The societies for the study of evolution (SSE), the American Naturalist Society (ANS) and the Society for Systematic Biology (SSB), issued a joint declaration addressed to president Trump and members of congress with a confusing definition of sex, implying that sex is not binary.
This is a very important action -- and I hope many more biologists will add their signatures to the letter. Scientists need to stand up against ideology and pseudoscience!
I'm not in higher ed, but even we in K-12 science education need to help hold the line against ideology and pseudoscience. So, I added my name to the campaign!
You and your opponents appear to be missing the important point. Biological genotype (XX vs XY) explains biological phenotype (male vs female) at birth and later in life for 99+% of human individuals. Science has identified a small minority humans (typically called intersex) where the usual biological sex-determining machinery doesn't function properly and for whom sex may not be biologically binary and for whom sex may be a continuum between two norms. However this biology (as far as I know) is irrelevant to the increasing incidence of gender dysphoria among children - which now appears to be contagious according to the CDC. There is no biological explanation or justification, as far as I know, for the belief that people have a sexual identity that differs from their sexual phenotype (except for the <1% who are intersex at birth). Behavior is determined by both genetics and environment. Since gender dysphoria can spontaneously resolve, it is not a permanent deterministic biological phenomena. (For that matter, we were told that homosexuality was permanent unchangeable orientation that affected roughly 3% of people, but when the social stigma was removed, sexual orientation for many proved to be flexible continuum for far more that 3% of the population. Not surprisingly, to the best of my knowledge a biological explanation for homosexuality has not be identified.)
Today's burning questions about transgender individuals and especially how to treat children with gender dysphoria are political questions for which BIOLOGY PROVIDES NO ENLIGHTENMENT, again except for the less than 1% of people who are intersex. In the past, to treat their horrified parents, doctors surgically altered intersex children to provide a normal phenotype, often with poor outcomes in the long run. Today, doctors wait until they are adults who can legally decide for themselves which sex they want to appear as. On the other hand, transgender activists are treating our children with gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery long before the age they can legally give informed consent. Parents of children with gender dysphoria are advised to accept the child's currently-preferred trans identity, when everything we know from biology tells us the genes in their body will - for the rest of their lives - try make them appear like the gender they were assigned at birth. The long term success of these interventions haven't been scientifically established.
Um, this post seems sort of confused. We are facing a crisis, if you have not noticed, and the people pushing for the destruction of STEM are using every available tool to do it. And that includes biology, correctly or incorrectly interpreted.
They are also using street action and violence and threats and the law and medicine and psychology and every other discipline they can get their hooks into.
These are the same nincompoops who have declared that truth and merit and evidence and reason are all old-fashioned and obsolete and are all concepts that MUST be discarded...or else. Have you not noticed this?
So, we have to push back. If you want to muddy the waters with this stuff, it might not be particularly helpful. But, whatever.
Thomas: I positively abhor the attack on science and the rejection of science and the scientific method as a superior way of understanding what is true. This is exactly why I don't want see science invest its remaining prestige on controversies where science has little to contribute. I acknowledge the existence of a small number of intersex people whose various phenotypes aren't determined by their genotype (XX or XY), but they constitute less than 1% of the population and almost none of the epidemic of transgender children we are experiencing. Biology doesn't provide a rational for the idea that there is a "gender ID" that differs from the phenotype assigned at birth. It turns out that transgender advocates haven't done any rigorous studies to determine what treatment provides the best outcomes for children with gender dysphoria. The vast majority of those providing "treatment" are interested in gaining another recruit for the "trans team" or saving another soul for God, not what is best for a particular child. Environment, not biology, is likely responsible for the increasing number of children with gender dysphoria: dysfunctional families, poor role models, peer pressure, autism, etc.
(When writing my comment, I had just read and was focused on the cited letter written to President Trump by the three heads of scientific societies.)
Done. I'm not a biologist per se, but am definitely biology-adjacent as I work with fossils and draw a lot of my ability to interpret what I'm seeing from biology.
The "scientific" definition of biological sex given in the open letter completely avoids the main question: What sex have individuals who do not produce gametes?
All possible answers ("will produce, or were produced, or supposed to produce unless genetic failures...") fail to give an unambiguous conclusion for thousands of intersex humans. So how sex can be binary for all people? "MOST humans have one of two sexes" - it is obvious for any ever proposed definition of sex but contradicts the common scientific meaning of the word "binary".
But the open letter is much worse: it proposes no answers for this question at all (even above-mentioned answers). In my opinion, such avoidance of obvious key questions is not good for scientists.
I also wish to raise concern about one more point in the open letter. It claims that the binary sex definition is "universal" for animals. So what sex do hermaphroditic animals have? And where the "binary" definition of their sex (sex of the animal, not of a gamete!) is described in the scientific literature?
Of course, sex of animals does not relate directly to social problems. But the letter claims its definition as "universal". What are the scientific sources (not blog posts) that this definition is universal and applicable to hermaphrodites, worker termites, larvaes etc.? If there are no clear scientific sources, does this undermine the trust of society for science and for claims of scientists about sex?
Note that the deadline for signing is 5 pm a week from Monday (Mar. 3). All you need to qualify is enough training and expertise in biology to be able to adjudicate this conflict.
This is a very important action -- and I hope many more biologists will add their signatures to the letter. Scientists need to stand up against ideology and pseudoscience!
I'm not in higher ed, but even we in K-12 science education need to help hold the line against ideology and pseudoscience. So, I added my name to the campaign!
You and your opponents appear to be missing the important point. Biological genotype (XX vs XY) explains biological phenotype (male vs female) at birth and later in life for 99+% of human individuals. Science has identified a small minority humans (typically called intersex) where the usual biological sex-determining machinery doesn't function properly and for whom sex may not be biologically binary and for whom sex may be a continuum between two norms. However this biology (as far as I know) is irrelevant to the increasing incidence of gender dysphoria among children - which now appears to be contagious according to the CDC. There is no biological explanation or justification, as far as I know, for the belief that people have a sexual identity that differs from their sexual phenotype (except for the <1% who are intersex at birth). Behavior is determined by both genetics and environment. Since gender dysphoria can spontaneously resolve, it is not a permanent deterministic biological phenomena. (For that matter, we were told that homosexuality was permanent unchangeable orientation that affected roughly 3% of people, but when the social stigma was removed, sexual orientation for many proved to be flexible continuum for far more that 3% of the population. Not surprisingly, to the best of my knowledge a biological explanation for homosexuality has not be identified.)
Today's burning questions about transgender individuals and especially how to treat children with gender dysphoria are political questions for which BIOLOGY PROVIDES NO ENLIGHTENMENT, again except for the less than 1% of people who are intersex. In the past, to treat their horrified parents, doctors surgically altered intersex children to provide a normal phenotype, often with poor outcomes in the long run. Today, doctors wait until they are adults who can legally decide for themselves which sex they want to appear as. On the other hand, transgender activists are treating our children with gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, sex hormones and gender reassignment surgery long before the age they can legally give informed consent. Parents of children with gender dysphoria are advised to accept the child's currently-preferred trans identity, when everything we know from biology tells us the genes in their body will - for the rest of their lives - try make them appear like the gender they were assigned at birth. The long term success of these interventions haven't been scientifically established.
Um, this post seems sort of confused. We are facing a crisis, if you have not noticed, and the people pushing for the destruction of STEM are using every available tool to do it. And that includes biology, correctly or incorrectly interpreted.
They are also using street action and violence and threats and the law and medicine and psychology and every other discipline they can get their hooks into.
These are the same nincompoops who have declared that truth and merit and evidence and reason are all old-fashioned and obsolete and are all concepts that MUST be discarded...or else. Have you not noticed this?
So, we have to push back. If you want to muddy the waters with this stuff, it might not be particularly helpful. But, whatever.
Thomas: I positively abhor the attack on science and the rejection of science and the scientific method as a superior way of understanding what is true. This is exactly why I don't want see science invest its remaining prestige on controversies where science has little to contribute. I acknowledge the existence of a small number of intersex people whose various phenotypes aren't determined by their genotype (XX or XY), but they constitute less than 1% of the population and almost none of the epidemic of transgender children we are experiencing. Biology doesn't provide a rational for the idea that there is a "gender ID" that differs from the phenotype assigned at birth. It turns out that transgender advocates haven't done any rigorous studies to determine what treatment provides the best outcomes for children with gender dysphoria. The vast majority of those providing "treatment" are interested in gaining another recruit for the "trans team" or saving another soul for God, not what is best for a particular child. Environment, not biology, is likely responsible for the increasing number of children with gender dysphoria: dysfunctional families, poor role models, peer pressure, autism, etc.
(When writing my comment, I had just read and was focused on the cited letter written to President Trump by the three heads of scientific societies.)
Done. I'm not a biologist per se, but am definitely biology-adjacent as I work with fossils and draw a lot of my ability to interpret what I'm seeing from biology.
The "scientific" definition of biological sex given in the open letter completely avoids the main question: What sex have individuals who do not produce gametes?
All possible answers ("will produce, or were produced, or supposed to produce unless genetic failures...") fail to give an unambiguous conclusion for thousands of intersex humans. So how sex can be binary for all people? "MOST humans have one of two sexes" - it is obvious for any ever proposed definition of sex but contradicts the common scientific meaning of the word "binary".
But the open letter is much worse: it proposes no answers for this question at all (even above-mentioned answers). In my opinion, such avoidance of obvious key questions is not good for scientists.
I also wish to raise concern about one more point in the open letter. It claims that the binary sex definition is "universal" for animals. So what sex do hermaphroditic animals have? And where the "binary" definition of their sex (sex of the animal, not of a gamete!) is described in the scientific literature?
Of course, sex of animals does not relate directly to social problems. But the letter claims its definition as "universal". What are the scientific sources (not blog posts) that this definition is universal and applicable to hermaphrodites, worker termites, larvaes etc.? If there are no clear scientific sources, does this undermine the trust of society for science and for claims of scientists about sex?
Note that the deadline for signing is 5 pm a week from Monday (Mar. 3). All you need to qualify is enough training and expertise in biology to be able to adjudicate this conflict.