this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Posted previously with lengthy discussion. I'll copy my comment here again:
If you want more of an explanation, see this recent comment of mine showing that even for people who want to redefine sex to not be gamete-based, they still acknowledge the reality of the gamete binary.
Isn't gamete also only one aspect of what constitutes the sex? What do you do of the sexual phenotype for example? See this article about a multimodal modelisation of sex. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.01.26.525769v1.full.pdf
That's an attempt to redefine sex. Which is all well and good and part of the scientific process. It's not going to be adopted in the field of biology though, because then talking about sex across the animal kingdom becomes incoherent. Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes addresses that paper directly:
Why do you think this paper is more correct than the other? This paper seems to be locked on a single definition and says everything else is wrong because it does not follow this definition.
Personally, I find it very intellectually unsatisfying because you can have a individual with male gametes but with a female phenotype, and this definition says, this individual's sex is without a doubt 100% male. It seems the main benefit is not questioning a historical definition, which fits well with conservative opinions. There's clear evidence on many other subjects that this can slow down or block science (ex: tobacco, climate).
Because it fits the narrative they are selling.
That's it. You're out of the tautology club.