Humans have a wide variety of biological variation in metrics we think of as linked to "biological sex" and those metrics are accessibly mutable. Even within the Olympics, the natural variation of these metrics within cis women is a famous topic of debate (Imane Khelif, Caster Semenya, etc.)
Bipedalism is something which varies very rarely and is especially not accessibly mutable.
What is the total prevalence of all conditions medically recognized as intersex?
> and those metrics are accessibly mutable.
What is that even supposed to mean?
Not all biological variation is classified as intersex.
> What is that even supposed to mean?
You can change a lot of your 'secondary sex characteristics' intentionally. This is much easier than removing a limb, and even easier than adding a limb.
Okay, but other biological variation is clearly not relevant to the discussion.
This would apply to sex chromosomes as well
We are talking about sexual dimorphism and secondary sex characteristics.
Humans were understood to be sexually dimorphic before we discovered sex chromosomes in 1905, and we usually label our babies with a biological sex without the aid of consumer genetic testing.
They have XY chromosomes, internal testes, a male testosterone level, and male muscle development. They have the SRY gene that the IOC is testing for, and are not one of the exceptions. Regardless of the fact that their DSD (5-ARD) results in no penis.
To be clear, I'm not saying they should start living life as men. But describing their situation as the natural variation of cis women is simplistic and not accurate.
Further, they are women, and therefore their testosterone levels and muscle development are female.
This just gets to a ludicrous place. These are women who are simply identifiable as so. Anyone throughout history would have identified them as so. Their biological metrics are within the variation of cis women, because they are cis women.
I’d rather not have discussions in bad faith.
Coming back around to the olympics: I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes. I think there's a lot of room for reasonable people to disagree without dismissing the complexity that comes from organizing across 8 billion people.
But that is not being said here, just as in every other time the discussion of sex segregation in sports comes up; and just as in every other time, people simply pretend in bad faith that such things are being asserted.
> I agree that humans are bipedal, but that has no bearing on the fact that the Olympic committee should take great care to create rules and categories for paralympic athletes.
Sure. Which is why they do, and nobody has a problem with it.
Go take a survey of the people opposed to transgender women competing in women's Olympic sports, and see what they think of having a separate category for transgender athletes. Or even separate categories for transgender men and transgender women. I'd wager the large majority have no problem with that. (They might at most be concerned about disproportionate airtime being given to sport events that relatively few people qualify for and relatively few people are especially interested in.)
Ironically the sports divide is probably the single area where having some physical advantages isn’t a bonus. It’s also near and dear to the hearts of billions, and such a terrible hill to die on. Ideally the solution would be a league like the Paralympic competitions, but high level athletes are rare, trans people are relatively rare, and two overlapping are incredibly rare. To make such a league would be a farce that couldn’t hope to succeed.
Within biology, we'd see a number of metrics (like height) which would usually appear bimodal (like two bell curves added together). We might identify at least two latent variables here: A real-number 'age' (which can be observed) and a binary 'sex' (not directly observed). But it's worth stressing that these implied underlying curves overlap, and any given metric is not strictly correlated with the others. (Commonly, one might be on the lower end of some distributions and the higher ends of others. Someone can be 5'3" tall, have red hair, and a high body-fat percentage while also having testicles, XY chromosomes, and dying at the age of 62.) (We should also note that the 23rd chromosome just another observed variable, starting after ~1900.)
Some causes of variation that we know about are fraternal birth order, or endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, conditions like PCOS, etc.
Case in point are all the cis women who are impacted by the ever-stricter testosterone guidelines in the Olympics. Further is the effect of fraternal birth order, or the endocrine-disrupting chemicals like PFAS, or the intentional introduction of hormones and hormone blockers. (If certain industries are to be believed, soy milk has a similar effect.) These are all variations and things which impact what we understand as "biological sex".
Folk gender theorists tend to consider sexuality, identity, biology, and expression as orthogonal axes. But these are clearly also correlated among people. (Stretching the definition of "correlated" to include qualitative metrics like 'expression' using the usual methods.)
An information-theoretic framework would inform well an "optimal" way to talk about this, using a one-bit string for most people and increasingly more bits when more information is needed. This is roughly how people already talk.
