The biologists' view of sex as a life stage is interesting because it gets at something fundamental about life being a process. One can contrast this with how humans, both individually and as a collective, view themselves as individuals that have an essence - in other words - indenties. Now sex happens to be an important concept (as are most concepts) that laid the foundation for god knows how many other breakthroughs. But there's something interesting about the way we take concepts that define differences between individuals and turn it into an identity. I'm guessing this is a natural function of being social mammals since most of our higher level faculties including language probably evolved to help us relate to one another. It therefore makes sense that concepts that differentiate us would be intergral to us - since the only way we can talk about ourselves is by comparing and contrasting with others. There's no real argument here, just a semi-stoned rant.
"... gets at something fundamental about life being a process"
Indeed. ICYMI, a Psychology Today article:
PT: "No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an 'essence' is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes, not essences."
Part of the problem is that many people don't realize that category names -- "male", "female", "teenager", "vertebrate" -- are just abstractions, and insist on turning them into real things -- the logical fallacy of reification. For details, see this post of mine, particularly the tweet by RadfemBlack on vertebrates:
I agree very much that there are no fundamental "essences" in biology. But it still often seems helpful to make some categories more rigid than others, at least in some contexts. In the category of "what foods should I consume," there are a vast array of options that would lead to success, so most people seem willing to see this category as a spectrum. In the category of "who should I marry," the ability to have biological children is very important for many people, so having a rigid definition of sex would probably be helpful for them in choosing a marriage partner. In other contexts, though, those same people might be okay with a more fluid definition of sex.
The problem is in having multiple definitions for the sexes, for "male" and "female", that are contradictory and inconsistent. Will we have one set of definitions for the kids in their humanities and law classes, and entirely different ones for their biology classes?
If the sexes are going to be used to adjudicate claims to access toilets, change rooms, and sports leagues then we simply have specify which definitions are trump, and what are the criteria for accessing those venues.
That comment of yours is, I'm sorry to say, hardly better than a statement in favour of motherhood and apple pie -- vague statements are pretty much useless, if not worse than useless.
Even in the case of the sexes, too many so-called biologists and philosophers don't know whether they're on foot or horseback -- see Griffiths' essay for details -- and are peddling idiosyncratic definitions which conflict profoundly with the more solidly justified ones of mainstream biology.
You might actually try reading and thinking about the specifics, about the devils in the details. See my:
If the production of gametes determines biological sex, why isn't the preparation (i.e. childhood) part of that overall production process? The preparation seems like it would be very important biologically. Then after fertility, protecting one's offspring would also seem to be part of the overall gamete production process.
Therefore, if doctors have ways to pretty accurately predict which types of gametes an individual would produce as a fertile adult, then that seems like a way to determine biological sex for juveniles and non-fertile individuals.
I agree that works for humans and that we should continue to classify people as you outline. The reason I noted the life stage point though is because an individual organism “being a sex” doesn’t make sense in every species. Either way, for humans the difference seems only technically important even if assigning sex to a juvenile is based on “prospective narration” about their eventual gametes
Griffiths also mentions simultaneous hermaphrodites - I think he’d say those organisms have both sexes at once, so they’d be both male and female during the time they’re producing gametes. The motivation for his life stage language is most clear when talking about sequential hermaphrodites. But I think the main point he’s trying to make, which seems to be motivated by the existence of both simultaneous and sequential hermaphrodites, is that sex is not an identity characteristic of an organism but something an organism does.
In the case of humans, the overall reproductive strategy involved in producing these gametes and creating offspring relates to basically every part of the organism, so thinking of sex as a part of identity makes more sense than it might for species in general
Looks like an very informative essay, and a pretty solid and useful review of Griffiths' paper. A great many cogent observations, probably too many to do justice to in a single comment. But thanks for the plug -- and for the Like of my related Note. Though it seems I need to update the pronouns I used -- as Maxwell Smart once put it, sorry about that Chief. 🙂
But really nice to see an honest and a more or less thorough review of Griffiths' paper which I think warrants a much wider discussion and currency. Haven't really read all of it in the depth required, and was planning a review of it myself -- waiting on a more thorough reading, but ran across this comment of Griffiths' which I think speaks directly to your whole post, although there are many others that do likewise:
PG: "Like [Joan] Roughgarden, I think the biological definition of sex is part of the solution, not part of the problem."
Moot of course what are the roots of that "problem", but kind of get the impression that, as you and many others have suggested, too many people have turned the sexes into an "immutable" identity based on some "mythic essences" instead of recognizing them as transitory states. Largely why I quite appreciate your quite frequent "sexless by this definition" -- "sexless" being a word that too many so-called biologists and philosophers seem congenitally incapable of even whispering for fear of their tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths. Though, to be fair, Griffiths himself seems somewhat reluctant to use the word -- maybe a case of discretion being the better part of valor.
But many other people get quite "offended" when one even suggests that that is the logical consequence of those biological definitions. For example, see Substacker, UK lawyer, and Genspect honcho Sarah Phillimore who thought I or that argument were "contemptible" for suggesting that she was thereby no longer human:
Which brings me around to your kick at the "clinical definition" kitty. Took a brief look at your GitHub program -- Python? -- and certainly an interesting model that you've created there which probably has some utility, at least for illustration purposes. But as you indicated yourself, the final values depend greatly on the (subjective) weightings used, and one might suggest that genitalia should have a higher one since they're more readily discernable than karyotypes.
However, I think there are any number of problems with the clinical definitions in general, some of which are highlighted by your model and discussions thereof. For starters, you quite reasonably assert that:
Regan: "... to define any category or concept, we have to agree on parameters that sequester one category from another."
Foundational principle of biology and much else. As mathematician, economist, Genspecter, and author of "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" once put it:
HJ: "But inclusive definitions miss the point. The way you define something is to state criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t. A prime number, for example, is 'a number that has no divisors but itself and one.' That excludes really rather a lot of numbers: six (two times three), say, and 71,417,010 (12,785 times 5,586). It’s not those numbers’ fault, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not nice numbers. They’re very nice. They’re just not prime."
Elsewhere there she clearly endorses the biological definitions, but she more or less snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by putting her money on the clinical definitions: trying to have her cake and eat it too. A modus operandi that's apparently rather typical of many weighing-in on "the problem" -- basically trying to define the sexes as a social category as opposed to a biological one; not a shot at you as you clearly recognize the difference.
No doubt that we can define "male" and "female" as we wish -- pay the words extra. But any number of problems arise because of the conflict. For example, will we have the clinical definitions for the kids in their social and medical studies programs and entirely different ones for their biology studies? IF we were to create new words for the former -- maybe "human-male" and "human-female"? -- THEN that might work. But I think that Griffiths' point is that biology has a great deal of relevance to human behaviour and society -- kinda think we're shooting ourselves in the feet by bastardizing and distorting and corrupting the biological terminology which the whole edifice of biology is founded on.
As something of a case in point, and one that seriously chaps my hide and which probably precipitated my involvement in this issue, is a Wikipedia article on sequential hermaphrodites. A recent version has been bastardized by some feminist collective to use the clinical/folk-biology definitions for the sexes where the biological ones had been used in a previous version:
Wikipedia (new): "Both protogynous and protandrous hermaphroditism allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female."
Wikipedia (old): "If the female dies, the male gains weight and becomes the female for that group. The largest non-breeding fish then sexually matures and becomes the male of the group."
A difference between night and day. "functional" and the implied "non-functional" of the new version make each sex into a binary. But "becomes the male" rather clearly indicates that sex is, as Griffiths emphasizes, "a life-history stage", not an identity; can't very well "become" a male if one qualified as such from conception.
But I think that the NIH definitions you quoted and your own model justifies the argument that they turn sex into spectrum -- the absolute antithesis of the biological definitions as a binary: Houston, we have a mission-critical problem.
Not at all sure what the resolution might be, but a greater appreciation of your point about the "parameters that sequester one category from another" would probably help. Apropos of which, you might be interested in my essay on the "debate" between the binarists & the spectrumists, on the profound difference between monothetic and polythetic categories:
And relative to your forthcoming explainer on "sex differences in humans and how that relates to my understanding of gender and gender identity" 🙂, you might have some interest in a 4thWaveNow article, particularly the joint probability distribution graph, that illustrates the ubiquity of those differences:
Provides some reason to argue that, to a first approximation, "gender" is just a rough synonym for sexually dimorphic personality traits, personality types, and behaviours: "sex" is the independent variable, and those sexually dimorphic traits are the dependent variables.
You might also have some interest in my effort to improve the general understanding of statistics, particularly the interactive Mathematica program 🙂:
I don't see an inherent problem with humanities classes teaching children that gender can be fluid, while biology classes teach them that sex is more rigid. We already do this in other areas. For example, civics classes might teach children that all people should be treated equal before the law, then their P.E. classes might teach them that people can be very unequal on a soccer field.
Seems you may be conflating "sex" and "gender" -- something of a developing consensus that they're entirely different kettles of fish. You might have some interest in reading Genspect's Glossary on both:
"Gender: .... Now denotes a person's social or cultural status as masculine, feminine, or something else ...."
And Google/Oxford languages defines "masculine" as:
"having qualities or an appearance traditionally associated with men or boys"
By the standard biological definitions for the sexes, ALL that "male" and "female" denote is the presence of functional gonads of either of two types. "gender" is then all of the OTHER traits that are typical of but not unique to each sex -- things like personality traits, behaviours, roles, and attire. How there can be masculine females and feminine males -- "sex" and "gender" aren't joined at the hip.
Actually, I want to do the opposite of conflation -- I want society to separate the concepts of sex and gender, with sex being biological qualities and gender being socially constructed qualities.
It might be difficult sometimes to distinguish which qualities are social and which are biological, but I think this separation hasn't even occurred to most people and contributes to the anger on both sides of the issue.
Nicely done. One quibble: your plots showing population density according to sex treated as a continuous function are heuristically useful, but is unlikely to be quantitatively accurate, considering sparse available data and a seemingly arbitrary equation. Might be misleading; for example, suggestsing that there are basically zero true intersex members in the middle of the distribution, a conclusion which might or might not be accurate.
The biologists' view of sex as a life stage is interesting because it gets at something fundamental about life being a process. One can contrast this with how humans, both individually and as a collective, view themselves as individuals that have an essence - in other words - indenties. Now sex happens to be an important concept (as are most concepts) that laid the foundation for god knows how many other breakthroughs. But there's something interesting about the way we take concepts that define differences between individuals and turn it into an identity. I'm guessing this is a natural function of being social mammals since most of our higher level faculties including language probably evolved to help us relate to one another. It therefore makes sense that concepts that differentiate us would be intergral to us - since the only way we can talk about ourselves is by comparing and contrasting with others. There's no real argument here, just a semi-stoned rant.
"... gets at something fundamental about life being a process"
Indeed. ICYMI, a Psychology Today article:
PT: "No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an 'essence' is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes, not essences."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hive-mind/202003/terf-wars-what-is-biological-sex
Part of the problem is that many people don't realize that category names -- "male", "female", "teenager", "vertebrate" -- are just abstractions, and insist on turning them into real things -- the logical fallacy of reification. For details, see this post of mine, particularly the tweet by RadfemBlack on vertebrates:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
I agree very much that there are no fundamental "essences" in biology. But it still often seems helpful to make some categories more rigid than others, at least in some contexts. In the category of "what foods should I consume," there are a vast array of options that would lead to success, so most people seem willing to see this category as a spectrum. In the category of "who should I marry," the ability to have biological children is very important for many people, so having a rigid definition of sex would probably be helpful for them in choosing a marriage partner. In other contexts, though, those same people might be okay with a more fluid definition of sex.
The problem is in having multiple definitions for the sexes, for "male" and "female", that are contradictory and inconsistent. Will we have one set of definitions for the kids in their humanities and law classes, and entirely different ones for their biology classes?
If the sexes are going to be used to adjudicate claims to access toilets, change rooms, and sports leagues then we simply have specify which definitions are trump, and what are the criteria for accessing those venues.
Maybe this issue would be easier to manage if we used "gender" for socially constructed qualities and "sex" for biological qualities.
Sure. But WHICH properties for WHICH category?
That comment of yours is, I'm sorry to say, hardly better than a statement in favour of motherhood and apple pie -- vague statements are pretty much useless, if not worse than useless.
Even in the case of the sexes, too many so-called biologists and philosophers don't know whether they're on foot or horseback -- see Griffiths' essay for details -- and are peddling idiosyncratic definitions which conflict profoundly with the more solidly justified ones of mainstream biology.
You might actually try reading and thinking about the specifics, about the devils in the details. See my:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
If the production of gametes determines biological sex, why isn't the preparation (i.e. childhood) part of that overall production process? The preparation seems like it would be very important biologically. Then after fertility, protecting one's offspring would also seem to be part of the overall gamete production process.
Therefore, if doctors have ways to pretty accurately predict which types of gametes an individual would produce as a fertile adult, then that seems like a way to determine biological sex for juveniles and non-fertile individuals.
I agree that works for humans and that we should continue to classify people as you outline. The reason I noted the life stage point though is because an individual organism “being a sex” doesn’t make sense in every species. Either way, for humans the difference seems only technically important even if assigning sex to a juvenile is based on “prospective narration” about their eventual gametes
I'm assuming Griffiths is only referring to animal species, not plants or fungi (which have many species where hermaphrodites are the norm).
Griffiths also mentions simultaneous hermaphrodites - I think he’d say those organisms have both sexes at once, so they’d be both male and female during the time they’re producing gametes. The motivation for his life stage language is most clear when talking about sequential hermaphrodites. But I think the main point he’s trying to make, which seems to be motivated by the existence of both simultaneous and sequential hermaphrodites, is that sex is not an identity characteristic of an organism but something an organism does.
In the case of humans, the overall reproductive strategy involved in producing these gametes and creating offspring relates to basically every part of the organism, so thinking of sex as a part of identity makes more sense than it might for species in general
I just hope I have a higher sex score than my partner :)
Well more positive score means more female so... “I got news for ya... that means you’re gay”
https://youtu.be/Zd8vzIRQLLM?feature=shared
Looks like an very informative essay, and a pretty solid and useful review of Griffiths' paper. A great many cogent observations, probably too many to do justice to in a single comment. But thanks for the plug -- and for the Like of my related Note. Though it seems I need to update the pronouns I used -- as Maxwell Smart once put it, sorry about that Chief. 🙂
But really nice to see an honest and a more or less thorough review of Griffiths' paper which I think warrants a much wider discussion and currency. Haven't really read all of it in the depth required, and was planning a review of it myself -- waiting on a more thorough reading, but ran across this comment of Griffiths' which I think speaks directly to your whole post, although there are many others that do likewise:
PG: "Like [Joan] Roughgarden, I think the biological definition of sex is part of the solution, not part of the problem."
Moot of course what are the roots of that "problem", but kind of get the impression that, as you and many others have suggested, too many people have turned the sexes into an "immutable" identity based on some "mythic essences" instead of recognizing them as transitory states. Largely why I quite appreciate your quite frequent "sexless by this definition" -- "sexless" being a word that too many so-called biologists and philosophers seem congenitally incapable of even whispering for fear of their tongues cleaving to the roofs of their mouths. Though, to be fair, Griffiths himself seems somewhat reluctant to use the word -- maybe a case of discretion being the better part of valor.
But many other people get quite "offended" when one even suggests that that is the logical consequence of those biological definitions. For example, see Substacker, UK lawyer, and Genspect honcho Sarah Phillimore who thought I or that argument were "contemptible" for suggesting that she was thereby no longer human:
https://sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/my-first-space-how-did-it-go/comment/39281981
Which brings me around to your kick at the "clinical definition" kitty. Took a brief look at your GitHub program -- Python? -- and certainly an interesting model that you've created there which probably has some utility, at least for illustration purposes. But as you indicated yourself, the final values depend greatly on the (subjective) weightings used, and one might suggest that genitalia should have a higher one since they're more readily discernable than karyotypes.
However, I think there are any number of problems with the clinical definitions in general, some of which are highlighted by your model and discussions thereof. For starters, you quite reasonably assert that:
Regan: "... to define any category or concept, we have to agree on parameters that sequester one category from another."
Foundational principle of biology and much else. As mathematician, economist, Genspecter, and author of "Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality" once put it:
HJ: "But inclusive definitions miss the point. The way you define something is to state criteria that enable you to distinguish between things that qualify and things that don’t. A prime number, for example, is 'a number that has no divisors but itself and one.' That excludes really rather a lot of numbers: six (two times three), say, and 71,417,010 (12,785 times 5,586). It’s not those numbers’ fault, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not nice numbers. They’re very nice. They’re just not prime."
Quillette; "She Who Must Not Be Named"; Archive: https://archive.ph/1TQWm
https://quillette.com/2020/06/20/she-who-must-not-be-named/
Elsewhere there she clearly endorses the biological definitions, but she more or less snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by putting her money on the clinical definitions: trying to have her cake and eat it too. A modus operandi that's apparently rather typical of many weighing-in on "the problem" -- basically trying to define the sexes as a social category as opposed to a biological one; not a shot at you as you clearly recognize the difference.
No doubt that we can define "male" and "female" as we wish -- pay the words extra. But any number of problems arise because of the conflict. For example, will we have the clinical definitions for the kids in their social and medical studies programs and entirely different ones for their biology studies? IF we were to create new words for the former -- maybe "human-male" and "human-female"? -- THEN that might work. But I think that Griffiths' point is that biology has a great deal of relevance to human behaviour and society -- kinda think we're shooting ourselves in the feet by bastardizing and distorting and corrupting the biological terminology which the whole edifice of biology is founded on.
As something of a case in point, and one that seriously chaps my hide and which probably precipitated my involvement in this issue, is a Wikipedia article on sequential hermaphrodites. A recent version has been bastardized by some feminist collective to use the clinical/folk-biology definitions for the sexes where the biological ones had been used in a previous version:
Wikipedia (new): "Both protogynous and protandrous hermaphroditism allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female."
Wikipedia (old): "If the female dies, the male gains weight and becomes the female for that group. The largest non-breeding fish then sexually matures and becomes the male of the group."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sequential_hermaphroditism&oldid=858242377
A difference between night and day. "functional" and the implied "non-functional" of the new version make each sex into a binary. But "becomes the male" rather clearly indicates that sex is, as Griffiths emphasizes, "a life-history stage", not an identity; can't very well "become" a male if one qualified as such from conception.
But I think that the NIH definitions you quoted and your own model justifies the argument that they turn sex into spectrum -- the absolute antithesis of the biological definitions as a binary: Houston, we have a mission-critical problem.
Not at all sure what the resolution might be, but a greater appreciation of your point about the "parameters that sequester one category from another" would probably help. Apropos of which, you might be interested in my essay on the "debate" between the binarists & the spectrumists, on the profound difference between monothetic and polythetic categories:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
And relative to your forthcoming explainer on "sex differences in humans and how that relates to my understanding of gender and gender identity" 🙂, you might have some interest in a 4thWaveNow article, particularly the joint probability distribution graph, that illustrates the ubiquity of those differences:
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
Provides some reason to argue that, to a first approximation, "gender" is just a rough synonym for sexually dimorphic personality traits, personality types, and behaviours: "sex" is the independent variable, and those sexually dimorphic traits are the dependent variables.
You might also have some interest in my effort to improve the general understanding of statistics, particularly the interactive Mathematica program 🙂:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics
I don't see an inherent problem with humanities classes teaching children that gender can be fluid, while biology classes teach them that sex is more rigid. We already do this in other areas. For example, civics classes might teach children that all people should be treated equal before the law, then their P.E. classes might teach them that people can be very unequal on a soccer field.
Seems you may be conflating "sex" and "gender" -- something of a developing consensus that they're entirely different kettles of fish. You might have some interest in reading Genspect's Glossary on both:
"Gender: .... Now denotes a person's social or cultural status as masculine, feminine, or something else ...."
https://genspect.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/The-Gender-Framework-Draft-One.pdf
And Google/Oxford languages defines "masculine" as:
"having qualities or an appearance traditionally associated with men or boys"
By the standard biological definitions for the sexes, ALL that "male" and "female" denote is the presence of functional gonads of either of two types. "gender" is then all of the OTHER traits that are typical of but not unique to each sex -- things like personality traits, behaviours, roles, and attire. How there can be masculine females and feminine males -- "sex" and "gender" aren't joined at the hip.
Actually, I want to do the opposite of conflation -- I want society to separate the concepts of sex and gender, with sex being biological qualities and gender being socially constructed qualities.
It might be difficult sometimes to distinguish which qualities are social and which are biological, but I think this separation hasn't even occurred to most people and contributes to the anger on both sides of the issue.
"this separation hasn't even occurred to most people and contributes to the anger on both sides of the issue"
Quite agree. Why I think Genspect's Framework is something of a step in the right direction.
However their rather sloppy and quite unscientific definitions for both are part of the problem. See my:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/welcome
Nicely done. One quibble: your plots showing population density according to sex treated as a continuous function are heuristically useful, but is unlikely to be quantitatively accurate, considering sparse available data and a seemingly arbitrary equation. Might be misleading; for example, suggestsing that there are basically zero true intersex members in the middle of the distribution, a conclusion which might or might not be accurate.