Commentary

Abstract

This article calls attention to the importance of more carefully defining femaleness and maleness and more f u l b acknowledging the existence of mixed-sex people. Mixed-sex people are defined as people with at least one female and one male characteristic, where female or male characteristics are defined as characteristics that are possessed by nomore than roughly half the population (the distribution criterion) and either play a clear role in reproduction (the reproduction criterion) or are veiy highly correlated across all cultures with charactm'stics that meet both the distribution and reproduction criteria (the correlation criterion). Among other recommendations, those who work in the field of human sexuality are urged, on the basis of these more careful definitions and on ethical grounds, to use the term sex-simplification rather than sex-change in describing surgical/hormonal treatments for transsexuals and to radically alter their use of the terms heterosexual and homosexual.