Another refuted example of the reverse appeal to nature

April 17, 2024 • 10:30 am

As Luana Maroja and I wrote in our paper on the ideological subversion of biology, some of that subversion involves a fallacy that we called the “reverse appeal to nature”, an inversion of the naturalistic fallacy:

All the biological misconceptions we’ve discussed involve forcing preconceived beliefs onto nature. This inverts an old fallacy into a new one, which we call the reverse appeal to nature. Instead of assuming that what is natural must be good, this fallacy holds that “what is good must be natural.” It demands that you must see the natural world through lenses prescribed by your ideology. If you are a gender activist, you must see more than two biological sexes. . . . .

In other words, people tend to justify something they consider morally desirable by seeing the phenomenon (or something like it) in nature. As we noted, the claim that sex is a spectrum in nature is a conclusion meant to buttress the value of people who consider themselves neither female nor male—those who are “nonbinary”. The problem here is twofold. Most important, biological sex is indeed binary in nature: all animals and vascular plants have just two sexes: males, making small motile sperm, and females, making large immotile eggs. I won’t defend this binary-ness now, as I’ve done it many times before, as have others. For a quick refresher, see this piece by Colin Wright.

The second problem is that the existence of something in animals or plants doesn’t buttress human morality.  Trans-identifying people should have all the same rights as other people, except that in some sensitive settings like sports, prisons, etc., segregation should be based on biological sex rather than gender. And that is regardless of what we see in nature. After all, we don’t think that theft, murder, and cheating are justifiable because we can point to these phenomena in various animals. (See my quote at the bottom.)

And yet there are still those, like gender activist Peter Tatchell, who fall victim to this fallacy.  In his tweet below, Tatchell claims to point out 18 animals that are transsexual (i.e., can change biological sex) and also show that “gender is not a simplistic binary, male & female”. This is a doubly incorrect instance of the reverse appeal to nature.

First, most of the animals in Tatchell’s litany of example do not change sex, and none of them are “transsexual” in the human sense (i.e., transgender humans who change their gender identity, not their biological sex, because they suffer from gender dysphoria).  And none of the animals that do change sex are mammals, since we know of no example of a mammal that can change from producing eggs to producing sperm or vice versa. (There are no examples, either, of human hermaphrodites that are fertile as both sexes.)

Second, not a single of Tatchell’s 18 examples shows that sex is “not a simplistic binary.” Every one of the animals shown instantiates that there are two sexes: males and females (or both combined in one body as simultaneous hermaphrodites). There are no third, fourth, or fifth sexes shown by Tatchell, for none exist.

His tweet:

In an earlier post I showed how Emma Hilton attacked Tatchell’s claims in jer twitter feed, with one tweet for each of Tatchell’s examples. Now she and Jonathan Kay have teamed up for a complete demolition job at Quilette, which you can read by clicking the headline below.

 

First the authors show the prevalence of using nature to justify nonbinary and transgender people:

Anyone who’s followed the debate about transgender rights will immediately understand why this type of fish now has a starring role in advocacy materials designed to convince the broad public that sex-switching is a common feature in the natural kingdom, including among humans [JAC: The preceding link goes to a Vice article by Diana Tourjée called “Yes, there are trans animals.”] In Canada, for instance, the publicly funded CBC is airing a documentary titled Fluid: Life Beyond the Binary, in which the self-described “non-binary” host, Mae Martin, invokes the existence of clownfish, and various other creatures, to argue that “each of us are on the gender spectrum.” Not surprisingly, Martin is explicitly promoting the documentary as a paean to social justice, and as a rebuke to anyone seeking to put limits on “gender-affirming health care” (such as the double mastectomy that Martin publicly announced in 2021).

This week, British human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell tried to advance similar arguments in a widely read tweet referencing—as the linked Gay Times article put it—“18 animals you didn’t know were biologically trans.”

“These animals show that gender is not a simplistic binary, male and female,” Tatchell gushed. “Trans and intersex are real. Get used to it!”]

Indeed, the article that Tatchell cited goes further, denouncing the very idea of “biology” as a “pseudo-intellectual” fixation of “lesbian separatists” and “right-wing lobbyists.” The author, one Fran Tirado, warns that even mentioning terms such as “biological sex,” “biological male,” and “biological female” is a problematic affront to the supposedly non-binary, gender-bending nature of life—which, the author claims, has been in evidence since “the earliest recorded histories of the earth.”

Then comes the promised 18-point catalogue of “animals you didn’t know were biologically trans”—starting with the above-pictured clownfish (often described by scientists as anemonefish).

Hilton and Kay then run through the list, which I won’t repeat here. I’ll just say that none of the examples show that there are more than two sexes, though individuals of some species can embody both sexes in a single individual, like slugs (a ” simultaneous hermaphrodite”), or, like clownfish, can switch over time from one biological sex to another (“sequential hermaphrodites”). But that is a switch from one biological sex to another, something not seen in mammals, and of course not seen in humans (transgender people do not change biological sex, but switch from one gender identity to another).

That leaves us with the so-called “trans” animals, most of which don’t really change sex. Tatchell needs to bone up on his biology.  Here I list some of the biological phenomena cited by Tatchell

  • Real changes of sex (sequential hermaphrodites like clownfish, jellyfish, oysters, sea bass, sea snails).  That constitutes five species in his list.
  • Simultaneous hermaphrodites (banana slug): individuals can produce both sperm and eggs. There are a fair number of animals that do this, but no mammals and only a few fish (e.g., some gobies and serranid sea bass) There are no simultaneous or sequential hermaphrodites known in mammals or birds.
  • Rare cases in which a single individual is known to have swapped testes for ovaries or vice versa (Boyd’s forest dragon, mandarin duck). These are rare exceptions to species in which there are two biological sexes that do not change.) They are developmental anomalies.
  • Parthenogenesis: species in which females can produce offspring without her eggs being fertilized (e.g., some Komodo dragons). Some animal species in which females can do this also have males (sometimes copulation is required to produce eggs, but there’s no fertilization). But all of these species are either completely female or have both males and females. They do not violate the sex binary
  • Species in which males look different from females (“sexual dimorphism”). The example Tatchell gives is a swallowtail butterfly. It doesn’t switch sex and there are only two sexes. Sexual dimorphism is widespread but doesn’t exemplify either changing sex or nonbinary sexes.
  • Species in which males can behave like females to get copulations (the ruff, a bird) or avoid predation (e.g., marsh harriers, a bird).  Again, it’s just a sneaky behavior; there is no sex-switching and all individuals are either male or female
  • Species in which males can get “pregnant”, like seahorses. Females stick their eggs into a the pouch of a male who fertilizes them and releases the newly-hatched seahorses. This is a reversal of sex roles, but not of sex: males still produce sperm and females eggs, and there is no changing of biological sex.
  • Hyenas (yawn). Females have long penis-like clitorises through which they give birth. There is no change of sex and individuals are either male or female. It baffles me why these animals are considered either “trans” or “nonbinary”
  • Gynandromorphs: individuals that, through a developmental accident, are part male and part female. Often the animal is split right down the middle with one half being one sex and the other being the other. I’ve seen them in fruit flies, and they are not all that rare in birds (see a gynandromorph cardinal here). These animals are developmental anomalies, not part of the regular constitution of a species, and most are sterile though some can be fertile.

So yes, some animals can switch sex, though none of those are birds are mammals. Those might be considered “trans” animals, but hardly (and shouldn’t) justify the existence of trans humans, which don’t change biological sex but gender identity.  And none of the species proffered by Tatchell show that there is a spectrum of sex.  As Hilton and Kay conclude:

Do some creatures change sex? Absolutely. But this isn’t new information. It’s a fact that biologists have known about for a long time.

What is also well-known is that none of these sex-changing creatures are mammals, much less human. Rather, they’re insects, fish, lizards, and marine invertebrates whose biology is different from our own in countless (fascinating) ways.

What’s more, in every single case described above, there are always (at most) just two distinct sexes at play—no matter how those two sexes may switch or combine. One of those sexes is male, a sex associated with gonads that produce sperm (testes); and the other is female, with gonads that produce eggs (ovaries). There’s nothing else on the menu. It’s just M and F.

Yes, there’s a “spectrum.” But it’s not the imaginary sex spectrum that activists such as Martin, Tatchell, and Tirado are trying to conjure. Rather, it’s the extraordinary spectrum of traits, behaviors, and evolutionary adaptations that all of these creatures exhibit as part of nature’s grand pageant.

I swear that people like Tatchell need to learn some biology. If I hear about sexual dimorphism, gynandromorphs, or hyena citorises again, I’m going to lose it.  And people really need to learn not to scan through species in nature to buttress what they see as moral or “right”. That way lies considerable danger, as I wrote in my Times Literary Supplement review of Joan Roughgarden’s Evolution’s Rainbow several decades ago:

But regardless of the truth of Darwin’s theory, should we consult nature to determine which of our behaviours are to be considered normal or moral? Homosexuality may indeed occur in species other than our own, but so do infanticide, robbery and extra-pair copulation.  If the gay cause is somehow boosted by parallels from nature, then so are the causes of child-killers, thieves and adulterers. And given the cultural milieu in which human sexuality and gender are expressed, how closely can we compare ourselves to other species? In what sense does a fish who changes sex resemble a transgendered person? The fish presumably experiences neither distressing feelings about inhabiting the wrong body, nor ostracism by other fish. In some baboons, the only males who show homosexual behaviour are those denied access to females by more dominant males. How can this possibly be equated to human homosexuality?

29 thoughts on “Another refuted example of the reverse appeal to nature”

  1. As you say, Tatchell needs to learn some biology.

    I think that the activists would be better off giving up on this attempt to find rare analogs of various sexual states in nature. Of course they will find some examples—right or wrong—that appear superficially to make their case. 3.2 billion years of evolution has generated a lot of amazing and interesting variations. But if the activists would simply focus on their legitimate demand for freedom, respect, and dignity they would not have to fight a losing battle on the biological front. They are simply wrong here and are wasting their time. They should cut bait and focus their attentions elsewhere.

  2. “It baffles me why [hyenas]] are considered either “trans” or “nonbinary””

    Because of the usual confusion of ontology and epistemology.
    The only way “sex is a spectrum” makes any sense at all is if sex is defined by external genitalia. Hyena females have a penis! They’re therefore intersex!, or maybe even nonbinary! and so therefore potentially Trans!!
    See? (I don’t.)

  3. Very sad — I have enormous respect for Peter Tatchell for his stand on gay rights and for his principled secularism, so I’m sorry to see him falling for this nonsense.

  4. Yes, anyone who insists that non-binaries must be something they patently are not for them to qualify as humans worthy of equal rights, dignity, and respect, is by definition a bigot.

    1. Dignity and respect are fine, because the state can’t compel me to show dignity and respect to anyone. I can deny them, and be a bigot, without punishment. Equal rights are another matter entirely because the state can punish me as a private individual if I transgress them. Bigotry suddenly has consequences.

      But how can someone be (patently) not non-binary? Everyone is binary. A person only claims to be non-binary. By definition that can only be occult, not “patent.” If we reject the claim as specious, we are saying that an untestable claim of non-binary self-identification is not a basis on which to base positive rights. I am free to not hire someone for the Metropolitan Opera broadcast who prefers hip-hop over opera if I thought somehow just maybe that an opera lover would make a more productive employee than the hip-hop person who hates opera. Musical taste is not a prohibited ground for discrimination. Why am I required to hire (or date?) a person with a particular metaphysical “soul” in order to escape your accusation of bigotry? Especially when the dangers of what I suspect to be false signaling cause me to be more cautious and mistrustful of the person making the non-binary claim?

  5. You say:
    “Nonbinary and transgender people deserve respect, dignity and **nearly all the rights (save sports participation, place of incarceration, and the like) of non-transgender people.**”

    I’d be more cautious in the way you word this because that wording feeds into the notion that the gender-critical movement is “trans exclusionary”. But in reality, the gender-critical movement fully *includes* trans-identified people. But it includes them as members of their *sex*, not their self-identified *gender*. (Many gender-critical feminists are gender abolitionists.)

    I think that what you mean to say is that trans-identifying people should have all the same rights as other people, but that especially in sensitive settings like sports, prisons, etc., segregation should be based on sex (or other biological characteristics, such as whether an individual underwent puberty as a male or female) rather than gender. (In other words, you believe that there are some venues that should be sex-segregated, for which no one–whether trans or not–has the right to enter on the basis of their self-identified gender. So non-trans people don’t have any special rights that don’t apply to trans-identified people.)

  6. I can sort of understand what is going on here. For years gay/trans (etc.) people have been persecuted on the grounds that what they are doing is ‘against nature’ or ‘unnatural’ by the unenlightened.

    It is far easier to offer a simple rebuttal (that gay/trans (etc.) IS part of nature) than it is to engage in arcane discussions about naturalistic and reverse naturalistic fallacies, however misguided that might be.

    2. I think it is very easy to rebut “against nature” or “unnatural” accusations without getting into logic or philosophy. The people making those sorts of accusations often are not interested in any kind of discussion anyway, so simple one-liners are just as likely to have a positive influence as anything else.

      Sufficient responses to such people are “So what?” or “Why do you care, are you insecure about your sexual orientation?” or “Pretty much everything humans do is unnatural, in fact that is exactly what the term is typically used to convey, that a thing was done by humans.”

  7. It’s interesting that gender activists are looking to the rest of the animal kingdom to justify trans identities using sex variations in nature instead of gender variations in nature. If “gender” is defined as the norms and roles associated with the sexes, then there are plenty of legitimate examples of, say, the males being more nurturing, or females being more aggressive. We can even find instances of naturally occurring anomalies — a gentle male in a species where males are routinely warlike. Pointing this out is still a Reverse Naturalistic Fallacy, but it’s not factually wrong.

    But all that accomplishes is supporting the argument that it’s okay for men and women to be gender non-conforming, and that argument has long ago been made and won and is also held by the critics of transgender ideology. Genderists aren’t trying to say it’s okay to accept men who want to stay home with the children: they want to say even masculine manly men aren’t men, but women or non-binary, if they don’t feel as if they’re men.

    And for that, they ultimately have to break down the idea that male & female are discrete categories in biology, thus making how a person feels look like a solid rock to lean on.

  8. Not only is the non-binary claim false, it is also irrelevant from the point of view of moral reasoning. No one would argue that the reason skin color should not be viewed as a basis for differential moral treatment is that it exists on a spectrum – it’s because skin color is a superficial attribute that has nothing to with how a person is treated. What if skin color were purely binary- how could that possibly matter? Or height, or weight, or shoe size, or… it’s not the binariness or nonbinariness of these attributes that is at issue; it’s the fact that they don’t matter! It’s only the postmodernists, with their determination to re-invent the world of moral reasoning, who don’t seem to know this.

    1. True as far as it goes, but there is more to the moral reasoning than, “it doesn’t matter.” In fact, if some difference truly doesn’t matter, a rational employer will not use it to make hiring decisions, instead overlooking it to get the best fitting employee on criteria that do matter. You won’t need to prohibit discrimination based on those criteria. (This is where civil/human rights laws bite: in hiring and public accommodation, not the vaguer “moral treatment.” I am still free to not date black women or even respect them, just because they are black, if I don’t want to.)

      We don’t prohibit employers or gatekeepers to public accommodation from discriminating on the basis of height, weight, shoe size, hair colour, handedness, musical taste, or any of thousands of possible characteristics that make one person detectably different from another. So why do we prohibit discrimination on the basis of skin colour (“race”), religion, sex, sexual orientation, and a few others depending on jurisdiction? How did those characteristics get put on the list of no-no’s while almost all others are left off it? …especially since for many employers those characteristics actually do matter, because they are useful heuristics (stereotypes if you like) for job performance. What we do with anti-discrimination law is force the employer to behave as if they don’t matter.

      The trans rights activists are making a political claim that discrimination in hiring and public accommodation on the basis of gender identity or expression should be illegal, “moral treatment” aside. I agree it doesn’t matter if these identities are binary or spectral. The question is, what is the basis for their claim? Why is trans- or non-binary identity like race and sex, and not like hair colour or musical preference? Is there a moral argument? Or is it just power-seeking?

      1. At least in the U.S., I think the activists push to expand interpretation of Title 9 regulations to include gender identity, as doing so allows them to smuggle in the amorphous ideas around gender to gain legal advantage. This conflation between sex and gender is enormously frustrating and difficult to combat. The activists will make the distinction between sex and gender when it helps their cause, and conflate the two concepts when it helps their cause. I appreciate the efforts of our host, Colin Wright, and others with a platform to keep pushing back on this stuff.

  9. Tatchell does not, apparently, recognise that when he refers to creatures changing from one sex to the other he is acknowledging that there are two sexes.

    1. That’s also the case for transgender people, who almost always change from one of two genders to the other, implying that there are two “spaces.” (Most would consider both their natal sex and their transitional state as “sexes”.)

  10. Jerry, FYI fish in the genus Kryptolebias are self-fertilizing hermaphrodites. I believe, could be mistaken, that they’re the only vertebrate selfing herms.

    1. Yikes! He’s serious. I haven’t heard that position lately (although I don’t frequent sites where the subject would come up).

      1. It’s from back in the late ’70s, IIRC. Tatchell also wrote an admiring obituary of Ian Dunn, who co-founded the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) although I think the obituary neglected that aspect of the subject’s life. Bizarrely, PIE were a public campaign group and affiliated with the National Council for Civil Liberties (the British equivalent of the ACLU, and now just called Liberty).

        1. Definitely kind of a weird guy. His Wiki entry says he backed off from the pedo business eventually. But still…

  12. The CBC doc is pure activist propaganda in my opinion. I downloaded it (with VPN, I am Norwegian). I uploaded it her.

  13. The thread by Peter Thatchell can best be understood as deliberate manipulation of thought for operational success.

    To understand in detail what trans movements worldwide are interested in read the George Soros’ Open Foundation publication:

    Advancing Trans* Movements Worldwide — LESSONS FROM A DIALOGUE
    BETWEEN FUNDERS & ACTIVISTS
    WORKING ON GENDER
    DIVERSITY

    CONFERENCE REPORT — DECEMBER 3 & 4, 2013 — BERLIN, GERMANY

    Global Action for Trans Diversity
    Open Society Foundations

    opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/advancing-trans-movements-worldwide

    Here is George Soros’ explanation [I don’t have a source yet besides goodreads] for the confusion :

    [begin] Scientific method seeks to understand things as they are, while alchemy seeks to bring about a desired state of affairs. To put it another way, the primary objective of science is truth, – that of alchemy, operational success. [end – probably from Alchemy of Finance]

    George Soros’ method is called reflexivity, a system where output serves as input – far from equilibrium. Undoubtedly the reasoned debate about basic biology (all very enlightening, IMHO) is part of Soros’ deliberate reflexive alchemy.

  14. Thanks again for an informative, clearly-written, and well-argued piece. The optimist in me wants to believe that most of these people confusing sex and gender will eventually acknowledge reality, but the pessimist in me also recognizes a fact about human nature — the inability of most people to acknowledge, in public, that one has been proven dead wrong by the facts. For that reason alone, I think this nonsense will have legs for a while yet. Never underestimate the fear of having been shown to be foolish.

  15. what is good must be natural.

    That’s getting very close to Hume, and his recognition that one cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’

  16. Thanks for another informative post, and all the good comments.
    My thoughts on the transgender issue has evolved fairly quickly in the past year from one of mostly acceptance, to questioning if it isn’t in reality mental illness in most all cases.

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