this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2025
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Plants looking at people looking at people looking at fungi (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 week ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to c/science_memes@mander.xyz
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[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

First of all, it’s not my approach, it’s the standard one among biologists. From Wikipedia:

Sex is the biological trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing organism produces male or female gametes.[1][2][3][4][5] During sexual reproduction, a male and a female gamete fuse to form a zygote, which develops into an offspring that inherits traits from each parent. By convention, organisms that produce smaller, more mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm) are called male, while organisms that produce larger, non-mobile gametes (ova, often called egg cells) are called female.[6] An organism that produces both types of gamete is a hermaphrodite.[3][7]

Biology deals with all living things, not just humans, and the word sex has been defined to be useful for understanding sexual reproduction (reproduction by the fusion of gametes) across many different species in their myriad forms. This is its purpose.

All sexually reproducing species undergo a life cycle and may not be fertile at every stage. Post menopausal women and prepubescent children are just 2 examples of non-fertile stages of the human lifecycle. Annual plants after dropping their fruits or seeds are another.

The specific details of how sex is expressed in humans (secondary sex characteristics, life cycle, etc) are important if you’re studying sex in humans but they aren’t part of the biological definition of sex because they don’t apply to other species.

[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Let me return to your original comment, again.

No, we only have 2 sexes. Sperm producers and egg producers. We call those male and female. All of the other stuff is window dressing.

And the comment I was responding to.

Since I don't think fungi have a social structure, those are sexes. Humans have two Sexes but also gender expression, conflating those is how transphobes come to their views.

We have been talking about sex in humans this entire time, a subject you are for some reason determined to avoid? Lol

You didnt answer if theyre still female after menopause though. They don't produce gametes. So they no longer meet the stated definition. And would therefore now be sexless. As would any sterile person. This is an inherent limitation of equating sex 1 to 1 with gametes production. Animals and plants couldnt care less what we think about them. Other people however do tend to care how we talk about them. And I doubt anyone, literally anyone, would agree that anyone who is sterile is no longer male or female. This is an example of the way that the definitions of terms can be one thing in one context and another in a different one. When the word sex is used in common parlance it is usually not as a reference to gametes.

What we are discussing is how to discuss people who are neither male or female. Sex, yes even in the literal Wikipedia definition, defines 2 categories. Not all organisms fit within those 2 categories. Therefore there are more than 2 categories. That is the entirety of my held position.

[–] chonglibloodsport@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I can see we’re just talking past each other at this point.

Scientists work with different definitions of words in different contexts all the time. You seem unable to grasp that. I don’t know what else to say to you. You keep wanting to apply the specific to the general and conflate the two. If I didn’t know any better I would conclude that you’re arguing in bad faith.

[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 week ago

We are. You keep ignoring the majority of what I say. You also haven't really pushed back in any way on the majority of what I've said. Scientists work with different definitions, right, and so we are talking about sex as it relates to people and how we categorize people. I am asking how we can use a definition of sex based exclusively on gametes in specific situations, specifically to highlight to you that that definition itself is not all that useful when applied to people.