Talk:Biological sex

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The chromosome gambit (transphobia)

All males have XY and all females XX, right? That depends on what's more important, the empty shell of the Y chromosome or its function of giving genitals. Turns out if you play with genes on the Y chromosome, you can have functionally female rodents (yes, this can work for humans), that produce even ovum1. Indeed, some of these mice even gave birth. So much for that whole "muh chromosomes" argument. BumblingBuffoon (talk) 17:53, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, the cold hard reality is that chromosomes almost unanimously determine one's sexual phenotype, so it's safe to say that one's sex is determined by this factor in the vast, vast majority of cases. ^{— Unsigned, by: 2a02:a456:1fda:1:10d0:a3b0:2e73:24ce / talk / contribs}

On talk pages, please sign your comments using four tildes (~~~~) or by clicking on the sign button: on the toolbar above the edit panel. You can also indent successive talk page comments using one more colon (:) for each line. Thank you. —cosmikdebris ^talk stalk 23:20, 12 May 2023 (UTC)

the cold hard reality is actually more complicated than that and that oversimplies sex determination in mammals a bit. The only reason why the Y chromosome typical results in the development of testes and related external genitalia is the presence of the SRY gene which works in tandem with various other genes that produce proteins that allows cells to respond to the presence of related androgens to trigger that development of penis, scrotum, testes, etc. Sometimes an SRY gene is translocated onto an X chromosome so you get similar development of testes and related anatomy but on someone with a XX karyotype. The absence of the SRY gene on a Y chromosome can also result in the absence of testes, penis, etc. Even sometimes with the presence of the SRY the genes it work with may be faulty or absent resulting in membrane proteins insensitive to androgens. Sure in the “majority” of cases XY karyotype results in the expected functional sex development but that doesn’t discount the unexpected or less probable cases. Sounds an awful lot like the argument that the vast majority of people who catch covid don’t die from it. It kind of misunderstands that working with large enough populations the “small minority” to start to add up and neglecting them would have sizeable externalities on the majority. Also it’s not how things work in science. If there existed even one oxygen atom that somehow had more or less than 8 protons in it’s nucleus it would refute the atomic number of oxygen. These definitions are supposed to be universal, not merely highly probable. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 16:12, 13 May 2023 (UTC)

Homologous structures

Relevant to the topic of transgender people and biological sex: List of related male and female reproductive organs

So, sexed organs develop from the same prenatal structures, making them homologous. Now, the curious thing to me here is the phenotypical appearance seems to be at least a little bit flexible in response to cross-sex hormones: if a trans man is on testosterone long enough the clitoris will grow significantly, and as such, in some individuals grows enough that it looks and even sort of acts kind of like a penis. (There's no way to say that which isn't sort of crude.) Obviously he isn't going to produce sperm from that transition (maybe in some intersex cases), but I just wanted to mention, there is some plasticity to primary sex characteristics even with nonsurgical options. It makes me wonder if there's value to the "medically-induced intersex" (rather "altersex") type narrative. As well, there are some papers showing that transgender hormone replacement therapy causes cell-level changes in gene expression towards the desired sex, which makes sense, though at least one found it to be the case in cells not even known to have androgen receptors.

I'm still learning about such things so wouldn't necessarily be confident to insert anything about it into the article. Chillpilled (talk) 21:12, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Source consideration:

Here's another source that sort of digs deeper. [1] TheEternalOutsider (talk) 06:25, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

"digs deeper" is quite the description for a publication that has been cited only twice and includes "sex is binary" in its title. "Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts" ....oh boy. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

That abstract is cringe, already sounding the alarms to a moral panic and framing the topic in response to a strawman fallacy. Rejecting sex as being binary is not the same thing as rejecting the existence of generally sexually dimorphic species. Also, it is important to understand what it is that people are actually objecting to when they say they reject the binary model. The objection is not to there existing two types of gametes that are produced by species under the kingdoms of Plantae and Animalia. Nor is it to claim that outside fungi, species produce gametes that are neither spermatozoa nor ova. When people say something like "sex isn't binary" what they mean is that sex does not delineate into two mutually exclusive categories that exist as a binary opposition. That is a simple biological fact considering the strong degree of developmental overlap in the generation of our sex organs, the existence of human beings that can exist in "opposite sex" ranges for hormone production, intersex individuals, etc. Sex is not a fixed category that is embedded in some platonic essence outside the material world. It is a living process that develops over time and is subject to change. If that is "denying biological facts" then so much for the existence of fucking puberty and prenatal sex differentiation. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Got to love it when authors cite Judith Butler and completely misrepresent them. Butler doesn't argue that sex is merely a social construct that's an oversimplification. Also, this gamete gambit has already been done before and it is complicated by the fact that some animal species include individuals who do not produce gametes and yet we still classify them as having sex. It is not always pathological either. For many colony insects, it is normal for the vast majority of females to not be fertile and produce no gametes whatsoever. There is no universally accepted definition of "biological sex" that exists across the sub-disciplines of biology. The gamete definition is one of many different definitions used by researchers, the Entomologist is not using the same operational definition as the Ornithologist. This is likely what people mean when they say "sex is contextual". It is not genuinely relativist in any anti-objectivist sense. There can still be mind-independent mechanisms that exist physically in the world that are being described even if the language used to describe it varies by research context. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 06:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

You misunderstood purpose of this article. It doesn't exist to describe scientific concept (with scientific value) as defined in ideologically neutral source (like this: [2]). It was written to push some ideology and it only reference sources with clear ideological bias. Definition of sex provided in this article are both inadequate. Definition (a) uses outdated terminology and it is formulated in vague way just to avoid simple fact that sex is defined by gametes. But this is what apparently "TERFs" says and since "TERFs" are people which you are not supposed to like then of course this definition must not be correct. Definition (b) is not a scientific definition at all. At best it is a sociological study of how layman people would explain sex when asked about “scientific definition”. Since most people heard something like “XX=female, XY=male” or “testosterone makes you male” and they think that this is some kind of science they could produce such pseudoscientific abomination as definition of sex. MichaelG (talk) 10:35, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

"sex is defined by gametes". Yeah err there are people who don't produce gametes so what would their sex be?. Simplifying it to gametes misses out those who don't produce gametes hence why the definition of sex is not purely gamete based. Lavalizard101 (talk) 21:38, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

Defined by gametes doesn’t mean that individuals need to actively produce gametes - gamete type is a reference point. You have a simple definition from wikipedia: “Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes.”. In this definition “produces” should be understood as “being source of”. Like in the sentence “This soil produces splendid crops”. If you know the composition of soil you can predict if this is true even if those crops are not produced right now. You can rephrase this definition if this is easier to you: “Sex is anatomy organized, thru development, around production of specific type of gametes”. And if you want to go even further than that then you need to make a distinction between what is “biological sex” and which individual is classified as “male” or “female”.MichaelG (talk) 05:27, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

...but this is still complicated by the facts of those born with congenital conditions (i.e. absent gonads). How do we classify someone who was conceived with XX chromosomes, but the X chromosome provided by the inseminating parent had the SRY gene translocated from a Y chromosome during meiosis? Something that does sometimes happen. Lets make this a thought experiment, say this was a case of an XX translocated SRY gene, and the infant is born with a penis, but an empty scrotum. Are they "oriented towards" producing male gametes? Why? What if the SRY gene in this case failed to express itself and the child was born with vulva, a vaginal opening, and ovaries instead? Are they not female in that case? You have to keep in mind that in early prenatal development these structures are undifferentiated. Both sets of reproductive organs are homologous structures developed from the same set of precursor structures. That's why many folks have a kind of "seal" on the bottom of their scrotum: the tissue that makes up the scrotum is the same tissue that forms the labia. - Only Sort of Dumb (talk) 07:39, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

I’m under the impression that you assume that biological concepts (or even wider, scientific concepts) are normative, e.g. that for example sex is something that each individual needs to have. This may be true for legal sex in some jurisdictions, but scientific concepts are descriptive, not normative. Rules of classifying anatomies as male or female are defined at species by species basis, but always in relation to development pathways associated with gamete production. Sometimes such classification is not possible (e.g. can’t be justified). In such cases sex is considered “ambiguous” and it is ambiguous exactly because only two sexes exist. If sex would not represent relation to reproductive function of gamete production, but merely “spectrum of phenotypes” then it would never be ambiguous. Saying that this makes sex non-binary would be an example of continuum fallacy. MichaelG (talk) 09:45, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

A mad experiment in sex plasticity

Here, a blog post discussing the use of CRISPR-Cas9 to knockout the DMRT1 gene. Supposedly something like this could theoretically be used to replace hormone replacement therapy in non-op transgender individuals, but currently it would be a dumb idea and in mice tests the animal dies after a bit.

Anyway a trans biohacker said fuck your caution, and allegedly went ahead engineering a lentivirus to knockout the DMRT1 gene causing the testicles to produce estrogen (as far as I understand). I saw people online saying this biohacker was still alive but I could find no evidence. I am going to assume that did not end well. Though, the story is fantastical and I'm rather skeptical, but either way it's eye-catching.

Still, an interesting consideration for the future. I heard of CRISPR being used for proposed HIV elimination therapies in recent years — cool stuff. Chillpilled (talk) 01:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)