# Biological Science Rejects the Sex Binary, and That’s Good for Humanity

**URL:** <https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090>\
**Category:** Conversation\
**Tags:** Science, Society, Article\
**Created:** [May 17, 2022, 5:33pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090 "2022-05-17T17:33:15Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2022, 5:43pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/41 "2022-05-26T17:43:32Z")

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> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> Humans are very good pattern seeking, coming up with boxes and quickly putting things that we see in our boxes in an attempt to make sense of a very messy world.

Yes and it really can be made sense of, exactly despite it’s overall messiness it isn’t actually a perfectly uniformly blending sludge of amorphous shape and colors bleeding into each other with no discernible boundaries or areas of greater and lesser dominane or privelege.

On the contrary most things seem to have some rather distinct and recognizable shape and color to them _that are the very things that make us able to tell them apart._ There are exceptions to probably all of them, but they are exceptions. Something rare enough that through their rarity they in effect prove the rule, as they say.

I totally agree that none of those have to correspond to some sort of essence, or platonic ideal. I don’t think they imply such a thing and I don’t think we need to think of then in terms of essences to make sense of or communicate about them.

But nevertheless that is how the shapes, colors, and what have you are distributed in real objects. Not completely equally on an infinitely finely graded continuum. We can conceive of such spaces, but the real world usually has a more coarse-grained quality to it. I can pretty well tell that there is some boundary where the outer surface of an object lies and where the surrounding air begins. My table doesn’t appear to me to cross blendingly into some misty haze of the surrounding air with no way to tell where air stops and table begins. And it isn’t all possible colors in equal amounts of brightness and intensity.

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> I think a good analogy here is is “colors”. Humans are able to recognize millions of different colors, and we have come up with numerous fancy names and color codes. However, most languages use only a few basic color categories.

Sure, but many things really seem to only have 1 overall color, with patches of surface that are in shade and that aren’t, or have relatively sharp boundaries where 2 or 3 of them meet. So even though the colors all correspond to “positions” somewhere on a continuum, a sort of space of all colors, individual colored objects in our surroundings for the most part are more uniformly colored with some being way more pronounced than others.

So again I think there are pretty good physical explanations for why language has developed the way it has where we have a handful of color categories, despite each of these _in principle_ blend into each other over infinitely many fine gradations. And it seems to me it’s at least partly because language reflects something about the reality we inhabit, about the distributions of attributes we find around us. So the language categories evolved because they were useful, and they were useful because they communicate something real about physical reality, about how the traits those categories describe are probably distributed.

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> I think you are stumbling upon the issues with the idealism of phenetics, as if taxa represent some ‘ideal’ phenetic form

That isn’t my contention at all (I don’t believe there is some sort of ideal version of some organism), and I don’t think that follows from anything I’ve said. I do believe however there are evolutionary and developmental reasons why anatomical and physiological traits of humans are distributed how they are. Not because there is some sort of platonic ideal, though I’m pretty sure it has at least something to do with natural selection.

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> Ergo, we are fish (Sorry, not sorry).

Cladistically, yes. But there are other ways to understand that word than in a cladistic sense, as having a particular set of shared derived characteristics. I also think the word fish as it finds use in everyday speech refers to something physically real, and that unless we are talking in a cladistic sense (which we can, but we have to specify that this is what we mean), we _can_ meaningfully talk about fish as being distinct from human beings. In all sorts of ways. And yes that is despite us knowing that we have passed through literally billions of gradations since our ancestors roamed the oceans. But those ancestors no longer exist, leaving us with a considerable gap in terms of characteristics that make everyone able to easily and reliably tell the difference.

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> There is no ‘ideal’ form or ‘essence’ to what makes a dog a dog or a cat a cat. Similarly true for men and women or male and female.

True, but that doesn’t mean there is _no such thing_ as male or female. The term refers to something real that really does exist I assume we agree, even if we can imagine infinitely many gradations between two “ends” of such a continuum. And the reason the language categories have found use in the first place _is_ probably mostly because of the strongly bimodal distribution of traits they refer to in both our own and so many other species.  
There aren’t infinitely many people in the world, and the different traits are not distributed in equal amounts all over that spectrum. And that probably does reflect something about evolutionary history, natural selection, and development, and the “functions” of the sexes in terms of reproduction. Oh and with that last part, I’m not saying that to argue that _because_ natural selection has probably favored such a distribution, people who seem to fall in between the two major categories are somehow wrong, sick, or defective. I have railed against the naturalistic fallacy before on other topics, and I will do so here too should anyone get confused.

Just to (hopefully) stave off any concern. I am not saying these things to in any way argue that people who really do seem to fall somewhere on the “outside” or “between” the two intuitive categories of the sexes somehow aren’t real, or are mentally insane, or that their life experiences or existence is invalid, or defective, or anything of the sort. It is my view that everyone who feels like they somehow don’t conform neatly to either category in whatever way or degree should have the exact same freedom to be the person they feel they are as everyone else has, in pretty much any imaginable respect. Be that law, marriage, healthcare, etc.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2022, 8:00pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/42 "2022-05-26T20:00:58Z")

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> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> > [@Nesslig20](#):
> >
> > Humans are very good pattern seeking, coming up with boxes and quickly putting things that we see in our boxes in an attempt to make sense of a very messy world.
> 
> Yes and it really can be made sense of, exactly despite it’s overall messiness it isn’t actually a perfectly uniformly blending sludge of amorphous shape and colors bleeding into each other with no discernible boundaries or areas of greater and lesser dominane or privelege.

I don’t think I ever said that, nor anything like that.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> On the contrary most things seem to have some rather distinct and recognizable shape and color to them _that are the very things that make us able to tell them apart._

Sure, but the **ACTUAL** point that I was making was that we are able to find consistent distinctions, even when there are no fundamental distinctions. That’s what the example of colors was for. We see distinctions in colors, treating them as distinct categories, yet visible light is fundamentally a spectrum with no boundaries from one color to the next. **So the fact that humans can recognize distinct categories of a set - even consistently - that does not mean that those distinctions are fundamental.**

I hate to bring up this example, but you are following the same type of reasoning as race realists.  
_“What do you mean race is not biologically real?? It’s just a fact that different groups of humans have distinct differences that allows us to tell them apart. I am able to consistently recognize the race of each individual. Sure, there are exceptions, but exceptions are not the rule.”_

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I totally agree that none of those have to correspond to some sort of essence, or platonic ideal. I don’t think they imply such a thing and I don’t think we need to think of then in terms of essences to make sense of or communicate about them.

Well, that is actually what is implied with the idea that sex is binary. It’s also the issue that is encountered with sex testing in sports, where they attempt to distinguish males from females based on the presence/absence of a (seemingly) biologically ‘essential’ attribute of the ‘ideal’ female/male. First they did nude parades, then y-chromosome, and recently testosterone levels. [Such practices quite frankley ruined the careers of several female athletes (including cisgender)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_verification_in_sports).

Also, in your first post here, you (probably unintentionally) exhibited some essentialism (almost as if you are referencing an ideal female/male form) when you said that most intersex people are still…

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> …obviously physical and almost **prototypical** male or female…

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> > [@Nesslig20](#):
> >
> > I think a good analogy here is is “colors”. Humans are able to recognize millions of different colors, and we have come up with numerous fancy names and color codes. However, most languages use only a few basic color categories.
> 
> Sure, but many things really seem to only have 1 overall color, with patches of surface that are in shade and that aren’t, or have relatively sharp boundaries where 2 or 3 of them meet. So even though the colors all correspond to “positions” somewhere on a continuum, a sort of space of all colors, individual colored objects in our surroundings for the most part are more uniformly colored with some being way more pronounced than others.

Actually, most things don’t have one uniform color. Most reflect light of many wavelengths, but our brain interpret a stream of different wavelengths as one color. Like the “color” white (often not regarded as a true color) is the quintessential example. Perhaps that was what you meant when you said that most things have 1 overall color. However, the point of the analogy was to show that our perception (boundaries between colors) don’t necessarily match the fundamental nature of the thing in question (spectrum). So you citing another perception (uniform color) that doesn’t match the fundamental nature (stream of photons of many different wavelengths) just proves my point even further.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> So again I think there are pretty good physical explanations for why language has developed the way it has where we have a handful of color categories, despite each of these _in principle_ blend into each other over infinitely many fine gradations.

There are also seems to be cultural factors to this, like words for “blue” often don’t show up in languages until the invention of blue pigments (which is rare in nature).

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> And it seems to me it’s at least partly because language reflects something about the reality we inhabit, about the distributions of attributes we find around us.
> 
> So the language categories evolved because they were useful, and they were useful because they communicate something real about physical reality, about how the traits those categories describe are probably distributed.

I don’t think they “communicate something real about physical reality”. Like the boundaries (the original point of the analogy) are NOT fundamentally real - instead they are quirks resulting from a combination of neurological processes and cultural history.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> > [@Nesslig20](#):
> >
> > I think you are stumbling upon the issues with the idealism of phenetics, as if taxa represent some ‘ideal’ phenetic form
> 
> That isn’t my contention at all (I don’t believe there is some sort of ideal version of some organism), and I don’t think that follows from anything I’ve said.

You got it backwards (although probably my fault of not being clear). I meant that that you were incidentally pointing out the problem of phenetics due to its idealism.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I do believe however there are evolutionary and developmental reasons why anatomical and physiological traits of humans are distributed how they are. Not because there is some sort of platonic ideal, though I’m pretty sure it has at least something to do with natural selection.

I disagree with this. I am in more or less agreement with the notion of historical contingency famously argued by Stephen J. Gould. Natural selection doesn’t explain why humans are bipedal as opposed to quadrupedal centaurs. That’s a consequence of historical contingency during evolution.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> > [@Nesslig20](#):
> >
> > Ergo, we are fish (Sorry, not sorry).
> 
> Cladistically, yes. But there are other ways to understand that word than in a cladistic sense, as having a particular set of shared derived characteristics.

Yes, but unlike the cladistic sense, none of them are real.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I also think the word fish as it finds use in everyday speech refers to something physically real, and that unless we are talking in a cladistic sense (which we can, but we have to specify that this is what we mean), we _can_ meaningfully talk about fish as being distinct from human beings.

Again, this goes back on the whole point of my color analogy. Just because humans can have consistent agreement on such catagorisation, that does not mean it is referring to / based on something real. Like ‘fish’ - in the common paraphyletic sense - is not real. If you think it does, than you unintentionally are contending the biological idealism of phenetics.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> And yes that is despite us knowing that we have passed through literally billions of gradations since our ancestors roamed the oceans. But those ancestors no longer exist, leaving us with a considerable gap in terms of characteristics that make everyone able to easily and reliably tell the difference.

You’ve just explained why the perceived distinction is an illusion, which only proves my point even further.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> > [@Nesslig20](#):
> >
> > There is no ‘ideal’ form or ‘essence’ to what makes a dog a dog or a cat a cat. Similarly true for men and women or male and female.
> 
> True, but that doesn’t mean there is _no such thing_ as male or female.

Another thing that I never said.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> The term refers to something real that really does exist I assume we agree,

Just like with the term ‘fish’, it depends on how you are using it.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> There aren’t infinitely many people in the world, and the different traits are not distributed in equal amounts all over that spectrum.

I also never said that.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> And that probably does reflect something about evolutionary history, natural selection, and development, and the “functions” of the sexes in terms of reproduction.

That highly depends on exactly what you are talking about. Like I don’t think you would go as far as adaptationism. And I also would point out that (in addition to the biology) are many aspects that we associate with the sexes, particularly regarding behavior (femininity and masculinity) and societal roles, that are predominantly cultural constructs.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Oh and with that last part, I’m not saying that to argue that _because_ natural selection has probably favored such a distribution, people who seem to fall in between the two major categories are somehow wrong, sick, or defective. I have railed against the naturalistic fallacy before on other topics, and I will do so here too should anyone get confused.

That’s good.

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Just to (hopefully) stave off any concern. I am not saying these things to in any way argue that people who really do seem to fall somewhere on the “outside” or “between” the two intuitive categories of the sexes somehow aren’t real, or are mentally insane, or that their life experiences or existence is invalid, or defective, or anything of the sort. It is my view that everyone who feels like they somehow don’t conform neatly to either category in whatever way or degree should have the exact same freedom to be the person they feel they are as everyone else has, in pretty much any imaginable respect. Be that law, marriage, healthcare, etc.

Nothing more to add.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [May 26, 2022, 11:14pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/43 "2022-05-26T23:14:14Z")

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> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> > [@Rumraket](#):
> >
> > Cladistically, yes. But there are other ways to understand that word than in a cladistic sense, as having a particular set of shared derived characteristics.
> 
> Yes, but unlike the cladistic sense, none of them are real.

Interesting statement. I’d be interested to hear in what sense you think the cladistic sense of the word fish is real.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2022, 11:19am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/44 "2022-05-27T11:19:55Z")

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> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> Interesting statement. I’d be interested to hear in what sense you think the cladistic sense of the word fish is real.

I think I already did.

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> > [@Rumraket](#):
> >
> > Haven’t read the article but I wonder what the 2nd quote is trying to argue. Other species have weird sexes, what does that have to do with Homo sapiens? We aren’t fish, lizards, or horses.
> 
> Correction. We definitely ARE fish!  
> ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/3/3e13f1f4f8f25d219d4feb6a0d16d96e87098322.jpeg)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2022, 12:25pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/45 "2022-05-27T12:25:42Z")

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> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> I think I already did.

That figure merely shows what you think belongs in the clade of fish. It doesn’t explain in what sense you think such a category is real. What do you mean by it being real, where some other category is not? What is the “realness” of it that some other category, for example one that corresponds to the everyday sense of the word, is not?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 28, 2022, 1:56am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/46 "2022-05-28T01:56:32Z")

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I made a [new topic](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121) regarding this, since the answer to this question is rather complex and I also think I have accidentally derailed the conversation away from the original topic.

My apologies about that (to everyone here).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 28, 2022, 11:37pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/47 "2022-05-28T23:37:51Z")

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Continuing form a relevant point brought in the other thread.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/3):
>
> And I think this is relevant to the previous discussion because it raises the issue of whether we can say that a group of entities sharing certain characters is “real” or not. You have implicitly admitted that we can group things by certain characters and that those groups really do refer to something physically real, even if that realness doesn’t exist at a fundamental physical level.

We have agreed (unless I am mistaken) that sex is a spectrum, with male and female representing the opposite ends of the spectrum, and intersex or DSD representing the middle. In this sense, male and female are real. However, if you treat ‘male’ and ‘female’ as ‘distinct (binary) groups’, I would say that they are not real. In this case, these are subjective constructs, similar to what portions of the spectrum of visible light constitutes the color ‘red’ or ‘blue’.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 29, 2022, 11:02pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/48 "2022-05-29T23:02:34Z")

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Continuing from a relevant point brought up in the other topic:

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> My concern is not cladistics. It’s with the idea that the lack of sharp boundaries is supposed to undermine the idea of the “realness” of some group. I am not objecting to the biological system of classification (I’d be happy to agree the clade fish is real), I am arguing for the idea of some sort of physical realness to methods of categorization even despite it having to involve some degree of arbitrariness at the boundaries. No, not at the fundamental level. At the fundamental level everything is just quantum fields or whatever, but things don’t _have_ to be real at the fundamental level to be real, or to matter to us, or to have real-world consequences we have to deal with and can’t just pretend isn’t of any value or consequence and we just have to convince ourselves is some sort of illusion of our perception.

I have not argued that, in order for a group to be ‘real’, it has to be based on the fundamental level of quantum physics. In fact, I gave an example to the contrary (clades aren’t defined at the level of quantum physics, but I argued that they are ‘real’ groups). I also have not claimed that groups have to be ‘real’ in order for it to matter to us, or to have value, or to have real-world consequences. We have lot’s of unreal groups that are very significant to us, like the concept of ‘family’ comes to my mind (I hope I am not causing another spin-off argument about ‘family’ like with ‘fish’).

I am saying is that a group is not ‘real’ if it is not objective; i.e. if it’s arbitrary on how the boundaries are defined. Thus the only thing I disagree with is when you said that **“I am arguing for the idea of some sort of physical realness to methods of categorization even despite it having to involve some degree of arbitrariness at the boundaries.”** I’d like to hear the argument for that, or rather how YOU would define the ‘realness’ of a group. Basically your question to me back at you: **What do you mean by it being real, where some other category is not? What is the “realness” of it that some other category, for example one that corresponds to the everyday sense of the word, is not?**

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> You argued at length by drawing from an analogy using colors that color groups aren’t real, because they can in principle blend into each other over infinitely many gradations. That is the reason you stated for _why_ color groups aren’t real. And so the decision of where one group begins and another ends would have to be totally arbitrary. The idea seems to be that if there is not sharp dividing line in principle then the group isn’t real.

Specifically, the spectrum of colors are - literally - gradients. It’s arbitrary to draw lines within that. That’s how gradients work. You’ve basically argued the same point about how arbitrary it would be to point out the “very first fish” among the fine gradations of numerous ancestors.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> As I argued before, many objects in our surroundings are relatively uniformly colored, and while colors are part of some huge space of _possible_ colors that don’t have obvious or clear boundaries, rarely do we find real things that are perfectly uniformly colored all possible colors in equal amounts.

And I have already addressed the exact same argument (paraphrased) before.  
_Argumentum ad nauseam_.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> The world is in many cases such that while there isn’t a perfectly sharp boundary between things (areas in light and areas in shade), there is a relatively narrow transition zone where one part shifts gradually into another _but much larger_ area in relatively uniform illumination or shade. In such cases the distribution of light lends itself in an intuitive sense to categorization. This part A is “in shade” provided by the trunk of that tree, that part B is not, and the transition zone C between them occupies a much smaller area.
> 
> ![shadowsABC](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/0/0f37b05da951a3752ad90639c4d304a7001f5d31.png)
> 
> The exact dividing line is an arbitrary decision _to a degree_ , but I think any reasonable person would have to admit it would not make sense to put the dividing line right in the middle of the letters A or B, and while the exact spot you pick for a dividing line is arbitrary to a degree, it would be “natural” to put it somewhere in C (which could be even more narrow).

No, I think you accidentally pointed out an example where there are distinct groups.  
Region A is the umbra and C is the penumbra.

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/7/74132efcaa4c8fa2e0291a04424cf5a77fb6b9e7.png)  
These regions are geometrically defined. I mean, sure quantum physics is very fundamental, but (I wouldn’t necessarily, but some would argue that) you can’t get much more fundamental than math. Or just looking at the ‘physical’ shadow itself, the umbra is ‘complete shadow’ and penumbra/antumbra is ‘partially shadow’. This isn’t the case regarding colors. There is no such thing as ‘complete red’ or ‘partially red’. At least, not objectively.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> …Some things are totally ambiguous, some are less so, and some are such that essentially everyone who isn’t mentally ill can agree on the distinctions.

Whoa, wait…hold up!! _Ad hominem_ alert. Also, I don’t think using “mental illness”, not even as a potential reason for why someone wouldn’t agree with you on this, is [very cordial](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism) to say the least.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> So if we return to the case of fish, we can see that even here there is some sense of arbitrariness involved. Even here we have to decide on how far back that clade should go, and we do that by picking characters shared among some collection of organisms and not shared by others. And we can know that this apparent dividing line of characters is a product of fossilization and extinction. That there was, once upon a time, organisms in existence that would have blurred out that dividing line between ancestor and descendant.

Again, I already addressed this with regarding the names we assign to the clades is indeed arbitrary, but clades themselves are not arbitrary.

Basically you are pointing out that, since there are (practically speaking) an infinite number of ancestors, we theoretically could defines a clade based on each of them. Thus, there is nothing special about the particular clade that we may give the name of ‘fish’. That’s just an accident of the surviving species and the extinct fossil species we happened to discover. If we were to find a new fossil species that for all intents and purposes looks like a fish, and it is sister to the fish we knew, we may reassign the name ‘fish’ to a more inclusive (parent) clade. However, let’s say that happens. Guess what? That newly characterized clade that gained the name ‘fish’ is also a real group. As I have pointed out before, it doesn’t matter what we call any clade. Conversely, it doesn’t matter to what clade we assign the word ‘fish’. The clade remains a real group. That is what I mean when I say “in the cladistic sense, fish is a real group”. I am not saying that it is objective give the name ‘fish’ to any clade. So, you are just talking past the point I was making.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> And I think we can say similar things about the categories male and female. Going back to the shadow analogy, I think many more people fall into the A and B parts than into C,

Can you define ‘male’ and ‘female’ geometrically? If not, then you can’t use the shadow analogy here.

> [@Why Humans are Fish \[If that word refers to anything 'real' at all\]](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/why-humans-are-fish-if-that-word-refers-to-anything-real-at-all/15121/5):
>
> and while the distinction would ultimately have to be arbitrary, I think that for purposes where having such categories becomes important (for matters of law, policy, health care and what have you), we’re going to _have_ to decide where to put that line.

I think if you are treating sex as a spectrum, not as distinct groups, would improve matters of law, policy and health care, since that more accurately reflects the reality. So far, when I have seen people (not referring to you here) wanting to see the sexes being treated as distinct categories as a matter of law or policy, most that I have seen is very absurd things. Like people are ridiculing the suggestion that the men’s bathroom should have free tampons available. Like, what’s the issue with that? Let’s say the women’s bathroom is out of order and they can only use the men’s bathroom, so it would still be a good thing for cisgender women too. Or are we afraid that men who don’t get periods are going to abuse these tampons? Or do we have a serious problem with sexes going to the “wrong” bathrooms? Are unisex bathrooms the work of the devil? Are we going full Ned Flanders here?

 ![image](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/2X/f/f549a67fcc881b49220c3149068b11a976b1ae01.jpeg)

But I also have noted more serious instances where establishing sex as distinct categories as a matter of policy has led to great harm. E.g. This below:

[![](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/uploads/peacefulscience/original/3X/c/1/c1d14f654a35fed4f68b4b1f881bf299f7efde5b.jpeg "The problem with sex testing in sports") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiCftTLUzCI)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![RonSewell](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/ronsewell/32/6194_2.png) [@RonSewell](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/RonSewell)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 3:03am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/49 "2022-05-30T03:03:07Z")

</div>

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> I’d like to hear the argument for that, or rather how YOU would define the ‘realness’ of a group.

Formally, are not blurred boundary memberships the domain of fuzzy logic? The groupings are real on some level.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Eddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@Eddie](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Eddie)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 3:55am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/50 "2022-05-30T03:55:26Z")

</div>

> [@T\_aquaticus](#):
>
> “Fish” is a colloquial paraphyletic group, so it shouldn’t be used in biology if you are aiming for accuracy.

And conversely, when one is speaking to everyday people in colloquial language, one should not insist that human beings are “fish,” since the claim will almost always be misunderstood.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 9:06am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/51 "2022-05-30T09:06:22Z")

</div>

> [@Eddie](#):
>
> And conversely, when one is speaking to everyday people in colloquial language, one should not insist that human beings are “fish,” since the claim will almost always be misunderstood.

Not if you explain yourself, and it’s quite useful to acquaint people with that viewpoint. Serves to illustrate evolution and tree-thinking for the public. There’s a reason Neil Shubin chose _Your Inner Fish_ as a title.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Eddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@Eddie](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Eddie)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 9:06am UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/52 "2022-05-30T09:06:39Z")

</div>

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I also think the word fish as it finds use in everyday speech refers to something physically real, and that unless we are talking in a cladistic sense (which we can, but we have to specify that this is what we mean), we _can_ meaningfully talk about fish as being distinct from human beings. In all sorts of ways. And yes that is despite us knowing that we have passed through literally billions of gradations since our ancestors roamed the oceans. But those ancestors no longer exist, leaving us with a considerable gap in terms of characteristics that make everyone able to easily and reliably tell the difference.

Very well expressed.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/53 "2022-05-30T13:44:17Z")

</div>

> [@RonSewell](#):
>
> Formally, are not blurred boundary memberships the domain of fuzzy logic? The groupings are real on some level.

Like…I have already said that my position is that sex is accurately described as a spectrum. The whole contention is that we disagree on the idea that you can objectively define ‘distinct groups with boundaries’ within such situations. So the appeal to fuzzy logic would admit my whole point that one cannot objectively define the boundaries.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/54 "2022-05-30T13:44:18Z")

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> [@Eddie](#):
>
> And conversely, when one is speaking to everyday people in colloquial language, one should not insist that human beings are “fish,” since the claim will almost always be misunderstood.

And (generally) one shouldn’t call a tomato a fruit in everyday situation.  
However, that doesn’t change the fact that a tomato is a fruit.

I wasn’t making the argument that we should use the word ‘fish’ like all situations. However, I second the point that @John_Harshman made, regarding educating people on tree-thinking that goes along way to promote understanding of evolution. There is utility with that, just like there is in teaching why a tomato is indeed a fruit.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nesslig20](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/nesslig20/32/11875_2.png) [@Nesslig20](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Nesslig20)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 1:44pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/55 "2022-05-30T13:44:22Z")

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> [@Eddie](#):
>
> Very well expressed.

And it is very well wrong, particularly this sentence:

> [@Rumraket](#):
>
> I also think the word fish as it finds use in everyday speech refers to something physically real

Paraphyletic groups (such as the common sense of ‘fish’ ) are not real groups. In the other topic, @Rumraket eventually said that he has no problem with cladistics, which implies that he agrees that only monophyletic groups are real.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 3:07pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/56 "2022-05-30T15:07:26Z")

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> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> @Rumraket eventually said that he has no problem with cladistics, which implies that he agrees that only monophyletic groups are real.

I’d just like to point out that it doesn’t actually imply that.

I think one could argue for other groups within biology being real, but I don’t think there is any alternative system of categorization that could apply to all of life in the way nested hierarchies can.

I could specify the groups “all organisms that can fly under their own power”, or “all obligate heterotrophs”.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![John\_Harshman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/john_harshman/32/1121_2.png) [@John\_Harshman](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/John_Harshman)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 3:08pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/57 "2022-05-30T15:08:04Z")

</div>

You should explain why rather than just making the assertion. Clades are real in the sense that they are historical entities, each the descendants of a single ancestral species. (I’d call them real-ish, because that line of descent can include lineage sorting, introgression, and other sorts of fuzziness.) Paraphyletic groups, on the other hand, are arbitrary divisions of the tree, truncated clades with one or more artificial cutoff points.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Rumraket](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/rumraket/32/9328_2.png) [@Rumraket](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Rumraket)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 4:17pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/58 "2022-05-30T16:17:18Z")

</div>

[@moderators](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/groups/moderators) I posted a long reply in this thread but now it seems to have completely gone without posting. Did I post in the wrong thread or something?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cwhenderson](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.peacefulscience.org/cwhenderson/32/72_2.png) [@cwhenderson](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/cwhenderson)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 4:17pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/59 "2022-05-30T16:17:50Z")

</div>

Speaking only for myself, I have not seen the post.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Eddie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f07891/32.png) [@Eddie](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/u/Eddie)\
**Post date:** [May 30, 2022, 4:19pm UTC](https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/biological-science-rejects-the-sex-binary-and-that-s-good-for-humanity/15090/60 "2022-05-30T16:19:01Z")

</div>

> [@Nesslig20](#):
>
> And (generally) one shouldn’t call a tomato a fruit in everyday situation.  
> However, that doesn’t change the fact that a tomato is a fruit.

The parallel is weak. The tomato is a fruit because the formal definition of “fruit” is based on objective natural characteristics (relating to the encasing of seeds), characteristics directly observable to the senses, and the tomato matches those characteristics. The classification of a tomato as a fruit does not depend on a hypothetical historical account of the origin of tomatoes. In contrast, classifying bears as “fish” does not follow from the observable natural characteristics of bears and fish, but is justified entirely on the basis of a hypothetical (however plausible) historical account of the origin of bears. And even then was not a normal locution, pre-cladistics; did you ever hear Darwin or Dobzhansky saying that bears were fish? (Not “descended from fish”, but “fish”?) And even post-cladistics the term “fish,” outside of a small geeky audience, will lead to confusion. [Post corrected by author, to eliminate misapplication of John Harshman’s comment about teleosts.]

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> Not if you explain yourself,

Which explanation will eventually lead to the point that “fish” is not a scientific term. [Post corrected by author, to eliminate misapplication of John Harshman’s comment about teleosts.]

> [@John\_Harshman](#):
>
> There’s a reason Neil Shubin chose _Your Inner Fish_ as a title.

The reason is rhetorical and pedagogical. The seeming absurdity of the notion, to the lay ear, is meant to catch the reader’s interest, so that Shubin can then launch into an exposition of current evolutionary thinking. (Keeping to the theme of “fish,” it is a sort of bait, by which Shubin hopes to reel in his readers.) And such uses of words are fair game, for such purposes. But as they are _meant_ to confuse before they clarify, they are not a means of efficient communication for everyday purposes, where immediate clarity is the goal.

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