Alex Byrne has kindly sent me a response to
my post on his article, which I here reproduce in full, with his permission and his original emphasis preserved.
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"Ellen, thanks very much for this thoughtful engagement with
my article. Here are some comments/replies. I’ve put the relevant pieces of
your post in quotation marks.
“I'll assume Byrne
recognises that the idea of defining sex by genitalia as birth, with chromosome
testing as a back-up, is problematic, because he doesn't consider it. One
problem is you might get people who have ambiguous genitalia and whose
chromosomes are ambiguous as well - such as if they have XXY or XO chromosomes.
Another problem is that people's genitalia can mismatch with their chromosomes.”
I agree completely with
this. Being female or male cannot be equated with having a certain kind of
genitalia, or having certain chromosomes. That is obvious if you widen the
focus beyond humans. Of course, genitalia at birth are generally a very
reliable sign of a (human) baby’s sex, but a sign or indication of X should
not be confused with X itself.
“Byrne argues instead that
we can turn to a standard biological definition of sex to show us that sex is
binary. He suggests we use the standard biological, multi-species sex
distinction which says that the female of the species is the one that produces
the largest gametes. Then we can say that "females are the ones who have
advanced some distance down the developmental pathway that results in the
production of large gametes - ie ovarian differentiation has occurred, at least
to some extent." A male, meanwhile, is someone who has advanced some
distance down the developmental pathway that results in the production of small
gametes - sperm.
Byrne argues that if we use
this definition then there will be no humans who are neither female nor male,
thus proving that sex is, after all, binary.”
But I do not say that.
Here’s what I wrote:
The existence of some
unclear cases shows that it would be incautious to announce that sex (in
humans) is binary. By the same token, it is equally incautious to announce
that it isn’t — let alone that this is an established biological fact. And even
if some people are outside the binary, they are a miniscule fraction of the
population, nothing like the frequently cited 1–2 percent figure, which draws
on Fausto-Sterling’s earlier work.
“There are several problems
with Byrne's argument.
First of all, the
definition wouldn't be easy to apply - we would have to come up with some
rules about exactly which developmental events constitute the right amount of
ovarian differentiation, for one thing.”
You’re right that it
wouldn’t be easy to apply. But I never suggested that we adopt it as a way
of telling whether a baby is female or male. Observing the genitals is a
cheap and effective way of telling (although, as you point out, it won’t work
for every case). I was simply interested in whether sex is binary, rather than
in finding some especially reliable test for someone’s sex.
“And Byrne would have to
accept that any fetus younger than 6 weeks has no sex at all, which flies in
the face of normal intuitions about sex.”
Quite right. I do accept
it. But surely you don’t think that biological questions should be decided by
“normal intuitions”! Since I think I existed at one week after conception, I
think there was a time when I was sexless. Here’s some support: “Sex is never
determined at conception” (Beukeboom and Perrin, The Evolution of Sex
Determination, OUP 2014, p. 17).
“Second, Byrne allows that
there will still be humans who count as both male and female, because they have
advanced some way towards production of both types of gamete (such individuals
have standardly been called 'true hermaphrodites' but the Intersex Society of
North America is campaigning for such genital-focused terms to be avoided).
This, he says, is in line with the fact that definitions in biology are never
perfectly precise, but always admit of exceptions. I agree, but I fail to see
why his desired conclusion - that sex is binary - is not threatened by such
exceptions just as it would be threatened by cases which are neither male nor
female?”
You’re right that if there
are humans who are both female and male, then this would refute the binary
thesis. But I never allowed that there are such people. I wrote:
…there are some other rare
cases (arguably 1 in 50,000 births or even rarer) that are hard to decide, but
there are no clear and uncontroversial examples of humans who are neither
female nor male. (A similar point goes for supposed examples of humans who
are both female and male, although here things get more complicated.)
Here things really do get
complicated! It would have taken much too much space to treat the (exceedingly
rare) cases of so-called “true hermaphrodites”, so I had to leave that out.
“And there are women who
likewise fail Byrne's definition of a female…Such individuals [XY people with
(Complete) Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome] don't constitute difficult cases
for Byrne's definition - they are classified unproblematically as male. But
Byrne's definition would pose a problem for these individuals - at least some
of them get hurt by being classified as male. Patino was hurt because she lost
her career as an Olympic hurdler. Some are hurt because they feel like females.
Some are hurt because they feel like neither males nor females.”
I am certainly not
suggesting that everyone who is male should be socially treated as male, or
barred from female-only sports, or called ‘male’, or have ‘male’ on their birth
certificate, or anything like that. Cases of CAIS prove that that would be
ridiculous.
“We don't have to define
sex as binary any more than we have to define indigo as separate from violet.”
Here I think we have a
serious disagreement. (Well, maybe not — tell me what you think.) By my lights,
I am not defining sex as binary. I am, rather, reporting that sex
is basically a matter of gamete size (as I might report that water contains
hydrogen and oxygen), and that people who say that sex isn’t binary (in humans)
are going far beyond the evidence.
Suppose sex is binary. We
can’t change that, any more than we can change the fact that we are mammals.
(Or that indigo and violet are different colors; indigo may be a kind of blue,
but whatever it is it isn’t violet.) What we can change (if we like) are our
practices of classifying people as female or male. We could even agree to drop
that social classification altogether — remove it from government documents,
tear down bathroom signs, mandate unisex clothing, and so on. I simply wasn’t
concerned (in that article) with these issues.
Consider this analogy. Let
us say that northerners are those born in the northern hemisphere, and southerners
are those born in the southern hemisphere. That is a binary distinction (assume
no one is born exactly on the equator): every human is either a northerner or a
southerner, and no one is both. Suppose that these are socially significant
categories. The northerners oppress the southerners, and the different groups
are supposed to wear differently colored hats. Some people feel trapped by the
“hemispheric binary”, perhaps not “identifying” as a northerner or a
southerner, and refuse to wear a hat at all (or maybe wear a multi-colored
one). No doubt something should be done about this unhappy state of
affairs. But denying that the northerner/southerner distinction is binary is
not it.
best
Alex"