(OPINION) ETH – A Harvard-educated Texas Democratic lawmaker just raised a lot of eyebrows after declaring at a recent hearing that there are six sexes, which prompted a quick rebuke from skeptics who said his count was off by four.

According to the report from the Washington Times,  Texas state Rep. James Talarico made this pronouncement prior to public testimony on Tuesday before the Public Education Committee on House Bill 4042, which is a measure to bar transgender athletes from girls’ K-12 scholastic sports.

Talarico, who himself is a former English teacher, first questioned Republican state Rep. Cole Hefner, the bill’s sponsor, on how many sexes there are with Mr. Hefner responding by saying there were only two. “The bill seems to think there are two,” said Mr. Talarico, who holds an M.A. in education policy from Harvard.


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“The one thing I want us to all be aware of recognize is that modern science obviously recognizes that there are many more than two biological sexes. In fact, there are six, which honestly, Rep. Hefner, surprised me, too.” He then stated that there are “six really common biological sexes” based on X and Y chromosomes: Not just XX (female) and XY (male), but also single X, XXY, XYY, and XXXY.

“The point is that biologically speaking, scientifically speaking, sex is a spectrum, and oftentimes can be very ambiguous,” Mr. Talarico said. However, not all were in agreement, such as Beth Stelzer, who is the president of Save Women’s Sports, who testified in favor of the bill. She cited scientific studies “proving that the male advantage is immutable [in athletics], and there are in fact two sexes. They are dimorphic: XX, XY.”

“The other, quote, sexes mentioned are disorders of sexual development that are variants of XX or XY chromosomes,” Ms. Stelzer said at the hearing. “They are still disorders of male or female.” Talarico received plenty of backlash on social media — conservative author Dinesh D’Souza tweeted that the “only thing obvious here is this man’s stupidity”.