Charles Arthur
1 min readSep 15, 2023

--

>>Basically, you are set on an absolute sex binary>>

Don't blame me, blame evolution for figuring out the best strategy for sexual reproduction a few billion years back.

>>Sure, you can classify the majority of people easily. But when gametes don't work, you move to chromosomes. When chromosomes don't agree with phenotype or hormonal levels or gender identity, then you decide to ignore them and move to gene expression instead>>

I don't do any of that. I say that the essential determinant of your sex is which of the two types of gametes your body is organised to produce. Perhaps you're using "you" to refer to people generally who point out that there are two quite distinct sexes, and how we usually distinguish them. Your complaint then seems to be that biology is multi-layered, and complex while also peeling back to reveal the same at the bottom as the top: just two sexes.

Beyond the existence of the two sexes, I'm not trying to "shove people into a box". People are free to live their lives as they want. It's just sometimes we need to know what sex someone is - for medical treatment, or fairness in sports, for example.

--

--

Charles Arthur
Charles Arthur

Written by Charles Arthur

Tech journalist; author of “Social Warming: how social media polarises us all” and two others. The Guardian’s Technology editor 2005–14. Speaker, moderator.

No responses yet