this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2025
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The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women's sport after being born male.

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[–] powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works -4 points 2 days ago

Let me know where you're misunderstanding it and I'll do my best to help break it down!

Sex is binary because there are two sizes of gametes, large and small. Those two are the only options, and thus sex is a binary. In humans, sex is determined by chromosomes, but defined by gamete size. Variations in phenotype and genotype are variations within a sex.

You might be confused by the term "hermaphrodite". It's possible for some organisms to produce both gamete sizes! But sex is still a binary, because you'll notice they produce both sizes. Some animals can even change sex during their lifetimes or have their sex determined by temperature while they develop 🤯 It's true! But humans aren't like that, we're sexually dimorphic. Our bodies are organized around producing one or the other of two gamete sizes for our entire lives.

Now you might be wondering why we care about defining sex. Why bother? 🤔 The answer is because it's the only defining trait that works across an enormous swath of the animal kingdom! Biology is hard and messy and it's amazing we found such a handy distinction. Some organisms such as fungi have mating types instead of sex, but in anisogamous species we define sex by gamete size because it's the only coherent definition.