Welcome to the end of the “work” week and, at sundown, the beginning of shabbos for Jewish cats. It’s November 21, 2025 and National Gingerbread Cookie Day. They are a big deal in Poland, and come highly decorated—like these I photographed in Katowice last December:
It’s also National Stuffing Day and National Cranberry Day, a reminder that a week from today most Americans will be recovering from overeating after the previous day’s Thanksgiving feast. (I’m a fan of jellied cranberries, but only the type without berries in it.)
I am going to the dentist this morning, so posting will be light. In fact, the Hili dialogue should count as a LARGE post!
Readers are welcome to mark notable events, births, or deaths on this day by consulting the November 21 Wikipedia page.
Da Nooz:
*Trump has signed the bill ordering the Department of Justice to release its material on Jeffrey Epstein, but there are some loopholes that mean that not everything will become public.
Relenting to pressure from his base, President Trump on Wednesday announced on social media that he signed legislation calling on the Justice Department to release its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein within 30 days.
Mr. Trump’s signature does not guarantee the release of all the files. The bill contains significant exceptions, including a provision protecting continuing investigations, which could mean many documents would stay confidential.
In a lengthy announcement on Truth Social, Mr. Trump focused on Democrats who were connected to Mr. Epstein and said the furor over the documents was a distraction to hurt his administration. “Democrats have used the ‘Epstein’ issue, which affects them far more than the Republican Party, in order to try and distract from our AMAZING Victories,” he said.
In his post, the president sought to portray the bill’s passage as the result of a directive to his party. “As everyone knows, I asked Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, to pass this Bill in the House and Senate, respectively,” Mr. Trump said. “Because of this request, the votes were almost unanimous.”
But, in fact, his call for Republicans to approve the measure came only after it became clear Mr. Trump had lost a political battle on the issue. Against Mr. Trump’s wishes, House Democrats and a few Republicans joined together to force a vote on the bill, and as the vote neared, other Republicans signaled they would approve the measure.
. . . . The Senate approved the legislation on Wednesday that demands the Justice Department release more of the Epstein files, a day after the legislation passed overwhelmingly in the House.
The bill contains several exceptions that are similar to the reasons Attorney General Pam Bondi initially withheld most of the files, a decision that caused an uproar among those who believed they were about to see a fuller picture of the case.
Under the legislation, the Trump administration may withhold records that identify victims or include images of child sexual abuse, or are otherwise classified. The legislation also allows records to be withheld if they would jeopardize an active federal investigation.
The Justice Department has already said the files it withheld contained images of victims, downloaded videos of illegal child sex abuse or materials that had been ordered sealed by a court.
What a dissimulator! Since the administration has already claimed that it’s going to use the files to investigate Democrats (not Republicans!) who might have violated the law, they could use that as these “ongoing investigations” as an excuse to withhold more documents. Of course the names of victime should be redacted, but my view is that, beyond that, they should release the whole megillah.
*The Free Press describes the worries that the Democratic Socialists of America have about their boy Zohran Mamdani, the next mayor of NYC, and how they plan to make him hold to his electoral promises.
This is DSA 101, a 90-minute introductory course offered by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the same group that propelled Zohran Mamdani to victory in his campaign for New York City mayor. My fellow comrades on the video call included a Cornell professor, a Google engineer, and a Johnson & Johnson communications manager. They listened dutifully, occasionally firing off heart emojis while Sebastian told participants that their job was not over now that Mamdani had won.
“Just because we elected Zohran doesn’t mean that we achieved a socialist city,” he said. “Our work is only just continuing and just beginning.”
If Mamdani, a dues-paying member of the DSA since 2017, thinks that winning City Hall means he will be in charge, someone should tell that to the New York City Democratic Socialists of America (NYC-DSA). A review of internal materials, public statements, and strategy documents shows an organization that views his election as the start of something much bigger: a plan to maximize their sway with the man they helped put into power—and, when necessary, hold his feet to the fire.
. . . When Grace Mausser, a top-ranked leader with the NYC-DSA, recently appeared on a podcast hosted by a Marxist-Leninist leader in Belgium, she said that the group’s goal was to move beyond the typical instinct of the left, which is to protest their elected officials.
“We need to develop that model where we’re not just critiquing and protesting Zohran—he’s one of our own, and we put him there,” said Mausser. “We’re actually working with him to push the apparatus of city government to the left.”
. . . Policing might be the first flashpoint. On Wednesday, Mamdani announced a decision that many of his supporters on the far left had feared: Jessica Tisch agreed to stay as police commissioner after Mamdani is sworn in on New Year’s Day. Mamdani and the NYC-DSA pushed for years to defund the New York Police Department, while Tisch has made it her mission to rebuild its depleted ranks. The NYPD is the largest police department in the United States, with over 33,000 uniformed officers, but that is the fewest number of officers in the department since 1994.
. . . . Will Mamdani give the DSA his ear? Yes, according to Adams, the political consultant—but not necessarily more than that.
“If some DSA internal working group called Eric Adams, he’d be like, ‘Get the fuck out of here,’ ” said the consultant, who donated to Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. “But if they call Zohran, he might take the meeting.”
The biggest challenge of all for Mamdani, as he gets ready to run New York City, will be keeping his base together, Adams said.
“He’s fucking King Arthur,” the political consultant told me. “He pulled the sword from the stone, and now he has to unite the whole fucking kingdom.”
Well, nobody wants NYC to go down the tubes because they don’t favor Mamdani (I am not keen on him as I think he’s somewhat antisemitic); we should want the poorest people in NYC to have a better situation. So I have some hope that Mamdami’s plan will work, though I highly doubt it. On the other hand, if it doesn’t work, it will hurt the Democrats by making everyone think that the party favors an unworkable form of socialism. So think of NYC—and Seattle—as experiments in Democratic socialism, and hope that they don’t fail to the extent of damaging the Democratic party.
*The CDC has apparently changed its website to now reflect the views of RFK, Jr. that vaccines are connected to autism.
Career scientists at the agency responsible for information about vaccine safety and autism had no prior knowledge about the changes to the website and were not consulted, according to five agency officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Before the Wednesday update, the CDC webpage stated that studies have shown that there is “no link” between vaccines and developing autism, and that “no links” have been found between any vaccine ingredients and the disorder, according to archived webpages.
The current CDC page says that studies supporting a link between vaccines and autism “have been ignored by health authorities.”
It states: “The claim ‘vaccines do not cause autism’ is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism.”
The revisions show that the “CDC cannot currently be trusted as a scientific voice,” said Demetre Daskalakis, who formerly led the agency’s center responsible for respiratory viruses and immunizations. He was one of three senior leaders who resigned in August because of what they said was the politicization of science at the agency. “The weaponization of the CDC voice by validating false claims on official websites confirms what we have been saying,” he said.
Go look at the site yourself. Perhaps like me, you’ll find it appalling. The page is here if you want to look for yourself. Here’s a small screenshot with the main points:
Let us be clear: not only is there no evidence suggesting that vaccines cause autism, but there is evidence that vaccines DO NOT cause autism.
*Former Harvard President Larry Summers, who decided to step out of the public eye after the government revealed cozy emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein (including asking Epstein for dating advice), has stopped teaching at Harvard, even though he’s still affiliated with the University.
Larry Summers won’t finish out the semester teaching at Harvard University, heeding calls that he step away from the classroom after the recent release of correspondence between the academic and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Summers, a former Harvard president, isn’t scheduled to teach any courses next semester, a spokesperson for the economist said Wednesday night. Summers also will take immediate leave from his position as a director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School.
“His co-teachers will complete the remaining three class sessions of the courses he has been teaching with them this semester,” the spokesperson said.
A university representative confirmed Wednesday that Summers had communicated his intention to the school.
Summers is one of several high-profile people whose communications with Epstein were detailed in the more than 20,000 documents lawmakers made public last week. Being mentioned in the emails isn’t an indication of wrongdoing. Their inclusion raised concerns about Summers’ relationship with the disgraced financier, as well as the nature of his relationship with a female former mentee whom Summers discussed in correspondence with Epstein.
Earlier this week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) said Summers shouldn’t be trusted to teach classes at the university or advise the government, saying the economist displayed “monumentally bad judgement” in his correspondence with Epstein.
Summers said Monday he would step back from public commitments as part of an effort “to rebuild trust and repair relationships” with the people closest to him, but would continue to fulfill his teaching obligations as a Harvard professor.
The removal from teaching is the first step in what Harvard will do if it decides to fire Summers. So far what I know of his connections with Epstein does not amount to a firing offense: he’s acted hamhandedly, but hasn’t done anything illegal. But all the emails about the l’affaire Epstein have not yet been released, and if there’s anything suggesting criminal behavior, he’ll be gone faster than a snowball in Hell.
*RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES! (This news is so fresh that it wasn’t even in Wikipedia yesterday afternoon.) Wisdom the Laysan albatross, the world’s oldest confirmed living bird (at least 69, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates 75) and oldest banded bird, has once again returned to the Midway Atoll. She doesn’t always produce a chick when she returns, but keep your fingers crossed. Here’s a bit about this beloved bird from Wikipedia:
Wisdom was first tagged in 1956 as #Z333 at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge by Chandler Robbins, a senior scientist at the USGS.At that time, she was estimated to be five years old—the earliest age that the Laysan albatross reaches sexual maturity—corresponding to a hatching date of the 1950-51 breeding season at the very latest. Birds are banded so that their populations can be monitored and individuals’ longevity, behavior and migration patterns can be studied.
In 2006, John Klavitter, a United States Fish and Wildlife Service biologist at Midway, gave Wisdom her name while he was replacing her band.
The USGS has tracked Wisdom since she was first tagged and estimated that Wisdom has flown over 3,000,000 miles (4,800,000 km) since 1956 (approximately 120 times the circumference of the Earth). To accommodate her longevity, the USGS has replaced her tag six times.
Laysan Albatrosses lay one egg per year, and usually have monogamous mates for life.[9] Smithsonian speculated that, due to Wisdom’s unusual longevity, she has had to find several successive mates in order to continue breeding.[10][11] Biologists estimated that Wisdom has laid some 30–40 eggs in her lifetime and that she has at least 30–36 chicks.
Here’s an Instagram post and a tweet from People Who Know:
Fingers crossed that she’ll produce another chick!
Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili’s environment has changed:
Hili: What’s this?
Andrzej: A new cover for the old sofa.
In Polish:
Hili: Co to jest?
Ja: Nowe nakrycie na starą sofę.
*******************
From CinEmma:
From America’s Cultural Decline Into Idiocy:
From Wholesome Memes:
From the redoubtable Emma Hilton, giving her take on the Roughgarden and Veale article I posted about yesterday. Emma summarizes it much better than I did:
This article is bonkers. @Evolutionistrue
(1) Define sex accurately (anchored to gamete type).
(2) Introduce sex-changing fish and heat-determined turtles as if that negates (1)
(3) Declare that a penis is part of your gender, not your sex as if that is supported by (1) and… https://t.co/BP44TPQCa8
— Emma Hilton (@FondOfBeetles) November 20, 2025
From Steve Stewart-Williams, who’s writing a book on sex differences. It will almost surely be a good one:
“A vocal minority see positing sex differences as more than a mere faux pas or difference of opinion, and view it instead as a moral transgression. For individuals in this camp, the idea that the sexes are naturally identical has become a sacred belief.”
[Link at end of thread.] pic.twitter.com/Jyth8qyO2k
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) November 18, 2025
From Larry the Cat via Simon, who says he’d never kick a d*g unless it attacked him:
Good. https://t.co/ovtUZGvZDi
— Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) November 18, 2025
From Malcolm, who captions this “idiocy”. Whatever it is, it’s scary as hell. Sound up.
Breathtaking cycling featspic.twitter.com/3YL1zyvvXG
— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) November 5, 2025
One from my feed; you MUST have the sound up on this one:
He took courage by hiding behind his mother and started to roooooaaarrrr. 😂
ai pic.twitter.com/60TB7PKpmX— The Figen (@TheFigen_) November 19, 2025
One I reposted from The Auschwitz Memorial:
This French Jewish boy was gassed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz. He was 7 years old. https://t.co/EEdulFgiz1
— Jerry Coyne (@Evolutionistrue) November 21, 2025
And two posts from Dr. Cobb. First, the world’s largest flower. What a treat to find it in the wild!
Earlier on the expedition we found the most beautiful flower, and here, my friends, is the biggest: Rafflesia arnoldi seen in full bloom today in the Sumatran jungle. This is the largest flower on earth and one of the greatest wonders of the natural world.
— Chris Thorogood (@christhorogood.bsky.social) 2025-11-20T09:39:59.620Z
I saw many of the Nazca lines in Peru flying over them in a small plane, but I didn’t see no kitties!
Part 190 of 200 in historically interesting things to inspire your ttrpg dndNazca Kitty Glyph discovered dates to 200 B.C. to 100 BC
— Oregon 🕎🎲 (@oregonthedm.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T02:24:56.105Z
Gingerbread Cookie Day seems an appropriate time to mention that here in Asheville the annual gingerbread house competition just finished. The entries are always spectacular. https://wlos.com/news/local/winners-2025-national-gingerbread-house-competition-announced-adult-teen-youth-child-omni-grove-park-inn-holiday-community-fun
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize. -Voltaire, philosopher (21 Nov 1694-1778)
That is not from Voltaire. It’s recent, from a white nationalist and Holocaust denier.
https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/to-learn-who-rules-over-you-quote-wrongly-attributed-to-voltaire-idUSL1N2UE2LM/
Thank you for spotting that.
How about this one instead?
Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. -Voltaire, philosopher (21 Nov 1694-1778)
Whoa, that’s an impossibly large amount of guilt for everyone. I expect in the original language it’s something like “the good he could have done”, or the context limits it in some other manner..
The only original source I’ve been able to track down for this is:
Un ministre est excusable du mal qu’il fait, lorsque le gouvernail de l’État est forcé dans sa main par les tempêtes; mais dans le calme il est coupable de tout le bien qu’il ne fait pas.
“A minister [of state] is excusable for the evil that he does, when the rudder of the State in his hands is forced by storms; but in the calm he is guilty of all the good that he does not do.”
Another interesting Voltaire quotation I came across:
Je voulus cent fois me tuer, mais j’aimais
encore la vie. Cette faiblesse ridicule est peut-être un de nos
penchants les plus funestes; car y a-t-il rien de plus sot que de
vouloir porter continuellement un fardeau qu’on veut toujours jeter par terre; d’avoir son être en horreur, et de tenir à son être; enfin de
caresser le serpent qui nous dévore, jusqu’à ce qu’il nous ait mangé le coeur?
“I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still love life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our most fatal inclinations; for is there anything more foolish than to continually want to carry a burden that one always wants to throw to the ground; to loathe one’s own being, yet cling to it; finally, to caress the serpent that devours us, until it has eaten our heart?”
Got it. The “good” is confined to the area of one’s particular powers of action. Fair enough.
Good spot there FK. Like those memes with a picture and a quote, usually in cursive. So often wrong!
My default is “Nup” every time I see one.
D.A.
NYC
I saw that quote on a site that attracts a lot of Holocaust deniers, who also often believe bizarre conspiracies about Jews (I didn’t realize this site would attract these people and I no longer go there).
Their thinking is: I’m not allowed to criticize Jews (such as questioning the Holocaust) and still be socially acceptable. That must mean that Jews are running the government.
Hence the quote. The Holocaust denier who came up with the expression probably attributed to Voltaire to lend gravitas.
I saw that quote several times in that site, and at one point looked into it.
The only thing better than Mamdani’s complete failure in governing as a Socialist would be if he turned out to be a pragmatist and the DSA turned on him.
Did you see the press conference after his meeting with Trump today? Mamdani went into the lion’s den and came out with Trump kissing his ass. That was surreal.
My hope is that the DSA¹ Democrats and the MAGA¹ Republicans jointly fracture their respective parties, and that the pieces then rearrange themselves into two new coalitions². I wouldn’t bet on it, but I see no plausible positive alternatives (but plenty of negative ones).
. . . . .
¹ or similar
² maybe based on social class or wealth or sanity — something that’s mainly real rather than feelz, resentment, wishful thinking, and/or delusion.
Thanks for displaying the latest corruption of the CDC by junior kennedy. Pediatrician Paul Offitt has covered rfkjr’s lies and misrepresentations for years (including this one just yesterday) on the free substack “Beyond the Noise” at url
https://pauloffit.substack.com/
You can subscribe to receive it regularly to your email inbox and also watch a TWiV video version which is a nice 15-minute conversation between Dr. Offitt and virologist Dr. Vincent Racaniello that appears a week or two later.
In addition to the danger to individuals who are confused by this misinformation, there is a larger effect if enough people fail to be vaccinated, herd immunity cannot be achieved, especially for those viruses that require a huge percentage of the susceptible population to achieve immunity. The decision on vaccination is NOT simply a self-regarding act.
Vaccination is never compulsory, though, not for civilians anyway, the way it is compulsory to hook your toilet to a septic or sewerage system rather than letting it flush directly into the stream your downstream neighbour drinks from. So there is some laxity in the expectation that we protect others by vaccinating ourselves, that there isn’t with sewage disposal. To maintain high vaccination rates we rely mostly on self-interest, not on a duty to protect others because this isn’t reliable in diverse pluralistic societies except with the state’s threat of force, as with sewage disposal.
Herd immunity is often misunderstood. If a vaccine-preventable disease isn’t contagious, e.g., tetanus, herd immunity is irrelevant. In contagious disease, the fraction that has to be vaccinated to prevent propagation of outbreaks varies with the inherent R value, the number of new cases that an index case will propagate to, on average, in a non-immune population. In other words, the penetration of vaccination that reduces the observed R to < 1, causing any new outbreaks among the susceptible to die out. The higher the inherent R, the greater the fraction that needs to be vaccinated to prevent epidemics. If measles vaccination uptake falls below 95% and a case of wild measles is introduced, there will be large outbreaks among the unvaccinated, probably infecting 100% of them unless tribes of unvaccinated children can be isolated from other tribes. But that doesn’t mean the vaccinated are less protected as a result, (if the vaccine is a good one, i.e., almost as good as natural immunity.*) Even with highly contagious measles you don’t rely on your neighbour’s altruism, or compliance with a mandate, to be protected. Just get vaccinated yourself if you can. Even if heavy exposure to measles might overwhelm vaccine immunity in some children, the consequence of this usually mild disease has to be balanced against the civil libertarian objections to mandatory vaccination. It’s not smallpox. While herd immunity is a useful by-product of a mass vaccination campaign, its benefit shouldn’t be exaggerated.
The vaccines that have enjoyed high acceptance are those that provide high and lifelong protection to the individual from symptomatic disease. People aren’t entirely stupid for being sceptical about Covid vaccines which offer neither. MMR is resisted irrationally for other reasons, has been for many years now. Ironically, for vaccines that are only modestly effective, like influenza and Covid, vaccination rates have to be very high to get R < 1, yet these are the very vaccines that people don’t judge to be worth getting! Nursing unions have successfully resisted attempts by hospitals to require their members be vaccinated to protect their elderly patients from being winnowed during flu epidemics.
In general, it’s still worth being vaccinated for everything even if nobody else is.
(*For an example of an outbreak of mumps that occurred in a highly vaccinated population under unusually intense exposure conditions, look up the Bergen County outbreak. Cases were milder than would be expected in an unvaccinated population of adolescent boys of yesteryear.)
For once I won’t quibble about the math(s). But even if I and my friends and loved ones are all fully protected, we still have to live with the short- and long-term social dysfunction provoked by a large outbreak. AIUI, Samoa was a good example of this. Whether such an outbreak rises to the level of an extreme public health emergency is a judgement call; as was the cholera-filled Thames until the 1858 Great Stink invaded Parliament.
Politics is the art of the possible, Barbara. We showed during Covid that we will go only so far in suffering any inconvenience to protect others, and that is not very far. Here I’m referring not so much to vaccination as to masking. Once it became clear that 1) young healthy people were not at great risk of dying and 2) ordinary loose-fitting surgical masks might theoretically prevent the wearer from generating the range of droplets that included aerosols but wouldn’t protect him from entraining aerosolized virus himself, mask mandates became compulsory altruism. Only the people who score high on docility and agreeableness accepted them with good grace, and many of them became censorious zealots, which hardened the refuseniks. It’s no surprise that vaccine mandates considered solely to protect vulnerable others were so bitterly opposed. (Vaccinate my schoolchildren with “the experimental jab” just to protect someone else’s granny? No dice.) That’s just the way we are. Smallpox would have put the fear of God in people. They would’ve lined up to get (re-)vaccinated, and did.
Identifying the fact of herd immunity made us think that people would jump at the chance to participate in it just because it existed. No. If you have a child with an immune deficiency who can’t have MMR, that’s your problem, we say. By the same token, if your unvaccinated child (who could have been vaccinated safely) gets measles and (rarely in America) dies, not my problem, I say in return.
It didn’t help that much of the laptop class hid at home, outsourced their risk to the working-class “essential” workers, went on Amazon shopping sprees, and picked up new hobbies. Somebody mysteriously delivered all those packages to the door, shipped our food, kept the lights on and the sewage pipes flowing. One group faced their anxiety because they lacked the luxury of comfortable salaries awarded for staying away from work. Many of them contracted COVID in the pre-vaccine days, learned that it wasn’t that bad for the younger and healthy among them, and they moved on with their lives to the degree they were allowed. The other group, mostly risk-averse by disposition, continued at home marinating in media-hyped fears that weren’t credible even then. Which group, when they were ready to emerge from hiding, would then make authoritarian demands that others be vaccinated—regardless of age, health, or infection history—or be denied access to public accommodations, universities, and jobs?
Many of them might be horrified to reflect that they share much in common with Trump: chiefly, an inability publicly to admit that they were wrong. But, Science, or something or other. And we didn’t even get a Canterbury Tales out of it.
“Bergen County” must have been a false recovered memory. I attach this article because what you find by Googling mumps and Bergen County is an outbreak in the county jail. Anyway:
The outbreak was heavily centred in Brooklyn and, OK, one county in New Jersey, so maybe I wasn’t totally wrong. The affected population, including the index case, was highly vaccinated and, contrary to expectations from herd immunity, almost all the cases occurred in vaccinated boys, with secondary cases among vaccinated siblings at home.
Well said Leslie. You’ve got the cred (I am an amateur and med school drop out) but what I learned from covid is the— extent— of misunderstanding in the population of things like…well even exponentiality.. but certainly differing R0 spreads of differing infectious diseases.
– As well as the difference between respiratory spread v. fomite spread. And even randomness as a math concept (I was a trader once) but …I expect that. Math is hard — whereas diseases … people kinda have a vested interest in.
More horrific was the ignorance in the media whom people rely on for info on vaccines, etc. (Paul Offit et al are specialists talking mainly to very educated people like, well, readers and loudmouths like us at WEIT! 🙂
D.A.
NYC
“Might be antisemitic”. You kid.
Mandami founded a chapter of SJP in high school, did rap video for indicted terrorists and never shuts up about Israel. Just last night a mob attacked synagogue goers on the U.E.S. — he took the side …..of the mob.
Can you FIND me a — more — antisemitic elected official in the US this century?
Further, and nearly as bad… he’s a Third World Socialist. (Which is a political “thing” from the 60s70s, I don’t mean he is a “socialist who comes from the Third World”).
See my: https://democracychronicles.org/forgetabaht-it/
There is simply NO good aspect to him.
D.A.
NYC
Upper East Side ?
Thanks for posting about Emma Hilton and Steve Stuart-Williams. I went to the Hilton tweet and clicked thru one of the comments – it led to a series of articles by Agustín Fuentes, Nathan Lents, Ambika Kamath, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Joan Roughgarden, and others on http://www.prosocial.world
The article by Roughgarden is extraordinary. Like that ridiculous nonsense critiqued by our host yesterday, this one embraces the sex binary defined by gamete size and argues this is scientifically, legally, and culturally the only defensible stance. But Roughgarden then pivots to call all non-gamete sex differences “gender” and argues this is the way to convince non-scientists that other animals have gender, that gender evolves, and that gender variation is a normal part of nature.
https://www.prosocial.world/posts/sex-gender-diversity-and-evolution-introduction
This is the sleight-of-hand that will allow Roughgarden and other “trans” people to claim to have meaningfully changed gender by altering their physical appearance through hormonal and surgical treatment. Critics will no longer be able to push back with “humans can’t change sex” because these secondary sex traits are by Roughgarden’s definition not sex – they are gender. Hormonal and surgical alteration of breasts, genitals, and other physical traits lead to human gender changes that are just like gender changes in clownfish, and are just as meaningful and natural. This is Roughgarden’s public policy project: to circumscribe the definition of sex and sex differences into such a small space that it can be drowned in a bathtub.
Roughgarden’s scientific project is more sinister (though perhaps less physically damaging to vulnerable autistic gay children): the destruction of sexual selection theory, which Roughgarden calls “the mastodon in the room…featuring bad genes, selfishness, competition, conflict, coercion, ownership, and deceit [and] gratuitous and inaccurate disparaging of gender diversity [such that it] is theoretically flawed, doesn’t fit the facts, and is a political project that reinforces genetic classism.”
Roughgarden proposes wholesale replacement of sexual selection theory with something called social selection, and argues that “the social selection framework, rather than the sexual selection framework, provides correct explanations.”
Not true explanations, rather “correct” explanations.
The citation is an article in press in the journal Biology of Sex Differences. The front page describes the journal this way:
“Biology of Sex Differences is unlike any other scientific journal: articles focus on sex differences in all aspects of an individual or organism. Everything from molecules to behavior and from studies of cellular function to clinical research studies are reported in this journal. Biology of Sex Differences aims to improve understanding of basic biological principles mediating sex differences and foster development of therapeutic and diagnostic tools that are sex-dependent. To the extent that gender influences biological outcomes, this journal also is interested in research addressing gender differences. Articles are expected to report results that directly compare sex/gender differences in the statistical analysis.”
I’m sure the editors will be surprised to learn that one of their authors has suggested to call ~all of the journal subject matter “gender”, and that the journal name should simply be Biology of Gender. [insert eye roll emoji here]
I hope Jerry might be interested to look into Roughgarden’s scientific project. It’s a threat to ~all future work on sexually selected traits in humans and other organisms. And worse in some ways than the extended evolutionary synthesis because lots of non-scientists will be interested in “social selection theory”.
I likewise appreciated the Emma Hilton post. Some thoughts (not directed at you, Mike):
Trans and gender activists don’t need sound science: cast doubt on the consensus and let emotion take over from there. Fairness, equality, opportunity. Prohibit discrimination. End hate. Only a bigot could be opposed. Judges and legislators are the ultimate audience: everyone else a useful tool or an adversary. Once gender identity is codified, then the activists get their supposedly denied rights and subject to litigation and penalty those of us who promulgate “hate” in violation of those “rights.” The goal is to effectively stifle opposition to the gender movement—both political and scientific—with threats of bankrupting federal enforcement actions, penalties, and civil lawsuits. Legal action aside, federal research dollars will be steered appropriately, and all the greengrocers in lab coats will post the requisite signs on the wall.
Many people now in the trenches who oppose unreasonable trans and “gender” demands will effectively neuter their own scientific work and rational advocacy because they will continue to vote for the politicians who side with the activists. The activists know this: despite their shrieking, they ultimately see their scientific opponents as bothersome-but-ultimately political allies. The left-leaning politicians also know they can count on the votes of most of the “reasonable” people; it is the activists who will bolt the party and challenge the primary, so the politicians’ vote accordingly on relevant legislation—no matter that the public opinion polls show the politician on the “wrong” side of a 70-30 issue even within his or her own party.
In the United States, the formerly Democratic House of Representatives passed the “Equality Act” twice with zero defections and have again submitted the legislation in 2025. The Republican-run Senate refused to take up the bill after the earlier House passages. (Divided government has its merits.) This act, which is still a top priority of the party, would insert “gender identity” into all federal law that currently addresses sex discrimination. The media will tell you “conservatives claim” that this would allow—and in many cases mandate—males in female sports, males in female prisons, males in female locker rooms and showers, coerced usage of pronouns in the workplace lest an employer face legal peril for a hostile environment, etc. Conservatives “claim.” Uh huh. Then it must not be true, right? One wonders why the activists then push for such legislation at all.
The euphemistic Equality Act remains a top priority of the Democratic Party. Note below all the milquetoast generalities with which few reasonable people would disagree and the intimations that only the vile oppose it. (Recall these tactics from supporters of the Patriot Act?) Then ask yourself the detailed questions that the “moderates” in the party refuse to publicly address.
I understand our political choices are mostly awful, but can we drop the conceit that one side steadfastly supports science while the other undermines it?
https://takano.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/takano-merkley-lead-reintroduction-of-historic-equality-act-to-ban-discrimination-against-lgbtq-americans
Doug: That first paragraph you wrote in the Covid thread that expired (the “laptop class”…) is so true. Your description really nails it.
Roughgarden has been going on about how sexual selection isn’t a thing for quite a few years, though I thought it had subsided. A number of years ago she got an article into Science that promoted that very idea, and quite a few of us wrote responses in opposition. The responses did get published, at least, and I don’t think any serious scholars in the field take her idea seriously, or at least I hope not. The “social selection” term is also pretty old, originated with Mary Jane West-Eberhard long before Roughgarden coopted it, and, to paraphrase The Princess Bride, does not mean what she thinks it means.
Thanks Marlene. I didn’t know this was such an old idea. Roughgarden may have been just a little too early with social selection theory in that 2006 Science paper. Even the 2012 review (doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0282) predates the intense transification of discourse. Now that the “trans” political project has taken flight, the time may be ripe for Roughgarden’s science project to succeed too. Ten years ago I would never have guessed that genderism would capture the academy as it has, so I no longer underestimate the willingness of academics to be bullied into silence or acquiescence. But I hope you’re right and I’m wrong.
Joan visited Omaha in 2009 to speak at local church and give a talk at Creighton. I was asked to give a talk shortly afterward in counterpoint. I perhaps wouldn’t say exactly the same things today, 16 years later, but if anyone would like I would happily send a PDF of my PowerPoint. It does confirm Marlene’s point that this has been a thing for Joan for quite a long time. (tedburk@creighton.edu) Marlene is therein, I hope, given appropriate credit for her great work in this area.
Björk was born on this day in 1965 whose voice I’m very fond of.
Edit: boy, was that phrased strangely