Talk:Sex

Is the gamete-based definition really sound and up-to-date?

Currently, we define "sex" by gametes, sourced to the OED (not a WP:MEDRS source) and a two-decade-old high school textbook.

Meanwhile, we have the following contradictory 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).

• 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  but also explicitly argues that this definition is outdated and should be updated.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 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

I will say that these are all medical sources, so they're all talking about sex in humans from a medical context and not necessarily sex in animals from a zoological context. I think we might get different definitions from those sources, but even if so we should at least make clear the source split instead of just going with the sex-in-animals definition.

Because I think I'm backed by the sources, I'm going to take the NIH/NOM definitions as the clearest ones and replace the definition in this article with them. But if anyone disagrees or has contradictory sources, please do respond here. Loki (talk) 04:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

A lot of those are human-centric sources, which I don't think is an appropriate focus for this article. The definition we give needs to work equally well for every organism that reproduces sexually. Also, your paraphrase has introduced some concepts, such as secondary sex characteristics, that don't necessarily exist in some organisms. (Do clams have external genitalia? Do apple trees have secondary sex characteristics?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:18, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

For sources, consider this 2018 textbook, Biology of Sex, pp 43–44, which is non-technical in nature but still entirely focused on gametes (both the size-based egg/sperm division and the +/- system for isogamous gametes). Anyone should be able to read that text and understand it, even without a background in biology.

If you'd like something more technical, then The Biology of Reproduction by Fusco and Minelli (2019, ISBN 9781108499859) looks good, but I don't have a copy (and don't know what it says on this point, although it looks like the kind of book that will have detailed information on every possible variation).

This book, Vegetal Sex, has a good page on some of the complexities: "More specifically, sex is defined in terms of anisogamy [size difference in gametes produced]....the popular, everyday understanding of sex...refers mainly to types of embodied individuals, whereas the scientific definition bears specifically on the process of sexual reproduction". I particularly recommend this page to anyone who has thought "but what about menopausal women and infertile people, because they're not producing gametes right now?!" in a sex–gender discussion.

Also, I would like to share the title of this paper: "Sex is a ubiquitous, ancient, and inherent attribute of eukaryotic life" because it makes me happy, and it might make other people happy, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I realize my edit introduces concepts that are not universally applicable to all organisms. However, it's really up to the sources how applicable this concept even is to all organisms. It appears many medical organizations give definitions that only apply in humans, or humans and animals, and they're no less reliable for it.

I also think that by referring to two textbooks about the biology of sexual reproduction (in context, the "sex" in "The Biology of Sex" is clearly referring to a type of reproduction and not a type of organism), you're begging the question. Of course textbooks about reproduction will define sex in reproductive terms. But that doesn't settle the matter for us, who need to define it in a general way for this article.

Now, it may be impossible to reconcile these sources, because they may well not be talking about the same thing. But in that case there's no reason to say that the reproductive definition of sex should take precedence over the medical definition of sex for the article simply called "Sex". In that case, we should figure out which article should take precedence and split off the other one. Loki (talk) 07:54, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Of course sex (the trait) has to do with reproduction. That is the whole reason for its biological existence. It's not like these types exist for no reason or just because.

All of the sources you cited are about humans and have to do with classifying sex in humans. The definition and topic here is far, far broader, yet the definition here also includes humans are humans are also eukaryotes. But for humans it is easiest to go by primary and secondary sex characteristics as a first resort, and hence medical sources focus on that. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:42, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

While my sources are human-focused, that doesn't make them less reliable. Also, several of them explicitly also say they apply to animals as well.

We need to follow the sources and it's seeming to me like the primary definition of "sex" in the sources is the broad way sex is defined in humans, while the definition used in this article is a jargon definition used only among biologists specifically. Loki (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't make them less reliable, but you can't take a source about "sex as it manifests in humans" and generalize it to "sex" without violating NOR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Who's generalizing? The sources are simply about "sex".

It's us that are coming to the conclusion that there are two groups of sources talking about two different things here, not the sources themselves. If you want to stringently avoid any hint of OR, you would need to just lump in all the sources together, which in this case would mean we'd go with the medical definition since there's more sources that support that. Loki (talk) 22:32, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

(I should probably clarify, I don't think WP:NOR means we can't say the sources are about different things. That's the whole point of WP:FRANKENSTEIN. But my assertion is that if most of the sources define sex from a medical perspective rather than a biologist perspective, the main article on sex should be from that medical perspective.) Loki (talk) 22:34, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

The sources aren't simply about "sex". As you noted above, "they're all talking about sex in humans from a medical context". "Sex in humans from a medical context" is not the same as "sex".

The correct process for determining the subject of an article is to decide what the scope is, not to decide what the most common meaning of the current article title is. It doesn't matter if the human-centric medical definition is the most common in your search results; the subject of this article is not the human-centric medical definition. Sex identification in humans would probably make a fine article. It's just not this one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You've linked to an essay when you really should have linked to the guideline WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, which defines two criteria for which topic is primary:

1. A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term

2. A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

I don't think either of these is primary with regard to long-term significance, but the medical conception of sex is definitely primary in regard to usage. The large majority of sources and the large number of searches will be for that conception of sex compared to the reproductive conception of sex. Loki (talk) 23:47, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm familiar with the policy, but you've skipped the first bit: "A topic". Step one: Figure out what the topic ("the scope") of the article is.

We could make an argument that this page is badly titled. I'm sure there are quite a few people who expect to find the topic of Human sexual intercourse under this title. But that suggests renaming the page, perhaps to something like Sex (biological division) (which currently redirects here), and not rewriting the article about the basis for multicellular life on Earth be all about how to determine whether a human baby is going to produce sperm or eggs. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:30, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

I've just checked. 11% leave this article for Sexual reproduction. 10% go to Human sexual activity. Only 3.5% go to Sexual intercourse. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:33, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Here's a source that have a good explanation of sex definition: [1]. Hope it'll help to make the definition more universal. D6194c-1cc (talk) 10:30, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, some information about sex identification in eukaryotic microbes: [2]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:05, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, as I understand, base definition may mention that it is feature of eukaryotic organisms: [3]. D6194c-1cc (talk) 16:26, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Prokaryotes can share DNA (e.g., in ways that promote antibiotic resistance), but that's unrelated to reproduction, and therefore not related to sex. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Please post the definition here, as the page is not visible to me on Google books. Zenomonoz (talk) 21:53, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

I can see it, so I'll type out the first paragraph linked to here:

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.

(This appears to be The Biology of Reproduction by Fusco and Minelli that WhatamIdoing mentioned above, FWIW. I'd like to also type out whatever Section 3.2.1 is here but unfortunately chapters 1-3 as a whole are missing from this preview.) Loki (talk) 22:17, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Or, to put it more briefly, sex is whether the organism produces sperm or eggs, exactly like this article has said for years.

It seems to have been popular for the last decade or so to talk about how extremely difficult it is to figure out whether a human is "truly" male or female, with some people putting forward expansive definitions of intersex conditions, etc., but they are mistaking the map for the territory. The actual definition of sex involves a single-criterion decision: "Does this one make eggs or sperm?" You only have to rely on things like genitalia and chromosomes and hormone levels when you can't directly inspect the gametes (e.g., because the individual is too young to produce them yet). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, but that's just not what the sources say. I've already listed plenty of contradictory sources above. Loki (talk) 23:48, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

You misunderstand what the sources say. There are different ways of how to determine the sex of individual in different classes of organisms. But all of them share the same feature to produce gametes, so that gametes of the same type cannot fuse together. That is what the sex is. In humans, male and female gametes can be determined by the X and Y chromosomes, so sex definition in humans might be more concrete. In other organisms such as hermophrodites sex definition may differ. But those differences just determine how and when sex of an individual can be determined. For example, sex in humans is determined after conception. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:54, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Also, the cited source (by Giuseppe Fusco and Alessandro Minelli) mentions sex phenotype. Sex phenotype is not equal to sex. Sex phenotype is based on the secondary characteristics and external genitalia, whereas sex is based on the produced gametes. D6194c-1cc (talk) 08:21, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

Personally I don't have much to add to the discussion, but I'd like to share my input.

• As you note, all the sources are talking about sex in humans from a medical context. In my mind, altering the definition based on these human-focused sources is speciesist (yes, I'm using this word unironically) in a very weird way. This is a level-3 vital article on a very clearly high-level topic; to generalize all organisms based on a human-specific definition is problematic.
• It feels like you've compiled a list of sources to further a specific point, considering that you do note that other potentially contradictory sources exist. As far as I'm aware, you've made no effort to compile them as you've done with the sources above, and have instead placed the onus on other editors to prove you wrong by examining sources on their own. Not that there is anything explicitly wrong with this, but the idea... it just doesn't jive with my spirit.
• I am sure that your sources can be included in the article alongside the gamete definition, but completely taking out the gamete definition (replace the definition) seems odd to me. It's not like a definition of sex based on gametes isn't verifiable—it's been verified multiple times in the body.

If I'm characterizing anything incorrectly please let me know. Cessaune [talk] 03:59, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

So, for what it's worth, I dispute point 2: I am aware contradictory sources exist because I included one above. I included all the sources I could find from web searches. The reason I didn't include more contradictory sources is that a lot of the contradictory sources seem to be biology textbooks, and I don't have easy access to arbitrary physical books.

I also kind of dispute point 3: the sources we were actually using for the gamete definition at the time were pretty weak, especially compared to the multiple WP:MEDORG sources we found for the pluralistic definition. A dictionary and a two-decade old textbook aren't very good sources for a WP:MEDRS topic, and especially not one where recent sources explicitly say the definition has been updated recently. (Obviously, the Biology of Sex source and some of the others people have found in this thread are better, and do verify that the gamete-based definition is still being used.)

I don't disagree with point 1, though I do want to say that some of the sources I found do explicitly note they are including animals in their definition. But it's just true to say they're mostly from a medical perspective and not a research perspective. I don't think that really should be dispositive but it's definitely worth considering. Loki (talk) 20:34, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

The only source arguing the definition has been (more accurately, should be) updated is the one from the Yale School of Medicine, which is by far the weakest source because it is simply an article on a university website. Medical human-focused sources focusing on primary and secondary sex characteristics have been around for decades, that's not a new thing. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:54, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

If you want to make a new page called "Human sex" that begins with a similarly garbled and tiptoey definition, that would be fair enough, but this is about sex across eukaryotes. Sex is not assigned to fruit flies at birth. Zanahary (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I just posted this discussion to the relevant WikiProjects so we can get some outside input. Loki (talk) 20:01, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

Update: the college-level biology textbook Campbell Biology by Urry, Cain, Wasserman, Minorsky, and Orr defines sex this way on page 298:

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.)

This textbook also very much is referring to sex from a biologist's point of view, as it goes on to talk about sex determination systems in non-human animals, and also later mentions sex in the context of fungi and plants. Needless to say, I'm starting to suspect that I was incorrect in presuming that the above definitions were the way they were because they come from medical organizations, and am instead beginning to suspect that this is a change happening all over the biological sciences. Loki (talk) 04:58, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

The next sentence appears to be "In this sense, sex is determined largely by chromosomes", which undermines the idea of it being a phenotypic description.

What I don't see at a brief glance is an explanation of why the chicken with matching sex chromosomes is called "male". (The answer is "because it makes sperm".) The chromosomes are the mechanism, but what we're looking for is why humans choose to call a rooster male despite the rooster having the chromosomal characteristics that are more commonly associated with female animals. Perhaps the "anatomical and physiological traits" that matter are the ones involved in sperm production? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree it's a vague definition but it is a definition used in a reliable source. Trying to make it mean something that it doesn't say is WP:OR. Loki (talk) 01:13, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

Fourth paragraph

The sex of a living organism is determined by its genes. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans.

— Current text

I'd suggest something along the lines of:

There are several sex-determination systems. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans.

— Proposed text

I am not at all attached to how I have proposed to phrase the first sentence. But I am not happy with the current first sentence which reads: "The sex of a living organism is determined by its genes." That is only trivially true; the sex of an organism with an environmental sex determination system is determined by the genes that lead to it having an environmentally determined system, and the sex of organism with a chromosomal system is determined by the genes that are (usually active) on given chromosome(s).

In the current text, sex-determination system is only linked in the third sentence as "Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals...". The link to sex-determination system should be in the first sentence, and in my proposed text I have replaced it in the third sentence with a link to a section:[[Sex-determination system#Chromosomal systems|chromosomal sex-determination system]]. Sex-determination system is really topic the fourth paragraph is dealing with, and that should not be buried three sentences in, after introducing XY sex-determination system. Plantdrew (talk) Plantdrew (talk) 02:06, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this change. The sex of many organisms with environmental sex determination systems isn't really determined by their genes, it's determined by their environment (except in the trivial way you've already mentioned). Loki (talk) 07:30, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I also support this change. @Plantdrew, would you make the edit? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

 Done Plantdrew (talk) 21:50, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

Suggestion for Leading sentence and section

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

"Sex is the biological trait"- This is not accurate sex etymologically & connotatively refers to divisions/sections.

Male and Female were originally used to refer to men and women in the general sense before being adopted in biology [for physical and physiological traits].

"Determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes." This isn't necessarily the case as not all sex traits determine the type of gamete produced. The second paragraph of the suggested change provides why reproductive traits were the basis. The focus on reproductive traits is arbitrarily done as for consistency purposes there are clearly other facets of biological sex independent of reproductive ones.

The below suggestion is meant better align with how scientific organizations, journals, and papers both have been and currently are defining sex which really isn't different for humans or animals as was previously suggested in this talkspace. When talking of animals papers can also specify sex just as is often done with humans.

Suggested Change:

Biological sex refers to categorizations (male, female, and intersex) based on attributes that delineate distinct traits exhibited by organisms within each segment of a species and can be classified along a continuum using various schemes and criteria. Organisms can display traits that span the established divisions, and these traits can also be subject to change over time.

Gamete typology and chromosomes are often used for scientific purposes to determine an individual's biological sex for a consistent basis across species as they are often deterministic of sex. However, it is essential to recognize that these factors, among others, represent correlative facets of an individual's overall sex profile. For a more holistic determination of an individual's biological sex, a comprehensive and nuanced assessment of their dimorphized attributes or lack thereof is necessary.

References

Editor0525 (talk) 21:23, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

I think you probably want to read about Etymological fallacy. It doesn't really matter what the origin of the word is.

I also think you should consider this subject from the POV of evolutionary biology on a geological timescale, and without focusing so much on the present generation of humans. There is no "continuum" between sperm or egg and no viable gamete that is mostly one but partly the other. We need to write something that is equally relevant to chickens and cockroaches and clams.

This article isn't about "an individual's overall sex profile." It's about the division of gamete production that makes Sexual reproduction possible. The article about whether various visible traits are associated with sperm or egg production is at Sexual dimorphism (as well as Sexual dimorphism in humans, etc.). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 21 October 2023 (UTC)

If the article is specifically discussing sex as it relates to reproductive sex then shouldn't that be the Main title. (Sex (Reproductive)). The citation referenced for the current definition are also solely in regards to reproductive sex.

Also, I included the etymology of the word along with citations of its customary usage to demonstrate the consistency in how biological sex has been defined, as there exists laymen debate over the definition being changed or being strictly about reproduction. The continuum I refer to are sex profiles as a whole rather trait specific. Editor0525 (talk) 07:49, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

That would be to put the cart before the horse. Sex is primarily about reproduction, so that needs no qualification. Plantsurfer 10:10, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

"Sex is primarily about reproduction" is a factual claim that needs to be sourced. We have plenty of sources that say that sex is at least not primarily defined by reproduction, and they tend to be more recent than the sources that disagree. Loki (talk) 18:44, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

I could accept having Sex (disambiguation) renamed to this title. People may be posting these human-centric, opposite-of-gender suggestions here because they are simply not finding the articles that cover the subjects that interest them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:45, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

To clarify:

1.) While our conception of traits as sex traits arises from their potential to confer reproductive advantages or faculties. The primary purpose of sexing organisms is to effectively communicate their observed trait differences, irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction.

2.) Sex is classified on trait-by-trait basis or holistically. No single trait defines an individual’s entire sex. This is true regardless of biology field.

3.) "Sexes refer to the categories male, female, intersex, or hermaphrodite based on various attributes that delineate distinct traits exhibited by organisms within a species". This definition should be applicable across species.[17][12] Inclusion of the second sentence would just be for added clarity "organisms can display traits that span the established divisions, and these traits can also be subject to change over time." For the 1st sentence due to the extensiveness of the citations, I'd recommend excluding the dictionaries and out of the rest, keeping:

[6] (Discusses Genotype & Phenotype relationship),

[12] (Discusses importance),

[17] (Discusses use in animal and human research),

[9] (States authors should clarify methods (measure)),

[5] (Discusses use in human research)

[18] (Discusses history of the terms use in biology).

"When it comes to gametic sex" can be then be used to bridge into "male organisms produce small mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while female organisms produce larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells)."

The rest of the article should be fine as is. Editor0525 (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think this is true. For example:

• The primary purpose of sexing organisms is to effectively communicate their observed trait differences – Whose primary purpose? Communicate to whom? Is anybody out there communicating trait differences about clams? Which differences? If you're breeding livestock, do you really care about "observed trait differences" in general, or do you specifically care whether this chicken is the type that lays eggs?
• No single trait defines an individual’s entire sex. – Please name several sex-based traits in hens that aren't related to egg production and actually matter to a chicken farmer. If you can't, then your claim is false.
• irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction. – Can you explain how you think a trait that is both sex-based and irrelevant to reproduction matters in evolutionary biology? Remember, this is a field that classifies species solely according to their ability to interbreed, and classifies sex not in male vs female vs intersex, but instead as male vs female vs environment.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:05, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

"Whose primary purpose? Communicate to whom?":

Anyone, be it yourself or others, if you're discussing an organism's sex you are describing or characterizing and distinguishing them from the other sexes.

"Is anybody out there communicating trait differences about clams? Which differences?":

Yes, there are many differentiations of the sexes of clams:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-010-1398-4

https://academic.oup.com/genetics/article/164/2/603/6050281

http://ssswxb.ihb.ac.cn/en/article/pdf/preview/10.7541/2021.2019.195.pdf (needs to put into a translator)

https://koreascience.kr/article/JAKO201505555186841.pdf (needs to put into a translator)

"[An organism's sex is not holistically defined by a single trait]", is a clearer and more precise way to express the idea that I wanted to convey. So, if you have an organism that possesses mostly male traits it would be inappropriate to classify their whole sex as female. A farmer may ID an animal along whatever lines he needs to but if he's basing it off of one trait it's still only based on trait. Arching back to what I said before: "Sex is classified on trait-by-trait basis or holistically."

"a trait that is both sex-based and irrelevant to reproduction matters in evolutionary biology" This is not what this says: "irrespective of whether would effectively aid in or facilitate reproduction." Example of what I mean: A Holistically female (ie. most of their traits appear female) individual without ovaries, the individual is still female overall irrespective of whether can reproduce (Notice how I use the word 'effectively' and address in the prior sentence where our conception of sex traits comes from). This does not mean evolutionary biology does not base sex on reproductive characters. Also, evolutionary biology is not the only field of biology.

Also, the environment is not a sex. "Environment" refers to the surroundings or conditions in which living organisms exist. It may determine sex, but it is not a sex.Editor0525 (talk) 20:19, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, with all due respect here, I don't think we should be basing the article on sex in general in all living organisms on the perspective of chicken farmers. Loki (talk) 02:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think we should do that either. But I think that we need a general definition that includes all of these perspectives, and these human-centric ones that are primarily focused on "Do I put an F or an M or an X in the official form?" are not achieving that goal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:48, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I don't think a perspective that isn't designed around whether a chicken will produce eggs is necessarily human-centric?

Like, if you just go over from chicken farmers to cow farmers you'll find that reproduction is no longer the top trait they care about: instead, it's that female cattle produce milk and are generally pretty docile, while male cattle are much more aggressive and also have sharp horns. Reproduction is in there (it's the reason they keep any bulls around given the difficulty) but it's not the top consideration. Loki (talk) 03:00, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Sex is about primary sex characteristics. What you are talking about is Secondary sex characteristics. There is a separate article about that.Plantsurfer 10:49, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

This is not correct. Sex encompasses both primary and secondary sex characteristics. The words primary and secondary mean the order in which they appear:

"Primary" sex characteristics are the first to develop, while "secondary" sex characteristics typically appear later, often during puberty.Editor0525 (talk) 12:20, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Determining an individual's sex could involve looking at both primary and secondary sex characteristics, but that's not what the concept of sex is about.

Maybe this will help: Pretend that I have discovered this morning a large colony of magical dragons. It is a completely new-to-science class in the phylum Chordata. I happen to have noticed that there is visible dimorphism, with half of them being bigger and hornless, and the other half being smaller with horns. I assume that this dimorphism is sexual dimorphism.

I come to you and ask: What information will you need to know to decide whether the bigger/hornless ones get labeled "male" and the smaller/horned ones "female", or the other way around? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

Primary sexual characteristics serve as a foundational framework for achieving high consistency when distinguishing sexes across species because primary characters typically determine the rest and there is little or less variability with primary characters. Nevertheless, the classification of an individual takes into account the both primary and secondary sexual traits, ensuring a comprehensive and accurate assessment of their sex. (This was addressed in my original suggestion)

Imagine I find both individuals with your dimorphism to be genetically and anatomically male but then I look at some more of the same animal and find that the larger hornless ones are generally female across the board. So now I want to describe the first large hornless individual as being genetically and anatomically male & female in their morphology.

If sex is only about classifying organisms along the lines of their primary characters than things like ‘morphological female’, ‘hormonal male’, ‘neurological male’, ‘female appearance’, ‘anatomical male’ and more don’t make sense. All of which are used throughout biology literature.

If you assert that secondary characters are not considered in the classification of sex, I kindly request reputable references supporting this claim.

The below definitions are not necessarily mutually exclusive, as secondary sex traits can contribute to reproductive success. However, even when considered exclusively, the concept of sex can be defined with precision in specific contexts. So such definitions would not be supportive:

"are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions."

"divided according to the function they have in producing young.[8]

"Sex is a biological construct premised upon biological characteristics enabling sexual reproduction." Editor0525 (talk) 20:21, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

My question is not about how to classify an individual. We are looking at two reasonably consistent groups dragons, each representing about half the dragons in the colonies. I have created a representative Biological illustration of each of the two groups, and I'm asking you: Is this the picture I should label "typical appearance of the males" in my species monograph, or is this picture the one I should label "typical appearance of the females"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

The classification of a trait as being linked to a specific sex is determined by its typical association with other sex-related characteristics. To ensure consistency across species, the foundational criterion for sectioning the male and female sexes relies on reproductive function. In practical terms, sexes are distinguished and defined based on a range of criteria associated with each sex, allowing for a comprehensive classification.

Without information about how an organism's morphological dimorphisms align with traditional foundational criteria for classification, determining the sex of the dimorphisms as male or female or other relative classifications is not feasible. Editor0525 (talk) 23:10, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

I notice that you said the foundational criterion, in the singular. What is that sole "foundational criterion"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:49, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Gamete typology, though other characters have historically been used. This was addressed in the original suggestion. Editor0525 (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

Revised suggestion for first section (underlined sections are from current article):

Sexes refer to the categories male, female, intersex, or hermaphrodite that are distinguished and defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each.

Sex traits exhibit significant diversity across species, reflecting how organisms evolve distinct characteristics and reproductive strategies in response to their unique environments. Males and females of a species may have physical similarities (sexual monomorphism) or differences (sexual dimorphism) that reflect various reproductive pressures on the respective sexes. Mate choice and sexual selection can accelerate the evolution of physical differences between the sexes. These traits, while they typically coincide with reproductive functions, may not always align with an individual's specific reproductive features.

Gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying typically co-occuring traits as male or female relatively across different species. Production of small mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen) is male, while production of larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells) is female.[4] Production of both types of gamete is called hermaphroditic.[3][5] During sexual reproduction, a male and a female gamete fuse to form a zygote, which develops into an offspring that inherits traits from each parent.

The terms 'male' and 'female' typically do not apply in sexually undifferentiated species in which the individuals are isomorphic (look the same) and the gametes are isogamous (indistinguishable in size and shape), such as the green alga Ulva lactuca. Some kinds of functional differences between gametes, such as in fungi,[6] may be referred to as mating types.[7]

Move to Sex-Determination Systems:

There are several sex-determination systems. Most mammals have the XY sex-determination system, where male mammals usually carry an X and a Y chromosome (XY), and female mammals usually carry two X chromosomes (XX). Other chromosomal sex-determination systems in animals include the ZW system in birds, and the X0 system in insects. Various environmental systems include temperature-dependent sex determination in reptiles and crustaceans. Editor0525 (talk) 20:59, 30 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm going to tell a story, because I think that might help. Years ago, a friend was teaching high school biology, and they'd reached the point in the curriculum in which the students were learning about the Central dogma of molecular biology. One of the things that impressed me was that most of a week's worth of lectures could be boiled down to a single learning objective: Students will be able to state that you can't start with a protein and go ("backwards") to DNA. That's it. Thousands of words, and the goal was one sentence.

We're IMO in a similar position for this article. Thousands of words, and the goal is just: the ones that make sperm are the males, and the ones that make eggs are the females. This explains, among other things, why the "pregnant" Syngnathidae are called males. At the end, we want the reader to say "Okay, if it makes sperm, then I guess it's male".

So with that context in mind, I have the following specific comments about your proposal:

• Intersex is not a gamete type, and is therefore irrelevant. Intersex is about individuals. This article is not about individuals.
• It is wrong to say that these categories are "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each". As we have just agreed, they are defined by a single foundational criterion.
• It is confusing to say that these categories are "distinguished...by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each", as that leads readers away from the main point of the article. Again, the main point of the article is "Sperm = male, egg = female, both = hermaphrodite". The main point of the article is absolutely not "How do I figure out whether that person is really male?" or "It's so complicated to figure out whether this individual chicken is close enough to the Platonic ideal of a male or female chicken that it's nearly impossible to decide whether it's a rooster or a hen." We just need people to figure out that the reason males are males is because they produce sperm, and the reason females are females is because they produce eggs.
• "Sex traits exhibit significant diversity across species" – or not, depending on what you mean when you by "sex traits". We'd have to explain here whether we mean things like male gorillas are bigger than females, and peacock feathers are brighter than peahens, or if we mean that there is significant diversity in sperm and eggs.
• "Gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying typically co-occuring traits as male or female relatively across different species" – I don't think this is true. Do we really classify traits "relatively across different species"? What exactly does that mean? Is this supposed to mean something like "Male humans tend to be bigger than female humans, so that's a masculine trait"?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:14, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

But sexes in general aren't defined by a single foundational criterion, and the sources are already pretty clear about that. So for instance, if sex was defined by gametes, do (human) women past menopause have a sex? It seems transparently obvious that they do, but they don't have any gametes, so if gametes was the foundational definition of sex they can't possibly have a sex.

Which is to say, reproductive sex is only one of the several senses that the word "sex" can take. It happens to be a particularly useful one for defining sex across species, but it's not the single foundational definition of sex, because there is no such definition.

Biologists talk about different types of sex in different contexts and while those types are normally defined so that they will usually agree with each other, biology is complicated and they don't always agree. A biologist that is mostly concerned about comparisons across species will mostly use reproductive sex, but other biologists working in other contexts will not.

And again, the sources agree here: all the recent sources I've been able to find use a multifactoral definition of sex. So this whole discussion is somewhat WP:OR. Loki (talk) 20:42, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

1.) "It is wrong to say that these categories are "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each". As we have just agreed, they are defined by a single foundational criterion." We are not in agreement on this. When I stated the it was I was foundational I did not state that sex is always defined solely along the along the lines of gametes I explicitly stated the opposite. Gametes define whether sex TRAITS are classified as male or female. This still fits that sex is "defined by a range of variable attributes typically possessed by each [category]"

2.) Why claim that this article's main point is about one aspect of sex when it speaks of sex in general. The article is titled 'Sex' not 'Gametic Sex'. The article contains an abundance of discussion about non-gametic sex traits without contextualization around how they relate to gametes.

3.) "We just need people to figure out that the reason males are males is because they produce sperm, and the reason females are females is because they produce eggs." The whole sex of an individual is not dependent on whether they produce gametes. Defining the entire sex along any one trait when discussing sex in general is not accurate and leads misconceptions and exclusivity.

4.) The word "relatively" was inserted to convey the categorization of traits being carried over to other species relative to gamete type produced. Your point here is fair as the sentence could be revised be less confusing. Editor0525 (talk) 21:23, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

5.) "Sex traits [may] exhibit significant diversity across species" fixed. Editor0525 (talk) 21:29, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Revision: "For consistency, gamete typology is contemporarily used as a basis for classifying traits that tend to co-occur with the types of gametes produced as male or female across different species." Editor0525 (talk) 21:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

@Plantsurfer Again, that's an assertion that needs to be sourced. Especially since we have many sources that don't agree, and say that sex is about all sex characteristics without particularly privileging any of them as a single defining factor. Loki (talk) 20:38, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

References

WP:RFCBEFORE: Definition of Sex

It seems like the discussions on this page aren't going much of anywhere, and I want to open this up to a broader pool of editors. Do people agree the following RFC phrasing is neutral?

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.

?

Loki (talk) 20:53, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

This confuses the definition of sex, with the determination of what sex a particular individual organism is. That is, the "multifactoral definition" is no definition at all. Void if removed (talk) 12:14, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Since the only complaint I've got is an argument that best fits inside the RFC and not an actual complaint about the wording, I suppose the consensus is that this wording is neutral and so I'll go ahead with it. Loki (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

RFC: Definition of Sex

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.

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

Survey

• Multifactoral. See the Discussion section for more detail, but in brief, the recent sourcing for that definition is extremely strong, while we don't appear to have much sourcing at all for the older reproductive definition. Loki (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
• Both. It's clear from the discussion below that there are sources supporting each one. When reliable sources are not fully in consensus, we just present what they have to say, and note the differences. We do not ever choose a side. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 15:42, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
  • (Having seen the discussion below, I am also fine with the disambiguation solution, and indeed that may be the best for it.) Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:17, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive, because the "multifactorial" one is over at Sexual dimorphism. This is really the wrong question, and I think the problem is the WP:Article title. So, once again, from the top:
  • The way that you figure out what the article about is...you figure out what the article is about. Naming it comes afterwards. You can't figure out what the WP:COMMONNAME for _____ is unless and until you know what _____ is. The relationship between Wikipedia:Article titles and scopes puts the scope first. For example, the _____ of Queen Elizabeth II is "that nice old lady who was queen", not "anything and everything that gets called 'Queen Elizabeth II'. In this case, the _____ of this article is "the academic convention by which those seahorses which bear young internally are called males, even though it's weird to think of males being 'pregnant'". (And why are they called males? Because every good biologist knows that the definition of male is "whichever ones have the smaller and more mobile gametes" – full stop. There is no "unless they're pregnant" or "except when they're shorter" or "if their internal genitalia look like this" – there are no exceptions to this rule.)
  • But with a few articles – I give Sex and Ketogenic diet as examples — we have a perfectly decent, well-understood _____, and some editor turns up and says "Oh, Title isn't about _____; Title is about <other thing>." That's what's happening here. As evidenced by the long conversations above, the OP's concern isn't whether there should be an article about dividing whole species into male and female; the OP's goal is to have the article at this particular title be about assigning individuals to the male half or the female half, with a particular emphasis on phenotypic variations in that process.
  • I think that the only way to stop this kind of demand (to put it bluntly, that the article at the title Sex be arranged in ways that support personal beliefs that a large fraction of humans should consider themselves biologically intersex) is either to have the trans-related culture wars end in the real world, or to turn Sex into a disambiguation page. Only one of those is within our control. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:02, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not against turning Sex into a disambiguation page but the way this discussion has been going so far, that will just push the argument back one step. The reproductive definition should be on a page titled reproductive sex, as it's only one of many such definitions, and the page for biological sex in general (because we still have to have one of those) should use the multifactoral definition below. Loki (talk) 21:23, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  The definition of sex used by biologists for centuries could be considered biological sex, but if you want to complain about how your POV is the One True™ POV for Biological sex, then that can redirect to the dab page, too.

  Your multifactorial definition could be at Phenotypic sex, if you can articulate a clear distinction between that and Sexual dimorphism. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  We don't go by the definition used "for centuries", we go with the most up-to-date definition in the sources. Otherwise we'd define heat as phlogiston. Loki (talk) 00:25, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

• Reproductive and Disambiguate. I'm not sure what title the topic of this article (the collective term for the two kinds of anisogamous sexually reproducing organisms) should have, but the title sex has many incoming links that intend sexual intercourse or human sexual activity. Outside of template (navbox) links, I'd estimate that most of the incoming links need disambiguation. Sources for a multifactoral definition are heavily anthropocentric. Sex is more complicated than XX/XY, but sources from biomedical/social (human/mammal) sources focus on stuff like SRY that upend XX/XY. Sources from biologists who aren't focused on mammals will focus on stuff like ZW sex-determination system that also upend XX/XY. Plantdrew (talk) 03:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

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)

• Comment. I think you have to get past the politics of this. This is for one several topics in one so that would lean me to Dissambiguate. Having worked in this area, indirectly my Post Grad superviser researched Temperature Dependant Sex Determination etc, I am most familiar with this as a Biologist. First up this is not an encyclopedia of mammals so sticking to xx/xy is so outdated and nonencompassing of what is out there its bordering on a political argument more than a biological one. As some noted birds and reptiles use different systems. In reality intersex is a biological definition of indivisuals that have traits or abilities of both sexes, note some species can change sex under certain circumstances, eg Clown Fish. There are cases where under varying circumstances species can have the chromosomes of one sex but exhibit another, my old boss got a paper in Nature over that. He found completely reproductive females that had the chromosomes of a male, and vice versa. The whole issue of sex in anaimals is directly tied to gene mixing and survival, so yes there are safeguards in the system. Snails are hemophradytes totally functional, some species have parthenogenesis. Make an article about biological sex and another about sexuality in humans. Both are important and both should be done with respect. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 10:33, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive The sources presented for multifactorial are not as authoritative or as strong as presented and contradictory (and highly critical) contemporary sources have been ignored. This is ill-conceived and fundamentally confuses anthropocentric heuristics for identifying sex in an individual, with sex. Void if removed (talk) 19:59, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Both - It's clear from the sources below, particularly those identified by Loki, that the definition of sex is multifactorial, and that defining it based on the types of gametes an organism produces is one of those factors. That it is politically controversial to recognise sex as multifactorial in some parts of the world is not a reason for our content to not match with reliable sources. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:05, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Sideswipe9th, the seahorses that carry their young internally are male. The seahorses that don't are female. Please name all the "factors" that went into the decision to label these two groups "male and female" rather than "female and male". If it's truly multi-factorial, you should have no trouble at all coming up with at least two factors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  @WhatamIdoing: I'm not a marine biologist (how often do you get to say that on enwiki?), and my knowledge of seahorses ends just slightly after the point at which the Science journal defines them as weird and there's a lot about them we don't know. There's also two answers depending on whether you're asking this question from a historical or contemporary perspective.

  For a contemporary perspective, in addition to the obvious factor of gametes, and the presence or absence of a brood pouch (both directly observable sex characteristics), at least one of the other factors seems to be genomic, if I'm understanding that paper correctly. The presence of one or more patristacin gene variants seems to be a necessary determinant, as it is expressed highly within the brood pouch. As for why male seahorses have a brood pouch, that is something I don't know, and I'm not sure is known.

  If however you're asking me historically how seahorse sex was determined, it seems to have been through observation of the brood pouch. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:38, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  How did marine biologists decide that the ones with a brood pouch (or other traits) should be called the male ones? Why didn't they decide that the ones with the brood pouch were female? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  Ultimately, it doesn't matter to us how they decided that. It only matters what they've decided, and you can see below that especially recent sources are increasingly using a multifactoral definition of sex, even in non-human animals. Loki (talk) 00:34, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  Ultimately, how they decided that is the subject of this article, no matter what this article is called. I think that matters very much for our current purposes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:52, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  No, what they decided is the subject of the article. How and why they decided that is scientific research, and if we want to repeat that research on this talk page ourselves that's called original research. Loki (talk) 05:50, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  I don't know, as I said I'm not a marine biologist. The real question is, how are they determined now? Definitions change over time, they can be replaced or added to. So how are scientists in the here and now determining the sex of seahorses?

  A paper published in Aquaculture in September 2023 mentions that the presence of a brood pouch and gonadal morphology is one way to determine the sex phenotype of Hippocampus erectus, while also stating that the presence or absence of LRRIQ1 and IL34 genes can be also be used for sexual determination. Likewise the paper in Nature that I linked in my previous reply also used a genomic basis for sex determination, albeit with a different gene. Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:23, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  Sure, but that's to determine whether the sex phenotype of the individual you're looking at aligns more closely with the group conventionally called 'male' or with the group conventionally called 'female'.

  The rule's the same for every single animal on Earth, so you don't actually need to be a marine biologist. Or, you know, read this article. The answer is in the very first sentence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:54, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

• Reproductive, there is already an entire separate entry covering gender and there are important distinctions we should not blur. Science Direct a respected digital publisher notes several of the differences between sex and gender clearly in articles like https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/gender-and-sex with many reasons for maintaining the biological (reproductive) definition of sex in medicine separately from gender. Watering it down to include / be based upon secondary sex characteristics & hormones which can be altered with drugs would effectively eliminate its usefulness. Protection of sex (reproductive) on the basis of best medical care & research should alone should be enough to conclude this debate. I additionally note the debate reaching seahorses on more than one occasion. This is surely a dead end and clearly not one where a new consensus will be won. Furthermore if new viewpoint is lost and sex was changed to multifactoral the page would be less clear to readers, and lead to further endless edit battles over the primacy of the different elements within the proposed list, rather than settling the issue. scolly69 (talk) 23:22, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

  I note that the very first source from your link is this, which defines sex as

  “Sex” refers to biological differences between female, male and intersex subjects—human, animal or even at the cellular level. Sex is generally operationalized through what can be summarized as the 3 “Gs,” i.e., genes, gonads and genitalia (Blackless et al., 2000). Practically, this means that sex can be defined by three means...

  This clearly looks like a multifactoral definition of sex to me. In fact, just skimming down the list, of the sources that define "sex" in their abstract there appear to be two sources that define sex multifactorally, one that defines it chromosomally, and zero that define it reproductively. Loki (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  "Operationalized through" means "identified in individuals via". It means "not the actual definition". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  Did you miss the this means that sex can be defined by three means at the end? Loki (talk) 05:51, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, and having read it in context, I realized that the authors were thinking of individual sex determination and not a dictionary definition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:09, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

• Multifactoral It's pretty apparent just by reading the rest of this article that it's about more than just the reproductive aspects of sex, but also about the other factors in other sections, which then have main page links to all the various sub-pages. This article is the top level one giving the overview leading to all of that. We have the sexual reproduction page for a reason, not to mention reproduction and human reproduction. It seems bizarre to have this article try to be just a copy of information in that singular aspect. Silverseren^C 23:39, 14 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. Sex would cease to have a useful meaning for the vast majority of sexual species if the so-called "multifactoral" definition of sex were to be adopted - which is exactly why this hasn't happened in academic science departments. What, exactly, would be the relevance of external genitalia to an asparagus? Or of gonads? Or of hormones? This whole discussion is frankly an exercise by anthropocentric ideologies from academic humanities to force scientific understandings to conform to contemporary trends, and it should be resisted. Fig (talk) 09:46, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive - If the definition were changed, sex would no longer be differentiated from other terms, such as gender, that exist to cover the multifactoral concepts. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 00:18, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive Certainly there is a place for the multifactoral definition (perhaps in Human sexuality), but this article is definitely not the place. Kcmastrpc (talk) 00:36, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. This is a general encyclopaedia article about biology that covers all sexually reproducing species. It is emphatically not an essay about gender (has its own page), human sexuality (has its own page) or any other human-related and in many cases behaviourally oriented topic such as practical treatment of patients based on their sex (or gender). It is always possibly to include short references and links to other articles where appropriate - this should be amply enough to address any issues behind the proposal. Stca74 (talk) 07:16, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. This question seems to attempt to elevate a modern socio-political-cultural issue above a fundamental natural concept, implying the former is of much greater broad importance and more deserving of focus than the latter. I must emphasize emphatically that this is not true and is not the way a general encyclopedia for people across the world should handle such topics. Kajitani-Eizan (talk) 09:49, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. The section on humans can feature the other sort of definition. The only reason that lay sources on sex feature the ‘multifactoral’ definition is because laypeople are more liable to be interested in human sex. More scientific sources, about the vast breadth of the phenomenon, are clear that it’s about reproduction. Zanahary (talk) 14:33, 16 November 2023 (UTC)
• Disambiguate. There are different topics under or related to sex. They should go into different articles if they do not already. Senorangel (talk) 03:28, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
• None of these. Recast as WP:Broad-concept article instead. Seems to me WP:BCA was invented for something like this. Literally will keep all y'all happy. Mathglot (talk) 06:58, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive, the clear and unambiguous definition of sex is the reason we can even talk about things such as Sexual dimorphism, Sequential hermaphroditism, or Simultaneous hermaphroditism High Tinker (talk) 17:51, 17 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive, as this is what the WP:WEIGHT of sources do that cover the tree of life broadly, as shown below in the Discussion section (and many more could be added). Almost all if not all of the sources alleged to support a "multifactorial" definition are anthropocentric; they are specifically about humans and about how to classify the sex of individual humans, which in a small minority of cases is indeed ambiguous and involves a mix of traits from both sexes. In a medical context, that can be relevant. But this article is not about humans except to briefly contextualize them among their closer and further relatives on the tree of life; to give any significant weight to definitions built around them is backwards and a misapplication of the sources.{{pb}There is no need to disambiguate this page; this is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and the hatnote and its link to Sex (disambiguation) serves that purpose perfectly well and with due weight. Crossroads ^-talk- 01:28, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. Was leaning both, but it's clear the article is about biology and the sex of organisms. The article is not limited to humans. Zenomonoz (talk) 23:33, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive - As stated at the top of the article, "This article is about the distinguishing trait in sexually reproducing organisms." PhenomenonDawn (talk) 23:06, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive. This is the first I've come across the "multifactorial" definition. I suppose one can fall back on the other factors to identify an individual's sex in totally sterile animals if gametes aren't available...although I'd say the equipment existing to produce certain gametes still falls under the "reproductive" definition even if the cells aren't ever produced. JoelleJay (talk) 02:37, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• Both and recast article as WP:Broad-concept article, cf. discussion of Mathglot. I would be open to some form of disambiguation. — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:05, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

• The following 14 sources, including several WP:MEDORG sources support the multifactoral definition:

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)

• Why not mention both? It really depends in what context and what field. Biologists tend to look to define sex by the gametes that reproductive organs produce. I have no issue with the multifactorial definition being presented either. Zenomonoz (talk) 08:39, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  @Zenomonoz, "mentioning" both might be appropriate, but the request here is really to change the main subject of this article (from "how to divide a whole species into male and female" to "there's so much variation in human phenotypes").

  "Mentioning" the latter, in the form of a "not to be confused with" statement, would be perfectly appropriate. Our goal, after all, is to get readers to the subject they care about. Some will want to read about why those wacky biologists decided that the seahorses that get pregnant should be called male, when every Kindergartner knows that it's the mommies who get pregnant; others will want to read about – and should be sent promptly off to the existing article about – the vast and vibrant variability in individual phenotypes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:18, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not totally against mentioning both, but my reason for preferring multifactoral only is that first of all I think the weight of the sources are strongly on the side of the multifactoral definition to the point where we don't need to give significant weight to other definitions, and second of all I think trying to phrase that properly would be awkward. Loki (talk) 21:08, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• It clearly depends on the field. In biology, it's clearly possible and normal to define sex – in that context – based on gametes. See for example the multitude of terms used in botany at Plant reproductive morphology#Terminology. In the context of human society, other definitions may be used. Our task is to follow reliable sources. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:12, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
• In short, it is proposed to define sex as sex phenotype, but they are not the same. I've already specified one reliable source that explains the difference, here's another one for the definition:

  Standard definitions of sexes in biology are based on the difference between sex cells (gametes, i.e., the egg and the sperm) and proceed as follows:
  Male 1. Denoting the gamete (sex cell) that, during sexual reproduction, fuses with a female gamete in the process of fertilization. Male gametes are generally smaller than the female gametes and are usually motile 2. (Denoting) an individual whose reproductive organs produce only male gametes. (Hine Reference Hine 2019)
  Female 1. Denoting the gamete (sex cell) that, during sexual reproduction, fuses with a male gamete in the process of fertilization. Female gametes are generally larger than the male gametes and are usually immotile 2. (Denoting) an individual organism whose reproductive organs produce only female gametes. (Hine Reference Hine 2019)
  — Evron, Aya (2023-06-13). "What Do Sexes Have to Do with (Models of) Sexual Selection?". Philosophy of Science: 1–19. doi:10.1017/psa.2023.86. ISSN 0031-8248.

  D6194c-1cc (talk) 11:28, 13 November 2023 (UTC)
• Many of the sources for the multidimensional definition seem to be about the definition of sex in humans, which is both biological and cultural/social. This page is not primarily focused on humans and does not address cultural dimensions of sex. Perhaps we should consider adding a link to Human Sexuality in the preamble?

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)

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)

Many, but not all. Several of the multifactoral sources explicitly mention non-human animals. Loki (talk) 21:10, 13 November 2023 (UTC)

• Many of the sources for a multifactoral definition seem weak, circular, or overtly ideological, or the quoting does not reveal the full picture. For example, this cited Stanford website is claimed as multi-factoral, but actually states:

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.

Or this 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)

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)

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)

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)

• Plantdrew Faendalimas Both of you mention XY/XX chromosomes in your answer. Are you both aware that's not an option under consideration? It's barely present in reliable sources at all as a definition of sex, exactly because it's not the only sex-determination system.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

@Scott Thomson If you mean sexual reproduction, sexual intercourse or human 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)

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)

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)

"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)

@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)

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[4], for anyone interested. Cheers Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 20:05, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

@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)

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)

• Has there been some sort of WP:CANVASSING going on? I notice there have been a bunch of !votes that are all going the same way from users with very low edit counts. Loki (talk) 01:35, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Starting with some data: checking page views at four Talk pages with open Rfc's (check 'log scale' for easier viewing), I dont see a smoking gun. That's not a proof of anything, it's just a first attempt to try to find evidence, if there is any. A good next step, would be to create a Google Custom Search Engine of popular social media and other forums where the troops are often mustered for this kind of thing, and then search your CSE for "wikipedia NEAR Talk:Sex" and see what you get (it's easy; completely web-based). Mathglot (talk) 02:02, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Meta

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

• WP:WikiProject Biology
• WP:WikiProject Sexuality
• WP:WikiProject Physiology

Loki has notified these WikiProjects:

• WP:WikiProject Biology
• WP:WikiProject Medicine
• Wikipedia:WikiProject LGBT studies

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