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A comment on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes. Parent comment

Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by igloop on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @04:29PM (#43697994)
Sex is binary - for all species that reproduce sexually, including humans - because there is no intermediate gamete between sperm and egg.

What you're referring to with "intersex" is actually a set of disorders of sex development which affect each sex differently. For example, consider 5-alpha reductase deficiency: a mutation in the gene that encodes the enzyme for converting testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, causing loss of enzymatic activity, may be present in anyone of either sex, but will only impair male sexual development.

None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by aisenik on Tuesday April 15, 2025 @04:51PM (#43698223)
The dramatic moral harms of this Engineer's-Disease-based reasoning on public policy are already visible and are only expected to dramatically accelerate for the foreseeable future. There's no point in engaging an off-topic and inflammatory line of discourse that attempts to paper over this undeniable reality with smug appeals to authority.
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Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by johnnyanmac on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @01:38AM (#43701848)
>None of this is controversial among biologists

Nope, but it is among people who can't tolerate different kind of people.

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Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by Voultapher on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @02:19AM (#43702088)
Wanna guess which books the Nazi's burned first? Yep the ones about transgender research from the Institute for Sexual Research. I'm sure they acted in good faith like they usually did.
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Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by dspillett on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @04:42AM (#43703025)
> None of this is controversial amongst biologists. It's fundamental to understanding sexual reproduction.

True, but nor is it generally controversial amongst the un-indoctronated that sexual reproduction and gender identity are NOT (as claimed a couple of posts above) orthogonal concepts. I don't know about you, but while my biology and mental identity happen to nicely match up, I consider myself to be more than my testicles and can accept that others don't share my cis status.

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Re:Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding... by Kim_Bruning on Wednesday April 16, 2025 @11:28AM (#43706680)
Hold on—we're being a bit taxonomically lazy here, aren't we? You're applying a species-level classification (based on gametes) too rigidly to individual-level variation. If you look at actual developmental outcomes, there's a non-trivial set of cases that don’t map neatly onto a system of just two categories (which is not a lot of categories). Calling all of those 'disorders' assumes the categories are already correct, rather than testing whether they fit what we actually observe.

Ps. The Overton window is such an interesting concept; Imagine arguing our case before the head Eunuch of the Ottoman Court in the 16th century or so.

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