This is such a sanity-creating piece! Thank you for collecting all of this.
I saw people start making the argument that biological sex was socially constructed back in 2020, but I imagine it started somewhere, and it probably started earlier, too.
I read this months ago and just spent a half hour looking for it again. So valuable.
I constantly see overly righteous complete morons insert themselves into this discussion with a great big sigh of "UGHH, could you please educate yourself!? No one is saying biological sex doesn't exist. Learn the difference between sex and gender and come back"
The whole damn movement espouses this nonsense, and even if they didn't, it is clear their position is that nonsensical ideas about gender are of paramount importance and sex should be ignored.
Thank you for compiling this archive. I have noticed the tendency of activists to deny the biological reality of sex, and also to deny that anyone would make such a ridiculous claim. But I suspect the matter will sort itself out, with the activists getting on the same page and agreeing to either affirm or deny biological sex. Or am I giving them too much credit?
Gaslighting meets delusion, as in trans A saying “you don’t understand what trans B is saying” - both are delusional, and inducting you into their Vampiric mental-energy sapping hall of mirrors. Assume anything said is a lie, including “I am lying” and it’s much easier. There is no “truth value” in utterances from deluded people. There is only desire to indict you into the delusion system.
The real question is do you understand that both people are delusional - trans A man thinks they have a female brain perhaps, and another trans B man thinks they are a woman.
The only non-delusional trans I know understand they have radical discomfort with their genitalia, it will never go away, and that they are indeed men.
It’s sort like AA “I recognize I’m an alcoholic and there’s no cure, but I can manage it.” You have to recognize that you’re delusional. That’s hard.
Good thing you posted a screenshot of that first Reddit post since I see the comment itself has disappeared into the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky. But a useful compendium of the quite unscientific if not psychotic zaniness from the transloonie nutcases -- as well as from their fellow travelers and assorted useful/useless idiots. Printed for posterity.
But particularly "amused" -- at least from the perspective of gallows humour -- by the interview of Veronica Ivy. The problem there is that Ivy is not specifying what it takes to qualify as a female, and is rather clearly using "male" and "female" as genders. Rather typical -- for example, see my post about Wikipedia's claim that transwoman & Olympian Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female":
And, rather sadly, Canada's own "Statistics Department" -- one uses the term loosely, "Ministry of Truth" being somewhat more accurate -- has done likewise:
But Trevor Noah, the interviewer of Ivy, is likewise clueless about what it takes to qualify as "male" and "female" -- as sexes -- in the first place; otherwise he could have unhorsed Ivy right out of the chute: "No ovaries? Not a female, suck it up buttercup." Although many so-called biologists and philosophers and erstwhile reputable magazines -- "Scientific" American in particular -- have been busily engaged in muddying the waters themselves. It's "degenderated" to the point that hardly anyone now knows whether they're Carmen or Cohen ...
Virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has entirely different and quite antithetical definitions for both "sex" and "gender". Everyone riding madly off in all directions.
ICYMI, the "Santa Fe Boys" recently had a conference -- attended by various "leading lights", loosely speaking, in the biology and sociology camps -- which was touted as "The Big Conversation ... among international experts (?) on the origins, mechanisms, and meaning of sex/gender differences". I had hoped, many people had hoped -- all being rather disappointed -- that it might come to a consensus as to what "sex" and "gender" actually referred to and denoted; the closest they came to that was a closing "Round Table (2) Discussion" -- which is still somewhat illuminating:
Unfortunately, many people are rather "averse" to stipulating exactly what it takes to qualify as males and females -- as sexes. And that probably or partly because they're apprehensive about losing their sex category membership cards for one reason or another.
The problem is generally that it is not just those transloonie nutcases who've turned "male" and "female" into "immutable identities" based on some "mythical essences" -- as UK feminist "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones once put it. It is also too many ostensibly on the other side of the fence from them who are doing likewise -- for examples, both Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce peddle definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk-biology, than the Kindergarten Cop definition: "boys have penises, and girls have vaginas".
Seems to me, and to more than a few others -- including philosopher of science Paul Griffiths, and a couple of quite credible biologists writing in the Wiley Online Library -- that the only way off the horns of that dilemma is to endorse the standard biological definitions for the sexes promulgated in various reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. They say, they stipulate, that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless:
Thanks for doing some background work. This response has always driven me up a wall because I was onboard this movement up through the "gender is the social elements of it and sex the biological ones, but jumped off after that. And then people will claim "no we never moved beyond that at all", which is crazy.
So glad you have all these receipts! One day historians will need them to figure out what the heck happened in the early 2000s.
This is such a sanity-creating piece! Thank you for collecting all of this.
I saw people start making the argument that biological sex was socially constructed back in 2020, but I imagine it started somewhere, and it probably started earlier, too.
I read this months ago and just spent a half hour looking for it again. So valuable.
I constantly see overly righteous complete morons insert themselves into this discussion with a great big sigh of "UGHH, could you please educate yourself!? No one is saying biological sex doesn't exist. Learn the difference between sex and gender and come back"
The whole damn movement espouses this nonsense, and even if they didn't, it is clear their position is that nonsensical ideas about gender are of paramount importance and sex should be ignored.
Thank you for an excellent piece.
Superb write-up - I instantly subscribed. Thank you for all the work you put into this. It will be so valuable.
Thank you for compiling this archive. I have noticed the tendency of activists to deny the biological reality of sex, and also to deny that anyone would make such a ridiculous claim. But I suspect the matter will sort itself out, with the activists getting on the same page and agreeing to either affirm or deny biological sex. Or am I giving them too much credit?
Gaslighting meets delusion, as in trans A saying “you don’t understand what trans B is saying” - both are delusional, and inducting you into their Vampiric mental-energy sapping hall of mirrors. Assume anything said is a lie, including “I am lying” and it’s much easier. There is no “truth value” in utterances from deluded people. There is only desire to indict you into the delusion system.
The real question is do you understand that both people are delusional - trans A man thinks they have a female brain perhaps, and another trans B man thinks they are a woman.
The only non-delusional trans I know understand they have radical discomfort with their genitalia, it will never go away, and that they are indeed men.
It’s sort like AA “I recognize I’m an alcoholic and there’s no cure, but I can manage it.” You have to recognize that you’re delusional. That’s hard.
Good thing you posted a screenshot of that first Reddit post since I see the comment itself has disappeared into the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky. But a useful compendium of the quite unscientific if not psychotic zaniness from the transloonie nutcases -- as well as from their fellow travelers and assorted useful/useless idiots. Printed for posterity.
But particularly "amused" -- at least from the perspective of gallows humour -- by the interview of Veronica Ivy. The problem there is that Ivy is not specifying what it takes to qualify as a female, and is rather clearly using "male" and "female" as genders. Rather typical -- for example, see my post about Wikipedia's claim that transwoman & Olympian Laurel Hubbard had "transitioned to female":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/wikipedias-lysenkoism
And, rather sadly, Canada's own "Statistics Department" -- one uses the term loosely, "Ministry of Truth" being somewhat more accurate -- has done likewise:
https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/concepts/consult-variables/gender
But Trevor Noah, the interviewer of Ivy, is likewise clueless about what it takes to qualify as "male" and "female" -- as sexes -- in the first place; otherwise he could have unhorsed Ivy right out of the chute: "No ovaries? Not a female, suck it up buttercup." Although many so-called biologists and philosophers and erstwhile reputable magazines -- "Scientific" American in particular -- have been busily engaged in muddying the waters themselves. It's "degenderated" to the point that hardly anyone now knows whether they're Carmen or Cohen ...
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/scientific-americans-lysenkoism
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/new-paper-argues-for-multimodal-model
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
Virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin has entirely different and quite antithetical definitions for both "sex" and "gender". Everyone riding madly off in all directions.
ICYMI, the "Santa Fe Boys" recently had a conference -- attended by various "leading lights", loosely speaking, in the biology and sociology camps -- which was touted as "The Big Conversation ... among international experts (?) on the origins, mechanisms, and meaning of sex/gender differences". I had hoped, many people had hoped -- all being rather disappointed -- that it might come to a consensus as to what "sex" and "gender" actually referred to and denoted; the closest they came to that was a closing "Round Table (2) Discussion" -- which is still somewhat illuminating:
https://santafeboys.org/recordings-of-the-big-conversation/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRW_II_-iFY&t=758s
Unfortunately, many people are rather "averse" to stipulating exactly what it takes to qualify as males and females -- as sexes. And that probably or partly because they're apprehensive about losing their sex category membership cards for one reason or another.
The problem is generally that it is not just those transloonie nutcases who've turned "male" and "female" into "immutable identities" based on some "mythical essences" -- as UK feminist "philosopher" Jane Clare Jones once put it. It is also too many ostensibly on the other side of the fence from them who are doing likewise -- for examples, both Kathleen Stock and Helen Joyce peddle definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk-biology, than the Kindergarten Cop definition: "boys have penises, and girls have vaginas".
Seems to me, and to more than a few others -- including philosopher of science Paul Griffiths, and a couple of quite credible biologists writing in the Wiley Online Library -- that the only way off the horns of that dilemma is to endorse the standard biological definitions for the sexes promulgated in various reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. They say, they stipulate, that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being sexless:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
Griffiths' "What are biological sexes?":
https://philarchive.org/rec/GRIWAB-2
"Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles"
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bies.202200173
Thanks for doing some background work. This response has always driven me up a wall because I was onboard this movement up through the "gender is the social elements of it and sex the biological ones, but jumped off after that. And then people will claim "no we never moved beyond that at all", which is crazy.
An excellent piece. They have always denied that biological sex was immutable, however, the facts speak for themselves.