this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2026
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[–] powerstruggle@sh.itjust.works -2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

One of those papers gets to the heart of your confusion and is interesting to consider, but first:

You're confused about what determination means. It's not cyclical, please read and understand

Your other link isn't saying what you think it's saying (https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/ideology-versus-biology). I'll start off by noting that it agrees with me:

Within the scientific community, Sun notes, Parker’s gametic definition of biological sex was generally accepted

It's also frequently incorrect (unsurprising since the article was written by a PR person), "binary definitions of biological sex fail to account for roughly 1.7 percent of the population according to one estimate" is false and relies on work from a deeply unserious person, Anne Fausto-Sterling, who got called out on her bullshit and said she was being "tongue-in-cheek" and "ironic".

But this is the real claim from that link:

Variations in genes, chromosomes, and internal and external sex organs are often called disorders in sex development in the medical community. I think that’s wrong in many cases. It’s just natural variation

It's not actually disputing the sex binary. It's basically a dispute about the term "Disorders of sex development" vs "Differences of sex development". So it doesn't disagree with me, though the question of "disorder" vs" difference" loops back to your confusion.

You're confusing the various meanings of the word "should" (or supposed to, or take your pick of terms). It can be used descriptively or prescriptively. You're saying that incorrect prescriptive use invalidates descriptive use, and that's wrong.

Using this interpretation, it would be ridiculous to define a human empiricaly around the fact that they are “supposed” to have feet at the end of their leg,

Humans aren't defined that way. Someone missing a foot is still human. You have the definition the wrong way around and complaining that it doesn't make sense, when in fact it doesn't make sense because you're thinking wrong.

A completely non-teleological definition is that sex is defined by what structures one has in their body that are required for production of one gamete type that are not required for production of the other gamete type.

[–] Binette@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

For the first link i am sorry, i confused my pubmed links in my copy tray: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34096131/

I read the text debunking second link. The author writing this is more concerned with the usefullness of the gamete size definition for us than the actual definition of it.

As I’ve mentioned before, the recognition of the gamete size binary—the so-called “flattening”, has in fact been enormously productive in biology, for it’s given us not only an explanatory basis for sexual selection (which itself explains a ton of biological phenomena), but also enables us to make predictions about how parental investment affects behavior (e.g., why female seahorsea rather than males are members of the sex with colorful adornments).

Flattening it has never been useful to this. Knowing people's sexual characteristics as a whole instead of just figuring out which gametes should be produced is more helpful

Another case of semantics vs actually understanding what the authors are saying. They argue that since they acknowledge that they called the hyena "female" that they recognise the sex binary. They were actually calling the hyena female because the wider scientific community calls them that, not because they believe it is. It's a bad faith argument.

The author keeps also talking about ideology and, in tfe end, mentions how the paper got through because of DEI. Like seriously???? That's not how DEI works 😭

Your claim about ASRM is quite disengenuons i feel. Saying that medical doctors are "non-biologists" disregards their education in biology and anthropology.

Either way, my point is that there are biologist that have contested it.

Then if you were talking beforhand about the sex determination mechanism, then you'd be off topic. My argument has nothing to do with how the body determines it's sexual function, but simply the end result, as you say it. The sex determination process is a process that, again, doesn't have a strict set of rules, other than, at best, the patterns that we observed and used as norms. Sex determination doesn't "fail" because, on it's own, it doesn't have any goals. We only say it has a goal to explain things easily, but concretely, it just does stuff

For the havard link, I want to empasise: you say that it wants to dispute the terms "disorder" and "difference". But this is exactly what we're arguing about. Just put in another context.

The paragraph on Fausto-Sterling is also not helpful. You didn't even reply with what she said, so why can't I asume she was just being ironic about it? Like what are you even talking about?

You're confusing the natural extention of the thesis of the author for their thesis: sex is not binary. I want you to not only undrestand their argument as to why it isn't, but also recognise that a significant amount of biologists are against your claims. Here is the paragraph directly against what you're saying:

Sun finds Geoff Parker’s gametic explanation of biological sex, published in 1972, to be the most useful—yet it too is incomplete. Parker suggested that sex is defined by the size of the reproductive cells present in each individual. That is, males produce smaller gametes (sperm) while females produce larger gametes (eggs). However, Sun emphasizes that this definition does not account for individuals that produce no gametes at all or those that produce gametes that are not fully viable—that is, intersex individuals.

My point isn't that humans are defined this way by the general population. But if they were the fact that people without feet at the end of their legs would be proof that humans cannot be defined with that, the same way that sex can't.

Your non-teleological definition is slightly beter at explaining what you're getting at, but contains quite the contradiction.

If by "stucture", you mean everything that is directly invoved in the creation of the gametes, then I can just show someone that doesn't have ovaries or testes. No organs in their body are creating them, so that person has no sex?

Edit: I forgot that chromosomes aren't sexual characteristics, stictly speaking. Here's another example.

If by "stucture", you mean that including the rest of the sexual characteristics, then someone that has traits of two different structures is both sexes? One could just argue someone with ovotesticular syndrome was organised around producing small gametes, while another could argue that they are organised around the production of large gametes.

edit: i said teleological when i meant the opposite