I have to say this about Richard: he is fearless. Of course he’s in a position to say what he wants and not lose much, though he is sensitive to erosion of his reputation, but that won’t stop him from speaking out. And one thing he will not apologize for is the claim shown in the Torygraph headline below, a headline guaranteed to raise the hackles of millions of gender activists. (By “women”, of course, he means “biological women”, not people who self-identify as women.)
Click the headline to read; you will go to a free archived version:
The quote comes from the book I discussed recently: the anthology The War on Science that I discussed yesterday. Richard’s contribution, which opens the volume, is particularly good. We authors have gotten a lot of flak because we should have written about ideological erosion of science by Trump and the Right, instead of about incursions from the Left. We should have left the Left alone, say the blockheads. So be it. An excerpt from the Torygraph piece:
The slogan “trans women are women” is scientifically false and harms the rights of women, Richard Dawkins has said.In a new book, the evolutionary biologist warns that scientific truth must prevail over “personal feelings” and argues that academic institutions must defend facts above emotion.
In The War on Science, Dawkins joins several scientists and philosophers contending that academic freedom and truth in universities was being stifled by diversity, equity and inclusion policies that promoted falsehoods under the banner of social justice.
“I draw the line at the belligerent slogan ‘trans women are women’ because it is scientifically false,” he said. “When taken literally, it can infringe the rights of other people, especially women.
“It logically entails the right to enter women’s sporting events, women’s changing rooms, women’s prisons and so on.“So powerful has this postmodern counter-factualism become, that newspapers refer to ‘her penis’ as a matter of unremarked routine.”
. . . . “Both politics and personal feelings don’t impinge scientific truths and that needs to be clearly understood. I feel very strongly about the subversion of scientific truth,” he said.
“I think part of what’s happened is the move of academia towards postmodernism, which is pernicious, and probably does account for the current vogue for the nonsense lie that sex is a spectrum.
“I think part of what’s happened is the move of academia towards postmodernism, which is pernicious, and probably does account for the current vogue for the nonsense lie that sex is a spectrum.
. . . . “JK Rowling can look after herself, but you look at the way they hounded Kathleen Stock out of Sussex University, and it’s always women who suffer.”
At London Pride demonstration in 2023, Sarah Jane Barker, previously Alan Barker, told a crowd, “If you see a Terf punch them in the f—— face.”
Dawkins said: “I don’t think I’m unduly guilty of sexist stereotyping if I say such language is more typical of the sex that ‘Sarah Jane’ claims to have left that the other she aspires to join.”
The last statement is both judicious and true. Among trans people, it is largely the trans-identified men who perpetuate hatred and violence. And that, of course, comes from men being more aggressive and domineering. \
There’s more, including quotes from Sally Satel, but you have the link above.
Hmm, my first reaction would be that the phrase “trans women are women” can’t really be judged as scientifically true or false, because it is not a scientific claim or statement.
It is a challenge to the long accepted definition of the word woman as based primarily on biology and a claim that it should rather be defined with reference to subjective criteria felt by the individual. And this is, it seems to me, not a statement or claim that can be evaluated scientifically.
So, better to attack the silly statement on other grounds, in fact, as Dawkins otherwise does so well in his chapter and has done elsewhere.
I think Dawkins addressed that objection in his essay. Of course, you can trivially redefine the word “woman” to make the phrase “trans women are women” true, just like you can redefine the word “flat” to render the statement “the Earth is flat” true. When Dawkins insists that the statement is scientifically false, he is in fact making two distinct claims: One, that the statement is scientifically false provided the words carry their conventional meaning, and two, he rejects any attempt to change the meaning of “woman” (or “female”, if you accept the definition “adult human female” for “woman) – because to do so increases confusion and serves no useful purpose. The second part is, of course, not a scientific statement; nor do I think he would claim it is.
Re. “… provided the words carry their conventional meaning …” But they do not, so claiming that the statement is scientifically false is not sensible.
Re. “… because to do so increases confusion and serves no useful purpose … The second part is, of course, not a scientific statement.” Exactly. As I said.
I think we are in the world of Humpty Dumpty, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
For those of us not in Wonderland, and enjoying words meaning only what they are supposed to, Richard is quite right, scientifically and semantically.
The Humpty Dumpty word that annoys me the most is literally ‘literally’.
It has a solid meaning. It literally means ‘literally’. When I explained to someone that they had misused the word they told me that it doesn’t literally mean ‘literally’ any more.
It seems that many years of literal misuse of ‘literally’ has caused it to be redefined, and it literally no longer means ‘literally’. Now it can mean either ‘literally’ or ‘not literally’ as it now has a secondary, informal, meaning.
So we have a useful word that no longer means what it says, and there is no suitable replacement for it that I can find.
” informal
used for emphasis while not being literally true.
“I was literally blown away by the response I got””
Exactly and well said, Christopher. 👍🏼
🎯
Tower of Babel, anyone? I sure wouldn’t want to reside there.
joolz, I too am much annoyed by the degradation of “literally”, and have found a personal solution: never use “literally” by itself, but always as “literally literally”. This both preserves the traditional useful meaning of the word, and implicitly¹ calls out the illiteralate. And, when things degrade further there’s always “literally literally literally”….
. . . . .
¹ As a brown belt in Passhibuaguresshibu. Hái!
“Hmm, my first reaction would be that the phrase ‘trans women are women’ can’t really be judged as scientifically true or false, because it is not a scientific claim or statement.”
Logical tautologies are definitions of the form “a=a.” “All cats are cats” and “2 + 2 = 4” are examples. Logical tautologies are true. Their opposites are fallacies. Logical tautologies are incapable of serving as a basis for science. “Cats can run at twice the speed of rabbits” provides room for experimentation. Not so “all cats are cats.”
Is “trans women are women” a logical tautology? No. “Trans women are women” means “Men who call themselves women are women,” or “Men who have undergone certain surgeries are women.” These statements provide room for experimentation.
Trans activists commit the fallacy of equivocation (the use of multiple meanings for one word in an argument) when they conflate sex with sexuality and gender. They do indeed claim biology is on their side when they insist sex is a spectrum rather than binary. There are far more than feelings at play here.
This is one of those times when I wish this website had a “Like” button. This is, for me, a very enlightening explanation. Thanks for taking the time to share it.
Trans activists are well aware of the difference between sex and gender. Trans activists were the one who introduced the distinction between sex and gender into the mainstream, as well as the word “gender.” Saying “trans women are women” is really just a short for saying “‘women’ should be defined by their gender identity and we should not care about their genitals or gametes.”
Some people here complain that this is contrary to the traditional meaning of the word “woman.” This is maybe true but not an argument, after all the traditional meaning of “marriage” was changed to allow same-sex marriages and this was for the better. Definitions can be changed and sometimes they should.
I for one do not feel it creates confusion to call Laverne Cox a woman or to say that Chella Man isn’t one (surname incidental). At least I would find the opposite more confusing. After all there are at most a handful of people whose kind of gametes needs to be known to me personally, and Laverne Cox is not one of them LOL.
Sorry, but everything you say in the first paragraph is either wrong or a distortion. “Gender” has been used as a synonym for sex long before there were transactivists. And “trans women are women” is short for saying “trans women should be seen to b e identical in all relevant respects to the traditional meaning of women.”
Finally, activists are trying to change the meaning of the word because of the ideological implication I mentioned just above; most people prefer to adhere to the traditional meaning of the word (not necessarily “biological” sex. This is a case of activists trying to change reality by changing a word, which is very different from the natural evolution of a word’s meaning. This is not a suggestion but an order. And it causes more confusion than it mitigates. Your idea of a definition is that anybody is anything they think they are. But I’m betting you wouldn’t say that Rachael Dolezal is black ecause she identifies as black or a therian should be called a horse because he/she identifies as a horse.
Thank you.
The traditional meaning of marriage was not changed. Marriage is a legal union concerning rights and responsibilities. The granting of these rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples liberalized the practice, but not the meaning, of marriage.
And nor was the meaning of marriage expanded arbitrarily, one-sidedly, and coercively to include arrangements that aren’t marriages, such as common-law cohabitations. The state has codified the rights and responsibilities of common-law cohabitants so they resemble marriage in some respects, but they aren’t marriages. By JoJo’s logic, one party in a common-law cohabitation could self-identify that the relationship was a marriage and walk away from it one day after she moved in, taking half the “matrimonial” property and an entitlement to spousal support with her.
Trans activists are well aware of the difference between sex and gender.
They claim they are, but if it were true they would not object so vehemently to women’s insistence on same-SEX spaces and sports.
In fact, many “trans women” insist that they are, in fact, female.
It’s a motte-and-bailey: Conflating sex with so-called “gender” (or “gender identity”) is the bailey. “Sex and gender are different” is the motte.
Trans activists were the one who introduced the distinction between sex and gender into the mainstream, as well as the word “gender”
Feminists introduced the distinction between sex and “gender” (defined as the social norms associated with each sex) to the mainstream decades before trans activism did.
After all there are at most a handful of people whose kind of gametes needs to be known to me personally, and Laverne Cox is not one of them
The vast majority of the time, nobody needs to see a person’s gametes (or genitals) to know which sex they are. This is often true even when the individual has undergone extensive surgeries and years of exogenous hormone treatment. I’ve never seen Laverne Cox in real life, but I’ve seen a photo of him standing next to Elliot Page, and it really isn’t difficult to tell which is the man and which the woman.
As discussed in a previous thread, the kindle version was made available in my corner of the globe just two days ago. So I have only managed to read the introduction and Dawkins’s contribution so far. Both are good.
Regarding whether you really should have written a different book, about the attacks on science from the right, I will not join in that criticism. However, I will say one thing: If you were to follow up with such a book, the present book should bolster your credibility no end. Far be it from me to insist you should do so, but I’d be tickled pink if you did.
The critiques about the book not being about the far right are a mis-direction. We note that such critiques don’t actually address the claims in the book. Claims which are arguably true.
I don’t know about writing a 2nd book, or a thicker book of everything, but perhaps it would have been better to include a Ch. 1 that explains the omission about the far right — just to anticipate and head off that misdirection. But Jerry et al. have explained the reasons over and over, and still the misdirections continue. So a lot of good that would have done!
“…scientific truth must prevail over “personal feelings” and argues that academic institutions must defend facts above emotion.”
AKA Objectivity.
I wish this word would be deployed more. It could be smash-mouth.
“A woman can have a penis.”
“Not in objective reality.”
“It is true that one’s thoughts create reality as we move through time.”
“Not since we achieved objectivity.”
A very good wish indeed. But who ya gonna call, zeitgeistbusters?
HA!
I blame scientists. The Enlightenment provided the opportunity to leave faith on the garbage heap and to valorize The Age of Reason.
Instead, we have knowledge workers dwelling in rational endeavors all week, and praying for God’s help on Sunday.
Science did not dethrone Plato and elevate Aristotle. Shame.
And please don’t leave out Democritus (pre-Plato), “Mr Atom”.
I came across a comment today related to natural childbirth and likening it to “natural dentistry”! I wish I’d said that. (And yes, Oscar, I just did!)
As an obstetrician, I’d love to know where you came across such a wise comment, Christopher!
At the time of ‘elevatorgate’ and ‘dear muslima’ I felt that Dawkins was sexist, but I’ve revised my opinion over the last few years. It’s great to see him standing up against the trans mob.
His comment about Alan Barker reminded me of a couple of memes I made. The first one was when TRAs I said that we had no way to tell who is a transwoman 😄
1 “Just say no to a transwoman and the male will reveal himself.”
2 “Men seem to have immense difficulty transitioning their male privilege and male pattern violence. It’s almost like men can’t actually become women.”
Barker is a very dangerous and violent man. He needs to be back in prison as he has a danger to society.
Nice! I particularly like the “male pattern violence” riff.
And maybe add “premature escalation” — going defcon 1 over some trivial matter.
🎯
I’m late here, BN, and concurring with your succinct comments. (oh, “premature escalation”, that’s good)
Better late than never, Tom 🙂.
FWIW, the Roman Ṉox (Greek Nyx) was the goddess of night, the daughter of Chaos. I admit to a slight metaphorical family resemblance, but a plausible actual relative was John Ḵnox, the founder of Scottish Presbyterianism (“The Kirk”). I expect that neither of them were much fun at parties.
An even later reply to Barbara: does that mean you support the “monstrous regimen of women”? 😉
In academia, in recent years, the left seems to have won every skirmish that is publicized outside of the academy. And the discipline of science in the academy seems to be morphing into a discipline that is hemmed in by social justice principles. What part does the right play in that paradigm? The right’s many dysfunctions have had a small role in science for most of the last forty? years or so. Calls to expose them are a display of group angst at work. The present funding delays will end in a few years, possibly sooner if the economy holds up. Doing the work of science scientifically may be the best antidote to both forms of dysfunction.
Sadly, conflict and stupidity have a very much wider audience than boring objectivity. I remember the post-sputnik era when science was way more cool. Maybe a moonbase will rekindle some of that.
A good reason to criticize the left over its excesses: I believe that recently the far left (including gender activists) has become so influential that it led to many not voting in the last election, handing victory to Trump.
The Dems need to re-centre.
Criticizing Trump is fine but it’s more important to stop the illiberal MAGA movement from being elected again. And that means criticizing the left.
A plague on both their houses. My wish is for both parties to implode soon and then for the fragments to re-arrange into some different coalitions. Sounds unlikely, but black-swan events do sometimes occur. Not the percentage play, I admit, but what other plausible hope is there? IMO the Dems have already centred themselves, in their fundaments, with little hope of emerging anytime soon.
+1
I appreciate your comment, Frau Katze. I think issues such as these led many to vote for Trump, as the left’s excesses worried some people more than the right’s excesses. Neither candidate inspired confidence. I agree that criticizing Trump is fine, but it’s done so very much so often about everything that people may start tuning it out. “And that means criticizing the left” is exactly right.
I disagree with Richard Dawkins. The statement “Transgender women are women” is true. The statement “Transgender women are exactly the same as biological women” is false.
There is no mystery here. There are two types of women that are nor the same. As Jerry has pointed out many times, gender is not the same as sex.
Thanks for your pronouncement. Are there two types of black people, too, biological ones and white people who identify as black people (tread carefully here!), like Rachel Dolezal. Are there two types of horses, biological ones and therians who identify as horses. Are there two Napoleons, the extinct real one and living people who claim they are Napoleon? If you look up “woman” in the Oxford English Dictionary (my go-to source), you will find “woman” defined as “an adult female human being”. The type of woman I believe you are saying exists–“a man who identifies as a woman”–cannot be found. I have never said that “there are two types of women, one being a biological man who says that she identifies as female, and that she is a woman as well.”
Except in the sense of grammar — une fenêtre doesn’t have female sex and un clitoris doesn’t have male sex — gender is the same as sex. Everything else is personality, social presentation, mental illness, or bad faith. A man who sincerely believes he is a woman is just mistaken, not transgendered.
Since most people according to opinion polls don’t accept that men who call themselves transwomen or, worse, women, really are women, it’s time for legislators to make that clear with laws that, yes, erase the concept of trans identity as something to organize the dispensation of rights and privileges around. The activists don’t have the votes to stop them so they don’t need to be persuaded. Spend effort instead on convincing undecided legislators. Private fantasies are of course permitted. Cross-dressing shouldn’t be punished as such as long as the men don’t use false signalling to enter women’s spaces. Use the men’s room, Bud. Even on Hallowe’en.
Two types of women:
1.) Woman as Sex.
-Defining characteristic:
Body developed to produce large gametes
– Some Secondary Elements
– ovaries; uterus; XX chromosomes/absence of SRY;
skeletal distinctions; fat distribution; etc
2.) Woman as Gender
– Defining Characteristic:
? (being “womanly? Knowing you are one?)
– Some Secondary Elements
– ? (gentle? nurturing? dresses/heels? submissive? etc?)
I think that second type of “woman” needs work. Please take out what’s wrong and add in what’s missing.
“There are two types of women that are no[t] the same.” Janus this is well intentioned I’m sure but I agree with others this is mistaken.
Accepting that statement might be ~harmless if it had no corollaries. And nothing about a man’s private fantasy (thanks Leslie!) that he’s a woman should be punished or sanctioned. If he wants to be gentle, nurturing, and submissive in heels and a skirt (thanks Sastra!), and he thinks that performing this pantomime of dumb stereotypes makes him a woman, then I think he’s mistaken but well [shrug emoji].
My university includes lots of male and female students performing that kind of pantomime: men with long hair and handbags wearing skirts and eye makeup; women wearing binders and baggy pants and backward baseball caps, with the squeaky kazoo voice that only testosterone can generate. It’s just the 2020s version of goth or emo or punk (with hormones instead of mohawks): it’s weird but whatever. If we reject the fantasy then it’s fine for a man doing that pantomime to hike up his skirt in the men’s washroom while I’m standing at the urinal to pee. Or if we go with the fantasy, then I can even get used to the women doing that pantomime also using the men’s washroom. I wouldn’t really mind either way (although I can’t speak for my female colleagues in the women’s washroom).
The problem is that it doesn’t end with the private fantasy. These folx tend to insist that other people must publicly agree with their mistaken views of themselves. These are the six-footers with massive hands and brow ridges who start every conversation with a head tilt and a deep-voiced “I use she/her pronouns”, and the feminine they/them women with pixie cuts asserting something called “non-binary” or “gender queer”. Members of the university can be disciplined for “misgendering” such students by correctly identifying them by their sex.
And some of these men further insist on being treated like women in social settings where men and women have different rights and responsibilities (prisons, shelters, medical facilities, changing rooms, sport, awards, scholarships, jobs). That’s where the meaningful conflicts arise between the “two types of women that are no[t] the same.”
Your description of some of your students (3rd paragraph) gives me pause — I’ve seen only a little of this — I’m not on campus much any more — and it rings sadly true. And: “the squeaky kazoo voice that only testosterone can generate” — well, I salute your descriptive prose. So far as oddballs in toilet faculties, to paraphrase Helen Joyce: A woman in a Men’s Room can be an embarrassment; a man in Women’s Room can be a threat.
Thanks Tom. “Kazooicism” is from the detransitioner @TTExulansic. Highly recommended twitter feed. And yes to both parts of that the Helen Joyce paraphrase.
That might prompt a necessary rethink about female preference.
This year I ended my donor-membership with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra because their mentorship program, intended to help aspiring young women conductors get themselves established in a male-dominated field, is open to musicians who “identify as female or non-binary.” This is a big deal in a culture that is dominated by homosexual men and heterosexual women, everywhere but in conducting. There is significant salary money attached to this two-year “apprenticeship”, attractive to starving artists in a family-unfriendly field where only a few will become famous. The TSO’s website even points out that as there is a dearth of transgender conductors, — who knew?! — the mentorship program has been repurposed to correct that disparity, too. So that was it for me. My Pride Month gift to them.
When I think ahead to a Someday-Soon land where official references to transgender people as an “equity-denied group” — current Canadian human-rights lingo used to justify special access to Covid vaccines for people under 65 who don’t otherwise need them — will have evaporated, I predict that (biological) female preference in awards, scholarships, and jobs will bite the dust as an early casualty of The Great Reset. If the TSO, or any other firm or organization, became legally permitted to restrict its mentoring to “women” — arts outfits would put their government funding at risk so they never will —, how would it verify that the applicant was not a man? “Prove I’m not a woman,” the unrepentant transwoman would throw down the gauntlet. Birth certificates and driver’s licences have no probative value anymore — that well has been forever poisoned by self-identification. Should it demand a cheek swab of all applicants, specifically to exclude trans-identified men? Cis-identified men would of course not apply, so the screening process would specifically discriminate against trans people as an equity-denied group. Can’t have that.
I predict that firms will take the path of least adverse publicity. They will simply end all systems of female preference, even informal collegial mentoring initiatives, if they have no way to winnow out men who want to game them. (Female corporate managers won’t want to mentor men dissembling as women, but they won’t risk shunning by calling them out.) Some social changes are irreversible. Exceptions would be jobs where you really have to be a woman to do them, e.g., ______, and programs where hiring women into jobs they don’t really want, like paratrooper and neurosurgeon, must demonstrate real success with no embarrassment from the media discovering that the hired and promoted women were all really men. Cheek swabs all around, then.
I know this is insignificant,but when I read about what’s going on at our universities, I try to imagine myself teaching calculus to a roomful of 40 or 50 people and being expected to commit all of their “preferred pronouns” to memory. Line integration is hard enough without that kind of useless distraction.
That link isn’t working. Posted this to AustralianAtheists.Org forum. Pity. Would like to read that article.