U can’t say that
See the reporter get it wrong in the very first paragraph (and thus also the headline).
Neuroscience Professor Removed From APA Discussion After Saying There Are Only Two Genders
Wrong. He said two sexes.
A neuroscience professor was ousted from the American Psychological Association’s (APA) email discussion group by vote after suggesting that there are only two genders as well as past concerns over his posts, the College Fix reported Friday.
Wrong. He said two sexes.
Psychology and neuroscience professor John Staddon at Duke University was removed from the APA’s Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology (SBNCP) Division 6 listserv and was notified via email by the group’s presidential trio who said use of the forum was a “privilege,” in the statements republished by the National Association of Scholars (NAS) on April 30.
The NAS is a conservative organization, but they’re a good watchdog on this stuff.
“It is sad that an audience of supposed scientists is unable to take any dissenting view, such as the suggestion that there really are only two sexes,” Staddon said in reply to the notification of his removal from the division’s group before allowing NAS to publish the email exchange. “Incredible! I don’t mind having one less distraction, but I think you should really be concerned at Div 6’s unwillingness to tolerate divergent views.”
His post that “tipped the scale,” according to Staddon, was titled “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?” Staddon told Newsweek he created the post on April 15.
“Science, real science, can and should be isolated from politics. Science has values, to be sure—curiosity, honesty, openness to debate, adherence to empirical facts, and so on—but they are not, and should not be, political,” he wrote to Newsweek. “Most of my comments have been devoted to that fact. I might add that a sense of humor would help.”
Science should be isolated especially from politics of the “men are women if they say they are” type. That’s not so much politics as childish fantasy-enforcement.
What about my realisation and revelation (brought to me in a dream by the Angel Gabriel) that I am really a giraffe? Surely science will support Gabriel and me on that.
See that one’s easy. We put lunch in a basket and hang it 18 feet up. If you can reach it without external aids, you’re a giraffe.
The thing is, the “gender is infinite” crew bring up non-standard karotypes as evidence that they’re right, as often as karotype is used to defend the existence of biological sex.
But karotype has nothing to do with it really, it’s just and artifact of which chromosome has the sex-linked alleles on it and isn’t even universal across animal clades. Which is why the scientific definitions of male and female don’t even mention chromosomes or genes, it’s gametes. In species with two sexes almost all individuals are born with one of two sets of characteristics associated with the production of one of two types of gametes, no matter what the karotype.
Goddammit >:/
…
But with apologies for the tangent, my brain can’t let this go:
Yes, there is, and I’d expect a neuro prof on a comparative psych listserv to know that. Not in humans, mind, so maybe in context that was clearer, but birds’ WZ sex determination system is not exactly a secret.
Birds also only have two sexes, though.
Wouldnnit, though?
After four years of Trump I’d almost become inured to it, but yeah, these ideologues are always so serious, so dour, so…downer…
That’s the T-shirt version. For an account of what she actually wrote, see https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/goldman/Features/danceswithfeminists.html
Science cannot be separated from politics insofar as science has policy consequences. Nevertheless, we should not judge science by those consequences, but the consequences by the science.
They sort of have to be, don’t they, given the absurdity of their belief system.
But, yes, absolutely, that is far from the least unpleasant thing about them.
The price of eternal vigilance. Somebody has to defend the Faith against Witches. It can’t help that they have to be forever on their guard against engaging in Wrongthink themselves, lest they be eaten by their own.
Besides, there’s nothing funny about the actual violence of misgendering, (or gendering at all for Enbees). We are, after all, talking about the most marginalized, at risk, harrassed, doscriminated against, and suicidal group of folks ever.
Maybe we’d be happier if we were wood lemmings, which have five sexes (in a manner of speaking). They have three kinds of sex chromosomes: X, X’ and Y. XX, XX’, X’X’ and X’Y are all fertile females, XY are fertile males, YY foetuses die in utero. I don’t think lemmings are much interested on wokeness, so I don’t know if X’Y animals self-identify as trans females (etc.).
Is there a Z gamete?
YNNB:
It’s getting harder and harder to not think of the transgender as “monstrous toddlers,” as simple folk without self-resilience, perspective, or, frankly, a lot of brains. I didn’t used to feel like this. It’s as if, over time, they’re getting younger and their sense of outrage, hurt, and entitlement growing accordingly. Right now I’d probably place the Edinburgh students and offended neurologists here somewhere around the level of an aggrieved 11 year old girl — or an insulted chieftain of a honor-based tribe.
Years ago the gnu atheists rightly mocked religious people with a crippling reaction to blasphemy. I remember one Catholic woman coming into Pharyngula whining that contemplating the unseen desecration of a consecrated wafer was, on the scale of pain, equivalent to her watching her 6 year old granddaughter get raped. We did not think we were harming the weak. We thought she needed to get a sense of proportion.
Not unlike the “harm” caused by cartoons of Mohammad, or destroying a copy of the Koran. Universities and other institutions seem to be handling complaints around slights against gender “identity” more like “blasphemy” against Muslim beliefs than against Christian sensibilities, i.e., they’re scared shitless. Like their angry, Islamist counterparts, trans activists have form for being disruptive, abusive, and violent when they perceive “offence.” Consequently, their complaints are being treated as offences against religious belief, which, it turns out, is exactly what they are. This makes a tiny bit of sense, in that university adminstrators now see students as “customers,” and it doesn’t pay to piss off the people who are paying money for your services. Curious that they don’t give a damn about offence against (or launching investigations of, or actual harm to) women, who, it seems to me, would represent a much bigger group of “customers” than genderists ever will.
And yet most businesses eject disruptive customers because otherwise they tend to cause the majority of non-disruptive customers to take their money elsewhere.
It can’t be because there’s a finite number of universities, a situation that forces them to accept everyone and base their rules around the noisiest and most disruptive groups, because every year students are refused places due to there being more applicants than places.
It’s more like they’ve been trapped in a loop: they’ve fallen for the initial onslaught and written protection of the identy bunch into their rules which have made it impossible to discipline them as their demands and disruptions become more extreme.
YNnB:
Showing the world yet again that anger is power. Hitler knew that. His elaborately stagecrafted rallies (“do INDIGNATION!, Adolf”) were suckerbait for indignation on a mass scale.
Perhaps a response to an outraged Muslim or genderiser would be “piss off, Adolf!” (This could also create work for drama coaches contracted to serve the needs of university administrators and faculty members, thereby stimulating the economy.) Win-win, wouldn’t you say?
As Nick Cohen put it with respect to those who refused to stand up for the victims of Islamist violence, the most blameworthy aspect of their behavior was pretending to be motivated by noble and worthy goals like tolerance and respect. If they would at least admit that they doing it out of fear, it wouldn’t be exactly admirable, but at least it would be honest as well as an extremely important piece information in its own right. And it would be perfectly understandable. Those who refuse to stand up for the victims of TRA bullying have far less to fear, and hence far less of an excuse.
AoS: Private sector providers eject disruptive customers by the expedient of saying “the trouble of your custom is not worth your money”. A tax-funded state provider is on weaker moral ground in doing so because the ejected customer still pays the price in tax. Monopoly providers lack the motivation of retaining existing customers who might be alienated because there is no elsewhere whither they might defect.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but the introduction of tuition fees for the majority of university students kind of blurs the line between state funding and private enterprise. When it comes to ejecting troublesome customers, a good parallel is council housing and the heavily state state subsidised housing associations. Neither of those have problems with ejecting problematic customers – they have it written into their terms and conditions of tenancy, the associations are generally the stricter and I think are more able to evict outright; councils tend to move their problems to other estates, in many cases concentrating the problem cases into certain areas – we all know where the no-go parts of council estates are..
The state-subsidised but privately run academies that are replacing state schools do not get any fees from students but they expel problem kids at a greater rate than do state schools, and their criteria for what constitutes acceptable behaviour is far tighter than their state-run equivalents. Some even have their students sign contracts which bind them to the academy standards, so stjdents are aware that breaking the contract may well lead to expulsion. Tying kids of that age into behavioural contracts is rather shitty in my opinion, but it’s an idea that maybe universities could consider.
AoS,
” Tying kids of that age into behavioural contracts is rather shitty in my opinion, but it’s an idea that maybe universities could consider.”
Such a suggestion would make more more concerned, not less. Who would write the contract, and what would be in it? I feel confident that “transphobia” would be including among things which violate the contract, along with, say, “kink-shaming.”
That would not be better.