Sex

This page is about sex. I devote a page to gender here.

Definitions

Let’s start with a few definitions. Here are some lifted from the Oxford dictionary:

Sex  Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

Male Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.

Female Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

What does the science say?

As far as most people are concerned, the above definitions of male and female as biological categories are likely to be uncontroversial and I suspect they would be as surprised as I once was to learn that they are hotly disputed. A 2015 article in the science journal, Nature, entitled Sex Redefined, informs us that,

The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that.

More surprisingly, the article claims that,

Many transgender and intersex activists dream of a world where a person’s sex or gender is irrelevant.

I’d say that’s a highly questionable claim. If transgender activists would like gender to be irrelevant, why switch from one gender to another? Why not campaign to make gender irrelevant instead of doing something that reinforces it?

The article was publicised by at least one science blogger I used to respect, namely PZ Myers

biology verifies the existence of a continuum of sexual differentiation. Drag this article out next time someone tries to argue that biology supports their simplistic version of a discrete sexual dichotomy.

That’s really bad advice, actually, PZ, because we all know that the words ‘women’ and ‘men’ are globally understood in terms of our respective roles in the reproductive process (regardless of whether we fulfil those roles or not) and that understanding isn’t actually going to change whatever biologists say – particularly when what they say is offered as a narrative to validate a particular moral conclusion.

A nice debunking by a biologist who isn’t trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes can be read here:

Is Sex Really a Spectrum? Tricia Frasman

Oh, and here’s a helpful explanation from Dr Emma Hilton (originally found here).

Males and females do not represent opposing ends of a spectrum; males and females are qualitatively, not quantitatively, different, from early embryonic development. Advocates of “sex is a spectrum” (very few of whom are biologists) argue that intersex conditions represent a “middle ground” between male and female states and thus, an intrinsically ordered spectrum is formed. There is no such intrinsic ordering. Except for the vanishingly rare and clinically traumatic few, intersex conditions affect either males or females and are categorised within the relevant sex. For example, an intersex female with an enlarged clitoris is not somehow “more male”, nor does she “have a penis”. This is an utterly regressive and male-centred view of biological sex.

Regarding the assertion that biological sex is a social construction, the words “male” and “female” have a very clear biological meaning, not up for postmodern deconstruction. They do not refer to social categories, but to the meat, gristle and bones of human anatomy and scientific study. Trying to change what “male” and “female” describe scientifically not only erases female sexed reality but also the tools we use to study that reality. The words I use in my job aren’t assigned “meaning” beyond physical understanding, and they are key to conveying that understanding.

 

Women’s oppression

While the news that there isn’t a “simplistic sexual dichotomy” has been greeted enthusiastically by many in the trans lobby, the fact remains that throughout history and across cultures, the social construct that is gender and all that it entails has been “assigned” according to our customary understanding of biological sex, i.e male for those carrying sperm and female for those carrying eggs. It is on the basis of that understanding of biological sex that women have been systematically oppressed and marginalised and the cultural expectations of gender roles is part of that oppression.

Those who, in keeping with cultural norms that value male children more, abort female fetuses, those who denied women the vote, the right to drive cars or pilot planes, who demand that women should be submissive, should forgo careers for marriage and motherhood or cover themselves from head to toe or have their genitals mutilated at puberty, those who objectify, harass, rape, traffic and kill girls and women… those people see us only as female and aren’t interested in what points on the psychological or social gender spectrums we fall. Those who are, by virtue of being the sperm-carriers, members of the oppressor class and who can detransition back to being a member of that class, do not know what being female in that globally understood sense actually means or feels like.

A woman can identify as a man if she likes but it won’t necessarily stop a rapist identifying her as a woman.

 

The sex binary matters!

Another crucial point is included at the end of Rachel Hall’s article:

So what are we to do? Reject the very ideas of sex and gender and stop trying to classify people? Reject the dichotomy? Of course not! The binary classification is sufficient for most practical purposes and is very useful. In medicine, the knowledge that a patient is male or female helps to guide diagnosis and treatment. We know that men and women have different responses to medications and different incidences of various diseases.

Unfortunately, that last sentence about medicine and disease comes across as an incidental afterthought. Thankfully we have David Page, Director of the Whitehead Institute and professor of biology at MIT, to tell us more about this aspect in his TEDx talk from 2013, called Why Sex Really Matters. Page tells us that, contrary to what most scientists still believed at the time of his talk, it is now known that the Y chromosome is not just functioning in the reproductive organs but throughout the body. The once widely promoted idea that human beings are 99.9% identical from one individual to the next is in fact only true if all the individuals are all men or all women. Comparing the genome of a man to that of a woman shows they are only 98.5% identical, which has huge implications for health care. Anatomical difference between men and women cannot account for the dramatic differences in incidence and severity of certain conditions and diseases as they affect men and women.

A  short article about David Page’s research can be read here: Every Cell Has a Sex: X and Y and the Future of Health Care

 

Thus, there is more than one reason why the concluding sentence to the Nature article is wrong as well as abysmally crass:

If you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask.

 

 

An article by Robert Jensen entitled Critical questions need to be answered in transgender debate argues – correctly, in my opinion, – that:

an internal subjective experience doesn’t change physical realities in the world. For example, people who are dangerously underweight sometimes report an internal subjective experience of being overweight, but we don’t embrace that as reality and encourage them to diet.

(Emphasis added)

More peak trans…

My peak trans experience was enhanced when I got involved in a discussion below a particularly daft Riley J Denis vid, which he has since removed from public view. It was called Are genital preferences transphobic? where I made dozens of what I thought were uncontroversial comments and I was getting sheer lunacy back from somebody who claimed to be a heterosexual man. Whatever he was, one thing I’m sure about was that he was serious ­and not just a wind-up merchant.

In one exchange I mentioned that,

Every human who has ever lived has developed inside a female body, from a female egg fertilised by a male sperm.

He responded with,

Every human who has ever lived has developed inside a body with a womb, or at least some internal structure to house a fertilized egg that will feed it nutrients. That body doesn’t have to be “female.” There is nothing inherently “female” or “male” about a womb, a vagina, testicles, penises, etc. Our current construction of sex is completely arbitrary.

This was probably the first time in my peak trans experience that I really felt I had wandered into the twilight zone and I feel obliged to post the disclaimer that I know not all trans-identifying people share his beliefs. But plenty of those who are active online have expressed ideas that come close enough. I owe a debt of gratitude to this individual for helping me understand what radical feminists mean when they talk of female ‘erasure’. I felt it keenly after engaging with him.

 

 

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