I'm an old-school leftist and politically homeless because I'm still a materialist and I believe in free speech and I refuse to submit to the authoritarian postmodernist mind-virus and the stupidity that it creates which is truly mind-boggling. Same people who used to defend teaching evolution in schools are now advocating a belief system that is undoubtedly a form of creationism. It's spreading to other disciplines and it's eroding and discrediting science as such! Obviously our overlords - mainly banks & big tech – have decided that we can do away with science because why else are they backing pseudo-science?!
Zelosaletheia-- I, too an old-school leftist who is "politically homeless" (or should I say politicly unhoused :-). These new so-called progressives have made a mockery of all that I believe in.
Yeah maybe - tho I would argue they took things to extreme. But I can see how that could be a logical conclusion. I’ve spent a lot of effort in thinking about tolerance and how that word can easily lead to acceptance of the intolerable
> I'm an old-school leftist and politically homeless because I'm still a materialist
Sorry, but materialism has no way to solve the so-called problem of universals, as we're seeing with the current attempt to destroy the concepts of "man" and "woman".
> I believe in free speech
Well, if humans are just collections of chemicals as materialism asserts, how does it make sense for collections of chemicals to have rights?
The problem of universals is difficult to sole because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels. If one reduces what is real to indivisible particles (and, perhaps, space, forces, etc.), there is no basis for anything more complex than a particle to exist as a unified thing. This is "reductive materialism," which has difficulty explaining the persistent and stable presence of more complex structures.
However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.). Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity. One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
Robert: "The problem of universals is difficult to [solve] because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels ...."
An interesting and useful concept that I've been puzzling over the last while, not least because it seems to have more than passing relevance to that "age-old question" of "what is a woman?" 😉🙂
Though I think that, as you suggest, too many are making heavier weather out of the concept than is justified, largely because of sloppy or careless thinking. Though I'll concede that there is no shortage of potential pitfalls or traps for the unwary in the idea or its application.
But you in particular might have some interest in that post of mine since much of it is predicated on what I think is an absolutely brilliant insight and analogy by tweeter RadfemBlack (RfB):
RfB: "You gonna tell people they’re 'reducing beings to their bones' next for saying that a vertebrate is a creature with a spine? (obviously you’re not one 🤡💀)."
By that token, "spines" are "universals" -- real things in that case at least -- shared by a great many "objects", the sharing of which justifies their inclusion in the category "vertebrate" -- another universal but an abstraction in this case. The problem there -- as RfB alluded to -- is in turning the abstraction into a real thing: the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification.
> However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.).
If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false.
> Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity.
Except no one has any idea who to do that for consciousness or qualia, even in principle.
> One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
You're conflating materialism and atheism. In any case, if you follow this logic, you'll eventually end up postulating entities and resemble the tradition descriptions of "gods", "angels", or "demons" remarkably well. And assuming you avoid dissolving in a pile of New Age goo, you'll eventually conclude that there is a single Source/Monad/Logos/God behind it all.
> It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language but otherwise resemble the collections that can (deaf people)? What about ones that can speak but lack something that's hard to describe in material terms (talking parrots), what about toddlers, what about the mentally disabled? Good luck describing the differences in material terms.
"If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false."
No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions. Here's a model of the way emergence (or supervenience) theory works. Hydrogen atoms have certain properties, as do oxygen atoms. When they form an H2O molecule, however, they exhibit properties that are radically different from the constituent atoms of the molecule. Those properties are emergent at the level of the molecule, and although H2O is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, its properties cannot be analyzed into the properties of hydrogen and oxygen atoms outside the moecular structure.
The same phenomenon applies to more complex levels of molecular structures, continuing into organic compounds and simple cells, to multicell organisms, etc. The phenomena that characterize the behavior and experiences of animal species are emergent upon the evolution of diversely complex multicell organic structures including neurons (as well as many other specialized cells, all structured in complex networks). All of these are in the end composed only of protons, electrons, and various subatomic particles, but their characteristics cannot be analyzed as the sum of those particles, because at every level of complexity independent characteristics emerge.
"You're conflating materialism and atheism. . . ."
Only to the extent that I anticipated that your antimaterialism implied an argument for the existence of a deity. I'm otherwise not interested in atheism. I'm not religious, but I have no quarrel with people who believe in a deity. I don't, however, see their beliefs as constituting an argument. (My view is that hydrogen and oxygen, when combined in an H2O structure, unproblematically behave as we see water behave; I don't see a reason to add a deity that decrees they shall behave that way.)
"So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language . . ."
I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
> No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions.
Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances.
> I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
Oh, I now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer.
"Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances."
Then you're not listening very well: nonreductive materialism has nothing in common with Aquinas's theory. And I'm neither inventing nor reinventing. These are not my theories; they are well known in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mind.
"Oh, I [k]now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer."
I think not, Mr. Nier. You do not seem to have known the answers I wanted to give (and have now given), nor have you shown in any way that my argument doesn't follow from my premises. You may think you have, because you are misconstruing the premises I have stated, either intentionally, in order to make a claim that you have prevailed despite having no means to do so, or unintentionally, perhaps because you do not wish to consider challenges to your beliefs beyond dismissing them without reflection.
By the way, I agree with you that the crude form of reductive materialism you dislike is indeed incoherent. It had its day in the 1930s and 1940s, the heyday of behaviorist philosophy. When you take that type of approach as a proxy for "materialism" in general you are attacking a straw man.
Very good article and analysis of another progressive "scientific" cudgel, that will be used to beat any counter argument, into obedience and or submissions.
For the propaganda swilling masses - who get their world views and ideologies from outlet like twitter, FB, the view and CNN's expert panels, Boylan's circular musings will be regurgitated in an even more fractured and nonsensical manner - that will then be echoed as settled "science", by the herds of true believers, influencers and politicos.
This ideological war, has no use for logic or reason. It's akin to toy manufacturers successfully pushing the premise, that Santa Clause is real. Providing "proof", in the existence of costumes, reindeer and fat bearded men who "feel" like Santa and even women in the same predicament. The twisting of reality and tangential evidence finally achieves total capture, of those with a deep need for Santa to be real (the children). From there a cultic doctrine and dogma is legitimized by well placed "experts" in arctic studies, zoology, toy manufacturing, sledging, sled manufacturing, myth and lore, meteorology and of course interdimensional and gravitational theory. From there, it's a matter of spreading the new pseudoscientific religion to the mases of children and captured adults, via influencers, beloved media, entertainment and sports figures and then political leaders. The practice of subverting a cohort - no matter how large - with manufactured truths and needs, has no use for reality, logic and historic or provable truths, except as a counter argument, that legitimizes their subversive version.
Unfortunately we have a long road ahead, before these pillars crumble under their own weight. The lgbtq planners will be erecting the third pillar soon, and will use the same arguments to legitimize it - they already are - and you'll be writing articles, about those like Boylan, who explain that the Pedophilic brain represents just another undiscovered sexual orientation path, that must be understood, included and most of all legitimized.
The science does not matter because gender ideology is an arrow in the Maoism quiver to detroy western civilization. We need to broaden the Target/AB boycotts to include every aspect of their revolution against western normalcy.
Counselor, Gender ideology has *absolutely nothing* to do with Maoism. Even a few hours study of Maoism would make this obvious. It would also reveal that historically Maoism did not aim to destroy Western civilization: it aimed to appropriate a great deal of it in the framework of Communism, a set of ideas that grew out of the European Enlightenment, particularly German philosophy. (But perhaps you think Communism was also anti-Western and pro-gender ideology.)
It is very disappointing to see comments on substack--which often has very thoughtful discussions--that invoke complex ideas as if they were emoticons. You don't have to like Maoism (I don't) to be willing to learn what it is.
We are in the midst of an accelerated cultural revolution against western normalcy (whiteness). That is the comparison with Maoism. James Lindsey is doing a much better job than I did describing the current moment. In 2017 I called it the Maoist Commie Cultural Revolution in America. James calls it Maoism with American Characteristics. The idea I was trying to promote is that we have intelectual revolutionaries with tyrannical support from the state and their corporations in the process of deconstructing everything as Maoists did, in order to present a new version of normal. Tradition is their enemy. Queer Theory and Gender Theory are tactics. The gender zealots and the other crazies are their Red Guard. The idea is to contextualize this gender moment as more than it appears to the average onlooker.
Counselor, I understand the attraction of borrowing the notion of a "cultural revolution" in China to attack US progressives, but you simply don't understand what the CR was about. Apart from the fact that the primary target of the CR was traditional forms of Chinese thought, not Western thought, the CR was launched by Mao and his supporters to destroy the government (Mao had been frozen out of both the government and Party for three years as a result of his disastrous mismanagement in the late '50s and early '60s)--the CR didn't have the support of a "tyrannical state," much less the state-owned enterprises that would correspond, I suppose, to "their corporations" in your view. You have your history completely screwed up and are simply throwing around slurs like "Commie" and "tyrannical government" as handy jargon to demonize those you oppose. That's what I mean by using such terms as emoticons.
If you wanted an American parallel to Mao launching the CR in 1966--gathering a mob in the capital city to overthrow the government, restore a cult figure to power, and purge all those who resisted a radical revision of political norms--Mr. Trump's behavior in January 2021 would come far closer.
None of my comments on your misuse of "Maoism," "Communism," and so forth constitute a defense of the gender ideology under discussion here. I think it's confused and its promoters are behaving in an illiberal way. But if opposition to it is going to take the form of the sort of cartoonish rhetoric you're using all you will do is make advocates of gender ideology seem knowledgeable and level headed. The authors of this post have offered a serious, smart, and helpful analysis of errors that advocates for transgender ideology make, and I think poorly informed and overwrought comments like yours ("They're Maoists!" "This is tyranny!" "They're crazies!") weaken the case.
I understand. You are offering a defense of Maoism and wish to separate it from gender ideology that you wish to oppose. We have a difference of opinion.
How in the world could pointing out that gender ideology has precisely nothing to do with Maoism constitute a defense of Maoism, Counselor? (Could you have thought that in comparing Mao to Mr. Trump I was saying something nice about Mao?)
Perhaps this is sarcasm--if it is, let me know and forgive my failing to see it. But if this is actually the conclusion you reached I suppose it is a good signal to me that there's no point in engaging further.
"gender ideology is an arrow in the Maoism quiver to deStroy western civilization..."
preach!
the problem (among others) is that your simple statement of truth sounds so extreme, odd and impossible to the average person (people raised in a free society cannot imagine that the freedoms they've always known could someday be taken away, esp by people who are constantly proclaiming their compassion)....
and thus the addled and exhausted American frog slowly boils, as we move inevitably away from our Enlightenment-based liberal democracy to our post-Enlightenment managed technocracy aka Social Justice Inc.
Excellent discussion of the science, but it's incorrect that gender ideology depends on the first pillar, the idea that sex is a spectrum. Most gender ideologues distinguish between sex and gender (even if they claim that sex is a spectrum), and say that gender is the essential component of gender identity. Gender, they say, ad nauseum, is a "social construct."
There's some plausibility to the claim that gender is a social construct, in the sense that social roles and norms (e.g., fashion, behavior, professions, etc.), which can vary across cultures, are determined by society. What is far less plausible is that "identification with" (whatever that is) this concept of gender is the meaning of standard sex categories (man/woman), and should be the basis for political and social recognition (e.g., sports, bathrooms).
Very well said Rich. The quite useful observation that gender roles are social constructions got morphed into the idea that gender itself is a social construction, and then mutated again into the notion that, therefore, gender is absolutely arbitrary and can be whatever you want it to be. The final deconstruction is that if gender is arbitrary then sex may as well be arbitrary too. Too bad Lewis Carol wasn't writing Alice about now, I'm sure he'd have fun with all this. Editing from memory: "Which is to be master, said Humpty Dumpty. My gender is whatever I chose it to be at this moment ..."
The following despicable claim that Jennifer Boylan, a man who ideates a female persona for himself, IS A MOTHER AND WIFE, is made in one glib, indoctrinated, captured, Stockholm-syndromed paragraph in a puff piece from The Advocate, an LGBTQ+++ alphabet publication. He is a father, a publicity seeker and a man usurping female identity.
"And still, Jennifer Finney Boylan's multi-episode appearance on the Oprah show helped to change the public perception and discourse around trans people. Audiences were used to seeing trans people presented on talk shows as punchlines, a man's attraction to a trans woman could only be accompanied by shame. Jennifer was a wife, a mother, a college professor who'd written a book."
Though "female identity" is hardly "immutable" or based on any sort of "mythic essence". By definition, the standard biological ones, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
"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]):
Rather "problematic" that so many transloonie nutcases are desperately committed to male and female as such "immutable" identities. But, rather sadly, far too many "women" are equally committed to the same rather poisonous schlock.
"The second asserts that every human brain contains an unchangeable “gender identity” that is knowable from a very young age,"
Or not. We hear of kids trying on several Genders and changing them several times. Today I'm Genderqueer, tomorrow I might be Twospirit or something else. Who knows?
Thank you for the thoughtful essay. It was very well done. And, from the point of view of a biological psychologist, I fundamentally agree with what you've said. However, if you don't mind, I would like to add some complementary information. One's gender identity does, in fact, have a biological basis (it's a product of brain activity), but — as you point out — that that does not mean that it's permanent or immutable any more than is any other self-perception. Often, this point is overlooked by people on both sides of the conversation: "There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
Further, it should be made clear that MRI (or other brain scan) data are only correlational and much too crude to identify patterns that represent gender identity, per se. Additionally, interpretation of any brain scan data is subject to the subjective, and often profoundly naïve and outdated models that people use to assign functions to brain areas. Often these functions are assigned after the fact in order to support the author's original point of view. For instance, claiming that the "tempo-parietal junction" is involved in "body perception" and "out of body experiences" is horribly simplistic and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain works. It is akin to saying that the "prefrontal cortex" is in charge of "executive functions" (whatever those are), or the amygdala is in charge of "aggression." Consequently, your criticisms of the original argument are correct but could be more pointed. Along that line, one study about which I commented (above), claimed that there were differences in "white matter" between trans- and non-trans brains. The claim, of course, is nonsensical, and when I emailed the lead authors for clarification of their rationale for using that metric, I never received a reply. Oh, well. Again, thank you for a very informative, well-argued essay. Sincerely, Frederick
Even though mental states have a biological basis in a trivial sense, I wouldn't want to grant that gender identity has a biological basis, because there's no identifiable, universal phenomenon that is "gender identity." (Nobody even knew they had one until ten years ago, so definitely no mental state at that time.) I reject the idea that gender identity is a feeling or sensation, which would be a candidate for a biological basis. At best, a gender identity is a collection of preferences/affinities/likes. There is no more biological basis for gender identity than there is for being an American, or a football fan, or a gardener.
As I've just responded to Frederick, I think, many others think, it's just a matter of definition. Some justification to argue that gender/gender-identity is a rough synonym for personalities & personality types that show some sexual dimorphism.
Would you agree that we all have more or less unique personalities? Some aspects of which are more typical of the other sex? If so then it seems you've just endorsed those concepts and definitions.
I think it's plausible that there is a biological basis for personalities and stereotypically gendered behaviors and preferences (girls and barbie dolls, boys and trucks). But I don't want to commit to saying the same about gender identity. I take gender identity to be an explicit self-association with a gender (e.g., "I identify as X") -- choosing a side. That could be absolutely anything. It surely means different things to different people, and it's hopelessly vague, to boot (practically indefinable to any particular person). That's not the same thing as just being a man or woman, in the non-gender ideology sense, which is just synonymous with sex.
I don't think gender identity existed as a concept until very recently, at least to the vast majority of the population, so nobody identified as a gender. In those pre-ideology days, there was no biological basis for gender identification, because it didn't exist. As for now, I don't think gender identity is a useful concept at all.
Rich: "I think it's plausible that there is a biological basis for personalities and stereotypically gendered behaviors and preferences ..."
So you more or less accept the definition of "gender" as "feminine and masculine personalities and personality types"? Progress! 😉🙂
You might note that the late Justice Scalia basically did so as well in this rather cogent analogy:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
Which sort of highlights the problem with various "gender ideologues" using "male" and "female" as genders when "masculine" and "feminine" seem more justified, at least in clearly differentiating between the biological and the psychological. Two entirely different kettles of fish even if the former has some influence on the latter.
But I'll largely agree with you that "gender identity" is "hopelessly vague", though one might say the same about "personal identity", a concept with which it seems to have a great many aspects in common. Consider this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] on the topic:
SEP: "Outside of philosophy, ‘personal identity’ usually refers to properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those properties she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
IF one starts from the premise that one's gender consists of those feminine and masculine traits that define one's personality -- which you've apparently accepted -- THEN it doesn't seem implausible to argue that those "gendered personality traits" "to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership" constitute our "gender identities".
"gender identity" may well be a murky concept -- that SEP article in PDF runs to 16 pages, very few of which I've read, but 4 of which are citations so describing or defining "gender identity" may well take at least that many. But I certainly think it's untenable to argue that it is not "a useful concept at all".
But you may wish to take a look at my Welcome post, particularly the section on Rationalized Gender which makes a preliminary stab at putting gender itself on a more scientific footing:
Your use of parts of speech is a little loose, suggesting that "gender", a noun classification, is an adjective -- "masculine" or "feminine", so I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but here's what I think about "gender."
"Gender" can be a term for classification -- a noun -- that is "man" and "woman". I think it was commonly taken to be synonym for "male" and "female". I saw Kathleen Stock say in a video (reference lost) that it was a polite way of saying "sex" (on a questionnaire, say). I think that's correct. I'm talking here about the common understanding and not the sense some academics may have had. In that definition, gender as male or female is not the same as "masculine" and "feminine".
In recent times, it has become conventional to distinguish gender and sex, such that a woman (as a gender classification) is not the same as an adult human female. I think that is a mistake, for a couple reasons. It has turned "woman" into a concept that is vague (see Matt Walsh's notoriously asking "What is a woman") and/or circular. It's also confused a number of issues that have nothing to do with the purely linguistic question -- issues such as sports, the acceptability of female only spaces, and (frighteningly) children's health.
(There are some other mistakes that are purely conceptual, such as the belief that we are "discovering" what gender is, or what a woman is, and uncovering scientific truths. This is popular philosophy gone bad, as anyone familiar with Wittgenstein will recognize.)
So, no. Just throw out that sense of gender (anything that's not male/female). It's a cancer. And we shouldn't use "woman" to mean whatever is feminine, and "man" to mean whatever is "masculine."
If you can fake sincerity then you have it made ... 😉🙂
But I largely agree with your "thesis", though I'll have to re-read it to better understand the specifics. But, offhand, it seems there's a great deal of justification to argue that "gender/gender-identity" is just a rough synonym for personalities & personality types. Something which Colin more or less agreed with at one point:
Rather depressing that so few are willing to "steel-man" the concepts of gender and gender identity. They're (almost) as narrow-minded and dogmatic as the worst of the transloonie nutcases. Largely why the whole "debate" has degenerated into something little better than playground squabbles between colicky children: "Is too! Is not!" A Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols.
Virtually everyone -- present company excepted of course ... -- seems to have their hands and minds stuck in the proverbial monkey traps. Which really doesn't say much that's flattering about their mental abilities or intellectual honesty:
I agree with your point: "Rather depressing that so few are willing to "steel-man" the concepts of gender and gender identity.... The whole "debate" has degenerated into something little better than...: 'Is too! Is not!'" As you may remember, I tried to steel-man the argument in the essays that I wrote about gender identity. Recognizing the phenomenon for what it is allows you to take a reasoned approach to discussing it. I also agree with you that the terms refer to a classes of personality types none of which are monolithic or homogeneous. In short, they are like any other psychological description; they are metaphors that refer to mental states.
"...if sex is binary, and no innate and fixed gender identity exists, then one cannot be “mismatched” from one’s sex—and “gender affirming” treatment is unjustified."
I fully agree sex is binary. Gender dysphoria does seem to exist (I refer to the old-fashioned always felt wrong kind, not social contagion) and that would seem to suggest there is such a thing as gender identity. In fact, the proper treatment of GID is to sort out those that are immutable and not aligned with sex, from those that are unstable and likely will come into alignment with maturation. The only treatment we have for "true" GID cases is transition (and I know all we are doing is confirming a mentally ill person's delusion), and those folks seem to do well. It's the tidal wave of social contagion and trendy cases that are going to regret it and should be protected from themselves as children. No one ever changes sex. All anyone can do is disguise their sex and live a life of pretending to be the opposite sex, which might feel more comfortable if you really have "true" gender dysphoria.
I don't think any of us want to deny adults to do what they want to themselves and make their own mistakes. What we must not fail to do is to protect youngsters who cannot make such decisions, especially when we know that 80-90% will desist and be gay adults.
I agree there is a condition we call gender dysphoria, which can and should be treated in all those ways. I disagree about gender identity. You don't need to posit the existence of gender identity. I would say people without gender dysphoria don't have a gender identity -- something they wouldn't be aware of having. What about people with gender dysphoria?
You've got people who are distressed with their sex and would like to be the opposite sex, or would like to pass for the opposite sex, or would like to modify their bodies to be like the opposite sex. You can describe all that -- as I just did -- without implying that there is a something called "gender" that is different than sex, and/or that we need to posit the existence of a "gender identity".
There is a common sense of "identification", so people can "identify as" as a plumber or parent -- that is, it's parts of their "identity". But that's a trivial sense of identity that doesn't have anything to do with the psychological distress. I think "gender identity" has been based on a confusion with the trivial sense of "identifying as" or "identifying with."
In my opinion the recruitment of children is to serve as "cover". and create a sense of urgency to make people skip performing due diligence. This is a movement driven by paraphiliacs to legalise the practice of their fetish. Soon enough people would notice these AGPS prancing around. They got stupendously lucky by running into gay rights extremists who wanted to take equality further and re-engineer society - even luckier to have successfully tricked the feminist movement into gifting womens' rights away to them.
Excellent article. One question I have is whether you have attempted to get it published as a reply article to Boylan in the Washington Post. I know the chances are slim to none, but it’s still worth it. Here your readership is already predisposed to accept your impeccable logic. It’s the casual reader who votes you need to reach.
I used to subscribe to Wapo but no longer. But I wonder if your readership can start a letter writing campaign.
I love Substack. But one disadvantage is that it creates niche readerships. Not useful for changing hearts and minds.
I have the same question as Miguelitro. The nonsense dressed up as science being published in the WP, NYT, etc., needs a response where their readers can see it. Good idea to email the author directly. I will do the same. I hope that Colin has also submitted this piece as a response / letter to the editor. And if WP turns it down, perhaps the WSJ would consider it.
Depressing but probably true. I has the less engaged and committed reader in mind, whose lack of engagement might make her more amenable to a diversity of views. On the trans issue, I have this fantasy that there are lots of moderate liberals who secretly think the “trans women are real woman” trope is absurd but just doesn’t want to be alone saying so.
One question that no one has posed (or I may have missed it) is why Boylan et al feel the need for a new gender "ideology" in the first place. Granted, her ideology has no scientific evidential basis, but for a consenting adult there is absolutely nothing wrong (from a personal liberty POV) with saying "I just feel better this way!"
Could it be that the need to construct a new gender ideology stems, partly, from the desire to justify aggressive gender-related "treatments" (e.g. puberty blockers) for people who cannot give consent- like children?
I agree with many of the commenters here that the article is great and clarifying; it answered many of my questions about trans activist arguments. I'd like to see the authors address why some people feel like they're women when they're in male bodies and vice versa--in other words, whether trans people exist. And if there are some people like this, why does "transitioning" relieve the distress around their situation and improve their mental health, by their accounts and by social science research?
Maybe someone in the comments can point out where I may have missed this, though I'm not interested in engaging in polemics.
But for some less speculative and more direct evidence, you might check out the "Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans" [PITT] Substack, these posts in particular:
Thanks for your thoughts and for the resources. Debate about trans issues is definitely infused with cancel culture from the authoritarian activists. And I agree it's likely that great harm is being done to many, especially minors. I'm much less certain that all trans folk are deluded or *simply* suffering from a mental illness--I'm concerned about folks who are really going through something that only transitioning can ameliorate (whether medical or social-only transitioning). If such people exist, nuance is called for. We should expect science to have answers to this question.
Finally, this debate needs to distinguish between the issues of cancel culture/left authoritarianism, what's happening with minors, and what science says about the subjective experiences of people who identify as transgender. Answers to the first two issues don't address the third issue.
Doesn't academic integrity require people with strong personal interest to recuse themselves from subjects that stand to directly benefit them? This entire phenomenon appears to be driven by exactly such individuals, and I don't know why anyone hasn't publicly called them on it yet. The only credible theory on transgenderism I have yet encountered is Blanchard's HSTS/AGP dichotomy. Tellingly desperate confabulation to maintain the plausibility of being a woman is actually a symptom of the AGP part... Very Trans-parent. Postpubertal transwomen appear to be all fetishists.
Doesn't academic integrity require people with strong personal interest to recuse themselves from subjects that stand to directly benefit them? This entire phenomenon appears to be driven by exactly such individuals, and I don't know why anyone hasn't publicly called them on it yet. The only credible theory on transgenderism I have yet encountered is Blanchard's HSTS/AGP dichotomy. Tellingly desperate confabulation to maintain the plausibility of being a woman is actually a symptom of the AGP part... Very Trans-parent. Postpubertal transwomen appear to be all fetishists.
I'm an old-school leftist and politically homeless because I'm still a materialist and I believe in free speech and I refuse to submit to the authoritarian postmodernist mind-virus and the stupidity that it creates which is truly mind-boggling. Same people who used to defend teaching evolution in schools are now advocating a belief system that is undoubtedly a form of creationism. It's spreading to other disciplines and it's eroding and discrediting science as such! Obviously our overlords - mainly banks & big tech – have decided that we can do away with science because why else are they backing pseudo-science?!
Great article.
Zelosaletheia-- I, too an old-school leftist who is "politically homeless" (or should I say politicly unhoused :-). These new so-called progressives have made a mockery of all that I believe in.
They're taking what you believe to its logical conclusion.
Yeah maybe - tho I would argue they took things to extreme. But I can see how that could be a logical conclusion. I’ve spent a lot of effort in thinking about tolerance and how that word can easily lead to acceptance of the intolerable
We've been forced to the accept the intolerable, namely blatant falsehoods, for decades.
> I'm an old-school leftist and politically homeless because I'm still a materialist
Sorry, but materialism has no way to solve the so-called problem of universals, as we're seeing with the current attempt to destroy the concepts of "man" and "woman".
> I believe in free speech
Well, if humans are just collections of chemicals as materialism asserts, how does it make sense for collections of chemicals to have rights?
The problem of universals is difficult to sole because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels. If one reduces what is real to indivisible particles (and, perhaps, space, forces, etc.), there is no basis for anything more complex than a particle to exist as a unified thing. This is "reductive materialism," which has difficulty explaining the persistent and stable presence of more complex structures.
However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.). Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity. One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
Robert: "The problem of universals is difficult to [solve] because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels ...."
An interesting and useful concept that I've been puzzling over the last while, not least because it seems to have more than passing relevance to that "age-old question" of "what is a woman?" 😉🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Though I think that, as you suggest, too many are making heavier weather out of the concept than is justified, largely because of sloppy or careless thinking. Though I'll concede that there is no shortage of potential pitfalls or traps for the unwary in the idea or its application.
But you in particular might have some interest in that post of mine since much of it is predicated on what I think is an absolutely brilliant insight and analogy by tweeter RadfemBlack (RfB):
RfB: "You gonna tell people they’re 'reducing beings to their bones' next for saying that a vertebrate is a creature with a spine? (obviously you’re not one 🤡💀)."
https://twitter.com/RadfemBlack/status/1161471915812360193
By that token, "spines" are "universals" -- real things in that case at least -- shared by a great many "objects", the sharing of which justifies their inclusion in the category "vertebrate" -- another universal but an abstraction in this case. The problem there -- as RfB alluded to -- is in turning the abstraction into a real thing: the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification.
> However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.).
If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false.
> Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity.
Except no one has any idea who to do that for consciousness or qualia, even in principle.
> One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
You're conflating materialism and atheism. In any case, if you follow this logic, you'll eventually end up postulating entities and resemble the tradition descriptions of "gods", "angels", or "demons" remarkably well. And assuming you avoid dissolving in a pile of New Age goo, you'll eventually conclude that there is a single Source/Monad/Logos/God behind it all.
> It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language but otherwise resemble the collections that can (deaf people)? What about ones that can speak but lack something that's hard to describe in material terms (talking parrots), what about toddlers, what about the mentally disabled? Good luck describing the differences in material terms.
"If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false."
No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions. Here's a model of the way emergence (or supervenience) theory works. Hydrogen atoms have certain properties, as do oxygen atoms. When they form an H2O molecule, however, they exhibit properties that are radically different from the constituent atoms of the molecule. Those properties are emergent at the level of the molecule, and although H2O is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, its properties cannot be analyzed into the properties of hydrogen and oxygen atoms outside the moecular structure.
The same phenomenon applies to more complex levels of molecular structures, continuing into organic compounds and simple cells, to multicell organisms, etc. The phenomena that characterize the behavior and experiences of animal species are emergent upon the evolution of diversely complex multicell organic structures including neurons (as well as many other specialized cells, all structured in complex networks). All of these are in the end composed only of protons, electrons, and various subatomic particles, but their characteristics cannot be analyzed as the sum of those particles, because at every level of complexity independent characteristics emerge.
"You're conflating materialism and atheism. . . ."
Only to the extent that I anticipated that your antimaterialism implied an argument for the existence of a deity. I'm otherwise not interested in atheism. I'm not religious, but I have no quarrel with people who believe in a deity. I don't, however, see their beliefs as constituting an argument. (My view is that hydrogen and oxygen, when combined in an H2O structure, unproblematically behave as we see water behave; I don't see a reason to add a deity that decrees they shall behave that way.)
"So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language . . ."
I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
> No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions.
Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances.
> I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
Oh, I now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer.
"Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances."
Then you're not listening very well: nonreductive materialism has nothing in common with Aquinas's theory. And I'm neither inventing nor reinventing. These are not my theories; they are well known in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mind.
"Oh, I [k]now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer."
I think not, Mr. Nier. You do not seem to have known the answers I wanted to give (and have now given), nor have you shown in any way that my argument doesn't follow from my premises. You may think you have, because you are misconstruing the premises I have stated, either intentionally, in order to make a claim that you have prevailed despite having no means to do so, or unintentionally, perhaps because you do not wish to consider challenges to your beliefs beyond dismissing them without reflection.
By the way, I agree with you that the crude form of reductive materialism you dislike is indeed incoherent. It had its day in the 1930s and 1940s, the heyday of behaviorist philosophy. When you take that type of approach as a proxy for "materialism" in general you are attacking a straw man.
🙄 You're applying for the job of hall monitor here?
"Jennifer" Boylan is a male who fathered two children with his long time wife. Raging autogynephile. Just in case someone missed that point.
Here you have JB:
https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/state-of-the-union
Thanks Colin. Your work continually keeps me grounded in reality in a world swirling in delusion. I appreciate everything you do.
Thank you for the kind words!
Very good article and analysis of another progressive "scientific" cudgel, that will be used to beat any counter argument, into obedience and or submissions.
For the propaganda swilling masses - who get their world views and ideologies from outlet like twitter, FB, the view and CNN's expert panels, Boylan's circular musings will be regurgitated in an even more fractured and nonsensical manner - that will then be echoed as settled "science", by the herds of true believers, influencers and politicos.
This ideological war, has no use for logic or reason. It's akin to toy manufacturers successfully pushing the premise, that Santa Clause is real. Providing "proof", in the existence of costumes, reindeer and fat bearded men who "feel" like Santa and even women in the same predicament. The twisting of reality and tangential evidence finally achieves total capture, of those with a deep need for Santa to be real (the children). From there a cultic doctrine and dogma is legitimized by well placed "experts" in arctic studies, zoology, toy manufacturing, sledging, sled manufacturing, myth and lore, meteorology and of course interdimensional and gravitational theory. From there, it's a matter of spreading the new pseudoscientific religion to the mases of children and captured adults, via influencers, beloved media, entertainment and sports figures and then political leaders. The practice of subverting a cohort - no matter how large - with manufactured truths and needs, has no use for reality, logic and historic or provable truths, except as a counter argument, that legitimizes their subversive version.
Unfortunately we have a long road ahead, before these pillars crumble under their own weight. The lgbtq planners will be erecting the third pillar soon, and will use the same arguments to legitimize it - they already are - and you'll be writing articles, about those like Boylan, who explain that the Pedophilic brain represents just another undiscovered sexual orientation path, that must be understood, included and most of all legitimized.
The science does not matter because gender ideology is an arrow in the Maoism quiver to detroy western civilization. We need to broaden the Target/AB boycotts to include every aspect of their revolution against western normalcy.
The irony being that China wants no piece of this madness become it's ultimately also a "Western" cult.
Counselor, Gender ideology has *absolutely nothing* to do with Maoism. Even a few hours study of Maoism would make this obvious. It would also reveal that historically Maoism did not aim to destroy Western civilization: it aimed to appropriate a great deal of it in the framework of Communism, a set of ideas that grew out of the European Enlightenment, particularly German philosophy. (But perhaps you think Communism was also anti-Western and pro-gender ideology.)
It is very disappointing to see comments on substack--which often has very thoughtful discussions--that invoke complex ideas as if they were emoticons. You don't have to like Maoism (I don't) to be willing to learn what it is.
We are in the midst of an accelerated cultural revolution against western normalcy (whiteness). That is the comparison with Maoism. James Lindsey is doing a much better job than I did describing the current moment. In 2017 I called it the Maoist Commie Cultural Revolution in America. James calls it Maoism with American Characteristics. The idea I was trying to promote is that we have intelectual revolutionaries with tyrannical support from the state and their corporations in the process of deconstructing everything as Maoists did, in order to present a new version of normal. Tradition is their enemy. Queer Theory and Gender Theory are tactics. The gender zealots and the other crazies are their Red Guard. The idea is to contextualize this gender moment as more than it appears to the average onlooker.
Counselor, I understand the attraction of borrowing the notion of a "cultural revolution" in China to attack US progressives, but you simply don't understand what the CR was about. Apart from the fact that the primary target of the CR was traditional forms of Chinese thought, not Western thought, the CR was launched by Mao and his supporters to destroy the government (Mao had been frozen out of both the government and Party for three years as a result of his disastrous mismanagement in the late '50s and early '60s)--the CR didn't have the support of a "tyrannical state," much less the state-owned enterprises that would correspond, I suppose, to "their corporations" in your view. You have your history completely screwed up and are simply throwing around slurs like "Commie" and "tyrannical government" as handy jargon to demonize those you oppose. That's what I mean by using such terms as emoticons.
If you wanted an American parallel to Mao launching the CR in 1966--gathering a mob in the capital city to overthrow the government, restore a cult figure to power, and purge all those who resisted a radical revision of political norms--Mr. Trump's behavior in January 2021 would come far closer.
None of my comments on your misuse of "Maoism," "Communism," and so forth constitute a defense of the gender ideology under discussion here. I think it's confused and its promoters are behaving in an illiberal way. But if opposition to it is going to take the form of the sort of cartoonish rhetoric you're using all you will do is make advocates of gender ideology seem knowledgeable and level headed. The authors of this post have offered a serious, smart, and helpful analysis of errors that advocates for transgender ideology make, and I think poorly informed and overwrought comments like yours ("They're Maoists!" "This is tyranny!" "They're crazies!") weaken the case.
I understand. You are offering a defense of Maoism and wish to separate it from gender ideology that you wish to oppose. We have a difference of opinion.
How in the world could pointing out that gender ideology has precisely nothing to do with Maoism constitute a defense of Maoism, Counselor? (Could you have thought that in comparing Mao to Mr. Trump I was saying something nice about Mao?)
Perhaps this is sarcasm--if it is, let me know and forgive my failing to see it. But if this is actually the conclusion you reached I suppose it is a good signal to me that there's no point in engaging further.
Here is a terrifying description of how the Biden tyranical government is forming the American Red Guard: https://www.theorganicprepper.com/domestic-terrorists/.
"gender ideology is an arrow in the Maoism quiver to deStroy western civilization..."
preach!
the problem (among others) is that your simple statement of truth sounds so extreme, odd and impossible to the average person (people raised in a free society cannot imagine that the freedoms they've always known could someday be taken away, esp by people who are constantly proclaiming their compassion)....
and thus the addled and exhausted American frog slowly boils, as we move inevitably away from our Enlightenment-based liberal democracy to our post-Enlightenment managed technocracy aka Social Justice Inc.
Excellent discussion of the science, but it's incorrect that gender ideology depends on the first pillar, the idea that sex is a spectrum. Most gender ideologues distinguish between sex and gender (even if they claim that sex is a spectrum), and say that gender is the essential component of gender identity. Gender, they say, ad nauseum, is a "social construct."
There's some plausibility to the claim that gender is a social construct, in the sense that social roles and norms (e.g., fashion, behavior, professions, etc.), which can vary across cultures, are determined by society. What is far less plausible is that "identification with" (whatever that is) this concept of gender is the meaning of standard sex categories (man/woman), and should be the basis for political and social recognition (e.g., sports, bathrooms).
Very well said Rich. The quite useful observation that gender roles are social constructions got morphed into the idea that gender itself is a social construction, and then mutated again into the notion that, therefore, gender is absolutely arbitrary and can be whatever you want it to be. The final deconstruction is that if gender is arbitrary then sex may as well be arbitrary too. Too bad Lewis Carol wasn't writing Alice about now, I'm sure he'd have fun with all this. Editing from memory: "Which is to be master, said Humpty Dumpty. My gender is whatever I chose it to be at this moment ..."
The following despicable claim that Jennifer Boylan, a man who ideates a female persona for himself, IS A MOTHER AND WIFE, is made in one glib, indoctrinated, captured, Stockholm-syndromed paragraph in a puff piece from The Advocate, an LGBTQ+++ alphabet publication. He is a father, a publicity seeker and a man usurping female identity.
"And still, Jennifer Finney Boylan's multi-episode appearance on the Oprah show helped to change the public perception and discourse around trans people. Audiences were used to seeing trans people presented on talk shows as punchlines, a man's attraction to a trans woman could only be accompanied by shame. Jennifer was a wife, a mother, a college professor who'd written a book."
Link?
Though "female identity" is hardly "immutable" or based on any sort of "mythic essence". By definition, the standard biological ones, to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
"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
Rather "problematic" that so many transloonie nutcases are desperately committed to male and female as such "immutable" identities. But, rather sadly, far too many "women" are equally committed to the same rather poisonous schlock.
Pots and kettles; pox on both their houses ...
"The second asserts that every human brain contains an unchangeable “gender identity” that is knowable from a very young age,"
Or not. We hear of kids trying on several Genders and changing them several times. Today I'm Genderqueer, tomorrow I might be Twospirit or something else. Who knows?
Thank you for the thoughtful essay. It was very well done. And, from the point of view of a biological psychologist, I fundamentally agree with what you've said. However, if you don't mind, I would like to add some complementary information. One's gender identity does, in fact, have a biological basis (it's a product of brain activity), but — as you point out — that that does not mean that it's permanent or immutable any more than is any other self-perception. Often, this point is overlooked by people on both sides of the conversation: "There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for
Further, it should be made clear that MRI (or other brain scan) data are only correlational and much too crude to identify patterns that represent gender identity, per se. Additionally, interpretation of any brain scan data is subject to the subjective, and often profoundly naïve and outdated models that people use to assign functions to brain areas. Often these functions are assigned after the fact in order to support the author's original point of view. For instance, claiming that the "tempo-parietal junction" is involved in "body perception" and "out of body experiences" is horribly simplistic and reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how the brain works. It is akin to saying that the "prefrontal cortex" is in charge of "executive functions" (whatever those are), or the amygdala is in charge of "aggression." Consequently, your criticisms of the original argument are correct but could be more pointed. Along that line, one study about which I commented (above), claimed that there were differences in "white matter" between trans- and non-trans brains. The claim, of course, is nonsensical, and when I emailed the lead authors for clarification of their rationale for using that metric, I never received a reply. Oh, well. Again, thank you for a very informative, well-argued essay. Sincerely, Frederick
Even though mental states have a biological basis in a trivial sense, I wouldn't want to grant that gender identity has a biological basis, because there's no identifiable, universal phenomenon that is "gender identity." (Nobody even knew they had one until ten years ago, so definitely no mental state at that time.) I reject the idea that gender identity is a feeling or sensation, which would be a candidate for a biological basis. At best, a gender identity is a collection of preferences/affinities/likes. There is no more biological basis for gender identity than there is for being an American, or a football fan, or a gardener.
As I've just responded to Frederick, I think, many others think, it's just a matter of definition. Some justification to argue that gender/gender-identity is a rough synonym for personalities & personality types that show some sexual dimorphism.
Would you agree that we all have more or less unique personalities? Some aspects of which are more typical of the other sex? If so then it seems you've just endorsed those concepts and definitions.
I think it's plausible that there is a biological basis for personalities and stereotypically gendered behaviors and preferences (girls and barbie dolls, boys and trucks). But I don't want to commit to saying the same about gender identity. I take gender identity to be an explicit self-association with a gender (e.g., "I identify as X") -- choosing a side. That could be absolutely anything. It surely means different things to different people, and it's hopelessly vague, to boot (practically indefinable to any particular person). That's not the same thing as just being a man or woman, in the non-gender ideology sense, which is just synonymous with sex.
I don't think gender identity existed as a concept until very recently, at least to the vast majority of the population, so nobody identified as a gender. In those pre-ideology days, there was no biological basis for gender identification, because it didn't exist. As for now, I don't think gender identity is a useful concept at all.
Again, I totally understand your point… Just don't throw out the biology…
Rich: "I think it's plausible that there is a biological basis for personalities and stereotypically gendered behaviors and preferences ..."
So you more or less accept the definition of "gender" as "feminine and masculine personalities and personality types"? Progress! 😉🙂
You might note that the late Justice Scalia basically did so as well in this rather cogent analogy:
Scalia: “The word 'gender' has acquired the new and useful connotation of cultural or attitudinal characteristics (as opposed to physical characteristics) distinctive to the sexes. That is to say, gender is to sex as feminine is to female and masculine is to male.”
https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep511/usrep511127/usrep511127.pdf
Which sort of highlights the problem with various "gender ideologues" using "male" and "female" as genders when "masculine" and "feminine" seem more justified, at least in clearly differentiating between the biological and the psychological. Two entirely different kettles of fish even if the former has some influence on the latter.
But I'll largely agree with you that "gender identity" is "hopelessly vague", though one might say the same about "personal identity", a concept with which it seems to have a great many aspects in common. Consider this article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] on the topic:
SEP: "Outside of philosophy, ‘personal identity’ usually refers to properties to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s personal identity in this sense consists of those properties she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
IF one starts from the premise that one's gender consists of those feminine and masculine traits that define one's personality -- which you've apparently accepted -- THEN it doesn't seem implausible to argue that those "gendered personality traits" "to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership" constitute our "gender identities".
"gender identity" may well be a murky concept -- that SEP article in PDF runs to 16 pages, very few of which I've read, but 4 of which are citations so describing or defining "gender identity" may well take at least that many. But I certainly think it's untenable to argue that it is not "a useful concept at all".
But you may wish to take a look at my Welcome post, particularly the section on Rationalized Gender which makes a preliminary stab at putting gender itself on a more scientific footing:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/i/64264079/rationalized-gender
Though the section on "Gender Identity" probably requires some reworking ... 🙂
Your use of parts of speech is a little loose, suggesting that "gender", a noun classification, is an adjective -- "masculine" or "feminine", so I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but here's what I think about "gender."
"Gender" can be a term for classification -- a noun -- that is "man" and "woman". I think it was commonly taken to be synonym for "male" and "female". I saw Kathleen Stock say in a video (reference lost) that it was a polite way of saying "sex" (on a questionnaire, say). I think that's correct. I'm talking here about the common understanding and not the sense some academics may have had. In that definition, gender as male or female is not the same as "masculine" and "feminine".
In recent times, it has become conventional to distinguish gender and sex, such that a woman (as a gender classification) is not the same as an adult human female. I think that is a mistake, for a couple reasons. It has turned "woman" into a concept that is vague (see Matt Walsh's notoriously asking "What is a woman") and/or circular. It's also confused a number of issues that have nothing to do with the purely linguistic question -- issues such as sports, the acceptability of female only spaces, and (frighteningly) children's health.
(There are some other mistakes that are purely conceptual, such as the belief that we are "discovering" what gender is, or what a woman is, and uncovering scientific truths. This is popular philosophy gone bad, as anyone familiar with Wittgenstein will recognize.)
So, no. Just throw out that sense of gender (anything that's not male/female). It's a cancer. And we shouldn't use "woman" to mean whatever is feminine, and "man" to mean whatever is "masculine."
If you can fake sincerity then you have it made ... 😉🙂
But I largely agree with your "thesis", though I'll have to re-read it to better understand the specifics. But, offhand, it seems there's a great deal of justification to argue that "gender/gender-identity" is just a rough synonym for personalities & personality types. Something which Colin more or less agreed with at one point:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1234040036091236352
And UK lawyer & Substacker Sarah Phillimore likewise:
https://sarahphillimore.substack.com/p/rip-it-up-and-start-again-sex-and/comment/16622306
Rather depressing that so few are willing to "steel-man" the concepts of gender and gender identity. They're (almost) as narrow-minded and dogmatic as the worst of the transloonie nutcases. Largely why the whole "debate" has degenerated into something little better than playground squabbles between colicky children: "Is too! Is not!" A Lilliputian civil war over egg (ova) cracking protocols.
Virtually everyone -- present company excepted of course ... -- seems to have their hands and minds stuck in the proverbial monkey traps. Which really doesn't say much that's flattering about their mental abilities or intellectual honesty:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/monkey_trap
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/14/how-to-avoid-monkey-trap-oliver-burkeman
I agree with your point: "Rather depressing that so few are willing to "steel-man" the concepts of gender and gender identity.... The whole "debate" has degenerated into something little better than...: 'Is too! Is not!'" As you may remember, I tried to steel-man the argument in the essays that I wrote about gender identity. Recognizing the phenomenon for what it is allows you to take a reasoned approach to discussing it. I also agree with you that the terms refer to a classes of personality types none of which are monolithic or homogeneous. In short, they are like any other psychological description; they are metaphors that refer to mental states.
That's true, of course, because the differences don't exist at the macro-anatomical level. They are a product of the dynamic, non-ergodic processes that go on at the molecular level. I talk about that in "There is "Biological Evidence for Gender Identity..." but it’s not what you think" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/there-is-biological-evidence-for ...and some in "ChatGPT, Lobster Gizzards, and Intelligence" https://everythingisbiology.substack.com/p/chatgpt-lobster-gizzards-and-intelligence
Thanks for the comment. I'll check it out!
I think there's a bit of woolly thinking here:
"...if sex is binary, and no innate and fixed gender identity exists, then one cannot be “mismatched” from one’s sex—and “gender affirming” treatment is unjustified."
I fully agree sex is binary. Gender dysphoria does seem to exist (I refer to the old-fashioned always felt wrong kind, not social contagion) and that would seem to suggest there is such a thing as gender identity. In fact, the proper treatment of GID is to sort out those that are immutable and not aligned with sex, from those that are unstable and likely will come into alignment with maturation. The only treatment we have for "true" GID cases is transition (and I know all we are doing is confirming a mentally ill person's delusion), and those folks seem to do well. It's the tidal wave of social contagion and trendy cases that are going to regret it and should be protected from themselves as children. No one ever changes sex. All anyone can do is disguise their sex and live a life of pretending to be the opposite sex, which might feel more comfortable if you really have "true" gender dysphoria.
I don't think any of us want to deny adults to do what they want to themselves and make their own mistakes. What we must not fail to do is to protect youngsters who cannot make such decisions, especially when we know that 80-90% will desist and be gay adults.
I agree there is a condition we call gender dysphoria, which can and should be treated in all those ways. I disagree about gender identity. You don't need to posit the existence of gender identity. I would say people without gender dysphoria don't have a gender identity -- something they wouldn't be aware of having. What about people with gender dysphoria?
You've got people who are distressed with their sex and would like to be the opposite sex, or would like to pass for the opposite sex, or would like to modify their bodies to be like the opposite sex. You can describe all that -- as I just did -- without implying that there is a something called "gender" that is different than sex, and/or that we need to posit the existence of a "gender identity".
There is a common sense of "identification", so people can "identify as" as a plumber or parent -- that is, it's parts of their "identity". But that's a trivial sense of identity that doesn't have anything to do with the psychological distress. I think "gender identity" has been based on a confusion with the trivial sense of "identifying as" or "identifying with."
Very well put.
In my opinion the recruitment of children is to serve as "cover". and create a sense of urgency to make people skip performing due diligence. This is a movement driven by paraphiliacs to legalise the practice of their fetish. Soon enough people would notice these AGPS prancing around. They got stupendously lucky by running into gay rights extremists who wanted to take equality further and re-engineer society - even luckier to have successfully tricked the feminist movement into gifting womens' rights away to them.
Excellent article. One question I have is whether you have attempted to get it published as a reply article to Boylan in the Washington Post. I know the chances are slim to none, but it’s still worth it. Here your readership is already predisposed to accept your impeccable logic. It’s the casual reader who votes you need to reach.
I used to subscribe to Wapo but no longer. But I wonder if your readership can start a letter writing campaign.
I love Substack. But one disadvantage is that it creates niche readerships. Not useful for changing hearts and minds.
I just sent Professor Boylan a polite and respectful email asking her to respond. I encourage others to do the same.
jb@jenniferboylan.net
I never got a response. Surprise, surprise.
I have the same question as Miguelitro. The nonsense dressed up as science being published in the WP, NYT, etc., needs a response where their readers can see it. Good idea to email the author directly. I will do the same. I hope that Colin has also submitted this piece as a response / letter to the editor. And if WP turns it down, perhaps the WSJ would consider it.
Let’s see if we can recruit more people to get a more visible debate going. We are basically invisible here to the people we need to reach.
I doubt Prof. Finley has the guts to voluntarily engage with a real competent scientist.
I also gave up Washington post
Ah yes. I do recal the mediocrity of CC
Depressing but probably true. I has the less engaged and committed reader in mind, whose lack of engagement might make her more amenable to a diversity of views. On the trans issue, I have this fantasy that there are lots of moderate liberals who secretly think the “trans women are real woman” trope is absurd but just doesn’t want to be alone saying so.
had
"Belief" <--- What is the science of belief and how does it bear on gender beliefs? Thanks for this essay.
One question that no one has posed (or I may have missed it) is why Boylan et al feel the need for a new gender "ideology" in the first place. Granted, her ideology has no scientific evidential basis, but for a consenting adult there is absolutely nothing wrong (from a personal liberty POV) with saying "I just feel better this way!"
Could it be that the need to construct a new gender ideology stems, partly, from the desire to justify aggressive gender-related "treatments" (e.g. puberty blockers) for people who cannot give consent- like children?
I agree with many of the commenters here that the article is great and clarifying; it answered many of my questions about trans activist arguments. I'd like to see the authors address why some people feel like they're women when they're in male bodies and vice versa--in other words, whether trans people exist. And if there are some people like this, why does "transitioning" relieve the distress around their situation and improve their mental health, by their accounts and by social science research?
Maybe someone in the comments can point out where I may have missed this, though I'm not interested in engaging in polemics.
"why some people feel like they're women when they're in male bodies and vice versa"
Certainly a puzzle -- I periodically wonder whether it's a case of an excess of empathy, of too many "mirror neurons" misfiring:
Wikipedia: "In addition, Iacoboni has argued that mirror neurons are the neural basis of the human capacity for emotions such as empathy."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron
But for some less speculative and more direct evidence, you might check out the "Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans" [PITT] Substack, these posts in particular:
https://pitt.substack.com/p/back-from-the-other-side
https://pitt.substack.com/p/leave-the-kids-alone
Something from the first:
Helene: "I lived in the self-delusion of being a boy for most of my youth."
The author of the second has her own Substack, and frequently collates other stories "from the front lines":
https://twoplustwo.substack.com/p/224-vol-4-teaching-therapy-trans
Thanks for your thoughts and for the resources. Debate about trans issues is definitely infused with cancel culture from the authoritarian activists. And I agree it's likely that great harm is being done to many, especially minors. I'm much less certain that all trans folk are deluded or *simply* suffering from a mental illness--I'm concerned about folks who are really going through something that only transitioning can ameliorate (whether medical or social-only transitioning). If such people exist, nuance is called for. We should expect science to have answers to this question.
Finally, this debate needs to distinguish between the issues of cancel culture/left authoritarianism, what's happening with minors, and what science says about the subjective experiences of people who identify as transgender. Answers to the first two issues don't address the third issue.
Doesn't academic integrity require people with strong personal interest to recuse themselves from subjects that stand to directly benefit them? This entire phenomenon appears to be driven by exactly such individuals, and I don't know why anyone hasn't publicly called them on it yet. The only credible theory on transgenderism I have yet encountered is Blanchard's HSTS/AGP dichotomy. Tellingly desperate confabulation to maintain the plausibility of being a woman is actually a symptom of the AGP part... Very Trans-parent. Postpubertal transwomen appear to be all fetishists.
Doesn't academic integrity require people with strong personal interest to recuse themselves from subjects that stand to directly benefit them? This entire phenomenon appears to be driven by exactly such individuals, and I don't know why anyone hasn't publicly called them on it yet. The only credible theory on transgenderism I have yet encountered is Blanchard's HSTS/AGP dichotomy. Tellingly desperate confabulation to maintain the plausibility of being a woman is actually a symptom of the AGP part... Very Trans-parent. Postpubertal transwomen appear to be all fetishists.