I need a really solid article proving our sexual dimorphism.

[forbiddenfruitcrumble]

I've read several, but I need to locate the ultimate one. DH is saying TWAW and I need to close this shit down fast.

FWIW, he is no dumb-dumb. He has a Dphil from Oxford and has written (and lectured) about identity. I know, right?

He doesn't suffer from wokeness in any other area, quite the contrary.

Any suggestions?

No, it’s not up to you to prove this ridiculous statement.

You ask HIM to prove how humans change sex.

Also ask him why there are just the two types of gamete.

medium.com/@tom_farr/the-wolf-of-masculinity-is-dressed-up-in-the-sheeps-clothing-of-gender-ideology-progressiveness-10ef8399ca6e
This isn't what you were after, but there is a quote from an intersex women speaking about how transwomen are using her condition as validation for themselves, and it would be hard to argue with.

Give him a good shake from me!

I only have access to the Abstract currently, but:
www.els.net/WileyCDA/ElsArticle/refId-a0026634.html

Sexual dimporphism is uncontested and evolution would long have abandoned it in mammals, if it was not central to the reproduction of mammals (like us). This is uncontested in Science. (I have a PhD in Biochemistry, I say that confidently).

The only point he might have is that 'woman' is not sex but gender. In which case you can kindly ask him to provide a definition (and definitions must be objectifyable and noncircular) of 'woman' other than the dictionary one, which is 'adult human female' and thus thoroughly linked to the body's sex (type of gamete). By definition.

You won't find one, it would be like looking for a maths journal article proving 2+2=4, it's such a basic premise to all the research that comes after, that nobody would fund it. If someone set out to prove something so obvious, they would get endless "in further news... water is wet," comments.

If someone believes we're (like all other mammals) not a species with two distinct sexes (and the odd medical condition pertaining to sex) then they need to prove it or at least succinctly explain what they mean.

I agree with Bowl - just call him a flat earther and ask him to produce evidence of the discovery of a third gamete.

And if he goes anywhere near intersex, threaten him with a good talking-to by @mrkhtake2 on Twitter!

Babies.

That's how they get made.

Just a personal opinion, but the phrase 'sexual dimorphism' can be a bit of a distraction as scientific studies on it seem to look at characteristics like height, musculature etc which are hugely variable. People nowadays seem to think that small blokes and big strong women prove that humans aren't strictly sexually diamorphic.

I think the key point is that humans (like all mammals and most other higher organisms) reproduce sexually -ie union of a male gamete and a female gamete.

Perhaps you can ask him what he thinks the other gametes are?!

Oops - x post bowl and lang

Any Biology for beginers book

How did he manage to get into Oxford?

I think that one recent Nature paper sowed a lot of confusion because it described some mosaicisms. Still does not make Sex a spectrum, with the binary gamete (egg and sperm) being the corner stone of reproduction and any other conditions (severe intersex conditions) evolutionary dead ends. And even those intersex conditions can generally be classified as male (Y chromosome present) or female (Y chromosome absent) (sex determination). That sex differentiation can go wrong does not change that.

How did he manage to get into Oxford?

Not in STEM, I assume. Probably a pomo-type who thinks it is all relative and a matter of perspective. But even pomo-academics should be able to define the words they use, no?

Having a DPhil from oxford - I'm assuming in a non STEM subject - and questioning whether mammals are sexually dimorphic is worse than being 'a dumb-dumb'. It implies wilful ignorance.

There's a real problem with 'the two cultures' - too many bright articulate people who have no clue, or even worse a philosophical rejection of, objective reality.

Ask him to disprove your pet Invisible Pink Unicorn. (That must be a real thing, my autocorrect automatically capitalised it).

I don't have any to hand but there are some very good longer threads on twitter that go through the issues and some that respond directly to the much quoted Nature article.

The continued existence of the ham race is your proof.

He has to prove it is not binary as he is making the challenge hypothesis.

human

"You won't find one, it would be like looking for a maths journal article proving 2+2=4.."

Pedants' Corner here!
Whitehead & Russell, the 3-volume Principa Mathematica, in Volume II:

Slime moulds may have hundreds of supposed sexes, but sexual reproduction still involves two mating types of gametes for cellular slime moulds. Not sure about acellular slime moulds, is it ONE type of gamete?

But I think I prefer -- how are babies made? And where are the other gametes then?..............And doin't you just mean personality or social role then?

I'd direct him to Rebecca Reilly Cooper. Sounds to me like her logical arguments might do more to persuade him than any science
aeon.co/essays/the-idea-that-gender-is-a-spectrum-is-a-new-gender-prison

sexandgenderintro.com

Does he think sex is a spectrum as seems to be trendy at the mo? Even if it was - how would that make twaw true? It would mean someone jumping from one end of the spectrum to the other.

This thread on twitter is good.
twitter.com/jonjonedinburgh/status/1047902447375671296
"There is no spectrum. In animals, gonads are testes or ovaries , gametes are sperm or eggs. There is nothing in between. Some animals have both at the same time, or change over time. Humans are mammals, and no mammals are hermaphrodites." It carries on.

We really need some biologists, or some kind of association on human biologists if there is one, to put out a statement or an article on this. There is so much crap being spoken on this and it is influencing people.

Just tell him intersex people are male or female. Most people don't know that.

Do you have kids? Ask him how he knew what combination of humans is required to make babies.

Do you have kids? Ask him how he knew what combination of humans is required to make babies.

And where are his kids on the sex spectrum? And did he expect them to be that? Did it feel like a 50:50 chance, what sex the baby would be or rather a 1:1000000 situation?

Pedants' Corner here!
Whitehead & Russell, the 3-volume Principa Mathematica, in Volume II:

Pedant alert on the pedantry (pedantry squared?) There then followed several decades of work on how one could prove that second order arithmetic was both sound and complete (roughly speaking, the axioms plus rule of inference only generate true statements, and the axioms plus rule of inference are sufficient to generate all true statements).

Then Gödel came along in 1931 and showed that (I paraphrase wildly at this point) there were statements of arithmetic which could be shown to be true (using metamathematical arguments outwith arithmetic itself) and also shown to be unprovable within arithmetic.

None of which of course has any bearing on the fact that human beings are a sexually dimorphic species. Yes, there are rare people who are intersex - they are (in the statistical sense, not the moral sense) abnormal, and often subfertile, so from an evolutionary point of view "dead ends".

This letter, written as a response to an article in the BMJ, is worth looking at, too:

Proposed ‘terminology’ may mislead and fudges the reality of biological sexual dimorphism. Sex is not “assigned”, but determined at conception and in early embryonic life. Biological characteristics of male and female have “historically” been observed at birth and likely this will continue. Sex should not be confused with gender - a social construct. Although internal subjective identity, legal status and external appearance can change or be re-aligned, a person’s underlying biological sex cannot.

www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3371/rr-0