Why do you think this paper is more correct than the other?
This paper seems to be locked on a single definition and says everything else is wrong because it does not follow this definition.
Personally, I find it very intellectually unsatisfying because you can have a individual with male gametes but with a female phenotype, and this definition says, this individual’s sex is without a doubt 100% male.
It seems the main benefit is not questioning a historical definition, which fits well with conservative opinions. There’s clear evidence on many other subjects that this can slow down or block science (ex: tobacco, climate).
Well no. You’re free to read the paper’s citations. The field of biology has always used this definition of sex, and that paper cites this definition from 1888. Somebody also helpfully set up a project for scientists to sign that affirms the same view:
EDIT: I didn’t think I needed to spell this out so directly, but Project Nettie was set up by Dr. Emma Hilton, who has a PhD in Developmental Biology, collecting signatures on a statement affirming the sex binary from other scientists with relevant credentials. You can go look for yourself, and here’s the description from the link:
Project Nettie is an online and regularly updated record of scientists, medics and those in related disciplines who, by signing their support for the Project Nettie statement (below), assert the material reality of biological sex and reject attempts to reframe it as a malleable social construct.
That it’s published on wordpress doesn’t matter, that was likely just a convenient place to publish. What matters is what the statement says, and who’s signing onto it. I didn’t think that needed to be said, but, some people 🫠
If they felt the need to write such a paper so recently, and the reviewers felt the need to accept it, then the issue is clearly more complex than you are presenting. Otherwise if it is truly that obvious the paper would be worthless.
I’ll let a professor emeritus, author of several popular books, etc etc respond (i.e. you should listen to him). From his commentary on the paper:
It’s important to recognize that the recent reframing of the two sexes as needing revision did not result from any new discoveries about biology […] It is not transphobic to recognize the two sexes that biologists have known for decades, but, unfortunately, we are dealing with ideologues who are largely impervious to both facts and reason,
There is no complexity here. It’s settled science. A few ideologues are trying to do something silly, and people outside of academia are taking that out of context. This paper was written to clarify that to lay people.
That’s an opinion piece from an anthropologist that doesn’t cite any sources. A priori, if you’re unsure, listen to the well-respected biologist talking about his field over a gender studies professor writing an opinion outside of her expertise.
But credentials aren’t everything, so let’s examine on its own merits. First off, it’s largely based on the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling, who is deeply unserious and has admitted to publishing bullshit and backtracking by calling it tongue-in-cheek and ironic:
It’s mostly about higher-level things like how sex is relevant to sports, though it’s kind of a confused mishmash overall. It doesn’t cite any sources, and doesn’t really say anything, but here’s a few relevant quotes:
If gonads were understood as the essence of sex, women who were phenotypically female but who had testes were men. This seemed illogical, so scientists proposed yet other traits
She doesn’t cite anything for this, but she’s incorrect. If you’re phenotypically female but produce sperm, then you’re male. There’s nothing illogical about it. People with CAIS are male. Scientists aren’t proposing anything of the sort.
Science does not drive these policies; the desire to exclude does. This intentional gerrymandering of sex opportunistically uses the idea of “biological sex”—which lends a veneer of science and thus rationality to any definition—to remove certain individuals from a category based on intolerance.
This is her gender studies woo showing through. She’s starting with a narrative and working backwards to shove reality into it, no matter how hard she has to twist it.
If reproduction is the interest, what matters is whether one produces sperm or eggs, whether one has a uterus, a vaginal opening, and so on.
In the end she acknowledges the binary, though she won’t outright say it.
To sum up, it’s just bluster about the social aspects of sex. If there’s something specific you want to talk about that you think is actually stating a viewpoint at odds with actual biologists, quotes would be helpful.
You posted two blog as evidence because the authors are really smart. You posted a recent paper arguing the point, despite insisting that it has been a closed issue for decades.
But, please, keep lecturing about the quality of sources.
I mentioned why credentials are relevant, but also directly addressed the meat of that opinion piece. Why are you ignoring that?
Also, it’s not just that they’re really smart lol. They have PhDs in biology and evolutionary biology. One is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. They can be wrong, but looking at an opinion piece from an anthropologist is the same as “let’s hear what RFK has to say about vaccines” lol. Just because RFK has some wackadoodle opinion doesn’t mean the science isn’t settled
The author of that paper has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is well-qualified to talk about it, but also provides plenty of citations in the paper. His point is simply that trying to redefine sex in that way leads to a circular definition that isn’t useful.
To that point, what does “male gametes but with a female phenotype” mean? What does female mean? How can you define it without reference to gametes?
I’m not sure what you mean by “what to do”. If someone has an XXY genotype, their sex is determined by the gametes their body is organized around producing, like everyone else.
but what about ovotesticular people? if they can produce both gametes what determines their sex? based on what gamete they were “supposed” to produce? but how do you determine what they’re “supposed” to produce? chromosomes? phenotypes? a combination of all of these? but then we’re back at square one where gametes may be binary but sex isn’t?
Some species are hermaphroditic, but humans aren’t. Nobody’s body is organized around the production of both gametes. Ovotesticular doesn’t mean what you’re thinking. I’ll copy from my other comment
The closest you’ll find in humans is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovotestis, but that’s not “fully functioning gonads of both types, producing healthy gametes of both types”. It’s “maybe a functioning gonad of one type, with a bit of non-functional tissue of the other type”. Their sex can still be determined, even if it’s not readily apparent.
but even then people who can’t produce either can’t be simply classified into what they were “supposed” to produce without involving karyotypes or other sex characteristics, which the paper you linked explicitly argues can’t be used for sex definition:
Here I synthesize evolutionary and developmental evidence to demonstrate that sex is binary (i.e., there are only two sexes) in all anisogamous species and that males and females are defined universally by the type of gamete they have the biological function to produce—not by karyotypes, secondary sexual characteristics, or other correlates
so for someone with complete gonadal dysgenesis:
they produce no gametes
their sex is defined by… which gamete they have the “function to produce”
we determine this function by… looking at their chromosomes (XY = male function, XX = female function) or other correlates
but then this is circular:
if sex is defined by gamete function
and gamete function can only be identified via determination mechanisms in non-gamete-producing cases
then determination mechanisms are also doing the definitional work
and I feel your lacking-an-arm comment doesn’t really apply here as humans aren’t solely defined by how many arms we have - the analogy would only work if:
sex were defined like humanity - as a cluster of traits with gametes being just one feature
but the paper explicitly rejects that (arguing the monothethic model is the only true one when the polythetic clearly covers more cases)
but I think the bigger question this whole biological definition/determinism sidesteps is the one that seems close to heart of the very-same intersex people linked in that Wikipedia page:
Paradigms for care are still based on socio-cultural factors including expectations of “normality” and evidence in support of surgeries remains lacking.
“Nearly every parent” in the study reported pressure for their children to undergo surgery, and many reported misinformation.
The report calls for a ban on “surgical procedures that seek to alter the gonads, genitals, or internal sex organs of children with atypical sex characteristics too young to participate in the decision when those procedures both carry a meaningful risk of harm and can be safely deferred.”
when these things affect human beings we can’t try to wash our hands by clinging to models that seem to give us simple answers - if we insist on monothethic definitions that don’t recognize the complexity of sexual development - we end up forcing ambiguous cases into boxes and providing intellectual cover to deny people agency over their own bodies.
Thank you for actually engaging. Too many people on Lemmy are worryingly anti-scientific due to their politics. To anyone that needs to hear it, join us on the science-accepting Left. Life’s easier without cognitive dissonance :)
To clarify, the fact of the sex binary doesn’t have any strong implications for surgically altering intersex children. People simply don’t understand that the sex binary is a limited, but factual claim. There’s several different domains here, and people keep confusing them and then arguing with me. The fact of the sex binary doesn’t mean that sex phenotypes or genotypes aren’t a spectrum, nor that gender roles need to be tied to sex. It also doesn’t mean that someone with a DSD needs “fixing”, particularly surgically before they can reasonably consent. It is possible that interventions are the appropriate course of action, but not just because someone is “supposed” to be a certain way.
Even in the case of complete gonadal dysgenesis, a person’s body is still “trying” to produce gametes, it’s just failing. My arm example is still relevant. It’s not about the number of arms, it’s about what’s missing. No person is born with a body that’s “trying” to produce a fish instead of a hand. Nobody was born with a body that’s “trying” to produce nothing instead of a hand. In both the case of a missing hand or gonads, the body was “trying” to do something and failed. Evolution is flexible, and it’s possible that someday, a new body plan would emerge that does lack a concept of hands or gonads or whatever, but that’s not the reality today.
Note that “trying” is a bit too anthropomorphic and loose of a term, but it’s good enough. It doesn’t imply that there’s a deity or sin or anything like that, it’s a description of a natural process, like gravity.
So experts can look at the correlates and determine the likely sex based on the apparent body plan. It’s not just karyotypes, they can also look at nearby structures like Müllerian/Wolffian ducts. The important thing to remember though is that experts can be wrong, but that doesn’t change reality. If an expert said “this person’s sex is male”, then gave that person a magic science pill that fixed whatever developmental issue they had, and they started producing ova, that says nothing about the sex binary. It merely means the expert was wrong and the person’s sex was female the whole time.
So when you say “if sex is defined by gamete function”, you’re missing the crucial “biological function” bit (a.k.a. “organized around” as I’ve been using). Here’s the corrected version:
sex is defined by the type of gamete one has the biological function to produce
in non-gamete-producing cases, experts would look at determination mechanisms to figure out the likely sex
those experts might be wrong
the sex binary remains unperturbed regardless of human hubris
in non-gamete-producing cases, experts would look at determination mechanisms to figure out the likely sex
those experts might be wrong
That’s an awful lot of words about trump’s definitions before you admit that some people have scientifically unknowable sex even with your supposedly binary definition. And that’s even before I put ten people I know in a room with you and you’re unable to use your definition in your own terms on them, not even if you check what’s in their pants.
Even of you were right, (which only you believe), it’s irrelevant to actual people’s lives. Stop trolling trans posts.
Organised around producing here means ‘should produce even if it never did’? You linked a list of disorders yourself, some of them do not allow a body to produce any form of gamete in severe cases
You can read that as “Would produce, if not for a developmental issue”. Their body is trying to produce a certain type of gamete and failing.
A rough analogy is, if a person is born without a hand, we say they’re missing a hand. We don’t throw our hands in the air and say “Whelp, could be anything. Maybe it’s a foot, or a wing, or a spider. There’s just no way of knowing”
Even in the case of missing gonads, their body is still trying to build them and failing. It’s not trying to build nothing
I now see better, but I still don’t understand how are we supposed to determine the sex in edge cases where it’s failing to produce both equally and has both, you mentioned the condition yourself, even though you say that it’s not failing equally that’s a possibility still. I mean, if we can’t determine sex at all maybe the definition is too abstract?
There isn’t a case where someone’s body is “failing to produce both equally”. I see what you’re getting at, but that’s not something that happens in humans. You’re asking a question like “What if someone was born with their liver in their foot?” Neither one is a reasonable possibility, even if you can imagine it
Why do you think this paper is more correct than the other? This paper seems to be locked on a single definition and says everything else is wrong because it does not follow this definition.
Personally, I find it very intellectually unsatisfying because you can have a individual with male gametes but with a female phenotype, and this definition says, this individual’s sex is without a doubt 100% male. It seems the main benefit is not questioning a historical definition, which fits well with conservative opinions. There’s clear evidence on many other subjects that this can slow down or block science (ex: tobacco, climate).
Because it fits the narrative they are selling.
Well no. You’re free to read the paper’s citations. The field of biology has always used this definition of sex, and that paper cites this definition from 1888. Somebody also helpfully set up a project for scientists to sign that affirms the same view:
https://projectnettie.wordpress.com/
Feel free to post anything disputing the paper.
EDIT: I didn’t think I needed to spell this out so directly, but Project Nettie was set up by Dr. Emma Hilton, who has a PhD in Developmental Biology, collecting signatures on a statement affirming the sex binary from other scientists with relevant credentials. You can go look for yourself, and here’s the description from the link:
That it’s published on wordpress doesn’t matter, that was likely just a convenient place to publish. What matters is what the statement says, and who’s signing onto it. I didn’t think that needed to be said, but, some people 🫠
If they felt the need to write such a paper so recently, and the reviewers felt the need to accept it, then the issue is clearly more complex than you are presenting. Otherwise if it is truly that obvious the paper would be worthless.
I’ll let a professor emeritus, author of several popular books, etc etc respond (i.e. you should listen to him). From his commentary on the paper:
There is no complexity here. It’s settled science. A few ideologues are trying to do something silly, and people outside of academia are taking that out of context. This paper was written to clarify that to lay people.
OK. And it still constitutes a single perspective.
That’s an opinion piece from an anthropologist that doesn’t cite any sources. A priori, if you’re unsure, listen to the well-respected biologist talking about his field over a gender studies professor writing an opinion outside of her expertise.
But credentials aren’t everything, so let’s examine on its own merits. First off, it’s largely based on the work of Anne Fausto-Sterling, who is deeply unserious and has admitted to publishing bullshit and backtracking by calling it tongue-in-cheek and ironic:
It’s mostly about higher-level things like how sex is relevant to sports, though it’s kind of a confused mishmash overall. It doesn’t cite any sources, and doesn’t really say anything, but here’s a few relevant quotes:
She doesn’t cite anything for this, but she’s incorrect. If you’re phenotypically female but produce sperm, then you’re male. There’s nothing illogical about it. People with CAIS are male. Scientists aren’t proposing anything of the sort.
This is her gender studies woo showing through. She’s starting with a narrative and working backwards to shove reality into it, no matter how hard she has to twist it.
In the end she acknowledges the binary, though she won’t outright say it.
To sum up, it’s just bluster about the social aspects of sex. If there’s something specific you want to talk about that you think is actually stating a viewpoint at odds with actual biologists, quotes would be helpful.
You posted two blog as evidence because the authors are really smart. You posted a recent paper arguing the point, despite insisting that it has been a closed issue for decades.
But, please, keep lecturing about the quality of sources.
I mentioned why credentials are relevant, but also directly addressed the meat of that opinion piece. Why are you ignoring that?
Also, it’s not just that they’re really smart lol. They have PhDs in biology and evolutionary biology. One is professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. They can be wrong, but looking at an opinion piece from an anthropologist is the same as “let’s hear what RFK has to say about vaccines” lol. Just because RFK has some wackadoodle opinion doesn’t mean the science isn’t settled
That’s it. You’re out of the tautology club.
The author of that paper has a PhD in evolutionary biology and is well-qualified to talk about it, but also provides plenty of citations in the paper. His point is simply that trying to redefine sex in that way leads to a circular definition that isn’t useful.
To that point, what does “male gametes but with a female phenotype” mean? What does female mean? How can you define it without reference to gametes?
I still don’t understand what to do based on gametes with XXY genotype for instance
I’m not sure what you mean by “what to do”. If someone has an XXY genotype, their sex is determined by the gametes their body is organized around producing, like everyone else.
To quote the NHS
but what about ovotesticular people? if they can produce both gametes what determines their sex? based on what gamete they were “supposed” to produce? but how do you determine what they’re “supposed” to produce? chromosomes? phenotypes? a combination of all of these? but then we’re back at square one where gametes may be binary but sex isn’t?
Some species are hermaphroditic, but humans aren’t. Nobody’s body is organized around the production of both gametes. Ovotesticular doesn’t mean what you’re thinking. I’ll copy from my other comment
but even then people who can’t produce either can’t be simply classified into what they were “supposed” to produce without involving karyotypes or other sex characteristics, which the paper you linked explicitly argues can’t be used for sex definition:
so for someone with complete gonadal dysgenesis:
but then this is circular:
and I feel your lacking-an-arm comment doesn’t really apply here as humans aren’t solely defined by how many arms we have - the analogy would only work if:
but I think the bigger question this whole biological definition/determinism sidesteps is the one that seems close to heart of the very-same intersex people linked in that Wikipedia page:
when these things affect human beings we can’t try to wash our hands by clinging to models that seem to give us simple answers - if we insist on monothethic definitions that don’t recognize the complexity of sexual development - we end up forcing ambiguous cases into boxes and providing intellectual cover to deny people agency over their own bodies.
Thank you for actually engaging. Too many people on Lemmy are worryingly anti-scientific due to their politics. To anyone that needs to hear it, join us on the science-accepting Left. Life’s easier without cognitive dissonance :)
To clarify, the fact of the sex binary doesn’t have any strong implications for surgically altering intersex children. People simply don’t understand that the sex binary is a limited, but factual claim. There’s several different domains here, and people keep confusing them and then arguing with me. The fact of the sex binary doesn’t mean that sex phenotypes or genotypes aren’t a spectrum, nor that gender roles need to be tied to sex. It also doesn’t mean that someone with a DSD needs “fixing”, particularly surgically before they can reasonably consent. It is possible that interventions are the appropriate course of action, but not just because someone is “supposed” to be a certain way.
Even in the case of complete gonadal dysgenesis, a person’s body is still “trying” to produce gametes, it’s just failing. My arm example is still relevant. It’s not about the number of arms, it’s about what’s missing. No person is born with a body that’s “trying” to produce a fish instead of a hand. Nobody was born with a body that’s “trying” to produce nothing instead of a hand. In both the case of a missing hand or gonads, the body was “trying” to do something and failed. Evolution is flexible, and it’s possible that someday, a new body plan would emerge that does lack a concept of hands or gonads or whatever, but that’s not the reality today.
Note that “trying” is a bit too anthropomorphic and loose of a term, but it’s good enough. It doesn’t imply that there’s a deity or sin or anything like that, it’s a description of a natural process, like gravity.
So experts can look at the correlates and determine the likely sex based on the apparent body plan. It’s not just karyotypes, they can also look at nearby structures like Müllerian/Wolffian ducts. The important thing to remember though is that experts can be wrong, but that doesn’t change reality. If an expert said “this person’s sex is male”, then gave that person a magic science pill that fixed whatever developmental issue they had, and they started producing ova, that says nothing about the sex binary. It merely means the expert was wrong and the person’s sex was female the whole time.
So when you say “if sex is defined by gamete function”, you’re missing the crucial “biological function” bit (a.k.a. “organized around” as I’ve been using). Here’s the corrected version:
That’s an awful lot of words about trump’s definitions before you admit that some people have scientifically unknowable sex even with your supposedly binary definition. And that’s even before I put ten people I know in a room with you and you’re unable to use your definition in your own terms on them, not even if you check what’s in their pants.
Even of you were right, (which only you believe), it’s irrelevant to actual people’s lives. Stop trolling trans posts.
Organised around producing here means ‘should produce even if it never did’? You linked a list of disorders yourself, some of them do not allow a body to produce any form of gamete in severe cases
You can read that as “Would produce, if not for a developmental issue”. Their body is trying to produce a certain type of gamete and failing.
A rough analogy is, if a person is born without a hand, we say they’re missing a hand. We don’t throw our hands in the air and say “Whelp, could be anything. Maybe it’s a foot, or a wing, or a spider. There’s just no way of knowing”
Even in the case of missing gonads, their body is still trying to build them and failing. It’s not trying to build nothing
I now see better, but I still don’t understand how are we supposed to determine the sex in edge cases where it’s failing to produce both equally and has both, you mentioned the condition yourself, even though you say that it’s not failing equally that’s a possibility still. I mean, if we can’t determine sex at all maybe the definition is too abstract?
There isn’t a case where someone’s body is “failing to produce both equally”. I see what you’re getting at, but that’s not something that happens in humans. You’re asking a question like “What if someone was born with their liver in their foot?” Neither one is a reasonable possibility, even if you can imagine it