I really appreciate this article, and can understand why the author has published it under a pseudonym.
But where are the senior, tenured biologists? That “sex is a spectrum” is now orthodox belief in progressive circles, where it is now fashionable to sneer at the bigots and troglodytes who cling to outmoded and simplistic concepts derived from 8th-grade biology textbooks. And the lack of pushback by professional biologists lends credence to activist claims that the sex binary has been replaced by something altogether sexier and more complex.
So why don’t more biologists speak out? I can think of a couple of (not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations:
1) Although their jobs are secure (I am speaking here only of the comfortably tenured), their reputations are not. They can still be smeared, deplatformed, ostracized, unpersoned, and so on.
2) They assume (wrongly, I’m afraid) that “sex is a spectrum” is just a passing fad, something the kids are saying on TikTok or what have you, but nothing they need take seriously. Indeed, it would be beneath their dignity to even take notice of such errant nonsense, which, again, is merely a passing fad.
My fear is that, without some effective pushback by experts in the field, “sex is a spectrum” really will become, well, the stuff of 8th-grade biology textbooks…
I don't think tenured professors are safe. Tenured, old-school liberal academics have been (and are still being) fired. If administration wants to get rid of you, then can do all sorts of creative contortions to get it done. It'll just take a long time, but it *will* happen. I can think of two prominent examples off the top of my head right now, but there's way more if you go digging.
"I believe Dr. Fuentes and other political progressives prefer this definition of sex because it makes it impossible to legally protect single-sex spaces." Exactly! These continuing attempts to redefine sex are politically driven, not scientifically; they are, indeed, "a kind of anti-science that makes biology less capable of making sense of the world around us." They're a smokescreen, an attempt to obstruct and divert from a biological truth that throws a real wrench in their political works.
I greatly appreciate the effort and intelligence -- and humor -- invested in this essay. (Though I failed in getting my eggs into contact with sperm, it's only because I'm lesbian, and that is totally on me. :) I'm still unequivocally female.)
Thanks for this analysis. It's a reasonable. science-based pushback on cockeyed theories used to retrofit bad psychology into physiology. Since the time of Harry Benjamin, Alfred Kinsey and John Money, the field of "sexology" has been rewriting history and scientific method to make their grand scheme of "sex change" work. Except it does not. In the famous Amy Bloom article in The Atlantic Monthly, (2002, scrubbed from their archive but saved at childrenoftransitioners.org) Dr. Ray Blanchard, the big guru who got "The Blanchard Protocols" named for him (2 years of cross-dressing, presenting as opposite sex 24/7, keeping your job as your new sex--except they didn't actually do that, my experience with my ex is proof.) said implicitly, that the middle aged men he was mostly treating had sexual fetishes.
Blanchard's own words: " They have to disconnect between reality and their fantasy. Otherwise, their desires are too disruptive. It's too disruptive to acknowledge that you wish your penis was part of your wife's body and not yours. It's too disruptive to acknowledge that this is a sexual compulsion."
For me, this meant that I got to spend about 40k on legal fees for a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty, which I suffered for 3 years while my then husband went cross-dressing in gay bars, pretended gay men were straight for his sexual encounters, lied to me about where he was and what was going on with the money, irritably yelled at our young sons, all with tacit approval of said "sexologist," taking a fee of $200 per session back in the 1990s. Get real, Fuentes.
Wow! A real eye-opener. I read the article ‘children of transitioners’ you referenced. Some years ago, this kind of behavior was treated as mental illness but now it’s fashionable, celebrated, it’s platformed on social media and those practicing or living out their delusions have become a protected class, they’re (although not genuinely or with sincere or loving motives) celebrated as heroes! It’s really disturbing to think what effects this will have on broader society, how many people will be gravely harmed by their behavior and how many decades it will be until the groundswell pushback comes, and this is revealed for what it really is. Thank you for sharing.
Why is this written under a pseudonym? Unless the people in the scientific community are willing to stand up in public and write pieces like this the progressives like Dr. Fuentes will get exactly what they want.
Fair point. Honestly, the same reasons as all the other assistant professors. Previous events lead me to believe my colleagues would not support me, and it's daunting to imagine having to find a new way to support yourself outside of a career you've trained or worked in for over a decade.
People have to feed and house themselves and their families, even professors. If she loses her ability to feed herself then she doesn't have time to write as she'll be out hunting for a new income stream. Those of us in a position (me as a pensioner) to write and say things without having to worry about retaliation can and should speak up.
Came here to leave a similar comment. Just reinforces the glaring issue at the end of this piece that biology has been politically captured and the author is in fear of his/her future.
it's ez for us on the internet to play fearless revolutionary who speaks truth to power, but we all know that if this person wrote this under his/her name what would happen: they and their families and friends would be attacked by an army of deranged zealots, their employer would be bombarded with requests to fire them (in the name of safety) and their life and career may very well be ruined.
If you don't believe me just look at what people like JK Rowling, Lisa Littman, and Alice Dreger had to deal with when they crossed the Trans mob. Insane levels of harassment!
This type of anonymous pushback may be the best we can hope for right now, Trans is a sacred belief system for our ruling class and until this somehow breaks they are willing to do anything to destroy dissent.
I'll admit I often wonder if it's a better strategy for those of us in academia (in whatever capacity) to counter the long-march by staying and seizing the seats of power by playing the long game or if we should just say "F--k this shit" and walk. Heterodox thinkers leaving academia has done the academy no favours, but then I wonder if there's anything worth saving.
Also, including her credentials defeats the purpose of the pseudonym. You can very quickly and easily find the author of the piece by googling "plant biology faculty American University".
I have a different take on the last part about "being clear...we are not transphobic." Claim the name the same way the non-Jewish Danes put on yellow stars during WWII. "Trans" is made-up, so the name-calling of "transphobe" is utterly meaningless.
Wait, isn’t there another word for this? This following description??? Oh wait, maybe it’s personality? “We should think of sex as a combination of many biological and social characteristics that make it “dynamic, biological, cultural, and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies, and multiple physiological and social processes.”
The two words were only interchangeable to those who benefited from cultural stereotypes of gender and they were harmful. Big boys don’t cry all your teachers are women dads leave and go to work all day. Gender has always been a thing
I believe those were called sex stereotypes and ironically the postmodern Gender project doesn't work to eradicate them, but instead has rebirthed and reified them in the form of rigid ideological labeling. Thus if your son plays with dolls or paints his nails out comes the most regressive stereotypes of sexual expression, and he must be a "girl" (possibly in need of castration).
This is repression disguised as liberation, overseen by our newest priesthood of dour moralists, the Gender Studies zealots.
Yup. Over decades ago. In the 60’s, we (called women libbers back then) set about to change the sex-based stereotypes that were preventing humans from experiencing full humanness. You know the ones...like the ones Michael mentions. And yet we were also a bit leery of using the word “sex” as, you know, it had other connotations. The word “sex” could be confusing. So we started using the word “gender” as a replacement for the word “sex”. What is so weird about the academics and institutions foisting this “gender identity” racket on us (egads we are still reducing this to dolls v trucks?) is that is so reactionary. The absolute opposite opposite of revolutionary. It’s driving us back to the 1950’s or probably more accurately the 1500’s.
As PJ O'Rourke used to say: "What the f*ck? I mean, what the f*cking f*ck!?" That we have to live through days like this ... Thankfully, people like Colin and Catherine stand athwart this madness!
Catherine: "Definitions are human inventions and can certainly change to incorporate new understanding."
Amen to that. Many people don't seem to realize that all of our definitions are, in fact, "socially constructed", but that some are clearly more useful than others. Catherine makes a more or less solid, and quite amusing, case that defining the sexes as two distinct categories is far more useful than as a spectrum -- particularly one so open-ended that the terms "male" and "female" become so vague or cumbersome as to be useless, if not worse than useless.
As Stephen Pinker once put it:
"An intelligent being cannot treat every object it sees as a unique entity unlike anything else in the universe. It has to put objects in categories so that it may apply its hard-won knowledge about similar objects, encountered in the past, to the object at hand." [How the Mind Works; pg. 12]
However, while the "gamete-based definition of sex" clearly has substantially more benefits than an open-ended spectrum, I'm not sure -- in fact, I'm quite sure -- that neither Catherine nor Colin, nor most people realize that Colin's definition based on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality" (see Emma Hilton's tweet below) also turns sex into a spectrum -- not a binary -- even if a somewhat more usefully circumscribed one than Fuentes is peddling:
While the rather idiosyncratic lexicon of Hilton and company at least makes the sexes into a binary -- the same way we might talk about the "reddish-bluish binary colour spectrum 🙄" -- their definition also makes each sex into a spectrum of three "sufficient conditions" for category membership. Basically, they are defining each sex as a polythetic category (see below). Which is in notable contradistinction to the standard biological definitions -- as promulgated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction (not the letter section of the UK Times ...) -- which make each sex into a monothetic category with a single "necessary and sufficient condition" for sex category membership, i.e., functional gonads of either of two types:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes" (Lehtonen & Parker [FRS]):
See also my Substack post on Binarists vs Spectrumists for some details on the profound and seriously problematic differences between polythetic and monothetic categories:
While one might also argue that the differences between the two types are somewhat academic, at least at first blush, a more honest assessment provides ample if not damning evidence of serious problems with the polythetic versions. For one thing, they conflict rather seriously with the view that sex is all about reproduction since, by their definitions, some "males" and some "females" are incapable of actually reproducing.
Somewhat more damning is when their definitions are applied to the many species which actually change sex over the course of their lives -- BECAUSE they change the type of gamete ACTUALLY produced. Clearly, it is the actuality and not the potentiality or previous state of the gonads that is the relevant criterion in play, that is the "necessary condition" for category membership. IF one insists on "past, present, or future functionality" THEN one is obliged to talk, for example, about "functional males" and "non-functional males" -- a clear binary -- as Wikipedia is obliged to do in their article on sequential hermaphroditism:
"Both protogynous and protandrous hermaphroditism allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female."
So then newly hatched clownfish are both non-functional males AND non-functional females? Some of whom then become functional males AND non-functional females, some of whom then turn into non-functional males and functional females? What a joke. All predicated, apparently, on a desperate and quite risible aversion to saying "sexless".
Houston, we have a problem. Which too few seem willing to address or consider. Largely because they seem to "think" -- or "feel" -- that the sexes should qualify as "participation trophies"; that everyone has to have a sex; that they constitute "immutable" identities -- and that foundational principles of biology, linguistics, logic, & epistemology be damned.
I will need to think more about this, but my first impression is that I think sex is more about having an ova- or sperm-based reproductive system than it is the presence of fertile gametes at a particular moment. What I mean by a gamete-based view is that the gametes are the starting point from which the reproductive body plan should flow, since evolution should have selected for traits that help those gametes to produce viable offspring. We can then observe sex at birth because we can see the body plan that evolution has coordinated with using those gametes to reproduce. What is different about Dr. Fuentes' view is that he sees gametes and traits describing the body plan as all having the same priority, so the underlying logic is lost. A tall female would then be "maler" because size is just one of the traits defining sex. In the gamete-based view, a smaller body size is developmentally and evolutionarily coordinated with an ova-based reproductive strategy. So, a tall egg-producing person might be unusual, but they are still female, because they use an ova-based reproductive system.
Thanks muchly for your response. As I've suggested, I think you've emphasized an important if not crucial point right out of the chute with your "Definitions are human inventions". Something that many people -- Colin included -- seem rather reluctant to even consider, much less grapple with.
You've also helpfully moved the conversational ball downfield by engaging with questions of how and why some category definitions might be more useful than others. As the Pinker quote emphasizes, categorization is foundational to the whole edifice, not just of biology, but of science and philosophy themselves. As Wikipedia puts it:
"Categorization is considered one of the most fundamental cognitive abilities, and as such it is studied particularly by psychology and cognitive linguistics. .... Objects are usually categorized for some adaptive or pragmatic purposes."
Moot of course which might be the overriding "adaptive or pragmatic purpose" that might reasonably motivate the definitions for the sexes. However, I think you may want to take a close look at the Molecular Human Reproduction [MHR] article which seems to make understanding how evolution operates the primary objective:
The authors seem to rather clearly emphasize or argue that it is gamete dimorphism which has driven dimorphism in a great many other traits that seem of substantial importance and relevance.
I expect you know of Dobzhansky's "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" -- to which one might offer the corollary of, "nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction": no reproduction, no evolution.
No doubt the polythetic category (spectra) definitions of Hilton and Company might possibly be adapted to that objective, but they clearly encompass those individuals who are, in fact, unable to reproduce. While I'm certainly no pro-from-Dover on modeling evolution, it seems clear to me -- and apparently to the authors of the MHR article -- that clearly differentiating between those individuals able to reproduce and those unable to do so is an essential step in that process. No doubt one can qualify the relevant terms -- e.g., fertile females and infertile females, even if the latter does some damage to the underlying concept of reproduction. But if you open the door to those unable to reproduce then where will you draw the line, particularly short of Fuentes' position?
In addition to which, and given Hilton's definition predicated on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality", exactly how will you clearly ascertain and specify the criteria for the first & third possibilities? And for literally millions of species? How far back along, or ahead in the developmental process will you draw the line? If you do draw one then you're saying "sexless", and if you don't then it seems there's nothing to clearly differentiate between male and female.
There may well be some justifications for the polythetic/spectrum-lite/functional-non-functional definitions, though they seem tenuous, idiosyncratic, or special-pleading at best. But it seems to me, and to many others -- philosopher of science Paul Griffiths in particular -- that they also entail some serious problems that too many are far too quick to try sweeping under the carpet.
You say that 'Colin's definition based on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality" […] makes each sex into a spectrum of three "sufficient conditions" for category membership'.
But isn't the spectrum you're referring to a spectrum from, let's say, fertile to infertile (or “currently producing” to “not yet/no longer producing”)? So not a spectrum from male to female, large gamete to small gamete, and not an argument against the binary view of sex. Or have I misunderstood?
Good question -- bit tricky to answer. 🙂 And not sure myself that I've phrased it correctly -- kind of winging it based on polythetic/monothetic dichotomy I've referred to in my Binarists post:
But seems that your "not-yet/no-longer producing" plus "currently producing" is, to begin with, more or less identical to the set of "past, future, present" set of properties of Hilton's definitions. But Hilton's definitions seem to boil down into 3 types of males and 3 types of females which might be arranged in some order, in a spectrum, for example:
Each of the 3 different & mutually exclusive (?) females might be considered, as I've suggested, as the reddish end of the colour spectrum, and the 3 males similarly as the bluish end of the colour spectrum. The two ends constitute a binary, but the totality is still a spectrum. More or less equivalent to the colour spectrum except for the number of "colours".
Moot how to say, for example, that one female is more female-ish than the others, but, regardless, it seems possible to say that, by Hilton's definitions, there are still 6 "colours", 6 sexes in 2 halves, each of which is a spectrum of 3 unique types. Rather than a binary of two.
I've tried to illustrate that with my Sally's and Mike's families in the Binarists post which is, in turn, drawn from an article by a Belgian virologist. The numbering scheme I've used -- which underwrites & illustrates the ordering in a spectrum -- is drawn from a comment in the article on polythetic categories by Rodney Needham:
As I've said, a bit tricky to phrase and illustrate. But clearly some solid sources that might reasonably justify arguing that Hilton's definitions constitute a polythetic category, a spectrum.
Maybe moot how much of a problem that creates, but, in any case, I still think it important to be clear about what's happening underneath the hood.
Yes, and so are words, and discussions. You are describing nominalism, and it's not the only way of viewing the world, as a philosopher would understand, there is also realism. Things are not just the labels we put on them, they have independent existence, which can be described by human definitions.
Don't see that there's much justification for realism, nominalism apparently being more tenable:
"In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. .... Nominalism is primarily a position on the problem of universals. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above particulars ..."
Can't say that I have much in the way of a solid grasp of the details of that dichotomy, though I don't see that it has much relevance to the question of Colin's/Catherine's definitions versus those of the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
But where it does have some relevance is in my argument that categories -- basically universals by the look of it or to a first approximation -- like "female" and "vertebrate" are abstractions; they exist only in our minds:
Bit of a murky topic and one I certainly don't have a solid grasp of, but some aspects of which I tried to illustrate in my post on "What is a woman?":
Well I didn't mean it to have relevance beyond the idea you raise that categories are just labels we create in our minds (equivalently definitions are human inventions).
It's a position you can hold, but who says it's right. Sex is a property of evolution - it had it's own reality before humans existed- our label is the description of that thing, it doesn't create it. I take the points above re quantum physics and unknowability etc and knowing philosophers, there are XYZ problems that trouble various realism, but it seems clear to me at least that there's an empirical reality we can discover and occasionally it involves something fundamental, like a sex binary, notwithstanding the intricate and somewhat arbitrary mechanisms required and all their biological messyness.
The alternative that we accept that categories exist just by our labelling, would seem to make scientifuc discovery more arbitrary than it has shown to be.
Mind you I'm no philosophy scholar so there's a lot I could be missing.
> .. categories are just labels we create in our minds ...
Glad we agree on that much in any case ... 🙂
> It's a position you can hold, but who says it's right.
"We" do -- the same way we say that 2+2=4 and not 5; that the "theories" of evolution and gravity are right. Working "hypotheses" that we use until evidence shows otherwise. As you pointed out or suggested yourself with your "arbitrary" comment.
> Sex is a property of evolution - it had it's own reality before humans existed -- our label is the description of that thing,
Sure. Though technically speaking, what existed "before humans existed" was that millions of species reproduced through the fusion of small and large gametes. The current "debate" is over what properties we CHOOSE to say constitute the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for membership in the "male" and "female" sex categories. A rather profound difference -- the map-territory dichotomy that too many philosophical philistines apparently haven't a flaming clue about ...
"Nominalism is primarily a position on the problem of universals. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above particulars ..."
Apparently they say -- biologist & philosopher Massimo Pigliucci says -- that much of philosophy is just "footnotes to Plato". Seems that much of it is still stuck there.
Chris: "A prepubescent boy, an XY fetus, an adult rendered sterile by measles or castration, is still a male."
That depends crucially on how you define "male", on what you specify are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" to qualify as a member of the "male" category. Which you have yet to do.
Hilton and Company say those conditions are:
"... developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present, or future functionality ..."
Maybe more importantly it conflicts with standard biological definitions published in reputable peer-reviewed biological journals. As opposed to the letter section of the UK Times ...
Chris: "What is the freakin' point of telling women over 45 that they aren't female anymore?"
What is the "freakin'" point of telling a transwoman that he's neither a female nor a woman? 🙄
Seems you -- and far too many others -- are more concerned about sparing people's "feelings" than in defending scientific, epistemological, and logical principles and facts. More engaged in the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable" than not:
I agree with the gamete-based definition and that queer/progressive definitions don't make sense, but why do we keep using teleological language to express or communicate science? I think this is harmful because it gives the impression that we are coming from a place where a creator/organizer/etc. determines how sex came to be (and maybe implies how the sexes should act/be (gender norms or stereotypes)). This impression puts off our target audience (I'm assuming we are trying to educate progressives) at a rapport level because they are generally not religious or view religious-like narratives in a negative way.
I'm certain that more liberals and progressives will come to understand the gamete-based definition and its importance if we stop implying design and purpose in our narrative.
Definitely not my intention. I would say the reproductive systems have a "purpose" in the sense that they must to allow for successful reproduction or the underlying genes will not be maintained in the species.
I understand what you are saying. There is directionality in reproductive systems, evolution, etc. what I'm trying to convey is that we should flip the explanatory arrow (from end->beginning to cause->effect; maybe by emphasizing morphology rather than function).
For example: from "female is the sex that produces ova" to "female is the sex that has a morphology that is contingent to ova (or the sex that has ova-related morphology)".
If you stop implying purpose by virtue of design you get to where we are right now. If there is no meaning anything goes. ANYTHING - which is exactly what we are seeing happen before our very eyes.
Progressives are not interested in truth. Power is the only currency they understand (and want MORE of).
"But leave biology out of your political project. Some of us would still like to use it to make sense of the natural world." Brilliant!! Thank you. I would like to tell the teachers at my kids school this. They do not have the right to mess up a child's learning by introducing nonsense in place of reality. You can help little kids understand that some people are different and not to treat them badly without ruining science.
Yes, we can define things how we want. Let us define our moon as a sun. The earth orbits around it, as does the previously-described sun. Some new Ptolemy will explain the mechanics of the orbits of the other plants in some complex way that makes a kind of sense. What's that? It's not very bright? Under the new definition it does not have to be bright, you effing bigot! We will be just as well off as when we choose to define the sexes by mental state instead of gametes.
If we view ourselves as a resistance movement in the context of true warfare, not much is gained by individual soldiers stepping out in front of the enemy's weapons and challenging them to shoot. Most warriors don camouflage and shoot from concealed positions. Individual martyrdom is seldom a winning strategy; the exceptions, like Gandhi, tend to prove the rule. It has often been observed that Gandhi's non-violent public demonstrations would probably not have worked as well against the Nazis as they did against the British.
Catherine, I am grateful for you and every other scientist who is speaking out against the linguistic warfare being perpetrated against us, and encourage you to take cover while you do so. Not only do you have the right to protect yourself, but it makes sense for all of us to start acting like a real army of resistance, dealing with a real enemy.
Indeed. Has been for some time now, mostly, as you argue, because the transgender rot has found a toehold there. Though arguably their monthly subscription model is somewhat better than the Substack model of multiple subscriptions to individual posters.
But ICYMI, a post by feminist philosopher -- and no friend of transgenderism -- Holly Lawford-Smith which had apparently been deleted since she had the temerity of questioning whether people can change sex; Medium link and archived copy:
The first indicates that "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules" -- a rather tardy investigation since the post was some 4 years ago. But of particular note from the archive copy, something that I'm sure that you will enjoy reading ... 😉:
Holly: "Whenever you chat to a biologist about what they understand ‘sex’ to be – and I have chatted to a few – they tend to talk about large and small gametes. .... Males produce sperm, and females produce eggs. Almost no definitions that we give in philosophy have a single necessary condition, but sex is one of the few instances where such a definition works well. If a human individual produces sperm then he’s male, and if a human individual produces ova then she’s female. This is a definition that researchers in many different academic disciplines take as foundational to their work."
Apparently a fairly popular position, and one entirely consistent with the one promulgated in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction. Even if she subsequently snatches defeat from the jaws of victory with something of a hail-Mary pass.
If you ever manage to get your head out of your arse -- an unlikely prospect -- then you might be able to see that, in point fact as Lawford-Smith emphasizes, many people "buy" that functional definition for the sexes.
I understand what you're saying; I admire that you stand boldly on principle. I did the same as an out lesbian involved in the gay rights movement, risking my job and safety in the late '80s and '90s while most of my friends stayed safely closeted. It can be maddening. I'm doing a version of the same now, by publicly rejecting the politically expedient (to gender ideologues) notion of an "LGBT" community, which most of my friends have uncritically embraced.
That said, I would rather have this writer publicly contributing to the resistance under a pseudonym than not at all. "Not at all" is what too many have chosen. A half step is better than none, and with her credentials, "Catherine Hawkins" -- under any name -- has something valuable to contribute.
Keep fighting the good fight, Josh, and take good care of yourself. Please remember how many allies are out there, doing what they can as they are able.
Back in the Nineties a trans person told me that she/he had decided not to attend the Gay Pride March (what it was called then), because it was all about accepting oneself as is and being trans is just the opposite.
Didn't you write a couple of posts on your Substack already complaining about feminists coming into your space and getting all up in your hair? "Rules for thee, not for me", eh?
Call it cowardice if you want, but everyone getting fired will only add to the problem. The Gender Cult has its hands on the levers of power. They didn't get there by getting fired in droves.
Try some common sense. If that's in short supply, try going outside and touching some grass.
Josh tends to be somewhat "intemperate" at best -- not to say "narrow-minded" and "dogmatic". Got his knickers in a twist and subsequently blocked me, though at least he didn't delete my comment -- then in any case:
Dr. Fuentes shows rather convincingly that his first love is sophistry not science.
Follow the sophistry! I am the sophistry! Real sophistry has never been tried!
I really appreciate this article, and can understand why the author has published it under a pseudonym.
But where are the senior, tenured biologists? That “sex is a spectrum” is now orthodox belief in progressive circles, where it is now fashionable to sneer at the bigots and troglodytes who cling to outmoded and simplistic concepts derived from 8th-grade biology textbooks. And the lack of pushback by professional biologists lends credence to activist claims that the sex binary has been replaced by something altogether sexier and more complex.
So why don’t more biologists speak out? I can think of a couple of (not necessarily mutually exclusive) explanations:
1) Although their jobs are secure (I am speaking here only of the comfortably tenured), their reputations are not. They can still be smeared, deplatformed, ostracized, unpersoned, and so on.
2) They assume (wrongly, I’m afraid) that “sex is a spectrum” is just a passing fad, something the kids are saying on TikTok or what have you, but nothing they need take seriously. Indeed, it would be beneath their dignity to even take notice of such errant nonsense, which, again, is merely a passing fad.
My fear is that, without some effective pushback by experts in the field, “sex is a spectrum” really will become, well, the stuff of 8th-grade biology textbooks…
I don't think tenured professors are safe. Tenured, old-school liberal academics have been (and are still being) fired. If administration wants to get rid of you, then can do all sorts of creative contortions to get it done. It'll just take a long time, but it *will* happen. I can think of two prominent examples off the top of my head right now, but there's way more if you go digging.
"I believe Dr. Fuentes and other political progressives prefer this definition of sex because it makes it impossible to legally protect single-sex spaces." Exactly! These continuing attempts to redefine sex are politically driven, not scientifically; they are, indeed, "a kind of anti-science that makes biology less capable of making sense of the world around us." They're a smokescreen, an attempt to obstruct and divert from a biological truth that throws a real wrench in their political works.
I greatly appreciate the effort and intelligence -- and humor -- invested in this essay. (Though I failed in getting my eggs into contact with sperm, it's only because I'm lesbian, and that is totally on me. :) I'm still unequivocally female.)
DOG-HORSE SPECTRUM!!!! I die dead 🤣🤣🤣 Great article.
Thanks!!
Thanks for this analysis. It's a reasonable. science-based pushback on cockeyed theories used to retrofit bad psychology into physiology. Since the time of Harry Benjamin, Alfred Kinsey and John Money, the field of "sexology" has been rewriting history and scientific method to make their grand scheme of "sex change" work. Except it does not. In the famous Amy Bloom article in The Atlantic Monthly, (2002, scrubbed from their archive but saved at childrenoftransitioners.org) Dr. Ray Blanchard, the big guru who got "The Blanchard Protocols" named for him (2 years of cross-dressing, presenting as opposite sex 24/7, keeping your job as your new sex--except they didn't actually do that, my experience with my ex is proof.) said implicitly, that the middle aged men he was mostly treating had sexual fetishes.
Blanchard's own words: " They have to disconnect between reality and their fantasy. Otherwise, their desires are too disruptive. It's too disruptive to acknowledge that you wish your penis was part of your wife's body and not yours. It's too disruptive to acknowledge that this is a sexual compulsion."
For me, this meant that I got to spend about 40k on legal fees for a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty, which I suffered for 3 years while my then husband went cross-dressing in gay bars, pretended gay men were straight for his sexual encounters, lied to me about where he was and what was going on with the money, irritably yelled at our young sons, all with tacit approval of said "sexologist," taking a fee of $200 per session back in the 1990s. Get real, Fuentes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y777OY1CxnU&t=3s
Thanks! I'm sorry, that sounds like a horrible thing to live through. I hope you're free of it now.
Wow! A real eye-opener. I read the article ‘children of transitioners’ you referenced. Some years ago, this kind of behavior was treated as mental illness but now it’s fashionable, celebrated, it’s platformed on social media and those practicing or living out their delusions have become a protected class, they’re (although not genuinely or with sincere or loving motives) celebrated as heroes! It’s really disturbing to think what effects this will have on broader society, how many people will be gravely harmed by their behavior and how many decades it will be until the groundswell pushback comes, and this is revealed for what it really is. Thank you for sharing.
Why is this written under a pseudonym? Unless the people in the scientific community are willing to stand up in public and write pieces like this the progressives like Dr. Fuentes will get exactly what they want.
Fair point. Honestly, the same reasons as all the other assistant professors. Previous events lead me to believe my colleagues would not support me, and it's daunting to imagine having to find a new way to support yourself outside of a career you've trained or worked in for over a decade.
That's the rub, isn't it? I'm in quite a similar situation, so my sympathies to you.
I am sorry that it has come to this that you have to hide your name. I am not in academia. I had no idea it was so bad.
People have to feed and house themselves and their families, even professors. If she loses her ability to feed herself then she doesn't have time to write as she'll be out hunting for a new income stream. Those of us in a position (me as a pensioner) to write and say things without having to worry about retaliation can and should speak up.
Came here to leave a similar comment. Just reinforces the glaring issue at the end of this piece that biology has been politically captured and the author is in fear of his/her future.
it's ez for us on the internet to play fearless revolutionary who speaks truth to power, but we all know that if this person wrote this under his/her name what would happen: they and their families and friends would be attacked by an army of deranged zealots, their employer would be bombarded with requests to fire them (in the name of safety) and their life and career may very well be ruined.
If you don't believe me just look at what people like JK Rowling, Lisa Littman, and Alice Dreger had to deal with when they crossed the Trans mob. Insane levels of harassment!
This type of anonymous pushback may be the best we can hope for right now, Trans is a sacred belief system for our ruling class and until this somehow breaks they are willing to do anything to destroy dissent.
Also James Esses
I'll admit I often wonder if it's a better strategy for those of us in academia (in whatever capacity) to counter the long-march by staying and seizing the seats of power by playing the long game or if we should just say "F--k this shit" and walk. Heterodox thinkers leaving academia has done the academy no favours, but then I wonder if there's anything worth saving.
Also, including her credentials defeats the purpose of the pseudonym. You can very quickly and easily find the author of the piece by googling "plant biology faculty American University".
I just want to clarify that my bio says 'an American university' - I'm not at the American university. I don't want someone else to get blowback!
Not my intention. But she's vulnerable to get doxxed with that information being included.
I have a different take on the last part about "being clear...we are not transphobic." Claim the name the same way the non-Jewish Danes put on yellow stars during WWII. "Trans" is made-up, so the name-calling of "transphobe" is utterly meaningless.
Just excellent. We need more who are willing to speak clearly
Wait, isn’t there another word for this? This following description??? Oh wait, maybe it’s personality? “We should think of sex as a combination of many biological and social characteristics that make it “dynamic, biological, cultural, and enmeshed in feedback cycles with our environments, ecologies, and multiple physiological and social processes.”
Yes! Didn't this used to be what we called personality?
It seems like the problems largely stem from the tendency to merge our understanding of sex binary with our understanding of gender.
The two words were only interchangeable to those who benefited from cultural stereotypes of gender and they were harmful. Big boys don’t cry all your teachers are women dads leave and go to work all day. Gender has always been a thing
I believe those were called sex stereotypes and ironically the postmodern Gender project doesn't work to eradicate them, but instead has rebirthed and reified them in the form of rigid ideological labeling. Thus if your son plays with dolls or paints his nails out comes the most regressive stereotypes of sexual expression, and he must be a "girl" (possibly in need of castration).
This is repression disguised as liberation, overseen by our newest priesthood of dour moralists, the Gender Studies zealots.
Yup. Over decades ago. In the 60’s, we (called women libbers back then) set about to change the sex-based stereotypes that were preventing humans from experiencing full humanness. You know the ones...like the ones Michael mentions. And yet we were also a bit leery of using the word “sex” as, you know, it had other connotations. The word “sex” could be confusing. So we started using the word “gender” as a replacement for the word “sex”. What is so weird about the academics and institutions foisting this “gender identity” racket on us (egads we are still reducing this to dolls v trucks?) is that is so reactionary. The absolute opposite opposite of revolutionary. It’s driving us back to the 1950’s or probably more accurately the 1500’s.
As PJ O'Rourke used to say: "What the f*ck? I mean, what the f*cking f*ck!?" That we have to live through days like this ... Thankfully, people like Colin and Catherine stand athwart this madness!
Catherine: "Definitions are human inventions and can certainly change to incorporate new understanding."
Amen to that. Many people don't seem to realize that all of our definitions are, in fact, "socially constructed", but that some are clearly more useful than others. Catherine makes a more or less solid, and quite amusing, case that defining the sexes as two distinct categories is far more useful than as a spectrum -- particularly one so open-ended that the terms "male" and "female" become so vague or cumbersome as to be useless, if not worse than useless.
As Stephen Pinker once put it:
"An intelligent being cannot treat every object it sees as a unique entity unlike anything else in the universe. It has to put objects in categories so that it may apply its hard-won knowledge about similar objects, encountered in the past, to the object at hand." [How the Mind Works; pg. 12]
However, while the "gamete-based definition of sex" clearly has substantially more benefits than an open-ended spectrum, I'm not sure -- in fact, I'm quite sure -- that neither Catherine nor Colin, nor most people realize that Colin's definition based on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality" (see Emma Hilton's tweet below) also turns sex into a spectrum -- not a binary -- even if a somewhat more usefully circumscribed one than Fuentes is peddling:
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
While the rather idiosyncratic lexicon of Hilton and company at least makes the sexes into a binary -- the same way we might talk about the "reddish-bluish binary colour spectrum 🙄" -- their definition also makes each sex into a spectrum of three "sufficient conditions" for category membership. Basically, they are defining each sex as a polythetic category (see below). Which is in notable contradistinction to the standard biological definitions -- as promulgated in reputable biological journals like Molecular Human Reproduction (not the letter section of the UK Times ...) -- which make each sex into a monothetic category with a single "necessary and sufficient condition" for sex category membership, i.e., functional gonads of either of two types:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense indefinite] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
"Gamete competition, gamete limitation, and the evolution of the two sexes" (Lehtonen & Parker [FRS]):
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
See also my Substack post on Binarists vs Spectrumists for some details on the profound and seriously problematic differences between polythetic and monothetic categories:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
While one might also argue that the differences between the two types are somewhat academic, at least at first blush, a more honest assessment provides ample if not damning evidence of serious problems with the polythetic versions. For one thing, they conflict rather seriously with the view that sex is all about reproduction since, by their definitions, some "males" and some "females" are incapable of actually reproducing.
Somewhat more damning is when their definitions are applied to the many species which actually change sex over the course of their lives -- BECAUSE they change the type of gamete ACTUALLY produced. Clearly, it is the actuality and not the potentiality or previous state of the gonads that is the relevant criterion in play, that is the "necessary condition" for category membership. IF one insists on "past, present, or future functionality" THEN one is obliged to talk, for example, about "functional males" and "non-functional males" -- a clear binary -- as Wikipedia is obliged to do in their article on sequential hermaphroditism:
"Both protogynous and protandrous hermaphroditism allow the organism to switch between functional male and functional female."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
So then newly hatched clownfish are both non-functional males AND non-functional females? Some of whom then become functional males AND non-functional females, some of whom then turn into non-functional males and functional females? What a joke. All predicated, apparently, on a desperate and quite risible aversion to saying "sexless".
Houston, we have a problem. Which too few seem willing to address or consider. Largely because they seem to "think" -- or "feel" -- that the sexes should qualify as "participation trophies"; that everyone has to have a sex; that they constitute "immutable" identities -- and that foundational principles of biology, linguistics, logic, & epistemology be damned.
I will need to think more about this, but my first impression is that I think sex is more about having an ova- or sperm-based reproductive system than it is the presence of fertile gametes at a particular moment. What I mean by a gamete-based view is that the gametes are the starting point from which the reproductive body plan should flow, since evolution should have selected for traits that help those gametes to produce viable offspring. We can then observe sex at birth because we can see the body plan that evolution has coordinated with using those gametes to reproduce. What is different about Dr. Fuentes' view is that he sees gametes and traits describing the body plan as all having the same priority, so the underlying logic is lost. A tall female would then be "maler" because size is just one of the traits defining sex. In the gamete-based view, a smaller body size is developmentally and evolutionarily coordinated with an ova-based reproductive strategy. So, a tall egg-producing person might be unusual, but they are still female, because they use an ova-based reproductive system.
Thanks muchly for your response. As I've suggested, I think you've emphasized an important if not crucial point right out of the chute with your "Definitions are human inventions". Something that many people -- Colin included -- seem rather reluctant to even consider, much less grapple with.
You've also helpfully moved the conversational ball downfield by engaging with questions of how and why some category definitions might be more useful than others. As the Pinker quote emphasizes, categorization is foundational to the whole edifice, not just of biology, but of science and philosophy themselves. As Wikipedia puts it:
"Categorization is considered one of the most fundamental cognitive abilities, and as such it is studied particularly by psychology and cognitive linguistics. .... Objects are usually categorized for some adaptive or pragmatic purposes."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization
Moot of course which might be the overriding "adaptive or pragmatic purpose" that might reasonably motivate the definitions for the sexes. However, I think you may want to take a close look at the Molecular Human Reproduction [MHR] article which seems to make understanding how evolution operates the primary objective:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990
The authors seem to rather clearly emphasize or argue that it is gamete dimorphism which has driven dimorphism in a great many other traits that seem of substantial importance and relevance.
I expect you know of Dobzhansky's "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" -- to which one might offer the corollary of, "nothing in evolution makes sense except in light of reproduction": no reproduction, no evolution.
No doubt the polythetic category (spectra) definitions of Hilton and Company might possibly be adapted to that objective, but they clearly encompass those individuals who are, in fact, unable to reproduce. While I'm certainly no pro-from-Dover on modeling evolution, it seems clear to me -- and apparently to the authors of the MHR article -- that clearly differentiating between those individuals able to reproduce and those unable to do so is an essential step in that process. No doubt one can qualify the relevant terms -- e.g., fertile females and infertile females, even if the latter does some damage to the underlying concept of reproduction. But if you open the door to those unable to reproduce then where will you draw the line, particularly short of Fuentes' position?
In addition to which, and given Hilton's definition predicated on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality", exactly how will you clearly ascertain and specify the criteria for the first & third possibilities? And for literally millions of species? How far back along, or ahead in the developmental process will you draw the line? If you do draw one then you're saying "sexless", and if you don't then it seems there's nothing to clearly differentiate between male and female.
There may well be some justifications for the polythetic/spectrum-lite/functional-non-functional definitions, though they seem tenuous, idiosyncratic, or special-pleading at best. But it seems to me, and to many others -- philosopher of science Paul Griffiths in particular -- that they also entail some serious problems that too many are far too quick to try sweeping under the carpet.
You say that 'Colin's definition based on "gonads of past, present, or future functionality" […] makes each sex into a spectrum of three "sufficient conditions" for category membership'.
But isn't the spectrum you're referring to a spectrum from, let's say, fertile to infertile (or “currently producing” to “not yet/no longer producing”)? So not a spectrum from male to female, large gamete to small gamete, and not an argument against the binary view of sex. Or have I misunderstood?
Good question -- bit tricky to answer. 🙂 And not sure myself that I've phrased it correctly -- kind of winging it based on polythetic/monothetic dichotomy I've referred to in my Binarists post:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/binarists-vs-spectrumists
But seems that your "not-yet/no-longer producing" plus "currently producing" is, to begin with, more or less identical to the set of "past, future, present" set of properties of Hilton's definitions. But Hilton's definitions seem to boil down into 3 types of males and 3 types of females which might be arranged in some order, in a spectrum, for example:
{FutureFemale, CurrFemale, PrevFemale, FutureMale, CurrMale, PrevMale}
Each of the 3 different & mutually exclusive (?) females might be considered, as I've suggested, as the reddish end of the colour spectrum, and the 3 males similarly as the bluish end of the colour spectrum. The two ends constitute a binary, but the totality is still a spectrum. More or less equivalent to the colour spectrum except for the number of "colours".
Moot how to say, for example, that one female is more female-ish than the others, but, regardless, it seems possible to say that, by Hilton's definitions, there are still 6 "colours", 6 sexes in 2 halves, each of which is a spectrum of 3 unique types. Rather than a binary of two.
I've tried to illustrate that with my Sally's and Mike's families in the Binarists post which is, in turn, drawn from an article by a Belgian virologist. The numbering scheme I've used -- which underwrites & illustrates the ordering in a spectrum -- is drawn from a comment in the article on polythetic categories by Rodney Needham:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309889266_Classes_taxa_and_categories_in_hierarchical_virus_classification_a_review_of_current_debates_on_definitions_and_names_of_virus_species
https://ia902602.us.archive.org/32/items/PolytheticClassificationConvergenceAndConsequences/65935-Rodney-Needham-Polythetic-Classification-Convergence-and-Consequences.pdf
As I've said, a bit tricky to phrase and illustrate. But clearly some solid sources that might reasonably justify arguing that Hilton's definitions constitute a polythetic category, a spectrum.
Maybe moot how much of a problem that creates, but, in any case, I still think it important to be clear about what's happening underneath the hood.
>Definitions are human inventions
Yes, and so are words, and discussions. You are describing nominalism, and it's not the only way of viewing the world, as a philosopher would understand, there is also realism. Things are not just the labels we put on them, they have independent existence, which can be described by human definitions.
Don't see that there's much justification for realism, nominalism apparently being more tenable:
"In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. .... Nominalism is primarily a position on the problem of universals. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above particulars ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
Can't say that I have much in the way of a solid grasp of the details of that dichotomy, though I don't see that it has much relevance to the question of Colin's/Catherine's definitions versus those of the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction.
But where it does have some relevance is in my argument that categories -- basically universals by the look of it or to a first approximation -- like "female" and "vertebrate" are abstractions; they exist only in our minds:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_(metaphysics)
Bit of a murky topic and one I certainly don't have a solid grasp of, but some aspects of which I tried to illustrate in my post on "What is a woman?":
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Well I didn't mean it to have relevance beyond the idea you raise that categories are just labels we create in our minds (equivalently definitions are human inventions).
It's a position you can hold, but who says it's right. Sex is a property of evolution - it had it's own reality before humans existed- our label is the description of that thing, it doesn't create it. I take the points above re quantum physics and unknowability etc and knowing philosophers, there are XYZ problems that trouble various realism, but it seems clear to me at least that there's an empirical reality we can discover and occasionally it involves something fundamental, like a sex binary, notwithstanding the intricate and somewhat arbitrary mechanisms required and all their biological messyness.
The alternative that we accept that categories exist just by our labelling, would seem to make scientifuc discovery more arbitrary than it has shown to be.
Mind you I'm no philosophy scholar so there's a lot I could be missing.
> .. categories are just labels we create in our minds ...
Glad we agree on that much in any case ... 🙂
> It's a position you can hold, but who says it's right.
"We" do -- the same way we say that 2+2=4 and not 5; that the "theories" of evolution and gravity are right. Working "hypotheses" that we use until evidence shows otherwise. As you pointed out or suggested yourself with your "arbitrary" comment.
> Sex is a property of evolution - it had it's own reality before humans existed -- our label is the description of that thing,
Sure. Though technically speaking, what existed "before humans existed" was that millions of species reproduced through the fusion of small and large gametes. The current "debate" is over what properties we CHOOSE to say constitute the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for membership in the "male" and "female" sex categories. A rather profound difference -- the map-territory dichotomy that too many philosophical philistines apparently haven't a flaming clue about ...
Apparently with some justification.
"Nominalism is primarily a position on the problem of universals. It is opposed to realist philosophies, such as Platonic realism, which assert that universals do exist over and above particulars ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
Apparently they say -- biologist & philosopher Massimo Pigliucci says -- that much of philosophy is just "footnotes to Plato". Seems that much of it is still stuck there.
https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/biological-essentialism-no-thanks/
Chris: "A prepubescent boy, an XY fetus, an adult rendered sterile by measles or castration, is still a male."
That depends crucially on how you define "male", on what you specify are the "necessary and sufficient conditions" to qualify as a member of the "male" category. Which you have yet to do.
Hilton and Company say those conditions are:
"... developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present, or future functionality ..."
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
Seems a rather unscientific definition, at best, predicated on anything but "natural kinds":
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/
Maybe more importantly it conflicts with standard biological definitions published in reputable peer-reviewed biological journals. As opposed to the letter section of the UK Times ...
Chris: "What is the freakin' point of telling women over 45 that they aren't female anymore?"
What is the "freakin'" point of telling a transwoman that he's neither a female nor a woman? 🙄
Seems you -- and far too many others -- are more concerned about sparing people's "feelings" than in defending scientific, epistemological, and logical principles and facts. More engaged in the "deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically or socially desirable" than not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
😂🤣🙄 After you Alphonse ...
No more Sox changes, please. It is the (Boston) “Red Sox” not “Red Socks.”
I agree with the gamete-based definition and that queer/progressive definitions don't make sense, but why do we keep using teleological language to express or communicate science? I think this is harmful because it gives the impression that we are coming from a place where a creator/organizer/etc. determines how sex came to be (and maybe implies how the sexes should act/be (gender norms or stereotypes)). This impression puts off our target audience (I'm assuming we are trying to educate progressives) at a rapport level because they are generally not religious or view religious-like narratives in a negative way.
I'm certain that more liberals and progressives will come to understand the gamete-based definition and its importance if we stop implying design and purpose in our narrative.
Definitely not my intention. I would say the reproductive systems have a "purpose" in the sense that they must to allow for successful reproduction or the underlying genes will not be maintained in the species.
I understand what you are saying. There is directionality in reproductive systems, evolution, etc. what I'm trying to convey is that we should flip the explanatory arrow (from end->beginning to cause->effect; maybe by emphasizing morphology rather than function).
For example: from "female is the sex that produces ova" to "female is the sex that has a morphology that is contingent to ova (or the sex that has ova-related morphology)".
If you stop implying purpose by virtue of design you get to where we are right now. If there is no meaning anything goes. ANYTHING - which is exactly what we are seeing happen before our very eyes.
Progressives are not interested in truth. Power is the only currency they understand (and want MORE of).
"But leave biology out of your political project. Some of us would still like to use it to make sense of the natural world." Brilliant!! Thank you. I would like to tell the teachers at my kids school this. They do not have the right to mess up a child's learning by introducing nonsense in place of reality. You can help little kids understand that some people are different and not to treat them badly without ruining science.
Yes, we can define things how we want. Let us define our moon as a sun. The earth orbits around it, as does the previously-described sun. Some new Ptolemy will explain the mechanics of the orbits of the other plants in some complex way that makes a kind of sense. What's that? It's not very bright? Under the new definition it does not have to be bright, you effing bigot! We will be just as well off as when we choose to define the sexes by mental state instead of gametes.
Coward. You're part of the problem. Hiding behind your pseudonym while the rest of us take the social beating so you don't have to.
I lost my job and became unemployable because I'm not a coward. You deserve what you get.
I admire your work and I'll take your criticism as fair, but this is what I'm willing to do right now.
If we view ourselves as a resistance movement in the context of true warfare, not much is gained by individual soldiers stepping out in front of the enemy's weapons and challenging them to shoot. Most warriors don camouflage and shoot from concealed positions. Individual martyrdom is seldom a winning strategy; the exceptions, like Gandhi, tend to prove the rule. It has often been observed that Gandhi's non-violent public demonstrations would probably not have worked as well against the Nazis as they did against the British.
Catherine, I am grateful for you and every other scientist who is speaking out against the linguistic warfare being perpetrated against us, and encourage you to take cover while you do so. Not only do you have the right to protect yourself, but it makes sense for all of us to start acting like a real army of resistance, dealing with a real enemy.
> Medium is a wasteland now. ....
Indeed. Has been for some time now, mostly, as you argue, because the transgender rot has found a toehold there. Though arguably their monthly subscription model is somewhat better than the Substack model of multiple subscriptions to individual posters.
But ICYMI, a post by feminist philosopher -- and no friend of transgenderism -- Holly Lawford-Smith which had apparently been deleted since she had the temerity of questioning whether people can change sex; Medium link and archived copy:
https://medium.com/@aytchellis/is-it-possible-to-change-sex-8d863ce7fca2
https://web.archive.org/web/20190502004710/https://medium.com/@aytchellis/is-it-possible-to-change-sex-8d863ce7fca2
The first indicates that "This account is under investigation or was found in violation of the Medium Rules" -- a rather tardy investigation since the post was some 4 years ago. But of particular note from the archive copy, something that I'm sure that you will enjoy reading ... 😉:
Holly: "Whenever you chat to a biologist about what they understand ‘sex’ to be – and I have chatted to a few – they tend to talk about large and small gametes. .... Males produce sperm, and females produce eggs. Almost no definitions that we give in philosophy have a single necessary condition, but sex is one of the few instances where such a definition works well. If a human individual produces sperm then he’s male, and if a human individual produces ova then she’s female. This is a definition that researchers in many different academic disciplines take as foundational to their work."
Apparently a fairly popular position, and one entirely consistent with the one promulgated in the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction. Even if she subsequently snatches defeat from the jaws of victory with something of a hail-Mary pass.
If you ever manage to get your head out of your arse -- an unlikely prospect -- then you might be able to see that, in point fact as Lawford-Smith emphasizes, many people "buy" that functional definition for the sexes.
I understand what you're saying; I admire that you stand boldly on principle. I did the same as an out lesbian involved in the gay rights movement, risking my job and safety in the late '80s and '90s while most of my friends stayed safely closeted. It can be maddening. I'm doing a version of the same now, by publicly rejecting the politically expedient (to gender ideologues) notion of an "LGBT" community, which most of my friends have uncritically embraced.
That said, I would rather have this writer publicly contributing to the resistance under a pseudonym than not at all. "Not at all" is what too many have chosen. A half step is better than none, and with her credentials, "Catherine Hawkins" -- under any name -- has something valuable to contribute.
Keep fighting the good fight, Josh, and take good care of yourself. Please remember how many allies are out there, doing what they can as they are able.
It does my heart so much good to hear another gay person -- "we" -- say this, Chris. Right on, brother!
Back in the Nineties a trans person told me that she/he had decided not to attend the Gay Pride March (what it was called then), because it was all about accepting oneself as is and being trans is just the opposite.
Didn't you write a couple of posts on your Substack already complaining about feminists coming into your space and getting all up in your hair? "Rules for thee, not for me", eh?
Call it cowardice if you want, but everyone getting fired will only add to the problem. The Gender Cult has its hands on the levers of power. They didn't get there by getting fired in droves.
Try some common sense. If that's in short supply, try going outside and touching some grass.
A suitably "sarcastic" close ... 😉🙂
Josh tends to be somewhat "intemperate" at best -- not to say "narrow-minded" and "dogmatic". Got his knickers in a twist and subsequently blocked me, though at least he didn't delete my comment -- then in any case:
https://disaffectedpod.substack.com/p/assholes-get-featured-on-the-front/comment/13017679