"Is ‘sex’ a useful category?”

Cell magazine's Lysenkoism and repudiation of biology

An open letter to Cell Magazine, more or less as sent, although with an added picture and related text for clarification and emphasis.

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To:  John Pham, Editor-in-Chief, Cell Magazine;

Cc:  Beans Velocci, PhD, History, University of Pennsylvania;
Jerry Coyne, PhD Biology, Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago;
Colin Wright, PhD, Evolutionary Biology

Mr. Pham,

My name is [Steersman], a retired electronics technologist, and I’m writing in regard to a paper published in Cell Magazine in your March 14th issue [1]. It was written by Beans Velocci and titled “The history of sex research: Is ‘sex’ a useful category?”

First off, I find it absolutely astounding that a journal and publisher ostensibly dedicated to biology would even ask that question, much less answer it, more or less, in the negative. In passing, I’ve linked to a post by Jerry Coyne here [2] which goes into some detailed and “trenchant” criticisms of the article itself. However, I had wanted to focus on a few broader points related to some foundational principles of biology which, to be charitable, Velocci seems completely unaware of and busily engaged in abrogating and repudiating.

No doubt Velocci makes some reasonable points and observations, notably in drawing attention to something of a dog’s breakfast of conflicting definitions for the sexes. However, where he goes off the rails and into the weeds, and in a rather spectacular fashion, is in “concluding” — starting from that dog’s breakfast — that none of those definitions hold any more water than any other one. As Carl Sagan once put it, “The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.”

More particularly, I draw your attention to another Elsevier article published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology some 50 years ago by Geoff Parker (FRS) and others: “The origin and evolution of gamete dimorphism and the male-female phenomenon” [3]. It seems that it was there that what are now virtually the standard definitions for sexes were first “promulgated”, even if not in the form typical of regular dictionaries:

When genes for large-producing (A) are dominant, these two genotypes are JJ (sperm producers, i.e. males) and AJ (ovum producers, i.e. females).

And a subsequent article (2014), by Parker and Lehtonen, in the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction (MHR) [4] — titled, “Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes” — underlines and repeats those same definitions:

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.

Do note the “produces”: present tense, i.e., right now [5]. Not in the sweet by and by, nor in ancient history. But those definitions have been more or less replicated by various reputable sources like Wikipedia [6], the Oxford Dictionary of Biology [7], and even more popular dictionaries like Google/OxfordLanguages [8]:

Wikipedia: Male is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilisation.

Google/Oxford Languages; male /māl/ adjective;
of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.

And finally, as evolutionary biologist Joan Roughgarden put it in her Evolution’s Rainbow [9]:

To a biologist, “male” means making small gametes, and “female” means making large gametes. Period! By definition, the smaller of the two gametes is called a sperm, and the larger an egg. Beyond gamete size, biologists don’t recognize any other universal difference between male and female.

That universal and essential difference is what differentiates mainstream biology from folk-biology [10], from the too popular Kindergarten Cop definitions: "boys have penises and girls have vaginas." And from most if not all of the definitions Velocci is giving far too much credence to. Though en passant and given his rather problematic “biases”, he might note that Roughgarden is a transsexual.

But of particular note is this passage from the Abstract of the MHR article:

“The ancestral divergence and maintenance of gamete sizes subsequently led to many other differences we now observe between the two sexes, sowing the seeds for what we have become.”

Those two fundamentally and profoundly different mechanisms — online and cranking out product on a regular basis: i.e., “producing large gametes”, or “producing small gametes” — were and are ubiquitous across literally millions of anisogamous species. Those processes are the bedrock and proximate causes for virtually every last bit of sexual dimorphism — biological and psychological — on the planet.

Many people, an increasing number, are arguing that while biologists don’t have the same sets or types of laws that are the bailiwick and claim to fame of physicists, mechanisms play pretty much the same role in biology [11]. They more or less constitute the “natural kinds” [12] of biology,  i.e., “groupings that reflect the structure of the natural world rather than the interests and actions of human beings”.

In passing and as an addendum, it seems that part if not most of the reluctance to accepting processes as essential properties, as natural kinds is that they tend to happen over a short period of time and so are not readily perceived. Something that King’s Psychology Today article [23] goes into some detail on. But typical Rube Goldberg machines often give some amusing insights into the sequence of steps that characterize different processes and mechanisms:

But that is why it is hard to imagine a more ubiquitous, fundamental, and profoundly important set of mechanisms and “natural kinds” than “produces large gametes” and “produces small gametes”. Anisogamy [13] in a nutshell — which has only been around for a billion years so it is maybe not surprising that Velocci missed seeing it on his radar ... But that is why the presence and current functioning of those mechanisms and processes constitute, by definition, the “necessary and sufficient conditions” [14] for any organism — of any anisogamous species — to qualify for membership in the categories “female” and “male”.

A famous biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, once wrote a book titled "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". But a reasonable corollary to that might be that nothing, or very little, in evolution makes sense except in light of sexual reproduction: no reproduction, no evolution, or precious little of it. Yet Velocci and Cell — both more or less shooting themselves in the feet as far as credibility goes — ask, “Is ‘sex’ a useful category?” Seriously? Kind of think you’ve all lost the thread and the plot there. Or are intentionally engaged in muddying the waters to the point where everyone else does.

No doubt that that dog’s breakfast of contradictory and inconsistent definitions is, in fact, something of a serious problem. Though the “solution” offered by Velocci, along with too many of his tribe, appears to be to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. However, there’s some reason to argue that many if not most of those other definitions are no more than operational definitions [15], that they are just based on the use of proxy variables [16] as stand-ins for the primary and difficult-to-detect but defining trait and variable, i.e., the ongoing production of either large or small gametes.

But as operational definitions tend to be ad hoc — designed for the task at hand — there are likely going to be as many definitions as there are tasks. Although many of those definitions are likely or often just for the furtherance of various more ephemeral or questionable “social engineering” projects. But none of their authors really should lose sight of that primary variable — unless they want to do so for less than edifying “reasons”. Which Velocci and too many others — including other erstwhile reputable journals like Nature [17] and Scientific American [18] — seem bound and determined to do.

Moot of course what are the roots of that phenomenon, although one candidate seems to be outright Lysenkoism [19]: “any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable.” And there seems to be thousands if not millions — and on virtually all sides of the political spectrum, of the transgender issue in particular — busily engaged in that “distortion”. On one side there’s Velocci, Nature, Scientific American, and now, rather sadly, Cell itself — all front and center in either trying to deny there’s any merit at all in the sex binary, or turning it into a totally open-ended and quite useless spectrum. But all are trying mightily to ride roughshod over fundamental biological principles and insights. Not a good look at all for Cell to be publishing such ideologically driven claptrap.

However, many on the other side of the fence are only marginally better, though somewhat more amusingly so: what tangled webs we weave. But, for example, “philosopher” Alex Byrne [20] — following his more or less commendable endorsement of Roughgarden’s synopsis — proceeds, in Act II of a classic comedy in two Acts (“Begging the Question”), to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by repudiating and abrogating the very principle he championed in Act I:

Roughgarden: To a biologist, ‘male’ means making small gametes, and ‘female’ means making large gametes.

Byrne: “Making” does not mean currently producing [yes, it does], but (something like) has the function to make …

Byrne [21]:  Roughgarden’s explanation could do with some refinement, mostly because some males and females don’t make gametes for a variety of reasons (prepubertal human males and postmenopausal human females are obvious examples), but it neatly captures the basic idea.

Nice of Byrne — ostensibly a philosopher though clearly no philosopher of science — to offer an “interpolation”, a “divination” of what’s in between the lines, and a “refinement” that mainstream biology — including a biologist with an FRS to his name, and the Oxford Dictionary of Biology — clearly never thought of, the concept clearly being beyond their ken ... But — if one wanted to take a close look under the hood [22] — that position of Byrne's, and of many others, is still little more than a naked pandering to women’s vanity.

But moot also as to what motivates the “exemplars” of those two camps. However, it’s hard not to get the impression that many of them are — at the base where the rubber meets the road — just pandering to the envy of transwomen or to the vanity of women: identity politics and biological essentialism, in one form or another, writ large. Which is what mars and cripples much of the whole “debate” over women’s rights, and corrupts much of fundamental biology. Too many seem desperately committed to the “ideas” that either changing one’s sex is as easy as changing one’s socks; that “male” and “female” are no more than fashion accessories; that there’s some “mythical” or “immutable” essences to the sexes [23]; or that everyone has to have a sex — one must be "kind", everyone gets a “participation trophy”. 

But virtually all of that is flat-out contradicted by massive amounts of biology — sequential hermaphroditism [24] in particular — which underlines the fact and the view that the sexes are “mere” “life-history stages” [25,26], and of a rather transitory nature. However, they are also profoundly important stages since they are, in turn, based on the presence of two quite distinct processes or mechanisms, the understanding of which undergirds and motivates pretty much all of biology.    

All of which is why you might want to consider retracting that essay of Velocci’s and sending him, and your reviewers, back to school for some remedial courses in basic biology and epistemology.

Sincerely,
[Steersman]

1) Cell; Beans Velocci (2024); The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category?; https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00122-3#%20;
2) Why Evolution is True; Jerry Coyne (2024); The journal Cell endorses the view that sex isn’t binary; https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/17/the-journal-cell-endorses-the-view-that-sex-isnt-binary/;
3) ScienceDirect, Elsevier; Parker, Baker, Smith (1972); The origin and evolution of gamete dimorphism and the male-female phenomenon; https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022519372900070;
4) Oxford Academic, Lehtonen, & Parker (2014); Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes; https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990;
5) Grammarly; Simple Present Tense; https://www.grammarly.com/blog/simple-present/
6) Wikipedia; Male; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male;
7) Oxford Dictionary of Biology (tweet, Patrick Killeen);
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441;
8) Google "male definition";
9) Amazon; Joan Roughgarden (2013); Evolution's Rainbow; https://www.amazon.ca/Evolutions-Rainbow-Diversity-Gender-Sexuality/dp/0520280458;
10) Wikipedia; Folk taxonomy; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_taxonomy
11) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Craver, & Tabery (2015)  Mechanisms in Science; https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/science-mechanisms/;
12) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Bird, & Tobin (2008); Natural Kinds; https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/natural-kinds/;
13) Wikipedia; Anisogamy; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisogamy;
14) Wikipedia; Extensional and intensional definitions; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensional_and_intensional_definitions;
15) Wikipedia; Operational definition; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition#Philosophy;
16) Wikipedia; Proxy (statistics); https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_(statistics);
17) Nature; Ainsworth (2015); Sex redefined: The idea of two sexes is simplistic. Biologists now think there is a wider spectrum than that [most biologists worth their salt don't think that at all]; https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a;
18) Scientific American; Fuentes (2023); Here’s Why Human Sex Is Not Binary;  https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/heres-why-human-sex-is-not-binary/;
19) Wikipedia; Lysenkoism; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lysenkoism&oldid=1139625110;
20)  Reality’s Last Stand; Byrne (2024); Exposing Sex Pseudoscience in American Scientist;
21) Areo Magazine; Byrne (2020); Biological Sex and the Legal Protection of LGBT Individuals; https://areomagazine.com/2020/08/20/biological-sex-and-the-legal-protection-of-lgbt-individuals/;
22) YouTube; Reason with Science (2022); Science of testosterone, Carole Hooven;
23) Psychology Today; Robert King (2020); Terf Wars: What Is Biological Sex?; https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hive-mind/202003/terf-wars-what-is-biological-sex;
24) Wikipedia; Sequential hermaphroditism; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism;
25) Wiley Online Library; Goymann, Brumm, & Kappeler (2022); Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202200173?af=R;
26) PhilPapers; Paul Griffiths (2021); What are biological sexes?; https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2;