At the CSICon meetings in Las Vegas this November, I gave a half-hour talk on the two aspects of evolutionary biology that have been most deeply misrepresented by ideologues: sex and race. “Progressives” maintain that sex is not binary but a spectrum, and also that “race and ethnicity are social constructs, without scientific or biological meaning” (that last bit is a quote from the Journal of the American Medical Association‘s guidelines for reporting race and ethnicity in medical and science journals). Below is the title slide of my talk, much of which was based on my paper with Luana Maroja on the ideological subversion of biology, but I talked only about the two most controversial claims in evolutionary biology that have been attacked by ideologues (the paper discusses six claims):
On the day before my talk, Steven Novella, a neurologist at Yale and editor of Science-Based Medicine, gave a talk about “When Skeptics Disagree,” but, as he said in a later post on his Neurologica blog,
I spent most of the talk, however, discussing the issue of biological sex in humans, which I perceive as the currently most controversial topic within skepticism. My goal was to explore where it is we actually disagree.
He strongly attacked the notion of a sex binary, saying that sex is multidimensional and that in the end, is “biological” in the sense that some people’s brains are wired up in such a way that their self-image doesn’t comport with either their natal sex or with the “gender role” typical of their natal sex. In other words, he sees sex in humans (he said nothing about other animals or plants) as something that’s complex, but largely comes down to how an individual feels about their sex. Presumably if you’re born a male with typical male primary and secondary sex traits, but think you’re a woman, then you are a woman. (This of course plays into the gender-activist notion that “a transwoman is a woman” and “a transman is a man”.)
The audience ate it up, giving Novella a standing ovation. [UPDATE: A reader says that she was in the back of the room during CSICON and while there were some who gave Novella’s talk a standing ovation, it was a relatively small group of conferees who did so. Most people stayed seated and offered polite applause as they would for any speaker. I would note that I was seated in front and people around me were standing up, but I didn’t survey the room.]
That is when I realized that, in fact, many skeptics at the conference, as well as Novella himself, have gotten it wrong, and have surrendered to the misguided gender-activist notions that, I think, make their bearers feel empathic towards those with gender dysphoria. But the gametic definition of sex wasn’t constructed to placate emotions (after all, it was devised about 100 years ago based on observation), and a scientific definition adopted because it’s universal, has great utility, aids in our understanding of nature (sexual selection, to give one example), and is maximally parsimonious. The gamete-based biological definition has no bearing on the treatment of or moral and legal rights of non-binary of transsexual people. To think otherwise is to engage in what I call the “reverse naturalistic fallacy”—that nature must conform to what we consider ideologically and morally proper. Increasingly, people are trying to force biological reality into the Procrustean bed of their ideology.
I realized that I had to revise my bit on sex for the next day’s talk, and so I did, adding some bits to refute Novella’s “multidimensional/brain-centered” view of sex. I then wrote a post on this site about it, and Novella responded on his own blog (both are linked in the second paragraph below the headline). At that point I didn’t want to engage any further, and ignored a few emails saying that I must respond to Novella. But both of our talks with eventually be posted on YouTube, and you can read our takes (mine is short) at the links below.
However, reader Jon Guy decided to write his own take on our conflicting talks, and put it on his own website: The Curious Case of Science. You can read it by clicking on the headline below, and I direct you towards his response, which was too long to publish on this site. If you’re interested in the definition of biological sex, by all means read it:
Two quotes that I’ve indented:
This year, I attended the annual CSICon conference, hosted by the wonderful skeptical organization Center for Inquiry. Among the star-filled lineup of amazing speakers were Professor Jerry Coyne and Dr Steven Novella, who both gave talks about the science of biological sex.
Following CSICon, both Novella and Coyne wrote blogposts about the others’ talk, and I decided to make a short Facebook post giving my own brief opinion about the matter. It didn’t take long before Dr Novella appeared on my post to argue the issue, and what followed was a cascade of scientific blunders, logical fallacies, and a critical thinking deficit that one wouldn’t normally expect to see from such an esteemed member of the skeptical community.
Why the “binary” position is derived: it’s ideology, Jake!:
. . . . Another interesting (and telling) component here is the number of biologists who are silent on the topic. That alone rings my skeptical alarm bells. Why would biologists be afraid to say sex is NOT binary in the current social climate? Well, obviously they wouldn’t be on account of the current culture wars on sex and gender. So why aren’t there more of them? Why aren’t ALL of them saying that? Can we assume it’s because they’re too scared of being canceled or labeled a transphobe, like teachers, academics, clinicians, social workers, civil servants, managers in organizations, many journalists, people in the arts, media, and publishing companies are? Even philosophers are afraid to publicly take the binary position, despite that that’s what they believe. It seems pretty obvious to me that if sex weren’t binary, we’d have a consensus statement saying as much. Instead, we have to search the primary literature to see how biologists actually define biological sex, which is something we saw Dr Novella avoided like the plague.
Guy’s post is a long one, but written clearly, and is devoted to sorting out the differences between my talk and Novella’s as well as examining scientific claims about the binary nature of sex. There are a few places where I would have written it a bit differently from Guy, but overall it corresponds not only with what I said, but also with biological reality. You can define sex any way you want, but the gamete-based definition, like the biological species definition, is the one most universal and most useful. And it happens to lead to the sex binary in all species of animals and vascular plants.
I think much of the issue is due to the conflating of “sex” and “gender,” a distinction that may have helped historically to produce more liberal attitudes to a host of only somewhat overlapping topics. When we think of stereotypical behaviours of males and females, it has long been clear that they are not completely tied to sex (i.e., XX vs XY). Think “tom boys” or Boy George. But that variation (i.e., gender?) does not mean they fall between XX and XY on a biological scale (i.e., sex?). Somewhere along the line the distinction got lost, undoubtedly accelerated by the trans movement and the ideology that trans-women are women (i.e.,XY becomes XX), which is nonsense of course. It was further helped along by stating that mistaken visual identification of sex at birth (enlarged clitoris, non-descending penis) fall in an inter-sex category rightly belonging only to genetic anomalies, which are extremely rare but more frequent with visual anomalies thrown in. We wouldn’t accept a dog misidentified as a cat as a “real” cat would we? Perhaps we on the side of biological reality need to emphasize that we don’t mind men dressing as women, same-sex relationships, women who want to transition to men, and so on; all deserve our full respect. Lots of flexibility about gender. But there are some areas (e.g., sports) where it is sex that matters, not gender. Also, we need to understand other domains in which sex might matter; for example, I’m a cognitive psychologist and perhaps the brain is influenced by the presence of intra-uterine testosterone. And what about the massive differences in murder rates between males and females? No role for biology?
As I’ve said many times, I don’t care how people present themselves, want new pronouns, or so on. The only thing that bothers me is the incursion of trans women (biological men) into spaces where only biological women belong (i.e., sports, rape counseling, etc.) and the form of activism that is so aggressive that it tries to stifle all dissent. Dissent from that kind of stuff is not “transphobia”, and we need to fight back against that term.
100%
+1 And thanks for the use of scare quotes: “progressives”
Trans ideology poses an additional danger, beyond invasion of men into female spaces. That is the the medical and surgical mutilation of minor children to bring their bodies into conformity with their imaginary gender. Activists claim that these “anti-trans” or “transphobic” laws violate the gender-based civil rights of these children to live their true transgendered selves.
So when one is compiling a short list of reasonable exceptions to otherwise full gender-based civil rights for trans-identified people, I suggest that should go on the list. It might be wisest, in hammering out a definition of full gender rights to say, “. . . except for, and without limitation to, women’s protected spaces [to be defined], medical care of minors, and any other exceptions necessary for policy to comport with reality and the public interest as shall be from time to time determined.”. This would allow you to start firing trans people who directed public policy in a self-serving trans-activist manner, such as calling for laws punishing misgendering while supposedly hired to ensure safe luggage handling at the nation’s airports.
“for policy to comport with reality … as shall be from time to time determined”
Aye, there’s the rub. Who gets to determine what reality is? It used to be scientists. Recently it has been the Grievance Studies profs.
Whenever we are discussing rights, reality is whatever the legislature says it is, at least insofar as invoking reality to justify passing or repealing laws governing a statement of rights. My reference to reality was tongue-in-cheek. The legislature need not even explicitly refer to reality. It just says, “Thou must do this. Thou shalt not do that.” If the legislature, after hearing from scientists and gender profs who state their cases, disavows trans rights and bans gender-affirming treatment in minors, it matters not whether transwomen are women in reality. Anywhere that legislature’s laws reach, they aren’t.
I agree.
BTW, Harvard Chan remodeled its men and women’s bathrooms to be a bunch of stalls for both “genders;” that is, there is now just one big room for all to use. It’s horrifying. I went in there for the first time a month ago, and there were men in the stalls on both sides of me. I couldn’t go. I waited until I thought everyone had left to have some privacy.
I oppose forcing women to endure men in their private spaces. At Chan, it’s not even just biological men that identify as women; it’s all men.
Not to be crass, but I don’t want men hearing me change a tampon or do any of the other things that occur in restrooms. And I don’t want them seeing me apply makeup. Screw Harvard. Yet another reason Trump got my vote.
Holy crap. See, I want for trans people to have all that we can give them, but there has to be limits! Yee gods.
Why do you want trans people to have all that we can give them, Mark, when giving them anything means taking something away from someone else, as Roz vividly describes? We are talking about a feeling here, a feeling that we aren’t even allowed to enquire about its validity or sincerity. Why does a transgender feeling merit privileges? That’s what civil rights are: privileges to enlist the state’s coercive power in your claim that someone harmed you based on the privileged group you belong to. The state awards those privileges to you when it recognizes your group identity as special, which makes them different from rights. Gay rights never forced this zero-sum: privilege me for something I say I am, penalize her by forcing her to acknowledge me as equivalent to her.
Even teaching schoolchildren about tolerance and inclusivity toward multiple different genders involves teaching them three lies: that multiple different genders even exist, that they themselves could be a “gender” different from the ones their parents told them they are, and that their parents are lying to them about all this.
I would even argue against the forced pronouns. Those are attempts to compel people to acknowledge false claims about sex. Equivalent to, say, me insisting on being addressed as “Your Highness”
It’s also an attempt to set up a slippery slope.
For example, if you keep addressing a “trans woman” as “she” then suddenly It’s much harder to argue why “she” shouldn’t be playing in the female category…
Sex isn’t always as simple as, XX or XY. Biological sex is more than chromosomes, it’s genetics too. 1 in 80,000 births is an XY female (Swyer Syndrome). There are also XX males and several other combinations of chromosomes.
Exclusion from women’s spaces and women’s sport should be based on biological sex, not just chromosomes. Women with Swyers are women and should be able to compete with other women. The two cheating boxers in the Olympics are males, so they should have been excluded from women’s sport for that reason, not just because they are XY.
A non invasive cheek swab can verify sex.
But wouldn’t a person with Swyer’s Syndrome have their test results come back from a cheek swap as an XY male, and thus be unable to compete with other women?
An XY male is SRY positive. An XY woman with Swyers is either SRY negative or has a mutated SRY gene. That’s why genetics need to be checked as well as chromosomes. Her genetics stop her ovaries maturing correctly, although she develops along the female path in other aspects. I think a woman with Swyers can sometimes carry a child using a donated egg. Because her external development is typical for a female, the syndrome is not always discovered before puberty.
She is an XY female and doesn’t benefit from a male puberty.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/swyer-syndrome/
Overall, I agree with your take. Swyer syndrome sounds like it produces sexless individuals that are nonetheless best referred to as female despite the XY chromosomes, but only as a social convention and not because they’re biologically female, and unlike other XY individuals like Caster Semenya, who have testes and are thus males.
Sexing based on gametes (and the associated organs) makes these messy chromosome cases largely irrelevant. Sometimes genes get corrupted, but nonetheless all humans have the equipment to produce sperm, eggs, neither, or (at least theoretically) both. Furthermore, chromosomes only directly determine sex in some species, but gametes determine sex in all sexual species.
If you have a sperm-producing organ, then you’re male. If you have an egg-producing organ, then you’re female. If you have both, you’re a hermaphrodite. If you have neither, like those with Swyer syndrome, then you’re neuter, but as a matter of convention we’ll go by what you used to be (if you lost your equipment), or else whatever you seem closest to, since our language doesn’t really have polite and non-awkward ways to talk about sexless people, even if that’s what they are…
Well, yes, an athlete who was disqualified in a screening test for male sex but who sincerely (or otherwise) claimed to be of female phenotype would (and does) have the opportunity to appeal. A diagnosed XY condition that doesn’t masculinize (e.g., Swyer) would be exempted in any fair adjudication, while one that does (e.g., 5-ARD and the incomplete variant of androgen insensitivity syndrome) would mean a DQ.
I think correct sorting of individuals in sports of either sex should be based on sex expression conforming to actual (i.e. biological) sex vs. non-conforming. Of course this leaves aside personal declarations. What matters is body type. There will be few remaining cases which cannot be so neatly resolved. But the benefit of the doubt should be always leaving the individual with weaker, not stronger, competitive position. Which is of course against the fashionable idea of “the weaker side should always win.”
Not surprisingly, the sociology 101 people think sex means the sociology of sex. It does not. Sex and asexual are the two main ways of species producing new members of that species. Asexual, one. So what does sex imply? Two, it implies two. Binary is literally burned into the definition of sex. All of the other stuff humans bring into it is just socio-psychological babble. Sex has existed before humans and ‘social constructs’ existed and will exist long after the sociology 101 people are gone.
“…discussing the issue of biological sex in humans, [which I perceive as the currently most controversial topic within skepticism”. 🤦♀️
It’s not controversial at all. Every mammal is binary male or female. No exceptions. Even when sexual development goes awry, as in DSDs, we still only end up with a human who is immutably binary male OR female.
It never fails to amaze me how many supposedly intelligent people don’t understand what biological sex is. Any woman who wants to have her egg fertilised knows that she needs male sperm. Every single man who wants to procreate knows that he needs to find a viable female egg.
I assume that even neanderthals could recognise the opposite sex. We have evolved to recognise biological sex in others, with few exceptions. It is a subconscious instinct that women still need to keep themselves safe.
This really isn’t rocket science.
If sex is a spectrum, then, presumably, there are people who are 20% male and 80% female. Do they need to find someone who is 80% male and 20% male to breed with? Of course not, because sex is not a spectrum.
I’m shocked that many skeptics I used to admire (eg David Gorski, Neil deGT) seem to be suffering from brain rot. Of course there are people who don’t feel they align with the stereotype of their sex, masculinity and femininity IS a spectrum, but that is not your biological sex. How you feel is not your biological sex.
There is no evidence for a gendered soul. If there was then we wouldn’t have any detransitioners. We could test for that soul before transitioning or mutilating children. Genderwoos can’t have it both ways. It’s either real, and can be tested for, or it’s a lie, and we should leave children alone.
Perhaps those skeptics should do what they USED to do, and look at the evidence. Do any other mammals mutilate their genitals and pretend to be the opposite sex?
This is exasperating. Almost everyone on the planet knows that mammalian sex is binary. It seems that those who don’t are disproportionately the ones who claim to be ‘intelligent’.
Thank you for staying sane, Prof.
I 99.99+% agree, but not 100.00%. Consider CAIS persons. Are they male or female? They don’t produce any gametes (or at least I think they don’t). They have 46-XY chromosomes and Tessticles (internal) and have male-normal levels of Testosterone. However, they look very female (externally, not internally). In my opinion they are not male nor are they female (they view themselves as female). Should they be allowed into women’s sports? In my opinion, they should.
But are they a third sex? I think that is the issue here. If they are a third sex, then sex is not binary.
There is no third sex in mammals.
The Paradox Institute has excellent information about all the more common DSDs.
This link explains the differences between androgen insensitivity in 46 XY and 46 XX, and how the foetus has issues in determining whether to go the Wolffian route or the Müllerian one, which can result in ambiguous genitalia, and result in sex not being determined correctly until puberty.
https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/watch/biology-of-dsds-cais
This reply is meant for ‘A Different Mike’ and ‘joolz’. In my opinion, CAIS persons have no sex. They (in my opinion) are not male or female. They have 46-XY chromosomes, testicles, and male-normal levels of Testosterone. However, they look (and think) very female. Conversely, they don’t have a Uterus or Ovaries. They can never have children and don’t menstruate. They are not a third sex (once again, in my opinion).
Individuals with CAIS have testes and make sperm, and are therefore male. That’s the definition.
It is insulting to claim that people with some DSDs are neither male nor female. I have a twitter friend with Klinefelter’s and he is fed up with people telling him that he is neither male nor female because he is XXY and not XY.
Perhaps you should read more of the Paradox Institute info. There is no third sex. This vid, https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XN2-YEgUMg0 explains why mammalian sex is immutably binary male OR female, regardless of problems with development. Sex is not male, female or ‘none’.
A male does NOT become a female simply by being socialised as if he is a female*. Sex characteristics are on a spectrum, but please don’t conflate that with biological sex. A male with a small penis is a male in exactly the same way as a male with a large penis. If your penis doesn’t develop properly, or you lose it in an accident, it doesn’t mean you are become female.
Khelif has male levels of testosterone because he is male. He must have internal testes which triggered a male puberty. That gave him 63% more punching power than a woman. The women he beat up all said that his punch did not compare with a punch of a woman. Male and female testosterone levels don’t overlap. He has far more testosterone than any woman.
He is clearly male, regardless of his socialisation and genital configuration.
Women’s sports are not yours to give away to men. Biological males should compete with other males regardless of their ‘feelings’. I’ve already explained that men with 46 XY 5-ARD CAN have their own children. Google Caster Semenya. His sperm was used to impregnate his wife.
As evidenced by John Money’s vile experiment on David Reimer and his twin. David’s penis was removed at birth and they tried to bring him up as a girl. It failed. David took his own life.
Every single mammal is immutably binary male or female.
The boxer Khelif may have been brought up as a girl initially, but the effects of testosterone show he is male. It’s why he refuses to make his sex test public. He likely has 46 XY 5-ARD. Males with that are often mis-sexed at birth, because their external male genitalia don’t develop normally. Their sex becomes apparent at puberty when their internal testes trigger male puberty.
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/5-alpha-reductase-deficiency/
He should NOT be allowed in women’s sport, because he is male. You just need to watch him punching the lights out of his female competitors to know that. He hardly reels back when they punch him in the face.
That is also what Caster Semenya has. He is a biological male and has fathered children with medical help accessing his internal testes to impregnate his wife. Men with that condition generally have a lower than normal sperm count.
People with these conditions can live their lives how they wish, I have great empathy if they have been socialized as female, but they cannot be allowed to use their testosterone advantage and their male sex to beat up women and deny women their medals in sport.
Imane Khelif’s medical report from the Bicetre hospital leaked. Of course, he is male. George Cazorla (Imane Khelif’s trainer) admitted that Imane was male at the time of the Olympics.
+1
Re apparent brain rot, “Never attribute to malice, insanity, or feeble-mindedness that which can be adequately explained by strongly-held priors.”
Thank you joolz! It’s not brain rot however. It’s a mind virus. And it’s called ideological, illiberal, cultural leftism. And it has infiltrated most of the academic world, the media, and large swaths of both the skeptic and so-called humanist movements. The virus ultimately leads to brain rot however!
I see it as not a binary but rather a situation of having two Boolean (true-or-false) properties. Any individual of a sexual species can have the “sperm-maker” property be true or false, and the “egg-maker” property be true or false. The combinations produce four possible values: male, female, hermaphrodite, and neuter. In humans normally exactly one of those properties is true, but rarely both are false, and theoretically (but perhaps not ever in practice) both could be true.
You don’t have to physically produce eggs to be a biological woman. What is necessary is that your body develops via the route that would produce female gametes, even if a genetic disorder stops them being created.
Women with Swyers are totally women, even though they have no ovaries, because their bodies followed the Müllerian route.
Men with Klinefelter’s are totally men, even though they often produce no sperm and have a low level of testosterone, because their bodies followed the Wolffian route.
Disorders of development actually PROVE the sex binary because they show us that, even when development goes awry, we still only end up with either male OR female. there is no third sex and no humans with no biological sex.
I’m not sure why people make this seem so complicated. It’s not.
There are several cases where it’s essential to know your biological sex, a male has (a fraction) less chance of rejection, if he gets a heart transplant from another man. There are risks associated with a male getting a blood transfusion from a female who has been pregnant. Some drugs have different doses across the sexes. The doses are given based on your sex, regardless of whether you produce gametes.
Gosh that’s a long piece! In my mind, it matters less who is a real biologist than what the argument is. Novella seems to be conflating the definition of something (sex as defined by gamete size and number) with the characteristics that are used to categorize that something (in this case, how to tell males from females). It’s true that people use numerous characteristics to aid in sorting male from female (even using such superficial features as length of hair and style of clothing), but that doesn’t mean that the definition of male or female by gamete size and number is itself flawed. It is not. Sadly I think that Jon Guy is quite right in hypothesizing that biologists are remaining silent about this because they fear reprisal. Such is the danger of ideology superseding reason.
Good essay. I particularly noticed this part of Novella’s argument:
An expansive view of sex apparently begins with sex as a reproductive category but quickly shifts to looking at sex traits and then sex-related traits. Sure, Bob has the anatomy formed for the production of small gametes but Bob being male includes so much more which has nothing to do with that. In fact, if Bob never has children we can to all intents and purposes dismiss the reproductive aspect of sex altogether as far as he’s concerned. An expansive view of sex is a holistic one, looking at the entire person.
I suspect Novella is slipping from the scientific definition of sex to how we might define sex from Bob’s perspective. I think that’s common among most of those who insist sex is a spectrum.
Readers might be interested in this method, now more than 20 years old, for distinguishing the effects of gonadal sex from the effects of other genes on the sex chromosomes.
_www.jneurosci.org/content/22/20/9005
In that mouse mutant line, the Sry gene (which causes the developing gonads of an XY male to become testes instead of ovaries) has been deleted from the Y chromosome and inserted on chromosome 3. By mating a normal female that has two X chromosomes (and two normal copies of chr3) to a male that has XY sex chromosomes (where the Y is missing the Sry gene) plus one copy of that mutant chr3 (with Sry) and a normal copy of chr3 (without Sry), researchers can generate four different types of offspring.
All of the offspring get a normal X from mom and a normal chr3 from mom. The four different offspring types depend on whether each offspring gets dad’s normal chr3 or his mutant chr3 with the Sry gene (about a 50-50 chance); and whether each offspring gets dad’s X chromosome or his Y chromosome without Sry (again 50-50):
Some offspring get dad’s X and get dad’s normal chr3 – those mice are normal XX females
Some get dad’s X and his mutant chr3 with Sry – those mice are XXSry+ and they develop testes and become males!
Some get dad’s Y (without Sry) and his normal chr3 (also without Sry) – those mice are XYSry- and they develop ovaries and become females!
And some get dad’s Y (without Sry) and his mutant chr3 (with Sry) – those mice are normal XYSry+ males.
Neat new paper here
_www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52640-8
that includes reviews of the use of this model for distinguishing gonadal sex from other sex chromosome effects (the authors say that the model mouse line can be “used to disentangle the function of sex chromosomes and hormones” but that’s too simplistic – it just disentangles the effects of Sry from other sex chromosome genes, some of which also work via hormones).
Best part is that in the literature on that mouse mutation line (called the “four core genotypes” model), all the way from 2002 to 2024, the word “gender” is absent, and the researchers refer to “sex” and “males” and “females”. When those authors say “males” they mean “testes”; when they say “females” they mean “ovaries”, and they don’t mean feelz or skirts that go spinney.
I wonder what NdGT or Novella would say about that?
It’s pretty clear what might be said: “Oppression!”, “Erasure!”, “Genocide!” ….
S. Novella is not a skeptic. Religious zealot would be a better description. TWAW is a profession of religious faith, not skepticism.
This is at bottom a semantic debate. Biological sex is binary, true for all mammals, and “intersex” are not exceptions to the binary but genetic/developmental abnormalities that violate the category definition rules. Either an individual can impregnate a female, be impregnanted by a male, or neither, never both and these exceptions are very well understood biologically.
Gender, they say, is not biological sex (though plenty claim that sex like gender is also fluid) but a cultural choice by individuals who identify differently than their biological sex. No, “gender” is an incoherent term which confuses everyone, including very smart people. If sex wasn’t binary then how could humans even identify as the other one from their youth? And people who fully transition do so my taking the opposite sex’s hormones, suppressing their own, or changing their outward morphology with surgery or makeup.
In addition to PCC’s completely legitimate points about protecting women and their rights, I think there is something very questionable going on in some public schools with respect to gender activists teaching very young kids misinformation, possibly propaganzing them. Why else the rapid social contagion numbers of transitioners and with a nod from the AMA and APA? Hormonal puberty blockers or other steroids for gender transition are prescibed “off-label” and not FDA-approved so what about the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm? Does it? Jeopardizing the future reproductive health of normal children/teens, whatever their identity struggles, is surely a medical ethics scandal on par with the Tuskegee experiments and it makes my blood boil. Wait until 18 or 21 I say, period, then good luck with your life.
Has anybody heard of the latest medical induced health comorbidities from the Trans care model of life saving study?
Read and weep
https://x.com/statsforgender/status/1860483707754414198
Ah, but assisting someone to become their true self is far from doing harm.
/s
As I understand it, suicidality among gender dysphoric kids is relatively unchanged whether they transition or not. What about “detransitioners” – those who regret having altered their bodies and wish to go back?
Irony deficiency?
Probably – need more sunlight! 😉
Funny how becoming your true self – who you really are – can require a lifelong dependency on advanced body-altering medical treatments… 😛
I have read thru Guy’s blog post as much as time allows (it is pretty long). Much of the discussion was a back and forth about what are the earliest academic definitions of sex, and disputes about who is cherry-picking. I easily found a reference to a very early paper from 1905 where sex chromosomes were discovered: https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/12/6/750/5823304#, 2nd paragraph. I don’t know if the authors of that old paper go on to basically define sex from the chromosomes, or if they stick to the gametes. But I would bet a jelly doughnut and a chai latte that the authors identify the sexes of mealworms (beetle larvae) based on developing gonadal tissue, so gametes.
Of course there must be accounts that go back centuries that describe (define?) the sexes from an anatomical basis, that being clear and obvious, and similarly old accounts that say that females produce eggs and males produce semen. What came first? I don’t know. Does it matter what is first?
One of the problems that I see is the use of the term “biological sex.” When I tried to explain to a woke radical on FB how we biologists define sex, I was accused of spreading misinformation and was told to get lost. So I did 🙂 I teach a segment on determination of sex in a human genetics class, and try to emphasize that chromosomal sex and gonadal [gamete] sex is binary, but phenotypic sex can indeed be a spectrum. I wrote a summary of this but I’m sure it did not sink in to a lot of the ideological extremists.
https://dougandrhonda.blogspot.com/2024/08/sex.html
I am sadly reminded of Lysenkoism.
Wikipedia:
Now the question is what damage will be done by people insisting on a political campaign that rejects biology?
In is weird how disputes repeat themselves, or have echos of earlier disputes. Lysenkoism does have parallels to this argument, minus the imprisonment and executions of course, but the parallels include the silencing of dissenters, and modern versions of adherents and careerists who seize upon the fallacy to advance their careers.
Re your comment that Novella et al “have surrendered to the misguided gender-activist notions that, I think, make their bearers feel empathic towards those with gender dysphoria.” By all means try to be empathic, but do not loose yourself in the process. As English academic Terry Eagleton pointed out “I do not understand you by ceasing to be myself, since then there would be no-one to do the understanding.” Empathy does not imply or require agreement (losing oneself). Understanding and empathy are not the same thing and those who see science in this subjective way would do much better if they understood this.
My granddaughter is taking a high school class in Gender Studies (California). She told me her teacher uses the pronouns they/them. But she tells me that “they” are taking a leave of absense in January because “them” is having a baby. It left me confused (who is having the baby and who is the teacher). What a waste of my taxes.