Richard Dawkins says trans activists 'bullied' JK Rowling for standing up for women's rights

Arrant is a recognised variant spelling: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/arrant

The approach by Nature to the sex binary has been heavily criticised: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/09/04/the-science-journal-natures-goes-woke-claiming-that-both-sex-and-gender-are-nonbinary/

This! Do it Dawkins!

There's an interesting piece about the historicity (or otherwise) of Jesus here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5x4SUZZrHuKcjVBMmR6THZiV1E/view

I don't think so. Dawkins has read the Bible and recommends it as a piece of literature, too.

@PorcelinaV

Whilst Aquinas was undoubtedly highly intelligent, his argument was, to reduce it, These things are beyond my ken, therefore, God did it.

Kucinghitam

Well, sorry to drag you into it, I just remember your refutation of it in Another Place. Anyway, @Sunnava has done the necessary!

I find the Paradox Institute the best source for this.
https://www.theparadoxinstitute.com/read/what-are-sexes

But I don't think there has been a peer-reviewed rebuttal of those infamous articles. There is a reason for that. Scientific journals do not publish many rebuttals to flat earther's claims either.

I feel the same about gender ideology.

No, I haven't read the entire back catalogue of Judith Butler. I've read enough to conclude that it's all a crock of shit.

I've read enough of Wikipedia and the NHS and the WHO websites which talk about gender and gender identity, completely fail to explain in even basic terms what either of these things are, say that they are different to biological sex and then immediately conflate them with biological sex, and talk about things being assigned at birth.

Sorry but if you talk about things being assigned at birth, why should I take you seriously? We all know sex isn't assigned at birth, that's why nearly all parents these days know the sex of their children before they are born. And since gender is vaguely defined as socially constructed norms and behaviour and expectations, if you are "assigning" any of those to a newborn baby who doesn't even know what a girl or a boy is or which one it is, you are the problem here.

So until someone can explain, in simple terms that a child could understand (because apparently children have innate gender identities and are capable of understanding these things which is why trans activists want this stuff to be taught in primary schools) WHAT gender is, and WHAT gender identity is, and WHY anyone should actually care, without resorting to stereotypes which just make you look like an actual old fashioned sexist who has time travelled from the 1950s, I don't actually need to give your ideology any additional time and attention to dismiss it as complete rubbish.

As an atheist, and also someone who does not have a gender identity, I consider that there is far more likelihood that God actually exists than it is that gender identity is real and innate and everyone has one.

They're not staying in their lane. They're telling actual biologists that biological sex isn't real/binary/immutable, and actual women that we don't understand what a woman is.

They believe every lane is their lane, despite not even having a coherent grasp of their own lane.

But the problem with this is that conversations about women's rights are reframed as conversations about trans rights.

We see it all the time with JKR.

She makes a statement about women's rights. Something that shouldn't be controversial, such as, "it's dehumanising to refer to us as menstruators", or "male rapists shouldn't be housed with vulnerable female prisoners", or "female rape survivors deserve single sex support", and what she has said is twisted and reported as a statement about trans rights, specifically that trans people should not have certain rights.

Can we shut up about trans rights for a nanosecond and focus on women's rights? Because JK Rowling is talking about women's rights, and as a woman, she is absolutely qualified to talk about that, because she is a member of the group in question.

Same with Sarah Summers and Allison Bailey.

The only way you can get away with saying that a woman isn't qualified to talk about women's rights is by pretending that the topic of discussion is trans rights. But it isn't, not really. And to the extent that it is, we're talking about a conflict of interests between two groups, which means that both groups should have the right to express themselves.

I believe that trans rape survivors should have access to support. Of course I do. And I believe that trans women should be safe in prison, and when using public toilets and changing rooms.

But trans activists aren't campaigning for trans people to have those things for themselves. If they were, I would support them. They are saying that women should not have these things if they exclude people who are male but believe they identify as women. They are expressly placing trans people's identities, rights, safety and dignity above women's. And then saying that any woman who isn't OK with that is a bigot.

The phrase is “arrant nonsense”. Google it, why don’t you?

Thank you for making this argument far better than I could.

And people buy these books and read these books despite apparently knowing pre purchase that he has no idea? Who is the dumb one?

I bought one of his books once, I found it impenetrable. I never bought another, not even from the charity shop.

FWIW I wouldnt buy your book either.

Still glad he has said what he has about jkr

I bloody love RD. Wonderful fellow.

The person in the article was a chimera. It's not unknown and there are probably more about than we think. Two embryos, or is it blastocysts(?) joining together early in pregnancy. Articles like this don't actually help the cause of sex being a spectrum, as there is clearly a medical reason for a person having a body containing both XY and XX chromosomes. But functioning ovaries, womb etc will clearly indicate female.

I'm interested in @EdgeOfACoin 's answer to this one, too.

The starting assumption of a "real historical Jesus" appears to take the Bible as a credible source, which is hotly debatable.

The other main primary sources (Josephus and Tacitus) are both written more than a century after Jesus died, and only discuss the fact that other people from generations before were talking about a wandering preacher (of which there were many). Also, there seems to be good evidence that those sources were altered after the fact, and may not be at all reliable.

Note from an easily distracted pedant: the arrant vs errant thing is fascinating, actually - google it, and then verify in the OED. Arrant was originally a variant spelling of errant, but their meanings in practice have now diverged somewhat, so that arrant is worse than errant. Can't really blame the speech to text for getting the wrong one, if it did, and it probably doesn't matter much, I expect either would work in context!

Emma Hilton is your best bet…

https://www.womentalkback.org/amp/emma-hilton-sex-denialists-have-captured-existing-journals-we-are-dealing-with-a-new-religion

https://www.peaktrans.org/sex/

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11845-020-02464-4

Was that directed at my last post?

@SinnerBoy I suspect, given the circular and restricted definitions of "acceptable" rebuttals as posted above, that a mere middle-aged-partially-sentient-support-biped with self-declared qualifications, writing a post on a talk forum, will also not be considered "acceptable".

It's a Very Neat Trick: get mainstream "acceptable" Good Media (including formerly robust scientific journals) captured, get unqualified TRSOH activists to write obfuscatory pseudoscientific shite in them, ensure that nobody on TWSOH is allowed to write in the same journals/media and then crow that only Bad Media and silly unreliable blogs are reporting on this.

OK - I have tried to find a rebuttal / critique of that Nature article but all I can find is blogposts and similar things... can anyone recommend me anything from a scientific journal - ie, like Nature?