Determining One’s Sex Requires Requires One to Consider Anisogamy

Paul Griffith explains in a letter to Nature:

Nature's recent Editorial and collection of opinion articles on sex and gender in research would have benefited from greater attention to evolutionary biology and the definition of sex by anisogamy, or differing gamete size. In the words of evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden in her book Evolution's Rainbow (Univ. California Press, 2013): "To a biologist, "male" means making small gametes, and "female" means making large gametes. Period!"

This definition avoids the 'sex binary' that concerns so many people. Some organisms produce both male and female gametes, and others produce different gametes at distinct life stages or under various conditions. Organisms can be male, female, both at the same time, male at one time and female at another, or have no clear and unambiguous sex. The definition also implies that there are no essential or universal male or female phenotypes: male pipefish gestate their embryos and female jacana birds fight over mates, for example.

Anisogamy is at the heart of the modern theory of why sexes evolved and why they show such extraordinary diversity. Neglecting it makes the varied phenotypic expression of sex, and its interaction with gender in humans, seem unmanageably complex. As with so much of biology, sex makes better sense when viewed in the light of evolution.

Nature 631, 275 (2024)

doi: https//doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02248-1

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Nurse Investigated by FBI for Exposing Fraudulent Transgender Program

Vanessa Sivadge, a nurse at Texas Children's Hospital admitted that she was the anonymous whistleblower who helped (along with Dr. Eithan Haim) expose a secret transgender medicine program taking place at the hospital. She writes:

I knew what Dr. Haim reported to be true because I worked in the endocrine clinic, and had first-hand knowledge of patients being prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones despite the hospital repeatedly and publicly denying the program's existence.

Texas Children's Hospital is using Medicaid to cover transgender treatments and cross-sex hormones. I know this because I saw it. Medicaid specifically prohibits any coverage of hormones related to transgender medicine, and yet the hospital for years has continued to prescribe and use hormonal therapies for transgender Medicaid patients. In addition, I saw examples of doctors who intentionally misdiagnosed patients for the purpose of justifying cross-sex hormones for transgender patients to get around state law.

Soon after I anonymously came forward to corroborate Dr. Haim, two agents from the FBI came to my home and threatened me. They and told me they were aware of my strong views against "gender-affirming care” and asked to recruit my help in order to expose Dr. Haim. They said they could make my life difficult, and said I was not safe unless I helped them. I felt scared, intimidated, and overwhelmed.

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J.K. Rowling Explains Why She Stood Up for Women

Why did J.K. Rowling take a strong stand in support of women, exposing herself to "a tsunami of death and rape threats"? See the following excerpt from J.K. Rowling's new book, The Women Who Wouldn’t Wheesht:

The thing is, those appalled by my position often fail to grasp how truly despicable I find theirs. I’ve watched “no debate” become the slogan of those who once posed as defenders of free speech. I’ve witnessed supposedly progressive men arguing that women don’t exist as an observable biological class and don’t deserve biology-based rights. I’ve listened as certain female celebrities insist that there isn’t the slightest risk to women and girls in allowing any man who self-identifies as a woman to enter single-sex spaces reserved for women, including changing rooms, bathrooms or rape shelters. . . . I’ve asked people who consider themselves socialists and egalitarians what might be the practical consequences of erasing easily understood words like “woman” and “mother”, and replacing them with “cervix-haver”, “menstruator” and “birthing parent”, especially for those for whom English is a second language, or women whose understanding of their own bodies is limited. They seem confused and irritated by this question. Better that a hundred women who aren’t up to speed with the latest gender jargon miss public health information than that one trans-identified individual feels invalidated, seems to be the view.

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