Scientific American Mag Publishes ‘Embarrassing’ Essay Claiming ‘Human Sex Is Not Binary’

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Joshua Klein

A Scientific American essay deemed “embarrassing” and “pseudo-scientific” is facing backlash after insisting human sex is “not binary,” while arguing claims to the contrary “are not about biology but are about trying to restrict who counts as a full human in society.”

The Monday article authored by Agustín Fuentes, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, bears the blunt title, “Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary.” 

In it, Fuentes argues that “ova don’t make a woman, and sperm don’t make a man.”

The piece begins by pointing to those “politicians, pundits and even a few scientists, who maintain that whether our bodies make ova or sperm are all we need to know about sex.” 

“They assert that men and women are defined by their production of these gamete cells, making them a distinct biological binary pair, and that our legal rights and social possibilities should flow from this divide. Men are men. Women are women. Simple,” Fuentes writes.

However, he claims, the notion that human sex “rests on a biological binary of making either sperm or ova” — the concept underlying the previous claims — is, in Fuentes’ words, “bad science.”

According to him, “the production of gametes does not sufficiently describe sex biology in animals, nor is it the definition of a woman or a man.”

He continues:

The animal kingdom does not limit itself to only one biological binary regarding how a species makes gametes. Scientifically speaking, animals with the capacity to produce ova are generally called “female” and sperm producers “male.” While most animal species fall into the “two types of gametes produced by two versions of the reproductive tract” model, many don’t. Some worms produce both. Some fish start producing one kind and then switch to the other, and some switch back and forth throughout their lives. There are even lizards that have done away with one type all together (sic). Among our fellow mammals, which are less freewheeling because of the twin constraints of lactation and live birth, there are varied connections between gametes and body fat, body size, muscles, metabolism, brain function and much more.

While Fuentes states sperm and ova “matter,” he insists that “they are not the entirety of biology and don’t tell us all we need to know about sex, especially human sex.”

Despite admitting that meaningful differences in sex biology exist and that reproductive physiology is an important aspect of animal lives, the 56-year-old anthropologist stresses that “most bodily systems overlap extensively across large (ova) and small (sperm) gamete producers, and the patterns of physiology and behavior in relation to birth and care of offspring are not universal across species.” 

“The bottom line is that while animal gametes can be described as binary (of two distinct kinds), the physiological systems, behaviors and individuals that produce them are not,” he writes, as he cites a group of biologists who recently claimed, “Reliance on strict binary categories of sex fails to accurately capture the diverse and nuanced nature of sex.”

Fuentes then continues to obscure the nature of biological sex:

We know that humans exhibit a range of biological and behavioral patterns related to sex biology that overlap and diverge. Producing ova or sperm does not tell us everything (or even most things) biologically or socially, about an individual’s childcare capacity, homemaking tendencies, sexual attractions, interest in literature, engineering and math capabilities or tendencies towards gossip, violence, compassion, sense of identity, or love of, and competence for, sports. 

“Gametes and gamete production physiology, by themselves, are only a part of the entirety of human lives,” he adds. “Plentiful data and analyses support the assertions that sex is very complex in humans and that binary and simplistic explanations for human sex biology are either wholly incorrect or substantially incomplete.”

He goes on to describe sex, for humans, as “dynamic, biological, cultural and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies and multiple physiological and social processes.”

Fuentes also addresses those who disagree with his definition, opting for a “discriminatory” one instead. 

“So when someone states that ‘An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing’ and argues that legal and social policy should be ‘rooted in properties of bodies,’ they are not really talking about gametes and sex biology,” he writes. 

“They are arguing for a specific political, and discriminatory, definition of what is ‘natural’ and ‘right’ for humans based on a false representation of biology,” he adds.

Furthermore, the biological anthropologist charges, this distortion of science is what lies behind an array of offenses.

“Over the past few centuries this process of misrepresentation of biology was, and still is, used to deny women rights and to justify legal and societal misogyny and inequity, to justify slavery, racialization, racism and to enforce multiple forms of discrimination and bias,” he writes. 

“Today dishonest ascriptions of what biology is are being deployed to restrict women’s bodily autonomy, target LGBTQIA+ individuals broadly and, most recently, attack the rights of transexual and transgender people,” he adds.

The professor concludes by accusing those who view sex as biologically “binary” of ultimately seeking to “restrict” which individuals are to be recognized as “fully human.”

“Given what we know about biology across animals and in humans, efforts to represent human sex as binary based solely on what gametes one produces are not about biology but are about trying to restrict who counts as a full human in society,” he writes.

In response to the “embarrassing” essay, which Fuentes seemed to imply was a prelude to an upcoming book on the subject, many took to social media to ridicule the author’s “unscientific” premise.

Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright described the piece as “so poorly argued I’m embarrassed on his behalf.” 

“I don’t even know if it even qualifies as ‘pseudoscience’ because it’s just so supremely confused. Response incoming,” he wrote.

“Another load of balderdash published in Unscientific American. Where do they dig up these grifters?” wrote British author Jane Harris.

“Is it just me, or is this fellow conflating sex, which is overwhelmingly binary, and gender, which is not?” asked journalist Benjamin Ryan.

“Trust the science,” mocked conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong. “A woman is whatever a person calling themselves a woman wants it to be, apparently.”

“Biology says, ‘Sperm (M) + ovum (F) —> new human,’” tweeted writer A.J. Kay. 

“None of the social, political, or ideological interpretations people try to layer on top of that recipe change it,” she added.

“Your constant dismissal of scientific fact in order to pander to a trans activist agenda has long been embarrassing, and you just get worse and worse,” wrote self-described feminist Democrat Jennifer Gingrich.

“You know very well that sex in humans is binary. You have chosen religious dogma over scientific fact & it’s shameful,” she added.

“This is insane,” wrote reporter Stephen Knight. “This article attempts to argue that by using objective biological criteria to differentiate between the two human sexes (large gametes or small gametes), we are actually just ‘trying to restrict who counts as a full human in society’.”

“Scientific American has lost it,” wrote podcaster Kushal Mehra.

“Is anyone else tired of this BS pseudoscience?” asked nephrologist Brent A. Williams.

There’s only one word to describe this article and it’s “embarrassing,” wrote one Twitter user.

The essay comes as science continues to fall victim to radical attempts to force it to fit with a woke agenda.

In January, Scientific American proposed that the “violence” of football “disproportionately affects Black men,” as it accused the NFL of having “exploited its Black players for decades” and of “persistent anti-Black practices.”

In December, the once-venerated magazine published an essay arguing the fight against obesity is rooted in “racism,” and that black women “consistently experience weightism in addition to sexism and racism,” while the prescribing of “weight loss” has “long since proved to be ineffective.”

A video published by the popular magazine in August, claimed that medicine’s “fixation on the sex binary harms intersex people,” as it charged that “‘normalizing’ infants’ and children’s genital appearance to match a sex assigned in early age isn’t medically necessary and can negatively impact quality of life.”

Last year, in addressing transgender children, a Scientific American piece argued that laws “ban[ning] gender-affirming treatment ignore the wealth of research demonstrating its benefits for trans people’s health.”

Follow Joshua Klein on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.

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