Is Biological Sex Binary? Agustín Fuentes and Tomás Bogardus in Conversation at the University of Delaware anthropology.princeton.edu/news/biologi...

We will be hosting a public debate at The University of Delaware on whether biological sex is binary. Debating on Friday, March 6th at 4:15pm in the Gore Recital Hall will be the authors of two recent books - Tomás Bogardus (Pepperdine Philosophy) and Agustín Fuentes (Princeton Anthropology).

What am I missing?

Tom? Any reply?

You say that I said, of Mikkola, "Clearly, this is supposed to be her argument"

What I actually said, of bits from Moi, Butler, Saul, and Mikkola, is, "it's difficult to trace the dialectic in these passages...it's difficult to discern just what the conclusion of these arguments is meant to be..."

My fellow Tom, I plead not guilty. Where in this passage do I commit the sin you accuse me of? Or did you have in mind some other passage?

Thanks Jason. I wrote up some thoughts about Jason's good question regarding the "collapse" principle I use in the book, and you can find those thoughts on my X dọt com page. (Hindsight is 20/20!) 😄

Maybe a source of confusion is that, when one hears e.g. "active capacity," one thinks the capacity must be "in use" right now. But I chose "function" talk to allow for the possibility that a function may fail to be realized. And that's true even for what I call an "activated" function.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I address juveniles and postmenopausal females in the book. For juveniles, the function is activated from the jump, but takes time to fulfill. For menopause, one story is the function remains activated, but can't be fulfilled due to age-related degeneration.

Yes, that sounds right. It sounds like it could happen, due to malfunction or a bad environment, that an activated function is not realized. And maaaaaybe it could also happen that a function is realized, without being activated? Like if I manually force a mousetrap shut?

Review of “Sex is a Spectrum” by Agustín Fuentes This is not my review, thank Ceiling Cat, but it’s one I agree with. Although I’m doing so reluctantly, I’m reading Agustín Fuentes’s recent book Sex is a Spectrum: The Biol…

Review of Agustín Fuentes's "Sex is a Spectrum" by philosopher Tomas Bogardus. Trigger warning: the review is incisive and critical.

whyevolutionistrue.com/2025/09/03/r...

Got it. In that case, 🤝

In defense of Brandon, I think he'd grant that the editor has the professional right & duty to make editorial decisions like this. What he means to question is the quality of & reasoning behind this editor's decision in this case.

Reminds me of the free speech dialectic...

I did ask... Is your intention not to answer?

Ah. Well then I guess I should ask, to whom does "they" refer in this skeet of yours?

bsky.app/profile/elto...

Mason, as I said there, what made me chuckle was the justification offered by the editor: "we feel we have, or the field has covered the question of sex, sexual function and gender fairly completely and within a sound foundational basis of biological principles."

Is the editor is right about that?

Also, about your claim that traditional Catholics are always adult converts: There are many cradle Catholic "Traditional Catholics." You can trust me; I live among them.

Do you have some stats you were relying on?

Sorry if I'm slow to reply. I don't check this site often.

Hi there Shane. I assumed that was the abstract because it was labeled "Abstract" in the link the editor sent me. My bad, as I acknowledged.

Why do you characterize this as a "tantrum," and conclude it was "wholly" due to that paper?