Here we have the Triggernometry duo (Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster) questioning astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about his views on gender (the full interview is here). Tyson seems quite agitated, loud, and even patronizing, but largely misses the points that gender-critical people are making. For example, he begins with his infamous argument that sex (or gender; he conflates them by bringing up sex chromosomes) is really a spectrum because people decide on a daily basis how male or how female they feel. Well, I’m not sure how many people do that (I don’t), but Tyson seems to be arguing that people consider this supposed daily switch of gender is a subject of deep concern.
It isn’t. Tyson doesn’t understand that what people are concerned with is not transitory fluctuations of “maleness or femaleness,” but the claim that people claim to be members of a sex that doesn’t correspond to their non-natal sex, and thus demand that they have the same privileges as members of that non-natal sex. That includes the “right,” if you’re a trans-identified male, for example, to inhabit “women’s spaces.” Some people are also concerned with requirements that they use special pronouns or address people in specific ways according to their gender (I don’t care much about this when addressing people directly, but it becomes problematic in other situations).
Why do people care? Not because of what Tyson says. They care about male versus female natal (“biological”) sex because of sports participation, changing rooms, jails, rape counseling or battered women’s shelters, and for some, restrooms. The only one of these issues Tyson mentions is the most inconsequential of all: restrooms. He says he’s speaking of “gender expression,” but since that includes trans people, he has to take them into account, too. And if you do that, then, yes, some sanctions are in order. In fact, the International Olympic Committee is poised to ban people from competing in sports reserved for members of their non-natal sex.
Kisin simply dismisses Tyson’s argument by saying he doesn’t know anybody who wants to prevent people from dressing as they want, behaving as they want, or using the names they want. Kisin then makes the point I made above: the issue of sex-restricted spaces and the issues of fairness that mandates their creation. Kisin then adds another area of sex-restricted spaces, at least in the UK: positions that are restricted for one sex or another, like positions in Parliament. I didn’t know that, or whether it’s still true, but if there are female-only positions in Parliament (or diversity targests elsewhere), presumably those would be restricted to biological women. Kisin later says he’s not in favor of sex “quotas”, but given that they exist, how are we supposed to deal with trans people?
Instead of taking this on board, Tyson is determined to say that all these problems are fixable. For bathrooms, for example, he says that the solution is single-person bathrooms or multi-gender bathrooms that members of both sexes can use at the same time. The former solution is okay by me, but not by everyone. The latter one, however, comes with problems, as many women simply don’t want to use multi-gender or multi-sex bathrooms for reasons they’ve given in detail. (Tyson seems to think, for example, that urinals with partitions between them is one solution for a multi-sex bathroom, but I, for one, wouldn’t want to use those.)
As for sports, Tyson says that there are solutions, and these involve not dividing sports by sex but by things like hormone ratios. That, of course, would lead to more than two classes of sports, and is useless anyway because anybody who’s gone through male puberty could adjust his testosterone ratio down so that it would fall into the female range (I’m not sure how easy this is). More important, once you’ve gone through male puberty, you are on average stronger, larger, and faster than natal women regardless of your hormone titer. So that is not a fix. (I’ve suggested another fix, like an “other” class, but that doesn’t seem acceptable.)
Kisin points this out the persistence of sex differences even with hormones, but Tyson’s solution is simply “find ways to slice the population in ways so that whatever the event is. . . is interestingly contested.” Tyson’s example is weight classes in wrestling. But Kisin points out that this is not a solution because matching men and women by weight alone would result in unfair victories for men. And of course men’s and women’s wrestling are still kept separate.
By taking up this issue, it’s clear that Tyson is indeed addressibg trans issues and not just temporal fluctuations in one’s gender identity. He’s sufficiently optimistic to think that creative solutions will solve all of these problems. Perhaps, but the problems exist now, and we have to find solutions for them that can work now.
Tyson takes up the questions of quotas, and says, properly, that if we want equity, then we have to determine why underrepresentation of certain groups exists. My claim is that yes, we need to know that before we do anything to create equity, because different groups may have different abilities and preferences that lead to differences in representation not caused by bigotry. Kisin responds, properly, “The question is: Female shortlists exist. Should biological males be able to enter those female shortlists?” Again, Tyson avoids answering that question, which is one we need to deal with now. Tyson’s only answer is “We’re in a transitional period. So we have to figure that out.” “Figuring these things out,” apparently means that we will find a solution that gets rid of men’s versus women’s sports, or male cersus female jails. (The jail issue doesn’t arise.) The IOC has solved the problem with blanket bans, and that seems like a good solution to me.
Tyson doesn’t seem to realize the extent of the problem, asserting that all playing fields can be “fixed,” and fixed in a way different than anything we can imagine now. But for things like jails, sports, and changing rooms, the “progressive” (yes, he uses that word) fix may be the fix that many of us have already hit on. Keeping male versus female sports separate, for example, doesn’t seem to me to be “regressive” as opposed to Tyson’s solution based on hormone ratios, which is not “progressive” but bonkers.
Tyson is either insincere and simply pandering to the masses. Or, perhaps, he himself has gender issues.
It is one thing for a scientist to have stupid opinions about how society should deal with people’s gender identities. It is quite another thing for a scientist to dismiss the need for clear scientific definitions of biological sex.
This guy understands nitpicking about scientific definitions. We need precise terminology when we discuss Pluto and the other icy dirtballs that orbit the sun. But as for biological sex, well, who cares. Sometimes I feel more male, sometimes a bit female, …. If memory serves, Tyson neglected to ask Pluto whether it self-identifies as a planet or as a dwarf planetoid.
I was wondering if Tyson was in effect claiming that you could change your pronouns everyday depending on how you felt and that everyone else has to call you by the right pronouns or else.
Ridiculous bluster from Tyson which demonstrates little other than his desire to say the “correct” things at the cost of his credibility.
There is a Himalaya of evidence showing the stark differences in male and female sports across most sports- both at a physiological level (differences in lean body mass, VO2 max and haemoglobin levels) and over a hundred years of results.
In order to have female inclusion there must be a female sex category and (like any category) it must be enforced.
The current system works ; Tyson’s “solutions” (such as artificial tinkering with testosterone levels) do not – as has been clearly demonstrated by Dr Emma Hilton, Dr Ross Tucker and others.
Tyson needs to stick to astronomy.
I made the meme below to explain why I refuse to use non-standard pronouns. This would be doubled or tripled if people like Tyson changed their pronouns every day 🤦♀️
“Most people meet 80,000 people during their lifetime, including the 800, or so, that you will know by name. My life is too short to try to remember 800 sets of pronouns, even if I had the inclination to, which I don’t. When I refer to you, you will be he, she or it. Learn to cope.”
Clearly, Tyson is beholden to a vague notion of “justice” that must minimize real biological sex differences. As a scientist, he should know better. I have noticed, however, that he also makes questionable, if not false, assertions, sometimes pompously, on a variety of scientific topics.
Currently, there is no restriction on trans athletes competing. They simply have to acknowledge the undeniable truth of their biological sex and compete as such. If they don’t like it, tough. It’s not fair to demand that the vast majority of people, especially athletes, accommodate their delusion. All of Tyson’s agonizing and insistence that the entire world find creative solutions is absurd. The current practices are the solution. Please, Tyson, let it go!
I meant to say “the traditional practices,” as in separating sports by sex, not the current practices that have already been perverted.
Transgenderism is the only mental illness whose treatment is affirming the delusion.
When an emaciated young woman with anorexia goes to a doctor, he doesn’t affirm her delusion that she is morbidly obese. When someone with depression goes to a doctor, she doesn’t affirm his delusion that he is worthless.
The latter two physicians would lose their licenses and face malpractice lawsuits. But in the trans universe, denying reality is mandatory.
I find that transactivists never think things through to a logical conclusion.
If self identified gender dysphoria is a reason to allow males to compete in women’s sport at the Olympics, then they must also agree that it’s ok for women to self identify with body integrity dysphoria and compete in the Paralympics.
Unsurprisingly, they never answered that question when I ask.
Good point!! 💜💜💜
In fact, older transsexuals who grew up without modern gender ideology often DON’T go for drivel about being “born in the wrong body”. They don’t deny the reality of biological sex, they just chose to get medical alterations to better resemble the sex they wish they were. It is the younger generation that thinks calling yourself a woman makes it so.
To make an analogy, a man who admires Napoleon and chooses to dress like Napoleon and speak pompous French and cultivate mannerisms like Napoleon is eccentric. But the man who thinks he IS Napoleon is insane.
In the same way, a man who wishes he were a woman and who chooses to wear dresses and cultivate feminine mannerisms is eccentric. But the man who insists he IS a woman is insane.
More good points.
In some cases it’s more than a wish but less than a delusion; maybe call that a compulsion.
Regarding “older transsexuals”: I recommend getting to know Buck Angel and checking out his YouTube channel.
Buck Angel argues exactly as you have described. He does not deny the reality of biological sex, he chose to get medical alterations to better resemble the sex he wishes he were. Buck Angel has no time for gender activists; on the contrary, he sees them as a major threat that could turn society against transsexuals like himself.
All-female shortlists are a thing. The Toronto Symphony Orchestra is the lead partner in a mentorship program where aspiring young female conductors enter a juried competition to receive salary support from the Orchestra to study with the principal conductor and music director for two years. (The dearth of women in symphony conducting is deemed a Problem That Has to be Remedied.). The program is open now to “women and non-binary people who identify as women.”
Whether the TSO actually believes in this — their PR says the program is trying to address the critical shortage of transgender conductors — or whether they are just trying to stay out of expensive trouble with the Ontario Human Rights Commission which mandates self-ID, or worried about activists scotching their government grants, I don’t know. I am no longer a member or a donor to the Orchestra, except for the taxes I pay to the two levels of government who support it.
Elsewhere, job postings that say they are limited to women — legal in Canada — must regard as women men who say they are women. No questions askable.
So no, all-female shortlists would not be based straightforwardly on biological sex. Why would the trans activists make that concession?
A “critical shortage of transgender conductors” must be the very epitome of First World Problems. 🥹
Why has the TSO not instituted a conducting mentorship program for Non-Musical People Who Identify as Musical? Surely, a program on those lines would be so Progressive.
Other issues of Music Justice come to mind. Is it just that tubas are bigger than trumpets, cellos bigger than violins? That whole notes are often written slightly larger than eighth notes? Where is the Equity when the key of C includes no Black piano keys at all, while C# has five? Is this not a case of anti-Blackness?
Even more unfair than that. G-flat major (seven flats) has two notes where white piano keys identify as black…AND THEY GET AWAY WITH IT! Right out in plain sight. Talk about cultural appropriation!
Sometimes it’s relevant to have representation guaranteed for specific demographics, but there is no point in having a women’s shortlist if men can self identify onto it.
The Scottish gov changed legislation so women’s spaces on Public Boards could be taken by men, if they thought they were women and had post addressed to them in a female name 🤦♀️
Interestingly, the legislation didn’t say that men’s spaces could be taken by transmen.
No wonder that many think of the trans rights movement as a men’s rights movement.
Maybe a female-identifying male could apply as an aspiring semiconductor?
It is shortlists for parliamentary candidates that Kisin was referring to: the Labour and Lib-Dem parties have both had policies that they would put up women candidates only, and that includes trans-women.
Same here in Germany: Alliance 90/The Greens have an equality policy. However, being a woman does not have to be biological; it is sufficient to identify as a woman.
There was a lot of fuss during the penultimate federal election in 2021 when a man with long-haired wig, dressed in women’s clothing and using a female name was allowed to occupy a promising place on the electoral list as a “woman.” He was elected to parliament and only changed his official gender entry from “man” to “woman” in 2024 with the new Self-Determination Act (SBGG).
Oh, and of course, he has not undergone any hormonal or surgical adjustments to his new gender. He/she feels like a woman [“the penis is not a male sexual organ per se” (answer from an interview)], and the rest of Germany had better accept that.
One of the dangers of the human mind is its ability to rationalize anything. Mr. Tyson demonstrates that ability in this discussion and labels it “progressive.”
What annoys me about views of people such as Tyson is that they believe in what I call “human exceptionalism”: the idea that human genetics and physiology is separate from the rest of sexually reproducing species, especially the class Mammalia, which is of course nonsense. I argue the point that the only way to understand human reproduction ( sexuality and sexual behaviour is a different matter) is in an evolutionary context and that is why biologists use the gametic definition – a simple point but people like Tyson don’t get that.
The thing that never happens — men assaulting women in restrooms and other women-only facilities — happens all the time.
One of my friends was attacked in a women’s restroom by a man wearing a dress. She fought him and escaped. By the time the police arrived, the man had fled. I can provide lots more examples.
How many ways can women distinguish male predators from trans-identifying males? ZERO ways.
As for men cheating in women’s sports the number is staggering.
Tyson needs to shut up already.
Even if there were a minimal physical threat, women’s comfort is a worthwhile goal in itself.
There are physical and sexual realities about the relationship between females and males (that progressives want to minimize) for which females must navigate psychologically (correct me if I am wrong). It’s natural if women feel uneasy in the presence of a male body or by male attention in a vulnerable or private space.
Question: it has always seemed to me that women’s bathrooms serve another vital role besides using the toilet, such as female gossip, dealing with a challenging situation outside the restroom, adjusting make up, expressing emotions, giving advice, etc. Is that true and is it worth preserving that function and protecting it from male eyes and ears?
Agreed. But there should be twice as many women’s rooms as men’s rooms (have you ever seen the lines at sporting events?)
When building a new stadium, my city intentionally included more women’s toilets than men’s for this reason. Women also take longer in the toilet because we must partially disrobe while men usually don’t.
And there are no female urinals or other pissiors, which take up much less space than toilet cubicles.
This is not merely “comfort.” Women-only restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms are places where women are in a state of undress, thus more vulnerable than usual to predation. These women-only facilities provide privacy, safety, and dignity for us.
Regarding your second comment, women do the things you mention BECAUSE women are much safer in sex-segregated places.
I assume men engage in similar behaviors in the men’s room.
BTW, men don’t want women in their men-only facilities either.
Typically, men are silent in the restroom.
I wouldn’t care if a woman was in a restroom I use, unless she was stalking me or she wanted to talk. I’m not psychologically or physically vulnerable to women in the same way women are to me.
I’m not sure it’s related, but I much prefer a woman massage therapist and I’m not uncomfortable being partially nude in front of her. It’s a different “energy,” I’m able to relax.
I don’t want even my wife of decades in the bathroom when I sh!t, shave, or pee. Okay, I was about to say shower, but we used to make exceptions for that one (um, not so much anymore!)
It still drives me nuts when she leaves her bathroom door open thinking we are supposed to continue our conversation while she’s in there. It’s not like I can’t hold the thoughts in mind for a minute or two until she finishes whatever and returns to the room.
His and her bathrooms are a must—in public and at home.
🎯 So refreshing to find guys who understand. Women’s toilets in clubs and pubs also are a refuge when we feel in danger. How can we get away from a predator if he can just follow us in?
💜💜💜
Agreed, the restroom issue is not inconsequential. Even in the men’s restroom what goes on involves being partly undressed to carry out a private function in a semipublic space. No one wants members of the other sex present. I never understood this so well as when a female student in one of my courses followed me into the men’s room at my university while I was standing at one of the two urinals. When he/him went into the stall instead I experienced an unexpected sense of relief. I can only imagine how women feel in a comparable situation.
And no knock on that student, who should be able to dress or talk or not conform to other sex stereotypes (it’s all fashion). But not in the men’s room please.
[Edit in response to Patrick: There is of course a comparable culture in the men’s room too. Its practices are anti-social as opposed to the kind of pro-social practices you suggested (gossip, mutual aid), but it’s just as important for men’s room users to know the culture and follow its practices: eyes forward, admire the tile wall, no talking at the urinal; minor inconsequential chat at the sinks is ok, but nothing about what we all just did (“Haha, too much coffee this morning, really needed to go” is not ok).]
I did laugh when the guy using the neighboring urinal said, “damn that water is cold.”
Probably just my juvenile sense of humor and not an exception to your rules.
Oh, Tom, did you fail to reply, “And deep, too!”
From further down the line came, “It warms up further down”.
But yes, I completely failed.
Once at a conference, I had to use an “all-gender” restroom. What surprised and disgusted me the most was the number of men who didn’t wash their hands after using the urinal or toilet.
Makes me think twice about shaking hands with a man…
+1
A male friend commented that had never seen so many men washing their hands in the toilets as he had during covid.
At least covid changed some bad habits.
There is a short “epitaph of war” by Kipling, in which a man reflects on how he was killed. He stepped away from where the other men were peeing, and was picked off by a sniper. But living his life that way — when urinating—-was true to his self-understanding. I mention this here as illustrating the significance that privacy while peeing can have.
The protocols of gender always amuse me. There’s not a fella here who doesn’t know, instinctively, male bathroom etiquette. We learn it in primary school. And it works in every country where I’ve used a public toilet.
The lovely broads have their own different sets of protocols for other things.
D.A.
NYC
Jerry quoted a tweet yesterday that is à propos:
+1
I sit here on a Sunday morning shaking my head. I’ve come to accept that the U.S. government has devolved into a kind of kleptocracy run by kleptomaniacs. But I had hoped that scientists and science-promoting organizations like FFRF and Hayden Planetarium would choose a better hill to die on than this one over trans issues.
Ken, I guess you’re in the USA? Take heart! At least the tide has started to turn there. Here in Canada we’re still partying like it’s 2017. My cozy university has just now aspired “to establish itself as a leader in advancing trans equity in research and academia.”
https://www.sfu.ca/sociology-anthropology/news-events/news/2025/tedi-robbins-ollivier-award.html
The agenda for my biology department faculty meetings now has a permanent item on DEI (or EDI, potatoe potahto) under which a member of our EDI committee leads a struggle session on things like the harm from deadnaming.
By the time that lawsuit against Johanna Olson-Kennedy and CHLA is resolved in your country
https://libertycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Complaint.pdf
we might just be allowed to ask “What is a woman?” in my country.
Sadly, it’s just recently been decided in favor of the defendants. But the decision was based on procedure — apparently the statute of limitations had expired by the time the suit was filed — not on the merits of the case.
https://www.theeastsiderla.com/neighborhoods/east_hollywood/judge-grants-judgment-in-favor-of-chla-doctors-in-gender-surgery-suit/article_b8758390-ec61-4613-92f4-86ca75c3be9b.html
Darn! Thanks for the update. I guess my hopes are dashed all around then 🙁
Rather than “fixing” things, how about we not break them? I have, yet, to hear any clear statement of what rights people claiming to be transsexual are being denied. It seems like the right they are claiming is to force others to inhabit their reality. Outside of a totalitarian society, where that very oppressive right is the right of the rulers, I have never seen such a right.
A man in a dress has exactly the same rights as every other man in the UK. i suspect that goes for the USA and Canada too.
The ‘rights’ they are claiming are women’s rights and the right to be treated as a priority over everyone else. Eg the right to use women’s spaces and the right to have their cosmetic surgeries ahead of everyone else who actually needs surgery.
Well said.
I saw this when it first came out. It’s very atypical of DeGrasse Tyson. Normally he is the cool, soft spoken voice of reason. Think of Cosmos, or his StarTalk podcast. Even though he is an atheist, think of how gentile he is when asked about religion. But he does seem very agitated and is downright rude in this interview. It’s obviously a very emotional topic for him, for some reason.
“For this is how human beings are constructed: whatever they conceive purely with their intellects, they also defend purely with intellect and reason while, on the other hand, whatever opinions they derive from their passions, they defend with their passions.”
Spinoza
I wonder if Dr. Tyson is so aware of how people like Dr. Carole Hooven have been cancelled, and likes his speaking engagements.
So me adjusts his answers and suggestions to make himself publicly non-cancelable.
“For example, he begins with his infamous argument that sex (or gender; he conflates them by bringing up sex chromosomes) is really a spectrum because people decide on a daily basis how male or how female they feel”
How does someone feel the sex they’re not? I have no idea how it feels to be male; I can only imagine.
I feel female because I am female: I have a female body. Beyond that, I’m just me. I can’t really know how it feels to be anybody else. Nobody can. Not even Neil de-fuckin-Grasse Tyson.
Single-person bathrooms are not practical in the numbers that will be needed for everyone in most buildings. My gym just wouldn’t have enough space. To be safe these units would need to include sinks, disposal bins, solid locks and have floor to ceiling walls with no gaps.
Mized sex bathrooms have also been a failure for women and girls. In some schools with mixed sex bathrooms, boys have been deliberately breaking all the locks so that they can ‘accidentally’ walk in on girls. Girls are now too scared to go to the bathroom alone and go in twos, so one can stand guard. There have been news reports of girls not taking fluids, so that they don’t have to use the school bathroom. Why should girls and women be put under such stress?
In disabled toilets, I find that men make a bit more of a mess than women do, so we need to clean the toilet before we use it. Women’s toilets in bars and nightclubs may be revolting at times, but this is not the case in most offices and public buildings.
We would need floor to ceiling walls because many, many men have been convicted of placing cameras under doors to video women and girls.. I was a victim in the stall of a mixed changing room with a man, on his hands and knees in the next stall, looking underneath the joining wall, watching me getting dried. It was traumatic.
There have also been cases of schoolgirls being pushed into stalls and sexually assaulted (eg Loudoun County USA high school). This is why I believe that women’s cubicles should be behind a separate door before you even get to the cubicles.
There are hundreds of photos/vids of men exposing themselves in women’s bathrooms, in one video you can hear children in the background.
There are a lot of male fetishists who exploit women’s bathrooms. They get a thrill from being in the stall next door and hearing women urinate, they get sexual excitement from listening to women unwrapping sanitary products, and there are even men who have a fetish for removing used items from sanitary bins and taking them away. Why should women be subject to these men?
There was a video recently of a man with his trousers off, with a towel and lubricant in a women’s toilet, who had been masturbating in there and was caught by a group of women. As a group, they were able to chase him, but for any girl on her own that would have been terrifying.
I think most decent men have no idea how vile many of their fellow men can be, so they think women are exaggerating, I can assure you that we aren’t. I can provide evidence for each case I quoted.
For these reasons, I don’t believe that it’s possible to have multi-gender bathrooms or changing rooms that are safe for women and girls.
I have never had any man give a rational explanation of of why it is necessary for men to take over the women’s spaces that we have had for over 100 years.
It never ceases to amaze me how it’s ‘valid’ for men to be scared of men in the Gents, but ‘transphobic’ for women to be scared of men in the Ladies.
Men need to welcome ALL men into their spaces. This not a problem for women and girls to solve.
There’s an astonishing case in Australia just now.
“Ms Buckley” is a heterosexual male. The mother allowed Buckley to be the main “breastfeeder”. A medic has been taken to a tribunal because of comments she made about “Ms Buckley”.
” The breastfeeding expert described Ms Buckley as a ‘man pretending to be a woman’ and referred to transgender male breastfeeding as ‘dangerous’ and ‘experimental’.
Ms Buckley is alleging that Ms Sussex’s online comments amount to discrimination and vilification, saying that they were ‘hurtful’. “
I’m not sure how multi gender bathrooms are designed elsewhere but the few I have used here in Australia don’t have urinals. All have had cubicles with doors. Or is it just I am not yet well enough travelled?
Thx for the summary PPC(E) – so I don’t have to listen to Prof Tyson.
One thought is I’ve noticed a lot of people (like him) seem to consider trans as just another form of gay. Well it is “force teamed” into the acronym and it involves sex somehow.
Nobody wants to be a 20 century gay-basher homophobe so they assume trans is on the up and up. When it isn’t – it is also an entirely different thing.
And – given we live in very enlightened times there is a shortage of civil rights problems and actual racism/bigotry. Yet the desire to man the barricades and be a hero on top of them remains.
This and other factors…
D.A.
NYC
I agree with what you said, but I think people like Tyson do have good intentions and that some of his arguments are fine on paper, although I think he does not understand the reality. I completely agree where you said “Perhaps, but the problems exist now, and we have to find solutions for them that can work now.”
That said, I do think that there is a lack of empathy among the gender criticals in regard to finding a solution, e.g., in the restroom issue. I often hear arguments that are just conveniently conservative (we should do it the way we used to do), which really says that the trans-people’s discomfort is not my problem. Only some openly say this, but it is quite obvious from many gender critical arguments. This is not an easy problem to solve, and one can argue that the conservative approach has better tradeoffs, but I am not sure if that is the case. There are ways to move towards better solutions such as ensuring single space toilets whenever possible. The approach should be kind of similar to making accessible options for physically disabled people, but neither the most vocal gender criticals nor the trans-activists are interested in that. From this perspective, I like the fact that Tyson at least wants to find solutions even though some of his proposed solutions are stupid.
The comparison to the handicapped is incorrect: a handicapped person cannot relieve themself without physical accommodation. A transsexual can, though they may be uncomfortable. But their discomfort is primarily their problem, not mine.
Some people using wheelchairs may be able to walk a little bit with a lot of discomfort (in fact poorer people who can’t afford a wheelchair often learn to walk using their hands by dragging themselves against the floor). I wouldn’t say that it’s then their problem, not mine, if there are no wheelchair accessible options. If you meant that all people with gender dysphoria can eventually overcome that condition, I haven’t seen any data that indicates that. But feel free to share if there is such data.
I think all of these issues boil down to social negotiation, and it is impossible to reach a solution if people don’t care about the opposite side. For the same reason, I am not a fan of the trans-activist argument that trans women/men have a right to access the space of the sex they identify with and it’s not their problem that the others in the space are uncomfortable. I see how the unkindness of from them brews unkindness on the other side, and vice versa.
Patrick didn’t say people with GD could overcome their condition. He just said that their discomfort (which is psychological not physical) is not his problem. Nor is it the duty of women to solve it for them. Trans people can overcome their discomfort long enough to urinate in the men’s room even if they can’t self-cure their condition. A full bladder will eventually empty itself except sometimes in us old guys.
You’re the one using the inadequate analogy, not Patrick. All analogies are inadequate as arguments. They may be useful to illustrate an argument already made.
What discomforts society decides are its problem to solve is a political question. It could decide that people in wheelchairs should be left with no choices but to park the chair in the hallway and drag themselves to the public toilet on their hands, or to wear diapers when out. (Trans people could use this option, too, btw.) We decided not to make paraplegic people bear that discomfort. But that by itself doesn’t mean we have to indulge people any accommodation at all who believe they are trans.
Re-doing the plumbing is a non-starter. Plumbing is expensive to install and doesn’t pay rent (unless you have coin-operated cubicles.) For high demand locations, especially when there is surge demand (like during intermissions at concerts where trans-gendered conductors are on the podium) you need lots of urinals and, for both sexes, spaces where users of the same sex will trade some privacy for the convenience of the line moving fast enough to accommodate large numbers in a short time. It’s fairly easy to devote a stall in each bathroom to wheelchairs without re-designing the entire complex the way your solution of private enclosed self-contained floor-to-ceiling closets would require. Besides, the women say that transgendered men don’t want their own stigmatizing private closets. They won’t use them. They want to use the ladies’. So No.
As a social negotiation principle, we are just going to keep saying No. There is no need to negotiate anything because our best alternative to a negotiated agreement, our walkaway position, is just “No”, the status quo. That’s what “bathroom bills”, and more generally laws against self-ID, make explicit. We don’t gain anything, we only lose, by sitting down with the trans crowd who want us to make expensive and socially undesirable (to us) accommodation to their demands. That’s why we won’t negotiate with you. We don’t need to.*
Perhaps you could tell me what a social negotiation would look like that was a win-win. You envision the trans side gaining some concession from us through negotiation. What do we gain from you? What could you give us that would make us want to negotiate with you in the first place? A list of demands where we give in on something and dig in our heels on others isn’t a negotiation. We’re giving something away. You’re gaining something. That’s not a negotiation. That’s just nagging. The fact is, trans people don’t have any high cards to play. You don’t hold anyone hostage. There is nothing you can give us that we want, that we should negotiate away anything to get it from you.
So no, we don’t care about the trans side. It has nothing that we need and wants to cost us. We’re just going to say that the moral arc of history doesn’t bend toward you. Sorry.
(* In a Phil Ochs song,
Just for clarification, my comment about wheelchair accessibility was a general one, not just in the context of restrooms. This includes ramps, elevators etc. They can, in many cases be difficult to implement, but are right things to do whenever possible. Similarly, the first parallel about disability was also about creating accessible spaces, not just in the context of wheelchair accessible restrooms.
You are right, the trans side does not have too many high cards to play… The same argument applies to people who are disable. Able people don’t have too much to gain by creating accessible spaces for disabled people. We are mandated at our workplace to maintain digital accessibility, and I have been working on that as part of my service responsibility… Surely it isn’t fun! Then why do we make such arrangements for disabled people?
I think negotiations do not always need to be based on a win-win situation in a narrow context. The argument, in my opinion, goes back to some basic morals of helping people in need. Why it is helpful for the society to do so is a long discussion. Philosophers have different theories of morality, and I have especially read a fair bit on the non-religious ones. The easiest way I can think of it without getting into a long philosophical discussion is that if I enter a social contract to help people in need then I can expect help when I need.
Saying that, I agree that the trans activist side does not want to use single person restrooms either (a trans-activist reading my comment will be super mad too), and I mentioned that as a problem in my first comment, although I think it is only half of the problem. I am not expecting you to agree with me and I will stop from further commenting on this post to respect the rules regarding over-commenting.
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Tyson’s private intentions are unknown to us, and may even be unknown to him. But it doesn’t matter much in this context of a very public dispute about public policy and morality.
Empathy is a big ask when the would-be empathiser is being asked to imagine themselves in the shoes of someone whom they consider to be delusional. ISTM this is a core of the dispute — whether or not there really is such a thing as a gendered ‘soul’ or ‘essence’. The the waxing and waning of this notion indicates to me that it is largely a contagious social meme; YMMV. It’s hard to forge a compromise on whether or not something is really real or just seems to be. “Half real” doesn’t cut it for either side.
You are right, the idea of a gendered soul, or “true self” is a premise of many who argue that a “trans woman is a real woman.” But I’m not sure that helps their situation much. I suppose they avoid the label of “mental illness,” but they still have the conflict between their soul and their body that never will be bridged, regardless of the amount of medical and cosmetic treatment. To deny this is what I mean when I say trans activists are delusional. I believe, however, gender dysphoria is a real condition—though at much smaller numbers than stated in the current fad—and I support anyone who must find an optimal way to live with it. But I cannot abide the zealots!
At the risk of overcommenting, I wanted to thank Jerry for putting up this post and others like it. I know Jerry feels his science posts don’t get enough engagement, but the “trans” posts do and I think they are science posts. Folks like me who study the evolution of sex and sex differences find the “trans” phenomenon baffling because it requires a kind of human exceptionalism (cf. Pierre @ 5) to all the theory that underlies our research, and it directly contradicts the life’s work of thousands of scientists who have documented the continuity between sex in humans and sex in other animals. Like religious claims (e.g., about the origins of the universe), “trans” claims (that humans but not other mammals have a gendered soul, can be born in the wrong body, and can change their sex) are assertions about reality that can be tested and rejected using reason and evidence. My only regret is that pro-“trans” commenters rarely show up to make their case (or maybe they do and the comments are so awful that Jerry keeps them out, what do I know). Anyway please keep posting about these topics!
The pro-trans commenters are all over on BlueSky – and they are a vicious lot.
I wonder if Neil has a trans identifying child, or relative. I can imagine it would be very difficult to accept humans are a gonochoric anisogamous species and the English nouns for adult members of the split are woman and man.
Of course we’re social beings and among us are members who believe different things despite empirical evidence, like young earth creationists who also reject the evidence of evolutionary biology. I’m confident Neil would object to children being taught YEC is true in public schools, and laws being passed that require everyone affirm a YEC beliefs. Yet somehow he’s ok with children being taught humans aren’t necessarily a gonochoric species, that some are the opposite – hermaphrodites.
Female and male have cross species meaning. And we have nouns for the females and males in many gonochoric species. Are Homo sapiens to stop using those nouns exclusively for the females and males of our species to accommodate people who are on the opposite side of the gonochoric split. Wouldn’t new nouns have been more useful? I suppose new nouns would have made it impossible to demand access into real world spaces exclusively used by people named by the nouns such people seek to appropriate.
Late to this thread. Others have pretty much covered the ground. The Neil deGrasse Tyson interview is probably cringeworthy, but someone’s got to watch & critique it. Also adding my thanks to Jerry for covering this topic — it’s a bizarre cultural development. On the one hand, paraphrasing Helen Joyce, the stupidest topic imaginable: male, female, men, women, universally understood, suddenly a topic of fierce contention — on the other hand, this damaging cultural/policial development must not stand. Also, re bathrooms, paraphrasing HJ again: a woman in a men’s bathroom/changing room can be an embarrassment. A man in a similar women’s space — a threat.
Another good reason for segregated single-sex bathroom spaces is to protect men. At first blush I might not have any reason to object to a woman entering a public bathroom while I was standing at a urinal. She isn’t a physical threat to me. But suppose she accuses me of something which I can’t rebut because there are no witnesses or security cameras in the bathroom. Nowadays men are being careful not to be alone with women, even ones they know, behind closed doors or out of view and earshot unless the prospect of sex is likely enough to justify the risk. If a woman was in a men’s bathroom washing her hands or combing her beard — or scrubbing the urinals — when I entered I would leave immediately. But if she entered while I was peeing I would be stuck and have to hope for the best. Worse, this defence strategy would be thwarted if I was unable to clock her immediately as a woman, and therefore dangerous.
Victorian mores (chaperones etc.) existed to protect the reputations of men, not to protect women from violence. A commenter here I think quoted contemporary advice to men never to enter an enclosed compartment of a railway carriage if a woman was the sole occupant. Once that door closes it’s your word against hers. #MeToo wasn’t invented yesterday.
Excellent point!