Six biological sexes

You could make an argument that in some (rare) cases a person's phenotype is markedly more like that of the other sex, and for social/legal purposes they could potentially be treated as a member of that sex, or could do so in some settings. At one time that was pretty commonly what happened with such people.

It does nothing to undermine sexual dimorphism though nor does it have anything much to do with gender.

I haven't got the foggiest idea how anyone can look at nature, life in all its glorious diversity and how it evolved and think it's all a bit boring, so they make up some nonsensical claims by stringing words they don't quite fully understand together to make it more "interesting". Just why?

You could look at their sexual organs to take a guess of what could have been... but what if they have a set of both? Intersex can produce very ambiguous phenotypes)

This is offensive. People with DSDs aren’t a different sex. Nobody “takes a guess”, ffs. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people with DSDs have ambiguous genitalia and need further investigation. I get so bloody sick of people using those with DSDs as some kind of trump card to prove additional sexes. Leave them alone!

And a woman is a woman whatever body type she has, and a man is a man. Their sex is determined by the gametes their body is designed to produce, not whether they have a small bust, hairy legs, long hair or whatever.

There are two sexes - because there are only two gametes. That’s what Sex is.

Sometimes their body shape clashes a lot with their primary sex, and there is a stigma around that.

Yes and that is key; there's a lot of homophobia around it.

Everyone is unique. And 2 sexes. Just that.

As soon as you start labelling "feminine male" etc it becomes a pigeon holing labelling exercise where someone somewhere falls foul for not "fitting in."

Which is exactly how we ended up in this mess.

I'm a bit disappointed, looking at chromosomes only is such a boring way to consider whether there's more than two sexes.

Boring?

Fact: there are 2 sexes

Fact: those 2 sexes have a range of 'missteps' but each misstep is still either male or female.

What you want would lead, as I said upthread, to there being 7billion+ sexes.

I'd love for people to be able to embrace the fact they are a feminine looking man or a masculine looking woman, without feeling the need to chop off body parts or change pronouns.

Well absolutely. But that certainly doesn't require any artificial and arbitrary divisions into 'ova producing masculine body' etc.

I'm a bit disappointed, looking at chromosomes only is such a boring way to consider whether there's more than two sexes.

Strange choice of words... sex is what it is. It's a matter of fact, regardless of how we might feel about it.
I've observed before that MN is probably particularly well-grounded on the realities of sex because its roots are as a parenting forum. Sex is kinda fundamental.

This has originated in the US hasn't it? There are two sexes, if by chance there are four more, then I wish to know what their names are. People who have a DSD are still male or female.

nypost.com/2021/04/26/texas-lawmaker-sparks-backlash-for-arguing-there-are-six-sexes/

An XY man with no DSDs is 100% irrefutably and immutably male. That's regardless of how masculine or feminine his outwards physical appearance may be. It's a bit weird to consider men with "feminine" physical features (unnoticeable Adam's apple? A more female body fat distribution??) as somehow less of a man than others with a more typical appearance.

Who cares if it’s boring or not?

What a weird statement.

Lovely, but those aren't sexes. Muddling something sex-correlated with sex itself isn't helping. Given women are short and men are generally tall, you could just as well have the six groups:

• ova producing person under 5'5"
• ova producing person 5'5"-5'9"
• ova producing person 5'9" or more
• sperm producing person under 5'5"
• sperm producing person 5'5"-5'9"
• sperm producing person 5'9" or more

Just as (un)helpful.

Sex is something very narrow and specific. Which is what makes it a useful concept. Conflating it with anything else reduces its predictive value, and the clarity of whatever you're trying to say. If there's something else you want to consider in addition to sex, consider it as a separate variable.

I'm a bit disappointed, looking at chromosomes only is such a boring way to consider whether there's more than two sexes.

I was hoping perhaps someone had looked at the overlap (or not) between primary sexual characteristics (the gametes a body produces, regardless of chromosomes. Phenotype is more relevant than genotype) and secondary sexual characteristics.
Primary sex is quite binary (ova or sperm), though not entirely (what if a body produces nothing? You could look at their sexual organs to take a guess of what could have been... but what if they have a set of both? Intersex can produce very ambiguous phenotypes)
Secondary sexual characteristics are a lot more fuzzy. Some bodies look very "masculine", others look very "feminine", some are surprisingly androgynous... Sometimes (not always) this can show in the kind of hormones these body produce (and/or respond to, or not). Even by simplifying a lot (ignoring even fuzzier concepts like personality traits, and the fact there are myriads of physical secondary sexual traits) you could count the following 6 sexes:

• ova producing feminine body
• ova producing androgynous body
• ova producing masculine body
• sperm producing feminine body
• sperm producing androgynous body
• sperm producing masculine body

... I wouldn't mind people talking about that. Sperm and ova are binary. But lots of people are not 100% feminine or masculine physically. Sometimes their body shape clashes a lot with their primary sex, and there is a stigma around that.

I'd love for people to be able to embrace the fact they are a feminine looking man or a masculine looking woman, without feeling the need to chop off body parts or change pronouns.

Dr Fondof beetles always makes the point that no matter what sort of animal, the female makes large gametes.

twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1133120326844506112?s=21

Anything else is a difference of sexual development, very rare and can also cause various disabilities. And we aren't clown fish, we don't change sex.

To discuss them in this fashion is akin to presenting a Victorian freak show ffs.

Oops cross post with mid!

WhatsApp em this

The very last sentence of this article reads "For now, this topic needs to go back in the file cabinet and be revisited in future years until it is fully flushed out and concluded."

It's possible that he meant "fleshed out", but flushed works just fine for me.

Quite right, too. It's never going to be "fully fleshed out". Because the author has written history-denying nonsense. Evolution is fact, not idle speculation. Anisogamy, the form of sexual reproduction involving one large and one small gamete, evolved over a billion years ago. It is the evolutionary origin of the male and female sex. It led directly to sexual dimorphism, which is obvious in humans even today. There is no evidence of any other sexes in mammals.

Everything the author refers to in support of his daft idea of six sexes is either an example of congenital malformations due to chromosomal abnormalities or an example of individuals suffering from severely disordered thinking, i.e. mental illness. And it is irrelevant if we have a big debate about whether we're allowed to call this disordered thinking a mental illness or not, because whatever it is doesn't change the fact that humans come in only two sexes. (The fact that he assures us that there is such a thing as ladybrain and that ladybrains are an established scientific fact tells you all you need to know about his scientific knowledge. Or his intellectual honesty. Or his understanding of women.)

It's possible that he meant "fleshed out", but flushed works just fine for me.

I'd love to know how the new sexes reproduce.

Keep us posted.

I have always found this table useful

Oh wow @WhateverWhatsapped I'm at a bit of a loss really. I only said it because I think women are more in touch with their biological reality than men are.

I'd struggle to take someone like that seriously about anything, I'd be tempted to same something like "Well that's nice dear" or just laugh my ass off at them, sorry they

I might just pull that out after a few glasses of

Could you ask if there are six biological sexes, which I assume are in addition to male and female, why do we never hear about anyone transition to any of the other 4 sexes. I've only heard of male-to-female and female-to-male. What do people who wish to transition have against the other 4 sexes? Are they biological-sex-3/4/5/6 phobic? Shame on them!

I always ask them to name all 6 sexes.

I grab my popcorn and wait for the hilarity.

Alas, they normally don't respond after that.

You are denying Darwin's Theory of Evolution on what basis exactly?

And let them explain their thinking.

I might throw in a sarcastic comment or two about Nobel-Prize-worthy discoveries...

Thank you, Charlie. I was fairly sure that blogger didn't have the scientific/medical background to make these apparently authoritative statements, but I'm not qualified to take that article apart. So useful to have solid information to back up my vague disquiet!