The Skeptic Community's Blind Spot for Gender Theory

By ‘continental philosophy’ I’m more talking about philosophies that emerged from France in the last 50 years and which, to be honest, are held in higher regard in the US than in France itself. I’m not talking about earlier perspectives like German Idealism, etc.

And I think you are right about English departments disseminating this stuff rather than philosophy departments. English Lit seems to be a sponge for ideas that have lost purchase in their original disciplines. You won’t find Marx taught in most economics classes despite it being rooted in economics; you won’t find Freud taught (other than in passing) in most psychology courses. But Marxism and Psychoanalysis are still taught in English Literature classes as if they are still relevant.

I'm only posting again to object to the labelling of all continental philosophy as pomo bullshit

It really, really isn't. A lot of continental philosophy is the absolute opposite of that. (I'm saying that as a huge Hegel fan)

The behaviour of some philosophers in this has shocked me deeply, but I still think that they aren't the primary ones driving the postmodernism stuff. The primary subjects who have pushed postmodernism are things like English Literature. In a lot of English departments they indoctrinate people in postmodernism and they never discuss or critique it.

I agree, and as a person who has certain purely subjective, if you like "faith based" beliefs founded in my personal experience which have brought me into conflict with "sceptics" before, I find their TWAW faith quite amusing.

They are hiding in the God of the Gaps argument, basically.

I'd be the first person to accept that people have experiences which seem to be outside the material sphere if it weren't for all the obvious misogyny and piss takers in this movement, which along with the lack of any coherent thought or basis in science have convinced me that there really is nothing to it.

Embarrassed for those right thinking "sceptics" that can't or won't see it.

Stephen J Gould used to talk about ‘Non-overlapping magisteria’ to delineate different fields of knowledge, eg science and religion.

I always thought that was a cop-out - there are certain claims that religions make that are absolutely testable, such as the age of the Earth - but I think that’s what’s happening in the skeptical movement.

Some people just aren’t natural materialists, and there’s a faith-based gap that they need to fill.

Trans-ideology fills that gap. It’s a way of allowing some kind of belief beyond the physical into their lives. It’s not an eternal soul, it’s an equally insubstantial ‘gendered’ essence. And it’s inextricably linked with notions of good and evil. People who don’t believe in it aren’t just wrong, they are evil.

Roberts is clearly avoiding dealing with it. Anyone who has spoken out knows what follows. Roberts knows it too and wont risk it. There is no way she believes that TWAW. Hardly anybody does, but they either think we’re talking about post-op transsexuals who are a tiny minority, or as someone said upthread, they do not/will not align themselves with radical feminism. If they do, there is a real price to be paid. It’s always been so and very few men in particular have ever made that leap. Elites don’t give up their privileges voluntarily.

That book review is horrific. There's definitely a problem among a lot of liberals as regards sex in general. Because religion tends to be anti-sex, some people think that any ethics regarding sex is religious. How they square this with #MeToo is anyone's guess[.

Yes exactly.

This is a very useful issue for separating the wheat from the chaff, however – you can instantly discover whether or not someone is capable of critical thought. True, a disappointing number of people one had previously assumed to be intelligent fail the test. But at least you know. It's quite a revelation.

Incidentally, though we are talking about trans ideology here, that book review also ties the skeptic community to ‘kink’.

In fact, I first heard the term ‘kink shaming’ in the context of criticism of Christina’s book.

Plus there was Richard Carrier’s polyamory, which he was quite open about on his FTB blog but forgot to mention to his wife, and his solicitation of prostitutes (again on his blog) whom he wanted to talk dirty to him.

I don’t think we have much of this in the skeptic movement on this side of the Atlantic but America is a lost cause. It’s pro-trans, pro-kink, pro-polyamory and pro-sex work all the way.

What the fuck that has to do with mocking UFOs and Bigfoot, I don’t know.

Final thought: I first heard of Danielle Muscato through their appearance at a Skepticon event where Muscato was acting as PR for the autistic student who had kept on filming a student protest when the lecturer leading the event called for ‘a bit of muscle’ to shift him. Muscato took the stage with their client, then turned on him, demanding he denounce his ‘white privilege’ before the audience.

That’s an autistic student denounced by his own PR agent and reduced to tears in front of a jeering audience of ‘skeptics’.

Cheerful potato. That bloke has made a third video now on sport. I haven't seen them but it sounds like in this one he finally doesn't capitulate to the twaw crowd.

I wonder whether some of this in the atheist/sceptic community is because its mostly American (from what I can tell) and the culture war there seems even more tribal. People write 'when I came out as conservative' blogs, and the situation as described above - I am clever and good so must be right, not like the thick evil other lot - is even stronger.

The book is called Bending by Greta Christina, who also blogged at FreeThoughtBlogs, but who later moved on to The Orbit, I think. The blurb describes it as being:

Greta Christina’s erotic stories are written to get you hard and wet — and to change the ways you think about sex. Be forewarned — stuff happens here that’s borderline consensual. Or not at all consensual. These are dirty, kinky stories about shame, about pain, helplessness and danger, reckless behavior and bad, bad ideas….

‘Not at all consensual’ sex. I wonder if there’s a four letter word for that?

I think if you have any doubts about Myers’s misogyny you should google his own account of how he fended off an accusation of rape by keeping his accuser occupied so he could get his version of the story to his administration first, or of how he won’t ever allow himself to be alone with a female student in case the same thing happens again. Also his enthusiastic review of an anthology of rape porn that can be found on Amazon.

Btw, Maria M. wrote about this some time ago: www.peaktrans.org/truth-is-the-new-hate-speech/

I don't even believe PZ Myers really thinks TWAW - he's a biologist FFS. I just think he's a misogynistic jerk who gets off on the adulation he gets from the cult for standing with them, which means blocking and abusing decent sceptics like Andy Lewis, Maria Mclachlan and her partner Alan Hennessy.

There are unfortunately plenty of handmaidens in the so-called sceptic community who will block anyone challenging them at the drop of the hat. Petra Boynton is probably the most high profile UK one and I've seen the "leader of the skepchics" (cringe) Rebecca Watson, who I spent a lot of time defending during 'elevatorgate', mocking 'terfs'.

I'm sick of the lot of them. Same for Humanists_UK, which ought to rename itself 'Men's Rights UK' AFAIC.

I also think that trans-inclusive skeptics have the backing of the ‘liberal’ media.

The trans-skeptics would have the backing of the ‘conservative’ media but they don’t want it because they consider theirselves liberal.

Their only alternative to the MSM would be social media, and we’ve seen how that goes.

Rational thought has co-existed with sexism for a very, very long time. Marriage Bars at the BBC and the Civil Service lasted until the 1940's. (1970's for the Foreign Office). Only a few Oxbridge colleges admitted women till the 1970's. So much easier to talk about philosophy when you have somebody at home to deal with the children, and so much easier to get a job when you don't have to compete with half the population.

I think we are caught between an older generation who took their wives for granted and a younger generation who takes their rights for granted.

I don’t want to go Godwin but academics seem to be in the position as under the doctrines of Aryan Science or Lysenkoism. Even if they don’t believe in it they have to tailor their research so it won’t be denounced by others who probably don’t believe in it either.

But this time there doesn’t seem to be anywhere for dissidents to flee to.

So glad to see this thread. I’ve followed skepticism for years and I discovered about a year ago that mainstream skepticism is total trans agenda....couldn’t believe it. There have been some bitter arguments.

I do not really know why. They should be all over the cod science and feelz are more important than reality like a rash.

I totally agree. I'm just saying that just because they bill themselves as the home of unemotional, cool calm rationality doesn't mean they actually are. They should be, by their own lights, but they aren't.

I think it’s like those ‘perception filters’ in Doctor Who or the Someone Else’s Problem (SEP) fields in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. There are things so alien your mind just won’t focus on it.

The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.

I don't think people keep quiet because they support gender theory. I think they keep quiet because they don't want abuse.

It's this. We all know that the TRAs have conducted a systematic campaign of labelling GC people as "haters" who want them "dead" etc.

That we are in a world where universities are banning even a discussion of women's rights issues is shocking.

I think there are True Believers in the skeptic community like PZ Myers, who genuinely seem to think TWAW, but for the most part I think there’s a reluctance to engage.

And I don’t think it’s about sparing feelings either. We’ve never been shy of saying there’s no Heaven, even in the presence of grieving parents. We shouldn’t be afraid of saying Little Jimmy is a boy any more than we should be afraid of saying that one day he’ll just be worm food.

I’d take the Anglo-American analytic tradition over Continental Pomo bullshit any day.

I totally agree. I'm just saying that just because they bill themselves as the home of unemotional, cool calm rationality doesn't mean they actually are. They should be, by their own lights, but they aren't.