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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

GC British guy debating US sceptic.

122 replies

Dadalus · 01/01/2022 09:18

In case anyone finds it interesting...

twitter.com/lecanardnoir/status/1477004076877496328?t=wcSZsecghAvIRo2WozuheQ&s=19

It looks like the idea is to have a long exchange of letters between them, only the opening statements have been made so far.

OP posts:
bishophaha · 01/01/2022 23:57

4 'letters' so far.
He's saying that any increase in FTM referrals can be explained by greater social acceptance and legal support for trans people.

Yet, of course, provides no argument as to what data one might even expect to evidence this, let alone the actual data.

He hasn't been able to explain what he means by gender. I don't understand why it's so difficult to set that out at the start - isn't that essential to know what you're talking about?

CheeseMmmm · 02/01/2022 05:08

Read a few comments and first tweet saying let's do this!

It's two men.

Who are going to have a look how clever i am competition involving lots of chin rubbing and long long articulations around how open they are to the other blokes opinions, how rational they are, how deeply they think, with a lot of. Yes you're very clever same as me! Look how awesome we are! Approaching this topic without bias, emotional interference, just superior male application of intellect.

And scene has been set that they avoid anything around the tricky things that are the whole point of the topic.

...

AND INSTEAD enjoy discussing cleverly the question that has been of huge interest to men since at least the ancient Greeks..

What is a woman?

Will have a read Twitter and see...

DinoDora · 02/01/2022 08:23

I feel I should know this but I don't; what in a nutshell, is the skeptic movement?

DinoDora · 02/01/2022 08:25

He's saying that any increase in FTM referrals can be explained by greater social acceptance and legal support for trans people.

He needs to read some of Littman's research and also bare in mind that Bowers (jazz Jennings TW surgeon) has stated that there's an issue with SM and young teen girls, and an exponential rise that are definitely not all trans.

DinoDora · 02/01/2022 08:27

Sorry bold error in first para, quoting bishopha

BessieBraddockAliasThorne · 02/01/2022 12:12

I was initially a bit sceptical of what could be seen as a parlour-game type approach here, with two men airily debating an issue that has very real ramifications for women, but I had a look at the letters as I've seen some good stuff from Canard Noir on Twitter. The contrast between the two is really quite astonishing. Reasoned arguments and evidence on one side (and a very good job of highlighting that the UK is very different to the US; I find the constant "you're just like the religious right" argument with this whole issue particularly galling), and on the other side... an absolute howling mess. Totally bizarre to say we should leave sport out of the debate as it might become a 'wedge issue' when in fact the issues that cause the unfairness in sport (ie male strength and size) are largely the same issues that make it a problem to have males in women's spaces. It's all interrelated - it's impossible to hive off one area and say it's not up for debate. They just want sport to be put aside as it's the most obvious manifestation of the problems inherent in the gender ideology. Looking forward to seeing the next response from Canard Noir, but there's almost no point in trying to debate someone whose main line seems to be 'yes it probably is unfair but just don't discuss it and be kind, and also the numbers look slightly different to what you said'

Truthlikeness · 02/01/2022 13:08

To borrow from Wikipedia.. "The skeptical movement (British spelling: sceptical movement) is a modern social movement based on the idea of scientific skepticism. The movement has the goal of investigating claims made on fringe topics and determining whether they are supported by empirical research and are reproducible, as part of a methodological norm pursuing "the extension of certified knowledge".

They largely address issues like religion (particularly in the US), pseudoscience, paranormal etc - effectively trying to prove there is no evidence for these things. Some notable skeptics you may have heard of are James Randi, Penn and Teller, Derren Brown (magicians know how various tricks are pulled off), Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins, Richard Feynman, Tim Minchin, Sam Harris. Apologies those are all men - there are female skeptics but they tend to be less well known. Make of that what you will.

The skeptic movement largely seems to have unquestioningly swallowed the idea that someone can have a gender soul different to the their physical body. It's quite mystifying.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 15:48

It's worth pointing out that it's a pop movement. It's not science as such, it would naturally fall under the philosophy of science, but it's not actually part of academic philosophy or the discipline of the philosophy of science at all.

One of the characteristics of this kind of popular scientific skepticism is that it has a foundational trust, to really an extreme degree, in science and empiricism. It is not skeptical of the latter especially and it tends to be a little naive about how to deal with problems in the sciences. It does fine with true pseudo-science but then really runs into trouble when talking about more serious questions about epistemology and science.

That may account for some of their problems with gender. It was and in some places like the US or Canada still is presented as being accepted by scientists and medical authorities.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 15:56

Here's an article people might find interesting - it's from "Science-Based Medicine" which is a website that operates from the perspective of scientific skepticism and presents medical topics from an evidence based perspective. This particular page is a review of Abigail Shrier's book. You can see, reading it, that they don't seem to have much ability to differentiate or evaluate different perspectives. I think that's really inherent in scientific skepticism.
sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-science-of-transgender-treatment/

Ereshkigalangcleg · 02/01/2022 16:03

I think Le Canard Noir (the GC British guy in the OP) is banned from commenting on that site after he criticised the various stuff they have platformed on trans issues, many with dubious credentials.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 16:10

@Ereshkigalangcleg

I think Le Canard Noir (the GC British guy in the OP) is banned from commenting on that site after he criticised the various stuff they have platformed on trans issues, many with dubious credentials.
That doesn't surprise me at all.

From the standpoint of philosophy, scientific skeptisism is maybe an ok approach within science, but skeptics involved don't see it that way, which is why they try and engage with things like metaphysics. But they are essentially logical positivists, which is no longer really a live position in philosophy. Not least because it's self-refuting.

The only way for them to deal with that in their discourse is to remove people who don't obey the rules, and it gives them a real blind-spot.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 16:14

If you read their stuff on midwifery care, it's really awful as well, their "expert" on the topic is as biased in her own way as their stuff on gender affirming care.

Dozer · 02/01/2022 16:16

‘……first see if we agree that trans persons should have their gender respected in all the other areas of society where competitive advantage isn’t at issue’.

By ‘have their gender respected’ assume he actually means self ID for boys and men to have access to facilities, jobs, sports, prizes and funding previously available only to girls and women.

Assume skeptics have scepticism about the concept of ‘gender’.

Dozer · 02/01/2022 16:18

Don’t understand any of your post, SantaClawsServiette. Lots of jargon.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 16:32

@Dozer

Don’t understand any of your post, SantaClawsServiette. Lots of jargon.
Which post?
ShagMeRiggins · 02/01/2022 17:09

@Dozer

Don’t understand any of your post, SantaClawsServiette. Lots of jargon.
Dozer, did you mean this paragraph:

From the standpoint of philosophy, scientific skeptisism is maybe an ok approach within science, but skeptics involved don't see it that way, which is why they try and engage with things like metaphysics. But they are essentially logical positivists, which is no longer really a live position in philosophy. Not least because it's self-refuting.

I didn’t read it as jargon, per se. I read it and thought I really need to look further into metaphysics, the skeptic (sceptic) movement, and logical positivism. Plus philosophy.

To me, jargon is shorthand (or bollocks) within an industry, such as “we’re doing menagerie” or “blue sky thinking”. Slang, really. Codified expressions that are understood, mostly, in certain sectors or groups (thinking Marvel fandom right now, in which my daughter is interested) as well as businesses and, frankly, Mumsnet.

ShagMeRiggins · 02/01/2022 17:12

Actually, my examples are not slang. Just shorthand and jargon. I could provide IT industry and further business industry and self-ID or simply “yoof” slang as examples, but hope y’all get my gist.

DinoDora · 02/01/2022 18:39

Thank you so much for your explanation Truth and Santa.

I think I get the basics and now need to read about the positive logical etc stuff.

Bonkers they don't get it isn't it?!

DinoDora · 02/01/2022 18:42

We've talked a lot about straw men arguments before here, this article (point 3) from the bbc really struck me:

Sorry I can't copy the relevant bits onto here for some reason.

Three ways to be more rational this year www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-59740588

GC British guy debating US sceptic.
DinoDora · 02/01/2022 18:44

Last phrase:

Guilt by association - rather than exposing flaws in an argument, calling attention to disreputable people that are sympathetic to it,

yes we see that one.

And I thought the final para useful:

We can all promote reason by changing the mores of intellectual discussion, so people treat their beliefs as hypotheses to be tested rather than slogans to be defended.

Dozer · 02/01/2022 19:42

Sorry, SantaClawsServiette I was abrupt.

By ‘jargon’ I meant phrases and terms that can’t easily be understood by the ‘lay reader’ who is unfamiliar with the subject matter. (Not bollocks or slang!). I appreciate that jargon is everywhere!

Some of the terms in your posts that I don’t understand are below. Not understanding them is making it difficult for me to understand your points, which I’m interested in as I hadn’t heard of this ‘movement’ and you seem knowledgeable about it and to be critiquing it. (The info from Truthlikeness from Wikipedia is useful but also uses some jargon).

I THINK what you’re saying is that the ‘skeptics’ have a ‘blind spot’ with respect to uncritically accepting lobbyists idea about ‘gender’ and assertions that ‘transwomen are women’?

Terms:

Popular scepticism / sceptic movement / popular scientific scepticism.
scientism.
epistemology.
scientific empiricism
[things that] can't be dealt with empirically
discipline of the philosophy of science.
‘foundational trust…in science and empiricism’
questions about epistemology and science.

‘medical topics from an evidence based perspective’

metaphysics
Logical positivists
self-refuting.

Marzipano · 02/01/2022 21:09

An attempt to restate some of SantaClawsServiette's great point.

The modern sceptic community tends to have the view that every question can be approached by purely logical analysis and the methods of empirical (evidence-based) science. This is a very incomplete view, but has historically been very successful for them in winning arguments on questions such as evolution-vs-creationism and whether vaccination causes autism.

But here the central questions are not amenable to this kind of analysis, since they are about justice and fairness, and how to handle two groups who want conflicting things. So the American guy is applying the tools he's used to using in debates against pseudo-science - such as demanding reliable evidence and querying unsourced statistics - without recognizing that he's fundamentally missing the point of this particular debate.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 21:13

I'll rewrite it in less technical language, Dozer - it might just be a bit longer and structured differently.

In academic philosophy, in universities, there is scepticism which is a historical school or way of thinking about reality that goes back to the ancient Greeks. In general, if you want to really get into the weeds about philosophical questions, academic philosophy does it in the most rigorous and technical way. But just like the academic sciences, it's not always very accessible to average readers and often seems kind of boring.

But something called scientific skepticism, or the Skeptic Movement, has become kind of a popular movement in the public sphere. It draws to some extent from academic philosophy but is more approachable while also being in some ways less rigorous. One way it's less rigorous is that it takes a definite point of view about how we know things. In philosophy the study of how we know is called epistemology, and it's important because if you are going to make any kind of claims about truth, you have to think about what we can know, how, and under what circumstances. A lot of the thinking in the philosophy of science overlaps with those kinds of questions, as you can imagine.

Scientific skepticism tends to assume as true a philosophical position called positivism, and a fairly strong version of that. Essentially what it says is that the only things that exist are material things, the physical universe, and we can know them through observation. And by extension, through science. This way of thinking, or something close to it, was something that philosophers considered a real possibility about 100 years ago or so, and thee were attempts to make it work. Since then it's largely fallen out of favour as there were problems that proved difficult to overcome.They couldn't get the support in terms of more fundamental questions to work out, justifying their underlying assumptions.

That being said, when scientific skeptics work that way, they can sometimes do well with debunking spurious scientific claims, things like homeopathy or ghosts and such. Science is defined as only including physical reality, so their approach is valid enough.

But they run into problems when they try and talk about things that fall outside of the physical world, for example metaphysical questions, like whether god exists, or the nature of being. Or even something like the nature of mathematical truths.

And they also don't have a very strong foundation to talk about epistemology and how we know things, including scientific things. And that's actually a really important topic in science, while not itself being just a scientific question. So they end up taking a very naive position on some of the really controversial questions in science which often aren't about facts and observations, but about how science should work, or about how it really does work in practice. They aren't very good at being critical of their own approaches to questions.

So this website, Evidence based Medicine - tha's just a term that means the emphasis is on using medical approaches that are really justified by good, robust research (which lots aren't) - is run by people who have toes to the Scientific Skeptic movement. And you can see where they get into topics like gender, that they struggle to deal with medical issues where politics are inserting themselves, or where there is disagreement about what evidence counts, or also I have noticed tend to be overly focused on the findings of institutional bodies. They can't deal with an area where the evidence given by bodies they see as authorities is all over the place.

SantaClawsServiette · 02/01/2022 21:14

Ha, or you can just read what Marzipano said, it's a lot shorter!

PermanentTemporary · 02/01/2022 21:16

How does 'let's leave out the sports issue' mean they're demanding evidence? It suggests they are trying to remove evidence that would make it a much shorter debate and much harder for them to win.

What they like is poking fun at creationists. Not losing. They hate losing.