| > I am implying pointing out that the idea of sex as a discrete variable with two choices in humans is wrong. > the gametes are eggs or sperm ... there is no law of nature that ... there aren't intermediate states for any specific dimension Sorry for butchering your sentence but wanted to respond very specifically. Sex, which is by far not exclusive to humans, has one primary purpose and that is sexual reproduction. And quite a lot there is governed by laws of nature. There are 2 sexes and not 1 or 3; 1 means cloning yourself and that does not introduce sufficient variance to fight against environmental change, 3 partners are combinatorially more difficult than 2 to bring together. Why gametes are dimorphic; sexual reproduction only needs exchange of genetic material, but the initial cell needs tons of other organelles to bootstrap. A process where either gamete can bring any of the organelles is exponentially more error prone and difficult to coordinate. Hence the small gamete having the bare bones mobility machinery to bring the genetic material to the heavier gamete. There is no gamete that's between sperm or egg. Even in super rare species where an individual can change sex (some fish does this) they switch to their sex matching gamete entirely, and don't produce an inbetweener. We can talk about continuity among secondary manifestations of sex, we can talk about fluidity of gender roles etc. and all would be fair game. But we can't call sex anything other than a discrete, binary category without destroying its scientific, cross-species, cross-millions-of-years, universal definition. |
At a bare minimum, you would have to make an allowance for the "third sex" (as you define it) of those who do not produce any gametes. Remember, we are talking about sex in humans, not sex in human gametes. I do not dispute that human gametes are strictly binary; the question is about classifying individuals, for which the binary classification is obviously not absolute, even on the question of gamete production.