Are we not primates? Mammals? Vertebrates?
I’m having trouble believing what I’m seeing.
They’re…not? They’re so not that the question gets a “sheesh”?
I don’t understand. I expect it from your Frances Coppolas and Bethany Williamses, but not from your Alice Dregers.
I think I’ve heard that Darwin waited years between publishing On the Origin of Species, on the one hand, and On the Descent of Man, on the other, because people could swallow the idea that animals descended from other animals (and plants from other plants, and all the others), but not about humans, because humans had to be different. I think that we see the world moving back in that direction.
Wait, what?! Is this the same Alice Dreger who wrote Galileo’s Middle Finger, or has she been replaced by body snatchers??
The very same, hence the incredulity.
The claim that humans are not sexually dimorphic does flow naturally from the underlying premise that sex is a matter of self-identification rather than objective physicality. If some females have uteruses and developed breasts and some don’t, while some males have penises and broad shoulders and some don’t, then no, there are no physical differences between males and females. Alice’s statement might sound absurd, but it’s internally consistent with the rest of trans ideology.
I’ve just spent the day re-reading Alice Dreger’s Galileo’s Middle Finger, which I noticed on my cloud library and didn’t remember reading. I evidently purchased it when it came out (probably on skeptic mag review) and trans issues weren’t on my radar yet. Ironically, I finished, decided to look her up on Twitter, and saw … that.
Galileo’s Middle Finger is about the heretical nature of scientific inquiry, and where it has got some scientists into hot water. Dreger was an historian-turned-intersex-activist, successfully campaigning against infants with ambiguous genitalia literally having their sex assigned at birth, with doctors snipping away small penises or large clitorises to make kids sexually “normal.” She went from that to writing about that hate campaign by trans activists against J Michael Bailey’s, who wrote a book on Autogynophilia. It was interesting to pick out her views on trans. My summary:
1.) surgeries on healthy intersex bodies were crap, & were done because people were uncomfortable with those who fell in between physical ideals of male & female
2.) The “born in the wrong body” trans narrative is crap, & was invented because people are uncomfortable with those who fall in between ideals of masculine and feminine
3.) the refusal to accept trans identities is crap, & comes from people being uncomfortable with those who don’t fit neatly into ideals of man and woman.
I would have thought that being acutely aware that trans people are not “assigned sex at birth” and rejecting innate gender identity would make her gender critical — but no. Instead, she seems to be going with “let people CHOOSE what makes them happy” from #1, and groups the GC with people who sneer at boys in dresses.She cites that misunderstood quote from Beauvoir about women are not born, but made.
Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!
I wonder if she is under the impression that sex dimorphism is only applicable to species which do not have any overlap in the size of the sexes. This misapprehension might explain where she is wrong. But a quick scroll through her twitter gave me this tweet of hers:
…which indicates that she is conflating sex with gender to such an extent that she is talking entirely about gender despite using the word sex.
So basically she’s saying feminism hasn’t caught up with the (attempted) erasure of women. Let’s hope so, because that means the erasure of feminism. Faulty conclusions from faulty premises. Feminism isn’t what confirms the sex binary, biological reality is.
Anyone else tired of shitty reasoning from people who parade their PhD’s? Sheesh.
The rather silly book ‘Sex at Dawn’ makes the point that humans have much less sexual dimorphism than any other large primate. As part of a campaign against the evo-psych reinforcement of sex-roles.
Is that even true? Do humans have much less sexual dimorphism than chimps for example?
@johnTD – the book “Sex at Dawn” was effectively discounted by Dr. Marlene Zuk in her book Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Teaches us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live.
The evidence used to claim that we’re rutting bonobos trapped in monogamy for “Sex at Dawn” is highly selective, and is akin to using a few polaroid snaps to write a biography. (Same for the paleo diet. While the diets may have sound principles regarding carbs and proteins, humans evolved over a long period as opportunistic omnivores so the idea that cereals wrecked everything is not based on solid anthropology.)
We humans have less dimorpism than other great apes, but we are smart enough to recognize sex. Here’s a recently published study in Nature (March 2021.)
Remember this is just facial dimorphism.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-85402-3#further-reading
Excerpt:
“Facial morphology is affected by overall body size45,46,47,48, which is also sexually dimorphic and thus influences the perception of various social traits. Taller and heavier men are not only perceived as more masculine49 but taller men also possess more masculinized facial structure20. Height is also associated with male health. Tall (but not the tallest) men seem to have optimized immunity function50 . Maintaining body mass is costlier in regions with uncertain food availability. Greater mass may also be disadvantageous for hunting as it may make one more visible to prey; as indicated by the negative correlation between body size and food returns in African hunter-gatherers51. Himba nomads from northern Namibia showed preference for equal height instead of “taller male–shorter female” stereotype43. Likewise, women of the Tanzanian Hadza tribe showed no preference for large body size in potential mates52 and they were more likely to marry men shorter than themselves compared to British women53. Despite some exceptions, male tallness is preferred across human societies while there is no such simple preference for female height54,55,56,57.”
Seems to confirm Darwin in “On the Descent of Man.”
Trigger warning: I’m about to say something in agreement with Sam Harris. (I know, I know, but sooner or later everyone gets something right.)
In relation to Michael Haubrich’s comment. I once heard Harris speak at a conference, and he was referencing the idea that Christianity makes people feel good about themselves. He commented on the information above about tall men. He said it might make him feel better to believe he was 6’4″ tall, but that wouldn’t make it true. He would still be the height he was, and other people would still perceive him as the height he was, and he wouldn’t get any of the actual benefits of being tall.
Okay, agreement with Sam Harris now over. You can relax. But it is a particularly cogent comment in relationship to trans issues. Since the conference was in 2006, the trans issues weren’t much on anyone’s radar yet.
Oh Harris says plenty that I agree with. Far far far more than your Donald Trump for instance, or Lauren Boebert, or Steve Bannon.
Yeah, I was just trying to make a joke. I find points of disagreement even with people I disagree with on most things.
I had a roommate who once told me that I would get more dating matches if I put my height at 5’10” even though I’m 5’8″ and I thought that’s sweet, but I would like to actually meet in person, not just tally my matches.
“Just when I thought I couldn’t disagree with them any more…”