Any scientists/academics who can explain the rationale behind the idea of ‘sex is a social construct’?

[4ammusings]

Just that really. I am trying to understand where this idea has come from and how the science supposedly backs it up (as declared by many trans activists). I understand that intersex people do exist and there are certain conditions that cause sex ambiguity, therefore technically sex isn’t strictly binary in all circumstances. However, from my understanding, most people still fall into the categories of male or female, based on their chromosomes.

I have a family member who is a biologist yet strongly believes sex is non-binary and merely assigned at birth. I can’t understand how she reconciles her biological knowledge with this seemingly ideological concept which appears (to me anyway) to have no real basis in science. I also can’t discuss this with her as she is so aggressively part of the TWAW brigade that the topic is not up for reasonable or respectful discussion.

Am I missing something here? Happy to be proved wrong, and she undoubtedly does have more biological knowledge than me. I just haven’t heard any convincing scientific evidence to date to actually back this claim up and am wondering if any scientists could please weigh in? Just to clarify, I understand the argument that gender is a social construct, but am talking specifically here about biological sex (just so the two aren’t conflated).

Massive error from hopeless science man.

'Juvenile organisms and postmenopausal human females also can’t produce either kind of gamete.'

We are born with all our eggs you ignoramus!

Oops.

Nearly there!

'The biological definition of sex wasn’t designed to ensure fair sporting competition, or to settle disputes about access to healthcare. Theorists who want to use the biological definition of sex in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare'

Erm..
Really?

So sex is irrelevant to medical care? Testicular cancer etc. Sex is irrelevant,??!!

I’m glad to have been able to share some late night reading pleasure!

I’m no scientist, as comments no doubt make very clear, so had taken on trust that aspect. I am primarily - not just wrt that article, but the whole debate - fascinated by the idea that the primary social distinction in society is now one based on entirely what appears to be a subjective internal sense of self. One which is simultaneously tied to biological sex (labels used are the same as those categorising by sex, whether you are trans or not is explicitly tied to the body you were born with) and completely unmoored from it.

I cannot square the arguments, and I have tried. This is why I am deeply suspicious of groups claiming that the general public support the idea that twaw and GC views to the contrary are those of extremists. I do not believe for a moment that the general public has engaged with and digested the ideas behind this.

I have a family member who is a biologist yet strongly believes sex is non-binary and merely assigned at birth. I can’t understand how she reconciles her biological knowledge with this seemingly ideological concept which appears (to me anyway) to have no real basis in science. I also can’t discuss this with her as she is so aggressively part of the TWAW brigade that the topic is not up for reasonable or respectful discussion.

She doesn’t believe it. She knows it’s nonsense. Her aggression and anger rise because when you challenge her, it exacerbates the extreme cognitive dissonance she is experiencing as she tries to suppress the knowledge that the two are contradictory.

@NiceGerbil
You make me smile 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
@4ammusings
I understand that intersex people do exist and there are certain conditions that cause sex ambiguity, therefore technically sex isn’t strictly binary in all circumstances. However, from my understanding, most people still fall into the categories of male or female, based on their chromosomes
Your use of the term ‘intersex people’ is offensive. It’s ‘people born with a DSD’ - difference of sex development- that should be used. And in every case, these days they are ‘assigned’ one of 2 sexes after a range of tests take place. People with a DSD are offended at being used as a ‘gotcha’ in the sex isn’t binary debate.

It's been eons since I studied anything like this, well into decades.

It is rooted in post modern theory which demands that we acknowledge that we cannot exist outside of language.

So while the second wave feminists were able to posit a binary between sex and gender, in which sex speaks to the material reality and gender refers to the discursive narrative that surrounds it, by employing postmodern theories you can argue that the concept of sex is as much of a discursive event as, well everything you think and know really, including gender and this is what Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble - early nineties?

Here sex is an oppressive narrative that operates on the individual. She does attempt to offer a biological justification for suggesting that there as much variation within the sexes as between.

Beyond this I can't do much justice to the book - it's a such a long and hard read that academic essays were written on how unnecessarily difficult it was and I suspect that most students scan it for jazzy quotes than read from begging to end 🤐

At twenty I remember reading it and thinking that, on the whole, it was an impressive and really interesting thought exercise and that no one would take it seriously beyond that.

I have a family member who is a biologist yet strongly believes sex is non-binary and merely assigned at birth. I can’t understand how she reconciles her biological knowledge with this seemingly ideological concept which appears (to me anyway) to have no real basis in science. I also can’t discuss this with her as she is so aggressively part of the TWAW brigade that the topic is not up for reasonable or respectful discussion.

It's strange, isn't it? Someone who could argue their case convincingly to someone who is willing to be persuaded would normally be only too happy to explain something.

The scientists I know often take pleasure in explaining complex ideas to lay people, breaking them down into simplified form. They don't get upset or angry about sharing new scientific updates along the lines of "well, we used to think this was the case because of a, b and c but now we know it's not so clear cut because of x, y and z."

For instance - when my mother was at school, she was taught that two blue-eyed parents could only have a blue-eyed child. Having a brown-eyed child was biologically impossible. That was what she told me. Fine - until I met a brown-eyed girl with two blue-eyed parents. The girl in other respects looks just like her dad. So I went away, did some research and discovered the old ways of thinking on eye colour are very outdated and it is now known other factors have an impact on eye colour, not just the parents' eye colour. Fine. I was happy to revise my previous opinion and so was my mother. It was a simple case of looking at the science and evidence.

I do note that 99% of the time, evolutionary biologists will talk about non-homo-sapien humans to explain something about human behaviour. Sometimes they talk about the other great apes - chimps, gorillas, bonobos etc - to prove a point.

But when genderists discuss sex, they don't talk about homo erectus or bonobos. They jump to clownfish, duck billed platypuses and seahorses.

Why? Why can't they use other humans and primates to illustrate their point instead of species with which we have very little in common?

Biology prof here. Gender is a social construct. Sex is a biological fact. (You might let the bio teacher know that's how babies are produced, another biological fact.)

It's binary in mammals. Developmental or genetic anomalies don't change that any more than the existence of conjoined twins implies we're all on a spectrum to become two people.

If you look further afield than mammals, fungi for instance, some have dozens of mating strains with very complex patterns of fertility and infertility between them. Invertebrate animals have some very inventive methods of reproduction. But none of that is relevant to the discussions of transactivists since, last I checked, they were all members of Homo sapiens.

Someone who really believes something is always happy to tell people about it. And if it was a scientific belief, they'd be happy to explain it.

That explains the difference in tone between us here and the OP's friend, so desperate not to have to talk about it. She's scared, defensive, knows she can't justify this stuff, but she's a bad person if she can't.

Anyway, there's no real science here. It's just deconstruction. Pulling away at loose ends, confusing stuff, trying to convince people we know less than we do. Fallacy after fallacy. Reality doesn't have sharp Platonic edges, so reality doesn't exist. Clownfish change sex (but how do you know, eh? figure that out, and apply the same test to humans).

You won't find your answer from scientists. Go check out the work of people like James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose. They've been analysing the deconstruction techniques being used to undermine knowledge and acquire power by hucksters. It's easier to do "critical X studies" than X for any discipline, so underachieving academics from every field are attracted to this nonsense-producing endeavour. It can be quite personally rewarding.

Theorists who want to use the biological definition of sex in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare

How about
‘ Theorists who want to use gender in those ways need to show that it will do a good job at the Olympics or in Medicare'?

Go on chaps. Prove that gender is a better way to pick categories for sports or healthcare than sex is.

@Soontobe60 I’m sorry I didn’t mean to cause offence. I didn’t realise that the term was outdated. I understand why people born with DSD would not like being used in this way for such an argument. I only bring it up as it seems to be used by many trans activists to justify the notion that sex is non-binary.

Lately though I have seen discussions that seem to fall into two camps about ‘intersex’ and DSDs.

Those who seem to use intersex to describe themselves believe in the spectrum and claim to support trans people by agreeing their conditions are relevant. There are support groups who use intersex in their names too and have sex spectrum in their manifestos etc.

Those who use VSD or DSD tend to ask not to have their bodies used to explain sex spectrums etc.

This might be bollocks but it occurs to me the other day while reading a conversation between two people with DSDs on twitter.

The former group probably has fewer DSDs in it though. Claims of physical "intersex" characteristics are relatively common in people with trans identities to justify the identity. (This was recorded by researchers long before the current trans trend). Real DSDs are very rare, so that group is likely to have a lot of self diagnosis, (including outright fabrication, like Yaniv), I feel.

One interesting question is why do scientists go along with fake science? To understand this there's a very interesting precedent:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

Scientists are not immune from repeating ideology as scientific fact if the coercion is strong enough.

Just want to add something. I have noticed that the I in LGBTQQI++ is not always used. I know that it is controversial and offensive to many with DSD conditions. In fact I haven't seen the I recently. In the recent GRA review by the women and equalities committee, one of the committee asked about the use of I and the respondent fudged and said some liked to be included and others didn't. How is this going?

This isn't a derail, I'm interested because LGBTQQ++ seems to include without consent. I noticed in the BLM case, many did not want to be included in the trans flag (which reminds me, is the Pink/Blue flag overtaking the Pride rainbow flag?).

Really interesting thread- thanks

My understanding is they are highlighting that we give socially constructed meanings to all phenomena, even that in the physical world.

For example. A chair, if presented to a person from a civilisation that only sat on the floor, might be construed as 'wood', or a 'piece of art', or just a weird construction. The point being that a chair is called a chair and thought of as a chair because society calls objects that have certain features/functions chairs. We could then get into a debate as to whether something is or isn't a chair based on lots of different aspects - eg is a comfortable log a chair, or is a chair only a chair if it has been made to be such and a log is therefore not a chair etc.

The reason I use this analogy is that, in my view, it is the 'features and functions' bit that is so abhorrent. If sex is viewed as a social construct, what features and functions create the construct 'female' or 'woman'. Discussion around this is usually avoided by those who engage in critical thought (presumably the biologist the OP is talking about does) because it can only result in sexist twaddle, often exposing entrenched and unconscious misogyny

It makes more sense to say that 'race' is a social construct.

Thinking of sex being a social construct (and using that language) we could say that how we understand what it means to be a man or a woman and how we then enact practices that inscribe this identity is socially constructed. This would make sense because it is clearly about social being and identity. But, clearly, they have done something different.

I think that what gets lost in postmodern ideas about social construction is how power operates and who has the power to do the constructing.

We know that this is men, of course.

For me, if something exists independently of thought, then it is part of the physical world. Then, people in the social world may layer on social meaning, but that doesn't change the physical properties/ existence.

It's interesting to juxtapose what the TRAs are doing against conditions such as Autism. Here, a diagnosis is given based on differences in learning and behaviour compared to what is more typical in society. You then have some people taking up a medical model and thinking about it from a biological perspective. Others make the case that we have, oppressive, 'normative' societal expectations and if these were removed the 'problems' would cease to exist.

What I find interesting is that there appears to be a correlation between those in the world of autism arguing for society to stop pathologising 'autistics' who don't fit the norm and those calling GC people bigots. I see the GC argument as being about not pathologising trans/ creating a category for people who don't fit gender norms.

I think the issue here is that for 'autistics' and people who think of themselves as autistic, their autism is part of their identity. Therefore, a perception of denying transgenderism is 'a thing' is what is being kicked against.

However, with the above comes the issue of wanting a trans identity legitimised but also wanting the trans aspect to be irrelevant- TWAW etc.

We could then get into a debate as to whether something is or isn't a chair based on lots of different aspects - eg is a comfortable log a chair, or is a chair only a chair if it has been made to be such and a log is therefore not a chair etc.

Indeed. So the really important question then is, of all the billions of cocepts like chairs etc to be debated, why "woman" and "female", specifically? Cui bono?

@NecessaryScene

We could then get into a debate as to whether something is or isn't a chair based on lots of different aspects - eg is a comfortable log a chair, or is a chair only a chair if it has been made to be such and a log is therefore not a chair etc.

Indeed. So the really important question then is, of all the billions of cocepts like chairs etc to be debated, why "woman" and "female", specifically? Cui bono?

Cui bono? - Exactly.

We could then get into a debate as to whether something is or isn't a chair based on lots of different aspects - eg is a comfortable log a chair, or is a chair only a chair if it has been made to be such and a log is therefore not a chair etc.

Interestingly, this was an issue pursued by the Ancient Athenian philosophers. See 'Theory of Forms' (Socrates/Plato) and 'Telos' (Aristotle).

@Threadbaretoe

My understanding is they are highlighting that we give socially constructed meanings to all phenomena, even that in the physical world.

For example. A chair, if presented to a person from a civilisation that only sat on the floor, might be construed as 'wood', or a 'piece of art', or just a weird construction. The point being that a chair is called a chair and thought of as a chair because society calls objects that have certain features/functions chairs. We could then get into a debate as to whether something is or isn't a chair based on lots of different aspects - eg is a comfortable log a chair, or is a chair only a chair if it has been made to be such and a log is therefore not a chair etc.

The reason I use this analogy is that, in my view, it is the 'features and functions' bit that is so abhorrent. If sex is viewed as a social construct, what features and functions create the construct 'female' or 'woman'. Discussion around this is usually avoided by those who engage in critical thought (presumably the biologist the OP is talking about does) because it can only result in sexist twaddle, often exposing entrenched and unconscious misogyny

Yes, my understanding is similar. And they are right. We do. But they go further than that and say that not only are the term "chair" and its functions socially constructed, but the actual physical chair is as well. Which again is trivially true to the extent that the need, knowledge and skills required to make a chair are culturally transmitted, even though each individual chair is made by someone. But if you apply the same thing to something which isn't an artefact, like sex, the nonsense becomes clear.

I completely agree about the "features and functions" bit. Jean Aitchison's book "Words in the mind" has a good section on "significant feature theory" and "archetype theory" in semantics, which looks at this . Though it's a good thirty years since I read it.

But my real beef with those who follow a "sex is socially constructed" model is that they never provide adequate arguments and evidence because they can't. To do so would mean focusing on specific significant features, such as genitals, chromosomes, pelvic structure, gametes and so on in a way which divorces sex from reproduction and just treats them as casual features of the body. Any biologist would have to go and have a lie down with a cold flannel over their face, or get angry and all denially after a minute or two of that.

If you start from the position that sex is about sexual reproduction, and there are two (2!) roles in this, not 3, not 4, then the binary reality of sex hits you in the face with a force measurable in megatons.

The really daft thing of this, is that male and female are some of the most clear-cut binary concepts in the natural world.

Everyone alive has exactly 2 parents. One male, one female.

These days you can fuck around to some extent, separating out the gestational and genetic roles of the female, but as it arises in nature, it's incredibly clear-cut. I can't think of anything more binary.

Night/day, solid/liquid, land/sea, animate/inanimate.

All of those have fuzzier edges.

Reproduction is an incredibly intricate process, and in mammals, requires two very specific, different things to combine. There's very little scope for fuzziness.

You cannot exist as a human without a male and female parent.

F