Rigorous science demands support of transgender scientists

[BunsenHoneydew]

A year ago Cell, a top US biology and biomedical science journal, published a special edition focussing on sex and gender. I posted about this around the time it came out, because I was so gobsmacked that a serious journal (and Cell is a serious journal) was publishing such nonsense, but at the time it was only available to academics. Anyway, it is now open access and can be read by everyone. So here’s some weekend reading, if you’re interested. (Apologies for re-posting old news.)

“Rigorous science demands support of transgender scientists” is actually a very thorough essay about trans thinking. It’s also a big self-centred whinge.

See also: “The history of sex research: Is “sex” a useful category?”. To clownfish, we can now add hyenas.

The whole issue is here:
https://www.cell.com/cell/issue?pii=S0092-8674(23)X0007-5

It’s a gobsmackingly bad issue and these articles should have never got through peer-review.

They should never have even been sent to peer-review, but put straight in the 'this is not science bin'.

Unfortunately I think most scientific journals are completely captured.

I got this far in and recognized the massive error the whole whinge is based on.

“Up until a few years ago, you were a niche curiosity of an exclusionary academy: someone labeled with a “disorder” based on dubious science.”

Perhaps someone more patient than me will click through to see what miracle of scientific reasoning is given to prove the faith-based existence of gender identity, or what breakthrough was made that solidifies and provides real evidence for the unevidenced psychological theory that men can feel like women and that pretending they are helps.

In the meantime, I shall remain cynical and guess that it’s simply more bunkum until someone can rationally explain it in simple terms that are not filled with conflicting ideas and unproven and unlikely theories.

The author of 'Is sex a useful category' gives a brief explanation. Wow.

If sex doesn't exist, then 'trans' people can't exist either. Without male and female categories there can be no 'trans' category where people move from one to the other.

And someone should explain to 'Beans' that people are not the same as fungi or bees.

Up until a few years ago, you were a niche curiosity of an exclusionary academy: someone labeled with a “disorder” based on dubious science.

The 'dubious science' is explained in an article by Jack Turban, which is the usual nonsense spouted by this individual.

TL;DR version of Turban's article:

Gender is all about stereotypes. We should let children defy gender stereotypes, but if they do so they need to be medicated for life in order to turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex because conforming to stereotypes is important.

Incoherent rubbish.

In the YouTube clip, the speaker says, ‘Objects don’t exist in the world waiting to be described, instead they are produced by how people talk about and use them’. This reflects a social constructionist world view, or ontology, that can make sense when applied to socially constructed phenomenon that have no material basis - such as laws or social norms. It is batshit crazy to suggest this ontological position applies to sex, a material phenomenon.

One can take a critical realist position, whereby you recognise that sex is material and exists independently of human thought, but society and individuals create meaning about what it means and involves. This is what moderate GCs put forward, stating that social norms relating to sex are damaging and/or limiting. This is what TRAs used to claim, but stating gender was far more important than sex.

This is what they did up until pesky feminist started pointing to laws that define sex in material terms and don’t refer to gender identity. If Dr Upton’s testimony in the Peggie v Fife tribunal, could have been ‘yes, I’m biologically male , but societally female, he could have made a more coherent case (I would still disagree though). Instead, because of the law as it was being put forward by Peggie’s team refers to sex existing outside of human thought and language, he was forced to give his batshit testimony.

I think some academics and scientists enjoy sojourns into social research. I expect they find it stimulating and interesting to explore viewing the world through a different lens. If this was being done in relation to cancer, or genetic modification, I wonder if they would enjoy it as much?

I’d love to see Beans give that talk to a group of livestock farmers.

Seriously... Beans used the 'trust me bro' argument!

Each of those worker bees could have reproduced if they had been fed royal jelly and become a queen. Beans has carefully glossed over that.

Gender is all about stereotypes. We should let children defy gender stereotypes, but if they do so they need to be medicated for life in order to turn them into sterile facsimiles of the opposite sex because conforming to stereotypes is important.

Thanks for this TL:DR summary!

Link on another thread, but that works perfectly for this too:

Benjamin Ryan, on his podcast, has started putting up a series of leaked talks by J. Olson Kennedy to mental health professionals in Los Angeles.

This is the first one:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RYGYELcxKE0Pzt5Z5Hi6t?si=UMG0WNIfSgK2P7O7aaYFA

Good fucking christ. And these people are qualified, apparently. The existence of mushrooms in no way means that humans are not dimorphically sexed mammals.

The disconnect in utterly basic logic is astonishing.

Thank you kindly, @OldCrone

As usual, on FWR, there is a patient woman who not only does the research, but then summarises it too.

Jack Turban as a reliable, scientific source to prove “trans” is a well defined and fully accepted concept? Ludicrous.

🦄

FlowchartRequired · Today 11:18

Seriously... Beans used the 'trust me bro' argument!

I'm not going to go into all that tedious science stuff, as it would prove that I'm talking tripple distilled bollocks.

Each of those worker bees could have reproduced if they had been fed royal jelly and become a queen. Beans has carefully glossed over that.

Yes; and sex defined by reproductive capability? So what's a bullock? Not a male kine? It's prove by potential, in part.

Bullocks are transcows
Freemartins are transbulls
Wethers are transrams
Geldings are transmares

... trust me bro. 😆

What a bag full of BS and incoherent word salad. I love the colonial origin of sex e.g. only white people are sexually dimorphic other people are a bit wavery. No-one ever believe this tosh - it's made of whole cloth (and moth eaten cloth at that).

To give Beans her due, she appears to have built an entire career out of justifying why she doesn’t want to wear a dress.

Her entire delivery was hesitant at every turn; ax if someone was going to say,

"Oh fer fuck's sake! How can you spout this bullshit?" and kill the mike. She knows, she definitely knows.

It always puzzles me that the people who are both claiming that "the West invented binary sex" and claiming that "nothing exists until it is named' , can't see the contradiction in their attitude.
They are so smug about having spotted (as they think) a piece of Western intellectual arrogance ("you think this is an objective fact but it's just your limited standpoint") but fail to see the breathtaking anthropocentric arrogance of their overall attitude. The non-human rest of the world just gets on with it all without bothering with language at all! Do the things in their world not "exist"?
I think the fact that a lot of people now (including opinion- leaders and people in power) are living lives where they have only superficial contact with anything not human or human- made, is doing harm in all sorts of ways that are not immediately apparent.

Great post, thanks

Even if the world were entirely constructed through language, try kicking a table. No matter how we describe—or fail to describe—it, the pain is real. A culture with no word for ‘table’ would still encounter the same solid, immovable object. Language shapes perception and interpretation, but it does not create physical reality.
Even de Saussure, despite emphasising the arbitrary nature of linguistic signs, never suggested that things cease to exist without words to name them.
Derrida, on the other hand, would probably deconstruct the table, argue that it’s a shifting play of différance, and insist that our experience of stubbing a toe is mediated by unstable signifiers. But he can go jump—preferably falling over a table, where he can contemplate its textuality while nursing a very real bruise.

That clip is so frustrating, I want to stop her and dismantle her point approx every 10 seconds.

If sex really doesn’t exist and was never there until it was arbitrarily named by westerners (this is SUCH an unthinkingly racist position - everyone else doesn’t have words for the sexes? Really? Other cultures’ languages don’t construct reality but western culture does? Why? The assumptions are glaring)

… then how can being trans exist? If there’s only gender, wtf are gender surgeons doing lopping bits off and sticking bits on - how do they know which bits to butcher - and how do people know which hormones to take? How do we know who is trans so they can be celebrated and given lighter jail sentences or awarded prizes or grants for trans people? Why do trans women on lesbian dating apps specify they only want natural born women, when that has no meaning? How do trans men and trans women know they want to be seen as men or women? Where did those categories come from? Why to “MtF” and ‘FtM” care so much about them if they don’t exist?

and so on…

It's the left wing version of right wing Americans giving their children chastity rings and then dealing with surprise pregnancies.

These people are crazy.