Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
A while back there was some discussion about whether people could claim that they were members of a race/ethnicity other than the one they were born into. The paradigmatic example was Rachel Dolezal, a white woman in Spokane, Washington who claimed to be black, and altered her appearance to match her claims. She worked her … Continue reading Why can’t you be transracial?
This event was more or less inevitable given that organizations can allow people to change their genders (a social construct) but won’t allow them to change their race (another social construct). That is, many people and groups approve of “transgenderism” but strongly oppose “transracialism”. It’s a mystery to me why, if you feel you’re of … Continue reading Chicago cop, citing gender precedent and seeking affirmative-action benefits, prevented from changing race to person of color from Caucasian
When my colleague, coauthor, and conspirator in crime Luana Maroja, a professor of evolutionary biology at Williams College, was teaching a short summer course at The University of Austin, she was interviewed on video about sex and gender issues by Peter Boghossian, also teaching at the U of A. The interview, below, speaks for itself: … Continue reading Peter Boghossian interviews Luana Maroja (and a note on “transracialism”)
UPDATE: As the Guardian reports, there is a controversy about what really happened in the “cat incident” reported below. The school, which initially said this (see below), The school, which does not dispute that the incident happened, said it was committed to inclusive education, but would be “reviewing our processes to ensure such events do … Continue reading The vexing problem of “otherkins”
I’m getting really tired of social media pile-ons, especially when the victim isn’t really guilty of a gross transgression. One of these is happening now, and the object is—once again—Richard Dawkins. The reason: his rather awkward attempt to discuss transphobia and transracialism on Twitter, which isn’t the place for this kind of discussion. (I suppose … Continue reading The Godless Spellchecker defends Dawkins against transphobia
The title of Richard Dawkins’s new article in Areo (below) is one I pretty much agree with, and in his analysis he covers a lot of ground. His main point, though, is that determining one’s “race”, which is said to be a social construct with no biological basis (that part isn’t true) is far more … Continue reading Richard Dawkins in Areo on race and sex
Reading time: However long it takes. (I hate these “reading time” indications, since they steer people away from long pieces and individuals vary tremendously in their speed of reading.) *************** The eminently sensible Cathy Young has a pretty balanced article in Bulwark on trans athletes, dealing with what criteria we should use to allow transexual … Continue reading Cathy Young on trans athletes
The question of how we compare someone like Rachel Dolezal, who assumed the identity of an African-American although she was white, with someone like Caitlyn Jenner, who transitioned from a male to a female, is a philosophically interesting ethical question that, unfortunately, has been declared almost taboo. If you even raise it, as Richard Dawkins … Continue reading A new comparison of transgender and transracial identities
