@religion-is-a-mental-illness / religion-is-a-mental-illness.tumblr.com
When people who don’t understand science think scientists don’t understand science.
Really tired of grown-ass adults pretending that nobody can figure out how a baby is made, and that there’s no difference between a human and a clownfish.
By: Emma Hilton
Published: Jul 22, 2019
Many people attempt to undermine the material reality of sex by highlighting weird and wonderful examples of variation in the natural world.
“But clownfish change sex [therefore sex is not objectively defined]”
“But some animals don’t have X/Y chromosomes [therefore the human system is unreliable]”
“But some people have reproductive disorders [therefore sex doesn’t exist]”
Here is my response.
Clownfish. These fish, like many others, are sequential hermaphrodites. In the case of clownfish, a group contains one dominant female and if she is removed from the group, a male changes into a female to replace her. Sex change in clownfish occurs when the testicular tissue of the bipotential gonad is regressed and ovarian tissue promoted.
How to recognise a female clownfish: She’s usually big. Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Anglerfish. These fish display extreme dimorphism between the sexes. The tiny males permanently fuse themselves to a female, adopting a parasitic lifestyle for the privilege of being first to contribute sperm to laid eggs.
How to recognise a female anglerfish: She is big and can be decorated with several parasitic males. Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Seahorses. Female seahorses deposit their eggs into the male brood pouch where he fertilises them. She then lounges around while the male carries and births the baby seahorses. Sounds great.
How to recognise the female: She’s big and she’s winning at life. Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Birds. Birds genetically determine sex, but using ZW, not XY, chromosomes. Males, with ZZ, are the homogametic sex and females, with ZW, determine the sex of babies. It’s not clear how ZZ triggers male development.
How to recognise the female: Like most female birds, she prefers discreet clothing. Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Crocodiles. Sex is determined by environmental temperature during the middle third of development. Male development requires intermediate temperatures, while females develop at lower or higher extremes.
How to recognise the female: Hard as nails, unlike her male counterpart, she can handle anything outside “tepid”. Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Platypuses. Platypuses have five pairs of sex chromosomes. Females have five pairs of XX and males five pairs of XY, but pairs 3 and 5 look a bit more like ZW chromosomes (see birds above) than mammalian XY chromosomes. And the way they segregate these chromosomes when they make gametes is just wild. I guess you could say they’re complicated creatures.
How to recognise the female: She’s the only furry mammal that lays eggs – this is one unique female. So obviously, she makes large gametes.
Hyena. Female spotted hyenas have a pseudo-penis which is internalised during mating and through which she gives birth. Because retraction of this pseudo-penis is controlled by the female, she is the sole arbiter of when intercourse will occur, suggesting that female spotted hyenas cannot be raped.
How to recognise the female: She’s giving birth through a massively overgrown clitoris, what more do you want as an identifying feature? Oh, and she makes large gametes.
Lily. Like many flowering plants, lilies are simultaneous hermaphrodites. This means they contain both male and female reproductive systems in the same individual.
How to recognise the female part: it doesn’t give you hayfever and it makes large gametes.
Flatworms. More simultaneous hermaphrodites. When it comes to reproducing, individuals penis fence to determine which will take the male role. Most of the time, no-one wins and they each, perhaps dejectedly, spaff over the other.
How to recognise the female part: I can’t think of a funny comment here. It makes large gametes.
Bees. Sex in bees is determined by number of chromosome sets. Females have two pairs of 16 chromosomes (32 total) while males have a single set of 16 chromosomes. Males develop from unfertilised eggs and their only genetic material is derived from their mother. Male sperm is used to create eggs with two pairs of 16 chromosomes. This means male bees have neither a father nor sons. But he must have a grandfather and may have grandsons.
How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Asparagus. No sense of sexed self and no plausible mechanism for social construction of gender.
How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Tuatara. Sex determination so extremely temperature sensitive that climate change is causing them to be largely male.
How to recognise the male: he makes small gametes. He can also be seen looking annoyed at enforced incel status.
Peafowl. Sexual selection gone mental.
How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes. And she’s not a massive freaking showoff, like this fella…
Mushrooms. Delicious. How to recognise the female: there are no females (‘there is only Zuul’). ‘Female’ and ‘male’ are predicated on two and only two differential gametes, and fungi don’t have them thingies, settling instead for equivalent gametes labelled +/-, or A/B, or yawn.
Straw-not technically a berry-berries. Delicious hermaphrodites. Genetic sex determination is polygenic and may reasonably be described as a (limited) spectrum.
How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Head lice. Annoying buggers. The female transmits chromosomes she inherited from either her mum or dad; the male *only* transmits chromosomes he inherited from his mum.
How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
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The “but clownfish change sex" gambit is the same as when creationists challenge you to show a dog that turned into a cat. Like the creationist, they’re suggesting that humans and clownfish can produce each other, and/or turn into each other directly.
To make the obvious explicit, humans are not clownfish.
Many often conflate two concepts in biology: how sex is defined versus how sex is determined. Conflating these two things, as we will see, can create absurd conclusions, so it is important we separate them out to accurately understand what male and female are and how they develop in the womb.
Defining sex: What are male and female?
Biologically, sex is defined with respect to gamete type. Because there are only two gamete types, there are only two sexes. The male sex is the phenotype that produces small gametes (sperm) and the female sex is the phenotype that produces large gametes (ova). This applies to all species that reproduce through two gametes of differing size (anisogamy), and it includes humans.
Based on this definition, we know whether an individual is male or female by looking at the structures that support the production (gonads) and release (genitalia) of either gamete type. In other words, we look at whether the individual develops a body plan organized around small gametes or large gametes. In humans, sex is binary and immutable. Individuals are either male or female throughout their entire life cycle.
Determining sex: How does an individual become a male or female?
In humans, sex is determined by genes. In biology, determining sex does not mean “observing” or “identifying sex” in the colloquial sense. Instead, determining sex is a technical term for the process by which genes trigger and regulate differentiation down the male or female path in the womb. This determines the structures that can support the production and release of either gamete type, and thus, the individual’s sex.
There are many different sex determination mechanisms across species. Humans and other mammals use genetic sex determination, where certain genes trigger male or female development, whereas reptiles often use temperature sex determination, where certain temperature values trigger male or female development. In all these species, an individual’s sex is defined with respect to gamete type and identified by the structures that support the production and release of either gamete.
Thus, while there are various mechanisms that control male and female development, there are still only two endpoints: male and female.
This video essay explores the origins of the two sexes: how they formed 1.2 billion years ago and why they are nearly universal across the plant and animal kingdoms.
Denial of the binary of sex is explicitly a denial of evolution and a form of creationism, as fervent as Ken Ham or Kirk Cameron.
Some claim that rare chromosome combinations prove there are more than two sexes, yet these combinations still result in males and females, not new sexes.
“Chromosomes are the input, and sexes are the result.”
If you think there’s more than two sexes, you’re a creationist.
Saying that someone with a DSD condition is something other than male or female is like saying that someone born without legs is something other than human. You’re not being “inclusive,” you’re just a piece of shit.
By: Heather Heying
Published: Oct 5, 2022
There is an eight-year-old girl who likes to play in streams and look under rocks for squirmy critters. She not only knows how to throw a ball but enjoys doing it. She loves math and logic, and has no interest in dolls or dresses. She will grow up to be a woman. Because that’s what girls do.
There is another eight-year-old girl who likes to give tea parties for her stuffed animals. She likes to dance all the dances, often with other girls who like to do the same thing. She loves to read, and has no interest in trucks or trails. She will also grow up to be a woman. Because, again, that’s what girls do.
One of these girls may want to be an astronaut. The other, a chef. Or a mother. Or a lawyer. An actress. A racecar driver. Are all of these desires equally likely among girls? They are not. Girls are likely to want some things more than others. But guess what: the girls who aren’t girly are still girls. You can tell, in part, by the fact that they grow up to be women. Because that’s what girls do.
Sex isn’t assigned at birth. Sex is observed at birth.
Sometimes, in fact, sex is observed before birth. Most commonly, this happens via ultrasound imaging of the fetus. Less commonly, it is possible to look at the karyotype—a visual representation of fetal chromosomes, organized roughly by size—which has been obtained through the usefully diagnostic but somewhat risky mid-pregnancy procedure known as amniocentesis.
All mammals have “Genetic Sex Determination,” which means that we have chromosomes dedicated to starting us down the path of maleness or femaleness. They are called sex chromosomes, in contrast to the autosomes which comprise most of our genetic makeup, and which do not vary predictably by sex. A tiny number of mammals—the echidnas, and the duck-billed platypus—have several pairs of sex chromosomes. The remaining several thousand of us mammals, however—everything from bats to koalas, kangaroos to whales—all the many thousands of other species of mammals have just one pair of sex chromosomes in each of our cells. Humans are mammals, so we have Genetic Sex Determination. Humans are neither echidnas nor duck-billed platypi, so we have just the one pair of sex chromosomes.
The number of chromosomes in each of our cells varies between species. Ocelots and margays have 18 pairs of chromosomes, for instance, while most other cats have 19 pairs[1]. Most of the great apes, including chimps, have 24 pairs of chromosomes, but humans have only 23. That is: humans have 22 pairs of autosomes, and at that 23rd position: one pair of sex chromosomes.
Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in almost all of our cells. Gametes—sex cells—are a notable exception to this[2], however, having only 23 chromosomes each, instead of 23 pairs. If you’re female, your gametes are called eggs; if you’re male, they’re called sperm. If successful (as the vast majority are not), an egg or a sperm will combine with a gamete of the other type and make a new life. As such, so as not to create a new life with double the chromosomes of their parents, gametes have half the chromosomal complement of somatic (body) cells: one copy of chromosome 1, one copy of chromosome 2, etc., all the way down to chromosome 23.
At chromosome 23, females have two nearly identical looking chromosomes, which we call XX. Males, in contrast, have two chromosomes at that 23rd position which are wildly different in size; this we call XY, the diminutive chromosome being the Y.
The gametes of female mammals, therefore—the eggs—all have Xs at that 23rd position. No matter what, a female mammal contributes one of her Xs to her offspring’s genetic make-up.
By comparison, the gametes of male mammals—the sperm—are variable at that 23rd position. For any given male, roughly half of his sperm will contain an X, which, if combined with an egg, will produce a daughter (XX). The other half of his sperm will contain a Y which, if combined with an egg, will produce a son (XY)[3].
The determination of what sex a baby is is usually based on an easy observation at birth, but this isn’t always the case. Intersex people exist, as do people with yet more subtle ambiguities in their phenotypes. The conclusion being imposed on us, far less by trans people than by Trans Rights Activists (TRAs), is that any exceptions to normal function, any fuzziness at categorical borders, proves that we’ve got it all wrong, and that reality is a social construct. It’s not, though. While laws are indeed social constructs, and lawmakers can clearly be captured by ideology, ideological capture does not change the underlying reality. Sex is observed at birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics, or sex can be observed before birth, by looking at primary sex characteristics in utero, or by looking at a karyotype.
All of that is less fundamental than this, however:
Females are individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs. Eggs are large, sessile gametes. Gametes are sex cells. In plants and animals, and most other sexually reproducing organisms, there are two sexes: female and male. Like “adult,” the term female applies across many species. Female is used to distinguish such people from males, who produce small, mobile gametes (e.g. sperm, pollen)[4].
A woman is an adult human female. Girls become women. Girls do not become boys or men any more than they become fairy princesses or dinosaurs. Fantasize all you want—that is the stuff of childhood, and childhood is the stuff of humanity. But do not confuse fantasy with reality, else you may make decisions based on fantasy that will haunt you for the rest of your life. And do not expect the adults who are paying attention to pretend that your fantasy is real life.
Many adults have either abdicated their responsibility, or are actively in on the game, the game being: hurt the children. Those of us who can see this for what it is, though, who know that providing puberty blockers and sex hormones to children and teenagers is dangerous and immoral, and cutting off their healthy tissue is even farther beyond the pale—we need to speak. We need to put aside what differences we may have.
In some circles, we are all painted with a MAGA brush. It’s a quick route to discrediting a person or position, at least among those who are unthinkingly on the trans train. And yet there are many among us, myself included, who are lifelong liberals[5]. Not only aren’t all of us who recognize that biology is real “MAGA Republicans,” we’re not even all Republicans. Imagine that. Some of us are, and some of us aren’t. And yet we’re all human.
We may not agree on reproductive rights, or climate change, or the second amendment—although I often find that the divide between us isn’t as vast as we’ve been led to believe. But disagreement is fine. It’s good, even. We don’t want to be a clone army, all in lockstep, all believing exactly the same things, living exactly the same lives. We see reality—girls become women, and boys become men—and we are adamant that reality not be hidden from view. And when we find that we actually share core values—values like protect the children from harm—we stand together.
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1 Hsu et al 1963. Karyological studies of nine species of Felidae. The American Naturalist, 97(895): 225-234.
2 Red blood cells are another exception. Humans, like all mammals, have red blood cells which at maturity do not contain nuclei. Red blood cells thus contain no chromosomes (except for what is in the mitochondria. Yes, this is biology, and there is complexity at every turn.)
3 Birds, by the way, do this the other way around. Birds, like mammals, have Genetic Sex Determination (GSD), but unlike mammals, female birds are the heterogametic sex, male birds the homogametic sex. To keep things clear to biologists (but no doubt creating greater confusion among non-biologists), scientists have named the sex chromosomes in birds “W” and “Z” rather than “X” and “Y.” Female mammals are XX, and so are homogametic (homo = same, gametic = marriage (from the Greek)); male mammals are XY, and so are heterogametic (hetero = different). Male birds are ZZ (therefore, homogametic), whereas female birds are WZ (therefore, heterogametic). Thus, it’s mama birds, like papa mammals, whose gametes determine the sex of their offspring.
4 From “I Am a Woman,” which I posted here on March 29, 2022.
5 Not woke. Not reality-denying. But liberal.
“A binary is a system composed of two parts--a duality, a pair. In developmental biology, sex is binary. Here’s why.“
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Remember back when we just assumed grown adults knew how babies were made? Good times.
If you think sex is "complicated" or "hard to define," you don't get to look down on creationists.
The lunatics who think dinosaurs rode on a boat with humans at least know how babies are made, and therefore have a leg up on you.
