Philippa Gregory thinks that two sexes, male and female, is a "myth"

[Fenlandia]

According to journalist Susan Dalgety's Substack (a good read), the author Philippa Gregory, who has sold gazillions of historical fiction novels, thinks there are more sexes than we first thought!

https://susandalgety.substack.com/p/philippa-gregory-may-be-a-bestselling

Here is the quote from Dalgety:

"Philippa Gregory, who prides herself as a feminist, does not believe in the “myth of two sexes.” She writes glowingly of a modern world where it is impossible to divide humans into two categories, male and female. “It is as fictional as a sorting hat – we are more diverse than and more varied, and more changeable over time, in a richer multiple word than the binary model…” And she points out that in the 1990s, American sexologist, Anne Fausto-Sterling, counted five sexes (male, female, merm, ferm and herm), while French scientist Eric Vilain suggested an “infinite number of biological genders.” It was at this point I dropped my coffee cup."

And yet again with the tedious trope that in order for people to be interesting and the world to be diverse, we must dispense with the fact of the sex binary by which every single human has been produced, ever.

I'm so sick of reading this gender crap. It's making kids sick and making them want to mutilate their perfectly healthy bodies.
I agree some people genuinely feel they have been born the wrong sex and want to have surgery and treatment for it, fair enough but most are just kids and they don't need this kind of confusion when they are growing up. It just adds to the already difficult time of puberty.
Certainly when I was growing up I wanted to be a boy, I hung out with boys and wasn't interested in dolls. Now I'm a perfectly normal if rather mannish woman and I'm just so glad I didn't have the pressure of worrying about gender dysphoria and treatments for it in my teens, I just needed time and space to find and accept the kind of woman I eventually turned out to be without any interference from anyone else.

Nailed it.

Because despite their professed progressiveness, they’re actually quite conservative and can’t perceive a feminine man as a ‘real man’ and a masculine woman as still a woman.

Scratch a ‘progressive’ GI fan and you’ll find regressive attitudes underneath.

Absolutely this.

Just read that extract from her book! It’s mind numbingly stupid! These are the terrible arguments you have to create to defend gender ideology.

I believe it was Christopher Hitchens who said, "If you make an extraordinary claim, you need extraordinary evidence." I'd like to hear from PG her 'extraordinary evidence', or even an example, to support her claim that two sexes are a myth. Is she in possession of a petri dish with a new gamete? May we look through her magical microscope and see?

Reviving the thread not that anyone might be interested as I knew her book would have been discussed here!

I wonder how well researched it is I'm listening to it on audible so can't see the references?

Such a shame as if factual she sets out the history of women over time well.

I thought the explanation of how Women were supposed to have to orgasm to conceive in the 14th century so men were expected to know how to make them orgasm to women aren't even supposed to want sex by the 18th century interesting.

If this is true, might have to clear my search history medieval sex and orgasm might throw up some interesting ads 🤣

Or to rephrase it in plain speak:

why do supposedly intellectually honest people keep deliberately confusing what is easy and simple to tell apart?

So has she (or anyone) come up with an actual example for someone of the 3,4,5 etc. sex, and if anyone suggests a book I could read on it that is proably the mess the author has got themselves in the first place

Erm, there is such a think as hermaphrodites? Its actually quite common

*citation needed

No there isn't. Hermaphrodite is an outdated and inaccurate term. There are people with disorders of sexual development who are ALL either male with a male specific disorder or female with a female specific disorder.

DSDs affect only 0.017% of the population, they aren't common.

Well she can think what she likes. She is of course entitled to her opinion just as we are entitled to think she is a wagon jumper of the worst kind.

Hermaphrodite is an outdated and inaccurate term.

It isn't, it's not outdated or inaccurate in mollusks or tunicates, also in flowering plants, but it's extremely rare in vertebrates and unheard of in mammals and also in birds. I think people who bring the term up to claim there are more than two sexes have no idea what it means.

Whatever the term is, they do exist. And given there are so many transgender people around and I'm sure it's not a 'lifestyle' most would choose so many of the comments here are so ignorant and dismissive. I bet people were like this about gay people too about 50 years ago.

Hermaphroditism is defined by the ability of one individual organism to make both eggs and sperm. Are you telling me that all trans people are making both eggs and sperm? Are you quite sure about that?

So the bit in ‘The Other Boleyn Girl’ where Mary Boleyn comes back home after church to find her newborn baby missing, because he has been taken to the countryside so she can resume her role as Henry VIII’s mistress has nothing to do with her position as a woman in Tudor society? Nor later that night when her sister Anne stuffs Mary’s vagina with a rag to stop her post-partum bleeding because the king has demanded that she come and have sex with him again? That has nothing to do with her female body of course.

A pity she couldn’t identify out of all that into one of these zany modern genders.

I don’t know anything about Phillipa Gregory’s personal life but I suspect that, like Mary Beard, we have a privileged woman giving things away on behalf of others.

She frames two sexes as an Enlightenment myth and claims that it is responsible for the idea of separate spheres and the weaker sex. Absolutely unbelievable, given that about 200 pages have already been given over to women being ignored, undervalued, mistreated and murdered by men. How on earth did they know how to pick on before the enlightenment? It's a total mystery.

I enjoy PG's writing, but this makes her seem ridiculous.

Well I won’t be reading anything by her anymore. How disappointing.

Babe. Transgender people are not 'hermaphrodites'.

Ok, it's outdated and inaccurate in humans! Which is the context people are using it in this conversation

I bet people were like this about gay people too about 50 years ago.

I guess so - we also insisted they were male or female.

Yep I know that 🤦🏼‍♀️