the point of the author. Plus definitions can be expanded, not just overwritten.
The people in that comitee are people that have worked in the medical field, including a medical doctor, a sociologist and a psychiatrist. The ASRM has reason to believe it is accurate as well, and should consider it.
That takedown of Fausto-Sterrling is arleady bogus. It calls LOCAH a non ambiguous sexual condition even though it affects hormones to an abnormal degree. Speaking again on intersex rights, the usefulness of treating LOCAH as intersex would be to let the children decide what treatments and effects on their body they want. When it comes to hormones even, it is assumed that the child wants effects alligned with their ASAB without asking them about it or by presure. Been through that myself. It is therefore useful to consider LOCAH as an intersex condition.
Not only that, yeah her claim about 5 sexes is tongue and cheek. It was meant to disprove a model. You gotta show contradictions in order to disprove it. So yeah, absurd claim are gonna come out. Like “therefore, there are 5 sexes”. It’s a critique of the current model, not her actual beliefs. The text is more about how intersex people are fit into these boxes without considering their opinion on how should they keep it. Anyone framing it as “she believes there are 5 sexes” is caricaturising what she is trying to say, and extremely bad faith for a scientist to do.
The guy responding to her work has also a pretty interesting track record in academia himself. He’s also a TERF. Makes you wonder why he would take such position… Are you gonna argue that there is an academic conspiracy to cancel him or something? Again, this is a tongue in cheek question, and I assume the aswer is “no”. https://en.everybodywiki.com/Colin_Wright#Leaving_academia
Again, with the organs that appear in one sex or the other, your own definition contradicts that. Since again, someone that is “organised around producing large/small gametes” CAN and HAVE HAD organs and traits from the opposite sex (ie MGD and other intersex hormonal conditions). Therefore, all sexual organs are able to appear in one sex and not the other.
I know that ovotesticular syndrome isn’t that. I’m just saying if both gonads don’t work, which sex should this person be? If you base yourself of of other sex characteristics, then your point is mute, per the last paragraph.
As we enter this complex conversation, we recognize that binary categories based on reproductive biologies or gender identities may make sense to include in analyses in order to address certain questions in human biology.
So even according to the paper, sometimes binaries are fine. Also, speaking of Fausto-Sterling, it cites her brainrot uncritically:
Although categories may be useful for addressing major issues of exclusion, feminist scientists have critiqued the concept of binary sex (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 1993)
And have you read her paper?
For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; and depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along that spectrum lie at least five sexes-and perhaps even more.
There is zero indication that it’s tongue-in-cheek when reading it, it’s been cited seriously in literature such as your link, and a good faith reading of it leads one to think she believes in 5 sexes. I mean come on, this is just nonsense. She’s a clown.
Zachary Dubois has a PhD from the Department of Anthropology but doesn’t list it specifically as a degree in biological anthropology in his CV. I don’t think it’s worth quibbling over whether he “counts” as a biologist, but I wasn’t lying and at worst was too dismissive. Either way, he’s not the person to look to for fundamental definitions in the field of biology.
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? […]
Again, it’s not my definition. It’s the common definition used in biology, and is very useful for science. That some people can misunderstand it and try “fixing” people using faulty logic is immaterial.
And hopefully this helps clear things up for you. From the same author I linked to before (PhD Evolutionary Biology):
Such mixed sex development is exceptionally rare because evolution has ensured developmental mechanisms to make sure this is so. A growing embryo will be wasting resources if it develops organs and tissues that cannot contribute to future reproduction. Novella’s paper on mice (above) is actually about a gene that appears to be involved in cross-sex development suppression. Put simply, our development of reproductive anatomy is absolutely not a pick-‘n’-mix of organs and tissues from male and female parts that might just result in enough of one’s sexed parts to enable an individual to be fertile and reproduce. Instead, it is a tightly regulated cascade of genetic events along a pathway that puts all development effort into male or female development. That is why pretty much everyone ends up as unambiguously male or female even when significant development conditions occur. Male and female development are mutually antagonistic.
Very rarely, and for reasons not well understood, the brakes may come off and tissue development that is normally suppressed starts to grow. It is a bit like a cancer where the normal growth regulating mechanisms fail. And indeed ovotesticular disorder is associated with malignancies of these tissues, so are often surgically removed soon after diagnosis to prevent lethal cancers.
What is not observed is an individual who is fertile both as a male and female. If fertile at all, it will be as one sex. The cross-sex tissue is typically under-developed. No human is a true hermaphrodite (in the biological sense as being able to reproduce as both a male and female). Unfortunately, medicine also uses the term “true hermaphrodite” to describe people with these very rare disorders. Do not be fooled by this equivocation.
So despite this cross-sex development, can we still say what sex a person is? That is a complex question as we are dealing with disorders that are so rare and with so many different causes and outcomes that a blanket statement is not easy. Doctors publish individual case reports where it may be clear a person has undergone predominately one sex development and in which case we may be confident in calling someone male or female. It is a matter of debate if there exist individuals where sex development is so mixed that such a classification is inherently meaningless. But even if some individual were truly sexually ambiguous, they would still not be a third sex.
My point is that biologists use the binary to simplify explanations of reality. In reality, what we call “sex” is just an observable variable trait. The question of “what is sex” is just philosophical.
Also, you say that despite what she says, that people will interpret this as “there are five sexes”, when the paragraph that DOES reference her doesn’t say so in the slightest.
You’d have to only read the title of her work to get this conclusion. Quite reactionary, but not unnexpected from a guy who did a video in PragerU of all fucking places lol.
For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male;
This is what she believes . It was so easy to spot even when reading diagonaly. The next sentence is an observation on the subject.
[…] and depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along that spectrum lie at least five sexes-and perhaps even more.
Here, she is saying that sex can be defined alongside this spectrum, depending on how you see things. You can split it up as as many subjective categories as you want. That is her point. To suggest otherwise is pretty disingenuous.
Speaking of disingenuous, I’m not saying your argument, as in you’re the only one making it. No fucking shit. I’m talking about your argument in the context of this conversation (honestly, I can barely call it that). You ignore the points I made below and just slap a definition, answering none of them. What do you mean “immaterial”??? It is by definition material. It has direct consequences on the material realities of these people. Who do you think is doing the corrective surgeries? Randoes on the street? No, it is doctors that use this definition to justify what they do.
Your biologist guy left academia a while ago. His PhD is honestly irrelevant, especialy since he’s a grifter. The fact that you cite a person that is clearly against trans people and that has to grift because he left academia makes me wonder if you actually take trans people and their struggles seriously: https://www.transgendermap.com/issues/biology/colin-wright/
Honestly I should’ve ended this convo the more I read about this guy. The fact that you take a transphobic grifter seriously, as your evidence, and don’t cite anyone else should’ve been the end of that conversation. Not just on the definition of sex, but on disregarding another academic’s text based on only the title at worse, or on the fact that he can’t read at best. If you want an example of how that definition is used to harm people, look no further than the person you are citing. I’m honestly done with your bullshit
Most biologists accept the facts and move on to more interesting things. He’s willing to write the “no duh” explainers. If you don’t like him, take your pick of people with other relevant credentials listed here that signed a statement affirming the same (in addition to the other link I posted to another well-respected biologist agreeing with him)
In mammals, there are two types of gamete and two classes of reproductive anatomy. The male sex class produces many small motile gametes – sperm – for transfer. The female sex class produces few large immobile gametes – ova – and gestates/delivers live young. […] Biological sex does not meet the defining criteria for a spectrum. […] Not one of these individuals represents an additional sex class.
Immaterial to the truth of it. Dislike 1 + 1 = 2 all you want, it’s still true.
That paper cites her seriously when it was apparently “ironic”. I didn’t say that paper quoted her about 5 sexes, but nowhere does it note that it was “ironic”.
depending on how you see things.
Biologists have observed that sex is binary. She’s free to “see things” however she wants, but mistaking the basic variations within the binary for a non-binary spectrum won’t get her taken seriously by biologists (or anyone)
It’s equally true to note that sex has been observed to be binary. You’re correct to note that they’re true for different reasons. If that is your only quibble, I appreciate your acknowledgement of the sex binary.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34096131/: Not biologists, and not really relevant. The main thrust is saying “Don’t binarize phenotypes”, which sure makes sense. If you see a more specific claim in there it can be evaluated, but I don’t think it’s really worth getting into.
Yes, that’s a biologist talking about why biologists define sex that way. That definition of sex is useful in biology. If it were redefined to something else, biologists would just invent a new term that meant the same thing, because they need it.
Regarding hyenas, what makes a hyena female? How can we talk about “female”, particularly across species? What makes the class of seahorses become pregnant “male”?
My claim isn’t about ASRM. It derives from this committee, which was tasked with a data collection task and did not have any biologists on the committee. You can see the people on the committee at the bottom. It wasn’t meant to be a committee to define sex, so it’s weird that they’re being cited as such.
https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26424/Highlights_Measuring_SGISO.pdf
Your specific claim was “notable amount of biologists argue against this”, but that has not been substantiated. The authors are not notable and there aren’t a notable number of them. The paper has not resulted in any change to the consensus, and has been ridiculed by the rest of the field.
Right, and biologists have defined sex around the end results.
My comment about Anne Fausto-Sterling was terse, but here’s more context, Intersex Is Not as Common as Red Hair and Responding to a ‘Fabulous Takedown’ of My Work. She is a deeply unserious person that wrote nonsense about 5 “sexes” and later responded like this when called out:
The PR person that wrote this doesn’t really understand what the person is actually saying. The cited paper from Geoff Parker is “The origin and evolution of gamete dimorphism and the male-female phenomenon” and considers how the sex binary came to be. Lixing Sun is saying that, even if you don’t produce gametes, you can play a role an evolutionary role.
There would still be structures in the body that only appear in one sex and not the other, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramesonephric_duct. That’s what “organized around” captures. It also includes other structures like uterus, that allow an individual to participate in one of the reproductive strategies for the species.
Ovotesticular syndrome isn’t what you probably think it is. It’s not “perfectly healthy gonads capable of producing both sperm and ova”. It’s “maybe one working gonad, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type”. An (imperfect) analogy is that transplanting an ovary into a male just makes him a male with a transplanted ovary, not a hermaphrodite or female. He can still only participate in the male reproductive strategy and lacks the rest of the structures necessary for participating in the female reproductive strategy.
It might help to think about what humans aren’t. There are trioecious species, with males, females, and hermaphrodites coexisting. That just doesn’t exist in humans.
The first article is specifically talking about gender AND sex, and to reconsider our conception of both. It is quite relevant. You are technically turning phenotypes into binary. Again, look at your model and ask “Who is this helping?”. It’s helpful to those that want to impose a strict binary, not those that require nuance. Also, Zachary dubois has a PHD in biological anthropology: https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/anthropology-faculty/all/zdubois. You’re straight up lying now
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? Imposing a binary on other people, especially children. “Your body is organized around producing small/large gametes, but it is not functional, so we’ll fix you by making you closer to something that works, whether you like the side-effects or not”. It wasn’t usefull for me, wasn’t usefull for intersex people, and will not be usefull for others in the future.
Again for the hyenas, that is not the point of the author. Plus definitions can be expanded, not just overwritten.
The people in that comitee are people that have worked in the medical field, including a medical doctor, a sociologist and a psychiatrist. The ASRM has reason to believe it is accurate as well, and should consider it.
That takedown of Fausto-Sterrling is arleady bogus. It calls LOCAH a non ambiguous sexual condition even though it affects hormones to an abnormal degree. Speaking again on intersex rights, the usefulness of treating LOCAH as intersex would be to let the children decide what treatments and effects on their body they want. When it comes to hormones even, it is assumed that the child wants effects alligned with their ASAB without asking them about it or by presure. Been through that myself. It is therefore useful to consider LOCAH as an intersex condition.
Not only that, yeah her claim about 5 sexes is tongue and cheek. It was meant to disprove a model. You gotta show contradictions in order to disprove it. So yeah, absurd claim are gonna come out. Like “therefore, there are 5 sexes”. It’s a critique of the current model, not her actual beliefs. The text is more about how intersex people are fit into these boxes without considering their opinion on how should they keep it. Anyone framing it as “she believes there are 5 sexes” is caricaturising what she is trying to say, and extremely bad faith for a scientist to do.
The guy responding to her work has also a pretty interesting track record in academia himself. He’s also a TERF. Makes you wonder why he would take such position… Are you gonna argue that there is an academic conspiracy to cancel him or something? Again, this is a tongue in cheek question, and I assume the aswer is “no”. https://en.everybodywiki.com/Colin_Wright#Leaving_academia
Again, with the organs that appear in one sex or the other, your own definition contradicts that. Since again, someone that is “organised around producing large/small gametes” CAN and HAVE HAD organs and traits from the opposite sex (ie MGD and other intersex hormonal conditions). Therefore, all sexual organs are able to appear in one sex and not the other.
I know that ovotesticular syndrome isn’t that. I’m just saying if both gonads don’t work, which sex should this person be? If you base yourself of of other sex characteristics, then your point is mute, per the last paragraph.
From the paper:
So even according to the paper, sometimes binaries are fine. Also, speaking of Fausto-Sterling, it cites her brainrot uncritically:
And have you read her paper?
There is zero indication that it’s tongue-in-cheek when reading it, it’s been cited seriously in literature such as your link, and a good faith reading of it leads one to think she believes in 5 sexes. I mean come on, this is just nonsense. She’s a clown.
Zachary Dubois has a PhD from the Department of Anthropology but doesn’t list it specifically as a degree in biological anthropology in his CV. I don’t think it’s worth quibbling over whether he “counts” as a biologist, but I wasn’t lying and at worst was too dismissive. Either way, he’s not the person to look to for fundamental definitions in the field of biology.
Again, it’s not my definition. It’s the common definition used in biology, and is very useful for science. That some people can misunderstand it and try “fixing” people using faulty logic is immaterial.
And hopefully this helps clear things up for you. From the same author I linked to before (PhD Evolutionary Biology):
My point is that biologists use the binary to simplify explanations of reality. In reality, what we call “sex” is just an observable variable trait. The question of “what is sex” is just philosophical.
Also, you say that despite what she says, that people will interpret this as “there are five sexes”, when the paragraph that DOES reference her doesn’t say so in the slightest.
You’d have to only read the title of her work to get this conclusion. Quite reactionary, but not unnexpected from a guy who did a video in PragerU of all fucking places lol.
This is what she believes . It was so easy to spot even when reading diagonaly. The next sentence is an observation on the subject.
Here, she is saying that sex can be defined alongside this spectrum, depending on how you see things. You can split it up as as many subjective categories as you want. That is her point. To suggest otherwise is pretty disingenuous.
Speaking of disingenuous, I’m not saying your argument, as in you’re the only one making it. No fucking shit. I’m talking about your argument in the context of this conversation (honestly, I can barely call it that). You ignore the points I made below and just slap a definition, answering none of them. What do you mean “immaterial”??? It is by definition material. It has direct consequences on the material realities of these people. Who do you think is doing the corrective surgeries? Randoes on the street? No, it is doctors that use this definition to justify what they do.
Your biologist guy left academia a while ago. His PhD is honestly irrelevant, especialy since he’s a grifter. The fact that you cite a person that is clearly against trans people and that has to grift because he left academia makes me wonder if you actually take trans people and their struggles seriously: https://www.transgendermap.com/issues/biology/colin-wright/
Honestly I should’ve ended this convo the more I read about this guy. The fact that you take a transphobic grifter seriously, as your evidence, and don’t cite anyone else should’ve been the end of that conversation. Not just on the definition of sex, but on disregarding another academic’s text based on only the title at worse, or on the fact that he can’t read at best. If you want an example of how that definition is used to harm people, look no further than the person you are citing. I’m honestly done with your bullshit
Most biologists accept the facts and move on to more interesting things. He’s willing to write the “no duh” explainers. If you don’t like him, take your pick of people with other relevant credentials listed here that signed a statement affirming the same (in addition to the other link I posted to another well-respected biologist agreeing with him)
https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/
Immaterial to the truth of it. Dislike 1 + 1 = 2 all you want, it’s still true.
That paper cites her seriously when it was apparently “ironic”. I didn’t say that paper quoted her about 5 sexes, but nowhere does it note that it was “ironic”.
Biologists have observed that sex is binary. She’s free to “see things” however she wants, but mistaking the basic variations within the binary for a non-binary spectrum won’t get her taken seriously by biologists (or anyone)
Funny thing: 1 + 1 = 2 isn’t material, it’s derived of axioms. You don’t know what you’re talking about
It’s equally true to note that sex has been observed to be binary. You’re correct to note that they’re true for different reasons. If that is your only quibble, I appreciate your acknowledgement of the sex binary.