Emma Hilton Profile picture
May 27, 2019 19 tweets 5 min read Read on X
Clownfish. Sequential hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Anglerfish. Extreme dimorphism. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Seahorses. Female fucks around while male carries babies. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Birds. Non-XY genetic determination. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Crocodiles. Sex determined by environmental temperature during development. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Platypus. Five pairs of sex chromosomes. X1X1X2X2X3X3X4X4X5X5 (female) and X1Y1X2Y2.... (male), where X3 and X5 look more like a bird (non X) than a mammal. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Hyena. Females have pseudo-penis which she internalises during mating. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Lily. Hermaphrodites. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Flatworms. Hermaphrodites. They penis fence to determine which takes the male role. Most of the time, no-one wins and they each, perhaps dejectedly, spaff (😉) over the other. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Bees. Males are missing an entire genome copy. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Asparagus. No sense of sexed self and no plausible mechanism for social construction of gender. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.
Tuatara. Sex determination so extremely temperature sensitive that climate change is causing them to be all male. How to recognise the male: he makes small gametes. He can also be seen looking annoyed at enforced incel status.
I’m pinning this. Please add requests. Also, any examples you see touted as an argument against sex. What was the strawberry one?
Peafowl. Sexual selection gone mental. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes. And she’s not a massive freaking showoff, like this fella...
Mushrooms. Delicious. How to recognise the female: there are no females (‘there is only Zuul’). ‘Female’ and ‘male’ are predicated on two and only two differential gametes, and fungi don’t have them thingies, settling instead for equivalent gametes labelled +/-, or A/B, or yawn.
Fun fact (not really): the truly unique structure of the female hyena reproductive system, whereby she is sole arbiter of when to allow intercourse, suggests that female hyenas cannot be raped.
Straw-not technically a berry-berries. Delicious hermaphrodites. Genetic sex determination is polygenic and may reasonably be described as a (limited) spectrum. How to recognise the female part: it makes large gametes.
Head lice. Annoying buggers. The female transmits chromosomes she inherited from either her mum or dad; the male *only* transmits chromosomes he inherited from his mum. How to recognise the female: she makes large gametes.

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Aug 9
"This model of estradiol’s role in improving resistance to wound sepsis predicts at least four “sexes” across two treatment groups: females who are in the proestrus phase, females who are in the diestrus phase, females who are postmenopausal, and males."

This is Sarah Richardson, of the Fuentes review.

Four "sexes", three of them female and the other male. JFC.


Also in the frame as new sexes, fat men, pregnant women and children. JFC.scholar.harvard.edu/files/srichard…
A cell line derived from an unusual cervical cancer (one that spontaneously immortalised) is not even "human", let alone "female", apparently.

It's cervical cancer cell line. Only women have cervices (pl?). JFC.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 4
An interesting article from Professor Andrew Sinclair here, criticising World Athletics proposals to SRY screen their elite female athlete cohort.

It’s a classic. Arguments from authority. Cherry-picking. Doesn’t appear to have read the policy. theconversation.com/world-athletic…
A half-truth.

Apparently-female athletes who test positive for SRY will have a consultation with WA, with a view to medical assessment to better understand any medical conditions (DSDs) they have.

It is this diagnosis that will determine eligibility (or not). Image
After a primer on sex development, Sinclair tries a gotcha.

Describing Swyer Syndrome and CAIS, he argues these athletes would be unfairly excluded.

But WA makes it clear that CAIS is exempt from exclusion. It’s in both the policy and the press release. I doubt Swyer would be excluded either.Image
Read 8 tweets
Jul 28
Ok.

Let’s take Kelly’s penalty at 110 kph and Isak’s belter as 108 kph.

First up, Isak’s belter was from outside the penalty area, under defensive pressure, on the run and without perfect body positioning.

Compare. Image
Image
That Kelly put 110 kph on a penalty is astonishing. That Isak managed to get 108 kph out of this belter is astonishing.

Isak could put 110 kph on a penalty with his eyes closed. Kelly will never get 108 kph on a 20-yard shot she digs out from under her.

No shade.
Much has been made of Kelly’s approach. And her technique is *chef’s kiss*

Now imagine a man with the same expert technique, and who puts in as much % max effort as Kelly?

The ball’s going faster.
Read 5 tweets
Jul 25
Five years ago, I gave a speech comparing sex denialism to creationism.

At the time, my partner-in-crime, Colin Wright, and I were near-lone academic voices willing to stand up and say “Biology! We have a problem!”

@SwipeWright Image
Reflecting, back in 2020, on that state of affairs:

“[That] there are two sexes, male and female is apparently something that biologists do not think needs to be said.

I think they are wrong.”
Since then, biologists with far more authority than an unknown developmental biologist who was trying to work out how nerves navigate over muscles and an unknown evolutionary biologist who was studying what makes insects mad have spoken up.

And their voices are much welcomed.
Read 9 tweets
Jul 23
It took Naomi Cunningham a single minute with a medic under oath to get a straight answer to a question that nobody wants to answer. Image
Crickets. Image
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Crickets. Image
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Read 6 tweets
Jul 14
"My data has suggested that my power, strength, stamina, muscle mass, oxygen levels and lung capacity all fit within the c*sgender female range."

Let's look at why this is a red herring.

onmanorama.com/sports/cricket…
Several people argue that if the metrics of a trans-identified male fall "within female range", it is fair for that male to compete in female sport.

But we need to look at what's typical .v. what's exceptional.
Male traits often overlap with female traits. Height, muscle mass and so forth all generate normal distributions within sex (bell curves), where the lower end of the male range overlaps with the upper end of the female range.
Read 10 tweets

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