🙄 "asexual" is NOT the same as "sexless" -- you might invest in a dictionary, and learn how to use it. Here's the Google/Oxford-Language definition for the first:
"asexual: 1) experiencing no sexual feelings or desires; not feeling sexual attraction to anyone." And: "2) (Biology): (of reproduction) not involving the fusion of gametes."
And, yes, the prepubescent are likewise sexless. Here's an article from the Wiley Online Library by a trio of biologists who say the same thing:
WOL: "For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET. [my emphasis]."
As for the NIH, they're a bit of a joke -- in bed with Anne -- "five sexes" -- Fausto-Sterling, and they also insist that "every cell has a sex" -- sure would like to see a liver cell produce any ova or sperm 🙄 :
🙄 "asexual" is NOT the same as "sexless" -- you might invest in a dictionary, and learn how to use it. Here's the Google/Oxford-Language definition for the first:
"asexual: 1) experiencing no sexual feelings or desires; not feeling sexual attraction to anyone." And: "2) (Biology): (of reproduction) not involving the fusion of gametes."
And, yes, the prepubescent are likewise sexless. Here's an article from the Wiley Online Library by a trio of biologists who say the same thing:
WOL: "For instance, a mammalian embryo with heterozygous sex chromosomes (XY-setup) is not reproductively competent, as it does not produce gametes of any size. Thus, strictly speaking it does not have any biological sex, YET. [my emphasis]."
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.202200173?af=R
And a couple of posts by a couple of "biologists", Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers, though they both tend to talk out of both sides of their mouths:
JC: "Those 1/6000 individuals are intersexes, neither male nor female."
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/06/04/sf-chronicle-sex-and-gender-are-not-binaries/#comment-2048737
PZM: “ ‘female’ is not applicable -- it refers to individuals that produce ova. By the technical definition, many cis women are not female.”
https://x.com/pzmyers/status/1466458067491598342
As for the NIH, they're a bit of a joke -- in bed with Anne -- "five sexes" -- Fausto-Sterling, and they also insist that "every cell has a sex" -- sure would like to see a liver cell produce any ova or sperm 🙄 :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222285/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK222291/