Talk:Sex

Misconceptions

I'm wondering whether we could produce a useful section on misconceptions about sex. For example:

Misconception Fact Example
Sex is immutable trait. Although the sex of a human individual does not change, sex is not inherently immutable. Some species change sex.
Clownfish
Clownfish change sex as they age
Males have Y chromosomes. Although human males always have Y chromosomes, this is not true for all species.
Rooster
Biological male with no Y chromosome

and so forth, through all the usual misconceptions (or, sorry, "non-biological views of sex"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I guess:
The article Evolution of sexual reproduction has a section on questions.
Okay this time will be the last thing I comment here for a while. Have to do assignments. CycoMa2 (talk) 16:54, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That feels like it might be better suited for a separate article, but whether it's a section or an article I do support it. Loki (talk) 20:55, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It might be better to mention such things in prose and interspersed where appropriate; I think a table like this might run afoul of MOS or at least attract complaints, since it's unconventional at least. Crossroads -talk- 22:14, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Some biologists do not agree that it is properly to refer to an individual organism as possessing a sex, rather only the haploid cells themselves (sperm and ova), so in their view it would be a category error to state "Although the sex of a human individual does not change".
"human males always have Y chromosomes" is also another false statement in any sense of the word. One could more accurately speak about the SRY-gene as "determining" sex, but human sexual development is incredibly complicated and has been studied for decades. Katzrockso (talk) 00:00, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you give an example of a human disorder in which an affected individual does not have a Y chromosome at all, and still produces sperm? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
XX male syndrome is the relevant topic. No known cases have reported production of sperm (it is a remote possibility that there exist XX males that have translocation of the AZF), but I don't think that's relevant. Is the claim here that XX males are not males? I don't think that is concordant with usage in reliable secondary sources. Katzrockso (talk) 01:00, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See the lead of the article: "those with the condition are sterile". See the body of the article: "In all reported cases, individuals have been sterile, with azoospermia (no sperm in the ejaculate)". These individuals are not able to reproduce sexually. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:54, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that is correct and what I just stated. Katzrockso (talk) 03:15, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Under the model that sex only exists in the context of sexual reproduction, individuals that are unable to reproduce sexually do not have a sex. They might have the appearance of a sex, but not an actual sex. (The same is true for the "only cells can have a sex, not whole individuals" model you've mentioned.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are more than welcome to believe that and I think it is a much more coherent argument than some I have seen in the past, but I don't think this is reflected scientific consensus. Essentialism about "sex" appears to be the common notion in the scientific literature, otherwise scientists wouldn't use the terms "infertile males" or "male infertility" which under your model here is a contradiction.
Do you think that this understanding of "sex" is established scientific consensus among biologists? Katzrockso (talk) 05:17, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Infertility implies some (albeit limited) capacity for reproduction. Total sterility is not the same thing. The difference between the two is why modern doctors are told not to call people 'sterile', because that's hope-destroying (especially when it's accurate).
The term "sterile male" might be used to describe an individual that was previously fertile. For example, in the Sterile insect technique, fertile males are made sterile through radiation exposure.
I think that the idea that individual organisms that can't reproduce are part of the environment rather than a source of genes for the next generation is widespread in evolutionary biology. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Then do a search for male and azoospermia, but it quite evident in any cursory reading of field research that reliable scientific sources do not stop referring to an organism as "male" if it is no longer capable of producing sperm. You are more than welcome to hold such a view (it is one espoused by Paul Griffiths and is an internally consistent concept of "sex"), but I don't think it is reflective of the concept as used and understood by reliable scientific sources.
Also, back to the original topic and onto the other "misconception", wouldn't your concept of "sex" above imply that an individual that undergoes orchiectomy is no longer "male" as they are no longer capable of producing sperm? If you are to take the understanding of sex as defined by gametic production, then it is strictly not correct to say that "the sex of a human individual does not change". Under Paul Griffith's view here [1], "In a sense all complex multicellular organisms ‘change sex’ because they do not have a sex at conception and must develop one as they grow to reproductive maturity". Katzrockso (talk) 06:52, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
AFAICT the mainstream view is that current production of gametes isn't necessary. A male horse is male through its life, including when it is too young to produce sperm and after it has been gelded. It's only when it is never able to produce any gametes that evolutionary biology sees that horse's contribution to the next generation as being a food source for predators rather than genes contributed to offspring. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:42, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that in mathematical models of evolutionary biology, an individual that does not sexually reproduce may be considered to not be a part of the "male population" or "female population". I don't think that sterile animals are considered to be sexless by ethologists, ecologists, zoologists or other related disciplines, but I will consult with some of my colleagues on that matter. Katzrockso (talk) 23:42, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Also, it is strictly not corrected to speak of an "individual" having a Y chromosome, that is a category error. Cells can have a chromosome, people cannot; Mosaicism Katzrockso (talk) 01:06, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If people have cells, then people have whatever is inside the cells, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:55, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This would depend on reliable sourcing showing that these misconceptions really are misconceptions, and are significant - and particularly good sourcing on what is factual. I agree with @Katzrockso that “human males always have Y chromosomes” is debateable (and if we’re going to be labelling something as a misconception, a general correctness won’t do; this is unlike in the lead where general correctness is appropriate and nitpicks aren’t helpful) due to some DSDs and other cases where it’s mainstream and conventional to describe a body as male or female if it has followed a male or female developmental pathway and that pathway stops short of actually producing gametes. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 06:44, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it's mainstream and socially conventional to assign a sex to all humans, but in the model of "gamete production determines sex", a person with a DSD that completely prevents gamete production does not have a sex, even if their doctors assign one to them or can say which sex the individual would be without the disorder. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:44, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Sex." listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Sex. has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 November 19 § Sex. until a consensus is reached. ArthananWarcraft (talk) 19:30, 19 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 1 June 2026

Sex → Genetic sexGenetic sex – "Sex" is ambiguous, and there is no clear primary topic between genetic sex, human sexual intercourse, and human sexual activity. This move would be followed by moving sex (disambiguation) to sex. PokemonPerson (talk) 04:14, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Move to Biological sex. Indeed, there is no primary topic here, but this article is broader than just genetics. Katzrockso (talk) 12:51, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Biological sex per Katzrockso. This title really should be a disambiguation, as there's no primary topic. Biological sex makes more sense for this page, as it's not only about genetics. InfernoHues (talk) 14:57, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Move to biological sex. The subject of this article is not a clear primary topic. Genetic sex is not an appropriate title for this topic, as it doesn't include environmental sex determination systems. I'm open to other choices of a title for this topic; I'm not sure that biological sex is the best title, but I can't think of anything better. Plantdrew (talk) 15:36, 1 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Biological sex. The disambiguation idea, while less than ideal, probably makes the most sense for such a polysemous word. (Though I admit that the biological sense is the clear original sense etymologically, as the "intercourse" sense has only developed since around the 1920s but has probably taken over as the dominant sense in colloquial use.) Wolfdog (talk) 11:32, 2 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Move to Biological sex as per given reasons — Preceding unsigned comment added by Iztwoz (talk • contribs) 14:57, 2 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support no clear primary topic but maybe Sax (biological). Crouch, Swale (talk) 18:48, 2 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose, this is about all aspects of the biological trait, not just genetics (i.e. environmental sex determination, genitals, etc. are included). It is not ambiguous with sexual intercourse in the more formal academic language that Wikipedia uses; at WhatLinksHere most if not all uses are referring to the biological trait and would have to be changed. Recent usage on Google Scholar is also in the sense of the biological trait, not intercourse. "Sex" referring to sexual intercourse is a colloquialism, and deserves a hatnote but not being a coequal primary topic per reliable sources. Crossroads -talk- 21:57, 2 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    What's your opinion on moving to biological sex as proposed above? InfernoHues (talk) 00:07, 3 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    To be clear, I oppose any of the moves proposed thus far, and believe my comment justifies why the current title only is best. Crossroads -talk- 20:01, 4 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm flabbergasted that you mention WhatLinksHere as a reason to oppose. Have you looked very far beyond the first 50 results? There are hundreds of incoming links that should be going to sexual intercourse or human sexual activity. Even among the first 50, The Downward Spiral, comic strip and playwright stand out to me as links likely not to be about the subject of this article (and after looking at the articles, I confirmed that the links are wrong). What those three articles have in common is that they are related to popular culture, broadly construed. Pretty much any article about music (albums such as The Downward Spiral, songs or artist), or a fictional work (comics, plays, books, films) that links to sex should have that link pointed elsewhere, and there are a lot of links that are obviously about popular culture once you go past the first 50.
    It may be ambiguous whether "sex" in cultural contexts refers to sexual intercourse specifically, or human sexual activity more broadly, but that ambiguity is part of why the word "sex" is used in those contexts (I think links could be safely retargeted to human sexual activity if there is ambiguity). Sex Addicts Anonymous wrongly links to this article; the title for the relevant phenomenon is sexual addiction, not sexual intercourse addiction; sex addiction gets 13,600 results on Google Scholar, sexual addiction gets 23,100, and sexual intercourse addiction gets 12. Plantdrew (talk) Plantdrew (talk) 20:39, 4 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    To be honest I did expect the first 50 or 100 to be representative; odd. But looking further, while there are more cultural articles like that, there are still many (most?) articles on biological topics, or making a distinction between sex and gender, that are supposed to link here. Perhaps I'll make a more detailed analysis later. In any case, I think that use of "sex" in the academic literature (like Google Scholar as I mentioned) takes priority as I said. Crossroads -talk- 21:27, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
    As I understand it, the order in which articles are shown in WhatLinksHere is roughly the order in which the articles were created. The earliest articles were more important topics for an encyclopedia and are more likely to use sex in the sense of this article. So the first 50 won't be very representative. And throughout Wikipedia's history there is a steady stream of new articles on newly released cultural items (i.e., 2001-2 Wikipedia wouldn't have had an article on a TV show that debuted in 2010). Plantdrew (talk) 21:55, 5 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose don’t really have too many things to say here except this. CycoMa2 (talk) 03:22, 3 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I don't think a clear case has been made. "Genetic sex" is wrong for the reasons outlined above, e.g. by Crossroads; the article is about more than that. In the context of an encyclopedia, I think that "biological sex" is just another term for "sex". Peter coxhead (talk) 08:29, 4 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]
Given that "sex" also means Sexual intercourse, and is probably much higher in usage for that sense, I doubt that's the primary topic. Katzrockso (talk) 13:47, 4 June 2026 (UTC)[reply]

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