
Sex redefined: the idea of two sexes is simplistic - Thevet
http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
======
simon_
"Some researchers now say that as many as 1 person in 100 has some form of
[atypical sex]."

If the "simplistic" male/female binary explains >99% of observations, there
does not seem to be a strong case for describing biological sex as a
"spectrum"...

I am 10,000% behind tolerance and acceptance for people of all genders and
sexes and orientations, and it's very useful to understand how much biological
complexity and variation is possible. But... any honest interpretation of the
data would suggest that "the idea of two sexes" is an highly accurate
approximation for Homo sapiens.

~~~
copsarebastards
1% of the world's 7 billion people[1] is 70 million people. That's a little
less than the population of Congo, a little more than the population of
France. [2]

I'll admit that what you're willing to call a "highly accurate approximation"
is pretty arbitrary. There are some systems where I would call an
approximation with a 1% margin of error a highly accurate approximation. But
it's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error includes 70
million people. I think we can all agree that issues which affect 70 million
people are not negligible.

[1] [http://www.worldometers.info/world-
population/](http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population)

~~~
coldtea
> _But it 's a pointless argument to make when your 1% margin of error
> includes 70 million people._

You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%.
Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

~~~
copsarebastards
> You say that like it's some huge number. 70 million or not, it's still 1%.
> Numbers get their significance relatively, not in themselves.

Relative to what? I can't believe I'm having this conversation.

70 million people is more than the number of people killed in both world wars.
70 million people is more than the population of the UK or Canada. Are you
claiming that the world wars caused negligible deaths, or that the populations
of the UK or Canada are negligible?

You can't just say 1% is a negligible amount without context. Whether 1% is a
negligible margin of error is entirely dependent on context. 1% blood alcohol
will probably kill you, 1% error on your taxes, if intentional, is enough to
put you in jail, 1% error in floating point arithmetic is the difference
between a missile that hits its target and a missile that lands in a civilian
residence. But numbers get their significance relatively, right?

70 million people _is_ a lot of people.

~~~
ajkjk
I can't believe you're having this conversation either. You're correct,
obviously; you've thrown out tons of trivially correct examples to make it
clear to everyone just how right you are, none of which have anything to do
with this. You are of course aware that 1% _out of a population_ has nothing
to do with the concept of a 1% error on your taxes or 1% blood alcohol.
Alcohol does not affect you 1% of the time if you have a 1% BAC.

Everyone here knows that if you make the population arbitrarily large, the 1%
sample becomes large too. But can you really argue that being able to
represent 99% with a binary spectrum isn't a pretty good approximation? What
percentage would be good enough for you? Or are you going to say "99.9% isn't
good enough because 7 million is a lot of people. that's more than died in X'?

~~~
copsarebastards
> I can't believe you're having this conversation either. You're correct,
> obviously; you've thrown out tons of trivially correct examples to make it
> clear to everyone just how right you are, none of which have anything to do
> with this. You are of course aware that 1% out of a population has nothing
> to do with the concept of a 1% error on your taxes or 1% blood alcohol.
> Alcohol does not affect you 1% of the time if you have a 1% BAC.

So you agree then that whether 1% is negligible is based on context?

> Everyone here knows that if you make the population arbitrarily large, the
> 1% sample becomes large too. But can you really argue that being able to
> represent 99% with a binary spectrum isn't a pretty good approximation? What
> percentage would be good enough for you? Or are you going to say "99.9%
> isn't good enough because 7 million is a lot of people. that's more than
> died in X'?

Yes. In case you didn't notice, 7 million people is a lot of people.

~~~
coldtea
> _So you agree then that whether 1% is negligible is based on context?_

Yeah, or as I put it: "Numbers get their significance relatively, not in
themselves".

Whereas you repeatedly stated how 70 million people is a huge number in
itself.

E.g. If I told you there are 70 million people that have blue eyes, is that "a
huge number?" No, it's actually a small number. One would expect blue-eyed
people to be in the 100s of millions or billions.

~~~
copsarebastards
> Whereas you repeatedly stated how 70 million people is a huge number in
> itself.

I haven't claimed that at all. I've said over and over that context indicates
whether it's important.

> Whereas you repeatedly stated how 70 million people is a huge number in
> itself.

No, I've said 70 million people is a lot in terms of medical and social
policy. It would be very possible, for example, for 1% of people to account
for 10% of medical expenses--an amount you would probably care about at tax
time. I think that's a number that matters to almost anyone's political goals.

In contrast, you've been repeatedly stating how 1% is not a large number.
Based on what?

> E.g. If I told you there are 70 million people that have blue eyes, is that
> "a huge number?" No, it's actually a small number. One would expect blue-
> eyed people to be in the 100s of millions or billions.

Science doesn't give a shit about your expectations. "Expectations" are
entirely irrelevant to whether a number is big or little. A number is big or
little depending on what effects it causes and what effects you're trying to
achieve.

You're accusing me of arguing that 70 million is inherently a large number,
but you're arguing that 70 million is inherently a small number, completely
arbitrarily. I'm not even saying 70 million people is a big or small number
inherently, I'm saying that 70 million people is a huge number when the
properties of that group have medical and social implications. 70 million
blue-eyed people isn't a small _or_ large number, it's an irrelevant number,
because whether or not someone's eyes are blue has almost no implication that
I care about. If you understand why it's not a big or small number, but an
irrelevant number, you'll understand my point.

~~~
coldtea
> _Science doesn 't give a shit about your expectations._

Language.

Also, I didn't say it's about "MY" expectations. It's about what the expected
distribution is, which is the whole context that makes something big or small.

 _" Expectations" are entirely irrelevant to whether a number is big or
little._

Actually, it's all about that. Bringing 10,000 times 6 by throwing dice 20,000
times is too big, because the expected outcome is about 1/6 throws to be 6.

------
Torgo
There is a spectrum of how many legs a human is born with. Some people are
born with two, some with none, some one, some with three. Some people are born
with between one and two legs that enable them to walk upright on the side of
a slope. The idea of two legs is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a
wider spectrum than that. What I am getting at is, there is science and then
there is the social context for a scientific fact. Some may be more useful
than others in various contexts, but the pure scientific fact may not be
useful at all, or actually confound your ability to understand things.

~~~
hackuser
> the pure scientific fact may not be useful at all, or actually confound your
> ability to understand things.

That's true in the abstract (undeniably, some scientific fact is confounding
-- I don't need to know about about quantum uncertainty to cook dinner) but I
don't think it applies well to this issue.

This report may confound some people's understanding of sexuality, but to
people who don't fit that conventional understanding, and to their loved ones,
it does the opposite. Imagine a lifetime of being reminded that you don't
belong -- every bathroom sign, do you attend the girls school or the boys,
every form you fill out, every locker room experience, every medical
procedure, etc etc. Addressing that seems much more important and fair than
reducing the confusion that new ideas can bring.

This is the nature of change and progress: Humans naturally are very
egocentric, and can be wholly unaware of others' experiences and perspectives.
When the reality of those experiences is thrust upon us, we often object --
everything seems fine to us, after all, and our old theories explain our
experiences.

Think of the responses to racial and gender discrimination, where many in the
majority insist that it doesn't exist. After all, they haven't experienced it.

------
moomin
This is a fascinating article, and stands on its own merits. Go read it.

The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to justify
intolerance, and time and again the science has caught up with what people
have reported as their own life experience.

~~~
haberman
> The point I'd like to make though is that sometimes we use science to
> justify intolerance

What? How can discovering the natural laws of the universe be a justification
for intolerance?

~~~
bennettfeely
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism)

~~~
haberman
I see that there is a history. But science, by its nature, is descriptive, not
prescriptive. It describes how the world is, not how it ought to be.

Pretend for a second that science discovered convincing/rigorous evidence that
white people were less intelligent genetically than other races. That isn't
justification for intolerance against white people. We get to choose our
values as a society, independently of the reality of the world around us.
Science is a poor justification for intolerance, no matter what arguments
people may attempt to make.

~~~
Jtsummers
People have used what they believe to be true from either actual scientific
evidence or a particularly bizarre/inept interpretation of scientific evidence
to justify their actions. Science is descriptive, but people turn it into a
prescription for how to do or deal with X. Whatever X may be. People read the
scientific report saying that a glass of red wine has some heart health
benefits and they start drinking (or justifying the drinking they already
did). That's at least a benign (assuming they don't go overboard on the
drinking) example. At points in history, and those points are described in the
linked article, people believed numerous things about the various "races".
They based this on scientific or pseudo-scientific findings of the time, that
often fit their pre-conceived notions. They used this to justify their
prescribed solutions. Whether it was slavery, subjugation or genocide.

It is a poor justification for intolerance, and that's part of what the
original poster was pointing out. But just because it's a poor justification
doesn't mean it hasn't been done. People (as a collective) are not inherently
rational or logical. They're easily led by the nose by charismatic speakers
and those skilled in rhetoric. They want to believe they're special or that
someone else is to blame and when someone presents something that helps them
believe that they lap it up. It's happened throughout history, and it'll
continue through the future. The best we can hope for is that our
understanding of the universe and nature casts light on more things so those
that would abuse it have fewer shadows to hide in.

~~~
haberman
> The best we can hope for is that our understanding of the universe and
> nature casts light on more things so those that would abuse it have fewer
> shadows to hide in.

I suppose. But the question still stands: what if there was rigorous evidence
that one race was genetically more intelligent than another? We need to have
an understanding that such data would in no way be justification for
oppression or mistreatment. We get to choose our own values. That needs to be
the message, IMO.

------
lexcorvus
The observation that a characteristic exists on a spectrum, and the
observation that the vast majority of individuals fall on one of two extremes
of that spectrum, are not mutually exclusive.

For the overwhelming majority of organisms, including _Homo sapiens_ , all
proposed indicators of sex (anatomy, hormones, cells, chromosomes) give the
same answer. Reading the final two paragraphs of the paper, it's obvious that
attempts to muddy this naturally clear water are being made for political, not
scientific reasons.

~~~
innguest
Bingo. This is just another way to divide people and create pointless
discussion about a non-issue so we can praise the "tolerant" and chastise
those who see it for the agitprop it is.

FTFA: > So if the law requires that a person is [sic] male or female, should
that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what
should be done if they clash?

Easy, have laws not discriminate by gender. Isn't that the point? No need to
discuss biology on and on to help some agenda.

------
slavik81
Biologists now think that the idea of two sexes is simplistic? This was high
school biology more than a decade ago.

Reality is never as neat as our models of it are. The question is what we do
about it. This reads to me like a call to arms for handling the exceptional
cases better. I could get behind that.

There's no need to throw out the male/female binary for most situations,
though. Exceptions can be handled as exceptions, as long as you know they
exist.

 _" [...] all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they
have to be to not be useful."_ ~ George E. P. Box

------
JonnieCache
The similar magnitudes of intra- and inter-sex differences are the best
argument against sexism.

This seems more true for behaviour than it does for physiology, but findings
like those in the article make it harder to draw even that distinction.

------
Animats
Some of the unusual situations mentioned are birth defects. About 3% of babies
have birth defects.[1]

[1]
[http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects...](http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/features/birthdefects-
keyfindings.html)

~~~
jklinger410
So if you count out birth defects and dimorphisms that have no weight on
"gender" you have an insignificant amount of variance.

Sounds to me like someone is reaching to make science match the way they feel
about gender.

------
protomyth
Ok, a practical question: for those of us required to get a value for "sex"
into a database, what possible values would be appropriate to have?

// and yes, we have to ask as their a whole lot of laws and scholarships that
reporting requires the number

~~~
dragonwriter
IIRC, one database used by a large public-sector healthcare entity that I
encountered used male, female, other, and unknown.

Of course, if you have external requirements to capture sex/gender, they
probably also dictate the valid options. If you have multiple different
external requirements, the options may be different for each and the correct
value for the same individual may be different for different purposes. One
value may not be sufficient.

------
ChikkaChiChi
If this is the case, then the headline and byline are clickbait
oversimplifications in their own right.

If there are people in this world who wish to reject the concept of gender
association with our biological reproductive systems, is there a need to
provide additional classification, rules of governance, services, etc. other
than "Denies classification"?

Otherwise, are we not chasing a long tail of specific situations in which
everything can be deemed intolerant?

------
facepalm
Even when I was a child (35 years ago) it was already common knowledge that
hermaphrodites exist. So this is really not shocking news. It's interesting
that they have new biological insights, but I'd say it's biologically
interesting, not socially. Although it certainly seems wrong to operate babies
to fix them on a gender - but I doubt there was ever a scientific rationale
behind it.

~~~
jonlucc
Children born with ambiguous genitalia were often operated on to form one
gender or the other. While this wasn't for a biological reason, the rationale
was justified by social science. There are issues that arise from children not
identifying with 99% of the population, and physicians and parents sought to
avoid that. It turns out that it might be at least as problematic to choose
"incorrectly" for your child.

------
PinnBrain
One of the predicted outcomes of the Singularity is the removal of sex as a
characteristic. Note that race would be removed as well. A posthuman (of
whatever form) would be free of both sex and race.

~~~
xxxyy
Oh boy, I will maybe get flagkilled, but you are wrong: race, sex, clothing,
and just about anything easily observable is used by humans to precondition
the Bayesian probability of the outcome of any social interaction. I see no
reason to expect that AI will be any different in this matter, perhaps only
more efficient.

~~~
waqf
Your username intrigues me (in the context of a discussion about sex
determination). Are you by any chance a monotreme?

~~~
xxxyy
I'm a cyborg platypus, nice catch. Just two chromosomes is not enough to
express all the variations of an algorithmic gender. And by the way, we also
sometimes have Z's (but that's considered a racial thing, so no asking).

------
stefantalpalaru
Redefining sex because of chimaerism? What is this, Nature Gender Studies?

------
nickff
The 'two-sexes approximation' is boolean, not binary. Boolean involves two
possible values; binary involves an infinite number of possible values,
represented in base-2.[1][2]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary)

note: this is a re-post of a comment made on a child of the OP.

~~~
efuquen
You are contradicted by the very Wikipedia article you posted: "Binary means
composed of two pieces or two parts" You look it up in any dictionary and a
similar definition will be given, which in the context of the article is a
completely correct usage. Binary as a word predates computer science by quite
a bit ...

