A majority of British scientists in a new poll reported that they view sex as binary and believe that gender is fluid.
In a survey of almost 200 scientists at UK universities published by the Telegraph and Censuswide on Saturday, 58% said they believe sex is binary, except in rare instances involving intersex individuals, those born with both male and female biological traits.
Less than a third, 29%, agreed with the statement “Sex is not binary,” while 13% had no views or preferred not to answer.
Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the scientists, 64%, said gender was fluid, while 22% said gender is binary and 14% gave no answer.
Sex is a biological classification, while gender generally refers to societal expectations for the two sexes — such as norms, roles and relationships between males and females.
“To me this just means that at least 29% of the academics that filled out this questionnaire do not understand the biological concept of sex, and at least 22% of them do not know what gender means,” Wolfgang Goymann, professor for behavioral biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, told the Telegraph.
In a recent article in the journal BioEssays, Goymann wrote that some scientists insist that sex is a graded spectrum rather than a binary trait.
“Leading science journals have been adopting this relativist view, thereby opposing fundamental biological facts,” he told the news outlet. “While we fully endorse efforts to create a more inclusive environment for gender-diverse people, this does not require denying biological sex.
“On the contrary, the rejection of biological sex seems to be based on a lack of knowledge about evolution and it champions species chauvinism, inasmuch as it imposes human identity notions on millions of other species,” Goymann told the Telegraph.
More than half the polled scientists have doctorates, with 18% belonging to the faculty of social sciences, 13% in medicine and 12% in life sciences.
“This survey has two remarkable findings. The first is that 29% of academics are apparently unaware of the obvious fact that sex is binary,” Helen Joyce, director of advocacy at the human rights group Sex Matters, told the Telegraph.
“The second is that nearly two-thirds of academics say that ‘Gender is fluid.’ That is a strikingly confident statement about a nebulous concept,” she said.
“Most ordinary people think ‘gender’ is just a polite alternative to ‘sex,’ so are these academics talking about personal style — masculinity or femininity, or assertions about ‘identity’ — that is, states of mind?” Joyce continued.
“This muddle feeds through into academic research and public policy. It’s concerning that people supposedly among our best and brightest are seemingly blind to this confusion,” she added.
The debate about sex and gender has become a hot-button issue in the US as politicians and activists grapple with measures involving self-identity and biological traits.
Last year, Kansas became the first state to pass a bill that defines a “woman” as someone who is biologically born female — laying the groundwork for possible bans on males who identify as trans women from using areas designated for females.
In 2023, a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that 65% of Americans — up from 59% in 2021 — believe there are only two genders: male and female.