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

It's not a given that Dawkins' former fan club will be swayed by his views on this.

When he was trending on Twitter fir his exchange with Monty and subsequent signature of that declaration of women's rights, an awful lot of toys were thrown by left wing woke bros who idolised Dawkins in his God delusion days and couldn't believe he had betrayed them like this.

Who knew? A man whose academic background is in evolutionary biology and who doesn't believe in God or other deities also doesn't believe in the magic gender fairy who gives us all sexed souls which usually but don't always match our sexed bodies.

Almost as surprising as a survivor of male violence against women who wrote a series of books about bravery and selflessness and personal sacrifice for the good of the rest of society not agreeing that men should be allowed into women's prisons and rape crisis centres just because it's what they want.

RosaBonheur,

I'm not defending the new approach, ie progressivism. I see myself as a classic liberal, more or less, and I don't like what's happened at all, because it takes away the role of reasoning, and implies that people who aren't in group x can't truly empathise or understand those who are in group x. That leaves nothing but a power struggle which ultimately ends badly for everyone.

You are allowed to speak if you're speaking on behalf of a recognised oppressed group. So stale pale males like Starmer, Davey, Blunt, Jones and Billy Bragg et al get heard anyway. Bailey and Summers don't get heard because, regardless of their own backgrounds and traumas, they aren't of the correct minority group, ie, trans.

If it were really the case that only the group being oppressed were qualified to comment on the subject, men would listen to women about womanhood, misogyny and sexism. But they don't.

I can only agree with this.

But I think it highlights another thing: there is a hierarchy of victimhood, and the logic goes that trans people outrank women, so when there is an overlap of groups, trans women trump biological women. I am not defending this - just trying to explain what I see as the theory's own logic.

I'm glad, because my stale male pale husband values the opinion of atheist scientists like Dawkins more than his own wife. This will influence a lot of "rationalists" who would rather poke their own eyes out than agree with anything the Daily Mail would agree with.

What is “errant” nonsense? Is it worse than arrant nonsense?!

What are you talking about? The word is 'errant', not 'arrant'. Google it or look it up in a dictionary if you don't believe me.

Is this really true though?

When it comes to gender we have stale pale males like Keir Starmer, Ed Davey, Crispin Blunt and Owen Jones telling women that trans women are women so we need to shut up and make room for them in our spaces.

People like Allison Bailey (a black lesbian), and Sarah Summers (a female rape survivor) are not pale stale males by any stretch of the imagination, but they are being cast in the role of the oppressor and told their opinions don't count because they're not part of the minority being oppressed.

If it were really the case that only the group being oppressed were qualified to comment on the subject, men would listen to women about womanhood, misogyny and sexism. But they don't.

I think it's more just a case of "heads I win, tails you lose" with these people. JK Rowling is dismissed as a white cishet billionaire and a right wing extremist, despite being an entirely self-made, former single mother on benefits and survivor of sexual abuse who has been a famous supporter of the Labour Party.

@Sunnava
I guess it's that article. In my defence, I was sent it by a friend who knows I have (in her opinion) unsound views on gender.

I shall google the panning.

I’m trying my best not to be triggered here, but that infamous Nature article you linked (one that cited a PhD student and a TRA gender clinic activist as its primary scientific sources) was SOUNDLY criticised, discredited and rightfully viewed as nonsense by every scientist I know, with its incorrect descriptions of DSDs as a spectrum. People with DSDs (formerly called intersex) are always either male or female due to being mammals. Even the chimerism described in that article refers to the rare chimerism of individual humans in uterine environments, which again is no evidence of a spectrum.

The equally unscientific (and grad-student-penned) Scientific American article also bandied about as “proof” of sex-as-spectrum conflates gonochoric mammalian species (which is every single one of them) with teleost fish and lizards and plants: not a biologically sound approach. No biologist is arguing that there cannot exist more variability in other non-mammalian animals or plants. Your assertion that “there is some proof that sex is a spectrum” does not, and never will be, applied to mammals.

Nearly all non-mammal animals, eg. reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, invertebrates, are also gonochoric with two sexes only. A fair few plants are, too. Even in non-mammal animals where sex-change mechanisms exist, there is compartmentalisation of structures to avoid self-fertilisation, and plants that do this also have specialised adaptations.

Moreover, self-fertilising plants and clownfish have sweet eff-all to do with transgender and DSD issues. Humans are a mammalian animal.

In mammals, THERE IS NO SEX SPECTRUM.

That hurts my head so much that I need a sit down.

Their inability to explain this annoys me, but all least they're staying in their lane. So a bit different from Dawkins. Perhaps I'm easily annoyed.

he doesn't understand gender

Nobody understands gender. We're re doing the middle ages where all hell breaks loose on you if you do not show vigorous committment to and servicing of the faith, which will be explained to you by very special priests with a lot of power, in ways that serve them and in language that means they're entirely in charge at all times. Heretics will be burned.

I see though that here's yet another person just not pure enough to be listened to.

It's like the unicorn accountant. Somewhere out there, gambolling in the mists, is that rare beast: someone sufficiently pure that when they speak someone doesn't immediately start wittering about "but they said that... and did that.... and sneezed in a suspicious way.... and smell because of that..... so nothing they say can be listened to and if you say you agree with them then you smell too! So ner."

Would you say the same about the experts in gender, who can't explain in even basic terms what gender is or why anyone should care, but think they're qualified to tell the rest of us (including Richard Dawkins who is an evolutionary biologist) that sex isn't binary and immutable?

Make a claim, get called, provide evidence; if not, it's bollocks.

Re the article, the woman was still a woman, despite having some male chromosomes. That's demonstrated by her pregnancy. I remember reading a different article on it and most of her family had similar conditions, nothing to do with absorbing a twin.

Paging @Kucinghitam for an expert explanation.

Crikey. Google is your friend.

@EdgeOfACoin

^EdgeOfACoin* · Today 06:07

What secondary evidence is there that Jesus existed? As far as I know, there are no contemporary Roman records, not Egyptian. Both were inveterate recorders of events.

I'm not a scientist, let alone a biologist, so I can't say I follow the argument well. The article is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/518288a

Sex is something of a spectrum
**
@TomPinch really? I've not seen a single case of a person with functioning gonads producing both large and small gametes. There is also no intermediate gamete between a sperm and an egg.

Sex really isn't a spectrum, and variation within a category isn't evidence of a spectrum.

He's welcome to publish the book, and he certainly made lots of money off of it, but he still looked like a boob to anyone with any background in philosophy or theology.

So, not many people then?

Anyway, let's not get bogged down in that puritanical thing of insisting everyone's perfect in whatever they say or do before we engage with the issue at hand. It gets you nowhere.

The issue isn't whether it's objectively convincing but whether it convinces enough people who matter, unfortunately.

Look at what has happened to (educated) public discourse over the last ten years or so. It's gone from classic liberalism to something else entirely.

The liberal approach which we probably all grew up with was that it's the contents of an argument that counts and the characteristics of who makes it are irrelevant, except that a person's background might their argument more informed (but the proof of this would be in the argument itself.) This view was left of conservatism, which was more 'don't rock the boat'.

Now we have the a different approach, ie, that you have no standing to comment unless you have the right, ie minority characteristics - which Dawkins doesn't have. Because this reasoning applies to social issues - which aren't easily resolved by science - Dawkins' undeniable eminence counts for little. What matters is that he's a stale pale male.

It's a sharp leftwards shift - and that's why Dawkins and co look like right-wingers now. They've been left behind. I say it's a leftwards shift because it has its origins in thinkers influenced by Marx. It's also very hard to argue against because it's an internally consistent theory that functions without much need for evidence. Someone - it might have been Arabella - posted a link to an article by Slavoj Žižek a couple of weeks ago. It was all very erudite on the surface but...

I understand that there is some proof that sex is something of a spectrum although - and this is the critical point - there's no evidence that it maps onto social concepts of gender in any specific way. Or, to put it another way, it's not clear what, if anything, should be done about this regarding social norms and laws.

I really doubt that Dawkins would be the best person to expound on the subject, however. He doesn't do nuance or uncertainty very well.

But, intellectually, Dawkins is on just as sound ground as any theologian in refusing to get drawn into the weeds of belief.

No, he wandered off into topics he knew nothing about. It's been a long time since I read The God Delusion but for instance I remember he tried to call into doubt the historicity of Jesus. This view just isn't supported by the current school of thought. Jesus almost certainly existed - the controversy (obviously) is the accuracy of the Biblical narrative and whether he was the Son of God. Christians say 'yes', everyone else says 'no' and 'don't be silly'. However, Dawkins' problem (iirc) is that he relied on extremely dodgy sources to make the claim that Jesus never existed at all and looked embarrassingly ignorant in the process.

That's just one example.

Dawkins is at his best when he talks about evolutionary biology, and that's what he should stick to.

Another article on Dawkins's TV interview: https://archive.ph/usGeB

Agnostic; certainly disagree with Dawkins on plenty. Happy to have him support JKR and state clearly that there are two sexes.

Unbelievably, we're in a position where some people genuinely think there are more than two sexes. So we need all the recognised scientific experts to spell it out clearly.

I really do worry about how teenage pregnancy rates are going to be impacted by this bullshit idea that we can choose sex or be a third sex and that 'sex is a spectrum'.

And, if you think the whole of religion is totally mad, you're not required to engage with its theology to make your case. He rejects religion on a fundamental level, not because he hasn't fully grasped the nuances of the Council of Nicaea.

Christians (or adherents of any other religion) don't get to dictate the terms on which non-believers reject the faith, and they would be hypocrites if they did, as - barring a handful of converts - they have all the adopted the belief system of their family and culture. They haven't carefully weighed up the competing belief systems and chosen Christianity after a detailed analysis of which religion is best.

Personally, despite also being an atheist, I don't think it's particularly constructive to run around telling religious people that they are idiots, which is how much of The God Delusion comes across. We're all trying to deal with the mind-fuck that is existing while being aware of our own mortality. If religion helps you get through that, it's not for me to question that, as long as you don't impose your views on me. But, intellectually, Dawkins is on just as sound ground as any theologian in refusing to get drawn into the weeds of belief.

Dawkins doesn’t simply state an opinion on the existence of God. He publishes books on the subject of religions about which he is lamentably ignorant, and argues against his own mistaken ideas of Christian doctrine, rather than the actual beliefs of mainstream Christians.
It would be like me publishing a book saying that atheists believe Christians should be imprisoned or killed, and then arguing that this proves atheists are stupid.

Iron Man exists and I don't care what you say!