Jennifer R. Povey
2 min readJan 30, 2023

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Allow me to give you some extra ammunition here.

Yes, the pelvis is the best sex-related skeletal indicator. But in 1972, it became apparent that there was a sex bias in the skeletons reported at archaeological sites...about 12% in favor of male. Turns out that if we aren't sure what sex a skeleton is, we mark it as male.

Modern archaeologists class skeletons as male, female, or indeterminate. Sometimes indeterminate means that the pelvis is too damaged to sex (other indicators, such as skull size, are less reliable). Sometimes it means that they're somewhere in the middle...a wide-hipped man or a narrow-hipped woman. It's called "sex estimation" not "sex determination."

We have a considerable number of skeletons that were estimated as a different sex from the genetic sex. In some cases this could mean the skeleton is an XY man or an XX woman, but it's honestly more likely we simply got it wrong. Grave goods aren't always accurate either...a good number of northern European women of rank were buried with swords or axes. They may have been shieldmaidens, warriors, or potentially priestesses (weapons were used in ritual and breaking the gender boundary was a key element of northern magic). But the assumption that *everyone* buried with a sword was a man...turned out to be a problem. It's more like 90%. Which is still overwhelming, but...

The point here is that not all cis women have a female pelvis and not all cis men have a male one.

Determining gender from bones is an educated guess. One test done to establish whether the method we use is accurate got 100% but omg was it flawed: They asked people to test skeletons that had already been tested. What does that prove? It proves you're teaching people to use the method correctly, that's all.

Sorry, I honestly feel strongly about the entire sexing skeletons thing.

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Jennifer R. Povey
Jennifer R. Povey

Written by Jennifer R. Povey

I write about fantasy, science fiction and horror, LGBT issues, travel, and social issues.

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