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RFC: Definition of Sex

Latest comment: 7 months ago128 comments39 people in discussion
The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The outcome of the RfC is a rough consensus to use the reproductive definition in this article.

Several editors suggested that the content of the article reflects this usage, though some pointed out that this article gets into multifactoral discussion. Overall this line of discussion, centered around MOS:LEAD, suggests that despite some coverage of other topics, this article's focus is around the reproductive definition

There was discussion about what reliable sources say; editors note that many sources that suggest a multifactoral definition do exist, however multiple editors believe that those sources were largely focused around topics other than the one covered by this article, especially with a focus on humans. Overall, this discussion—implicitly focused around the WP:RS guideline, and related policies like WP:NPOV, WP:V and so on—suggests that the latter evaluation has broader support.

Some editors of various opinions relied on their personal opinions or expertise on what the meaning of the word was. Given the amount discussion centered around PAG (including use of reliable sources), I've weighed such opinions or personal expertise appropriately.

There was concern about canvassing, evaluating the concerns including checking the edit history of many individual editors it seems likely that canvassing did in small part affect the discussion. This does not mean we can't, with care, find a rough consensus in the discussion. However, note that the in-depth of this discussion is far less "one-sided" than a raw !vote tally would suggest. On the other hand, please don't take the wrong message from this: canvassing concerns were not one-sided. I evaluated both explicit and implicit concerns neutrally, not taking any at face value.

There are some more notes from the discussion:

  1. Some editors desire to further disambiguate within the hatnote of this article, the primary suggestion being to link gender, though there were other suggestions.
  2. Some editors suggested to change this into a disambiguation page. There are suggestions that the article title itself is a source of disagreement, and that turning the page into a disambiguation page would make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for. Some editors suggested the current article is a primary topic for the article title, while others disagreed.
  3. There were also suggestions to turn this into a broad concept article.

Despite the amount of discussion, none of these points were supported or rejected sufficiently to suggest any further consensus. (non-admin closure) —siroχo 10:41, 16 December 2023 (UTC)Reply


Should this article use a multifactoral definition of sex, such as:

Sex is a biological construct based on traits including external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones.

or a reproductive definition of sex, such as:

Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes.

orboth?Loki (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC) ("Both" added by Loki (talk) 21:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC))Reply

Survey

There might be a place for a multifactoral definition in a different article and the most appropriate disambiguatory term used for this article would be affected if there is an article on a multifactoral definition. Plantdrew (talk) 17:38, 16 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
P.S.: Regarding the example sentences used in the OP, there are far more sources that refer to sex as a "trait" rather than as a "construct". Sex is a phenotypic trait, not a mere "construct" (whatever that is supposed to mean). Crossroads -talk- 20:15, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Presumably a Social construct is intended, since the meaning of all words is a social construct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 29 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I suspected as much, but of course this would then apply to literally every topic in Wikipedia and to every scientific term. Yet, one never sees a push to label things like anthropogenic climate change, evolution, Covid-19, or the shape of the Earth as social constructs. Most if not all arguments used to claim sex is a social construct apply to many other things as well, yet it is easy to see how in such cases it obscures more than it clarifies or even implies that there is no objective basis to believe the phenomenon exists. Crossroads -talk- 18:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)Reply
Climate change could be described as a phenomenon; perhaps that word would work here, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 12 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

Discussion

Multifactoral sources

  • The American Anthropological Association says as of just a few days ago that

    There is no single biological standard by which all humans can be reliably sorted into a binary male/female sex classification.

  • The NIH (Office of Research on Women's Health) defines sex as

    a multidimensional biological construct based on anatomy, physiology, genetics, and hormones.

  • The Canadian Institutes of Health Research defines sex as

    a set of biological attributes in humans and animals. It is primarily associated with physical and physiological features including chromosomes, gene expression, hormone levels and function, and reproductive/sexual anatomy.

  • The WHO defines sex, somewhat tautologically, as

    the biological characteristics that define humans as female or male

  • The CDC defines sex as

    An individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes.

  • The American Psychiatric Association defines sex as

    a biological construct defined on an anatomical, hormonal, or genetic basis

  • WPATH defines sex (on p96) as

    Sex is assigned at birth as male or female, usually based on the appearance of the external genitalia. When the external genitalia are ambiguous, other components of sex (internal genitalia, chromosomal and hormonal sex) are considered in order to assign sex (Grumbach, Hughes, & Conte,2003; MacLaughlin & Donahoe, 2004; Money & Ehrhardt, 1972; Vilain, 2000).

  • The National Academies of Medicine themselves in a recent publication define sex as

    a multidimensional construct based on a cluster of anatomical and physiological traits that include external genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, gonads, chromosomes, and hormones

  • The 11th edition of the college textbook Campbell Biology by Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, and Orr (ISBN 978-0134093413) defines sex on p298 as

    Although sex has traditionally been described as binary—male or female—we are coming to understand that this classification may be too simplistic. Here, we use the term sex to refer to classification into a group with a shared set of anatomical and physiological traits. In this sense, sex in many species is determined largely by inheritance of sex chromosomes. (The term gender, previously used as a synonym of sex, is now more often used to refer to an individual’s own experience of identifying as male, female, or otherwise.)

  • The website of the journal Nature defines sex as

    Sex – refers to currently understood biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles. Sex is usually categorized as female or male, although there is variation in the biological attributes that constitute sex.

  • The college textbook Neuroscience, 2nd edition, published in 2001, defines sex as

    Roughly speaking, sex can be considered in terms of three categories: genotypic sex, phenotypic sex, and gender. Genotypic sex refers specifically to an individual's two sex chromosomes. Most people have either two X chromosomes (genotypic female) or an X and a Y chromosome (genotypic male). Phenotypic sex refers to an individual's sex as determined by their internal and external genitalia, expression of secondary sex characteristics, and behavior. If everything proceeds according to plan during development (Box A), the XX genotype leads to a person with ovaries, oviducts, uterus, cervix, clitoris, labia, and vagina—i.e., a phenotypic female. By the same token, the XY genotype leads to a person with testicles, epididymis, vas deferens, seminal vesicles, penis, and scrotum—a phenotypic male. Gender refers more broadly to an individual's subjective perception of their sex and their sexual orientation, and is therefore harder to define than genotypic or phenotypic sex. Generally speaking, gender identity entails self-appraisal according to the traits most often associated with one sex or the other (called gender traits), and these can be influenced to some degree by cultural norms. Sexual orientation also entails self-appraisal in the context of culture.

  • The paper Human sex differentiation and its abnormalities starts by defining sex as

    Sex is multidimensional. By this, we mean that no single gene, hormone, anatomical feature or behaviour indisputably determines the sex of an individual

  • The Gendered Innovations Project at Stanford defines sex several times, but summarizes these definitions as

    Sex refers to biology. In humans, sex refers to the biological attributes that distinguish male, female, and/or intersex. In non-human animals, sex refers to biological attributes that distinguish male, female, and/or hermaphrodite. In engineering & product design research, sex includes anatomical and physiological characteristics that may impact the design of products, systems, and processes.

  • The neuroscience journal Neuron defines sex as

    In human research, the term "sex" carries multiple definitions. It often refers to an umbrella term for a set of biological attributes associated with physical and physiological features (e.g., chromosomal genotype, hormonal levels, or internal and external anatomy). It can also signify a sex categorization, most often designated at birth ("sex assigned at birth") based on a newborn's visible external anatomy.

Furthermore, this piece by the Yale School of Medicine refers to a 2001 definition by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Medicine) as

a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement [generally XX for female and XY for male].

but also explicitly argues that this definition is outdated and should be updated.
The following 4 sources that have been offered by opponents in previous discussions support the reproductive definition:

Reproductive sources

  • Biology of Sex, a 2018 textbook, defines sex as

    based on gonads and on the type of gametes produced in those gonads, either eggs or sperm.

  • The Biology of Reproduction by Fusco and Minelli, ISBN 9781108499859, published 2019, defines sex as

    Acquiring the phenotypic characters specific to a given sex, during development or at some other point during the life cycle of an organism, is usually a complex process. Although the sex of an individual is conventionally defined on the basis of the type of gametes, either eggs or sperm, that it is able to produce (see Section 3.2.1), the phenotype of each sex is generally composed of a multitude of characters. Each of these characters can present a certain degree of independence from other sexual traits in the same organism, be subject to different developmental controls, and show different degrees of sensitivity to the environment. Sexual differentiation is therefore not limited to the development of characteristic reproductive organs and the production of a given kind of gametes, but also extends to the development of the so-called secondary sexual characters, morphological, physiological and behavioural, or combinations of these.

  • The Oxford English Dictionary as of 2011 defined sex as

    either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.

    but I note that this is not a WP:MEDRS source and is also possibly not up to date. I'd welcome someone accessing a newer version of the OED and seeing what they say now.
  • The textbook Life: The Science of Biology, published 2000, says that

    Sexual reproduction requires both male and female haploid gametes. In most species, these gametes are produced by individuals that are either male or female. Species that have male and female members are called dioecious (from the Greek for 'two houses'). In some species, a single individual may possess both female and male reproductive systems. Such species are called monoecious ("one house") or hermaphroditic.

    though I note that while it implies sex is based on gametes it does not actually define it.
Although Vegetal Sex by Stella Sandford has been offered by opponents as a book that defines sex as based on gametes, it in fact puts up such a definition to be refuted and goes on to spend the rest of the chapter rejecting the idea that sex is a meaningful concept in plants at all.
Overall I find the sourcing here pretty overwhelming that sex is defined in a multifactoral way, and think it's impossible to say with these sources that we should continue to define sex in a purely reproductive way: either it should be defined only multifactorally or both definitions should be represented. Loki (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
A nit on wording: is it correct to say that sex is "the trait that determines" gametes, rather than the trait of having such-and-such gametes? The former makes it seem like sex precedes gametes, but the rest of the article has it the other way around.
Carleas (talk) 14:53, 13 November 2023 (UTC) (Summoned by bot)Reply
Yes, @Carleas, you're right. That's been discussed above, at length. These are very human-centric sources, and they're really talking about sex phenotype rather than sex per se. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:05, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Many, but not all. Several of the multifactoral sources explicitly mention non-human animals. Loki (talk) 21:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

the egg-sperm distinction is the basis for distinguishing between females and males.

Very few sources have been included presenting the opposing, overwhelmingly well-established picture, grounded in evolutionary biology, but they are easy to find. For example this (2014) on the evolutionary benefit of two sexes, which has evolved independently multiple times throughout history:

Biologically, males are defined as the sex that produces the smaller gametes (e.g. sperm), implying that the male and female sexes only exist in species with gamete dimorphism (anisogamy). Our ancestors were isogamous, meaning that only one gamete size was produced. The question of the evolutionary origin of males and females is then synonymous to asking what evolutionary pressures caused gamete sizes to diverge.

Orthis one (2022), which explicitly rejects the multi-factoral approach as confusing "sex" with "sex differentiation", and clearly defines sex itself thus:

Biological sex is defined as a binary variable in every sexually reproducing plant and animal species. With a few exceptions, all sexually reproducing organisms generate exactly two types of gametes that are distinguished by their difference in size: females, by definition, produce large gametes (eggs) and males, by definition, produce small and usually motile gametes (sperm).[9-12]

Void if removed (talk) 15:31, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
From Chapter 2 of Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader:
On defining sex:

The aim of this chapter is to review the biological understanding of the phenomenon that is sex. In the first section, we ask the question: Why does sex exist? We explain its evolutionary origins and the binary gamete system on which sex— 'female' and `male'—is founded. We explore some of the diversity of sex in the natural world yet understand how reproductive bodies are organised around two functional reproductive roles.

[...]

From an evolutionary perspective, we have established what sex is (reproductive role by reference to gamete type) and that, despite the fascinating manifestations of the two sexes within individuals and within populations, there are only two sexes.

On whether there is a "new consensus" on the meaning of sex:

we challenge the premise that some new scientific consensus on sex has emerged. Writing for DW, Sterzik (2021) claims that the broad scientific consensus now looks different: sex is a spectrum'. The definitions and understandings of sex we present in this chapter are uncontroversial, appearing in dictionaries, key biology textbooks and medical consensus statements like that issued by the Endocrine Society (Barghava et al. 2021). There is a vast literature which depends, explicitly or implicitly, on these understandings of sex. Searches on the scientific publication database PubMed for 'male' [AND] 'sperm' or 'female' [AND] 'egg' retrieve around 100,000 results each, including numerous and recent publications from Nobel laureates in physiology and medicine and a huge array of biological and medical disciplines. Searches of the PubMed database (performed on 9 July 2022) for phrases like 'bimodal sex', 'spectrum of sex' or 'sex is a social construct' generate no results in the biological or medical literature, although two close matches for 'sex is a spectrum' are found. The first is a study of how sex (female or male) affects the spectrum of genetic variations acquired in the X chromosome over a lifespan (Agarwal and Przeworski 2019). The second is a study of how foetal sex (female or male) affects the spectrum of placental conditions experienced during pregnancy (Murji et al 2012). Neither study demonstrates any confusion about the nature of sex, and both exemplify the importance of understanding sex in a clinical setting. It seems that claims of a new scientific consensus—or the milder assertion of an academic debate — regarding sex are overblown and manufactured by public commentators to generate an appeal to authority.

On the fundamental error of redefining sex as a set of traits:

A related argument evokes sex characteristics that can overlap between the sexes to attempt to demonstrate that 'there is no one parameter that makes a person biologically male or female' (Elsesser 2020). It is true that many females are taller than many males, and that some males have low levels of testosterone more typical of females. However, such arguments fail to acknowledge a point we have already addressed: we only know that males are typically taller and have higher testosterone levels than females if we have a reference characteristic for sex, independent of height and testosterone level, by which to divide and measure people. And it is centuries of study of the anatomic and molecular organisation of the human species around sex as a biological function that serves as the anchor point. Put simply, it would be impossible to claim that low and high testosterone levels are correlated with being female and male, respectively, unless the categories female and male already had established meanings that testosterone levels were being correlated with. The same holds for every other sex correlate.

Void if removed (talk) 17:51, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
First of all, you are extremely cherrypicking the Stanford definition. The full quote you're cherrypicking from is:

Sex may be defined according to: 1. Genetic sex determination: chromosomal make-up, generally XX/XY for most mammals. The presence of sex-determining genes means that every nucleated human cell has a sex. 2. Gametes: germ cells. In species that produce two morphologically distinct types of gametes, the egg-sperm distinction is the basis for distinguishing between females and males. 3. Morphology: physical traits that differentiate female and male...

Or in other words, they are giving three different definitions of sex as part of a broader point that there is no single definition of sex.
Your next two sources I admit are valid, but they're only two WP:PRIMARY papers. And one explicitly says that it's arguing against a growing new consensus.
Sex & Gender: A Contemporary Reader appears to be a collection of sociology essays and so its relevance to an article on biology seems shaky. I'm also suspicious that two of the essays are from Kathleen Stock and Lisa Littman, who, just look at their pages for why I suspect both of them may have strongly biased views on this topic to say the least. Loki (talk) 21:18, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
The full quote you're cherrypicking from is:
I'm pointing out this is contradictory, and omitting that this source very clearly states gametes are the whole basis of male and female overrides the rest, which is about sex determination, not what sex is.
a growing new consensus
It says "increasing". It does not say a consensus, and certainly not a biological consensus which it specifically refutes thus:

it is consensus among biologists that the majority of sexually reproducing multicellular organisms have exactly two evolutionary strategies to generate offspring, a female one and a male one

And it notes that these increasing moves are not about biology, but about creating an "inclusive environment for gender-diverse people". More on this below.
Sex & Gender: A Contemporary Reader appears to be a collection of sociology essays
It is an expansive book covering eg. sociology, philosophy, biology and law, with subject-matter chapters written by different authors. Ad hominem attacks on the authors of other chapters have no bearing on the present citations from chapter 2, which was written by a developmental biologist and heavily cites and assesses the primary literature. Basically, this is a recent, high quality WP:RS that has already performed a literature review as to whether there is a "new consensus" on sex, and come to the conclusion again that no, there is not.
Meanwhile the multifactoral citations you've provided include eg. one attributed to "the CDC", but that actually is from a terminology page on a section of their website about "Health Considerations for LGBTQ Youth", which cites two dead links, and that includes other contested and quite possibly offensive definitions like:

Lesbian: A woman who is primarily attracted to other women.

Another statement is a "No Place For Transphobia" response by the AAA to the cancellation of an event whose whole point was to talk about sex ("Let’s Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology"). Again - not a high quality biology source, just some political grandstanding on a website in a disputed area of contemporary politics.
Another, sourced to the APA, is from a guide to working with transgender patients, on a page whose principal focus seems to be listing neopronouns like xe/xir.
And another is WPATH.
Assessing these sources, this is representative of exactly the increasing (anthropocentric) moves to redefine sex to create an "inclusive environment" for "gender diverse" people which two of the sources note. You are not providing overwhelming citations demonstrating a changing biological consensus on what sex actually is, but rather that many of these sources simply demonstrate the shifting values (especially in the US) around whether we consider sex to be something else instead because it is politic to do so. Void if removed (talk) 09:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Also, both of you and Seraphimblade voted for disambiguation, so could you please clarify disambiguation between what and what? We still need an article on biological sex in general, because it's a topic that appears in the sources quite a lot. So in my view "disambiguation" just pushes the dispute back a step: there are some versions of it that I'd support and others that I wouldn't, based primarily on how our eventual article on biological sex defines sex. Loki (talk) 20:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I did my last sentence said make one article about sex Biology and the other about sexuality. They are not the same and should be treated as such. Why you would propose an article on sex in biological organisms (a biology article) and not mention how they are different is not clear to me, in some species it is xx/xy in others it is zz/zw, or ww/zw and there are many others as such it should address them. I never said to keep it mammalocentric, in fact I said otherwise and it would be advisable not to do this as this is not a mammal encyclopedia. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 20:19, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I would've thought my mentioning the ZW system in the following sentence would have made it clear that I was aware that the XY system wasn't an option under consideration. This article is presently about the reproductive (gamete) definition of sex. Under that definition birds with identical sex chromosomes (ZZ) are males, mammals with identical chromosomes (XX) are females, and sequentially hermaphroditic fishes are male/female based on the gametes they produce at a particular point in time.
The sources for a multifactoral definition of sex are heavily anthropocentric (or mammalocentric). The XY system is the first (and often only) sex-determination system people learn about in school. Humans are the best studied organisms and we know that XY doesn't fully explain human sexes. Seeing that XY doesn't fully explain human sexes, anthropocentric sources propose a multifactoral definition. Non-anthropocentric sources would discuss non-XY systems (as does this article). ZW probably doesn't fully explain bird sexes.
Are there sources using multifactoral definitions that explain why ZZ birds are (typically) considered to be male and XX mammals are (typically) considered to be female? Are there multifactoral sources that consider non-XY systems at all? If there are, there should be an article about multifactoral definitions of sex in different organisms. Multifactoral sources that are focused on humans could be used for an article on multifactoral definitions of sex in humans.
I don't think this article is the primary topic of "sex" since it gets many incoming links that aren't at all about the topic of this article. If there were articles about multifactoral definitions of sex (in various organisms, or just in humans), I wouldn't consider the topic of this article to necessarily be the primary topic of biological sex. Plantdrew (talk) 21:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
I think there's also the ever-present question of "What would a reader typing in this term primarily expect to find information on?". If there's not one clear answer to that question, disambiguation is the best solution. In this case, I think a substantial number of readers who type "sex" into the search bar may expect to find information on sexual reproduction and/or sexual intercourse rather than sexual dimorphism. I don't think any one of those are the unambiguously clear answer to "This is what a reader who types 'Sex' into the search bar will generally expect to find", so, when I saw disambiguation mentioned as a possible solution, I think it probably is the best of those available. Seraphimblade Talk to me 22:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Not necessarily; there's also the WP:Broad-concept article. It's quite possible that that may be a better solution than disambiguation, and I invite anyone who leans toward "disambiguation" to revisit WP:BCA and see what you think. I think it would be ideal. Mathglot (talk) 06:51, 17 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Given how relatively disparate some of those concepts are, do you think a single article could reasonably cover all three of them without being rather disjointed? That would be a good solution if possible, but I can't think of a good way off the top of my head to do that. Seraphimblade Talk to me 04:11, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yes, absolutely. This is not a Mercury case, where the concepts have nothing to do with each other. The 'Particle' example at BCA is illustrative, and pretty similar to this one, in the sense that it is a concept that is used to address many different, but related ideas in a scientific field (in this case, several closely related fields). Note that Particle is a short article: longer than a stub, but not by much. There is no need to pack everything into Particle—it's just an intro to the general concept of "Particle" in physics with links to the more specific meanings—just as there is no reason to pack everything into Sex.
I think "Sex" should be handled just like Particle , with a smallish article introducing several meanings, with plenty of links leading to other articles, some of which might be parenthetically disambiguated versions of the title "Sex". That would essentially finesse this entire Rfc, not to mention a lot of the endless debate about what "Sex" means, and what to say about it. Yes it means a lot of things; no we shouldn't squeeze it all into one article, and no we shouldn't recycle the same Talk page discussions, endlessly arguing about it. We should acknowledge the polysemy, and deal with it via a BCA. Mathglot (talk) 01:29, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Just noticed Loki's comment (00:31, 15 Nov), "If you mean [[this]], or [[that]], or [[that-over-there]]...": exactly—if there's still argument about what an article means that's been around since 2001, then there's a problem, and I'm not sure another 22 years of discussion will solve it. Time for another approach. Mathglot (talk) 01:43, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
A broad concept article would include sexual intercourse? That's what hundreds of incoming links to this title intend. And that seems too broad to really be a single concept (sex/sexual intercourse have are concepts with an etymological relationship, but so is the planet/diety named Mercury). Plantdrew (talk) 02:11, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, same issue with this as Plantdrew.
I agree that you could have an article encompassing reproductive sex, hormonal sex, phenotypical sex, chromosonal sex, etc etc. And you could also have an article encompassing sexual intercourse, sexual reproduction, and human sexuality, possibly among others. But I don't think you could do both of those things in one article. Loki (talk) 02:31, 19 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Scott Thomson If you mean sexual reproduction, sexual intercourseorhuman sexuality we already have separate articles for those. That's not what this RFC is about (though I agree they should go on a disambiguation page if we make one).
@Plantdrew As far as I can tell, the issues that are causing biologists to reevaluate this in humans also apply in non-human animals, and are things like "we're already saying that human women post-menopause are still women, but the gamete definition claims otherwise". Some of the sources which use definitions like this are explicit about applying it to non-human animals, while others are clearly medical sources intended to be applied in humans.
@Seraphimblade While that's a separate issue from the reason I originally started this RFC, I'd be alright with merging this page into sexual dimorphism and having this page be a disambiguation page between that and sexual intercourse/sexual reproduction. Loki (talk) 00:31, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Gamete-based definitions do not require lifelong gamete production, and they never define which individual is a woman. They define which group is conventionally called female. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:59, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
The groups are conventionally defined across different traits though. An organism can be reproductively male and phenotypically female and scientific source materials would likely specify or imply the trait(s) they’re referencing. Editor0525 (talk) 04:29, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
"Phenotypically female" is established in an organism with reference to gametes. That's how you know what the female phenotype is, and how a male organism can still be male with phenotypically female features. Void if removed (talk) 09:40, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@Editor0525, I'm not sure what you're saying with An organism can be reproductively male and phenotypically female. That sounds like "An organism can produce sperm from ovaries". Gonads and internal anatomy are also part of the phenotype. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
for info: I mentioned sex reversals in nature and that my post grad supervisor had a paper in Nature on this, here is the link to it[1], for anyone interested. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 20:05, 18 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamIdoing With all due respect here, I pinged three people who I'm asking for responses from. I understand that you disagree with me but you don't need to respond to every thread. Loki (talk) 05:55, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
no probs I received this via the biology portal and I am a biologist so I see it through that lens. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) talk 12:11, 15 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

Meta

This article is tagged as being within the scope of these content WikiProjects:

Loki has notified these WikiProjects:

I will go notify the ones that were skipped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:24, 13 November 2023 (UTC)Reply

The RFC was advertised for 30 days. I have listed this discussion (without any comment) at Wikipedia:Closure requests#Sex#RFC: Definition of Sex. It may be days or weeks before anyone volunteers to summarize the discussion, and until then, there is no prohibition on continuing the discussion as/if/when people feel like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)Reply

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hermaphrodites

Latest comment: 5 months ago18 comments4 people in discussion

Plantsurfer and Peter coxhead, I'd like to have a simple, everyday example in the lead that helps people (including older kids) understand that hermaphroditism is normal state for some organisms. In popular culture, it tends to be sensationalized in a freak show kind of way, and I think that waving vaguely in the direction of flowering plants or something else of your choosing would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

I don't know why you think waving vaguely towards a populist view is the solution. Land plants have been swinging both ways for half a billion years, and their aquatic ancestors for twice that. Hermaphroditism is THE NORM in flowering plants. Single-sex flowering plants are in the vast minority, but in-between there is complexity that has no parallel at all in human sexuality.Plantsurfer 19:40, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I don't think that the first paragraph has much room for complexity. I'd like that sentence to point attention towards plants (or, really, any example that you and Peter think is a good idea). I'd rather that the stereotypical fourteen-year-old boy, upon encountering the word hermaphrodite in the first paragraph was nudged towards thinking "Oh, right, that drawing of pistils and stamens we had to do in biology class" instead of "The guys at school were telling a funny story last week".
The end of that paragraph currently says just "An organism that produces both types of gamete is hermaphrodite." I think some slight addition, like "such as most plants", would help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 12 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I agree with that. I suggest changing "An organism that produces both types of gamete is hermaphrodite." to "Organisms that produce both types of gametes, such as most flowering plants, are hermaphroditeormonoecious." That should be covered by citation 3.
I don't like the wording of the next sentence - "In non-hermaphroditic species, . ." I suggest changing it to "In dioecious species, . ." or "In species with separate sexes, ."Plantsurfer 00:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps "In species with separate sexes (dioecious)..."? That way people learn the word, but also know we're talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
While I'm all for covering plants, alternation of generations (and exactly where plant gametes are being produced) wasn't something I understood until college. Hermaphoditism in gastropods and worms was something I understood in high school. Plantdrew (talk) 03:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I agree with Plantdrew. Yes, it's good to cover plants. However, doing so accurately in one or two sentences is very difficult because of alternation of generations and the overwhelming dominance of the sporophyte generation in vascular plants. For animals and bryophytes the statement "An organism that produces both types of gametes is hermaphrodite" is correct (but it's monoicy not monoecy in bryophytes). Maybe "A hermaphrodite organism is one that produces both types of gametes, either directly as in animals or indirectly as in vascular plants" without mentioning monoecious? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think you are overthinking it. The sentence I offered above specified flowering plants. I don't think it is necessary to cover the entirety of sexual complexity in plants, merely to provide an example that covers the overwhelming majority.Plantsurfer 12:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Consider the definitions in The Kew Plant Glossary. On p. 54, "hermaphrodite, bisexual plant with stamens and pistil in the same flower", and on p. 20 "bisexual, having both sexes in the same flower, or in the same inflorescence." The point is that applied to flowering plants, hermaphrodite does not mean 'producing both kinds of gamete', it means, in lay language, 'having both stamens and pistils in the same flower' or more technically 'having both sexes of gametophyte in the same flower'. Confusing gametophytes with gametes leads to the error of calling pollen sperm. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:20, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Yes, Heslop-Harrison (1972) emphasised that sexuality is a gametophytic property, but control of the determination of the sex of gametophytes in heterosporous plants is exerted by the sporophyte.[1]: 138–139  JH-H says "Customarily, monomorphic, monoclinous species are termed hermaphrodite, and monomorphic species with diclinous flowers, monoecious." He also says "Flowers either contain both stamens and carpels, in which case they are termed monoclinous or hermaphrodite*, or stamens or carpels alone, in which case they are said to be diclinous (sporophyte is dioecious) or unisexual." Stace 4th edition prefers to use the term bisexual instead of hermaphrodite.
If necessary the complexities of land plant sexuality can be dissected at length in the body of an appropriate article. I don't think this is the one, and I definitely don't think the lead of Sex is the right place to air these concerns either. There is a clear, sourceable precedent for the use of the term 'hermaphrodite' to describe the sexuality of bisexual angiosperms, and I really don't think that is likely on its own to lead to the misconception that pollen=sperm. [1]
Plantsurfer 14:27, 13 February 2024‎ (UTC)Reply
@Peter coxhead and @Plantdrew, is it factually true that hermaphroditism is seen in:
  • most (i.e., not all)
  • flowering plants (i.e., not other kinds of plants)?
If alternating generations happens in less than 50% of flowering plants, that would not make the statement about "most flowering plants" be incorrect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Alternation of generations occurs in ALL vascular plants. In fact it is true for all land plants and many algae.
Yes, 71% of Dicot species and 73% of monocot species are hermaphrodite. Only ~3% of monocots and 4% of dicots are dioecious. [2]: 140 
Nothing I have said so far implies that hermaphroditism does not exist in other kinds of plants. Plantsurfer 18:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I had somehow formed the misimpression that hemaphroditism (=this individual plant produces both gametes) and alternating generations (this individual plant produces one, and its offspring will produce the other?) were mutually exclusive states. I see that I need to go read the article on this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing Alternation of generations does not carry any implication that an individual plant produces only one type of gamete. Many plants (all of which have alternating generations) produce both types of gamete, not necessarily simultaneously. The alternation bit is about what happens when the mature sporophyte produces spores by meiosis - the spores are haploid and develop by repeated mitosis into a multicellular haploid gametophyte, (something unknown in animals), the function of which is, as the name implies, to produce gametes.Plantsurfer 19:28, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
WAID, sporophytes don't produce gametes directly, but (in flowering plants) do "host" gametophytes. Your misimpression gets at why I suggested not giving plants as an example of hermaphrodites for the lead. The majority of flatworms and annelid species are hermaphroditic and those can be given as examples in the lead without going into alternation of generations in plants. (I'd also suggested gastropods, but it appears that the majority of gastropod species aren't hermaphroditic (although some gastropod clades are almost exclusively hermaphroditic)). Plantdrew (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
About the plural vs singular (this diff): I think that using the singular tends to detract from the idea of hermaphroditism being normal. It's "that one weird individual" (did you see the photos of the honeycreeper with bilateral gynandromorphism last week? [2]) instead of "yeah, that's just normal sexual development for a huge number of species". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
@WhatamIdoing: I think it needs to be absolutely clear that hermaphrodite applies in the first instance to individuals: each individual hermaphrodite can produce both eggs and sperm. Secondarily, a species can be described as hermaphroditic if every 'normal' member of the species is a hermaphrodite. That's why I prefer the singular there. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
I think the singular leads people to think about humans with unusual disorders of sex development, when we want them to be thinking about normal sexual development in non-mammalian species. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 18 February 2024 (UTC)Reply

References

  1. ^ a b Heslop-Harrison, John (1972). "Chapter 9 Sexuality in Angiosperms". In F.C. Steward (ed.). Plant Physiology VIC a treatise: Physiology of Development from seeds to sexuality. London: Academic Press. pp. 133–271.
  • ^ Cite error: The named reference JHH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

    • First sentence

    Latest comment: 2 months ago6 comments5 people in discussion

    Generally, I think that editors spend too much time thinking about the first sentence, so if y'all think I'm overthinking this, just tell me. But I had an idea.

    The first sentence is currently:

    Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces maleorfemale gametes.

    We could shorten it to say:

    Sex is the trait that determines which type of gamete is produced by a sexually reproducing organism.

    (The links to male and female could go where those words already exist in the third sentence of the first paragraph, i.e., "By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male...".)

    What do you think? Would this be an improvement at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

    I personally think the first sentence is fine as it right now.CycoMa1 (talk) 04:11, 10 May 2024 (UTC)Reply
    First reaction: no. Because it leaves open the impression that maybe there are other types; third gender gamete? Turner's gamete? CAIS gamete? Silliness, of course, because, we want to say amongst ourselves, duh, NO; but with all the misinformation and lack of knowledge around the whole topic and the sex/gender confusion lurking around the corner, do we want to open the door even a crack to more confusion? That said, I'm open to your reasoning; why do you think it would be an improvement? Mathglot (talk) 22:44, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
    Agreed with Mathglot. I think the existing sentence is clearer, and from a purely stylistic perspective (which is admittedly pretty subjective) I don't see an advantage in changing it. Also, clarity in facts is more important anyway. Crossroads -talk- 22:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I think what irritates me about this is that we could also, with equal accuracy, write that "Fertility is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces maleorfemale gametes". Pedantically speaking, fertility is about whether; sex is about which. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)Reply
    I agree with WhatamIdoing; the focus ought to be on what/which, rather than whether. Terrapinaz (talk) 11:16, 29 April 2024 (UTC)Reply

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