Sex, Science, and Society: Reckonings and Responsibilities for Biologists

Abstract

Synopsis Individuals who may not fit European colonial ideas of dichotomous male or female bodies—those who are intersex—have been known across cultures and throughout human history. Unfortunately, acknowledgement of and engagement with this aspect of human biological diversity and the ongoing impact of binary misunderstandings of sex have been largely contained within the humanities and social sciences, while sex diversity beyond an assumed male/female binary has been either ignored or pathologized in the medical and biological sciences. The perceived social threat of intersex variation to the sex and gender binary has led to institutional and medical regulation of intersex people’s bodies, which has been the subject of increasing spotlight recently. Given the historical and ongoing role of the biological sciences in the pathologization of human sex variation and the deployment of medical technologies attempting to suppress this variation, we must actively acknowledge that our work does not exist and is not produced in a vacuum. Biological data demonstrate that sex is diverse and variable in animals, plants, and fungi. Despite this, the paradigm of binary sex has labeled diverse and variable sex as anomalous, especially in human populations. It is far past time to address this paradigm by actively examining the ways that our research, teaching, and communication engage with, articulate, and make legible particular narratives of sex diversity and variation.