Simon Gunkel

Biology versus Biologism – On the current use of sex in biology

The proposal is for a talk/workshop which mainly focusses on the current definitions of sex used in biology and especially the differences between those definitions. Central ideas include the notion that the word sex is used differently depending on the theoretical context in which it is introduced. Examples are given for problems associated with using the term irrespective of this context (for instance one paper found that 10 children had 10 fathers and 11 mothers and concluded that one man fathered one child with two different women. The problem was that two definitions were used and one of the fathers was also a mother)