Why do scientists swallow gender ideology?

People who work in STEM often have done no more biology than anybody else, having dropped it in favour of Physics, Maths and Further Maths early on

I've said this before, all (or the vast majority of) the "but X is a scientist and doesn't believe in evolution" scientists that have been quoted at me in discussions about evolution and creationism were always engineers. For a few years the guy that was always brought up in discussions in Germany was someone who worked at the TUV (they test and inspect technical stuff, including cars) making sure that industrial balances were working properly, not sure what makes him an expert in evolution. I bet it's similar in the trans debate.
And often the other STEM subjects look down on biologists, this has changed a little in recent years since biology has become more genetics and lab work with big, shiny, expensive machines rather than "sitting in a field counting birds" as a chemist described it once to me, but there are plenty of "hard sciences' scientists around who don't take biologist all that seriously and often think they know better.

The humanists are all twaw. I know one and I think he does agree it's bullshit. Because he's so into science. But they're very kind to humans so... twaw.

I think that's some of the Alice thing. Course she knows what a woman is.

Anyone, however intelligent, can be irrational in their beliefs. Belief/faith has little to do with intelligence as it is conventionally defined. The most dangerous people are those of high intelligence and eloquence who hold batshit beliefs and proselytise them. IME the more batshit the belief, the more enthusiastic they are. Genderism ticks all the boxes as being completely counterfactual, anathema to common sense and contradictory to lived experience if one has ever physically encountered members of both sexes, including one’s self.

Really? Think rationally for a moment about all the women and girls oppressed around the world by misogynistic religions. The Christian and other traditions that saw women and sex as lesser than men. Saudi Arabia's version of Islam. Catholicism in Ireland. Has transgender ideology really done more harm that millennia of oppressive religions?

Being a member of a religion, misogynistic or not, is not the same as a belief in God. Religions are man-made institutions with their own dogmas, rituals, traditions, etc. They do not represent internal faith.

There is no fixed definition of God that can be refuted or proven. Unlike the facts of sex.

Faith in a higher power is entirely subjective, as those who do have faith would never contest. But love is also subjective. I'd say most scientists know love, and nobody calls them irrational for doing so. Having strong, unprovable feelings one way or the other is not what makes a person irrational. Equating a belief in God with a belief in TRAdogma is a false analogy.

There are actually millions of scientists today (not just Christians) who believe in a higher power (called God), and always have been, and are still perfectly rational. It does not come even close to a belief in trans-ideology.

A belief in God and in science are not mutually exclusive. The two can exist very comfortably together in one person. A belief in transideology and a belief in biological fact are just that.

“we're still fighting to get small sized PPE and get the dinosaurs out of the 1960s attitude to women in the workplace”

I worked in heavy industry in Canada and had PPE to fit my small size in the 1980s. There were quite a few female engineers over the years who got on with the men just fine. Men respect good workmanship and loathe whining. Over the years a younger generation of women have gradually moved in to become operators alongside the men. The women give as good as they get. The factory pays better than dental assistant. If there is a 60's dinosaur vibe whatever that is, it doesn't phase these women.

Hmmm interesting

I did science at university. I was very surprised when I realised that one of my lecturers was a strong Christian!

From the word go I've not accepted that anyone can change sex, that you can 'feel like' or know you are male or female on the inside because how does anyone know how the opposite sex feels?

The whole thing doesn't stand up to any logic. And is deeply regressive.

So no I don't understand why so many scientists are twaw.

Of course many branches of science have always been very sexist. Men are men whatever their jobs. And there has been an attitude that this is for men. What are you doing here?

Talking to a bloke at work recently I realised that he strongly identifies as and with the nerdy types who (stereotypically, but often not in reality) are seen as outside the norm, different, etc

So I think it's not surprising that male science types will look at tw /GNC men and feel kinship as outsiders.

Of course this kinship is because they know they are male.

Why the women do it I have no idea. Protecting themselves probably

Belief in anything that can't be proved is odd amongst supposed scientists who surely have to provide evidence for all their work - so I'm bemused that any of them believe in gender ideology, God or any religion, or fairies at the bottom of the garden come to that tbh - makes me doubt their intellectual powers

Intellectual cowardice.
Its such an easy lie to tell.
And you get rewards for telling it, and you're so sure you won't get caught out in a situation where the lie betrays that you know the truth.

People who say it do so because they're rewarded for it. They've sold their integrity for peer approval.

Science is a very wide field.

People who work in STEM often have done no more biology than anybody else, having dropped it in favour of Physics, Maths and Further Maths early on.

My engineering husband would be quite happy for someone to cobble together some sort of a facsimile of a woman and then argue the toss for ever as to why it is a valid concept because it fits the criterea on a list.

Agree it’s driven by fear a lot of the time, especially among younger scientists.

Also this:

Not all scientists are good scientists, not all science is good science.

It’s worth remembering that science is, and always has been, deeply political.

Because they’re afraid not to. Afraid they’ll lose their jobs, their income, possibly their homes. It’s a shame that people feel they can’t speak openly without fear of this.

Alice Roberts had a massive public spat with her mother a couple of years ago. Her mother denounced her in The Times

Her Mum said that Alice, as a leading Humanist, was being a massive hypocrite sending her children to a church school. I read an interview where Alice said she hadn't agreed with her mother for 30 years.

All I can say is that Prof Roberts is unlikely to change her position any time soon!

I remember hearing her wax lyrical about the wonder of female anatomy (esp pelvic expansion during pregnancy and birth, and the shared history of childbirth through our maternal ancestors) not that long after she had her own children. She knows.

So when she came out with the clownfish argument on Twitter, I lost all respect for her. It's self-serving bad faith.

Perhaps she has actually convinced herself that her specious arguments are valid, but no way would she present a programme on female-sexed anatomy now.

That's a really interesting way to put it PermanentTemporary. Hadn't thought about it like that before.

This is why I was so disappointed in Alice Roberts. She of all people...

Because it's easy to go so far with a thought, reach a point you are happy with, and stop. To argue the thought further on, there has to be something you are not happy about.

1. I accept that my mother, my sister and my friend Ella are women. I've never questioned this or seen their bodies.
2. Nobody has ever questioned my sex when I stated what it was.

1. My friend Dawn says she's a woman.
2. Sex as a social factor is self identified [see earlier conclusion].
3. Anyone who questions Dawn's sex is unscientific because they have contradicted my evidence-based conclusion.
4. They are questioning her sex purely on the basis of her appearance, which is just like being racist or sexist towards women who aren't pretty.
5. My friend Dawn is upset.
6. These people who question Dawn's sex are unscientific bullies.

The missing thought is to identify whether sex really is a social factor or whether there is something else to it. But usually instead of going back to the point early in the train of thought and question the underpinning rationale of the conclusion, they retrofit further points to avoid having to do that. Such as, sex is only social because clownfish.

I was comparing those issues to religious belief, not really TWAW.

I think "TWAW" is just obviously foolish. Some religious beliefs are also imo obviously foolish, but others are up for debate just as "free will" would be.

We treat other people as being "morally responsible" all the time. I don't think it's just a fiction that we all agree to play along with because it's socially useful. No, many of us believe it's real.

I wasn't impolite, I just pointed out that it's not rational to say that because of a personal experience one has incontrovertible proof that god (or whatever) exists.

Zinco, do people believe in free will and moral responsibility? Those are huge theoretical concepts and they've been up for debate since the Greek philosophers. They're open-ended discussions.

They are very different from a belief that, for example, humans can change sex or that because someone says they are a woman they are a woman (TWAW). Those things are easy to refute. Free will is an open-ended discussion.

I was pointing out that you had been impolite to someone admitting to a personal faith. Obviously I was so subtle that it has sailed over your head.

I find the silence of people like Ben Goldacre on this issue depressing but not surprising

When you can replicate your experience in a way we can all experience it and assess the evidence I'll reconsider. I have friends, by the way, who hold religious beliefs and happily describe themselves as irrational.

I agree with you that claimed religious experience is hardly a strict proof of anything; obviously for one thing you can have followers from different and contradictory belief systems all claiming to have "proof" from religious experience. So trust the Buddhist or the Mormon or the evangelical Christian?

That said, there is no hard proof for many of our common beliefs, like e.g. a belief in free will and moral responsibility. (OK, many people would simply deny those things, but still.) Or a belief in an external world outside of mind. (No way to check on that without begging the question, and yet it's a near universal confident belief.) Or a belief in various supposed "human rights".

So I think that some people exaggerate the irrationality of religious belief. For a lot of people, being non-religious is just their own brand of conformity to prevailing fashion.

Presumably fear plays a massive part. Everyone can now see what happens to women heretics who do not conform to the prescribed beliefs or language so they protect themselves by ignoring their scientific knowledge and repeating what they know to be unscientific.

Depressing.

No I'm not. You can believe what you want and talk about what you want. You can believe people can change sex, you can believe lesbians can have penises, you can believe that there's a loving god watching over us, you can believe in baby-eating extra-terrestrial lizards cunningly disguised as the royal family...

Can you not see that you're doing to me what the TRAs did to JKR? People can believe what they want. What they can't do is expect anyone/ everyone else to agree and go along with it. We're all entitled to our own opinions.