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In defence of de Beauvoir, she has a much more nuanced position, one that is far from reductionist. Although she begins with a discussiion of the "physiological", her emphasis is on how gender is constructed - that "biology is not destiny". She ends the first chapter of "The Second Sex" by saying, "Thus we must view the facts of biology in the light of an ontological, economic, social, and psychological context. The enslavement of the female to the species and the limitations of her various powers are extremely important facts; the body of woman is one of the essential elements in her situation in the world. But that body is not enough to define her as woman; there is no true living reality except as manifested by the conscious individual through activities and in the bosom of a society. "
"you can't build a civilization on overly simplistic notions about only two kinds of people" - You hit the nail on the head here. All queer people want is to exist safely as ourselves, and allies such as yourself are key to reaching people it may not be safe for us to interact with directly. I'm trans and a medicinal chemistry student. The complexity and variation of sex alone is unbelievable and worthy of not just respect but celebration - and that's without even starting to look at gender identity. Petty reductionism isn't going to get us anywhere as a species, our differences make us who we are so we may as well put in the effort to understand them
Thank you for your video. As a trans woman, I am grateful to listen to a biologist that grasps the complexity and multiplicity of biological and social processes.
It's disgusting to me that we are even having to have this conversation. How someone wishes to identify ain't nobody's business but their own. Personally, I'm not a big fan of tattoos. That's my problem not Lidia's. If Lidia wants to be an encyclopaedia , then good for her.
@@ipilotaneva2586 Competing against them in sports, their locker and rest rooms and awards meant for women not for men who wrongly believe they are women
Reductionist: There are only two sexes, no exceptions! Science: What about intersex people? Reductionist: Those are anomalies. Science: So…an exception? Reductionist: … Science: Here’s a distribution graph of heights of adults 20-29 from the US census. You can see the two peaks where the average female and average male height is. In the dip between the two peaks, point to where height switches from being female height to male height. Reductionist: ... Science: Let’s say it’s right in the middle of the peaks. Congrats. Everyone under 5’8” is a female, everyone over that is a male. Right? Reductionist: … Science: That’s you. That’s what you sound like. Reductionist: Well, I’m 5’9”.
An intersex person is someone that partially expresses traits from two sexes at the same time. Note that this is not a person with a new sex, just someone with e.g. female anatomy but also male karyotype. This does not refute the claim that there are two sexes.
@@BigTallLankyDude What sex does a person have if they have traits from two sexes at the same time? The reductionist says there are only two sexes, and an individual can only be one or the other. Sometimes they claim sex can only be determined by gamete production (oops, some have neither) and sometimes they claim it is only chromosomes (oops, some XY people can have uteri and vaginas). The reductionists can’t even agree on a definition that creates a binary. Yes, height doesn’t have a bimodal distribution by sex assigned at birth when your sample size is large and representatively diverse enough, but it’s hardly the point. The reductionist can’t name a single trait where the range of expression between the sexes does not overlap, yet they claim that there’s some singular trait that you can point at that has a sharp line dividing the sexes. Ok, what trait is it, where is that line?
sex is a bimodal distribution, not binary because intersex people exist too, you can't have a binary system that has 0s, 1s and sometimes 2s. and 'bimodal' still implies there are two main ones, with exceptions.
I had a question I thought of since your last video, if you think it would be interesting to talk about, but "Like there are different hair colors, and eye colors, are there different genetic variants associated within the sexes?" For context, I was thinking about how there are various parts of the body that are subtly different between male, and female humans, like the shape of the hips, and the heart, and I was also thinking about how some of these traits associated with one sex, and be found in an individual who is genetically the opposite sex, like how there is at least one part of the brain that is sexually dimorphic, and the brains of some percentage of trans-people typically more closely resemble the dimorphic form not associated with their gender assigned at birth. I was thinking about summarizing this using an analogy of playing cards, "not everyone has been dealt a straight-flush in life, some have a mix of black, and red cards - even if there are only two sexes, some people have a mix of male and female biological/phenotypical traits." However, this got me thinking on a tangent, are there more than just "Black, and Red cards" when it comes to the human sexes, are there the equivalent to "Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades", like having multiple suits within the two colors/sexes? From the surface level information I know as a layperson who likes learning about biology as a type of "edu-tainment" it would strike me as very surprising if the sexes do not have the types of genetic variation we see with other traits, but I also don't think I have ever heard any mentioned, beyond things like that there are certain genetic markers that indicate a woman is more likely than the average person to develop breast cancer. If you think this topic would be worth a video, I would love to see it.
Your videos are brilliant ( I’m a great fan of you and your work) ...and yet I’m not convinced with your argument. I entirely agree that sex identity is the result of lots of factors - but ultimately (with some exceptions) the basis is male or female (based upon physiology).
Well you can classify sex, and its useful....to an extent. Beyond being able to efficiently deal with newborns it really isn't as useful when describing adults. People dont like it because its confusing. And i do sympathize with that. The entire thing is confusing for everybody (trans and non trans).
We describe species, and the properties of organs and traits etc. of species, in terms of what is typical. For example, we describe _Homo sapiens_ as being capable of bipedal locomotion despite the existence of people without the ability to walk; we describe our hands as having five digits despite some people being born with a different number of digits than that and many people losing fingers through e.g. injury... I'm sure you can think of many examples. Anomalies arise because biology is chemistry when you zoom in, and chemistry is chaotic even within the somewhat controlled environment inside a cell. Things can go wrong when DNA divides, and suddenly you have a sperm cell with a Y chromosome that isn't carrying the vital gene that kicks off the sex development process. The result in that case may be someone with XY karyotype but a female body. An anomaly, but not one that overturns the fact that there are two sexes.
@@BigTallLankyDude But homo sapiens didnt exist in the past. We are a product of ''anomalies'' and so many species.. Just because something is not typical doesnt mean is an ''anomaly'' especially when it is typical in other species
Dismissing the gamete basis for defining sex as reductionist isn't an argument against the definition of sex being about gametes! All you are doing is objecting to that basis, as in 'I don't like why that's the basis, it's reductionist'! You not liking it doesn't change the fact that gametes are the basis of defining sex. You then go on to ramble about the consequences of that basis, but your reasons are irrelevant! They are are _not_ consequences at all. The definition is one point, _sexuality_ (which encapsulates your 'consequences' nonsense) is free to flow however it may, the sex binary definition doesn't clash! I'll stop there, I've heard enough nonsense.
Not binary mindset generally, but female sport is caught with 3 important things in conflict: safety, fairness & inclusion. Some groups value inclusion more and are compromising fairness, and in some sports, safety. But the whole point of having female sport is to create an arena for fair competition by having a category without male advantage. There is plenty of evidence that puberty creates variety of male differences that are not erased by hormone treatments
@@PZMyersBiology i feel like I'm either missing half of a conversation or being trolled. Male puberty creates changes throughout the body from skeleton to lungs. Lots of systems that won't be changed by hormone treatments later in life. Yes there is an overlapping bell curve between men and women, but if you compare elite men and elite women who would normally compete in sports, there is a big difference
I live in traditional society and I get why lots of females would wish if they were rather males, discrimination, limited right, and specific lows that are only made in order to dictate what to wear, how to speak and so on. I still don't get why to take those who are obsessing about what kind of body they bornd with for such a trivel reasons like what sits of behaviors they have seriously. the question is in an ideal society where sexuall deferences (only social) are no longer there would the problem of being born in the wrong body exists? Or is it just that some people who are being identified as men want to run away from responsibility associated with that to the realm of femininity sense there is more trans women than men, like those women in traditional society how only want the freedom of masculinit? Would not it be better if we got rid of social rolls that are based arbitrary on sex to solve the problem? Much love PZ your follower from Yemen 🇾🇪
A lot of people think there is black and white. As someone assigned White at birth but who discovered they are actually black I just can't help but chuckle at these people
I don't care which sex / gender someone wishes to be known as. But in competitive sports, I just don't want to see a loophole created, which can be exploited to provide unfair competitive advantage..
does it concern you personally? you don't know which team to bet on any more? sorry, but your concern reeks of projection and falsehood. be honest with yourself first. nobody will ever respect you otherwise. and i for one sure do not respect you so far.
Oh get lost with this sexist BS. There are multiple studies that have shown NO physiological basis for the garbage myth that cisgender men are any stronger than cisgender women, have any better endurance, or more overall strength. It's also a stupid argument when co-ed sports already exist, and HAVE existed, for decades, successfully. Besides that, changing your entire identity just to switch teams and win more is beyond unlikely to happen. Going through hormone therapy isn't a magic one-shot process. It's uncomfortable, some of the effects are permanent, and people like you have already seen to it that it's nearly impossible for trans athletes to get placed onto a team of the correct gender (the one they identify with), much less compete at higher levels.
"Unfair competitive Advantage" is itself a social construct and a total can of worms. We accept 7' female basketball players but force women with naturally high testosterone levels to take hormones to modify their bodies. "Fair" seems to be defined by what ESPN thinks is good for ratings. My athletic career was ended by the existence of genetic freaks like Micheal Phelps with huge feet and loosely jointed arms. Why is his genetic weirdness "fair" while a trans woman's different body for her gender "unfair?" As far as loopholes go, living your life as a different gender seems an awfully high cost to pay for an athletic career, especially since that by itself doesn't guarantee anything.
I think you are talking past each other. Yes, there is a whole lot more to humans than just their gametes. But their gametes define their sex, not their humanity. Nobody is defining people per se by their gametes, they are defining people's sex by their gametes.
This isn't really about coming up with neat definitions. Yes, you could define sex as gametes, gender as a purely social aspect and invent some new word (like "secondary sex" by analogy with secondary sex characteristics, or whatever) for everything in between, but that doesn't really help anyone. Anti-trans guys would still anxiously stare at their ceilings and go "Am I GAAAAAY now?" every time they saw an attractive trans woman, TERFS would still think "did we let THE ENEEEEMYYYY in?" every time they see anyone, not realising the irony, and grifters will still use the resultant moral panic to peddle their grift. Unfortunately, this isn't a disagreement that could be just defined away, we need to persuade that guy that no, he's not, don't be silly, and what's the big deal if he was, and that TERF that, err... she did let the enemy in, but it's not transwomen, so the grifter, deprived of marks, would move on to something else. And, for that you need to contradict and challenge them, at least to an extent.
They really are defining people by their gametes. That's why buffoons like Matt Walsh and other regresseive theocrats are so up in arms about this. They reduce people to their gametes, and reduce sex (in all forms of the word) to merely the reproductive process. How many times have you heard fundamentalists talk about the purpose of marriage being reproduction? This serves to undermine liberal attitudes to sexuality, and the scientific understanding of sexual activity is ignored in favour of a reductionist view of its teleology. To these people, the only reason sex exists is to make more babies to increase the flock. Atheistic transphobes have a different motivation of course - the 'it's icky' argument that holds no weight whatsoever and just reveals their biases about what they choose to view in a rational way. I don't think there are any transfolk out there who don't acknowledge the different gametes we all have - but as PZ says, that's a very simplistic way of looking at who we are.
So people who don't produce gametes don't have a sex or are not defined as humans? What does that narrow definition have to do with anything? Nothing except for a few cases in very specific biological issues. That's why it is a very narrow reductionistic definition for scientific use only... Anyone who uses this definition outside of very narrow biological applications shows either his/her ignorance or malice...
But that is the (main) point: many people ARE deciding social and political rights according to the "biological sex" of a person rather than considering the whole of their lived reality. In the UK, the government appointed Equality and Human Rights Commission has just announced that may change its advice on how organisations meet their obligations under Equalities and Equal Rights legislation to reflect their "new" thinking that "sex" should mean "the sex assigned at birth". This would mean that even those trans-people who have a legally recognised Gender Recognition Certificate would be treated as if they were still the sex assigned at birth, so they could lose legal protection against sex discrimination etc. This change is entirely the result of political lobbying by "Gender Criticals" and those who argue that gender isn't real, and only their simplistic version of "biological sex" counts.
@@shinywarm6906 How is being considered in accordance with their sex a loss of legal protection against sex discrimination? The only thing they lose is the supposed 'right' to enter spaces reserved for the sex they are not.
Thank you for replying to the comment I left on your earlier video on this topic. If for no other reason than to prove beyond all doubt that you argue in very bad faith. Remember, the topic of the last video was a rebuttal to Richard Dawknis' claim that there are two sexes. Your position was that this is an oversimplification, and my response to you was that you were bringing in things that were not relevant to the topic. Keep in mind: *the topic is whether "there are two sexes" is a reasonable position* On that video, I said: _We are not our gametes, we are a complex multicellular organism” … not even wrong, just irrelevant. You could carry on and say many more things about what we are - philosophers! mathematicians! diabetics! cynics! the kitchen sink! - but if the aren’t relevant to the conversation of the biology of sexual reproduction, they will continue to be irrelevant_ In response to this, you said _Everything about our morphology, behavior, endocrinology, physiology, genetics…IRRELEVANT. So what if there are philosophers and mathematicians, all that matters is the “biology of sexual reproduction,” which only involves sperm bumping into ova. This degree of reductionism is simply gross and denies all aspects of biology and culture other than the one he (yeah, pretty sure this is a “he”) wants to use to make his argument. OK, fine, if everything but this one thing is irrelevant, just lie down in a gutter, masturbating, and wait for an ovum to find your puddle of semen_ Yes, on the question of *whether "there are two sexes" is a reasonable position* the relevant thing is the biology of sexual reproduction. On that video, I continued: _The maturation process after fusion? Really? Yes it takes years, no it is not relevant to the biology of reproduction_ And to this you responded: _Wait, wait, wait. So puberty, the development of secondary sexual characteristics, gonad development, mental maturation, and sexual orientation are NOT relevant to the biology of reproduction? Seriously, dude? All this fancy non-gonadal equipment we evolved has nothing at all to do with making babies, which is, of course, the only criterion we’ll use for classifying sex_ ? Again, the topic is *whether it is reasonable to say there are two sexes* Yes, on that topic, the duration of our maturation process is irrelevant. I finished by saying: _ [quoting you from that video] “You might think you can peek in the baby’s diapers and predict with absolute certainty their future role as a biological organism in society” - your usual mistake, conflating sex with societal role. Yes the sexes are surrounded by many stereotypes, yes many people place expectations of behaviour / personality / profession / hobby / sexual preference / favourite colour / taste in movies and all sorts of other silly things on people on the basis of their sex. Still only two sexes though_ And your final response was: _So, after briefly lising a small sample of the panoply of possibilities for human individuals, he just dismisses at all as “silly” because there are “only two sexes”. Because all that matters is whether you produce sperm or egg_ Interjecting: all that matters is the biology of reproduction, because *the topic is whether there are two sexes or not* Sorry, carry on... _But nobody, let alone any biologists, is arguing that there is some alternative mechanisms for reproduction in humans than the fusion of sperm and ovum; what I’m saying is sex is immensely more complex than that, that there are many other factors that define the sex of individuals_ But the question is not whether reproduction gets complicated when you examine it in detail, the question is whether those complicated processes rebut the idea that there are two sexes. They don't. You bring them up continually when someone states there are only two sexes, but they never amount to a refutation to that statement. There are two sexes. Do you agree?
No. Your argument is circular: you equate sexes to gametes, and then because there are two kinds of gametes, you make a leap and claim that therefore there are two sexes. That is invalid reasoning.
@@PZMyersBiology Sexual reproduction is the method our species uses, and we cannot talk about sex without bearing that in mind. As a method of reproduction, we require the fusion of two halves of a complete genome from two discrete individuals, each possessing the means to produce one of the two gamete types. Sex is simply the pattern created by that evolutionary adaptation. We are classed as dioecious, meaning production of each gamete type - both of them - is produced by a distinct body type carrying anatomy to produce one gamete only rather than both. Two individuals with two body types producing two distinct gametes. Two two two sexes.
"you argue in very bad faith" please, ffs, do spend a least an hour looking at what the actual definition of arguing in bad faith IS, before you couch your rambling diatribe in that very thing you decry.
@@PZMyersBiology So basically you can't define anything. don't call a chair a chair because it could be defined as a small table or don't call a tall person a tall person because he/she might be average or short in some other country. From what I've seen people more interested in philosophy tend to make such arguments while the more "scientificists" tend blunter in their definitions and don't put much thought into it. Dawkins is a scientificist
@@BigTallLankyDude Your definition of sex is simply wrong...because it's reductionist and leaves out the majority of factors that contribute to sex. Your focus on gametes to define sex is like saying language is defined solely by letters in an alphabet and not the way it's spoken or written or used symbolically or its effect on the actions of people and algorithms and so forth. let me ask...why does it matter to you that sex can only be defined by karyotype?
Is there a difference between sex and gender? Sex is determined by chromosomes. Gender is a bit more complicated and is definitely not a social construct. Is there confusion between sex and gender? I have known people who have defied the two sexes argument by having mutated or damaged chromosomes and have fallen somewhere between the two sexes position. Gender is even more complicated than that...
"Social construct" doesn't mean "made up." Doors are social constructs. Unless you live in a Swiss bank vault, most doors you see throughout the day are relatively easily broken or bypassed, in many places this is actually specified in building codes to help evacuation and rescue in fires and other emergencies. Yet we socially agreed to act as if locked doors are impenetrable barriers, and punish most people who act as if they weren't. So, is, say, HRT, a firefighter opening a locked door to let the trapped person out or a B&E?
Sex refers to the body, its anatomy and genetics. It is the product of our method of reproduction - we split our genome into two different cell lines (sperm, ovum), and each cell line is associated with a distinct set of organs. These are what we observe when noting someone's sex. And yes, this division of course originates from our genetics. Gender seems complex because it is extremely nebulous, with many conflicting definitions. Worse still is gender _identity_ - one of the most fraught concepts ever invented.
As a software architect, I must say everything is mathematical and binary. Don't delude yourself thinking otherwise. I still don't get why people mix human biology with psychology and sociology
I work in quantum computing so I must say everything is all states at once with a probability to condense to possible states when a measurement is made. It's still, very very mathematical. And yeah, the real world is governed by quantum mechanics, binary is just an approximation for stuff that's big and clunky.
@@bcwbcw3741 Everyone collapses their gender wave function based on the programming in their brains, influenced to varying degrees by other body physiology, so there’s way more than 2 genders. There’s way more than the numbers of greyscale tones in your computer. There’s a number of genders equal to number of people on the planet. The majority just tend to fill up 2 large Venn diagram circles by their eventual cell distribution, actions, decisions, upbringing and societal pressure. Others have differing amounts of those things and distribute into various other circles that may partially lie in the two big circles or completely independent of both. Deciding on a course of hatred based on the circle the individual collapsed their wave function inside of is very likely one of the stupidest displays of stupid human tricks a person could be unfortunate enough to encounter, right after wearing a MAGA without it being a practical joke.
