Are There More Than Two Sexes?

Recent years have seen a concerted effort to overthrow the longstanding scientific consensus that “male” and “female” represent two real, discrete biological categories in humans. The Oxford philosopher Amia Srinivasan, for instance, rejects the notion that biological sex is “natural,” “pre-political,” or “objective,” claiming instead that it is “a cultural thing posing as a natural one.” UC–Riverside’s Gender and Sexualities Chair, Brandon Andrew Robinson, openly claims that we “should stop teaching that sex is biological” because we “assign meaning to certain things . . . because of dominant gender ideologies.” In this view, categorizing people as male or female is not only biologically incorrect but also harmful and oppressive.