Talk:Sex

RFC: Definition of Sex

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

The outcome of the RfC is a rough consensus to use the reproductive definition in this article.

Several editors suggested that the content of the article reflects this usage, though some pointed out that this article gets into multifactoral discussion. Overall this line of discussion, centered around MOS:LEAD, suggests that despite some coverage of other topics, this article's focus is around the reproductive definition

There was discussion about what reliable sources say; editors note that many sources that suggest a multifactoral definition do exist, however multiple editors believe that those sources were largely focused around topics other than the one covered by this article, especially with a focus on humans. Overall, this discussion—implicitly focused around the WP:RS guideline, and related policies like WP:NPOV, WP:V and so on—suggests that the latter evaluation has broader support.

Some editors of various opinions relied on their personal opinions or expertise on what the meaning of the word was. Given the amount discussion centered around PAG (including use of reliable sources), I've weighed such opinions or personal expertise appropriately.

There was concern about canvassing, evaluating the concerns including checking the edit history of many individual editors it seems likely that canvassing did in small part affect the discussion. This does not mean we can't, with care, find a rough consensus in the discussion. However, note that the in-depth of this discussion is far less "one-sided" than a raw !vote tally would suggest. On the other hand, please don't take the wrong message from this: canvassing concerns were not one-sided. I evaluated both explicit and implicit concerns neutrally, not taking any at face value.

There are some more notes from the discussion:

1. Some editors desire to further disambiguate within the hatnote of this article, the primary suggestion being to link gender, though there were other suggestions.
2. Some editors suggested to change this into a disambiguation page. There are suggestions that the article title itself is a source of disagreement, and that turning the page into a disambiguation page would make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for. Some editors suggested the current article is a primary topic for the article title, while others disagreed.
3. There were also suggestions to turn this into a broad concept article.

Despite the amount of discussion, none of these points were supported or rejected sufficiently to suggest any further consensus. (non-admin closure) —siroχo 10:41, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

---

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) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Alligator24 (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.

  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) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Kajitani-Eizan (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
• 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) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that High Tinker (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
• 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.
  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)

P.S.: Regarding the example sentences used in the OP, there are far more sources that refer to sex as a "trait" rather than as a "construct". Sex is a phenotypic trait, not a mere "construct" (whatever that is supposed to mean). Crossroads ^-talk- 20:15, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Presumably a Social construct is intended, since the meaning of all words is a social construct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

I suspected as much, but of course this would then apply to literally every topic in Wikipedia and to every scientific term. Yet, one never sees a push to label things like anthropogenic climate change, evolution, Covid-19, or the shape of the Earth as social constructs. Most if not all arguments used to claim sex is a social construct apply to many other things as well, yet it is easy to see how in such cases it obscures more than it clarifies or even implies that there is no objective basis to believe the phenomenon exists. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:38, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

Climate change could be described as a phenomenon; perhaps that word would work here, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:26, 12 December 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) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that PhenomenonDawn (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.
• 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)
• Reproductive - per WP:LEAD as it is a summary of the article content and the wording used. The content here is not talking about biological "construct", maybe that is for a different article in the theme? Cheers Markbassett (talk) 14:35, 20 November 2023 (UTC)
• Both and Disambiguate. I am voting for this variant because clearly sex is not just about producing of gametes (reproductive cells). From my perspective as a person with education in biology (molecular genetics) it is much more complex. Sex is basically reproductive strategy of an organism. However this strategy is fulfilled not just by gametes but also by secondary sex characteristics of phenotype which serve as a major aspect of gamete production and distribution (gonads, ductal system and genitalia-in mammals) and secondary sex characteristics (visible aspects of phenotype besides primary sex characteristics, mostly formed during maturation of an organism) which support mating strategy of an organism. Without secondary sex characteristics sexually reproducing organism couldn't achieve successful mating and wouldn't in fact reproduce. Secondary sex characteristics are induced by interplay of genotype and sex hormones in mammals (regulation of gene transcription). All these aspects are inseparable parts of a concept which we can describe as "sex". Thus I strongly recommend complex description, gamete production is reductive and doesn't fully describe sex as a reproductive strategy. Multifactoral definition with addition of gonads and produced type of gamete provides complete description. Which means sex is both "Multifactoral" and "Reproductive". There is another problem with "Reproductive" gamete definition. When we want to create classification system which would be able to classify sex of an organism you cannot use solely gamete based definition because it would fail to classify organism which doesn't produce any gametes for whatever reason, be it induced condition or congenital condition. In such cases we need to fallback to definition based on phenotype of an organism and that is described by "Multifactoral" definition rather than just "Reproductive" gamete based.Beczky 23:04, 20 November 2023 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Beczky (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.

  The multi-factorial approach fails for example here with these lizards. There are three widely divergent types of males, each with very different behaviours and morphologies, the consistent way that we can tell they are all males is because of the gamete they produce. High Tinker (talk) 11:47, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  All of the aspects you mention are still solidly in the "reproductive" definition, not "multifactorial", as they are all ultimately predicated on the gametes a type of organism produces. From the perspective of biology it doesn't matter if one species has secondary sex characteristics resembling those of males in other species; if it produces ova it is still female (or hermaphroditic if it also produces sperm). It's the gamete production that is necessary and sufficient to identify sex in a species; secondary sex characteristics may generally be necessary, but they are not sufficient.

  An organism that doesn't produce any gametes does not sexually reproduce, so there is no conflict with the "reproductive" gamete definition. What you seem to be talking about, though, is how to classify sex in an individual organism rather than in a whole species or clade--but that is not what this page is about. JoelleJay (talk) 00:41, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

  This is a general definition of sex. Problem I see is determination of sex of an individual organism. I see a conflict here. If we accept only gamete based definition then it means some organisms would be classified as sexless. Is it acceptable or not? Beczky (talk) 12:19, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Why would an article on sex be of any concern to organisms which are sexless? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but where is the conflict or problem in that instance? Kcmastrpc (talk) 12:45, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Of course it's acceptable; all prokaryotes are sexless.

  Wikipedia needs two articles:

  • An article about sex determination for an individual organism ("Given that males generally have these characteristics, and females generally have those characteristics, which is this particular individual?")
  • A separate article about which group gets labeled male or female ("We have two groups; which group gets labeled as male and which group gets labeled as female? We can't figure out which characteristics males and females 'generally have', if we can't figure out which group gets which label.")

  The subject of this particular article is the second one. The articles about the first probably need work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  Why does Wikipedia need those two articles? Do the sources make this distinction? Because it looks to me like they don't. Loki (talk) 04:22, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

  Medical sources certainly do. For that tiny minority of ambiguous intersex babies, there's nothing whatsoever in a medical textbook about the convention that sperm producers are called male. It's all about assigning an individual to a pre-divided group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

  Why do you think that? Because all I see is "sex is...". I think that you're assigning this intent to the sources after the fact. Loki (talk) 22:50, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

  Do you see any medical textbooks explaining why males are called males and not called females? I haven't (and after 16+ years with WikiProject Medicine, I have seen a lot of medical textbooks). Therefore, medical textbooks do not explain the convention that sperm producers are called male. Please feel free to provide a counterexample, though. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:30, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

  Have you seen any medical textbooks explaining why dogs are called dogs and not oompa-loompas?

  Does the lack of such an explanation mean that when a textbook tells you what a dog is, you say "but since it's not explaining why this species is called dogs instead of something else, it's not a definition of 'dog'"? Loki (talk) 03:44, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  Here's one. How many do you need? Mathglot (talk) 03:51, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  For a moment there I was very confused. Loki (talk) 04:31, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  There are sources explaining why certain canids are called dogs and not called gray wolves, or, more generally, why other closely related species are conventionally given different names. Because of the Species complex problem, sources like this are fairly common. Every animal with a Valid name (zoology) has a definition that tells you how to differentiate this particular species from some other, similar species. There are variations in individuals that might make them difficult to classify at a glance (e.g., an albino ball python won't have the characteristic coloring of its species, but it's still part of its species), but there's still a general definition.

  It's the same thing with males and females: we have a human-imposed conventional nomenclature that says sperm=male and egg=female. There are variations in individuals that might make them difficult to classify at a glance (e.g., intersex animals), but there's still a general definition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:17, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  The definition on dog is The dog (Canis familiaris or Canis lupus familiaris) is a domesticated descendant of the wolf. This isn't even sufficient to distinguish one individual organism from another, let alone explain why this particular species is called "dog".

  And this pattern is true for most Wikipedia articles. So for instance, the definition of a chair is A chair is a type of seat, typically designed for one person and consisting of one or more legs, a flat or slightly angled seat and a back-rest. which is (mostly) sufficient for distinguishing between individual objects, but cannot explain why the class of objects called "chairs" are called that. Loki (talk) 05:49, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  WhatamIdoing is talking about Linnaeus considered the dog to be a separate species from the wolf because of its upturning tail (cauda recurvata), which is not found in any other canid. Most Wikipedia articles on species don't include information differentiating the species from it's close relatives (because most articles on species are 1-2 sentence stubs), and I think it's safe to say that none of the Wikipedia articles that do include the differences from close relatives have that information in the first sentence. But every species has a publication somewhere out there that does give the differences from close relatives. I'm not sure how dogs are particularly relevant though.

  Chair seems more relevant. Chairs (presumably) have been independently invented multiple times. Anisogamy (production of sperm/eggs) has evolved independently multiple times. Gonochory (separate individuals producing sperm/eggs) has evolved independently multiple times. Convergent evolution has produced different things that humans use the same label for in spite of their independent evolution. We use the word wing to refer to independently evolved appendages in birds, bats, insects and pterosaurs (the wing article is awfully anthropcentric, focusing mainly on wings constructed by humans). Plantdrew (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

  WhatamIdoing wrote - Every animal with a Valid name (zoology) has a definition that tells you how to differentiate this particular species from some other, similar species. This is not entirely the right way to look at this. Your mixing taxonomy and nomenclature. A name has a diagnosis which purports to differentiate the taxon. It does not have to actually work. A species in a taxonomic assessment will have a set of characters that diagnose the species from other related forms, no matter what name is applied to it, if any. Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 02:11, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  Having a valid name is how you know that it's been accepted as a separate species in the taxonomy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  remember though that the difference between availability and validity (zoology) is a taxonomic assessment. So that is true but there are plenty of taxa recognised without a valid name, plenty with a valid name that cannot be distinguished, and also plenty where there are options depending on where you look. Birdlife Int Checklist has 20% more species in it than IOC, which is correct? Scott Thomson (Faendalimas) ^talk 02:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  I feel completely confident in saying that neither is entirely correct. Both contain errors and out of date entries. If you meant "Whose inclusion guidelines do you feel are more compelling?", I'd say that Wikipedia:I am not a reliable source, so Wikipedia doesn't really care which one I prefer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

• Reproductive. As many editors have already pointed out, this article is about the biological notion of sex, "the distinguishing trait in sexually reproducing organisms", not about human sexuality and gender, which already have their own self-standing articles. It's perfectly clear, the hatnote template:About does its job here, and I don't see the need to disambiguate further. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:14, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive Agree that this article is clearly about the biological aspects and we have other articles that cover other aspects. I don't see the need for the change here. Springee (talk) 02:02, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
• Multifactoral/both; this is self-evident and not up for debate, given how this topic is covered in reliable sources and even in the article. Per Silverseren ("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.") I also note that there have been organized attempts at WP:CANVASSING by anti-trans activists on social media, including a Tweet that has been retweeted over 700 times by anti-trans Twitter accounts specifically linking to this talk page. --Amanda A. Brant (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2023 (UTC)

  We're aware of the canvassing, that's why there's that big notice at the top. Loki (talk) 03:05, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

• Reproductive - 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 this article is clearly much wider than that and about a basic biological distinction across most of the animal and plant world. Pincrete (talk) 15:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive: From my reading of the multifactoral sources below, they seem to exclusively talk about humans and sometimes animals. As this page also includes plants, it should include a generalized definition, which reproductive works as. The multifactoral aspect can be added to human-specific articles. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 23:39, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
• Reproductive and Disamb to Gender for the multifactoral which is only completely valid for organisms that have external genitals and sexual dimorphism. Why complicate this and confuse the reader? How does that improve the encyclopaedia? Cheers, Last1in (talk) 18:11, 6 December 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)

  Gamete size and motility are phenotypes, so the debate about whether to use the gamete definition and multi-factorial definition is not a question about whether to "define sex as sex phenotype," but a question of which phenotypes to use in the definition. And the heart of the question before the Wikipedia editors is whether the biologists have a consensus on which phenotypes to use and how to combine them to determine sex. BrotherE (talk) 00:40, 11 December 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[1], 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)

  I've found some evidence of off-wiki canvassing happening on Twitter, attempting to draw editors with a specific POV to this discussion. I'll not be posting any direct links here, as I don't want to risk outing any identifiable editors, however I will provide this info to a CU or ArbCom if requested. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:22, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  I have too. See my talk page. Loki (talk) 21:48, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

  Alright, I've gone through the discussion and added canvassed tags to the users that are most obviously canvassed (ones with extremely low edit counts or who popped up from long hiatuses to vote in this RFC). But I note that the earliest of the Twitter threads was posted at about 7:00pm UTC on Wednesday, November 15th, so any comment posted after then could potentially be a result of users with more established accounts having seen something about this on Twitter. I urge the closer, whoever it is, to look even more closely at the actual argumentation for each side than normal, and to not make this a simple vote.

  Also, Beczky has said on my talk page they're the same user that reported the canvassing on my talk page, and has also said they came from the Twitter thread to oppose the canvassed opinions. And like I told them on my page, I don't really think they've done anything wrong per se (in fact I'm grateful for being told about this), but that still definitely counts as being canvassed, so I tagged them even though they do actually have a pretty substantial reasoning for their !vote. Loki (talk) 00:24, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

  Loki says on their talk page that "extremely low edit counts" is less than 500, a level of participation that applies to more than 99% of all registered editors. They did not tag editors in the top 1%.

  That said, I have no doubt that some editors heard about this discussion off wiki, and I suspect that we would be hearing from far more of them if participation on this page didn't already exclude brand-new accounts and unregistered editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

  First of all, you're putting words in my mouth. You asked if that was the threshold, and I said that I didn't have an exact threshold but that was a reasonable estimate. I already gave my full criteria above: [editors] with extremely low edit counts or who popped up from long hiatuses to vote in this RFC. I looked at the edit histories of every editor who voted and tagged any that seemed especially odd. And I really don't think any of my decisions are arguable: besides the edit counts, one of the editors I tagged came out of a six-year-long hiatus to vote on this RFC and has not edited once since.

  I could have tagged even more: there's a few editors above who don't normally edit in any of the topic areas this RFC pertains to, and who voted right at the time the tweets in question were attracting people to this page. But that wasn't clear enough evidence for me to be comfortable tagging any of those people.

  Ultimately, this is a decision that will have to be reexamined by the closer anyway, because, like I've said, it's very possible that several of the longer-standing users on this page saw it from Twitter. There's a burst of votes on the 15th and 16th which matches perfectly with the burst in activity from the tweet (see Mathglot's graph above). Loki (talk) 00:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

  I said: "at a glance, it looks like you've accused all participants with fewer than 500 edits".

  You replied: "There wasn't a particular edit number I had in mind, but it basically was that, yes."

  You will have to forgive me for assuming that "yes" means "yes". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

  Well, the objection here is that "more-or-less" doesn't mean "yes, that's the precise criteria I used", but it's not really worth arguing about. Loki (talk) 01:03, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

  It's being discussed on Manifold, but that's likely a consequence of the canvassing rather than a progenitor. (No particular answer is being pushed there, and I think Manifold users are generally well-behaved enough to not disrupt a Wikipedia vote.) I don't know where it originally came from, an anonymous user was the first to create a market on it. KingSupernova (talk) 07:40, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

• Comment: there is more than one article on the topic of sex or sex versus gender -- so having difference in some sources might just be that those links apply somewhere else. Not saying it's so, just saying that a source on sex doesn't necessarily go into *this* article on sex. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 14:38, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

• How does ("Sex is a biological construct based on traits including (...)" go together with WP:ISATERMFOR? Perhaps it could be more agreeable to phrase it without explicitly saying "construct", e.g. just "Sex is a set of traits including (...)" or something like that. NicolausPrime (talk) 21:47, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

  Saying that something is construct (I believe what's meant by biological construct is "a thing society has decided is a thing, about something involving biology") isn't quite like saying that it's a term for something.

  Influenza happens to be a term for something that isn't a construct (Influenza A virus would exist and infect humans even if society weirdly agreed that it didn't exist and didn't infect us); money happens to be a term for something that is a construct (it would be valueless except that we've all decided that it has value). We write the articles to say "Influenza is a disease" and "Money is a way to pay for stuff".

  The latter could be written as "Money is a construct about how to pay for stuff" (after all, there's no inherent reason why certain pieces of paper should be accepted as a way to pay for stuff). To say that "Money is a construct about payments" is to say "Money is a thing we've all agreed is about payments..."; to say that sex is a construct based on traits is to say "Sex is a thing we've all agreed is based on traits..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

  Would syndrome be a better word in this context than "construct"? Articles for human sex chromosome aneuploidies such as Turner syndrome and Klinefelter syndrome are titled with "syndrome". Plantdrew (talk) 05:02, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  It seems to me that "(syndrome)" would be a decent disambiguation term for an article about how sex is determined in individuals of various species. "(anisogamy)" could be used to disambiguate an article covering species that have a particular sex-determination system that can be applied to most individuals. Plantdrew (talk) 05:27, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

  Strongly opposed to 'syndrome' as a disambig term, as it means "disorder" or "disease", so, definitely not. Mathglot (talk) 01:48, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  A syndrome isn't necessarily a disease; strictly speaking, it is a characteristic collection of multiple signs and symptoms. Since the biologists declare that this half is male and that half is female based on a single factor (production of sperm vs egg), it's not really a "syndrome". I suppose one could stretch it a little and claim that the signs associated with sexual dimorphism constitute "a syndrome", such that I have "female syndrome", but that sounds a bit like declaring that one overly cheerful co-worker to have "cheerful morning person syndrome". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:21, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

  Strictly speaking, you're right, but it's irrelevant. The point was, that a syndrome is an abnormal condition, and sex (in any of the meanings discussed above, take your pick) is not. Thus whereas titling or disambiguating "Turner..." and "Klinefelter...'" with syndrome is perfectly appropriate, it would be anathema for this article. Even more strictly speaking, and following this sidebar on what syndrome means to its conclusion: yes, a syndrome is a collection of s&s as you point out, but that's not all: more specifically, it is a collection of s&s which have no known mechanism; i.e., they appear to co-occur for reasons we don't understand. We talk about pneumonia—not pneumonia syndrome—because we understand the mechanism; but we talk about idiopathic pneumonia syndrome because we don't. Mathglot (talk) 19:25, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

  I agree that the word wouldn't be understood. It's a bit like the Genesis creation myth problem: It really is a myth, using that word as defined by scholars, but readers would hear "story that is not true" instead of "story of inestimably large social significance". WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 12 December 2023 (UTC)

  Clarification: by "for reasons we don't understand", I meant "for reasons scholars in medical science don't understand", not the average reader. Mathglot (talk) 22:53, 15 December 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)

The RFC was advertised for 30 days. I have listed this discussion (without any comment) at Wikipedia:Closure requests#Sex#RFC: Definition of Sex. It may be days or weeks before anyone volunteers to summarize the discussion, and until then, there is no prohibition on continuing the discussion as/if/when people feel like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hermaphrodites

Plantsurfer and Peter coxhead, I'd like to have a simple, everyday example in the lead that helps people (including older kids) understand that hermaphroditism is normal state for some organisms. In popular culture, it tends to be sensationalized in a freak show kind of way, and I think that waving vaguely in the direction of flowering plants or something else of your choosing would be helpful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:52, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why you think waving vaguely towards a populist view is the solution. Land plants have been swinging both ways for half a billion years, and their aquatic ancestors for twice that. Hermaphroditism is THE NORM in flowering plants. Single-sex flowering plants are in the vast minority, but in-between there is complexity that has no parallel at all in human sexuality.Plantsurfer 19:40, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that the first paragraph has much room for complexity. I'd like that sentence to point attention towards plants (or, really, any example that you and Peter think is a good idea). I'd rather that the stereotypical fourteen-year-old boy, upon encountering the word hermaphrodite in the first paragraph was nudged towards thinking "Oh, right, that drawing of pistils and stamens we had to do in biology class" instead of "The guys at school were telling a funny story last week".

The end of that paragraph currently says just "An organism that produces both types of gamete is hermaphrodite." I think some slight addition, like "such as most plants", would help. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:55, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with that. I suggest changing "An organism that produces both types of gamete is hermaphrodite." to "Organisms that produce both types of gametes, such as most flowering plants, are hermaphrodite or monoecious." That should be covered by citation 3.

I don't like the wording of the next sentence - "In non-hermaphroditic species, . ." I suggest changing it to "In dioecious species, . ." or "In species with separate sexes, ."Plantsurfer 00:30, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps "In species with separate sexes (dioecious)..."? That way people learn the word, but also know we're talking about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

While I'm all for covering plants, alternation of generations (and exactly where plant gametes are being produced) wasn't something I understood until college. Hermaphoditism in gastropods and worms was something I understood in high school. Plantdrew (talk) 03:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Plantdrew. Yes, it's good to cover plants. However, doing so accurately in one or two sentences is very difficult because of alternation of generations and the overwhelming dominance of the sporophyte generation in vascular plants. For animals and bryophytes the statement "An organism that produces both types of gametes is hermaphrodite" is correct (but it's monoicy not monoecy in bryophytes). Maybe "A hermaphrodite organism is one that produces both types of gametes, either directly as in animals or indirectly as in vascular plants" without mentioning monoecious? Peter coxhead (talk) 07:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I think you are overthinking it. The sentence I offered above specified flowering plants. I don't think it is necessary to cover the entirety of sexual complexity in plants, merely to provide an example that covers the overwhelming majority.Plantsurfer 12:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Consider the definitions in The Kew Plant Glossary. On p. 54, "hermaphrodite, bisexual plant with stamens and pistil in the same flower", and on p. 20 "bisexual, having both sexes in the same flower, or in the same inflorescence." The point is that applied to flowering plants, hermaphrodite does not mean 'producing both kinds of gamete', it means, in lay language, 'having both stamens and pistils in the same flower' or more technically 'having both sexes of gametophyte in the same flower'. Confusing gametophytes with gametes leads to the error of calling pollen sperm. Peter coxhead (talk) 12:20, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, Heslop-Harrison (1972) emphasised that sexuality is a gametophytic property, but control of the determination of the sex of gametophytes in heterosporous plants is exerted by the sporophyte. JH-H says "Customarily, monomorphic, monoclinous species are termed hermaphrodite, and monomorphic species with diclinous flowers, monoecious." He also says "Flowers either contain both stamens and carpels, in which case they are termed monoclinous or hermaphrodite*, or stamens or carpels alone, in which case they are said to be diclinous (sporophyte is dioecious) or unisexual." Stace 4th edition prefers to use the term bisexual instead of hermaphrodite.

If necessary the complexities of land plant sexuality can be dissected at length in the body of an appropriate article. I don't think this is the one, and I definitely don't think the lead of Sex is the right place to air these concerns either. There is a clear, sourceable precedent for the use of the term 'hermaphrodite' to describe the sexuality of bisexual angiosperms, and I really don't think that is likely on its own to lead to the misconception that pollen=sperm.

Plantsurfer 14:27, 13 February 2024‎ (UTC)

@Peter coxhead and @Plantdrew, is it factually true that hermaphroditism is seen in:

• most (i.e., not all)
• flowering plants (i.e., not other kinds of plants)?

If alternating generations happens in less than 50% of flowering plants, that would not make the statement about "most flowering plants" be incorrect. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:53, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Alternation of generations occurs in ALL vascular plants. In fact it is true for all land plants and many algae.

Yes, 71% of Dicot species and 73% of monocot species are hermaphrodite. Only ~3% of monocots and 4% of dicots are dioecious.

Nothing I have said so far implies that hermaphroditism does not exist in other kinds of plants. Plantsurfer 18:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

I had somehow formed the misimpression that hemaphroditism (=this individual plant produces both gametes) and alternating generations (this individual plant produces one, and its offspring will produce the other?) were mutually exclusive states. I see that I need to go read the article on this subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:11, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing|WhatamIdoing Alternation of generations does not carry any implication that an individual plant produces only one type of gamete. Many plants (all of which have alternating generations) produce both types of gamete, not necessarily simultaneously. The alternation bit is about what happens when the mature sporophyte produces spores by meiosis - the spores are haploid and develop by repeated mitosis into a multicellular haploid gametophyte, (something unknown in animals), the function of which is, as the name implies, to produce gametes.Plantsurfer 19:28, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

WAID, sporophytes don't produce gametes directly, but (in flowering plants) do "host" gametophytes. Your misimpression gets at why I suggested not giving plants as an example of hermaphrodites for the lead. The majority of flatworms and annelid species are hermaphroditic and those can be given as examples in the lead without going into alternation of generations in plants. (I'd also suggested gastropods, but it appears that the majority of gastropod species aren't hermaphroditic (although some gastropod clades are almost exclusively hermaphroditic)). Plantdrew (talk) 20:01, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

About the plural vs singular (this diff): I think that using the singular tends to detract from the idea of hermaphroditism being normal. It's "that one weird individual" (did you see the photos of the honeycreeper with bilateral gynandromorphism last week? [2]) instead of "yeah, that's just normal sexual development for a huge number of species". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

@WhatamIdoing: I think it needs to be absolutely clear that hermaphrodite applies in the first instance to individuals: each individual hermaphrodite can produce both eggs and sperm. Secondarily, a species can be described as hermaphroditic if every 'normal' member of the species is a hermaphrodite. That's why I prefer the singular there. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:17, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

I think the singular leads people to think about humans with unusual disorders of sex development, when we want them to be thinking about normal sexual development in non-mammalian species. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:41, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

References

First sentence

Generally, I think that editors spend too much time thinking about the first sentence, so if y'all think I'm overthinking this, just tell me. But I had an idea.

The first sentence is currently:

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

We could shorten it to say:

Sex is the trait that determines which type of gamete is produced by a sexually reproducing organism.

(The links to male and female could go where those words already exist in the third sentence of the first paragraph, i.e., "By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male...".)

What do you think? Would this be an improvement at all? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:39, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

First reaction: no. Because it leaves open the impression that maybe there are other types; third gender gamete? Turner's gamete? CAIS gamete? Silliness, of course, because, we want to say amongst ourselves, duh, NO; but with all the misinformation and lack of knowledge around the whole topic and the sex/gender confusion lurking around the corner, do we want to open the door even a crack to more confusion? That said, I'm open to your reasoning; why do you think it would be an improvement? Mathglot (talk) 22:44, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreed with Mathglot. I think the existing sentence is clearer, and from a purely stylistic perspective (which is admittedly pretty subjective) I don't see an advantage in changing it. Also, clarity in facts is more important anyway. Crossroads ^-talk- 22:48, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I think what irritates me about this is that we could also, with equal accuracy, write that "Fertility is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes". Pedantically speaking, fertility is about whether; sex is about which. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)