Richard Dawkins - request for discussion on Identity

[MrsMidClegs]

"In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as.

Discuss."

twitter.com/richarddawkins/status/1380812852055973888?s=21

And I suspect that it's been on Dawkins radar for quite sometime.

The year of Jenner+Dolezal was when quite a few people noticed how ridiculous this was getting, including me.

But at that point none of the actual political changes had really started occurring, so it wasn't on the general public's radar so much. You probably had to be fairly geeky to notice. Plus they were both US, rather than UK.

Now, a LOT of the public have noticed the real policy issues, with the whole GRA thing between then and now too, and interventions from people like J K Rowling. So there's more awareness that something's going on, and people are interested in the topic.

So I think Dawkins is right - it seems worthwhile rewinding to 2015 and doing Dolezal/Hypatia again, with more people listening. I guess there's only so many times you can redo one issue, so choosing timing is a thing. This feels like a good moment.

Trans ideologists insist on right-speak and No Debate and only engaging with those who completely defer to the ideology.

Gender critical people are open to engagement with other perspectives, to debate and investigation, without blindly accepting or rejecting everything because we disagree with something.

@Zinco quoting from the Boston Review, where this mindbending line appears: "gender inequality is not accrued intergenerationally."

Racial inequality is, so letting people identify as black is a no-no.

But gender inequality? Apparently that's reinvented from nothing every 25 years? We all start with a perfectly equal clean slate and women get forced into being comfort animals each time for no reason at all.

Or something.

So gobsmacking I have several loose teeth rattling around in my mouth.

Poor Rachel dolzeal.

Watching the documentary I saw a very intelligent and kind, thoughtful lady who was dealing with a lot of pain and trauma.

For those who have not seen it, her parents have her and another biological son, then adopted four other children, all black.

The parents and the biological son abused Rachel and her black adopted siblings, including sexual abuse for Rachel and her sisters.

When she left home, Rachel took her adopted siblings with her, adopting the youngest ones herself, and it appears she has a good relationship with them.

She said herself that she never wants to look in the mirror and see that little white girl, who was damaged and abused and in pain - she wanted to distance herself from her abusers at the same time as feeling closer to the family that love and respect her.

Her adopted son is a very clever young man who wanted to go to university (and I think it was Harvard?) but when they found out who his mum was he was hounded off campus.

So it's a very sad, painful story of a lady trying to forget pain and trauma, trying to do the best for her family, and doing good work for the black community before she was exposed...... Its very hard not to sympathise with her.

And then it's compared to this horrible child mutilating, women erasing, rape threatening part of the trans rights agenda..... Its like comparing nice apples to rotten, poisonous oranges, frankly....

mobile.twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1381139520784044033

He has a point.

He has a good point.

I think the Boston Review "gender inequality is not accrued intergenerationally." thing is about family wealth. Black people are discriminated against, tend to marry each other, and then their children end up poorer than a comparable white family who have not been discriminated against. This has a cumulative effect through the generations, increasing inequality. The argument seems to be that financial reparations could never be sorted if any white person can identify as black.

Women's discrimination doesn't have the same effect because most people are straight and so the disadvantage that women suffer effects all families. It's spread a bit more evenly.

Ignorning the fact that US politicians are unlikely to ever vote for financial reparations, and there are a heap of other problems like whether the payments just go to descendants of slaves? are recent black immigrants excluded? etc. this may be a good reason not to allow white people to identify as black. I can think of a whole heap of more obvious reasons not to allow this - eg white people pretending to be black would reinforce racial stereotypes and lead to genuinely black people being unable to organise as a group etc. What it's not though is a good reason to allow men to identify as women.

Existing words change meaning by gradual evolution. Or a redefinition or refinement is proposed & voluntarily adopted. Fine.

Not fine is when a word with a long-established common usage is bossily redefined, & adoption of the new meaning imposed by law or social bullying.

What a waffler. Hows about:

"Words change" does not mean "I can change your words".

I’m surprised more people on twitter aren’t connecting all his tweets over the past few days. His catholic tweets from today are directly linked to his tweets on trans issues.

I agree NativityDreaming, also the quotes from Orwell and Yeats...

Aaaaand..... the coward has backtracked:

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .
twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1381665011127451652?s=19

[quote ItsAllGoingToBeFine]Aaaaand..... the coward has backtracked:

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .
twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1381665011127451652?s=19[/quote]
That's not backtracking. He hasn't said you can change sex, he's just making it clear that he's not to be affiliated with the Republican bigots.

@NecessaryScene1

Existing words change meaning by gradual evolution. Or a redefinition or refinement is proposed & voluntarily adopted. Fine.

Not fine is when a word with a long-established common usage is bossily redefined, & adoption of the new meaning imposed by law or social bullying.

What a waffler. Hows about:

"Words change" does not mean "I can change your words".

I'd have added more - that it's not ok for words to have changes imposed on them if they're used in defining protected characteristics of a group. Certainly not without the full and informed consent of that group.

[quote ItsAllGoingToBeFine]Aaaaand..... the coward has backtracked:

I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic “Discuss” question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue .
twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1381665011127451652?s=19[/quote]
🙄

But now I’m all confused as to whether I’m supposed to disown him or not, per regularsized’s instructions upthread!

I know- I will go back to finding his opinions sometimes mildly interesting and sometimes not, sometimes agreeing with him, sometimes disagreeing, but fundamentally thinking that he’s quite irrelevant to feminism. It’s served me well thus far.

It's not disparaging trans people to note that there are two immutable sexes.

That's not backtracking. He hasn't said you can change sex, he's just making it clear that he's not to be affiliated with the Republican bigots.

It's fine for Dawkins to make clear that he isn't disparaging trans people.

However, Republicans are exploiting this issue? By doing bans on trans-women in female sports?

I'm not sure how that counts as "exploitation"? I doubt it's a big vote winner for them or anything. Rather, how about they just genuinely think it's unfair to let them compete against females, and so act to ban it for that reason?

I'm confused about why when an atheist liberal asks a question, it's from virtuous academic interest. Dawkins just wants us to be able to talk about this stuff. However if Republicans act to protect female sports, they are trans-hating bigots just seeking to exploit the situation?

Maybe Dawkins thinks he can protect himself from accusations of bigotry, by throwing the bigot accusation at other people.

Is he doing a Stephen King and backtracking a bit? Amazing how these men have flimsy backbones made of matches. JKR is far braver. Ovarios of steel that one!

Coward, never liked him, comes across as a 'holier than thou' man, not a good look for an atheist.

I am fascinated to know how The Powers That Be operate behind the seens to cause all these people of principle to do such a rapid and embarrassing reverse-ferret.

I'll never understand why some people seem to believe that people or political allies need to agree on absolutely everything to be legitimate. It reminds me of that totalitarian way of argument we are seeing so much of these days. So being so rigid and extremist. People vary, no one thinks the same.

I dislike him, the way he speaks, his contempt. I avoid him. I've always been surprised he's so conciliatory about the gender issue. It doesn't make sense.

I am so, so disappointed with Mr Dawkins. His initial discussion question was great.

But now he is just trying to deflect the baying mob, by throwing the Republicans to them as a crumb, hoping that the mob will get sidetracked and thus leave him alone.

Also - I've been reading the Twitter replies, and what stands out, for me, are the huge number of responses saying that Mr Dawkins has got the science wrong. There are SO many replies on this theme, that this really appears to be a Thing.

Which begs the question, what are these kids being taught? Is gender woo being taught as science? Where are they getting this from? The people replying to his question do seem to genuinely believe this.

It would be illuminating to know exactly which bit of the science it is that they think he has wrong of course (perhaps someone will tell us) But it does show us the depth of capture of their minds.

Helen Joyce has just tweeted to say he has endorsed her new book so who knows where he stands on this...

twitter.com/hjoycegender/status/1381888763006160898?s=21

“ This endorsement for my book is very exciting for me - I've been reading @RichardDawkins since 'The Selfish Gene', and he's a hero of mine for his brilliant exposition of science, and emphasis on freedom of belief and speech. Out July 15th folks! amazon.co.uk/Trans-When-Ide…”

The science is that sex is a spectrum because intersex exists which means that it's all fluidy-wuidy and since everyone is on that spectrum, then a person from the man end of the spectrum can actually be anywhere on the spectrum including that part occupied by women.

I suspect that if the gender identity ideology doesn't fall out of fashion, the concept of transitioning will fade away and it will all be about gender identity and one simply is on the sex spectrum wherever one's gender identity indicates, with the fluidity meaning that this position can shift.