We’ve all learned that The Lancet, once a respectable journal, has gone full-on “progressive,” denying the sex binary, adopting a comprehensive Left progressive position, blaming rich white countries for all the health problems of poorer countries, and advocating gender-activist language, as it did in its widely-criticized cover below. Much of this was done under the editorship of Richard Horton (still the editor-in-chief), who makes no bones about the journal being institutionally biased. It might as well be edited by AOC.
It is no surprise, then, that the magazine just published a long “review” of Agustin Fuentes’s new book, Sex is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary, which came out in May. I haven’t yet read it, but the summary of it in various reviews tells us that the title is exactly what it’s about. And apparently Fuentes maintains that sex is a spectrum not just in humans, but in all animals—a deeply misguided position (see examples below). Further, The Lancet review not only adopts this position, but it’s a position that the review’s author, Sarah Richardson—a Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard, as well as director of the Harvard GenderSci Lab—previously embraced with gusto (see below). She has clearly changed her mind, but doesn’t tell us why. Apparently it’s not because there are new facts about biology that mandate jettisoning the gametic definition of biological sex so her change of position must be based on something other than new biology. And I bet you can guess what would make one embrace a gametic concept of sex in 2013 and then reject it 12 years later!
Further, the review smacks of sour grapes (Richardson lost her grant due to Trump’s declaration), osculates the rump of Lancet’s “Commission on Gender and Global Health”, conflates sex with gender, spends half of its time criticizing what the right has done to science (it’s hardly a book review), misrepresents animal sex in an attempt to show it’s not binary, and, worst of all, attacks those who hold that the definition of biological sex is binary and based on gamete type, saying that we are doing this deliberately to hurt trans people and folks of non-standard gender. We are, she says, “sophists,” determined to attack gender equality, and clearly hateful and bigoted.
I found out about this review from Carole Hooven’s tweet below, which is, as always, polite. I can’t say I’m as polite as Carole, but reviews like this, so misguided and confused, and which deliberately distort biology, anger me:
Here’s Carole Hooven’s tweet about the review, and it’s followed on X by three more tweets about the book and the binary in general. But sure to read the initial tweet below:
🧵1/4
A Harvard professor has just published a glowing review of Yale Professor Agustín Fuentes’ new book, Sex is a Spectrum, in The Lancet—one of the highest-ranked, most prestigious medical journals in the world. In it, she asserts that the “gametic definition” of sex—roughly,… pic.twitter.com/16Kp4VkipC— Carole Hooven (@hoovlet) August 6, 2025
Here’s a copy of the review, which you can also find online here.
Here are the main problems with Richardson’s glowing review; quotes from the review are indented:
1.) The book conflates gender with (biological) sex. This starts right at the beginning with the title. Fuentes’s book is mostly about sex, as it is sex that he sees as a spectrum in opposition to his critics. What Richardon’s defending is both a presumed spectrum of biological sex as well as gender (she never defines the latter). While Fuentes’s book is about sex, Richardson uses sex and gender as things that apparently go together. They don’t: one is a biological feature, the other a social role. Examples:
The Lancet Commission on Gender and Global Health lucidly highlighted how attacks on the concept of gender, and on gender equality and women’s rights more broadly, are not new. As Sarah Hawkes and her colleagues demonstrated, such attacks are part of a well-funded, global right-wing movement that over the past two decades has sought to challenge the concept of gender and erase it from public policy and discourse. With the advance of these ideologies, the USA—a country that has been an established global leader in medical research at the intersection of health and gendered power inequalities—now risks a vast loss of knowledge, in-progress science, and a generation of trainees in studies of gender inequality and health.
. . . This interdisciplinary, scientist-humanist voice is vital in our time. As the Lancet Commission makes clarion, gender is an essential concept for improving health and wellbeing for everyone. Defending research and clinical practice in gender-related areas must be a priority in the face of perilous new attacks on science and academic freedom.
. . . . This interdisciplinary, scientist-humanist voice is vital in our time. As the Lancet Commission makes clarion, gender is an essential concept for improving health and wellbeing for everyone. Defending research and clinical practice in gender-related areas must be a priority in the face of perilous new attacks on science and academic freedom.
But what about biological sex? However, this conflation doesn’t bother me too much: after all Richardson at least distinguishes sex and gender, What bothers me more is Richardson’s attacks on her opponents (e.g., me) as motivated by bigotry and transphobia:
2.) The review is largely an attack on the Trump administration and the right, insappropriate for a book review. Worse, it attacks those who favor gamete-based species concept, saying that they’re motivated by bigotry. You have to wade through a full page of invective before you get to the book itself. Such digressions are sometimes okay, but Richardson says nothing new. (See the first sentence of the review under 1.) above. The two bolded bits below were also singled out by Hooven in her tweet above:
Trump and his Project 2025 coalition’s appeal to biology might seem surprising, given their derision of scientific knowledge in other areas, ranging from the evidence of the wide-ranging impacts of climate change to the life-saving and preventive effects of vaccines. But although the gametic definition makes reference to biological systems, it is sophistry, not science. Those who promote this definition favour the assertion that sex inheres in gamete (sperm and egg) production because, in part, it facilitates their political aims by fuelling unhinged panic in some quarters about transgender threats to traditional gender roles. Like scientific bigots of yore—such as the anthropologist J McGrigor Allan, who in 1869 pronounced in the Journal of Anthropological Science that, “Thousands of years have amply demonstrated the mental supremacy of man, and any attempt to revolutionize the education and status of women on the assumption of an imaginary sexual equality, would be at variance with the normal order of things”—the recent favour bestowed on the gametic definition of sex by anti-trans gender traditionalists appeals selectively to science to naturalise and rationalise inequality and exclusion.
Well, she’s just wrong here. As I’ve always said, the biological (gametic) definition of sex does not “rationalise inequality and exclusion” (I add, though, that I have favored some exclusion based on sex, but it’s limited to things like sports participation and occupation of jails.) But here Richardson is painting us all with a broad brush, and painting us the wrong color. As I’ve said, the biologists I know who favor the gametic sex binary are nearly all liberals opposed to bigotry—that is, typical left-wing professors who have no opposition to people assuming different genders. Finally, if you want to attack an argument, you don’t say that your scientific opponents are motivated mostly by bigotry and a desire to hurt society.
As Hooven says in her tweet about these bogus accusations,:
The subtext is that in science, simply following the evidence is ill-advised if you (or others who have power over you) think it will lead to social harms. What kind of person would want to hold, let alone give voice to such harmful views as the gametic one?
And look at the bit below, which covers her tuchas just in case she’s wrong. But I agree with the ethics bit in this paragrah, though of course this part also implies that defenders of the sex binary are fostering bigotry:
But, of course, whatever the facts of biological science, this does not and cannot determine society’s laws and policies. Matters of social justice and equality under the law when protecting women and gender minorities from discrimination or upholding human rights and dignity when accommodating legal and social gender transition are questions of human values and judgement, enjoining us to ongoing dialogue, the consideration of plural perspectives, and the cultivation of multiple forms of expertise in free and democratic societies.
3.) Sour grapes. Richardson mentions this as an aside:
My federal research funding, a National Science Foundation grant on laboratory models for preclinical biomedical studies of sex-related biology, which supported new trainees in the field including a postdoctoral scholar and graduate research assistants, was terminated some 3 months ago.
Make of that what you will. I wouldn’t have included it, for it makes one question whether Richardson’s attacks on Trump and his policies are in part motivated by her rancor at losing her funding. At least there’s more evidence for that than for her claim that all of us who favor the gametic concept of sex do so because we want to harm people of nonstandard gender!
4.) Richardson gives a completely false characterization of biology, implying that sex binaries are really sex spectra. Apparently Fuentes’s argument against a sex binary is the familiar one, also made by the Novellas, that because members of the two sexes are so diverse, and there are so many other behaviors associated with sex, then biological sex is so plastic that it simply can’t be a binary. He (and Richardson), then proffer a list of animals that supposedly go against the sex binary. First, the familiar but faulty argument against a binary:
Although the arguments are not necessarily new, Fuentes’ plea for careful attention to diversity, context, and variation in pronouncements on the biology of sex offers up-to-date examples and citations to meet the current political stakes. Gamete size, he explains, does not reliably predict other forms of sexual dimorphism, nor mating and reproductive behaviour, in sexual species. Furthermore, there are not only two sexes, and sex can most definitely change. In humans, he argues, sex is a biocultural construct. Gamete size represents but one of multiple components and developmental processes—including gonads, hormones, genitals, fertility, mating, parenting behaviour, secondary sexual characteristics, and gender identity—that mainstream science recognises as constituting “sex” in human medical, social, and cultural-symbolic systems.
The fact that sex can change in some species is not an attack on the gametic binary, for when it changes, as in clownfish, it changes from either male to female or vice versa, and the gametes change, too. No new sexes appear. And what does Richardson or Fuentes mean by “there are not only two sexes”? What other ones are there? Further, the diversity of development and behaviors among different species still does not efface the sex binary, as I said in a post the other day. What is binary is gamete type, and its’binary-ness is not only universal in animals and vascular plants, but also the most useful sex concept for understanding evolution. Of course there is variation in sex-related traits, but there are only eggs and sperm—and no other type of gamete.
But here is the bit that really peeves me—almost more than her calling us “anisogamites” names and accusing us of sophistry and bigotry:
To grasp the richness of biological variation produced by sexuality, according to Fuentes, we should look at sex in its evolutionary and developmental context and appreciate its fundamental plasticity. Rather than simply comparing average males and females, more important is the overlap and variation in the distribution of traits around those means between the sexes. Fuentes builds this case through examples that may be more or less familiar to readers given the explosion of popular literature on sexual diversity in nature in recent decades—from the sex-changing bluehead wrasse, to same-sex mating birds who rear offspring together, to monogamous owl monkeys with minimal sexual dimorphism, to female hyenas with external genitalia, and naked mole rats with a three-sex social system similar to bees. Everything we know about the evolutionary history of sexuality, Fuentes persuasively argues, should lead us to expect plentiful natural plasticity and variation in its expression, even within a single species.
Do these species counteract the sex binary? Nope! Let’s look at each one:
Blueheaded wrasse: These fish can change sex (unlike transsexual humans), but they change only from one sex to the other. And are only two sexes. From Wikipedia:
Initial phase females and initial phase males both can change into terminal phase males. This change can be relative quick, taking around 8 days.[12] However, this change in sex is permanent: once an initial phase female or male changes into a terminal phase male, it cannot change back.
I’m surprised Richardson didn’t throw the clownfish in here, in which males can change permanently into females. Again, there are only two sexes. Defenders of the gametic definition do not deny that, in some species that are not humans, individuals can change their biological sex. To show sex change doesn’t lay a hand on the sex binary.
“Same-sex mating birds who rear offspring together.” I’m not sure what Richardson is talking about here, but I know one thing: if two individuals of a bird species mate and produce offspring, they are not members of the same sex. And of course there are many vertebrates in which the parents rear offspring together.
“Monogamous owl monkeys with minimal sexual dimorphism”. So what? Owl monkeys are either male or female. The fact that they have minimal sexual dimorphism is hardly rare: many species are not very dimorphic, particularly those which are more monogamous and in which there is reduced competition in males for females.
“Female hyenas with external genitalia”. Note that Richardson calls them “female”, for, like all mammals, hyenas are either male or female! Here she undercuts her own argument. As Wikipedia notes, this is true of spotted hyenas:
The genitalia of the female closely resembles that of the male; the clitoris is shaped and positioned like a penis, a pseudo-penis, and is capable of erection. The female also possesses no external vagina (vaginal opening), as the labia are fused to form a pseudo-scrotum. The pseudo-penis is traversed to its tip by a central urogenital canal, through which the female urinates, copulates and gives birth.
We don’t understand why this is so, but there are theories that the male-like organ in females, produced by the persistence of androgens, may contribute to their social dominance. But despite that, how does Richardson know that those spotted hyenas are female? Because they produce eggs, not sperm, and get pregnant and give birth! Shoot me now! The sex binary is untouched by hyenas. Even AI says this:
If Richardson can prove that female hyenas are hermaphrodites, producing both sperm and eggs, I’ll pay her $1000.
“Naked mole rats with a three-sex social system similar to bees.” This is NOT an example of three sexes, nor are bees. Like bees, naked mole-rats have “castes”, with some individuals reproducing and some not. But the non-reproducting individuals have either male or female reproductive systems–they just don’t produce gametes. Here’s how Wikipedia describes it, and note that even the non-reproducing mole rats are either ‘male” or “female” (bolding is mine):
The social structure of naked mole-rats is similar to that of ants, termites, and some bees and wasps. Only one female (the queen) and one to three males reproduce, while the rest of the members of the colony function as workers. The queen and breeding males are able to breed at one year of age. Workers are sociologically but not physiologically sterile.[61] Smaller workers focus on gathering food and maintaining the nest, while larger workers are the tunnelers, and are the most reactive to threats. The non-reproducing females appear to be reproductively suppressed, meaning the ovaries do not fully mature, and do not have the same levels of certain hormones as the reproducing females. By contrast, there is little difference of hormone concentration between reproducing and non-reproducing males.
Note that non-reproducing individuals are either male or female, though in eusocial insects like bees the sterile caste usually comprises females (workers). There is no third sex in any of these examples; there are just individuals of one biological sex or the other that are effectively sterile.
Couldn’t Richardson use Wikipedia? Why is she distorting the biology of these animals to buttress the case that there are more than two gameticallty-defined sexes. I muyst say that I have little use for people who mislead others about biology because misleading is necessary to buttress an ideology,
I’ll add that 12 years ago Richardson was a booster of the gametic concept of species, but has apparently changed her mind. Here’s a tweet that shows that, with the relevant parts in color:
It gets more awkward for Richardson. In this 2025 review, Richardson says the gametic view of the sexes is sophistry, and those who promote it are motivated partly by bigotry.
Buuuuut in her own 2013 book, Sex Itself, Richardson seems to promote the gametic view. See attached. https://t.co/IxpFAGwVrb pic.twitter.com/xu8YsOUKbd
— Tomas Bogardus (@TomasBogardus) August 6, 2025
The change. Then:
Now: biological truth has become “sophistry”!
Now of course people are entitled to change their minds: in fact, it is a virtue of scientists to change their minds if new facts appear that undercut their theories. But no new facts have appeared in the last 12 years that would militate against the gametic species concept. All the examples Richardson cited above were already known 12 years ago!
So what has changed to turn her into a “progressive” biologist like Fuentes? I can think of only one thing: the rise of a militant form of gender activism that makes it politically expedient (and enhances one’s virtue) to attack the sex binary. We have another example of the ideological subversion of biology.
These people remind me of Trump in that they believe saying it’s true makes it true.
(Good write up, btw)
HA! I saw this yesterday and wondered how long it’d take the boss to hit the roof on this one. hahah. Sooo.. our old friend Fuentes, the most ridiculous “scientist” in this era’s clown car.
About Prof Hooven, she and a number of the writers in Lawrence Krauss’ latest book (including my beloved Elizabeth Weiss) are interviewed separately this month on his Origins Podcast on youtube. Most of what they say I’m familiar with b/c I follow them closely but it is good to spread the word. I’m guessing Fuentes idiot won’t be invited. 🙂
D.A.
NYC
Yes. Prof Krauss is releasing an audio podcast each day…about an hour each BUT I have also located video youtube version of most of them. I found Abby Thompson’s (known to WEIT readers for her excellent wildlife photos) particularly good and frightening as she speaks of two universities in one at many R1 campuses: a Social Justice university and our traditional, at least since the Enlightenment, Knowledge university. And it is pointed out that while initially pretty much immune to the SJ focus, STEM departments have more recently become infected also.
Url for Abby’s discussion should be
For giggles, I’ve renamed Fuentes as Agustín Ocasio-Cortez Fuentes. He’s her scientific equivalent.
That’s a good one.
Don’t feel bad about being called a transphobe, Jerry. Soon this craziness will invade math and physics too. Someday soon I may get student complaints about teaching that electric charge, for particles that have charge, is binary. And, since charge is quantized, there is no possibility of a spectrum. Students may point out that some positrons may self-identify as negatively charged, or as lacking charge, or as having gingerbread charge, or what have you. Perhaps each particle should get to decide on its choice of charged pronouns.
Computer Science is even more blatant: bit (binary digit), binary arithmetic, binary coded decimal, binary search, binary trees, binary heaps, binary prefixes; and foundationally, 0 and 1.
I’m very happy to no longer be in the “ed biz” (TL, R.I.P.).
It’s going to take decades to clear out the ideological rot from publishing.
I think we should differentiate between two meanings of the sex binary, otherwise I’m afraid we allow them to obfuscate.
One meaning is: there are only two gametes, hence only two possible sexes. They usually don’t deny this.
A different meaning is: in mammals (hence in humans) individuals are either males or females, not both, not neither. This one is what they try to deny.
They usually employ the argument from DSDs, and/or try to say that sex should be understood as deriving from many different phenotipic charateristics.
I have a degree in physics and I for one don’t dislike in principle the approach of imagining people as points in a (highly) multi-dimensional space, where each dimension is a phenotipical feature.
But if there are two clusters, two & only two clusters remain. Otherwise it’s the univariate fallacy. You can always attribute one point to one of the clusters.
As for people with DSDs, a rule that applies to 99.98% of people isn’t refuted by a few exceptions, but this require attacking their dumb, irrealistic, and essentialist concept of what a binary is.
They write: ““Almost binary” — how can anyone say that with a straight face? The word “almost” refutes the claim”
This is stupid, nothing in reality is perfectly defined without fuzzy edges. In physics an observation is declared when you reach 3-sigma confidence and a discovery when you reach 5-sigma. Nobody can expect to have 100%. So it’s actually a very anti-scientific, idealistic misunderstanding.
They also write: “A binary relationship is that of one and zero. They’re completely distinct. This concept is used in computer science, because there’s no overlap in any element: either you have a one, or you have a zero”
This is even wrong! In THEORY in a completely abstract, mathematical world it would be so, but our physical implementations don’t work that way (and yet, they always worked as if). For example, in the old days a zero would be represented by a reading of a “low” electrical current, and a one by a reading of a “high” electrical current. These values wouldn’t be always the same, and would show a continuous, not “jumps”. But they would interpreted as a binary in relation to one another.
I can’t really see any difference between this understanding of zeroes and ones and males and females.
I’m sorry if I write too much but I think we should attack along these lines otherwise they’ll always be able to obfuscate.
I’ll also add that this doesn’t say anything about how we should treat people. For example, I’m afraid people with CAIS are indeed males, even if they don’t like hearing this and don’t appear to be. But I’m all for treating them as women.
When arguing about this I sometimes say it this way: The assertion that people are male or female is as good or better a generality as saying that people have two legs and dogs have four.
You’re right, no need for a detailed analysis when a reductio ad absurdum suffices.
Would they deny that humans have 2 legs, 2 arms, 2 hands, 2 foots?
But the Incidence of Congenital Limb Reduction is HIGHER than the prevalence of DSDs.
Q.E.D.
Incidence of Congenital Limb Reduction Defects: A Systematic Review. Journal of Limb Lengthening & Reconstruction 10(2):p 31-54, Jul–Dec 2024. | DOI: 10.4103/jllr.jllr_17_24
It is a sign of progress that these ideologues are forced to discuss gametes now. They used to just not mention gametes at all. But now they know they are losing the argument and have to address it. Unfortunately, they reject the argument based on sophistry.
For example, if you watch the infamous Bill Nye clip where he says that sex is a spectrum, he doesn’t mention gametes in the definition of sex at all. He just says it’s a spectrum based on chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy. “What makes someone male or female isn’t so clear-cut”. It’s absolutely nuts.
This is all a problem of our social policy being based on the “expertise” of human biologists and social scientists, who have never asked themselves what a “male” human and a “male” gametophyte have in common is (i.e., both produce sperm). Add into that ideological capture and activism, and this is what you get.
A few humans are actually chimeras. Chimeras are the result of two zygotes fusing to form a single embryo (or so I think). Chimeras can produce both types of gametes. They are very (very) rare.
As for CAIS persons, check out Sara Fosberg’s videos on YouTube. Normally, I would refrain from using a specific name. However, she has made YouTube videos. I have quite deliberately used ‘she’.
1) Even if it was true, it wouldn’t be engaging with the argument (which is exceptions don’t disprove the rule, unless you are also prepared to say humans are an “almost” bipedal specie
2) I said I would treat cais as women
3) both gametes sound fake news, please provide link (last i checked it was never documented in humans)
I would say that if something is 99.9% true, then it is true. In other words, “exceptions prove rules”.
“I said I would treat cais as women” Me too. Agreed. The famous case of María José Martínez-Patiño comes to mind.
The link is “Has there ever been documented human individual producing both kinds of sex cells?” (https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/53202/has-there-ever-been-documented-human-individual-producing-both-kinds-of-sex-cell). Quote
“An unusual case of true hermaphroditism is reported. The patient was a 32-year-old phenotypically male true hermaphrodite. Histology of his removed ovary suggested that ovulation had, at some time, occurred. He had also fathered a child and this is believed to be the first case of a cytogenetically proved true hermaphrodite who is fertile as a male.
As has been shown, the ovary in this case was relatively normal with perhaps a little more fibrous stroma than is usual. Ovulation was assumed to have occurred at some time given the presence of corpora albicantes. These only occur in the presence of ovulation since they develop from the involuting corpora lutea.The presence of oogenesis and spermatogenesis at the same time is unlikely, and in this case the testosterone was in the high normal range. One must therefore postulate that, if both were not proceeding at the same time, ovulation had occurred in the past, possibly before testicular maturation."
1) Even if it was true, it wouldn’t be engaging with the argument (which is exceptions don’t disprove the rule, unless you are also prepared to say humans are an “almost bipedal” species)
2) I said I would treat people with CAIS as women. It appears she has SWYER and I would do the same, it wasn’t meant as a comprehensive list
3) A human individual producing both gametes sound fake news, please provide link (last I checked it was never documented in humans. The only report that hints at something similar is from the 80s and from biopsy says an ovulation could have occurred in one gonad while the other was a dysgenetic testis -which means sperm is also just hinted at)
Tomas Bogardus captures very well how accepting that gametes are binary sinks the whole sex-denialism ship here:
Agustín Fuentes’ Book ‘Sex is a Spectrum’ Fails to Refute the Binary
Fuentes’ confused arguments against the sex binary ironically end up confirming it.
Tomas Bogardus
Sep 03, 2025
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/augustin-fuentes-book-sex-is-a-spectrum
Almost the only debatable case after that Bogardus definition is the case of CAIS, where there are internal testes (although, according to Wikipedia, often atrophied, and sperm development does not complete as androgen sensitivity is required for completion) but otherwise female development (although usually infertile and lacking uterus etc.). I tend to think if the rest of development is dominated by the female pathway, this should override the presence of some nonfunctioning testes emitting a signal (testosterone) that the rest of the body is not receiving. But apparently this is less than 1 in 20,000 XY births (thus less than 1/40,000 births; it would be recessive in XX females anyway, even if they had a developmental need for testosterone which they mostly don’t).
PZ Meyers and his anti-science Horde are completely in thrall to him and his book. You won’t be surprised to learn.
Our old friend PZ Myers also writes about the book, which he likes a lot. He particularly appreciates that Fuentes is anti-Coyne and ends his mini-review with, “Fuentes for president.”
PZ is obviously a highly qualified developmental biologist, yet I find his views on sex bizarre:
“there are so many distinct criteria that are used to identify a human’s sex, so just the fact that there are multiple independent measures refutes the claim that there is one pure definitive definition.”
I’m not even sure he believes them himself.
I’m also quite certain he would not write anything critical of Fuentes’ views, as praise from his minions in the comment section seems more important to him than scientific integrity.
I saw Carole Hooven’s comments yesterday and I had expected — and very happy to read — detailed commentary here. Thanks for this.
How does an educated person write the sentences like: “Female hyenas with external genitalia” and “Same-sex mating birds who rear offspring together” not recognize the senselessness of these sentences?
And how does Dr. Richardson know that the hyena with the external genitalia is female?
Well the females are pretty well hung, as I understand it.
Good catch! How do birds of the same sex mate with each other?
Peter, et al
I think Richardsons reference to same sex birds raising offspring is centered on the male penguins that raised orphans as a couple. It’s the only example that comes readily to mind and the only one that pops up in a non AI, non wiki web search
But of course they are both of the same sex, so how does that efface a sex binary? All it says is that maternal or sexual behavior can change IN MEMBERS OF A GIVEN SEX. So if that’s the reference, it’s just as misguided as the rest of them!
@whyevolutionistrue; As you can tell, I’m new here. Can you and I talk in private? I have a layman’s School of Life and Hard Knocks opinion on this.
It also may refer to a high proportion of female-female pairs in a population of Laysan albatross in Hawaii. The sex ratio is female-biased, and females will sometimes pair with another female. If one or both of the females has mated with a male, the resulting offspring is reared by both of them. Of course, as Jerry says, this still means it takes a male and a female to make an offspring, so it’s not at all clear that it’s relevant anyway.
For context, Dr. Richardson is not a scientist. She is “Aramont Professor of the History of Science and Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University”.
Her cancelled grant was not scientific research contra her claim that she was funded to work “on laboratory models of preclinical biomedical studies of sex-related biology.”
From the abstract of her NSF grant,
“This research project will investigate the conceptual foundations of research paradigms for the study of biological sex in basic, preclinical, nonhuman biological research. The project will use a case study approach to analyze four research programs across the fields of drug metabolism, endocrinology, behavioral science, and genetics, and examine diverse models from gene expression assays to in vitro organ cultures to animal models. Through these case studies, the project will analyze scientific practices surrounding the question of how to study sex as a biological variable. Specifically, the project will analyze uses and meanings of the variable of biological sex within the design, analysis, interpretation, and communication of laboratory-based scientific research. Through in-depth case studies, interviews, statistical reanalysis of sex difference claims, and conceptual analysis, this project will study diverse practices in laboratory research on sex-related variables across a range of fields and generate an account of sex as a research construct embedded in specific research contexts and practices.”
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2341785
It’s all word games with these folks.
Unbelievable such projects receive funding. The main problem is that too many academics have run out of ideas. Most work I speed-read today (since I’m not really learning anything) in the Humanities is repackaged material claiming novelty.
I have no clue. Gene expression assays, in vitro culture of organs, and animal models. I got those parts.
I may have posted this opinion before, but the thing I find most bewildering is that the whole “sex is a spectrum” stance appears to be an attempt to justify something that nobody needs to justify. If an individual feels that sex “reassignment” is something they want, then they can do it. It’s their body. Nobody else’s business. It’s as though they want to disarm those who, for whatever reason, oppose it by claiming that their arguments rest on a false belief in sexual dimorphism. And then people who should (and in fact DO) know better make specious arguments out of simple sympathy. I know two transsexual people. They have both gone through a lot to get to the place they felt they needed to be. I sympathize. I hate the cruelty that they have endured. But that has no bearing on the biological sciences.
In my view, they feel that they need to justify it because “sex” is encoded in the law, so by making sex a “spectrum”, then a post-operative trans-man can be said to be of the male sex because of penis-like reconstructed genitals (even though no male gametes are produced).
And if a post-operative trans-man who has had bottom surgery can be said to be of the male sex, then why not one who has only had top surgery (i.e., double mastectomy)? After all, the definition of “man” has already been “queered” so that sex categories have been dismantled… And then why not those who have had no surgery at all? Maybe a trans-man who is merely a female with short hair should qualify as “male” in Biology and under the law.
Eventually, they wish to abandon the “trans-man” and “cis-man” labels altogether, because “trans-men are men”, and your pointing out that “actually this person is female because they were born with ovaries” will be a meaningless criticism.
Making sex a spectrum is important for activists to justify, so they can convert the legal definition of sex into gender identity, so that anyone is legally justified in being called whatever they wish and reaping all those benefits. Biology and truth are the casualties in their war.
It’s the logic of affirmation taken to its logical conclusion.
If sex reassignment surgery and cross-sex hormones are regarded as medically necessary for a real medical condition — “having been born in the wrong body” — then insurance has to pay for it and doctors must provide it. If it is just body sculpting according to a desire to change one’s appearance to get to where one wants to be, then it’s cosmetic and is paid out of pocket and doctors are free to not make it part of their service menu. (Doctors don’t have to do Botox.) The goal of “disarming” objectors is to compel insurance to pay and to obligate doctors, to improve “access” to care. The other issue at stake is whether children without capacity to consent can have these treatments done to them. If it’s not a real disease, then no they can’t, and their parents can’t either.
If a doctor declines to offer sex-trait modification as a matter of professional principle, based on his having weighed vague benefits against permanent harms, he may be guilty of illegal discrimination against people with a transgender identity in the provision of care, since only people claiming a transgender identity will request these services in the first place, and be denied them.
OTOH, insurance does cover some psychological conditions that are treated with drugs or surgery.
But certainly TRAs would violently oppose any attempts to classify “gender dysphoria” as an insurable mental illness, since (they claim that) they know they really are in a wrong-sex body, and insist that everyone else share this delusion (or at least pretend to).
To claim they “really are in a wrong-sex body” assumes there are gendered “souls” floating around and that a few end up inhabiting a wrong-sex body. I wonder if the people promoting this view even realize how religious their view is. I guess it just shows that wokism really is a religion after all.
Transsexuals’ obsession with proving that they are literally the opposite sex is a result of the sexual paraphilia that causes transsexualism among straight males.
They’re gynephilic — sexually attracted to females of the species — and they’re usually somewhat androphobic as well — sexually averse to males of the species. They’re typical straight men, in other words. Except, there’s a glitch in the brain’s wiring that has caused them to erotically target their own bodies. The object of their sexual attraction is themselves. This means that they’re sexually aroused at the thought of being female, AND they’re usually sexually averse to the thought of being male.
They can’t admit that they’re men in dresses, because they’re not sexually attracted to men in dresses. To admit that they’re just crossdressing men therefore diminishes their sexual and romantic arousal, and therefore blocks the chemical pleasure/reward that their brains have become addicted to.
They’re attracted to real women, and the pleasure they derive (or relief they experience) comes from convincing themselves and everyone else that they’re literally female.
Ironically, then, the phenomenon of transsexualism is entirely dependent on the distinction between males and females, and the louder the transsexuals shout that they’re literally the opposite sex, the more they’re reinforcing the relevance of the sex binary.
As for gays and lesbians who identify as transgender, they’re a different phenomenon, and historically they’ve been much more pragmatic about their “sex changes”. Gay male “transwomen” still use gay men’s dating apps like Grindr, for example, and they still hang out with other gay men and go to gay bars, etc. Up until quite recently, they weren’t hung up on “proving” to the world that they’re “literally” women. They were more concerned with visually “passing” — that is, looking sexy enough to secure dates with ostensibly “straight” acting men. They don’t care so much that they’re male, as long as they can still get men to have sex with them.
(The men who have sex with them are invariably bisexual, or they have a paraphilia caled gynandormorphophilia or GAMP — a fetish for “shemales” or the idea of a penis on an otherwise feminine-appearing body with breasts.)
It’s only recently, with the internet craze, that they’ve begun aggressively claiming to have been “born” transgender and to be “literally” the opposite sex, or on some kind of biological spectrum.
The girls and young women calling themselves “nonbinary” are much easier to explain — it’s just social contagion mixed with body anxiety exacerbated by social media.
I agree with Leslie. The issue is much more profound than just whether to let “trans” people (whatever that means) modify their own sex traits. For the most part they can’t do so themselves, and require physicians to (sometimes be compelled to) do it for them and everyone else (through insurance premiums or taxes) to collectively pay for it.
In any event, support for medical & surgical sex trait modification in adults is a minor part of the problem of “sex is a spectrum” advocacy. Many “trans” adult males don’t medicalize their beliefs about themselves but still want access to female-only spaces in order to validate their beliefs through the compelled speech and participation of others. Some large proportion of those males are autogynephiles with a sexual paraphilia involving the experience of arousal at the idea and manifestation of themselves as stereotypical women. The Pulitzer winner Andrea Long Chu ascribed his own paraphilia to consumption of a type of online pornography known as sissy porn. “Sex is a spectrum” provides cover for these belief and practices and the associated claim to have the rights of a woman.
And that’s not even touching on the problem of describing sex as a spectrum to children who are susceptible to suggestion, anxious to please, and vulnerable to criticism for failing to conform to stupid gender stereotypes.
[forgot to add: I teach at a university so by definition I also know lots of “trans” people. Some are autogynephiles; some are young butch lesbians (an endangered species); and some are sad anxious depressed young gay men. None of them were obviously born in the wrong body. Only the autogynephiles were not medicalized.]
Steve, trans activists could have gone that way. They could also have joined old-school feminists and LGB activists and argued for greater tolerance for everybody who is gender-nonconforming. “Yes, I’m a man, but my personality and clothing preferences are ‘feminine.’ So? Why should that be a problem?”
But that would have made sense. So it just wouldn’t do.
Remember, activists wanted “gender identity” to be prioritized over sex in law and social policy (in many places, of course, they succeeded, though fortunately some of those laws and policies are being overturned.)
In order to do that, they had to obfuscate certain realities, chief among them sexual dimorphism and its social consequences.
Plus, you must remember that much of the trans movement is driven by autogynephilic males, who really, REALLY don’t want to be reminded that they’re not actually females. Such reminders ruin the fantasies.
And so we were given “Trans women ARE women, and you’d damn well better agree.” And they’ve been frantically reasoning backwards from what they want us all to believe ever since.
Which ultimately leads us here:
“Amid a growing number of criminal cases in Brazil involving speech about gender identity, a prominent feminist is facing up to 25 years in prison after being charged with five counts of ‘social racism’ for referring to a trans-female politician as a man.”
https://freespeechunion.org/brazilian-feminist-faces-25-years-for-misgendering-politician-under-social-racism-law/
It looks like there was a win in Brazil…from twitter:
Isabella Cêpa
@CepaIsabella
Brazil’s Supreme Court officially closed my case, marking a groundbreaking precedent.
This isn’t just about me. It’s the first time in Brazil that a radical feminist voice was formally targeted through criminal prosecution, and failed.
What started as an attempt to silence a woman for speaking truth to power has now become a legal turning point.
The Supreme Court’s decision to archive the case sends a resounding message: coercion, criminalization of feminist thought, and punitive actions against women exercising their freedom of expression are legally inappropriate and must not stand.
This ruling is a milestone in Brazilian history. It affirms that from this day forward, women cannot be threatened or silenced for daring to speak the obvious. What was once weaponized against feminist voices now serves as a precedent safeguarding them.
A historic day for women’s freedom in Brazil and a powerful statement to the world: feminist expression is not a crime!
7:45 AM · Sep 3, 2025
Great news! Thanks, Nicholas.
One aspect of sex, downstream of the gametic definition, is viviparous embryonic development and birth in mammals and many other animals, in just one of the two sexes. This is deeply obvious to everyone, except the Fuentes/Richardson brigades. The latter no doubt avoid the subject because of the difficulty of locating multiple positions on the spectrum of gestation—some not quite in the mother, some half in and half out, etc.. Even Professors of Gender Theory might be at a loss for words on this matter.
On a related subject, it is a little puzzling that The Lancet has never reviewed Trish MacGregor’s study “The Biggest Book of Horoscopes Ever” (Page Street Publishing, 2016). Surely, Lancet could have found a professor of Critical Astrological Theory to handle that review. Oh, wait, the groves of academe have not set up departments of Critical Astrological Theory; and NSF, for some reason, has failed to hand out grants in this vital area of scholarship.
One thing that gets me about that side of this issue — where sex is a spectrum and all that — is that the practitioners are pretending to do science. And yet unlike any real scientific field, none of its practitioners ever ever call out one another for being wrong. No truth claim is critiqued and found to be false and so one can make the wildest assertions.
So this is why we get the unblinking lie that mole rats and bees magically now have 3 sexes. That is a new surprise for me, but its right up in there with the supposed 4 sexes in white-throated sparrows, or 3 sexes in orangutans. Will anyone over there politely raise their hand and say “*ahem, excuse me ? …” No. It won’t happen.
Has Sarah Richardson looked in the mirror lately and asked “do you feel like your on a spectrum!” Yeah YOU! “I’m looking at you!
This is a perfect example of the why the inner left are as bat shit crazy as the right.
See next post. I read them back to front for novelty sometimes.
The ad hominem nastiness that permeates Richardson’s review should have disqualified it from publication. She goes awfully low, and it’s not a good look.
Sarah Richardson had published an account of the nature of sex in the LA Review of Books, November 8, 2018, which is just as confused and misleading as her current piece on Fuentes. She seems to have departed from her 2013 understanding of sex quite a while ago. The 2018 piece is explicitly ideological.
The May 29th 2014 issue of Time Magazine announced on its cover “The transgender tipping point. America’s next civil rights frontier.”
Possibly, Richardson then figured she had to change her view of sex because she would not want to be on the wrong side of history.
Some people say that activists were just looking for the next big “cause” and weren’t inclined to study the details very carefully.
Gay rights was done after gay marriage was legalized.
But some people always need a cause.
She is committing the reverse naturalistic fallacy here — assuming that what she wants to be true for moral reasons is actually true, and that the only explanation for differences between the sexes must be discrimination.
Many health sites only claim the sex binary doesn’t exist when it comes to women. This hypocrisy shows who has the power. Men get proper acknowledgement of their sex, but women are irrelevant.
The Lancet has form. The ‘bodies with vaginas’ cover that you shared was tweeted by them on 25 Oct 2021. However, just a month before, on 20 Sep 2021, they tweeted an article saying “About 10 million men are currently living with a diagnosis of prostate cancer-making it a major health issue”. They don’t apply the same rules to men and women.
There were also two articles published the same day on the Healthline website in 2021.
1 Human Papillomavirus (HPV) in Men.
2 Everything You Need to Know About HPV in Vulva Owners.
The Macmillan cancer charity:
1 “Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in the UK.”
2 ‘more than 3,200 people are diagnosed with cervical cancer in the UK’
The ignorance is bad enough, but the sexism on top adds salt to the wound.
Wow, that is very telling indeed!
Indeed, I suggest we start referring to men as “bodies with prostates” on this website, which will include, of course, the bodies with prostata who identify as bodies with vaginas. Should make everyone happy.
😁
I’ve tried to explain many times to TRAs that a man cannot self identify out of prostate checks and into cervical smears. He cannot even identify out of penile cancer as one guy who had his penis inverted to create a neo-vagina developed cancer in his remaining penile tissue. Men need male healthcare.
One woman didn’t tell A&E her sex and nearly died during a miscarriage as doctors didn’t realize that was a possibility. Another woman was intubated with male equipment and has suffered permanent throat damage ever since.
People who deny their sex are a danger to themselves.
It’s nonetheless telling that The Lancet didn’t get a biologist to review Fuentes’ book. Any serious biologist would realize that it would be the death of his professional reputation to give the book a positive review. By handing the job to a ‘Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality’, the editors were thus able to have their cake and eat it. Appease the ideologues and give themselves an out when the real biologists show up asking WTF.
Agustín Fuentes wrote an article for Scientific American titled “Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary”. The funny part is that the associated illustration showed the sexual binary. The illustration is still there.
“At the Harvard GenderSci Lab, the work my colleagues and I do uses the concept of gender […] to bring precision, rigour and new perspectives to areas as diverse as understanding variation in sperm counts among men”
See? Stating that men produce sperm brings a new perspective full of precision and rigour. When Trump defines males as those belonging to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell, however, that’s scientific bigotry and sophistry.
Remember the Lancet – with Richard Horton as editor – took 12 years to retract Wakefields’ autism and vaccines paper.
Brian Deer, the journalist who exposed the fraud from 2004 in The Times and (eventually) triggered the GMC to strike Wakefield off in 2010 deserves his awards
Not exactly an exemplary example of science in action….