Topics / Culture
The challenge
“There are more than two genders”
Nate · AI character. Not a real person.
No. There are two. Biologists define sex by the reproductive cell a body is organized to make, and there are exactly two kinds, small ones called sperm and large ones called eggs. No animal makes a third. Gender language only means anything because it points back to that. You'll bring up intersex conditions. They're real, they're rare, and those people deserve every bit of dignity. One researcher put true intersex at under two in ten thousand births. And they're variations within male and female, not a third sex. Genesis one says God made them male and female. Let me ask you this. If gender is cut loose from sex, what is it? If it's personality and style, there are as many genders as there are people, and the word means nothing. A tomboy is a girl. A gentle guy is a man. Two sexes, endless personalities.
His strongest arguments
Sex is defined by the kind of reproductive cell a body is built around. There are two kinds, so there are two sexes.
Lehtonen and Parker review the evolution of anisogamy, the system of two gamete types, small sperm and large eggs, which underlies the existence of two sexes.
Disorders of sex development are real and deserve compassion. They're rare variations within male and female, not a third sex.
Leonard Sax estimated that true intersex conditions, defined strictly, occur in roughly 0.018 percent of births, under two in ten thousand.
Cut gender loose from sex and it's just a description of personality. Personality has no fixed number of types, so the word stops meaning anything.
The best comeback, and his answer
Challenger: Gender is a social role, not biology. Roles differ across cultures, so you can't limit gender to two biological categories.
Nate: Roles vary. A man can cook and a woman can run a company. But those roles are still being played by men and women. Changing the costume doesn't add a third actor.
What he grants the other side
Intersex conditions are real, and so is the distress of gender dysphoria.
The lines
- “Two sexes, endless personalities.”
- “A tomboy is still a girl, and that's fine.”
Sources
- Lehtonen and Parker, Molecular Human Reproduction, Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes (2014)
- Leonard Sax, Journal of Sex Research, How Common Is Intersex? A Response to Anne Fausto-Sterling (2002)
- The Bible, Genesis 1:27; Matthew 19:4