The first article is specifically talking about gender AND sex, and to reconsider our conception of both. It is quite relevant. You are technically turning phenotypes into binary. Again, look at your model and ask “Who is this helping?”. It’s helpful to those that want to impose a strict binary, not those that require nuance. Also, Zachary dubois has a PHD in biological anthropology: https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/anthropology-faculty/all/zdubois. You’re straight up lying now
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? Imposing a binary on other people, especially children. “Your body is organized around producing small/large gametes, but it is not functional, so we’ll fix you by making you closer to something that works, whether you like the side-effects or not”. It wasn’t usefull for me, wasn’t usefull for intersex people, and will not be usefull for others in the future.
Again for the hyenas, that is not the point of the author. Plus definitions can be expanded, not just overwritten.
The people in that comitee are people that have worked in the medical field, including a medical doctor, a sociologist and a psychiatrist. The ASRM has reason to believe it is accurate as well, and should consider it.
That takedown of Fausto-Sterrling is arleady bogus. It calls LOCAH a non ambiguous sexual condition even though it affects hormones to an abnormal degree. Speaking again on intersex rights, the usefulness of treating LOCAH as intersex would be to let the children decide what treatments and effects on their body they want. When it comes to hormones even, it is assumed that the child wants effects alligned with their ASAB without asking them about it or by presure. Been through that myself. It is therefore useful to consider LOCAH as an intersex condition.
Not only that, yeah her claim about 5 sexes is tongue and cheek. It was meant to disprove a model. You gotta show contradictions in order to disprove it. So yeah, absurd claim are gonna come out. Like “therefore, there are 5 sexes”. It’s a critique of the current model, not her actual beliefs. The text is more about how intersex people are fit into these boxes without considering their opinion on how should they keep it. Anyone framing it as “she believes there are 5 sexes” is caricaturising what she is trying to say, and extremely bad faith for a scientist to do.
The guy responding to her work has also a pretty interesting track record in academia himself. He’s also a TERF. Makes you wonder why he would take such position… Are you gonna argue that there is an academic conspiracy to cancel him or something? Again, this is a tongue in cheek question, and I assume the aswer is “no”. https://en.everybodywiki.com/Colin_Wright#Leaving_academia
Again, with the organs that appear in one sex or the other, your own definition contradicts that. Since again, someone that is “organised around producing large/small gametes” CAN and HAVE HAD organs and traits from the opposite sex (ie MGD and other intersex hormonal conditions). Therefore, all sexual organs are able to appear in one sex and not the other.
I know that ovotesticular syndrome isn’t that. I’m just saying if both gonads don’t work, which sex should this person be? If you base yourself of of other sex characteristics, then your point is mute, per the last paragraph.
As we enter this complex conversation, we recognize that binary categories based on reproductive biologies or gender identities may make sense to include in analyses in order to address certain questions in human biology.
So even according to the paper, sometimes binaries are fine. Also, speaking of Fausto-Sterling, it cites her brainrot uncritically:
Although categories may be useful for addressing major issues of exclusion, feminist scientists have critiqued the concept of binary sex (e.g., Fausto-Sterling, 1993)
And have you read her paper?
For biologically speaking, there are many gradations running from female to male; and depending on how one calls the shots, one can argue that along that spectrum lie at least five sexes-and perhaps even more.
There is zero indication that it’s tongue-in-cheek when reading it, it’s been cited seriously in literature such as your link, and a good faith reading of it leads one to think she believes in 5 sexes. I mean come on, this is just nonsense. She’s a clown.
Zachary Dubois has a PhD from the Department of Anthropology but doesn’t list it specifically as a degree in biological anthropology in his CV. I don’t think it’s worth quibbling over whether he “counts” as a biologist, but I wasn’t lying and at worst was too dismissive. Either way, he’s not the person to look to for fundamental definitions in the field of biology.
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? […]
Again, it’s not my definition. It’s the common definition used in biology, and is very useful for science. That some people can misunderstand it and try “fixing” people using faulty logic is immaterial.
And hopefully this helps clear things up for you. From the same author I linked to before (PhD Evolutionary Biology):
Such mixed sex development is exceptionally rare because evolution has ensured developmental mechanisms to make sure this is so. A growing embryo will be wasting resources if it develops organs and tissues that cannot contribute to future reproduction. Novella’s paper on mice (above) is actually about a gene that appears to be involved in cross-sex development suppression. Put simply, our development of reproductive anatomy is absolutely not a pick-‘n’-mix of organs and tissues from male and female parts that might just result in enough of one’s sexed parts to enable an individual to be fertile and reproduce. Instead, it is a tightly regulated cascade of genetic events along a pathway that puts all development effort into male or female development. That is why pretty much everyone ends up as unambiguously male or female even when significant development conditions occur. Male and female development are mutually antagonistic.
Very rarely, and for reasons not well understood, the brakes may come off and tissue development that is normally suppressed starts to grow. It is a bit like a cancer where the normal growth regulating mechanisms fail. And indeed ovotesticular disorder is associated with malignancies of these tissues, so are often surgically removed soon after diagnosis to prevent lethal cancers.
What is not observed is an individual who is fertile both as a male and female. If fertile at all, it will be as one sex. The cross-sex tissue is typically under-developed. No human is a true hermaphrodite (in the biological sense as being able to reproduce as both a male and female). Unfortunately, medicine also uses the term “true hermaphrodite” to describe people with these very rare disorders. Do not be fooled by this equivocation.
So despite this cross-sex development, can we still say what sex a person is? That is a complex question as we are dealing with disorders that are so rare and with so many different causes and outcomes that a blanket statement is not easy. Doctors publish individual case reports where it may be clear a person has undergone predominately one sex development and in which case we may be confident in calling someone male or female. It is a matter of debate if there exist individuals where sex development is so mixed that such a classification is inherently meaningless. But even if some individual were truly sexually ambiguous, they would still not be a third sex.
The first article is specifically talking about gender AND sex, and to reconsider our conception of both. It is quite relevant. You are technically turning phenotypes into binary. Again, look at your model and ask “Who is this helping?”. It’s helpful to those that want to impose a strict binary, not those that require nuance. Also, Zachary dubois has a PHD in biological anthropology: https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/anthropology-faculty/all/zdubois. You’re straight up lying now
Do you know what your binary definition has been usefull for? Imposing a binary on other people, especially children. “Your body is organized around producing small/large gametes, but it is not functional, so we’ll fix you by making you closer to something that works, whether you like the side-effects or not”. It wasn’t usefull for me, wasn’t usefull for intersex people, and will not be usefull for others in the future.
Again for the hyenas, that is not the point of the author. Plus definitions can be expanded, not just overwritten.
The people in that comitee are people that have worked in the medical field, including a medical doctor, a sociologist and a psychiatrist. The ASRM has reason to believe it is accurate as well, and should consider it.
That takedown of Fausto-Sterrling is arleady bogus. It calls LOCAH a non ambiguous sexual condition even though it affects hormones to an abnormal degree. Speaking again on intersex rights, the usefulness of treating LOCAH as intersex would be to let the children decide what treatments and effects on their body they want. When it comes to hormones even, it is assumed that the child wants effects alligned with their ASAB without asking them about it or by presure. Been through that myself. It is therefore useful to consider LOCAH as an intersex condition.
Not only that, yeah her claim about 5 sexes is tongue and cheek. It was meant to disprove a model. You gotta show contradictions in order to disprove it. So yeah, absurd claim are gonna come out. Like “therefore, there are 5 sexes”. It’s a critique of the current model, not her actual beliefs. The text is more about how intersex people are fit into these boxes without considering their opinion on how should they keep it. Anyone framing it as “she believes there are 5 sexes” is caricaturising what she is trying to say, and extremely bad faith for a scientist to do.
The guy responding to her work has also a pretty interesting track record in academia himself. He’s also a TERF. Makes you wonder why he would take such position… Are you gonna argue that there is an academic conspiracy to cancel him or something? Again, this is a tongue in cheek question, and I assume the aswer is “no”. https://en.everybodywiki.com/Colin_Wright#Leaving_academia
Again, with the organs that appear in one sex or the other, your own definition contradicts that. Since again, someone that is “organised around producing large/small gametes” CAN and HAVE HAD organs and traits from the opposite sex (ie MGD and other intersex hormonal conditions). Therefore, all sexual organs are able to appear in one sex and not the other.
I know that ovotesticular syndrome isn’t that. I’m just saying if both gonads don’t work, which sex should this person be? If you base yourself of of other sex characteristics, then your point is mute, per the last paragraph.
From the paper:
So even according to the paper, sometimes binaries are fine. Also, speaking of Fausto-Sterling, it cites her brainrot uncritically:
And have you read her paper?
There is zero indication that it’s tongue-in-cheek when reading it, it’s been cited seriously in literature such as your link, and a good faith reading of it leads one to think she believes in 5 sexes. I mean come on, this is just nonsense. She’s a clown.
Zachary Dubois has a PhD from the Department of Anthropology but doesn’t list it specifically as a degree in biological anthropology in his CV. I don’t think it’s worth quibbling over whether he “counts” as a biologist, but I wasn’t lying and at worst was too dismissive. Either way, he’s not the person to look to for fundamental definitions in the field of biology.
Again, it’s not my definition. It’s the common definition used in biology, and is very useful for science. That some people can misunderstand it and try “fixing” people using faulty logic is immaterial.
And hopefully this helps clear things up for you. From the same author I linked to before (PhD Evolutionary Biology):