Love the article. These silly metaphysical “angel on the head of a pin” debates in support of crushing traditional American culture create Trump voters far more effectively than any campaign speech.
Liberal urban navel-gazers refuse to understand the average American is far more worried about paying the mortgage, educating his or her kids, and avoiding being shot by neighborhood thugs, than whether a transgendered lesbian is “forced” to use the “unigender” restroom.
Please folks - get a grip and address income inequality, the absence of any real inheritance tax, and the national debt.
37
While there are chromosomal and genetic exceptions, these are pretty rare. Would the author also argue that just because many people have trace amounts of ethnic diversity in their heritage that anyone ought to be able to claim to be any race and then receive say Affirmative Action as say a "black" person? I would certainly hope not.
Now let's say that the person in question grew up in the South, loves hip hop and R&B, has lots of black friends, feels most at home in Fubu clothing, and loves to play basketball. That would make them actually black, right? They'd totally deserve all of the Civil Rights protections of an African American, right? No?
What?!?! You mean to tell me that choosing to wear certain clothes or act a certain way or feeling most similar to a certain group of people isn't grounds for claiming special Civil Rights protections?!?!?! Oh the horror! They must be denying the existence of white boys who listen to SoundCloud rappers and hang at the park playing basketball! This is how fascism starts! Someone start a protest!
58
This is scientific drivel. Intersex and transgender are in no way related. One is a physical aberration caused by coding sequences the other is a psychological condition
53
Sex is dimorphic. There are individuals who, for various reasons, have an admixture of the two sexes. Even taking the small step of describing sex as trinary is a gross distortion of these facts. Sex is binary; there is no need to deny that objective reality to uphold the dignity of intersex persons.
43
This whole article is about the foundation over which the government is not not justified to pass a sex identification law. It's not independent, but it's "the reason why" government shouldn't pass it.
Transgender people, believe it or not, are called transgender BEcause they want their gender trans-formed... from the one the were born with, which actually means they recognized their sex and want to change it. That is why It's not called fluid-gender community, but trans-gender.
And of course they want their right to be protected. And they are so just now, as are people who have different nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, language.
These are human rights.
12
Sex and gender identity are not the same thing. So all of this is to say that the White House policies erase INTERSEX people. I am not seeing how those definitions would erase trans people, the overwhelming majority of whom are not intersex and were born unambiguously male or female.
20
For the overwhelming majority of the species Sapiens, sex is binary. The process of development is very complex and multifactorial. Variations occur due to spontaneous mutations, chromosomal crossovers and other errors of chromosomal segregation,etc., exposure to drugs and hormones during gestation or abnormal levels of hormones caused by a metabolic abnormality, etc.,etc.. But individuals with these conditions constitute a very small part of the general population. Nevertheless they should all be treated with the compassionate care, respect and dignity that all members of our species deserve.
University Professors who use these or any other minority group to push a political agenda or climb a Departmental ladder, should be looked at with the same skepticism as any other scientist postulating a scientific theory.
32
Are you one of the professors at Brown who suppressed the publication of Lisa Littman’s research regarding rapid onset gender dysphoria in teenage girls? Science is about empiricism, not about what makes people happy. Brown University failed knowledge-and-reason in its removal of Dr. Littman’s research from its docket.
29
Why does anyone, anywhere, care if someone is female, male, gay, straight or anything in between? As long as no one is hurting someone else, so what? Religion and the patriarchy that governs it has a lot for which to answer. I just don’t see why it matters so much to others. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable and right in their home they have the right to change to a place better suited to them. The same should be true for the most personal of homes, our bodies.
26
Most of the comments about this subject indicate that the readers miss the point of the article. The fundamental argument isn’t whether sex is binary or not but whether the federal government is morally and constitutionally justified in denying the existence of sexually ambiguous people and therefore in denying them the same rights, privileges and protection afforded to other people.
98
@Andy wohl
Andy, the title of this article is "Why Sex Is Not Binary". From the biological and evolutionary standpoint the idea that sex is not binary is nonsensical. This does not mean that sexually ambiguous people should be dened the "same rights, privileges and protection afforded to other people. " On the contrary. Choosing who we identify as is a fundamental right. This however is not an excuse to misrepresent science and make it conform to identity politics.
51
@Andy wohl *It is not a debate about denying the EXISTENCE of sexually anomalous people.* It is a debate about how to conceptualize these anomalies, and sex itself. No one is trying to say these people don't exist, or that they aren't legitimate, or that they lack dignity, or that they ought to be ashamed. It's astounding how this continues to be misunderstood.
25
@Andy wohl There are two different reproductive rights: male and female, impregnator and impregnatee, father and mother. Intersex people have a right to reproduce same as anyone, as whichever sex they have the most ability to produce gametes. No one has a right to choose which reproductive role they perform.
14
I think sexual identity is easy.
Check their DNA.
8
We are all in drag all the time.
8
The article depicts the sexologist John Money as some sort of visionary hero, saying nothing about Money’s infamous sex-reassignment experiment that led to the suicide of his victim, er, “patient.” Google it. (Wikipedia has a good account in its article on Money.)
19
Gender is not binary. (Neither is sex.)
4
In the passport and numerous other documents we are checked as male or female. Why is this information important to anyone who had absolutely nothing to do with sexual life, like the border check point attendants? Anyone who does not take part in your sexual life should be completely disinterested, and from that point of view do not need the information, where grouping wouldn’t really identify you anyway. Having your arbitrary sex in the passport and a number of other documents serves no purpose and the information shouldn’t be there in the first place. As far as restrooms go, do like the people in Tahiti. How much of your body is visible is a human creation and varies from country to country.
10
Trump wants to regulate and monitor down to how we expel our body fluids. He must not have anything better to do. I am sure he will appoint one of his Mar A Lago friends to be the Director of Potty Police.
4
Words have meaning. Until they don't. Binary is the word in question. Actually, it's really not in question, but the writer would like people to divert rational thinking from objectivity reality to pseudo pop science supported by left leaning social constructs. Regardless, people will continue to believe what they believe. No one one is going to change their ideology/religion. Moreover, no one really is interested in or cares about addled, tired banal rant..
13
In humans as in every mammal, there are usually two sexes. This has evolved to ensure diversity: you cannot just multiply your own individual, you need to contribute half your genome and your partner the other half. Two sexes are the simplest way to do it.
However, the two sexes rule is NOT mandatory.
In the so called slime mold, a modest animal looking like fungus and living on rotten tree trunks, there are about 600 different sexes, defined by three different genes, A,B,C for which there are about 10 variants each. A slimemold stuck to its trunk has nevertheless the obligation to cross with a mate which is different for each of the three A,B,C variants.
Imagine the complexities of dating among slimemolds!
Now, just figure how difficult it would be for the Chief of these slime molds (lets call him President Trunk) to enforce sexual orthodoxy!
59
It certainly is a large step back in time. As a sexual health and gender identity educator it saddens me to think our leadership is misdirecting the country. In 2012 we produced this resource on transgender which is the #4 LGBTQ Film on Amazon Prime. I would suggest thatThe Department of Health and Human Services talk a https://www.ranker.com/list/best-lgbt-movies-on-amazon-prime/ranker-stre...
4
People don't get to fill out forms before conception selecting their gender and genitals (or their parents, or their attractiveness, or their country of birth...) So let's just accept them the way they are. If you'll try it you'll find it doesn't hurt at all.
17
I hope NYT finds another biologist, someone who disagrees with Fausto-Sterling, to write a rebuttal of sorts. The reason we are here today, any of us, is because there are two sexes in H. sapiens. Male and female. A sperm from a male fertilizes an egg from a female, a zygote is produced, in utero development proceeds, and a baby is born. Sometimes babies are born intersex, but, like so much in biology, they are outliers. Sex in H. sapiens is binary. Gender is a different story. It's something humans have created, more or less. Of course, there is some biology to it, as there is to everything human, but environment/culture arguably plays the much greater role. The sad thing, tragic really, about what is happening today with this conflation of sex and gender is that so many people, especially so many children and adolescents, are being told or led to believe that because their gender, or gender expression, doesn't fall neatly into one of the two (in most cultures) human-decided this-is-what-you-should-be "male gender" or "female gender" boxes, they must change their sex, which is impossible. Why not expand these two genders, abolish them entirely, instead? Isn't that what feminism has been about, more or less? Or was about in its earlier days, at least? Do whatever you want to do, be whoever you want to be, etc., regardless of sex. Why mess so much with the human body?
123
There have been a few of these articles lately, with scientists pointing out that sexual development can throw up interesting variations. But what they never explain is how this relates to transgender people. Are trans people more likely than the general population to have intersex or developmental conditions? If so, is trans a developmental disorder? If not, then how do intersex conditions have any bearing on the argument?
96
Perhaps for lack of room, the author hasn't added the expression of genes, controlled by other factors (epigenetics). We know even less about this, but know it is a massive subject.
An example is androgen insensitivity, which causes a person with standard male genes to develop partly female, often with breasts and vagina but no uterus, and sometimes with genitals that are partly male and partly female. Thus, apart from the variations she mentions here of genes and of competition among genes, some can just not work in the usual way.
Typically, when there is a substantial class of individuals for whom a proposed law is a denial of due process, because it just does not fit facts, then the law fails a court challenge. That is not because it is wrong as to most, but because it is wrong as to enough to be unjust.
3
Yes, but the individuals described in this article are the tiny minority of people who are hermaphroditic, being born with biological features of both sexes, that rightly or wrongly could objectively be characterized as "birth defects". Transgender people, however, are mostly those whose biological features are not ambiguous at all, but who do not fit in or identify with the social constructs of masculinity and femininity which consist of social roles and gender cultures that are extremely entrenched, having evolved over millennia.
Sadly, until these ossified cultural mores and prejudices decline and wither away, it will be easier for transgender folks to take the radical step of changing their bodies than being themselves in their own natural bodies as gender non-conforming individuals; and it's easy to see how people can become confused about this as I did back in the day as a feminine, bisexual cross dressing man who identified with girl culture growing up. But I have reached the conclusion that it is incontrovertible that I am a biological human male and that what I subjectively think about that has absolutely no bearing on that immutable biological fact. So it is really our entrenched, seemingly immutable, cultural norms and attitudes that have come down to us from the ancient patriarchal and caste ridden past that should change instead of us having to resort to crudely altering our bodies to gain social acceptance.
18
Although he was talking about businesses when Trump signed an executive order that for every "new regulation" 2 must be rescinded. In the same way I wonder which 2 would come off the books if this nonsense gets approved. Suggestions?
2
Biological facts end up being the correct way to show that an act by the trump administration to discriminate against the trans community can adversely affect and harm others, especially the intersex population.
This article clearly shows the administration cannot base their discrimination on science because it is impossible to break our society into only 2 categories XX/XY.
Perhaps those wishing this open discrimination against trans people should try the religious track, since the hyper religious are the ones demanding the action.
Or maybe they could just get off their high horses, admit that trans people are people, follow the golden rule, and not discriminate against anybody.
5
@Timothy Sharp Title Nine is sex-based, and is still written as sex-based. Obama can’t change the meaning of language because he sees its “fit”. You may not like Trump. I don’t like Trump. But the reality Is that transgender girls and women are males. Transgender people have a responsibility to create their own safe spaces, shelters, prisons, and sports teams. Females should not be denied access to their sex-based institutions because a transgender person who is male takes their space.
14
This is more about the comments than the biology lesson in the article.
What I would like to understand is this bit about safety. If a person who outwardly dresses and looks like the traditional understanding of a gender is forced to use the bathroom of the style of what’s under their clothes, that does not match their look, who is at more risk?
If a male looking person enters a communal bathroom marked for females, I am concerned. And the same for a female looking person enters the communal male bathroom. If an outward looking person enters bathroom that appears to be correct and goes to use the facilities, I am unfazed.
Who will police this policy? Will there be hired guards that will look under clothes to determine if you are following the rules?
Stuff and nonsense.
It is somewhat unclear to me why we are having this discussion. If we are to continue to divide people into categories by some arbitrary convention, then make it so no one has to police the stalls.
7
All we need to do is look at evolution.
If sex was non-binary we should see this in the vertebrate evolutionary design. It is not. The birds, mammals - yes, even the bees (and plants).... have two sexes. There is no third gender. This is not to say that there are no random mutations leading to developmental changes however these only serve to confirm the binary rule. I am amazed that a biologist would teach our children otherwise.
16
If we're to focus on science, let's put medicine first: for most of us, our sex is observed — not "assigned— at birth. This is essential because it tells us what kind of medical attention we will need throughout our lives. Yes, a minority of people have intersex conditions. Why not put the focus on their medical needs (at birth and throughout life), rater than exploiting their experience to suggest that there is no dimorphic sex at all? Thinking of medical needs, it's disingenuous to claim that the binary is — rather than complicated by anomalies — nonexistent. And many intersex advocates understandably take umbrage at their bodies being used to support a notion that grown men can "become" women, due to an "inner feeling," which is based on stereotypes and even misogyny. A body that shows characteristics of both sexes reinforces rather than erases the notion of a binary; the binary it does challenge is not between male and female but between norm and anomaly.
24
I swear, the current Administration is trying harder and harder to recreate those old 1950s early-reader school books: Jack and Jill. White. Dad with his briefcase and pipe, and Mom mopping the floor of the footprints from her five or eight children. Ah, paradise.
When there are no people in any drawing or any picture or any advertisement or any place of prominence or any representation of any other race, culture, ethnicity, or gender, then and only then will all the (MAGA) citizens of this land be, finally, content.
4
Many commenters here are bashing the science. Whether you believe in the scientific evidence here of biological diversity as a reason to accept transgenders in our society, you could easily accept the notion that there is diversity in nature, just as there is diversity in societies’ gender constructs, period. It’s science as metaphor. Of course, Trump wouldn’t know a metaphor if it hit him over the head. Or subtlety. Some people here miss the scientific evidence of hormonal effects on the brain before birth, which means that indeed, it’s all in your head, literally.
I have a close friend who changed from female to male. It was like watching a blurry image come into sharp focus. He doesn’t call himself trans. He says his body finally confirmed to his identity.
I think about this issue a lot because I think even in the LGBTQ community there is a lot of misguided nonsense about gender politics. (I am gay) So, I decided to discuss this on neutral territory with my veterinarian. Yep, they see intersex dogs and cats. No big deal. Who judges them? Sometimes my female dog humps me. No big deal.
And take a look at how foppish courtiers were in the 17th and 18h centuries, you manly men, and ask yourself if you could handle sharing a bathroom with them.
Get over it.
8
One group seems to be most undesirable. Males with no ambiguities are sometimes labeled as having 'toxic masculinity'..apparently a condition needing to be excised.
No wonder sexual dysphoria is so prevalent.
3
This article lacks more than a scientific base.
The author is making a special case ( people born without a neat type of genitalia ) as general case for humanity ( it's not), or a plausible case for transgender community ( not even close ).
Are people in the transgender community because they have mixed genitalia/chromosome type?
No.
What lacks here, apart any concrete evidence of the number of cases with mixed genitalia ( 1 in a thousand, in a million in a 10 million cases? ), is the statistical background.
Such proposition as the one stated that because there are some rare cases, than there is no general case is logically ridiculous. You are advocating not for inconclusiveness of genitalia type but for their mix, a mix of types, so you admit there is a type characterizing female and one for male ( also true for genetic chromosome). So there's no fluidity of sexuality.
Second of all, let's take different case with the same approach used here.
Siamese twins.
Now, because seldom some people aren't born with separated bodies, then a thing like a single person, an individual doesn't exist.
That also implies that transgender community doesn't exist, because as a community is made of individuals. an since there isn't a possible definition of individual, thus there's no such thing as community, for transgender and for all the others.
That's where such preposterous foundation will lead us all, to the meaningless and absurdity realm.
22
what is the truth? People born transgender can live as they are but all this situation of changing their bodies into what they are not is completely artificial.
You always will find a man even though it has been changed into a woman, it shows in spite of how many hormones it takes.
The strenght of a man remains, for example: can he changed into a woman play a tennis championship as such? No way.
As for the respect deserved to any human being, of course that everybody must be oneself.
6
Those of low mentality cannot tolerate the challenge that new ideas make on their tiny, closed minds.
5
If you ascribe to Darwinism, what is the adaptational advantage to a person who is intersexed?
People are born, and have always been, by heterosexual reproduction. A queer male and a queer female (queer used to encompass all non-straight possibilities) could agree to engage in heterosexual reproduction for the sole purpose of child birth.
Yet that would mean that they are acting unnaturally just to reproduce.
Is an intersexed person who chooses to use chemicals and/or surgery to transition, taking a rational action? It is self-sterilization: A Darwinian specimen that chooses to not reproduce in order to feel complete and not pass on the genes.
5
The political battle about 'gender' is as unnecessary as it is ridiculous.
There is no such thing as 'gender fluid'.
The distinction is that a person who, at any time in his life, produces sperm that can fertilise an egg, is a man. A person who, at any time in her life, produces eggs that can be fertilised by sperm, is a woman.
How people dress and what erotic behaviour they express does not change that. A man in a floral dress may look like a stereotypical woman but, even castrated and carrying six pounds of silicone gel on his chest, is still a man. A woman in a pinstripe and sporting a moustache may look like a stereotypical male but, even spayed and mastectomised, is still a woman.
That should not matter at all, except when seeking to reproduce. Until we get rid of the stereotypes, both for appearance and social role, and attain equality of life and opportunity for both sexes, any pretence is harmful.
Flying false flags, always delays progress.
Many psychologists have incorporated the term 'dysphoria' instead of 'disorder' for politically correct reasons. They impose on society the responsibility for a type of mental illness, caused precisely by the stereotypes that so-called 'transgender' people strive to maintain.
If all this were a real medical issue, there would not be such a variation of incidence as low as 0.05% of the entire population of the Nederlands, for example, to more than 0.5% in Massachussets.
It is all cultural, and as such it should be treated.
16
Disappointed to see the Fausto-Sterling is playing politics. Anomalies does not change the reality that human sex is dimorphic.
9
Ok, let’s go with your argument. Human sexuality is binary, male or female. Does that mean the people who do not fit neatly into that category simply don’t exist, magically evaporate, vanish? Or do you propose that some authority simply force everyone into one or the other category? And who would that authority be (you, the federal government)? Does the individual have any say in their own identity?
4
Deviation from the norm matters in Trump world and whitetrashville. Gender rules apply and biology be dammed. Things are going downhill so fast that tomorrow will bring hand-to-hand combat at the boarder and institutional incarceration for gender conflicted babies. Christianity will be mandatory along with the return of home economics and cooking in high school. Plastic surgery will be sewing synthetic hymens into women that are facing pelvic floor inspection to meet the requirments to marry.
4
Reading this piece I cannot but help arrive at the conclusion that this is only typical of the insincerity that has now become intrinsic to the mainstream leftist ideology post US President Donald Trump-- and it is unfortunate. In the first case, I sincerely doubt that the caricartures the author erect here, and chose to battle with, represent the complexity that pervades many of the layered conservative views about the topics of sexuality and society. Simply put, few 'conservatives' (if any) accord to the manifestly simplistic definition of a hardcore binary sexuality (of course, save the die-hard lucidly delusional mob that never cease to fuel news outlets like the new york times in their bids to propel deceptive nonsense). The author would take far more credit than is due for the piece by seeming to suggest a new discovery of 'hermaphrodite individuals'. Second, it is significantly disingenuous for the author to here frame the terms of this debate as purely a biological one, ignoring that what really is at issue for the vast majority of conservatives is the almost facist militaristic approach groups like the neo-lgbt movement adopt to advance their claims. I wish him/her good luck in his/her quest for social acceptability (if that is the purpose of the piece). But blatant battling with non-existent strawmen, as the author undertakes to embark on here, serve to do little more than disgust.
4
So let me get this straight.. the same problem who have a problem with how people gender identity, also believe that there is some imaginary God for whom they dedicate their entire lives to and that the Earth was actually created in 7 days? Mmmkay..
4
If Trump attempts this new draconian policy, American doctors, nurses and hospitals should refuse to assign any sex at birth, and persons filling out the census should refuse to list sex. This monstrous evangelical push that Trump panders to will put lives, jobs, futures, and children in danger. Trump should have to list his own sex as "dangerously predatory male."
5
If classification is impossible, then we wasted a lot of time on Linnaeus in high school.
4
Linnaeus classified organisms by species not by sex. What the Department of Health and Human Services is arguing is that people who do not fall neatly into one of two categories are not entitled to the rights and protections afforded by the federal government to those who do and in fact the Department wants to define them out of existence.
6
Prevalence of intersex conditions is notoriously difficult to estimate. The higher numbers come from methodologically flawed studies and are often cited by politically invested advocacy groups.
Imprecise and inconsistent definitions are the biggest problem. Barring the mutation or (in)activation of a gene, sex is determined by the presence of a Y chromosome. The addition of an X to an XY karyotype still produces a male phenotype, albeit one that sometimes—sometimes—presents slightly “feminized” features (e.g., smaller testicles) and slight cognitive impairment. The addition of two XX chromosomes causes significant health problems. Similarly, an X0 or XXX karyotype still produces a female phenotype. These individuals do not have ambiguous genitalia and identify as their “natal” sex at the same rate as XY males and XX females.
Our best guess of the number of *true* intersex individuals is 0.018% of the population, and even that might be high.
LGB activists engage in this practice as well, citing figures as high as 5% when the most comprehensive, rigorous study (conducted by the NIH) estimated roughly 1% homosexual and 1% bisexual with more bisexual females than males and more homosexual males than females. (FWIW I’m gay; I’m not pushing a conservative agenda.)
Transgender estimates are another thing entirely. Definitions very from study to study—even person to person. Frankly, it’s a mess, and it’s somewhat meant to be thanks to the influence of postmodernism.
12
Ori Turner, a delightful 11-year-old, and her mother, Kristina Turner, presented a TEDx Talk about Ori, who was born with two XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes. At one time, Ori used the name Alex and prefers the pronouns they and them. Kristina said that "raising an intersect kiddo isn't any different than raising any other kid. It's raising the rest of the world that can be a challenge." As I watched Ori talk about her life, I saw a boy and I saw a girl, but mainly I saw a happy, confident, loving human being and a parent who trusts her child to make decisions in their best interests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRzbVxQVJWA
1
What an astoundingly fallacious argument. Yes, many different forms of sexual anomalies exist. But they occur in no more than 1% of the population (by the author's own figures--see http://www.isna.org/faq/frequency). The rest of the population, 99+% of it, fits cleanly into a bimodal distribution of normal males and females in terms of sexual anatomy (as well as 'gender identity'). To say that anomalies such as intersex undermine the reality of a sexual binary is as silly as claiming that the existence of people born with with something other than 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 arms, 2 legs, etc. undermines the normality of having 10 fingers etc.
It's ironic and very telling that the author cites John Money, the infamous inventor of the concept of "gender identity" (prior to whom the term 'gender' was never used to refer to sex). Money is best known for his oversight of the sad case of David Reimer. A botched circumcision during infancy left Reimer without a penis. Under Money's direction, and based on his strong blank slate theory that 'gender identity' is completely learned, Reimer's parents had Reimer's testes surgically removed around age 3, gave him hormone treatments, and attempted to raise him as a girl named Brenda. It didn't work. Reimer ultimately committed suicide in 2004. Money also forced Reimer and his twin brother, during childhood, to engage in simulated sexual play, with Reimer playing the female and his brother the male. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
15
Intersex is a birth defect in the same way that extra fingers, cleft palate or autism are birth defects. Should we discriminate against people born with birth defects? No. Should we change society to define all birth defects as variations of normal? No.
10
Sex may not be completely binary, but it is not a spectrum. Intersex people are about 1.7% of the population, the rest of humanity is categorically male or female. Stop obscuring biological categories that are the basis of oppression for a large group of people (females).
Can we all stop treating intersex people like some sort of third sex, and using intersex people to validate misogynistic and homophobic identity politics? The genderists and trans community needs to stop erasing biological realities just to validate their internal sense of ‘feeling’ like a woman or man. Can we stop conflating sex and gender?
Acting like sex doesn’t exists may make you feel woke, but what about the practical feminist implications? You don’t get to choose your sex, only your internal sense of gender identity. The problem isn’t that we should be able to choose whatever sex we are (physically impossible), but that we need to stop forcing gender identities to be inherently connected to one sex or the other when they are completely socially constructed.
18
@Marisa Arana actually it is a much smaller percentage than that.
6
The author takes a very rare phenomena - and nowhere mentions the frequency of it - and then proceeds to build a weak argument for her agenda.
BTW, the Intersex Society of North America puts the frequency of such births at between 1 in 1500 to 2000. I.e., the author tries to build a case on a .0005% basis. Which means the other 99.9995% destroy her illogical case.
Have you ever noticed that gender studies teachers are not biologists? In fact, to my observations, always women, too. Isn't that some kind of inequity??
6
@Jus' Me, NYT That's true, but the riposte to this point that we need to have tolerance for all, including transgender folks, is important.
2
Forcing binary categories on sex isn't about health, or truth, or bathroom etiquette. It is and always has been about power and control--just look at the psychological caracteristics of those who are most concerned about dictating it.
7
XXY XYY XO Chromosomes likely occur at a rate of .0001 within our population. Someone correct me, I'm probably wrong, but the prevelance of chromosomal deviation away from either XY or XX in our population is hella low. I'd go as far to say that stating the deviation is "less common" is an exaggeration of exponential porportions. Why exaggerate so much?
3
This presentation of the different layers of sexual differentiation is science. It is so clearly written that it is accessible to non scientists as any article about, say, politics.
But here, the beef is scientific: it describes reality.
Ignoring this reality is a political statement, made by your President and, surprisingly, by many readers of the New York Times in the associated comments.
7
In 2002 the NCBI responded to Dr. Fausto-Sterling’s claim of intersex people making up 1.7% of the population.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12476264
“Abstract
Anne Fausto-Sterling s suggestion that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7% has attracted wide attention in both the scholarly press and the popular media. Many reviewers are not aware that this figure includes conditions which most clinicians do not recognize as intersex, such as Klinefelter syndrome, Turner syndrome, and late-onset adrenal hyperplasia. If the term intersex is to retain any meaning, the term should be restricted to those conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female. Applying this more precise definition, the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%, almost 100 times lower than Fausto-Sterling’s estimate of 1.7%.”
Start with science, go from there. It’s an emotional issue that is being ramped up into a political issue to, well surprise, discredit Trump.
Trump plays fast and loose with the facts on Twitter. Playing fast and loose with the facts under the sheen of academia is no less devious.
The bigger question: why are we politicizing everything?
12
This conclusion would follow only if one is a nominalist. But pathology implies teleology, and it's the directedness of the various 'layers' of sex to sexual difference that allows us to recognize them *as sexual layers in the first place. To turn the layers of sex into biological legos which can be (re)assembled in a variety of equally 'normal' ways ignores the fact that the very phenomena being appealed to are (a) sexual (b) mis-assemblies, pathologies of sex sometimes requiring medical treatment.
5
There are people here who are either not really reading the article or missing the point. As the author and scientist explains, brain sex is yet another layer. That is where transgender people enter the equation, their brain sex is yet another variation. They are not appropriating or exploiting the status of intersex people. Perhaps the author could've made that point more clearly: transgender people are neurologically intersexed, and there are a lot of them because the brain is a fragile organ.
6
@AF evidence for "brain sex"? Our brains and brain chemistry will obviously reflect our thoughts which are heavily conditioned by our socio-cultural experiences.
7
@AF there is absolutely NO evidence that brains are sexed, or that transpeople have the brain of the opposite sex. Fausto-Sterling makes a reference to “brain sex” here in the context puberty and sexual maturation, and the hypothesis that prenatal hormones somehow determine an oppositely sexed brain is an unproven conjecture. (The same hormone fluxuations have been proposed to explain homosexuality. Also unproven.)
8
@AF Even if brain sex is real, it doesn’t affect reproductive rights aka sex, which is determined by the body’s reproductive potential. Trans women could have female brains, but they still have male repro rights not a right to be pregnant.
3
Sexuality is just another dimension of the human condition which is being demonized by the regimes of fascist thinkers. Routinely placed in this group are the disabled and anyone who does not conform with that which assures the power and dominant control of the self-anointed "leadership." It is as old as the ages and as modern as the development of ever more subtle and ever more destructive means of exerting such control ( or worse) over those being subjugated to the arbitrary evil of their "masters." We will never learn and ultimately it will lead to the total annihilation of the planet we are meant to share in harmony. Heaven help us all.
3
Trump's (probably Pence's) view of gender is like the Nazi's view of eugenics--a little science can create horrible mistakes. Having just finished the book, Toxic Bodies, gives me another view of the issue. DES was given as a growth hormone to animals--it's a synthetic estrogen. Eventually, we got enough information to know that DES caused cancer, infertility in future generations and intersex babies.
Chemical companies are still making these growth hormones, but they're smarter now. When there are complaints, they claim there's no scientific evidence, which is correct because they do everything to make sure there are no studies.
Considering Americans keep getting bigger and bigger, maybe we should be extremely suspicious of "growth hormones" in our food. And because synthetic estrogen has been identified as a problem that reveals itself in future generations--we'd do well to get it out of our food system.
We might also consider that it's not the transgendered who are violating God's will; it's the chemical companies.
6
Ms. Fausto-Sterling, in order to promote an agenda that normalizes the abnormal, would have the reader believe that those of us who subscribe to the principle of binary sexuality are troglodytes who are out to massacre anyone who is not heterosexually male or female . All animals, including humans, are male of female. This is the natural order, and it is necessary for reproductivity and continuity. That there are aberrations, that there are people who are unfortunately born with conditions that do not conform to the natural order is tragic. This is true whether one is born with a cleft palate, with a hump back, with spina binfida, with cerebral palsy or any of hundreds of tragic aberrations that deny that personal full normalcy. This does not mean we should not love, respect, hire, educate, shelter or feed such people. At the same time it does not mean that we should turn a blind eye to the fact that their conditions are hardly normal. LGBT are exceptions to the natural biological order. Love them Yes. Lionize them and call them normal No.
10
What this has to do with being gay or transgender? The science on display here, who has what chromosomes seems to suffer from political abuse. Repeating the numbers without actually understanding to prove virtue. Why is being binary, your word , treated as an abnormality.
Do they call them hermaphrodite anymore? Does reciting chromosome counts define them. I understand some chose surgery to be male or female. Some want to stay the same. Some had surgery a decision made by their parents they disagree with later in life. Are you saying these decisions for surgery can be decided by a chemical test?
Thank you for this.
Gender is complicated. Sex is also complicated. People who view it as binary are not working from Science. They are working from religion.
The lunatics are running the asylum.
3
Anne Fausto-Sterling is an emeritus professor of biology and gender studies at Brown University.
“It was not until the late 1980s and 1990s that scholars recognized a need for study in the field of sexuality. This was due to the increasing interest in lesbian and gay rights, and scholars found that most individuals will associate sexuality and gender together, rather than as separate entities”
“Although doctoral programs for women's studies have existed since 1990, the first doctoral program for a potential PhD in gender studies in the United States was approved in November 2005”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_studies
“The relationship between research and social activism has always been integral to the interdisciplinary field of Women’s and Gender Studies.”
https://las.depaul.edu/academics/womens-and-gender-studies/about/Pages/h...
Men and women coexisted for thousands of years prior to the advent of “gender studies”. The rapid population growth of the globe over those many years would indicate that men and women understood how to differentiate and identify a “man” versus a “woman”.
Makes one wonder about the true agenda of the recently created “gender studies” field of study.
6
@rfmd1
Brown University's Gender Studies Department succumbed to pressure to remove Dr. Lisa Littman's study on the reasons for increased prevalence of transgender ID-ing youth: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/brown-university-criticized-over...
6
Maybe a chromosome test would solve the confusion. I have to wonder about someone claiming "science" and believing there is more than one sex. Try telling that to a game warden when you harvest a buck on a doe tag.
4
See the Ted Talk by Wellesley President and physician Paula Johnson in which she says every cell is either male or female. Seems contrary to the claims here.
7
That is incorrect. Hermaphrodites are as much an error as harelips, spina bifida, and congenital sterility. That hardly makes them an 'expanded spectrum'. As for the LGBT crowd, their wiring is crossed and, since their problems express themselves behaviorally rather than biologically, we do expect them to conform to society at large and behave themselves. Crazy is not cool.
5
@Jenn Notwithstanding their misguided views, how are they misbehaving?
1
@Sue Sponte:
There is the case of Dana Rivers, celebrated transwoman activist, who is currently on trial for the murder of a lesbian couple and their teenage son. This case is local to you in Sacramento, you should know about it?
1
Anyone who thinks that transgender women can never pose a threat to "cis" women should read about "Karen White" and her sexual assaults on "other" women.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/sep/09/sexual-assaults-in-women...
12
Anyone who wants to understand should read Washington Post reporter Petula Dvorak's ongoing series about a child who, at age 3 and 4, was clearly transgender. She's been following her since at least 2012. https://live.washingtonpost.com/transgender-120518.html
That child is lucky to have her parents. They've fought for them all along and did all the things that should have been done. That child is lucky to have a community of schools, teachers, and childhood friends.
This is not the norm and it saddens me so that we can pretend, as a society, to be advanced and enlightened, and be so willing to be cruel and deny science on the grounds that "God doesn't make mistakes." The perception that "it" is a mistake, is erroneous in and of itself. There are historical records of the existence transgender going back to antiquity.
What is truly infuriating, however, is how political and unequal our system of education has been all along, in what it inculcates, what it doesn't, and why.
Knowledge shouldn't be feared, nor should it be treated as suspect in conflicting with other beliefs. A sound education gives people tools to work both out for themselves.
Sex isn't binary. Most things in life aren't but, increasingly, we are treating everything as if they are...
--
'Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking' https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-2ZW
3
@Rima Regas "clearly transgender" because her parents are conditioning him/her to behave in a certain way. "Clearly transgender" because he/she has an affinity for what are socially considered opposite gender cultural activities like baseball or playing with dolls? We used to call that being a tomboy etc. Honestly, on a scientific level, how do such affinities relate to biological sex?
9
@Rima Regas the parents manipulated the poor child Rima. You wouldn't let a 4 year old child pick what they are going to wear to play in the snow would you? And no, knowledge should never be feared but it has become weaponized. Facts that do not contribute--or which weaken--a given theory are discarded. I've read several accounts of there being a "transgender DNA." There isn't even a genetic basis for homosexuality much less transgenderism.
3
People who think that gender is strictly binary are likely those who embrace a binary vision in other aspects of life. There is only black and white, no greys. There is only God and Satan, and you fit into only one of those camps. I think it is a lazy approach to living, because you don't have to examine much.
2
How often do these "mixed levels" happen? And are they responsible for all the delusional people who keep claiming that they are the opposite sex, and expect government to humor them?
3
“It has long been known that there is no single biological measure that unassailably places each and every human into one of two categories — male or female.”
Said no honest scientist ever ...... Darwin respectfully disagrees.
8
There can be a fine line between the tolerance of difference and the promotion of that difference. There is indeed a backlash against the agenda of the "gender fluid" lobby. This agenda was moved forward strongly in the Obama years and many people just let it pass on the grounds that we should tolerate differences. But now that we have seen parents who simply refuse to recognize that their kids were born with standard - not mixed genitalia - and who say "I'll wait until it tells me what gender it is", a lot of folks who would tolerate differences have gotten uneasy over the pushiness of the gender-confused. In fact, many are downright disgusted by what they see. This is the fault of the "gender fluid" folks. They pushed their agenda too hard and are now paying the price. They had made great strides in achieving tolerance for their differences, but they pushed it too far. They aren't likely to get back the lost ground any time soon.
5
@Norm Weaver yes, somewhat skewed and outlandish for sure and part of what is bringing the left into disrepute as a puerile, gentrified milieu.
5
Honestly, I don't understand why some of these commentators are so insistent that there be only 2 categories. Why does it matter? So there are shared restrooms. Who cares? I admit that it can be challenging to learn to refer to an individual as "they" but it's no different then learning any new vocabulary word.
I've spent my whole life stifled by the vary narrow gender expectations placed on women. I find this national discussion of gender norms to be incredibly liberating.
Why is it so important to you that there are only 2 categories? Is is simply because you feel more comfortable with clearly defined expectations? Just trying to understand this perspective.
49
@Me Actually it doesn't matter and we should have a culture of tolerance which should also include not stereotyping people and cultural traits as male and female, creating social pressure and undue influence that encourages people, particularly youth, to crudely fix their bodies. In short, if gender is a social construct, it should be deconstructed, not reinforced with aspects of transgender ideology that do that.
22
@Me Exactly: Why does it matter?
Simple categorization perpetuates simple and inadequate responses to the needs of individuals. I'm pretty sure that people know which goods and services suit them.
3
One of my first nursing positions was in a hosptial that did a number of surgeries on children born with both male and female sex organs. If I remember correctly there was usually a committee that worked with the parents [physicians including a psychiatrist, social workers, a member of the hospital ethics committee, often a chaplin]. I remember at least one set of parents disagreeing about which sex should be retained. Over the years I often wondered was the right choice made for the child. Reading the scientic breakdown of fetal sexual formation leaves many questions unanswered. I always considered being "gay" a genetic issue. I don't think anyone can deny the possibility that during fetal formation "wires" can get crossed. These "wires" may not necessarily extend to the formation of both sex organs but merely create a permanent mind set that differs from an individual's physical sexual characteristics. My brother-in-law was gay. The family felt he was "different" from a very young age. Johhny came out in his early teens, a very brave and admirable thing to do in the early 60's. He often said he being gay was not a choice, it was something he had to do. Rod McKuen once said "It is not who you love or how you love but that you love." I agree, we need more love in the world, especially now.
57
Dr Fausto-Sterling neglected to mention, during her laborious explanation of "layers of sex", that there's a Bell Curve to just about every possibility she describes.
The center of the bell curve is what happens most of the time: Most humans are either male or female, both biologically and categorically.
2
@KarlosTJ and that does nothing to change the facts she presents. "Most humans are" is not "all humans are". The majority of human eyes have brown pigment. So?
2
Yet another proof that I was right all along, about everything.
There is a wonderful video on youtube from a guy who says he is a scientist, and he sets out to prove that Darwin was wrong. He mixes up all the chemicals that you'd find in a living organism (or says she does) and presto, no life! See, Darwin was wrong.
I don't want to lump Prof. Fausto-Sterling in with this crank, but I will point out that studies prove, more often than not by a long shot, what the person who conducted the study believes.
3
@Ken - prove " I will point out that studies prove, more often than not by a long shot, what the person who conducted the study believes." You left out the qualifier "when the person is a crank on Youtube"
Many key scientific discoveries arise out of things not working as the person conducting the study thought they should. The background noise first detected from the Big Bang was thought to be wiring problems, or even pigeon droppings, on the radio telescope that did the detection. Penicillin was an accidental discovery Fleming investigated when it, by chance, ruined one sample of Staphylococcus he'd been studying.
Every time a new collider starts running, at higher power than the previous ones, the physicists are drooling - more for unexpected results than the ones that prove the presuppositions correct.
Science advances by finding and explaining novel results. It persists by eliminating what's been disproved while retaining the rest. And it often re-confirms what's the assumed status quo. Einstein refined Newton's gravity, but didn't remove most of Newton's work. We can send a satellite out to do loops around Saturn - passing between Saturn and its rings! - with Newtonian gravity equations, but a GPS won't work without Einstein.
So no, don't lump Fausto-Sterling with the Youtube cranks. Lump her with the scientists.
1
Does it even matter what we call anyone? They’re still who they are; they’re still a person. As a person they still have all the rights guaranteed in law and under the Constitution.
If you want to say they’re not who they think they are, what are you planning to do with them?
2
Let me introduce you to the "fuzzy boundary" phenomena, which affects nearly all human scientific endeavors. Look it up.
Nearly every scientific classification of any type, is necessarily imprecise, because the world is complex. Take life, for example. Scientists generally accept some things are "alive", and some things are not. It is a very useful classification--but it has a fuzzy boundary. Try to define life. It's hard. We intuitively know that viruses are alive and crystals are not, yet it's very hard to write a definition which works in these cases. But even though "life" has a fuzzy boundary, it is an enormously useful classification, and helps to explain reality.
Sex also has a fuzzy boundary. While the binary male/female divide is enormously useful to science, and explains much of the natural world we see around us, it has a fuzzy boundary. The vast majority of organisms in the living world are easily classified as male or female. Emphasizing the tiny number of cases in the fuzzy boundary will backfire. While humans in fuzzy boundary deserve the same rights as the rights of us, the facts remains: Sex IS a binary system.
11
A layer of identity not mentioned in the op ed is the fact that we are socially organized around male and female in units called families. This organization helps to create and propels social interaction throughout life, so much so that when couples divorce or one spouse dies, the other is often left adrift without social contacts or put in a situation where friends and relatives have to choose which of the divorcing spouses will remain in their social circle.
The article also gives no clue of how we might organize socially with the acceptance of gender differences that are beyond what is generally accepted as routine. We can endeavor to treat everyone we encounter with decency and respect, but then what? What is the new ideal? How do we get there? Should we teach children growing up that what they see all around them, male and female couples, is only a small part of the human picture?
It would also be important to know what percentage of the population can be described as intersex. I have read previously that about 1 in a 1,000 births results in a person having dual sexual characteristics. That would indicate around 340,000 American citizens but I am not sure if this figure is correct.
This is a difficult subject. I was kind of exhausted just reading the various stages and their inherent conflicts. We need more information.
3
So, if I'm reading this correctly...The Nature/Nurture Question for gender identification and sexuality has been finally answered for Dr. Fausto-Sterling. Last I read the A.P.A. has not adapted the 64 {and growing} genders that are circulating widely--Have they? Are the behavioral scientist on board with their biological brothers and sister? Have the academics, clinicians, workers and students come to an agreement or is this topic or is in need of further research? Has all the work in this field agreed in finding? Is moving on from three genders premature???
4
Excellent article on the complexities and hence the potential for variance in what we think of as gender. This article should be saved and passed around to as many people as possible. Then ask those who differ what evidence do they have to counter the science. In the spirit of Bruno Latour, reveal all of how you reach your conclusions via the data, studies, collaborators, published papers and institutions that supported the findings. Those who won't believe the science but will instead fall back on religion or politics will have some explaining to do when they devise mechanisms to marginalize and hurt their fellow Americans.
It is interesting that in so many comments, the percentage a particular person represents is so important. Even 0.1% is six million people on the planet or more. If one of those six million is your son, daughter, partner, parent, etc., does it matter what the percent is? It is as if the writers using this argument are trying to deny the validity and dignity of these individuals because they are a minority. Where have we heard that before?
55
@BobL We’ve heard it a lot in #metoo. If false allegations are only 2% of the population then why give dignity or due process to accused men. But yes, we’ve also heard it in regards to gay people, black people ect...
The column is mildly interesting but quite beside the point.
I believe - and believed 50 years ago - that humans are a complex amalgam of the biological, psychological and cultural. I have neither the right nor the inclination to judge any human on the choices they make to identify and occupy their individual place in the world.
As a rule I don't love generalities (yes, I see the irony!). But generally speaking, the non-conforming, non-majority people in my life are more thoughtful, kinder and more sensitive than the conforming majority of privileged white folks (like me).
The issue is freedom and acceptance, not biology or politics.
4
Periodically we learn about savant artists like Alonzo Clemons who fashions clay into beautiful and amazing animals in mere minutes with little apparent effort. These rare people show the capacity for great things lies just beneath the surface of human beings and is brought forth by processes we little understand.
Sexual development, differentiation and expression show much the same thing. We are mostly ordinary XX and XY humans but as Ms. Fausto-Sterling details, variety is largely unlimited. And, while not as obvious as Mr. Clemons' horses, this variety can teach us a great lesson: humility and respect for every other person on the planet regardless of the genotype or phenotype they carry or express.
3
It's pretty easy to argue that a strict binary system is imperfect. Most systems are imperfect, and rigidly applying categories to people against their wills generally is unfair. Giving people some flexibility to escape or adjust the system makes a lot of sense.
But it's one thing to argue that the old system is imperfect, and quite another to claim that there is a new system that IS perfect, should supplant the old system, and should be applied rigidly.
So even though I'm skeptical of strict male and female gender roles, I'm even MORE skeptical of the ideas trans and cis. I'm skeptical of the claims that there is a well-defined set of people who require surgery on identity grounds, while everyone else does not.
6
Please do more than be skeptical of the term "Cis," reject it entirely; "Cis" implies that we claim the social identity that is aligned with our biological sex. This is another way that that trans ideology seeks to conform people to sex-based stereotypes.
I do not claim the social identity that is associated/aligned with "woman"; I am an adult human female. I have more often aligned with the social identity ascribed as 'masculine', and yet I am not male, nor does my personality mean that I am supposed to be male.
But many people who believe themselves to be trans believe themselves to be so because they don't conform to the sex-based stereotypes. This is the true failure to recognize the spectrum of human diversity as trans claims to, but rather relies on the performance of stereotypes to show one's transness since there's no other objective way to identify who is trans, the way that one can test for high blood sugar and diagnose a diabetic.
It would be far better for the health of society and the individual, if they could be helped to understand they don't need to rearrange their flesh to align to their personality. They won't get the social affirmation they crave, but it's not women's job to forget about our own rights in order to make other people (men) feel good.
9
The good doctor had confabulated sex and gender for political purposes and that is bad science.
Sex is binary and driven by the X and Y chromosomes.
Gender is a social construct.
The Doctor correctly points towards some biological variations in sexual manifestation driven by womb chemistry and innaccurate replication of either chromosome. What she fails to reveal is the statistical likelihood of either event, about 1 in every 5,000,000 births.
Science can acknowledge the variations that occur as a result of vanishingly tiny anomaly but it should never propose that it is anything but a minuscule event. A birth defect.
Gender on the other hand is a social construct, a convienent fiction we use to categorize our world. Humans, by our nature, create boxes in which we place items. This helps us navigate our increasingly complex ecology.
Like all human constructs the law and science struggle to keep pace with the evolution of human culture.
Efforts by people like the Doctor are counterproductive and ultimately only serve to further discredit real science.
9
Biological intersexuality is an intriguing rarity, but socially we’re grappling with something much less well understood: gender dysphoria. It has no demonstrable biological markers yet, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. There is some evidence it has a psychosocial component, not unlike other known syndromes within populations (such as that documented by Anne Fadiman among the Hmong or the Swedish teenagers experiencing “resignation syndrome”).
The question we need to answer for social policy isn’t whether gender dysphoria is scientifically explicable, but whether experiencing it should mean a person loses civil rights. Obviously, he/she/they should not.
4
@Portia
Obviously, someone else experiencing sex dysphoria doesn't mean that I should lose my civil rights to associate away from people with male bodies, doesn't mean I should have to lose my civil rights to have equal opportunities for sport and public life... but that's the goal when anyone states that transwomen are women and should have all the sex-based protections that women have. Women have sex-based protections because our vulnerable biology, which is historically and contemporaneously oppressed by males, demands it.
As this article states very clearly, intersex people are an anomaly and should not be used as the shibboleth to try and convince women why we should cede our sex-based protections to people with male bodies who claim themselves to be women.
16
@Portia
I do agree that the lack of scientific clarity on transgenderism is somewhat beside the point when the fact is, transgender people exist.
But the question is: what rights do transgender people have?
It seems clear, to me at least, that transgender people should have the basic human rights to identify themselves as they wish and be treated with dignity and without discrimination. (Clearly Trump doesn't agree.)
But at the same time, it's not at all clear that transgender people have a right to be treated as a sex that they are not in every situation or to have other people believe they are really that sex.
Even in Canada, where transgender people have the right to change their legal sex and are protected from discrimination, the courts have already held in one case that a shelter for battered women had the right to exclude a fully transitioned transwoman from volunteering at the shelter the same as they have the right to exclude males, since the traumatized women they serve are afraid of males and need the space to heal.
There will be a lot of legal cases before the dust settles, but I can't see that the law will ever go as far as the activist slogan "transwomen are women." Women are a separate class with distinct rights that need to be balanced with those of transwomen.
9
Dept. of Health & Human Services hasn't marched backward in time. Rather, it remains back in time to a Constitution that should be as fluid as how one asks to be seen in order to live a dignified life. Constitutional originalists and literalists thrive under this Supreme Court and now HHS.
1
It seems that many of the people writing other comments here did not read carefully what Dr. Fausto-Stirling said, but chose to simply foist objections onto what they falsely claimed she said.
While this also happens with other editorial pieces, the high degree that it is happening with this piece indicates that this issue triggers even more emotion than usual (for many readers).
3
I am so tired of people misinterpreting "gender is a social construction" to mean we get to make up gender anyway that we like--as if construction is always deliberative.
Different cultures do construct their gender norms--divisions of labor, personal expression, foodways. That is part of what makes masculinity and femininity interesting--it is NOT simply a predetermined biological construct that one culture gets "right" and another "wrong."
Understanding that gender is constructed through each society's day-to-day norms, traditions, and modernisms is to open up our minds accept the mutability of how we express biology. It is not to deny that biology creates meaning. It is to say that positives and negatives assigned to male or female identity are not god-given or even naturally determined, but evolve through particular configurations of power.
5
Dr. Fausto-Sterling tries to make the argument that sex is socially constructed but then gives multiple examples in which biology influences the development of one sex or the other. This statement shows that there are two underlying circuits which determine gender; no more, no less.
"...one of which represses male development while stimulating female differentiation and the other of which does the opposite."
Chromosomes, hormones, organs are all matters of biology, not sociology or psychology. I'm sorry that some people were not "born in the right body" but this is not a justification for undermining biology and science more broadly.
Just because sex has multiple biological layers does not mean that it is socially constructed. This equivocation and slight of hand should not fool anyone. I'm sorry that what science has discovered does not fit into your worldview.
7
Preach on to those of us who are interested in finding out more about this field of genuine science. As for popular receptivity, well, don't forget that this administration "don't need no education."
1
"The policy change proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services marches backward in time."
So does every policy change implemented by this administration, from clean air and clean water to pre-existing conditions to new energy to the right to choose to pretty much anything else that has taken place in the last 22 months. The fact that intelligent arguments can be made against these policy changes is not going to keep them from happening. The Trump administration specifically says the word "again" in its tagline. Whatever America was once, even or particularly when it was clearly inferior, is what Republicans want it to be again.
1
The column is misleading, or has been misleadingly edited.
All the various anomalies described add up to a very small minority of all humans, on the order of 2-3%.
Furthermore, homosexuality or bisexuality can also occur in people with pure heterosexual "layers of sexuality."
It is clear that non-heterosexuality is a universal feature of humanity. Every society, every culture in human history has had some form or forms of it.
It also seems, however, that scientists do yet fully understand what explains this persistent small minority of non-heterosexuals, and that in some cases (an even smaller small minority one hopes) scientists are more interested in sermonizing than in learning.
2
Because there are very tiny organisms that display characteristics belonging to both the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom some scientists have said that the notion of two different kingdoms is untenable. Actually all we can say is that there are organisms that exist on a continuum. Some organisms, or people, don't fit into the existing categories hence the categories are useless. We must stop using them. This is post modernism.
2
I agree fundamentally with those who have pointed out, correctly, the extreme rarity of the biological instances which the esteemed professor has cited to support the 'non-binary' nature of gender. I have a more mundane question/issue, though. If gender is not biologically binary, what need have we of separate athletics competitions assorted by gender? Why do we need a WNBA or WMSL? Or, for that matter, what is the point of Title IX, then? Let's have have non-gender specific sports leagues (or college conferences) and let those most able, irrespective of presumably irrelevant gender, occupy the elite, and best remunerated, positions in those leagues. Explain to me how that is unfair if gender is fundamentally irrelevant.
10
Politically, I completely agree with the writer. But, given the recent dissolution of rational thought and declaration in our country, I believe the adoption of a non-binary approach to an individual’s identity is of lesser importance than the more pressing issues of basic democratics mores. Many of us are fighting tooth and nail to hang on to the basic civil rights that were won fifty years ago (voting rights). Gender and sexual identity seems trivial in comparison.
2
Gender identity can be argued, but sex is fairly clear. While the borders may be unclear, the fundamentals are clear and cover most people. The category of male covers the person capable of producing sperm to fertilise an egg that is produced by someone who would be classified as a woman. There are various levels of fertility malfunctions that constitute small variations where the person can still be clearly placed in one or other category by dint of matching one group physically more than the other. The remainder is a very small group that includes intersex and chimeras.
I have some sympathy with people in the clearly defined groups who have some feeling of mismatch with their physical category, but the nature of that mismatch is up for discussion as far as the evidence I am aware of is concerned.
5
@ Those who argue that transgenders don't count:
We consider as "intersex" those in whom different parts of the body express characteristics of different sexes. Some people's brains express characteristics of a sex different from their genitalia. Why would these people not be worthy of the same compassion and understanding as those possessing, say, a vagina and testicles? And why would any of these not be worthy of the same compassion and understanding as any of the rest of us? Who, among those who would deny the truth of transgenders, has actually chosen their own gender? Or did you simply recognize who you are? If you had a sex change operation and woke up in a body of another sex, would your own thoughts and identity change, or would you still be the person you know yourself to be? Try to imagine how traumatic this is for those who do recognize that they are born into the wrong body. Try a little compassion. It'll make your world a better place.
2
Abnormal sexual gender however is one thing, abnormal sexual behavior another. Abnormal biology is not the same as abnormal social and cultural behavior. Gender cultural behavior, not gender biology, dictates the choice of two or three types of public bathrooms, male, female, and unisex.
As a practical matter, we can’t provide public bathroom accommodations for all types of genetically abnormal people.
Many types of birth abnormalities occur besides the ones biologically related to confused gender identity as “nature’s sport.” In teratology, we find people born with fused bodies, fused heads, two sets of limbs, two sets of sexual organs, and many other statistical errors of genetic miscues.
Ancient Greece and other ancient cultures, such as some native pre-Columbian Americans, recognized homosexuals and transgender peoples, but nonetheless expected of them the same socially public observances of binary gender norms.
We do not know yet whether our laws protecting homosexuality have led to even smaller number of statistical abnormalities of homosexual child rapes? All we know is that young homosexuals tend to pair with much younger ones just as do heterosexuals, but that socially enforced celibate environments lead to abnormally high sexual abuse experiences of heterosexuals in segregated gender prisons and religious clergy, like the Roman Catholic Church. Accept biology, as we must, not all social behavior.
1
In citing the research of Dr. John Money, (a Johns Hopkins MD) Dr. Fausto-Sterling neglects to mention the controversy surrounding his surgical and post-surgical interventions in the case of David Reimer.
" ...his penis was irreparably damaged during infancy due to a failed circumcision. After encouragement from Money, Reimer’s parents decided to raise Reimer as a girl. Reimer underwent surgery as an infant to construct rudimentary female genitals, and was given female hormones during puberty. During childhood, Reimer was never told he was biologically male and regularly visited Money, who tracked the progress of his gender reassignment. Reimer unknowingly acted as an experimental subject in Money’s controversial investigation, which he called the John/Joan case. The case provided results that were used to justify thousands of sex reassignment surgeries for cases of children with reproductive abnormalities. Despite his upbringing, Reimer rejected the female identity as a young teenager and began living as a male. He suffered severe depression throughout his life, which culminated in his suicide at thirty-eight years old. Reimer, and his public statements about the trauma of his transition, brought attention to gender identity and called into question the sex reassignment of infants and children." (https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassign...
Omitting reference to this history seems peculiar, given the topic.
4
Thank you for a very clear and informative explanation of the biology.
1
The examples of intersex individuals have nothing to do with the transgender debate. People born with congenital anomalies did not choose to be that way whereas the transgender movement asserts that gender is a matter of choice. Indeed, the existence of intersex people argues against the transgender position as intersex individuals cannot simply wish away their genetic defects and become either male or female with functioning sexual organs.
It is also not true to assert that gender identity has no bearing on the public space. For instance, should a sixteen year old boy be allowed into the same locker room as sixteen year old girls because he identifies as a girl? What if he later changes his mind and decides that he is a male after all?
8
I would add one thing: the brain knows the body's sex. There is a lot of research on this, but the upshot is that children know that they are boys or girls without their parents having to point it out.
However, sometimes the brain and the genitals do not agree. The developmental signals, whatever they are, that would cause the brain to view itself as male or female sometimes do not correspond with the body's development.
People in this situation are not terribly common; for most of us, the male/female dichotomy works pretty well. The question is, as a society are we more interested in forcing people to live unhappily in a body/social role that defies their strong, biologically determined sense of who they are, or are we gracious enough to accept their efforts to sort it out?
I took me a while to get here, but I know where I stand. I will always try to choose people over preconceived social expectations every time.
3
All human life is precious because every life has the life force that some describe as the Light of God.
To be using perceived sexual characteristics to block humans from purpose-filled lives is well-known in Saudi Arabia, and continues to be practiced to greater or lesser degrees in other nations.
Discriminating against self-described or diagnosed transgenders, intersex or anyone biologically and self-describing as female is the next step of these fake Christians. George Fox, the great uniter in the Society of Friends in the 17th Century, describes fake Christians including some who described women as geese.
Thank you Dr Fausto-Sterling for carefully presenting the biological basis for sex.
1
Even if it’s ~1% of the population (1/100 is pretty significant!), intersex people do exist. I’ve known one, and even by age 40 they hadn’t clearly decided how they wanted to live because part of their DNA is male and part is female, so they lived a life with secrets and shame. And what for? Why are people so concerned about everyone fitting into binary gender definitions? Why force people to choose a gender? It’s another example of how cruel people are to each other.
2
This whole subject seems contrived. Nobody cares now if your gay. Which seems to be upsetting to maybe 10% of people on the far left and religious right. So we get lawsuits pitting religious liberty vs equal protection, dstorting both negatively, on one side and insistence that transgender issues are a major problem from the other
There are vanishingly few people who are physically trans. For people who feel they don't fit in we could put a third box for gender on official forms and give them the same protections as gay people. It seems the issue is being used as yet another wedge. We have enough of those.
4
Standard Republican playbook. Find a minority, people who are "different", demonize them, and declare that, since there are more of "us" than there are of "them", "we" can persecute "them" to our hearts' content.
1
The trans lobby and the Trump administration have at least three things in common, both are anti-truth, anti-science, and anti-woman. Trans people have every right to live as they please, free of harassment, and I defend that, but they cannot change reality to suit them. Insisting on the truth, even if some find that truth painful, is not the same thing as "erasing" anyone. Demanding that people accept your lie, your false reality, and making all sorts of threats and accusations if they won't accept your counter "truth" is something people are rightly put off by.
13
In his posthumously published book "Factfulness" the late Swedish doctor Hans Rosling tried to alter people's mode of thinking by stressing "facts & statistics" and moving away from black & white binary thinking. He stressed that there are many shades of gray in between.
Changing how people think is a difficult quest. Educators through the ages had tried. Most people are already brainwashed by their tribal traditions and hold on to dogma stubbornly. It is harder still these days when accusation of fake news is promoted by the liars themselves. Black is white and white is black. There is a Pali word for that: " Vipallasa", sometimes translated as "perversion" or "mental distortion".
1
Just because we cannot scientifically pinpoint where in the brain our gender identity is controlled, does not mean it doesn't exist. Why can't we admit that? Why can't we accept that while we don't know, the one thing we do know is that treating all people with love and respect is what matters.
Over the years I've read comments that say transgender is mental illness. If that's so, then why are transgender people able to live normal lives and work in challenging fields. The late Dr. Ben Barres, neurologist and leader in researching glial cells at Stanford was a female to male transgender person. There is an openly transgender person who works at Lockheed making nuclear missiles. Years ago, a mayoral candidate in one of our suburbs was openly transgender. So if these people are so "mentally ill", then why are they so perfectly normal and high functioning.
I've read comments that these people are abominations, and their being is the work of evil. If you are a believer, then you're saying God makes mistakes and that the Gospels are not true. Every hair is counted before you were born,,,,remember that passage????
President Obama was so helpful in bringing about acceptance of transgender citizens. The very people who resist this are no different than the people in the 1960's who screamed at black people when segregation ended. Its the same mindset.
2
What is totally lost in this article, is that for the vast majority of people the entire issue is about bathrooms.
I don’t think it is unreasonable for people to be uncomfortable with someone who has the physical appearance of the other sex insisting on using a bathroom that is inconsistent with their physical appearance.
The argument is all about the hurt feelings of the transgender person who can’t use the bathroom of their choice. What about the feelings of the vast majority of the bathroom users who have no idea if they are dealing with an authentic transgender person or a sexual predator?
If you aren’t comfortable using the bathroom appropriate for your physical appearance, what’s the problem with using a private bathroom where no one needs to feel threatened or uncomfortable?
9
There needs to be THIRD gender neutral bathrooms, which would also be good for intersex and non-binary people in addition to transgender people. Rather than letting trans women invade female bathrooms, and giving trans men no options (most are in danger in the male bathrooms as well, for being trans as well as biologically female).
But the trans community doesn’t want third bathrooms. Because it’s not about safety, it’s about public validation of an internal sense of gender identity. They think the women’s bathroom is some magical sparkling pink haven to basque is validating feminine glory.
8
@Mike Schumann
I think I agree with you, could you clarify what you mean " physical appearance"
And for the final paragraph, there are not always private bathrooms available.
1
Hoping that republicans will base policy on science and facts: good luck with that.
1
I wonder how many people reading this realize that this science is being used to deny that homosexuality exists and giving cover for males to harass lesbians. Since sex is supposedly so ambiguous, and identity is more important that physical reality, lesbian organizations and dating sites are full of people with unambiguously male sexual characteristics, having undertaken few to no steps toward medically transitioning, shaming lesbians for not wanting to date people with penises. Lesbians are shunned as homophobes and ‘terfs’ just for being lesbians. People speak of “the cotton ceiling,” referring to the difficulty transwomen have trying to date actual lesbians. It has become controversial to say that a lesbian is a female homosexual, and none of the major LGBT organizations of publications will stand up for actual female lesbians.
This is only one example of how gender identity is being used in ways that do negatively affect other people, contrary to many comments advising all to MYOB. People can ID however they want, but at some point have to accept that biosex does exist and does matter.
21
@finally I admit that I am not part of the community and do not know how this science is being misused to harrass lesbians. I do not know and cannot determine if the "people with unambiguously male sexual characteristics" who harrass lesbians on lesbian dating sites are transexual females or men who troll lesbians for any number of pathological reasons. I do not believe this harrassment justifies denial of the science presented in this essay, or the adoption of the definition of "sex" being considered by Trump's HHS. Recognition of transgender identity does not in any way say biological sex does not exist or does not matter; however, for people who are transsexual, the gender-sex mismatch has had a more profound effect on their lives and is the basis for discrimination against them, just as sexual preference is used to discriminate against lesbians. Rather than deny the science, or define transgender identity out of legal existence, maybe stop harassing people because they are different? Your implicit argument denying recognition of transgender identity based on the behavior of some people hardly seems like a good start.
2
@finally Yes, very aware. Thanks for providing this information.
8
@K I do not wish to define transgender identity out of existence. I wish to retain transgender identity AS transgender. I am not denying the science, here. I have also not, as you implied, harassed anyone for being different, and have personally experienced harassment for being gender non-conforming.
The problem I am discussing here is that male people declare that they are female and deny that there is any difference that might matter to lesbians. You use the word “transsexual,” which means a person who has had much medical intervention. Many transpeople have none. As far as sexual orientation goes, bodies matter, and for male people to be calling themselves lesbian is very antagonistic against lesbians. They are denying that the reality of female homosexuality by insisting it should include males. It’s not trolls. All the big (L)GBT orgs either support this or look the other way. You say that recognizing transgender identity does not deny that sex exists, but there is in fact a very large and vocal movement arguing that a person’s gender ID determines their sex. I don’t want to discriminate against transpeople, but I do expect any respect to be mutual, and male people persuing lesbians and trying to browbeat them into considering them as dating partners hardly, as you say, seems like a good start.
3
This article is making a good argument for genetic testing to find out biological sex, which I think was not the intention of the author. I wonder how many transpeople have actually gotten genetic testing to see what their sex chromosome situation is. I would think that would be the first approach in the medical field, since apparently there is all this science-based evidence that supports the existence of transpeople.
My problem with trans is that when they are picking their gender, and figuring out what they really are, every single one of them picks the opposite gender of what they were born as, male or female. If there were actually more than two genders, why are all transpeople transistioning to male or female? Transpeople themselves support the existence of only two genders, in a convoluted way.
4
@AuthenticEgo, there are many differing states of being transgendered. not every one wants a final confirmation surgery.
Arguing from ignorance leads to a false conclusion.
1
@AuthenticEgo
Trans- latin prefix meaning to cross over.
2
So if you’re “crossing over” try to make yourself welcome by not redefining the island of womanhood- smile, ask politely for directions and have some respect for our biology- we have been here for a long time and you should learn our ways.
7
Dear Professor Fausto-Sterling,
thank you very much for this clear, understandable and insightful article. I have bookmarked it and will share it with others who are not on firm grounds concerning this issue.
I had already read a bit about the complexities of sexual development from gene to soul, but I was missing something concise to put my finger on.
You have provided that information to a wide public and I hope it will be put to good use and not called "Fake Science" by those who benefit from creating divisions among the people.
Right on target and explained scientifically which means, of course, it will be ignored in this WH administration.
I have always been grateful that my self-identity has always been 100% female. I never had doubts or confusions to live with on that score. I have been blessed.
Fausto-Sterling seems to have forgotten essential biology - specifically the human anatomy and physiology. Males and females don't differ only in sex organs. Their entire biological natures are different from their skeletal, muscular, endocrine and nervous systems, up to the urinary and reproductive systems. That becomes clear when men and women are compared side by side. But males and females are not only different. They are COMPLEMENTARY.
Darwinians can show clearly that the males and females have been optimized through natural selection for the survival of their species, and that all the sexual "mutations" are biological aberrations.
From an evolutionist viewpoint, the matter is too clear to be confused. A "reductio ad absurdum" would unmistakably make the final point: Separate all these claimed "genders" and let them live in isolation from one another. What would be the chance of survival for each group? Which group would be able to maintain and perpetuate the human race?
The answer can be only one: the binary sexual beings, males and females. All the other groups would become extinct within their first generation.
No matter what the "logical arguments" about "genders" are claimed to be, the primary human burden is the survival of the species, and only the binaries are able to do that.
5
@Eduard C Hanganu
Just pointing to the obvious--->The logical extension of the complementary nature of the sexes that you have correctly identified, is that the two sexes are not analogues; one cannot be converted into the other with just a few exogenous chemicals. Hormones and body parts are the incomplete picture of what makes a person a certain sex, and individuals are being guinea-pigged to try and alter that, not without harms:
Research has shown that high levels of endogenous cross-sex hormones can be harmful: long-term, too much estrogen in males and testosterone in females has been shown to be carcinogenic, and is strongly correlated with insulin resistance and kidney disease.
Adults are not being asked to examine their mental state, to introspect to see if there isn't some other cause for their discomfort. Healthy children are being given Lupron, a drug which suppresses puberty but has been shown to cause severe osteoporosis.
Research shows children who take this drug do not grow out of cross-sex identity, while children who don't take it, grow out of trans at a rate of ~80%. My teen's endocrinologist didn't consult his MHPs to ask if it was a feature of his bipolar or borderline disorder before offering Lupron when my kid was talking about being trans. (He later decided that he was just uncomfortable enacting male stereotypes, not that he was a girl.)
9
Reproductive rights are binary. Every person has an equal right to procreate, but not as both sexes, only as the sex they were born with most potential to, with the other sex. Male and female are reproductive rights. Intersex people have same rights as everyone, not a choice which sex to reproduce as. Congress will ban trying to procreate as the other sex.
1
I really appreciate this article discussing the complexity of sex and gender at a biological level, which clarifies how the Trump administration’s policy doesn’t even make sense on a biological level. Intersex conditions are uncommon, but are real and the people with them matter. I am a pediatrician and have a patient who was born with ambiguous genitalia. Based on this child’s anatomy, the specialists recommended assigning a gender to the child that doesn’t match the child’s chromosomal sex. I honestly don’t know what is best in these situations, but I do know that these specialists and the child’s parents are trying to do what they believe is best for the child. Since hearing about the Trump administrations plan to recognize gender based on genitalia at birth, or chromosomal sex if the genitalia is ambiguous, I have been worrying about my little patient, whose chromosomal sex is not in line with their assigned gender. I know that intersex people are not the target of this policy, but will be among the unfortunate victims.
52
Unfortunately the logic of this argument (which is well articulated) indicates that ones sex can not be claimed or determined until pubertal sex phase is completed. No one can claim to be a gay child per this logic... "its just a phase" until all the phases of sexual maturity are complete... ??? This argument is as damning as it is supportive. Almost easier to argue that the sexes no longer exist than it is to classify us under this Escher argument. Clearly best intentions but it unfortunately misses the mark.
4
It should not surprise anyone that evangelical Trump voters would choose their idiotic bible verses over science.
Republicans want privacy, right? They don't want government butting in, going behind closed doors, right? They make exceptions over what goes on between a reproductive age woman's legs, and exception on those that they think are different in how they are attracted to other people, consistent % over the span that humans have been on the planet. Innies and outies, pluses and minuses. Who the heck cares? Its not my business. Stay out of the bedroom.
1
@4Average Joe
And the bathroom.
This is interesting, but I’d add it’s rather ironic that John Money was a strong proponent of the “Blank Slate” view of babies and the absolute dominance of gender as a “social construct.” That’s why he advised parents of a baby boy who suffered a botched circumcision to simply take the “easy” approach of surgery to remove the penis and testes entirely, raise the child as a girl, not tell her the truth, and offer female hormones at the age of puberty. Fast forward a couple decades and the “girl” rebelled utterly and said he felt he was a boy.
41
@Mau Van Duren And then committed suicide.
This is one of the most important aspects that is not discussed enough, how our acceptance, or lack, of gender identities affects suicide rates.
7
@Mau Van Duren Yep. Money has been completely proven wrong, yet gender studies activists, such as the author, a a professor at Brown who surely knows better, continue to cite him without mentioning this...
14
The whole argument sounds like she's trying to rationalise her claim. All of these "non-standard" types, such a 2 X-chromosomes and a penis, are genetic aberrations, just like, eg, cystic fibrosis is a genetic aberration; we don't celebrate cystic fibrosis, do we?
What's most bemusing is there is no need for this. If someone exhibits non-traditional gender preferences (such as men wearing make-up), it's incumbent on others to show tolerance towards these people; in other words, perhaps societal "norms" need to be adjusted. But a male saying he "feels" like a woman means absolutely nothing, since it can be based on any number of factors, biological, psychological, or imaginary. And how would he know what a woman feels like anyway? What he does know is that he is uncomfortable with society's expectations of males. And that seems to be the crux of the matter.
9
“But a male saying he "feels" like a woman means absolutely nothing, since it can be based on any number of factors, biological, psychological, or imaginary. And how would he know what a woman feels like anyway?“
Just one question Danny.
Do you think you are a man?
I don't think so.
To me it seems you are lesbian.
Because a male saying he "feels" like a man means absolutely nothing, since it can be based on any number of factors, biological, psychological, or imaginary. And how would you know what a man feels like anyway?
The term transgender has been so broadened over the last few years from the former transsexual, to a term which is now almost meaningless as it includes most of the human species. Given that the majority of us feel at least some level of discomfort with our gender, technically anyone can be "trangender!"
Which makes it an even more cruel appropriation for so many to equate the existence of a rare genetic abnormality, ie. intersexed as somehow proof of and the reason for transgender!
Intersexed conditions are rare but they are well documented as to causation while there are absolutely NO documented causal factors to transgender, that is if you can even make a determination agreed to by more than 4 people as to what is and is not transgender!
These two, transgender and intersexed, as of now, still entirely different things which are only connected as a ideological statement and the most fanciful of conjectures!
9
Sexual fantasies get in the way of a lot of this.
For instance, a woman who wants a 100% man which doesn't really exist.
Some men love to see two women go at it.
Notice how this doesn't fit the one male, one female example.
Also, it's been said that inside every male is a female, and inside every female, a male.
The psychological plays a major part in the physical.
1
What percentage of people have this di/tri/quad-morphism ?
What does hormone therapy do for these people ?
4
Science is science.... You can't make it politically correct.
5
There is no clarity as to what the writer is saying. We need to accept the fact that the majority are either male or female. Can anyone deny the fact ? Exceptions are always there and it’s true in the case of birth also. We have to accept and respect them as they are. That’s it.
5
Intersex individuals are, from a sexual perspective, biological errors...failures to develop correctly. While this does not diminish their humanity, society should be organized for the common and normal, not the anomalies.
4
Gay individuals are, from a biological perspective, not biological errors. They look for the children of their sisters and so pass the Gay DNS through these children. In the same way the DNS for long life pass because of the grandma-effect.
But you are right.
Let's kill all anomalies.
First all people who have glasses (like in Cambodia).
Are our contemporary gender debates focused on these extremely rare cases of non-normal development, or on people who develop in what we consider the normal way but think of themselves as something other than what they seem to be?
I have to admit I don't know what we mean when we say transgender. It seems to me that people who have undergone surgery to reconfigure their bodies represent a very different category of individuals from those who have merely decided to declare themselves something other than what science says they are.
Do we not need to make that distinction? Do we have language to do it?
6
Without any numbers this is pointless.
What percentage of people experience these inconsistencies? I'm assuming it's very small, otherwise the numbers would be here.
There are tons of mutations that can affect human development, but that doesn't mean we have to create a separate category of human for each one.
7
This is very confusing... if Conservatives claim that God is ultimately the creator of all things, how can they disavow those that God has chosen to have a unique genitalia or sexual orientation.
For those that claim they can judge these people as unworthy need to acknowledge they are in conflict with their God.
48
@Stephan
Transgender is neither unique genitalia nor sexual orientation, and the association with those categories is purposeful to try and align transgenderism which is a belief system currently no more provable than religion, with normal human variants.
6
I can’t challenge your knowledge of the process here, but I can challenge your interpretation of it.
How many people truly identify as transsexual? It’s not a large percent. How many people are intersex? It’s likely a comparable, though perhaps, a smaller percent.
Words like “misbegotten” fail to recognize the reality of living as a member of a tiny minority that people (and animals) do not choose. If you are intersex or trans, would you want your family, friends, and society to refer to you that way? Would you want others to treat your case as hopeless, because the only correct (natural?) gender arrives at birth? If you have a child that faces that reality, would you apply that word to your child?
In reality, gender and sex have biological and social aspects (among others), and our definitions create daily difficulties for intersex and trans individuals. Our idea that gender is only naturally binary pretends that anyone that fails to conform is a mistake.
Are you a mistake? An extra? Is your difficulty beyond correction (if transitioning should be illegal) or can we accommodate it, with or without correction, like many other harmless differences people present?
We may never figure out exactly what happened that led to X being intersex, or Y feeling a need to transition. We still need equal rights for people in a just society, asap. It shouldn’t have to wait for our leaders to reconsider whether X and Y should be allowed to live like other people. But it does.
Gender has to do with gonads. Someone might not be comfortable with their genitals, and wish they had different genitals, but it is what it is. You might wish you were a woman, and like to act like you are a women, but the fact is that you are a man. Sometimes life is not fair.
8
Author: "external genital sex — penis and scrotum in males, vagina and clitoris in females." I read this and double checked.
My vagina is still internal. I hope it doesn't fall out.
9
I noticed there is not a single reference in this piece to the frequency in the general population of the genetic ambiguities the author describes. Why can't she tell us the "rest of the story"? Likely because it is less than 1/100 of one percent of the population! And we're going to rewrite the rules for all of society for this? Insanity.
11
@c smith So let's say that your guesstimate is correct and transgender is only .5% of the population or so, in the USA that would mean 15 million people are affected. Statistically small but empirically relevant. Also, one has to assume that these people have family and loved ones who are also affected, that increases the number affected, exponentially.
@Kno Yeh First, one half of one percent is 50 times greater than .0001. Second, .5% of the U.S. population is 1.9 million people, NOT 15 million. This means (using the correct 1.9 million number) that only 38K people (out of 379 million) would be so affected in the U.S.. The point is, that you cannot write the rules for an entire society based on the supposed emotional trauma that such rules might have on a tiny, tiny fraction of the populace.
1
This is an important article to have published at this time when science and fact-based policy development have fallen from grace, because science and facts don't support the distractions certain politicians are whipping-up to obfuscate the evil-minded policies they are implementing in this and in unrelated areas.
3
People - please stop using "defect", "abnormality", "disorder" and similar terms to refer to intersex, a rare but perfectly "normal" condition that flows, as the author has elegantly described, from the complexities of sexual biology.
8
Bravo. This was an outstandingly clear explanation of the complexities of human sexual development that any non-scientist should be able to understand.
5
My religion tells me that I should respect the inherent worth and dignity of ALL humans. Biology is not strictly binary and that is all anyone needs to know. The hard part is finding way to respect our current president; I can't.
4
Let's see: a biologist writes an opinion piece about a rare phenomenon in great detail while omitting any reference to its rarity. Fausto-Sterling is selling ideology while pretending she writing about biology.
21
Remind me, what is the necessity for a government to officially categorize people through gender (binary, fluid, fractal, multicolor or any other)...?
6
Please ask some trans people and you will get the answer to your question.
It is a mistake to think that biological categories are purely there to describe *all* diversity, rather biological categories are designed to be biologically meaningful. The macrogamete and microgamete strategies are adaptations to maximize reproductive fitness in anisogamous species. In some species there are other strategies (e.g. sneaker males, protandrous and protogynous sex change in reef fish, etc.) but in humans there are only two strategies: female and male. Yes, there are individuals who develop badly and thus suffer a lower reproductive fitness, but these morphologies are not adaptations just as a one-legged man is not an evolved adaptation. Just because the average insect has 5.99 legs doesn't mean that it wrong to say that insects have 6 legs. True, physicians need terms to describe developmental pathologies (e.g. androgen insensitivity), but that is not to say that humans have evolved more than two sexes.
18
Things like this are Exhibit A for why Trump won the election in 2016. The majority of people shouldn't have to bother listening to this nonsense or change policy to accommodate the .00000000001% of the population for whom gender may be considered non-binary. If that hurts your feelings, deal with it.
8
If professor Fausto-Sterling is a biologist she must acknowledge that evolution drive behind sex is to successfully reproduce and pass DNA on to future generations. These rare intersex humans are usually, if not always unable to reproduce.
As far as evolutionary biology is concerned these individuals are not even part of the picture of sex. In the rest of the animal kingdom that uses sex to reproduce intersex animals will not pass on their genetic material or propagate.
It is only Human society that makes this a matter worth discussing.
10
In what way does this essay twist science to serve a social agenda? Did I miss something? This read like an educated explanation of the folly of thinking that everything is either A or B, black or white, living or dead, right or wrong.
This essay explains why negotiation and compromise are necessary for societies to persevere. No religion is totally good or totally evil. I cannot think of anything that doesn’t have exceptions.
Murder is wrong and yet we expect the military to do just that. When someone murders another in self-defense they can be found not-guilty in a court of law. So why do right-to-lifer's fight only for the zygote/embryo/fetus and not for a soldier in war-time? It's because our realities are human-constructs. Why is the story of Hera and Zeus considered mythology and the story of God and "his" appointed considered religious givens? They're constructs.
Deconstruction never became very popular because it's hard to let go of long-held beliefs. But mere belief does not a reality make make. We need to quit taking the frivolous so seriously and start paying attention to the "real" real. Or is it the real "real"?
That disadvantaged people are starving, being massacred, dying of preventable diseases is real. That the Earth IS getting warmer is true. Viruses don’t breathe, or eat, or reproduce on their own . . . are they alive? Why can’t we kill them?
Existence is a mystery. Enjoy it even if you don’t understand it. And let others do the same.
7
In my opinion this is an effort of the department of health and human services to gather reliable demographic data to create health programs, it decides to give a narrower definition of sex in which it is based on the identification of the sex of a person by the genitals that presents at birth, this is an easy, accessible and sensitive test because it can correctly identify 99.5% of the population perhaps more. In addition, if it fails, it can be appealed with the appropriate evidence. All this has a reason, when gender is a social construction and can fluctuate as it has been established, policy makers need to have precise demographic data of the country validated in objective information.
There are things in life in which we have no decision as to where we were born, our parents and our sex, whether male or female, or if we have a disorder of sexual development. Although some people will say that you can change sex with surgery or with hormones but this is unreal as Dr. Fausto-Sterling explains, sexual development is not only genitals or phenotypes, it is a complex process and certainly can not be completely undone.
Finally, if someone is not happy with the sex they were born in, they have to accept it and can express their gender identity as they see fit, but they will always be what biology gives them, and that's ok.
7
@Alexander
One of the problems with the HHS proposal is that it conflates gender with sex. Another is that it doesn’t take into consideration the variations in sex beyond the binary. There are ways to study this. In fact, there is an office at NIH (the Sex and Gender Minority Research Office), whose role is to help people properly study these issues, make sure they are defined appropriately, and that understudied groups are included in research. One way is to ask a clinical study subject or someone filling out a questionnaire two questions: what was your sex assigned at birth and what is your gender. Hospitals have successfully implemented these two questions on admission with little to no controversy.
This method would give researchers and the government much more accurate data on everyone in society.
1
Great article! Science again provides insight,
IT is dismaying that the Trump administration is contemplating denying transgender people recognition and legal protection.
Since sexual emotion is such a fundamental force it is not surprising that this article is easily dismissed by some who have fixed views. But why does recognizing people who are "different" trouble them?
More generally, why are conservatives so intolerant, so frightened, of liberal views?
4
Hey, Anne - can you please explain to the 800 women who will die in childbirth today (and every day) that sex is not binary? Also -How many XY humans will die in childbirth today? (oh - that would be zero). How many XY humans will experience an unwanted pregnancy? Zero. How many XY humans will be forced to give birth against their will due to Roe v Wade being gutted? Zero. Compare the number of XY humans to the number of XX humans who hold political & economic power around the world. Notice the difference, Anne? Looks pretty darn binary to me. Please stop "All Lives Matter-ing" women's lives, Anne. Biological Sex Matters; Female Biology is the oldest and most brutal axis of oppression. We cannot fight sexism if we erase sex. Women Exist!
25
@Penny White Are you serious? Acknowledging that there is sex diversity does not hurt the fight against sexism. And I work in women’s health research, so this is an issue I care deeply about. Transmen and transwomen, as well as those that are intersex, deserve to have equal rights as well. Did you not hear that Virginia has a transwoman in their state House of Representatives? And that a transwoman is in a competitive race for governor this year? Trans and cis women deserve equality. The problem is not people trying to make sure intersex and trans people aren’t erased; the problem is entrenched sexism in almost all segments of society imposed by predominantly white men and encouraged by predominantly white conservative women.
1
@Agb Please note the 2 transgender “women” who are politicians have a biology that is male. They are XY, do not represent women biologically, and will never, ever understand the plight of women.
2
This logic indicates a woman isnt even a woman until childbirth and women who can not concieve are worthless classless individuals. Im appalled as a man.
I routinely refer to "people of all sexes," like I would "people of all races." Now if we can only get people to realize that the concept of "gender" is nonsensical. Human behaviors don't have a sex any more than they have a race.
6
Seems to be that the Republicans are flunking Environmental Science and the Dems are flunking biology.
11
As a non professor of biology I know that
Sex
Is a description of how some living things have
Binary
Reproduction
No human ever has had non binary reproduction.
But a retired professor is here to confuse things in the name of.
Get this.
Biology.
And. In the name of humans.
For goodness sake.
Professor please cite the literature on how human sex biology is unique as compared to other critters.
Because it ain’t.
17
So we're supposed to indulge what amounts to nothing more than a mental illness?
9
Can someone tell me why exactly it is the government's business to identify me as male or female? Why does this appear on my passport? (my picture should be sufficient for purposes of identification) If we want men and women (and anyone in between) to have equal treatment under law, then why should the government be in the business of making this distinction explicit? I have, so far, resisted comparisons of America in the Trump era with pre-War Germany, but this action of HHS is simply too close to outright fascism to be ignored. Half my extended family was killed by the combination of Stalin and Hitler. I would not like to see a similar thing happen to my children.
5
@ShenBowen There's a reason the government wants to know if you're male or female. The recording of crime statistics. Population studies. Knowing how to allocate health resources. Your biological sex is a great predictor of your longevity and health needs.
6
You know, if someone asked me how many arms do people have, Id say 2.
And they then exclaime Ha! You are wrong! some people have 1,3, or 0 arms!
Yes, but not in general. Shall we stop putting arms on representations of people? Is that the answer? No obviously not, that would be rediculous.
No one is arguing that biological systems do not have anomalus elements. That is not in question, and it appaears that is the argument presented here: that biology is not enitrely clean. Everyone acknowledges this.
But to function we need to use certian categorizations that are not 100 percent accurate, but are so close they might aswell be. Outliers are best dealt with on a case by case basis.
Hard cases make bad law, this whole thing illustrates that perfectly.
120
@Mark F Well said.
10
If people's rights were legitimately determined according to their number of arms, you'd have a point. As it is, all you have is a disanalogy and a straw man.
2
@Mark F
As an ethicist, I would point out that if you are making another person's life more difficult, the burden of proof is on you to show that the additional difficulty you are imposing is needed or that the greater good out weighs the burden that you are placing on others. I do not see where the currently proposed HHS definition meets that burden. What good is being achieved that is so overwhelming for humanity that those who are intersex or otherwise transgender should be "prohibited" from choosing there gender identity?
1
Bravo/Brava! Why are conservatives so intent on regulating thee most intimate parts of our lives and deregulating the most dangerous?
353
@DenisPombriant Why? Religion.
13
@ggj Correct! Religion.
@DenisPombriant The extremist mindset is binary at its core: the world consists of two categories, good and evil, and the good (Us, of course) must exterminate the evil (Them, of course). This is why the extreme left and the extreme right meet in totalitarianism.
9
This line of argument, twisting science to serve social agenda, is extremely dangerous.
Using the same logic of science, the Supreme Court of the United States had, historically, used evolutionary biology to prevent "retarded" minorities from reproducing. If we follow the same logic, homosexual couples cannot biologically reproduce without intervention of modern medical technology - should their marriages be banned on that basis?
If anything, nature has unequivocally declared binary sex a winner, by leaving almost every single surviving species unambiguously sexually binary, and often easily identifiably so, in order to maximize the chance of reproduction success. For examples, see a cock vs a hen. The extremely small portion of none binary cases mentioned here are simply part of the random mutation process that enables evolution. The cases may be scientifically intriguing, but it stops there.
The case for supporting self-identified gender is straightforward. It doesn't need science or evolution for its validity. It is freedom and equality, something already guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
120
@Avi The case for supporting self-identified gender is meaningless. Accept which sex you are. Express yourself however which way you want. Stop saying that that changes your sex in any way, shape, or form. Male and female are sexes. They are not genders.
13
@Avi
No one is twisting science to serve an agenda. You, however, are ignoring science to maintain your prejudices and narrow-minded thinking.
4
@Avi
Here is the problem: social conservatives, some of them, argue that gender necessarily correlates to sex, which they maintain is binary. In their view, gender self-identification is thus a fanciful liberal notion, one that damages society because it does not conform to science, or to nature.
What Dr. Fausto-Sterling is pointing out in this article is that in fact sex is not strictly binary and has never been. The idea that sex is binary, and that gender must conform to it, is a social construct (one which, moreover, is not universal among cultures). Biological science is now advanced enough to establish this as fact. That, I think, is the point the article is making.
2
The author fails to mention the rarity of the aberrations she describes. For 99.9% of the population, sex is binary in that individuals are either XX with female genitalia and a uterus, or XY with a penis and a prostate gland. The problem of the day is gender dysphoria, with transgender males thinking that they are females and transgender females thinking that they are males. Biological rarities do not justify the author's non binary argument.
213
@Michael
that .01% = 35000 people in the United States. Should we just pretend they don't exist? Not afford them any basic rights?
14
@Michael By the author's estimates, it's 1.7% of the population.
5
"Biological rarity" -- You aren't willing to respect minority populations until they reach a certain number? What's your threshold? 1%? 10%?
16
The issue isn't sex determination or identity, it's about discrimination and the 14th amendment. People may have many different appearances or identities, but we don't/shouldn't discriminate on that basis; unless we are a Trumpian bigot. IF we had true workplace equality through labor law, we would hire, pay and promote people based on their qualifications and job performance (emphasis on "Period"). The problem is that corporate American fears that paradigm (they prefer the patronage and favoritism) and they own both political parties. Real change is hard, but we shouldn't quit. Union YES!
29
@MTDougC
Exactly. Women athletes who only want to compete against other biological females shouldn't be discriminated against on that basis. They should be allowed to compete based on their qualifications when competing against other female-bodied people, not benched because they're not as good at being female athletes as males are. (Rachel McKinnon, Andraya Yearwood, Laurel Hubbard...)
9
@MTDougC
Speaking of workplace discrimination, I'm reminded of the woman who lost her sex discrimination suit over her right to breast feed at her workplace. It was thrown out because, since "men" can also breast feed, she couldn't have possibly been discriminated against due to her sex.
This insanity needs to stop. We are a long way from having the kind of equality in our society that negates the need for protection against sex based discrimination, and this movement is trying to erase biological sex in favor of identity. Doing so eliminates the means for women, half the population of the planet, to name the source of their oppression. The Obama administration significantly reduced Title IX protections for women by substituting "gender" for "sex". As much as I hate the current administration, I applaud any effort to return Title IX to its original intent.
4
@MTDougC Unions have often been discriminatory.
I think the biology is fascinating—but from a policy perspective, I don't think it should matter at all whether one's gender identity is biologically determined or simply a matter of preference. People should be free to identify with whatever gender they want. Don't we have more pressing problems to deal with than how people sort themselves into restrooms?
114
@617to416
I agree that people should be free to identify with whatever gender they wish. Society, however, is not required to cater to, accommodate, or agree with their self-chosen gender.
4
@617to416 If you don't care who is in the restroom with you, use the men's room. I care who is in the restroom with me. I don't care to share it with males. (Small children excepted. And they'd better behave.)
4
And if how they sort themselves into restrooms is soooooo important to you, I can’t understand why you’d want to sort with the people who look like and feel like they are of the opposite sex. People have clearly not thought this through.
Any man with bad intent today can hide in the ladies’ room to rape someone. I prefer to keep the rules around who can go where to phenotype, so if I see a dude in the restroom I can scream and run out, without having to ask myself first whether he might be a trans man forced into this space by a stupid law.
5
Really disheartening to see this written by a biologist. As many have already written, the existence of intersex individuals has nothing to do with the modern trans movement. To take it farther, intersex people are increasingly asking not to be held up as any kind of example or defense of transgenderism. Their genetic defect is not for anyone to take to try and justify someone's identity.
142
@Philgro
Your exactly right. The transgender movement to be accepted and afforded equal rights has nothing to do with biological sex. So then, why is the Department of Health and Human Services attempting to deny rights and privileges to a small population by arguing that it does?
It is not the author who is making this argument, it is the federal government.
2
@Philgro-- Wow, what shortsighted post. While intersex was discussed in the scientific explanation of all the factors that end up determining a person's resulting orientation, it is in no way equating intersex with transgender people. The article clearly shows how many times in development that nature works to determine the end mix of sex and which is dominate. Using your words, "Their genetic "defect","is part of nature, just like all the other results that are possible. This article doesn't confuse the issues, you do.
3
@Philgro. If you read carefully he did not equate intersex with transgender.
The questions of sex and gender belong to the medical, biological and mental health sciences. They are not political questions, and the Trump administration has no business whatsoever attempting to rewrite definitions to appease its evangelical base. I have transgendered friends. I have a friend, a woman, who is partnered with a transgendered woman. I have at least one friend who has a transgendered son. To a person, these are all good, decent people who deserve the same equal protection of the laws as anyone else!
63
@Mark Kessinger
Biology still matters.
When a transgender female to male has renal failure or a heart attack, will they receive a diagnosis and treatments that will not kill them? Our sexed bodies are not analogue. People with female bodies have different symptoms and require different treatments.
Will a transgender male to female receive medical recommendations for a prostate exam when the time comes? Likely not, but I have never heard of any transwoman having theirs removed during transition.
4
Let’s get rid of women sports. No more separate but equal. As my Stanford and Wharton graduate sister has always said, “women are just as good at sports as men.”
30
Advisable to abstain from driving heavy equipment until symptoms subside.
Biology again: human males are on average larger and stronger than human females. Which is why more and more women's sports competitions are being dominated by biological males. So yeah, they being gotten "rid of" already, in a way that negates the achievements of female athletes.
7
@Shamrock Well, Shamrock, if the trans lobby has its way, your wish will come true - women's sport will be over. No matter what is in the person's heart, a person born with male gonads will have greater muscle mass, lung capacity, longer arms and legs, etc. This is simple scientific truth. Women's athleticism, I like to think, is equal to that of the male given their differences in size in strength, but the differences are undeniable. Allowing transwomen to compete in women's sports will end those opportunities for women. One more reason this is a narcissistic, self-centered, anti-woman movement that's really more about male entitlement (now to redefine women) than anything else.
9
In other words, biology does not provide proof of God's plan for people's proper sexual identities. It must be the work of Satan!
17
.
Freud held that the id is bisexual
8
@Prometheus: in what way is Freud a relevant authority on this matter? Or any others...
@Prometheus. Except there is no Id.
@Andrew
Ah yes an anti-Freudian.
I just made a point; you didn’t like it. I’m over it
Neuroscience will show that much of Freud was correct. Neuroscience and materialism will also show that you are not even a real person, but just a brunch of neural processes that are material, a biological puppet.
1
Intersex people born with both male and female genitalia comprise a fraction of a percent of the population. Usually either the male or the female organs is not fully formed. Hospitals normally remove one of the other organ after running a chromosome test. Intersex people are not transgender and are not part of the transgender issue. The use is whether men who gender identify as female should vibe treated a women or whether women who gender identify as male should be treated a men.
37
@William Case Back before these DNA tests, I had a friend who had a baby born with both sex parts. The doctor, in his specialty said, "Its easier to make her a girl, instead of a boy because she has better female parts and the male part is very small." so they made her a girl. I watched her grow up, and she was definitely a boy. I lost contact with them when this child was about 12, they called her a tomboy. but he was adamant that he wouldnt touch a doll or play with any girls toys.
14
@William Case - In truth, the case being made is that sex is a complicated, multilayered and multifaceted situation. Of course, one must have a mind that is equally complex, multilayered and multifaceted to understand that. Those who insist on a world of black/white, on/off, yes/no are of course going to have a tough go of understanding the world.
43
@wahela "he was adamant that he wouldnt touch a doll or play with any girls toys. " but many progressive sociologists / gender studies people contend that there is no inborn desire for "girls toys" or " boys toys".
Could it possibly be that these oh so learned people are wrong?
Why can’t we acknowledge that intersex people exist and need fuill supports and rights, that most people are unambiguosly male or female, and that anyone of either sex can express their sense of gender however they see fit? The existence of intersex conditions ends up being used to justify fully male people calling themselves females and undermining protections designed for females. That some people are intersex does not mean that male and female cease to exist, and sometimes that distinction matters.
129
I suspect you are confusing intersex with transgender. Intersex individuals are a different issue where there is physical abnormality and sterility, and no-one is really disagreeing about them. The issue is over people who clearly fit into one or other category of gender physically and are almost all fertile members of that physical gender, but see themselves as “other”. This is not a simple topic, and there should be a reasoned discussion about how this minority of people should be treated in society. At the very least, I would hope it could be without demonization, but not all demands are necessarily valid (if any).
5
@Andrew I think we’re on the same page. I mean to say that intersex and transgender are different but often conflated in public discussion, and that intersex conditions are being inappropriatedly used with reference to transgender people. I agree with your conclusion.
2
@finally Well and clearly stated! Thank you! Reason and compassion are not antithetical and not yet dead.
3
I have no problem recognizing the complexity of intersex people - but I have a problem with a “scientific” rejection of a sexual binary that smuggles in a relativist, social constructionist philosophy which renders sex a matter of internal feelings. We are not “assigned” a sex. We recognize our sex. “Gender identity” is as scientifically grounded as “age identity” - there is nothing there except subjective feeling.
We have male, female, and in .02% of the population or so, intersex - which is analogous to many other rare disorders that deserve our empathy and understanding.
207
@James
Far be it from me to spend a nanosecond attempting to shed light on transgender to James, who writes intelligently but without any medical knowledge. Here goes, and again for no purpose because not a word will change not a single mind - now biology is politics in this tiny country of ours.
It is beyond cavil that sense of gender identity is inborn, like sexual orientation, and is immutable, and is not a social construct. It can be male, female or a mix. Establishment science recognizes this as fact; the single debate now is how it happens, not if.
Now, let the fury commence!
25
@AG I am a woman. I know this because of my biology. I have no sense of gender identity. Please tell me what it feels like to be a woman or a man without using cultural stereotypes?
12
@AG
If "gender identity is...immutable" why is we are also told that said identity is "fluid" and subject to variation and change from one time to another by a person?
8
People really need to read more anthropology. So many people are certain that their worldview--limited in place and time and often based on privilege--is the ultimate Truth. But the world does not work in binaries; everything is a continuum; everything is variation. It's beautiful if you aren't busy trying to force everything into little boxes.
89
Actually things are chaotic with strange attractors. One of these is fertile male and the other is fertile female and they select for themselves. All other things are culture, which is what you are talking about, and we can disagree about those and societies can choose to reject norms from other societies. I would prefer not to recognize human sacrifice. I give this an example of the argument taken to extremes so that the point is clear, not as a direct equivalent (which it is certainly not).
1
@Anne, You bring up a good point. We only think of our own culture. I've read that some Native American and other cultures hold people with both sex characteristics in high regard, as having wisdom that "binaries" don't have. One culture's abominations are another culture's idols.
Life is not black and white, but shades of grey. Black and white thinkers tend to make an assumption or follow someone else's conclusion, and then completely shut down all thought on the subject, even when new evidence is brought to light. This is how fundamentalists in any religion, and any extremist who want to conserve whatever they think is the one "right" way, lead people backwards by stifling growth and adaptation.
1
As someone who teaches anthropology: what is also interesting are the similarities that tend to persist in time and space. Pesky, I know, and assiduously denied and ignored by the cool kids who want to score political/popularity points for relativism, but it’s true.
Think of it this way: the urologist quoted in the comments is trained to notice OUTLIERS, but like all doctors make heir living on the FACT that most people have these organs and systems, with normal variations.
Maybe we will evolve differently toward non sexual reproduction. Who knows. Til then evolutionary pressure is on clear sexual distinctions.
5
"The policy changed proposed...marches backward in time. It flies in the face of scientific consensus." Backwards and ignorant. Two words which perfectly describe this Trump-Republican administration.
45
The current administration appals me. Nevertheless, some of this debate at both ends is ridiculous. In terms of physical identification, the large majority of people can be easily categorized, and it makes sense to do so. Intersex are a small group that may need special consideration. Those who feel that there is a mismatch between their physical gender and their feelings are another class altogether, and sincere people can disagree on how this issue is to be addressed. Everyone comes to their own conclusions based on their own axioms - and that is how we deal with everything in society. Let’s discuss rather than denigrate.
2
I don't have much concern for the depth or parcing of the math or science. Those things can be argued for an infinity.
What I can not understand is why some people feel it necessary to define others by some arbitrary standard. How should it matter to me how someone else sees themselves. Why is this important to anyone?
Wouldn't these great binary simplifiers time be better spent concerning themselves with how to create the circumstances that allow most of us to seek our own sort of happiness? (If they must be concerned about it at all.)
But of course they can't because difference frightens them.
250
@David Clark The standard is anything but arbitrary. It's a standard that's emerged from observations of the entire population. Virtually everyone fits cleanly into male or female. It's a bimodal distribution, not a spectrum. Occasionally something goes wrong and an anomaly results. What *would* be arbitrary is taking these rare anomalies, creating a theory of sex entirely based on them, and ignoring the fact that virtually all other cases fit into a bimodal distribution, not a continuous "spectrum".
What I will agree with you on is your raising of the rhetorical questions: "How should it matter to me how someone else sees themselves. Why is this important to anyone?" Indeed, if a man sees himself as a woman, it does not thereby make him a woman, just as a man of European ancestry does not become black or Japanese merely because he sees himself as such, or as someone who believes himself the Emperor of Rome is not entitled to be addressed as an emperor merely because of his subjective belief and feeling.
55
@David Clark - Well said. It's like if we all met at a restaurant to share a meal. Why should it matter if I order the salmon, you order the veggie burger, and she orders a steak? How does what I eat and enjoy affect what you eat and enjoy? In truth, it does not affect me at all. The same is true here - let all enjoy their own "meal" as they choose, for whatever reason they choose.
35
@David Clark I can explain. People denying rights to sex/gender minorities often mix in "science" with the religious arguments to deny their reality or relevance. Normally we hear that gays can not reproduce, and thus can not be a result of biological evolution. Trans identity is called arbitrary because it defies the binary biological sex determination. So it is only prudent to illustrate the fact that determination of sex (not gender, or identity, or behaviour) is not binary, but can be demonstrably (e.g. translocations, sequence divergence) incremental and intermediate.
19
I am a Urologist. We are taught about intersex and are on the front line with families and patients born with “ambiguous genitalia”. It is an extremely difficult situation. The pink or blue room scenario doesn’t work from day one.
The original surgical approach was that it was easier to make a vagina than build a penis. It has become more complicated as we have learned there is much more to being female or male. Many bad decisions were made. These children didn’t choose anything.
The same is true with adults who feel they are in the wrong body and need to be the other sex. They don’t chose it anymore than I have chosen to be a man. These people don’t deserve anything but our understanding and empathy. My heart hurts for these patients who do not have a place in our society.
This article is a great review of why this happens and the truly scientific non-binary definition of sexual identity.
The reason it is controversial isn’t the science. It is the man made, not scientific, definitions from political, social and religious organizations that make this issue controversial. Whether it is only 1 or 2 % of the world’s population doesn’t matter or whether you can grasp it scientifically or not. What matters is giving these people a chance to live how they need to live and as whatever sex is right for them. How that is defined can be different for many and having a law such as the ACA or what Mr Trump is proposing which defines sex only one way is not consistent with reality.
622
@DLP Thank you for this kind and erudite comment.
35
@DLP There is a big difference between acknowledging the right of intersex people to live as they choose, and allowing those without intersex conditions to appropriate the lives of intersex people by claiming they are trans gender. Being intersex and being transgender are two completely different things.
62
@DLP
so well said.... Thank you for your comments
8
Glad to see this. I was a science journalism major at the University of Wisconsin, concentrating in Genetics. this was back in 2005 when there was first a problemitizing of how sex/gender is determined. Most of the evidence came from twin studies where the twins were two separate genders in the womb but the stronger twin, in the fight for resources, turned the gender of the other.
We need more study of this and besides this, Alfred Adler taught gender was a spectrum. Gender has to do not with gonads but what we consider to be the social norms for men and women at any given time. In this gender is definately a conceptualization. Sex is not but people are, most are, born with a penis or a vagina but neither has to do with self concept and there may be other very complex chemistry going on underneath. The White House decision was not only a blow to the transgender community and civil rights but also to science.
173
@Quispin Hoeks What is the debate really about? Sex or gender? If it's sex then science dictates that it can't be assigned...period. Sex is determined at birth when the person delivering the baby sees its genitals & declares, “It’s a girl/boy!” Determination of a child’s sex at birth is basic biology 101 & it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with gender. Gender identity is different. This may be “wired” in our brains before we are born. We all have certainly read, seen or heard about some notable examples. I believe we are here today because the left has muddied the waters. A good example was brow beating Facebook into having 71 different gender identities which is absurd. The left's obsession with trivial issues like this has made them and their supporters a national laughing stock. This is politically disastrous & plays into the hands of Fox News. We need to find common ground... somewhere in the middle. I believe we can & should make accommodations to people who have or are in the process of transitioning. But no legislature in their right mind is going to give full civil rights protections to people who self identify as polygender, two spirit, or non binary to name a few unusual categories. That would be insane. That would create the mother of all legal quagmires that would only benefit lawyers. It's your personal choice how you choose to self identify. But if there's no science to back this up & you won't get a lot of support. Less anger more common sense.
6
"An XX baby can be born with a penis..."
The intersex incidence is about about one in every 2,000 births, in other words, the likelihood is ~0.0005%. Which means that sex is essentially binary.
Sexual identity is of course a completely different story. A person can identify as anything they chose (or are imprinted on). A duckling may believe it is a goose (or human). A human may believe they are a wolf - there are many cases of such wolf and tiger children. Does this make them wolves and tigers, Dr. Fausto-Sterling?
114
@Kai Intersex is only 1 biological variation among many. See the excellent (but not all inclusive) review in 2016 by J Michael Bailey, Northwestern U.
There is much to know beyond Intersex and this article just touches on the layers.
12
1/2000 is .0005, which is .05%
11
1 in 2000 = 0.05%
x 325,000,000 = 162,500 people in the US
15
Its clear that the skill of extrapolation is lost to most Americans or most of the commentators here.
So if the "alterations", and/or changes that go on as described here, are the outliers...imagine all the possibilities of similar, but not to this degree changes going on in the mix of reproduction and the sharing of genes - from more then one generation and lineage - of the procreator's. Imagine.
Imagine all the blips and almosts, and chance changes taking place in the mix of genetics, that might result in those among us who never feel comfortable in their skin, or with the genitals they might feel they never should have been given...?
Can any of you nay-sayers think outside of that shut-box and stop and extrapolate (from what we read here and elsewhere) that the results of genetic mixing (in both diverse and not so diverse populations) results in a spectrum of the "hows" any person might feel about themselves? From a deep and primal level of their being? That they have no means to explain the why? And due to societal prejudices and constraints, even if they should try and express that deep feeling so to be more real in their own bodies...?
Its truly sad that so many people simply cant take a moment or two in their lives to try and imagine life for those they deem defectives. That they refuse to try...to imagine the difficulties of people who feel trapped in a body that feels alien to them. In a society that vilifies them for a difference they didn't ask for...
Sad.
51
@Boregard "Can any of you nay-sayers think outside of that shut-box and stop and extrapolate (from what we read here and elsewhere) that the results of genetic mixing (in both diverse and not so diverse populations) results in a spectrum of the 'hows' any person might feel about themselves?"
Yes, we can understand being uncomfortable with the genetic/biological hand we are dealt. We just all don't think that we should change basic biology because we don't like ours, and we don't demand that public policy accommodate our every nuance.
23
@Boregard It is indeed unfortunate that such genetic abnormalities and the conditions they give rise to exist.
It's also unfortunate that some people suffer from schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. Do we allow such conditions to govern our conception of normal mental health?
26
@Boregard Intersex people are not defective. Neither are trans people. But that does not change the fact that we are a sexually binary species. XY humans do not die in childbirth or endure forced pregnancy. XY humans dominate the world, and use violence to maintain control over XX people. This is the reality women live with every single day. Erasing us is just as cruel as erasing the existence of transgender people.
6
I was going to admonish the author for the oversimplification of the argument, such as imparted by omission of the effects of chromosomal translocations, SNPs load, and such. But I see that even this incomplete avalanche of scientific nuance has already upset readers quite comfortable under the warm covers of ignorance and "common sense".
51
A person just successfully sued the Dutch govenrnment to have sex noted as XX in his/her passport, commenting: "this is how I was born, I am happy with who I am, and it is not for the government to tell me to pick one sex over the other".
7
@erik The same people who got hysterical because Elizabeth Warren shared the results of HER OWN DNA test, are perfectly fine with males appropriating the biology and chromosomes of female people. The Left has its own toxic version of misogyny that's almost as insidious as the Right's.
31
@Penny White
This assertion makes no sense at all. How are males appropriating the biology and chromosomes of female people, again? And misogyny means "hatred of women". Hard to see how acceptance of transgender identity equals hatred of women, no matter where on the political spectrum you fall.
2
Actually, Leonne Zeegers was identified as male at birth, was raised as male but decided to have reassignment surgery in 2001 in accordance with a female identity, but has now decided to identify as intersex, hence the “X” in the passport. So I do not feel it is at all clear that this person’s identity and feelings have been consistent.
9
I am very thankful of this writing. Too often the public debate on gender spins into rootless areas that soon spin out of control into unfounded psychobabble, opinion and delusion. This article anchors the discussion where it belongs: on biology and its wonderful complexity. While the vast majority of our species are clear XY males and XX females, 99.936% according to the authors own work, this still amounts to 4.67 million worldwide who are not XX or XY. Expand to include true hermaphrodites, Turner and Klinefelter Syndrome, Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome, and Vaginal agenesis, the sum of which is a subset of Fausto-Sterling's count of those with "Nondimorphic Sexual Development" and we get to 0.22% or 15.97 million souls worldwide and roughly 720,000 within the US.
Such numbers are staggering. My heart breaks to read of such high numbers who have been under a cloud of being the ultimate "other."
Clearly, eyes and hearts must be opened. Mine have been.
24
@Krizpe Some people are born without limbs; we are still a bipedal species. Some people are born intersex; we are still a sexually binary species. This is not hard.
38
@Penny White
If you define sex only via reproductive role, then no one prior to puberty, past menopause, or childless by choice or necessity has a sex. That is weird. Are those without limbs not a part of our species?
1
@Krizpe: and I am sorry for those folks wit birth defects. They deserve compassion and respect.
But they are NOT TRANSGENDER.
They have birth defects.
That is not the same as a healthy normal man who decides at 50 that he
s really a woman and wants society to pay for his sex change, and then treat him just like a woman.
4
Thank you for this article - it helps my understanding. It is disheartening to see many of the denial responses. Fausto-Sterling's article does not assign quantities to the existence of non typical people because it's complex and really unknown. And ultimately, to a society, it shouldn't matter. Why does anyone need to feel threatened by someone else's being. We are all unique and each of us could somehow be defined out of legitimacy. Acceptance and understanding are the only necessary responses.
21
@JS "Why does anyone need to feel threatened by someone else's being." Let me explain: The vast majority of sexual violence is committed by people with XY chromosomes; the majority of people who are victims of sexual violence have XX chromosomes. People with XY chromosomes are a genuine threat to people with XX chromosomes. Karen White has XY chromosomes and demanded to be housed in a women's prison; 'she" raped at least one incarcerated woman. (google it: Karen White transgender rapist). A person with XY chromosomes claimed to be trans (he's not - but who could prove it? We are told we must take people at their word) and he raped several disabled women in various homeless shelters (google it: Christopher Hambrook). Haven't heard about this? I can explain: trans activism is a boutique issue of the privileged academic class, and does not concern itself with the mundane safety needs of homeless and incarcerated women. Miss Anne is a perfect example of a privileged woman who can afford to live in her head, while most women are oppressed through their very real, very binary bodies.
4
This really informs me. I had thought that the y chromosome determined one of two biological categories but I could care less what people called or identified themselves. In fact if somebody identifies as a female while biological evidence indicates another, is it important except for scientific research? If it varies from day to day, as I'm sure it does with some (many?), I'm not sure it has any significance at all, aside from the scientific information it may provide for researchers. And yet some people, mostly conservative, think it important. So with or without scientific information I previously thought differently, and I'm sure that those who now have more factual information will not be swayed by it either. So they are not fact based. Big deal for them I suppose.
6
@Mickeyd This is the misogyny inherent to trans activism: the vast majority of sexual violence is committed by male people against female people. This is why male people do not care when a male person "identifies" as a female person and demands access to spaces where female people are vulnerable to assault (shelters, prisons, locker rooms). Female people do not exist to male people. Our biology is a mere matter of opinion, not the source of ALL human life or the axis of our oppression. We are a costume, a mere idea in a man's head. Yet we must weep and gnash our teeth when the existence of trans people is denied. Misogyny is one heck of a drug - even on the Left.
42
@Penny White — Penny, transgender women are highly vulnerable to sexual assault and other physical assault by some men seeking to punish them for transgressing the boundary. It’s possible trans men also experience heightened danger from some other men.
In contrast, I am not aware of any degree of physical threat presented to cis women by trans people of either gender. So why the concern over their access to various spaces? They share with cis women a peculiar vulnerability to violent assault. Solidarity would be a better response. They’re not appropriating anything of value from cis women.
2
@Penny White
Are you aware of the existence of trans men?
Are you aware that there have been no documented assaults of cis women by trans women in locker rooms or bathrooms?
If you can't respect the autonomy and right of self-determination of someone else, why would you expect your own to be respected?
1
It is true that there are several varieties of intersex. There is no third sex.
However, the determining factor in all of human history is that about half the population can bear children. Our hisotry is the struggle for control of that power.
54
@Audaz
So well said.
2
Sex did not exist until human beings decided it did. That is a fact. Before human beings, there was simply no life form that used its brain cells to create complex systems for understanding the universe.
Classification systems say more about the creator of the system than that which is being classified. In the case of NYT readers who commented here, I have learned that human beings care a lot about classification systems that have equally weighted categories, which is to say a category with 1% of the total members of the system is dismissed as unimportant to an understanding of the system. In other words, we don’t like outliers. I also learned that physical structures (whether hormones, genes, or body parts) are more important than feelings, thoughts, and desires, although that will probably change as we better understand the subtle physical structures that surely produce these affects. Finally, I learned that fertility/reproduction is REALLY important to us. In another cultural context, our biological categories might be determined by sexual desire or activity, and not by the limited issue of whether or not someone can produce offspring (something to which infertile members of the ~98.3% of us who are supposedly “binary” might object).
If you are still not convinced, read the first chapter of Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex, where she looks across the plant and animal kingdoms and describes myriad, fascinating, and non-binary ways organisms develop and reproduce.
21
@znb731 Some people are born without limbs; we are still a bipedal species. Also- I'm pretty sure sex, air, water, and fire existed LONG before human beings decided they did. Naming something is not the same as creating it. We are supposed to understand this when we outgrow the narcissistic magical thinking of childhood.
47
@znb731 Would you stand by that first paragraph if the words "global warming" were substituted for "sex"? So it read:
Global warming did not exist until human beings decided it did. That is a fact. Before human beings, there was simply no life form that used its brain cells to create complex systems for understanding the universe.
1
@znb731 Nothing exists until human beings "decide" it does?
Okie. I've decided the cars driving by on the nearby freeway don't exist. I'm going to walk across it to prove it! I'll report back with my findings.
3
One aspect of transgendered sexuality that hasn't been discussed much is the extent of sexual differences between the brains of men and women. As some have said, gender is more a function of what is between one's ears than what is between one's legs.
In the case of transgendered individuals, they feel like they are of the opposite sex, despite cultural and social expectations. In many cases they want to play with toys associated with the opposite sex (e.g. toy trucks vs dolls) and wear clothes associated with the opposite sex. This seems to indicate that (1) there are clearly defined differences between the brains of men and women, and (2) gender related preferences are more than just societally enforced expectations.
So while all occupations should be open to all genders, the fact that some occupations are dominated by one gender or the other may not be evidence of any discrimination. I suspect this is an issue - like differences between different races - that many will want to stay away from, lest the results upset what they want to believe.
8
@J. Waddell: OR ... maybe toys have no gender.
Maybe clothing is just fabric and has no gender.
1
@J. Waddell Thank You for illustrating so clearly the toxic misogyny of the transgender movement. It is deeply regressive and extremely harmful to women.
5
@J. Waddell
Like so many other commenters, you fail to distinguish between the biological aspects of sex (which this article says are nonbinary and multilayered), and the societal markers of gender, which vary with time and place.
Playing with toys that are associated with the opposite gender is a long way from feeling that one has the wrong physiology and wanting to have surgery to alter one’s body.
I never felt myself to be or wished to be anything but female. I have not conformed to various societal expectations about the occupations and clothing assigned to females. But still, I am at peace in my female body.
People whose core identity doesn’t match their assigned sex may be are drawn to superficial markers like clothing and toys as a way to communicate their identify. “The child likes pink dresses — she must be a girl!” If that’s the case, it proves nothing but the high degree to which children are aware of the male/female schema for so many things that are not inherently male or female (colors, for example).
The important thing is a person’s core identity, not the societal markers assigned to it. After all, there was a time when it was the norm for powerful men to wear high heels and wigs. I have been criticized for not wearing heels and makeup, but still I persist and still I am female. If that’s “brain chemisty,” it’s only because the entire personality of a human being involves brain chemistry.
2
The only way we get to 1% - 2% is by vastly expanding the definition of intersex into something it is not. This is exactly what Dr. Fausto-Sterling has done.
To arrive at that figure, she defines as intersex any "individual who deviates from the Platonic ideal of physical dimorphism at the chromosomal, genital, gonadal, or hormonal levels"
Traditional intersex studies identify the rate as 8 births out of every 100,000.
This is what happens when special interest groups try to reset reality to drive policy - and people claim it is only the right that ignores science.
Sax, Leonard. "How Common is Intersex? A Response to Anne Fausto-Sterling." The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 39, no. 3, 2002, pp. 174-178.
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@SteveRR I think the point of the article is that there are many biological variations. Some have genetic contributions but others (altered Hypothalamic nuclei, for instance) may not. They are still biological and do NOT represent choices. They are largely present prenatally or in early infancy, and only a few are not clear until after puberty.
18
@SteveRR. But Streve, activists and media types need every hot-button topic they can find, to prove how open-minded they are, and the public is not. Categories of victimhood, however itty-bitty, are becoming a sought-after commodity.
25
@SteveRR: I believe Dr. Fausto-Sterling has more credibility and informed knowledge of the topic than you do Steve. Also, your source is 16 years old.
6
“It has long been known that there is no single biological measure that unassailably places each and every human into one of two categories — male or female.”
Uhm, hold on. This is a shady tactic, saying that since you can’t put Every human into one of two categories, those categories should be null and void. As one commenter noted, the amount of people afflicted by an intersex condition is extremely small, almost negligibly small (from a statistical point of view). The exceptions don’t break the rule. This biology professor is leaving out very important information to advance her agenda.
Dear NYT, can we get an opinion piece from someone that rejects this argument? I think it’ll be an interesting read.
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@Nick
The only people identified as intersex will be those with an easy-to-see mix of sexual characteristics. That may be a couple of percent of people. But much larger groups will have mixes of chromosomes that aren't just XX or XY, and that produce different cocktails of hormones, in people who will respond differently to medications, and so on. So it's not just hermaphrodites.
7
@Nick I don't think the goal is to nullify the binary categories. You acknowledge there are those who fall outside these categories. Let's say you were one of them. Or let's say you had a sibling who was one of them. What would you think of the current government proposal?
18
@Nick It is not a tactic. The quotes specifies "no single biological measure". Let me re-word it. The author does not say that some people can't be placed into one of the two categories. It says that the path to make that decisions entails several tests or criteria, rather than a single one. The traditional test has been the very visible presence of genitalia. That criterion is incomplete.
10
"The flogging will stop when morale improves." Why stop at T when L, G. B all assault the tender sensibilities of the Christian Conservative Right.
We cannot have their "religious freedom", to persecute people they don't like, taken away.
8
Great article, though i wish it backed up the various layers wiht research on how real gender variances have been observed
I do think the liberal side has rushed very fast into transgender issues (and I fully support it) but with no education or outreach that such variances are biological and normal.
Many folk who have never heard such are left thinking it is personal preference, or socialization. A person who has XX chromosomes but with a penis is an example I had never heard, and can be useful in educating people.
3
@Wake A person with XX chromosome and a penis has a medical disorder and cannot produce sperm. This is very different from a sperm producing XY person who claims to be a woman. We need to acknowledge those very real and important differences when making laws based on "gender identity" as opposed to laws meant to protect people born with intersex anomalies.
18
Use three categories for biological sex then: male, female, and intersex.
18
@Holly
But the whole point of the science Fausto-Sterling sketches out here is that sex and gender are *more complicated* than that. I really don't understand why so many people feel it necessary to deny that or why others, like you, seem so grudging about it. What skin is it off your nose, or anyone else's, if governments acknowledge people whose sex/gender are complicated?
10
@Jolanta Benal
It’s not complicated at all. I was talking about biological sex which was what the article was about. But biological sex and gender are not the same thing. You can be of “male” biological sex but of “female” gender (as in a transgender woman).
1
@Holly That's too reality based and sensible for an academic to understand.
9
"The policy change proposed by the (Trump-GOP) Department of Health and Human Services marches backward in time........ It flies in the face of scientific consensus about sex and gender....... and it imperils the freedom of people to live their lives in a way that fits their sex and gender as these develop throughout each individual life cycle."
Exactly.
D to go forward; R for reverse.
November 6 2018
14
@Socrates The scientific consensus is that only (not all) female human beings can get pregnant and give birth, and that only (not all) male human beings can produce sperm. That is the scientific consensus. And denying that fact imperils the freedom of female people to discuss sex based oppression and to fight sexism.
13
@Penny White
No it really doesn't. You keep making that assertion but in no way explain or defend it. Female people discuss and fight sexism while defending the rights of nonbinary gendered people all the time. You simply don't choose to.
1
@Socrates: OR ...
D for devolution
R for reasonable rational thinking
1
thought police, republican variety -- you may only have two categories
4
I like to remember the movie "Little Big Man". In this flik a character male who acted female was called a "contrary". He/ she did all kinds of things backward; like walking, riding a horse and dressing. He was the good-natured fun-loving character who clearly had an appreciated, respected, and even admired position in Sioux society.
I followed this up in studies and found that many so-called "primitive" societies reserved respectable positions for homosexuals and transvestites: not so many for lesbians of course except for the Amazons who coupled with men only to have children and then killed them swiftlly like Black Widow spiders. Is that right?
Anyway how about a little respect for human sexual expression, anyone?
Live and let live: let it be--let it be.
15
@Discernie Traditional cultures with third gender categories tend to be extremely patriarchal. A man with "feminine" traits would be kicked out of the man box. This is not "enlightened" it is an attempt to preserve rigid gender roles, not undermine them. And no- Amazons did not couple with men to have children, then kill them like Black widows. But that myth is based just as much in reality as the idea that men can get pregnant and that some women produce sperm.
5
The only problem I have with the argument presented by this article is that anyone thinks it's necessary. If I choose to live my life as a different gender, whether or not that choice is driven by biology, I don't think it's anyone else's business.
24
@Justin It's someone else's business if you then decide to get a sports scholarship set aside for women. Or if you decide that your new gender gives you the right to enter women's refuges or shelters.
4
@Justin When males stop raping females at horrific numbers, it will no longer be anyone's business if a man identifies as a woman. But that is not the world we live in, and male sexual predators have already abused the Gender ID movement to harm women in prisons (google Karen White, transgender rapist, as only one example) and to harm women in homeless shelter (google Christoper Hambrook). These homeless and incarcerated women were raped and no one on the "enlightened" Left cared. When they say "It Never Happens" they mean "We Don't Care If It Happens."
3
@Justin
The problem is that transgender people have made it other people's business by insisting that they may now be forcibly integrated with women who remain generally physically vulnerable to male-bodied people. Women have fought long and hard for our rights to associate away from male-bodied people, and saying that anyone who claims to be a woman is a woman and now fit to be integrated with them, is discarding the rights of women born as women.
5
I’ve been waiting for your article in response to Washington’s latest move, Professor! Thank you! Your work has been pivotal in my understanding. So very grateful!
15
@Jude Parker Smith Only female humans can get pregnant and give birth; the vast majority of people in power have XY chromosomes and are male; please stop playing "All Lives Matter" with women's lives. Female biology is the oldest and most brutal axis of oppression and FEMALE BIOLOGY MATTERS.
3
Yes! Thank you!
1
The author of this article seems to take rare, abnormal biological events to justify why there isn’t a binary male/female system. In reality, since these outcomes are so rare, and often the result of something going wrong during gametogenesis, it is inaccurate to say that these genotypes are viable genders. In fact some of these genotypes are sterile. The XX male is more often a result of a translocation event from the Y chromosome bringing the SRY gene onto the X. There are very few cases of the SRY gene not causing it though it does happen. Such cases mean that sex-determination is more complex than we thought, and requires more research to pinpoint what factors may cause this. In short, to claim that misbegotten genotypes are evidence of non-binary genders is a middling of science. While the conservatives seem to deny science, liberals seem to be willing to use it for political/social gain in unsavory ways.
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@Waleed Khalid
What gain, other than protecting people from discrimination?
Those in the administration are not raising the discussion in good faith. There is no problem they are trying to solve. They just want another "them" for their supporters to circle wagons against, just as they have created "them" groups of immigrants, Muslims, minorities, Californians, and such. Why do authoritarians pick on minorities? Because it works politically, allowing them to distract from their own incompetence. Oldest trick in the book. Take it seriously, but do not play into this game.
16
Dr. Fausto-Sterling covers the science and biology of sex. Now let's address the clerical and social implications.
Most, but not all, humans are born with the unambiguous physical attributes of male or female. For clerical purposes, the gender of a newborn can be classified male, female, or other on the birth certificate.
A person classified "other" at birth may later choose to adopt either the male or female gender by mimicking socially-perceived behavior and dress. They, and any citizen, may undergo surgical procedures and drug therapy to reverse or enhance their preferred gender characteristics.
Just how should society treat and classify those individuals who began life in gender ambiguity, or chose to switch their gender identity? As individuals, of course, more interesting company than most, for sure.
And should gender identification on the birth certificate be amendable on a birth certificate, just as it is on my Georgia driver's license? Of course! Who does it harm? What business of clergy or politicians is it?
17
@AynRant We have the Americans With Disabilities Act to protect people born with Intersex conditions. If trans people want legal protections they must fight to pass the Equality Act, not gut the meaning of Title IX.
12
Anne,
While there are obvious abnormalities in the animal kingdom, they are just that - abnormalities. People who are born with both male and female genitalia are a very minuscule number and need to be helped into transitioning into one sex or the other.
Most transgender people that I know, however, were born clearly into one sex. Some transgender men and women have happily reproduced as mothers and fathers, according to their biological gender.
Human biology is indeed very complex, and nature is often dreadful. Imagine being born as conjoined twins. We don’t create a third species of humans for them. We try to separate them when possible and do the best medicine can achieve.
51
I’m curious, Rose: what is the second species of human to which you refer?
1
@Rose M. What a false equivalence. Conjoined twins are two individuals trapped in bodies that are inextricably combined. While people with ambiguous genitalia or whose sexual identify doesn't properly match up with their genitals, they are clearly individuals whose understanding and manifestation of who they are often starts at an early age and persists through life. The ideas that a nonconforming sexual orientation somehow makes a person a different "species" and that forced early intervention is a better path than simply respecting people's freedom to decide for themselves what gender they are are repugnant.
2
Thank you for writing this lucid explanation of the many layers of biological sex. I hope your readers will be open-minded enough to take it as a means to understanding, rather than "hogwash".
It doesn't matter how few people fit outside the traditional boxes of all-female or all-male. It also doesn't matter whether you knew anyone outside those boxes growing up, as an adult, or ever. We are all Americans and we all deserve equal protection under the law.
17
If the idea that sex is non-binary makes you angry, ask yourself why. It comes from wanting everything to be easy, neat, and clean versus being comfortable with nuance.
34
@Anne I can tell you exactly why the idea that sex is non-binary makes me angry. Here goes: 800 women will die in childbirth today. Women - not men. Not one single man has ever died from childbirth or endured a forced pregnancy. Never. Not one. But millions of men have forced women into pregnancy and childbirth. Also- today - in the USA alone -3 women will be murdered by a MALE intimate partner. Today and every day in the USA. These are MALE people murdering FEMALE people. When you claim that sex is non-binary, you erase the sexist oppression of ONE sex class (male) by the other sex class (female). We cannot fight sexism if we erase sex. We MUST acknowledge the physical, social, and political realties of being a sexually binary species.
3
I agree completely.
Sadly no one cares- see Christine Blasey Ford.
1
Hmm...I think there is a pretty reasonable line that can be drawn here: Gender Expression v. Sex
Gender Expression is cultural, and one should be able to live as one chooses.
Sex, however, is 99/100 bimodal. You have male, female or intersex. The idea that there is some spectrum of sexes isn’t borne out by the data.
The LGTBQIA issues are, by and large, cultural. Let’s keep the debate in that arena. Post-modernism has no place in the hard sciences.
85
@Michael Cain: The hard sciences have been dominated by white men historically. They are 'hard' (male) as opposed to soft (female). White male scientists are very sure of themselves. I love science, but let's be honest: There are things called scientific revolutions where previously believed scientific "truths" were turned on their heads.Even Einstein didn't like quantum physics. Science is an ongoing process; not an infallible truth.
5
@Michael Cain
There is no post-modernism in Dr. Fausto-Sterliing's essay. Just very sound science. And though you are right to distinguish sex from gender, the Trump administration's proposal doesn't do that, so the topic of sexual diversity is entirely appropriate.
6
@Brian Haley the passage from the proposal that was quoted regarded sex, specifically. It was the NYTimes that introduced the concept of gender and confused the two.
Biologic gender is binary in the vast (>99.9%) majority of cases. Furthermore the issues around transgender and non- binary identification have never focused on the rare individual with an intersex or hermaphroditic condition, and it's intellectually dishonest to say so.
Almost all people who identify as transgender or non-binary have clearly female or male chromosomes and genitalia. As adults, they sexually mature in the usual fashion.
Now, people can gender identify as they see fit, that's their right in a free society. And that identification is certainly a social construct. But they are still biologically male or female.
171
@bobw
If 99.9% of people have clearly male or female biology (I doubt it's this high), then that leaves 300,000 Americans you're turning your back on. How many other policies would you support that seek to wipe out a small city?
Also, your comment didn't address the many layers of sex that sit atop chromosomes and genitals. You should respond to the article.
21
@bobw This is so true. This piece is headscratching; it's a lot of mumbo jumbo about the science of a biological minority that everyone may agree exists, but has almost nothing to do with the conversation today. It's completely intellectually dishonest, but all this gender studies is really weird.
38
@Graham
Wait....I must have missed something, but did he recommend wiping out a small city, or wiping out people that are of a certain sexual designation? I don't think he said that at all.
Also, when you go through the article, even to read about the first five layers of sex, the author states that they usually follow the chromosomes. They CAN be different, but in most they are just a layer on top of a layer of what is already there. So it doesn't really change things.
But I think Bob is really right-we aren't even probably talking about those people whose biology is different. We're talking about people who feel different. While feelings are very real to the people who experience them, that doesn't mean that society has to change the way IT views things.
To take a way out example, if you hear voices, they may be real for you, but I don't have to do anything practical to deal with that.
4
Thank you Anne Fausto-Sterling for beginning the conversation regarding the biology and birth defect of genitals. There is also an area in the brain, which develops after the genitals, which regards gender ID. It is larger in males, smaller than females. In studies, the trans persons' matched whom they stated they were. I was healthcare professional 35 yrs. I've seen scapegoated individuals just b/c they were disabled, or didn't meet society opinion. I also studied this issue. People have been in fear of writing about this. A tragic birth defect. Again, I ask, why are infants with spina bifida, born with intestines outside their bodies, with no brain, etc, why are they immune? I believe it is b/c of general public imaginings of parts, sex, etc., and feel icky. I know I don't consider what others' genitals look like, nor how they have sex. It's pervey.
To some, cuddling is sex. Why would I care when looking at someone who has finally become authentic to themselves, think immediately of perverse nosy thoughts. Move on people. You'll find another scapegoat. Look in the mirror.
10
@Jeff "There is also an area in the brain, which develops after the genitals, which regards gender ID." If that is true, then only people who've had a brain scan proving that they are trans gender should be allowed to legally identify as the opposite sex. But there is no part of the brain "which regards gender." So for now, ANY man with a fully functioning male reproductive system can claim to be a woman and we little ladies are expected to smile and welcome him into the shower room. No. Biological Sex Is Real And It Matters.
13
@Jeff
I will happily share my vulnerable spaces with male-bodied transgender people IF AND ONLY IF there is a _definitive_ test to tell the difference between someone who is truly transgender and someone who is an opportunist.
As it stands, surgery is a poor threshold as 80% of people who transition male to female keep their male genitalia. Not all take the hormones which theoretically render them impotent and as physically weak as women. Not even 100% alter their appearance to adhere to feminine stereotypes (viz. Danielle Muscato, Alex Drummond) but they still want access to all the spaces that vulnerable women have carved out to be away from male-bodied people.
(Aside: Many times the truly transgender ARE simply opportunist - one of the biggest reasons that detransitioned women give for their desire to transition into men, was to escape what they felt was socially imposed and enforced personal weakness.)
3
Should be re-tiled: Why is it Ok to massage science to fit your social agenda
While I have absolutely no problem with any of the alphabet in LGBTQ, I deem it entirely a personal freedom issue. But this? This is ridiculous.
54
@Avi
Really? Why?
3
@Stephen in Texas Because virtually the entire population minus a tiny fraction fit perfectly cleanly into a bimodal distribution of sex--NOT a continuous 'spectrum' as you find with a trait like height or weight--yet the author does not mention this, and instead argues that anomalies should govern our conception of sex. Which logic would also imply that we need to throw out the theory that a normal human being has 10 fingers and 2 hands, simply because rare exceptions exist.
2
I'll march with you in defense of each person's right to dress, speak, marry, and live as they please without fear of violence, harassment, or discrimination for being a trans person any time. Still, genetics is such that just as some people have a sixth finger, (and who's to say that's wrong? it's fine!), the human hand has five fingers as a rule, and as a rule the human is of two sexes, male and female. Just as your fingers may look very different from mine, maleness and femaleness cover quite a spectrum, all of which is beautiful. It's tragic that rigid ideas of gender once so ordered our lives that parents (all love and good intention) of intersex children were persuaded by doctors and busy bodies to have their babies operated on and socialized to fit a role that may not have fit, lest their child suffer unbearably, when the babies really were whole and fine as they were and would discover themselves in time. Many such people regret those surgeries. Similarly rigid ideas of gender today so order our lives that parents of children whose behaviors don't fit neatly on the same side of the spectrum as their bodies (again, all love and good intention) are again persuaded by doctors and busy bodies, lest their child suffer unbearably, to medicalize what might be accepted as a charming quirk on the personality spectrum, a person who makes it a richer thing to be human, and so they change the child's body in vain search of a false ideal that reflects unhealthy gender concepts.
14
A better title would have been "Why Gender [not 'Sex'] is not Binary". The whole point of applying the word "gender" to human beings (as happened in the 1980s, before which gender was a grammatical term) was to move beyond the biological binary of sex. That binary is real. Every human being who ever lived (and not just every human, not even just every mammal) had one father and one mother (if you prefer, they were sired by one sperm and conceived by one egg). It does not follow that everyone who was sired and conceived should be either a father or a mother. It does not follow that anyone who is not a father or mother (or is incapable of being one or the other) is any less human. But fatherhood is real. Motherhood is real. The sexual binary is real. It is not the whole truth. But it is the truth. And nothing but.
You will call me "heteronormative" (or some such term), but you will fail to say what a norm is. Norms can be descriptive as well as prescriptive. Norms are not evil. Transgender people have the right to exist (of course they do). But so do men and women. We are real.
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Yes, transgender people have the right to let their flags fly. But let's please not conflate gender and sex. Gender is a social construct. Sex is a hard biological fact.
Speaking of male transgenders here--far more common than female transgenders for reasons I'll leave to your imagination--male transgenders, bless their hearts, do not have a right to compete in women's sports or to set records in women's sports; do not have the right to creep around in women's dressing rooms; do not have a right to be incarcerated in women's prisons and rape their fellow inmates. All of these are common, unfortunately.
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@John
The word "Gender" is derived from the Latin "Genus" and originally was synonymous with sex.
It is a fabrication of the trans-movement that "before which gender was a grammatical term". In fact, the trans-movement is busy getting the dictionaries to re-write history to suit their political agenda:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GenderCritical/comments/67wlz4/the_oxford_dicti...
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Such a good article. Evidently, in males the sex parts grow outward and in females the same parts grow inward, which of course promotes coupling and reproduction in mature humans. A clever design. And in some the reproductive signals get confused, leading to unusual combinations -- not illogical at all. The government should stay out of this.
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And then there's the fact that we are changing our biology. For example, endocrine disruptors.
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@Davis Straub Men still can't get pregnant or give birth. Ever. Female Biology Matters.
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The content of this summary can be found in a more expanded version in the Wikipedia articles on "Intersex" and "John Money"
Dr. Money was a controversial figure, as he came to the conclusion that it was more harmful for the newborn to have ambiguous genitalia, so an assignment was decided very shortly after birth. In the 1950s sexual reassignment surgery had barely existed, so the concept of reassignment didn't exist.
President Trump's history of past antagonism to the transsexual community, explains, but does not excuse, his not stating that the description on official documents will be immutable. It is a conclusion from this report in the Washington Post yesterday:
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President Trump said Monday that his administration is “seriously” considering changing the way it treats transgender people under the law, confirming what administration officials describe as a debate about whether to define a person’s sex as a biological fact determined at birth.
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Sure, this was an example of his gross irresponsibility of tweeting his impulsive thoughts irrespective of how they can affect people. The only thing that is binary about gender, as we now know, is the parametric limit of a data point on a birth certificate or census record.
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@Call Me Al Nope. We are as much as sexually binary species as we are a bipedal species. The exceptions prove the rule. Sex is binary.
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Trump's appeal and his implicit promise is that he will create for his followers a simpler world that conforms to their dreamy wish list of how the world ought to be. The nostalgia for a glorious, non-existent past where thare are only two sexes, where men and woment have distinct and separate roles, where the climate never changes except due to natural cycles and non-whites know their places. The list goes on. The world really isn't simple though - it is unimaginably, richly and beautifully complex, and no amount of wishing will make it less so.
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Everything about the Trump regime seeks to march us backward in time, especially anything having to do with science. They will never buy the scientific premise of this article. We are all imperiled by this lack of critical thinking but none more so than those individuals who do not conform to the cookie-cutter stereotypes espoused by Trump and his cult-like followers.
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@Bailey
Pope JP II said it is better that millions die of AIDS than use condoms, to save their souls.
Pope Francis stated that transgender people are as dangerous to mankind as nuclear weapons.
Reasoning with religion is like spitting in the wind.
I will agree to let them pray to some thing that cannot be seen if they will let me be something they cannot see.
The current administration doesn't care at all about science or facts. They are making policy to attract right-wing religious know-nothing voters. Unfortunately, any evidence-based arguments to the contrary are useless.
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@Roy Sadly, the current administration has a lot in common with the Academic Left when it comes to science denial. Men cannot get pregnant (sorry) Women do not have testicles (sorry) and that's as factual as Climate Change and Evolution. Stop denying biology and please remember to vaccinate your kids.
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Some may want to claim that sexual variance is a tiny percent of the population but it is 100% of the time for those who are born and live with that difference. We are deserving of rights, respect and choice despite noncomformity.
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@Ken True. So fight to pass the Equality Act instead of erasing biological women by pretending that womanhood is an "identity" rather than a lived biological reality. You were fine with defining biological women out of existence, but we're supposed to wail and gnash our teeth when trans activists define biological women out of existence. Nope.
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The mere existence of rare occurrences of abnormalities does not negate that human beings as a species (like many other species) are sexually dimorphic with two binary sexes as our species mechanism to accomplish reproduction. Most people claiming a transgender identity do not actually have the rare chromosomal and genitalia variations as described in this article to begin with so trying to conflate the two only creates more distortion and confusion on the issue. Such variations while certainly found in nature, are about as common as other embryonic developmental or genetic derived abnormalities such as being born with six fingers on one hand yet no one would seriously suggest that the presence of extra digits in some infants means that describing human beings as having five fingers on each hand isn't accurate.
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@MM: I actually had a childhood friend who had been born with two thumbs on each hand. She had had the extra thumbs amputated as a toddler, but you could clearly see where they had been located.
This fascinated me as a kid and I would try to catch looks at her hands. I hope I was kind -- we were only about 8 years old -- and I never made fun of her, but I as mesmerized at the idea of EXTRA FINGERS.
However, I never thought of this as meaning "it is normal for people to have extra digits" -- though it is a birth defect more COMMON than intersex (toes too).
I also wonder if any of the PC nuts here think this child should have been allowed to grow up with four thumbs -- and ridicule and staring -- so as not to "influence her choices as an adult" -- or if their ONLY concerns are ever about sex.
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@Concerned Citizen My dear Concerned Citizern! Clearly, your friend shows that the five-fingeredness of homo sapiens is merely a social construct, and that the reality is far more complicated: finger count exists on a spectrum!
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@MM
What on earth does that have to do with the article? The fact is that biological sex at birth is not always clear. Period.
Why? Because biological sex is a balance, coming from a complex combination of factors -- not just a black-white determination of simple X & simple Y.
And that gender is very socially determined indeed, even though it is not unrelated to biological traits.
But the main point is that this administration & the conservatives who support it wish to ignore science & instead make up their own facts. And then also force society to act on these soviet-style pseudo-science fabrications.
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This makes a great deal of sense and is fascinating. I think vis-a-vis the bathroom and locker-room debates: The major issue seems to be the presence or absence of a penis. Many people with vaginas do not feel comfortable - for a variety of reasons, some involving previous sexual assault - being naked or nearly naked around strangers who have penises. Furthermore, public restrooms really just serve a utilitarian role - with urinals for males (or people with penises) and extra stalls for females (or people with vaginas.) Until the day when public facilities are all unisex single-stall spaces, I'd propose that public restrooms/locker-rooms be delineated based on sex (or presence/absence of a penis since sex is a spectrum); and that other groupings - such as a women's book club or a men's film group - be open to anyone who identifies as a woman or a man respectively.
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@GBR
There are no documented cases of assault by trans women of cis women in locker rooms or bathrooms. A trans woman is far more likely to be assaulted by a cis man than a cis woman is by a trans woman. Someone who appears female and goes into a stall in a woman's bathroom and does her business is not going to cause nearly the upheaval that the same person would cause going into a men's bathroom.
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@Not what he said
"There are no documented cases of assault by trans women of cis women in locker rooms or bathrooms." That's baloney. Ask the women imprisoned with Karen White. Ask the little girl who encountered Miguel Martinez, who claims to be a woman named "Michelle."
There are plenty of documented cases of something you say never happens: https://theysaythisneverhappens.wordpress.com/
https://theysaythisneverhappens.wordpress.com/
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Thank you!
I invite all who didn't understand this article to read it again before commenting and sharing your ignorance with the world.
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Triadic Philosophy regards binary thinking of all kinds to lie at the root of the world Aristotle bequeathed us and Charles Sanders Peirce will get us out of when he is finally accepted. It is good to see binary noted in proper context on the home page of the NYT. Now if it would write an editorial about how it infects everything, today would be a great day for thought
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@Stephen C. Rose I don't know anything about Peirce or triadic thinking but inherently I understand the concept and always have looked for many sides of a story, even as most people insist it be binary.
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From an evolutionary point of view, the unfortunate individuals born as hermaphrodites and the like suffer from birth defects. It is intentionally obscurantist to over-emphasize their sad but rare conditions to try to obfuscate how nature works to have humanity reproduce.
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@Steve Sailer: It's only sad when we deem it so and shame people who have bodies different from standardized enforced norms.
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@Anne
You, like everybody, are overwhelmingly descended from bodies of what you consider "standardized enforced norms." The unfortunate individuals who suffer such major birth defects that their reproductive systems are ambiguous have very few descendants.
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@Anne How is it 'shaming' to correctly categorize such conditions as abnormal? No one is saying people with such conditions ought to be ashamed of themselves. Do you think that the identification of leukemia and Alzheimer's and Crohn's as diseases shames people who have them? Do you think the identification of schizophrenia as a mental illness shames someone who has it?
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There are only two biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit procreative natural human race sexes.
But there are many biological DNA genetic evolutionary fit natural human race genders. Gender is typically determined twice prenatally. During the development of genitalia and gonads then during the development of the brain.
While both identities typically coincide and match that is not always the case. And there is nothing unnatural about it. Evolutionary fit natural selection relies on errors to insure diversity among viable populations. Even identical twins are not identical at birth and they change throughout life.
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Yes, there rarely are odd combinations of characteristics, and yes if you measure enough variables enough ways you can claim the male/female dichotomy is unclear, but it is common sense that factors that cluster into two sexes, normally. It is quite real and fundamental, despite the professor's obfuscation.
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@No- A loud NO at your piecing together of biological facts. Common sense is equivalent to opinion. It is not fact. If science, medicine, research felt *common sense* was fact, there'd be no need to understand the precocious biology of genetics, mutations, new findings about the human body.
I am retired healthcare provider. Do YOU want a surgical team which is founded merely on *common sense*? Treat each patient as the same same? I know better, we keep an eye out for developments which are unique to that person. We humans are each unique- as shown by finger prints. We are unique as *snowflakes*. With genetics, biology, it is never fundamental, unless medical research is abolished. And there you have the recipe of never being able to cure whatever illness your unique human body may or may not contract. Ignorance is bliss- right????
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@No common sense also tells you that the Earth is flat, Sun disappears at night, and the Moon is larger than the stars.
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This article covers the biological factors that impact sexual identity. Imagine how much more complex the development of gender preference and gender role is given the potential non-biological factors at play.
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The science of this needs publicity. Most people don’t know about the variability in sexual characteristics that occur in most species.
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@RjW And most of our lawmakers are not aware of the science either as they move to legislate how to define gender.
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@RjW yet as you see with *No*, you can lead a person to knowledge and facts, but you can't make them *see* them. It's just common sense. Fundamentally. To remain stagnant. (I don't really believe in that............you learn as long as you are living, unless feeling threatened by the truth)
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@RjW
and they know even less about endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are found in the lining of their cans of beans or beer.
We use so much drugs that fish in steams are getting their sex determined by their proximity to wastewater treatment plants.
But you're right, it needs to be told and starting with middle school children.
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The problem is that when we go beyond two, there is no stopping because there will always be somebody that won't like her/ his category and would like to create a new one.
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@Ricardo - better to deny reality because it makes counting hard?
I'm glad I grew up when I did instead of when my grandfather did, because for me, being left-handed just meant bad grades in penmanship, and smudges on the side of my hand, and "comfortable" scissors that hurt to use.
For him, physical punishments if caught trying to use the "evil" hand. Everyone knows people are right-handed, right?
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@Ricardo - it seems that when we have male, female, trans, and gender non-conforming we've about covered it(the having the potential to hold all who don't fit the first 3).
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Why is that a problem? Stop trying to categorize people and let them decide for themselves who they are and want to be.
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Do you really think that Republicans are persuaded by science?
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@SlipperyKYSlope. Democrats are equally unpersuaded by science. In a study involving English twin brothers, homosexuality was evident in both twins only 20% of the time. Let that sink in--identical genes but only 1 in five times were both brothers gay. In another study involving Scandinavian homosexual marriages, the rates of suicide were comparable to the unfortunately high rates outside of Scandinavia. This refutes the notion that gays commit suicide more frequently in societies that are unsupportive of them. However, these facts inconveniently do not prove the theory that homosexuality lies along the spectrum of normalcy.
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@Uncommon Wisdom Identical twins are not genetically identical. NGS of twin genomes comes up with thousands of missense SNVs, and up to hundred of nonsense SNVs and indels.
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@Uncommon Wisdom Ditto for all the research showing how personality differences between the sexes *maximize* in the *most* sex-egalitarian countries.
This is all bio-babble. If the development of a human embryo takes place as nature intended, after all is said and done when the baby is born and raised normally it will either be male or female. A baby that is unfortunately born with both male and female organs or neither is a baby with a birth defect and should be medically treated as such. But none of this has anything to do with grown-ups who elect to undergo surgery to change their sex from being completely male to female or vice versa.
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@Jay Orchardy a baby born with a more complex male-female biology develops just as naturally as any other babies. It is not a disease, as you make it sound. Perhaps having a more open mind would help you see the issue more neutrally.
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@Jay Orchard "As nature intended", eh? Giving nature an intent is just a rhetorical device, and we have to carefully unpack what we mean by it. Aren't sexual dimorphism in the body and sexual dimorphism in the brain both "natural"? Those who don't believe people can be transgender are often just latching onto the thing they can see at birth, the body, while ignoring the mind, which is hidden until later on. Why insist on placing matter over mind, rather than the other way around - especially when the person who matters most disagrees?
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@Jay Orchard
bio-babble really? Science is complex and resisting its complexity is highly uninformed be intention.
as nature intended? methinks you conflate intentional and spiritual.
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One thing this article omits is the number of people in this country afflicted by these conditions, which is generally considered to be less than 1%, often much less.
Therefore, the question arises; should such a tiny population be the subject of such a large and polarizing public debate?
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@Christopher Loonam Should the concerns of less than 1% of the population be the subject of such a large and polarizing public debate?
Of course not, whatever the percentage. Society should quietly allow those who don't neatly fit our categories to live the gender their mind and body desires.
We could also stop harping on gender roles and allow young boys to dress as princesses, etc., whether it is gender identity or a love of finery or sheer cantankerous, allowing children to find their own way.
But since there are so many who insist on enforcing rigid, harmful definitions, we must find time to protect this minority, while also dealing with other pressing problems.
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@Christopher Loonam---1% of the US population is about 3.26 million people. How many people do you think a nation can acceptably define out of existence and deny civil rights protections?
Around 1% of the US population is Jewish as well---would it not be worth having a large and polarizing debate if Trump and company decided that Jewish Americans should no longer have legal protection from religious discrimination and hate crimes? I would hope that you would think that it would be essential to combat such a proposal.
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Its an earth-shaking development to consider all gender as having a place or multiple places on a continuum. Nevertheless for the tiniest of populations to ‘wag the tail’ culturally speaking to define themselves in the same terms as those who have functioned consistently and honorably in their birth-assigned gender, is somehow not right.
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