Prof Stock on Woman's Hour today

[Bittermints]

Is this the week they're doing a lot of stuff on gender? Anyway, saw a tweet earlier from Professor Stock that she is on WH this morning. Don't know what time. Should be worth a listen. She is so clear and cogent.

Cross-posted with Bitter

Sally Hines just did a massive disservice for transgender people by deliberately ignoring facts.
Leeds university biology and medicine depts will be embarrassed about this too.
Sally has also done a disservice to socialogy as a discipline by confirming many scientists suspicions that it isn’t rigorous.

Is the TRA professor trans? If not, she really shouldn't be speaking for them.

Worth reading Richard Feynman's demolition job on the social sciences - cargo cult science. 44 years ago and all those problems still seem to be there.

I also noticed that Sally Hines is yet another 'influence' coming from Leeds.
It was good to let her talk on stating such obvious nonsense except... as she got so much time to burble on with her 'alt facts' it must have been very hard to follow for those not conversant with all the 'assigned at birth', intersex, black and working class women not women diversions. Prof Stock was very clear.

I note that Ms Hines has retweeted Roz Kaveney calling those women who have objected to Comic Relief choosing Lili Elbe as their first inspirational woman 'petty' and 'mean-minded'

I caught a bit of start the week this morning and will try to listen later. There was a lecturer discussing how (I paraphrase) students are whining little babies looking to be offended.

Can someone please tell us this person was chosen though? ‘Because they were trans, innit’ just isn’t enough to inspire - it really isn’t. WHAT DID THEY DO OR ACHIEVE?

Thank you for the link Bittermints much appreciated.

And Kathleen - thank you. You’re doing brilliantly, you’re a shero ❤️

Very much enjoyed that. The yawning gulf between the academic disciplineof philosophy, and the word salad of debased grievance studies.

I haven't seen this on mumsnet, though I may have missed it. It's a piece by some academics explaining a project whereby the wrote a series of essentially nonsense articles around gender and similar issues, and got several of them accepted in peer reviewed journals.

areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/academic-grievance-studies-and-the-corruption-of-scholarship/

It is a long read, but a good one. Although apologies if we've already had it!

Anybody else frequently reminded of The History Man?

Me, me, me!

Hines on biological sex (A): "It is a complex mix of hormones, genitals, chromosomes so we're talking about biological factors but it's not straightforward."
Hines on the biological sex of babies (B): "I think using the term assigning male or female at birth is kind of a useful way of looking at ways in which sex can be understood as something social."
How the hell does she get from A to B? I don't think she's thought this through, unless she believes that babies are born wearing pink or blue or stating their preference for "girl" or "boy" things.
If I wanted to study sociology, I think I would give Leeds a miss.

Very much enjoyed that. The yawning gulf between the academic disciplineof philosophy, and the word salad of debased grievance studies.

Yes. This.

Trans arguments using intersex abnormalities as a prop are all intellectually and scientifically incoherent (as well as normally being grossly insulting to people actually with such conditions).

They also fail to show any link between intersex conditions and transgenderism.

Hines is an embarrassment to sociologists of gender, you know those who have specialized in engaging in actual research to determine the reality of the structural inequalities women and men face. Reiterating the empirically unsubstantiated slogan: 'transwomen are women', again and again does not clarify the issue or extend/advance knowledge on the topic.

Hines should have gone with #nodebate. It was painful listening to her. I've seen more coherence in the arguments from flat earthers.

I’m not very well versed in the whole trans debate but I was cringing listening to this. The silence when transmen were mentioned sums it all up for me, this is all about people with penises.

Prof. Hines has earned over £1 million in research grants from the ESRC for studying "pregnant men" (sic) and new gender identities.

ESRC = Economic & Social Research Council, the public body that funds academics in the social sciences.

And Hines immediately leapt to asserting that 'sex is a spectrum, same as gender, and young people get it' whilst using intersex as a wobbly platform for the 'see, there aren't just two sexes, it's a whole rainbow, and loads of scientists are now discovering just how complex that rainbow really is and so intersex is really common and that's why young people are loads of different genders and it's because older people are too hard of thinking that they don't understand this progressive new totally proven science'...

It sounded like she was lining up to use 'intersex' and 'trans' interchangeably - maybe that's the next step now that sex and gender have been pissed about with.
I wonder if perhaps even she knew, as she was saying it, what a completely fallacious connection she was trying to make between sex, intersex and gender or can she really not separate them from each other in her head.

It’s such a way to shoe horn the whole debate into a very rare thing

We are good at disbelieving but what of her students? I’m dispairing. Maybe we need to chat about this stuff too with young people

Despairing

Hines reminds me of the quote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Threewheeler1 I think once you have adopted the position (or really believe the position) that sex is social/cultural - ie we only see two sexes because we are looking at the human body with our gender binary goggles on - then it becomes difficult to separate sex, intersex, and gender because they are all manifestations of culture. They would all be connected for you if that was your position. That's my guess anyway.

To be fair to Hines, the 'sex is a spectrum' and 'sex is culturally constructed' thought processes are difficult to get over in a short amount of time. An episode of In Our Time might get there.