Are There Two Sexes?

Here is a typical woke academic paper on the subject.

Sex is an ambiguous term and the point of this paper is to clear it up in as brief a manner as possible. I aim to report the more or less settled biological facts and point out the unsettling (for some) and unsettled ones.

It concludes:

So, are there two and only two sexes? Yes and no, but mostly no. Yes, insofar as “sexual” as a type of organism is defined in terms of sexual reproduction and anisogamous organisms are identified as those that reproduce by joining large gametes with small ones.

If sex is defined by gametes, then there are only two sexes in mammals. Snails can be more complicated.

The academics used to carefully distinguish sex and gender. Now many use the terms interchangeably. When they distinguish, sex means biology, and is best defined by gametes but could also be defined by chromosomes or by a functioning SRY gene. Gender means grammar. Gender identity means preferred pronouns.

The paper has a lot of discussion about odd cases, but they really do not have much to do with the current transgenderism controversy.

Some say that the existence of intersex people shows that transgenders should be accepted. But this is not true. First, it is not clear that there are any intersex people. They are mainly or entirely people who have been misclassified. Second, the vast majority of the transgenders are not intersex anyway.

People can have legitimate differences about preferred pronouns. But if an academic tries to tell you that sex is not binary in mammals, then he is just lying to you for some woke purpose.

Update:

Joe Biden is clearly unhappy with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s attempt to repair his relationship with Donald Trump.

The outgoing president said at a press conference on Friday that Zuckerberg’s decision to roll back his platforms’ censorship policies was “really shameful” and against American values.

“It’s just completely contrary to everything America is about,” he said.

No, free speech is aligned with what America is about. I will be glad when I no longer have to listen to Pres. Biden lecture us on American values.