Another journal drinks the Kool-Aid

You can see the table of contents at the last link above. Yes, a compendium of biological anthropology on sex and gender could potentially contribute to human understand of our personas and social interactions, but this one ain’t it.  Here are a few select articles, and I’ll give a quote or two from each (click on the headline to read the free bits; excerpts are indented, and bolding is mine).

Here’s the phenomenon:

Callitrichids are equally notable as chimeras, a term referring to organisms whose cells are derived from two or more distinct zygotic lineages (Anderson et al. 1951). Among mammals, small numbers of chimeric cells (i.e., “microchimerism”) are thought to be present in all placental species (Gammill and Harrington 2017; Nelson 2012). In callitrichids, however, chimerism routinely occurs on a much larger scale. Within this taxon, chimerism occurs in conjunction with the production of fraternal twins and other multiples, which is the typical birth pattern for all but callimicos (Ah-King and Tullberg 2000; Harris et al. 2014).

That’s interesting, but in the hands of an ideologue the finding allows one to go wild with speculation:

This article demonstrates how queer monster theory can illuminate the cultural boundary-work that stabilizes biological categories of sex and reproduction as well as the kinship claims that often follow. Read as monstrous informants, callitrichid chimeras make visible how “monstrosity” is employed to police these categories in human and nonhuman primates alike, as well as what is at stake when that policing is normalized. When primatology defaults to inherited assumptions about sex and reproduction, it risks not only mischaracterizing its study species but lending scientific authority to the broader cultural machinery of queer monsterization and erasure.

The promises of monsters and monkeys therefore carry epistemic and ethical obligations. Meeting them is, in a sense, a monstrous practice; it requires connections and conversations across subfields and sustained attention to the entanglements of science and sociopolitical dynamics. Yet these obligations can also begin with small methodological choices: specifying the traits being measured rather than using “sex” as a silent binary proxy; defining and justifying what counts as “reproduction” and “fitness” within a given analysis; and acknowledging nonbinary sex and nonreproductive individuals without casting them as aberrant or without value. Practiced in these ways, primatology and biological anthropology can begin to unsettle naturalized bias rather than reproduce it.

In fact, the whole issue is permeated with the view that sex is nonbinary. Here’s another example, one of two article that bemoans the fact that “gender” (presumably how one identifies with respect to sex)

A quote:

Intersectional feminism and queer theories may also be used to challenge sexist and cisgenderist biases that can harm sex- and gender-diverse individuals. Striving to de-center patriarchal ideology, feminist history highlights the shared goals of gender equality and equity. Feminist anthropology, specifically, teaches cultural competence and limits patriarchal biases in forensic casework. A rich understanding of intersectional feminism can help forensic practitioners better understand sex and gender variability. A more feminist forensic anthropology could greatly improve the communal impact of medicolegal practitioners across the U.S. Queer theory aims to critique assumptions related to “atypical” bodies by normalizing the spectrum of human sex and gender diversity. Advocating against biological determinism, integrating queer theories in medicolegal investigations can help ensure that documents and datasets are reflective of individuals’ biological and cultural experiences. Discussions on queering bioarchaeology emerged around the start of the century, with scholars such as Sabrina Agarwal, Pamela Geller, Sandra Hollimon, and Julie Wesp outlining the importance and utility of queer theory and methods in skeletal assessments and conceptualizations of the human body (e.g., Geller 2005, 2008, 2009a, 2009b, 2019; Hollimon 1996, 2001, 2011; Wesp and Agarwal 2017). Failure to recognize both biological and cultural influences on the skeleton risks perpetuating scientism, presentism, and bio-colonialism (Geller 2005, 2009b, 2019; Hollimon 2011). Using queer theory in forensic anthropology can help improve medicolegal case resolution by broadening identification efforts and collaboration with living communities.

Another search for nonbinary sex in skeletons:

This author use sa bogus overestimateion of true intersex individuals, and then, since there are really no data showing what the skeletons of such individuals look like, they simply make predictions. Again, there’s a general denial that there are distinguishable sexes, as well as the usual emphasis on sex-related traits which, of course, we’ve long known are more variable than sex itself. We still have only two types of gametes.

Blackless et al. (2000) have estimated that approx. 1.7%–2.3% of all humans are intersex. Fausto-Sterling (2000a) similarly estimated that intersex people comprise 1.7% of the global population, revised from an earlier estimate of 4% (Fausto-Sterling 1993). If accurate, these estimates indicate that intersex is not rare in population genetics terms (Astorino 2019), since “rare” traits are exhibited by < 1% of individuals in a given population (Hartl et al. 1997; Jobling et al. 2013). Researchers in the social sciences have noted that this frequency estimate is comparable to the global frequency of humans with natural red hair—a trait that is generally not considered “rare” by medical professionals or many cultures (Dreger 1998; Karkazis 2008a; Davis 2015). In other vertebrates, it is unclear how common intersex is; while the frequency of other forms of sex diversity has been more comprehensively studied across higher vertebrate taxa (Ashman et al. 2014; Nemesházi and Bókony 2023), similar data on intersex are not available.

. . . . Given these frequencies, it may be inaccurate to characterize humans as sexually dimorphic (Blackless et al. 2000). Astorino (2019) suggested that humans may be conceptualized not as sexually dimorphic, but as sexually polymorphic. Dunsworth (2020) proposed referring to “sex differences” instead of sexual dimorphism. McLaughlin et al. (2023) argued that sex is multivariate, where many individual traits—each of which may or may not conform to a binary distribution—collectively constitute what is typically considered a single variable. Similarly, Smiley et al. (2024) asserted that individual sex variables each represent different aspects of sex, which may have complex, dynamic relationships with other sex variables, and suggested that researchers operationalize specific, measurable sex variables appropriate for a given study, each of which may be characterized as monomorphic, dimorphic, or multimorphic.

Despite the fact that sex variation has been noted to be complex in humans, sex is still most commonly defined as sexually dimorphic by biological anthropologists and evolutionary biologists.

Bonobos used to rectify the claimed erasure of lesbian and bisexual relationships:

The title of this paper “Just gal pals!” refers to the heteronormative tendency to erase lesbian and bisexual relationships and is a memeified response by the LGBTQ+ community online to such erasure (Warburton 2021). We believe it also encapsulates the way researchers over the decades have described bonobo GG rubbing: Wow look at those two female bonobos (gal pals) and their strong social bond or just two female bonobos (gal pals) reducing tension. Entrenched biases make the alternative—that two female bonobos are having sex—one of the last available explanations that researchers explicitly acknowledge in the scientific literature. This may be why sexual motivations are omitted from hypotheses for the function of GG rubbing (Hohmann and Fruth 2000; 2009; Waller 2016). Similarly, while GG rubbing in female bonobos has been emphasized, male–male sexual behavior in bonobos and other primates is often overlooked. Media portrayals of female–female sexuality in humans are often framed for consumption by the male gaze and/or imply that the women involved are “testing” or “experimenting” while not invalidating a heterosexual identity (Diamond 2005). Thus, female–female sexuality among humans, particularly for bi/pansexual women, is often not viewed as valid, and sexual relationships among women are viewed more favorably than those among men (Worthen 2013; Bettinsoli et al. 2020). As a result, recognition of female–female sexuality in our closest relatives may also be perceived as less directly threatening to patriarchal hegemony in humans.

Now I haven’t read the whole issue, or any article in great detail, as that would cause severe damage to my alimentary canal. Regardless, this issue, for which papers were solicited, appears to be driven not by a search for truth but by a drive to promote “progressive” ideology. Not only do we see the claim that traditional anthropology has caused great harm (see above about erasing lesbian and bisexual relationships), but that these papers will rectify that harm. The science is mission-driven rather than knowledge-driven.

Other harm appears to come from the claim that sex in humans is binary, with misguided biologists like me recognizing that humans have but two types of reproductive apparatus: those designed to produce eggs or sperm. I’ve defended that position assiduously while recognizing that there is a very low frequency (about 1/5000) of true intersex individuals.

Overall, this shows the growing tendency of biological anthropologists to distort science for ideological ends. The claim that there are more than two sexes, or that sex is a continuum, is of course made to buttress the idea that individuals who feel that they’re not of their natal biological sex will be harmed by the sex binary. It is a way of providing consolation to nonbinary people (I’m talking about gender, not sex.) That idea bogus, of course, but it’s these well-meaning but careerist scientists—those who infuse their “findings” with ideology—who do the real damage.

And of course I make no comment about the other papers in the contents that I haven’t looked at.