{"id":1366,"date":"2026-07-16T22:12:46","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1366"},"modified":"2026-07-16T22:12:46","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:12:46","slug":"explaining-sex-to-an-anthropologist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=1366","title":{"rendered":"Explaining Sex to an Anthropologist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Last week, the president of the American Anthropological Association weighed in on one of the most polarizing subjects in her field: biological sex. Some anthropologists believe that biological sex is binary, and that it is a necessary and useful category; others believe that this position is at odds with settled science and is a threat to people\u2019s \u201csafety and dignity,\u201d as the AAA put it in an official statement. In 2023, organizers of a large anthropology conference canceled a panel that sought to defend the importance of biological sex to the field.<\/p>\n

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Anthropology scholars, in particular, should be unusually adept at accurately reconstructing human beliefs that they do not share. But the AAA\u2019s president, Carolyn M. Rouse, says that she\u2019s baffled by the whole debate.<\/p>\n

Rouse, who is also a tenured professor at Princeton, addressed the question during a lengthy interview with The Chronicle of Higher Education<\/i>. \u201cThe idea that there are two sexes is just factually incorrect,\u201d she stated, arguing that \u201call you need to do is literally type into Google\u201d to see that we know \u201cthere are different types of \u2018sexes\u2019 and \u2018genders.\u2019\u201d In a curious aside, she added, \u201cYou may not like<\/i> it. I don\u2019t know, maybe you want to kill babies that aren\u2019t just XX presenting XX or XY presenting XY, but that\u2019s what we have in this world.\u201d In Rouse\u2019s telling, scholars who believe that biological sex is a useful analytic category are not only wrong but engaging in \u201cnonsensical\u201d speech that is no more fit for consideration in their field than astrology is fit for astronomers. \u201cI still don\u2019t know what people mean\u201d when they assert that sex is binary, she said, or \u201cwhy that matters to people so much.\u201d She called the belief \u201cvery strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rouse\u2019s comments reveal that she does not even understand the position that she is dismissing. Anthropology is the study of humanity, and scholars in the field are charged with understanding our species, past and present, in all of its diversity. Their ambit includes our belief systems. And a belief in two sexes is one of the most common in human history. That a belief is common does not make it correct, but it is jarring for a leader representing anthropologists to talk about a position held by billions of humans in wildly different times and places as if it is both \u201cvery strange\u201d and beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n

Scholars are well within their rights to reject the notion that sex is binary\u2014many anthropologists share this view, including Princeton\u2019s Agust\u00edn Fuentes, who explains his logic in Sex Is a Spectrum<\/i>. But instead of a fair-minded appraisal of the matter, Rouse showed conspicuous incuriosity about other scholars\u2019 work.<\/i> It is striking how little she seems to know about the particular reasons that many fellow scholars believe that biological sex is binary. Just as striking is how she responds to not knowing. She could apply her scholarly tool kit to understand what others think and why. Instead, she treated their view as unworthy of debate and said that academics might be right to keep it out of conferences. She doesn\u2019t \u201cknow what people mean\u201d\u2013\u2013yet she is certain that their wrongness is settled.<\/p>\n

Her interviewer, Stephanie M. Lee, reacted by pointing out that in 2022, in a survey of forensic anthropologists, 42.4 percent of respondents expressed the belief that sex is<\/i> binary, implying that the question simply isn\u2019t<\/i> settled in the field. Lee said, \u201cI was wondering how you explain that.\u201d Rouse responded, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in opinion research,\u201d then added, \u201cNot to disparage them, but a lot of forensic people, they\u2019re coroners, they\u2019re doing it in a practicing level, where they\u2019re actually asked on forms to determine whether this body is male or female, oftentimes they haven\u2019t had advanced schooling.\u201d In fact, the journal Forensic Anthropology<\/i> published data on the respondents: 57.9 percent had a doctorate, and another 25.7 percent had received a master\u2019s degree; the most common degree concentrations among respondents were forensic anthropology and biological or physical anthropology. Just 20.5 percent worked in a coroner\u2019s office. And flimsy claims aside, these attacks on survey respondents\u2019 credentials evaded the substance of the matter.<\/p>\n

All of this seems contrary to the spirit of anthropology. If the goal of the field is to understand humans, what kind of scholar professes ignorance of a common viewpoint and<\/i> why its adherents value it, and rejects surveys, panels, and debates that clarify what others believe?<\/p>\n

Granted, like many coroners, I lack advanced education in anthropology. But even journalism can add clarity here. Rouse stated, \u201cBinary means two. So, what are the two? One is XX and one is XY, but we know that there are more than that. That\u2019s not binary.\u201d She alluded to the fact that although most humans have either XX or XY chromosomes, there are some cases in which a person\u2019s chromosomes are XXY, XYY, or XXX, and rare cases in which they are XXYY, XXXY, et cetera. If a scholar were to define every variation as a different sex, then sex would not be binary.<\/p>\n

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But scholars who believe that sex is<\/i> binary do not define sex based on chromosomes alone. Typically, their position goes something like: Human reproduction is organized around two types of gametes and two corresponding reproductive roles: small gametes, or sperm, produced by males and large gametes, or ova, produced by females. In this important sense, sex is binary. There is no third type of gamete, just the male and female gamete<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist with a Ph.D. in biological anthropology, had been slated to appear on the American Anthropological Association panel that got cancelled. She is a proponent of the \u201cgametic view.\u201d Far from denying the complexity of life, her account of binary sex acknowledges it. In her telling, its usefulness is due in part to the fact that \u201cit applies across sexually reproducing animals and accommodates all the complexity and variation within the sexes. It holds in nonreproductively viable animals\u2014like postmenopausal me\u2014that don\u2019t produce gametes,\u201d she writes; \u201cit holds in male seahorses that get pregnant; in clownfish who change from male to female (first producing sperm and then eggs); in females who identify as male (trans men) and take male levels of testosterone and have a deep voice and a thick, bushy beard.\u201d As for how it maps onto humans in particular, she writes, \u201cTraits associated with sex\u2014like chromosomes, hormones, brain, feelings, or behavior\u2014are not binary; nor do they define sex. However, there are two, and only two, sexes.\u201d<\/p>\n

After understanding the gametic view, one can explore any number of challenges to it\u2013\u2013a proponent of it, Colin M. Wright, who holds a Ph.D. in evolution, ecology, and marine biology from UC Santa Barbara, summarizes many of them in his article \u201cWhy There Are Exactly Two Sexes.\u201d For example, some people argue that sex is not binary, because some people are intersex. \u201cA person might be born appearing to be female on the outside, but having mostly male-typical anatomy on the inside. Or a person may be born with genitals that seem to be in-between the usual male and female types,\u201d the Intersex Society of America explains. \u201cOr a person may be born with mosaic genetics, so that some of her cells have XX chromosomes and some of them have XY.\u201d (This last point resembles one of the arguments that Rouse employed in her recent interview as if it was a decisive rejoinder to the notion of two sexes.)<\/p>\n

Wright\u2019s response to that line of argument is that \u201cthe sex binary does not entail that every individual can be unambiguously categorized as male or female.\u201d The claim is that \u201cthere are only two gamete types, sperm and ova, and thus only two sexes. Sexual ambiguity is not a third or intermediate sex because developmental variation does not correspond to producing new gamete types.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Wright\u2019s position and the counterarguments are easy to understand, whatever view one holds. Neither side is \u201cnonsensical.\u201d And the point is not to pick a side. It is, rather, that the AAA and its president have an obligation to understand all relevant positions and convey them accurately\u2013\u2013and to eschew ad hominem rhetoric such as denigrating coroners and speculating that people who think sex is binary may want to kill babies.<\/p>\n

In popular discourse, one can doubtless find many weak and flawed arguments for why sex is binary. What hope does anthropology have for understanding those beliefs\u2013\u2013which its scholars should try to do, given their overall mission of understanding people\u2013\u2013if the field can\u2019t even give a fair shake to scholars with the steelman version? These academics have presented a coherent, internally consistent, scientifically grounded case for sex as binary that many scholars share.<\/p>\n

Anthropologists would do their discipline\u2019s reputation some good if they collectively signaled that they have no confidence in leaders who behave this way. To understand humans, anthropologists must be able to understand the humans with whom they disagree.<\/p>\n

Read more What Ancient Greek Is Good For<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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