The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born male.
The development comes after a presentation to the International Olympic Committee by its medical chief, which highlighted the potential physical advantages of competing in women’s sport after being born male.
Glad I can help you learn something today! Sex is defined by gamete size. Unfortunately, disputing like you’ve done is unscientific. The linked article that goes over the definition is a great place to start for a beginner though!
I know I told you to find someone else to read for you, but I won’t be that person, sorry. However, rest assured, the Wikipedia article you linked also doesn’t claim what you say it does. Have a shitty day!
I’ll help you out with the first sentence!
“Male and female” were synonyms for “large and small,” huh? I hope you manage to get past the first sentence of an article one day
Before you come at me with the end of that paragraph, try reading the end of it too. Still not a binary!
Let me know where you’re misunderstanding it and I’ll do my best to help break it down!
Sex is binary because there are two sizes of gametes, large and small. Those two are the only options, and thus sex is a binary. In humans, sex is determined by chromosomes, but defined by gamete size. Variations in phenotype and genotype are variations within a sex.
You might be confused by the term “hermaphrodite”. It’s possible for some organisms to produce both gamete sizes! But sex is still a binary, because you’ll notice they produce both sizes. Some animals can even change sex during their lifetimes or have their sex determined by temperature while they develop 🤯 It’s true! But humans aren’t like that, we’re sexually dimorphic. Our bodies are organized around producing one or the other of two gamete sizes for our entire lives.
Now you might be wondering why we care about defining sex. Why bother? 🤔 The answer is because it’s the only defining trait that works across an enormous swath of the animal kingdom! Biology is hard and messy and it’s amazing we found such a handy distinction. Some organisms such as fungi have mating types instead of sex, but in anisogamous species we define sex by gamete size because it’s the only coherent definition.