You cannot separate the brain from the culture
The Times has a long flattering piece on celebrity archaeologist and “trans ally” Alice Roberts. There’s an interesting moment where…
She says she chooses her words carefully, and it is not long before she is doing so again. We have been talking about men’s and women’s brains and whether there are fundamental intellectual differences between them. Ten years ago, she made a Horizon documentary with Michael Mosley called Is Your Brain Male or Female?. “And the answer is very simply, no. You cannot separate the brain from the culture that it is immersed in from the moment the baby is born, and even before. Your brain is going to develop in a way that is responding to that culture.”
I am not trying to propel Roberts back to a 2019 skirmish in the trans wars in which she tweeted that “biology is, quite simply, messier and more wonderful than some people like to believe” and advised doubters to “ask a clownfish” — a clownfish being a fish that starts life as male but becomes female. It does, however, strike me that if human female and male brains are the same, how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body.
There is quite a pause.
“I think that’s a very difficult philosophical question. It’s very difficult to pin it down, isn’t it? And we’ve had decades of feminism where we’ve been trying to get away from women being reduced to their genitalia. My own feeling is that you approach everybody as an individual.”
So respect an individual’s right to present as they wish?
“I think you would do that in normal society, wouldn’t you?”
First, the short one. Yes of course “you approach everybody as an individual” but that doesn’t require agnosticism on what sex the individual is. In fact in general agnosticism is not possible: we know what sex people are because we have our whole lives of knowing what sex people are to provide the clues. We may have been little agnostics as toddlers, but by the time we’re old enough to chat to the Times we can’t help knowing who is what sex.
Next, the longer one. Would you “do that in normal society”? That’s a general rule is it? So everyone is a blank slate and we all have to start from zero on every encounter? “Is this a human or a frog? Is this a living being or a rock? Is this a woman or a man?” Life is like that is it?
Give me a break.
And scientifically?
“Science can offer solutions to some questions and not to others. Science doesn’t necessarily tell us how to treat each other. We have to be very cautious if people are trying to use science in that way. I think there are big moral and ethical questions that exist almost separate to science.”
But that wasn’t the question. The question wasn’t “how should we treat each other?” but “how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body?”
Andrew Billen of The Times however finds her non-responsive response just the ticket.
I feel she has conceded exactly the ground necessary to foster a civilised truce in this particular culture battle.
Nope.
I suppose your question is asking me if I think I can have my cake and eat it too. The answer is yes, because I am a trans person. For you? No. No cake at all for you.
One of the few exceptions to this ability occurs when people deliberately modify or disguise their appearance to look like the opposiste sex. In some instances, this can be harmless fun; in others it can be a threat because this represents camouflage intended to decieve. Women trying to pass as men do not represent a threat to men, whereas men trying to pass as women may very well be a threat to women. As with the concept of Schroedinger’s Rapist, there’s no way to tell the difference between those TiMs who are (supposedly) harmless and a predatory male dressed in women’s clothing. Any such man loudly proclaiming his “harmlessness” is a red flag. Any such man demanding access to female spaces is another. Either of these things on its own makes a man more suspect rather than less. Pressure to “be kind,” placed exclusively on women, are attempts to get women to ignore these two red flags (among others). Whether or not the man in question really is “harmless”* and simply likes to wear women’s clothing, or is getting off on being in women’s spaces, or is planning an assault doesn’t matter: they’re all men and shouldn’t be there at all. Segregation by sex is a basic, first line of defence that would normally be available to women. If you suddenly decide that the definition of “female” is somehow vague, uncertain, or somehow negotiable, bad things can happen while you’re busy debating with the people who have redifined the word without your consent. Yey somehow, women saying “No” to this unauthorized, unilateral ceding of their spaces are bigots acting in bad faith against the “marginalized” men invading their (formerly) single-sex facilities.
And since when has “respect(ing) an individual’s right to present as they wish” or “approaching everyone as an individual” meant acceding to their every whim and desire? If I “present” as a banker, do I get to have access to the vault? Are those denying me that access hateful bigots? Just because someone dresses in what might be considered typical (or stereotypical) female garb, that does not make them female, any more than donning business attire makes me a banker. So why is “banker” me rebuffed (and arrested, if I persist), while “Loretta” with five o’clock shadow and size thirteen stillettos gets full access to women’s spaces, with the only people at risk of police detention being those denying him entrance? After all, I might actually be a banker (or might yet become one), while there is no way that Loretta is, or ever will be, a woman. Anyone claiming that sex determination in humans is “complicated” is trying to sell you a “Loretta.”
And here we see Roberts swapping her “scientist” hat for her “ideological” one, while hoping nobody notices. She must know that humans can’t change sex the way clownfish do. They may “transgress” the gendered, cultural expectations of their societies, but that does not magically change their reproductive biology. It’s an irrelevant, distracting non-sequiter, and shows she’s not being honest. However “messy” biology is, that doesn’t mean there are more than two sexes in humans, or that, unlike clownfish (and whatever other non-mammalian examples one might try appealing to), humans can switch between them. Attitudes like hers have resulted in the retroactive “transing” of gender-non-conforming women of the past, effectively denying credit for, and stripping all women, past and present, the talents, skills, and agency that have been declared a strictly male prerogative.
The interviewer comes close to pulling down the whole house of cards with a single question: “…if human female and male brains are the same, how can it ever be said that a baby possessing male genitalia was born into the wrong body?” Or in other words, if we rule out the brain, what is “transgenderism”?
We can almost hear the wheels going round in her head as she tries to reconcile the contradictions in the position she has taken. I believe this is one of the main reasons for her declaring the question a philosophical one, rather than an imperical one. By doing this she gets to put off having to justify the Cartesian dualism that trans ideology has smuggled into the discussion. The only thing that is actually “difficult to pin down” is a coherent explanation, cause, or definition “gender identity.” Best not to look too closely. Or at all. Having quickly sidestepped this akward question, she proceeds to rewrite the history of feminism in a single sentence, and does so in such a way as to disqualify any biological definition of sex. It’s a nice little two-step that the unwary might well miss.
No, the goal of feminism was to get away from the idea that women’s opportunities and choices should be limited by the fact of their being female, and that they should not be restricted by sexist, patriarchal stereotypes. This was at the time, I believe, called “biological determinism.” It was considered “bad,” and rightly so. There was no thought then that anybody would be in any doubt as to what a woman was. Who would have guessed that a few decades down the road, the very definition of “woman” would be considered to be up for grabs and put into question. The biological definition of “woman” with all its stubborn, recalcitrant, clarity was in the way of men claiming to be women, so the rude, concise clarity of the immutable sex binary would have to go. Goodbye adult human female, hello clownfish.
As they redefined “woman,” they also redefined the original feminist concept of “biological determinism,” and, ruling the genital/gamete definition of sex as out of bounds, they now derided it as “biological determinism.” And wouldn’t you know it, it was “bad,” because it supposedly restricted performative feminity to women when it belonged to everyone, particularly men. Sex was fuzzy, uncertain, and above all volitional; being a “woman” was no longer the monopoly of females. It was a revolutionary, negotiable matter of clothing and mannerisms expressing some kind of inner “essence,” not the inevitable, mechanistic result of organs, gametes and chromosomes.
But Roberts is no longer on Team Science, but on Team Gender; she abandoned science as soon as she reached for “clownfish.” She jumped ship when she claimed sex determination in humans is “complicated.” She’s still acting like the Sherriff even though she’s turned in her badge. Roberts herself is not being “very cautious” at all; she is indeed “trying to use science in that way” when” she shores up the incoherent mess that is Gender ideology, defending it from rude, transphobic questions which would expose that very incoherence. She is a partisan apologist, pretending to be a neutral, scientific observer dedicated to the “facts.” Her insincere call for “caution” is a demand for unilateral disarmament, and a bold, unjustified, and overconfident claim that the “science” of gender is settlled (clownfish!) and has come down squarely on her side. She has thrown her scientific credibility away behind gender ideology. Having joined Team Gender, whether she likes it or not, whether she even realizes** it or not, she’s made a big moral and ethical choice about how people should “treat each other” and that choice is that women who say “No” to trans demands deserve to be bullied and intimidated, because that’s what Team Gender does.
*But of course, this isn’t harmless at all; the women subjected to his presence and gaze are harmed by his mere presence, whether he does any thing else at all.
**I think she does realize it, because she has blocked anyone asking embarrasing, gender-critical questions of her on Twitter, even though she is “Professor of Public Engagement with Science” at the University of Birmingham. Some “public engagement.”
I wish that every time someone states “clownfish can change sex” in this context the interviewer would ask “how do you know that? Determining sex from gametes is totally ok suddenly?”
Or that being “man” or “woman” is about something other than biological sex. As I keep saying, if biological sex is not a valid category, then neither is “man” or “woman”*. If biological sex doesn’t make us “men” or “women”, then nothing does.
* Or “intersex” for that matter.
Personally, whenever the Clownfish Gambit is advanced, I rather enjoy imagining a young clownfish with newly teal scales, demanding to be called Ash, and wanting a visit to the gender clinic. Ash then storms off, and the anenome slams shut behind her. Marlin looks gobsmacked.
lol