A survey conducted by The Telegraph in collaboration with Censuswide, a London-based market research consultancy, revealed that most scientists from British universities, nearly 200 in total, perceive sex as a binary concept but view gender as more flexible.

This study, which took place between 2023 and 2024 and was reported on over the weekend in the United Kingdom, distinguishes between sex, considered a biological category, and gender, which is increasingly understood in terms of social roles and expectations for the two sexes.

The Cleveland Clinic stated that people who are intersex “have genitals, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t fit into a male/female sex binary.”

29% of those surveyed concurred with the notion that "sex is not binary," whereas 13% either remained neutral on the issue or chose not to express their opinion.

The Telegraph reported that 64% of scientists hold the view that gender is fluid, while 22% consider it to be binary, and 14% refrained from responding. Dr. Wolfgang Goymann, a behavioral biology professor at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, commented on these results for the publication.

“To me this just means that at least 29% of the academics that filled out this questionnaire do not understand the biological concept of sex, and at least 22% of them do not know what gender means,” Goymann said.