[appreciatorBus]

You didn’t read the article.

There are two developmental pathways for sexual reproduction: - one produces small mobile gametes - one produces large immobile gametes

There can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism in different species ends up on one pathway or the other, there can be plenty of variation in how an individual organism on either pathway develops, and there can be plenty of variation in how an individual on either pathway behaves. But in sexually reproductive organisms, there are only two pathways.

A male who wants to obey stereotypical feminine stereotypes in behaviour and dress is free to do so, but it doesn’t make him any kind of female, or a different kind of male.

[SubiculumCode]

No biologist is an essentialist for long. Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you ou define sex by the specific definition of gametes. The author is not wrong within that limited scope. But, what really matters is the phenotype of sex, which is not binary, is highly overlapping, and is a complex developmental phenomenon.

When people get all up in arms being anti trans, they are not getting up in arms about people not respecting the gametes... They are getting up in arms because they don't like it that the expression of sex phenotypes is heterogenous, overlapping, and scary, and that makes their small minds feel funny. Because they want to pretend that the world can be categorized into simple boxes that alleviate their anxiety, and gives them a sense of control. No, they don't even fucking know what a gamete is, for the most, and we sure as hell didn't know 200 years ago.

If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes, fine. But that is a small thing. It's a definition that has little relevance. All the phenotypic variability in the expressed biology, phenotypic expression that depends on multifactorial developmental processes that can go in any of a billion different directions, that, while informed by sex chromosomes, are also affected by other non sex chromosomes genes, and also from variability in environmental exposures, which can affect the timing and dosing of sex hormones during development that actually DIFFERENTIATES thr biology? This article, and your perspective, only finds solid ground by limiting what biological sex encompasses to such a small piece of territory, that ceding that kingdom loses nothing meaningful, certainly not in how bodies are made, how sex is expressed and lived in, and to what matters in shaping their lives, personalities, who they feel akin to, and everything else. Have the gamete, who gives a shit? Get it?

[rdinkel]

> Sorry, the author makes a good argument that there are only two sexes if and only if you define sex by the specific definition of gametes.

This definition of sex is fundamental. It's the only one that applies across all sexually-reproducing species.

> They are getting up in arms because they don't like it that the expression of sex phenotypes is heterogenous, overlapping, and scary, and that makes their small minds feel funny.

They probably just disagree with the bizarre and false claim, made so often in recent years for reasons of ideology rather than fact, that humans can change sex and that there are medical interventions that supposedly make this possible.

[Terr_]

> If you want to define biological sex as only being the gametes

Compare to: "If it burns diesel, it's a truck, if it burns gasoline, it's a car. Thus, there are only two kinds with no overlap, easy peasy."

[phs318u]

Are humans as simple as cars though? And why does sexuality get represented by the energy source n your analogy? Why doesn’t sexuality get represented by other characteristics? Perhaps because “there’s only two kinds - sedans and pickups” sounds a little silly?

[appreciatorBus]

It’s much more fundamental than that.

A better example would be how many axles a road vehicle can have to be considered a road vehicle.

You might reasonably conclude that the number starts at one and essentially goes to infinity and you’d be right.

But somewhere, deep in academia, some critical theorists are going to get upset that you’ve excluded zero and excluded the all the real numbers. They are going to call this oppression, and they’re going to invent a theory that says “actually vehicle axle identities exist on a spectrum that includes zero and all the real numbers, irrational numbers, etc.” if you give them long enough, they will also tell you if you don’t consider a vehicle whose axle count is an imaginary number, then you are imaginary axle-phobic.

Out here in the real world it’s very obvious that vehicles can’t have half an axle or 4.29 axles.

And the point is not because you want to exclude or oppress any road vehicles, it’s simply that being able to count the number of axles is a useful categorization for humans who work with road vehicles, so it has to be possible to say how many there are in an objective sense, in the real world.

Similarly, knowing which of the two sexes an individual belongs to does not tell you everything about that individual, but it definitely tells you a few things that are very useful in policy, law and custom.

It’s one thing for a man to put an a dress, it’s quite another for us to allow the law to consider that by putting on the dress he is now the weaker sex.

[defrost]

> Out here in the real world it’s very obvious that vehicles can’t have half an axle or 4.29 axles.

Yeah, I'm thinking you don't have much exposure to real world trucking and lift axles at all.

It's not uncommon for heavy load truck trailers to have axles that are only dropped to the road to take up a heavy load and are retracted for lighter and no loads to extend the lifetime of tyres and bearings.

Operationally, over their road time, the number of axles in contact with tarmac becomes fractional.

If you're going to make sweeping claims about "the real world" it's best to be across all those pesky actual edge cases.

[Terr_]

The fictional speaker in quotes is supposed to be saying something silly, yes, and the "easy peasy" is to convey their overconfident naivete.

[More detail in reply to sibling-comment]

[SubiculumCode]

There are plenty of sedans that run diesel, especially in Europe, but even in America.

[Terr_]

Correct, perhaps was being too subtle and ran into Poe's Law. [0]

I'm saying that their attempt to reduce a human-categorization question to just-gametes is the same kind of stupid and incomplete as trying to reduce another vehicle-purpose question to gas-vs-diesel.

> “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

-- H.L. Mencken.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

[appreciatorBus]

> makes their small minds feel funny. Because they want to pretend that the world can be categorized into simple boxes that alleviate their anxiety, and gives them a sense of control.

Ah the classics!

“Everyone who disagrees with me is stupid”

If that is literally the only reason you can comprehend that someone doesn’t buy this ideology hook line and sinker, then you are the one with the small mind.

I have spent the last several months learning everything I can, and not just about trans, but about the academic undercurrents like queer theory, and of course about the concept of sex in biology.

Until earlier this year, my assumption was the trans rights was just gay rights 2.0 and that seemed pretty fine to me. I was aware that there was controversy, but I paid a little heed. Like you I assumed anyone who was fighting it was just a small minded bigot. Eventually, the good people would prevail and the world would go on.

But then I started actually listening to what trans activists and queer theorists were saying. And then I started reading from people with a wide variety of thoughts.

I came out the other end pretty much aligned with J. K. Rowling:

Wear whatever clothes you like.

Sleep with whoever will have you.

But sex is real and immutable in humans, and this has real consequences for policy and law that cannot be ignored in pursuit of a utopian fantasies of a world where everything is a spectrum and all categorization is interpreted as oppression.

[SubiculumCode]

If you want to talk about science, read scientific academia, not activists or liberal arts majors. Science. You can pick that one part of myb aragraph out but ignore all that I wrote about biology. that is your choice.

[phs318u]

You didn’t read my linked article. And you are still trying to shoehorn an entire spectrum of biological expression which is a function of chromosomes, genes, hormones, fully or partially developed sex organs and secondary sexual characteristics, into two buckets - which are really just two “blessed” combinations of the above characteristics.

The thing about reality is that it persists no matter how stridently one denies it.

[appreciatorBus]

> which are really just two “blessed” combinations of the above characteristics.

Nope. Not what I said at all. Nothing I said in any way related to the idea that some combinations were “blessed”. Merely that there are two pathways. Individuals may travel those two pathways in numerous ways, but until someone discovers a third gamete, there are only two pathways.

> The thing about reality is that it persists no matter how stridently one denies it.

Very true! No matter how many drugs or how many surgeries or behaviour changes, reality persists - males in dresses are still male, females in suits are still female.

[phs318u]

You sir, are no biologist.

[joenot443]

Which part of his comment are you disagreeing with when you say that?

[phs318u]

The part where he’s chosen to ignore all the physical developmental factors that contribute to how sexuality is expressed in the body and focus solely on gametes in order to fit the world into a preconceived notion of “male” and “female”.

I’ll give an analogy. Male and female are to biology as orbitals are to nuclear physics. A really, really useful shorthand. But they do not describe actual physical electrons “orbiting” a nucleus. Don’t mistake the shorthand for the reality. Scientific shorthand is generally not useful for reasonably discussing edge cases.