Gå til innhold
☰ Menu
Gender and identity – biology and ideology

Gender and identity – biology and ideology

The question of what gender really is, is more relevant now than ever before. We need to show respect for vulnerable groups of people, but we can be certain of what gender is according to biology.

In the past few years gender and gender identity has been one of the big debates in the international media. One of the events leading to this was a statement made by J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter books.  She commented on Twitter about the phrasing of an article published in DevEx which had the title: ‘Creating a more equal post-COVID-19 world for people who menstruate’. Rowling found this phrasing unnatural and provocative. She finds it self-evident that people who menstruate are women, and that men never menstruate. However, her tweet brought a vehement response, and she was accused of hate speech and transphobia. Celebrities, including actors from the Harry Potter films, distanced themselves from her publicly.

The background for the anger which Rowling faced, is that there are opinion influencers who oppose the classic understanding of gender. There are trans people who identify themselves as men, who menstruate. There are also trans people who identify themselves as women, but who do not menstruate. According to these opinion influencers, people born with male genitals but who identify themselves as women, are just as much a woman as so-called ‘cis’ women, whose gender identity and genitals are the same as each other. Are you confused? I will try to clear up some of the phraseology here. Does it just boil down to arguments about semantics? Does it really matter how we define gender?

What students think about gender

Everyone has an idea about what gender is. Some time ago I asked biology students what they thought the defining differences are between male and female.

– One of them replied, ‘internal or external penis’, to much laughter. The external genitalia are clearly different between men and women. I complimented the student on a good try, but I replied with a counterexample: birds of both genders have an opening for waste, and lack external genitalia – both genders have an ‘internal penis’. Nevertheless, ornithologists have no problem deciding a bird’s gender. So what is the difference? How can we see the difference between males and females?

– One student suggested that males are bigger and have stronger colours, bigger horns and so on, while the females get pregnant and care for their young when they are small. I mentioned some counterexamples.  The female of many species of fish is bigger than the male; the female of the Eurasian dotterel (bird) has nicer colours than the male, and the male seahorse gets pregnant – the fry grow in a kind of pocket on the male’s chest.

– Another suggestion the students had was that females have XX chromosomes, but males have XY. But in fact the opposite is true for birds: males birds have XX chromosomes and females have XY. (We actually call the gender chromosomes ZZ and ZW when the female has two different chromosomes.)  A lot of animals do not have gender chromosomes at all. The gender of a crocodile is decided by the temperature at which the fertilised egg develops. Some other species change gender with age. Young shrimps are male, but they become female as they get bigger.  The female cuckoo wrasse (fish) changes gender and turns into a male when it matures.

I told the students that a lot of organisms are hermaphrodites – male and female at the same time. What is the difference between the male art and the female part of a hermaphrodite? And if we take it even further, to include plants, what is the difference between male and female plants?

– A biologist can catch a fish in the deep ocean which is unknown to science, and still easily classify it as male or female, I explained. The truth is that in every organism where there are different genders, there are always two of them, male and female – never more. But what is the decisive difference between the two genders?

Biology and gender

The answer is quite simply the size and function of the gender cells. Two genders are two different and evolutionary stable strategies for propagation. Gender propagation is the recombination and uniting of hereditary material from two genetically different individuals which together form the basis for new life.

Gender cells have become specialised: the female cell produces large gender cells (egg cells in animals, seeds in plants), while the male cell produces a lot of small cells (sperm in animals, pollen in plants). In order for propagation to be successful, the fertilised cell has to survive. The egg cell ensures its survival. It is large and contains organelles and nutrients so that the nascent life has a better chance of survival. Successful propagation requires the gender cells to meet. The sperm cells are small and mobile and are produced in great quantities. They die easily, but the sheer number and ability to spread maximises the probability that one of them will fertilise the egg cell. Evolution has made the sperm cells effective at diffusing. Together, the two different gender cells ensure effective fertilisation and a high chance of survival for the new life.

Herein lies part of the answer to why no species have more genders. A third, intermediate gender would produce medium-sized gender cells which are neither as good at surviving as egg cells nor as good at spreading as the sperm cells. The posited third gender would simply not be able to compete with the two others. Evolution has favouritised the two extremes and there is no room for anything in-between.

There is another reason why nature has not come up with more genders. In order for individuals to multiply, they need to exchange gender cells. This is difficult enough with two genders. Males and females of one species have to find each other, mate, and risk sexually transmitted diseases due to having intimate contact. Genderless multiplication, which happens for example with aphids, where the female lays unfertilised eggs which become adult aphids, is more effective.

Nevertheless, gendered multiplication has dominated because the advantages it brings usually outweigh the disadvantages. One of the more distinct advantages of this is that gendered multiplication produces genetically different offspring which are better equipped to cope with varying and different environments than the identical clones that an asexual individual   would be. It is easy to imagine that fertilisation would become increasingly difficult the more genders that had to meet in order for fertilisation to occur. Two genders are the simplest way to organise gendered multiplication. It’s an evolutionary winner.

Consequences of two genders

I have occasionally ended up in a discussion with people from other disciples who are not comfortable with this biological understanding of gender.

– I often hear that ‘gender is so much more than gender cells’, and this is of course true. Men and women are different in many more ways than just the size of the gender cells they produce. The most fundamental is the fact that egg and sperm cells are produced by different genitals.

Different genitals require different programs of development. In humans these are controlled by the gender chromosomes.

Furthermore, different organisms have developed a range of different gender-specific adaptations to do with propagation. One set of adaptations is regarding the effective exchange of gender cells. Feelings of falling in love and sexual arousal are examples of this. The fact that sex is enjoyable is evolution’s way of making sure that we do what we need to do to produce offspring.

Another set of gender-specific adaptations are about maximising survival of the new life. Just as with other mammals, the human foetus lives protected in the womb for the first part of its life and receives nourishment through the placenta. After the birth, the mother continues to be the most important caregiver while she breastfeeds, although the father can become an increasingly important caregiver as the child grows up. In other species the care of the young is more evenly divided, and in yet other species the male is the primary caregiver, an example is the seahorse which I have already mentioned.

Other gender-specific characteristics are more indirectly linked to propagation. As one of the students suggested, the male of many species has stronger colours or another way of being appealing, so that females will mate with it. These secondary gender characteristics are appealing to the opposite gender (or to the same gender, for lesbians and homosexuals).

Finally, there are also general differences between the genders in terms of behaviour and preferences. Just how much of these gender differences are due to biology is up for discussion. Evolutionary psychologists see gender differences in the light of evolved strategies for propagation. Perhaps there is something in the different biology of the genders which makes girls happier playing with dolls than boys are, or that more women than men choose the caring professions? Nevertheless, it is clear that some of what we think of as gender roles, are learned and culturally conditioned. There is no biological reason why pink should be a girls’ colour, and blue a boys’ colour, or that a skirt and dress are women’s clothes. These are culturally conditioned identity markers for gender identity.

Biology exhibits a basic division of gender in nature, which is connected to propagation. Apart from this we see a lot of gender-related variation and different ways that organisms have solved the fact that there are two genders. In our species the gender is irrevocably tied to the individual and is controlled by gender chromosomes which initiate one of two developmental cycles after fertilisation. Half of us develop ovaries and other female characteristics, while the other half of us develop testicles and other male characteristics. A biologist takes it for granted that there are two genders. The fact that some girls find dolls boring, and some boys find it exciting to put a dress on, doesn’t change that fact. Nature doesn’t give us any examples of transitions or something in-between the egg and the sperm cell. Two genders, that’s all!

“Sex” versus “gender” – biological versus social gender

The above is a statement I hear sometimes. The fact is that the distinction is relatively new. Sexologist John Money is often credited with having introduced the distinction in an academic article from 1955, in which he made a distinction between biological gender (sex), and gender roles (gender). The word ‘gender’ was simply an academic term only to be found in academic papers. The distinction became more common from the 1980s, in the wake of the growth of feminism and the fight against discrimination and for equal rights between the genders.

The rebellion against gender-stereotypes was definitely important for women’s liberation and the fight for equal rights. Nevertheless, I’m not altogether happy with the distinction between biological and social gender. It gives the illusion of a biology/culture dichotomy. Social gender has become a collective term for many different things: gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation and gender roles to name a few. Much of this is also part of biology, so the dichotomy is in fact artificial. Some people go much further than simply dividing biology and culture, they argue that biological anatomy and function is subservient and of little consequence, and that everything about gender is fluid. But since when did propagation become of little consequence in our understanding of gender?

Queer ideas about gender

Queer theory is an academic field seeking to challenge established truths about gender and sexuality. It challenges the idea that heterosexuality is the natural order. It criticises ‘heteronormative’ society. It says that heterosexuality is the result of narrow societal norms and culturally conditioned expectations. One typical assertion is that ‘Most people are queer’, as stated in a book by gender researcher Agnes Bolsø. The idea that gender is a spectrum comes from queer theory. According to this theory, the categories of man and woman, homosexual and heterosexual, are artificial. Gender expressions and sexuality which deviates from the traditional ones are celebrated. Queer theory in its nature is utopian. It doesn’t relate to biological realities or observable empiricism. It would be in the realms of fantasy if evolution had produced a species where heterosexuality was not dominant. 

Queer theory has had quite an influence on activists campaigning for lesbian, bisexual, homosexual (gay) and trans people’s (LGBT) rights. The acronym is occasionally lengthened to include new sexual minorities, such as asexual, non-binary, pansexual (those who are attracted to all genders) and polyamory. The purpose of some LGBT organisations can be positive in some respects, for example that they campaign for diversity and against discrimination of vulnerable groups of people. But two questions remain: do they look after the various groups in the best possible way, and is society well served by implementing their utopian views?

Transgender activism is gaining ground

 “There are many ways to see gender, and there are many more choices than the traditional ‘man’ and ‘woman’”.  This quote is from a Norwegian transgender activism website, it serves to illustrate how queer theory has inspired and influenced transgender activism. Gender is seen as a spectrum, from feminine to masculine, and you can place yourself somewhere on the spectrum. Only you know which gender you are and this has nothing to do with which gender ‘the doctor assigned you when you were born, by looking at your sexual organs’.

Transgender activism has gained considerable ground both politically and in the health sector. Paradoxically, they have worked towards normalising gender incongruence (the lack of conformity between biological gender and experienced gender), but on the other hand they have worked to make hormonal and surgical gender-affirming treatment more easily available for those who want it. Gender incongruence is not reckoned to be an illness, nor is it a psychiatric diagnosis in many countries today. This is despite the fact that people who experience gender incongruence very often have other psychiatric symptoms. If we were to expand our thinking a little, we could see other types of mismatches between our bodies and our way of thinking. The health service does not accept the starving anorexic’s absurd conviction that they are too fat. So why does the same health service go so far as to accept the conviction that it is normal that someone is the wrong gender?

Two genders and why it is important

Queer theory, as expressed in transgender activism, is not compatible with our knowledge of biology. A trans person has the gender they are born with, and neither hormones nor surgery can change that. A trans woman can never become pregnant, and a trans man can never make a woman pregnant. Expressing what is biologically obvious, like Rowling did, is not hate speech. Trans people are a vulnerable group and deserve respect and value just as all people do. However, I don’t see any contradiction between showing respect and the biological realities of gender. Accepting the activist’s wrong and utopian ideas of what gender is, does not constitute respect.

Av Glenn-Peter Sætre 
PROFESSOR I EVOLUSJONSBIOLOGI VED UNIVERSITETET I OSLO

Publisert av Minerva

We are in the process of translating the full content of this website to English.
Translated material will be published consecutively as soon as it is ready.
There are about 1300 questions with answers, as well as many articles that need to be translated. 
We ask for your patience and understanding for this.