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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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But I've always had a slight discomfort with the gamete-focused definition of sex. Even if we allow that sexual categorization is based on a cluster of traits, like chromosomes, genitalia, bone density, face and body shape, etc., where we're just using gametes as the tie breaker, I think we run into some problems.

The strongest form of the gamete definition is not gamete-focused around a cluster of traits. The strongest form only concerns gamete contribution to sexual reproduction, which is binary in mammals. Sexual reproduction is a well defined process at the core of sexual selection, which has been known since at least the publication of On the Origin of Species. Examples of a species in class 1 are male. Examples of a species in class 2 are female. Examples of a species that are in class 3 are sterile. Examples of of a species in class 4 are hermaphrodites.

Primary sexual characteristics are the organs that produce the gametes.

The things you see at first glance for clothed individuals are secondary.

The use of the generic "trans" rather than the specific "transsexual" or "transgender" only adds to confusion when determining exactly what people are discussing.

The strongest form of the gamete definition is not gamete-focused around a cluster of traits. The strongest form only concerns gamete contribution to sexual reproduction, which is binary in mammals. Sexual reproduction is a well defined process at the core of sexual selection, which has been known since at least the publication of On the Origin of Species. Examples of a species in class 1 are male. Examples of a species in class 2 are female. Examples of a species that are in class 3 are sterile. Examples of of a species in class 4 are hermaphrodites.

I think the issue is that this biological definition is rarely relevant in a human context.

First, humans in the anglosphere (at least) tend to think sex is salient even for prepubescent children who are unable to reproduce. We presumptively use "he" and "she" for kids even though we know that 9% of men and 11% of women experience reproductive issues. Even after a person has become physically mature, we don't generally say they're "not a man/woman" just because we discover that they don't produce gametes properly, or can't reproduce for any number of other reasons.

I agree that your four classes are a categorization scheme that should exist somewhere in the English language. It's very useful to biologists, and an important idea for people to understand.

It also seems to have only a weak correlation to how we colloquially use language.

This is exactly why people talk about biological sex, presenting sex, and gender. That does not change the definition of biological sex. Using the terms interchangeably does nothing for clarity. He, she, man, and woman when used colloquially are typically used with an associated gender. That gender is correlated with sex (when describing people in English), but does not necessarily have the same definition.

Reproductive issues in the form of infertility is not identical to sterility. Yes, the normal usage of man or woman would typically still hold. No, sterile people cannot become biological fathers or biological mothers.

Those four terms exist exactly to describe the cases in your bulleted list.

The correlation is strong. The r value is larger than 0.7 which is the threshold used to determine if a correlation is strong in the sciences, including biology.