10 ms·

Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic

102 points by Thevet 12y ago

moomin 12y ago
This is a fascinating article, and stands on its own merits. Go read it. The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience.
- Alex3917 12y ago
  > time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience. The problem is that most people's life experiences seemingly justify intolerance, in the sense that most people's experiences of most things are fairly typical. It's a serious epistemological problem with science, and is one of the major reasons why using science alone to create legislation is problematic.
- jklinger410 12y ago
  >sometimes we use science to justify intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience. Do you have any examples of this?
  - Jtsummers 12y ago
    bennetfeely in a cousin post has a good Wikipedia link on it. At different times in history racism has been justified by religious and (then current) scientific thinking on biology and (possibly) evolution. It's been used to justify slavery and genocide or the general subjugation of nations of people.
- haberman 12y ago
  > The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify intolerance What? How can discovering the natural laws of the universe be a justification for intolerance?
  - bennettfeely 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
    - haberman 12y ago
      I see that there is a history. But science, by its nature, is descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes how the world is, not how it ought to be. Pretend for a second that science discovered convincing/rigorous evidence that white people were less intelligent genetically than other races. That isn't justification for intolerance against white people. We get to choose our values as a society, independently of the reality of the world around us. Science is a poor justification for intolerance, no matter what arguments people may attempt to make.
      - Jtsummers 12y ago
        People have used what they believe to be true from either actual scientific evidence or a particularly bizarre/inept interpretation of scientific evidence to justify their actions. Science is descriptive, but people turn it into a prescription for how to do or deal with X. Whatever X may be. People read the scientific report saying that a glass of red wine has some heart health benefits and they start drinking (or justifying the drinking they already did). That's at least a benign (assuming they don't go overboard on the drinking) example. At points in history, and those points are described in the linked article, people believed numerous things about the various "races". They based this on scientific or pseudo-scientific findings of the time, that often fit their pre-conceived notions. They used this to justify their prescribed solutions. Whether it was slavery, subjugation or genocide. It is a poor justification for intolerance, and that's part of what the original poster was pointing out. But just because it's a poor justification doesn't mean it hasn't been done. People (as a collective) are not inherently rational or logical. They're easily led by the nose by charismatic speakers and those skilled in rhetoric. They want to believe they're special or that someone else is to blame and when someone presents something that helps them believe that they lap it up. It's happened throughout history, and it'll continue through the future. The best we can hope for is that our understanding of the universe and nature casts light on more things so those that would abuse it have fewer shadows to hide in.
- jcromartie 12y ago
  We should not use science to justify intolerance of minority sexual identities. But we should also not use it to justify intolerance of people who express things in terms of the normal (in the statistical sense) gender distribution of male and female. For example, this criticism of a woman expressing thoughts on her own experiences: http://jezebel.com/kirsten-dunst-thinks-ladies-in-relationships-should-wif-1557845533 http://jezebel.com/kirsten-dunst-thinks-ladies-in-relationsh...
JonnieCache 12y ago
The similar magnitudes of intra- and inter-sex differences are the best argument against sexism. This seems more true for behaviour than it does for physiology, but findings like those in the article make it harder to draw even that distinction.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
sauere 12y ago
Hacker News 2015
simon_ 12y ago
"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and variation is possible. But... any honest interpretation of the data would suggest that "the idea of two sexes" is an highly accurate approximation for Homo sapiens.
- Aloisius 12y ago
  > If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... 1% of the world population is nearly 70 million people. That is not a small population. One would hope that we might be more flexible in our descriptions considering how large of a population that is.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? At what point is it acceptable to say that something is an approximation, and should not expected to be precise and accurate in perfect detail?
    - Aloisius 12y ago
      > Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? What we have right now is not an approximation, but a binary measurement. Turning sex into an approximation would be considered a significant step forward considering science tells us it is not binary.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        As simon_ and Symmetry point out, that binary is in fact a pretty accurate approximation. So it seems we have both a binary measurement and an approximation in one. Perhaps we should consider that something can be both a binary measurement and a reasonably accurate approximation of a spectrum. Regardless, my earlier question stands. At what point is it acceptable for an approximation to not be accurate in detail? What's the acceptable level of error in approximations?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lexcorvus 12y ago
The observation that a characteristic exists on a spectrum, and the observation that the vast majority of individuals fall on one of two extremes of that spectrum, are not mutually exclusive. For the overwhelming majority of organisms, including Homo sapiens, all proposed indicators of sex (anatomy, hormones, cells, chromosomes) give the same answer. Reading the final two paragraphs of the paper, it's obvious that attempts to muddy this naturally clear water are being made for political, not scientific reasons.
- innguest 12y ago
  Bingo. This is just another way to divide people and create pointless discussion about a non-issue so we can praise the "tolerant" and chastise those who see it for the agitprop it is. FTFA: > So if the law requires that a person is [sic] male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash? Easy, have laws not discriminate by gender. Isn't that the point? No need to discuss biology on and on to help some agenda.
PinnBrain 12y ago
One of the predicted outcomes of the Singularity is the removal of sex as a characteristic. Note that race would be removed as well. A posthuman (of whatever form) would be free of both sex and race.
- ars 12y ago
  That would only happen if you removed human bodies altogether.
  - Crito 12y ago
    And for that matter, bodiless posthumans could still chose to exhibit whichever characteristics they please. I'd wager that most people on second life, given the freedom to portray themselves however they wish, choose to portray themselves as humanoid with apparent gender.
- Jach 12y ago
  It's hard to predict what beings more intelligent than us will do. Yes sex and race cease to become very valuable concepts when people can configure their bodies to be whatever they like in any mix at any time. But we can also consider that having machine-memory allows us to be very specific with the characteristics we want to advertise. e.g. from one of my favorite sci-fi books The Golden Age, the main character's full name is "Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconsciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043". We won't lose labels, and objective superiority in certain areas won't go away. (A singular human-sized machine can't hope to compete intellectually with a Jupiter Brain. A machine made of bark will be physically weaker than a machine made of diamond.) But the negative associations could go away, which would largely end racism/sexism, the thing we really care about.
  - PinnBrain 12y ago
    The Golden Age...thanks! Bought on Kindle.
- xxxyy 12y ago
Animats 12y ago
Some of the unusual situations mentioned are birth defects. About 3% of babies have birth defects.[1] [1] http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects-keyfindings.html http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects...
- jklinger410 12y ago
  So if you count out birth defects and dimorphisms that have no weight on "gender" you have an insignificant amount of variance. Sounds to me like someone is reaching to make science match the way they feel about gender.
  - JoergR 12y ago
    The article is about sex, not sure why you talk about gender.
nickff 12y ago
The 'two-sexes approximation' is boolean, not binary. Boolean involves two possible values; binary involves an infinite number of possible values, represented in base-2.[1][2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary note: this is a re-post of a comment made on a child of the OP.
- Reebles 12y ago
  No we are talking about binary. In the very link you provided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_binary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_binary
- untothebreach 12y ago
  if we are considering wiki* sources legitimate, then let's visit the wiktionary page for "binary" that the Wikipedia page for "Binary" links to: [1]. The first definition is: Being in a state of one of two mutually exclusive conditions such as on or off, true or false, molten or frozen, presence or absence of a signal So, the "two-sexes approximation" is binary :) 1: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/binary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/binary
- efuquen 12y ago
  You are contradicted by the very Wikipedia article you posted: "Binary means composed of two pieces or two parts" You look it up in any dictionary and a similar definition will be given, which in the context of the article is a completely correct usage. Binary as a word predates computer science by quite a bit ...
Torgo 12y ago
There is a spectrum of how many legs a human is born with. Some people are born with two, some with none, some one, some with three. Some people are born with between one and two legs that enable them to walk upright on the side of a slope. The idea of two legs is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that. What I am getting at is, there is science and then there is the social context for a scientific fact. Some may be more useful than others in various contexts, but the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things. That's true in the abstract (undeniably, some scientific fact is confounding -- I don't need to know about about quantum uncertainty to cook dinner) but I don't think it applies well to this issue. This report may confound some people's understanding of sexuality, but to people who don't fit that conventional understanding, and to their loved ones, it does the opposite. Imagine a lifetime of being reminded that you don't belong -- every bathroom sign, do you attend the girls school or the boys, every form you fill out, every locker room experience, every medical procedure, etc etc. Addressing that seems much more important and fair than reducing the confusion that new ideas can bring. This is the nature of change and progress: Humans naturally are very egocentric, and can be wholly unaware of others' experiences and perspectives. When the reality of those experiences is thrust upon us, we often object -- everything seems fine to us, after all, and our old theories explain our experiences. Think of the responses to racial and gender discrimination, where many in the majority insist that it doesn't exist. After all, they haven't experienced it.
- JoergR 12y ago
  You should not be talking about other people's ability to understand things if you so blatantly lack it yourself.
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
Redefining sex because of chimaerism? What is this, Nature Gender Studies?
facepalm 12y ago
Even when I was a child (35 years ago) it was already common knowledge that hermaphrodites exist. So this is really not shocking news. It's interesting that they have new biological insights, but I'd say it's biologically interesting, not socially. Although it certainly seems wrong to operate babies to fix them on a gender - but I doubt there was ever a scientific rationale behind it.
- jonlucc 12y ago
  Children born with ambiguous genitalia were often operated on to form one gender or the other. While this wasn't for a biological reason, the rationale was justified by social science. There are issues that arise from children not identifying with 99% of the population, and physicians and parents sought to avoid that. It turns out that it might be at least as problematic to choose "incorrectly" for your child.
protomyth 12y ago
Ok, a practical question: for those of us required to get a value for "sex" into a database, what possible values would be appropriate to have? // and yes, we have to ask as their a whole lot of laws and scholarships that reporting requires the number
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  IIRC, one database used by a large public-sector healthcare entity that I encountered used male, female, other, and unknown. Of course, if you have external requirements to capture sex/gender, they probably also dictate the valid options. If you have multiple different external requirements, the options may be different for each and the correct value for the same individual may be different for different purposes. One value may not be sufficient.
ChikkaChiChi 12y ago
If this is the case, then the headline and byline are clickbait oversimplifications in their own right. If there are people in this world who wish to reject the concept of gender association with our biological reproductive systems, is there a need to provide additional classification, rules of governance, services, etc. other than "Denies classification"? Otherwise, are we not chasing a long tail of specific situations in which everything can be deemed intolerant?
slavik81 12y ago
Biologists now think that the idea of two sexes is simplistic? This was high school biology more than a decade ago. Reality is never as neat as our models of it are. The question is what we do about it. This reads to me like a call to arms for handling the exceptional cases better. I could get behind that. There's no need to throw out the male/female binary for most situations, though. Exceptions can be handled as exceptions, as long as you know they exist. "[...] all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful." ~ George E. P. Box
arctansusan 12y ago
fwiw, ive never met a DSD human creature in my life. It'll be amazing if I ever will! I love this last sentence: "In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask". LOL And this is a serious science article in the most prestigious general science journal.

102 points by Thevet 12y ago

This is a fascinating article, and stands on its own merits. Go read it. The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience.

Alex3917 12y ago
> time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience. The problem is that most people's life experiences seemingly justify intolerance, in the sense that most people's experiences of most things are fairly typical. It's a serious epistemological problem with science, and is one of the major reasons why using science alone to create legislation is problematic.
jklinger410 12y ago
>sometimes we use science to justify intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people have reported as their own life experience. Do you have any examples of this?
- Jtsummers 12y ago
  bennetfeely in a cousin post has a good Wikipedia link on it. At different times in history racism has been justified by religious and (then current) scientific thinking on biology and (possibly) evolution. It's been used to justify slavery and genocide or the general subjugation of nations of people.
haberman 12y ago
> The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify intolerance What? How can discovering the natural laws of the universe be a justification for intolerance?
- bennettfeely 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
  - haberman 12y ago
    I see that there is a history. But science, by its nature, is descriptive, not prescriptive. It describes how the world is, not how it ought to be. Pretend for a second that science discovered convincing/rigorous evidence that white people were less intelligent genetically than other races. That isn't justification for intolerance against white people. We get to choose our values as a society, independently of the reality of the world around us. Science is a poor justification for intolerance, no matter what arguments people may attempt to make.
    - Jtsummers 12y ago
      People have used what they believe to be true from either actual scientific evidence or a particularly bizarre/inept interpretation of scientific evidence to justify their actions. Science is descriptive, but people turn it into a prescription for how to do or deal with X. Whatever X may be. People read the scientific report saying that a glass of red wine has some heart health benefits and they start drinking (or justifying the drinking they already did). That's at least a benign (assuming they don't go overboard on the drinking) example. At points in history, and those points are described in the linked article, people believed numerous things about the various "races". They based this on scientific or pseudo-scientific findings of the time, that often fit their pre-conceived notions. They used this to justify their prescribed solutions. Whether it was slavery, subjugation or genocide. It is a poor justification for intolerance, and that's part of what the original poster was pointing out. But just because it's a poor justification doesn't mean it hasn't been done. People (as a collective) are not inherently rational or logical. They're easily led by the nose by charismatic speakers and those skilled in rhetoric. They want to believe they're special or that someone else is to blame and when someone presents something that helps them believe that they lap it up. It's happened throughout history, and it'll continue through the future. The best we can hope for is that our understanding of the universe and nature casts light on more things so those that would abuse it have fewer shadows to hide in.
jcromartie 12y ago
We should not use science to justify intolerance of minority sexual identities. But we should also not use it to justify intolerance of people who express things in terms of the normal (in the statistical sense) gender distribution of male and female. For example, this criticism of a woman expressing thoughts on her own experiences: http://jezebel.com/kirsten-dunst-thinks-ladies-in-relationships-should-wif-1557845533 http://jezebel.com/kirsten-dunst-thinks-ladies-in-relationsh...

JonnieCache 12y ago

The similar magnitudes of intra- and inter-sex differences are the best argument against sexism. This seems more true for behaviour than it does for physiology, but findings like those in the article make it harder to draw even that distinction.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

sauere 12y ago

Hacker News 2015

simon_ 12y ago

"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of [atypical sex]." If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological complexity and variation is possible. But... any honest interpretation of the data would suggest that "the idea of two sexes" is an highly accurate approximation for Homo sapiens.

Aloisius 12y ago
> If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a "spectrum"... 1% of the world population is nearly 70 million people. That is not a small population. One would hope that we might be more flexible in our descriptions considering how large of a population that is.
- Kalium 12y ago
  Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? At what point is it acceptable to say that something is an approximation, and should not expected to be precise and accurate in perfect detail?
  - Aloisius 12y ago
    > Does that make a highly accurate approximation into a less accurate one? What we have right now is not an approximation, but a binary measurement. Turning sex into an approximation would be considered a significant step forward considering science tells us it is not binary.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      As simon_ and Symmetry point out, that binary is in fact a pretty accurate approximation. So it seems we have both a binary measurement and an approximation in one. Perhaps we should consider that something can be both a binary measurement and a reasonably accurate approximation of a spectrum. Regardless, my earlier question stands. At what point is it acceptable for an approximation to not be accurate in detail? What's the acceptable level of error in approximations?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lexcorvus 12y ago

The observation that a characteristic exists on a spectrum, and the observation that the vast majority of individuals fall on one of two extremes of that spectrum, are not mutually exclusive. For the overwhelming majority of organisms, including Homo sapiens, all proposed indicators of sex (anatomy, hormones, cells, chromosomes) give the same answer. Reading the final two paragraphs of the paper, it's obvious that attempts to muddy this naturally clear water are being made for political, not scientific reasons.

innguest 12y ago
Bingo. This is just another way to divide people and create pointless discussion about a non-issue so we can praise the "tolerant" and chastise those who see it for the agitprop it is. FTFA: > So if the law requires that a person is [sic] male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash? Easy, have laws not discriminate by gender. Isn't that the point? No need to discuss biology on and on to help some agenda.

PinnBrain 12y ago

One of the predicted outcomes of the Singularity is the removal of sex as a characteristic. Note that race would be removed as well. A posthuman (of whatever form) would be free of both sex and race.

ars 12y ago
That would only happen if you removed human bodies altogether.
- Crito 12y ago
  And for that matter, bodiless posthumans could still chose to exhibit whichever characteristics they please. I'd wager that most people on second life, given the freedom to portray themselves however they wish, choose to portray themselves as humanoid with apparent gender.
Jach 12y ago
It's hard to predict what beings more intelligent than us will do. Yes sex and race cease to become very valuable concepts when people can configure their bodies to be whatever they like in any mix at any time. But we can also consider that having machine-memory allows us to be very specific with the characteristics we want to advertise. e.g. from one of my favorite sci-fi books The Golden Age, the main character's full name is "Phaethon Prime Rhadamanth Humodified (augment) Uncomposed, Indepconsciousness, Base Neuroformed, Silver-Gray Manorial Schola, Era 7043". We won't lose labels, and objective superiority in certain areas won't go away. (A singular human-sized machine can't hope to compete intellectually with a Jupiter Brain. A machine made of bark will be physically weaker than a machine made of diamond.) But the negative associations could go away, which would largely end racism/sexism, the thing we really care about.
- PinnBrain 12y ago
  The Golden Age...thanks! Bought on Kindle.
xxxyy 12y ago

Animats 12y ago

Some of the unusual situations mentioned are birth defects. About 3% of babies have birth defects.[1] [1] http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects-keyfindings.html http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects...

jklinger410 12y ago
So if you count out birth defects and dimorphisms that have no weight on "gender" you have an insignificant amount of variance. Sounds to me like someone is reaching to make science match the way they feel about gender.
- JoergR 12y ago
  The article is about sex, not sure why you talk about gender.

nickff 12y ago

The 'two-sexes approximation' is boolean, not binary. Boolean involves two possible values; binary involves an infinite number of possible values, represented in base-2.[1][2] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary note: this is a re-post of a comment made on a child of the OP.

Reebles 12y ago
No we are talking about binary. In the very link you provided: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_binary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_binary
untothebreach 12y ago
if we are considering wiki* sources legitimate, then let's visit the wiktionary page for "binary" that the Wikipedia page for "Binary" links to: [1]. The first definition is: Being in a state of one of two mutually exclusive conditions such as on or off, true or false, molten or frozen, presence or absence of a signal So, the "two-sexes approximation" is binary :) 1: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/binary http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/binary
efuquen 12y ago
You are contradicted by the very Wikipedia article you posted: "Binary means composed of two pieces or two parts" You look it up in any dictionary and a similar definition will be given, which in the context of the article is a completely correct usage. Binary as a word predates computer science by quite a bit ...

Torgo 12y ago

There is a spectrum of how many legs a human is born with. Some people are born with two, some with none, some one, some with three. Some people are born with between one and two legs that enable them to walk upright on the side of a slope. The idea of two legs is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that. What I am getting at is, there is science and then there is the social context for a scientific fact. Some may be more useful than others in various contexts, but the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things.

hackuser 12y ago
> the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things. That's true in the abstract (undeniably, some scientific fact is confounding -- I don't need to know about about quantum uncertainty to cook dinner) but I don't think it applies well to this issue. This report may confound some people's understanding of sexuality, but to people who don't fit that conventional understanding, and to their loved ones, it does the opposite. Imagine a lifetime of being reminded that you don't belong -- every bathroom sign, do you attend the girls school or the boys, every form you fill out, every locker room experience, every medical procedure, etc etc. Addressing that seems much more important and fair than reducing the confusion that new ideas can bring. This is the nature of change and progress: Humans naturally are very egocentric, and can be wholly unaware of others' experiences and perspectives. When the reality of those experiences is thrust upon us, we often object -- everything seems fine to us, after all, and our old theories explain our experiences. Think of the responses to racial and gender discrimination, where many in the majority insist that it doesn't exist. After all, they haven't experienced it.
JoergR 12y ago
You should not be talking about other people's ability to understand things if you so blatantly lack it yourself.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

Redefining sex because of chimaerism? What is this, Nature Gender Studies?

facepalm 12y ago

Even when I was a child (35 years ago) it was already common knowledge that hermaphrodites exist. So this is really not shocking news. It's interesting that they have new biological insights, but I'd say it's biologically interesting, not socially. Although it certainly seems wrong to operate babies to fix them on a gender - but I doubt there was ever a scientific rationale behind it.

jonlucc 12y ago
Children born with ambiguous genitalia were often operated on to form one gender or the other. While this wasn't for a biological reason, the rationale was justified by social science. There are issues that arise from children not identifying with 99% of the population, and physicians and parents sought to avoid that. It turns out that it might be at least as problematic to choose "incorrectly" for your child.

protomyth 12y ago

Ok, a practical question: for those of us required to get a value for "sex" into a database, what possible values would be appropriate to have? // and yes, we have to ask as their a whole lot of laws and scholarships that reporting requires the number

dragonwriter 12y ago
IIRC, one database used by a large public-sector healthcare entity that I encountered used male, female, other, and unknown. Of course, if you have external requirements to capture sex/gender, they probably also dictate the valid options. If you have multiple different external requirements, the options may be different for each and the correct value for the same individual may be different for different purposes. One value may not be sufficient.

ChikkaChiChi 12y ago

If this is the case, then the headline and byline are clickbait oversimplifications in their own right. If there are people in this world who wish to reject the concept of gender association with our biological reproductive systems, is there a need to provide additional classification, rules of governance, services, etc. other than "Denies classification"? Otherwise, are we not chasing a long tail of specific situations in which everything can be deemed intolerant?

slavik81 12y ago

Biologists now think that the idea of two sexes is simplistic? This was high school biology more than a decade ago. Reality is never as neat as our models of it are. The question is what we do about it. This reads to me like a call to arms for handling the exceptional cases better. I could get behind that. There's no need to throw out the male/female binary for most situations, though. Exceptions can be handled as exceptions, as long as you know they exist. "[...] all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful." ~ George E. P. Box

arctansusan 12y ago

fwiw, ive never met a DSD human creature in my life. It'll be amazing if I ever will! I love this last sentence: "In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask". LOL And this is a serious science article in the most prestigious general science journal.