The presidents of three American societies of evolutionary biologists and ecologists have written a joint letter to President Trump and members of the US Congress stating that “extensive scientific evidence” contradicts the view that “there are two sexes .
I don’t understand the purpose of this argument. Yes there are a few DSD males in female sports—mostly hailing from third world countries—but the larger issue is first world males claiming a woman “identity” taking women’s places in female sports and elsewhere. They are not claiming to have a DSD — they are saying that their subjective belief trumps their biology for all purposes. That is what most women object to as it destroys all boundaries we have built to protect women.
"they are saying that their subjective belief trumps their biology for all purposes."
Really?
None of the (few) trans people I know insist that their subjective belief trumps biology for all purposes. What they do insist is that their subjective belief shouldn't be used to deny the basic human rights and respect we grant to those with other subjective beliefs.
The ones most of us are concerned about are those who insist they are to be given access to women’s sports and spaces on the same terms as biological women
Reality is not an attack. My point is these scientists are conflating two things that have little to do with each other — the few DSD persons in the world are not the problem. For 99% of us there is no ambiguity in our sex and it can be determined by a simple cheek swab test.
How many female athletes are being affected (by the way this is one area where I agree that trans women who came to puberty as male should not be allowed to compete); but it’s a tiny number of affected people. How many women have been attacked in locker rooms by trans women(I can find only two after AI-driven research; it’s not right, but it’s also rarer than hen’s teeth. There are far more trans people who are sexually assaulted by cisgender people (almost always men) My point about “reality” is that most of the complaints about trans people are hype, manufactured, trivial in real numbers. And if a trans person insists that they are or are not “male” or “female,” honestly why do you care? Some people insist that they “are“ animals. Meh; why do you care? What’s the harm? More people believe the Earth is flat, and by the way that shouldn’t bother you either. What’s the harm?
Ah, the old “a little harm is ok when the victims are women” argument. How many lost medals and opportunities are too many? How many sexual assaults? We don’t have to accept ANY.
I don’t care what you call yourself or who you sleep with. But stay out of spaces where women are vulnerable and don’t take our opportunities. It’s not complicated.
Literally thousands. And growing every day. But of course you don’t care about the harm to females. And that right there says that you and society knows exactly who are the men and who are the women in this situation. Bc you are never fighting for “transmen” aka females. You are only ever fighting for men taking advantage of women.
Charles, Anna said it perfectly. Fairness beats equality every day: trans women’s “basic human rights” do not (or should not) be at the expense of fairness to other women. It has nothing to do with lack of respect, if any.
Two things can be right. IMHO it is unfair for people raised as male through puberty to compete on equal terms with people who have grown up biologically female in nearly all athletic endeavors. At the same time, it shouldn't be hard to distinguish that specific opinion from broader, unspecified claims that women are being harmed by "trans rights." What is the harm, and what can be done to rectify it? We needn't throw the baby out with the bathwater by recklessly over-generalizing the issue.
The harm is that males commit 98% of sex crimes, regardless of their 'gender identity.' Allowing males to freely enter women's private spaces like locker rooms, spas, bathrooms, and prisons exposes women to greatly enhanced risks of sexual assault and abuse.
The gall of even asking this question when there have now been MULTIPLE examples of registered sex offenders parading in women's spas on the basis of their self-declared 'gender identity' - around children even - is remarkable.
Well, although I'm with you about all this, I'm not sure you're right about "The gall of even asking this question".
I don't think it's true that everyone who supports trans-blah is a misogynist. Many of them are simply wrong, without hating women. Many of the trans activists do exhibit misogyny, that's for sure. There is a streak of misogyny running right through trans.
But I think lots of the supporters don't see that, because they are a bit innocent. At personal level they may be unfamiliar with how brutal the world is. They object to being called woman-haters because they aren't. So possibly they need a different approach if you want to get them onside.
The locker room stuff is a political flash point. I agree with you that it's problematic and should be dealt with. But that's both rare and solvable, and doesn't and shouldn't necessarily affect issues beyond that.
Solvable? Shall we start asking perverts if they intend to rape our children or just perv on them? Good God man, it took electing Trump as US president just to get Democrats to stop trashing women's rights. As soon as they're back in power, they'll be back to destroying female safety, dignity and privacy. Did you notice that California removed a male from a female prison? Their idea of “solving” the problem of male violence is to wait until a man commits sexual violence, then remove him, but only him, from having access to vulnerable females. The rest haven't raped the female prisoners... Yet!
By the way, letting men leer at our naked children in the local YMCA shower, then Y staff telling them those men are actually women destroys their trust in adults who should be protecting them. It also makes kids not want to grow up. Good news for the transitioning profiteers. We're making even more bodies for them to destroy!
Grown men calling themselves women free-balling in front of little girls in locker rooms they have no right to be in is not a political flashpoint. Women not being able to comfortably use their own locker rooms because of these men aggressively pushing themselves into our spaces and parading around watching us is not a political flashpoint. It is sexual assault. It is harm to women and girls
Even one woman or girl being denied a scholarship, even one woman or girl being denied the dignity of privacy, even one woman being raped or assaulted by a male in prison is one too many.
But of course, it's been thousands of women and girls who've experienced these things, and there is no better proof of the misogyny of the 'trans rights' movement than the fact that you have the audacity to pretend women's rights, privacy, and safety don't matter as much as a male's desire to be validated at every turn.
There has been a strong insistence that women give up their rights to accommodate the wishes of others - once again, the perpetual request that we put our needs last. The expectation that women would simply do that - even though those rights were won after great bravery and suffering, and are necessary for women’s full participation in society - is beyond galling and has taken great courage to resist. Left wing men have been hugely disappointing on this front, as has the ease with which young women have been manipulated by the demand to be kind no matter what is taken from them.
Nobody is trying to "deny the basic human rights and respect we grant to those with other subjective beliefs." No one. That's a straw man argument.
So-called "trans" people are some of the most privileged on the planet. That's why they can get away with their narcissistic delusion that they were born in the "wrong body" and that's why they insist that everyone kowtow to their delusion.
The scientist’s letter is muddled and tinged with political correctness. They conflate gender and sex, and back up their argument with only 2 references! Gender is a spectrum, hormone levels and secondary characteristics are a spectrum. But sex is so close to a pure binary, the only reason for eliding that is … politics.
"Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one's identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans."
WTF does "lived experience" have to do with the criteria to qualify for membership in a category?
But the sexes are, by definition, a binary. By standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types. See the Glossary in this article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
And those with neither type of functioning gonad are, ipso facto, sexless -- a fairly large category that includes the prepubescent, vasectomees, menopausees, transwomen who cut their nuts off, and most of the intersex. Relative to the last group, the intersex, you might take a gander at this comment by Jerry Coyne, one of the signatories to Dawkins' response to those three presidents:
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
If you put as much energy into correcting those definitions your constantly publish in your comments, you'd be part of the solution instead of the problem. It's obviously inaccurate to define sex as a binary system based on the type of gamete an organism is organized to make (male=sperm, female=ova) and then declare that whoops, post-menopausal women are no longer female. That definition describes “currently reproductively capable females” not female as a sex class.
Their definition is wrong. Why don't you contact them? Fix the problem instead of repeatedly insisting in comments of multiple articles that every agree with a stupidly inaccurate definition.
Sally: "It's obviously inaccurate to define sex as a binary system based on the type of gamete an organism is organized to make ...."
Except NO reputable biological journal, dictionary, or encyclopedia says anything of the sort, that the definition is based on "organized to make". It's got diddly-squat to do with organization, and everything to do with actually producing -- a world of difference.
You might actually try reading and paying close attention to the definitions for the sexes in the Glossary of the article I linked to above.
Sally: "Their definition is wrong. Why don't you contact them?"
Whose definition? The one in the article in the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction I linked to? Who says they're wrong? Dawkins basically says they're right even if he subsequently snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by corrupting those definitions.
And I have contacted someone who is more or less of the same mind on those definitions, the (retired) professor in the philosophy of science, Paul Griffiths. You might try reading several of his articles on the topic:
Griffiths: “Sex Is Real: Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing is either one or the other.”;
And see these bits from his "What are biological sexes?" A couple of salient points you might focus on to begin with:
Griffiths “But no general definition of sexes can rely on these features [chromosomes, sex organs, hormones] because, as [evolutionary biologist and transwoman Joan] Roughgarden puts it, ‘the criteria for classifying an organism as male or female have to work with worms to whales, with red seaweed to redwood trees.’ ....”
The ONLY definitions that work for ALL anisogamous species are the ones in that Oxford article I linked to. "organized to make" is a non-starter. HTH ...
"Reproductive sex" would be a better term than "biological sex." Then we wouldn't waste a lot of energy trying to define which of the two reproductive sexes the many variants (such as Klinefelters, Turners, AIS, CAH, 5-AR and many more) "really" are..
Certainly "reproductive sex" would be more descriptive than "biological sex" since the latter is, by definition, all about reproduction:
"sex: 2) Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions."
But kind of think that that is just a case of moving the goal-posts. The issue is still what it takes to qualify as male and female in the first place. For example, see the recent, more or less commendable, ruling by the UK Supreme Court which stipulated that:
"The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex."
Unfortunately that Court did not specify exactly what either of those terms actually mean, or what it takes to qualify as either -- in notable contradistinction to Trump's EO which didn't pull many punches:
Whitehouse: "(d) 'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) 'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
Unfortunately, the UK Supreme Court has more or less just passed the buck, just left the question open to create problems down the road:
UKSC: "We also use the expression 'biological sex' which is used widely, including in the judgments of the Court of Session, to describe the sex of a person at birth ..."
The thing is that the ONLY thing "observed at birth" is genitalia; that becomes the de facto or default criteria for membership in the sex categories. No better than the Kindergarten Cop movie definitions: "boys (males) have penises, and girls (females) have vaginas". No wonder then that the "judge" in the Tickle vs. Giggle case ruled that "Ms." Tickle -- with "her" brand-spanking new neovagina -- had "changed sex":
1) they include the word "sex", thereby pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps without defining what sex actually _is_.
2) Persons at conception do not produce any reproductive cells (in fact moments earlier, they were two reproductive cells, one large, one small, and now they are just one cell) and don't start producing any till months (ova) or years (sperm) later. Some never do. Some may, for all we know, later produce intermediate cells (or large cells with flagellae, or small immotile cells) but biologists regard those as "abnormal" and disregard them in their fixation on reproduction.
Here's my definition:
Sex is the constellation of characteristics (more or less associated with reproduction, such as chromosomes, gametes, genitalia internal and external, bone structure such as pelvic width, hair and body fat distribution, that strongly tend to cluster around the two phenotypes we call "male" and "female" that are able to reproduce.
Note "more or less" "such as" "tend to" that leave the field open.
I would like to argue that we should conflate sex and gender. The two terms should be synonymous because they so clearly have meant the same meaning for the longest time. It has only been a recent advent that some academics want to separate these terms and reserve one for identity. Now, they want to reunify the definitions of these terms, where both now mean identity.
Humans are complicated, we have biology and psychology at play. That argues for more terms, rather than fewer. A person’s gender identity may vary over time, while aspects of their physical body did not change. So you could tie this to mind-body duality… there is also the general danger of a ‘language police’ which can be the scientists or sociologist-queer theorists enforcing norms.
Yeah I agree. I think gender should be synonymous with sex. I think changing how words are used and then shaming people for not wanting to go along is bad & clearly doesn’t work well here.
Jesus. Sorry that sounds like a religious comment, but it's the only despairing reaction I had to this lunacy. I wonder if there is "extensive scientific evidence" that you can be somehow utterly devoid of reason and yet make your way up a hierarchy to become a president (!!) of a society of evolutionary biology (!!). It's not April Fool's Day, is it?
The term being used here is "sex", which is different than gender, the latter is more complicated and at a minimum involves genetics, gene expression and psychology. But the point appears to be that humans only come in two genders, which is silly on its face.
The term "non-binary" is most accurate, few biological traits are binary. The majority of humans are either male or female, but we have intersex, hermaphrodism and transgendered humans.
Despite the linguistic and dogmatic Stalinism of some people, who insist that trans women are women or trans men are man, this is not true either. They are not men or women but something different. And so what.
Every attempt to stuff people into boxes demonstrates how dumb those boxes are. Humans have virtually infinite variety and that is what makes life interesting.
I grew up in the 70s and I recall
distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared. I don't get it.
Try explaining to your daughter that the person who muscled her off the ball with ease or the person with a dick in her female changing room is a woman, and see how you go. The painful expressions on the faces of those girls beaten by Lia Thomas is indelible; told to suck it up and stay silent by their mothers or be called transphobes.
What is so wrong with "different", it's beautiful. Trying to force people into boxes is absurd, variation should be celebrated. Linguistic dogma applied to biology is a fool's errand.
Why attempt to shove people into boxes? It is much more complicated than that. Adults can and should do whatever the hell they want if it doesn’t hurt others. Linguistic fascism that is scientifically inaccurate is what is absurd.And thanks for helping Donald Trump ruin our country with your ridiculous insistence on a non truth.
What “ nontruth “? That sex is binary ? The binary of sex goes back in billions of years of evolution. Without it you wouldn’t be here. Or did you spring out of someone’s head ?
Yes, it is a non-truth, in this case a fallacy, that sex is binary. It only appears that way because the two reproductive sexes are the vast majority (because reproduction is essential to species survival - but _not_ to individual survival).
Until very recently (this century) people of other sexes were ignored, dismissed, abused and killed as "monsters". So they hid. Bravi to all the sex-variant people who have broken this wall of silence!
(You may say that sex-variance is an evolutionary dead end, but so is celibacy, yet the Catholic Church hierarchy survives. Human cultural evolution is Lamarkian - acquired characteristics _are_ transmitted - not Darwinian.)
But that's sex. This debate is about gender; identity and presentation. We are still unsure whether that has a biological component, so a biologist, no matter how eminent, has no special claim to lay down the law about it.
I said cultural evolution is Lamarkian. What part of “cultural evolution” don't you understated? Evolution of culture happens through the transmission of ideas. Ideas acquired in adulthood can be transmitted to children (as per Lamark) as biological traits acquired in adulthood cannot (as per Darwin).
Our idea of who a man or a woman is (gender, cultural) is evolving by the transmission of ideas to include trans men and women, as distinct from what a man or woman is (sex, biological).
Something similar happened 150-250 years ago to the idea of who is or is not fully human, and therefore who might not or might be enslaved. The defining biological trait then, as gametes are today, was melanin.
“I grew up in the 70s and I recall distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared.”
So what do you think all the marches were about then?
Btw, I was on those marches back then. When lesbians were threatened with child removal solely because they were lesbian.
When women were shamed if they were divorced.
When gay men were ridiculed on telly sitcoms.
Your romanticised ‘recollections’ of that era are either written from a place of unaware privilege or written for manipulative effect. Either way, it’s completely untrue.
The term being used here is "sex", which is different than gender, the latter is more complicated and at a minimum involves genetics, gene expression and psychology. But the point appears to be that humans only come in two genders, which is silly on its face.
The term "non-binary" is most accurate, few biological traits are binary. The majority of humans are either male or female, but we have intersex, hermaphrodism and transgendered humans.
Despite the linguistic and dogmatic Stalinism of some people, who insist that trans women are women or trans men are men, this is not true either. They are not men or women but something different. And so what.
Every attempt to stuff people into boxes demonstrates how dumb those boxes are. Humans have virtually infinite variety and that is what makes life interesting.
I grew up in the 70s and I recall
distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared. I don't get it.
Idiots like the three societies' presidents are responsible for people like Dr Upton, a man who identifies as a woman, being able to give evidence under oath in which he claimed to be "a biological woman", denied that the sex binary exists, said he would treat a female patient requesting same-sex care, and dismissed the suggestion that human reproduction requires one large and one small gamete. I repeat - a medical doctor, under oath - FFS!
Instead, the General Medical Council allowed him to change his doctor's registration to "Gender: female" (they don't refer to sex on their registration system at all). They require no paperwork to do so, just the doctor's say-so. In all, 62 doctors have changed their registration records in this way. And any previous suspensions or disciplinary actions magically disappear from the new record! https://archive.is/5jSjb
It would be one thing if I thought their goal was simply bringing attention to the variety of quite rare expressions of intersex. However, it certainly feels like a much more ideological project of inserting a version gender maximalist ideology into contexts (e.g., biological science) where binary sex is clearly the more relevant framing.
To put forth, in official capacity, something that is blatantly false just to be politically correct is nothing but pandering to popular opinion which has no basis in fact. It is shameful coming from scientists who should know better.
And indeed they DO know better, as Richard's (and Jerry Coyne's) examples from the three presidents' scholarly work shows. It is cringeworthy virtue signalling that will embarrass them in the not-too-distant future.
No, there are very many smart people in the world, but if you think you have to argue whether sex is binary then yeah, you are stupid! It’s like trying to argue for 2 + 2 =5. 🤣. Stuuuuuupid!
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
"To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer." This is exactly right.
For example, try a counter-argument to what Caitlin Jenner has to say about it below.
Do you tell Caitlin (s)he is deluded? Do you tell her that her feelings violate some scientific definition? How can you plausibly reject someone's feelings?
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
Yes, he is deluded if he thinks he actually *is* female. A woman. He's not. I have no problem believing that he believes it. I have compassion for what was no doubt a difficult path, hiding feelings that have been considered deviant for most of his life. My compassion leads me to expect he be treated with dignity and grace. But it does not lead me to affirm a thing that is not true.
And we're back to the very initial point: the problem is the word "is." Science has no more claim than Caitlin Jenner to what "is." We can describe observations, and I have no trouble agreeing that biology can usefully categorize things. But defining what a man or a woman "is" is a purely metaphysical claim, with no more validity than a claim about where the plain ends and the mountain begins, or whether God "is" or "is not." It's as useful as claiming that abortion "Is" or "is not" murder. You're trying to scientize what is a purely metaphysical claim. The mere fact that people disagree on all those points should be sufficient to conclude that there is no "is" there.
Let me finish your thought: the mere thing that people are claiming that reality doesn't exist proves that reality doesn't exist. Congratulations! Maybe you should disappear now that you just proved that nothing exist.
Clearly when the Homo sapiens first emerged as a species there was a binary gender code. Made sense. That's what the species needed at the time. However, evolution implies a narrative moving forward, and today's Homo sapiens is not necessarily sexually binary. We don't need to procreate, we need to flourish. There are nuances involved over time with evolution, changes, and we are seeing that in non binary genders, but we are rejecting it because we are so in love with the duality of boy and girl.
I wonder how you imagine our species is going to "flourish" if we don't procreate. Going extinct doesn't strike me as flourishing. The way we procreate is that a sperm penetrates an egg which is implanted in the uterus etc. Male. Female. Binary. Has nothing to do with a person's name or haircut or career choice or hobbies, be they "masculine" or "feminine" .
Of course, I should've mentioned that. Thank you! The species needs members that will procreate, but not all of us, as we can barely sustain the populations that we have now, and it's not viable for that to be the evolutionary imperative of the entire species if we want to survive into the future. 1000 years ago we were very short people. Today we are taller, have Different bodies, which is all part of the evolution. So if our species is moving towards including a gender that was not part of the original model, that would just make evolutionary sense. To resist it is to stick to an old paradigm which may not be relevant for a large, and I mean a huge percentage of the human species. Sticking to a paradigm so strictly is not science. It's value. Think of Einstein refusing to believe his own science that the universe is expanding. Of course he didn't wanna believe it. We are encoded to think things have always been this way, but he learned from his biggest blunder and it seems Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, and others might learn this as well.
Non-binary is quasi-religious, regressive, stereotyping, made up nonsense - still male or female regardless of hair/makeup, clothes and daft pronouns. Our whole reproductive and gamete systems haven’t evolved. Show one bit of scientific evidence for non-binary and don’t drag out the old DSD chestnuts. What does it mean? Non-binaries are not male or female?
One of the silliest things that has reared its ugly head is the concept ( not even a concept) of humans being “ non binary”! And this is from those who deny the binary of sex😂! So, how can you have a “ non- binary” without a binary..? Aside from the fact that humans cannot be sexless , this is as stupid as it gets! The trans cult is not known for its logic.
Sadly, Dawkins seems to have been caught in an intellectual block. I have never heard him try to define what sex _is_, only give a stock definition of two sexes, invented for the convenience of biologists, just as they define some different species of beetles by the length of the hairs of their legs. It begs (assumes the answer to) the question of what sexes _are_, or how many they are, because biologists are so heavily focussed on reproduction.
And there is no reason biologists should know anything about gender, which belongs more to the field of anthropology.
Indeed. These poor biologists who can't define "the sexes" (how many? a thousand?) because they are "too focused on reproduction." Could it be because biology, actually, defines the 2 sexes according to their role in reproduction: males, producers of sperm, and females, producers of ova. And yes, "gender" should be studied by anthropologists precisely because it is a belief system and it has nothing to do with organic, biological reality. The only reason biologists are talking about gender is because people who believe in this metaphysical entity claim that biology cannot tell us what sex is. Which is precisely what you just did. Reread what you just wrote and see how irrational it is: the definition of the two sexes "was invented for the convenience of biologists"? Invented by whom? You are saying that biology is not a science, but something "invented" to bother people who believe in the metaphysics of gender.
You may call gender "metaphysucs" but it - identity and presentation - are far more salient in human interaction than reproductive sex the vast majority of the time. No gentleman demands to see another person's gametes, chromosomes or external genitalia before deciding to open a door for her or buy her a drink (and yes, I am straining for examples of gendered behaviour in this day and age, and a good thing too.)
"Biology" does not define anything. Biology just is, in all its wonderful diversity. How many sexes? As many as there are sexed organisms, but of course the vast majority fall near enough to one or other of the canonical sexes - as defined by biologists - to reproduce.
Even the proverbial birds and bees both organise sex and reproduction quite differently from us and from each other. (It is mother birds' ova that determine the sex of their offspring, unlike us mammals. Worker bees are deemed female, defined by being diploid - 2 sets of chromosomes - but effectively neuter, producing no gametes. About 20% of animal species use this system.)
People can believe what they want, but that doesn’t make it true .
A man can never be a woman since every cell in his body is XY , except for some aberrations , and even these are male . The same applies to women who will always be female with XX chromosomes.
Hormones can not change somatic or germ (sex) cells . Thus hormones can not change one’s sex .
The trans ideology denies biology , because it doesn’t fit their agenda. So they will talk about clownfish and snails , but those have nothing to do with mammalian biology . Humans are mammals . Humans are the result of billions of years of evolution, which “ invented” the binary of sex. None of us would be here without one male and one female parent….not several different ones! But, because trans ideology has to defend itself , it makes up myths. Don’t expect logic from cult thinking.
If they wouldn’t expect the rest of us to bow down to them, and consider them “ sacred” as the Unitarian Church maintains, things would be better.Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Sex-variant people are not abberations, and how dare you call them that! What a cruel way to wish your fellow human beings out of existence! They are a minority, that's all, just like all of us in the LGBTI+ community, and you are just doing what has always been done.
There are many varieties of sex-variance, and their identity and presentation - like trans people's - need not suit either of the two silos you choose to put them in, nor any other. What sex are chimeric people, with both XX and XY cells, who may produce no gametes?
We are what we are, and what we are needs no excuses.
I think what you mean is that YOU cannot escape gravity. Human beings are definitely capable of escaping gravity, both theoretically and literally, at least altering its behavior and composition. Think of the astronaut dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon. In other words, the laws of science, physics, biology adapt to different situations, and as Homo sapiens have been on earth for 300 thousand years, it is very clear that an adaptive process has happened and is happening to our organisms as we move away from the need for every one of us to procreate. Complex systems like us change. That’s adaptability. That’s evolution. We no longer need 100% binary sexual identity or mechanisms.
But you’re right! Gravity for a human walking around middle America will always be gravity. If you fall, it will hurt. If you drop a ball, it will bounce. But not every perspective or every observer is standing in middle America and witnessing the behavior of gravity.
For some people within a family, a man will always be a man, and a woman will always be a woman. But not every Homo Sapiens is part of that family.
So for those people who say that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ are fluid, or not fixed, or can be negotiated, or defined and redefined by humans, can we also say that a person’s skin colour can be fluid, or understood differently, or reinterpreted so that a person who is called ‘white’ can now be understood as ‘black’? And can we say, for humans are in some way defined by their ability to understand the expression of their being in many different ways and forms, that a person born to Finnish parents can now be validly identified by themselves and others, as African-American?
I believe you write in jest, but this has been of crucial importance in US history, though typically in the direction of "black" to "white". If you're really interested, look up the immense amount of writing on the subject of "passing" (i.e. a person nominally "black" who attempts to be understood as "white"). It really mattered back in the days of segregation.
Yes, you have sussed me out. It was ‘intentionally mischievous’ but at the same time, how we answer that question (that I raised) may give us an idea of how we answer the other question of biology. If everything is negotiable, then, well, everything is negotiable. That’s OK as far as it goes, but then if we say only some things are negotiable then where do we draw the line and why. (And who has the authority to draw it). Thanks for the article links. I will follow them up and then, if this thread is still open perhaps, we can talk again. Cheers.
You raise a good question when you ask "and who has the authority to draw [the line]. May I suggest an answer? No one. But what we can see is that different people would wish to draw the lines differently. So if there is no authority, but people use terms differently, perhaps it is a doomed cause to seek the certainty implied by the all-powerful term "is." People differ, and people differ about how they differ. End of story. There is no certainty to be found here, stop searching and claiming that some objective "truth" exists. It doesn't.
Exactly. Or rather, you point out how inexact it all is. Coloured people (and women) used to be defined as less than human. In practice we do not define women or men by their gametes, but by their identity and presentation, ie their gender. Hard cases make bad law, and letting parliament define who is a man or a woman according some arbitrary rule is a bad idea.
I think my conclusion is that sex is clearly, for 99 percent of the population, binary. Humans are divided into male and female. But the way people think of themselves is not binary at all. Thus we have men thinking of themselves as females and females thinking of themselves as men, and others calling themselves intersex and others non-sexual. I don’t know, so I am guessing here, that the number of people born who are neither clearly males nor females is a very, very small percentage of the total human population.
Sir, with all due respect (and indeed much is due), you are contributing to a common problem among scientists, which broadly goes by the name "scientism," a conflation of science and philosophy. Keeping it at the level of common language and understanding, the problem often arises with statements that involve the verb "to be."
When we assert that something "is," or that something "exists," we are on solid ground when we are referring to phenomena like the weather, or wild animals. When it comes to things like the existence of God, as you well know, it is considerably more problematic. I would argue that "male vs. female" falls into that category.
Just like the ontological argument for the existence of God is flawed because as Kant said, "existence is not a predicate," so too with the notion of sex. We all have a common understanding of what people mean when they say "God," it doesn't mean God exists. We also have a common understanding of what people mean when they say "male vs. female." So too when common phrases invoking Newtonian physics, while also recognizing that quantum physics lies outside Newton's realm.
There do exist atheists in this world, as of course you know. So too are there people who call themselves "male or female" to describe how they feel about their personal identities, quite apart from their biological natures. These people are simply not saying the same thing. They are arguing over words and meanings, not some existential reality which is confirmable or disconfirmable by science.
A similar argument can be found among those arguing that abortion is murder (or more prosaically whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling). The answer lies not in an attempt to conclusively determine whether or not abortion really "is" murder in some scientific sense, but simply to note that the social/anthropological use of the word "murder" differs among people. So too with "sex."
This is a debate which is unanswerable by reference solely to science. The answer does not lie in studying butterfly wings, it lies in recognizing that human beings use words to mean many things (see Alice in Wonderland).
Those scientists who argue with you in scientific terms are no less guilty of scientism than you are. All of you need to recognize the difference between science and the shades of meaning used by human beings in the world we all inhabit.
Male and female are definable terms. Biologists must define those terms to do science. The fact that many folks want to argue about the scientific definition is neither here nor there. Someone can claim that up means down if they want; it has no bearing on the laws of gravity. Masculinity and femininity, on the other hand, are variable from culture to culture and historic age to age. Feel free to discuss those definitions, which are outside of a biological definition of sex.
You say "male and female" are definable terms. I would remind you that the arbiter of definitions is not science, but a dictionary. And a dictionary is an anthropological document, tracking how people actually use the word. Science can, for its own purposes, define them as it likes, but that has no bearing on how people actually use the terms. You are conflating science with sociological behaviors; they are not the same.
If you identify a third gamete, there might be a reason for those dictionaries to change. Until then, male and female are the only sexes recognized in any dictionary because those concepts graft onto material reality. The interplay between material reality and human needs for communication is the ultimate arbiter of definitions.
This is a specious argument. "...how they feel about their personal identities, quite apart from their biological natures" - exactly. The former can go any way one wants, according to cultural indoctrination, predilection or mere whim, on any day of the week; the latter is determined and stridently fixed at conception by eminently understandable mechanisms of natural selection. It's not a value judgement; it's something one can observe repeatedly and reliably. But really you seem to be arguing ambiguously, perhaps safely for both at once, and waving the essentially pejorative banner of 'scientism'.
I'm agreeing with you that science needs to define some terms very precisely, in order to do science. Yet as you note, cultural definitions are not bound by the precise rules of science. People are free to feel and think and talk in whatever terms they want to use; science has absolutely no right to insist that their terms are wrong, or indeed that any term "is" "right" for all purposes. Much of this silly debate would go away if people were simply more critical about what they assert "is" or "is not."
Where do the mountains end and the plains begin? A mapmaker may be required to answer that question in some precise way, but that shouldn't and doesn't constrain the rest of us in thinking more broadly about it. When scientists make precise definitions to do science, that is well and good. When they stray into making ontological claims, they are properly talking about the realm of metaphysics. Not the same thing.
> "… [Trump's] statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular…"
In addition to the disclaimed low opinion of him, let's be clear about whether he actually deserves any credit for that statement. Of course he didn't write it himself, and presumably doesn't understand those particulars.
Trans delusion, once accepted, begins to harm all related abilities to operate in reality. You begin to echo the delusion because you can’t discern reality, and are gradually aren’t able to make functionally true statements.
I don’t believe these professional statements are to made for any other reason than to spread the delusion which these people have absorbed.
The more serious problem is that functioning within science, as opposed to pseudoscience these people should be released from work immediately, and directed to mental help, not to punish them, but to ensure people working in biology are those who operate in the world of facts and reason, not fiction.
Someone who spouted Lysenkoism or theory of humors to Trump, or various amusing Aristotelian ideas about life, they would be relieved of professional responsibilities quickly.
I am profoundly disappointed that an intellectual whom I have so greatly admired and respected for many years would publish such a poorly reasoned, ill-informed and inadequately researched article. Even a cursory review of the scientific literature supports the thesis of the joint letter to President Trump. Time and space do not permit me to lay out the work Dawkins should have done, but anyone who wishes to contradict the scientific consensus on this subject really should engage in sufficient research of their own to substantiate their opinion.
Why are you pretending that an anthropologist is qualified to speak on biological science? This entire list is a gish gallop of equivocation and activist nonsense. You have the typical claims from activists deliberately conflating sex and gender, and the typical claims from activists pretending that DSDs are some form of third sex. That's all you have here.
Nearly all of these amount to someone’s philosophical opinion, and are not scientific literature relavent to the question of biological sex.
I don’t think Dawkins has put forth any opinion here at all about what gender is or what the LEGAL definition of sex should be. Just that the biological definition put forth by trump is in fact accurate.
The legal definition need not match the biological one. We don’t base law around race on population genetics for example.
I don’t understand the purpose of this argument. Yes there are a few DSD males in female sports—mostly hailing from third world countries—but the larger issue is first world males claiming a woman “identity” taking women’s places in female sports and elsewhere. They are not claiming to have a DSD — they are saying that their subjective belief trumps their biology for all purposes. That is what most women object to as it destroys all boundaries we have built to protect women.
"they are saying that their subjective belief trumps their biology for all purposes."
Really?
None of the (few) trans people I know insist that their subjective belief trumps biology for all purposes. What they do insist is that their subjective belief shouldn't be used to deny the basic human rights and respect we grant to those with other subjective beliefs.
The ones most of us are concerned about are those who insist they are to be given access to women’s sports and spaces on the same terms as biological women
I agree with that particular concern; but let’s not overreact by extending one valid concern to an across-the-board attack.
Reality is not an attack. My point is these scientists are conflating two things that have little to do with each other — the few DSD persons in the world are not the problem. For 99% of us there is no ambiguity in our sex and it can be determined by a simple cheek swab test.
How many female athletes are being affected (by the way this is one area where I agree that trans women who came to puberty as male should not be allowed to compete); but it’s a tiny number of affected people. How many women have been attacked in locker rooms by trans women(I can find only two after AI-driven research; it’s not right, but it’s also rarer than hen’s teeth. There are far more trans people who are sexually assaulted by cisgender people (almost always men) My point about “reality” is that most of the complaints about trans people are hype, manufactured, trivial in real numbers. And if a trans person insists that they are or are not “male” or “female,” honestly why do you care? Some people insist that they “are“ animals. Meh; why do you care? What’s the harm? More people believe the Earth is flat, and by the way that shouldn’t bother you either. What’s the harm?
Ah, the old “a little harm is ok when the victims are women” argument. How many lost medals and opportunities are too many? How many sexual assaults? We don’t have to accept ANY.
I don’t care what you call yourself or who you sleep with. But stay out of spaces where women are vulnerable and don’t take our opportunities. It’s not complicated.
Literally thousands. And growing every day. But of course you don’t care about the harm to females. And that right there says that you and society knows exactly who are the men and who are the women in this situation. Bc you are never fighting for “transmen” aka females. You are only ever fighting for men taking advantage of women.
Charles, Anna said it perfectly. Fairness beats equality every day: trans women’s “basic human rights” do not (or should not) be at the expense of fairness to other women. It has nothing to do with lack of respect, if any.
Two things can be right. IMHO it is unfair for people raised as male through puberty to compete on equal terms with people who have grown up biologically female in nearly all athletic endeavors. At the same time, it shouldn't be hard to distinguish that specific opinion from broader, unspecified claims that women are being harmed by "trans rights." What is the harm, and what can be done to rectify it? We needn't throw the baby out with the bathwater by recklessly over-generalizing the issue.
The harm is that males commit 98% of sex crimes, regardless of their 'gender identity.' Allowing males to freely enter women's private spaces like locker rooms, spas, bathrooms, and prisons exposes women to greatly enhanced risks of sexual assault and abuse.
The gall of even asking this question when there have now been MULTIPLE examples of registered sex offenders parading in women's spas on the basis of their self-declared 'gender identity' - around children even - is remarkable.
Well, although I'm with you about all this, I'm not sure you're right about "The gall of even asking this question".
I don't think it's true that everyone who supports trans-blah is a misogynist. Many of them are simply wrong, without hating women. Many of the trans activists do exhibit misogyny, that's for sure. There is a streak of misogyny running right through trans.
But I think lots of the supporters don't see that, because they are a bit innocent. At personal level they may be unfamiliar with how brutal the world is. They object to being called woman-haters because they aren't. So possibly they need a different approach if you want to get them onside.
I don't know, the world has changed now.
The locker room stuff is a political flash point. I agree with you that it's problematic and should be dealt with. But that's both rare and solvable, and doesn't and shouldn't necessarily affect issues beyond that.
Solvable? Shall we start asking perverts if they intend to rape our children or just perv on them? Good God man, it took electing Trump as US president just to get Democrats to stop trashing women's rights. As soon as they're back in power, they'll be back to destroying female safety, dignity and privacy. Did you notice that California removed a male from a female prison? Their idea of “solving” the problem of male violence is to wait until a man commits sexual violence, then remove him, but only him, from having access to vulnerable females. The rest haven't raped the female prisoners... Yet!
By the way, letting men leer at our naked children in the local YMCA shower, then Y staff telling them those men are actually women destroys their trust in adults who should be protecting them. It also makes kids not want to grow up. Good news for the transitioning profiteers. We're making even more bodies for them to destroy!
Grown men calling themselves women free-balling in front of little girls in locker rooms they have no right to be in is not a political flashpoint. Women not being able to comfortably use their own locker rooms because of these men aggressively pushing themselves into our spaces and parading around watching us is not a political flashpoint. It is sexual assault. It is harm to women and girls
Even one woman or girl being denied a scholarship, even one woman or girl being denied the dignity of privacy, even one woman being raped or assaulted by a male in prison is one too many.
But of course, it's been thousands of women and girls who've experienced these things, and there is no better proof of the misogyny of the 'trans rights' movement than the fact that you have the audacity to pretend women's rights, privacy, and safety don't matter as much as a male's desire to be validated at every turn.
It is not "victimizing" a male to treat him as a male.
Rage? I’m perfectly calm. How often? Every time females are forced to accept intrusion by biological males.
Oh, be quiet, John, you retard.
Caring about problems isn’t rage. Your ideology makes no sense and that’s a problem whether you care or not.
Your own rage narrative doesn't look much better.
More projection, John. You're the one exhibiting "rage," not the rational, scientifically informed commenters here.
There has been a strong insistence that women give up their rights to accommodate the wishes of others - once again, the perpetual request that we put our needs last. The expectation that women would simply do that - even though those rights were won after great bravery and suffering, and are necessary for women’s full participation in society - is beyond galling and has taken great courage to resist. Left wing men have been hugely disappointing on this front, as has the ease with which young women have been manipulated by the demand to be kind no matter what is taken from them.
Left wing trans men demand, yes, demand, that lesbians engage in sexual intercourse with their "female penis".
Then you don't know enough trans people. The majority of them insist that their idiotic beliefs trump biology for all purposes.
Nobody is trying to "deny the basic human rights and respect we grant to those with other subjective beliefs." No one. That's a straw man argument.
So-called "trans" people are some of the most privileged on the planet. That's why they can get away with their narcissistic delusion that they were born in the "wrong body" and that's why they insist that everyone kowtow to their delusion.
They have perfected the victim narrative while lording it over the rest of us!
What basic human rights are being denied?
Whataboutery alert. Look! Over there!…
This "John" person is clearly a troll trying to make wokesters look like morons, and succeeding brilliantly.
True dat.
The scientist’s letter is muddled and tinged with political correctness. They conflate gender and sex, and back up their argument with only 2 references! Gender is a spectrum, hormone levels and secondary characteristics are a spectrum. But sex is so close to a pure binary, the only reason for eliding that is … politics.
Gender is a made up idea used to oppress women via the limited and confining expectations put on women and girls.
Exactly right.
"Beyond the incorrect claim that science backs up a simple binary definition of sex, the lived experience of people clearly demonstrates that the genetic composition at conception does not define one's identity. Rather, sex and gender result from the interplay of genetics and environment. Such diversity is a hallmark of biological species, including humans."
WTF does "lived experience" have to do with the criteria to qualify for membership in a category?
But the sexes are, by definition, a binary. By standard biological definitions, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types. See the Glossary in this article in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
https://web.archive.org/web/20221214064356/https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990?login=false
And those with neither type of functioning gonad are, ipso facto, sexless -- a fairly large category that includes the prepubescent, vasectomees, menopausees, transwomen who cut their nuts off, and most of the intersex. Relative to the last group, the intersex, you might take a gander at this comment by Jerry Coyne, one of the signatories to Dawkins' response to those three presidents:
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/04/sf-chronicle-sex-and-gender-are-not-binaries/#comment-2048737
If you put as much energy into correcting those definitions your constantly publish in your comments, you'd be part of the solution instead of the problem. It's obviously inaccurate to define sex as a binary system based on the type of gamete an organism is organized to make (male=sperm, female=ova) and then declare that whoops, post-menopausal women are no longer female. That definition describes “currently reproductively capable females” not female as a sex class.
Their definition is wrong. Why don't you contact them? Fix the problem instead of repeatedly insisting in comments of multiple articles that every agree with a stupidly inaccurate definition.
Sally: "It's obviously inaccurate to define sex as a binary system based on the type of gamete an organism is organized to make ...."
Except NO reputable biological journal, dictionary, or encyclopedia says anything of the sort, that the definition is based on "organized to make". It's got diddly-squat to do with organization, and everything to do with actually producing -- a world of difference.
You might actually try reading and paying close attention to the definitions for the sexes in the Glossary of the article I linked to above.
Sally: "Their definition is wrong. Why don't you contact them?"
Whose definition? The one in the article in the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction I linked to? Who says they're wrong? Dawkins basically says they're right even if he subsequently snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by corrupting those definitions.
And I have contacted someone who is more or less of the same mind on those definitions, the (retired) professor in the philosophy of science, Paul Griffiths. You might try reading several of his articles on the topic:
Griffiths: “Sex Is Real: Yes, there are just two biological sexes. No, this doesn’t mean every living thing is either one or the other.”;
https://aeon.co/essays/the-existence-of-biological-sex-is-no-constraint-on-human-diversity
And see these bits from his "What are biological sexes?" A couple of salient points you might focus on to begin with:
Griffiths “But no general definition of sexes can rely on these features [chromosomes, sex organs, hormones] because, as [evolutionary biologist and transwoman Joan] Roughgarden puts it, ‘the criteria for classifying an organism as male or female have to work with worms to whales, with red seaweed to redwood trees.’ ....”
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
The ONLY definitions that work for ALL anisogamous species are the ones in that Oxford article I linked to. "organized to make" is a non-starter. HTH ...
"Reproductive sex" would be a better term than "biological sex." Then we wouldn't waste a lot of energy trying to define which of the two reproductive sexes the many variants (such as Klinefelters, Turners, AIS, CAH, 5-AR and many more) "really" are..
Certainly "reproductive sex" would be more descriptive than "biological sex" since the latter is, by definition, all about reproduction:
"sex: 2) Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions."
https://web.archive.org/web/20190326191905/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/sex
But kind of think that that is just a case of moving the goal-posts. The issue is still what it takes to qualify as male and female in the first place. For example, see the recent, more or less commendable, ruling by the UK Supreme Court which stipulated that:
"The unanimous decision of this court is that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex."
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7pqzk47zo
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
Unfortunately that Court did not specify exactly what either of those terms actually mean, or what it takes to qualify as either -- in notable contradistinction to Trump's EO which didn't pull many punches:
Whitehouse: "(d) 'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell.
(e) 'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defending-women-from-gender-ideology-extremism-and-restoring-biological-truth-to-the-federal-government/
Unfortunately, the UK Supreme Court has more or less just passed the buck, just left the question open to create problems down the road:
UKSC: "We also use the expression 'biological sex' which is used widely, including in the judgments of the Court of Session, to describe the sex of a person at birth ..."
The thing is that the ONLY thing "observed at birth" is genitalia; that becomes the de facto or default criteria for membership in the sex categories. No better than the Kindergarten Cop movie definitions: "boys (males) have penises, and girls (females) have vaginas". No wonder then that the "judge" in the Tickle vs. Giggle case ruled that "Ms." Tickle -- with "her" brand-spanking new neovagina -- had "changed sex":
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07ev1v7r4po
For reference, you might consider the definitions for the sexes from a fairly reputable source, the Oxford English Dictionary:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
They basically said -- some 8 years ago -- the same thing that Trump's EO is saying now. Better late than never.
The trouble with the Whitehouse definitions is
1) they include the word "sex", thereby pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps without defining what sex actually _is_.
2) Persons at conception do not produce any reproductive cells (in fact moments earlier, they were two reproductive cells, one large, one small, and now they are just one cell) and don't start producing any till months (ova) or years (sperm) later. Some never do. Some may, for all we know, later produce intermediate cells (or large cells with flagellae, or small immotile cells) but biologists regard those as "abnormal" and disregard them in their fixation on reproduction.
Here's my definition:
Sex is the constellation of characteristics (more or less associated with reproduction, such as chromosomes, gametes, genitalia internal and external, bone structure such as pelvic width, hair and body fat distribution, that strongly tend to cluster around the two phenotypes we call "male" and "female" that are able to reproduce.
Note "more or less" "such as" "tend to" that leave the field open.
I would like to argue that we should conflate sex and gender. The two terms should be synonymous because they so clearly have meant the same meaning for the longest time. It has only been a recent advent that some academics want to separate these terms and reserve one for identity. Now, they want to reunify the definitions of these terms, where both now mean identity.
Humans are complicated, we have biology and psychology at play. That argues for more terms, rather than fewer. A person’s gender identity may vary over time, while aspects of their physical body did not change. So you could tie this to mind-body duality… there is also the general danger of a ‘language police’ which can be the scientists or sociologist-queer theorists enforcing norms.
Yeah I agree. I think gender should be synonymous with sex. I think changing how words are used and then shaming people for not wanting to go along is bad & clearly doesn’t work well here.
Jesus. Sorry that sounds like a religious comment, but it's the only despairing reaction I had to this lunacy. I wonder if there is "extensive scientific evidence" that you can be somehow utterly devoid of reason and yet make your way up a hierarchy to become a president (!!) of a society of evolutionary biology (!!). It's not April Fool's Day, is it?
They aren't stupid. They're liars.
The term being used here is "sex", which is different than gender, the latter is more complicated and at a minimum involves genetics, gene expression and psychology. But the point appears to be that humans only come in two genders, which is silly on its face.
The term "non-binary" is most accurate, few biological traits are binary. The majority of humans are either male or female, but we have intersex, hermaphrodism and transgendered humans.
Despite the linguistic and dogmatic Stalinism of some people, who insist that trans women are women or trans men are man, this is not true either. They are not men or women but something different. And so what.
Every attempt to stuff people into boxes demonstrates how dumb those boxes are. Humans have virtually infinite variety and that is what makes life interesting.
I grew up in the 70s and I recall
distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared. I don't get it.
Try explaining to your daughter that the person who muscled her off the ball with ease or the person with a dick in her female changing room is a woman, and see how you go. The painful expressions on the faces of those girls beaten by Lia Thomas is indelible; told to suck it up and stay silent by their mothers or be called transphobes.
“They are not men or women but something different”
This is plainly absurd.
It’s also extremely insulting to the people you are referring to.
What is so wrong with "different", it's beautiful. Trying to force people into boxes is absurd, variation should be celebrated. Linguistic dogma applied to biology is a fool's errand.
Why attempt to shove people into boxes? It is much more complicated than that. Adults can and should do whatever the hell they want if it doesn’t hurt others. Linguistic fascism that is scientifically inaccurate is what is absurd.And thanks for helping Donald Trump ruin our country with your ridiculous insistence on a non truth.
What “ nontruth “? That sex is binary ? The binary of sex goes back in billions of years of evolution. Without it you wouldn’t be here. Or did you spring out of someone’s head ?
Yes, it is a non-truth, in this case a fallacy, that sex is binary. It only appears that way because the two reproductive sexes are the vast majority (because reproduction is essential to species survival - but _not_ to individual survival).
Until very recently (this century) people of other sexes were ignored, dismissed, abused and killed as "monsters". So they hid. Bravi to all the sex-variant people who have broken this wall of silence!
(You may say that sex-variance is an evolutionary dead end, but so is celibacy, yet the Catholic Church hierarchy survives. Human cultural evolution is Lamarkian - acquired characteristics _are_ transmitted - not Darwinian.)
But that's sex. This debate is about gender; identity and presentation. We are still unsure whether that has a biological component, so a biologist, no matter how eminent, has no special claim to lay down the law about it.
Nope! Sex is binary , .. biology does not lie , neither does evolution! Sex has been binary for billions of years!
And to even think that anyone still believes the thoroughly disproven Lamarkian ( lysenkoism) ideology is astounding!
Just like the trans ideology, it is completely false and based on ideology, not science.
I hope I misunderstood what you wrote about it !
Every mammal born , every human born has two parents , one male, one female , no more!
What a muddle it would be if there were more. Trans ideology which denies the binary of sex is lying! Lying to uphold its false narrative!
Dawkins , as an evolutionary biologist is brilliant and to dismiss him is hubris .
I said cultural evolution is Lamarkian. What part of “cultural evolution” don't you understated? Evolution of culture happens through the transmission of ideas. Ideas acquired in adulthood can be transmitted to children (as per Lamark) as biological traits acquired in adulthood cannot (as per Darwin).
Our idea of who a man or a woman is (gender, cultural) is evolving by the transmission of ideas to include trans men and women, as distinct from what a man or woman is (sex, biological).
Something similar happened 150-250 years ago to the idea of who is or is not fully human, and therefore who might not or might be enslaved. The defining biological trait then, as gametes are today, was melanin.
“I grew up in the 70s and I recall distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared.”
So what do you think all the marches were about then?
Btw, I was on those marches back then. When lesbians were threatened with child removal solely because they were lesbian.
When women were shamed if they were divorced.
When gay men were ridiculed on telly sitcoms.
Your romanticised ‘recollections’ of that era are either written from a place of unaware privilege or written for manipulative effect. Either way, it’s completely untrue.
You are not wrong, that is all true. Im talking about my experience, which is not manipulative.
And when lesbians were excluded from a "United Women's Conference" (New Zealand, 1973) for not being woman enough. History is repeating.
Sorry, you’re wrong about human hermaphroditism. It does not exist!
The term being used here is "sex", which is different than gender, the latter is more complicated and at a minimum involves genetics, gene expression and psychology. But the point appears to be that humans only come in two genders, which is silly on its face.
The term "non-binary" is most accurate, few biological traits are binary. The majority of humans are either male or female, but we have intersex, hermaphrodism and transgendered humans.
Despite the linguistic and dogmatic Stalinism of some people, who insist that trans women are women or trans men are men, this is not true either. They are not men or women but something different. And so what.
Every attempt to stuff people into boxes demonstrates how dumb those boxes are. Humans have virtually infinite variety and that is what makes life interesting.
I grew up in the 70s and I recall
distinctly how nobody much cared whether a person was male/female/trans, or gay/straight/bi. There was freedom that seems to have disappeared. I don't get it.
Nonbinary as applied to humans is as stupid as it gets! Nobody is” nonbinary “ ! Humans are not sponges!
Idiots like the three societies' presidents are responsible for people like Dr Upton, a man who identifies as a woman, being able to give evidence under oath in which he claimed to be "a biological woman", denied that the sex binary exists, said he would treat a female patient requesting same-sex care, and dismissed the suggestion that human reproduction requires one large and one small gamete. I repeat - a medical doctor, under oath - FFS!
He should be struck off.
Instead, the General Medical Council allowed him to change his doctor's registration to "Gender: female" (they don't refer to sex on their registration system at all). They require no paperwork to do so, just the doctor's say-so. In all, 62 doctors have changed their registration records in this way. And any previous suspensions or disciplinary actions magically disappear from the new record! https://archive.is/5jSjb
Exactly. And the Unions are supporting him and failing their women members.
He should be disbarred! Total idiot!
It would be one thing if I thought their goal was simply bringing attention to the variety of quite rare expressions of intersex. However, it certainly feels like a much more ideological project of inserting a version gender maximalist ideology into contexts (e.g., biological science) where binary sex is clearly the more relevant framing.
Thinking about what's relevant in different contexts is way too nuanced for a lot of people
To put forth, in official capacity, something that is blatantly false just to be politically correct is nothing but pandering to popular opinion which has no basis in fact. It is shameful coming from scientists who should know better.
And indeed they DO know better, as Richard's (and Jerry Coyne's) examples from the three presidents' scholarly work shows. It is cringeworthy virtue signalling that will embarrass them in the not-too-distant future.
What a bunch of fucking idiots! 🤣🤣
Such refined argumentation!
Ah shuddup. It’s boring trying to explain things to stupid people 🤣
Let me make a wild guess; you find the world is just so damn full of "stupid people," right?
No, there are very many smart people in the world, but if you think you have to argue whether sex is binary then yeah, you are stupid! It’s like trying to argue for 2 + 2 =5. 🤣. Stuuuuuupid!
To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer.
Where you decide to live your life on a spectrum of superficial, stereotypical male to female attributes (and we all do) is also purely subjective and similarly cannot be questioned.
However, your biological sex reflects an objective reality which cannot be changed by your subjective personal view and futile attempts to do so can result in serious health impacts to you as well as harms to members of the sex you are impersonating (primarily women).
Others who are grounded in objective reality should never be forced to accept your subjective version of your actual biological sex.
Finally, it's past time for the LGB community to separate themselves from the trans activists who are trying to take away the rights of women to fairness in sports and to privacy and safety in their restrooms, locker rooms and prisons. They also advocate for the chemical and surgical mutilation of children many of whom would grow up gay.
Their actions are evil and the
understandable negative reaction to the harm they are causing is spilling over to innocent people who are just going about their business, marrying and leading their lives.
Three Cheers for Dave!
I think that's the most succinct summary of the trans nonsense I've ever seen.
"To whom you are attracted sexually is purely subjective and therefore cannot reasonably be contested by an outside observer." This is exactly right.
For example, try a counter-argument to what Caitlin Jenner has to say about it below.
Do you tell Caitlin (s)he is deluded? Do you tell her that her feelings violate some scientific definition? How can you plausibly reject someone's feelings?
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/12759854/bruce-jenner-says-interview-woman?t
"Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."
Yes, he is deluded if he thinks he actually *is* female. A woman. He's not. I have no problem believing that he believes it. I have compassion for what was no doubt a difficult path, hiding feelings that have been considered deviant for most of his life. My compassion leads me to expect he be treated with dignity and grace. But it does not lead me to affirm a thing that is not true.
And we're back to the very initial point: the problem is the word "is." Science has no more claim than Caitlin Jenner to what "is." We can describe observations, and I have no trouble agreeing that biology can usefully categorize things. But defining what a man or a woman "is" is a purely metaphysical claim, with no more validity than a claim about where the plain ends and the mountain begins, or whether God "is" or "is not." It's as useful as claiming that abortion "Is" or "is not" murder. You're trying to scientize what is a purely metaphysical claim. The mere fact that people disagree on all those points should be sufficient to conclude that there is no "is" there.
Let me finish your thought: the mere thing that people are claiming that reality doesn't exist proves that reality doesn't exist. Congratulations! Maybe you should disappear now that you just proved that nothing exist.
Clearly when the Homo sapiens first emerged as a species there was a binary gender code. Made sense. That's what the species needed at the time. However, evolution implies a narrative moving forward, and today's Homo sapiens is not necessarily sexually binary. We don't need to procreate, we need to flourish. There are nuances involved over time with evolution, changes, and we are seeing that in non binary genders, but we are rejecting it because we are so in love with the duality of boy and girl.
I wonder how you imagine our species is going to "flourish" if we don't procreate. Going extinct doesn't strike me as flourishing. The way we procreate is that a sperm penetrates an egg which is implanted in the uterus etc. Male. Female. Binary. Has nothing to do with a person's name or haircut or career choice or hobbies, be they "masculine" or "feminine" .
Of course, I should've mentioned that. Thank you! The species needs members that will procreate, but not all of us, as we can barely sustain the populations that we have now, and it's not viable for that to be the evolutionary imperative of the entire species if we want to survive into the future. 1000 years ago we were very short people. Today we are taller, have Different bodies, which is all part of the evolution. So if our species is moving towards including a gender that was not part of the original model, that would just make evolutionary sense. To resist it is to stick to an old paradigm which may not be relevant for a large, and I mean a huge percentage of the human species. Sticking to a paradigm so strictly is not science. It's value. Think of Einstein refusing to believe his own science that the universe is expanding. Of course he didn't wanna believe it. We are encoded to think things have always been this way, but he learned from his biggest blunder and it seems Dawkins, Jordan Peterson, and others might learn this as well.
Non-binary is quasi-religious, regressive, stereotyping, made up nonsense - still male or female regardless of hair/makeup, clothes and daft pronouns. Our whole reproductive and gamete systems haven’t evolved. Show one bit of scientific evidence for non-binary and don’t drag out the old DSD chestnuts. What does it mean? Non-binaries are not male or female?
One of the silliest things that has reared its ugly head is the concept ( not even a concept) of humans being “ non binary”! And this is from those who deny the binary of sex😂! So, how can you have a “ non- binary” without a binary..? Aside from the fact that humans cannot be sexless , this is as stupid as it gets! The trans cult is not known for its logic.
So you think you’re smarter than Dawkins! Got it! What are you trying to prove?
You probably shouldn t explain all this to an evolutionary biologist.
Sadly, Dawkins seems to have been caught in an intellectual block. I have never heard him try to define what sex _is_, only give a stock definition of two sexes, invented for the convenience of biologists, just as they define some different species of beetles by the length of the hairs of their legs. It begs (assumes the answer to) the question of what sexes _are_, or how many they are, because biologists are so heavily focussed on reproduction.
And there is no reason biologists should know anything about gender, which belongs more to the field of anthropology.
Indeed. These poor biologists who can't define "the sexes" (how many? a thousand?) because they are "too focused on reproduction." Could it be because biology, actually, defines the 2 sexes according to their role in reproduction: males, producers of sperm, and females, producers of ova. And yes, "gender" should be studied by anthropologists precisely because it is a belief system and it has nothing to do with organic, biological reality. The only reason biologists are talking about gender is because people who believe in this metaphysical entity claim that biology cannot tell us what sex is. Which is precisely what you just did. Reread what you just wrote and see how irrational it is: the definition of the two sexes "was invented for the convenience of biologists"? Invented by whom? You are saying that biology is not a science, but something "invented" to bother people who believe in the metaphysics of gender.
You may call gender "metaphysucs" but it - identity and presentation - are far more salient in human interaction than reproductive sex the vast majority of the time. No gentleman demands to see another person's gametes, chromosomes or external genitalia before deciding to open a door for her or buy her a drink (and yes, I am straining for examples of gendered behaviour in this day and age, and a good thing too.)
"Biology" does not define anything. Biology just is, in all its wonderful diversity. How many sexes? As many as there are sexed organisms, but of course the vast majority fall near enough to one or other of the canonical sexes - as defined by biologists - to reproduce.
Even the proverbial birds and bees both organise sex and reproduction quite differently from us and from each other. (It is mother birds' ova that determine the sex of their offspring, unlike us mammals. Worker bees are deemed female, defined by being diploid - 2 sets of chromosomes - but effectively neuter, producing no gametes. About 20% of animal species use this system.)
How silly!
Dawkins knows what he’s talking about! The trans cult doesn’t have a clue.. either from stupidity, ignorance or simple bullheadedness!
Thank you for your evidence-free claim.
My comment was not to a biologist. It was to Daniel Chacon.
Haha! Right! Dawkins needs to prove himself to the trans cult, I guess! They are so much smarter! 🤪
Sheer dammed maddening idiocy! 🤦🏽♂️🤷🏽♂️
Gender is not sex! Sex is binary and always has been! Think of the muddle if it weren’t!
Gender is more broadly defined.Getting the two mixed up is the goal of the “ gender industry “ , so they can lie about sex.
People can believe what they want, but that doesn’t make it true .
A man can never be a woman since every cell in his body is XY , except for some aberrations , and even these are male . The same applies to women who will always be female with XX chromosomes.
Hormones can not change somatic or germ (sex) cells . Thus hormones can not change one’s sex .
The trans ideology denies biology , because it doesn’t fit their agenda. So they will talk about clownfish and snails , but those have nothing to do with mammalian biology . Humans are mammals . Humans are the result of billions of years of evolution, which “ invented” the binary of sex. None of us would be here without one male and one female parent….not several different ones! But, because trans ideology has to defend itself , it makes up myths. Don’t expect logic from cult thinking.
If they wouldn’t expect the rest of us to bow down to them, and consider them “ sacred” as the Unitarian Church maintains, things would be better.Unfortunately, that’s not the case.
Sex-variant people are not abberations, and how dare you call them that! What a cruel way to wish your fellow human beings out of existence! They are a minority, that's all, just like all of us in the LGBTI+ community, and you are just doing what has always been done.
There are many varieties of sex-variance, and their identity and presentation - like trans people's - need not suit either of the two silos you choose to put them in, nor any other. What sex are chimeric people, with both XX and XY cells, who may produce no gametes?
We are what we are, and what we are needs no excuses.
Nonsense! You cannot escape biology! Just like you can’t escape gravity!
I think what you mean is that YOU cannot escape gravity. Human beings are definitely capable of escaping gravity, both theoretically and literally, at least altering its behavior and composition. Think of the astronaut dropping a hammer and a feather on the moon. In other words, the laws of science, physics, biology adapt to different situations, and as Homo sapiens have been on earth for 300 thousand years, it is very clear that an adaptive process has happened and is happening to our organisms as we move away from the need for every one of us to procreate. Complex systems like us change. That’s adaptability. That’s evolution. We no longer need 100% binary sexual identity or mechanisms.
But you’re right! Gravity for a human walking around middle America will always be gravity. If you fall, it will hurt. If you drop a ball, it will bounce. But not every perspective or every observer is standing in middle America and witnessing the behavior of gravity.
For some people within a family, a man will always be a man, and a woman will always be a woman. But not every Homo Sapiens is part of that family.
Yeah, nah.
Thanks Richard. You are a beacon of light in the new Dark Ages.
So for those people who say that the terms ‘male’ and ‘female’ are fluid, or not fixed, or can be negotiated, or defined and redefined by humans, can we also say that a person’s skin colour can be fluid, or understood differently, or reinterpreted so that a person who is called ‘white’ can now be understood as ‘black’? And can we say, for humans are in some way defined by their ability to understand the expression of their being in many different ways and forms, that a person born to Finnish parents can now be validly identified by themselves and others, as African-American?
I believe you write in jest, but this has been of crucial importance in US history, though typically in the direction of "black" to "white". If you're really interested, look up the immense amount of writing on the subject of "passing" (i.e. a person nominally "black" who attempts to be understood as "white"). It really mattered back in the days of segregation.
Yes, you have sussed me out. It was ‘intentionally mischievous’ but at the same time, how we answer that question (that I raised) may give us an idea of how we answer the other question of biology. If everything is negotiable, then, well, everything is negotiable. That’s OK as far as it goes, but then if we say only some things are negotiable then where do we draw the line and why. (And who has the authority to draw it). Thanks for the article links. I will follow them up and then, if this thread is still open perhaps, we can talk again. Cheers.
The "color line" (which is the phrase used) is actually a pretty highly negotiated one sometimes. Here's a more recent story about it all
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/214/transcript
You raise a good question when you ask "and who has the authority to draw [the line]. May I suggest an answer? No one. But what we can see is that different people would wish to draw the lines differently. So if there is no authority, but people use terms differently, perhaps it is a doomed cause to seek the certainty implied by the all-powerful term "is." People differ, and people differ about how they differ. End of story. There is no certainty to be found here, stop searching and claiming that some objective "truth" exists. It doesn't.
Exactly. Or rather, you point out how inexact it all is. Coloured people (and women) used to be defined as less than human. In practice we do not define women or men by their gametes, but by their identity and presentation, ie their gender. Hard cases make bad law, and letting parliament define who is a man or a woman according some arbitrary rule is a bad idea.
Wonders of the Internet. Here's a long discussion of the topic:
https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.5697/2015.5697.A-Man-Called-White_djvu.txt
I think my conclusion is that sex is clearly, for 99 percent of the population, binary. Humans are divided into male and female. But the way people think of themselves is not binary at all. Thus we have men thinking of themselves as females and females thinking of themselves as men, and others calling themselves intersex and others non-sexual. I don’t know, so I am guessing here, that the number of people born who are neither clearly males nor females is a very, very small percentage of the total human population.
Sir, with all due respect (and indeed much is due), you are contributing to a common problem among scientists, which broadly goes by the name "scientism," a conflation of science and philosophy. Keeping it at the level of common language and understanding, the problem often arises with statements that involve the verb "to be."
When we assert that something "is," or that something "exists," we are on solid ground when we are referring to phenomena like the weather, or wild animals. When it comes to things like the existence of God, as you well know, it is considerably more problematic. I would argue that "male vs. female" falls into that category.
Just like the ontological argument for the existence of God is flawed because as Kant said, "existence is not a predicate," so too with the notion of sex. We all have a common understanding of what people mean when they say "God," it doesn't mean God exists. We also have a common understanding of what people mean when they say "male vs. female." So too when common phrases invoking Newtonian physics, while also recognizing that quantum physics lies outside Newton's realm.
There do exist atheists in this world, as of course you know. So too are there people who call themselves "male or female" to describe how they feel about their personal identities, quite apart from their biological natures. These people are simply not saying the same thing. They are arguing over words and meanings, not some existential reality which is confirmable or disconfirmable by science.
A similar argument can be found among those arguing that abortion is murder (or more prosaically whether Miller Lite tastes great or is less filling). The answer lies not in an attempt to conclusively determine whether or not abortion really "is" murder in some scientific sense, but simply to note that the social/anthropological use of the word "murder" differs among people. So too with "sex."
This is a debate which is unanswerable by reference solely to science. The answer does not lie in studying butterfly wings, it lies in recognizing that human beings use words to mean many things (see Alice in Wonderland).
Those scientists who argue with you in scientific terms are no less guilty of scientism than you are. All of you need to recognize the difference between science and the shades of meaning used by human beings in the world we all inhabit.
Male and female are definable terms. Biologists must define those terms to do science. The fact that many folks want to argue about the scientific definition is neither here nor there. Someone can claim that up means down if they want; it has no bearing on the laws of gravity. Masculinity and femininity, on the other hand, are variable from culture to culture and historic age to age. Feel free to discuss those definitions, which are outside of a biological definition of sex.
You say "male and female" are definable terms. I would remind you that the arbiter of definitions is not science, but a dictionary. And a dictionary is an anthropological document, tracking how people actually use the word. Science can, for its own purposes, define them as it likes, but that has no bearing on how people actually use the terms. You are conflating science with sociological behaviors; they are not the same.
If you identify a third gamete, there might be a reason for those dictionaries to change. Until then, male and female are the only sexes recognized in any dictionary because those concepts graft onto material reality. The interplay between material reality and human needs for communication is the ultimate arbiter of definitions.
PS: The dictionary agrees with Dawkins
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/biological-sex-male-female-intersex?t
" leaves out people who carry certain genetic variants and don’t make any reproductive cells, or gametes"
This is a lie. Whether a person actual makes sperm or ova is irrelevant to the definition put forth by the Trump administration.
These activists just can't help but lie through their teeth.
Oh man, they even throw out the "1.7%" lie. They lie incessantly.
This is a specious argument. "...how they feel about their personal identities, quite apart from their biological natures" - exactly. The former can go any way one wants, according to cultural indoctrination, predilection or mere whim, on any day of the week; the latter is determined and stridently fixed at conception by eminently understandable mechanisms of natural selection. It's not a value judgement; it's something one can observe repeatedly and reliably. But really you seem to be arguing ambiguously, perhaps safely for both at once, and waving the essentially pejorative banner of 'scientism'.
I'm agreeing with you that science needs to define some terms very precisely, in order to do science. Yet as you note, cultural definitions are not bound by the precise rules of science. People are free to feel and think and talk in whatever terms they want to use; science has absolutely no right to insist that their terms are wrong, or indeed that any term "is" "right" for all purposes. Much of this silly debate would go away if people were simply more critical about what they assert "is" or "is not."
Where do the mountains end and the plains begin? A mapmaker may be required to answer that question in some precise way, but that shouldn't and doesn't constrain the rest of us in thinking more broadly about it. When scientists make precise definitions to do science, that is well and good. When they stray into making ontological claims, they are properly talking about the realm of metaphysics. Not the same thing.
> "… [Trump's] statement that 'sex is determined at conception and is based on the size of the gamete that the resulting individual will produce' is accurate in every particular…"
In addition to the disclaimed low opinion of him, let's be clear about whether he actually deserves any credit for that statement. Of course he didn't write it himself, and presumably doesn't understand those particulars.
This is an object example of “folie à deux”.
Trans delusion, once accepted, begins to harm all related abilities to operate in reality. You begin to echo the delusion because you can’t discern reality, and are gradually aren’t able to make functionally true statements.
I don’t believe these professional statements are to made for any other reason than to spread the delusion which these people have absorbed.
The more serious problem is that functioning within science, as opposed to pseudoscience these people should be released from work immediately, and directed to mental help, not to punish them, but to ensure people working in biology are those who operate in the world of facts and reason, not fiction.
Someone who spouted Lysenkoism or theory of humors to Trump, or various amusing Aristotelian ideas about life, they would be relieved of professional responsibilities quickly.
This is no different.
Apparently I can’t spell either. I’m growing exhausted with correcting word correction.
I am profoundly disappointed that an intellectual whom I have so greatly admired and respected for many years would publish such a poorly reasoned, ill-informed and inadequately researched article. Even a cursory review of the scientific literature supports the thesis of the joint letter to President Trump. Time and space do not permit me to lay out the work Dawkins should have done, but anyone who wishes to contradict the scientific consensus on this subject really should engage in sufficient research of their own to substantiate their opinion.
Perhaps they could start here:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-why-human-sex-is-not-binary/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10842549/#:~:text=Abstract,go%20beyond%20a%20binary%20model.
https://www.sapiens.org/biology/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-thats-good-for-humanity/
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-biological-sex/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6677266/
https://psycnet.apa.org/manuscript/2018-32185-001.pdf
https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07238-8
https://gem.cbc.ca/the-nature-of-things/s63e09?cmp=DM_DOCS_FEED_GEMCARD_fluid
Why are you pretending that an anthropologist is qualified to speak on biological science? This entire list is a gish gallop of equivocation and activist nonsense. You have the typical claims from activists deliberately conflating sex and gender, and the typical claims from activists pretending that DSDs are some form of third sex. That's all you have here.
Nearly all of these amount to someone’s philosophical opinion, and are not scientific literature relavent to the question of biological sex.
I don’t think Dawkins has put forth any opinion here at all about what gender is or what the LEGAL definition of sex should be. Just that the biological definition put forth by trump is in fact accurate.
The legal definition need not match the biological one. We don’t base law around race on population genetics for example.
You need to get a grip Don. You're espousing nonsense.