Nature, perhaps the world’s premier science journal, has, like most of its kind, gone woke. Nowhere is this more obvious than its abandoning of science articles in favor of ideological ones, so it’s undergoing convergent evolution with not only its competitor Science, but also Scientific American.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the essay below, which is not only science-free, but wholly about semantics. And useless semantics to boot, at least to my eye. The whole purpose is to introduce a new term, “gender modality,” which, the authors say, will be of great help to people who don’t identify as “male” or “female”, and keep them from being “erased”. The thing is, the other terms that fall under this rubric already exist, so grouping them as aspects of “gender modality,” a term whose definition is confusing, adds nothing to any social discourse that I can see. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Click below to read; you can also find it archived here.
The usual caveat applies again: people of non-standard gender, including transgender people, deserve nearly every right—and certainly every moral and legal right—as well as every civility, as people of the two standard genders. (My exceptions, as usual, include sports, where one is incarcerated, sex-specific shelters for the abused and rape counseling.) That said, let’s proceed to the semantics.
The authors are promoting the term “gender modality” because it was invented by the first author, Florence Ashley, whose page says she is “metaphorically a biorg witch with flowers in their hair.” Dr. Ashley is a transwoman who uses the “they” pronoun.
The term gender modality was coined in 2019 by one of us (F.A.) in response to frustrations felt as a trans bioethicist and jurist with the limits of existing language (see go.nature.com/3×34784). The term has since been used by transgender communities, clinicians and policymakers to describe the realities of trans communities and the heterogeneity of trans experiences.
So what is the definition of the term? Here it is (bolding is mine):
A person’s gender identity is their sense of gender at any given time. By contrast, gender modality refers to how a person’s gender identity relates to the gender they were assigned at birth (see go.nature.com/3×34784). It is a mode or way of being one’s gender.
The best-known gender modalities are ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’, but the term allows for other possibilities, such as ‘agender’, which includes those who do not identify with any gender, and ‘detrans’ or ‘retrans’ for people who have ceased, shifted or reversed their gender transition. The term also makes space for gender modalities specific to intersex individuals, gender-questioning people, people with dissociative identity disorder and people with culture-specific identities (see ‘Many ways of being’). Gender modality serves a similar purpose to sexual orientation, which describes a facet of human existence and makes space for orientations beyond gay and straight.
Well, this is confusing. First of all, I reject the notion of “gender assigned at birth”. The proper term here is SEX DETERMINED AT BIRTH. Once again, like so many gender ideologues, the authors think that sex is not a binary, but represents some point on a spectrum that doctors “assign”. But sex is a reality, not a semantic, socially constructed invention, and, using the gametic definition for “biological sex”, 99.82% of humans (and surely an equally high percentage of other animals) fall into the classes “male” or “female” depending on whether they have the developmental equipment to make small mobile gametes or large, immobile ones.
Leaving that aside, I still can’t quite understand how “gender modality” differs from “gender identity”. Doesn’t “agender” or “intersex” refer to a person’s sense of how they feel? If not, what does it mean to say that those two terms “refer to how someone’s gender identity relates to the ‘gender they were assigned at birth'”? In fact, neither of those terms say anything about what sex someone was determined to be at birth. Those terms, and the ones the authors list below as “gender modalities”, leave the question of “gender assigned at birth” undetermined, so the notion of “relating how you identify with what you were determined to be at birth” seems meaningless. For example, here’s the list they give of these terms.
You’ve probably seen many of these terms before, and they all refer to people’s sense of who they are. In fact, you can simply eliminate the term of gender modality and just use the identities themselves, perhaps—as in complicated cases like “two spirit identities”—with some necessary explanation. If you’re asked by a person or on a questionnaire, “Are you transgender?” You can either say “yes” or “no”, or explain how you identify (in many cases you ‘ll have to do this).
For some reason, the authors, who simply reiterate only part of a list of gender identities, but call them gender modalities, think that the “gender modality” term itself can improve the work of scientific researchers in three ways:
First, scientists can expand the gamut of gender modalities included in questionnaires given to participants, to capture a broader range of experiences than those represented by the binary of cis and trans. Formulating new categories, adapted to the study design, will enhance the validity of the research7,8. It could also improve response rates and reduce the likelihood of people dropping out.
What they’re really saying is that sometimes, for some purposes, it’s useful to use gender identities to avoid “erasing” people. (Yes, they use that term, saying that using the wrong term will “erase gender trajectories and experiences”. No, they don’t get erased: you still have yours!) It’s just that if it’s important to researchers to know these things, then you they have to ask specifically how you feel about yourself. Using the word “gender modality” instead of “gender identity” adds nothing to this endeavor.
Number two:
The second way in which researchers can use gender modality to improve their work is by using it to refine how they phrase questions or discuss results.
By reflecting on gender modality, researchers can better ensure that participants feel respected, and can avoid assigning gender modalities that conflict with participants’ identities. Recognizing gender modalities beyond cis and trans is a matter of justice. In some studies, offering write-in opportunities can help participants to feel respected despite the nuances of their experiences not being captured. But it could be as simple as using ‘gender modality’ instead of ‘gender identity’ or ‘transgender status’ in a table heading, because the last two terms can be seen as inaccurate or marginalizing.
If gender identity is important in a study (and realize that this applies only to humans and gender identity isn’t relevant for every study involving sex), then by all means use in a write-in option, which to me, given the number of “gender identities” available (there are over 100 now!) seems necessary in any case.
The key to this paper lies in the second paragraph above: getting people’s gender identity correct is a matter of “justice”, and by that they mean “social justice”. Well, sometimes it is important, in which case you must use the write-in option (given 100d+ different gender identities, ticking boxes won’t work. Or if both biological sex and gender identity are important, here’s a questionnaire I suggest.
Biological Sex
Male
Female
Other (please explain)__________Gender identity
Male
Female
Other (please explain)__________
That should take care of everything.
“Advantage” number three is like number two, but is about civility rather than justice:
Finally, researchers can use gender modality to think more meticulously about what it is that they are really trying to capture in their study.
Linguistic gaps abound when it comes to our ability to describe trans people’s experiences. For instance, discrimination against trans people is often described as discrimination on the basis of gender identity. Although this shorthand might be workable, it is not entirely accurate. If a trans woman is fired for being trans, should we say that her gender identity was targeted when she has the same gender identity as cis women? Although her gender identity was part of the equation, it would be more accurate to say that she was discriminated against on the basis of her gender modality. Gender modality, not gender identity, is what distinguishes trans women from cis women.
No, what distinguishes trans women from cis women is their biological sex, not “modality rather than identity”. Adding “modality” here doesn’t change the legal case, which is this: someone was fired because their gender identity didn’t match their biological sex. As you can see, this whole mishigas comes from the authors’ refusal to use the word “sex”, which does not appear by itself in the whole article (it shows up a few times in words like “intersex”).
The authors say this at one point: “Not everyone is male or female.” Well, only one out of 5600 persons is not, and they’re exaggerating that number, as many do, thinking that it somehow empowers those of different gender identity. But biological sex is a scientific term with a well-understood meaning, and those who feel that they don’t conform to the “male” or “female” stereotypes still have a biological sex, but sense their nonconformity with the stereotypes associated with that sex. That’s fine, and they can explain their feelings to anyone they want—if explanation is important. (Like race, gender identity has become someone’s single most important characteristic.) In fact, I think that everyone who has a gender identity different from male or female would explain the differences in a unique way, so explanation is nearly always imperative.
Towards the end, the authors sort of admit that using the term “gender modality” isn’t a big fix:
Gender modality is not a panacea. Rather, it is one piece in the toolbox of those who engage in research involving human participants, whether in the medical, biological or social sciences. Its power lies in what people make of it. Our hope is that researchers and others will play with it, stretching it and exploring its full potential. Rather than foreclosing the evolution of language, gender modality welcomes it.
“Its power lies in what people make of it.” Well, I don’t make anything of it; it seems to me identical to “gender identity”. And I’m not going to “play with the term.” That suggestion itself shows the postmodernism inherent in this view.
The most important aspect of this article to me is this: Why on earth did one of the world’s best science journals publish it? The answer is undoubtedly this: Nature is virtue signaling, publishing an article on semantics to cater to gender activists. It’s progressive, Jake! But it also demeans the journal. Just think: there could have been three pages of real science in its place, science from which you could learn something. Did you learn anything from this article beyond the fact that Nature is falling prey to ideology?
… and they called it “Woke Derangement Syndrome”.
[ ] It Isn’t Happening
[•] It Is Happening And Weird But Rarely Or Fringe
[ ] It’s Happening And It’s A Good Thing
/Woke Apologia
Florence Ashley is a man larping as a female law professor (pronouns are “that/bitch”) and a self-identified “transfeminine academic slut” who has argued that puberty blockers should be a default medical option for kids because trans kids have bodily autonomy and rights to make their own medical decisions.
x.com/ReduxxMag/status/1743669974743330835
He tweeted about that Nature paper a few minutes ago.
“This is a great example of ‘if you don’t ask for things, you won’t get them.’ I had built a rapport with the editor from reviewing. One day, I emailed to ask if she’d be interested in commissioning a piece on gender modality. I made my pitch, and now we have a Nature paper.”
x.com/ButNotTheCity/status/1801260803875836053
He thinks this is how scientists get their work published in Nature: you develop a prominent online presence, chat up the editor, and voila.
This editorial and, um, “concept” of gender modality, plus his most recent book called “Gender/Fucking”, will be enough to get him tenure at the University of Alberta. Imagine the extent of looking-the-other-way that’s required for such a book title to be created by a law professor, added to a CV for tenure & promotion, circulated to external reviewers at other universities, then approved by senior administrators and by the university senate and the board of governors.
It will take a generation to undo gender wang. As Helen Joyce said, it’s the parents of transed kids who will resist most strongly. Many other individuals will just stop talking about gender and trans and pretend it never happened (cf. Satanic panic). But the institutions will blithely carry on, without breaking a sweat, mainly because arsonists like Florence Ashley have successfully embedded genderwang in law, policy, and practice.
[edit to add] I disagree with Jerry’s concession that 1/5600 humans are not male or female. That’s a reference to Sax (2002) on the frequency of intersex individuals. But those folks are almost all male or female, they just lack some of the usual diagnostic secondary sex traits.
“As Helen Joyce said, it’s the parents of transed kids who will resist most strongly. ”
There’s an article for that :
Navigating Parental Resistance: Learning from Responses of LGBTQ-Inclusive Elementary School Teachers
Jill M. Hermann-Wilmarth & Caitlin Law Ryan
Pages 89-98
Published online: 14 Nov 2018
In
Theory Into Practice
Volume 58, 2019 – Issue 1: LGBTQ Topics in Elementary Education, Research, and Practice
doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2018.1536914
Troubling article. But it’s about the *other* parents who don’t want their kids to be socially transitioned at school, and about how to overcome or navigate around such parents.
“This article…interrupts notions that negative responses from parents are reason enough to avoid including these topics in elementary classrooms.”
Joyce was focused on the parents who embrace social and medical transition for their kids.
How can Florence have “built a rapport from reviewing” with the editor of Nature if he’s a lawyer, not a scientist?
I suspect some deeper nepotism here.
Nature has published a lot of genderwang content and needs genderwangers to review it. Enter Flo.
Preferably not, I hear that those neovaginas are icky.
First, Ways of Knowing, and, now, Ways of Being.
They’ve tied their brains into knots with this crap.
Transgender does not mean “people whose gender identity does not correspond to the gender they were assigned at birth”.
Transgender means “people whose gender identity does not correspond to their SEX”.
According to their asinine definition, if you have a male child and treat him as if he were a girl from the time of birth, then–if he turns out to identify as a woman–he is NOT transgender. And if he turns out to identify as a man, he IS transgender.
What’s actually being “erased” here is not transgender identity. What’s being “erased” is SEX. They’re biology deniers, plain and simple.
The Blank Slate has been extended from minds to bodies in service of The Cause.
The whole “erased” notion is pretty new and psychologically interesting.
And telling about those who use it.
D.A.
NYC
As Helen Joyce has also pointed out, there are either two genders or, as many as there are people…
This strikes me as 100% self-promotion 0% content.
Self-promotion is expected if not required if one expects to get their ideas heard. But the assumption is that the self-promotion is in service of ideas. This term and its justification sound like a solution in search of a problem.
For self-promotion you should check out Florence Ashley’s twitter feed @ButNotTheCity. But beware the image filters. This tiktok by FA gives a more representative sample of his phenotype (massive hands, Adam’s apple, hair flip, falsetto)
x.com/texan_maga/status/1743854660635525241
and some better idea about the standards for hiring and tenuring criminal law professors at the University of Alberta Faculty of Law.
A bit of good news: Lia Thomas won’t be at the summer Olympics.
https://amp.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jun/12/transgender-swimmer-lia-thomas-out-of-olympics-after-losing-legal-battle-swimming
I believe there is a typo in the following from this post:
[sex is a reality, not a semantic, socially constructed invention, and, using the gametic definition for “biological sex”, 99.82% of humans]
Per ‘How common is intersex? a response to Anne Fausto-Sterling’ “the true prevalence of intersex is seen to be about 0.018%”.
Using the proper definition of intersex i.e. “conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female” the correct percentage would be 99.982%.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12476264/
You might be a tad behind the times here my friend.
Fauso Sterling’s 2002 paper and her statistics have been utterly and roundly debunked and she pretty much discredited.
Matthew you’d be well invested if you had a look at the works of Colin Wright (reality’s last stand) who goes into this at a higher level of research and argument than the lowly one you and I dwell at.
best regards,
D.A.
NYC
Fausto-Sterling’s number was 1.7%. Matthew cited a corrective by Sax. You could have checked the link, my friend.
Kudos and a round of applause to PCC(E) for having the energy and the chops to take on this arrant nonsense in public.
Please note above: made up psychiatric ideas (Diss’ve ID Disorder) and the nonsense (see Jon Kay’s essay) “Two spirit”. Hints at a wider fraud put together by genderwang fanatics with purple hair, young women of low mate value mainly who aren’t doing well.
Fight this madness Prof. Coyne. Society thanks you.
D.A.
NYC
This new term seems necessary only if there’s such a thing as a “gender identity assigned at birth.” If gender is assigned (or observed) at birth, a person might come to realize that the assigned gender is not the gender with which that person identifies in later life. Hence the new term would function to distinguish between what was the case at birth vs. in later life.
BUT, it seems to me that gender is *not* the thing that is assigned at birth; rather, what’s “assigned” at birth is sex. (I would hold that sex is not “assigned” at birth, but is instead “observed” or inferred from the newborn’s appearance.)
If it’s sex that’s observed (“assigned”) at birth, and not gender, then a person’s gender at birth is perhaps best regarded as indeterminate. Since there is no “gender identity assigned at birth,” the new term becomes superfluous.
Ultimately, I think that the premise that a person’s gender is assigned at birth is incorrect. If so, the new term doesn’t add anything helpful.
Yes. This is clearly about ideology.
Whenever I hear the term “gender assigned at birth” I picture new parents cooing over a baby girl “ooh, she’s such a little princess” or grandparents announcing “we’ve got a future linebacker here” when looking at a similarly indistinguishable newborn boy. Adults can have expectations for the sexes which don’t necessarily fit who those children eventually become.
But that, unfortunately, is clearly understandable and makes sense so it’s obviously not what “gender assigned at birth” means.
Unless we’re dealing with the proportion of subjects who will see newly formulated categories like “agender” and “two spirit” and toss the study aside as full of ideological nonsense, that is. My guess though is that the more these potential respondents are excluded, marginalized, and ignored, the more “valid” they think the study will be.
Matthew wasn’t citing the F-S paper, but a challenge to it, correcting the percentage used by JC from 98.82 to 98.982.
It seems to me that the most obvious argument against sex being a spectrum is, if so, why would a trans person need surgery to try to artificially emulate the physical characteristics of the opposite sex?
None of it makes any sense.
Only pretzelbrains can believe this stuff.
The list ‘many ways of being’ omits the two categories: male and female, proportionately far in excess of the total of all the other categories.
This 1977 interview of Prof. John Searle by Bryan Magee sheds some light on the possible role of language in creating the items on the list. Put another way, would removal of the the items on the list remove the categories themselves?
Agreed. That’s the crux.
Self-identification is the real danger of all this gender BS because it erases standards. One’s “lived experience” or “true self” is a more acceptable term for making sh-t up. If I can identify as female, I can also identify as Japanese.
Years ago as I was starting my career, a wise experienced reporter told me to be skeptical of academics. He said given enough time, they will believe any thing.