It’s been hard times for my alma mater in the past year. Harvard’s President was excoriated and then removed, there were protests and illegal sit-ins over the war, a Supreme Court decision came down ruling that Harvard’s admissions policies were racist, and now Jewish students have brought a Title VI lawsuit brought against the school for creating a climate of antisemitism. But surely, I thought, the students are still good.
Well, yes, maybe “good:, but also woke. One of these is E. Matteo Diaz, an opinion writer for the student newspaper Harvard Crimson. Diaz has taken on the burden of correcting generations of scientists who have lied to us, saying that in humans, as in other animals, there are only two sexes. (Biologists define sex as binary, with males having small mobile gametes and females large immobile ones.)
It’s important to realize that some of the slant of the op-ed may come from the fact that Diaz is transgender, as he notes in the second paragraph, and so the article is likely written to buttress a gender ideology, one claiming that biologists promulgate a definitional binary of sexes because we’re a bunch of transphobes who want to erase transgender people or folks who identify as non-binary.
That is nonsense, of course, but once again I’ll show you not only how widespread is the false claim that sex isn’t binary in humans, but also that the reason for this lie is purely ideological. It is a prime example of how ideologues try to foist their nonsense onto nature, adopting what I call the “reverse appeal to nature”: sayint that what is considered good and moral in humans must also be what we see in nature.
On to the piece:
Diaz pulls no punches, but gives at the outset why he thinks biologists see sex as binary:
“There are only two sexes.”
At a moment when transgender people face unprecedented visibility and vulnerability, this claim pervades the discourse surrounding our identities. We hear it everywhere: in the media, in our legislatures, and, yes, at our very own university.
Even when it is not being used to categorically deny the existence of trans people, this claim is weaponized to qualify our validity. The argument goes as follows: “Trans people can ask to be called whatever they want, but they can’t change the fact that there are only two sexes.”
The idea that sex is binary is presented as an irrefutable fact of life, the most natural truth in the world. Anyone who dares question this “fact” is quickly discounted as a “radical, woke ideologue” or an agent of the “liberal DEI agenda.”
This line of thinking is dangerous and deeply alarming. The truth of the matter is that sex is not a simple binary. To claim otherwise is overly simplistic, flawed, and harmful.
No, biologists have defined sex this way for decades for a reason: it’s a universal in plants and animals, and, moreover, it helps us understand a great deal about their behavior and evolution. No other definition of sex is either so universally applicable or so useful. And no, we don’t hold that definition because we want to erase trans people or those who identify as non-binary. Neither of the latter two groups are somehow outside the purview of the sex binary, which, by the way, has only 0.018% of people as exceptions, not the “1.7%” mentioned by Matteo. (The higher figure was suggested by Anne Fausto-Sterling in a 2000 paper, and she later said her claims were wrong.)
After disposing of the sex binary as ideological, Diaz tells us why sex really is nonbinary:
Let us first clarify what the claim “sex is binary” actually means. This framework organizes the human sex into two distinct categories: male and female. These categories encompass a variety of biological characteristics. Males have a penis, testes, higher levels of testosterone, and XY chromosomes. Females have a vagina, ovaries, higher levels of estrogen, and XX chromosomes.
At least, that’s what they teach you in sex ed.
But this is not the full story. What about people who don’t fit neatly into one of these two categories? What about people with ambiguous genitalia, or those who have the genitalia typical of one sex but the chromosomes and anatomy typical of the other?
These are not abstract what-ifs. As many as one out of every fifteen hundred babies is born with ambiguous genitalia. Many more are born with another type of sex variation, though some are more subtle or late to manifest.
People whose sex falls outside of the binary are known as intersex, and experts estimate that they make up as much as 1.7 percent of the population.
Here Diaz conflates traits that are used as imperfect but pretty good diagnostics for biological sex in humans, but they’re not definitions of biological sex. This is the most common ploy to get around the sex binary. But of course the binary also holds in animals that don’t have chromosomal sex determination (turtles), have no external genitalia (corals), and in which sex is determined by haploidy/diploidy (bees) or environmental circumstances (fish). No matter which traits are used to diagnose sex in animals and plants, there are still only two sexes: one with sperm and the other with eggs. Diaz has yet to learn some biology. Instead, he says that sex is “socially constructed”! Either he’s referring to gender, or he’s simply wrong:
This is where the sex binary fails us. How can it be an undeniable, natural truth that there are only two sexes if we consistently observe a myriad of naturally-occurring variations in sex?
The answer? It isn’t. Saying there is only male and female is like saying there’s only blond and brunette — the sex binary is a social construct, not a biological fact.
. . . The sex binary is a human invention — one that is driven, at least in part, by political motives. As a society, we are deeply invested in this invention, having imbued the binary with immense power and influence. This raises several points of concern.
I won’t even bother to answer that ridiculous assertion. Readers who want to know why there’s really a biological binary of sex should watch this video by Colin Wright. I guess birds and fruit flies are also deeply invested in the sex binary, since when it comes to mating time, you don’t see a male bird copulating with another male, or a male elephant courting another male. Reproduction in plants and animals occurs ONLY when a male gamete unites with a female one. Pollen lands on and fertilizes eggs—did plants also invent the sex binary? What are their other social constructs?
After dismissing the scientific definition of sex—and implying that humans have an infinite number of sexes—Diaz once again says, without any evidence, that the sex binary is “harmful”. Yes, trans people may be derided by bigots because they don’t fit the “norm”, but those who deride them are doing so based on what they see as the norm, not how biologists define sex, which few laypeople know anyway:
The sex binary is a human invention — one that is driven, at least in part, by political motives. As a society, we are deeply invested in this invention, having imbued the binary with immense power and influence. This raises several points of concern
First, it is bad science. Treating the sex binary as an immutable fact ignores the ample evidence that calls it into question, producing biased research design and results.
Peer-reviewed research contradicts a strictly binary interpretation of sex [NOTE: no references given.]. We have yet to uncover a precise causal mechanism that definitively and consistently guarantees an individual’s sex. [NOTE: a “cause” is not important when delineating a binary. And, as we know, there are many causes that result in the sex binary.]Though many suggest that chromosomes are the determining factor, science supports that sex differentiation is a much more complex process.
Second, in failing to account for the wide range of human variation, it harms anyone who does not fit neatly within it — namely, intersex and transgender people.
The presumed verity of the binary is weaponized to force conformity upon those who are different. This is what allows conservative politicians to pass harmful laws that ban gender-affirming care for trans people (under the guise of protecting children) while maintaining carve-outs allowing damaging “corrective” surgeries on intersex babies.
When you want to redefine scientific facts to conform to your ideology, just say that those facts are weaponized against marginalized groups. And, in fact, there may be some misguided and bigoted politicians who try to pass laws trying to force people into conforming to gender stereotypes. But that’s a problem of morality, not of science. You might as well blame chemistry as being responsible for the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Poor Harvard! The misguided Diaz even claims that he’s promulgating the truth:
We must never stop striving for truth — even when it is difficult, even when it requires us to challenge the status quo. This should not be any different when it comes to sex.
Or math! Remember in Nineteen Eighty-Four when Winston Smith was forced, under torture, to admit that 2 + 2 = 5 because it was in Big Brother’s interest to have Smith believe lies?
h/t: Michael
There’s a real chance that giving hormones to people with gender dysphoria–to say nothing about mutilating surgeries–will be looked on with great shame many years from now. No one looks back at the days of lobotomies and feels pride in medicine.
I would expect there will be lawsuits 10 to 20 years from now based upon the unquestioning application of these therapies.
There already are, at least in the UK.
Isn’t it fair to say there are more than two biological sexes in humans. There are male and female and a (very) small percentage of intersex.
As to gender they can have as many as they like. One can’t stop them. One website lists 72 different genders (https://www.medicinenet.com/what_are_the_72_other_genders/article.htm)
What puzzles me is the obsession with needing to bring their myriad societal genders into the biological realm as one would think they wouldn’t want to have societal genders based upon biological sexes.
Biologists don’t say that “intersex” is a sex because individuals who are intersex either make only one kind of viable gamete or none at all. They do not make a third kind of gamete.
And you are equating gender with sex in your second paragraph.
Finally, remember that “true” intersexes are only about 1 in 5600 people, while the people making the argument above are either trans individuals or those of “nonstandard” gender, the vast number of these not being intersexes.
Fair enough about the sex misunderstanding. Perhaps the word intersex should be changed to something different then.
But in the second paragraph I am only talking about the proliferation of genders that society seems to be discovering/creating. My argument is that these genders have nothing to do with biological sex. And I don’t know why those who embrace all these genders feel threatened by the fact of biological sex.
Thank you for your clarification.
We already have terms for those who have other perturbations in their phenotype. Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and others.
Yes, and aren’t these conditions considered to be the result of biological errors rather than being evolved variants?
They’re threatened because “gender” is a nebulous concept which reduces either to masculinity/femininity or an undefinable sense of being a man/woman/other — and neither of these is enough to establish the right to be considered the sex you believe you are.
That’s because there’s still the sex you actually are.
Social and legal distinctions between men and women are based on sex. But if science establishes that “sex” is fluid and non-binary, then people who identify as transgender can’t be classified according to “the sex they actually are” because they’re not that sex. According to science, they’re somewhere in a fuzzy area where gender identity is a valid determinant of where they rightfully belong — scientifically, legally, socially, and morally.
We have Differences in Sex Development (DSDs)
Some people have disorders related to sex, but that is not the same as being born a third (or more ) sex.
Some people are born with fewer or more limbs than normal, but everyone reasonably sees these as disorders, not a refutation of bipedalism.
Indeed! Some people who have been pronounced dead are later discovered to be alive – there goes the living/dead binary…!
The headline itself is an implicit admission of his experiencing cognitive dissonance. It’s a completely understandable reaction to having a preferred belief confronted by disconfirming facts: Shut up!
The responses to this opinion piece by a freshman (studying what, I wonder) are pretty funny (and universally critical)
Study: electrical engineering
https://twitter.com/ematteodiaz
(the X account was open just a few hours ago, now it’s restricted)
Seeing the universal negative responses on the Harvard Crimson site and on X, I kind of feel sorry for this person. I do not condone of harassment of people, there were some on X and understand that Diaz found it necessary to restrict the account. I think many “gender critical” and anti woke people (like myself) feel it’s time to “take the gloves off”. The woke madness is illiberal regressive and not progressing society at all, in addition being a threat to democracy and freedom of speech
Seeing whats going on on X after this article
https://twitter.com/search?q=%40ematteodiaz&src=typed_query
I don’t think that the comments on this site, and certainly not mine, constitute “harassment”. I criticized Diaz as I’d criticize a colleague were I to do so on this site. That is, I paid him the respect of taking his arguments seriously and debunking them.
I agree 100 % with you there Jerry. The comments on th Harvard Crimson site and certainly on your site is definitely civil and not harassment. However, X has really become a site where harassment and inflammatory comments is becoming more and more extreme it seems. This goes both way, some trans activist are really nasty, but some (very few) TERF’s should also try to keep a civil tone. Of these two groups however , the trans actvist seems to be the worst
Yes, the comments should help restore Jerry’s faith in Harvard.
When reading the comments on Harvard Crimson site I was thinking: Are these comments from people at Harvard og just whomever?
Well, I’m just whoever (and currently in moderation) but some of the others seem to be Harvardians who even know each other. Many of the later comments are perhaps external given the widespread attention this piece has been receiving.
Gotta give them credit, that logo is clever. But it doesn’t prove their point. Images can be powerful ways to mislead people.
“It was not until the 18th century that a binary model for sex became prevalent in Western society…. The sex binary is a human invention…” – E. Matteo Diaz
Diaz doesn’t seem to know the difference between making things and making signs (representations) of things such as models and concepts. That the concept of the sex binary is a human invention doesn’t mean that the sex binary is a human invention.
And it’s an insane claim anyway, that nobody talked about sex as binary before the 18th century. What!?
Phil, nobody knows anything until it appears in a peer-reviewed journal. And once fellow ideologues publish, then you can say “peer-reviewed research contradicts. . . “
Some idiot was trying to argue on X/Twitter that sex didn’t exist before it was codified into law. It’s a miracle that humans (and all other species, who lack a legal system entirely) ever figured out how to reproduce…!
Right.
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” – some white cishet dude in the 18th century
No understanding between the difference of inventing a thing and discovering a thing….very post-modernist.
“Sometime in the eighteenth century, sex as we know it was invented.”
(Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. p. 149)
That’s typical “Constructspeak”: Word-making is equated with world-making. The making of sex-conceptions is equated with the making of sex(es). But there is certainly a difference between the cultural history of sex-conceptions and the natural history of sex.
OMG…I read that book about 30 years ago.
An important distinction:
A. There are exactly two sexes.
B. Everybody is either male or female.
The truth of A doesn’t entail the truth of B. Is A true? Yes. Is B true? Almost. A small minority among “intersexuals” (DSD-afflicted individuals) seems unclassifiable as either female or male.
People who have intersex conditions can still be diagnosed as male or female; it just takes more work and requires that the affected person, or his/her parents want to pursue it. Intersex is a grab bag of unrelated conditions—it just tells you where to put these conditions in a textbook or as a rubric for an approach to babies with ambiguous-looking genitalia. “Intersex” is not a diagnosis and it is not a third sex.
I should add, to amplify the second clause in sentence 1, that for the individual, finding absolutely whether s/he is “really surely” male or “really surely” female might be less important, for that individual, than other medical needs. What’s important to the well-being of the patient must always be given priority. There is nothing wrong with putting “Undetermined” on a birth certificate, which you can in Ontario. But if the individual grows up and wants to have biological children, at some point s/he is going to have to find out if s/he produces gametes and, if so, which ones. And if s/he wants to have sexual intercourse, his/her anatomy will determine what is possible.
As our host points out, the binary model of sex was widespread among animals and plants even before they read about it in the 18th century. The only interesting feature of the new Lysenkoism in regard to sex is sociological: how did it attach itself to the set of attitudes nowadays labelled as “Left” or “liberal”? The
answer, I think, is a curious shift of emphasis on what is defined as “Left”. The old version sanctified “the proletariat” or “the masses”. When the masses showed little interest in Left sloganeering, the search for a new icon found minorities,
whether racial or psychological. The increasing use of the term “neurodivergent” reveals where this search is headed. The implicit assumption that there are many different realities comports with the sanctification of Indigenous “knowledges”, and with the underlying postmodern verbiage.
There would be more logic if woke pop-Leftists sanctified one actually useful minority group: the minority of techies who repair their smartphones.
+1 (old style lefty here)
The assertion that the concept of two sexes is purely political is ridiculous. However, the assertion that there are more than two sexes is entirely political.
In the Crimson article you see that “1.7%” figure.
That notorious figure comes from Brown U emerita professor Anne Fausto Sterling.
She was a “gender studies” professor, who may also have studied some biology?
To get to that number she added what are known as DSD…diseases of sexual development (like Turner syndrome, X0, I believe only found in females, etc). She had to had known that it was a bogus percentage, but she wanted the frisson of a bigger figure for ideological purposes, instead of the 1 in 5000 or so that is the number of so-called “intersex” persons.
Sterling has retracted the 1.7% grudgingly, I understand.
“Sterling has retracted the 1.7% grudgingly, I understand.”
Still the 1.7% is used by Amnesty, Human Right Watch and many other “progressive” organizations
Yes, it’s a zombie statistic that just won’t die, sadly.
I just read Diaz’s piece. Like so many others it conflates how we recognize something with how we define it. Having grown up with this logical fallacy and having heard it used all around him, I might be willing to brand his editorial as naive rather than purposely misleading.
Of course there is a spectrum of variation in the way people feel inside and present themselves to the world. Amplifying the false claim that sex is non-binary doesn’t help. We would be far better off addressing the real issue regarding acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, which is the matter of treating people as normal and deserving of the same rights, privileges, and dignity as everyone else. That’s the problem that need to be addressed and rectified.
Yes, and it is counterproductive to seek that outcome by constructing a false reality and accusing those who disagree with it of being phobic.
Sorry – I now see that you already made the point that false claims are not helpful.
A person who misconstrues basic concepts in biology (sex vs. gender), whose arguments are full of logical fallacies, and who claims all who disagree with him are “harmful” and “dangerous,” is chosen by the student newspaper to set us all back onto the path toward Truth.
This, more and more, represents the “Crimson” brand seen by millions of scientists, engineers and serious people throughout the world, many of whom are re-assessing their estimate of Harvard’s reputation.
Diaz abuses language like many woke activists. “Sex is a binary” isn’t a “claim” as he asserts, it’s an observation. It reminds me of the phrase “sex assigned at birth.” That, too, is an observation, not an assignment.
I forget who to credit for this, but the response “Show me the third gamete.” is all that is required to refute his entire article.
As others have already pointed out, the most embarrassing gaffe the author makes is this: “It was not until the 18th century that a binary model for sex became prevalent in Western society.” He should crack open a Bible. Independent of what one thinks of any religious value of the Book of Genesis, you can’t deny that it was written long, long before the 18th century, and that it says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
It’s telling that Diaz NEVER DEFINES SEX in the process of telling us that there are more than two of them. (Nor, of course, does he ever tell us exactly how many sexes he thinks there are.) Any dictionary will do. The one I have at my desk is American Heritage Dictionary, 5th edition, 2018: “sex: Either of the two divisions, designated male and female, by which most organisms are classified on the basis of their reproductive organs and functions.”
Or try Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary: “sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures”
Once you do this little exercise, and discover what lexicographers all agree is the basic meaning of the word “sex,” it becomes clear why Diaz skirts around ever defining it. If he defines it the way all dictionaries do, he can’t write his article coherently. So he either has to ignore the word’s basic meaning, or invent his own idiosyncratic definition. The latter tactic would necessarily put him in league with Lewis Carrol’s Humpty Dumpty: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'” Discussion doesn’t work if we don’t share an agreement on what words mean.
If sex is redefined as a spectrum or a multitude of sexes/genders using variations in diverse aspects of phenotypical presentation, this still does not make a female to male trans person a female. Trans people are somewhere in between and can be their own group (or several), or just individual variants. Insisting trans women are truly women like other women makes sense only if one accepts a binary, be it social or biological.
You are combining sex and gender and concluding that there is a spectrum. That’s what the gender ideologues are doing to prove that sex is not binary.
Sex is a reproductive category. It’s binary because for reproduction you need 2, one has to belong to male sex, the other one to female. A female to male transgender can participate in this process only as a female, because they were born with female genitalia and are capable of creating big gametes, i. e. ova. They can never participate in reproduction as anything else.
As for gender, the whole thing seems disingenuous. I feel as a man, because I have male body and it provides male experiences. How on earth can someone who never had female body know how it feels to be a woman is beside me.
My disappointment with the gender ideology is that they are insisting on sociological, over biological. Apparently there are things that have to do with our bodies and behaviors, that are completely invented by our minds and have nothing to do with biology. How unthoughtful and unsophisticated does one have to be to believe something like that?
My point was that even if we granted him his view of “sex is not binary” (which I dont), it would not follow from that that trans women are women. I was trying to point out what I see as a logical fallacy in trans activist ideology.
Typically disingenuous nonsense. What does E. Matteo Diaz’s transgenderism have to do with the 0.018% of people with serious differences in sex development? (No surprise that he quotes Fausto Stirling’s retracted 1.7% figure.) People with such conditions have frequently asked to be left out of this issue – in the UK, the LGBTQIAP+ campaign group Stonewall has agreed to do so:
https://www.stonewall.org.uk/list-lgbtq-terms
However, they have often reneged on their promise.
The popular belief is that transgender people are “erased” if the explanation for their being transgender is the wrong one.
There’s a whole host of things which could potentially cause Gender Dysphoria, ranging from early self -misidentification, psychological trauma, a byproduct of other issues, social contagion, neurological anomalies, reincarnation, God putting the wrong “soul” into the body, etc. etc. But the current claim is that the existence of transgender identity is about an immutable characteristic based in biology and embedded in a network of scientific facts about the non-binary nature of sex and the significance of gender.
Choose another explanation and the person you’re evaluating isn’t “transgender” anymore.
But since they know they are transgender, you’re actually denying that they exist.
A lot of problems here.
+1
So are you saying transgender folk consider themselves a 3rd sex? Is that a coping mechanism for existence? Haven’t thought of that scenario. I honestly can’t figure why a binary sexual truth disturbs the trans-philosophy. Yet when you consider them a 3rd category in sports, or whatever, they demand a binary playing field. Confusion is a feature, not a bug.
They don’t consider themselves a third category, but the outcome of a different way to classify sex in a system in which it’s impossible to draw any firm lines between male and female by using a single criteria. This means that mental state is a valid way — perhaps the only valid way — to ascertain whether someone is a man, woman, neither, both, or other.
Arguing otherwise destroys the only explanation which makes them scientifically legitimate members of the sex category which they believe they fit into — it’s saying trans people as they define themselves don’t exist.
Mark, I think the transgender activists have to argue that sex is a spectrum because it’s the only way they can claim membership in the sex they clearly aren’t. If sex is a spectrum they can say, ergo, not all women are far enough “Mullerian (female)” on the spectrum to have uteruses instead of prostates and some are far enough “Wolffian (male)” to have clitorises that look like penises…and lo and behold I am one of those women who isn’t and is! When they say “transwomen are women” they mean it literally (or at least they mean for us to take it literally.) This has to be repeated over and over again but it works. The media and public institutions are increasingly referring to “women” without bothering to point out that a particular woman is a transwoman, referring only to “her fight for insurance-paid genital confirmation surgery” or “her struggle to gain acceptance in her chosen sport” without batting an eyelash.
They still talk about gender expression and gender identity in general terms as a political activist focus but they are increasingly calling their own selves “women” (or “men”). They don’t call themselves “transwomen” because everyone knows that transwomen are men. It spoils the illusion. They say things like, “Women’s sport should be accessible to all women. My gender identity should not exclude me.” When you don’t hear the other shoe drop, that the speaker is really a man, you start to think that maybe you’ve been wrong all this time and she really is a woman.
Here’s an example that just came across my feed:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/hochul-joins-chorus-of-opposition-to-nassau-s-ban-on-transgender-athletic-participation/ar-BB1iL4cZ?cvid=7513ec87d5ba4c7dc14b6da678879e21&ocid=winp2fptaskbarhover&ei=33
Nowhere in the long story is it mentioned that transgender athletes to be excluded (probably illegally — it’s New York) from women’s /girls’ sport are biologically male. The words “man/men” and “male” never appear except in a reference to “transmen” being exempted — they can play on men’s teams. The story doesn’t even say “transwoman” or “transgirl”, which might remind us what these individuals are. We only hear about the generic class of “transgendered” children, athletes, etc. and their vulnerability to vicious Republican political attacks, according to Gov. Hochul.
So yes, confusion is a feature. It’s like a Stroop test.
(Sorry this got a little long. I couldn’t resist mentioning the story from New York.)
One of the many sad consequences of this ideology (apart from misogyny & homophobia) is that (some) people will believe they will be treated like the other sex in all aspects if they “transition” (which appears to mean different things to different people. However, selection will ensure that’s never broadly true – i.e. a majority of people looking for long-term partners are always going to be looking to produce offspring with those partners.
I’ll try a slightly different angle than my usual.
A search for “2 + 2 = 5” and “Harvard public health” should turn up something – yes – the argument from “Actually, 2 + 2 really can equal 5”.
Here it is – make of it what one will :
https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/biostatistics/2020/09/kareem-carr-explains-why-225/
According to the indefatigable Christopher Rufo, multiple instances of “duplicative language” have been found in the output of two more members of the Harvard
DEI nomenklatura. [No surprise, of course, since the charade of DEI studies is largely mimicry of what used to be conventional scholarship.] What with the redefinition of plagiarism required to guard the credentials of Harvard’s DEI illuminati, and now this Crimson pronouncement about 72 sexes, Harvard will soon achieve the cultural role of Groucho Marx’s institution in the 1932 classic movie “Horsefeathers”.
“Anyone who dares question this ‘fact’ is quickly discounted as a ‘radical, woke ideologue.'”
Says the radical, woke ideologue.
Remarkable isn’t it? When you reject the definition of a word and create another, the word now means what you want it to mean; no more and no less. I imagine the Red Queen would be pleased, but what about the rest of us?
Let me try a different chain of reasoning:
How many hands does a human have?
Anatomy books tell us that the number is two. However, since humans are born with less than two hands, the number is on a spectrum from zero to two. Everything else is bigoted bichiralnormativity!
So I guess we can still give thalidomide to pregnant women without problem instead of problematizing births of babies with less than two hands? If there was a compound that causes human fetuses to develop no genitalia, should be ban it? If there was a medical intervention that lets a fetus destined to be born without clearly observable sex to develop functional genitalia according to their gamete type, should we pursue that invention?
If not, what is the difference between babies born with no hands and babies born with no clearly observable sex?
I too was once a male trapped in a female body.
Then I was born.
Or to paraphrase Groucho: Gentlemen, Diaz here may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don’t let that fool you. He really is an idiot.