- **Etymological Critique:** Examine when “biological male” emerged as a phrase and how its use has changed culturally/politically over time. - **Comparative Analysis:** Contrast “biological male” discourse in conservative vs. progressive media to unpack rhetorical strategies. - **Historical Contextualization:** Show parallels between contemporary uses of “biological male” and historical pseudoscientific race/gender ideologies (e.g., 19th-century phrenology). - **Speculative Scenario (AI/Speculative Fiction):** Imagine a future scenario where gender identity is entirely decoupled from physicality. Analyze how the concept of “biological male” might lose or retain meaning. - Draw connections to previous medical/scientific classifications used to marginalize identities (homosexuality classified as pathology, etc.). - Explore why certain biological characteristics (like chromosomes) became culturally privileged markers of gender. - Critique the selective focus on genetics vs. hormone levels, brain structures, secondary sex characteristics, or lived experience. --- - "Biological sex" implies sex is essential and immutable. - Instead, use "legal sex," "natal sex," "birth sex," or "sex assigned at birth." ([Trans Journalist Association](https://styleguide.transjournalists.org/#biological-sex)) - "Biological family" versus "adoptive family," productive comparison? - What does it say about nonbinary identities? - There's no one single way to assign "biological sex." - Compare the contemporary usage of “biological male” to historical pseudoscientific categories like racial taxonomies, showing ideological parallels (e.g., phrenology, eugenics). - "Throughout the nineteenth century, scientists (Geddes and Thompson included) frequently argued that Africans exhibited less sexual dimorphism than Europeans, characterized by a variety of traits including genital appearance, pelvic structure, and body hair, among others, and were therefore less evolved on a racial level." [^Velocci2024] - How this intersects with women of color being tranvestigated at outsized rate. e.g. Imane Khelif. - How are intersex people affected and have been treated historically? - The term "sex assigned at birth" originated from mid-century medical treatment of intersex infants, emphasizing the the social role of sex determination. (Transphobes are now trying to change it to "sex observed at birth.") - History of how we have defined sex over time. - Bio/Logics: "Interior bio/logics (iB/L) the most biologic are the most interior" - Draw on several examples, especially high-profile ones, of use of "biological male" or "biological women" to clearly illustrate the work it's doing. - e.g. "Biological women"s restroom is meant to exclude trans women from women's restroom by narrowing the definition such that trans women are seen as marked by an essential maleness that cannot be shirked. - The term cisgender is inclusive to intersex individuals. - Lets say we have a woman that happens to be intersex. If she was assigned female at birth, she’s a cisgender woman- but not necessarily a “biological” woman. Referring to people by their biological sex excludes intersex individuals from the conversation. - Elon Musk declaring 'cisgender' a slur. - The word “cis” is another attempt to mark the unmarked, to make a norm be visible. Saying “cis” is a slur is a bit like saying “white” is a slur, or “man” or “heterosexual.” [^Ahmed2021] - What's the alternative? "Mechanical males"? - Dig into the experience of the medical system and the nuances of how it's inaccurate to use biological male / female. - While HRT does not change your sex on a genetic level, it does on a molecular level. - Category error: it assumes “male” and “female” are mutually exclusive natural states and that a person must be one or the other in every aspect at all times. - The sex/gender (nature/nurture) distinction, while seemingly emancipatory and egalitarian, can still lead to discrimination. For example, "male socialization" becomes the new essence. - Janice Raymond, a committed lesbian feminist who believed that even transgender women without testes or penises were still a threat to women-only spaces, it was ultimately their socialization as boys and as young men, she reasoned, that made transgender women “male” – not a biological argument at all. - Defining sex has shifted historically from all of: genital inspection, then gonads, then chromosomes, then even socialization. ([Are trans women 'biologically male'?](https://theconversation.com/are-trans-women-biologically-male-the-answer-is-complicated-244465)) - There's no scientific consensus on how to define sex. Historically, the use of gametes as defining sex was only done by biologists who specifically study the evolution of sexual reproduction. ([Serano, Why are "Gender Critical" Activists So Fond of Gametes?](https://juliaserano.medium.com/why-are-gender-critical-activists-so-fond-of-gametes-b76bdd116331)) - The relatively new definition of sex on gametes is, crucially, caveated by the phrase "all going well," signaling a weakness in their argument. The binary does not hold since producing sperm, producing eggs, and _producing nothing_ are all options. - Related, exclusionary terms: adult human female, natal woman. - Compare the gender critical idea that "women are being erased" with the Great Replacement theory. - "As Sarah Franklin has noted, biology can refer to both a “body of authoritative knowledge (as in the science of reproductive biology) and a set of phenomena” (2001, 303). Biology can thus refer both to studies of living organisms and to the living organisms themselves. This confusion of different senses of biology is evident in some of the wider discourse, which has had the effect of treating “a body of authoritative knowledge” as if corresponds to a set of phenomena." [^Ahmed2021] - Seemingly benign utterances like "Sex is real" or "Sex matters" can be likened to "white lives matter." - "Disorders of sexual development" changed to "differences of sexual development" - Usage of "disorder" indicates how are conceptions of sex are socially constructed. Rather than accepting natural variation, we mark it deviant and stigmatize it. - After X years, every one of a person's cells have developed under HRT. - Saying "biological female" is like saying "chromaticalogical blue" - Treating sex as natural masks and reinforces how the norm operates— that's how norms operate, by not appearing as norms. [^Ahmed2021] - Simone de Beauvoir or Iris Marion Young are feminist philosophers who have shown how we become women through in relation to our bodies. **Biology matters, yes, but biology is always part of our historical situation.** For Beauvoir, “woman is not a fixed reality, but a becoming.” For Beauvoir, the “body is our grasp on the world and an outline for our projects.” What this means is that yes, **Beauvoir does acknowledge the body and its limits. She might even talk about women’s bodies as having such and such qualities, but as she describes “they do not carry their meaning in themselves.” Even matter is made to matter.** We can thus denaturalise the category of “biological sex” and talk about our lived experiences as gendered beings (in fact, we have more, not less, to talk about when we don’t bracket sex as if was outside the social or the cultural domain). We can talk about physical and fragile bodies, aging bodies; and yes, we can still talk about women’s bodies without presuming in advance who is and is not “women.” [^Ahmed2021] - "by treating the idea of two distinct biological sexes not as the product of the sex-gender system, but as before it and beyond it, “gender critical” feminists tighten rather than loosen the hold of that system on our bodies. To breathe in feminism we have to loosen this hold." [^Ahmed2021] - "Saying that sex is “socially constructed” does not mean that biological sex differences do not exist or do not matter. It simply conveys that our definition of sex, and the way that we categorize people into sexes, is determined by society and our assumptions about how the world works." [^Serano2017] - "Sex is multifaceted, variable, and somewhat malleable." - " the very fact that, given the same evidence, people will disagree about the nature of sex (strictly binary versus multifaceted and variable; immutable versus somewhat malleable) demonstrates that sex is socially constructed!" - "during the 1968 Olympics, for instance, the IOC instituted ‘‘scientific’’ sex testing in response to rumors that some Eastern European competitors were trying to win glory for the Communist cause by cheating" [^FaustoSterling2000] - IOC began chromosomal testing in 1968, after female competitors complained that the practice of parading naked in front a board of examiners was degrading. - The idea that women are oppressed solely on their biology is incorrect. Misogyny does not happen contingent on whether someone has small gametes. While some sexism targets female-specific biology, such as slurs for breasts or attempts to regulate women's reproductive systems, many other expressions of sexism targets gendered traits. - This approach also reduces women to their biology and reinforces patriarchal notions of women as "naturally" inferior. - In the vast majority of cases, sex assigned at birth is determined by external genital inspection. [^Lockwood2023] -  - "The history of sex research demonstrates an ongoing coexistence of multiple, conflicting meanings of sex." [^Velocci2024] - The category “sex” has historically been both overly broad and scientifically imprecise, producing endless contradictions and anomalies. Its persistence is driven less by biology and more by societal investment in a binary sex system. Greater specificity in research combined with interdisciplinary collaboration may improve precision—but the deeper issue might require entirely rethinking whether “sex” itself remains scientifically or ethically useful at all. - Diagram of student-provided responses to, "What is sex?" ![[many-definitions-of-sex.png]] - Clarke argues that debates should focus less on disputed definitions of sex and more on fundamental values—equality, autonomy, dignity—and evidence-based reasoning, thereby challenging the reductive, exclusionary use of “biological sex” and providing a stronger conceptual foundation for transgender inclusion and human rights. [^Clarke2022] - "the idea of “biological sex” as distinct from gender identity is not a time-honored scientific or legal category; it is a contested concept from mid-twentieth-century medicine." - 1905: Nettie Stevens and Edmund Beecher Wilson independently discover the XY chromosome-based sex determination system. Previously, sex had largely been defined by genitals or gonads. - 1950s: "sex assigned at birth" arose in context of medical treatment of intersex infants. - 1940s-1960s: By mid-20th century, chromosome-based sex became popularized: the 'molecular agents' that trigger development of gonads and hormones, causing sex differentiation. Deviations from this model were considered "freaks of nature." - 1960s: Robert Stoller coins "gender identity" to describe psychological sex. - 1970: Corbett v. Corbett (UK). Transgender woman April Ashley was seeking to legally marry a man and claimed her true psychological sex was female, arguing that transsexualism was a type of intersex condition. The court disagreed, concluding that sex was fixed at birth. - 1970s: Second-wave feminists argue sex is distinct from gender. U.S. case law invokes Corbett decision in cases involving transgender rights. - 1972: Sexologists John Money and Anke Ehrhardt popularized idea that sex (anatomy, physiology) and gender (identity, expression) are separate categories. [^FaustoSterling2000] - 1980s: "biological sex" appeared in army regulations on the exclusion of LGB people from military service. - 1984: Seventh Circuit opinion held that trans individuals were not covered by sex discrimination because "sex" means only "biological male" or "biological female," and characterized "transsexualism" as unnatural and pathological. - 1990s: Transgender rights advocates appropriate term "sex assigned at birth" to resist labels imposed by psychiactric establishment. - 1994: First U.S. Supreme Court opinion on transgender rights, Farmer v. Brennan, referred to "anatomical" and "biological sex" and labeled trans women who had not completed genital surgery as "biologically male." - 2000s: "sex assigned at birth" begins circulating in legal sources, such as statutes and judicial opinions. - The more we look for a simple physical basis for ‘‘sex,’’ the more it becomes clear that ‘‘sex’’ is not a pure physical category. What bodily signals and functions we define as male or female come already entangled in our ideas about gender. [^FaustoSterling2000] - The **"invert"** in late 19th and early 20th century sexology described individuals whose sexual desires and gender expression were perceived as opposite ("inverted") to their biological sex. - Ulrichs, a German lawyer and early gay rights advocate, was among the first to conceptualize homosexuality as an innate condition. He introduced the idea of "sexual inversion," suggesting that some individuals had a "female soul in a male body" (or vice versa). - Richard von Krafft-Ebing further developed the concept in his influential 1886 work "Psychopathia Sexualis". He used "inversion" to describe what we would now understand as homosexuality and transgender experiences. - Castor Semenya, Imane Khelif - Justin Garson's robust vs. plastic continuum, instead of nature/nurture. - Bostock decision shows gender/sex two sides of same coin - Skrmetti supreme court case - The science of the effects of HRT with respect to sports and fairness - White women portrayed as victims of Black male aggression - In Beavuoir's Second Sex, women are culturally constructed as the Other, reduced to their bodies and, further, to their sex. - We falsely take certain concepts like the definition of “life” or “species” as clear and certain. - Butler resists the strict social/nature divide: the body is real and has constraints, but our understanding is mediated by normative frameworks. - "Materialization": The material body is not a pre-social fact onto which gender is inscribed, rather what counts as "material" and "natural" is itself shaped by discourse. - Sex is not a simple biological fact but part of the same performative process that produces gender norms. - The body always exceeds any attempt to fully explain it with language. (e.g. Describing pain or gender dysphoria is not fully captured by language.) - The aim for Butler is to expand the realm of socially "livable" lives by challenging the norms that render some people abject or invisible. - “gender artifactualism” describes “the tendency to conceptualize and depict gender as being primarily or entirely a cultural artifact.”[^Serano2013] - I created the term to make a distinction between the idea that gender is “socially constructed” versus the idea that gender is “just a construct” - I am most certainly a social constructionist. Gender artifactualists, on the other hand, are typically not content to merely discuss the ways in which gender may be socially constructed, but rather they discount or purposefully ignore the possibility that biology and biological variation also play a role in constraining and shaping our genders. Sometimes, even the most nuanced and carefully qualified suggestions that biology may have some influence on gendered behaviors or desires will garner accusations of “essentialism” in gender artifactualist circles - The homeostatic property cluster (HPC) theory: Richard Boyd proposes that natural kinds are defined by clusters of properties maintained by homeostatic mechanisms, rather than by essential, fixed characteristics. - Influential in discussions about biological species, where it provides a way to account for the fluidity and diversity of phenotypes within a species. - The Trump admin has declared race is a biological reality and not a social construct, legitimizing race science - Gramsci terms "common sense" for set of hegemonic beliefs. - "Accordingly hegemony, as Gramsci theorized it and as Hall interprets it, is the term for a multilayered system by which a dominant group achieves power not through coercion but through the production of an interlocking system of ideas which persuades people of the rightness of any given set of often contradictory ideas and perspectives. Common sense is the term Gramsci uses for this set of beliefs that are persuasive precisely because they do not present themselves as ideology or try to win consent."[^Halberstam2011] [^Ahmed2021]: Sara Ahmed, “Gender Critical = Gender Conservative,” feministkilljoys, October 31, 2021, https://feministkilljoys.com/2021/10/31/gender-critical-gender-conservative/. [^Lockwood2023]: Lockwood, Tom. 2023. “What Is Feminism? Part One: Gametes.” Synthetic TERF. October 21, 2023. https://syntheticterf.com/feminism/gametes/2023/10/22/what-is-feminism-part-one-gametes. [^Velocci2024]: Velocci, Beans. 2024. “The History of Sex Research: Is ‘Sex’ a Useful Category?” _Cell_ 187 (6): 1343–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2024.02.001. [^Serano2017]: Serano, Julia. 2017. “Transgender People and ‘Biological Sex’ Myths - Julia Serano - Medium.” Medium. July 17, 2017. https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-people-and-biological-sex-myths-c2a9bcdb4f4a. [^Clarke2022]: Clarke, Jessica. 2022. “Sex Assigned at Birth.” Columbia Law Review. November 2022. https://www.columbialawreview.org/content/sex-assigned-at-birth/. [^FaustoSterling2000]: Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing The Body: Gender Politics And The Construction of Sexuality, First (New York: Basic books, 2000). [^Serano2013]:Serano, Julia. 2013. “What Is Gender Artifactualism?” https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2013/11/what-is-gender-artifactualism.html. [^Halberstam2011]:Jack Halberstam, “Introduction; The Queer Art of Failure,” in _The Queer Art of Failure_ (Durham London: Duke University Press, 2011). ‌