Yesterday when I criticized Agustín Fuentes’s article in Natural History trying (and failing) to show that sex isn’t binary, I gave the magazine a break. After all, it hasn’t been nearly as bad as Scientific American, and I gave it a break because it published a gazillion essays by Steve Gould (yes, some of them were misguided, touting punctuated equilibrium, but they were all entertaining).
But now I’ve changed my mind, for I’ve learned that the editors actually published a justification in the magazine for publishing Fuentes’s piece. I guess they knew it would be controversial, and it is. It’s just flat wrong, but also misleading in a very annoying way: making points about variation within the sexes that have nothing to do with his thesis (and the title of his book from which the article was taken): “Sex is a Spectrum: Why the Nonbinary View is Problematic.” His presentation shows that some (but not all) aspects of sexual behavior, sexual dimorphism, and so on are more continuous that the discontinuous existence of the sexes themselves. In all animals there are two reproductive systems, male and females, with exceptions ranging in proportion from 0.00005 to 0.00017. And that, ladies and gentlemen, friends and comrades, is in all relevant respects a binary.
Fuentes, in other words, was attacking an argument that nobody had made, since we all realize there’s variation in sex-related traits, but his thesis was not about that. It’s about whether there is variation in the types of gametes in plants and animals (especially humans) that are the basis for defining sex (actually it’s really a “recognition” of a binary, not an a priori definition designed to impose a false binary on nature). And Fuentes uses many of the bogus tropes employed to “prove” that sex is nonbinary, even showing a photo of a bluehead wrasse, a fish that forms polygynous groups. When the alpha male dies, one female gets rid of her ovaries and develops testes, taking over the top job. But there are still only two sexes! I have to say that you have to be either ignorant or tendentious to use this animal as an argument against the sex binary, and Fuentes isn’t ignorant.
At any rate, the editors’ apologia–or rather “explanation”—is below. What burns my onions about this is their contention that “the science behind Fuentes’s thesis. . . is solid.” The claim that “the number of mating types (often called “sexes”) has been variable over hundreds of millions of years, ranging from two and sometimes three in most animals, to as many as seven in single-celled animals. . ” is wholly misleading. Well, Dear Editors, all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes (which ones have three?), though single-celled organisms, algae and fungi can have more “mating type”, which I’m okay with calling “sexes”if you want. But Fuentes and the editors, are defending the thesis that animals, including our own species, have nonbinary sex. This is not true.
Note as well that the editors have been taken in by the claim that the variability of “sexual behavior” and of “sexual activity” within and among species show that there is variability in the number of sexes beyond two. This is a false argument, as anybody who knows biology and isn’t warped by ideology should know.
What bothers me most about this editorial is the editors’ sanctimonious claim that they are acting “in the public interest” by recognizing the “science” in this debate, but the bogus-ness of that science is all on Fuentes’s side. Shame on you, editors of Natural History? Have you actually followed this debate? How can it be that the Supreme Court of the UK has apprehended and resolved this debate better than do editors of a science magazine.
This is what happens when scientists’ work is distorted by their ideology, and by now I shouldn’t have to tell you what the distorting ideology is.
Here is the editors’ preface:
h/t: Robert
With apologies for repeating myself from yesterday, Agustín Fuentes is a moron. And so are the editors of Natural History.
At least that’s the null hypothesis against which other evidence should be judged to account for their moronic behaviour.
As Kathleen Stock said a few days ago, these people are a bit thick, they have been promoted way above their station, have blustered through on their accents, educations, and connections, and now the tide is going out, we can truly see who is naked.
I wish it were as simple as being able to say that Fuentes and the editors of Natural History were just thick and that’s the end of it. Then all the clever people could point out their errors and the false claim that sex is a spectrum would be discredited once and for all.
But that is not what is going on here. It’s not just stupid people getting it wrong. I’d imagine that by most metrics Fuentes is clever. He probable did really well in exams. I bet he’d score highly on IQ tests. He might well be good at maths and chess and logic puzzles and sudoku and all that.
What’s going on here is people presenting positions that they know will be approved by those whose opinions they value. It’s the same as intelligent Christians who use their ingenuity in defending silly doctrines, in order to be in good standing with their community.
For a short while – a couple of centuries, maybe – there was a dominant ideology among intellectuals that you should follow logic and evidence wherever they led, and if you were howled down for your heterodox views, then fine. That ideology is ebbing away, to my great regret. Young people are far less likely to hold it. Perhaps it’s the result of social media? Anyway, I know from personal experience that whenever I go to a philosophy conference, the younger people there will advance what they deem to be the most progressive positions, and if they consider objections, it will be in a cursory manner, with the aim of dismissing them.
It’s more important for Fuentes, and the editors of Natural History, to be in the right camp – the camp that disagrees with traditionalists and Trump – than to follow the evidence. The thirst for affirmation overwhelms the desire for truth, I’m afraid.
Do take a bow, sir.
I wish I could’ve written this post with the clarity and brevity you mustered.
Thank you for that!
Robin yes of course you’re right. Kathleen Stock’s point is that calling him a moron is a helpful supplement to also criticizing his specific scientific errors because Fuentes has made a career as a public intellectual on his connections, institutional prestige, and undeserved reputation as a smart person. Some of his readers who might be on the fence could be persuaded to rethink genderism if they knew Fuentes is not just wrong on the specific biology but a moron in general. I respect Stock’s suggestion because she’s been in the gender trenches for a long time, and was drummed out of the academy for refusing to agree that TWAW.
Having been unfairly drummed out the academy and subsequently fighting in the gender trenches against hostile enemies would I think make Stock’s advice on the wisdom of abandoning civility less reliable, not more. It’s understandable, but she’s gotten shell -shocked.
Two problems in discourse: shutting down debate, and dividing the positions into Good and Evil. Calling people “morons” tends towards doing both. It also makes it look like we can’t support our position so have to resort to insults – which, ironically, is what we’ve been able to say about them.
Thanks! I partly agree: calling Fuentes a moron might tend to shut down debate. I guess Stock would say it’s a risk worth taking. I don’t agree calling him a moron is like calling him evil. Stupidity and evil are sort of orthogonal to each other, and one might even prefer evil (per Anatole France). Fuentes may have a good heart. Calling him a moron gives his followers a chance to consider whether he’s the public intellectual they’re looking for.
I also think resorting to calling names and/or declaring a person a moron is unlikely to be helpful.
So often, the one who first starts resorting to such ad hominems is likely to be doing so because s/he is actually losing the argument. Not a good tactic.
And, in fact, even being a moron does not necessarily mean you’re wrong; just like being intelligent does not necessarily mean you’re right.
I’m as far from being a scientist as one could get and even I immediately read this as disingenuous. What do “mating types” have to do with the number of sexes? How male and female parts are strewn about in the wind, attach themselves to insects, pant cuffs, etc is a strategy, not a sex. Are babies conceived via IVF of yet another sex? Doesn’t it all ultimately boil down to the mixing of the same two (and only two) sexes?
Debi: Thanks as a non-scientist for getting involved. Mating types are roughly equivalent to sexes, and many single-celled organisms have more than two mating types. But single-celled organisms don’t have gametes–reproductive cells–the way multicellular organisms do. Having said this, I’ve exhausted my knowledge of how single-celled organisms reproduce. But the debate isn’t about single-celled organisms, it’s about vascular plants and animals, and particularly about humans. Vascular plants and animals have only two mating types, those with big reproductive cells (females) and those with small reproductive cells (males). Deviations from this binary exist but are very rare indeed. So yes, there organisms with more than two mating types, but they are no more relevant to the current discussion than how many moons Saturn has. And that’s why most of your comment is correct.
“and that’s why most of your comment is correct”, well, thank ceiling cat for that. I didn’t make too big of an ass of myself, then. Whew!
I don’t know how I found this, but here is an article from NOEMA magazine (never heard of it, but it is apparently spun off from WaPo and HuffPo).
https://www.noemamag.com/the-sex-lives-of-common-vegetables/
It calls attention an area of ammunition that is often ignored by sex-is-a-spectrum-activists, namely, plants. Did you know that plants are literally everywhere on the sex spectrum? There are species that are male or female, in that they have either one or the other form of flower. There are species with flowers of both sexes (these often mature at different times), and of course species that have hermaphrodite flowers — both pistils and anthers in the same buds. Amazing! Shocking! This changes everything!!
Yes, if we were plants. However…
Here’s a fun, brief read. “Fond of Beetles” is evolutionary biologist Emma Hilton. She includes some plants in her rundown:
https://fondofbeetles.wordpress.com/2019/07/22/from-humans-to-asparagus-females-are-females/
OMG, the text is horribly written and full of ideological pitfalls. But what can you expect from an anthropologist with poor knowledge of biology who uses the pronouns “she/they”?
Hi Mark,
Interesting article from NOEMA magazine you linked to, but in no way does it disprove the sex binary and what you wrote exactly supports the biological sex binary.
To quote our host as to the definition of biological sex, Jerry Coyne published the following in Secular Humanism, 2nd January 2025, in “Biology Is Not Bigotry”, at
https://secularhumanism.org/exclusive/biology-is-not-bigotry/:-
“…in biology “sex” is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells (“gametes”). Males have small, mobile gametes (sperm in animals and pollen in plants); females have large, immobile gametes (ova in plants and eggs in animals). In all animals and vascular plants there are exactly two sexes and no more. Though a fair number of plants and a few species of animals combine both functions in a single individual (“hermaphrodites”), these are not a third sex because they produce the typical two gametes”
Further, some organisms (but not any mammals) can change their sex from male to female or vice versa.
Neither hermaphrodism nor organisms that change their sex disproves the biological sex binary, in all cases there are either females or males, there is no third sex producing a third type of gamete. If there is, please tell us what it is called.
In humans there are very rare conditions we refer to as intersex, frequency somewhere between 1 in 5,600 and 1 in 20,000. In percentage terms that is at least 99.982% binary, either female or male. If we can’t call that binary, what is?
Now, in your comment you wrote:-
“plants are literally everywhere on the sex spectrum? There are species that are male or female, in that they have either one or the other form of flower. There are species with flowers of both sexes (these often mature at different times), and of course species that have hermaphrodite flowers — both pistils and anthers in the same buds”
So, we have flowers that are male, flowers that are female, plants that have both male flowers and female flowers, and plants that have hermaphrodite flowers (one flower that has both female and male parts). These cases are all covered by the gametic definition of biological sex above. You only refer to female and male flowers. There is no third sex and no third gamete.
The biological sex binary is not disproven by any of this.
I took what you said as tongue placed firmly in cheek, Mark. 😀
Others didn’t.
The new thought that occurred to me has to do with the notions of ideology and knowledge :
Knowledge, such as scientific or mathematical, is independent of opinion – expressed by Neil deGrasse Tyson thusly :
“The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”
Neil DeGrasse Tyson
—From Real Time with Bill Maher (2011)
Ideology can be – I’m not sure about “always” – associated some sort of consciousness – but this would almost always be a gnostic consciousness.
So – to be brief : an epistemic illusion has been practiced, which makes science appear to work due to a special consciousness.
This needs to be countered with severity.
When did all this start? I don’t remember anyone talking about sex as a spectrum back when I was in high school (60s).
I do not understand why this “debate” arose in the first place. My understanding is that it involves the rights of trans people. Am I correct on this point? If so, then I believe they are misinterpreting science in an attempt to justify something that they don’t have to justify. They have the right to alter their bodies as they see fit. I fully support them. I understand that it would be very difficult to grow up having feelings and desires out of kilter with those around you. It’s hard for me to even imagine what it would feel like to think that you got the wrong body. The fact that many are willing to go through difficult and excruciating surgeries to better match their bodies to their feelings shows me that it is a very real and deeply felt problem. I wish them all the very best outcome and a happy life going forward. Buy it has nothing to do with the basic biological fact that sex in Homo sapiens is binary. And it isn’t “assigned” at birth; it is observed at birth. I do not for the freaking life of me understand how their interests are served by denying this. Their situation is, I would think, fraught enough as it is without complicating it with assertions that are demonstrably untrue. And it makes utterly no sense for scientists to skew established facts out of sympathy for people who are facing these challenges. It doesn’t do them any good. If there is an important point to the argument that I have utterly missed, please let me know.
Their key argumentative point is that by claiming to be the sex their body is not, they actually are the sex they are not. If you don’t believe the man standing before you is a woman because he says he is you are a bigot. And not just any old bigot — “I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one.” — but a bigot who can be punished by law for expressing the legally false, but biologically true, belief that he is not a woman.
The trans rights movement wants to fire you, fine you, revoke your professional licence, or put you in jail for disagreeing with anything they say about themselves. The Emperor is not going to let that little boy get away with pulling that stunt again!
🎯
This is really good!:
The Emperor is not going to let that little boy get away with pulling that stunt again!
There are many good posts on this thread.
Quoting the perceptive “Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost” (eXtwitter):
Kant (Self shaped by mind’s rational categories organizing experience)
Hegel (Identity emerges socially)
Marx (Identity shaped by historical class position and material conditions)
de Beauvoir (Gender identity socially adopted, not biologically given: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”)
Foucault (Identity formed and controlled through power relations and social discourse)
Butler (Gender as repeated social performance; identity fluid, performative, not essential)
Gramsci (Identity molded by dominant cultural ideologies and ruling-class institutions)
[end quote]
[Yuri Bezmenov’s Ghost / @Ne_pas_couvrir]
I think one element missing from your summary might be disparity among the people who say they are “trans”. Under that umbrella are relatively few people who experience what you described: severe gender dysphoria, resolved by drastic surgery to modify secondary sex traits, resulting in a quiet unobtrusive happy life out of the spotlight.
Relatively few males have surgery to modify their genitals into a vulva. Many females who have radical bilateral mastectomy (“top surgery”) are autistic, homosexual, suffering from a significant mental illness, or survivors of sexual abuse. The few females who have phalloplasty to create a meat tube surgically attached to the groin (usually made from skin and muscle of the forearm or of the upper thigh) have extraordinarily high rates of surgical complications. There is no high-quality evidence that these medical or surgical treatments improve mental health or wellbeing of the patients who undergo those treatments.
The increases over the last 15 years in “trans” identifications and medicalization are at least in part a social media phenomenon (Lisa Littman’s rapid-onset gender dysphoria hypothesis, supported by many parents of “trans” teens here https://www.parentsofrogdkids.com).
At the core of “trans” activism are males with a sexual fetish called autogynephilia (in Blanchard’s typology). These folks require positive affirmation of their gender identity in social settings – it’s part of the kink to be acknowledged as a woman in public by others (and the cause of arguments about pronouns & deadnaming, which harshes the vibe for an autygynephile). It seems that a lot of sex-is-a-spectrum activism is a rear-guard action to defend the identities of autogynephiles and their claim to be women in the law (and in public washrooms, sport, shelters, prisons, awards, etc.).
Sorry for the essay (and for overcommenting).
Thank you for making me aware of the colorful “harshes the vibe” locution. (Does this possibly arise from “Millennial-speak”? If so, I suppose that I should view it as “sick.” 😉 I wonder how the Gettysburg Address would be rendered in Millennial-speak.)
Back in the hippie days the term “harshing my mellow” was common. “Some guy was bitching about my playing my boom box. Really harshed my mellow.” Oh, those were the days. Pass me a joint.
Some 35 years ago I knew a transsexual (both before and after surgery) and he fit the first category you list. I had the upstairs apartment of a small house and he had the downstairs. Perfectly nice guy without any political ax to grind who became a perfectly nice gal without any political ax to grind. Roger became Robin and we still sat in the backyard grilling chicken and drinking beer. If confronted with today’s controversy and invited to join in, I have no doubt that she would walk away (or run if necessary). She didn’t really want to talk about it much less argue about it. Probably been 30 years since I’ve seen her. Hope she’s doing well.
As a non-scientist (former airline pilot) I have a theory why many young people under 18 have jumped on the gender ideology bandwagon, and it is due to religious indoctrination. Many of them are actually homosexuals, but their religions have taught them that not only is it wrong to be gay or lesbian; it is EVIL. Of course, no one wants to be considered evil; so they have swallowed that unscientific nonsense that says that they are not really one of those evil homosexuals, but, rather a woman trapped inside the body of a man or a man trapped inside the body of a woman. I have done a very unscientific survey by talking to several trans identified individuals, and the two experiencing trans-regret have agreed with me. I have found at least this possibility being present from talking to the parents of other trans children. I wonder if there are any data on the prevalence of trans identified children having very religious parents.
Indeed, I think that one important aspect of this conversation is a deeply held belief in a sort of dualism. The idea that a “soul” or “true self” can be trapped in the “wrong body” is a modified take on a belief about as old as human beings.
So the ideological divide that has been described here in a number of ways is also, at least sometimes, a divide between dualists and those who do not believe in any sort of “soul” or “true self” apart from the physical body and its cognitive and emotional functioning.
Mike Hart, I appreciate the depth of your long comment. Saves me some typing as I come in late. There are many good posts on this thread.
To me, trans-rights activism emerged big-time after the west experienced a kind of sea-change regarding gay rights. Once gay rights became very much main-stream, even among a wide area of the conservative political right, then the far left noticed there was this other socio-political cause célèbre in the form of the still-closeted and generally ostracized transexuals. Of course people on the new bandwagon saw that there was this big wide ocean of diverse sexuality in nature, and it seemed reasonable that a wider acceptance of transexuals could be won by pointing out that nature has sexual diversity. “Look! Clown fishes change their sexes! Female Hyenas have fricken’ penises!!”.
I think a major (if not the primary) reason for the attack on the biological definition of sex is the legal recognition of trans persons.
Initially I thought, that the position of having both biological sex that is immutable and binary for science and gender that is a spectrum with infinite individual positions to govern social interaction would be a sensible compromise that would make everyone happy. Be who you want to be and express yourself as you wish. The hand you are dealt can’t be changed, but you are in charge of how you play your cards.
Boy, I was wrong. Trans-persons want to be recognized by society as indistinguishable from the sex they are imitating. Since laws carve out sex specific rights – usually to grant increased protection to women – trans women want to have those rights as well. If denied those rights, it would be a blatant display of society recognizing them as not-women even though they so desperately want to be seen as women.
In order to gain legal recognition as women, they would need to change every law regarding sex specific rights. This is difficult, as the legal process is ponderous and there is a lot of opposition. Thus the first attempt was to push through, that the laws are not sex specific, but gender specific. This failed at various stages. The law stayed sex specific. However, if one were to destroy the biological definition of sex and establish gender as the “true sex”, then suddenly the law would be compliant to the wished of the trans activists. If you can change not only your gender but also your sex based on your internal “sexed soul” feeling, then the law doesn’t have the language to deny you.
This is merely a hypothesis of mine, but I think it has explanatory value – although I’m unsure, how to test it properly.
Thanks for raising these issues, which are similar to points that have been made in these and other forums before: how we define biological sex, and how we count sexes, is simply orthogonal to the fundamental issue of trans identity. Trans identity is a conviction that one’s psychological sense of one’s gender is out of sync with one’s biological sex, and that would be the case whether there were two sexes or twenty, and whether there were hard and fast categories of “sex” or a spectrum (categorical versus dimensional views…..).
Ironically, trans identity is not ‘resolved’ by persuading a trans person that their sense of gender identity is perfectly in sync with their biological sex, just not with male or female sex, which is kinda a possible implication of Fuentes’s strange argument. On the contrary, as far as I am aware (I’m a cardiologist so my experience with trans patients is limited, though my group practice has an active trans service…). any ‘conversion’ undertaken to resolve the lack of fit between one’s gender and one’s sex is to adopt various secondary sex features of one of the two biological sexes that we recognize: breast implants or breast removal, for example, not some third option.
It’s also important to remember that active “gender-affirming” care, especially body altering techniques, is probably the least common approach. My impression is that something as simple as antidepressants, or even CBT, are routinely used as a first line treatment for individuals experiencing gender confusion, and my less than scientific impression is that CBT, for example, is fairly effective in helping resolve the issue.
Canada boasts that it has the toughest conversion therapy ban in the world, Dr. Taylor. The prison term is two years for even suggesting, much less providing, CBT or any other Rx to allay gender dysphoria by attempting to reconcile a person’s gender sense with his sex “assigned” at birth. A physician charged with the offence would certainly lose his medical licence on balance-of-probability rules of civil procedure even if he managed somehow to win acquittal in a criminal court.
FX Kober’s astute observation immediately upthread describes exactly how the self-identity principle works here. If a man says he’s a woman, he’s a woman in every legal respect. To imply he is not a woman — “Sorry, Sir, you can’t use the female nurses’ change room because the women don’t want you in there. They will be polite to you out in the regular workspace but they don’t want a man watching them change,” — is to discriminate against “her” on the basis of her gender identity. Cis-women are welcome but trans-women are not? I don’t think so. Misgendering becomes gender identity discrimination if it is used to deny services to a woman by falsely (!) accusing her of being a man. (Misgendering all by itself will still be deemed to be professional misconduct if the patient complains to the regulator and the doctor is not suitably contrite. And when the doctor is contrite, in hopes of avoiding being escalated to discipline, it cements further the idea that misgendering is indeed a punishable transgression. Soon* it will be a Human Rights offence for anyone to do it.)
I know I’ve said this before: “trans rights”, all of them, are incompatible both with civil liberties and with science. You mustn’t endorse rights based on unscientific gnostic fantasy that clash with women’s rights where the gnostic rights always prevail and where ordinary people can be punished by the state for not giving uptake to that fantasy. As soon as a kind person says trans people “shouldn’t be discriminated against” he is permitting the state to criminalize misgendering and to undo all sex-based protections. The kind of rights trans people demand expand state power to punish the individual at their behest. They don’t limit state power over the people. (This distinction seems totally lost on Canadians, who see rights as things the government provides, like free health care.)
We need to state a hard fact and ask some hard questions: Trans-identified men are still men. They are in no sense women. All attempts to show that they are even in some sense “between” men and women have failed. What additional rights, if any, (beyond those endowed to everyone inalienably by their Creator), ought a man to gain merely by saying he’s a woman when what he says is untrue on its face? What would be the basis for legislating that right against his neighbours, or, in the Constitutional sense, for discovering that such a right exists against the state?
(* …if the newly re-elected Liberal Government re-introduces the OnLine Harms Bill, which died on the order paper when it prorogued Parliament in the lead-up to the election.)
Thanks for your reply, but I am not sure what you think you are replying to in my comment.
I see what you mean. I started out just meaning to say CBT even if effective would be illegal in places that ban conversion therapy directed at gender dysphoria. But then I got trying to endorse FX Kober, too, in the same post to avoid making too many comments.
Sorry, and thanks.
Fuentes’s argument is a straw man. He thinks that by demolishing the statement that sexual characteristics are binary—a statement that no one holds to be true—he is also discrediting the recognition (and definition) of the sex binary by gamete size. His conclusion that sex is a spectrum does not follow from the fact that sexual characteristics and behaviors (often) lie on a spectrum.
It seems that the editors of Natural History have fallen for Fuentes’s sleight of hand.
Here’s another sleight of hand. Basically, they’re just saying same-sex relationships are not constrained by the fact that reproduction is heterosexual. So? That has nothing to do with whether sex is binary or not.
I think they are queering the notion, which most of us are comfortable with, that same-sex relationships are socially permissible despite not being naturally reproductive. They are trying to get us to accept that their queer flavour of opposite-sex relationships will also not be naturally reproductive because the woman in the couple was, alas! born without ovaries, uterus, and a vagina, but with a penis and testes instead, just like the man, and there is nothing wrong with that, either.
The ruse collapses if you are allowed to observe, “but there is no woman in that relationship. It’s two men.” So saying that must be sanctioned as transphobia.
This debate is starting to look like the debate on the Trinity between the Cappadocian Fathers and the proponents of Arianism. But I think there is an obvious solution: sex is two spectra (the male spectrum and the female spectrum).
Re the Supreme Court of the UK having resolved the fact of the binary nature of sex, no. Appellate courts (unlike trial courts) resolve issues of law and not of facts. AIUI (and IANAL), the issue here was the legal meaning of sex, woman, man, etc. in the Human Rights Act, its intended meaning by the legislature. And they quite reasonably concluded that it meant the same as the common usage of the time. That’s it. They also followed through with some of the implications of this.
What is confusing, I think, is that even trans people believe in the sex binary; They want to be transitioned either to man or to woman, and be called as such, but not a third sex.
A most interesting take on this is Ursula K. Le Guin’s book The Left Hand of Darkness, which you’ve probably read, where a prominent feature is the varying sexuality of some of it’s characters–sometime s male, sometimes female.