Museum of Natural History, Oxford transfish bollocks (Edited by MNHQ)

[MillicentFawcett]

Look at this fucking load of nonsense. We are in real trouble when our institutions are pushing an ideological position as scientific fact.

It will not surprise you to learn that Clara Baker is a bloke

Many thanks ToniMN! Very efficient service :)

Thank you MNHQ!

Mmmmmmh, yes, like Crepidula fornicata, the slipper limpet, where the males as they get older change to females.

A nasty invasive species, currently spreading in UK water. Excludes other bivalves including oysters to whose beds they are a serious threat as they muddy the bed and trap shit and almost shit (pseudofaeces).Also a major threat to other protected species.

NoToast - I had to Google that one!

My husband (who has a PhD in evolutionary genetics so knows what he’s talking about) says that the fish - human example is as similar as someone saying well bulls have horns so I’m going to attach wooden horns to my head.

I saw what you did there NoToast. Very good.

Or perhaps ElfrideSwancourt that cars have horns too so a bull and a car should be interchangeable.

The author of the label, Clara Barker, has been commended by the Prime Minister:
www.ox.ac.uk/staff/news-listing/2017-10-10-oxford-scientist-recognised-prime-minister-lgbt-work

So this transfish bollocks is effectively endorsed by the government.

What exactly got edited by MNHQ?

I’ll believe this when the Natural History Musuem can showcase a human who has spontaneously changed sex organs without surgical intervention. I remember watching a documentary about this condition back in the 1970s, Michael Mosley did another a year or so ago. They don't change sex as such but their genitals do change. www.sciencealert.com/in-a-remote-town-in-the-dominican-republic-some-girls-turn-into-boys

They changed the title to clarify that it's the Oxford University Museum of Natural History not the London NHM.

Thanks Countess! I was wondering!

I've complained - after all she is also implying that transexuals "change their sex" because there is a lack of the other sex around - which is a new and strange claim.

So, apparently Clara Barker is the Technical Lab Manager at the Oxford Centre for Applied Superconductivity. Support staff not academic staff. Even if they were academic staff, probably more qualified to talk about physics than biology.

Although according to this:
www.admin.ox.ac.uk/media/global/wwwadminoxacuk/localsites/equalityanddiversity/documents/transgender/Clara_stonewall_poster.pdf
Clara is a materials scientist with a PhD (I assume again not in a biological science!). Note the leaflet says material scientist which I assume is a typo for the correct materials rather than any statement about Oxford having material and immaterial and slightly more ethereal scientists about............

Without a deadname, I can't go further and track down Claras academic credentials. I must admit that I was quite enthralled by the names of the facilities at the centre, such as the Panalytical Empyrean X-ray Diffractometer which sounds almost poetic!

You wouldn't normally ask their lab manager about biology though. As "vicechair of the LGBT+ Advisory Group for the university", I assume that is how they got their slightly novel views on biology into the museum............
Plus, I suspect, since they aren't an academic member of staff (i.e. academic reputation isn't that critical), then they are more likely to talk utter fish gonads in an academic subject other than their own. As opposed to academic members of staff who tend to only talk utter gonads about their own subject.................

At least Joan Roughgarden ("Evolutions Rainbow" with some 'interesting' views on sexual selection and god and evolution) has a PhD in biology and had odd ideas in their own academic subject. And AFAIK they didn't witter on about novel ideas in particle physics, say, whilst doing it.................

The prenatal hormone environment has got 'blamed' for lots of things (like lesbianism and digit ratios), so no surprise if some think it is to blame for transgenderism as well. I suppose we have the attempted link between hey, fish change sex based on varying stuff in the environment, so possibly that is how I 'changed' as well due to stuff in the womb! It really is a pretty weak argument by analogy, and that is all it is, unless any biologists know better. It's also trying to make out that trans is a hidden disorder of sexual development, a hidden type of intersex. It's all the same ole 'female brain' or at least 'male brain inadvertently dunked in the wrong hormones' in fishy clothes...........

This article quotes studies of twins where one is trans to demonstrate that the prenatal environment argument has no basis in actual facts and science ...

@grannytomine They don't change sex, they've always been male, it's just that their sex organs weren't developed enough to see due to the lack of an enzyme, which then floods the body at puberty, revealing that they were already male, and allowing their sexual organs to develop properly.