Science

Sex cells! Are there just two biological sexes? [Part 2] – ABC News

Biological sex has become a battleground of conflicting agendas and experiences. But does Nature offer a much wider and wilder view than a basic binary — male and female? 

Meet the scientists with sex on their minds.

In the confusing maze of sexual reproduction, sex hormones, sex chromosomes, and genitalia … could biological sex exist on a continuum just as gender does?

Hear Part 1: I knew I was trans because of science

Guests:

Art Arnold
Distinguished Professor
Integrative Biology and Physiology
University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)

Jenny Graves
Vice Chancellor’s Fellow & Distinguished Professor
Ecology, Environment & Evolution
Latrobe University, Australia

Paul Griffiths
Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Professor of Philosophy
Co-author of Genetics and Philosophy: an introduction (2013)
Griffiths Lab
University of Sydney, Australia

Dr Simón(e) Sun
@simonedsun
Neurobiologist
Postdoctoral fellow, Tollkuhn Lab, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL)
Senior Fellow, Center for Advanced Transgender Studies

Further information:

Sex is real (Aeon Magazine, 2021)
By Paul Griffiths

Stop using phony science to justify transphobia (Scientific American, 2019)
By Simón(e) Sun

Quantum Sex: Intersex and the Molecular Deconstruction of Sex (GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2009)
By Vernon Rosario

A general theory of sexual differentiation (JNR: Journal of Neuroscience Research, 2016)
By Arthur Arnold

Human Y Chromosome, Sex Determination, and Spermatogenesis— A Feminist View (Journal of Biology of Reproduction, 2000)
By Jennifer Graves