Charles Arthur
1 min readAug 29, 2023

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The Medium interface doesn't really make it feasible to respond in detail to all your points (though quite a few of them are repetitive). Most of them are demonstrably shortsighted (if you think humans were radically different a few thousand years ago and have evolved physically in any substantial way since, you really need to read some textbooks). Perhaps this one though:

>>I think it’s dangerously reductive to overly define people by their reproductive ability>>

We are not "defining people" by their reproductive ability (more accurately: by which of the two gametes their body is configured to produce). We are determining which of the two sexes people are. Beyond that, we aren't defining people at all.

Oh, and this one:

>>it is patently wrong to say that this debate is settled. You can argue one way or the other, but the science isn’t settled (science often isn’t - scientific knowledge improves and changes all the time, that’s what science does) and certainly, biologists aren’t settled on the matter.>>

Apart from the point about "science not being static" forming the opening paragraphs of the article, you will not find any biologists who have the least doubt that humans come in two sexes, immutably. That's why I provided the link to the paper by biologists who explain this fact. You're very welcome to provide a link to a paper by qualified biologists (no social scientists please) who can demonstrate otherwise.

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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.

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