I write this post to recommend a new book recently published by my colleague and friend Tomas Bogardus: The Nature of the Sexes: Why Biology Matters (Routledge, pp. 156). Bogardus has been publishing for the past six years in the areas of the philosophy of sex and gender. In an era when expression of feelings, language manipulation and political rhetoric dominate public discussion of sex and gender, Bogardus calls us back to biological reality and rational rigor.

Overview

In Chapter 1, “Introduction,” Bogardus explains the significance of the debate and whets our appetite for the book’s argument. In Chapter 2, “What the Sexes Could Not Be,” he surveys four unacceptable proposals for specifying the differences between the sexes. All four views take sex to be “complex” in a variety of ways: (1) the word “sex” is an ambiguous term, (2) the meaning of sex depends on the research context, (3) the word “sex” is indeterminate and can apply to a range of things, (4) according to the “property-cluster hypothesis,” there is no one property necessary to the definition of sex. Bogardus examines and rejects each of these views.

In Chapter 3, “What the Sexes Could Be: The Gamete View,” Bogardus builds up to his understanding of the defining characteristics of the sexes. (Just so we are clear, a gamete is a reproductive cell, sperm or egg, that when united form a zygote.) The gamete view in general, defines males as organisms capable of producing sperm and females as organisms capable of producing eggs. Bogardus surveys three views within the umbrella of “the Gamete View” and finds weaknesses and strengths in each one. Combining the strengths of the surveyed views, Bogardus defines the sexes this way:

Put simply, a male is an organism with the function of producing sperm, and a female is an organism with the function of producing eggs. Put more carefully, the sexes are particular kinds of functions—activated higher order functions—of entire organisms, coded in master programs specifying the development, organization, and maintenance of components themselves programed to produce (and transport, etc.) some type of anisogamous gamete, for example, sperm or ova (p. 68).

Chapter 4, “Gender is Defined in Terms of the Sexes,” argues that “gender” should be defined in terms of biological sex. Gender talk cannot be disengaged from reference to biological sex or it becomes meaningless. Bogardus explains why: “To understand what gender identity is, one must understand what a gender is, and to understand that, one must understand the sexes” (p. 104). To say, “I am a woman trapped in the body of a man” uses the word “woman” in a confused way. It fuses typical “feminine modes of presentation of women” with the female sex. Although simultaneous hermaphroditism is a reality in simpler organisms, humans are never both male and female in the biological sense of “activated higher order functions” capable of producing both sperm and ova. Bogardus recommends avoiding the word “gender” altogether and using such “sex-based alternatives” (p. 104) as “biological sex,” “norms of the sexes,” ‘roles of the sexes,” “adult sexes,” “juvenile sexes;” or one can continue to speak about man and woman, boys and girls.

Chapter 5, “When Biology Meets Politics,” addresses the thorny issues circling around the politicization of sex and gender. Bogardus argues that we should defer to biologists in the matter of defining sex, and he refutes those who wish to enforce linguistic norms designed to engineer a new understanding of sex that better conforms to the political aspirations of certain groups. As an example, suppose we attempt to enforce the rule that “a person is male only if he identifies as male.” The circularity of such expressions is glaringly obvious. How can maleness be something that exists only because of an act of identification unless maleness is something objective one can identify as? Apart from reference to biological reality, how could we know what the expressions “is male” and “as male” mean?

In Chapter 6, Bogardus defends using pronouns that track with biological sex. Among other reasons for this contention, Bogardus points out that in our social relations there are good reasons to know the sex of the person we are speaking with. Compelling examples include finding a mate and keeping female spaces safe from predators, who overwhelmingly tend to be males.

Recommendation

The Nature of the Sexes cuts through the linguistic fog and political posturing that plague public and academic discussions of sex and gender. It calls us back to common sense and biological reality. In contrast to talking heads on cable news and ideologues in academia, Bogardus sounds like the voice of reason itself. I learned something new on every page! I recommend this book highly!

Bogardus Podcasts

If you listen to podcasts, you may enjoy these three presentations by Bogardus. Very informative and entertaining:

Here’s a talk from September summarizing the main arguments of the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI6g5iuRL14

Here’s a recording of a lecture Bogardus gave at the University of Maine a couple years ago, with a Q&A from students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGYI4sWhAfI

Here’s a popular level debate Bogardus did a few years ago with a popular left-wing Youtube influencer who goes by the name ‘Vaush’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxHSD4qWEM