. . . . the Presidents of three organismal-biology societies, the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the American Society of Naturalists (ASN) and the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB) sent a declaration addressed to President Trump and all the members of Congress. (declaration archived here) Implicitly claiming that its sentiments were endorsed by the 3500 members of the societies, the declaration also claimed that there is a scientific consensus on the definition of sex, and that is that sex is NOT binary but rather some unspecified but multivariate combination of different traits, a definition that makes sex a continuum or spectrum—and in all species!
You can see the tri-Societies’ announcement, published on February 5 on the SSE’s website, by clicking on the headline below:
On Feb. 13,, 23 biologists wrote to the Presidents of the three societies (our letter is at the link above), correcting their view that sex is a “construct” and is multidimensional. (Our response was largely confected by Luana Maroja of Williams College.) We emphasized that biological sex in humans (and in other animals and vascular plants) is as close to a binary as you can get (exceptions in humans range from 0.005% to .018%). We noted as well that biological sex is defined by the nature of the two observed reproductive systems in nature: one designed to produce large, immobile gametes (females) or small, mobile gametes (males). In some species of plants there are individuals of both sexes (“hermaphrodites”), but there are only two separate sexes, and each species has only two types of gametes.
We later got more people to sign the letter to the societies, ending up with 125 signatures of people willing to reveal their names.
The Presidents of the three Societies did not answer us at first, though eventually they did respond, though we cannot publicize their private email. I’ve outlined the tenor of their response here, saying that they largely conceded our points:
I will say that [the Society Presidents] admitted that they think they’re in close agreement with us (I am not so sure!), that their letter wasn’t properly phrased, that some of our differences come from different semantic interpretations of words like “binary” and “continuum”(nope), and that they didn’t send the letter anyway because a federal judge changed the Executive Order on sex (this didn’t affect our criticisms). At any rate, the tri-Societies letter is on hold because the organizations are now concerned with more serious threats from the Trump Administration, like science funding.
So the letter was never sent, and is still sitting on the SSE website, an embarrassing and biologically misleading example of virtue signaling. Nor did they answer Luana Maroja’s subsequent email asking whether they would remove the announcement from the SSE website and inform the Societies’ members of the change. They have been notably unresponsive, and, although admitting problems with their announcement about sex, they have neither changed the letter nor explained how it is misleading.
You can see all my posts about this kerfuffle here. Besides our weighing in, Richard Dawkins put up two relevant posts on his website, one mentioning the kerfuffle and explaining very clearly why there are only two sexes, and the other showing that even the three Presidents who wrote the declarations implicitly accepted the binary nature of sex in their own published research.
Given that the three Society Presidents who wrote the letter never sent it, and have backed off on its assertions, I call on them to either retract the letter or clarify and qualify it. Right now it stands as an embarrassment to not just the Societies, but to biologists in general—people who are supposed to be wedded to the truth and not to woke ideology. It goes without saying that the claim that sex is nonbinary is made simply to make people who feel that they’re neither male nor female feel better about themselves. But someone’s self-image should not depend on biological definitions and realities. It does not “erase” non-binary people, nor diminish their worth, to note that biological sex is binary.
I will echo Ronald Reagan, “Please, Society Presidents, tear down that announcement.”
***********
Finally, in a new post called “Debunking Mainstream Media Lies about Biological Sex,” Colin Wright shows that this kind of distortion is widespread in the media. Here’s how he begins his defense of the sex binary—by showing misleading articles in the media (he mentions the SSE statement):
On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order affirming the binary nature of sex in federal law, a move that was solidified a month later by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with a scientifically robust definition of sex and the sexes: male and female. This reaffirmation of biological reality sent left-wing media into a frenzy, unleashing a flood of articles attempting to deconstruct and redefine sex through the lens of progressive queer ideology.
The Society for the Study of Evolution quickly issued a statement, purportedly on behalf of all 3,500 of its members, claiming that the executive order’s recognition of the sex binary “is contradicted by extensive scientific evidence,” and, remarkably, even invoked the subjective “lived experience of people” as part of their counterargument. The Washington Post followed suit on February 19 with an article titled, “Trump says there are ‘two sexes.’ Experts and science say it’s not binary.” A piece in The Hill this week accused the executive order and HHS guidelines of containing “profound scientific inaccuracies,” while Science News proclaimed that “sex is messy” and that “choosing any single definer of sex is bound to sow confusion.” Similar articles challenging the definitions outlined in Trump’s executive order and the HHS guidance have also appeared in Time Magazine, The Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Guardian, and numerous other outlets.
These responses have come in waves, with new attempts to muddy the waters appearing weekly. But one recent article from NPR—“How is sex determined? Scientists say it’s complicated”—encapsulates virtually every fallacious argument and pseudoscientific distortion used in the others. As such, it serves as the ideal target to be used for a collective rebuttal.
He then proceeds with the debunking and ends with this:
The left’s assault on the binary reality of sex is not about science—it is about politics. The goal is to deconstruct and redefine fundamental biological truths to serve ideological ends, whether that be justifying the inclusion of males in female sports, allowing men into women’s prisons, or pushing irreversible medical interventions on children under the guise of “gender-affirming care.”
I’m not defending the media—after all, it’s their job to get this right—but reporters are getting mixed messages from the scientists, science journal editors, and scientific societies themselves (as this post illustrates). Since the media leans left, a great deal of the coverage leans toward the sex-as-a-spectrum narrative because it comports with their world view—and because reporters don’t want to get crosswise with the activists. It will not be easy to fix this. A clarification from the three societies can help.
I wouldn’t hold my breath. . . .
I would like us to stop using the term “gender-affirming care,” and replace it with “gender-altering care.”
Decades ago the standard phrase was “sex change”.
“Sex change” is even less accurate. No one (with current technology) can change their sex. To some degree (via surgery and drugs) appearance can be changed. But actual sex? Actual sex can never be changed.
Except that it’s not “care” and not “healthcare” since the body is healthier without it. And it’s about bodily changes related to sex rather than about “gender” (which, if it is about anything, is about social roles). So something like “sex-related medical procedures” would be better.
I’ll accept your friendly amendment. It used to be that sex was the biological process that produced fertilized eggs and involved meiosis, and gender was whether you were M or F. But “gender-affirming care” is an abomination.
I usually use “medical sex trait modification” or just “sex trait modification.”
Perfect!
And that includes puberty blockers (when given to stop normally timed healthy puberty) and wrong-sex hormones, as well as surgery.
Genital mutilation.
Also perfect, although few trans-identifying males actually go through the process.
F or M, affirmative “bottom surgery” is GM.
Absolutely!
In response to women who identify as non-binary and propose to have a double mastectomy to affirm this, I’ve seen it suggested that they should only have one breast removed instead. After all, wouldn’t that be more “non-binary”? Someone replied that since binary is zero or one, keeping two breasts is the most non-binary option of them all!
I am struck by the difference in endorsement signatures between the two letters. The tri-Society letter does not have signatures, save for the immediate authors, while the Luana Letter (as one might call it) has over a hundred. I’d say more could be collected, but I understand the difficult vetting process that must have followed.
If they don’t respond I say publish their email anyway. They’re trying to have their cake and eat it.
I can’t because it seems unethical to me. Also, I asked them for permission to publish their response (which was sent to all 125 signers) and they refused.
I agree with you.
Aargh — this is depressing. How it was that apparently well-meaning people — (“the left”? Democrats? “centrist” Democrats, cf. Obama?) could fall for this crap, but, worse, be apparently intransigent, when, if not an outright apology (never apologize, who teaches that?) — at least they could slink away from it and address important & legitimate issues. One thing is certain, reality and women’/girls’ rights & safety are important and legitimate issues and now that’s ceded to well, eeek — J.K. Rowling made that point clear in her recent Trump tweet — and she despises the guy, but here we are. What a mess. (N.B. by “well meaning” I exclude the Butleresque postmodern queer-it-all types who are simply smug destructive nihilists.)
I did enjoy the ducks this morning.
A brief comment on the NPR article that used Colin Wright as a hook for his critic:
It is noticeable that of the four authors of the article, three list the preferred pronouns in the personal description (2 times she/her, 1 time they/them). The 4th author refrains from using pronouns, but describes herself as follows: “Barber spent her academic career combining racial and gender equity, science and pop culture into one career. In 2019, she won WWU’s Womxn of Color Empowerment Faculty Award. ”
This means that the misleading information content of the article is actually set from the outset. The authors were not interested in conveying facts, but in activism.
Womxn? What’s that all about?
Frau Katze: It’s what’s known in evolutionary biology as a transcription error.
I did a Google search for: womxn meaning
The result (Google using AI):
Then it should be “womxyn”.
Sounds about right.
And how does one pronounce it?
“more serious threats from the Trump Administration, like science funding”
Trump (to a degree) was elected because of ‘wokeness”.
The funding issues (to a degree) are a consequence of ‘wokeness’.
Today around 3PM I couldn’t believe what I was hearing on NPR, on the radio (in central Virginia). It was an interview of a “gender-medicine specialist/clinician” (didn’t catch her name, as I was driving a car), who was quite unequivocal about pointing out the dangers of “affirmative care,” even to the point of describing herself as critical and skeptical. Given NPR’s strong progressive-leaning reporting, I thought this was remarkable. I just now spent some time looking online, but I cannot find any any evidence (a URL or something) about this interview. Has anyone else here heard it?
The show was WBUR’s “Here and Now.”
Yesterday was Part 1 with Hannah Barnes, author of “Time to Think,” which documents the downfall of the Tavistock, the UK’s pediatric gender clinic.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/03/20/uk-gender-affirming-care-kids
Today was Part 2 with Dr. Erica Anderson, a trans-identified male psychologist who has said that the gender doctors in the US are acting recklessly, which is an understatement.
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2025/03/21/transgender-kids-health-care
Ellie: thanks for that brilliant reply! For the sake of posterity, I’ve made two archive.org pages/entries of these interviews:
https://archive.org/details/httpswww.wbur.orghereandnow20250320uk-gender-affirming-care-kids
https://archive.org/details/httpswww.wbur.orghereandnow20250321transgender-kids-health-care
It will be interesting to see if WBUR/NPR receives a lot of flak over these interviews, and whether or not they decide to take them down off the net.
My own view is that many people ‘on the left’ still believe in ‘the Blank Slate’ because this is the only hope for society to progress to Utopia. I imagine they have realised that a Utopia of people with different predispositions would be unlikely to persist.
The corollary is that babies and children must be sexual and gender blank slates otherwise the progressive march on Utopia grinds to a halt.
Hi AC Harper; People dont realize how ancient the blank slate arguement is, among modern activists on the left. 50 years ago we had the first ‘sociobiology wars’, and now we are repeating the theme.
A book from almost 50 years ago (1977) will help put it into perspective: Its titled BIOLOGY AS A SOCIAL WEAPON, and can be purchased used, and its easy to find write-ups on the Web that include the table of contents, and some discussion of actual contents.
I did not find the ‘sociobiology wars’ very interesting at the time, but I did write a book review of BIOLOGY AS A SOCIAL WEAPON. I did not much like the book, and the review is thus pretty short. It can be read here:
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/410792
Hello Eric. At the University of Sussex, in around 1973, there was a little clique of “Science for the People” enthusiasts who liked to analogize DNA to the ruling class, and ribosomes to the proletariat. No kidding. If they (or their grandchildren) were around today, they would perhaps tell us that DNA methytransferases carry out a form of cellular “affirmative care”.
You write, “In some species of plants there are individuals of both sexes (“hermaphrodites”), but there are only two separate sexes, and each species has only two types of gametes.”
You are clearly downplaying hermaphroditism here, which I think weakens your scientific ‘high ground’ and thus your overall argument. Hermaphroditism is rampant in some very common fish families (e.g. Labridae) and can make it irritatingly difficult to identify some species. It’s fairly rare in other vertebrates, but, according to Wikipedia, if you exclude insects (as perhaps most people would like to do!) a whopping 33% of all animal species exhibit some form of hermaphroditism.
I think it is unfortunate that the transgender community and apparently quite a few scientists (including those who wrote the letter you write about) seem to conflate hermaphroditism with “a spectrum of sexes”. In the fish I study, the smaller fish remain female which clearly increases their reproductive potential, as they cannot compete with the very large, dominant and territorial male. There are only two sexes and there is not a ‘spectrum of sexes’, but individuals can lie on a spectrum between those two sexes. In the case of the labridae, individuals may even change where they are on that spectrum in order to increase their reproductive success.
If the transgender community is looking for examples in nature to argue that transgenderism is not so unusual, then they would do much better to inform people about the prevalence of sequential hermaphroditism than to argue that sexes are not binary. Thus, rather than downplaying hermaphroditism, and erroneously implying that it only occurs in plants, you should be pointing out to the transgender community that they would be much better served by educating people on hermaphroditism rather than the erroneous ‘spectrum of sexes’.
Hi Cowhead
The Queer community is already doing what you propose. See
https://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/are-there-queer-animals-clownfish-that-change-sex-and-other-species-that-demonstrate-queer-behavior
Well, maybe they are using these biological examples in a different way than your suggestion. But they are clearly aware of these sexual variants.
There is a very fine overview of sex change in animals here, available for free:
https://www.evolution.unibas.ch/teaching/evol_fort/pdf/Munday&al2006.pdf
Its a bit old, but clearly shows the power of a Darwinian fitness approach to understanding the timing of sex change, and yes, the approach is entirely based on there being 2 sex functions, male and female, and the equal role each plays in reproduction. Its not the slightest bit ideological.
The first 2 publications cited in the reference list are by 2 people commenting in this thread: Policansky and Charnov
Of course the Queer community is using natural sex reversal as an ideological weapon.
Tbanks for the reference!
But humans are hardly sequentially hermaphroditic, except maybe in appearance only, through modern medical intervention. No such shift in focus (towards hermaphroditism and away from the “sex spectrum”) will help the advocacy for “trans” rights. That advocates advance the notion that “trans” is normal, natural, or even common in humans, shows they have closed their eyes to reality and live in a fantasy of their own making.