Students call for professor at University of Southern Maine to be replaced after teaching that there are only two sexes

[TheBiologyStupid]

According to the Bangor Daily News, a newspaper in Maine, USA:

Nearly two dozen graduate students at the University of Southern Maine are demanding their education professor be replaced after the professor allegedly said only two biological sexes exist.

The students said professor Christy Hammer’s remarks were inaccurate and transphobic.

After all but one student walked out of Hammer’s class on Sept. 14 in protest, they demanded a facilitated restorative justice meeting between the 22 students and their professor.

They got it, but, according to students, Hammer maintained her position saying non-binary biological sex designations are merely variations on male and female. Now they want Hammer gone.

www.bangordailynews.com/2022/09/29/news/portland/usm-professor-two-sexes/

Professor Kathleen Stock has tweeted about this ridiculous situation:
twitter.com/Docstockk/status/1576060008533757952

Jerry Coyne, an emeritus professor of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, has also just written about it: whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/10/01/professor-in-maine-demonized-for-teaching-that-humans-have-two-sexes-students-walk-out-and-demand-her-suspension/

Maybe the student thought they were a sea horse , although I suspect the lecturer may have spotted that.

Hidden? Oh because I said there was a petition. Aren’t we allowed to even say there is one?

A male seahorse has a fold of skin (like a pouch not an internal uterus) where he collects the eggs released by the female and fertilised by his sperm. So the seahorse argument only works if a male human thinks he has a flap of belly skin in which to house hundreds of babies and the ‘housing’ of the fertilised embryos makes him female.

Is this the new P word?

Outstanding article, thank you for sharing the link.

A great article. We are not above nature. We are part of it.

Yes, a fantastic explanation of the aversion of the Abrahamic religions to sex and bodily reality.

No, it's a pretty basic misunderstanding of how the Abrahamic religions think about the material world. Which is characterized, unlike many of the eastern religions or western pagan religions, as thinking the physical world is in fact real, that it's physicality is part of it's nature, and that it is intrinsically good.

It's just wrong at a basic level.

You are David Icke and I claim my five pounds.

It’s the Gnostic heresy that has the aversion to sex and bodily reality. Gnosticism rears its ugly little head in almost every generation.

In gnostic type beliefs, you are ‘saved’ by a knowledge of the ‘hidden’ divinity, and you can only access the ‘true’ divine through mystic insight that’s inaccessible to the ‘unenlightened’.

Sounds remarkably like being ‘saved’ by the knowledge of your ‘hidden’ gender and only being able to access your ‘true’ self through your amazing insight. Which is obviously inaccessible to us unenlightened types. We’re just not esoteric enough.

Of the Abrahamic religions, Christianity was the first to offer women a lifestyle that didn’t necessarily involve getting married. Not so much an aversion to sex and bodily reality, more a recognition that it can be slightly difficult to concentrate on God while dealing with ten dc, a dh and assorted df.

The passage in the linked article that I was referring to says:

All Abrahamic religions espouse a profound distrust for the “fallible” body and aversion towards sex, both in terms of the act of reproduction and of the female class that carries out the reproductive labour. One can endlessly speculate about the reasons for this aversion but one obvious reason is that reproduction and birth are the most evident manifestations of humanity’s place in the natural world. These biological processes positively mark us as animals amongst other animals rather than as a separate, superior species. Ideologies that elevate the soul/mind over the body and material reality tell a tale of dominance and control of humanity over the natural world rather than the truth about our belonging within it.

These students who think it’s ‘literal violence’ to speak biological facts are going to be parents at some point soon (if they aren’t in denial of biological reproduction that is) … wtf is happening and what will they teach their children?!

I don't even know how to pronounce Icke.

I did study ancient philosophy during the early Christian period, at university. And the musings in that article just don't reflect a very clear understanding of how they conceived of the physical body.

Just because something sounds right doesn't mean it's correct. That's as true of the history of philosophy or theology as much as science.

You seemed to be disputing the existence of physical reality, which is a bit of a stretch for most people

Yes, I agree that it says that. I just don’t agree with what it says.

All Abrahamic religions don’t have a profound mistrust of the physical body. There’s an ascetic strain in Christian monasticism, which the writer seems to be over-generalising to to both the wider Christian experience and the other Abrahamic religions.

I think there’s also a couple of minority Jewish traditions - but the emphasis is on ‘minority’. It’s not a mainstream view; we’re talking about a religion that has a prayer suitable for going to the loo - in which you give thanks that everything’s working!

Declaring that we are animals among other animals is simply the mirror image of elevating the soul over our material reality. The students in the original post insist that their gender-souls trump mere biology.

But if you go too far in the other direction, you end up with ‘uterus-havers’ and ‘people who bleed’. We are more than simple animals, because we’re capable of seeing beyond our biological roles. Because we’re capable of doing that, we are capable of recognising where the role-constraints are social, not biological.

And we can also see where the constraints are biological - which brings us back to the teacher, telling the students that the number of genders/sexes is two. That’s a material constraint. The students need to know that.

That certainly wasn't my intent.

There are certain philisophical positions, for example, most of the western pagan ones and many eastern religions, that saw the physical world and nature as being a kind of degraded, unstable emanation of what was real and stable. They tended to see the human soul, for example, as being trapped in matter for a time, and thought it was freed from that when the body died. So the material element of the body was not part of our true nature.

That's quite different from the Abrahamic religions which believed that the natural world's physicality was an inherent part of its nature and also a good. They thought that the human soul and physical body were an organic unity, incomplete when either element was missing.

Pretty much all religions and philosophical schools had some kind of explanation for the problems that matter seems to bring with it, death, suffering, vice, and so on, as these phenomena were seen to require explanation, but seeing the problem as matter itself wasn't the explanation the Abrahamic religions took.

It’s a bit of a stretch to leap from the poster saying that the Abrahamic religions think ‘the physical world is in fact real’ to suggesting that they’re disputing the existence of physical reality.

@MangyInseam @dropthevipers @Anactor
I guess the point of this thread is that your debate would not be tolerated because it would upset students who would call for your resignation and cancel you. That is the issue.
But also certain things are real and factual. We can all muse away philosophically. But unless we built on reality, we are lost.

cant lecturers and serious students call for the twerps to be kicked out of uni/college? They aren’t there to learn, just to ‘live their authentic life’ or whatever nonsense they spout.

They may be worried about lawsuits if they expel they/them. I'm sure the ACLU'll be waiting to charge in. They should call their bluff, let them boycott the class and fail the course.

It's been a couple of days though, have there been any developments.

Fail the course. An you imaging the wailing and pooing of pants (probably in public) about this? Tiger moms and dads threatening to sue the unis because their little baba’s civil rights have been attacked?

what a mess.

There are infinite gender identities!

Although the biggest category must surely be 'none'? Who needs or wants one?

well, quite!

Nonetheless, some extremely insistent people are claiming to have one which is fine (in the way that a personal religious faith is fine) but we clearly can’t organise society around it.

Imagine all the extra toilets!

They may be worried about lawsuits if they expel they/them. I'm sure the ACLU'll be waiting to charge in. They should call their bluff, let them boycott the class and fail the course.

Yes I think that's the best course of action.