By God and/or by Evolution, human beings are designed (or “designed”) to detect sex, that is, to discern whether a human is male or female. There are many practical reasons why it is important for a person to be able to do this. Mating with the aim of producing children is one, but there are many more. Suppose you’re a woman walking alone at night and you see a figure coming towards you in the darkness. You will, based on its size, shape, and gait, or the sound of its voice, try to judge the sex of that person. Why? Because if it is an adult male coming towards you there is, on the face of it, a greater threat, and fight or flight may be in order.
This sex sorting capability requires us to have a general concept of what a human male is, and a general concept of what a human female is. Young children do not have this concept. But all adults with a normal range of intelligence have these, and they get these concepts from common experiences. (The rare human raised by wolves may lack the needed experiences, and so may lack the concept.) But concepts that are, as it were, built in to the human species, are ones which will normally form given relatively healthy mental functioning and given the ordinary range of experiences that a human will have in communal life. (Humankind, as Aristotle observed, is a social species.)
It is a matter of common human experience that nearly all humans are easily sortable into two general body types. One of those types is such that a natural function of it is to become pregnant and bear and nurse young humans. The other type is such that a natural function of it is to make a person of the first body type pregnant. The first type of human is a female, and the second type is a male. That is what all mentally functional adults in all human cultures in all times and places know about human beings – unless this knowledge is thwarted by ideology which contradicts these claims.
Here are things which normal humans naturally know: real changes occur, other people too are conscious, it is morally wrong to torture innocent babies merely for the fun of it, and that I myself (the one thinking this) have existed for some time now. Yet false teachings or one’s own misguided speculations may deprive one of each piece of knowledge. In order: you might believe the speculations of Parmenides on which there is no real change, a philosopher may convince you of solipsism, or of error theory about ethics, or convince you by Humean or by Buddhist means that there is no lasting self. And so a person may easily be robbed of the natural knowledge of what a human male is and what a human female is by her own or by others misguided theories. Now, let me return to what humans naturally are supposed to know, and consequently what most people do know.
Notice that what we know about human males and females does not define males as the penis-and-testes havers, and the females as having a vagina and womb and ovaries and breasts. It is true that we will often quickly sort humans by examining what is (or isn’t) between their legs, but this is because such an observation is merely a typical indicator of being the one body type or the other. Consider an unfortunate veteran whose genitals have been entirely shot off. No one considers him to be an ex-man, but only a tragically maimed man. Why? Because he still has that general body type described above.
Nor are we defining people by their actual reproductive abilities. Some people are born or become infertile for various reasons. But they still have the general type of body which has as a natural function either making pregnant or getting pregnant. And that is why we all think that an infertile woman is a woman nonetheless. A thing may have a natural function and yet be unable to perform it.
Nor is there any creepy or weird obsession with genitals. We sex people (sort them into the categories of male or female) instinctively based on many typical indicators, alone and in conjunction: pitch of voice, face shape, breasts or lack thereof, shape of the thighs and buttocks, size of the shoulders and arms, the “bulge” or lack of one. Even, less reliably, behavior, interests, or pattern of thinking. This is all built in to us. Of course, these are typical and not universal indicators. A man may in a sense have breasts (judging externally) and a woman may have legs and butt that are not distinguishable from those of a man. A man may have a very high voice and a woman may have a very low voice. Still, relying instictively on multiple indicators, we are extremely reliable sexers, and this is why “passing” (being able to fool all or most other people regarding which sex you are) is so difficult.
In modern times science has come along and tried to precisify these built-in concepts of male and female humans, telling us about the underlying mechanisms that produce these body-types, and perhaps even the metaphysical essence of human maleness and human femaleness. But this knowledge (not mere opinion) that I’m discussing here is older, more widespread, and more fundamental than any biological science, and I think is the reason why most people are resistant to the new gender ideologies and philosophies. We’re not talking about essences or “real definitions” in the metaphysical sense, but we are talking about a natural way that humans sort one another into the categories male and female. These categories have to do with body-types defined in terms of natural functions which, given how the human species is put together, no one person can have both of.
“But what about intersex people?!”
These are each typically a male or female – just look at them, or talk to them – who have suffered some problem in the development of their sexual organs. But suppose that you think that it is obvious that some such people are neither male nor female. In reply, nothing in this post presupposes that sorting people into the categories male or female will in all cases be easy, or that there will never be borderline cases, where our concepts just don’t seem precise enough so that a person clearly satisfies one and not the other.
Nothing here even presupposes that the classification scheme male or female is exhaustive. Certainly, in principle there could be a human person who is neither. But just as surely, most of the people now claiming to be neither are in fact – according to the concepts described above – easily classifiable as male or female.
