I have recently discovered your Substack column and like it a lot. The articles are very good, I have to say, though I am a competitor, with a Substack column with a similar mission (BioBuzz).
With respect to this particular piece, I agree with you that the key issue is the inherent "fuzziness" of many terms in biology, including what seem very straightforward ones like "man" and "woman". We use words to define categories of objects and actions, assuming that they are perfectly clear, only to discover that reality is more complex and messier. (Two of my articles have dealt with just this issue, concerning the words "gene" and "species" https://adamwilkins.substack.com/p/what-is-a-species?r=n0hre , https://adamwilkins.substack.com/p/how-the-gene-gained-then-lost-its?r=n0hre .)
In this case, the problem is that anatomy (genitalia) and genetics (XY vs XX chromosomes), on the one side, do not always match up with psychology (whether the individual "feels" like a man or a woman). Hence, the distinction between sex and "gender", the latter concerning the feelings of the individual. (When I was growing up, the terms were considered synonyms.) Perhaps 95-98% of the time, the two are concordant but in the remaining cases, they are not.
There is no simple or universal solution to the general terminological problem (words that are too simple for the realities). We will always need to make sure that prescribed actions (such as rules governing sporting events) honor the real-life complexities that exist rather than the qualities implied by the words. For sporting competitions, size and strength of the competitors are the relevant variables, not their chromosomes or genitalia (as indeed you imply at the end.)
I cannot believe how many people in the comments here...do not seem to realize the first part of the essay was tongue in cheek. What has happened to reading skills?
Yes, it was! The point was that you can confuse any issue and keep any argument going if you reach for the one-offs, ambiguities, and rare exceptions that always occur in biology. It's interesting, isn't it, that even the simplest definition of a 'gamete' — that appears in every introductory biology book — doesn't quite fit the human female condition. I think that's interesting… and telling. Of course, I'm confident that I understand the difference between an adult male and adult female human being… But I also understand there are some unusual physiological conditions that are hard to shoehorn into the specific definitions without entering the labyrinthine rabbit holes of molecular biology... and, even then, the arguments will be ultimately unresolvable as long as people want to keep arguing. Note that as I knew it would, the boxing debate has shifted from genetics to testosterone levels. After that, it may end up moving to the relative levels of free- versus bound testosterone, and then to the particular ratios of the two isomers of dihydrotestosterone and their relative affinities for the two types of androgen receptors, and so on. In the meantime, people could make some common sense, practical decisions about athletics. What do you think? In any event, thanks for your comment.
Why are we arguing over what a woman is, and not what a man is?
Because men fucking rule, and women fucking don't.
The reason why men fucking rule and women fucking don't is because there will always be women who want to have babies, but men have to be bribed into doing their jobs, otherwise they desert or disrupt.
When you reach a certain age, you no longer care, or have time to indulge bullshit, which this is.
> "Everyone knows what a man is, what a woman is. ..."
Sadly, many people don't -- most academic feminists in particular. Apropos of which and ICYMI, see this article by Canadian anthropologist professor Kathleen Lowrey:
"Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner: Judith Butler didn’t invent gender ideology, anthropologists did."
Lowrey: "Even earlier, however, is Strathern’s 1981 article 'Culture in a netbag: the manufacture of a subdiscipline in anthropology'. 'Culture in a netbag' allows us to spot in the wild a series of now-thoroughly domesticated assertions, chief among them that there is 'No such thing as woman' (the header to the concluding portion of Strathern’s essay)."
"woman" is then any one of some 4 billion different feminine genders with no one common element. In notable contradiction to the standard "adult human female" with the common element being "produces ova" -- even if that excludes some third of all of the human XXers on the planet ...
Of course, that was my point. The article is written tongue-in-cheek to point out that misunderstanding the underlying information can obfuscate even a simple point.
LoL. I think you're about at the level of the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes: boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas. Which is largely why Khelif and "her" ilk are in women's sports in the first place ...
But you might note that Emma Hilton has, somewhat belatedly, more or less endorsed the standard definitions for the sexes, "female" in particular:
Hilton: "The definition of female is: of or denoting the sex that can produce large gametes. This not a matter of *observation*, this is a matter of *definition*."
Many people recognize that, and there are countless side conversations now to warn others to not engage with you or pay attention on Substack but I had the poor luck to have you respond to me.
Your nonsensical Alice-in-Wonderland conversations confuse response-Naive people into thinking you have a point, particularly the fairly offensive idea that a woman not menstruating is not female, the repetition of which illustrates the term “ad nauseam”.
Kindergarten level responses to postings are about being insistent on nonsense, and freshmen level dictionary definition arguments back-and-forth. Citations are not to prove an argument, they are manifestation of failure to communicate an idea and akin to a five-year-old stomping their little feet, holding their breath until they turn purple, or someone on QAnon SHRIEKING IN ALL CAPS.
I’d like to ask that you don’t respond to me in the future.
I used to think you were funny in a cat-chasing-tail way but you’re just sad in a “Americas Funniest Home Videos” way when a heavy drunk person reaches across the bow of a drifting boat to grab a pier, the boat maintains momentum, the drunk predictably falls in the water, the pants get caught on a cleat and get pulled off along with a wooden leg, revealing hideous underwear, everyone is laughing their ass off, the drunk crawls through mud to the shore and doesn’t realize why everyone is paralyzed with laughter as he hunts for the prosthetic.
Go ahead - call names (sophisticated), cite an alternate definition of troll, show me a website that shows “Americas Funniest Home Videos” is a Rashom-like meditation on comedy/tragedy viewpoint.
And above all, tell readers that a woman who isn’t menstruating isn’t female because you read it on the internet and A LOT OF PEOPLES AGREE WITH YOU.
> "... the fairly offensive idea that a woman not menstruating is not female ..."
Only "offensive" because too many people, mostly women, have turned the sexes into "immutable identities 🙄" based on some "mythic essences". Part and parcel of why there are so many dysphoric children.
But as Stephen Fry put it, "Well, so fucking what?"
Do let me, do let us all know when you manage to get your head out of your arse and table a more authoritative set of definitions for the sexes than those in the Oxford Dictionary of Biology, in the Glossary of that Molecular Human Reproduction article, and in Hilton's tweet which reflects and endorses the other two.
First, looking at oocytes and their paths is interesting, but they aren’t human beings. They’re at most half of what might become a human. And they don’t get a vote on whether that human is going to be a female or a male.
Second, discussions about birds and bees are irrelevant to the subject. Birds and bees don’t compete in our Olympics.
Third, if a oocyte that has left the ovary and is not yet in a Fallopian tube is physically “outside the body,” this leads to bizarreness of high order. Is there a pathway the egg can take to see daylight that doesn’t involve entering a body cavity? If not, it is, by definition within the woman’s body. Technically, the space it’s occupying is called the pelvis, which is properly enclosed within the body.
The better argument for something being exterior to the body would be the GI tract lumen. It’s even open at both ends.
Fourth, as for the requirements of what a woman is, the statement “…that it flummoxed a Harvard-educated Supreme Court nominee…” is likewise irrelevant. How she got into law school is up for debate. Past that, I doubt she’d know a T cell from a sewing machine, but both are well understood by normal people who have looked at both.
The problem is made unnecessarily complicated by people who are trying desperately to pretend that the emperor has made frequent visits to Savile Row. He hasn’t. Statistically normal people are either XX or XY and their genitalia reflect these differences in statistically normal ways. There are exceptions, but exceptions need not complicate well-understood and generally accepted knowledge. “Lia” Thomas is a much a woman as a Volkswagen is an apartment building.
The way to solve the problem in athletics is for there to be more than two categories. Male, female, and as many others as the IOC wants to have. It’s not OK to insist on putting square pegs in round holes.
> "Second, discussions about birds and bees are irrelevant to the subject ..."
I would strongly disagree with that. Seems that both issues -- Khelif and transgenderism -- turn on what are the definitions for the sexes, on what are the criteria to qualify as male and female -- the birds and the bees writ large. The IOC and their ilk have clearly not progressed past the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And too many on the other side aren't much better in making the criteria XY versus XX. Phenotype versus genotype.
But both are totally clueless that the biological definitions for the sexes stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
> "Third, if a oocyte that has left the ovary and is not yet in a Fallopian tube is physically 'outside the body,' this ... "
Kind of like the "academic joke wherein topologists can't tell the difference between a coffee cup with a handle and a doughnut" 😉 🙂
All good points, indeed. My only thought to the contrary would be that the egg is considered to be outside of the body once it's in the fallopian tube. Your analogy to the G.I. tract is accurate. But it also applies to the reproductive system and others. That's why, for instance, the pancreas is considered an exocrine and an endocrine organ. Some of its secretions enter a duct system that, eventually, enters the G.I. tract. But once those fluids are within the duct system they are considered outside the body (i.e., exocrine secretions).
Of course, the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek to make the point that even simple issues can be confused if one selectively chooses bits of information and fails to understand the ambiguities inherent in biological terminology.
“My only thought to the contrary would be that the egg is considered to be outside of the body once it's in the fallopian tube.” Not by me. By extension, your argument implies that everything between the fimbria and the labia is also outside the body. This makes the implicit assumption that, so long as you don’t have to make an incision in the skin to reach something, it’s external. That would imply that something like rape is a misnomer since it involves penetration. Instead, it’s simply assault and battery? Try selling that one to a jury.
Full disclosure: I’m a retired surgeon whose parents were criminal lawyers in New Orleans back in the day. I know what it would have been like to have been raised by wolves.
My favourite comment on this topic came from Kellie-Jay Keen who stated that she is not a vet, but she knows what a dog is. As do many others who have competed in dog shows, where you can't enter in any old category, but need to enter your dog in his/her correct breed and sex class.
Men claiming to be women are still men and cheating your way to sporting win is still cheating, even if you don't win because you have taken the place of an actual woman who has now missed out on her chance to compete.
Earnest question: do you think that looking "like a woman" to the IOC (that is, physically feminine) is a good benchmark for being counted as female for the purposes of sport? you are aware trans people often pass? I am assuming you don't want medically transitioned trans men in women's boxing either. Is the only way to become a man being born a boy? "I just know by looking" seems to me like a uniquely awful strategy here. Especially as Imane Kheilf is not transgender, so clearly people do not, in fact, know a dog when they see it.
I don't think that how one looks is necessarily relevant at all to which sex you are. Neither of these cheating boxers are trans; they are men born with a DSD. They did not make this as a choice; they were born with a medical condition. They went through male puberty and have the universal male advantaged physiology of their sex. However, I think that most people watching this would not pick the Algerian as the woman of their dreams: https://x.com/salltweets/status/1820554001487905250?s=07
The IOC has stated that they have an "F" designation on their passports, and that this is "proof" they are women. Which, given the numbers of countries who now allow sex self-ID and even changing a birth certificate to match a chosen identity, makes this a poor marker for categorization in an embodied activity, which is what sports are.
Identities don't play sports, bodies do. You can be inclusive of men's feelings or fair to women.
We need the Crufts judges to be included in the Olympics, to descend on athletes with measuring tapes, to check circumference of heads, lengths of arms, to probe for testicles and hairy bum cracks 😃 Or, just do a cheek swab.
The proposed solution - open-female category - is not a solution. Nobody will watch that category, the category will not be financed, and it will die. Personally, I am OK with that outcome. Not everyone gets to enjoy to be a star athlete, and that is fine. People with intersex conditions will not get to compete, that is sad for them, but life is generally not fair.
The author's proposal is not a compromise or a new path, like he wants it to look like. It is functionally equivalent to the ban on intersex people in women's sports. Most people agree with that approach, and there is no need for dressing it up as something else
As others have previously noted... No-one will enter it, because A they wouldn't be beating women, and B it wouldn't be asserting their femaleness. Males are entering women's sports to win. Without a pretty much assured Win, their motivation just wouldn't be there.
If it helps, I very much would. Not anywhere near the Olympic level (of course) but as a female person who has been on low-dose t and wants top surgery that would be perfect.
They’ll either enter it or they won’t. That’s their call. But you don’t penalize statistically normal people for the necessarily hollow victories of a few.
Is it OK for a 180 pound fighter to identify as 135 pounds and compete with them? Why not?
I think the irony of not coming to a conclusion may have been missed, but I'm not sure the thinking-through was very rational either. I'm drawn to several solutions proposing the Y chromosome as the defining factor, which you contemplate, but then deny by saying there are "XY females". From a pure analytic-philosophical position, this is begging the question, since "female" is what you're trying to define, so unless you unpack the phrase, it's moot. On the other hand, had you unpacked it, I think you'd hit the same kind of impasse later (because your essential point about definitions is correct).
It's true of all definitions if we get really deep, although unfortunately you chose two that are easier to be clear about - age and weight - since if we know when someone was born, defining their age is merely a matter of measurement resolution, and similarly for someone's weight. So in those kinds of situations, it is only being pedantic about endless division into finer resolution that ought to cause any problem (i.e. nobody is ever exactly 25, because when exactly were they born and when exactly is the present moment?) - these are a little like Zeno's Paradox, in which nothing can ever move, yet somehow we all seem to get past that illusion and commute anyway.
I agree with you. The first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek. The point being that information can be used to confuse any issue including — as you note — someone's age. However, all biological categories are somewhat ambiguous around the edges. For instance, there are 20 or more active definitions of the term "species" in the literature. Biologists can't even agree on how to define being "alive." In any event, the upshot is that we can decide on issues like competitive categories without wallowing in the nuances of physiology or philosophy. Those are two different issues, I think. Thanks a lot for the note!
I always enjoy your articles, but this one was a little disappointing. I truly don't understand if this boxer is a man or a woman. How can it be so hard to figure out? Half the people say it's a man, half say it's a woman. Both can't be right. Is this person intersex? Can this boxer get pregnant? No one has given a clear explanation and I was hoping to get one here. As far as the fairness argument, half the country thinks it's OK for a biological man to claim to be a woman and compete against or invade women's spaces. So we can't just hope they do the right thing.
Sorry this one disappointed you. I appreciate you being candid, though. As far as I understand, this person is intersex, but I don't think anyone knows the whole story. The main point of the piece was that we can make practical decisions without getting lost in the unending philosophical debates about every issue. Beeswax (below) has provided a link to an article on DSDs that you may find informative. Thanks for the note!
I was only disappointed because I was hoping for an answer. But I get the point of your article wasn't to answer the question, but to promote common sense. It's just frustrating that we no longer have THE truth. Truth now seems to be subjective. I still very much enjoy reading everything you write! Keep it up!
Here's an article that discusses the general topic of DSDs, although the specifics with regard to the individual boxers' status is necessarily vague. This is because the public has not been given all the details of the exams used to disqualify/qualify them.
Good question -- part of the answer is that the biology is a bit complicated which too many scientific illiterates, grifters, and political opportunists are further obscuring for fun and profit.
But the problem is that Khelif, the boxer in question "looks" like a female -- "she" probably has the genitalia typical of females -- but she probably has the chromosomes typical of a male, i.e., XY. She probably has complete androgen insensitivity:
She is, biologically speaking, phenotypically female but geneotypically male. However, by the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- which far too many, including those who should know better, are rather pigheadedly clueless about -- she is neither male nor female, she is simply sexless, neither male nor female.
Those definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
For example, see the Glossary definitions in this article (2014), by Parker [FRS] and Lehtonen, in the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (MHR) — titled, “Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes”:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
Rather disconcerting that so many so-called biologists and philosophers, including Frederick, are "unwilling" to accept such definitions -- particularly since they're foundational to all of biology.
Well, I agree with most of what you said, as I usually do. I do hope you realize that the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek to point out that virtually any issue can be obfuscated by throwing around information. Where we disagree, and always have, is that I see more ambiguity in the edge cases then do you. Of course, as always, I appreciate your vigorous presentation!
Thanks Frederick. And for the clarifying information about oogenesis -- I found the Wikipedia article somewhat vague on the topic though they suggest/claim, as do you, that the final stage in the evolution of an ovum is actually precipitated by a spermatozoa:
But while I appreciate your leavening with a bit of humour, I find this comment of yours untenable and "problematic":
Frederick: "... it does mean that all definitions have what are called fuzzy boundaries."
Where, exactly, is the "fuzzy boundary" in the definition of "teenager" as someone who is 13 to 19? Nor do I find the standard biological definitions for the sexes at all "fuzzy" -- if some organism produces (present tense) either of two types of gametes then it is male or female, and if it produces neither then it is sexless. The problem is that too many so-called biologists and philosophers -- Wright and Byrne in particular -- seem congenitally incapable of even whispering the word "sexless".
Though some have argued that the "present tense (is) doing a lot of work" in those standard definitions. But it's an important and essential distinction. You might take a gander at my post that uses an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Mechanisms in Science to defend that distinction -- "produces gametes" is a mechanism that is ubiquitous in biology; it's a common reference point across literally millions of species:
Evading that point is largely how the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell winds up asking, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" Something you may wish to weigh-in on yourself -- see my open letter to them for details:
Not sure what your point is as I certainly wasn't arguing that sports are unimportant. My point -- Frederick's point if I'm not mistaken -- is generally that the sexes -- at least the standard biological definitions -- are not terribly useful for adjudicating access thereto.
If sports categories matter, and there's a good argument for saying they do, then what to do with someone like Imene Khelif, who was born with female genitalia, registered female on her birth certificate, raised as a girl, competed as a girl, female on passport. What testing should be mandated for, I guess all children, or infants, and when? I suppose there are tests that can be made at birth, but I don't know if they are inexpensive, and universally available in all locations on our planet, including rural areas with next to no medical facilities. I think these are important aspects that are worth bringing into this discussion.
She might be an XY with 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency. Babies don’t have male genitalia but they don’t have ovaries or a uterus either. But my understanding is that they have male strength as adults, eg Caster Semenya.
You are correct. All of the issues that you've raised are very important. In the relatively less important area of athletic categories, I think that some practical decisions could be made without being derailed by the more abstract, philosophical, granular issues of physiology. I would suggest that the fighter in question should be fighting an open-female division — as I said in the essay — rather than in the standard women's division. Thanks very much for your thoughtful comment.
His comments were so out of left field Frederick that if I hadn't watched them on video I would have had a hard time believing a scientist of his notoriety would dare publicly speak such gibberish. : / But these are amazing times!
But maybe Frederick could have quoted physicist Sean Carroll's touting of Scientific American's claim that sex is a spectrum? 😉🙂
Though Carroll had a point about "male" and "female" being "terms of art" in biology -- which got Colin Wright's knickers in a twist. Still true though. The problem there being that grifters like Wright and Alex Byrne are peddling their own idiosyncratic definitions while fraudulently claiming that their versions are THE standards of biology.
Human females are those with no Y chromosome. They may be X, XX (typical) or XXX., but no Y. It's really that simple. It's not nuanced to say some females and males have more than one X chromosomes. "Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes. That’s 46 in total." You just made what sounded like a hard, factual statement, yet some humans have an extra copy of a chromosome. Are they nuanced humans? This doesn't preclude me from having empathy for some with a DSD, especially one with XY and CAIS. Out of courtesy and respect, I would refer to this person as a female in social settings, but not for sports purposes. As I posted somewhere else, if we're not going with anyone with a Y chromosome is a male, then why not use those who have migraines (predominately females) are considered female. All those who've had an inguinal hernia (predominately males) are males. All others are nuanced. Except for me, I'm a female with migraines who had an inguinal hernia as a child.
That's by far the simplest way to do it, in my opinion. Presence of one or more Y-chomosomes=male, regardless of whether there is a full or partial androgen insensitivity.
Agreed. Lack of a Y chromosome plus testosterone in the female range (which doesn't overlap with the male range) should be enough to define a woman for athletics purposes. This includes "intersex" individuals, who are also either male or female.
It's a shame the author didn't make this point clearly -- yes, biology is complex, but sex is clearly binary and immutable. The boxer Imane Khelif is an XY male likely with the DSD 5‐alpha reductase deficiency who was raised as a female.
Basically, I agree with you. Of course, the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek simply to point out that even relatively straightforward ideas are both complex and can be obfuscated. However, although I agree with you, I would be a little bit leery of using hormone levels as a criterion for persons with no Y chromosome. I think no Y is reasonable… But I can imagine unending arguments about precisely the levels of free and bound testosterone that would be acceptable for a particular classification. It seems that the easiest criteria is the one you suggest: no Y.
Perhaps I'm an idiot for asking, but what do the reproductive specifics of flies or any other species for that matter have to do with our biological definitions of who is a male or female? It seems a little odd that we require a definition that includes all living species, especially when you consider a multitude of other biological discrepancies like one has wings.
You are absolutely correct. Flies, fish, and turtles don’t have anything to do with the issue. That was the point of my previous essay which, like this one, was written with some-tongue-in-cheek: "Don’t Ask Animals How to Fix Your Love Life." https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/dont-ask-animals-how-to-fix-your
I'm not sure how this whole issue got so convoluted…
> "... not sure how this whole issue got so convoluted ..."
Good question -- what tangled webs we weave? You no doubt know of Nature's and Scientific American's shameful efforts to peddle the view that sex is a spectrum. And now Cell joins them in that "Hall of Shame":
I was thinking the same thing. What if we reversed the question and tried to classify the reproductive specifics of flies, alligators, clownfish, etc. by talking about human sex. I could state alligators have no sex because it's not fixed and is affected by temperature.
Excellent point and a great thought experiment… Thanks! However, saying the alligator sex is fixed by temperature is a little bit overstated. The proximate causes are genes, hormones, and biochemical processes just like it is in all animals. However, in some amphibians and reptiles these processes can be influenced by temperature (it's a molecular chemistry thing).
From the essay cited above: "...it should be made clear that sexual development in reptiles and amphibians is a product of the same types of genetic and physiological processes that operate in other animals. Saying that reptile sex is ‘determined’ by temperature makes it sound like the whole process is much more capricious than it is. While “a narrow range of incubation temperatures during a thermosensitive period of embryonic development” can affect the underlying genetic, physiological, and biochemical processes in ways that alter the sex ratios (i.e., the relative numbers of males and females) in a cohort, the most proximate causes leading to a turtle or alligator being male or female are physiological. In the end, it’s all genes, hormones, and molecules just like it is in other animals. And, the ultimate developmental outcome is binary."
I have recently discovered your Substack column and like it a lot. The articles are very good, I have to say, though I am a competitor, with a Substack column with a similar mission (BioBuzz).
With respect to this particular piece, I agree with you that the key issue is the inherent "fuzziness" of many terms in biology, including what seem very straightforward ones like "man" and "woman". We use words to define categories of objects and actions, assuming that they are perfectly clear, only to discover that reality is more complex and messier. (Two of my articles have dealt with just this issue, concerning the words "gene" and "species" https://adamwilkins.substack.com/p/what-is-a-species?r=n0hre , https://adamwilkins.substack.com/p/how-the-gene-gained-then-lost-its?r=n0hre .)
In this case, the problem is that anatomy (genitalia) and genetics (XY vs XX chromosomes), on the one side, do not always match up with psychology (whether the individual "feels" like a man or a woman). Hence, the distinction between sex and "gender", the latter concerning the feelings of the individual. (When I was growing up, the terms were considered synonyms.) Perhaps 95-98% of the time, the two are concordant but in the remaining cases, they are not.
There is no simple or universal solution to the general terminological problem (words that are too simple for the realities). We will always need to make sure that prescribed actions (such as rules governing sporting events) honor the real-life complexities that exist rather than the qualities implied by the words. For sporting competitions, size and strength of the competitors are the relevant variables, not their chromosomes or genitalia (as indeed you imply at the end.)
I cannot believe how many people in the comments here...do not seem to realize the first part of the essay was tongue in cheek. What has happened to reading skills?
Yes, it was! The point was that you can confuse any issue and keep any argument going if you reach for the one-offs, ambiguities, and rare exceptions that always occur in biology. It's interesting, isn't it, that even the simplest definition of a 'gamete' — that appears in every introductory biology book — doesn't quite fit the human female condition. I think that's interesting… and telling. Of course, I'm confident that I understand the difference between an adult male and adult female human being… But I also understand there are some unusual physiological conditions that are hard to shoehorn into the specific definitions without entering the labyrinthine rabbit holes of molecular biology... and, even then, the arguments will be ultimately unresolvable as long as people want to keep arguing. Note that as I knew it would, the boxing debate has shifted from genetics to testosterone levels. After that, it may end up moving to the relative levels of free- versus bound testosterone, and then to the particular ratios of the two isomers of dihydrotestosterone and their relative affinities for the two types of androgen receptors, and so on. In the meantime, people could make some common sense, practical decisions about athletics. What do you think? In any event, thanks for your comment.
Oh, sorry, this is bullshit.
Everyone knows what a man is, what a woman is.
Why are we arguing over what a woman is, and not what a man is?
Because men fucking rule, and women fucking don't.
The reason why men fucking rule and women fucking don't is because there will always be women who want to have babies, but men have to be bribed into doing their jobs, otherwise they desert or disrupt.
When you reach a certain age, you no longer care, or have time to indulge bullshit, which this is.
BYE!
I'm sorry, but did someone beat you when you were young?
> "Everyone knows what a man is, what a woman is. ..."
Sadly, many people don't -- most academic feminists in particular. Apropos of which and ICYMI, see this article by Canadian anthropologist professor Kathleen Lowrey:
"Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner: Judith Butler didn’t invent gender ideology, anthropologists did."
https://kathleenlowrey.substack.com/p/nobody-puts-baby-in-the-corner?triedRedirect=true
Of particular note therefrom:
Lowrey: "Even earlier, however, is Strathern’s 1981 article 'Culture in a netbag: the manufacture of a subdiscipline in anthropology'. 'Culture in a netbag' allows us to spot in the wild a series of now-thoroughly domesticated assertions, chief among them that there is 'No such thing as woman' (the header to the concluding portion of Strathern’s essay)."
"woman" is then any one of some 4 billion different feminine genders with no one common element. In notable contradiction to the standard "adult human female" with the common element being "produces ova" -- even if that excludes some third of all of the human XXers on the planet ...
Of course, that was my point. The article is written tongue-in-cheek to point out that misunderstanding the underlying information can obfuscate even a simple point.
I wrote a bunch of stuff & edited and decided to delete it.
Somehow, your point got lost in all those words.
Sorry I misunderstood.
Too complicated:
A woman is an adult human who has only female genetic material.
A man is an adult human who has male genetic material.
If challenged, the follow-on is:
A tiny fraction of all men have birth defects relating to their male genetic material.
A tiny fraction of women have birth defects relating to their female genetic material.
And consequently:
Only women can create eggs.
Only men can create sperm.
And finally:
Every human alive was conceived from with the egg of exactly one woman and the sperm of exactly one man. From this fact we call sex binary.
🙄 What the hell are "male and female genetic material"? "Citations required ..."
And menopausees can't "create eggs", and transwomen who cut their nuts off can't produce sperm. Ergo, sexless.
It’s too complex for you I’m afraid.
It’s amusingly astonishing your total lack of self-awareness, a hallmark of triollistry. The more you troll the funnier it gets.
Keep on going I’ll make some popcorn.
Don’t forget to mention again that “everyone” knows that women not menstruating are not women - and supply some more links. Half-dozen will do.
You need to state that each and every posting because saying it often enough might make it true.
LoL. I think you're about at the level of the Kindergarten Cop definitions for the sexes: boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas. Which is largely why Khelif and "her" ilk are in women's sports in the first place ...
But you might note that Emma Hilton has, somewhat belatedly, more or less endorsed the standard definitions for the sexes, "female" in particular:
Hilton: "The definition of female is: of or denoting the sex that can produce large gametes. This not a matter of *observation*, this is a matter of *definition*."
https://x.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1488523777042432008
A matter of definition, not of observation. You -- and Frederick -- might consider following suit.
Steersman, you’re a classic troll, who has attached to “gender discussions” on Substack.
Citation:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang)
Many people recognize that, and there are countless side conversations now to warn others to not engage with you or pay attention on Substack but I had the poor luck to have you respond to me.
Your nonsensical Alice-in-Wonderland conversations confuse response-Naive people into thinking you have a point, particularly the fairly offensive idea that a woman not menstruating is not female, the repetition of which illustrates the term “ad nauseam”.
Kindergarten level responses to postings are about being insistent on nonsense, and freshmen level dictionary definition arguments back-and-forth. Citations are not to prove an argument, they are manifestation of failure to communicate an idea and akin to a five-year-old stomping their little feet, holding their breath until they turn purple, or someone on QAnon SHRIEKING IN ALL CAPS.
I’d like to ask that you don’t respond to me in the future.
I used to think you were funny in a cat-chasing-tail way but you’re just sad in a “Americas Funniest Home Videos” way when a heavy drunk person reaches across the bow of a drifting boat to grab a pier, the boat maintains momentum, the drunk predictably falls in the water, the pants get caught on a cleat and get pulled off along with a wooden leg, revealing hideous underwear, everyone is laughing their ass off, the drunk crawls through mud to the shore and doesn’t realize why everyone is paralyzed with laughter as he hunts for the prosthetic.
Go ahead - call names (sophisticated), cite an alternate definition of troll, show me a website that shows “Americas Funniest Home Videos” is a Rashom-like meditation on comedy/tragedy viewpoint.
And above all, tell readers that a woman who isn’t menstruating isn’t female because you read it on the internet and A LOT OF PEOPLES AGREE WITH YOU.
🙄 "when you're losing an argument ... play the [troll] card ..."
https://x.com/adamcarolla/status/1421138069026074628
> "... the fairly offensive idea that a woman not menstruating is not female ..."
Only "offensive" because too many people, mostly women, have turned the sexes into "immutable identities 🙄" based on some "mythic essences". Part and parcel of why there are so many dysphoric children.
But as Stephen Fry put it, "Well, so fucking what?"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/706825-it-s-now-very-common-to-hear-people-say-i-m-rather
> "... freshmen level dictionary definition arguments ..."
Do let me, do let us all know when you manage to get your head out of your arse and table a more authoritative set of definitions for the sexes than those in the Oxford Dictionary of Biology, in the Glossary of that Molecular Human Reproduction article, and in Hilton's tweet which reflects and endorses the other two.
In the immortal words of Posy Parker: "I'm not a vet but I know a dog when I see it."
How true!
A few points:
First, looking at oocytes and their paths is interesting, but they aren’t human beings. They’re at most half of what might become a human. And they don’t get a vote on whether that human is going to be a female or a male.
Second, discussions about birds and bees are irrelevant to the subject. Birds and bees don’t compete in our Olympics.
Third, if a oocyte that has left the ovary and is not yet in a Fallopian tube is physically “outside the body,” this leads to bizarreness of high order. Is there a pathway the egg can take to see daylight that doesn’t involve entering a body cavity? If not, it is, by definition within the woman’s body. Technically, the space it’s occupying is called the pelvis, which is properly enclosed within the body.
The better argument for something being exterior to the body would be the GI tract lumen. It’s even open at both ends.
Fourth, as for the requirements of what a woman is, the statement “…that it flummoxed a Harvard-educated Supreme Court nominee…” is likewise irrelevant. How she got into law school is up for debate. Past that, I doubt she’d know a T cell from a sewing machine, but both are well understood by normal people who have looked at both.
The problem is made unnecessarily complicated by people who are trying desperately to pretend that the emperor has made frequent visits to Savile Row. He hasn’t. Statistically normal people are either XX or XY and their genitalia reflect these differences in statistically normal ways. There are exceptions, but exceptions need not complicate well-understood and generally accepted knowledge. “Lia” Thomas is a much a woman as a Volkswagen is an apartment building.
The way to solve the problem in athletics is for there to be more than two categories. Male, female, and as many others as the IOC wants to have. It’s not OK to insist on putting square pegs in round holes.
> "Second, discussions about birds and bees are irrelevant to the subject ..."
I would strongly disagree with that. Seems that both issues -- Khelif and transgenderism -- turn on what are the definitions for the sexes, on what are the criteria to qualify as male and female -- the birds and the bees writ large. The IOC and their ilk have clearly not progressed past the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And too many on the other side aren't much better in making the criteria XY versus XX. Phenotype versus genotype.
But both are totally clueless that the biological definitions for the sexes stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
> "Third, if a oocyte that has left the ovary and is not yet in a Fallopian tube is physically 'outside the body,' this ... "
Kind of like the "academic joke wherein topologists can't tell the difference between a coffee cup with a handle and a doughnut" 😉 🙂
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2658:_Coffee_Cup_Holes
All good points, indeed. My only thought to the contrary would be that the egg is considered to be outside of the body once it's in the fallopian tube. Your analogy to the G.I. tract is accurate. But it also applies to the reproductive system and others. That's why, for instance, the pancreas is considered an exocrine and an endocrine organ. Some of its secretions enter a duct system that, eventually, enters the G.I. tract. But once those fluids are within the duct system they are considered outside the body (i.e., exocrine secretions).
Of course, the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek to make the point that even simple issues can be confused if one selectively chooses bits of information and fails to understand the ambiguities inherent in biological terminology.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment!
You’re welcome.
“My only thought to the contrary would be that the egg is considered to be outside of the body once it's in the fallopian tube.” Not by me. By extension, your argument implies that everything between the fimbria and the labia is also outside the body. This makes the implicit assumption that, so long as you don’t have to make an incision in the skin to reach something, it’s external. That would imply that something like rape is a misnomer since it involves penetration. Instead, it’s simply assault and battery? Try selling that one to a jury.
Full disclosure: I’m a retired surgeon whose parents were criminal lawyers in New Orleans back in the day. I know what it would have been like to have been raised by wolves.
My favourite comment on this topic came from Kellie-Jay Keen who stated that she is not a vet, but she knows what a dog is. As do many others who have competed in dog shows, where you can't enter in any old category, but need to enter your dog in his/her correct breed and sex class.
Men claiming to be women are still men and cheating your way to sporting win is still cheating, even if you don't win because you have taken the place of an actual woman who has now missed out on her chance to compete.
The only way one can become a woman is to be born a girl: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/private-spaces
Earnest question: do you think that looking "like a woman" to the IOC (that is, physically feminine) is a good benchmark for being counted as female for the purposes of sport? you are aware trans people often pass? I am assuming you don't want medically transitioned trans men in women's boxing either. Is the only way to become a man being born a boy? "I just know by looking" seems to me like a uniquely awful strategy here. Especially as Imane Kheilf is not transgender, so clearly people do not, in fact, know a dog when they see it.
I don't think that how one looks is necessarily relevant at all to which sex you are. Neither of these cheating boxers are trans; they are men born with a DSD. They did not make this as a choice; they were born with a medical condition. They went through male puberty and have the universal male advantaged physiology of their sex. However, I think that most people watching this would not pick the Algerian as the woman of their dreams: https://x.com/salltweets/status/1820554001487905250?s=07
The IOC has stated that they have an "F" designation on their passports, and that this is "proof" they are women. Which, given the numbers of countries who now allow sex self-ID and even changing a birth certificate to match a chosen identity, makes this a poor marker for categorization in an embodied activity, which is what sports are.
Identities don't play sports, bodies do. You can be inclusive of men's feelings or fair to women.
Great article to link to... thanks 😊
Aha, yes.
We need the Crufts judges to be included in the Olympics, to descend on athletes with measuring tapes, to check circumference of heads, lengths of arms, to probe for testicles and hairy bum cracks 😃 Or, just do a cheek swab.
… Probably just the cheek swab!
The proposed solution - open-female category - is not a solution. Nobody will watch that category, the category will not be financed, and it will die. Personally, I am OK with that outcome. Not everyone gets to enjoy to be a star athlete, and that is fine. People with intersex conditions will not get to compete, that is sad for them, but life is generally not fair.
Uh…it seems that your comment is that it ~is~ a solution. And I agree with that. Life’s not fair.
The author's proposal is not a compromise or a new path, like he wants it to look like. It is functionally equivalent to the ban on intersex people in women's sports. Most people agree with that approach, and there is no need for dressing it up as something else
As others have previously noted... No-one will enter it, because A they wouldn't be beating women, and B it wouldn't be asserting their femaleness. Males are entering women's sports to win. Without a pretty much assured Win, their motivation just wouldn't be there.
If it helps, I very much would. Not anywhere near the Olympic level (of course) but as a female person who has been on low-dose t and wants top surgery that would be perfect.
They’ll either enter it or they won’t. That’s their call. But you don’t penalize statistically normal people for the necessarily hollow victories of a few.
Is it OK for a 180 pound fighter to identify as 135 pounds and compete with them? Why not?
Thanks for the interesting and thought provoking essay! (You’re the GOAT)
Thank you very much for your kind comment… I am hoping that everyone knows the definition of the term GOAT! Sincerely, Frederick
I think the irony of not coming to a conclusion may have been missed, but I'm not sure the thinking-through was very rational either. I'm drawn to several solutions proposing the Y chromosome as the defining factor, which you contemplate, but then deny by saying there are "XY females". From a pure analytic-philosophical position, this is begging the question, since "female" is what you're trying to define, so unless you unpack the phrase, it's moot. On the other hand, had you unpacked it, I think you'd hit the same kind of impasse later (because your essential point about definitions is correct).
It's true of all definitions if we get really deep, although unfortunately you chose two that are easier to be clear about - age and weight - since if we know when someone was born, defining their age is merely a matter of measurement resolution, and similarly for someone's weight. So in those kinds of situations, it is only being pedantic about endless division into finer resolution that ought to cause any problem (i.e. nobody is ever exactly 25, because when exactly were they born and when exactly is the present moment?) - these are a little like Zeno's Paradox, in which nothing can ever move, yet somehow we all seem to get past that illusion and commute anyway.
Very thought provoking though, and "kinda true".
I agree with you. The first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek. The point being that information can be used to confuse any issue including — as you note — someone's age. However, all biological categories are somewhat ambiguous around the edges. For instance, there are 20 or more active definitions of the term "species" in the literature. Biologists can't even agree on how to define being "alive." In any event, the upshot is that we can decide on issues like competitive categories without wallowing in the nuances of physiology or philosophy. Those are two different issues, I think. Thanks a lot for the note!
I always enjoy your articles, but this one was a little disappointing. I truly don't understand if this boxer is a man or a woman. How can it be so hard to figure out? Half the people say it's a man, half say it's a woman. Both can't be right. Is this person intersex? Can this boxer get pregnant? No one has given a clear explanation and I was hoping to get one here. As far as the fairness argument, half the country thinks it's OK for a biological man to claim to be a woman and compete against or invade women's spaces. So we can't just hope they do the right thing.
Sorry this one disappointed you. I appreciate you being candid, though. As far as I understand, this person is intersex, but I don't think anyone knows the whole story. The main point of the piece was that we can make practical decisions without getting lost in the unending philosophical debates about every issue. Beeswax (below) has provided a link to an article on DSDs that you may find informative. Thanks for the note!
I was only disappointed because I was hoping for an answer. But I get the point of your article wasn't to answer the question, but to promote common sense. It's just frustrating that we no longer have THE truth. Truth now seems to be subjective. I still very much enjoy reading everything you write! Keep it up!
Here's an article that discusses the general topic of DSDs, although the specifics with regard to the individual boxers' status is necessarily vague. This is because the public has not been given all the details of the exams used to disqualify/qualify them.
https://quillette.com/2024/08/03/xy-athletes-in-womens-olympic-boxing-paris-2024-controversy-explained-khelif-yu-ting/
You are correct and thank you for the link!
> "How can it be so hard to figure out?"
Good question -- part of the answer is that the biology is a bit complicated which too many scientific illiterates, grifters, and political opportunists are further obscuring for fun and profit.
But the problem is that Khelif, the boxer in question "looks" like a female -- "she" probably has the genitalia typical of females -- but she probably has the chromosomes typical of a male, i.e., XY. She probably has complete androgen insensitivity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Physical
She is, biologically speaking, phenotypically female but geneotypically male. However, by the standard biological definitions for the sexes -- which far too many, including those who should know better, are rather pigheadedly clueless about -- she is neither male nor female, she is simply sexless, neither male nor female.
Those definitions stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
For example, see the Glossary definitions in this article (2014), by Parker [FRS] and Lehtonen, in the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (MHR) — titled, “Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes”:
MHR: "Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
Rather disconcerting that so many so-called biologists and philosophers, including Frederick, are "unwilling" to accept such definitions -- particularly since they're foundational to all of biology.
Well, I agree with most of what you said, as I usually do. I do hope you realize that the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek to point out that virtually any issue can be obfuscated by throwing around information. Where we disagree, and always have, is that I see more ambiguity in the edge cases then do you. Of course, as always, I appreciate your vigorous presentation!
Thanks Frederick. And for the clarifying information about oogenesis -- I found the Wikipedia article somewhat vague on the topic though they suggest/claim, as do you, that the final stage in the evolution of an ovum is actually precipitated by a spermatozoa:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oogenesis
But while I appreciate your leavening with a bit of humour, I find this comment of yours untenable and "problematic":
Frederick: "... it does mean that all definitions have what are called fuzzy boundaries."
Where, exactly, is the "fuzzy boundary" in the definition of "teenager" as someone who is 13 to 19? Nor do I find the standard biological definitions for the sexes at all "fuzzy" -- if some organism produces (present tense) either of two types of gametes then it is male or female, and if it produces neither then it is sexless. The problem is that too many so-called biologists and philosophers -- Wright and Byrne in particular -- seem congenitally incapable of even whispering the word "sexless".
Though some have argued that the "present tense (is) doing a lot of work" in those standard definitions. But it's an important and essential distinction. You might take a gander at my post that uses an article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Mechanisms in Science to defend that distinction -- "produces gametes" is a mechanism that is ubiquitous in biology; it's a common reference point across literally millions of species:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
Evading that point is largely how the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell winds up asking, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" Something you may wish to weigh-in on yourself -- see my open letter to them for details:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
IF sports are important...
Not sure what your point is as I certainly wasn't arguing that sports are unimportant. My point -- Frederick's point if I'm not mistaken -- is generally that the sexes -- at least the standard biological definitions -- are not terribly useful for adjudicating access thereto.
I would agree with that.
If sports categories matter, and there's a good argument for saying they do, then what to do with someone like Imene Khelif, who was born with female genitalia, registered female on her birth certificate, raised as a girl, competed as a girl, female on passport. What testing should be mandated for, I guess all children, or infants, and when? I suppose there are tests that can be made at birth, but I don't know if they are inexpensive, and universally available in all locations on our planet, including rural areas with next to no medical facilities. I think these are important aspects that are worth bringing into this discussion.
She might be an XY with 5α-Reductase 2 deficiency. Babies don’t have male genitalia but they don’t have ovaries or a uterus either. But my understanding is that they have male strength as adults, eg Caster Semenya.
You are correct. All of the issues that you've raised are very important. In the relatively less important area of athletic categories, I think that some practical decisions could be made without being derailed by the more abstract, philosophical, granular issues of physiology. I would suggest that the fighter in question should be fighting an open-female division — as I said in the essay — rather than in the standard women's division. Thanks very much for your thoughtful comment.
The irony of quoting Neil deGrasse Tyson on this issue is priceless. : )
Thanks, Gary! I didn't realize that when I used the quote… Great call.... Thanks for pointing that out!
His comments were so out of left field Frederick that if I hadn't watched them on video I would have had a hard time believing a scientist of his notoriety would dare publicly speak such gibberish. : / But these are amazing times!
🙂 Bit of a fraud and charlatan, isn't he? 😉🙂
Though stopped clocks and all that ...
But maybe Frederick could have quoted physicist Sean Carroll's touting of Scientific American's claim that sex is a spectrum? 😉🙂
Though Carroll had a point about "male" and "female" being "terms of art" in biology -- which got Colin Wright's knickers in a twist. Still true though. The problem there being that grifters like Wright and Alex Byrne are peddling their own idiosyncratic definitions while fraudulently claiming that their versions are THE standards of biology.
Human females are those with no Y chromosome. They may be X, XX (typical) or XXX., but no Y. It's really that simple. It's not nuanced to say some females and males have more than one X chromosomes. "Human beings have 23 pairs of chromosomes. That’s 46 in total." You just made what sounded like a hard, factual statement, yet some humans have an extra copy of a chromosome. Are they nuanced humans? This doesn't preclude me from having empathy for some with a DSD, especially one with XY and CAIS. Out of courtesy and respect, I would refer to this person as a female in social settings, but not for sports purposes. As I posted somewhere else, if we're not going with anyone with a Y chromosome is a male, then why not use those who have migraines (predominately females) are considered female. All those who've had an inguinal hernia (predominately males) are males. All others are nuanced. Except for me, I'm a female with migraines who had an inguinal hernia as a child.
For women's sports, no XY need apply -- easy, peasy ... 😉🙂
That's by far the simplest way to do it, in my opinion. Presence of one or more Y-chomosomes=male, regardless of whether there is a full or partial androgen insensitivity.
Agreed. Lack of a Y chromosome plus testosterone in the female range (which doesn't overlap with the male range) should be enough to define a woman for athletics purposes. This includes "intersex" individuals, who are also either male or female.
It's a shame the author didn't make this point clearly -- yes, biology is complex, but sex is clearly binary and immutable. The boxer Imane Khelif is an XY male likely with the DSD 5‐alpha reductase deficiency who was raised as a female.
Basically, I agree with you. Of course, the first part of the essay was written tongue-in-cheek simply to point out that even relatively straightforward ideas are both complex and can be obfuscated. However, although I agree with you, I would be a little bit leery of using hormone levels as a criterion for persons with no Y chromosome. I think no Y is reasonable… But I can imagine unending arguments about precisely the levels of free and bound testosterone that would be acceptable for a particular classification. It seems that the easiest criteria is the one you suggest: no Y.
So should a person like Buck Angel be able, in theory, to compete in womens?
(to clarify, he is a transexual man, XX as far as anyone can tell, and uh. look up a picture of him.)
As long as the XX isn’t taking testosterone,
I agree that would be a functional rule, but Frederick was having reservations about that criteria and seemed to be suggesting a pure "no Y" rule.
It’s like a Monty Python skit...except it’s real life...and it’s not funny.
Agreed.
Perhaps I'm an idiot for asking, but what do the reproductive specifics of flies or any other species for that matter have to do with our biological definitions of who is a male or female? It seems a little odd that we require a definition that includes all living species, especially when you consider a multitude of other biological discrepancies like one has wings.
You are absolutely correct. Flies, fish, and turtles don’t have anything to do with the issue. That was the point of my previous essay which, like this one, was written with some-tongue-in-cheek: "Don’t Ask Animals How to Fix Your Love Life." https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/dont-ask-animals-how-to-fix-your
I'm not sure how this whole issue got so convoluted…
> "... not sure how this whole issue got so convoluted ..."
Good question -- what tangled webs we weave? You no doubt know of Nature's and Scientific American's shameful efforts to peddle the view that sex is a spectrum. And now Cell joins them in that "Hall of Shame":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
Postmodern claptrap writ large.
I was thinking the same thing. What if we reversed the question and tried to classify the reproductive specifics of flies, alligators, clownfish, etc. by talking about human sex. I could state alligators have no sex because it's not fixed and is affected by temperature.
Excellent point and a great thought experiment… Thanks! However, saying the alligator sex is fixed by temperature is a little bit overstated. The proximate causes are genes, hormones, and biochemical processes just like it is in all animals. However, in some amphibians and reptiles these processes can be influenced by temperature (it's a molecular chemistry thing).
From the essay cited above: "...it should be made clear that sexual development in reptiles and amphibians is a product of the same types of genetic and physiological processes that operate in other animals. Saying that reptile sex is ‘determined’ by temperature makes it sound like the whole process is much more capricious than it is. While “a narrow range of incubation temperatures during a thermosensitive period of embryonic development” can affect the underlying genetic, physiological, and biochemical processes in ways that alter the sex ratios (i.e., the relative numbers of males and females) in a cohort, the most proximate causes leading to a turtle or alligator being male or female are physiological. In the end, it’s all genes, hormones, and molecules just like it is in other animals. And, the ultimate developmental outcome is binary."
I never said alligator sex was fixed by temperature. I did say it was affected by temperature.