The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category?

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The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867424001223

The history of sex research demonstrates an ongoing coexistence of multiple, conflicting meanings of sex. This history raises questions for scientists about the deployment of a research variable that lacks precision. Cross-disciplinary collaboration between scientists and science and technology studies (STS) scholars offers a way to find solutions to this problem.

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What a terrible, terrible paper.

And yet it was cited seriously on Lemmy over in https://lemmy.today/post/57474308. Here’s a takedown of it:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/03/17/the-journal-cell-endorses-the-view-that-sex-isnt-binary/

Here are the main problems with Velocci’s paper:

  • It conflates sex differentiation, sex determination, and the definition of sex
  • It argues, wrongly, that no progress has been made in understanding the nature and definition of biological sex
  • Its argument is ideological rather than scientific, yet is given the trappings of science
  • It argues that the binary nature of sex, which the author rejects, somehow erases transgender and nonbinary people
  • And, as usual, its supposed examples that make sex nonbinary, like the long clitoris of the hyena, are wrong. But where are the clownfish? Send in the clownfish!
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