The modern denial of biology undermines an essential part of the human story.

现代人对生物学的否定破坏了人类故事的一个重要部分。


Jim Gaffigan has this joke about a scientist who mistakes the male seahorse for the female and then stubbornly refuses to admit his mistake after learning that the one he’d called the male is pregnant. It’s a funny bit, but it hinges on a common misunderstanding that sex designations are arbitrary.

吉姆·加菲根有这样一个笑话：一位科学家将雄性海马误认为是雌性海马，在得知被他称为雄性的海马怀孕后，顽固地拒绝承认自己的错误。这是一个有趣的笑话，但它是基于一个普遍的误解，即性别名称是任意的。

The biological definition of males and females is entirely based on the size of the sex cells, called gametes, that they produce. Males produce the smaller gametes and females produce the larger ones. When scientists discover a new sexually reproducing species, gamete size is how they determine the sexes. In humans, males release between 200 and 500 million tiny sperm in each ejaculation while females have a lifetime supply of around 400, much larger, eggs.

雄性和雌性的生物学定义完全基于它们产生的性细胞（被称为配子）的大小。雄性产生较小的配子，雌性产生较大的配子。当科学家发现一个新的有性繁殖的物种时，配子的大小是他们确定性别的方法。在人类中，男性在每次射精时都会释放2亿至5亿个小精子，而女性一生中大约有400个大得多的卵子。

This initial asymmetry in gamete size may not seem like a big deal, but it leads to a whole cascade of evolutionary effects that result in diverging paths for each sex, which we call sexual sextion. If male and female bothers you, call them little and big, but regardless of what you call them, this foundational cell-sized difference in gamete size has profound effects on both evolution and behavior.

配子大小的这种最初的不对称可能看起来不是什么大问题，但它导致了一连串的进化效应，导致了每种性别的不同道路，我们称之为性选择。如果男性和女性让你感到困扰，那就叫他们小的和大的，但不管你怎么称呼他们，配子大小的这种基础细胞大小的差异对进化和行为都有深刻的影响。

Sexual reproduction that involves the unx of gametes of different sizes is called anisogamy, and it sets the stage for phenotypic differences between males and females. Robert Trivers laid down the basic argument, which he later described in biblical terms (“the scales fell from my eyes”), in one of the most cited papers in biology, when he wrote “What governs the operation of sexual sextion is the relative parental investment of the sexes in their offspring.” This fundamental insight provides the frxwork for understanding the emergence of sex differences across all sexually reproducing species.

涉及不同大小配子结合的性繁殖被称为异配生殖，它为雄性和雌性之间的表型差异创造了条件。罗伯特·特里弗斯在生物学中被引用最多的一篇论文中提出了基本论点，他后来用《圣经》中的术语描述了这一论点（“我恍然大悟”），他写道：“支配性选择运作的是两性对其后代的相对亲子投资。这一基本见解为理解所有有性繁殖的物种的性别差异的出现提供了框架”。

Because male animals can produce millions of sperm cells quickly and cheaply, the main factor limiting male reproductive success is their ability to attract females, whereas the primary limiting factor for females, who, in humans, spend an additional nine months carrying the baby, is access to resources. The most reproductively successful men (e.g., Genghis Khan is likely to have had more than 16 million direct male descendants) can invest little and let the chips fall where they may, while the most successful women are restricted by the length of pregnancy.

由于雄性动物可以快速而廉价地产生数百万个精子细胞，限制雄性动物生殖成功的主要因素是它们吸引雌性动物的能力，而对雌性动物来说，它们要多花九个月的时间来孕育婴儿，其主要限制因素是获得资源。在生殖方面最成功的男性（例如，成吉思汗可能有超过1600万的直接男性后代）可以投资很少，让筹码落在他们可能出现的地方，而最成功的女性则受限于怀孕的时间。

By replacing “female” with “the sex that invests more in its offspring,” however, we can extract Trivers’s general argument, and one of the most falsifiable predictions in all of biology—the sex that invests more in its offspring will be more sextive when choosing a mate, and the sex that invests less will compete over access to mates. Find a single species where the sex that invests less in offspring is choosier, and the entire theory is disproved. The brilliance of this insight is that it explains both the general rule and all of the exceptions. Because of the initial disparity in investment, females will usually be more sextive in choosing mates. Trivers explained something that had puzzled evolutionary biologists ever since Darwin and also explained why the male seahorse, which really does get pregnant, is choosier, and the female seahorse is bigger.

然而，通过将“女性”替换为“对其后代投资更多的性别”，我们可以提取出特里弗斯的一般性论点，以及所有生物学中最可被证实的预测之一——对其后代投资更多的性别在选择配偶时将更具选择性，而投资较少的性别将为获得配偶进行竞争。如果找到一个对后代投资较少的性别更有选择性的单一物种，整个理论就会被推翻。这一见解的精妙之处在于，它既解释了一般性的规则，也解释了所有的例外情况。由于最初的投资差异，雌性在选择配偶时通常会更加挑剔。特里弗斯解释了自达尔文以来一直困惑进化生物学家的东西，同时也解释了为什么真正孕育后代的雄性海马比较挑剔，而雌性海马的体型则比较大。

The assertion that male and female is an arbitrary classification is false on every level. Not only does it confuse primary sexual characteristics (i.e., the reproductive organs) which are unambiguously male or female at birth 99.8 percent of the time with secondary sexual characteristics (e.g., more hair on the faces of men or larger breasts in women), it ignores the very definition of biological sex. Although much has been made of the fact that sex differences in body size, ornamental features, hormonal profiles, behavior, and lots of other traits vary widely across species, that these differences are minimal or non-existent in some species, or that a small percentage of individuals, due to disorders of development, possess an anomalous mix of female and male traits, none of it undermines or challenges this basic distinction. Sex is binary. There is no third sex.

男性和女性是一种任意的分类，这种说法在每个层面上都是错误的。它不仅混淆了初级性特征（即生殖器官），这些特征在出生时99.8%的情况下都是明确的男性或女性，而二级性特征（如男性脸上的毛发更多或女性的乳房更大）则忽略了生物性别的定义本身。尽管人们对以下事实做了很多解释：身体大小、装饰性特征、荷尔蒙状况、行为和许多其他特征的性别差异在不同的物种中差异很大，这些差异在某些物种中很小或不存在，或者一小部分个体由于发育紊乱而拥有女性和男性特征的异常混合，但这些都没有破坏或挑战这一基本区别。性别是二元的。不存在第三性。

In the 50 years since Trivers’s epiphany, we seem to have done everything we can to forget it. John Money in 1955 was the first to introduce a distinction between biological sex and gender roles. Prior to Money, gender was almost exclusively used to refer to grammatical categories (e.g., masculine and feminine in Spanish). But the major change came in the 1960’s when feminists first adopted it to distinguish social and cultural differences (gender) from biological differences (sex). By 1988 gender outnumbered sex in all social science journals and in the following decade the sex vs gender usage ratio in scientific journals had gone from 10 to 1 to less than 2 to 1. The last twenty years have rapidly accelerated this trend, and today this distinction is rarely observed.

在特里弗斯顿悟之后的50年里，我们似乎已经尽了一切努力来忘记它。1955年，约翰·曼尼是第一个提出生物性别和性别角色之间区别的人。在曼尼之前，性别几乎只被用来指代语法范畴的含义（例如，西班牙语中的男性和女性）。但主要的变化发生在20世纪60年代，女权主义者首次采用它来区分社会和文化差异（性别）与生物学差异（性）。到1988年，在所有的社会科学期刊中，性别的提及数量都超过了性，在接下来的十年中，科学期刊中的性与性别的使用比例已经从10比1变成了不到2比1。在过去的二十年里，这一趋势变得更加剧烈，今天这种区分已经很少被观察到了。
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This major change is part of a larger movement to deny the effects of biology in humans altogether and the dominant view in the social sciences has now become that human sex differences are almost entirely socially constructed. In this interpretation, all differences in outcomes between men and women are the result of bigotry, and all we need to do to eliminate them is change children’s beliefs by encouraging gender neutral play.

这一重大变化是完全否认生物学对人类影响的更大运动的一部分，社会科学中的主流观点现在已经变成了人类的性别差异几乎完全是由社会构建的。在这种解释中，所有男女之间的结果差异都是盲从的结果，而我们需要做的就是通过鼓励性别中立的游戏来改变儿童的观念，从而消除这些差异。

Despite these assertions, human sex differences are among the most robust and replicable findings in the social sciences. The strongest effects are in physical abilities, such as throwing distance or speed, spatial relations tasks, and some social behaviors, like assertiveness, where men have the advantage. Women, meanwhile, tend to have an edge in being more extraverted, trusting, and nurturing. The largest sex differences, however, involve mate choice and are in behaviors that emerge out of Trivers’ theory of parental investment, with women giving more weight to traits that signal a potential partners ability to acquire resources (e.g., socioeconomic status and ambition), while men give more weight to traits that signal fertility (e.g., youth and attractiveness).

尽管有这些断言，人类的性差异仍然是社会科学中最有力和最可复制的发现之一。最强烈的影响是在身体能力方面，如投掷距离或速度，空间关系任务，以及一些社会行为，如自信，男性在这些方面都有优势。同时，女性往往在更加外向、信任和培育性的方面具有优势。然而，最大的性别差异涉及到了配偶的选择，并且是在特里弗斯的亲本投资理论中出现的行为，女性更重视标志着潜在伴侣获得资源能力的特征（如社会经济地位和野心），而男性更重视标志着生育能力的特征（如年轻和吸引力）。
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The evidence that sex differences in behavior have a biological origin is overwhelming. There are three main methods that scientists use to determine whether or not a trait is rooted in biology. The first hallmark of a trait that is likely to have evolved by natural sextion, is that the same pattern is seen across cultures. This is because it is unlikely that a characteristic, like husbands being older than their wives, is culturally determined if the same pattern is seen in every country on earth. The second indication that a trait has biological origins is if it is seen in young children who have been less exposed to culture (e.g.,baby boys are more aggressive than baby girls). Third, a similar pattern (e.g., males are more aggressive) seen in closely related species, such as other apes or mammals, also suggests an evolutionary history. Many human sex differences, such as more aggression in males or choosier females, hit the trifecta.

证明行为上的性差异有着生物学渊源的证据非常多。科学家们用三种主要方法来确定一种性状是否植根于生物学。一个可能通过自然选择而进化的特征的第一个标志是：在不同的文化中可以看到相同的模式。这是因为如果一个特征，如丈夫比妻子年长，在地球上的每个国家都有相同的模式，那么这个特征就不可能是由文化决定的。第二个标志是，如果一个特征在较少接触文化的幼儿身上看到，那么这个特征就有生物学的渊源（例如，男婴比女婴更具攻击性）。第三，在密切相关的物种（如其他猿类或哺乳动物）中看到的类似的模式（如雄性更具攻击性），也表明存在着进化的历史。许多人类的性别差异，如雄性更具攻击性或雌性更挑剔，都符合三要素的要求。

If these differences are so common, why has the opposite message—that these differences are either non-existent or the result of social construction—been so vehemently proclaimed? The reasons are almost entirely political. The idea that any consequential differences between men and women have no foundation in biology is appealing because it creates the illusion of control. If sex differences are hardwired into human nature, they are more difficult to change. In other words, if biology underpins sex differences, we might have to learn to accept them. But if gender role “theories” are correct, all we need to do to eliminate them is give kids gender neutral toys.

如果这些差异如此普遍，为什么相反的信息——即这些差异要么不存在，要么是社会建构的结果——会被如此强烈地予以宣扬？其原因几乎完全是政治性的。认为男女之间的任何重要差异都没有生物学基础的想法很吸引人，因为它创造了一种控制的幻觉。如果性差异是人类本性中的硬伤，那么它们就更难改变。换句话说，如果生物学支撑着性差异，我们可能不得不学习接受它们。但如果性别角色“理论”是正确的，我们需要做的就是给孩子们提供中性玩具来消除它们。

Acknowledging the role of biology also opens the door to the unwelcome possibility that unequal outcomes for men and women should not just be expected, they might even be desirable. Consider the so-called gender equality paradoxwhereby sex differences in occupations are higher in countries with greater opportunities for women. Countries with the highest gender equality, like Finland, have the lowest proportion of women who graduate college with degrees in stereotypically masculine STEM fields, while the least gender equal countries like Saudi Arabia, have the highest. Similarly, the female to male sex ratio in stereotypically female occupations, like nursing, are 40 to 1 in Scandinavia but only 2 to 1 in countries like Afghanistan. This is an inconvenient finding for gender role theorists because it suggests that women and men have different preferences which they act out given greater choice, and it is only a “paradox” if you assume that sex is a social construct.

承认生物学的作用也为不受欢迎的可能性打开了大门，即男女不平等的结果不仅是可以预期的，它们甚至可能是可取的。考虑一下所谓的性别平等悖论，即在妇女机会较多的国家，职业的性别差异较大。性别平等程度最高的国家，如芬兰，在大学毕业时获得充满刻板印象的理工科领域学位的女性比例最低，而性别平等程度最低的国家，如沙特阿拉伯，则最高。同样，在斯堪的纳维亚半岛，像护理这样的充满刻板印象的女性职业中，女性和男性的性别比例是40比1，但在像阿富汗这样的国家，只有2比1。这对性别角色理论家来说是一个令人不快的发现，因为它表明女性和男性有不同的偏好，如果有更多的选择，他们就会表现出来，而如果你假设性别是一种社会结构，这才是一个“悖论”。

It is understandable, however, that some might fear that any concession to nature or evolved differences between men and women will be used to perpetuate discrimination. But is the fear of abuse so great that lying about biological sex differences is the only alternative? The rhetorical contortions required to assert that gender and sex are nothing more than chosen identities requires increasingly incoherent arguments and inscrutable jargon. This not only subverts confidence in science; it also leads to extreme exaggerations designed to silence those who don’t agree. The lengths to which previously trusted institutions like the American Medical Association now go to deny the impact that hormones have on development are extraordinary. These efforts are also likely to backfire when gender neutral terms handed down by elites, like “Latinx,” are opposed by 98 percent of those they are supposed to protect.

然而，可以理解的是，有些人可能担心任何对自然或男女之间进化差异的让步会被用来延续歧视。但是，对虐待的恐惧是如此之大，以至于对生物学上的性差异撒谎是唯一的选择吗？要断言性别和性只不过是选择的身份，所需的修辞扭曲需要越来越多的不连贯的论据和难以捉摸的行话。这不仅颠覆了人们对科学的信心，还导致了旨在让那些不同意的人闭嘴的极端的夸大其词。像美国医学会这样以前受人信任的机构现在不遗余力地否认荷尔蒙对发育的影响，这种做法很不寻常。当精英们传下来的中性术语，如“拉丁裔”，被98%本应该保护它的人反对时，这些努力也可能适得其反。
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The heart of the problem lies in conflating equal opportunity with being equal, and in our utter failure to respect and value our differences. For two billion years, sexual sextion, governed by an initial disparity in the size of the sex cells, has driven a cascade of biological differences between males and females, whileat the same time ruthlessly enforcing another type of equality between the sexes. The fact that it takes one male and one female to reproduce guarantees equal average reproduction of the sexes, while the fact that mothers and fathers will each contribute a nearly equal amount of DNA to both their sons and daughters ensures equal genetic representation in the next generation.

问题的核心在于将平等机会与平等结果混为一谈，也在于我们完全没有尊重和重视我们的差异。20亿年来，由最初的性细胞大小差异所支配的性选择，推动了男性和女性之间一连串的生物差异，同时无情地在两性之间实施另一种平等。需要一男一女来繁殖的事实保证了两性的平均繁殖量相等，而母亲和父亲将各自为他们的儿子和女儿贡献几乎相等的DNA这一事实保证了下一代的平等遗传表征。

Although this may not be the kind of equality some want, we need to move beyond simplistic ideas of hierarchy, naively confusing different with better and worse, or confusing dominance with power. In the logic of evolution, there are many paths to power and neither sex is superior. Better simply means more copies, and dominance only matters if it leads to more offspring.

虽然这可能不是某些人想要的平等，但我们需要超越简单的等级观念，天真地将不同与更好和更坏混为一谈，或将支配地位与权力混为一谈。在进化的逻辑中，有许多通向权力的途径，没有哪种性别是高人一等的。更好只是意味着更多的复制，而统治地位只有在繁衍更多的后代时才显得重要。

The assertion that children are born unisex and are molded into gender roles by their parents delegitimizes other scientific claims. If you can’t be honest about something every parent knows, what else might you be lying about? It leads to inane propositions, like the assertion that transgender men can give birth by a pro-choice doctor testifying to Congress, and endangers the most vulnerable parts of our population.

孩子们生来就是单性的，他们被父母塑造成性别角色，这种说法使其他科学主张失去了合法性。如果你对每个父母都知道的事情都不诚实，那你还有什么可能在撒谎？这导致了一些无稽之谈，比如一位支持选择权的医生在国会作证时断言变性人可以生育，并危及到我们人口中最脆弱的部分。
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When people are shamed into silence about obvious male advantages in sports, or children are taught that sex is grounded in identity rather than biology, masculine girls and feminine boys may become confused about their sex or sexual orientation, and harmful stereotypes take over where none existed. Boys are told that if they like dolls, they are really girls, while girls who display interests in sports or math are told they are boys, born in the wrong body. This restrictive thinking shames people for feeling misaligned with their birth sex and pushes them to change their bodies to reflect this new identity. How is this progress?The rapid rise in the number of young girls with gender dysphoria is a warning sign of how dangerously disoriented our culture has become. Feminine boys, who might have ended up being homosexual, are encouraged to start down the road towards irreversible medical interventions, hormone blockers and infertility.

当人们对男性在体育运动中的明显优势感到羞愧而保持沉默时，或者儿童被教导说性的基础是身份而不是生物学，男性化的女孩和女性化的男孩可能会对他们的性别或性取向感到困惑，有害的定型观念取代了原来没有的东西。男孩被告知，如果他们喜欢洋娃娃，他们就是真正的女孩，而那些对体育或数学感兴趣的女孩则被告知他们是男孩，只是生在了错误的身体里。这种限制性思维使人们因感到与自己的出生性别不一致而感到羞耻，并促使他们改变自己的身体以反映这种新的身份。这是怎样的进步？患有性别障碍的年轻女孩的数量迅速增加，这是一个警告信号，表明我们的文化已经极其危险地迷失了方向。女性化的男孩，最终可能成为同性恋者，被鼓励开始走向不可逆的医疗干预、注射激素阻断剂和不育的道路。
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The push for a sexless society is a stupendously arrogant and utopian vision. It cuts humans off from our biological history and promotes the delusion that we are not animals. Sex is neither simply a matter of socialization, nor is it just a matter of choice. Making these assertions—failing to understand the profound role that an initial asymmetry in gamete size plays in sexual sextion—is like trying to referee a game in which you’ve never bothered to read the rules, and it is an ignorance that we can’t afford.

对无性社会的推动是一个令人目瞪口呆的傲慢和乌托邦式的愿景。它将人类与我们的生物历史割裂开来，并助长了我们不是动物的错觉。性既不是简单的社会化问题，也不只是一个选择问题。做出这些断言——不理解配子大小的初始不对称性在性选择中所发挥的深刻作用——就像试图在一个你从未费心阅读过规则的游戏中担任裁判，而这是我们无法承受的无知。