Ridiculous.
I get the notion that biological sex is one thing, but gender is another thing entirely. They’re still conflating the two.
And even in saying that, biological sex is not a binary because we know intersex individuals exist—people born with ambiguous sex organs, sex organs that don’t match chromosomal makeup, or even chromosomal makeups beyond the typical XX/XY. For all of the claims of “scientific reality,” the figures named in this article seem to do a very good job of cherry picking facts while ignoring the actual, less convenient reality of science.
“It’s basic biology, XX or XY, man or woman!”
“OK, but have you ever looked into intermediate or advanced biology?”
Dawkins is such a disappointing person. He has all the knowledge required to not only understand but also advocate for trans people but instead is defending the Anglican church, “light pedophelia”, and gender essentialism. He wrote a couple of books with some good parts but honestly, he is a sad old man and should be forgotten. Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
That is badass
I knew it sounded familiar. It even has a name and a wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck’s_principle
light pedophelia
“That can’t be true!”
Looks it up : “Dear spaghetti monster, what did I just read”.
Science moves forward one funeral at a time.
Imma steal this, okay? Just letting you know now because this is absolute #facts.
It is called Planck’s principle, so we are stealing from Max Planck.
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it ...An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth. — Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97Cool phrasing from him, lots of people have enjoyed it since, and honestly from my exposure to the field it is accurate. The push back against plate technonics was hard, as was the clinging to steady state cosmology. Oh, and miasma as a model of disease. We really are just slightly smart monkeys.
Basic biology he says? I’m just gonna leave this here
Calling sex a true binary is strange for a talented biologist, intersex people definitely exist.
Transgenderism is a bit different though. Personally I think gender is a repressive, outdated social norm, and I disagree with transgenderism precisely because it reinforces this obsolete notion. Anyone should feel free to dress, act, and identify however they please, including but not limited to any body modifications they wish. But “switching” your identity to align with another set of stereotypical expressions only reinforces those stereotypes.
I can’t even see the point in “fitting in”, because those who care about how you express yourself aren’t going to accept you as transgender anyway, and the people who are going to accept you aren’t going to care if your expression matches the stereotypes they’re used to.
I dunno if that’s his objection because paywall, but I can certainly understand opposition to transgenderism that isn’t actually intolerant of transgender people themselves.
And that’s what gender critical means.
I personally smell either some kompromat-style blackmailing situation (remember him defending trans people in the past, as well as having a much lighter stance on being “culturally christian”), or money in behind the scenes.
Dawkin’s quote:
Prof Dawkins described publishing Grant’s “silly and unscientific” article as a “minor error of judgment”, but that the decision to remove Prof Coyne’s rebuttal was “an act of unseemly panic”.
He continued: “Moreover, to summarily take it down without even informing the author of your intention was an act of lamentable discourtesy to a member of your own advisory board. A board which I now leave with regret.”
He was/is upset about pulling an article and that’s why he resigned.
And the person whose article was pulled also has a point:
That is a censorious behavior I cannot abide,” he wrote in an email. “I was simply promoting a biological rather than a psychological definition of sex, and I do not understand why you would consider that ‘distressing’ and also an attempt to hurt LGBTQIA+ people, which I would never do.”
“The gender ideology which caused you to take down my article is itself quasi-religious, having many aspects of religions and cults, including dogma, blasphemy, belief in what is palpably untrue (‘a woman is whoever she says she is’), apostasy, and a tendency to ignore science when it contradicts a preferred ideology.”
Both of their issues was the article elaborating Coyne’s position was yanked.
This is a pedantic miscommunication issue, which is pretty much their point.
Instead of discussing the issue and coming to an understanding, discussion is immediately shut down.
That’s why they’re resigning and it’s valid.
I would buy that if Dawkins didn’t have a history of making bigoted statements about trans people.
He literally lost a Humanist of the Year award because of it a few years ago
He may have other motives and may be a total dirt hat, but I’m the spirit of pedantic disagreement, the argument given still holds water.
It’s valid to get mad at the article being removed and not discussed. But I have to say, that argument calling “gender ideology” a religion and its justification reads exactly as a right-wing anti-woke argument calling science a religion. Or the way I like to translate it, “everything I don’t like is X” syndrome. Be it woke, religion, or anything else. It’s a blatant display of rigid thinking. Just because someone didn’t intent to hurt doesn’t mean their actions can’t hurt, and that’s a big part of critical feminist theory (of which they might not entirely understand much about). Our actions and words have material and social consequences that extend beyond our intentions. Maybe try to understand why they were injurious instead of throwing a performative tantrum.
The problem here i think is “we remove this article because people got upset” this behaviour is basically the same as “we remove this article because (religious) people got upset”
People in the comment seems to have issue with the person or the article, but that not the problem. The person can be the worst, and the article could be written by chatgpt, but at the end should not be taken down unless it violate the website or publishing terms and condition if any.
Richard “Culturally Christian” Dawkins can go meme himself out of the meme pool.
I get, given how right wing, nasty, anti women and anti LGBTQ+ the American church is, why you would want to put Richard Dawkins, who is so nasty and anti trans (probably among other things) into the same bucket, but he’s British, not American, and famously very firmly anti-religion.
He has always been a dick, whatever he was trying to convince people of, and it’s no surprise he continues to be a dick in his old age. It doesn’t mean he’s a Christian. He’s really, really, really not.
Some context for you: https://skepchick.org/2024/04/richard-dawkins-cultural-christian-or-supremacist-bigot/
Surplus extra-topical context: https://religiondispatches.org/norway-massacre-suspect-anders-behring-breivik-hitler-the-jerusalem-post-editorial/ (you can find his manifesto online)
OK, the first article points out that he has a lot in common with the American right wing churches in that they don’t actually believe a word of it and just use it as a cultural sheild for their hatred, which is a fair point.
The second one doesn’t seem as related.
The second one is about how far [right] “Culturally Christian” can go.
Reading that article and this comment thread just makes me want to endlessly reiterate the point that if you don’t intimately understand the difference between gender and sex then you aren’t qualified to claim scientific opinion on either.
Defining terms is absolutely crucial to any kind of meaningful debate including science. Cultural anthropologists find the idea of social gender and biological sex being the same concept to be genuinely laughable. Whether or not you dogmatically think they ought to be the same or not, they are historically obviously not and if you mix and match which you are talking about in an argument then your argument will not be productive or make sense.
Even according to Dawkins definition of sex, there are only two, which is scientifically inaccurate. He’s a fucking esteemed biologist and should know the difference between binary and bimodal.
“Why should sex be changeable while other physical traits cannot? Feelings don’t create reality,” he wrote. “Instead, in biology ‘sex’ is traditionally defined by the size and mobility of reproductive cells. “It is not ‘transphobic’ to accept the biological reality of binary sex and to reject concepts based on ideology. One should never have to choose between scientific reality and trans rights.”
As a fellow psychologist, I must regretfully state that this is the stupidest thing ever written by a psychologist. Our entire science is built upon the notion that feelings indeed create and modify (social) reality*. Sex is not gender, and he fumbled the most basic differentiation of concepts.
Heteronormative gender roles, on the other hand, are categorically a form of ideology and to defend them in place of basic human decency is a disgrace, good riddance to both asshats, I say. Specially with such a tenous biological argument that any good biologist can tell you is patently false. Gametes are not binary, there are hundred of thousands of intersex individuals for which this narrow definition doesn’t apply.
Grant is absolutely right, but I don’t expect the mentally weak asshole who invented the word “meme” to ever understand social sciences. His book is a pathetic pseudo scientific intrusion in a field he doesn’t understand in the slightest.
*: some philosophers would even argue that there’s no reality but social reality and both are one and the same.
Dawkins isn’t a psychologist afaict. I had to check.
He isn’t which is why I called him intrusist there at the end for writing a book about psychology and neurology which he doesn’t understand. But the quote is from Coyne, another biologist who wrote the reply and was supported by Pinker, who is a psychologist and should’ve known better. None of these people know what they’re talking about and are acting in this whole thing from passion instead of reason and evidence. Which is ironic, I believe.
This conflates material reality and ideology, though. Not to say a cultural or social reality isn’t real in its own way, just that it is preceded by objective, material reality. I think the arguments tend to boil down to people prioritising one or the other and then refusing to budge.
I’m pretty laid back about it but draw the line at people attempting to assert there is no such thing as material conditions. I’m not explicitly “Marxist” but definitely Marxian in the sense that I think all theories need to be anchored in material reality in the first instance. So gender categories exist, but are part of the superstructure.
I am reminded of Willian Jennings Bryan, who in his old age advocated for the eight-hour work day, a minimum wage, the right of unions to strike, women’s suffrage, and then Alcohol Prohibition and of course Anti-Evolution.
Even the most progressive will turn to “I am old and don’t like new ideas!” as they age.
I’m seeing that in some of my older friends. Some of them can be manually taught new ideas, but it gets tiring. Well, they still vote for the most progressive option on any ballot, so I’m not bothering with it anymore.
I’m getting older and get weird looks when I tell people I refuse to install apps that can be websites and if a company is going to force me to use their app I am simply not spending money there.
Returning my Norelco shaver and Beats headphones I received for Christmas this year because I don’t need an app for headphones and sure as fuck do not need an app for my shaver!I’m talking more about political prospectives. Your example is about privacy concerns and superficial tech advances, which I’ve never really seen a strong generational bias.
Richard “cultural christian” Dawkins.
Great. Another one of those Gurus doing dumb shit.
It’s valid to get mad at the article being removed and not discussed. But I have to say, that argument calling “gender ideology” a religion and its justification reads exactly as a right-wing anti-woke argument calling science a religion. Or the way I like to translate it, “everything I don’t like is X” syndrome. Be it woke, religion, or anything else. It’s a blatant display of rigid thinking. Just because someone didn’t intent to hurt doesn’t mean their actions can’t hurt, and that’s a big part of critical feminist theory (of which they might not entirely understand much about). Our actions and words have material and social consequences that extend beyond our intentions. Maybe try to understand why they were injurious instead of throwing a performative tantrum.
Edit: this comment is a reply to another comment and somehow got duplicated by lemmy as both a reply to OP and the comment. My apologies.
“Boo! Hiss! Protect the citadel!”
-United Atheist Alliance
(I’m mocking dogmatic pop sci types, not attempting to denigrate trans rights or identities)
Article requires sign up which Im not willing to do.
Also didn’t receive a GDPR compliant prompt.
Steven Pinker also resigned for the same reason. I had picked up one of his books at an airport. The man is insufferable.
This makes the South Park arc even funnier. Maybe that’s why he’s sore.
