Is Sex Really a Spectrum?
What do we say to someone who says that ‘sex is a spectrum’? What does this mean, and why should we care?
It helps to clarify whether you are talking about:
(i) physical or biological sex;
(ii) a person’s sense of whether they are male or female;
(iii) the expression of social behaviours and attitudes that are considered male or female; or
(iv) characteristics that are valued in women or men.
People often blur and glide between the four in a way that is not logical. Items (ii), (iii) and (iv) may be a bit of a spectrum, or may change over time, but this doesn’t prove that (i) is. If people start off arguing that gender expression is a spectrum, and then assert that biological sex is a spectrum, it’s useful to point out that one doesn’t follow from the other.
What is biological sex?
First, what indicates biological sex? This requires a bit of jargon. A major indicator of sex is which gametes you produce. A gamete is a haploid cell: a cell with half the normal number of chromosomes (in humans, 23 instead of 46). A gamete can combine with a gamete of the opposite type to form a zygote (a fertilised egg). I suggest anyone look up these terms and read a dozen articles before they use these words in a discussion.
Most people’s reproductive systems are organised around the production of either eggs or sperm, but not both. There are no gametes that are 70 per cent sperm and 30 per cent egg, or 80–20. Very rarely, someone is born with both ovarian and testicular tissue, but this is extremely rare.
If physical (biological) sex existed on a spectrum, then when my 11-year-old dog Billy dies and I go back to the breeder for a new puppy, and the breeder asks, ‘Do you want a male or a female?’, I could say, ‘I want one that’s 65 per cent male and 35 per cent female.’ The breeder would reply, ‘Well, this one is 80–20, this one is 70–30, this one is 10–90.’ But that doesn’t happen, and we all know why: physical sex is not a spectrum.
‘But that’s dogs,’ someone will say. ‘People aren’t dogs.’ True, people aren’t dogs, but people and dogs are both mammals, and both use the XY system to determine sex. A typical dog still has a reproductive system organised around the production of either sperm or eggs, but not both.
‘But what about clownfish? They change sex!’ someone says. Yes, they do, but how do we know that a clownfish has changed sex? We know it has changed from male to female because it stops producing sperm and, a few weeks later, starts producing eggs. It’s the gametes that tell you it has changed sex. Does this tell you that sex is a spectrum? No.
There are snails that are hermaphrodites, but how do we know that? Because they have reproductive organs that produce both sperm and eggs. It’s the fact that they produce both types of gamete that tells us they are hermaphrodites.
A professor of biology at Brown University in the US, Anne Fausto-Sterling, produced figures claiming that 1.7 per cent of the population is intersex, using her own broad definition of intersex. She included conditions such as chromosome variations that most doctors wouldn’t call intersex.
Sometimes people point to non-standard combinations of X and Y as if this proves that ‘sex is a spectrum’ or that ‘biology is more complicated than you imagine’. A woman who has Turner syndrome has 45 chromosomes instead of 46, missing one X (45,X for short). She is still a woman. There’s nothing male about her. She usually won’t ovulate, and will usually need IVF with donor eggs to get pregnant. That doesn’t make her part male. A man with 47,XYY (an extra Y chromosome) may have delayed speech development and is a bit more likely to have ADHD, but isn’t part woman.
Reproduction is a mechanism. Sometimes mechanisms go wrong, and an abnormal combination of chromosomes occurs. This doesn’t prove that the categories the mechanism produces don’t exist.
Do changes in fashion or social value mean a category doesn’t exist?
A professor at the University of California, Riverside, Brandon Robinson, recently called for people to stop using the terms gay, lesbian or bisexual on the grounds that they ‘harm’ trans people. Robinson said, ‘If being “gay” means being a man attracted to men, it assumes “man” is a stable, inherent category, when history shows the definition of manhood is constantly changing.’
Notice what is being done here. Is the definition of manhood constantly changing? What attributes are useful or admired in a male may change over time. Physical strength may be an aspect of manhood. The mechanisation and robotisation of industry has made physical strength less important in male-dominated occupations than it was 100 years ago. But does this show the category ‘man’ is changing? If a man is a person whose reproductive system is organised around the production of sperm (even if he is not currently producing any), has this changed in the last 100 years?
Ideas of female beauty may have changed over the last 100 years. In the 1920s, slim, androgynous women were in fashion (the ‘flappers’ of the jazz age). By the 1950s, hourglass figures (Marilyn Monroe) were popular. However, a female was still a person whose reproductive system was organised around the production of eggs.
Spectrums and overlaps
The fact that two categories overlap in some property doesn’t prove that the categories don’t exist. Some behaviours and physical attributes are distributed along a spectrum, and the averages differ, even though there is a lot of overlap.
For example, the average American man is 175 cm tall, and 95 per cent of men are between 160 and 190 cm. The average woman is 161 cm tall, and 95 per cent of women are between 147 and 176 cm. This means there is a difference at the average (of about 8 per cent), and there’s a lot of overlap (especially between 160 and 176 cm). Many women are taller than some men, and many men are shorter than some women.
Some traits are distributed like this: think height, weight, how far people can throw a tennis ball, or what weight they can lift. Just because there is overlap doesn’t mean there aren’t two separate categories.
Other things are either A or B, with not much overlap. Most people are either right- or left-handed. About 1 per cent are ambidextrous, doing most tasks equally well with either hand. A few people do most things one way and a couple of things the other. (I do most things right-handed, but I hold my knife and fork left-handed.) This doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as handedness, or that handedness is a social construct.
One saying you may have heard is, ‘Trans activist in the street, TERF between the sheets.’ This means that people (especially straight men) may say ‘trans women are women’ publicly (in the street), but reveal their true beliefs in how they behave in private (between the sheets). When a straight man is interested in a woman, does he pursue a trans woman, or an actual biological female? His private behaviour tells you what he really believes. When a lesbian is looking for a partner, is she interested in a trans woman? No? Why? Because physical (biological) sex is real, and she has distinct preferences based on it.
There are many physical differences that remain after cross-sex hormones and surgery. Men have a prostate gland. They have a ring of muscle at the outlet of the bladder that stops seminal fluid from going into the bladder. Men don’t get pregnant.
Conversational tactics
Now, about conversational tactics. I think it’s useful to ask the other person what they think, rather than saying ‘So you think that…’ and putting words in their mouth. If somebody is really saying that physical sex is a spectrum, I’d suggest asking why, in a flat, neutral voice.
Remember that in many conversations, the person you are trying to convince is not the person you are talking to. Your real audience is the neutral or undecided bystander. For that reason, it’s always better not to lose your cool, and to moderate your language.
People frequently change their minds on the basis of emotion, not logic. Many US states now have near-total abortion bans. Many abortion sceptics may be won over by hearing about a woman going into septic shock after a miscarriage, or being made to carry an anencephalic baby (one with no brain) to term, only to have it delivered dead. Arguments are often won by appealing to emotionally vivid examples.
We can point out the problems caused by the view that if a man says ‘I now identify as a woman’, he has to be treated as a woman for all purposes. Try suggesting that women in prison have a right not to be assaulted, get the other person to agree, then try asking:
‘I have a lot of trouble seeing why a man convicted of raping two women, like Isla Bryson in Scotland, should be put in a women’s prison. How do you feel about that?’
‘Clinton Rintoull, here in Victoria, killed a young Sudanese refugee in a racist attack. Then in prison, he decided he was a woman, and he was moved to a women’s prison. Within two months, he sexually assaulted a female prisoner, and she sued the Victorian Government. They settled out of court. Do you think he should have been put in a women’s prison? How do you feel about that?’
‘Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines has said that at the 2022 NCAA Swimming Championships, female competitors had to share a locker room with trans swimmer Lia Thomas, and that Thomas exposed male anatomy. How do you feel about that?’
Try getting them to agree that people should have the right to live as they choose, as long as they don’t interfere with anybody else. Then give them the example of lesbian social functions being gate-crashed by trans activists (see links), and ask if lesbians have the right to their own social functions.
UC Riverside professor: https://www.aol.com/articles/california-professor-calls-abolish-identities-215706856.html
Changes in women’s beauty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEBGAnPR_sE
Lia Thomas / Riley Gaines: https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/former-teammate-lia-thomas-speaks-out
Clinton Rintoull: https://www.news24.com.au/politics/victorian-premier-jacinta-allan-grilled-on-secret-payout-for-female-prisoner-sexually-assaulted-by-biological-male-in-womens-prison/news-story/1eb02c58fbbf633555d88339ec3d66f8