The Skeptic Community's Blind Spot for Gender Theory

[Mermoose]

One of the most disappointing aspects of the gender debate has been the response of the skeptic community. Apart from a few - Maria MacLachlan, Andy Lewis, Gia Milinovich - prominent skeptics have either been silent or supportive of gender theory. Which would be fine, if they could offer cogent arguments for it, but they can't. Robin Ince, who scoffs at people believing in homeopathy, disappears off Twitter when asked to explain his belief in gender essence.
I have a theory as to how this has happened.
I think I'm a skeptic but it's fairly common (and it's always annoyed me) to find skeptics not only debunking fallacies but sneering at those who believe them. One reason it annoys me is that I once believed in a lot of that stuff, and even though I've now changed my mind, I remember how it felt and why I believed in it. I don't think I was stupid, and likewise I don't think people who still believe in it are stupid. Also because I was wrong once, I know I will probably be wrong again, so I'm never 100% sure of my opinions.
Do a lot of skeptics - skeptics like Robin Ince, who can be quite condescending (albeit in a funny way) - believe that only stupid people get things wrong? That they, being clever, are sure to be right? Is that why they haven't put gender theory - something they want to believe in - to the same test they'd put some quack medicine?

I also think that trans-inclusive skeptics have the backing of the ‘liberal’ media.

The trans-skeptics would have the backing of the ‘conservative’ media but they don’t want it because they consider theirselves liberal.

Their only alternative to the MSM would be social media, and we’ve seen how that goes.

I don't even believe PZ Myers really thinks TWAW - he's a biologist FFS. I just think he's a misogynistic jerk who gets off on the adulation he gets from the cult for standing with them, which means blocking and abusing decent sceptics like Andy Lewis, Maria Mclachlan and her partner Alan Hennessy.

There are unfortunately plenty of handmaidens in the so-called sceptic community who will block anyone challenging them at the drop of the hat. Petra Boynton is probably the most high profile UK one and I've seen the "leader of the skepchics" (cringe) Rebecca Watson, who I spent a lot of time defending during 'elevatorgate', mocking 'terfs'.

I'm sick of the lot of them. Same for Humanists_UK, which ought to rename itself 'Men's Rights UK' AFAIC.

Btw, Maria M. wrote about this some time ago: www.peaktrans.org/truth-is-the-new-hate-speech/

@Staffori Do you really think PZ Myers is a misogynist? He was very vocal against misogyny in the skeptic community. I don't think he hates women, I just think he loves to feel self-righteous.

I think if you have any doubts about Myers’s misogyny you should google his own account of how he fended off an accusation of rape by keeping his accuser occupied so he could get his version of the story to his administration first, or of how he won’t ever allow himself to be alone with a female student in case the same thing happens again. Also his enthusiastic review of an anthology of rape porn that can be found on Amazon.

@AlwaysComingHome Oh ok, I didn't know about any of that, fair enough.

The book is called Bending by Greta Christina, who also blogged at FreeThoughtBlogs, but who later moved on to The Orbit, I think. The blurb describes it as being:

Greta Christina’s erotic stories are written to get you hard and wet — and to change the ways you think about sex. Be forewarned — stuff happens here that’s borderline consensual. Or not at all consensual. These are dirty, kinky stories about shame, about pain, helplessness and danger, reckless behavior and bad, bad ideas….

‘Not at all consensual’ sex. I wonder if there’s a four letter word for that?

Cheerful potato. That bloke has made a third video now on sport. I haven't seen them but it sounds like in this one he finally doesn't capitulate to the twaw crowd.

I wonder whether some of this in the atheist/sceptic community is because its mostly American (from what I can tell) and the culture war there seems even more tribal. People write 'when I came out as conservative' blogs, and the situation as described above - I am clever and good so must be right, not like the thick evil other lot - is even stronger.

Incidentally, though we are talking about trans ideology here, that book review also ties the skeptic community to ‘kink’.

In fact, I first heard the term ‘kink shaming’ in the context of criticism of Christina’s book.

Plus there was Richard Carrier’s polyamory, which he was quite open about on his FTB blog but forgot to mention to his wife, and his solicitation of prostitutes (again on his blog) whom he wanted to talk dirty to him.

I don’t think we have much of this in the skeptic movement on this side of the Atlantic but America is a lost cause. It’s pro-trans, pro-kink, pro-polyamory and pro-sex work all the way.

What the fuck that has to do with mocking UFOs and Bigfoot, I don’t know.

Final thought: I first heard of Danielle Muscato through their appearance at a Skepticon event where Muscato was acting as PR for the autistic student who had kept on filming a student protest when the lecturer leading the event called for ‘a bit of muscle’ to shift him. Muscato took the stage with their client, then turned on him, demanding he denounce his ‘white privilege’ before the audience.

That’s an autistic student denounced by his own PR agent and reduced to tears in front of a jeering audience of ‘skeptics’.

That book review is horrific. There's definitely a problem among a lot of liberals as regards sex in general. Because religion tends to be anti-sex, some people think that any ethics regarding sex is religious. How they square this with #MeToo is anyone's guess.

This is a very useful issue for separating the wheat from the chaff, however – you can instantly discover whether or not someone is capable of critical thought. True, a disappointing number of people one had previously assumed to be intelligent fail the test. But at least you know. It's quite a revelation.

That book review is horrific. There's definitely a problem among a lot of liberals as regards sex in general. Because religion tends to be anti-sex, some people think that any ethics regarding sex is religious. How they square this with #MeToo is anyone's guess[.

Yes exactly.

Roberts is clearly avoiding dealing with it. Anyone who has spoken out knows what follows. Roberts knows it too and wont risk it. There is no way she believes that TWAW. Hardly anybody does, but they either think we’re talking about post-op transsexuals who are a tiny minority, or as someone said upthread, they do not/will not align themselves with radical feminism. If they do, there is a real price to be paid. It’s always been so and very few men in particular have ever made that leap. Elites don’t give up their privileges voluntarily.

Stephen J Gould used to talk about ‘Non-overlapping magisteria’ to delineate different fields of knowledge, eg science and religion.

I always thought that was a cop-out - there are certain claims that religions make that are absolutely testable, such as the age of the Earth - but I think that’s what’s happening in the skeptical movement.

Some people just aren’t natural materialists, and there’s a faith-based gap that they need to fill.

Trans-ideology fills that gap. It’s a way of allowing some kind of belief beyond the physical into their lives. It’s not an eternal soul, it’s an equally insubstantial ‘gendered’ essence. And it’s inextricably linked with notions of good and evil. People who don’t believe in it aren’t just wrong, they are evil.

I agree, and as a person who has certain purely subjective, if you like "faith based" beliefs founded in my personal experience which have brought me into conflict with "sceptics" before, I find their TWAW faith quite amusing.

They are hiding in the God of the Gaps argument, basically.

I'd be the first person to accept that people have experiences which seem to be outside the material sphere if it weren't for all the obvious misogyny and piss takers in this movement, which along with the lack of any coherent thought or basis in science have convinced me that there really is nothing to it.

Embarrassed for those right thinking "sceptics" that can't or won't see it.

I'm only posting again to object to the labelling of all continental philosophy as pomo bullshit

It really, really isn't. A lot of continental philosophy is the absolute opposite of that. (I'm saying that as a huge Hegel fan)

The behaviour of some philosophers in this has shocked me deeply, but I still think that they aren't the primary ones driving the postmodernism stuff. The primary subjects who have pushed postmodernism are things like English Literature. In a lot of English departments they indoctrinate people in postmodernism and they never discuss or critique it.

By ‘continental philosophy’ I’m more talking about philosophies that emerged from France in the last 50 years and which, to be honest, are held in higher regard in the US than in France itself. I’m not talking about earlier perspectives like German Idealism, etc.

And I think you are right about English departments disseminating this stuff rather than philosophy departments. English Lit seems to be a sponge for ideas that have lost purchase in their original disciplines. You won’t find Marx taught in most economics classes despite it being rooted in economics; you won’t find Freud taught (other than in passing) in most psychology courses. But Marxism and Psychoanalysis are still taught in English Literature classes as if they are still relevant.

@mermoose. I haven't engaged with him on it. He's a toxic individual all round.

Helen Zaltzman’s another disappointment.

I find the sceptical movement, (and atheist movement), as a whole, to be less about critical thought and more about proving how much more right they are, than the general run of sheep.

Given how that dominant voice is so often stridently male, the ducking and weaving on the topic of gender identity doesn’t surprise me. Men would rather agree with other men, no matter how barking, than align themselves with women, let alone feminists.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald

I think AnyOldPrion’s point here is an important one and worth its own discussion.

Given the mooted links between AGP and other paraphilias and fetishes, and the number of in prison who are there for sexual or violent crimes, I think we have to stop pussyfooting around the fact that SOME men who identify as women are part of the issue.

According to Transgender Trend, 41% of the (identified) transgender prison population are there for sexual offences - compared with 19% of the general male population.

Humanists UK are dreadful on the trans issue. They don't respond to members who write in with concerns about gender identity ideology. When I wrote in with serious concerns and rational arguments which pointed out the hypocrisy of their position (supporting self-ID), the CEO (Andrew Copson) refused to discuss any of the points I raised and instead chucked me out! A sure sign he didn't feel confident enough to defend their policies against well-reasoned arguments. Pathetic actually.

There is legitimate skepticism, wherein one critically examines the available evidence in order to come to a conclusion, and then there is the skeptic community. The skeptic community is as dogmatic and belief oriented as any other I've ever encountered. On certain subjects, they are absolutely immovable if countered. You can set a thousand studies at their feet and they'll shake their heads and wag their fingers in superior ire if those studies don't support what they've been told to think, or what they've determined one should think.

Thirty years ago, the skeptic community joined in the big backlash against the Second Wave's exposure of CSA and incest. (I may be wrong, but I think this is the time period when the skeptic community began to coalesce, or took off, as it were.) They took the perpetrators' side, and adopted fully their propaganda, ignoring or lying about legitimate research. I am not surprised at all they support gender ideology.

Apologies if this has already been posted, but here is a shocking account by Janice Williams of OBJECT (and humanist celebrant) about the disgraceful way she was treated by Humanists UK after her part in the peaceful lesbian protest at London Pride 2018: www.objectnow.org/news/2019/6/15/a-witch-hunt-at-humanists-uk

“On certain subjects, they are absolutely immovable if countered. You can set a thousand studies at their feet and they'll shake their heads and wag their fingers in superior ire if those studies don't support what they've been told to think, or what they've determined one should think.“

What subjects are you talking about?

I think that the attention of skeptic and rationalist feminists could usefully be drawn to The School of Life, an interesting organisation founded by the philosopher Alain de Botton

This organisation has long been of interest to me as it has a strongly woo influenced agenda, many promoters of conspiracy theories re satanic ritual abuse are involved with it, and it claims to offer education and training on a range of life and professional issues. As a network of highly influential psychotherapists and philosophers it is definitely an organisation of interest.

I have studied various different models of psychotherapy over the years and have an interest in philosophy (but far from an expert re philosophy) and I am realising that the academic language used in both the psychological and the philosophical arenas mean that most lay people feel inadequately educated to challenge various prevalent discourses.

My impression is that both psychology and philosophy are arenas where social engineering is taking place and where bizarre and pseudoscientific theories are infiltrating academia and then being spread throughout society.

There is an urgent need to examine some of the foundations of both psychological and philosophical theories underpinning recent controversies on a range of issues.