The latest issue of the London Review of Books contains a long essay by Judith Butler attacking Trump’s Executive Orders, particularly 14168, “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” You can read her piece by clicking on the title below:
The piece constitutes good news, bad news, and mixed news. The good news is that Butler’s prose is, for once, comprehensible (usually she writes in such dense academic jargon that you can barely work out her meaning). The mixed news is that she does say some stuff I agree with: stuff about the rights of those who are gender nonconformists. And she also calls out Trump for allowing the snatching up of visa- and green-card holders who get deported simply for saying things (mostly pro-Palestinian) that the government doesn’t like. I oppose that. No deportations without through legal investigation and, I think, a court hearing!
The bad news is that Butler falls prey to common misconceptions about sex. One is her opposition to the biological definition of sex using gametes, a definition to which I adhere. This, says, Butler, is wrong, and that definition was promulgated by Trump simply as a way to erase trans and nonbinary people. She justifies her opposition by referring to the “tri-societies” letter published on the Society for the Study of Evolution‘s webpage, a letter that many of us criticized heavily for denying the binary nature of sex and asserting that sex was nonbinary in all species. Here’s how she characterizes that letter:
There are two significant problems with using gametes to define sex. First, no one checks gametes at the moment of sex assignment, let alone at conception (when they don’t yet exist). They are not observable. To base sex assignment on gametes is therefore to rely on an imperceptible dimension of sex when observation remains the principal way sex is assigned. Second, most biologists agree that neither biological determinism nor biological reductionism provides an adequate account of sex determination and development. As the Society for the Study of Evolution explains in a letter published on 5 February, the ‘scientific consensus’ defines sex in humans as a ‘biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics. There is variation in all these biological attributes that make up sex.’
Let’s first get out of the way the canard that the sex of babies is not determined by using gametes, so gametes are irrelevant to defining sex. Here she conflates “determination” with “definition”, a bad move for someone as smart as Butler. (But of course she has an agenda.) Yes, babies’ sex is written down at birth nearly always by looking at their genitals, but genitals are imperfectly correlated with the reproductive apparatus that is used to define sex: whether one has the apparatus to make sperm or eggs. One may well find out later that genitals, particularly if they’re abnormal, are not an indicator of one’s biological sex.
Worse, though is that Butler is seemingly unaware of the controversy engendered by the tri-societies announcement. No, we do not know that the definition above is the “consensus” definition of sex, for none of the three Societies canvassed its members. And of course the Societies got themselves into the weeds by arguing that sex in humans is “a biological construct that relies on a combination of chromosomes, hormonal balances, and the resulting expression of gonads, external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics.” Is that so? Then how do we determine what sex any animal or plant is, given that in some cases chromosomes are irrelevant to determining biological sex, and “hormonal balance” doesn’t work so well in plants?
Seriously, the three societies should either take down that letter, which was never sent, or revise it. And if they’re claiming that it represents a consensus of the members of the societies, then they should poll their members. They did tell us that their letter is moot and needs to be rewritten. In fact, the ASN President admitted that the letter was problematic, hadn’t been sent, and needed revision. Butler says none of this. Again, she distorts data that could easily have been found had she looked. But again, she has an agenda.Three societies: take down that letter!
Further, Butler buys into the discredited claims of Anne Fausto-Sterling that 1.7% of the American population is intersex and that there were actually five sexes. Fausto-Sterling later admitted that she was writing this “tongue in cheek,” and she and a colleague later revised that figure down to 0.4%. But even later work shows that, using the biological definition of sex and how clinicians themselves define intersex, the true figure is probably between 0.018% and 0.005%.
Now the proportion of intersex people in the population says nothing about how they should be treated, or justifies ignoring them as people. Rather, this shows that Butler is playing fast and loose with the data, and uses the data that supports her own views. That is intellectually dishonest.
Now it is entirely possible—I think likely—that the agenda of Trump’s EO involved more than just clarifying the biological definition of sex and saying sex is binary. His agenda likely involves the Republican distaste for gender-nonconforming people. I don’t share that distaste, but I do agree with the EO’s definition of sex, which I hear was made with the input of biologists. And the biological definition of sex, as I’ve said repeatedly, does not target trans or gender-nonconforming people with the intend of erasing them or, as Butler says, “effacing the reality of another group.”
Finally, Butler fails to realize that defining biological sex does have implications for people’s rights, which we can see very clearly when the “rights” of two groups clash, as in sports participation, incarceration, or allowing women to rely on biological women as rape counselors if they request it. Among all the rights that we enjoy or are supposed to have, the clashed don’t involve many of them. But those clashes are still meaningful, and resolving, say, the sports issue by prohibiting biological men who identify as women to compete in women’s sports in no way “erases” trans-identifying men. To me does not appear to deprive them of dignity; rather, failing to adhere to this restriction deprives biological women of opportunity. Butler seems impervious to the issue of clashing rights around the definition of sex. The part in bold below (my bolding) is correct–so long as there is no clash of rights between groups:
Although the order here opposes those who would ‘eradicate the biological reality of sex’, it also defines what women’s interests are, what trust in government requires and what is at stake for ‘the entire American system’. Thus, the regulation of sex assignment and the eradication of trans, intersex and non-binary legal existence is a matter of national concern: the ‘entire American system’ is at stake. Of course, the dignity, safety and well-being of women should be secured, but if we value these principles, then it makes no sense to secure one group’s dignity, safety and well-being by depriving another group of dignity, safety and well-being. Indeed, the order effectively consigns trans people to radical indignity and unsafety, if not non-existence. Women – including trans women – and trans, intersexed and non-binary people all deserve to be free of attacks on their dignity, safety and well-being, not only because the principle applies to all of them, but because these categories of person overlap. These are not always distinct populations.
The issues of sports participation, incarceration, and so on, must be adjudicated, and they are being so now. But no resolution deprives gender-nonconforming people of “dignity, safety, and well-being” (Safety issues do arise, for example, when trans-identified males are put in women’s prisons.) But of these few instances in which rights clash, there are solutions: “open” sports leagues, for example, or giving women who have been raped a choice between having a biological male or biological female rape counselor.
I don’t want to run on, but I have to say that there are places where I do agree with what Butler says, for instance striving to treat trans or gender-nonconforming people in a way that preserves their dignity, or, with respect to deporting people for free speech, this:
On 8 March, Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the US with a green card who participated last year in protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Trump posted online that ‘this is the first arrest of many to come.’ It may seem that the targeting of people protesting in support of Palestinian freedom has nothing to do with objections to ‘gender ideology’ and the government’s efforts to strip rights from trans people. The link appears, however, when we consider who, or what, is being figured as a threat to American society. Educational institutions and non-profit organisations, especially progressive ones, are at risk of losing their federal tax breaks if they collaborate on projects concerned with Palestine or fail to expel students who engage in spontaneous or ‘unauthorised’ protest. If the Heritage Foundation’s plans become official policy, institutions or organisations that fund work critical of the state of Israel – or, more precisely, work that could be construed as critical – will be deemed antisemitic and supportive of terrorism. If they fund work on race and gender, they will not merely be guilty of ‘wokism’ but regarded as antagonistic to the social order that now defines the United States – in other words, a threat to the nation.
Although I don’t agree with Butler about the close connection with trans rights and deporting dissenters, I do agree that criticism of the government should not be punished with deportation, and that such behavior is indeed a “threat to the nation.”
But there’s a lot more in the article, and you can read it for free by clicking on the link above. In the meantime, though, Butler should have done her homework.
[ sigh… ]
She’s a dialectical wizard – paltering to materialize the new world that’s in her mind e.g. Queer Futurity (see Cruising Utopia, Muñoz, 2009).
And it appears to be a good moment to bump this oldie-but-goodie :
The Stupidity of Dignity
By Steven Pinker
The New Republic
May 28, 2008
Subheading : “Conservative bioethics’ latest, most dangerous ploy.”<-note the 00’s topic
https://newrepublic.com/article/64674/the-stupidity-dignity
Thanks for this link.
“Seriously, the three societies should either take down that letter, which was never sent, or revise it. And if they’re claiming that it represents a consensus of the members of the societies, then they should poll their members. They did tell us that their letter is moot and needs to be rewritten. In fact, the ASN President admitted that the letter was problematic, hadn’t been sent, and needed revision. Butler says none of this.”
The societies are not acting in good faith, and this is precisely why — so that they can continue to provide a reference point for other sex-denialists like Butler, even as they privately admit that they were wrong. Someone among the 125 recipients of their email needs to publish it and put the record straight.
At least five of the disorders of sex development can cause intellectual impairment. Calling this group of people “intersex” obscures the reality that a lot more than sex is impacted in many cases. Furthermore, progressives using vulnerable people as tokens for their cause is pernicious. The harm in doing so is that it degrades the integrity of our conversations around both sex and disability, while doing a disservice to those with disorders of sex development.
I favor abandoning the term.
This is a thought-provoking observation. I was not aware of a connection between DSDs and intellectual development. Thank you for sharing.
+1. I was also not aware of a connection between DSDs and intellectual development. Please provide more details.
Ok, this is a list from Grok, which is I presume is largely accurate:
Disorders of sex development (DSDs) Associated with Intellectual Impairment or Learning Disabilities
Klinefelter Syndrome (47,XXY)
Description: Males with an extra X chromosome (47,XXY).
Cognitive Impact: Mild cognitive impairments are common, particularly in language skills (e.g., verbal IQ lower than performance IQ), reading (dyslexia), and executive functioning (e.g., planning, attention). Full-scale intellectual disability is rare, but learning disabilities occur in 50-70% of cases.
Mechanism: Extra X chromosome may affect brain development and gene expression (e.g., overexpression of X-linked genes).
Turner Syndrome (45,X or mosaicism, e.g., 45,X/46,XX)
Description: Females with a missing or partially missing X chromosome.
Cognitive Impact: Normal overall intelligence (average IQ), but specific learning difficulties are frequent, especially in visuospatial skills, mathematics, and nonverbal reasoning. Executive function deficits (e.g., working memory) may also occur.
Mechanism: Haploinsufficiency of X-linked genes (e.g., SHOX) may influence neurodevelopment.
47,XXX Syndrome (Triple X Syndrome)
Description: Females with an extra X chromosome (47,XXX).
Cognitive Impact: Mild intellectual impairment or developmental delays in some cases (IQ often 10-15 points below average). Language delays, learning disabilities (e.g., reading, writing), and poor motor coordination are common.
Mechanism: Similar to Klinefelter syndrome, extra X chromosome dosage may disrupt neurodevelopment.
48,XXYY Syndrome
Description: Males with two extra sex chromosomes (48,XXYY).
Cognitive Impact: More severe than Klinefelter syndrome. Intellectual disability (mild to moderate) occurs in 25-50% of cases, with significant deficits in language, social skills, and adaptive functioning. Learning disabilities are nearly universal.
Mechanism: Increased sex chromosome aneuploidy amplifies cognitive effects.
49,XXXXY Syndrome
Description: Males with four X chromosomes and one Y (49,XXXXY).
Cognitive Impact: Moderate to severe intellectual disability is typical (IQ often 20-60). Speech delays, motor impairments, and global developmental delays are prominent.
Mechanism: Extreme X chromosome overdose severely impacts brain development.
Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) – Severe Forms (e.g., Salt-Wasting CAH)
Description: A group of autosomal recessive disorders affecting adrenal steroidogenesis (most commonly 21-hydroxylase deficiency), leading to excess androgens and, in severe cases, cortisol deficiency.
Cognitive Impact: Cognitive impairment is not universal but can occur in severe, untreated, or poorly managed cases (e.g., salt-wasting crises). Deficits may include lower IQ, memory issues, or attention problems. Learning difficulties are more common with early-life hormonal imbalances.
Mechanism: Adrenal crises or chronic hormonal dysregulation (e.g., excess androgens, low cortisol) may affect brain development.
5-alpha Reductase Deficiency (5-ARD)
Description: A 46,XY DSD where testosterone cannot be converted to dihydrotestosterone (DHT), often leading to ambiguous genitalia.
Cognitive Impact: Intellectual impairment is rare and not a primary feature. Some case reports suggest mild developmental delays or learning difficulties, but evidence is limited and inconsistent.
Mechanism: Possible hormonal imbalances during critical developmental periods, though poorly understood.
Fragile X Syndrome (technically a sex chromosome-related condition)
Description: A genetic condition caused by a mutation in the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome (trinucleotide repeat expansion), leading to 46,XY or 46,XX individuals with developmental issues. While not a classic DSD, it can present with atypical sexual development in males (e.g., macroorchidism).
Cognitive Impact: Moderate to severe intellectual disability in males (IQ 30-50); milder effects in females (learning disabilities or borderline IQ). Autism spectrum disorder is common.
Mechanism: Loss of FMR1 protein disrupts synaptic development in the brain.
XX Male Syndrome (46,XX testicular DSD)
Description: Individuals with 46,XX karyotype but male phenotype due to translocation of SRY gene.
Cognitive Impact: Intellectual function is typically normal, but rare cases with additional genetic anomalies (e.g., mosaicism or deletions) may show mild learning difficulties.
Mechanism: Cognitive effects likely stem from co-occurring genetic abnormalities rather than the DSD itself.
45,X/46,XY Mosaicism (Mixed Gonadal Dysgenesis)
Description: A mosaic condition with some cells missing an X chromosome (45,X) and others having a 46,XY karyotype, often leading to ambiguous genitalia or gonadal dysgenesis.
Cognitive Impact: Variable; intellectual impairment or learning disabilities may occur, especially if Turner syndrome-like features dominate (e.g., visuospatial deficits). Severe cases are rare.
Mechanism: Combination of X chromosome loss and potential Y-linked anomalies.
Phelan-McDermid Syndrome (22q13.3 Deletion Syndrome) with DSD Features
Description: A chromosomal deletion syndrome (22q13.3) that can include DSD features (e.g., ambiguous genitalia) due to SHANK3 gene disruption or nearby loci affecting sex development.
Cognitive Impact: Moderate to severe intellectual disability, developmental delay, and speech impairment are common.
Mechanism: Deletion affects neurodevelopment; DSD features may arise from overlapping genetic disruptions.
Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome (SLOS)
Description: An autosomal recessive disorder of cholesterol synthesis (due to DHCR7 mutations) that can present as a 46,XY DSD with ambiguous genitalia or undervirilization.
Cognitive Impact: Mild to severe intellectual disability (IQ 20-80), developmental delays, and behavioral issues (e.g., autism-like traits).
Mechanism: Cholesterol deficiency impairs brain development and steroid hormone production.
Denys-Drash Syndrome (and related WT1 mutations)
Description: A rare condition caused by WT1 gene mutations, leading to 46,XY DSD (e.g., gonadal dysgenesis) and kidney issues (e.g., Wilms tumor).
Cognitive Impact: Intellectual impairment is not a core feature but can occur in severe cases with broader developmental delays.
Mechanism: WT1 mutations may disrupt multiple developmental pathways, including brain function.
But what is equally interesting to consider is non-sex-related and non-intellectual issues in these same people. I can provide a list for that, but it is too long for this site.
This post is already too long. But I wanted to do the request justice.
Thank you
This is a thought-provoking observation. I was not aware of a connection between DSDs and intellectual development. Thank you for sharing.
“Furthermore, progressives using vulnerable people as tokens for their cause is pernicious.”
Those who signed the letter opposing the tri-societies statement (Jerry, me, and some other commenters here) are getting an email discussion that has focused on “intersex” conditions. One person on that thread replied,
“The term “intersex” is misleading and intersectional. Intersectionalists, like Butler, co-opt attention with imprecise language. We’re talking about biological variations in sex development, not some exotic category. One way to support individuals with disorders of sex development is by keeping them out of the gender ideology blender.”
Spot on.
😉
Leonard Sax distinguishes between disorders of sexual development (DSDs) and those DSDs that might actually reasonably be termed “intersex” conditions here:
https://www.leonardsax.com/how-common-is-intersex-a-response-to-anne-fausto-sterling/
(I believe the conditions that cause intellectual impairment fall in the first category–for example, Sax points out that:
How are health researchers supposed to behave if there is no binary sex? Should they just include self-identified women in studies of birth control pills? Should self-identified men be included in studies of erectile dysfunction? I thought that women’s interest was to have more studies of health that focused on women’s health?
Prostate glands don’t lie.
But Judith Butler thinks that women can have prostate glands. That is the whole point.
FWIW – I agree with what you’re saying.
I trust that she has stated, or will get around to stating, that for the record.
Because of life-threatening prostate cancer I no longer have a prostate gland (snip, snip!). But the upside of the downside is I am now a woman.
But you were one when you had a prostate, apparently!
It’s perhaps worth noting that there have recently been clashes between women’s rights and the rights claimed by transwomen in the context of changing rooms for nurses. There has been one clash in England, now I think resolved, and another in Scotland, still being adjudicated. Both cases involved transwomen using the changing rooms for NHS nurses. The Scottish case involved a female nurse changing out of clothes stained during menstruation, and a transwoman who has insisted on using the changing room specified for women, a serious dignity/privacy issue.
The English case is yet to be heard (there was a case management hearing today, with the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust applying to have the case delayed because 18 months on they STILL haven’t finished their investigation).
Trans women are not women.
Trans men are not men.
Non-binary people are trend-hopping.
No one knows what trans rights are.
And as Butler’s recent book, ‘Who’s Afraid of Gender’, is written in ‘Plain English’ I now know she peddles codswallop.
I don’t believe for a minute that her not mentioning the controversy surrounding the tri-societies letter suggests that she may be unaware of it. She should be aware of it, but chose to not mention the controversy in order to tell a purely one-sided narrative that claims Consensus from Authorities. Pay no attention to those other dissenting authorities over there!
Agreed. After all, would you expect any intellectual honesty from a person who consistently has said that she wants to destroy the category woman as a means of liberating woman?
Interestingly, these type of “feminists” do and did not solve any of womens’ problems; instead, they paradoxically arrived at a way to hide them, by literally making them impossible to describe.
Butler and those who follow her are shameless catastrophists.
“[I]nstitutions or organisations that fund work critical of the state of Israel [or] work on race and gender…will not merely be guilty of ‘wokism’ but regarded as antagonistic to the social order that now defines the United States – in other words, a threat to the nation.”
This is just not true. But Butler seems to eagerly anticipate that universities and progressive orgs will be deemed a threat to the nation, and progressives will be rounded up into camps by the FBI, like the Japanese internment in the 1940s. It would be validation of her extremist views. Like genderists who constantly invoke the spectre of suicides by “trans” people who are denied blockers and hormones and surgery – some of these folx seem in a dark way to want at least a few depressed autistic gay kids to kill themselves. Pour encourager les autres.
Perhaps my view is unfair or ungenerous. Maybe Butler and her supporters are just warning us of the dangers they honestly think they foresee. But it is hard to credit her with good faith when she ignores so much context (e.g., the disagreement about the claims in the tri-societies statement).
Mike, I’ve wondered about the trans suicide link. In speaking with certain family members who are seeming to push their children into identification with their non-biological sexes for social media cred, they keep saying things like “it’s better to have a trans kid than a dead kid”, and “we just worry that if little Johnny and Jenny don’t get the gender affirming care they need that they’ll end up killing themselves”. This has to sink in to the kids’ heads after a while.
I’m not saying this lightly or flippantly to make a point. I’ve witnessed the power of suggestion leading to a suicide in our family after a combination of bullying and “why don’t you just kill yourself and make us all happy” putdowns by classmates. It looks like some of this trans suicidal thought tendency could be the result of reinforcement, potentially leading, as you hypothesize, to a few deaths in the name of the cause.
A new study has just come out on this topic. It cites similar studies:
“Suicide Scripts Among Sexual and/or Gender Minority Adults”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sltb.70012
Thanks. That’s a damning study. This line, “Consequently, it is almost expected that members of that cultural group share that same experience (e.g., suicidal thinking/attempts) which then perpetuates the acceptability and likelihood of occurrence, increasing risk” is horrible in terms of the implications.
It’s not surprising though: suicide is contagious. Look at the upswing in attempts every time a suicide is reported in the news. Most psychiatrists wish we could agree not to report such things for that reason.
And while I’m here, what I want to ask Butler is this: if sex is “assigned” at birth, how come we can determine the sex of a fetus in utero?
I’m so glad my kids grew up well before the trans craze.
As if raising kids wasn’t hard enough before, now the trans issue is out there too.
The UK government’s independent suicide prevention adviser, Professor Louis Appleby, debunked the myth about suicide rates increasing when puberty blockers were stopped: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust/review-of-suicides-and-gender-dysphoria-at-the-tavistock-and-portman-nhs-foundation-trust-independent-report
I’ve noticed that when Butler writes for non-academic journals, her prose is clear and good, more than good.
But when she’s in her academic milieu, it’s obscurantism to the max.
I.e. “good”, by the standards of her intended audience.
The fallacy of equivocation, the giving of more than one meaning to a term in an argument, is rife in discussions about the nature of sex. If language were logical (and people interested in following the logic), a distinct term would represent every distinct idea.
Thus if sex refers to gamete size, birth certificates would have to replace “sex” with “genitalia,” and couples who engage in intercourse would have to stop calling it sex. Also, if male and female were associated with sex, the terms could no longer be associated with gender. Gender might be associated with sexuality, masculinity, femininity, manhood, or womanhood. Or perhaps not. This is above my dilettantish pay grade.
Until linguists get together with scientists and logicians to work out a dictionary for discussions about the nature of sex, confusion will rule. I suspect many progressives won’t care because any attempt at clarity will be seen as an imposition of power akin to colonialism.
Of course, parents telling their children not to run with scissors is an imposition of power too.
I have trouble understanding what is meant by the position that trans people should have full civil rights (except the ones we don’t want them to have, like change rooms and women’s sports.). Here’s a scenario:
You are interviewing a woman for a job as a bank teller. You get past the obvious Adam’s apple and five o’clock shadow and jawline and broad shoulders and deep exaggeratedly effeminate voice and mannerisms and, having done your diversity sensitivity training, you are on-board with her as a woman. She seems qualified and ingratiating enough in the interview to be a good fit. She shakes hands and leaves. The bank really wants you to hire trans people and this hire will look good for your diversity numbers. Ten seconds later, your exec assistant comes in, in tears.
“That guy! er, woman! As he was leaving I wished him, ‘Have a good day, Sir.’ It just slipped out. Well! He flipped out on me, called me the C-word for misgendering him, said he was going to make my life a living hell here, then stomped out and slammed the door. If he gets that job, I’m quitting.”
Do you:
1) Feed his resume in the shredder, thankful for a bullet dodged?, or…
2) Remonstrate with your EA for her transphobic outburst and remind her of the bank’s legal obligation to observe the civil rights of trans people which include empathizing with their justified outrage at being misgendered. She must now e-mail the candidate to offer her abject apology and thank her for the learning opportunity to do better. But it doesn’t matter: she’s going to quit anyway because you don’t dare not hire the applicant.
The interviewer can safely feed the resume into the shredder. Angry outbursts are not in keeping with a bank teller’s expected behavior, provide evidence of an unstable personality, and disqualify the applicant from employment. The threat to make the EA’s life a living hell also disqualifies.
It has been said that there are an infinite number of genders. Misgendering is inevitable. Outrage is not justified. It is a show, a grab for power, the act of a bully. Had the applicant calmly and politely expressed displeasure the EA would have apologized and employment would have been assured.
Civil rights don’t qualify every member of a group for employment. Personality determines the qualification. The applicant lacks the personality to be a trustworthy teller.
Good answer and thanks for your view. And yes one does take the impressions of the lowly front-line staff into account. If an applicant’s not nice to them he’s not going to be a good fit. I made it easy to reject this one.
But if the EA had come in and said, “You know that candidate you just interviewed got a little huffy when I accidentally called him Sir. Something about having put her pronouns on her resumé as she/her and surely you informed all the staff she’d interact with? Of course I apologized — don’t want to get you or the bank in trouble — but I think she was expecting the full-dress groveling that our DEI training says we’re supposed to do. A word to the wise just so you know….”,
…I would still have fed the resumé into the shredder.
An applicant puts on his best self at a job interview. His disclosed intention to use a legally enforceable civil right to be called something he’s not means trouble down the road, particularly my having, as manager, to ride herd on the other valuable, non-troublemaking employees and punish them for infractions. Firing a member of an entitled group later is very difficult and expensive. Much better to not hire them in the first place. (“And this conversation never happened!”)
If the law says it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender expression or identity as it does in Canada and all its provinces, and if unpunished misgendering and a long list of other microaggressions such as not flying the trans-Pride flag on the premises, is taken as evidence of discrimination, then it is foolish to hire trans people.
Force-teaming the belief that TWAW with basic liberal causes like anti-authoritarianism, gay marriage, and freedom of speech is pretty much par for the course.
So is the canard that if we can’t see the gametes, gonads, or chromosomes, then deciding what sex a person is starts and ends with appearance and social construction. Butler’s dismissal of meaningful sex distinctions, however, doesn’t sit well with the Genderist claim that gender is innate, immutable, and subjectively certain. It erases the transgender as much as Trump’s executive orders.
Since trans rights activists have incorporated Trans Women Are Women and Trans Men Are Men into the definition of “transgender” — while undermining male and female as legitimate biological categories — then counting TW as male and TM as female erases their existence and denies them human dignity. That’s all it takes. It’s grand catastrophizing on the scale of the individual.
Refutations of Butleresque genderism overlook a key point. Genderism may be incoherent and rest on inconsistencies, BUT this is no defect: coherence and logical consistency are, recall, just social constructs of the colonializing, heteronormative, patriarchalist, and probably Zionist system of oppression.
The trans ideology dictates that although there is some kind of difference between a man and a women, this difference has no physical basis. For example, whether a person has a womb or produces sperm has no bearing on the determination of their sex.
This is exactly the same as a belief in a soul. You can’t see it or in anyway demonstrate its existence. A person’s sex is like a soul, and there are apparently male souls and female souls. What is the difference between a male soul and a female soul….nobody knows.
And like any religious belief, the point is not to ask…
… and to enthusiastically eliminate infidels / heretics / apostates who do ask.
+1
I notice Jerry bends over backwards to give Butler a benefit of the doubt:
“Butler falls prey to common misconceptions about sex.”
I doubt very much she has any such misconceptions. I think she understands the issues clearly. But she has an ideological agenda to “queer” everything and she is purveying nonsense and sowing confusion with deliberate malice aforethought.
Butler: “Of course, the dignity, safety and well-being of women should be secured, but if we value these principles, then it makes no sense to secure one group’s dignity, safety and well-being by depriving another group of dignity, safety and well-being.”
Ms. Butler, if a woman quits an athletic team because she declines to undress before a transwoman in a locker room, or decides that she simply is no longer interested in (getting permanently injured by) the sport and wants to pursue other interests (surfing, kite-flying, biochemistry, calculus, gardening, bird watching, Pinochle or Cribbage, Sweet Adeline quartet singing, underwater basket weaving, pottery, amoeba skinning) is she in the wrong? Does she somehow bloody owe you or anyone else a duty to stay on the team, or an explanation? Is she thereby somehow violating transwomen’s “dignity, safety and well-being”?
Why aren’t we hearing about the travails of transmen in men’s sports? Surely it’s not because transmen are making the rational decision not to expose themselves to the possibility (probability?) of serious permanent physical injury.
Why, it’s almost as if there’s a factor other than “gender identity” involved there. What oh what could it be?
Filippo, I’ve been saying this for years now. If these folks think trans-identified men need to compete with women because they ARE women and their identity must be validated, why are there virtually no “trans men” competing with men?
Surely if playing on the side that matches your “gender identity” is so damn important, trans activists should be out there harassing men’s teams to include more trans men. Lower the standards for qualification–after all, “inclusion” trumps mere skill, right?
Excellent point! The trans men would say that there is no point in competing as they will be beaten hollow, yet we are to believe that trans women have no such advantage?
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691249414/sex-is-a-spectrum?srsltid=AfmBOoqgNisvC02oYD-uH5Q2ugaKZVgzJKKITJr0lL3SvqwZYUmIh4Xj#preview
In just a few weeks things will be much more complicated for us simple 2 sex crowd.
From the Introduction,
“[B]iology as it relates to sex is not binary, meaning that it does not come in two distinct kinds: male and female.”
The first part before the comma is true: many biological traits show sex differences, and those sex differences vary among traits and species. But the second part after the comma is not: there are only two sexes, male & female, and those are binary categories.
This is a stupidly bad motte-and-bailey argument, where Fuentes makes a safe claim from the motte (there are lots of kinds of sex differences) and uses it to fool the reader with his indefensible claim from the bailey (that sex is not binary).
Without reading it I feel I can safely predict that this is the rhetorical magic trick Fuentes will use throughout the book.
I strongly doubt that Fuentes will provide any new arguments in his forthcoming book. Of course, I get that people who think that sex is oh so complicated will be able to point to a book published by a prestiguous university press (Princeton UP) making this case. But it is still a minority viewpoint among biologists.
I’m making some predictions about the content of Fuentes book:
1. Fuentes won’t tell us how many sexes there are.
2. He will not provide a definition of sex beyond saying that it is multidimensional.
3. He will claim that his reconceptualization of sex is motivated by the wish to do better science, not by politics – but he will not be able to give any examples showing that his new & improved view of sex has any explanatory payoffs (explanation being the main business of science). He won’t explain to us how the theory of sexual selection works with his new definition of sex, etc.
We know this is all about politics. Sex is a category in law. By redefining it you can create a new legal reality (a new disributiuon of rights and duties) without having to change any laws (which would require legislative majorities).
The main point of all this is to confect a new definition of sex according to which you can change your sex, because then transwomen literally are women.
But these attempts are failing. The trend in public opinion is unambiguous: the more people are learning about the agenda of the radical trans activists, the stronger is the opposition to it. Eventually, there will be defeat at the ballot box. (Trump is one example.) Of course, all this is bad for science. But who ever said that professors are good at politics?
Hi peter; I pointed out the upcoming PUP book not because it will impact how working biologists view sex and sex roles [maybe better said as biologists when working view sex and sex roles], but because it will provide a credible(?) source for folks who want to view sex as a spectrum, whatever the he** that means in this political dialogue. It does not mean anything good.
I draw attention to it because when I dug a bit deeper I discovered that the book is being treated as a Science book by PUP, a deeply ironic (disturbing?) fact since PUP publishes the Princeton Monographs in Population Biology, the world’s premier series in population biology, AND the Princeton Monographs in Behavior and Ecology, the world’s premier series in Behavioral Ecology. The first series has 3 volumes on sex ratio evolution [ by me, Stu West , and Sam Karlin], and George C Williams’ classic monograph titled Sex and Evolution, the classic posing of the question… why sex in the first place? The second series has Malte Andersson’s 1994 SEXUAL SELECTION, the 20th’s century’s great classic book on evolution of sex differences. Several other volumes deal with evolution of reproductive decisions, made by, yup, males and females. Surprize.
I doubt that Butler needs anything biological to argue their case, but its just more useful ammunition.
Long ago, elementary Biology courses used to point out the distinction between the animal and plant categories of living things. But of course there are many differences between them, the cellular differences arise in complex ways (like cell division, very complex), and Biology in general is oh so complicated. On these bases, can we not look forward to a Butler/Fuentes line of philosophic thought that dismisses the very idea of distinguishing between animal and vegetable?
When I TAed in a Biology course a millennium ago, one exam question showed a drawing of a cell and this question: is this a plant or an animal cell? I remember that one wise-ass student answered: YES. I gave that student full credit.
Also, since the topic is Judith Butler – and some language issues came up in comments – let’s have a look this great quote again (bold added) :
” “gender” is a kind of lexical brainworm, a parasite eating away at understanding.”
Alex Byrne
fairerdisputations.org/journey-of-gender/
17 May 2024
I fully support Jerry. I was sad to see that Jerry got hate mail for stating the truth.
We are mammals and therefore we reproduce by being two separate halves of the same species. Just as a woman cannot have the hands of a man, so too cannot she have the brain of a man, and vice versa. We come in two types, man and woman.
People who don’t understand this are intellectually limited, yes, unfortunately. People who cannot see that this trans thing is an ideological flash in the pan are sometimes both intellectually limited and malicious (the worst combination).
Academics, please stay true to the cornerstones of academic enlightenment, to reason, to logic, to the pursuit of quantifiable reality, and to methodical evidence that supports such reason and truth. Intellectual thought depends on you. We must not fall back into the dark ages.
Rachel
P.S.
There is of course one exception to my above generalisation, which is that D. Trump quite possibly has the hands of a woman, although more scientific research needs to be done on this critically important area of research.