There's a lot more to it! 

A legend in his own mind.

@orkhaa Don't feed the trolls. It's an old saying but it still works.

It's not even an argument, it's just pointless semantics. Trying to pin down a fully accurate definition of male/female is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT to discussion of complexities of biological sex, like the fact that some individuals can have both male and female traits.

I think I spotted an Innuendo Studios reference 😄 Good stuff.

@orkhaa That works both ways though & PZ is clearly doing it here. Whether he likes it or not there are only two sexes, as is made clear by his complete failure to mention any additional sexes in the above vid. DSD/intersex are not additional sexes, social roles are not additional sexes; the only way to show an additional sex would be to demonstrate someone with a third gamete or a unique role in sexual reproduction. But he can't do that because there aren't any, so he has to rely on fluff & nonsense about "the ones who teach, who play, etc", that has nothing to do with sex in the context of "there are only two sexes".

@orkhaa You are ceding the battle ground to your enemy. Your opponent wants you to play defence, they want to dictate the narrative, and they want you to respond in a predictable way. NEVER, EVER DO WHAT YOUR OPPONENT WANTS YOU TO DO!

@orkhaa I apologize. I may have used all-caps to let you know this is serious, but in fact I am very cold and calculating, not a raving lunatic. If your interlocutor is arguing in good faith, then being non-confrontational may be the best strategy in that situation. But when someone calls you their enemy, you take them at thier word, and believe me, they call us the enemy. In that situation, destroy them. That's the only thing that works.

All the wonders of sexual and asexual reproduction in the animal kingdom...all medical conditions, abnormalities, deformities don't change the basic fact that human reproductive organs -function -system is Dimorphic, that Homo sapiens is bipedal, a mammal, a primate.....and sexually reproducing BINARY species ! Everything else is social construct - ideology. Unscientific dogmatic pernicious Gender ideology.

He’s put his foot in the poop a few too many times. It’s like there’s been a slow decline in his awareness of how to be the good guy and just cares about getting a smarmy soundbite at all costs. I wish I had better foresight and not bought his books, because maybe a little less showman success early on would have made him more self-aware and try harder later.

Not that I disagree with your point, but there are chromosomal disorders, and I'm 100% sure that people with those get treated differently because of it. Again, I agree with your point when it comes to sex and gender, but I have a bad case of Erm-Actually Syndrome. Sorry.

@orkhaa Are you talking to me?

@orkhaa that's exactly my point. If someone presents as female, we generally don't ask to see proof of their chromosomes in order to treat them as females, unless your a very specific type of doctor, or you're just kind of a psycho.

you would hear it a LOT more if you were ever a grad student in evolutionary biology.

@ 3:26 the guy claims that biological changes continue taking place until maturity is achieved, so a man can be born with a female brain and vice versa. In nature when female clownfish die the biggest male will transform into a female to continue the species. Although; *_"Sex reversal in mammals occurs but is not as extensive as that in other animals. Gonadal plasticity is confined during the time of embryonic development. Upon reaching adulthood, the gonads are already formed and will not change from one type to another."_* So if it's all natural to human biological evolution, why is it that these folks need hormones to assist them in this process? If a male transforms into a female can the newly transformed female menstrate and give birth? The guy identifies this as an issue that begins in the brain, alright.... Of this brain issue how much is nature Vs. environment? He continues to state his case as in we're social creatures and not really asocial creatures like much of the rest of the world. Since we owe our existence today due to this type of communal growth. So we're automatically different from a vast majority of the world's creatures. So nature vs environment, these individuals that wish to transform. Is there an environmental trigger that caused this revelation. Was, is there a trauma that just got them saying it's time to switch sexes? ¡ didn't hear the guy raise such an issue. Evidently society shapes us but psychological issues play no role in shaping us? Must've been a reason that was left out of this video all together, seems like an agenda but alright. He goes on to state this is how we've evolved with different people filling in different roles. Yet the strongest of the group have always dictated how a particular group lives. Who's to say the strongest in society aren't pushing for such agendas like the one that this man is championing to further develop into the norm? All in the guise of pushing this narrative as a normal function of human evolution with no psychological reasoning behind it. It's been known that many individuals (educators) pushing this on an higher learning level as well at an elementary grade school level are motivated by financial gains. Although parents at school board meetings are unable to critique this merely point out the particular policies that come of this. Such as biological females changing in the boys locker room in front of adult male coaches. As well as biological males changing in female locker rooms then attacking the females on numerous occasions. Or biological males showering along side females making them uncomfortable and raising this issue to school administrators and little to nothing gets done until parents get involved. Yet in many of these cases parents aren't told of these particular types of incidents. They're simply the last to know as the schools try to wait for these types of incidents to blow over. Many times these schools have no idea what to do, whether to accommodate a marginalized group and risk discriminating against another. So they come across creative creepy solutions, such as if female students are uncomfortable showering along side biological males that identify as females then the uncomfortable females can shower alone. Does that seem fair or just downright creepy? Possibly the latter, this is what's being pushed as the new norm. All in an effort to be inclusive, doesn't seem right does it? Yet in many instances the educators or administrators pushing for this earn six figure incomes. So they must know better than everyone else since their policies are not to be scrutinized when they come to light. Must be one of the reasons parents are always the ladt to know when these types of incidents occur due to these bizarre policies. Never mind the terrible test scores in math, reading and science. Pretty much ensuring the youth of tomorrow will succeed in beating people up in restrooms in the days to come. That's evolution in western society, it's time we step down and allow those so called 3rd world nations that don't emphasize *_identity_* politics but rather traditional education in *STEM* science, technology, engineering, mathematics to step up to the plate and take their turn.

​@@fernquiroz 👏👏💯👌

he's already there.

Necessary, but not sufficient.

​@@PZMyersBiology Well put. I wish people were required to have training in set theory before they could graduate from highschool.

All of developmental biology, for one.

@@PZMyersBiology So there must be a widely acepted consensus among scientists and biologists about this topic… al is right?

centering evolution at the level of the gene was his entire postdoctoral thesis work. and it failed, utterly. the only examples of evolution at the gene level were exceptions that exactly proved the rule that evolution happens at the level of the individual. Dawkins was a poor scientist frankly, that he was successful at popularizing science was in SPITE of his being a poor scientist.

I hate debates. So no, not going to happen.

@@PZMyersBiology what about a dialogue?

@@trydowave that has already happened. PZ has commented on Dawkins, and Dawkins has tried to respond... but the responses were inane. no kidding. this is a near 30 year history.

@@thomasneal9291 id Still like to hear each side though. Do you know where I can read these responses? Thanks.

@@trydowave gees. I doubt any of that would still be archived. why not just learn about the underlying issues via the primary literature, like a real scientist would.

I don't think that atheists in general have that problem. The thing is that the people who were naturally self-promoting gravitated towards positions of power and influence and gave us a leadership with an authoritarian problem.

We haven't. A recent poll I saw showed that while trans-acceptance is going down overall, especially with conservatives, atheists continue to grow in their acceptance by a significant amount. We are still leading the way on this issue.

3rd option: you and PZ are wrong. You are confusing form with function. The function of sex is reproduction. In sexual reproduction, there are 2 distinct gametes that contribute DNA. There is not a third or intermediate gamete. The form (or body) is irrelevant.

As a martial artist and student of SunZi for over 30 years, I feel qualified to extend your metaphor. When you agree to a boxing match and your opponent knows that there is no referee so he cheats, it's time to fight dirty. He wants you to respond defensively, and you should NEVER DO WHAT YOUR OPPONENT WANTS! So go on the offence. Avoid where he is strong and attack where is weak. You take the gloves off, and use every weapon in your arsenal to pummel, defeat, and humiliate him as quickly as possible. Keep attacking until he stops moving. He has violated the unwritten rule, and deserves to be punished for it, lest he do the same thing to someone else.

@@crystalroche2168 irrelevant to what? You make a good point, but your perspective is very restricted. You don’t stop being a man if you can’t produce sperm. Women who don’t produce eggs are still women. Gametes don’t have a sex. I didn’t stop becoming a man when I had a vasectomy. Women who have hysterectomies are still women. So it really isn’t that simple after all.

​@@crystalroche2168 please understand that nobody is arguing that there are more than 2 gametes But gametes don't define sex They're simply what enables reproduction through fusion They're packaging (and in the case of ova, briefly nutritious) material What's inside that package or who is producing the package is irrelevant Many intersex and even straight people were from birth/conception or still are incapable of producing either package Nobody is denying the function, if anything, it's the only thing all seem to agree on Because it's just plain true But people, in accepting the premise of function, implicitly extend it to form erroneously

​@@rickedwards7276 You dont need to actively produce gametes to remain male. You had the genetic potential to produce sperm. Development abnormalities, accidents, deliberate medical procedures, etc can remove your capacity to produce sperm. But that doesnt mean you stop being male. It certainly doesnt make you female and there is no third sex. It just means you are a defective male. A car is still a car even if you disconnect the battery. Your insistence that it is more complicated is a hangup only for you and PZ because of your identity politics. You want to be inclusive and compassionate so much you have to make this more complicated. It's similar to how young earth creationists cant accept evolution because it conflicts with their unsupported claims. You still need 1 sperm and 1 egg in every sexually reproducing species to procreate. It really is that simple. Everything else is something added by social justice activists.

Setting aside rare intersex conditions, are you saying that humans have more than two sexes - sexes, now, not genders?

@@drlegendre I'm saying that there aren't only two categories you can sort people into based on gamete production for many variables that biologists are interested in. A group of trans women, based on gamete production, might be considered "male". But if I'm an oncologist interested in breast cancers, I might find that their breast cancer rates are more similar to cis female controls than cis male ones, and become more similar as their estrogen exposure becomes comparable to cis females.

@@drlegendre There are more than 2 sexes, yes... If you can comment here, I'm sure you could have googled that and you'd know there are 6...

@@CurtainRod Don't feed the trolls. Trolls should only be interacted with long enough to destroy them, and destroying them here in the comments section will only bring more of them here, like moths to a candle, or gun-fighters to Shane.

The convenience of simplifying it might be nice for you, but it's horrible for those experiencing that non-binary condition, especially since the complacency of the majority allows them to pretend they "practically" don't exist.

I hope you're right, but this feels different. The 50s and the 80s, that was organic bigotry, born and bred in the culture. This anti-trans hysteria seems manufactured, as if somebody is using Mein Kampf as an instruction manual, and realized they need a substitute for blood libel.

I feel the same way. I was such a big fan of his and I learned so much from his books. I can't believe he's stooped to this level. So disappointing.

He often forgets to mention the altruistic parts of evolution as well. Boggles my mind as he has taken this up in his old documentaries

Forrest valkai😂... Seriously?

@@user-ve7hn2dh8h " I really think we have outgrown Dawkins and Harris." How?

A suggestion: rather than charging in and Just Asking Questions that require others to do the work of putting together a complex answer, you might want to start by revealing some of your own ideas so we know where you are coming from.

Not the place for a paper but I'll shoot for some succinct notions: Systems of categorization group traits that produce similar outcomes. Often, people fail to see systems serve other systems. M/F supports the military draft, driver license ID, and shoes sizes (for some reason). These are examples of one system supporting multiple other systems. Replacing systems with a bottom up approach should necessitate separating out all dependent systems that will benefit from other systems that will not benefit. Replacing M/F in the driver's license may make sense but doing away with gender altogether for shoe sizes would likely make sense as well. Systems are developed to be optimal in decision processes. E.g., a born female's aptitude for physical combat is a distribution that overlaps with a born male's. The rigor and cost to separate candidates based on performance is disregarded in favor for a simple two sex selection system. This isn't to suggest it is optimal, only that it is/was believed so at some time and the draft system remains unchanged. Changing the selection process should have an improvement on the draft's purpose, which is to support another system. The nature of the examples provided in the video presents deeper categorical strata, but they serve a purpose. Even if that purpose is to draw ones attention to the degrees of variability leading to the development of a person, which, at its extremes, is individualism. Where individual purpose has more meaning to the individual than to a larger group, unless it is a shared trait and therefore a group worthy outcome. When you hit usefulness, we neared a truism. It had heart. It explains why the systems are what they are, why the talking head chose to use two sex as his example, and why you could further the discussion down to the individual which is useful in understanding the variability in people.

@@PZMyersBiology As you know, you're under no obligation to respond or answer the questions. Just piqued my interest is all. You'll note the idea is in the paragraphs following the questions.

Chomsky is a joke who blames the west for everything

"and people with mental deviation from sex " you realize you are spouting nonsense from literally over 50 years ago, right? also? learn how to spell before trying to educate others. especially about things you know nothing about.

"mental deviation from the sex they belong"…you have no idea how deeply engrained your bias is.

@@PZMyersBiology Ok, if "deeply engrained your bias" is new phrase for being sane.

@@IvanSam1 based.

@@thomasneal9291 so we're in 500 BC and you an i are having a debate about whether earth is flat or round. so i say it's round and i give good argument for it but my english isn't so good so i may pronounce a word incorrectly or something, does that make my argument invalid and shouldn't be discussed just because my english isnt as good as yours ?

I just see my role as home, protector and feeder of my gut bacteria.

There's an old article from the mid 20th century called "Who Goes Nazi?" If you can find it on Google, it might make some motivations clear.

That's the fallacy of relative privation. It's so big because the asshole Right has decided to make it so big, and has embarked on a campaign to abuse and torment trans people. We on the left are supposed to oppose inequality and injustice, you know.

I quoted him literally, and included the clip of him saying what I objected to. He said what he said, and much more that was incredibly stupid.

@@PZMyersBiology Do you realise that with the way you want to depict such topic you put all the taxonomy of the living things to the bin ? The taxonomy is discriminatory as most languages spoken by humans are discriminatory because if we can't discriminate, we can't communicate. It is as simple as that. We are a sexed species, a species with two sexes and between those there are some mutations, emergent traits or accidents wich as a gay I'm a part of. The is not a third sex, or fitht or whatever our species has not evolved to this stage. Consider that there are many genders as you like, genders are only the way you look at sexes with a conservative lens, but there are only two sexes in the human species.

@CT Ks there's some amphibology fallacy there. The fact that words and concepts imply discrimination because we discriminate things and concepts to think doesn't mean we NEED to discriminate people because the language itself requires discrimination (in the sense of bigotry, or racism).

@@pensandoenvozalta8415 This is the purpose of my comment, it is an ambiguity that I am pointing out and it is the fact not only of people on the far left but also on the far right. This is why we must be clear, Biology can be discriminatory but it is not for this reason that we must morally exclude people. In the opposite direction, it is not because one does not want to morally exclude people that one must say that biology is not discriminatory. Biology only affects our capacities, and culture our possibilities. (Maybe this distinction between capacities and possibilities is less evident in english, but it's the spirit)

@@carthkaras6449 but the problem here is that there's a clear difference between discrimination in a conceptual and theoretical sense, and just being a plain bigot. And thats precisely the point here: there's no "biological justification" for bigotry against trans people here. Trying to use scientific discrimination between concepts and justifying discrimination on people (i.e. trans people) is just plain nonsense and faulty reasoning.

If gender exists on a continuum, how many genders exist depends on how fine you want to split categories.

@@machintelligence Yes, and there's the rub. With a hundred genders, that are self proclaimed, the meaning of gender becomes arbitrary. Man/masculine and woman/feminine become just two endpoints of a continuum with very little meaning attached to them. Being too rigid with a strict gender binary, leaves out a big middle ground of gender nonconforming individuals, but being too inclusive, breaks down all distinctions, making gender a useless term.

Is gender really distinct from sex?

​@@prschuster I agree with this in principle the issue I see with the specifics is that it's still oversimplified. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to assume that gender can work on something akin to the "Kinsey Scale" where you could theoretically find (possibly number) a person's gender on a spectrum from "Male" to "Female" and that's their gender. Unfortunately gender isn't so simple. There are people who express with no gender and people who express with both male and female genders simultaneously. So then the next thought is something like two numbers, one for "maleness" and one for "femaleness" but unfortunately that falls apart too for the same reason the Kinsey Scale does. Gender, like sexuality, is not always a fixed thing over time for all people. Most people have a relatively stable gender across their lives, but many have variance to the degree that that they identify as genderfluid. Since we're just recently starting to consider all the variants of gender I doubt we've hit the bottom of the complexity here. The number of overlapping terms will probably be cut down as society starts to understand these things better, categorize them more widely, and people sort themselves into the now-more-established categories. On the other hand probably impossible to estimate a "good number" of genders, since without knowing how deep the complexity is we don't how many words will be needed to describe it.

@@genericneamehere So now we have an undecipherable term - gender - by trying to accommodate every possible way we can interpret an identity. I say, keep it simple by acknowledge that most people fit into man/woman binary while some people are gender nonconforming, and leave it at that.

There is no way I would dream of using this argument to try to invalidate the existence of transsexuals! Just as I accept that gender and sex should be separate concepts...

This this and this.

We also see this on the subject of race. Political attitudes have largely colored race discussion after WWII to the point that many scientists, if they don't deny it, say it's not useful. But physical anthropologists still can ID race by average facial bone structure, which is what race basically is.

​@Peter from NZ Hmmm explain yourself.

good thing ghosts aren't real.

@@thomasneal9291 I agree. Spirit isn't a ghost either. Spirit is esoteric.

@@buddinganarchist somewhere in there is a point not worth trying to dig up.

" but if the aren't relevant to the conversation of the biology of sexual reproduction" secondary sexual characteristics are indeed relevant to the biology of sexual reproduction. I do hate simpletons like yourself who know nothing about biology but what they learned (failed?) in grammar school. Tell me, genius. what "sex" is someone who is XXY? There are over 16 known relatively common configurations of XY sex chromosomes. which ones are which sex, do you think? or just... do you even think?

Are you also on Team Light Pedophilia with him?

@@PZMyersBiology I can’t see that Dawkins has ever condoned pedophilia… what he has done is talk about his own experiences with this sort of abuse and made a case… convincingly… that there are different degrees of abuse… not all of them equally damaging to people

What religion would that be? I'm an atheist. I'm not even an Anglican atheist.

@@PZMyersBiology Woke Progressivism. Your mental gymnastics and apologetics are on par with Gould.

​@@PZMyersBiology Your religion of Lysenkoism

Thank you. I'm an admirer of Gould's work.

@@PZMyersBiology See? Your mental gymnastics allowed you to take a jab at NOMA as a compliment. I'm sure you'll walk away with a self-satisfied and sanctimonious feeling like a fundy Christian. But your insistence on overly complicating the fact that there are only 2 gametes that contribute DNA does nothing to elucidate the universe. It only muddies the water. Its commendable that you care about people with birth defects. But ignoring reality to be inclusive is not science. Its faith.

Your first logical error: equating atheism with 20th century communist regimes. Stopped reading at that point.

@@PZMyersBiology Good call, it got worse from there.

@@PZMyersBiology They can still throw you in jail for being gay in Venezuela.

Plus, men have to accept women’s boundaries.

"Just don't expect anyone else to agree." but NOBODY IS. you have it exactly backwards. the problem is people who DON'T agree, trying to remove the rights of others. can you not see this?

@@thomasneal9291 , what rights do trans people not have all the other demographics have?

@monika hug you're not interested in the answer for the question you just asked. You're just a cheap troll, because the only thing a person need to know what rights trans people are claiming is to listen to them for at least 1 minute. So you're not interested in an answer and asked only to start trolling. Do all of us a favor and listen what trans people say instead of asking stupid questions.