Texas's Legislature is contemplating whether men who think they're women should be allowed to compete in women's sports.  A Texas Democrat politician with degrees from the University of Texas and Harvard tried to bring some science to the issue.  To that end, he announced that science has discovered that there are, in fact, six sexes.  Only an "educated" person could say something so stupid with a straight face.

England's Daily Mail has the story:

A Texas Democratic state lawmaker insisted there are six different sexes during a committee hearing Tuesday on transgender issues, sparking backlash from several different communities.

James Talarico, a Democrat and former English teacher, insisted during a Public Education Committee hearing earlier this week that there are more than two sexes.

'The bill seems to think there are two,' Talarico, who has a masters in education policy from Harvard, said.

'The one thing I want us to all be aware of is that modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes,' he said. 'In fact, there are six, which honestly… surprised me, too.'

[snip]

Talarico went on to explain that there are 'six really common biological sexes' based on X and Y chromosomes.

The usual is that there are XX chromosomes for females and XY for males, but Talarico explains there are also single X, XXY, XYY and XXXY, making a total of six sexes.

'The point is that biologically speaking, scientifically speaking, sex is a spectrum, and oftentimes can be very ambiguous,' Talarico said.

What this Ivy League–educated legislator somehow missed is the fact that the alternate chromosomes are not part of a spectrum.  Instead, they are rare genetic defects.

Beth Stelzer, the president of Save Women's Sports, corrected Talarico's error:

'They are dimorphic: XX, XY,' she said of sex. 'The other 'sexes' mentioned are disorders of sexual development that are variants of XX or XY chromosomes. They are still disorders of male or female.'

It's always simultaneously scary and entertaining watching the nonsense that people who attended once respectful academic institutions spout.  They argue with the certainty and fervor of any cultist or flat-earther.  (I find it especially offensive to hear this nonsense from a University of Texas at Austin grad.  When I was last there — before Talarico was born — U.T. was a more conservative institution, and people emerged better educated.)

This video of an Australian man who calls himself Hannah Mouncey and insists on participating in girls' handball is instructive:

This is a man with full XY chromosomes, and he has no business playing on a women's team, where he can seriously injure his own teammates and the women on opposing teams.

In a tolerant society, men who want to play at being women are allowed to do so up to a limit.  That limit is hit when their fantasies start seriously impinging on other people's rights and safety.  There is no constitutional principle that says people who deviate too far from the norm get to reshape society to their beliefs.  The most they can ask for is to be left alone.

But our leftist "betters," in their drive to upend Western culture and usher in a glorious new era of race-based socialism, willingly abandon science and liberty to pursue their ideological goals. The truth is our best defense.  Arm yourself with facts and speak out when confronted with this deliberate nonsense.

Image: James Talarico (cropped) by Masonthedem.  CC BY-SA 4.0.

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