'Until a decade or so ago it was widely assumed there were two sexes and two genders. Now it is held by many that the sexes are not two but a spectrum and there are an indefinite number of genders. Hot and sometimes vicious debate has ensued. But there is a danger that we are confusing a debate about language with reality. Language provides the framework through which we make sense of the world rather than how it is in itself. The number of sexes is not therefore going to be definitively identified as a matter of fact in a lab, but is a product of how we define and use the word 'sex'.
Should we recognise that there is no right answer to the number of sexes or genders? Should we see the number of sexes and genders as a political and practical choice about the outcome we desire rather than a factual description of the world? Or is this to obscure the everyday evidence that there is a fact of the matter?
Gender theorist Fellipe do Vale, award-winning molecular biologist Güneş Taylor, and journalist author and podcaster Aline Laurent-Mayard debate sex and gender.