Why do scientists swallow gender ideology?

[JellySlice]

The IET recognise the inequalities women and girls face in STEM, and actively encourage and support women and girls in STEM. Yet these initiatives are open to those who 'identify' as women. Presumably that means TM and NBs are excluded.

Shrouk El-Atar's caption. An excellent, inclusive ambition - why the need for 'cis'?

Someone on here recommended The Intelligence Trap as a book. It's very good - explains a lot about why very intelligent people believe absolute nonsense.

The interesting thing about that poster is that it includes transmen in 'smashing barriers'. I'd rather see ftm transitioners included in this stuff than mtf transitioners.

Some scientists also believe in god. I've started to realise that just because people are more intelligent than me doesn't necessarily make them more rational or to understand feminism and how patriarchy works. So much of my disappointment has been around seeing professional, intelligent, educated women — senior medics, accountants, policy-makers, heads of major charity-based organisations (like the woman running Barnardos in my region) — who've apparently mindlessly bought into trans ideology and can't be budged. Perhaps because they're clever and earning lots of money they're above the day-to-day complications that ordinary women face.

In some cases it is fear too. You need to have a very secure job to stand against the TRAs. I imagine many scientists might use "cis" to avoid being dubbed a transphobe, it seems such a small concession to protect themselves.

This has just started appearing where I work. Mostly engineers affiliated to IMechE and IET. I have signed up for the International Women's Day stuff to see what will get said about it. My chartership is via a different society and that's been full on "if I say I'm a woman, I am one and you can't disagree or you're evil" type thing for a good while. I haven't needed to probe what the (very small) pool of women on site think about all of this, yet; we're still fighting to get small sized PPE and get the dinosaurs out of the 1960s attitude to women in the workplace!

Shedbuilder, are you trying to suggest that belief in God is irrational?
Either God exists or He does not.
I’m a retired hospital doctor, and a Christian, who has had a life changing personal encounter with the presence of God.
My direct experience confirmed His existence to me, and therefore I believe in Him. There is nothing “irrational” about accepting incontrovertible evidence!
I get weary of people conflating gender ideology, for which there is no evidence, with belief in God, when we have the historical evidence of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, plus the experiences of millions of Christians.

"we have the historical evidence of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection"

Whilst there may well have been a person called Jesus in those times, there is zero evidence of the resurrection.
I stepped away from religion in my early teens, because I found it compulsive and not evidence based. I was put in detention at school for asking why other religions were not as valid as Christianity. I was beaten by my mother for refusing to go to church on a Sunday. Once you start using violence against people, in order to compel them to believe in something, then there is something deeply flawed with that belief system.

I see that bollocksy bumpf as a way to still be inclusive without including actual men

“we're still fighting to get small sized PPE and get the dinosaurs out of the 1960s attitude to women in the workplace”

^Yep this

From my own experiences so many of my colleagues over the years have very, very rigid view of gender roles between women and men. Based on that I genuinely think it would be far easier to convince them that men can change sex and actually become women than that women should be doing Engineering.

NASALT!

I am, Babdoc. You've had a personal experience that you describe as incontrovertible evidence. That's irrational. When you can replicate your experience in a way we can all experience it and assess the evidence I'll reconsider. I have friends, by the way, who hold religious beliefs and happily describe themselves as irrational. I'm sure there are many transgender people who sincerely believe that they were born in the wrong body even though that's not possible.

You can believe what you want, of course —angels, conspiracy theories, baby-eating extra-terrestrial lizards — and I will try not to discriminate against you for your beliefs unless they infringe my rights.

Endlessly mind boggling init.

My partner is a programmer. At some conferences (and indeed in his company), there are more Trans women than biological women.

Not all scientists are good scientists, not all science is good science.

Actually pretty rude to compare someone's personal beliefs with the dreadful cultish misogynistic TRA claptrap.

Really? Think rationally for a moment about all the women and girls oppressed around the world by misogynistic religions. The Christian and other traditions that saw women and sex as lesser than men. Saudi Arabia's version of Islam. Catholicism in Ireland. Has transgender ideology really done more harm that millennia of oppressive religions?

This is actually proving the OP's point. I guess I'm always surprised by this because although I went to a good university and got a good degree it was an arts degree. I always assumed that studying science and maths would mean that people were more logical and rational than I am. Now I see that actually my degree encouraged me to think critically.

Should be 'women as a sex'

I still feel that having a personal faith is perfectly OK. Of course organised religion over the centuries has been pretty misogynistic...as has society in general. We are all entitled to our beliefs, it gets dangerous when we seek to impose them on others. And the TRA cult is actually dangerous in my opinion.

I am pretty live and let live, though

Did anyone say that having a personal faith wasn't okay? No.

But those of us who don't have a personal faith are allowed our thoughts about those who do.

NASALT indeed.

I'm a professor in a STEM field and I would say my department is mixed - some are openly GC, others have started using pronouns in their email signatures since the university told everyone it was a sign of support and inclusivity , and most people quietly ignore everything and get on with their jobs.

Imo, the blind spots - like the people with pronouns in their email sigs - arise because everyone is massively overworked and takes the latest suggestion from the EDI team on trust. This year has been hell on earth for academic workloads, half my colleagues are one step from burnout, and nobody has the time to think critically about anything outside their immediate research (if they even have time to do any outside the relentless repeat online teaching).

I wonder if gender ideology would have spread so far into universities if academics weren't so overworked?

@Shedbuilder

Did anyone say that having a personal faith wasn't okay? No.

But those of us who don't have a personal faith are allowed our thoughts about those who do.

Indeed you are.

No I'm not. You can believe what you want and talk about what you want. You can believe people can change sex, you can believe lesbians can have penises, you can believe that there's a loving god watching over us, you can believe in baby-eating extra-terrestrial lizards cunningly disguised as the royal family...

Can you not see that you're doing to me what the TRAs did to JKR? People can believe what they want. What they can't do is expect anyone/ everyone else to agree and go along with it. We're all entitled to our own opinions.

Presumably fear plays a massive part. Everyone can now see what happens to women heretics who do not conform to the prescribed beliefs or language so they protect themselves by ignoring their scientific knowledge and repeating what they know to be unscientific.

Depressing.

When you can replicate your experience in a way we can all experience it and assess the evidence I'll reconsider. I have friends, by the way, who hold religious beliefs and happily describe themselves as irrational.

I agree with you that claimed religious experience is hardly a strict proof of anything; obviously for one thing you can have followers from different and contradictory belief systems all claiming to have "proof" from religious experience. So trust the Buddhist or the Mormon or the evangelical Christian?

That said, there is no hard proof for many of our common beliefs, like e.g. a belief in free will and moral responsibility. (OK, many people would simply deny those things, but still.) Or a belief in an external world outside of mind. (No way to check on that without begging the question, and yet it's a near universal confident belief.) Or a belief in various supposed "human rights".

So I think that some people exaggerate the irrationality of religious belief. For a lot of people, being non-religious is just their own brand of conformity to prevailing fashion.

I find the silence of people like Ben Goldacre on this issue depressing but not surprising

@Shedbuilder

No I'm not. You can believe what you want and talk about what you want. You can believe people can change sex, you can believe lesbians can have penises, you can believe that there's a loving god watching over us, you can believe in baby-eating extra-terrestrial lizards cunningly disguised as the royal family...

Can you not see that you're doing to me what the TRAs did to JKR? People can believe what they want. What they can't do is expect anyone/ everyone else to agree and go along with it. We're all entitled to our own opinions.

What are you on about? I never said people should impose their belief on others, in fact quite the opposite. I am not treating you like the TRAs treated JKR.

I was pointing out that you had been impolite to someone admitting to a personal faith. Obviously I was so subtle that it has sailed over your head.

I wasn't impolite, I just pointed out that it's not rational to say that because of a personal experience one has incontrovertible proof that god (or whatever) exists.

Zinco, do people believe in free will and moral responsibility? Those are huge theoretical concepts and they've been up for debate since the Greek philosophers. They're open-ended discussions.

They are very different from a belief that, for example, humans can change sex or that because someone says they are a woman they are a woman (TWAW). Those things are easy to refute. Free will is an open-ended discussion.

@Shedbuilder

I wasn't impolite, I just pointed out that it's not rational to say that because of a personal experience one has incontrovertible proof that god (or whatever) exists.

Zinco, do people believe in free will and moral responsibility? Those are huge theoretical concepts and they've been up for debate since the Greek philosophers. They're open-ended discussions.

They are very different from a belief that, for example, humans can change sex or that because someone says they are a woman they are a woman (TWAW). Those things are easy to refute. Free will is an open-ended discussion.

Well I am still struggling to see why you likened me to TRAs attacking JKR? That was a bit OTT.