Royal Society of Biology - biological sex is transphobic

The link in the OP still works, still shows the RSB’s accusation that stating facts and basic biology is being ‘transphobic’.

Also thanks for the link re Baroness Nicholson tweet, FindTheTruth - if you scroll down the thread someone appears to have has screenshotted the bio of the RSB’s twitter account manager, describing herself as ‘young but authorised’.

So, this doesn’t look like a rogue tweet.. more an expression of the RSB’s equality and diversity policy and corporate culture that follows from that.

I hope they are getting a lot of feedback from their members about how unacceptable this is, even if their management team think it’s fine.. it’s really not.

I hadn’t heard that. What? When? Why? How?

Yep Fair click the link on the first isle - def still there

Is the tweet still up there? I couldn’t see it.

Baroness Emma Harriet Nicholson recommends contacting the chair
twitter.com/tibby17/status/1314648055594078209

Ha I didn't even notice that! I don't know if it's the only place, to be fair - I just found the first relevant links. I know she's written a lot of other articles, probably some more recent. She's written quite a bit for Areo, also for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Quillette. Here's something she wrote on Medium - medium.com/@heyingh/grievance-studies-goes-after-the-scientific-method-63b6cfd9c913

Am I the only one seeing the irony in the fact that the only place that will host Heather Heyting's complaints about the left being science-denialist is... a right-wing, climate science denialist website? You couldn't make it up.

The world is going fucking mad.

Some info here on one of the #shutdownstem campaigns - www.shutdownstem.com/

Comment on this movement from Heather Heying here - www.thegwpf.com/heather-heying-the-post-modern-left-is-destroying-freedom-of-thought-and-science/

Also more discussion between Heather and her husband on this podcast - open.spotify.com/episode/0QQVNt6ROtOimwes7Aor0h

BLM have also been trying to 'shut down stem' for quite some time, and having some success

I hadn’t heard that. What? When? Why? How?

I agree with pp saying this is more than backlash and misogyny, and that it's an attack on enlightenment values. It's not just TRAs who've come for science, either. BLM have also been trying to 'shut down stem' for quite some time, and having some success. Universities and organisations are submitting to all kinds of demands and propagating an ideology that spells their own destruction.

It must be like when at the height of the bomb scares in the city, some dingbat visitor left his briefcase under someone’s desk in the main office.

We were all standing around it - looking at it ‘you deal with it’ ‘no you deal with it’ ‘no I’ll get into trouble opening someone else’s case’ No - what if it it goes off....’

(We stupidly opened it and doing it contained someone’s lunch).

‘You tell them to delete it’ ‘no you, it’s your department’ ‘now way, have you seen how mean some people can get’ ‘just pretend you haven’t seen it and it might just go away’.

NRatched I was teaching at the time and a lot of my students thought the same - that there'd been some sort of medical breakthrough.

I can’t believe that tweet is still up.

NRatched.

But of course the obfuscation of language is deliberate and intended to confuse/stop people spotting outrageous levels of what-the-fuckery.

Years back, there was a 'pregnant man' all over the press. And I (very stupidly, though I of course knew only women could get pregnant) actually believed science had done something fucking amazing and managed to override biology in a fantastic way. Something that would really be something you imagine would always be science fiction, but no, we did it!

I was most embarrassed when it was explained to me that this was (of course) a female person, albeit one who dressed in a more masculine way and might have had 'hormone treatment' to 'look more like a man'. Seemed so fucking obvious once it was explained, and of course I knew only females gestate, but my god, I was swept up min the 'amazingness' of it all

Mind, this was long before coming to this topic as such, and of course those who are immersed in it everyday cannot really use the ignorance excuse.

Nothing that’s great you contacted them and I’m glad if anything I posted was useful.

I’m wondering when and how the RSB will comment or reply to all this. I wonder if they are somehow hoping that if they just stay quiet that criticism from members and the public will pass and they can just carry on as they are... perhaps not appreciating that this just one instance where the fundamental contradiction and cognitive dissonance in their set up has been noticed.

This contradiction and their authoritarian attempt to stop the contradiction being pointed out publicly, can only continue to cause problems for them, as it will do for every organisation that has to deal in sexed human reality as part of their remit. They will have to think about it sooner or later.

From the Society's web page".

"Chartered Biologist status (designated by the postnominal CBiol) provides a benchmark for bioscientists working in a vast and continually growing array of settings. ...

Chartered Biologist is a professional registration and is not an academic qualification.

So. Thick as.....members joining.

When some UK scientists lose their jobs/funding due to Brexit, I hope it's these ones.

Get Woke, go broke.

ChattyLion I have quoted your excellent post upthread in my email to RSB. I'm greatly looking forward to their response

I agree - depressingly enough - that this is not just an intern, but symptomatic of a much deeper rot. Also - 24 hours on and it's not been taken down. This is clearly sanctioned higher up in the Society.

I'm involved in a much smaller learned society in a different discipline whose day-to-day business is run by two paid staff and three unpaid volunteers from the academic community. Four of the five put pronouns in their emails and think trans rights are pretty much the next great big equalities battle the Society should work for.

They work with a wider governing body and the Society represents several thousand members - some of whom I know feel very differently. But there it is - those at the top set the agenda, they are fully TWAW, and they've employed a staff who'll willingly execute it.

Oh, and if that's not depressing enough - the team are all women too.

Ah, great, I've to teach my kids sex ed as they missed it during lockdown. I'll get that printed off right away, ta CandyStripe.

Have you seen this on Twitter?

Science is a social activity, carried out by humans who are subject to exactly the same biases and dubious motivations (fame, money, pats on the back from one's peers, going into a field with the intention of proving one's pre-existing prejudices are right) that any other human activity is. I say that as a working research scientist with nearly 20 years of post-doc experience behind me.

So it's not surprising that science occasionally gets co-opted by politics, religion or other ideologies. (Think Lysenkoism in Soviet Russia, for example).

Ultimately, if you're cutting your scientific cloth to fit your ideology, the tension between the resulting "theory" and the real world will become so great that the pseudo-science collapses ("eppur si muove"), but it frequently takes a while.

So it's not surprising - sad, but not surprising - when this sort of idiocy gains traction. Gender ideology is a secular religion, with all the trappings: priesthood, sacred castes, punishment for heresy and for apostates, purity spirals.

I have a couple of degrees and postgrads as well as professional qualifications. And I know FA about a few things your think I’d know about...

Aye but where from? They will be asking for it back...

From a really good university that's strong in the subject. But sadly even with a high quality university education it's being displaced by #genderwoowoo.

I have known someone (a member of the Wee Frees) who did a PhD at one of the old Scottish universities so she could argue creationism with the authority of a PhD from a reputable university behind her. She was quite open about that once she had got the place.
I also know a lot of biologists who have no interest whatsoever outwith their own narrow field of research.