Dialogue
Who’s speaking?- Ellen
- Yair
The sexes are defined by their roles in reproduction. Males make sperm. Females make eggs. There are no other sex cells, so there are no other sexes.
Sex depends on more than sex cells. There are sex organs and sex hormones and sex chromosomes. Combined or apart, these are not strictly binary. Just look at the variety of intersex conditions.
Intersex
individuals are rare and almost always sterile. Exactly two reproductive profiles dominate–crudely put, XY with penis and XX with vagina. People with these traits exemplify and perpetuate the species.
XX with penis and XY with vagina still exist. The latter can even bear children. Are these sorts of people not members of the species? Are they not human?
Of course they’re human! But humans are the product of imperfect biological processes. Sometimes development deviates, leading to disorder. In any case, a human who reproduces uses either male or female parts. An XY female who bears a child has basically the same genitalia as an XX female.
As I said, sexual traits aren’t binary, even if sperm and egg are. Genitalia can be ambiguous. Sex chromosomes come in several variations and can differ from cell to cell in the same person. And testosterone and estrogen, the male
and female
sex hormones, both shape all human bodies.
You’re right about hormones. But males tend to have more testosterone, which masculinizes their bodies, and females tend to have more estrogen, which feminizes theirs. That aside, you’re still talking about disorders of sex development. Those are congenital abnormalities that usually impair sexual reproduction, a fundamentally binary, sperm-egg process that’s the objective biological basis for the two sexes. You know, a tiny fraction of people are also born with more or fewer than two legs. Does that mean humans aren’t bipedal?
Counting legs is simple. Assigning sex at birth is not, particularly with intersex individuals. By definition, they don’t fit the male-female binary. And yet in most states they must be marked M
or F
at birth. Some intersex infants undergo life-altering surgeries to normalize
—potentially remove or desensitize—their genitalia, all to approximate a sex they may later reject. For intersex people, binary sex is not a biological fact. It is a legal and medical fiction with real social and psychological consequences.
Notes
-
An example of the
binary gametes, therefore, binary sex
argument:No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex “spectrum” or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary.
Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton. The Dangerous Denial of Sex [alternate link].For in-depth discussion, see: In Humans, Sex is binary and immutable.
Some states have proposed laws defining sex as either
male
orfemale
based on gamete production. For example, see: Kansas’ rights bill angers left with its definition of ‘woman’. -
Here are a few articles that criticize the idea of sex as binary:
According to The Dangerous Denial of Sex, human
reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time.
Also see WhyIntersex
Conditions Do Not Invalidate the Sex Binary, which is in In Humans, Sex is Binary and Immutable.XX Male Syndrome or de la Chapelle syndrome.
A clinical case study: Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development. A less technical account of the case: The Woman Who Gave Birth Despite Most Of Her Cells Having XY Chromosomes.
By chance, genes mutate and gene pools drift toward the
deleterious,
sowe cannot expect ‘perfection’ from biological processes,
argues In Humans, Sex is Binary and Immutable.See Ambiguous Genitalia and Disorders of Sexual Differentiation. According to this article, intersex is not current medical terminology. Disorder of sex development (DSD) is.
Along with XX and XY, there are 9 other viable variations. Chromosome mosaicism is when different variations occur in different cells in the same body.
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For a similar defense of binary sex based on species norms, try this thought experiment:
Humans are also born with a great variety of devastating congenital deformities and diseases, and if alien exozoologists were to write a description of Homo sapiens based on extensive observations of the population, such a description would never feature, for example, anencephaly, and neither would it include anything else but binary sex.
Georgi K. Marinov. In Humans, Sex is Binary and Immutable. Only 16 states plus D.C. offer non-binary birth certificates.
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Some critical perspective on intersex infant surgeries:
See, for example, Male or female? Babies born on the sliding sex scale, which draws from the BBC One documentary Me, My Sex and I.