On Truly Changing Sex
A Repudiation Of Immutability
In this article I aim to (relatively) succinctly eviscerate the flat assertion that “sex is immutable”, a favourite slogan of transphobic rhetoric.
The supposal that there is an irreducible and clear cut distinction between two sets of people — those labelled “male” or “female” at birth — is frequently used in the framing of trans people as deluded or even unreal.
In terms of the TransActual definition of transphobia, this exemplifies:
Using biological essentialism to try and delegitimise trans people.
The Simplest Refutation Of Immutability
Believers in the immutability of sex claim they are promulgating an irrefutable scientific truth — but so do “race realists” and “Goreans”. We don’t have to treat such claims credulously.
Clearly, the major physical characteristics used to define sex are mutable.
Primary sex characteristics — genital anatomy — can be reconfigured by surgery; in fact, they are inherently changeable in some people. Likewise, a wide range of secondary sex characteristics are changed through hormone therapy (commonly undertaken by trans people), because hormones regulate gene expression.
Equally clearly, the mutability of legal sex is well-established in many jurisdictions around the world.
For example, as a matter of fundamental human rights, the availability of a legal provision to change sex is required in order to comply with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, applicable to 47 member states (see here; this right is analysed in detail in this article).
This actual mutability of sex characteristics and legal status clearly doesn’t matter to those people for who “sex is immutable” is really just a kind of stand-in for the moralistic idea that “sex shouldn’t be mutable”. We see this attitude in the use of emotive language to deprecate mutabilities: for example, in transphobes’ descriptions of elective surgery as “mutilation” or court rulings as “legal fiction”. It’s evident that these attempts at invalidation are propelled purely by zealotry, not by a love of science.
What About Immutable Characteristics?
There are other physical characteristics associated with sex that can’t be medically changed, such as genetic structure or aspects of internal anatomy. (Although this is not so much a fundamental limitation as a reflection of current medical state of the art, which can change).
However, the mutability of sex itself does not depend on these characteristics being themselves mutable, because a) while they are typically associated with a specific sex, they are not inevitably so and b) these characteristics are not the basis for the declaration of what sex an infant is.
Sex-Associated Characteristics: Diversity and Reality
Contrary to common assumption, even the presence of XX or XY chromosome pairs does not definitively tell us what sex someone is. Likewise, internal anatomy and all other “immutable” sex-associated characteristics are subject to natural variation.
(A concise overview of variability in the biological characteristics of human sex is The Spectrum Of Sex by Hida Viloria and Maria Nieto.)
The variability of these characteristics means that they are all indicative of sex, but none are definitional of it. In each case, a majority of people within the sex category will possess the characteristic, but a minority of others will not. Possession of such characteristics does not determine an individual’s sex — and therefore does not determine whether sex is mutable.
An analogy may help to make this clearer: consider the difference between churches and houses. Each class of building has indicative architectural features (presence of stained glass windows, type of ground plan, and so on), but none of those features define what type the building is. Indeed, these buildings can be converted from one class to the other: but various processes, such as deconsecration, may have to be followed to formally change the building’s designation. It is the availability of such processes that determines the mutability of the building’s type — not its architectural characteristics.
Note that none of this is an assertion that “sex is not real” — anymore than it is an assertion that the flying buttresses of Notre Dame are mere figments of the imagination, or that Songs Of Praise is a collective hallucination.
{ Sidetrack: Anti-trans rhetoric often claims that trans people believe that “sex is not real”. The intent is to (a) paint trans people as irrational, and (b) drop the credulous down a radicalising rabbit hole, an entry point into conspiracy theoretic thinking which, alice-in-wonderland style, portrays the existence of trans people as being inherently homophobic — the aim being to weaken LGBT solidarity. }
Nor does recognising the diversity of characteristics within sex classes mean that one is trying to “erase same-sex attraction” or “deny biological facts”: just as noting the existence of flightless birds fails to “annihilate” the existence of birds that fly. No more do white peacocks “devastate” peacockism in general, or egg-laying mammals “repudiate” viviparous mammals.
What strange perspectives an immersal in transphobia inculcates.
The Basis Of Sex Declaration
Knowing what sex is on someone’s birth certificate does not allow us to straightforwardly predict which sex-indicative characteristics they have, simply because of the diversity that exists.
However, there is a definitional characteristic of sex: we’ve already mentioned it and noted that it is mutable: the sex on a birth certificate, male or female, is declared simply on the basis of an inspection of an infant’s external genitalia.
{ Sidetrack: there are, of course, prenatal tests that may give a strong diagnostic indication of foetal sex, for example via karyotyping. However, there will always be a margin of error to those tests, whereas the inspection of genitals informs a declaration that literally defines a person’s legal sex. }
And it really makes no sense whatsoever to claim that sex, declared solely on the basis of a characteristic that is mutable, is itself immutable.
But even more fundamentally, mutability of sex itself is possible simply because we can, as a society, choose on what basis sex can be declared or re-declared. There is nothing sacrosanct about the first declaration of sex for an infant: it is, in essence, nothing more than an act of naming. A change of legal sex is simply a newer declaration, justified by more recent information.
The range of possible sex declarations that can be made can itself be questioned. This Phall-O-Meter created by the Intersex Society of North America vividly illustrates that sex declaration works as a crude and arbitrary way of imposing binary categories of sex upon human variation (note: the society is no longer extant; IC4E is a contemporary campaign for intersex equality).
This diagram alerts us to the existence and harm of Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), the common imposition of unnecessary genital surgery on infants who are intersex, which may be medically unnecessary, and can lead to lifelong problems.
IGM is entirely ideologically driven, the consequence of an unexamined belief in the sex binary. These two classes do not map to natural kinds but are approximations, arbitrarily bounded categories, conformity to which is sometimes brutally enforced. There is no intrinsic reason why we can’t reform society to recognise this — if we can overcome inertia and indifference.
Narrower And Wider Senses Of Sex And Gender
Anisogamy: The Narrowest Sense Of ‘Sex’
The “reality” of the sex binary is sometimes argued for by pointing to the species characteristic of anisogamy: the fact that human gametes come in two different types, sperm and egg.
However, gamete generation is relevant to reproductive biology only. This can’t be definitional of sex in general, as shown by the fact that no one makes the claim that (the many) people who do not generate gametes don’t have a sex. Anisogamy is only relevant to “reproductive sex”.
{ Sidetrack: Attempts to define sex in general by relying on “subjunctive” anisogamy — that is, an even more reductive classification based on the type of gametes that would be generated by an individual if they were being generated — simply beg the question, necessarily failing to account for the fact this isn’t always clearcut. }
This illustrates the important point that what we mean by “sex” differs across contexts — the word is polysemous. So in different situations we might draw the boundaries of sexes in terms of: reproductive biology; blood hormone levels (as done for some sports); legal sex as listed on birth certificate; lived sex as listed on other documentation; sex as perceived; and so on.
The meaning of “sex” itself changes — is mutable — with context. Arguments that only consider a single meaning cannot stand in general.
Geschlecht, Køn, Płeć: The Broadest Senses Of ‘Sex’
In fact, the idea of “sex” as narrowly biological in reference is recent; before the rise of the word “gender” in English — which only started to gain currency from roughly the 1960s — the scope of “sex” was always taken to encompass social and psychological characteristics alongside biological ones.
The meanings of “sex” and “gender” are still largely commingled: they are frequently used interchangeably in everyday English, and also in legal usage. Indeed, many languages simply don’t have this sex/gender distinction — the German word geschlecht, the Danish word køn, the Polish word płeć — all refer to both sex and gender (each with its own additional set of connotations and other meanings). English does not provide a neutral — or single — way of limning the world.
When using a broader understanding of what is meant by “sex” then its mutability is more readily accepted: it is obviously more humane to view people through the prism of a life entire, rather than solely through descriptors of anatomy or — even more reductively — of reproductive biology.
Throwing Gender Out Of The Window
Portraying the very blurry boundary between “sex” and “gender” as an unbridgeable gulf is a key aspect of gender critical belief (GCB).
GCB takes “sex is immutable” as a core tenet, insisting on the narrowest possible biological sense of sex. Its other key axiom is that gender is metaphysically unreal — this is the “critical” part of “gender critical”.
(A previous article of mine explores the mythologies of GCB in detail, taking a scenic tour through its genuinely comedic/dangerous rhetoric).
So, those who have GCB believe that no one can legitimately claim a gender identity (because gender isn’t real) and also believe that no one can change sex (because immutability is an axiom). This requires that everyone is simply “male” or “female” in a way that can’t be gainsaid: GCB is intrinsically a belief that trans people shouldn’t be regarded as “real” in any meaningful sense.
Expressed politely, GCB may sometimes be regarded as a “socially acceptable” form of prejudice. But many of its prominent adherents are far from polite: the spreading of endless vitriol towards trans people online and across mainstream media merges with grossly repugnant bigotry. Not bounded by transphobia, this includes the spreading of ludicrous homophobic and anti-semitic conspiracy theories (see here and here).
At core GCB is deeply morally censorious, a preaching that sex shouldn’t be mutable, that gender shouldn’t exist, and that trans and intersex people therefore shouldn’t be extant. It encompasses literal advocation for the “elimination” of “the practice of transgenderism” and the repeal of legislation that recognizes trans people (see this submission to the UK Parliament).
From the perspective that trans people aren’t “real”, none of the rights that trans people have today are valid — a direct justification for removing them. This is the absolute essence of transphobia, of “using biological essentialism to try and delegitimise trans people”.
And the casual suggestion of extirpating trans existence is not just an aberration; it is very much the point (see also the Eliminating Possibilites section of my previous article). GCB deliberately throws common understandings of gender out of the window, defenestrating trans people alongside them.
You should understand that all this is in the undercurrents when someone is forcibly arguing that “sex is immutable” — that is only part of the picture. It’s often very much not about “science”: it’s about policing gender.
Sex In The Abstract
Sex As Provenance
If sex is claimed to be immutable in the light of the mutabilities, diversities, and complexities we have already noted, then the conception of “sex” that is in play can’t be of something straightforward and tangible.
It must, in fact, be based on something highly abstract: provenance. An origin and history cannot be changed, even if embodiment or legal status can be. Belief in the immutability of sex requires belief that the declaration of sex made for an infant is actually definitive: an accurate accounting of a reality that can’t be rescinded or revised.
This just doesn’t seem supportable. Provenance may help determine immutable physical characteristics — but we’ve already said these are not definitional for sex. Obviously the declaration of sex for an infant does have ritual/legal significance, but fundamentally it is just the first among incessant attributions of sex to a person throughout life — and those attributions can vary both with the people involved and with the heuristics used to attribute it. This is what is recognized through the mutability of legal sex.
Sex In The Head
But there is another way in which the influence of provenance might create an irreducible distinction between those declared “male” and “female” at birth, and that is through its effect on psychological characteristics.
As a belief about the power of provenance, “sex is immutable” often maps to a restatement of Freud’s declaration that “anatomy is destiny”: the idea that psychological nature is fundamentally determined by sex. However, despite much effort spent in trying to track down an inherent “maleness” or “femaleness” to the brain, the scientific evidence we have does not support such a distinction:
The key biological mechanism proposed to cause a psychological distinction between the sexes is the effect of testosterone production on the brain, but again the evidence that testosterone is responsible for sex-associated behavioural differences is equivocal at best:
Note this quote from Joe Herbert in the latter article:
If you deny (implausibly) that there are genuine sex differences in any behaviour, then you have abolished the concept of both masculinity and femininity: the words have no longer any meaning except to describe the genitalia.
Contrary to the implied sarcasm, we’ve already seen that at core “sex” is, in fact, declared on the sole basis that it describes genitalia.
And of course, one can very plausibly deny that there are behavioural sex differences — directly caused by biological difference — without having to deny that there are gender differences. But the effects of sociocultural influences on individual psychology can be highly idiosyncractic: as, indeed, we see in the very existence of transgender people.
This is an incredibly long way from any substantiated claim about intrinsic sex differences or the immutability of sex.
Yet, like other repeatedly debunked “folk psychology” beliefs, the myth that “testosterone causes male aggressiveness” (in particular) is incredibly tenacious. We find this idea routinely used to characterize all trans women as being inherently violent, aggressive, a predatory threat — just because of their provenance. This is baseless, pernicious prejudice.
Once again, zealotry — not scientific fact — informs these ideas.
The Inescapable Conclusion
To your satisfaction or not, I’ve dissected the notion that “sex is immutable”, showing a variety of its failures.
It’s relatively easy to see that physical and social mutabilities of sex do exist, but perhaps harder to shake the conviction that provenance must shape us profoundly.
Indeed, the idea of inescapable provenance is often used as a tool of power, a way to fix people into their allotted place in the scheme of things. However, such notions, serving to entrench existing inequities, look absurd when viewed with some distance. We find few-to-zero contemporary advocates for systems of hierarchy such as “the great chain of being”, for racist formulations such as the “one drop rule”, or for the misogynistic ideas used to argue against women’s suffrage.
The framing of sex as immutable is the transphobe’s reploughing of this familiar mental rut: a rigid vision of the world in which inescapable provenance — “biology” — overrides personhood. When viewed with appropriate distance, it, too, appears truly absurd.
Transhood doesn’t neatly fit within contemporary expectations about what the scheme of things is, or what allotted places are allowable. It explodes the certainties of bureacracy; it disturbs and discomfits pigeonholers; it generally muddies the waters. So where is the downside?
An eidolon of self-actualization, a flail for pedants, a spanner in the works, a menace to society: however you regard it, trans existence is interminably challenging, undoubtedly messy, spectacularly exciting to live — and a direct repudiation of immutability.
