What a pair! The renowned biologist and the hoax-exposer/mathematician, teamed up to attack the medical profession’s new and woke tendency to deny the existence of biological sex as a reality. (Yes, all animals have exactly two sexes, which are not made up by society.) This eloquent op-ed is in the Boston Globe, and you can click below to read it for free, or find it archived here (h/t Mark, Barry).
It’s the “sex assigned at birth” meme, which any fool knows was made up to pretend that biological sex doesn’t really exist in nature, but is merely a “social construct”. This is the same risible meme taken apart by Alex Byrne and Carole Hooven in a recent NYT op-ed. As Alan and Richard note below, the distortion of reality was made for ideological reasons—by gender activists who want to see biological sex as a spectrum, and that is based on the the insupportable view that if you distort biology, transgender or transsexual people will not be “erased”. But, as I’ve said ad infinitum, you don’t need to distort biology to justify treating such people with civility and respect, and to confer on them the same moral value as everyone else has.
The excerpt from the above speaks for itself, but has a lot of useful links to show how well the termites have dined.
The American Medical Association says that the word “sex” — as in male or female — is problematic and outdated; we should all now use the “more precise” phrase “sex assigned at birth.” The American Psychological Association concurs: Terms like “birth sex” and “natal sex” are “disparaging” and misleadingly “imply that sex is an immutable characteristic.” The American Academy of Pediatrics is on board too: “sex,” it declares, is “an assignment that is made at birth.” And now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urge us to say “assigned male/female at birth” or “designated male/female at birth” instead of “biologically male/female” or “genetically male/female.”
After discussing the biological definition of sex, which, as you know well by now involves differences in developmental systems that produce gametes of different size and mobility, Sokal and Dawkins give a sharp rap on the knuckles of the medical establishment. I’ve put the last two paragraphs in bold; the penultimate one shows the trend and motivation, while the last one shows the damage.
Much is speciously made of the fact that a very few humans are born with chromosomal patterns other than XX and XY. The most common, Klinefelter syndrome with XXY chromosomes, occurs in about 0.1 percent of live births; these individuals are anatomically male, though often infertile. Some extremely rare conditions, such as de la Chapelle syndrome (0.003 percent) and Swyer syndrome (0.0005 percent), arguably fall outside the standard male/female classification. Even so, the sexual divide is an exceedingly clear binary, as binary as any distinction you can find in biology.
So where does this leave the medical associations’ claims about “sex assigned at birth”?
A baby’s name is assigned at birth; no one doubts that. But a baby’s sex is not “assigned”; it is determined at conception and is then observed at birth, first by examination of the external genital organs and then, in cases of doubt, by chromosomal analysis. Of course, any observation can be erroneous, and in rare cases the sex reported on the birth certificate is inaccurate and needs to be subsequently corrected. But the fallibility of observation does not change the fact that what is being observed — a person’s sex — is an objective biological reality, just like their blood group or fingerprint pattern, not something that is “assigned.” The medical associations’ pronouncements are social constructionism gone amok.
. . .For decades, feminists have protested against the neglect of sex as a variable in medical diagnosis and treatment, and the tacit assumption that women’s bodies react similarly to men’s bodies. Two years ago, the prestigious medical journal The Lancet finally acknowledged this criticism, but the editors apparently could not bring themselves to use the word “women.” Instead the journal’s cover proclaimed: “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected.” But now even this double-edged concession may be lost, as the denial of biological sex threatens to undermine the training of future doctors.
The medical establishment’s newfound reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality most likely stems from a laudable desire to defend the human rights of transgender people. But while the goal is praiseworthy, the chosen method is misguided. Protecting transgender people from discrimination and harassment does not require pretending that sex is merely “assigned.”
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It is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just. If the cause is truly just, then it can be defended in full acceptance of the facts about the real world.
And when an organization that proclaims itself scientific distorts the scientific facts in the service of a social cause, it undermines not only its own credibility but that of science generally. How can the public be expected to trust the medical establishment’s declarations on other controversial issues, such as vaccines — issues on which the medical consensus is indeed correct — when it has so visibly and blatantly misstated the facts about something so simple as sex?
Read also Byrne and Hooven; click below (or read it archived here):
Finally, the infamous Lancet cover:
“physiology of bodies with vaginas” so it needs three words to say “women” seriously what is wrong with these people?? Truth and common sense is neglected, never mind the physiology of women. Are men referred to in the same way?
Even if your definition of “women” includes trans women and excludes trans men, you could say “human females”.
Respectfully, no. “Female” is already taken, and its definition excludes males. “Trans women”, whatever that means, are males.
You know what’s really infuriating about the Lancet claim? It is that the bit of a body that is relevant to sexual intercourse, not the bit that’s making and nurturing embryos, is used as a way of identifying this neglected group. I know when Fear of flying first came out women revelled in their liberation from the ineluctable connection between sexual intercourse & reproduction but its adoption by Hugh Hefner very quickly soured the victory. And now the bearing of a vagina with no connection at all to the business end is used to define what it is to be a women. Talk about the zipless f…k.
+1
It is also true that this abuse of social theory undermines its validity as well. It becomes easier to dismiss the insights gained from understanding the role of social constructions in human behavior when the masses understand it as an attempt to deny reality in service of a debatable political ideology.
The comments at the NYT article trended strongly against the “assigned at birth” terminology. (These readers are generally left leaning.)
A number of women saw the trend as an assault on women’s rights. Can’t say I blame them.
Dawkins/Sokal ” The American Academy of Pediatrics is on board too: “sex,” it declares, is “an assignment that is made at birth.” ”
I love that one in particular. … I gotta read it again…
[read with Michael Palin’s voice for best results ]:
It’s true! “It”, the “assignment”, being “sex”, which, by the way, is “an assignment”, is… “made” .. like, sorta written on a checkbox on the clipboard*, “at birth”, as in the heat of the wild and crazy process of birth in the maternity ward, where its so chaotic, mixups happen all the time!
*the clipboard, which would have all the prior observational results including genetic or ultrasound.
[ ok, turn off Michael Palin voice .. if desired]
Second and last comment :
Dawkins and Sokal illustrate restraint, and refusal to fall for the temptation of gnosticism. See
Science, Politics, and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin
1968, 1997
Regenery Press, Chicago;Washington D.
I’ve seen the phrase “gender assigned at birth” instead of “sex assigned at birth” and wondered which phrase came first, or is more important. It’s hard to tell because the claims keep morphing. It used to be important to separate “sex” (biology) and “gender” (social norms) — with “female” being a sex term and “woman” a gender one. This framework still comes up occasionally, but it’s mostly fallen out of favor.
A gender assigned at birth would be giving babies masculine or feminine clothing, toys, or names: later on, the child might turn out to be gender nonconforming and insist on different kinds of clothes, toys, or nicknames.
A sex assigned at birth would be a doctor snipping a small penis off a baby boy with a DSD and telling the parents it’s really a girl, or labeling a baby girl a boy because her genitalia are ambiguous. The kids might grow up and sue that doctor.
If those who identify as trans are in the first category, they won’t be able to make the case that they have a human right to be recognized and treated as the sex/gender they “know themselves to be.” They therefore need science to support the idea that saying a transwoman was “born male” or a transman is “female at birth” is just like a mistake made with an DSD and subsequent involuntary castration. Sex, therefore, is always only assigned.
Those biology verses social norms terms were so nice. They made perfect sense. I miss them.
Versus
The most common terms are “AMAB” and “AFAB”, Assigned Male at Birth and Assigned Female at Birth. Male/Female is clearly sex “assignment.”
Hey, here’s the first google hit:
“Assigned female at birth/Assigned male at birth (noun) – Refers to the sex that is assigned to an infant, most often based on the infant’s anatomical and other biological characteristics. Commonly abbreviated as AFAB (assigned female at birth) or AMAB (assigned male at birth).”
From…”LGBTQ+ Inclusion Glossary – UW Medicine.”..That’s the University of Washington med school!
https://www.uwmedicine.org/practitioner-resources/lgbtq/lgbtq-inclusion-glossary#:~:text=Assigned%20female%20at%20birth%2FAssigned,(assigned%20male%20at%20birth).
This stuff wouldn’t matter if, well, it didn’t matter. In other words, saying “assigned at birth” may be unnecessary but if it didn’t matter, then making (some) people feel better by saying “assigned at” would not be so objectionable. But it *does* matter, as biological sex is fundamental to biology and to health care.
When women advocate for more studies of women’s health, actual sex matters. And the same applies when Blacks demand more funding for research on conditions that affect Blacks. This trend toward characterizing biological facts such as sex, or race, or whatever, as social constructs does not do the practice of medicine any good. I can only hope that actual medical providers ignore this performative stuff and continue to provide care that adheres to scientific reality.
You know what also matters? Criminal statistics. Apparently in the UK there has been a huge increase in “female” sex offences.
What gives?
Well. Peter Tachel and other fanatics, the edgelords and primary promoters of this nonsense generate such confusion and damage to statistics.
Without actual numbers, data, our justice system is lost.
D.A.
NYC
(fmr defense atty)
Thank Ceiling Cat Sokal and Dawkins are taking to the press on this topic, because unless there’s strong pushback from respected scientists and philosophers the madness won’t stop. I hope this will give more doctors and scientists the courage to speak out. It’s sad how the social pressure of being called a transphobe by the most demented, extreme activists has made the medical community betray its principles.
NEVER? The Boston Globe article makes an excellent point. But in the sciences, especially in the biological sciences, “never” should be used with care. Yes, for most issues, “it is never justified to distort the facts in the service of a social or political cause, no matter how just.” Yes, for most issues, “how can the public be expected to trust the medical establishment’s declarations on other controversial issues,” if that trust is betrayed on one issue? However, when vaccines are mentioned, most readers will be thinking of the recent pandemic.
As the biography of Katalin Kariko makes clear, had she been granted appropriate resources, both the benefits and possible hazards of mRNA vaccine technology would have been recognized decades ago. Thus, at the outset of the pandemic, mRNA vaccines could only be given emergency approval by the FDA. It now seems that, over the years as the numbers solidified, the initial “medical consensus” was “indeed correct” in supporting pandemic vaccination campaigns. This was far from evident at the outset. Faced with an active antivaccine lobby and strange input from a US president, most politicians made the best of a difficult situation by assuaging doubts and hence, as now is apparent, saving millions of lives.
It is amazing the amount of time and energy presently being devoted to the trans situation, not to mention the widespread and stunningly servile rush to upend science and convention in the service of a perspective affecting so few.
It bears asking, what percentage of the population now claims to be trans? I’m sure the number is higher than ever, since at present being trans is in some quarters a fashionable trend, but still I suspect that the percentage of the population that “assigns” itself the trans label is still exceedingly small. And I also suspect the number will shrink somewhat once the current obsession with the topic recedes a bit.
The fact that an issue affects few does not mean that it irrelevant or unimportant, and some conventions may deserve to be overturned. But given what many of us thought was (think is) settled science on the topic of sex, I would have expected these trans claims to be contested only at the margins. The fact that so many scientists are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater in service of such controversial claims directly affecting so few is disheartening.
“what percentage of the population now claims to be trans?” We don’t know this because people can self-identify without having to make changes in their official records. The (London) TImes has some figures from the newly released Cass Report which shed some light on how many people (mainly young women) are seeking medical intervention in the aid of this self-definition. (The Guardian’s reporting on Cass is actually better in most respects. They seem to be being scrupulous, perhaps given past imbalances.)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cass-report-review-key-findings-nhs-gender-puberty-blockers-j09ggw09c
The 2021 census in England and Wales should have given us accurate data, but despite being warned in advance the Office for National Statistics went with a confusing question on transgender identity and so the results are completely unreliable. The areas with the most transgender people, according to the census, aren’t the hotbeds of transgender activism such as Brighton and Cambridge, but instead the areas with the highest numbers of people who don’t speak English as their first language. A real missed opportunity.
I got 10 downvotes on Reddit for saying, “I heart Richard Dawkins” when this was posted in the “skeptic” (lol) community.
People kept saying, “He identifies as Christian now, TrAiTor!!11”, and stuff like, “sad old man spends his twilight years being a bigot”
-1
Just posted to r/atheism
https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/1c03coq/so_happy_that_my_great_hero_richard_dawkins/
(I mean this, not trolling, I am happy that Dawkins defend science against the woke left)
Let’s see what happens on the uber woke Reddit
I also posted this on X about a CBC doc
https://twitter.com/mbibt/status/1777766188006642052
Surprised that CBC would produce such a one sided piece about the issue. As a Norwegian (and as a biologist) I really don’t understand how a public channel like CBC can produce such a one sided and non-objective doc about this issue
>Surprised that CBC would produce such a one sided piece about anything.
Few people in Canada are. And those few are outnumbered by those whose side the Corp. took on the issue.
Thanks again, Bjorn, for bringing this peak woke nonsense to our attention.
What a piece of annoying garbage this video is. Insultingly stupid.
“Ciss” is a red flag word – those using it are either gender activists or afraid of them. And can be dismissed immediately as serious people. Ditto “trans kids”.
D.A.
NYC
sorry, dismissed BY serious people. Or they can be dismissed as nonserious people.
D.A.
NYC
That part in bold especially.
So should trans men who check off the box that they are male ever get tested for cervical cancer?
Should trans women who check the box that they are female ever get their prostate checked?
What does the AMA say? [Waiting for them to squirm and divert and basically not do their job].
An Inside Higher Ed article on “Critical Studies” announced another triumph of this modern academic approach: “For instance, critical childhood studies investigates how childhood is socially constructed, understood and experienced cross-culturally and trans-historically. It challenges the notion that childhood is a natural and universal stage of life…”
Permit me to announce the new, related approach of Critical Mortality Studies. This field will investigate the social construction of death, challenging the notion that those who are assigned to the category of “deceased” are any different from you, me, or the Associate Dean for DEI. They are just on one position of the vitality spectrum. We in Critical Mortality Studies demand that this community be protected from the harm they suffer when disparaged by words like “the late”, “departed”, “defunct”, or “dead”.
If childhood is socially constructed, then something something no reason to not allow “children” to have sex with “adults”.
Here be dragons, er, pedophiles. Beware.
🙂
Call me cynical, but if past efforts by postmodernists are any indication, the main purpose of “critical childhood studies” will be to erase protections for children and to churn out excuses for p***ph***s – sorry, “minor-attracted persons”.
I won’t call you cynical, but I would appreciate references to document the claim about “past efforts by postmodernists” and children.
I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to find references but there are many hits to ‘Foucault age consent” like this one.
https://publicseminar.org/essays/why-we-shouldnt-cancel-foucault/
Thanks for your note, though it doesn’t really address the claim from “Richard Metzler”. I taught Foucault for 40 years, so I am familiar with his sexual history, yet I find nothing in his writing that would be interpreted as an effort to erase protections for children, and we should be cautious about using an author’s behavior, however awful, as a grounds for rejecting his or her social theory without more direct links. When it comes to children, Jacques Donzelot might be a better source. (I’ve always been partial to Max Weber’s work, but would not want to reject it because he was a less than ideal husband.)
Worse, and forgive me for being a bit nit-picking here, Foucault was a better poststructuralist than postmodernist.
Mike has already pointed out the accusations against Foucault personally; also, his link mentions his “joining other intellectuals in signing the 1977 open letter of support for the decriminalization of sex with minors in France.” Similar efforts from leftist circles took place in Germany ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A4dophilie-Debatte_(1970er_und_1980er_Jahre) ).
Queer theory, which is heavily based on postmodern concepts, was apparently sympathic to lifting the stigma on pedophilia from the beginning (see for example this analysis of Gayle Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” : https://newdiscourses.com/2022/06/the-origin-of-queer-theory-gayle-rubins-thinking-sex/ )
Coming back to Foucault: postmodernism and all its related currents are pernicious, whether or not any of their founders were personally guilty of misconduct. But if it turns out that the guy who argues for a radical deconstruction of traditional moral standards might be motivated by his personal enthusiasm for all kinds of immoral practices… “honi soit qui mal y pense”, I guess.
“Queer theory, which is heavily based on postmodern concepts…”
Queer theory is the antithesis of postmodernism, which is fundamentally the rejection of master narratives. Queer theory is a quintessential master narrative.
“Radical deconstruction” is the hallmark of poststructuralism, not postmodernism.
I am still waiting for references to actual postmodernists who promote(d) the sexual exploitation of children. Foucault, whatever his flaws — which were many — was not a postmodernist, and his 1977 support for changes in French law is not in any regard a condemnation of postmodernism.
Finally, you might be more specific about what you regard as the “pernicious” features of postmodernism. It’s been highly useful in architecture, where the concept originated, and later in History and in social sciences, where the “attitude of incredulity toward master narratives,” as Lyotard put it in his Report to the Academy, has been important in challenging cultural myths.
“For instance, critical childhood studies investigates how childhood is socially constructed, understood and experienced cross-culturally and trans-historically. It challenges the notion that childhood is a natural and universal stage of life…”
I’m not sure that is much of a modern approach, since it has been a central focus of a lot of anthropology ever since Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa” in 1928 — which took up that issue for adolescence. The Oxford Bibliography series has a good entry on the anthropology of childhood:
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780199791231/obo-9780199791231-0002.xml
HAHHA.
“They are just on one position of the vitality spectrum.”
Killer, Jon. Excellent and hilarious.
D.A.
NYC
(still “not unalive”)
The general public certainly can tell the difference, and this hurts the “Party of Science” by reducing trust in the other messaging that is done. I can’t understand how the educated class especially gloms onto this ideology and proclaims any deviation from the established line as basically heresy. Whether it’s trans issues or vaccines, honest examination of the data is what should be done, not toting a party line. Of course vaccines helped, but an honest look at side effects, or even who the most vulnerable groups of people were for getting COVID should have been done. It’s not “fat shaming” to say that heavier people had worse outcomes from COVID if it is true.
Jerry made a comment in an earlier post about immigration to say “This is why immigration is the #1 issue for most voters, and, unfortunately, the Republicans have the advantage here”. Again, it’s ideology trumping data. I’m finding myself aligning more with Republicans on many issues, though it’s still “Orange man bad” for me. But I’ve been able to have conversations with even Christian Republicans about some sensitive topics and not been faced with shunning as I have with equivalently educated Democrats (note: all college grads, about half with graduate degrees). I’ve never talked to a Republican directly who told me that they hated anyone, or were against respecting people as individuals even if they disagree with their decisions, whereas I was called a racist and removed from social circles both during the BLM protest timing and as recently as earlier this year for expressing concerns about DEI while espousing a philosophy of color blindness. I thought I’d get pushback and maybe a chance to learn more about the other opinion in an open conversation, and said “I know you disagree, but please explain to me why – I really want to learn”, but all I got was a “you don’t understand because of white supremacy” and “you are a typical racist white man”, and the conversation shut down. Maybe I need to start weighing the overall R vs. D platform and really consider my choices.
The AMA should say that they treat people based on the data. In some cases race does matter, and in a lot of cases biological sex matters, just as age, weight, and other physical attributes may matter. If particular outcomes are different between any sort of group, that can help to speed diagnosis as well as guide treatment. Obscuring this can lead to incorrect strategies. For example, let’s say the cervical cancer rate among females remains the same, but now we’re including transwomen and excluding transmen in the data set. That would show a decline in the rate of cervical cancer in “women” and an increase in “men”. This is just silly but seems to be the path that we’re headed toward.
It’s going to be hard for doctors to diagnose cervical cancer in transwomen, no? Will there be performative pap smears and other screens by OB-GYN doctors that are reimbursed by insurance? I rather doubt it.
I’m sorry but the empress has no tampons.
… the empress has no tampons???
LOL
Sokal:The medical establishment’s newfound reluctance to speak honestly about biological reality most likely stems from a laudable desire to defend the human rights of transgender people.
I must refute this statement, which is almost the reason why the “anti-woke left” cannot fight against the erosion of science by the woke, that is
A. Believing in ideologies that have no basis in reality is a good thing (although evidence is starting to point to the fact that this can be harmful to society)
B. Insisting that certain ideologies can survive scientific facts as a reason to support science (despite the fact that science is inevitably causing harm to that ideology)
Anti-woke left scientists still regard some of the demands of wokeism as “noble” and pretend that science does not conflict with their anti-materialist idealist ideas.
This is ultimately harmful to science itself, because lying for the sake of a “noble” ideology will be considered a moral choice if scientific facts are proven to inevitably destroy the ideological foundation.
Almost all the left’s destruction of academia is based on the above foundations, including Slate Theory, Lysenko biology, and feminism and racial egalitarianism based on anti-materialism.
The solution to this dilemma is actually very simple. Scientists only need to abandon their allegiance to leftist ideologies. For example, if scientific facts will inevitably collapse feminism and gay rights, and return society to the romantic era with traditional gender roles, scientists still have to speak out the facts loudly.
As a leftist scientist, Sokal argued that science can serve the left well as a reason to oppose wokeism. But according to the above logic, if leftist ideas prove to be unable to survive scientific progress, then scientific progress must be sacrificed in order to serve the left.
Neither Sokal nor Dawkins believe (A). As far as (B) is concerned, it it not “woke” to treat people who are different with civility and respect. And your conclusion does not follow at all from the article.
They do believe to some extent that A. When the conclusions of evolutionary psychology conflict with their ideology, they will resort to the “anti-naturalist fallacy” – the things we observe in nature are evil and therefore that some parts of leftist ideology conflict with reality is ”morally correct”.
By the way, I actually admire Sokal’s challenge to the orthodoxy of academia. I just wanted to say why their refutation of wokeism “lacks strength”. It is a poor strategy to call a group of extreme egalitarians who are destroying academia has a “noble reason”.
Sex is an assignment that biology makes at the fusion of two differentiated sex cells. Everything else is sociology 101.
BTW, give me a differentiated analyses of the ‘female genderly feelze’ vs. the ‘male genderly feelze’. If you can’t define them they don’t exist.
I suspect that this ‘sex assigned at birth’ brouhaha is just another stab at embedding the Blank Slate hypothesis in daily life.
If people are born as Blank Slates then they may be perfected by social activity. Which is a foundational belief of those who yearn for Utopia… because without such a belief every political aim becomes far more messy and difficult.
Exactly right. At one time, blank slate enthusiasts explicitly announced that their aim was to create “the New Soviet Man” through control of language and perpetual indoctrination. The results of this experiment, crashingly obvious in the USSR’s successor state, are blithely ignored—and the blankslate utopians are back at work, this time with the cult of DEI, assorted linguistic and educational “reforms”, etc. etc. No quantity of negative/disastrous results leads them to rethink matters for a microsecond.
[Perhaps blankslateists are biologically determined, like the frequency of some other
deleterious alleles.]
Very interesting point, especially given the government’s and ruling elite’s support of this.
A very recent presentation by Sokol on this subject with some of the same points made in op-ed at the free Speech Union is available on you tube at
https://twitter.com/SpeechUnion/status/1776912803645047074
It is about 90 minutes including q&a. Sokol solo presentation is about the first 40 minutes of that.
Thanks to Luana M., Jerry Coyne, Dawkins and Sokol – all of who have the chops and platforms to counter the insanity of our current age where a grab bag of
feelings have combined with miscasting social “fizz”, psychological contagions, with actual facts.
The whole trans cult seems to be so obviously religious to me. All of its magical thinking, brutality/intolerance, conformism and recasting of narcissistic and borderline personality disordered thinking as a civil rights project reminds me of religion.
I oppose it like I oppose the Christ Clappers, be-hatted Jews, murderous Islamists and all other forms of magical thinking. All result in unlimited human suffering.
D.A.
NYC
Rather depressing that neither Dawkins seem to have a clue what are the actual biological definitions for the sexes — they’re peddling what are little more than folk-biology and those from the Kindergarten Cop movie: boys have penises and girls have vaginas.
Standard biological definitions published in various reputable biological journals, dictionaries and encyclopedias stipulate that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless.
Did you read the article? I don’t think so. It says this:
Nothing about penises and vaginas, except as indicators of biological sex.
Behind on my reading, but I am glad I didn’t skip this or all the good comments.
Thanks.