This is in reply to a post I read on a science fiction forum, where the author postulated there are basically 'five' sexes; male, female, hermaphrodite, 'mixed', and neuter. But I'm wondering if that's true. What determines if something is a 'sex' and how many are there? Is it just a chromosomal thing? A mechanics thing?

(Note, this is different from gender or sexual identity, although I'm sure we'll bleed into that too. I just think the mechanics question is straight-forward in comparison, so a good start-off point.)

Guess I'm a bit confused about the question.  It's sort one of definition.  Define it one way, and there's X number of sexes, define it another there's Y of them.  Neither definition is "right" since it just amounts to labeling/categorizing.  One definition might be more commonly used/accepted, and you might confuse people by using another, but that doesn't make either definition more "correct."  It sounds like the author has defined sex in such a way that there end up being 5 sexes.  It's presumably an internally consistent categorization system, but unless other people know what he's talking about, it doesn't really aid in communicating whatever idea he's trying to get across.

Put another way:  There are an zillion different ways you could categorize people into a certain number of groups.  You can call each of those groups a sex if you like.  None of them is "right" per se, though all but a very few of the possible categorization methods will be far from what most people mean when they talk of sexes.  Arguing about whether there are two, five, or 50 sexes basically will come down to arguing about which way of categorizing people is "best," and there's not a whole lot to really base that on, besides "this is the one that is most useful to communicating about a given idea," I'd say.

I don't know too much about it, but there are biologists who specialize in this sort of thing.

For us, there are only two Sexes, and I think the number is determined by the Zygote types.

But for say, Arthropods, I'm not sure if it's the same number.  I know there are certain species that have more, species that only have one, etc.

Actually, the definitions are pretty clear on this one.  "Sex" is understood to be your biological sex, while "gender" is your social identity.  This is the accepted scientific definitions of the term.

Speaking strictly from biology, it's tempting to go off of straight chromosomes.  However, it's well-known that you can express a biological sex that differs from your chromosomal sex.  This usually happens is certain XY (male) pairings: the Y chromosome is faulty, and never sends the signals for the fetus to develop into a male.  The result is a normal female until puberty, when she doesn't develop menstruation.

So, the five biological sexes is a valid scientific view.  It has absolutely no bearing on social gender roles, of course; and the interaction of the two causes no end of confusion.

Personally?  I think hermaphrodite and mixed are pretty much the same thing, and I can't think of a single case of a neuter happening-- everyone expresses some sexual characteristics, even if they're confusing.  So, my opinion is that there is only three, but I can't back that up like the other points.

Hermaphroditus doesn't confuse anything going by Gametes.  Either you produce an ovum gamete or you produce a sperm gamete.

If you produce both, you're Homothallic, like Yeast or other fungi.

EDIT:  That is to say, even if both sexual organs develop in humans, one or the other will be unable to produce viable gametes.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:59, Sat 17 Mar 2012.

Actually, many hermaphrodites don't produce reproductive cells at all.  The various bodily changes required for hermaphrodisim tend to render a person sterile.  A fertile hermaphrodite is very rare.

So, if you're going off of gametes, you automatically include a third sex for sterile humans, who produce no gametes.  That covers a lot of conditions, many of which do not affect the development of sexual characteristics.  In the case I mentioned before, you can have a chromosomally XY female, normally developed in every way except for non-developed reproductive organs.  Should she be considered male, or neuter, or hermaphrodite?

It's not a separate sex, it's the lack thereof. If they are not possessing any sexual characteristics, then they have no Sex.  Being without a religion is not itself a religion.

Any way you could further categorize people into Males and/or Females would be descriptors of Gender characteristics, Male and Female themselves being gender Categories, not Sexual Categories.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:40, Sun 18 Mar 2012.

Gender is a social category, and is variable from culture to culture.  Sex is biological, and can be determined scientifically.  Male and Female are sexual terms, while Man and Woman (since they only refer to humans) are gender terms.

Of course, reproductive ability is not a good method of doing it, since many people are physically one sex or the other, but sterile.  Generally, those who have female secondary sexual characteristics are considered female, and those with male secondary characteristics are considered male.  Those with confusing characteristics are usually considered intersex, and generally identify with one gender or the other.

It's why Sex, and the traits associated with it, cannot be generally rounded down to individuals.

Sex is meant to describe populations in a mean average.

And Male and Female are only sexual descriptors when the Gametes are represented as such;  The Female Gamete being larger and the Male Gamete being more populous.

But such descriptors are inadequate when the size difference is not as Sexually Dimorphic, or both gametes are produced by the same organism.  The fact that we call our gametes male and female is itself a product of culture and social categorization, and no longer accurately fits what we know to be true.

It carries as much descriptive power as the term "Male to Female Audio-Converter" does; both are products of cultural assumptions, specific to a single species and culture(s).

Oh, it can.

You're confusing gender and sex; sex is biological while gender is sociocultural.  And yes, there are more than two variations among each.  Biologically speaking, there are more than two sexes, even ignoring rare edge cases like hermaphrodites.  It's not uncommon for one sex to express characteristics of the other: women with facial hair, men who lactate, and so on.  These are common and well-documented enough to show that biological sex isn't a matter of gametes.

What does facial hair or lactation have to do with Sex?  Your assumptions that this is a Male or a Female thing to experience betrays that it is you who is confusing culture with Biology.

Sex is defined in a way that allows for as few ambiguities as possible, because it is a scientific classification.

Gender shows itself to be a sociocultural term because the exceptions abound.  Hirsutism and Male Lactation only causes dillemas in a cultural view of what it means to be one Sex or another, and does not apply at all to the scientific definitions.

You claim that it is more than Gametes, yet what you propose to add to the definition only serves to leave things less defined.

Biological sex is usually paired with either genitalia or secondary sexual characteristics, of which facial hair and lactation are included.  Since ambiguous genitalia is a fairly common occurrence, you usually rely on the secondary sexual characteristics.  You can't rely on reproductive organs (testes or ovaries) because it's perfectly possible to have a normally developed female with undescendable testes.

Biological Sex applies to more than just humans, and so neither facial hair or lactation are descriptive characteristics of it. We should forget humanocentrism in looking at sex, as it applies to more than just Humans.

Obviously, neither does Cryptorchidism; if an organism can reproduce, we can usually determine its sex by its gametes, no matter what part of their body they're in.

It's rather insulting to claim that we can't rely on it just because superficial observation reveals no clear definition; it's Social Constructs, not scientific ones, that demand the obtuse and obvious.

We can't even use Sexual Chromosomes as a way to indicate Sex over gametes; every rule of thumb or proverb you may know about the chromosomes does not necessarily apply to all species:

1. Not all species have their sex determined by their Sexual Chromosomes; many lizards' sex is determined by room temperature while in the egg.

2. The Egg-Sex is not always the default Chromosome; in many birds the Sperm-Sex-Correlated Chromosome is the default one.

Yes, but not all organisms can reproduce.  Nor do they have functioning reproductive organs, or even developed ones.

Look, all human fetuses are female by default.  It's only through the action of the Y chromosome that the changes into a male phenotype are possible.  When that chromosome is defective, you end up with a perfectly normal looking female... with internal testes in place of ovaries, or some undeveloped organs.  In every practical sense, you have a female-- but technically, you have an intersex condition.

That does leave out the [rare] cases of true hermaphrodism and other intersex conditions that are possible within human biology.  Most hermaphrodites (they're too rare to really get a good sample size) are infertile.  Since they don't produce gametes at all, what does that mean for your theory?

For that matter, there's lots of conditions that would leave a human unable to produce gametes.  Failure to develop reproductive organs at many points during pregnancy would leave precursor organs, neither testes nor ovaries.  What happens to your theory then?

All extant species are capable of reproduction.  If they weren't, they wouldn't be extant.



You're still mixing social meaning of what it means to be female or not female, and you're also presupposing that pseudo-organs = gametes.



Provide actual peer-reviewed scientific documentation of True Hermaphroditus in the human species.



Assuming they do in fact produce no gametes, then they have no sex.



Assuming any of these things result in the failure to produce gametes, then they have no sex.

I do not know at this time whether or not any of these conditions would lead to the failure of gamete production, but then I do not know whether you know either, or are looking further into your propositions to see whether they hold water before you make them.

To summarize, it is my opinion that you are way too deep into Humanocentrism and the Social homology of Sex and Gender to provide any meaningful definition of how Sex is defined that could be applied to all species capable of reproduction.

Your problems with the scientific definition of Sex are only problems if we follow the definition of sex as propositioned by you, and confusing your views for the views which you disagree with says to me that you need to take some time to find out more about the subject and divorce your social beliefs from the facts.

Oh, please.  Let's open up the discussion with the Encyclopedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/EBch...3151/hermaphroditism

But wait!  There's more!  One of the more common intersex conditions is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (which I referred to earlier), you can read the National Institute of Health report on it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002163/

And since we're at the National Institute of Health website, we might as well link to their page on Intersex conditions: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...y/article/001669.htm

So, there you go.  Lots and lots of peer reviewed articles are cited on the subjected of intersex conditions.


If you read the links on AIS, you'll see that "True AIS" cases are 100% phenotypically female.  Breasts, genitals, everything but ovaries.  Are you honestly saying that they're not female?

Hell, let's take it one step further.  Let's say a woman has ovarian cancer and has to have her ovaries removed.  She now produces no gametes.  Has she now lost her classification as female?

In short, do you see how silly your argument is when faced with the biological reality?


Your problem is that you're trying to debate physiology with a nurse.  Not a smart idea.

The scientifically accepted definitions are that sex is biological, while gender is cultural.  Fortunately, most intersex conditions are rare enough that they don't crop up often; when they do, it's usually easier to follow their gender identity unless it directly pertains to their treatment.

And yet you've yet to provide a single case of True Hermaphroditus in humans.  You're also continuing to use your definition of sex, which doesn't mean anything if you're trying to disprove the scientific definition of sex as faulty.

Give me an actual example of a hermaphrodite capable of impregnating themselves, and you'll have something; there are no documented cases of such a thing, because humans are not homothallic.



You do know what a Phenotype is, don't you?  Looks can be deceiving; some flowers for example can only be told apart by dissecting them.  The Phenotype isn't just superficial observations.



Assuming that we forget that she did at one point have ovaries (why we'd forget such a thing is mind-boggling, but since you're so against "scientific reality", I'll humor you), then yes she would be sex-less.  However, culturally speaking she would invariably maintain her social status of "Female".
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On further study, I've discovered that the gametes need not be fully-matured and viable to designate a Gender;  This does in fact allow for the following options of Sex: Oocytic, Spermatocytic, Both, or Neither.
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:05, Mon 19 Mar 2012.

Wow, can't contribute much, but this is a very educational discussion. Keep it up, guys!

Read the links I've provided.  Additionally, I'm not trying to prove the scientific definition of sex as faulty, I'm proving that your definition of sex is faulty.  There is a difference.


Now that's just ridiculous.  "Female", biologically speaking, doesn't refer to just your reproductive organs.  Again, there are plenty of true AIS cases of people who are phenotypically female, but have testes instead of ovaries.  Are they men, women, or intersex by your definition?


I'll simplify that for you.  The current accepted scientific categories are Male, Female, and Intersex.  There is no neuter category.  Intersex does cover a lot of territory, but it works for the purposes of science.

Gender is a purely social construct, but biological sex is often assigned based on it in ambiguous cases, especially after the famous John/Joan case.  (For those of you who don't know, the John/Joan case was of a male baby who's penis was destroyed during a botched circumcision.  So, he was given a vagina and fed hormones to make him into a her.  It didn't take; he developed what we'd now call Gender Identity Disorder and eventually came out as male.)

I'd say it's hard to argue that a definition "is faulty," except perhaps to the extent that it fails to communicate the intended information.  You two seem to be arguing mostly about what we should call things, rather than what is true about things.  That's a subjective issue, and no amount of links or evidence will really sway the discussion.

Put another way, something like whether any human beings make two different types of gametes is a question about the real world, and one for which there is a correct answer.  What label we should attach to such a person is a semantic question, for which there is only opinion and precedent.  For me at least, the former types of questions are far more interesting.  The latter is nothing to get worked up about usually so long as everyone is clear on what everyone else means when they say a given term.

It's important to sort out what we mean when we say X, Y, or Z, but once we're clear on that, it's hard to argue one person is wrong for meaning something different when they say the same thing (or meaning the same thing while saying something different).  There are "accepted" definitions, which are good to use because it makes it less likely that we'll confuse one another, but I'm not sure there's really such thing as a "correct" definition.  Granted, using a term in a way that is counter to what everyone else takes it to mean is a bit silly, since it's bound to lead to confusion, but that's more an issue of manners than correctness, I'd say.

Again, there are three accepted human biological sexes: male, female, and intersex.  Intersex is something of a dumping ground category, so it's not as useful as it could be.  However, it works for functional assessment.

Using gametes as a dividing line is fairly useless, as it's possible to be entirely biologically one sex except for the production of reproductive cells.  There's probably dozens of conditions that would render a human incapable of producing gametes without affecting other sexual characteristics.  I've already referred to AIS, but there's also Klinefelter's (a male with XXY chromosomes instead of XY) XXY is actually fairly common, occurring in about 1 in 1000 male births.  In this case, we have a person who develops as a normal male in just about every way except for some gynomastica and sterility.  To say that they're not male would be just plain silly.  There's several other possible pairings that occur, most commonly XYY and XXX.

And those are just the chromosomal anomalies!  There's many more to choose from.  In general, biological sex is assigned based on appearance: if it looks like a penis, it's male, if it looks like a vagina it's female, and if it's confusing it's intersex until the child is old enough to self-identify.