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Five years ago, I gave a speech comparing sex denialism to creationism. At the time, my partner-in-crime, Colin Wright, and I were near-lone academic voices willing to stand up and say “Biology! We have a problem!” @SwipeWright
Reflecting, back in 2020, on that state of affairs: “[That] there are two sexes, male and female is apparently something that biologists do not think needs to be said. I think they are wrong.”
Since then, biologists with far more authority than an unknown developmental biologist who was trying to work out how nerves navigate over muscles and an unknown evolutionary biologist who was studying what makes insects mad have spoken up. And their voices are much welcomed.
But as I am asked to rebut yet another 20-pager that meticulously documents the known genetic and endocrine interactions involved in building a reproductive system to conclude that there cannot possibly be only two sexes, I am reminded that we still have a long way to go.
This is not a new obfuscation (and that is what it is). Back in 2020, I noted the arguments that, reminiscent of those about an eye so complex we cannot possibly understand its existence without an intelligent God at the helm, developmental biology is soooo complicated. “It is, you can get a PhD in it and everything.”
Such arguments mistake developmental mechanisms - which can be complex, messy loops of positive and negative feedback - for developmental outcomes. Is it complex to build a reproductive system? Yes. Are there more than two sexes? No.
“The internal combustion engine is complicated but cars still fundamentally go forwards, backwards and, unexpectedly and usually unintentionally, sideways.” But still, some biologists are pointing at a car on its roof and arguing they’ve discovered a new direction.
It’s a misdirection. An obfuscation. An attempt to confuse. A weaponisation of their academic scientific understanding in the service of a political ideology. And this is simply a car on its roof.
Link to my transcript of that 2020 speech here: <a target="_blank" href="https://emmahilton.substack.com/p/sex-denialism" color="blue">emmahilton.substack.com/p/sex-denialism</a>
