Sex as a Spectrum

Contextual Quote

"Heather Heying writes that “sex isn’t assigned at birth. Sex is observed at birth” and that this has fundamental implications for reality and how we live within it:

"Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).A woman is an adult human female. Girls become women. Girls do not become boys or men any more than they become fairy princesses or dinosaurs. Fantasize all you want—that is the stuff of childhood, and childhood is the stuff of humanity. But do not confuse fantasy with reality, else you may make decisions based on fantasy that will haunt you for the rest of your life. And do not expect the adults who are paying attention to pretend that your fantasy is real life."

- Heather Heying [1]

Description

Heaather Heying:

"Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen).

A woman is an adult human female. Girls become women. Girls do not become boys or men."

(https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/whatdogirlsdo?)

Characteristics

Heather Heying:

" Sex isn’t assigned at birth. Sex is observed at birth.

Sometimes, in fact, sex is observed before birth. Most commonly, this happens via ultrasound imaging of the fetus. Less commonly, it is possible to look at the karyotype—a visual representation of fetal chromosomes, organized roughly by size—which has been obtained through the usefully diagnostic but somewhat risky mid-pregnancy procedure known as amniocentesis.

All mammals have “Genetic Sex Determination,” which means that we have chromosomes dedicated to starting us down the path of maleness or femaleness. They are called sex chromosomes, in contrast to the autosomes which comprise most of our genetic makeup, and which do not vary predictably by sex. A tiny number of mammals—the echidnas, and the duck-billed platypus—have several pairs of sex chromosomes. The remaining several thousand of us mammals, however—everything from bats to koalas, kangaroos to whales—all the many thousands of other species of mammals have just one pair of sex chromosomes in each of our cells. Humans are mammals, so we have Genetic Sex Determination. Humans are neither echidnas nor duck-billed platypi, so we have just the one pair of sex chromosomes.

The number of chromosomes in each of our cells varies between species. Ocelots and margays have 18 pairs of chromosomes, for instance, while most other cats have 19 pairs1. Most of the great apes, including chimps, have 24 pairs of chromosomes, but humans have only 23. That is: humans have 22 pairs of autosomes, and at that 23rd position: one pair of sex chromosomes.

Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in almost all of our cells. Gametes—sex cells—are a notable exception to this2, however, having only 23 chromosomes each, instead of 23 pairs. If you’re female, your gametes are called eggs; if you’re male, they’re called sperm. If successful (as the vast majority are not), an egg or a sperm will combine with a gamete of the other type and make a new life. As such, so as not to create a new life with double the chromosomes of their parents, gametes have half the chromosomal complement of somatic (body) cells: one copy of chromosome 1, one copy of chromosome 2, etc., all the way down to chromosome 23.

At chromosome 23, females have two nearly identical looking chromosomes, which we call XX. Males, in contrast, have two chromosomes at that 23rd position which are wildly different in size; this we call XY, the diminutive chromosome being the Y.

The gametes of female mammals, therefore—the eggs—all have Xs at that 23rd position. No matter what, a female mammal contributes one of her Xs to her offspring’s genetic make-up.

By comparison, the gametes of male mammals—the sperm—are variable at that 23rd position. For any given male, roughly half of his sperm will contain an X, which, if combined with an egg, will produce a daughter (XX). The other half of his sperm will contain a Y which, if combined with an egg, will produce a son (XY)3.

The determination of what sex a baby is is usually based on an easy observation at birth, but this isn’t always the case. Intersex people exist, as do people with yet more subtle ambiguities in their phenotypes. The conclusion being imposed on us, far less by trans people than by Trans Rights Activists (TRAs), is that any exceptions to normal function, any fuzziness at categorical borders, proves that we’ve got it all wrong, and that reality is a social construct. It’s not, though. While laws are indeed social constructs, and lawmakers can clearly be captured by ideology, ideological capture does not change the underlying reality. Sex is observed at birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics, or sex can be observed before birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics in utero, or by looking at a karyotype."

(https://naturalselections.substack.com/p/whatdogirlsdo?)

Typology

Colin Wright:

"There are 4 main types of arguments activists use to undermine the sex binary:

1. Sex expansionism

2. Sex eliminationism

3. Sex as a cluster concept

4. Sex as a multi-level phenomenon

Sex expansionists argue that there are more than two sexes, usually based on there being multiple sex chromosome combinations beyond XX and XY, like XXY, XYY, X0, etc. See also Fausto-Sterling's "five sexes"—males, females, merms, ferms, and herms—that try to include various DSDs as their own unique sexes. This argument confuses how human sex is genetically determined with how sex is universally defined (based on gametes).

Sex eliminationists argue that sexes aren't real categories and there's just continuous variation of maleness and femaleness. This is the common "sex spectrum" concept, which is often portrayed as bimodal. Lots of issues here, such as failing to specify units on the X-axis of the spectrum.

The sex cluster camp avoids the limitations of a 2D "spectrum" by insisting that what we call males and females are actually cluster concepts; that is, you determine how male and female someone is by taking a composite score of various sex-related traits like chromosomes, hormones, voice pitch, facal hair, breast size, etc. This is probably best viewed as a subset of sex eliminationism.

The multi-level (or "multivariate") sex group share similarities with the eliminationists in that they don't believe sex is any one thing. But they don't really believe sex is a spectrum, either. Rather, when you ask them about a person's sex, they will respond with, "what level are you referring to?" The levels, in their minds, include genetic sex, gametic sex, hormonal sex, morphological sex, behavioral sex, and brain sex (i.e., "gender identity"). They believe you can be "genetically male" but "hormonally female," or "morphologically male" yet have a "female brain." They also believe that each of these "levels" exhibits its own spectrum. This is the favored concept used by proponents of "gender-affirming care." This is based on the idea that different "levels" of an individual’s sex can be misaligned and could, in theory, be reconciled through various interventions.

These are all absurd and desperate attempts to deny the basic fact that sex is universally defined according to the type of gamete an individual can or would produce."

(https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1698505419310690556)

Discussion

Colin Wright:

"There are two main argument's typically offered in defense of the claim that sex is a non-binary attribute that exists on a “spectrum.”

The first is based around the existence of intersex conditions — people with intermediate or indeterminate sex characteristics. This argument claims sex cannot be binary if some individuals have sexual anatomy that appears to fall somewhere between male and female. This argument is frequently illustrated with figures that plot intersex conditions along a continuous axis that ranges from “typical female” to “typical male”—as with this widely reproduced figure from the 2017 Scientific American article, “Visualizing Sex As a Spectrum.” [2]

The second argument typically offered in defense of the sex-spectrum model is based around secondary sex organs and characteristics. Secondary sex organs encompass all elements of our reproductive anatomy—apart from the gonads, which are the primary sex organs. Secondary sex characteristics, on the other hand, are sex-related anatomies that differentiate during puberty, such as enlarged breasts and wider hips in females; and facial hair, deeper voices, more musculature, and broader shoulders in males. Because the distribution of these secondary sex characteristics can overlap between males and females, it is argued we should therefore view biological sex as a continuum.

This way of thinking about biological sex is now frequently presented to children in school using such cartoon illustrations as The Genderbread Person (shown below). In the purple box labeled “Biological Sex,” you’ll notice the terms “male” and “female” are not used. Instead, terms denoting the idea of sex as a continuous variable—“male-ness” and “female-ness”—are chosen. Many of the traits listed as defining one’s degree of male-ness and female-ness are secondary sex organs and characteristics: genital morphology, body shape, voice pitch, and body hair. Conspicuously absent from this chart is any mention of primary sex organs (gonads, i.e. ovaries and testes in the case of females and males, respectively) or the typical functions associated with sex, such as menstruation in females and ejaculation in males. There is also no mention of eggs or sperm (produced by ovaries and testes, respectively).

Both of these arguments—the argument from intersex conditions and the argument from secondary sex organs/characteristics—follow from fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of biological sex, which is connected to the distinct type of gametes (sex cells) that an organism produces. As a broad concept, males are the sex that produce small gametes (sperm) and females produce large gametes (ova). There are no intermediate gametes, which is why there is no spectrum of sex. Biological sex in humans is a binary system.

It is crucial to note, however, that the sex of individuals within a species isn’t based on whether an individual can actually produce certain gametes at any given moment. Pre-pubertal males don’t produce sperm, and some infertile adults of both sexes never produce gametes due to various infertility issues. Yet it would be incorrect to say that these individuals do not have a discernible sex, as an individual’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of evolved reproductive anatomy (i.e. ovaries or testes) that develop for the production of sperm or ova, regardless of their past, present, or future functionality. In humans, and transgender and so-called “non-binary” people are no exception, this reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female over 99.98 percent of the time.

The binary distinction between ovaries and testes as the criterion determining an individual’s sex is not arbitrary, nor unique to humans. The evolutionary function of ovaries and testes is to produce either eggs or sperm, respectively, which must be combined for sexual reproduction to take place. If that didn’t happen, there would be no humans. While this knowledge may have been cutting edge science in the 1660s, it’s odd that we should suddenly treat it as controversial in 2020.

That above-cited 99.98 percent figure falls short of 100 percent because of the roughly 0.02 percent who are intersex. (The actual figure is estimated to be about 0.018 percent.) But the claim that intersex conditions support the sex spectrum model conflates the statement “there are only two sexes” (true) with “every human can be unambiguously categorized as either male or female” (false). The existence of only two sexes does not mean sex is never ambiguous. But intersex individuals do not demonstrate that sex is a spectrum. Just because sex may be ambiguous for some does not mean it’s ambiguous (and, as some commentators would extrapolate, arbitrary) for all."

(https://quillette.com/2020/06/07/jk-rowling-is-right-sex-is-real-and-it-is-not-a-spectrum/)

Biologically, Sex <is> a binary

Colin Wright:

"“Why Sex Is Not Binary.”

The argument is that because some people are intersex—they have developmental conditions resulting in ambiguous sex characteristics—the categories male and female exist on a “spectrum,” and are therefore no more than “social constructs.” If male and female are merely arbitrary groupings, it follows that everyone, regardless of genetics or anatomy should be free to choose to identify as male or female, or to reject sex entirely in favor of a new bespoke “gender identity.”

To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.

In humans, as in most animals or plants, an organism’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of reproductive anatomy that develop for the production of small or large sex cells—sperm and eggs, respectively—and associated biological functions in sexual reproduction. In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time. The evolutionary function of these two anatomies is to aid in reproduction via the fusion of sperm and ova. No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex “spectrum” or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary."

(https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex?s=r)

Not everyone can be neatly categorized as either male or female

Colin Wright:

"Sex is binary.

There is a difference, however, between the statements that there are only two sexes (true) and that everyone can be neatly categorized as either male or female (false). The existence of only two sexes does not mean sex is never ambiguous. But intersex individuals are extremely rare, and they are neither a third sex nor proof that sex is a “spectrum” or a “social construct.” Not everyone needs to be discretely assignable to one or the other sex in order for biological sex to be functionally binary. To assume otherwise—to confuse secondary sexual traits with biological sex itself—is a category error.

Denying the reality of biological sex and supplanting it with subjective “gender identity” is not merely an eccentric academic theory. It raises serious human-rights concerns for vulnerable groups including women, homosexuals and children."

(https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex?s=r)

Human-rights concerns for vulnerable groups

Colin Wright:

"Denying the reality of biological sex and supplanting it with subjective “gender identity” is not merely an eccentric academic theory. It raises serious human-rights concerns for vulnerable groups including women, homosexuals and children.

Women have fought hard for sex-based legal protections. Female-only spaces are necessary due to the pervasive threat of male violence and sexual assault. Separate sporting categories are also necessary to ensure that women and girls don’t have to face competitors who have acquired the irreversible performance-enhancing effects conferred by male puberty. The different reproductive roles of males and females require laws to safeguard women from discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. The falsehood that sex is rooted in subjective identity instead of objective biology renders all these sex-based rights impossible to enforce.

The denial of biological sex also erases homosexuality, as same-sex attraction is meaningless without the distinction between the sexes. Many activists now define homosexuality as attraction to the “same gender identity” rather than the same sex. This view is at odds with the scientific understanding of human sexuality. Lesbians have been denounced as “bigots” for expressing a reluctance to date men who identify as women. The successful normalization of homosexuality could be undermined by miring it in an untenable ideology.

Those most vulnerable to sex denialism are children. When they’re taught that sex is grounded in identity instead of biology, sex categories can easily become conflated with regressive stereotypes of masculinity and femininity. Masculine girls and feminine boys may become confused about their own sex. The dramatic rise of “gender dysphoric” adolescents—especially young girls—in clinics likely reflects this new cultural confusion.

The large majority of gender-dysphoric youths eventually outgrow their feelings of dysphoria during puberty, and many end up identifying as homosexual adults. “Affirmation” therapies, which insist a child’s cross-sex identity should never be questioned, and puberty-blocking drugs, advertised as a way for children to “buy time” to sort out their identities, may only solidify feelings of dysphoria, setting them on a pathway to more invasive medical interventions and permanent infertility. This pathologizing of sex-atypical behavior is extremely worrying and regressive. It is similar to gay “conversion” therapy, except that it’s now bodies instead of minds that are being converted to bring children into “proper” alignment with themselves."

(https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex?s=r)