The rejection of science and common sense

[AntsInPenzance]

I'm currently engaged in a debate on trans issues and concepts around sex/gender on another forum (US based). I've been dealing with two main protaganists, one male, one female (neither of them trans people as faras I know), and so far I've had the following statements put to me by one or both of them which just boggle the mind:

^A transwomen is female and has always been female even before they identified as such.

DNA and chromosomes are not the deciding determinate of what differentiates male from female.

If the boxing heavyweight champion, Anthony Joshua, were to identify as a transwoman, he should be allowed to fight against a female heavyweight boxer and such a fight would be fair and evenly matched.

75% of all rapes occur by someone known to the victim, so a strange male in a woman's changing room is less of a threat.^

I'm not even angry, just dumbfounded.

Yeah Errol.

I always think of the people that do the denying of science with fingers in their ears shouting la la la can’t hear you

Bit like toddlers.

I think it's a case of people believing what they want to believe. If you don't like or care about women you can either do so covertly by adopting the shield of transcultism or overtly by doing it the old fashioned way and calling women and girls sluts and telling them they deserve to be raped and murdered. Or, more often than not these days, if you're really woke you could go for a hybrid of the two.

Strangely, in my experience a lot of people who go all in for the belief in gender identity are also exactly the kind of atheists who love Richard Dawkins and hassling people to provide evidence for other faith-based beliefs.

Personally I can't tell a fundamental difference between the idea of a gender identity that is your true self and separate from your physical body and the idea of a soul. It's obviously faith-based.

Interesting links @NonnyMouse1337 Thank you 🙂

Don't think Dawkins has got involved specifically in the gender stuff, but occasionally speaks up more generally.

Well, he is a man noted for his subtlety

I don't want him on our side either. I am just disgusted by his hypocrisy and cowardice, and that of the entire new atheist, 'freethinking' movement.

The information on here about what has been happening within the movement has been fascinating, though.

In agreement here. Many skeptics, atheists, scientists are happy to criticise organised religion, homeopathy, anti vaxxers or whatever but are silent on this, or have been captured. Like the humanists.

Hear hear, Errol. Please don't dignify a flat earther or climate denier with a moment of attention.
Born with a penis equals male. Who you go to bed with and what you wear is your affair, so is what plastic surgery you choose.
There are a miniscule number of people born hermaphrodite.
They, and nobody else, can choose which sex to be, or choose both, or switch back and forth. Until the first instance of one of them using the penis as a weapon, under the shelter of pretending to be exclusively female. It seems statistically next to impossible that will ever happen

Personally I can't tell a fundamental difference between the idea of a gender identity that is your true self and separate from your physical body and the idea of a soul. It's obviously faith-based.

Hmm, I don't think the idea of a soul needs to be faith based at all.

My own view on this is that talks about soul and spirituality are just good old psychology with mystic poetry slapped on top (which is not necessarily a bad thing, metaphors can make complex ideas more accessible and relatable. Or more confusing and undebatable. Language is a double-edged sword when it comes to approximating Truth)

From that perspective, souls/minds exist within bodies, but are also somewhat separate, just like software is not hardware, and words are not ink.
And as far as software goes... from where I stand, gendered feelings are real but toxic (a bit like a virus, really) and gender free is the way to go, regardless of the shape of the chassis (which, in my opinion, should be embraced as it is, not excessively tinkered with)

In any case... The deafening silence of the like of Dawkins is indeed shocking.
Not that he ever struck me as being particularly sympathetic to women, mind you... (A bit too gleefully pointing out sexual dimorphism in humans when it came to physical performance)

@BreatheAndFocus

Interesting links *@NonnyMouse1337* Thank you 🙂

You're welcome.

20mum I've got to correct your last post a bit I'm afraid. There's no such things as hermaphrodism in humans. A hermaphrodite is where an organism produces both male and female gametes. Sequential hermaphrodites (like clown fish) can switch between the sexes by changing which gamete they produce. No human past or present can do either of these things. There is no such thing as a human who is both male and female (produces both gametes) or who can change sex (start producing a different gamete).

What you're probably thinking of is people with differences of sexual development (DSD). This is a broad spectrum of conditions where people are born with varying degrees of atypical development, everything from atypical chromosome development where the person has too many or too few X or Y chromosomes, to differences which amount to really very minor urological conditions like the urethra emerging from too low down in the penis. In every single case, people with DSDs are either male or female, and in the majority of cases it is not ambiguous which they are. DSDs are sex specific and do more to prove human sexual dimorphism than they do to disprove it. No human is neither male nor female. No human is both. No human can be first one then another. The outdated term "intersex" has been very affective in creating confusion around this, and of course some people with DSDs have been incorrectly labelled as the opposite sex due to lack of testing facilities. But the reality is that all people with DSDs are either male or female and with the exception of genetic mosaicism it is very easy with various tests to determine which is which.

Thanks for up to date information. That's good. Last time I took any notice, I got the version pre d.n.a, I should think. It was then said that a vanishingly tiny number of people were born with characteristics of both/born with ambiguous genitalia. At that time (probably still) parents insisted on being told which gender, in order to dress the infant in the 'correct' clothes. I believe there were some virtually toss of the coin decisions by doctors. It wouldn't make any meaningful difference to my daring declaration that people born with a penis are male. Except that now, the d.n.a would settle any exceptional appearance on birth, and for the rest of the person's life.

I really don't care if people dress as male, female or penguin. But being too fair to a fox disguised as a chicken won't make it sensible to let it into a hen house, and it removes fairness or safety from the hens.

You're right that before adequate testing (this is still the case in some countries) some people were incorrectly assigned one sex or another. Some people with DSDs have ambiguous genitalia but by no means all of them, most are unambiguously the sex that they are. There was a point also where children with DSDs were routinely having "corrective" surgery to make their genitalia appear more typical. Thankfully the DSD human rights movement has made great strides in preventing this from being forced on parents or considered the default. If the trans movement would just leave them alone and stop spreading misinformation about them in order to advance their own agenda, they could make even faster progress. Mind you, I only learnt about people with DSDs during the genetics component of my medical degree, it's definitely not something I'd expect the average person to know about. One of the reasons the trans disinformation campaign has been so successful and also so harmful.

The thing with Dawkins is that he's a fundamentalist. Just like TRAs. His attacks on Christianity are always asked on the assumption thAt all Christians agree with the most extra fundamentalist viewpoint. From my point of view, he's often objecting to a belief I've never held or recognised as Christian.
So I think it's unsurprising that he's been si!ent in this debate.

@AsTreesWalking

The thing with Dawkins is that he's a fundamentalist. Just like TRAs. His attacks on Christianity are always asked on the assumption thAt all Christians agree with the most extra fundamentalist viewpoint. From my point of view, he's often objecting to a belief I've never held or recognised as Christian. So I think it's unsurprising that he's been si!ent in this debate.

Yes, I agree. He would always argue against a caricature of ‘religion’ rather than anything else.

I think it is interesting to consider the power dynamics in all of this. Nobody has the slightest concern about criticising the science/ideology of organised religion. Creationism, ID - all of it is fair game (and that’s as it should be in an open society).

Yet many of those same people who tear the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury to shreds over their beliefs never criticise the science of trans ideology. It’s not even a case of keeping politely quiet out of respect. It’s a case of otherwise sensible scientists twisting known scientific facts (and possibly convincing themselves in the process) to avoid hurting the feelings of a section of society.

I find it very curious that the most marginalised group in society is accorded more genuine respect for their beliefs than the head of the worldwide Catholic church.

Yet many of those same people who tear the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury to shreds over their beliefs never criticise the science of trans ideology.

That's because there are real world consequences for criticising some beliefs and not others. Christianity as a whole has been neutered over the decades and centuries as Western society moved towards a more secular and democratic configuration.

There are some fringe nutters, but on the whole you won't be subjected to a terrorist attack or hounded out of your job for criticising or mocking Christianity, at least in Western Europe. (It can still be dangerous in other countries.) Hence why people engage in it, precisely because it is safe.

Those people in history books who genuinely faced threats and death from the Church in days gone past were truly brave. They stood up to dogma and authoritarianism at great personal cost. And their sacrifices have laid the foundation for us to be able to freely criticise Christianity today without much fear of retribution.
Other religions and ideologies still have a long way to go in their evolution.

Those people in history books who genuinely faced threats and death from the Church in days gone past were truly brave. They stood up to dogma and authoritarianism at great personal cost. And their sacrifices have laid the foundation for us to be able to freely criticise Christianity today without much fear of retribution.

Amen. This is why many of these "atheists" are complete frauds. They're role-playing a previous generation's battle against already-defeated (or at least massively weakened) foes, while being utterly unwilling to address THIS generation's battle against a new authoritarian religious movement.

OP, I don't know if people are more stupid than before or whether this is down to the influence of social media. In the past they'd have been fairly isolated in their fantastical beliefs, now they're connected by social media and feel mainstream.

I know apparently rational people in their 50s and 60s who will explain at length about why they won't have a Covid vaccine and why 5G will kill us all. There's an article in the Guardian today saying that 25% of the UK population are spouting ideas and theories from QAnon.

I used to think that the death of religion in Northern Europe would mean a more rational society but with the advent of the internet and social media disinformation and quack theories seemed to have mushroomed to fill the void.

In the past they'd have been fairly isolated in their fantastical beliefs, now they're connected by social media and feel mainstream.

There's a good bit from Glinner in the latest "The Mess We're In" on that topic - talking about his previous optimism about the Internet:

It all reminds me of several members of the rather extreme religious group at uni who used to get absolutely pissed on a Friday night and then get into the faces of other drunk people demanding "Are you saved ?" And sobbing into their beer about the destiny of the souls who irritably told them to go away.

No, you can't argue with stupid. You can't argue with extremism, it isn't based on a starting point of rationality. When you're talking to an extreme world view that is based on the very concept that reality is a selective personal construct created by feelings and thought but that only some chosen people get to do the constructing and that mentioning facts, reality, your own feelings etc is 'hate'..... really, you're onto a loser there. But continuing to patiently point out facts, the whopping holes in the arguments, the double standards and what areas of well known social dysfunction share very similar double standards and drawing the parallels is helpful to bystanders and those who are repeating the lines they've been fed and just haven't thought things through yet.

And there is also too the explanation to face people with that while you may be absolutely accepting that some people believe in God, flat earth, creationism, fairies and angels, Roswell, the Titanic conspiracy etc etc, and there's books and evidence and papers about all of that, society is based on live and let live. Believe in what you want, I'll respect your right to believe that. But your personal freedoms end at the boundaries of other people's equal freedoms, rights and needs. Unless they believe in forced conversion and forced religious enactment of an unheld belief with punishment for heresy, which is an interestingly medieval point of view for anyone to be admitting to.

Most people find that one a step too far for their own comfort.

Amen. This is why many of these "atheists" are complete frauds. They're role-playing a previous generation's battle against already-defeated (or at least massively weakened) foes, while being utterly unwilling to address THIS generation's battle against a new authoritarian religious movement.

Yes, you've summarised it perfectly!

That Glinner video would have been a lot better if I'd been able to hear a word Helen Staniland was saying. A good opportunity wasted.

This may be pertinent (as are quite a few others in the last few months ... not all atheists and skeptics are blind to current issues)

www.jesusandmo.net/comic/lots/

My usual comment is well they know what a fucking woman is when they want to buy a baby

Or when talking about any animal other than humans it also seems bizarrely easy: they would not hesitate to call that angry thing with horns and huge dangly bollocks charging towards them a bull; and would not expect that lazy thing with a mane to go hunting with the lionesses. We are the same as other animals in 99.999% of respects (well, not far off).

Why are we the only animals that get to decide whether we are male or female? If it is argued that we are the only ones with the requisite neurological substrates to make that decision, then we’d have to do away with the whole notion of sex in other animals altogether.
After all, it has nothing to do with biology, and all to do with feelz that they’re incapable of feeling.

That's exactly what I always think Alice, and it's yet another way that I see this as being a religious movement. It's an age old desperation not only to cling to a belief in dualism (mind/soul/gender vs physical body) but also a refusal to accept that we are just another species of animal. In many ways its a form of evolution denial. The idea that biological sex exists in all placental mammals apart from humans, is so insane that it has to be up there with young earth creationism. Some people just cannot accept that we're just another species of ape. It's bizarre how strong this impulse is to reject physical monism and distance ourselves from non human animals.