#gametes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 7 months

Text

By: Colin Wright

Published: Oct 2, 2023

On September 25, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) announced that they were cancelling a panel discussion titled “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why Biological Sex Remains a Necessary Analytic Category in Anthropology,” originally scheduled as part of their annual conference in Toronto from November 15–19. The cancellation and subsequent response by the two organizations shows the extent to which gender ideology has captured academic anthropology.

The panel would have featured six female scientists, specializing in biology and anthropology, to address their profession’s growing denial of biological sex as a valid and relevant category. While terminological confusion surrounding the distinction between sex and gender roles has been a persistent issue within anthropology for decades, the total refusal of some to recognize sex as a real biological variable is a more recent phenomenon. The panel organizers, eager to facilitate an open discussion among anthropologists and entertain diverse perspectives on a contentious issue, considered the AAA/CASCA conference an optimal venue to host such a conversation.

The organizations accepted the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel without incident on July 13, and planned to feature it alongside other panels including those on politically oriented subjects, such as “Trans Latinx Methodologies,” “Exploring Activist Anthropology,” and “Reimagining Anthropology as Restorative Justice.” Elizabeth Weiss, a professor of anthropology at San José State University, was one of the slated panelists. She had intended to discuss the significance in bio-archaeology and forensic anthropology of using skeletal remains to establish a decedent’s sex. While a 2018 article in Discover titled “Skeletal Studies Show Sex, Like Gender, Exists Along a Spectrum” reached different conclusions, Weiss planned to discuss how scientific breakthroughs have made determining the sex of skeletal remains a more exact science. Her presentation was to be moderate; she titled it “No Bones About It: Skeletons Are Binary; People May Not Be,” and conceded in her abstract the growing need in forensics to “to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity” due to “the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims.”

Despite having already approved the panel, the presidents of the AAA (Ramona Pérez) and CASCA (Monica Heller) unexpectedly issued a joint letter on September 25 notifying the “Let’s Talk About Sex” presenters that their panel was cancelled. They claimed that the panel’s subject matter conflicted with their organizations’ values, jeopardized “the safety and dignity of our members,” and eroded the program’s “scientific integrity.” They further asserted the panel’s ideas (i.e., that sex is a real and important biological variable) would “cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.” To ensure that similar discussions would not be approved in the future, the AAA/CASCA vowed to “undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings.”

The following day, the panelists issued a response letter, expressing their disappointment that the AAA and CASCA presidents had “chosen to forbid scholarly dialogue” on the topic. They rejected the “false accusation” that supporting the “continued use of biological sex categories (e.g., male and female; man and woman) is to imperil the safety of the LGBTQI community.” The panelists called “particularly egregious” the AAA/CASCA’s assertion that the panel would compromise the program’s “scientific integrity.” They noted that, ironically, the AAA/CASCA’s “decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign.”

I spoke with Weiss, who expressed her frustration over the canceled panel and the two presidents’ stifling of honest discussion about sex. She was concerned about the continual shifting of goalposts on the issue:

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

Weiss was not the only person to object. When I broke news of the cancellation on X, it immediately went viral. At the time of writing, my post has more than 2.4 million views, and the episode has ignited public outcry from individuals and academics across the political spectrum. Science writer Michael Shermer called the AAA and CASCA’s presidents’ letter “shameful” and an “utterly absurd blank slate denial of human nature.” Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and political science at Duke University, described it as “absolutely appalling.” Jeffrey Flier, the Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of the Harvard Medical School, viewed it as “a chilling declaration of war on scholarly controversy.” Even Elon Musk expressed his disbelief with a single word: “Wow.”

Despite the backlash, the AAA and CASCA have held firm. On September 28, the AAA posted a statement on its website titled “No Place For Transphobia in Anthropology: Session Pulled from Annual Meeting Program.” The statement reiterated the stance outlined in the initial letter, declaring the “Let’s Talk About Sex” panel an affront to its values and claiming that it endangered AAA members’ safety and lacked scientific rigor.

The AAA’s statement claimed that the now-canceled panel was at odds with their first ethical principle of professional responsibility: “Do no harm.” It likened the scuttled panel’s “gender critical scholarship” to the “race science of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,” the main goal of which was to “advance a ‘scientific’ reason to question the humanity of already marginalized groups of people.” In this instance, the AAA argued, “those who exist outside a strict and narrow sex/gender binary” are being targeted.

Weiss remains unconvinced by this moral posturing. “If the panel was so egregious,” she asked, “why had it been accepted in the first place?”

The AAA also claimed that Weiss’s panel lacked “scientific integrity,” and that she and her fellow panelists “relied on assumptions that ran contrary to the settled science in our discipline.” The panelists, the AAA argued, had committed “one of the cardinal sins of scholarship” by “assum[ing] the truth of the proposition that . . . sex and gender are simplistically binary, and that this is a fact with meaningful implications for the discipline.” In fact, the AAA claimed, the panelists’ views “contradict scientific evidence” about sex and gender, since “[a]round the world and throughout history, there have always been people whose gender roles do not align neatly with their reproductive anatomy.”

There is much to respond to in this portion of AAA’s statement. First, it’s ironic for the organization to accuse scientists of committing the “cardinal sin” of “assuming the truth” of something, and then to justify cancelling those scientists’ panel on the grounds that the panelists refuse to accept purportedly “settled science.” Second, the panel was organized to discuss biological sex (i.e., the biology of males and females), not “gender roles”; pivoting from discussions of basic biology to murkier debates about sex-related social roles and expectations is a common tactic of gender ideologues. Third, the AAA’s argument that a person’s “gender role” might not “align neatly” with his or her reproductive anatomy implies the existence of normative behaviors for members of each sex. Indeed, this is a central tenet of gender ideology that many people dispute and warrants the kind of discussion the panel intended to provide.

The AAA’s statement made another faulty allegation, this time against Weiss for using “sex identification” instead of “sex estimation” when assessing the sex of skeletal remains. The AAA claimed that Weiss’s choice of terminology was problematic and unscholarly because it assumes a “determinative” process that “is easily influenced by cognitive bias on the part of the researcher.”

Weiss, however, rejects the AAA’s notion that the term “sex determination” is outdated or improper. She emphasized that “sex determination” is frequently used in the literature, as demonstrated in numerous contemporary anthropology papers, along with “sex estimation.” Weiss said, “I tend not to use the term ‘sex estimation’ because to estimate is usually associated with a numeric value; thus, I do use the term ‘age estimation.’ But just as ‘age estimation’ does not mean that there is no actual age of an individual and that biological age changes don’t exist, ‘sex estimation’ does not mean that there isn’t a biological sex binary.” She also contested the AAA’s claim that anthropologists’ use of “sex estimation” is meant to accommodate people who identify as transgender or non-binary. Rather, she said, “sex estimation” is used when “anthropologists are not 100 [percent] sure of their accuracy for a variety of reasons, including that the remains may be fragmented.” But as these methods improve—which was a focus of her talk—such “estimations” become increasingly determinative.

After making that unfounded allegation against Weiss, the AAA further embarrasses itself by claiming that “There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification,” and that sex and gender are “historically and geographically contextual, deeply entangled, and dynamically mutable categories.”

Each of these assertions is empirically false. An individual’s sex can be determined by observing their primary sex organs, or gonads, as these organs determine the type of gamete an individual can or would have the function to produce. The existence of a very rare subset of individuals with developmental conditions that make their sex difficult to assess does not substantiate the existence of a third sex. Sex is binary because are only two sexes, not because every human in existence is neatly classifiable. Additionally, while some organisms are capable of changing sex, humans are not among them. Therefore, the assertion that human sex is “dynamically mutable” is false.

Weiss appropriately highlights the “false equivalency” inherent in the claim that the existence of people with intersex conditions disproves the binary nature of sex. “People who are born intersex or with disorders of sex development are not nonbinary or transgender, they are individuals with medical pathologies,” she said. “We would not argue that because some people are born with polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), often seen in inbred populations, that you can’t say that humans have ten fingers and ten toes. It's an absurd conclusion.”

On September 29, the AAA posted a Letter of Support on its website, penned by anthropologists Agustin Fuentes, Kathryn Clancy, and Robin Nelson, endorsing the decision to cancel the “Let’s Talk About Sex” session. Again, the primary motivation cited was the panel’s opposition to the supposed “settled science” concerning sex. The authors disputed the panelists’ claim that the term “sex” was being supplanted by “gender” in anthropology, claiming instead that there is “massive work on these terms, and their entanglements and nuances.” They also reiterated the AAA’s false accusation that the term “sex determination” was problematic and outdated. Nonetheless, the canceled panel could have served as a prime venue to discuss these issues.

In response to these calls for censorship, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) issued an open letter to the AAA and CASCA. FIRE characterized the groups’ decision to cancel the panel as a “retreat” from their scientific mission, which “requires unwavering dedication to free inquiry and open dialogue.” It argued that this mission “cannot coexist with inherently subjective standards of ‘harm,’ ‘safety,’ and ‘dignity,’ which are inevitably used to suppress ideas that cause discomfort or conflict with certain political or ideological commitments.” FIRE implored the AAA and CASCA to “reconsider this decision and to recommit to the principles of intellectual freedom and open discourse that are essential to the organizations’ academic missions.” FIRE’s open letter has garnered signatures from nearly 100 academics, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton University’s Robert P. George. FIRE invites additional academic faculty to add their names.

The initial letter and subsequent statement by the AAA/CASCA present a particularly jarring illustration of the undermining of science in the name of “social justice.” The organizations have embarrassed themselves yet lack the self-awareness to realize it. The historian of science Alice Dreger called the AAA and CASCA presidents’ use of the term “cardinal sin” appropriate “because Pérez and Heller are working from dogma so heavy it is worthy of the Vatican.” Indeed, they have fallen prey to gender ideologues, driven into a moral panic by the purported dangers of defending the existence of biological sex to people whose sex distresses them. The AAA/CASCA have determined that it is necessary not only to lie to these people about their sex but also to deceive the rest of us about longstanding, foundational, and universal truths about sex.

Science can advance only within a system and culture that values open inquiry and robust debate. The AAA and CASCA are not just barring a panel of experts with diverse and valid perspectives on biological sex from expressing their well-considered conclusions; they are denying conference attendees the opportunity to hear diverse viewpoints and partake in constructive conversations on a controversial subject. Such actions obstruct the path of scientific progress.

“When you move away from the truth, no good can come from it,” Weiss says. The AAA and CASCA would be wise to ponder that reality.

I miss the days when anti-science meant creationists with "Intelligent Design," flat Earthers, and Jenny McCarthy-style MMR anti-vaxers.

It's weird that archaeologists are now denying evolution and pretending not to know how babies are made. Looks like creationists aren't the only evolution-denial game in town any more.

#Colin Wright #anti science #gender ideology #queer theory #anthropology #biology denial #sex is binary #censorship #disinvitation #cancel culture #genderwang #moral panic #biological sex #biology #human biology #ideological corruption #ideological capture #gametes #religion is a mental illness

130 notes · View notes

futurebird · 4 months

Text

None of you thought it might be important to tell me that ferns have sperm that swim???

So.

None of you thought it might be important to tell me that ferns have sperm that swim??? I just had to find all this out on my own?

And, (apparently, & no one thought to bring this up either🙄) fern plants are only one form… they have this 'other form' (tiny, ephemeral, difficult to find in the wild) alternates generations-- Fern spores don't grow into ferns! (WHAT) they grow into 'gemetophytes' (WHAT) THEN you get a fern.

Feel like I've uncovered a massive scandal.

#plants #biology #reproduction #ferns #spores #gemetophytes #sporophyte #learning #meiosis #Polypodiopsida #Polypodiophyta #vascular plants #land plants #gametes #seeds #zygote #reproductive cycle

61 notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 1 year

Text

"Scientists have created mice with two biological fathers by generating eggs from male cells, a development that opens up radical new possibilities for reproduction.

The advance could ultimately pave the way for treatments for severe forms of infertility, as well as raising the tantalising prospect of same-sex couples being able to have a biological child together in the future.

“This is the first case of making robust mammal oocytes [a.k.a. egg cells] from male cells,” said Katsuhiko Hayashi, who led the work at Kyushu University in Japan and is internationally renowned as a pioneer in the field of lab-grown eggs and sperm.

Hayashi, who presented the development at the Third International Summit on Human Genome Editing at the Francis Crick Institute in London on Wednesday, predicts that it will be technically possible to create a viable human egg from a male skin cell within a decade. Others suggested this timeline was optimistic given that scientists are yet to create viable lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Previously scientists have created mice that technically had two biological fathers through a chain of elaborate steps, including genetic engineering. However, this is the first time viable eggs have been cultivated from male cells and marks a significant advance. Hayashi’s team is now attempting to replicate this achievement with human cells, although there would be significant hurdles for the use of lab-grown eggs for clinical purposes, including establishing their safety.

“Purely in terms of technology, it will be possible [in humans] even in 10 years,” he said, adding that he personally would be in favour of the technology being used clinically to allow two men to have a baby if it were shown to be safe.

“I don’t know whether they’ll be available for reproduction,” he said. “That is not a question just for the scientific programme, but also for [society].”

The technique could also be applied to treat severe forms of infertility, including women with Turner’s syndrome, in whom one copy of the X chromosome is missing or partly missing, and Hayashi said this application was the primary motivation for the research.

Others suggested that it could prove challenging to translate the technique to human cells. Human cells require much longer periods of cultivation to produce a mature egg, which can increase the risk of cells acquiring unwanted genetic changes.

Prof George Daley, the dean of Harvard Medical School, described the work as “fascinating”, but added that other research had indicated that creating lab-grown gametes from human cells was more challenging than for mouse cells. “We still don’t understand enough of the unique biology of human gametogenesis to reproduce Hayashi’s provocative work in mice,” he said.

Study Methods

The study, which has been submitted for publication in a leading journal, relied on a sequence of intricate steps to transform a skin cell, carrying the male XY chromosome combination, into an egg, with the female XX version.

Male skin cells were reprogrammed into a stem cell-like state to create so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. The Y-chromosome of these cells was then deleted and replaced by an X chromosome “borrowed” from another cell to produce iPS cells with two identical X chromosomes.

“The trick of this, the biggest trick, is the duplication of the X chromosome,” said Hayashi. “We really tried to establish a system to duplicate the X chromosome.”

Finally, the cells were cultivated in an ovary organoid, a culture system designed to replicate the conditions inside a mouse ovary. When the eggs were fertilised with normal sperm, the scientists obtained about 600 embryos, which were implanted into surrogate mice, resulting in the birth of seven mouse pups. The efficiency of about 1% was lower [although not THAT much lower] than the efficiency achieved with normal female-derived eggs, where about 5% of embryos went on to produce a live birth.

The baby mice appeared healthy, had a normal lifespan, and went on to have offspring as adults. “They look OK, they look to be growing normally, they become fathers,” said Hayashi.

Going Further

He and colleagues are now attempting to replicate the creation of lab-grown eggs using human cells.

Prof Amander Clark, who works on lab-grown gametes at the University of California Los Angeles, said that translating the work into human cells would be a “huge leap”, because scientists are yet to create lab-grown human eggs from female cells.

Scientists have created the precursors of human eggs, but until now the cells have stopped developing before the point of meiosis, a critical step of cell division that is required in the development of mature eggs and sperm. “We’re poised at this bottleneck at the moment,” she said. “The next steps are an engineering challenge. But getting through that could be 10 years or 20 years.”

-via The Guardian (US), 3/8/23

#genetics #gene editing #genetic engineering #reproductive care #infertility #infertility cw #ivf #science and technology #lgbtq #oocytes #gametes #turner syndrome #queer parenting #good news #hope

213 notes · View notes

crossdreamers · 3 months

Text

Why are gametes so important for "gender critical" and transphobic "feminists"?

The "transphobic "gender critical" feminists, also known as trans-exclusionary radical feminists or TERFs, have become increasingly focused on gametes (sperm and eggs) to determine biological sex.

Given that they deny the existence of gender identity, gametes therefore also becomes the cause of legal and cultural gender identity. In this way they think they can deny trans women the right to call themselves women, and trans men the right to be seen as men.

In a new article transgender philosopher and activist Julia Serano points out that to decide whether a man is a man and a woman is a woman on the basis of gametes is a social and cultural dead end. We never ask people to see their gametes when we interact with them.

Moreover, as any real feminist will tell you, to divide people into men and women on the basis of gametes, is an old fashioned and patriarchal approach to gender. According to this approach women are women only by nature, and throughout history men have been allowed to deny women any rights that do not fit the traditional concepts of natural gender abilities and behavior.

So why do TERFs find this dichotomy so appealing?

Julia Serano explains:

There seems to be two main reasons why gender-critical activists have gravitated toward gametes. The first is that most other sex characteristics—whether they be chromosomes, genitals, other reproductive organs, and so-called secondary sex characteristics (e.g., facial hair, breasts, muscle/fat distribution)—do not fall into a strict dichotomy. There are XX people who exhibit certain male sex characteristics and XY people who exhibit certain female ones. Some intersex people have chromosome combinations that fall outside of XX and XY, and/or sex characteristics that fall “in between” what is considered “standard” for male and female. In addition to this, trans people often change our sex characteristics via gender-affirming hormones (which alter our secondary sex characteristics) and surgeries (which may reconfigure our genitals and other reproductive organs).

Ultimately it all boils down to this: "There must be a strict binary because that would define trans people out of existence."

The scientist Julia Serano then goes on to describe what science really says about gametes, biological sex and gender.

She points out that trans people are "a pancultural and transhistorical phenomenon". Trans people arise "as a part of natural variation rather than being mere products of any specific culture." Trans people are "the inevitable outliers that exist in every complex biological system".

The conclusion?

In other words, much to gender-critical activists’ chagrin, gametes are actually a part of natural variation and sex diversity, rather than the antithesis of it.

Read Serano's article here.

youtube

Photo of Julia Serano from Medium. Photo #2: bodym

#transgender #trans #lgbt #lgbtqa #terf #lgbtq #transphobia #culture #gametes #biological sex #Youtube

18 notes · View notes

vadaturner · 2 months

Note

Elite what’s the difference between meiosis and mitosis 🙁🙁🙁

It’s pretty simple actually

So yk how stuff is divided in normal/sexual?

Ofc cells have the same thing too

Somatic cells (bone,tissue,blood,etc) are the “normal” ones. They go through the regular cell division process which includes all the stages and stuff. That is called mitosis

However with gametes it’s different, because even though they go through the same process as a somatic cell, after they’re done they go through the same process again. That is called meiosis

Now, how is meiosis different? They divide to produce sex cells and not

There’s two pairs of chromosomes on the cell so they cross over (take a part from the other, trade yk) and divide the cell.

Now we have two cells with two chromosomes in each

Now, the two new cells will have to go thru the same thing again (except they don’t have to cross over and shit).

Now we’re left with four thingies, which equal either:

- 4 sperm cells

- 1 egg + 3 polar bodies

(The polar bodies of don’t have any important role on this)

So in conclusion…

✪ mitosis = regular cell division

✪ meiosis = sex cell division, which has two rounds.

Im pretty sure I’m right but still consult a textbook for help

#biology #mitosis #meiosis #cell division #gametes #yes I WILL add the tags #WHO SAID EGG?? 🥚#THESE FRAGILE EGGS WILL LIKELY CRACK

6 notes · View notes

economicsresearch · 1 year

Text

page 194 - am I in one of those police dramas, a single bulb hanging over me handcuffed to a table in the interrogation room. No one is asking anything of me, questions or actions. Am I meant to be doing something to show my worth, sharing something so they know I'm peaceable and can be left alone, or just staying in the bright light's cone so I can't see what's outside? So I can't see who is outside it, who I might talk to or collaborate with.

Ever lick a mystery bear after eating a mystery fungus and hours into the trip you wonder. See lights and wonder, metaphorically.

8 notes · View notes

bpod-bpod · 2 years

Photo

The X Factor

We have 23 pairs of chromosomes, but our gametes, sperm and eggs, only carry one copy of each. To achieve that, precursors called germ cells undergo a form of cell division known as meiosis: in this artificial ovary, lab-grown female germ cells are shown in purple, with those undergoing meiosis in yellow, and supporting cells in cyan. Meiosis has added complications for females, who possess two copies of the X chromosome. To avoid producing a harmful excess of X-linked proteins, one copy of X is inactivated in every cell, but it needs to be re-activated in germ cells. Researchers tracking the status of X chromosomes in cultured mouse cells found that this cycle of inactivation and re-activation is hugely important for efficient meiosis. This could help explain why producing immature eggs, or oocytes, in the laboratory is so difficult; improvements to the process would ultimately benefit research on female fertility.

Written by Emmanuelle Briolat

Image from work by Jacqueline Severino and colleagues

Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Spain

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Research published in The EMBO Journal, May 2022

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook

#science #biomedicine #lyonisation #x inactivation #x chromosomes #chromosome #meiosis #x-linked #x factor #immunofluorescence #cells #cell culture #oocytes #germ cells #gametes

15 notes · View notes

owlkhemy · 1 year

Text

First Week, Second Semester

featuring @redpanda411

- - - - -

Me: Why's this text so hecking ominous to me?

Roomie:

GAMETES

(Pronounced like an ancient Greek hero)

- - - - -

Me: The theory of inberitance - bleh. Inheritance.

Roomie: "Inberitance".

Me: I need to do a thing, hang on -

- - - - -

Me: Schedule making time! Just gotta put in physics and then -

Me: ... GEORG? No. GEOR.

Roomie: Georg.

Me: Like Spiders Georg. And then there's a "D=" like it's sad!

Roomie: "Physa Georg Sadge".

- - - - -

(Meanwhile...)

Me: Alright! Post is ready. It's going up at 5:20. That's a weirdly normal time.

Roomie: Cheers to that.

*burp*

Bleh. Cheers to that froggish burp.

#be the random post chaos you want to see in the world #roomie shenanigans #gametes #in🅱️eritance #spiders georg #it's only the first week of school again #and we're Back On Our Bullshit™#also what the heck is a 'froggish' burp???

2 notes · View notes

andersunmenschlich · 2 years

Text

Yes, there are only two sexes. From a purely biological standpoint, considering only gametes, we can ask and answer these questions: Do you produce sperm? That's male. Do you produce eggs? That's female. Do you produce both? That's both male and female. Do you produce neither? That's sexless.

"Nothing in the biological definition of sex requires that every organism be a member of one sex or the other. That might seem surprising, but it follows naturally from defining each sex by the ability to do one thing: to make eggs or to make sperm. Some organisms can do both, while some can’t do either. ... But that doesn’t mean that there are many biological sexes, or that biological sex is a continuum. There remain just two, distinct ways in which organisms contribute genetic material to their offspring."

Now, as I understand it, gametogonia are what give rise to gametocytes, which are what form gametes.

If you have oogonia, eventually you'll have oocytes, and finally eggs—if you have spermatogonia, eventually you'll have spermatocytes and then sperm. Assuming nothing interrupts the process, of course. So say you're a baby: do you produce sperm? No. Eggs? No. You may have oocytes or spermatogonia (or both, or neither), but you don't have gametes yet.

Congratulations, it's not a male or a female baby, it's a sexless baby! From a purely biological standpoint. It is a baby with neither male nor female gametes, whatever may develop later.

Then puberty hits (unless you block it).

If you've got oocytes, one of them develops into an egg and heads off down the tube (assuming nothing happens to prevent it). If you've got spermatogonia, half of them start making out with Sertoli cells and turn into spermatocytes, which then grow up into sperm (terms and conditions may apply). If you've got both, both things might happen, or only one, or neither, or one or both may happen partway, and if you've got neither oocytes nor spermatogonia, you can definitely count on neither of these things happening.

Let's say an alien biologist is trying to classify you based on your biological (that is, gamete-based) sex.

Now that you've hit puberty, they can call you female if you've only got oocytes growing into eggs, male if you've only got spermatogenesis going on, a simultaneous hermaphrodite if you've got both, or just stick with asexual if you've got neither (I know, I know, the biological terms sound either horribly rude or weirdly inaccurate or somehow both when you're talking about humans, that's why I made the biologist an alien: mostly biologists use these words to talk about frogs and voles and, you know, non-human organisms that aren't going to be offended by how human biologists talk about them).

But then you get older. And guess what happens if you've had oocytes developing into eggs all this time? They stop doing that. And now you're no longer female. Biologically speaking.

So here's a few basic biological options:

• Born sexless, sexless in puberty, sexless in later life • Born sexless, female at puberty, sexless after menopause • Born sexless, male at puberty, male in later life • Born sexless, male and female at puberty, male after menopause

Real simple, ain't it? And if this doesn't make it clear that sex and gender are two different things, I don't know what will....

#biological sex #gametes #not the cells that become gametes、the actual gametes #biological essentialism #is ridiculous #it's true: there really are only two biological sexes in humans #and so what #Isaiah lectures #to the best of my knowledge #I am not a biologist I just read a lot #And look: this is ignoring every other biological thing that can make this so much more complicated #I didn't even touch chromosomes or hormones or genes or genitalia or chimerism or even fertility #this is just gametes #purely eggs and sperm #that's it #and already the sex of any given individual is not static across their lifetime #just looking at this one part of their body that can be sexed!#throw in all the other stuff and you can't say an individual body is all one sex at even a single point in its total lifespan #there's a reason we simplify these things #''mostly male so male'' or ''female in all the ways I care about so female'' is PRACTICAL.#And then there's gender #which is a whole other kettle of fish.#sex ≠ gender #they're two different things

4 notes · View notes

qupritsuvwix · 7 months

Text

#pz meyers #richard dawkins #transphobia #gametes

0 notes

religion-is-a-mental-illness · 1 year

Text

By: Catherine Hawkins

Published: May 6, 2023

In a new piece for Scientific American, Princeton anthropologist Dr. Agustín Fuentes argues that the binary of male and female is too simplistic to describe the complexity of human sex. He claims that defining sex from “the type of gamete (sperm or ova) [an organism] has the function of producing” is not just “bad science,” but a political ploy to justify discrimination. Instead, he says we should think of sex as a combination of many biological and social characteristics that make it “dynamic, biological, cultural, and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies, and multiple physiological and social processes.” Definitions are human inventions and can certainly change to incorporate new understanding.

Unfortunately, this definition of sex is muddled and incoherent. Making gametes just one of many characteristics defining sex may free us from a politically unpopular binary, but at the cost of our ability to describe reality correctly and clearly.

What is this supposedly simplistic, regressive gamete-based definition of sex? Gametes are the cells that combine during sexual reproduction to produce an offspring with genetic material from both parents. Each species that sexually reproduces needs to produce two kinds—small, mobile gametes (sperm) that make their way to large, immobile gametes (eggs). Most animals have evolved two basic body plans to produce these gametes and use them to give rise to offspring. Dr. Fuentes is correct that these body plans are complex and involve many aspects of anatomy, physiology, and behavior. For example, for human females, successfully producing eggs, getting them into contact with sperm, and generating viable offspring requires dedicated structures (including a vagina, ovaries, and uterus), complicated hormonal regulation (including puberty, the menstrual cycle, and the many hormonal changes during pregnancy, birth, and lactation), and complex biologically and socially influenced behaviors.

In the gamete-based view, the question “what sex is this person?” is asking “Which body plan would this person use to reproduce? The female (egg-based) or male (sperm-based) plan?” Humans do not have other sexes beyond males and females because there are no other gametes that human bodies have evolved to use for reproduction. Sometimes, the complex machinery involved in reproduction can develop wrong, and people can suffer from infertility or exhibit reproductive traits that are atypical for their sex, including ambiguous genitalia (intersex conditions). However, as pointed out by others, these are not additional sexes because these body plans do not produce a new type of gamete besides sperm or eggs. Someone who does not produce any gametes would also not be a third sex since they would be fundamentally incapable of sexual reproduction.

Dr. Fuentes challenges this view by building and readily destroying several strawmen. He claims that sex in human cannot be binary because (1) sex differences in physiology and behavior are not universal across species, (2) individuals with the same gametes can have different traits, and (3) individuals with different gametes can have overlapping traits. To the first point, the gamete-based view is what allows us to talk coherently about sexes across diverse organisms. We know that what a female echidna and a female human have in common is that they produce eggs that must be fertilized by sperm to reproduce. Is Dr. Fuentes saying that if we were to use his mishmash of “biological and social characteristics” to define sex, we would end up with bizarre situations where sperm-producing individuals are the “females” of some species?

The second point also falls quickly to scrutiny. There is no mainstream belief that the fact there are two body plans for reproduction means that every characteristic of individuals with those body plans must be the same. As Dr. Fuentes reminds us, “producing ova or sperm does not tell us everything (or even most things) biologically or socially” about people, including characteristics like “sexual attractions, interest in literature, engineering and math capabilities” or “love of… sports.” Just imagine a world where that was a mainstream belief. Going to the doctor would be chaos if doctors believed that there was only one acceptable body size, estrogen or testosterone level, or muscle or fat composition for each sex. Imagine being regularly shocked to meet gay males, male English teachers, and female engineers and Red Socks fans. Obviously, we don’t live in this world, because there is nothing incompatible about believing that individuals who produce the same gametes and use the same general body plan to produce offspring can vary widely in many characteristics.

Dr. Fuentes’ third and final strawman is also the basis of the “sex is a spectrum” argument, usually represented in a graph like this:

Despite detailed rebuttals, it’s obvious from this graph that people cannot be grouped into binary categories of male and female because these categories are not separate—some of the people who produce eggs have more male-typical traits, and vice versa.

Except, oops, that’s a plot of dog and horse body weights.

The fact that small horses and large dogs have similar weights means that “horse” and “dog” are a false binary, and all of these animals fall along a dog-horse spectrum. Don’t scoop me before I get this submitted to Nature.

Alright, I was a bit rude just there to Dr. Fuentes. Let’s be fair and ask: what would be so wrong with taking up his definition of sex as a conglomerate of physical and behavioral traits, of which gamete type is just one? For his definition to work, we would first need to agree on what physical and behavioral traits we must use to quantify sex—otherwise, we will get different answers about where a person falls on the spectrum. This gets tricky fast for behavioral traits. For example, can we determine sex by asking people about their interest in literature in general, or would we need to distinguish an interest in rugged war stories by Hemmingway from romantic comedies of manners by Austen?

Let’s say we eventually did decide on a comprehensive panel of traits to measure human sex. We then quickly see that his definition is not so much unscientific as it as a kind of anti-science that makes biology less capable of making sense of the world around us. For example, people who produce eggs typically have hormone levels that change over time as part of their menstrual cycle. In the gamete-based view, this person is always female, because they will always use eggs to reproduce. But if hormone levels are instead some of the physical traits that define one’s sex, this definition quickly devolves into nonsense where people become “maler” and “femaler” every month while their underlying reproductive body plan remains the same.

Even measuring sex for an individual with ambiguous traits—which should be a strong case for Dr. Fuentes’ definition—quickly breaks down into gibberish. Consider a person who produces eggs but has the rare disorder called congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH causes the adrenal glands to overproduce androgens, the hormones that drive the development of male-typical characteristics. This person would have ovaries and a uterus but also likely have ambiguous external genitalia, an irregular menstrual cycle, and significant facial and body hair, falling well within the overlapping zone for physical traits. But what is their sex? In the gamete-based view they are unambiguously female, since this person would only ever reproduce through producing eggs and never by producing sperm or another yet-to-be-discovered gamete. This person could struggle to get pregnant due to CAH, but this doesn’t change the fact that their only viable reproductive strategy is female (through eggs). Instead, Dr. Fuentes’ view of sex would say that this person has traits that place them in the middle of the range across humans, making them approximately 50/50 male- and female-typical.

The problem is that this information is essentially useless. Imagine reading that as a doctor and trying to figure out whether your patient is a female facing serious medical problems or a healthy short male who likes gossiping and Pride and Prejudice more than sports. The doctor would need the gamete-based view of sex to make sense of what they’re seeing, since these traits—facial hair, high androgens—only emerge as symptoms in the context of a female sex.

How has a researcher at such a respected institution convinced himself of something so confused and incoherent? Since Dr. Fuentes has taken the liberty of speculating about others’ political motivations, I will speculate about his.

I believe Dr. Fuentes and other political progressives prefer this definition of sex because it makes it impossible to legally protect single-sex spaces. Take the case of Adam Graham (Isla Bryson), a male convicted of two rapes who began identifying as a woman and was sent to a female prison until public outcry reversed this decision. The gamete-based view is clear that Graham was born a male and no amount of hormone therapy, interest in Jane Eyre, or disinterest in football can make him less so. There is therefore no biological reason to think that he would be less of a risk to female prisoners than any other violent male. But in Dr. Fuentes’ view, who’s to say that Graham couldn’t come up with enough physical and behavioral changes to move himself into the female-typical end of the spectrum? And if sex is just a position along a spectrum, how can anyone say that Graham couldn’t become “female enough” for female prison?

Maybe I’m putting words in Dr. Fuentes’ mouth, but I believe these are the kinds of extreme political positions that he and other activists are trying to re-write biology to support.

Dr. Fuentes, vote for anyone or anything you like. But leave biology out of your political project. Some of us would still like to use it to make sense of the natural world.

Catherine Hawkins (a pseudonym) has a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology, and is currently a professor of plant biology at an R1 university in the United States.

There was a time when people didn't know that the Earth was round and not the center of the universe. Now we do. And people who deny it are delusional.

But there was never a time when humans were confused about how to make a baby. Now people are lying and pretending that there's no way to figure it out. And being celebrated for it.

#Catherine Hawkins #pseudonym #biological dimorphism #sex is binary #sex binary #gametes #human biology #sex denialism #biology denial #gender ideology #queer theory #dimorphism #religion is a mental illness

86 notes · View notes