Princeton University professor Agustín Fuentes wrote an opinion piece for Scientific American contending that it is “bad science” to suggest that human sex is a binary biological concept based on whether an indiviual produces male of female gametes.
“This is bad science. The production of gametes does not sufficiently describe sex biology in animals, nor is it the definition of a woman or a man,” Fuentes wrote. “Given what we know about biology across animals and in humans, efforts to represent human sex as binary based solely on what gametes one produces are not about biology but are about trying to restrict who counts as a full human in society.”
Fuentes claimed that inaccurate representations of biology are being wielded to target women and transgender people.
“So when someone states that ‘An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) it has the function of producing’ and argues that legal and social policy should be ‘rooted in properties of bodies,’ they are not really talking about gametes and sex biology. They are arguing for a specific political, and discriminatory, definition of what is ‘natural’ and ‘right’ for humans based on a false representation of biology,” he wrote.
“Over the past few centuries this process of misrepresentation of biology was, and still is, used to deny women rights and to justify legal and societal misogyny and inequity, to justify slavery, racialization, racism and to enforce multiple forms of discrimination and bias. Today dishonest ascriptions of what biology is are being deployed to restrict women’s bodily autonomy, target LGBTQIA+ individuals broadly and, most recently, attack the rights of transexual and transgender people,” he claimed.
Fuentes, who is an anthropologist, is the author of the book, “Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You” — according to a book description, he characterizes the idea that men and women have different “behavior, desires, and wiring,” as a myth.
“The bottom line is that while animal gametes can be described as binary (of two distinct kinds), the physiological systems, behaviors and individuals that produce them are not,” he wrote in the opinion piece. “For humans, sex is dynamic, biological, cultural and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies and multiple physiological and social processes,” he claimed.
Humility—Can it Exist in Science?www.youtube.com
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