Philobiblon

The Women’s Studies Listerv has gone slightly crazy on that old debate of sex as a fixed category versus a social construct. I’ve had that debate probably one too many times (you might guess I’m on the social construct side – although with an added leavening of “there aren’t two distinct categories” anyway – not so you can meaningfully group them.)

But the discussion did point to an interesting podcast, an interview with Deborah Rudacille, author of The Riddle of Gender: Science, Activism, and Transgender Rights. And she had some interesting statistics. Biologically speaking, you can look at sex in terms of chromosomes, gonads, genitals, endocrinology (the balance of androgen and estrogen), and gender identity, which she equated with “brain sex”. Group those together and by one or more categories, about 2.2 per cent of live births are “intersex” – unable to be clearly allocated as male or female. As the interviewer rather laboriously calculated, that amounts worldwide to about 120 million people who are neither definitively male or female.

(Two warnings – the volume of the podcast is very loud – about three times as loud as Radio Four, and the interviewer has an irritating voice – but stick with it, it is worth it.)