Sex Is Real
aeon.co
aeon.co
Schizophyllum:
Some species have many hundreds of these ‘mating types’, and newspapers often report research into this phenomenon under headlines such as: ‘Scientists discover species with hundreds of sexes!’ But, formally, biologists refer to these as ‘mating types’, and reserve the term ‘sexes’ for gametes that are different in size and structure. Why distinguish between these two phenomena? One reason is that the evolution of anisogamy – gametes that differ in size and structure – explains the later evolution of sex chromosomes, sex-associated physical characteristics and much more. But the existence of mating types doesn’t have these dramatic knock-on evolutionary effects.
Intersex:
Many people assume that if there are only two sexes, that means everyone must fall into one of them. But the biological definition of sex doesn’t imply that at all. As well as simultaneous hermaphrodites, which are both male and female, sequential hermaphrodites are first one sex and then the other. There are also individual organisms that are neither male nor female. The biological definition of sex is not based on an essential quality that every organism is born with, but on two distinct strategies that organisms use to propagate their genes. They are not born with the ability to use these strategies – they acquire that ability as they grow up, a process which produces endless variation between individuals. The biology of sex tries to classify and explain these many systems for combining DNA to make new organisms. That can be done without assigning every individual to a sex, and we will see that trying to do so quickly leads to asking questions that have no biological meaning.
> The fact that no species has evolved more than two biological sexes is also a puzzle. It would be quite straightforward to engineer a species that has three, but none has evolved naturally.
This is straight-up wrong, and he attempts to use the nomenclature of "mating types" to dismiss the obvious counterexamples. He's attempting to be some sort of deep thinker about genetics, but he's reaffirming the idea that somehow there's only ever two sexes, which is literally binary gender theory and has already been debunked.
Seriously, do some close-reading. The very first sentence:
> It’s uncontroversial among biologists that many species have two, distinct biological sexes.
Note the word "many" here; not all species, but just some. In other words, many species do not have two distinct biological sexes. They then continue:
> It does so despite the fact that there are no more than two biological sexes in any species you’re likely to have heard of.
Ah, so while many species do not have two sexes, we're not likely to have heard of them. Okay, that's a fair cultural idea, I suppose... And then, suddenly, a one-two punch:
> Not all species have biological sexes, and biology seeks to explain why some do and others don’t.
Wait, okay, so some species have more than two sexes, and some don't have sex at all? This is a confusion tactic, because the very next sentence is:
> The fact that no species has evolved more than two biological sexes is also a puzzle.
We've done it. We went all the way from some species, to no species that we've heard of, to no species at all having more than two sexes. This is a famous rhetorical technique known as Iago's whispers [0]. By carefully restating the original thesis over and over, but gently changing it each time, the meaning of the entire article is shifted.
Now with this discrediting in hand, the author can continue safely down their binary-gender-theory path, writing slapstick like:
> Now imagine if there was a whole species like this, where three different kinds of gametes combined to make a new individual – a sperm, an egg and a third, mitochondrial gamete. This species would have three biological sexes. Something like this has actually been observed in slime moulds, an amoeba that can, but need not, get its mitochondria from a third ‘parent’.
You see, the idea of more than two sexes is now imaginary, relegated to thought experiments. And we see species that are like having more than two sexes, as a simile. But the author's carefully removed the actual physical reality from consideration.
HN rules forbid me from accusing folks of not having read the original article.
If author justified his credentials with more titles, it would be better? If he was a biologist, his paper would stop being sexist in your opinion? Why does it matter?
As for the article itself, it isn't sexist IMHO unless you believe that stating that the biological sex exists and in human case there are two sexes is sexist. If that's so then the most biologists I've met are jest sexists and I should probably call the police and denounce them as petty criminals.
You're right that author contradicts himself in the sentence "The fact that no species has evolved more than two biological sexes is also a puzzle". It's definitely a logical error on the author's side and is plainly wrong, but it's not the main point of the paper.
> stating that the biological sex exists and in human case there are two sexes is sexist.
You got it! Sort of. It's not a problem to use the concept of biological sex, but it's completely wrong to say that humans have two biological sexes. The main problem is in the assignment of chromosomal configurations to sexual configurations; humans have a dozen or so intersex [0] configurations which don't fit neatly into binary gender theory.
And this has real-world consequences. There are many countries which have canonicalized various sorts of human-rights abuses based on the binary theory, mostly by establishing some sort of concentration camps for homosexuals. The author's writing forms a small but real brick in the wall of these camps.
> If that's so then the most biologists I've met are jest sexists and I should probably call the police and denounce them as petty criminals.
This is the error. It doesn't make sense to criminalize sexism, and indeed it's not criminalized in any jurisdiction that I know of. Instead, what's criminalized are specific deleterious pragmatic aspects of sexism: Sexual harassment, genital mutilation, conversion therapy, forced emancipation of trans children, human trafficking. When biologists are sexists, they are usually being reductionist as the author is doing, by minimizing and ignoring the diversity of the real world's biosphere; they are not directly advocating for the harm that is done by other, more hateful people, based on their reasoning.
Also, yes, my priors are that people are 99% racist, 80% sexist, 85% delusionally religious, and 20% fascist; this gives me a weak but steady belief that the typical person I talk to is, in some way, a sincere believer in deeply harmful and falsifiable cultural beliefs. I'm in the USA, for what it's worth; hopefully it's not like this everywhere.
So basically you make an attack ad personam because it is effective way to win the discussion. It is not enough to dismantle his argument, you have also to make him unreliable source of knowledge. For my part, I haven't noticed the little bio, but I know it's a common practice to show a short info about the author under his article. It's a two edge sword, some readers may be impressed, some may feel like you.
> but it's completely wrong to say that humans have two biological sexes
So I guess saying that humans have two arms and five fingers per hand is also completely wrong. You know that due to strange genetic conditions, some people are born with more fingers, etc.? Some people get Down syndrome due to an extra chromosome, but still it's correct to say that humans have 20 chromosomes. It doesn't mean that there are no exceptions and doesn't dehumanize those exceptions.
I believe you're oversensitive in this area, but I guess you already told me why.
I assume that you know about the facts that some humans have fewer than two arms, and some humans have not just fewer than five, but also sometimes more than five fingers [0]. In what way, then, do you hope to show that the facile versions aren't wrong? I think that what you're saying is that it is quite common for human genetics to plan for people to have two arms and five fingers. But it's not universal. We must distinguish between the two, because every time we make a universal claim about humans, we implicitly exclude the humans who aren't covered by the claim. Indeed, intersex folk, polydactyls, amputees, and folks with Down syndrome are all marginalized in our society, and all via this same mechanism of minimization and normalization.
On personal attacks: I've only lost karma in this thread and I'm going to continue losing it; I'm not sure by what means you could imagine that I'm effectively winning.
Generalization is one of the main mechanisms making the communication (language) work. Otherwise one should probably treat every human as an individual, similarly to the Duns Scotus and his haecceity concept.
It's somehow related to the concept of overfitting, you acknowledge existence of the outliers but at the same time you may want to generalize them for the sake of the better generalization...
> On personal attacks: I've only lost karma in this thread and I'm going to continue losing it; I'm not sure by what means you could imagine that I'm effectively winning.
Who cares about karma. What's important is that your comments may encourage some readers to think ;)
> HN rules forbid me from accusing folks of not having read the original article
I see that your indignation makes you read right past me.
I wasn't expressing any disagreement with your post, I was just trying to offer a theory why people would find it questionable. Calling me out in a passive aggressive way that I haven't read the article has no bearing on my previous statement and it only enforces that sentiment.