I was with you until this statement. Sex is a millions-of-years-old discrete variable; it depends on whether you could produce the bigger gamete (called egg) or the smaller one (sperm). Gender is a continuous variable with a strongly bimodal distribution.
“Sex” could be interpreted to mean a statement about chromosomes, in which case there are more than two variants.
Or it could be interpreted to be a statement about reproductive potential, in which case the “two sexes” model is a better fit, because there’s no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg. Do intersex conditions break this model? Almost always not: the variations of sex development are variations on the male pattern and the female pattern. Are there exceptionally rare individuals that defy categorisation? Surely there are, but the existence of extreme, rare outliers doesn’t invalidate the model.
Which definition is most useful? In the context of women’s rights, it’s clearly the latter. Women suffer discrimination based on their reproductive biology, not based on their chromosomes. It’s also the model that the vast majority of people use as their everyday working definition of sex.
So I think anyone who wants to claim there are more than two sexes must accept the responsibility to qualify their terminology.
Yes, it could - by people who don't know what the word "sex" means. Sex isn't about chromosomes, it's about gametes, and sex chromosome variants aren't separate sexes. For example, people with Klinefelter Syndrome (XXY) are male. This isn't hard.
https://colinwright.substack.com/p/sex-chromosome-variants-a...
> What’s important to note is that the presence of a Y chromosome, or two, or three, etc., all result in the development of testes and therefore these individuals are biologically male. Likewise, individuals with additional or fewer X chromosomes, in the absence of a Y, all develop ovaries and are therefore biologically female.
Looking at things like testes and ovaries is only one part of things, and not some universal definition scientists accept. The author even admits in the comment some people may have both. We also know that some people make have one of these but appear oppositely on the inside/outside.
> This isn't hard.
From my experience, it is deeply complex.
> Effectively regulating sports divisions based on sex using science is impossible. There are no singular or combinations of objective criteria that can define each sex. Prior attempts to govern sports eligibility based on sex using existing testing methods have failed to provide a workable solution based on chromosome composition, physical exam, etc. In other words: we have no way to consistently differentiate male from female and we have never possessed the ability to do so. Gender and sex are not the same thing. Sex is typically assigned at birth based the appearance on appearance of external genitalia and or chromosomal makeup, whereas gender is socially constructed and may vary from culture to culture and/or change over time. However, sex is difficult to dichotomize into two binary divisions because there are a number of different chromosome compositions consistent with either male or female phenotypes. The phrase “biological sex” is meaningless and is ill-advised.
From https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/shades-of-gray-sex-gend...
https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/File/051_...
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-s...
Most (but not every) step on that continuum are known as diseases of sexual development [0].
These arguments often come up in discussions around trans issues, but its a trick of misdirection, although the DSD community does have a higher incident of gender identity issues (which is what you'd expect), around 5%, 1% that actively changed their gender, the lack of transition within the DSD community seems to suggest DSD and gender dysphoria are not related phenomenon.
The idea that sex is a continuum, based on known disorders, is like saying human bipedalism is a continuum due to people being born with less than 2 full legs, or more than 2 legs (extra toes), or losing them in later life. Although technically correct the observation does not really change the conversation.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disorders_of_sex_development
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29606626/
[edited for clarity] added: the lack of transition within the DSD community
Re intersex; congenital anomalies do not define a category (if the term congenital anomaly offends you, I am using the WHO definition). Just like if we would say "humans have one head" we would be excluding congenital twins, or with "five fingers" we would be excluding polydactyly.
Also: people with Klinefelter Syndrome are male.
And before you say "this is purely hypothetical, these sorts of conditions would never affect the practical sorts of discussions we are having here about olympic games", no, it is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foekje_Dillema.
> the gametes are eggs or sperm ... there is no law of nature that ... there aren't intermediate states for any specific dimension
Sorry for butchering your sentence but wanted to respond very specifically.
Sex, which is by far not exclusive to humans, has one primary purpose and that is sexual reproduction. And quite a lot there is governed by laws of nature. There are 2 sexes and not 1 or 3; 1 means cloning yourself and that does not introduce sufficient variance to fight against environmental change, 3 partners are combinatorially more difficult than 2 to bring together. Why gametes are dimorphic; sexual reproduction only needs exchange of genetic material, but the initial cell needs tons of other organelles to bootstrap. A process where either gamete can bring any of the organelles is exponentially more error prone and difficult to coordinate. Hence the small gamete having the bare bones mobility machinery to bring the genetic material to the heavier gamete.
There is no gamete that's between sperm or egg. Even in super rare species where an individual can change sex (some fish does this) they switch to their sex matching gamete entirely, and don't produce an inbetweener.
We can talk about continuity among secondary manifestations of sex, we can talk about fluidity of gender roles etc. and all would be fair game. But we can't call sex anything other than a discrete, binary category without destroying its scientific, cross-species, cross-millions-of-years, universal definition.
At a bare minimum, you would have to make an allowance for the "third sex" (as you define it) of those who do not produce any gametes. Remember, we are talking about sex in humans, not sex in human gametes. I do not dispute that human gametes are strictly binary; the question is about classifying individuals, for which the binary classification is obviously not absolute, even on the question of gamete production.
It is also incorrect to describe sex as a continuum. On a continuum we can increase or decrease a value. The number line, for example, is a continuum. We can find the integer immediately larger or smaller than a given integer. It would be incoherent to pick a woman and ask who is incrementally more feminine than her or incrementally less. We can't sort people by how male they are. I think "bimodal distribution" is a more apt description than continuous or continuum.
Yes, they are trying to be politically correct, since you are basically forced to talk about it only in a politically correct way. Her statement reads to me like she is not allowed to tell directly what she thinks about it, so needs to describe it in a roundabout way. And that worries me more than the women's weightlifting itself.
Women who take performance enhancing drugs are also disqualified from competing. No one is challenging their identity as a woman, just the fairness of their competing against women without that advantage. It is not a moral prohibition against consuming certain substances, but a practical prohibition because it makes competing on a level playing field impossible.
The same is true of trans atheletes. They have an advantage other women do not. Women's sports were invented precisely for that reason: natal males have an advantage that means most natal females are not competetive against them in most sports.
Imagine a woman born with only one arm complaining that Vanbellinghen had an insurmountable natural advantage in weight lifting. The one armed woman would be correct. There is a Special Olympics where disabled people can compete and it would be incredibly unfair for fully-abled competitors to enter the Special Olympics. Analogously there is an Olympic division where Hubbard could fairly compete (the men's) and another division where Hubbard has an unfair advantage (the women's).
If Hubbard is a woman then Hubbard has a distinct natural advantage. To wit, Hubbard was born and developed physiologically as a man. Hubbard didn't attain this advantage unfairly by using steroids. We don't disqualify any other competitor because of the physiological advantages of their natural bodies. Why should Hubbard be disqualified? The only coherent argument is that Hubbard is not actually a woman and should compete in the men's division. This is a denial of Hubbard's identity.
Not even taking transgenderism into account, I think it is a very difficult problem of how to handle people have been born with intersex characteristics in sports. On the one hand, the argument can be made "how is this different than other natural variation that makes someone good at sports", but on the other hand, since testosterone has such a powerful effect, it means that women sports can only be won by those with a genetic abnormality that causes high testosterone (a couple of years ago all three of the top finishers at an international track and field competition were intersex - I'm blanking on the competition but Caster Semenya was one of them).
No one needs to deny their identity as woman to also question whether, in one example, internal testes gives someone an unfair advantage in women's sports.
Not all women are allowed to participate in powerlifting competitions. For example, people not qualified couldn't. People that are known steroids abusers couldn't. That doesn't make them less women.
> "So why is it still a question whether two decades, from puberty to the age of 35, with the hormonal system of a man also would give an advantage [in competing against women]?
The issue would be the same with a long term steroid user consider how it was worded.
Not quite. Vanbellinghen is asserting that Hubbard should not compete in the women's league. That is different from asserting she should not compete as a woman. She then continues to argue this is not because her identity is not female, but because of biological reasons.
This is coherent because the point of a Women's league (in weight-lifting at least) isn't to segregate women from men, but to give women a place to compete without being crippled by biologically determined dis-advantages.
Things get complicated because the reason for a Women's league existing, and the actual written rules around it do not quite line up. It might even be the case that for Hubbard to compete as women means she could not enter the men's league. That would then probably be a moral mistake in the rules.
One thing I'd like to add is that this is, by definition, a hard problem. The fact is sex and gender exists on a continuum, even if 99% of the time it seems binary. Anyone who says that the "other side" in this situation (regardless of which side they are on) is being idiotic is ignoring a lot of inconveniently difficult truths.