Thinking Out Loud with Alan Shlemon - Rejecting the Sex Binary with Bad Evidence

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Alan responds to a transgender ideology advocate who argues against the sex binary in human beings.

Believe it or not, but sometimes transgender ideology advocates use examples from radically different species as evidence that sex is not binary, but rather on a spectrum. Well, I want to explain why this type of argument fails in the latest episode of my podcast, Thinking Out Loud with Alan Schleman. So transgender ideology is based upon two foundational pillars. And these two pillars both need to be true in order for transgender ideology to be true. true, to be legitimate. And the two pillars are the sex spectrum and gender identity. Sex spectrum and gender identity. These are the two foundational pillars of transgender ideology. Now, gender identity is simply a psychological belief about whether you believe yourself to be a man, a woman, both neither, or something else. So gender identity is a self-perception. It's a deeply held internal sense of self-executive.

about what you think you are. And one of the tenets of gender identity is that you can have a gender identity that is incongruent with your biology. So you could be biologically male, but identify as a woman or believe yourself to be a woman. So that's gender identity. That's one pillar. Now, the second pillar in transgender ideology is the sex spectrum. And this is defined as,

basically a rejection of the sex binary, this idea that males are either male or female. That there's only two sexes and you're either one or the other. The sex spectrum would also say that male and female are the opposite ends, the opposite poles of this sort of large, long continuum, and that humans can fall upon a whole different continuum of sexes within the male-female sort of two opposing poles, right? Sometimes also you'll see people say, well, and also, you know, males and females can change what sex they are as a result of this particular pillar in transgender ideology. Now, as I said, transgender ideology needs both of these pillars to be true in order for the movement to be legitimate. And I'm not going to address gender identity right now. What I'd rather do

right now is look at one particular argument, there's one specific author who's making an argument to reject the sex binary. In other words, they're making a case for the sex spectrum. And this particular author, his name is Augustin Fuentes. He is a Princeton University anthropologist. He's written a book on the subject. In fact, it's called Sex is a Spectrum, the Biological Limits of the Binary. And he's even written an article in Scientific American, where, he argues for this sex spectrum or a rejection of the sex binary, right? And listen to what he writes in this particular article. He says this, quote, plentiful data and analysis support the assertions that sex is very complex in humans and that binary and simplistic explanations for human

sex biology are either wholly incorrect or substantially incomplete. All right. So, end quote. So notice there, he's saying that the binary explanation for sex is wholly incorrect or incomplete. Now, what's the evidence? What's the data that he cites in order to make this case or not to make that claim? Well, he continues on in the article. He says this, quote, Some worms produce both gametes, sperm and egg. Some fish start producing one kind and then switch to another. And some switch back and forth throughout their lives, end quote. So he's citing worms and some fish. And if you dig a little deeper, what you look at and start looking at some of the end notes and following those references,

he's referring to two specific kinds of species, earthworms or flatworms and then also clownfish. So let's take a look at each one of those. So with regard to the worms, yes, it's true. Some earthworms and some are earthworms and flat worms are what's good. called hermaphroditic. Okay. And by that I mean, they are a species that contains both male and female sex systems within the same organism, right? But I want you to note a very important and obvious distinction, and that is, humans are not worms, right? Humans are an entirely different

category of animals. In fact, humans are what's called gonachoristic, which, means they are a species with two different sexes, and every member of the human species is either male or female and remains male or female throughout the entire duration of their life. Now, it turns out most animals in the animal kingdom, most species of animals in the animal kingdom, about 95% are also gonachoristic, meaning they are either male or female

and remain as such throughout the entire duration. Okay. So it's totally appropriate to identify worms and classify them as hermaphroditic. But notice, it's scientifically incorrect, and dare I say naive, to cite worms as somehow evidence to reject the sex binary in humans or to suggest that sex is somehow now on a spectrum or that humans can be both male and female, right? None of that logically follows. By the way, I want you to notice here that even though worms are hermaphroditic, their sex systems are still binary, meaning they still only contain two sexes, right? It just happens to be both sexes exist within the same individual organism, but there's still only two. So the sex binary is still true in that sense of the word. Now, what about the fish?

Okay, so as I mentioned, if you look at the end notes and the citations that, Fuentes refers to, he's citing these articles that talk about clownfish. And clownfish had the capacity to change from male to female or vice versa. Now, this is a fantastic. This is an amazing feature. What happens is through an environmental trigger, clownfish can reorganize their gonads from male to female. In other words, they can can be, have their gonads be testes first and then change them to ovaries. And so they could be producing sperm at one point and then later on at a future date be producing eggs. Right. Now, though that's incredible, it bears emphasizing humans are not clownfish, right? Humans, again,

are gonachoristic, right? They remain male and female throughout their entire life and are either male or female. Now, clownfish are hermaphroditic. Okay, so kind of like worms are hemaphroditic, but worms are different. Worms are simultaneously hermaphroditic, which means they have both male and female at the same time within the same organism. Clownfish are sequentially hermaphroditic, which means they are either male or female and they can switch, but they're not both at the same time. right so while well fish contain this capacity to be sequentially hermaphroditic humans do not right humans belong to an entirely different taxonomic class of animal with a completely different reproductive system right and so hermaphroditism in fish is not then evidence for the sex spectrum

in humans or evidence that humans don't have a sexual binary or anything like that or that humans can change their sex, right? Again, none of this logically follows because you're looking at a completely different class of animals. By the way, just like in the case of worms, when it comes to clownfish, even though they are a hermaphroditic species, right, sequentially hermaphroditic, It turns out that clownfish are also evidence of the sex binary in the sense that they can only produce one of two possible types of gametes, either sperm or egg, right? They can either have testes or ovaries. So even in the case of clownfish, which are hermaphroditic, there's never a situation where they are, where they contain or possess a third type of gonad or can produce a third type of gamete. Okay. So sex even in clownfish is binary in that sense of the word. And by the way, I'll just add this as well.

Clownfish transformation from male to female can hardly be described as analogous to humans who try to, you know, transition from male to female through hormones and surgery. And that's because humans require external intervention by physical. by surgeons, by psychiatrists, to, you know, do surgeries, to produce hormones, give them hormones and all kinds of drugs like that. And even then, those new organs that the human has now, now has, are not fully functional, right? They don't, they don't function like the opposite sex. By contrast, when a clownfish rearranges its anatomy to go from male to female, it's this process, this physiological process is an internal process that is inherent in the biology and physiology of a clownfish. In fact, they're literally designed to do that. And after a

clownfish goes through that transition, they actually have fully functioning gonads that can produce the opposite type of gametes. Whereas with humans, no, through that transition process, humans remain infertile afterwards, right? So anyways, there you go. There you have this particular argument, and I hope you can see why this argument type is mistaken, right? Because you got this author who's claiming that sex is not binary or that sex is on a spectrum, and he cites a radically different animal species, a worm or a fish, as evidence. But this is just bad reasoning because humans are not worms,

humans are not clownfish. In fact, if you wanted to apply that same reasoning, you could perhaps say, well, I guess humans aren't bipedal, meaning we don't walk on two legs because after all, there's horses that have four legs. Like, that doesn't make sense. Horse is a completely different animal. Or maybe we could argue by that same reasoning and say, well, humans don't have brains because there's an animal, a jellyfish, that doesn't have a brain. And you'd be like, no, that doesn't make sense.

we're not jellyfish. You know, like, yeah, that's right. We're not worms either. We're not clownfish either, right? So it's faulty reasoning to try to compare one animal with a completely and fundamentally different type of animal species with a fundamentally different kind of reproductive system and somehow suggest that one is evidence for the other.

Again, remember, all of this is done simply as evidence to justify the sex spectrum, which is one of the key pillars in transgender ideology. And in this case, the evidence that's being presented, I would argue, and I hope you can see as well, is not sufficient to warrant belief, right? It doesn't make the case. It fails, and therefore can't be used

to support the sex spectrum. All right, well, that's all I have for you today. Thank you for listening or watching. I encourage you if you enjoy this episode to share it with a friend, and don't forget to subscribe to my podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. And I look forward to thinking out loud with you next time.