Imagine a girl who dreams of being a footballer or a scientist, or a young man who wants to engage in ballet. We will immediately imagine how, from very early on, they are told that their dreams do not fit with what is expected of them “by nature”: that their body, their abilities, even their emotions, are determined by a biological destiny linked to the sex with which they were born. This story is so common that we rarely question it. But what if that biological destiny wasn’t as natural as we thought?

Against sex as a biological category, common sense questions and radically challenges the idea that the differentiation of two sexes in human beings is a natural, inevitable and inherent fact. Far from it, argues the great Lu Ciccia, is a historical notion and is based on sexist premises. To dismantle these premises, the author interrogates three key dimensions in neuroscience, sport and molecular biology. A detailed examination of the current discoveries of neurobiology and genetics and a careful approach to historical evidence allows it to put in check strongly rooted beliefs: that sex intrinsically conditions our psychological life and cognitive abilities, which explains the biological parameters that are usually linked to athletic skills or even that allows us to understand how our reproductive possibilities develop.

With analytical rigor and based on the most recent scientific evidence, this book is an invitation to rethink how we understand the body and identity and to question the categories that limit and pigeonhole us. It is, in short, a call to free ourselves from reductionist conceptions and to build a broader and more equitable understanding of the potentialities of the human being.