If I’d been his editor I would’ve rewritten the article to make this much stronger point.
1) There are some people who claim that male and female is one of those universal binaries, woven into the fabric of the universe, like light and dark. Actually pretty common for religious people to make the strong form of this claim for example.
2) Slime molds prove that isn’t necessarily true and doesn’t have to be true for living organisms. It’s the way evolution went but it wasn’t inevitable. (Article then delves into this but more scientifically)
I think the way the article is written makes it clear that its kind of preaching to the choir with respect to that message. Most of the reactionary types who want gender to be as simple as black and white aren't interested in scientific accounts anyway.
yeah, and if you want scientific validation that nonbinary humans really exist and really are nonbinary, there’s endless evidence from human biology which is far more relevant. a fanatic who refuses to acknowledge that science is not going to be swayed by a footnote about slime mold.
The more abstract concept of complementarity does appear to be woven in the fabric of the universe. At least if it's not, then math working so well is really surprising.
Sex is a case of biotic complementarity. I don't know much about slime molds, but I'm willing to bet there is all kind of complementarity in their organization.
But complementarity doesn't have to be binary, which is the point under contention here. It is a scientific fact that gender and even sex in human populations, while having a strong binary tendency, is not in any way an absolute binary.
Binary complementarity is no more woven into the fabric of the universe than any other symmetry that you see in nature. Gravity is unipolar, electromagnetism is dipolar and the strong force is multipolar. In fact, if you look at electroweak theory (which breaks into E&M and the Weak Force) the bipolar character of the E&M field is less fundamental that it might appear.
1) There are some people who claim that male and female is one of those universal binaries, woven into the fabric of the universe, like light and dark. Actually pretty common for religious people to make the strong form of this claim for example.
2) Slime molds prove that isn’t necessarily true and doesn’t have to be true for living organisms. It’s the way evolution went but it wasn’t inevitable. (Article then delves into this but more scientifically)