In general, one can’t say that chromosomes “determine sex” in animals, as there are other genetic or environmental features that determine what sex an individual becomes.
As Coyne and Maroja (2023) note:
Different sexes can determined during development bybe based on different chromosomes and their genes (e.g., XX vs. XY in humans, ZW vs. ZZ in birds, individuals with like chromosomes being female in mammals and male in birds); different rearing temperatures (crocodiles and turtles); whether you have a full or half set of chromosomes (bees); whether you encounter a female (some marine worms); and a host of other social, genetic, and environmental factors.
But note that we’re talking about what “determines” sex—setting off the developmental program that results in a male or female—but the “definition” of sex, ubiquitous in animals and vascular plants, still depends on whether they make large immobile gametes or small and mobile ones.
Still, it’s true that the gene that sets off the sex-determining cascade in humans and most other mammals is based on chromosomes. In particular, if a mammal carries a Y chromosome, which harbors the sex-determining gene SRY, whose action initiates development of testes, that individual is a male. Without a Y, you nearly always develop female reproductive equipment.
All in all, it’s accurate to teach students that sex is determined (but not “defined”) by chromosomes: the normal karyotypes are XX for females and XY for males. Yet for teaching that simple fact, adjunct professor Dr. Johnson Varkey, was fired from St. Philip’s College in Texas in January of last year. As the Fox News (where else?) article below recounts, Varkey has now been re-hired after filing a lawsuit against the Alamo Community College District.
Excerpts:
A biology professor who was fired from a Texas community college for teaching students that X and Y chromosomes determine sex has been reinstated.
First Liberty Institute, a law firm that defends religious liberty for Americans, announced in a Tuesday press release that St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas, had reinstated Dr. Johnson Varkey, a former adjunct professor, a year after he was terminated.
The law firm noted they had filed a charge of discrimination at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against St. Philip’s and the Alamo Community College District (ACCD) earlier this year.
Here’s what Varkey said that got him canned:
“When teaching the human reproductive system, Dr. Varkey also stated that human sex is determined by chromosomes X and Y, and that reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species,” First Liberty stated last June. “In the course of teaching Human Anatomy and Physiology, he made these statements in every class for 20 years, without any incident or complaint.”
Now you can imagine how some gender activists could get upset by that. If it takes a man and a woman to make an offspring, what do you do with those who assert that “transwomen are women” or “transmen are men”? If the trans people aren’t sterile, they could still reproduce according to their biological sex, but an activist might assert that a woman and a woman could produce a baby. (I wouldn’t say that, of course.). Further, activists might argue that sex is not determined by chromosomes, but by one’s inner feelings. So a simple statment like Varkey’s would of course be inflammatory. It’s telling that he taught this same thing for 22 years, but only last year did it rile up the students:
Complaints against Varkey that ultimately led to his firing said he had engaged in “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter” and that his teaching “pushed beyond the bounds of academic freedom with [his] personal opinions that were offensive to many individuals in the classroom,” according to a letter from the law firm.
Here we have another example of the ideological erosion of biology: a simple fact about human reproduction gets a professor fired simply because it contravenes the ideology of gender activists. It surprises me even more because it’s happened in conservative Texas, and the college is historically black.
I’m glad the buck stopped after a year, but the professor still went a year without teaching (and presumably salary). And this example may chill other people from teaching the truth about human sex and sexuality as well. After all, look at what happened to Carole Hooven at Harvard.
I think what most disturbs me is that this was being taught at the *college* level.
“So a simple statment like Varkey’s would of course be inflammatory.”
Continuing a medical metaphor, I would say that, no, it wasn’t inherently inflammatory, just that some people had a acquired hypersensitivity reaction.
All humans react to poison ivy (or rattlesnake venom), but if someone has hay fever, it’s THEIR problem to treat it or avoid the things that cause them trouble.
Just because I’m in a feisty mood . . . I’ve worked around poison ivy for years. Not the occasional garden plant, but rather I’ve walked in the middle of quarter-acre plots of it, grabbed and cut vines thicker than a man’s forearm winding up trees, removed walls of it at the forest edge. I’ve been smacked in the face with it more times than I care to count, grabbed vines and leaves in hand, found it rubbing against my neck, brushed it all over my clothes, contaminated all my hand tools. Never had a rash.
Now, I don’t intentionally court trouble, and it could be that I’m simply lucky, but it appears that poison ivy immunity exists. If I am immune, then it compensates a bit for the worst cat allergy in human existence, the attempted treatment of which has proved nearly pointless. And, yes, those cats will pick me out of a crowd of 50 and decide that it is me against whom they want to rub their sides. I respect that side of them.
Off to my work in the woods. Weather’s warming. Hope not to meet those snakes. Cheers.
https://www.si.edu/stories/poison-ivy-primer
There is another detail about the stuff, which is that apparently if you can wash it off with water and preferably soap, you can pretty well prevent its effects. And you can do that within an hour or more after exposure. I’ve done that and it seems to work.
I was exposed to poison ivy as a child. No reaction. My sister was also exposed, and she suffered from a huge rash. Go figure
Unless they have an imaginary allergy to scents. Then it is all our problem to not wear any in any crowd where one of them might feel entitled to show up. My own theory is that this is where the pronoun wars started. My proclivity –> your problem.
You have to love that Dr. Johnson Varkey is a based black man.
New rule analogous to [Macpherson’s Rule]: Whenever the politics of race[sex] meets the politics of gender, the gender borg will win.
Needs someone’s last name to go with the rule.
Was he fired for teaching about genetics, or for “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter”? If the latter, then the firing was justified.
I was also going to bring this up.
For now, I am neutral on why he was fired. I don’t know, mind you, but given the source the story could have been slanted to spin up a common conservative talking point while the actual tale might have been fairly different. I just don’t know at this point.
Yeah … I wondered about this too. But I agree with the caveat, that he had received warnings about this kind of behaviour and that a properly documented step discipline procedure had been implemented.
Based on the fact, that the professor was re-instituted, a step procedure had not been followed.
It does seem like there might be more to the story. Even his own defense “reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species” is odd phrasing. Would fit in nicely with sin, depravity, and homosexuality. Or a joke about him and a student saving the human race from extinction.
I agree he might have a lot of other odious views. And they might be the correct basis for his firing. I’m just here for the gender-critical part, on which he seems to be correct.
Teaching that chromosomes determine anything could make some in the institution, particularly in its administration, feel unsafe. Such teaching conveys the dangerous implication that some things in life are beyond the reach of the DEI Office.
Yes, but what have you decided to be now?
It’s actually quite interesting how very resistant the transactivists are to arguments about sex and gametes. This is, of course, a trump card, and so they rightly fight back with calls of TERF and much worse. I was recently told on Quora that there were many different ways to define sex (this particular person chose “brain affinities” as the deciding factor), and the gametes one was just one relatively minor way that I’d chosen because of being a TERF, etc etc.
[s]You’re a bad, bad person Janis.[/s]
And remember, all the stuff about gametes and chromosomes and so on, it was all foisted on humanity by the colonialist, capitalist, patriarchalist system of oppression. Fortunately, now we have DEI offices to correct everything. These offices, and the essential trainings they provide, will not only end cis-heteronormativity, they will also ensure that nobody ever receives less of anything than the median.
“they will also ensure that nobody ever receives less of anything than the median.”
Except for salary. But no worries. The money we once earned will go to a good DEI cause.
If there were a reliable way to find out, I think I would make a sizeable bet that he _didn’t_ in fact just say the things he’s described as saying, but that in fact he went out of his way to express them in a way that was unpalatable to more-progressive types, and that “First Liberty”‘s description of “what got him canned” is deeply misleading.
(I’d be like 95% confident of this if it weren’t for the fact that he got reinstated, which is obviously something more likely to happen if what he was was less deliberately-culture-war-y. So I’m only at about 75%.)
But I bet that when he was fired the process was entirely “internal” and didn’t involve publishing details of what he actually said or did, and so far as I can tell much the same is true of his reinstatement, so all we have is “First Liberty”‘s account of things, which obviously will have whatever spin on it makes their client look as blameless and victimized as possible.
Edit: Comment went astray. I’m referring in the first sentence to the assertion that he made “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter.”
That assertion is contained in a letter from his law firm, not the college’s. So it is his lawyer’s expression of what it said the college had accused him of. We don’t know what he actually said, or even what the college actually accused him of in its termination action. I could imagine that the statement that X and Y chromosomes determine sex and reproduction requires a male and a female to continue the human species might be taken by the very very sensitive to constitute, all by itself, “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter”, with nothing else objectionable at all ever said.
Rom refers to a progressive step discipline procedure which is not mentioned anywhere in the cited story to support the idea that he was a repeat offender refractory to performance management for odious views on topics other than sex determination. Do we know anything further about this? If so, why was mentioning X and Y chromosomes the straw that broke the camel’s back one fine day?
I sense an unseemly rush in the Comments to undermine the scientific principles of this case just because the professor was represented by a religious-freedom law firm and the story was reported on everyone’s favourite news site. (Of course it was!) If I was a Christian accused of transphobia, whom law firms eager to keep the trans-advocacy business wouldn’t touch with a barge pole*, I would of course seek out a firm like First Liberty to argue my case, especially if I thought they might take it pro bono. (Adjuncts don’t make a whole lot of money.) That doesn’t mean I did anything wrong. Unfortunately it’s not just atheists who get fucked over by the system. We are going to have to rejoice, sometimes, in believers winning their cases, too, and sometimes their views on our other “preciouses” may differ from our own. Revel in viewpoint diversity.
—————-
* This actually happens in Canada.
“This actually happens in Canada.” I believe it, but can’t think of examples. Do you have one handy that I could cite when I talk about this with others?
Remember the guy in Vancouver who made a nice living filing Human Rights complaints against immigrant (mostly Bengali) cosmeticians who refused to wax “her” scrotum in their private homes? The first few paid up, unable to afford lawyers to defend, thinking that well, I guess that’s just a fact of life in Canada that the immigration consultants never told us about. Eventually, one stroppy one went looking for a lawyer but no Van firm would take her case, not wanting to alienate the various trans-activist orgs they were all vying to get litigation business from, to sue all and sundry.
Someone put this woman onto a legal charity which I won’t name because I give them money. It, as the pulp fiction says, “blew the case wide open.” (Literally. He had been filing these complaints anonymously, hiding that he was all the same guy, causing the cosmetician community to be vilified for this epidemic of deep-seated transphobia.) The rest of the case you surely know. The background was detailed in the newsletter I get as a donor to the charity where they elaborated on the details of the yeoman’s work they did for free on behalf of these women.
Oh yes Jessica Jonathan Simpson Yaniv. I didn’t know his victims had trouble finding representation. I shouldn’t be surprised 🙁
“Complaints against Varkey that ultimately led to his firing said he had engaged in “religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals[..] ”
It is said the Iron Law of Woke Projection never misses – in this case, there is a conflict : between orthodox religion and the doctrine of a gnostic-hermetic religious cult – Queer Theory – which contains literature expressing a certain dissatisfaction with homosexuality. “Gender activists” are certainly brainwashed by some of that literature. I’ll have to find a particular example in my archive – but on the spot, Gayle Rubin’s Thinking Sex might have some ideas along those lines.
I forgot to note the obvious modern demoralization that Queer Theory is responsible for :
Employing the word “queer” in its service – a homophobic slur.
clown world