"What Is A Woman" by Richard Dawkins - in the the New Statesman!!

[Qbishy]

Wow, I can't imagine the New Statesman, of all mags, commissioning this a year ago...

Why biological sex matters - New Statesman

Moreover, I don’t think Jacqueline Rose can be blamed for not replying to my article, because I doubt that she was shown it. Whether she should be blamed for something else – such as writing an article that doesn’t make any coherent sense – is another matter. Perhaps “doesn’t make any coherent sense” is a badge of honour among postmodernists. I wouldn’t know, as I’ve never met anyone who could even begin to tell me what postmodernism is.

This is glorious.

Loving this! 😄And, as a long-time subscriber, looking forward to the letters page next week.

Do you think it makes any of them pause for thought when they sit down, sharpen their pencil and find that they can’t actually sensibly explain why they believe what they believe?

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

From the Bible commissioned by King James VI
1604

I mean this is pretty basic, how can an academic not have heard of this text?

Also how can she have so seriously misunderstood Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex?

This exact point is actually debated by early modern historians. Aristotle isn't regarded as clear about it at all.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-sex_and_two-sex_theories

As a student I accepted that the one-sex model was the dominant way of thinking in the early modern period. The critiques I read of it were very weak - more tinkering at the edges than demolishing the theory. I think I need to read it again now with a gender critical adult eye!

It's interesting to consider 'sex as a spectrum' as being a fundamentally medieval idea!

One more time 😁😁

Dawkins, you are a gem.

I would like them to have two opposing-sides articles on the vexing question of what is a man.

We had a brilliant display on national telly (Scandinavia)where two men who were all TWAW invited a transman on their show.
Their faces when it dawned on them that this little woman with a beard really thought she was a man were priceless.
It was VERY clear that they did not think TMAM and the cogs started to turn regarding TWAW as well.

It would be good to accept that twatw and tmatm, and that they can have their own categories and Third spaces.

Women, Men and Other or some such.

Is this even true?

Research published this June found that roughly 7 per cent of people changed sexual identity and/or orientation in the course of a six-year period in the UK.

I thought that the census showed that it was about 1% ?

I've read both the articles. I enjoyed the Dawkins (I always do - he's a first rate writer, except when he gets overtaken by grumpy-old-mannishness). I found the other weirdly - weird. Again, I always do. There's something intoxicatingly sublime about the sheer chutzpah behind this kind of writing. You're reading it, and thinking "how do they get away with this?" all the way through. Apart from the straw manning, the outrageous inaccuracies ("female" emerging as a concept in 19C racism? Really?), the refusal to define or even characterise concepts, and the complete failure to reference any of the claims, there is an argument and evidence vacuum. Nothing outside the story.

And this is the aim. Destroy reason and argument construction by claiming that everything is stories, and everyone had a story, and all are equal. Except, of course, for the stories of the oppressor class, which are only there to disempower marginalised identities. They cannot therefore be a legitimate expression of identity. They are not "valid". "Valid" is another term which has lost any meaning.

I remember reading a pamphlet written by the Chinese American Peoples Friendship Organisation (or some such title) which was a far left Maoist organisation in the 60s or 70s. It argued that fallout from China's nuclear bomb could not harm the workers because it was not produced for profit, but for people. The US bomb, though, was produced by the capitalist west, and was lethal to the working class because capitalism is all about production for profit, not people. The Pomo attitude is the same thing. Same aims. Same utter lunacy. Same rejection of reason.

However, they have learned from the Maoists. The Maoists attempts to argue exposed them to ridicule. The current bunch realise that the best way to counter rational argument is to refuse to engage. Actually, it's the only way. So "no debate". As long as you shout your matras long and often enough, they will somehow transmogrify into reality.

There's a wonderful bit at the end of Vladimir Voinovich's "Private Ivan Chonkin" where the peasant's horse finally, though the enobling, developing power of Labour, turns into a human. Beautiful parody.

Apart from the straw manning, the outrageous inaccuracies ("female" emerging as a concept in 19C racism? Really?)

It's not an inaccuracy, it's a deliberate, steaming pile of horseshit.

Dawks has hit the nail on the head with this, of course:

A “woman” is defined as anyone who chooses to call herself a woman, and never mind if she has a penis and a hairy chest. And of course this entitles her to enter women’s changing rooms and athletic competitions. Why should she not? She is, after all, a woman, is she not? Deny it and you are a transphobic bigot.

@SinnerBoy

It's not an inaccuracy, it's a deliberate, steaming pile of horseshit.

Horseshit is real, very material, and has its uses. I prefer the term "inaccuracy" which is much more damning.

Yes, but it's a conscious and deliberate lie. All of the pro-trans crowd seem to delight in lying, distracting and obfuscation.

How can you have a meaningful dialogue with liars?

Approximately 2 seconds of googling would have enabled renowned intellectual JR to have found this:

In the 14th century, female appeared in English with such spellings as femel, femelle, and female. The word comes from the Latin femella, meaning “young woman, girl,” which in turn is based on femina, meaning “woman.”

She really must think people are stupid.

There is money in it.

@SinnerBoy To be fair to Rose (yeah, I know, I know), the census measures (or attempts to; the questions in the census on this were very unclear, and comments on MN and elsewhere have made clear) trans people in the whole population, she is surely taking about the current rate of change. Whether her figure is accurate, since she does not provide a source, I have no idea.

Nicely written @JustSpeculation

As long as you shout your mantras long and often enough, they will somehow transmogrify into reality

Well they appear to believe that a man can transmogrify into a woman, so...

This is the research Rose is referring to:

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/11/sexual-identity-mobility-study-uk

But it's about straight people coming out as gay, or vice versa. It doesn't tell you anything about trans people.

How very shallow Rose’s article appears when you remember that two of the sources she relies on heavily (Freud and Andrea Long Chu) were both born with a penis and spent their life and career using this fact with very clear bias as to the innnate superiority in almost every way you can think of for all individuals so blessed, even if like Chu they change their minds about their own penis later.

Are the non-scientifically based opinions and observations of people born with a penis really the wisest choice to be used as confirmation in an article to answer the question “what is a woman”. To rely on them to back up an argument hints at a very thin veneer of scholarship and research.

And once again the trope of transphobia being an iteration of racism. It isn’t.

I enjoyed reading Dawkins though.

I enjoyed reading Dawkins though.

I liked the bit where Dawkins explained the biology. I wasn't that bothered about the rest of it where he describes Jan Morris as true trans, blah blah. I think most of us are past that now. Probably Helen or Maya or Kathleen or Dr Em or any number of others would have written a better account of the gender critical position, though of course Dawkins has the authority as a distinguished scientist when it comes to the biological stuff.

I don't know what to make of Rose's piece. Is she really this stupid? Does she imagine she's making a very clever and sophisticated case? Or has she set herself the task of defending the indefensible as a kind of intellectual game, like proving "black is white" or "two plus two equals five"? I always feel the same way about this PoMo nonsense, like Sally Hines saying "before the Enlightenment the female skeleton didn't exist", or anything at all that Judith Butler writes. Perhaps the true purveyor of PoMo thinks that reality doesn't matter anyway, so you can just write any crap you want.

Genesis 5;2
Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.
I'm not religious but even the King James Version says that.

Probably Helen or Maya or Kathleen or Dr Em or any number of others would have written a better account of the gender critical position, though of course Dawkins has the authority as a distinguished scientist when it comes to the biological stuff

Plus he has the benefit of being a man. Sad to say that men are listened to more than women, especially in this sphere, and especially in the New Statesman.

Or as the TRAs would say AMAC. Assigned male at creation…….Though you would think god knew exactly what he was assigning and to whom.

sorry to be stupid, but what does pomo stand for?

Not stupid at all! My fault for using shorthand. It's postmodernism.

You can't have a meaningful dialogue. They want precisely this. Not to have a dialogue. That's the point.

ah, thank you, that makes total sense.

Or no sense at all, taken another way.