Back in 2021, Richard Dawkins posed what I thought was a fairly common sense question: In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss.
I am going to need to get off my lazy ass and write up the formal list of discredited institutions I have been cataloguing in the back of my mind. It will include The Association for Library Service to Children for stripping Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from a book award that was created and named for her because she depicted racist characters as racist, Yale University for multiple acts of intellectual cowardice, everyone who removed 6 Dr Seuss books from publication and from libraries, and now the American Humanist Association.
To be fair, Seuss really did have racist stereotypes depicted in some of his books, and it was his own family who decided to stop publishing those specific books, most of which weren't very popular anyway. All the Seuss classics that don't show black people depicted as monkeys are still in publication.
Remember back in 2010, when Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens were at the height of their fame, and it felt like the world was on the precipice of stamping out irrationality for good? I loved Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris especially. Feels like a lifetime ago.
What’s insane is that the extremist trans activists don’t represent the views or lifestyle of ANY of my trans friends, which only makes them feel more alone. But often, those activists get famous/attention for saying that inflammatory stuff. Just like Andrea Dworkin’s brand of radical feminism isn’t representative of women or even the average feminist.
Now we’ve habituated saying the inflammatory stuff as a culture. I think it’s pretty clear social platforms shoulder much of the blame for this hellscape we find ourselves in.
I was upset about the Dawkins fiasco too when it happened and felt it was unfair to him. But now that I revisit it, the tweet truly is a little off.
The problem is comparing these two groups in particular with this framing ignores the obvious and scientific differences between them.
Race isn’t even a scientific category, hasn’t been for generations, while trans is an empirical biological reality caused by a plethora of genetic and hormonal conditions. Sure, you could argue some cis people claiming to be trans are only doing so due to peer pressure, but that’s a tough case to make because there isn’t much quality data on it and estimates are quite hard.
Comparing race to diabetes sounds equally as wrong.
“Rachel Dolezal believes she’s trans-racial, a different race than she was born with. Some people believe they have a pancreas that doesn’t produce enough glucose. If you believe the former, you’ll be vilified, but if you believe the latter, you’ll be cheered. Why? Discuss...”
This sounds like a talk show question, a set-up you’d hear on Jerry Springer.
When you put it like that, it’s obvious what’s wrong with it. Race is a fictional construct designed to enslave and abuse people; diabetes is a biological condition millions of people have. Of course you shouldn’t believe or endorse the former and of course you should believe and endorse the latter. Comparing them is just silly.
As a scientist, especially a biologist, Dawkins should certainly know better, but maybe it was Twitter and he wasn’t viewing it as exactly a dissertation or anything.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if Dawkins hasn’t kept up with advancements in biology, genetics, and endocrinology over the years. We’ve come a long way since his upswing in the 1970s with the Selfish Gene.
I also think debates have come to be weaponized to the point that they can’t be productive anymore, because a debate requires two people—and an audience—all acting and thinking in good faith. And there’s a lot of bad faith floating around.
"What’s insane is that the extremist trans activists don’t represent the views or lifestyle of ANY of my trans friends, which only makes them feel more alone."
Yep, this is one of the many reasons I started writing about this topic. I've seen this same disconnect both in the trans people I know offline, and in the insane racial rhetoric that was at its peak a few years ago. As I've said many times, social media activists almost never truly speak for the people they claim to represent.
As for Dawkins, as far as I can see, the comparison works because what's really being compared here is the unscientific concept of race and the unscientific concept of gender. We can think of it like this:
A trans woman is a male who has gender dysphoria. And because of this, believes he feels like a woman (whatever that even means). He will usually take steps to ease that dysphoria and be perceived as female. But he's not literally female.
Rachel Dolezal is a white person who, let's be generous and say believes she feels like a black person (whatever that even means). She has taken steps tone perceived as black (darkening her skin, etc). But she's not literally black.
A diabetic person isn't trying to be perceived as anything. Nor is a black person, nor is a woman. These aren't matters of belief. There are no steps they take to be perceived as what they are. These are objective facts that everybody can agree on.
I think your analogy would work better if Dawkins had said that "some people believe they have gender dysphoria." No, like being black or female or having diabetes, gender dysphoria is innate. But it doesn't shift you into a different sex category.
So another way to frame Dawkins' question is: if you have gender dysphoria, does that have anything to do with you sex? I think the answer is no.
2. I think this is the problem with the discourse right now, but, of course, it's the internet so lol. The problem is people are lumping "transgender" into one huge category which is a bit like tossing cancer—both benign and malignant, as well as zits, cysts, pimples, goiters, and boils—all into one category and trying to have a conversation about it. You're painting with just way too broad of a brush (not you, the generalized you, as in we all).
So, the only way for the conversation to be tenable is if we begin with some bogus premises, like all trans people are the kind jumping on the bandwagon.
Anyways, love your work. I've been reading since your first Medium hit dropped, Anti-Racism is Becoming Troublingly Racist. Hopefully this gives you a little something to ponder and perhaps you can come up with some new ideas to further the dialogue along.
1. "As for Dawkins, as far as I can see, the comparison works because what's really being compared here is the unscientific concept of race and the unscientific concept of gender. We can think of it like this:"
If your conversation is limited to anime profile pics on X/Twitter, yes. But scientifically, both sex and gender do exist and being transgender has more to do with sex than gender most of the time. I sense a distinction is in order. Two of them, actually.
I think by "unscientific concept of gender..." and "gender dysphoria," what you're referring to is a psychic experience—an immaterial perception of self that conflicts with the material-physical body one was born with. So let's call this "immaterial gender" to be more precise.
This "immaterial gender" is opposed to what I'll call "material sex," referring to sperm/ova, genes, chromosomes, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics like phenotypes (breasts, facial hair, etc.). The physical stuff that makes us male-female.
I think the hiccup in your argument is artificially restricting transgender to be purely a concept of "immaterial gender", when, in most cases, it has a lot to do with "material sex."
There's a lot we don't know, but there's a good possibility that transgender is more significantly influenced by physical biology than sexual orientation is, which is pretty damn biologically determined. Left or right-handedness predicts whether a gay man will be top or bottom, birth order predicts sexual orientation, and twin studies have shown that a substantial chunk of what makes people gay, straight, or everything in between is in the genes/biology.
Back to trans people.
When it comes to material sex, you have the classic cases of intersex/hermaphroditism, which often present with ambiguous genitals, like 45,X/46,XY mosaicism and Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome. Many of these people are surgically made into unambiguous males/females at birth and never know it (sometimes the parents don't even know).
These aren't the classic cases of intersex, ambiguous genitals and so forth. These people may look perfectly male or female, but on the hormonal, chromosomal, and, or genetic level, something doesn't jibe with the outward presentation.
What I'm driving at here is, I think by limiting the concept of transgender to purely psychic "immaterial gender," ie, mental experience, it's ignoring all of these "material sex" underpinnings that create (or at least influence) feelings of incongruity between mind and body. After all, what is mind if not chemicals and electricity?
It's demonstrably, empirically physical and material and gender dysphoria does have something to do with your sex. This is why I wonder if Dawkins is up to date on biology.
Now, do I believe people hop on the trans bandwagon sometimes because it's cool? Absolutely. But that's not my place to judge. Who am I to say who's experiencing gender dysphoria and who's experiencing a biological tug-of-war on the genetic/chromosomal level? And how would I test my hypotheses?
"When it comes to material sex, you have the classic cases of intersex/hermaphroditism, which often present with ambiguous genitals, like 45,X/46,XY mosaicism and Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome. Many of these people are surgically made into unambiguous males/females at birth and never know it (sometimes the parents don't even know)."
No, these people, in almost every single case, are *already* male or female. Atypical karyotype varations don't mean somebody isn't male or female. Male and female, in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates exclusively to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce. It's vanishingly rare, like 0.002% of people rare, that that design is ambiguous.
But the bigger point is that this has nothing to do with Dawkins' question:
"Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as."
Intersex people are very often conflated with trans people for the purposes of this question (all of the conditions you mention are intersex conditions or DSDs), yet they have basically nothing to do with each other. If Dawkins was asking about intersex conditions, or asking whether the outward appearance of somebody's body was always an accurate predictor of their sex, there might be some interesting nuance to dig into there. But he's asking about people who are *unambiguously male or female* who claim they're literally the opposite.
He's asking whether I become a female if I get breast implants or put on a dress and makeup or even, increasingly, if I do nothing at all. And he's asking why people would be vilified if they didn't take my claim to womanhood seriously. I'm sincerely struggling to see how there's anything but "immaterial gender" in cases like these. What am I missing?
4. What I think is this. None of what I've said here precludes the idea that extremist, overzealous, radical activists can be annoying, make false accusations, and be generally insufferable. I follow your stuff for a reason.
But that doesn't mean we should misrepresent the truth, the evidence, etc.
And while this is just a debate for us, it's a reality for millions of people, so I think it's important to keep them in mind and not misrepresent the situation.
"But that doesn't mean we should misrepresent the truth, the evidence, etc."
I couldn't agree more. It's just that I honestly don't think I am misrepresenting the evidence. I'm trying, to the absolute best of my ability, to represent it accurately. And I don't think, at all, that the trans activist side of the debate is doing that. To their own detriment, as well as the detriment of women and sane trans people.
As I often point out, trans inclusion wasn't an issue until this idea that a man who says he's a woman is a woman. JK Rowling never said a word about it until the topic of selfID came up in Scotland, I'd been watching quietly without feeling the need to say a word. There were common sense safeguards against insincere men and clear, comprehensible language to talk about the issue with. Nobody risked their job by telling the truth.
So yes, I have enormous compassion for the people whose lives are being ruined by this "debate." I think maybe we disagree about who is responsible for most of the damage of the past few years. Again, I saw a great tweet on this point recently (https://twitter.com/TheBasedTS/status/1700992636084232382).
3. "If Dawkins was asking about intersex conditions, or asking whether the outward appearance of somebody's body was always an accurate predictor of their sex, there might be some interesting nuance to dig into there."
This assumes that intersex, transgender, etc. are completely unrelated and can't be related. Again, my very first comment was an example, but there's an abundance of evidence that the experience of gender-sex incongruity has a biological basis.
A notable quote: "In this review, we have focused on brain sex differences because of the role that they play in people's health and behavior. Historically, it was believed that such differences were solely due to gonadal hormone secretions. Yet, emerging research is also implicating direct genetic effects."
"But he's asking about people who are *unambiguously male or female* who claim they're literally the opposite."
This is why I'm not really bothered by the tweet and said that at the outset. I just said he should know better. By reducing it to just identification and nothing more pretends that all of ^ evidence (and much more) doesn't exist.
I get it, man, it's just a tweet. It's character limited. But it's also like reducing (for lack of a better analogy) bipolar people to "choosing" to be moody.
To answer his question, he'd be vilified because there's no, zero, nada evidence of a genetic or brain structure basis for a desire to be transracial. There never will be because race isn't a real, measurable category (as I said at the outset) and THAT is the purely mental construct with no biological basis. The two aren't analogous which is the problem with the tweet.
"To answer his question, he'd be vilified because there's no, zero, nada evidence of a genetic or brain structure basis for a desire to be transracial."
I've responded to this point (and the rest of this message) in a reply below. But just to pull this point out, there is, at best, extraordinarily weak evidence for a brain structure basis for gender identity.
In fact, this extraordinarily weak evidence only suggests that there are minor average differences in brain structure between trans men and heterosexual cis men. This isn't evidence that a man can feel like a woman. Nor does it explain what feeling like a woman even means.
Can you explore this question? What does feeling like a woman mean? What's your experience of feeling like a man? Do you think it's the same another man's?
2. I'm not sure if the last lines were sincere or not, but here's what I think you're missing. The problem is either with your premises or definitions. This quote deserves its own comment.
"in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates exclusively to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce."
Sure, this is true if you're reading a biology textbook from 1984. But in 2023, it's simply not true.
If it were true, we would have "gender characteristics" instead of "sex characteristics" both primary and secondary. We wouldn't have SEXual dimorphism but GENDER dimorphism. We wouldn't have SEX chromosomes, we'd have GENDER chromosomes.
But please—don't take my word for it (bracketed emphasis mine).
Here it is from the Centers for Disease Control: "An individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and [this part is important] associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes."
The definition of sex from the National Institutes of Health: "A biological category based on reproductive, anatomical, and genetic characteristics, generally defined as male, female, and intersex. Sex is used when describing anatomical, chromosomal, hormonal, cellular, and basic biological phenomena."
Here it is from Yale School of Medicine: "In the study of human subjects, the term sex should be used as a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement [generally XX for female and XY for male]."
Point here: none of these definitions say or allude to "Male and female, in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates EXCLUSIVELY to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce."
If you read The Red Queen by Matt Ridley (1994) that's exactly how sex is defined. But that was thirty years go. So much has been discovered since then. The genome wasn't fully sequenced until 2003.
"If it were true, we would have "gender characteristics" instead of "sex characteristics" both primary and secondary. We wouldn't have SEXual dimorphism but GENDER dimorphism. We wouldn't have SEX chromosomes, we'd have GENDER chromosomes."
Wait, what?!! I'm not following this at all! I said that male and female, which are SEX based terms, relate to gamete production. Which they do. I didn't refer to gender at all. This is why I say that transGENDER people have basically nothing to do with interSEX people (and why I keep pointing out how much time we're spending talking about interSEX people when Dawkins' tweet was about transGENDER people). It seems as if we're using the terms sex and gender in completely opposite ways.
But yes, reproductive SEX, as in the trait that all animal species have, relating to reproduction, is based on gamete production. It's the trait that means 100 male humans on a desert island will never produce any offspring. Even if some of the identify as women, even if they strictly adhere to feminine stereotypes, even if they have androgen insensitivity syndrome.
For example, male seahorses give birth (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seahorse.html). So why do we still classify them as male? Because they produce small gametes. The female seahorse transfers her large gametes into the male brood pouch where he fertilises and carries them. Again, this gamete production distinction is what classifies the sex of all sexually dimorphic organisms.
This idea that our understanding of sex has dramatically changed since 1984 is so bizarre to me. Mainly, what's changed is that the language we use has been so deliberately warped by activists that we're not sure what we're talking about anymore. The CDC definition is an excellent example of this.
Sex is not assigned at birth. This linguistic construction is ideological rather than scientific and should act as a red flag for any information that follows it.
Most obviously, sex is not assigned at birth because it's not assigned *at all*. Sex is an objective fact. It's like saying that skin colour is assigned at birth or the number of fingers and toes is assigned at birth.
Sex can be *observed* at birth, usually trivially easily, by taking a look at the genitals of any animal. Because the genitals (along with chromosomes, cells, hormones, etc.) align, in 99.998% of cases, with the gamete production system of the organism. When the genitals are ambiguous, several other tests can be used to verify sex.
But sex is observable about 7 months *before* birth. A simple pin prick blood test on a pregnant woman can determine the sex of the child (https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/131632-test-can-determine-fetal-sex-at-7-weeks). And even ignoring that, sex is also observed during an ultrasound many months before birth. The doctor does not, as it's become popular to teach kids, "take a guess."
The sex that the doctor observes doesn't directly impose (or "assign") any gendered stereotypes on a child. But of course, I agree that male/female children are funnelled down separate behavioural tracks in many ways. Liberating children from these gendered expectations would be great. I just don't think the way to do that is to teach them that if you're a boy who likes makeup and Barbie dolls, you're actually a girl.
Following on from the above, there isn't "something else" other than male or female because there is no gamete type other than sperm or egg. It's like saying you can be sighted or you can be blind or you can be something else. Nope, those are your only two options. And though there are gradations (some people, for example, can see even better than what is considered perfect vision), you are still always within one of the two categories.
Again, the information here doesn't represent an upgrade in biological understanding but a downgrade in accurate biological language.
And I promise, this isn't just me being stubborn or closed minded. I'm willing to learn. I have learned a great deal about all of this over the past few years. But nobody has ever discovered a reproductive sex other than male or female. I'm pretty sure this will still be the case in 2064. Unless the aliens arrive by then.
1. I wasn't exactly expecting a debate so I wasn't particularly clear, it was an off-the-cuff comment and suggestion (hence the end). The central points intended were 1. race and sex are not analogous and 2. gender is associated with sex, not totally unrelated and not totally immaterial. I almost dropped a third comment saying race wasn't analogous to sex and that's Dawkins' problem but I didn't want to bombard you.
But! Since you've brought this up, here's what I think is being missed.
"No, these people, in almost every single case, are *already* male or female. Atypical karyotype varations don't mean somebody isn't male or female. Male and female...It's vanishingly rare, like 0.002% of people rare, that that design is ambiguous."
1. These were examples explaining there are intersex people (as defined as people with ambiguous genitals [a commonly used definition]) and then there are people with other conditions that influence sex without ambiguous genitals. There's no universal definition of intersex.
2. Since it was an example, your point is non-sequitur. I didn't say anything about the odds of these conditions.
3. Because I said nothing about the rate of occurrence, whether they're common or not is irrelevant. I think you're assuming I was making the point "these conditions = transgender" which wasn't the point at all.
This is more along the lines of what I was getting to...
"Intersex people are very often conflated with trans people for the purposes of this question (all of the conditions you mention are intersex conditions or DSDs), yet they have basically nothing to do with each other."
Not quite (see comment 2). From the National Institute of Health, a transgender person "is someone who identifies with a gender other than the one that was assigned to them at birth." This is a mental experience.
Intersex is, again from the NIH, "a general term used to refer to individuals born with, or who develop naturally in puberty, biological sex characteristics that are not typically male or female." This is a physical fact about someone's body.
My point was these two aren't equal but they're not wholly unrelated either.
Let's use bipolar as an example.
Hypomania is an episode where someone feels excited, has more energy, an overly happy mood, etc, but it's not enough for most people to notice or to cause hospitalization.
Bipolar is a condition caused by genetics, brain chemistry, and environment that causes severe mood swings between depression and mania or hypomania.
To say that—because hypomania is mental and bipolar is physical—they, "basically have nothing to do with each other," isn't accurate. They have everything to do with one another. I picked hypomania for a reason, but depression works for this exercise too—because people *without* bipolar get depression/hypomania.
They're not synonymous but they're not totally unrelated either. Which brings me back to the central point: that physical, biological events cause mental events. Trying to address either in isolation doesn't tell the whole story.
Bipolar might not be the sole cause of hypomania and (clinical) depression, but it's very clear that things in the brain and the genes cause hypomania and (clinical) depression; just like the aforementioned conditions might not be the *sole* causes of feeling that your gender doesn't fit your biological body. But to say biology has *nothing* to do with it is incorrect.
There's nothing biological that can make someone feel they're a different race like there is with sex. They aren't analogous.
"There's nothing biological that can make someone feel they're a different race like there is with sex. They aren't analogous."
Yes, I agree that sex and race aren't analogous. But again, when we're talking about men who identify as women, we're talking, in 99.998% of cases, about people whose sex is not in question. So while I understand your point about them not being wholly unrelated, the prevalance seems relevant here, no? In discussions about pretty much any topic, you'd consider a continuous appeal to 0.002% of the issue a distraction, no?
The very question of what race somebody is is almost impossible to pin down when you think of it. Just one reason why the concept of race is so stupid. If two people have a child, that child will, in every case, be a different racial mix to either of their parents.
Barack Obama, for example, is considered black. But he has an equal claim to being white (he'd just be in for a world of pain if he ever did😅). So there's actually far better grounds for self-identifying as a particular race than as a particular sex. Because we're all a mixture of the different "races." You've got some African ancestry in you somewhere.
We're all a mixture of the different genders too. Where, by gender, I really mean gendered stereotypes. All of our personalities are a mixture of masculine and feminine stereotypes. Some men are widely considered feminine, some women are widely considered masculine, and until about five minutes ago, nobody thought that these feminine men and masculine women were in the wrong body. In fact, the idea would have seemed regressive and sexist.
So this is why I agree that sex and race aren't analogous. It's *gender* and "race" that are analogous. Everybody is a mixture of all the elements of both of these. And they are both of them externally categorised. Barack doesn't get to say he's white. Rachel Dolezal doesn't get to say she's black. And that's why Dawkins--and I--are asking why men get to say they're women.
But yes, as we used to be reminded by trans activists, sex and gender are different. And nobody, except for the aforementioned 0.002% have any grounds to claim they're a mixture. Sex isn't subjective. It's not based on feelings. I don't feel like a male/man. I AM a male/man. And this is true even if I prefer to wear dresses and makeup. Or even if I decide I want a feminine name. These things don't make me a female/woman. Any more than a woman who *doesn't* do these things becomes a man.
So I think the main point where we're disagreeing is whether there's something biological that makes us feel like we're the opposite sex. I had a look through the links you sent me, and nothing in them suggests this is true.
One of the other studies (sorry, I lost track) didn't think to compare trans women to gay men and instead compared them only to straight men. The thing is, gay people's brains are structured (in the same minor ways) like the opposite sex too (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14146-gay-brains-structured-like-those-of-the-opposite-sex/). And that's because most gender dysphoric young people just turn out to be gay if they can get through puberty unmedicalised.
Lastly, one of the other studies that found brain structure similarities in trans women and women was looking at the brains of trans women on oestrogen. But oestrogen is known to change brain structures in males. When looking at the brains of gender dysphoric males who were unmedicated, these differences weren't there.
So yeah, again, I'm not nearly as convinced as you that there is a biological component to "feeling like a woman." I don't have the first clue what "feeling like a woman" even means. And nobody has ever been able to explain it beyond regressive stereotypes like "liking makeup and dresses and Barbies." And even if these brain structure differences were consistently detectable, that's a long way from saying they relate to a felt experience of being a woman. Incidentally, I saw a great video on this topic yesterday (https://twitter.com/KnownHeretic/status/1700634899655606746?s=20).
There are several reasons for the persistence of the concept of race that have nothing to do with dominance. 1. It is visually observable down into subsets. 2. DNA tells you about it. 3. Most importantly, people choose to tribalize themselves based upon numbers 1 and 2.
Numbers 1 and 2 are declining thanks to "interracial" procreation but we are a long way from erasure. Number 3 is probably the biggest obstacle, and it persists due to obsession with oppression as if the last fifty years never happened. It leads to the bad faith you mention and the problems that come when more is read into the concept of race than is justifiable.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
" 'No debate' isn’t just a bully tactic, it’s a recipe for ignorance." YES. Thank you. The consequences of shutting down debate are harmful to EVERYONE. And "lived experience" is just another word for "anecdotal evidence" -- just re-packaged to sound like something we should pay more attention to than scientific data.
I highlighted your comment, Steve: "...too many people have forgotten that the purpose of debate is to learn. To share ideas. To understand each other's point of view."
Which is why I don't watch televised debates any more—about anything. I have stayed out of the transgender issue, because I am female/cis/heterosexual/white and a person first. I do my best to treat everyone I meet as a person first. Their self-identification is their business, and I will do my best to respect that and treat them accordingly.
Which is why I don't watch televised debates any more—about anything.
Yep, debates are occasionally illuminating, but in general, the person who is best at debating will win, not necessarily the person who's right.
And yes, I couldn't agree more. When somebody's self-identification is their business, I feel no need to say anything at all. The issue comes when they make their self-identification my business by writing laws and confusing/medicalising children and adjusting the boundaries of women's rights around it. At that point, I think a conversation is necessary.
With regard to backlash to trans, I think it is much more. Trans have become the guidon bearer for the political left and the backlash is happening toward the entire "left". Increasing numbers of liberals are disgusted with what the progressives have done to tarnish the good name of liberalism and are drifting right.
I see that the chatter from liberals who don't want to admit to themselves what the left has become and try to make it all about trans, but I think it is more than that. They instinctively want to view the world thru a "conservative bad" filter and when in agreement with them put weasel words to say, "the asshole I'm agreeing with on this almost sounds sane" because it is more palatable than "my tribe has gone nuts."
"and the backlash is happening toward the entire "left"."
I'm not sure this is true. Or, at least, I don't think the people who think the "entire left" are the problem are any more worthy of taking seriously than the people who think "conservatives bad."
There's a completely appropriate backlash against the extremes of the left (if it's even fair to call these authoritarians the left), which is being driven by plenty of liberals as well as by conservatives. But I don't think the left has "become" the gender extremists any more than the right has "become" the Trumpists and the QAnon believers.
As I always point out, most people are somewhere fairly sane on all of these issues. Most liberals are reasonable. Most conservatives are reasonable. And if they actually understood each other's (and their own) positions, they'd agree far more than they think. The sense of extreme political polarisation is being driven almost entirely by the fringes.
You are correct, but the squeaky wheel gets greased. Politically, people left, and right are happy to assign the loud radical behavior and beliefs to their tribe. Low hanging fruit.
Do I think that most liberals or conservatives are what the radicals would have us believe? No, like you I don't believe that. Here's the rub, they vote for politicians who pander to the radicals even though the majority has a problem with that. Why? Because most voting is against someone or thing. "I can't vote for X because [radical element]."
I often (more often every election) cast protest "no acceptable candidate" write ins. It's just a futile protest, but I think if "no acceptable candidate" was on the ballot for every political office, and if it got the most votes none of the candidates could be on a ballot again it might just solve the problem of voting for the lesser evil. Kick the evils off the ballot until we get good choices.
“ Because most voting is against someone or thing. "I can't vote for X because [radical element]."”
Yep, for better or worse, I think this is a problem the left suffers from more than the right. I wrote, after the 2020 election, that if elections were decided by how many people actively wanted their guy to win, Trump would have won by a landslide.
I’m not going to get into what it says that Trump has so many did-hard supporters on the right, but Biden, it seemed to me, was effectively a protest vote. People voted for him because they wanted Trump to lose. Not because they wanted him to win.
Sacha wrote, "Not that long ago, the question was what is a human... and the accepted definition only included white people"
I'm old and lived in the deep South when supervisors felt free to call a black employee a ni**er and never heard even the most racist bigots suggest that only white people are human. He established himself as someone with no respect for truth right away didn't he.
"He established himself as someone with no respect for truth right away didn't he."
I'm fighting with every fibre of my being not to let this settle in as a default assumption, I definitely know some exceptions to this rule, but let's say, in general, I find that people whose identity is based on a lie have a very liberal relationship with the truth.
You are right in that of course, but it isn't my default. My thought on that hangs upon what "not long ago" means. Unfortunately, in the age of hyperbole we have trouble deciding if words are disingenuous. In the grand scheme of humanity's existence, not long ago is different from what people are generally thinking when they hear those words.
Dave, I think Sacha is referring to the three-fifths compromise in America where the country debated whether African Americans were fully human and settled on the idea they were 3/5ths of a human. Natives also didn’t count, as they were seen as “less than human” or akin to other apes due to being “uncivilized.”
Joe, a valid thought but there is room for nuance. Northern/anti-slave states wished to dilute the political power of slave states and reduce the number of Congressmen from those states (based upon census). The slave states would probably have been happy to have slaves counted as whole persons in the census. Ironically, it could be that the anti-slave people who would benefit from that compromise. Was that truly a matter of a less than human idea, or one of political power?
With regard to the native people who were being displaced, what was the ratio of "less human savages" to "soothing conscience" thought? I suspect that many trash ideas are about soothing a guilty conscience.
The book, "Empire of the Summer Moon" is an interesting look at the cultures and behaviors of various tribes, and the political tribes of "Americans" (yeah, I know) and Mexicans.
A bizarre but overpowering thought entered my mind the other day: we are going to have all of the arguments we are having now about whether trans women are women all over again about whether AI/robots are people, People will argue that "AI individuals" are people, too, and have all the same rights as humans. They will be cast as victims, complete with emotions and hurt feelings that some people don't accept them as fully human. "Robot rights are human rights" except they'll have some name for them that sounds human and blurs the line between us and them, like 'non-biological humans' (NHBs).
"People will argue that "AI individuals" are people, too, and have all the same rights as humans."
Yep, I'm pretty sure I've already heard whisperings about this. I guess it'll depend how the financial motivations shake out. Is there money to be made from treating AI as a lifeforms? Does there come a point where it's genuinely intelligent? What are the real-world implications for giving AI rights?
Again, I think'll come down to money. If giving AI rights interferes with the amount of profit that can be squeezed out of it, I don't see the debate going anywhere.
I prefer to reframe the question in terms of transcending the binary distinctions which limit the meaning to be associated with humanity. The question is then usefully challenged by the distinction between human identity and that becoming ever more apparent with respect to AI. Avoiding some abstractions, is the discourse characterizing humanity to be distinguishable from that characterizing AI? Will that of AI, or with it, become "more transcendent"? One way of exploring this is through 3 or more Borromean rings -- effectively braided together -- framing the possibility of "Borromean discourse". This would be intertwined but "not touching" as a form of infinite game (https://shorturl.at/aoO68)
I am going to need to get off my lazy ass and write up the formal list of discredited institutions I have been cataloguing in the back of my mind. It will include The Association for Library Service to Children for stripping Laura Ingalls Wilder's name from a book award that was created and named for her because she depicted racist characters as racist, Yale University for multiple acts of intellectual cowardice, everyone who removed 6 Dr Seuss books from publication and from libraries, and now the American Humanist Association.
Better add the ACLU as well. They now only provisionally defend freedom of speech. It has been "deprioritized."
Yep, they're on my list. Totally captured by the trans agenda and willing to jettison their avowed principles for it, thanks to Chase Strangio et al.
To be fair, Seuss really did have racist stereotypes depicted in some of his books, and it was his own family who decided to stop publishing those specific books, most of which weren't very popular anyway. All the Seuss classics that don't show black people depicted as monkeys are still in publication.
Remember back in 2010, when Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens were at the height of their fame, and it felt like the world was on the precipice of stamping out irrationality for good? I loved Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris especially. Feels like a lifetime ago.
What’s insane is that the extremist trans activists don’t represent the views or lifestyle of ANY of my trans friends, which only makes them feel more alone. But often, those activists get famous/attention for saying that inflammatory stuff. Just like Andrea Dworkin’s brand of radical feminism isn’t representative of women or even the average feminist.
Now we’ve habituated saying the inflammatory stuff as a culture. I think it’s pretty clear social platforms shoulder much of the blame for this hellscape we find ourselves in.
I was upset about the Dawkins fiasco too when it happened and felt it was unfair to him. But now that I revisit it, the tweet truly is a little off.
The problem is comparing these two groups in particular with this framing ignores the obvious and scientific differences between them.
Race isn’t even a scientific category, hasn’t been for generations, while trans is an empirical biological reality caused by a plethora of genetic and hormonal conditions. Sure, you could argue some cis people claiming to be trans are only doing so due to peer pressure, but that’s a tough case to make because there isn’t much quality data on it and estimates are quite hard.
Comparing race to diabetes sounds equally as wrong.
“Rachel Dolezal believes she’s trans-racial, a different race than she was born with. Some people believe they have a pancreas that doesn’t produce enough glucose. If you believe the former, you’ll be vilified, but if you believe the latter, you’ll be cheered. Why? Discuss...”
This sounds like a talk show question, a set-up you’d hear on Jerry Springer.
When you put it like that, it’s obvious what’s wrong with it. Race is a fictional construct designed to enslave and abuse people; diabetes is a biological condition millions of people have. Of course you shouldn’t believe or endorse the former and of course you should believe and endorse the latter. Comparing them is just silly.
As a scientist, especially a biologist, Dawkins should certainly know better, but maybe it was Twitter and he wasn’t viewing it as exactly a dissertation or anything.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if Dawkins hasn’t kept up with advancements in biology, genetics, and endocrinology over the years. We’ve come a long way since his upswing in the 1970s with the Selfish Gene.
I also think debates have come to be weaponized to the point that they can’t be productive anymore, because a debate requires two people—and an audience—all acting and thinking in good faith. And there’s a lot of bad faith floating around.
"What’s insane is that the extremist trans activists don’t represent the views or lifestyle of ANY of my trans friends, which only makes them feel more alone."
Yep, this is one of the many reasons I started writing about this topic. I've seen this same disconnect both in the trans people I know offline, and in the insane racial rhetoric that was at its peak a few years ago. As I've said many times, social media activists almost never truly speak for the people they claim to represent.
As for Dawkins, as far as I can see, the comparison works because what's really being compared here is the unscientific concept of race and the unscientific concept of gender. We can think of it like this:
A trans woman is a male who has gender dysphoria. And because of this, believes he feels like a woman (whatever that even means). He will usually take steps to ease that dysphoria and be perceived as female. But he's not literally female.
Rachel Dolezal is a white person who, let's be generous and say believes she feels like a black person (whatever that even means). She has taken steps tone perceived as black (darkening her skin, etc). But she's not literally black.
A diabetic person isn't trying to be perceived as anything. Nor is a black person, nor is a woman. These aren't matters of belief. There are no steps they take to be perceived as what they are. These are objective facts that everybody can agree on.
I think your analogy would work better if Dawkins had said that "some people believe they have gender dysphoria." No, like being black or female or having diabetes, gender dysphoria is innate. But it doesn't shift you into a different sex category.
So another way to frame Dawkins' question is: if you have gender dysphoria, does that have anything to do with you sex? I think the answer is no.
2. I think this is the problem with the discourse right now, but, of course, it's the internet so lol. The problem is people are lumping "transgender" into one huge category which is a bit like tossing cancer—both benign and malignant, as well as zits, cysts, pimples, goiters, and boils—all into one category and trying to have a conversation about it. You're painting with just way too broad of a brush (not you, the generalized you, as in we all).
So, the only way for the conversation to be tenable is if we begin with some bogus premises, like all trans people are the kind jumping on the bandwagon.
Anyways, love your work. I've been reading since your first Medium hit dropped, Anti-Racism is Becoming Troublingly Racist. Hopefully this gives you a little something to ponder and perhaps you can come up with some new ideas to further the dialogue along.
1. "As for Dawkins, as far as I can see, the comparison works because what's really being compared here is the unscientific concept of race and the unscientific concept of gender. We can think of it like this:"
If your conversation is limited to anime profile pics on X/Twitter, yes. But scientifically, both sex and gender do exist and being transgender has more to do with sex than gender most of the time. I sense a distinction is in order. Two of them, actually.
I think by "unscientific concept of gender..." and "gender dysphoria," what you're referring to is a psychic experience—an immaterial perception of self that conflicts with the material-physical body one was born with. So let's call this "immaterial gender" to be more precise.
This "immaterial gender" is opposed to what I'll call "material sex," referring to sperm/ova, genes, chromosomes, sex hormones, and secondary sex characteristics like phenotypes (breasts, facial hair, etc.). The physical stuff that makes us male-female.
I think the hiccup in your argument is artificially restricting transgender to be purely a concept of "immaterial gender", when, in most cases, it has a lot to do with "material sex."
There's a lot we don't know, but there's a good possibility that transgender is more significantly influenced by physical biology than sexual orientation is, which is pretty damn biologically determined. Left or right-handedness predicts whether a gay man will be top or bottom, birth order predicts sexual orientation, and twin studies have shown that a substantial chunk of what makes people gay, straight, or everything in between is in the genes/biology.
Back to trans people.
When it comes to material sex, you have the classic cases of intersex/hermaphroditism, which often present with ambiguous genitals, like 45,X/46,XY mosaicism and Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome. Many of these people are surgically made into unambiguous males/females at birth and never know it (sometimes the parents don't even know).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45,X/46,XY_mosaicism
https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/condition/persistent-mullerian-duct-syndrome/
But then you have conditions like Klinefelter syndrome, Androgen insensitivity, and Mixed Gonadal Dysgensesis, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klinefelter_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androgen_insensitivity_syndrome#Classification
These aren't the classic cases of intersex, ambiguous genitals and so forth. These people may look perfectly male or female, but on the hormonal, chromosomal, and, or genetic level, something doesn't jibe with the outward presentation.
What I'm driving at here is, I think by limiting the concept of transgender to purely psychic "immaterial gender," ie, mental experience, it's ignoring all of these "material sex" underpinnings that create (or at least influence) feelings of incongruity between mind and body. After all, what is mind if not chemicals and electricity?
It's demonstrably, empirically physical and material and gender dysphoria does have something to do with your sex. This is why I wonder if Dawkins is up to date on biology.
Now, do I believe people hop on the trans bandwagon sometimes because it's cool? Absolutely. But that's not my place to judge. Who am I to say who's experiencing gender dysphoria and who's experiencing a biological tug-of-war on the genetic/chromosomal level? And how would I test my hypotheses?
"When it comes to material sex, you have the classic cases of intersex/hermaphroditism, which often present with ambiguous genitals, like 45,X/46,XY mosaicism and Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome. Many of these people are surgically made into unambiguous males/females at birth and never know it (sometimes the parents don't even know)."
No, these people, in almost every single case, are *already* male or female. Atypical karyotype varations don't mean somebody isn't male or female. Male and female, in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates exclusively to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce. It's vanishingly rare, like 0.002% of people rare, that that design is ambiguous.
But the bigger point is that this has nothing to do with Dawkins' question:
"Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as."
Intersex people are very often conflated with trans people for the purposes of this question (all of the conditions you mention are intersex conditions or DSDs), yet they have basically nothing to do with each other. If Dawkins was asking about intersex conditions, or asking whether the outward appearance of somebody's body was always an accurate predictor of their sex, there might be some interesting nuance to dig into there. But he's asking about people who are *unambiguously male or female* who claim they're literally the opposite.
He's asking whether I become a female if I get breast implants or put on a dress and makeup or even, increasingly, if I do nothing at all. And he's asking why people would be vilified if they didn't take my claim to womanhood seriously. I'm sincerely struggling to see how there's anything but "immaterial gender" in cases like these. What am I missing?
4. What I think is this. None of what I've said here precludes the idea that extremist, overzealous, radical activists can be annoying, make false accusations, and be generally insufferable. I follow your stuff for a reason.
But that doesn't mean we should misrepresent the truth, the evidence, etc.
And while this is just a debate for us, it's a reality for millions of people, so I think it's important to keep them in mind and not misrepresent the situation.
"But that doesn't mean we should misrepresent the truth, the evidence, etc."
I couldn't agree more. It's just that I honestly don't think I am misrepresenting the evidence. I'm trying, to the absolute best of my ability, to represent it accurately. And I don't think, at all, that the trans activist side of the debate is doing that. To their own detriment, as well as the detriment of women and sane trans people.
As I often point out, trans inclusion wasn't an issue until this idea that a man who says he's a woman is a woman. JK Rowling never said a word about it until the topic of selfID came up in Scotland, I'd been watching quietly without feeling the need to say a word. There were common sense safeguards against insincere men and clear, comprehensible language to talk about the issue with. Nobody risked their job by telling the truth.
So yes, I have enormous compassion for the people whose lives are being ruined by this "debate." I think maybe we disagree about who is responsible for most of the damage of the past few years. Again, I saw a great tweet on this point recently (https://twitter.com/TheBasedTS/status/1700992636084232382).
3. "If Dawkins was asking about intersex conditions, or asking whether the outward appearance of somebody's body was always an accurate predictor of their sex, there might be some interesting nuance to dig into there."
This assumes that intersex, transgender, etc. are completely unrelated and can't be related. Again, my very first comment was an example, but there's an abundance of evidence that the experience of gender-sex incongruity has a biological basis.
Genetic basis: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200205084203.htm
Genetic basis: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/
A notable quote: "In this review, we have focused on brain sex differences because of the role that they play in people's health and behavior. Historically, it was believed that such differences were solely due to gonadal hormone secretions. Yet, emerging research is also implicating direct genetic effects."
Brain basis: https://consultqd.clevelandclinic.org/the-brain-and-gender-identity-current-evidence-and-implications-for-practice-podcast/
Brain basis: https://www.newsweek.com/transgender-people-brains-wired-those-gender-they-identify-new-study-shows-939504
It's a holistic system. Monism for the win.
"But he's asking about people who are *unambiguously male or female* who claim they're literally the opposite."
This is why I'm not really bothered by the tweet and said that at the outset. I just said he should know better. By reducing it to just identification and nothing more pretends that all of ^ evidence (and much more) doesn't exist.
I get it, man, it's just a tweet. It's character limited. But it's also like reducing (for lack of a better analogy) bipolar people to "choosing" to be moody.
To answer his question, he'd be vilified because there's no, zero, nada evidence of a genetic or brain structure basis for a desire to be transracial. There never will be because race isn't a real, measurable category (as I said at the outset) and THAT is the purely mental construct with no biological basis. The two aren't analogous which is the problem with the tweet.
"To answer his question, he'd be vilified because there's no, zero, nada evidence of a genetic or brain structure basis for a desire to be transracial."
I've responded to this point (and the rest of this message) in a reply below. But just to pull this point out, there is, at best, extraordinarily weak evidence for a brain structure basis for gender identity.
In fact, this extraordinarily weak evidence only suggests that there are minor average differences in brain structure between trans men and heterosexual cis men. This isn't evidence that a man can feel like a woman. Nor does it explain what feeling like a woman even means.
Can you explore this question? What does feeling like a woman mean? What's your experience of feeling like a man? Do you think it's the same another man's?
2. I'm not sure if the last lines were sincere or not, but here's what I think you're missing. The problem is either with your premises or definitions. This quote deserves its own comment.
"in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates exclusively to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce."
Sure, this is true if you're reading a biology textbook from 1984. But in 2023, it's simply not true.
If it were true, we would have "gender characteristics" instead of "sex characteristics" both primary and secondary. We wouldn't have SEXual dimorphism but GENDER dimorphism. We wouldn't have SEX chromosomes, we'd have GENDER chromosomes.
But please—don't take my word for it (bracketed emphasis mine).
Here it is from the Centers for Disease Control: "An individual’s biological status as male, female, or something else. Sex is assigned at birth and [this part is important] associated with physical attributes, such as anatomy and chromosomes."
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/terminology/sexual-and-gender-identity-terms.htm
The definition of sex from the National Institutes of Health: "A biological category based on reproductive, anatomical, and genetic characteristics, generally defined as male, female, and intersex. Sex is used when describing anatomical, chromosomal, hormonal, cellular, and basic biological phenomena."
https://www.nih.gov/nih-style-guide/sex-gender-sexuality
Here it is from Yale School of Medicine: "In the study of human subjects, the term sex should be used as a classification, generally as male or female, according to the reproductive organs and functions that derive from the chromosomal complement [generally XX for female and XY for male]."
https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/what-do-we-mean-by-sex-and-gender/
Point here: none of these definitions say or allude to "Male and female, in every single animal species, and even in the parts of some plants, relates EXCLUSIVELY to which of the two possible gamete types you produce or have a reproductive system designed to produce."
If you read The Red Queen by Matt Ridley (1994) that's exactly how sex is defined. But that was thirty years go. So much has been discovered since then. The genome wasn't fully sequenced until 2003.
"If it were true, we would have "gender characteristics" instead of "sex characteristics" both primary and secondary. We wouldn't have SEXual dimorphism but GENDER dimorphism. We wouldn't have SEX chromosomes, we'd have GENDER chromosomes."
Wait, what?!! I'm not following this at all! I said that male and female, which are SEX based terms, relate to gamete production. Which they do. I didn't refer to gender at all. This is why I say that transGENDER people have basically nothing to do with interSEX people (and why I keep pointing out how much time we're spending talking about interSEX people when Dawkins' tweet was about transGENDER people). It seems as if we're using the terms sex and gender in completely opposite ways.
But yes, reproductive SEX, as in the trait that all animal species have, relating to reproduction, is based on gamete production. It's the trait that means 100 male humans on a desert island will never produce any offspring. Even if some of the identify as women, even if they strictly adhere to feminine stereotypes, even if they have androgen insensitivity syndrome.
For example, male seahorses give birth (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/seahorse.html). So why do we still classify them as male? Because they produce small gametes. The female seahorse transfers her large gametes into the male brood pouch where he fertilises and carries them. Again, this gamete production distinction is what classifies the sex of all sexually dimorphic organisms.
This idea that our understanding of sex has dramatically changed since 1984 is so bizarre to me. Mainly, what's changed is that the language we use has been so deliberately warped by activists that we're not sure what we're talking about anymore. The CDC definition is an excellent example of this.
Sex is not assigned at birth. This linguistic construction is ideological rather than scientific and should act as a red flag for any information that follows it.
Most obviously, sex is not assigned at birth because it's not assigned *at all*. Sex is an objective fact. It's like saying that skin colour is assigned at birth or the number of fingers and toes is assigned at birth.
Sex can be *observed* at birth, usually trivially easily, by taking a look at the genitals of any animal. Because the genitals (along with chromosomes, cells, hormones, etc.) align, in 99.998% of cases, with the gamete production system of the organism. When the genitals are ambiguous, several other tests can be used to verify sex.
But sex is observable about 7 months *before* birth. A simple pin prick blood test on a pregnant woman can determine the sex of the child (https://www.reliasmedia.com/articles/131632-test-can-determine-fetal-sex-at-7-weeks). And even ignoring that, sex is also observed during an ultrasound many months before birth. The doctor does not, as it's become popular to teach kids, "take a guess."
The sex that the doctor observes doesn't directly impose (or "assign") any gendered stereotypes on a child. But of course, I agree that male/female children are funnelled down separate behavioural tracks in many ways. Liberating children from these gendered expectations would be great. I just don't think the way to do that is to teach them that if you're a boy who likes makeup and Barbie dolls, you're actually a girl.
Following on from the above, there isn't "something else" other than male or female because there is no gamete type other than sperm or egg. It's like saying you can be sighted or you can be blind or you can be something else. Nope, those are your only two options. And though there are gradations (some people, for example, can see even better than what is considered perfect vision), you are still always within one of the two categories.
Again, the information here doesn't represent an upgrade in biological understanding but a downgrade in accurate biological language.
And I promise, this isn't just me being stubborn or closed minded. I'm willing to learn. I have learned a great deal about all of this over the past few years. But nobody has ever discovered a reproductive sex other than male or female. I'm pretty sure this will still be the case in 2064. Unless the aliens arrive by then.
1. I wasn't exactly expecting a debate so I wasn't particularly clear, it was an off-the-cuff comment and suggestion (hence the end). The central points intended were 1. race and sex are not analogous and 2. gender is associated with sex, not totally unrelated and not totally immaterial. I almost dropped a third comment saying race wasn't analogous to sex and that's Dawkins' problem but I didn't want to bombard you.
But! Since you've brought this up, here's what I think is being missed.
"No, these people, in almost every single case, are *already* male or female. Atypical karyotype varations don't mean somebody isn't male or female. Male and female...It's vanishingly rare, like 0.002% of people rare, that that design is ambiguous."
1. These were examples explaining there are intersex people (as defined as people with ambiguous genitals [a commonly used definition]) and then there are people with other conditions that influence sex without ambiguous genitals. There's no universal definition of intersex.
2. Since it was an example, your point is non-sequitur. I didn't say anything about the odds of these conditions.
3. Because I said nothing about the rate of occurrence, whether they're common or not is irrelevant. I think you're assuming I was making the point "these conditions = transgender" which wasn't the point at all.
This is more along the lines of what I was getting to...
"Intersex people are very often conflated with trans people for the purposes of this question (all of the conditions you mention are intersex conditions or DSDs), yet they have basically nothing to do with each other."
Not quite (see comment 2). From the National Institute of Health, a transgender person "is someone who identifies with a gender other than the one that was assigned to them at birth." This is a mental experience.
Intersex is, again from the NIH, "a general term used to refer to individuals born with, or who develop naturally in puberty, biological sex characteristics that are not typically male or female." This is a physical fact about someone's body.
My point was these two aren't equal but they're not wholly unrelated either.
Let's use bipolar as an example.
Hypomania is an episode where someone feels excited, has more energy, an overly happy mood, etc, but it's not enough for most people to notice or to cause hospitalization.
Bipolar is a condition caused by genetics, brain chemistry, and environment that causes severe mood swings between depression and mania or hypomania.
To say that—because hypomania is mental and bipolar is physical—they, "basically have nothing to do with each other," isn't accurate. They have everything to do with one another. I picked hypomania for a reason, but depression works for this exercise too—because people *without* bipolar get depression/hypomania.
They're not synonymous but they're not totally unrelated either. Which brings me back to the central point: that physical, biological events cause mental events. Trying to address either in isolation doesn't tell the whole story.
Bipolar might not be the sole cause of hypomania and (clinical) depression, but it's very clear that things in the brain and the genes cause hypomania and (clinical) depression; just like the aforementioned conditions might not be the *sole* causes of feeling that your gender doesn't fit your biological body. But to say biology has *nothing* to do with it is incorrect.
There's nothing biological that can make someone feel they're a different race like there is with sex. They aren't analogous.
"There's nothing biological that can make someone feel they're a different race like there is with sex. They aren't analogous."
Yes, I agree that sex and race aren't analogous. But again, when we're talking about men who identify as women, we're talking, in 99.998% of cases, about people whose sex is not in question. So while I understand your point about them not being wholly unrelated, the prevalance seems relevant here, no? In discussions about pretty much any topic, you'd consider a continuous appeal to 0.002% of the issue a distraction, no?
The very question of what race somebody is is almost impossible to pin down when you think of it. Just one reason why the concept of race is so stupid. If two people have a child, that child will, in every case, be a different racial mix to either of their parents.
Barack Obama, for example, is considered black. But he has an equal claim to being white (he'd just be in for a world of pain if he ever did😅). So there's actually far better grounds for self-identifying as a particular race than as a particular sex. Because we're all a mixture of the different "races." You've got some African ancestry in you somewhere.
We're all a mixture of the different genders too. Where, by gender, I really mean gendered stereotypes. All of our personalities are a mixture of masculine and feminine stereotypes. Some men are widely considered feminine, some women are widely considered masculine, and until about five minutes ago, nobody thought that these feminine men and masculine women were in the wrong body. In fact, the idea would have seemed regressive and sexist.
So this is why I agree that sex and race aren't analogous. It's *gender* and "race" that are analogous. Everybody is a mixture of all the elements of both of these. And they are both of them externally categorised. Barack doesn't get to say he's white. Rachel Dolezal doesn't get to say she's black. And that's why Dawkins--and I--are asking why men get to say they're women.
But yes, as we used to be reminded by trans activists, sex and gender are different. And nobody, except for the aforementioned 0.002% have any grounds to claim they're a mixture. Sex isn't subjective. It's not based on feelings. I don't feel like a male/man. I AM a male/man. And this is true even if I prefer to wear dresses and makeup. Or even if I decide I want a feminine name. These things don't make me a female/woman. Any more than a woman who *doesn't* do these things becomes a man.
So I think the main point where we're disagreeing is whether there's something biological that makes us feel like we're the opposite sex. I had a look through the links you sent me, and nothing in them suggests this is true.
This paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3030621/) clearly states that "there is no clear support for a genetic basis of transsexualism"
This story (https://www.newsweek.com/transgender-people-brains-wired-those-gender-they-identify-new-study-shows-939504) is based on this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4987404/) that found that the brain structures grouped exactly as you'd expect: female > trans man > trans woman > male. Note, that's a male/female grouping. But the story paints this as evidence that trans women's brains are like women's. It's like saying that if trans women were shorter on average than cis men, that's proof that they're like women.
One of the other studies (sorry, I lost track) didn't think to compare trans women to gay men and instead compared them only to straight men. The thing is, gay people's brains are structured (in the same minor ways) like the opposite sex too (https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14146-gay-brains-structured-like-those-of-the-opposite-sex/). And that's because most gender dysphoric young people just turn out to be gay if they can get through puberty unmedicalised.
Lastly, one of the other studies that found brain structure similarities in trans women and women was looking at the brains of trans women on oestrogen. But oestrogen is known to change brain structures in males. When looking at the brains of gender dysphoric males who were unmedicated, these differences weren't there.
So yeah, again, I'm not nearly as convinced as you that there is a biological component to "feeling like a woman." I don't have the first clue what "feeling like a woman" even means. And nobody has ever been able to explain it beyond regressive stereotypes like "liking makeup and dresses and Barbies." And even if these brain structure differences were consistently detectable, that's a long way from saying they relate to a felt experience of being a woman. Incidentally, I saw a great video on this topic yesterday (https://twitter.com/KnownHeretic/status/1700634899655606746?s=20).
There are several reasons for the persistence of the concept of race that have nothing to do with dominance. 1. It is visually observable down into subsets. 2. DNA tells you about it. 3. Most importantly, people choose to tribalize themselves based upon numbers 1 and 2.
Numbers 1 and 2 are declining thanks to "interracial" procreation but we are a long way from erasure. Number 3 is probably the biggest obstacle, and it persists due to obsession with oppression as if the last fifty years never happened. It leads to the bad faith you mention and the problems that come when more is read into the concept of race than is justifiable.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
" 'No debate' isn’t just a bully tactic, it’s a recipe for ignorance." YES. Thank you. The consequences of shutting down debate are harmful to EVERYONE. And "lived experience" is just another word for "anecdotal evidence" -- just re-packaged to sound like something we should pay more attention to than scientific data.
I highlighted your comment, Steve: "...too many people have forgotten that the purpose of debate is to learn. To share ideas. To understand each other's point of view."
Which is why I don't watch televised debates any more—about anything. I have stayed out of the transgender issue, because I am female/cis/heterosexual/white and a person first. I do my best to treat everyone I meet as a person first. Their self-identification is their business, and I will do my best to respect that and treat them accordingly.
Which is why I don't watch televised debates any more—about anything.
Yep, debates are occasionally illuminating, but in general, the person who is best at debating will win, not necessarily the person who's right.
And yes, I couldn't agree more. When somebody's self-identification is their business, I feel no need to say anything at all. The issue comes when they make their self-identification my business by writing laws and confusing/medicalising children and adjusting the boundaries of women's rights around it. At that point, I think a conversation is necessary.
With regard to backlash to trans, I think it is much more. Trans have become the guidon bearer for the political left and the backlash is happening toward the entire "left". Increasing numbers of liberals are disgusted with what the progressives have done to tarnish the good name of liberalism and are drifting right.
I see that the chatter from liberals who don't want to admit to themselves what the left has become and try to make it all about trans, but I think it is more than that. They instinctively want to view the world thru a "conservative bad" filter and when in agreement with them put weasel words to say, "the asshole I'm agreeing with on this almost sounds sane" because it is more palatable than "my tribe has gone nuts."
https://notthebee.com/article/proof-that-us-culture-is-trending-quickly-to-the-right
"and the backlash is happening toward the entire "left"."
I'm not sure this is true. Or, at least, I don't think the people who think the "entire left" are the problem are any more worthy of taking seriously than the people who think "conservatives bad."
There's a completely appropriate backlash against the extremes of the left (if it's even fair to call these authoritarians the left), which is being driven by plenty of liberals as well as by conservatives. But I don't think the left has "become" the gender extremists any more than the right has "become" the Trumpists and the QAnon believers.
As I always point out, most people are somewhere fairly sane on all of these issues. Most liberals are reasonable. Most conservatives are reasonable. And if they actually understood each other's (and their own) positions, they'd agree far more than they think. The sense of extreme political polarisation is being driven almost entirely by the fringes.
You are correct, but the squeaky wheel gets greased. Politically, people left, and right are happy to assign the loud radical behavior and beliefs to their tribe. Low hanging fruit.
Do I think that most liberals or conservatives are what the radicals would have us believe? No, like you I don't believe that. Here's the rub, they vote for politicians who pander to the radicals even though the majority has a problem with that. Why? Because most voting is against someone or thing. "I can't vote for X because [radical element]."
I often (more often every election) cast protest "no acceptable candidate" write ins. It's just a futile protest, but I think if "no acceptable candidate" was on the ballot for every political office, and if it got the most votes none of the candidates could be on a ballot again it might just solve the problem of voting for the lesser evil. Kick the evils off the ballot until we get good choices.
“ Because most voting is against someone or thing. "I can't vote for X because [radical element]."”
Yep, for better or worse, I think this is a problem the left suffers from more than the right. I wrote, after the 2020 election, that if elections were decided by how many people actively wanted their guy to win, Trump would have won by a landslide.
I’m not going to get into what it says that Trump has so many did-hard supporters on the right, but Biden, it seemed to me, was effectively a protest vote. People voted for him because they wanted Trump to lose. Not because they wanted him to win.
I wish both sides offered better options.
Count me as a disgusted liberal.
Sacha wrote, "Not that long ago, the question was what is a human... and the accepted definition only included white people"
I'm old and lived in the deep South when supervisors felt free to call a black employee a ni**er and never heard even the most racist bigots suggest that only white people are human. He established himself as someone with no respect for truth right away didn't he.
"He established himself as someone with no respect for truth right away didn't he."
I'm fighting with every fibre of my being not to let this settle in as a default assumption, I definitely know some exceptions to this rule, but let's say, in general, I find that people whose identity is based on a lie have a very liberal relationship with the truth.
You are right in that of course, but it isn't my default. My thought on that hangs upon what "not long ago" means. Unfortunately, in the age of hyperbole we have trouble deciding if words are disingenuous. In the grand scheme of humanity's existence, not long ago is different from what people are generally thinking when they hear those words.
Dave, I think Sacha is referring to the three-fifths compromise in America where the country debated whether African Americans were fully human and settled on the idea they were 3/5ths of a human. Natives also didn’t count, as they were seen as “less than human” or akin to other apes due to being “uncivilized.”
Joe, a valid thought but there is room for nuance. Northern/anti-slave states wished to dilute the political power of slave states and reduce the number of Congressmen from those states (based upon census). The slave states would probably have been happy to have slaves counted as whole persons in the census. Ironically, it could be that the anti-slave people who would benefit from that compromise. Was that truly a matter of a less than human idea, or one of political power?
With regard to the native people who were being displaced, what was the ratio of "less human savages" to "soothing conscience" thought? I suspect that many trash ideas are about soothing a guilty conscience.
The book, "Empire of the Summer Moon" is an interesting look at the cultures and behaviors of various tribes, and the political tribes of "Americans" (yeah, I know) and Mexicans.
A bizarre but overpowering thought entered my mind the other day: we are going to have all of the arguments we are having now about whether trans women are women all over again about whether AI/robots are people, People will argue that "AI individuals" are people, too, and have all the same rights as humans. They will be cast as victims, complete with emotions and hurt feelings that some people don't accept them as fully human. "Robot rights are human rights" except they'll have some name for them that sounds human and blurs the line between us and them, like 'non-biological humans' (NHBs).
"People will argue that "AI individuals" are people, too, and have all the same rights as humans."
Yep, I'm pretty sure I've already heard whisperings about this. I guess it'll depend how the financial motivations shake out. Is there money to be made from treating AI as a lifeforms? Does there come a point where it's genuinely intelligent? What are the real-world implications for giving AI rights?
Again, I think'll come down to money. If giving AI rights interferes with the amount of profit that can be squeezed out of it, I don't see the debate going anywhere.
Excellent point, Steve. It's always about the money.
I prefer to reframe the question in terms of transcending the binary distinctions which limit the meaning to be associated with humanity. The question is then usefully challenged by the distinction between human identity and that becoming ever more apparent with respect to AI. Avoiding some abstractions, is the discourse characterizing humanity to be distinguishable from that characterizing AI? Will that of AI, or with it, become "more transcendent"? One way of exploring this is through 3 or more Borromean rings -- effectively braided together -- framing the possibility of "Borromean discourse". This would be intertwined but "not touching" as a form of infinite game (https://shorturl.at/aoO68)