It IS pocket science

Is that a medal in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?

As we see yet another swathe of AQWO’s¹ standing proudly on the podium in the US and, at times, standing proud in the (female) changing rooms, one does not need a degree in biology to figure out that something is amiss (or more accurately, not a miss).

There’s a well-known quote by the biologist Dobzhansky who famously stated that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” This comes from articles written in 1964 and 1973 in which he was criticizing the position that it was God wot dunnit.

Back in the day, some 2 to 3 decades ago, when I enjoyed debating creationists online I used to have all the salient facts to hand. I’m kind of rusty now, but one (amongst many) lines of evidence was the existence of various “design” flaws; stuff that had awkwardly evolved leading to a decidedly non-optimal ‘design’. The most quoted example of this is the the recurrent laryngeal nerve², but there are others.

Evolution is often much misunderstood by (some) non-experts and, to be fair, even amongst experts there are still many questions surrounding things like detailed mechanisms (the “why” and “how” it happens). But the broad picture is well-understood by biologists³.

One thing that is sometimes difficult to figure out is the evolutionary advantage of any given adaptation. The evolution of the sex binary is one of those puzzles. I think I’m right in saying that although many hypotheses have been put forward as to why sex exists at all⁴ none have risen to the level of ‘consensus’.

The simple view of evolution as “survival of the fittest” is potentially misleading. It’s a true statement, but only true with a very specific definition of what fitness means. It’s really to do with reproductive fitness - which underlines the (trivially obvious) point that without reproduction there is no evolution.

So, in mammals, the way this evolutionary process has played out is, crudely speaking, that the male bits go into the female bits and, some time later, you get new males and females born.

In mammals there is no question at all that sex is binary, fixed, and immutable. It does get a bit more interesting when you try to apply a sex binary across the entire animal kingdom, because there are a few interesting exceptions that (sort of) call this strict binary into question⁵. But even in the entire animal kingdom binary is overwhelmingly the reality.

Evolution cannot be decoupled from reproduction. Sex, in humans, cannot be decoupled from its reproductive function. The whole reason why sex exists at all is for the purpose of reproduction.

Given the absolute lunacy of some “research” papers these days (examples below) it’s probably not true to say that nobody has ever argued that sex in (mammalian) non-human societies is “socially constructed”. There will doubtless be some blue-haired weirdo who’s a bit Butler-drunk and has destroyed their neurons with some PoMo JuJu juice who has argued that the patriarchy extends to the mating habits of baboons, but there is literally⁶ no good reason why we should take anything like this seriously.

Trying to understand sex in humans without reference to its reproductive function is like trying to use Viking runes to translate Chinese characters.

Just because stuff goes wrong in biology (all sorts of developmental disorders, diseases, genetic abnormalities, etc) this does not invalidate the fundamental role of reproduction in properly understanding sex in humans. We are, also, more complicated creatures and can rise above (to some extent) any evolutionary impulse that has been hard ‘coded’ in over deep evolutionary time.

Being able to reproduce does not define sex in humans. The deeply stupid arguments about whether someone who has had a hysterectomy is ‘still’ a woman, developed to counter so-called biological essentialist arguments, for example, misunderstand the biological argument completely.

Sex is defined (in practice, but not necessarily in the ‘textbooks’) by a body type constructed around the possibility of reproduction whether or not something messes up this construction or its proper functioning (like a developmental abnormality, for example). In humans there are only two body types around which we are constructed (from conception) and those are male and female.

The distinction drawn via gametes, which is usually taken to be the definition of sex, is merely a very convenient physical marker of the entirety of that developmental difference that begins at conception.

It’s like, from conception, you have two paths. Each path has various diversions and side roads that are trying to go in the same direction (these represent the developmental abnormalities or the variation of secondary sexual characteristics, for example).

But there are no ‘side’ roads that connect with the ‘other’ path. Once you’ve started down the male path, there’s no possible route you can take to jump onto the female path.

We, as humans, also have a pretty damned complicated mind. And that’s where it all gets very interesting. There are a number of individuals who are walking one path who desperately want to be walking the other, or who feel (or believe) themselves to be actually walking the other path.

Biology, in humans, has decreed that we’re fairly weakly sexually dimorphic compared to some other animals. Those differences, however, are still critical. The whole way we ‘construct’ our societies has been driven by those differences. The specific forms that has taken differ from place to place (different societies have developed different ways of accommodating this weaker dimorphism) but each one has developed because of that dimorphism.

This has resulted in behavioural differences (actual or expected) between the 2 sex classes; initially driven by evolution and amplified by the kinds of society that emerged in a particular place. It’s a dynamic interaction between that dimorphism and the kind of societies built around it.

In later times this has led to the idea that being a woman is about what you do, rather than what you are. This kind of approach, championed by academics like Butler, is an understandable response to the grievances of women over the centuries.

To put it crudely, the sexual dimorphism that resulted in a physically stronger male sex has enabled men to do whatever the fuck they like with women. That, bar the necessary details (things like the existence of laws which, to greater or lesser extents, protected women from excesses), is the essence of the matter.

That and the practical realities of childbirth and child rearing.

The attempt to decouple sex from the biology, from its fundamental reproductive function, is understandable in the context of how this dimorphism has played out (in practice) as a way to relegate women in many places.

The notion of gender arose as a way to ‘capture’ the more ‘performative’ elements of membership of a sex class. So, in society X as a woman you might be expected to behave in a certain way or be mostly limited to certain roles. In society Y those expectations and roles might be different.

This leads to the curious possibility that one can change one’s gender simply by crossing a border. The ‘woman’ behaviours in society X might be more in tune with the ‘man’ behaviours in society Y. This is, of course, only a hypothetical, but it does rather call into question this notion of the supposed “innateness” of gender.

We all have a set of characteristics that have resulted from a complex interaction between nature and nurture. Figuring out the relative contribution is impossible. Although there is a reasonable level of correlation between body type and behaviour type (stereotype) these behaviour types are not sufficient to be able to distinguish male and female as a class.

The only way to do that in a fully consistent way is to ask which body type path, from conception, are you on?

We’ve seen quite a substantial rise in the numbers of people, particularly young people, declaring themselves to be something different from the sex class they were conceived into⁷. There are bitter arguments about what has ‘caused’ this⁸. Those on-board with the primacy of ‘gender’ rather than sex eschew the notion that social forces have anything at all to do with this. Despite almost everyone recognizing that many/most aspects of gender are socially constructed, social construction is said to play no role in one’s understanding of one’s own gender from this perspective.

It’s logical bollox like this that scuppers the whole ‘gender’ program. How can something that is (significantly) socially constructed, as gender is according to the various definitions, be innate?

If it isn’t “innate” then, when it comes to the provision of gender services for kids, there can be no such thing as conversion therapy as that term is understood by the gender activists.

Exploratory therapy for those struggling with ‘gender’ issues, is not about figuring out⁹ some ‘innate’ property, it’s about understanding the social dynamics (the social constructions) that have led to the development of a particular gender ‘identity’ in that individual.

It still could be viewed as a kind of ‘conversion’, but the better analogy here would be the attempt to convert someone from one religion to another. Nobody, I hope, would argue that one’s religion is, somehow, an ‘innate’ property.

But if a property is ‘innate’ then it has been developed to be so by the process of evolution. It’s quite remarkable that evolution has managed to cock things up so badly when it comes to the increasing numbers of ‘trans’ individuals. Why would it ‘program’ in such an ‘innate’ property?

Or, if you think it’s all down to whatever Godlet you believe in, you’d have to accept that God buggers it up rather too often. He (or she, or it) is probably tired after a hard day’s creating and sometimes gets it wrong.

We can sometimes see how social forces play out. Doubtless you will have seen various videos in which some female, presumably believing she’s some Hollywood girlboss, hits some bloke. In these videos the fist of reality meets the girlpower of fantasy with predictable results. It’s biological essentialism in action.

I have to say that I do rather enjoy the movie spectacle of some spaghetti-armed female taking down a bunch of hulking special forces guys. It’s fun. But it’s not real. Not even close to being real (it’s not real when a single guy does it either - but also fun). I do kind of wish that these (often obnoxious) girlboss type characters weren’t in every action movie these days, though.

Hollywood is kind of the inverse of what’s happening with sports. In Hollywood we have females ‘invading’ what have been traditionally male spaces (complete with all the associated toxic masculinity). In sports we have males invading what have traditionally been female spaces (on the track and in the changing rooms).

Why are we doing this? The primary driver is really to protect the feelings of trans individuals. The feelings of many women on this issue are, of course, of no import whatsoever. Who cares, it seems, whether some women get a bit upset?

We see this philosophy in the research on male ‘lactation’. Some papers have explicitly told us that the most important thing is to validate the transiness, the feelings of ‘being’ a woman, in the males. Who the fuck cares whether it’s good for the child or not? Gotta ensure that the trans euphoria levels are properly topped up - even if the baby only gets topped up with some weird moob fluid.

Although there are other places, perhaps of more import, where the current rejection of biological reality is having an impact (rape crisis centres or kid’s education, to name two examples) it, like an autogynephile’s boner, sticks out a mile when it comes to women’s sports.

Here’s one example of the stark difference (this is a 400m race I believe - not some 10km race where one might expect a large difference between competitors by the end of it).

The title of this picture should really be

Biology wins again

Critics will doubtless point out that there have been males (Assigned Male at Conception) competing in women’s sports who have lost to females (Assigned Female at Conception). So what? This one single pic demonstrates very clearly the lunacy and why women’s sports, only for AFAC’s, was necessary in the first place.

When it comes to sports we really do need to stop judging people by the content of their character and go back to judging people based on the content of their pockets.

1. Athletes of Questionable Womanhood

2. Showing their typical nerve, creationists have attempted to explain this away as a developmental, rather than evolutionary, balls up

3. Personally I view evolution as a consequence (not a theory) of certain axioms. Where you have heritable variations, you’re going to get evolution. The variations which favour better overall success in the ‘mating game’ (which encompasses the conception and survivability of offspring) are eventually going to dominate - it’s mathematically inevitable.

4. It is not easy to see what the immediate evolutionary advantage in sexual reproduction was (over other, asexual, methods of reproduction)

5. The ‘reasoning’ of some in the trans lobby appears to be along the lines of “Ooh look, the lesser striped Antiguan nematode worm can change sex, therefore sex in humans is not binary”. I really need a footnote within a footnote here. I have no idea whether there is such a thing as this kind of nematode worm, or whether nematode worms can change sex - but you get the point I’m trying to make here. Just insert your own exotic example of an actual non-mammalian biological exception.

6. Literally used in its correct sense here

7. It’s SAC and not SAB. Sex is ‘assigned’ at conception by biology and not at birth. The acronyms should really be AMAC and AFAC (assigned male/female at conception). Your sex is observed at birth (and usually before then with modern technology).

8. My best guess is a mix of social dynamics and the prevalence of endocrine disruptors in the environment.

9. It’s worse than this because any ‘exploratory’ therapy is itself seen as ‘conversion’ therapy even by the various professional bodies. You are, these days, simply supposed to believe whatever your patient tells you when it comes to gender.