Abstract

Over the past few decades, a broad movement of thought has placed the binary view of human sexuality under attack, with arguments combining the biological and the socio-anthropological sciences and the queer rights activism. This article examines the problems posed by these theoretical approaches, beginning with a recent debate regarding the cancellation of a panel on Biological Sex at an American Anthropological Association conference in 2023. The main arguments of the anti-binary thesis are then discussed, based mainly on the work of A. Fausto-Sterling. Finally, criticisms are advanced, on the one hand of the thesis of biological evidence for sexual dualism; on the other, of the claim of a militant avant-garde to overthrow in the name of social justice such a basic feature of the natural history of humankind (Wittgenstein) as the binary classification of people into two classes, one that gives birth and the other that cannot