An excellent article on how liberals should address transgender issues

September 28, 2017 • 11:15 am

Helen Pluckrose, whose essays I’ve highlighted several times, has turned out a number of superb articles on how genuine progressives should deal with the political madness around us. (Areo describes her as “a researcher in the humanities who focuses on late medieval/early modern religious writing for and about women. She is critical of postmodernism and cultural constructivism which she sees as currently dominating the humanities”). Now she’s teamed up with James A. Lindsay to turn out a remarkably clear-thinking and empathic essay on how progressives like us (you are one, right?) should deal with the rise of the transgender rights movement. The essay, “An argument for a liberal and rational approach to transgender rights and inclusion,” is also in Areo, and impressed me with how right it was.  They set up the issue this way:

The rights and social inclusion of trans people is a heated topic right now and, as usual in our present atmosphere, the most extreme views take center stage and completely polarize the issue. On the one hand, we have extreme social conservatives and gender critical radical feminists who claim that trans identity is a delusion and that the good of society depends on opposing it at every turn. On the other, we have extreme trans activists who claim not only that trans people straightforwardly are the gender they experience themselves to be but that everyone else must be compelled to accept this, use corresponding language, and be fully inclusive of trans people in their choice of sexual partners.

The problem is that most of us are not extremely socially conservative, radically feminist, or intersectional trans activists, and our ethics do not align with any of these rationales or approaches. Nevertheless, people are pressured to take a “yes or no” position in relation to both trans rights and the scientific reality of trans identity. This essay is aimed at everyone, transgender and trans-skeptical, who consider themselves to be liberal (in the broadest sense). Such people value gender equality, racial equality, and LGBT equality alongside freedom of speech and belief and a rational, evidence-based approach to the world.

Their general conclusion is that we should respect transgender people’s rights and identities and, as they say, “let them do what they want.” The only areas where, they argue, we needn’t accept transgender claims at full face value are these (my characterization, not quotes):

  • The claims that sex and gender are pure social constructs lacking a biological basis should not be accepted prima facie. They cite evidence showing that transgender people may have biological features that confer gender dysphoria. This, of course, shouldn’t affect how we treat trans people at all; but it affects whether or not we must accept what they assert. In fact, that’s the only argument Pluckrose and Lindsay have with the transgender movement: the claim that we must to believe all its assertions. They are in full agreement with the need to treat trans people as equals, accommodate their special needs, and be sympathetic to their feeling that they may be outliers.
  • The authors are strongly opposed to allowing children before puberty to choose a gender and then undergo medical treatment to facilitate changing their gender.
  • The “bathroom” issue. Pluckrose and Lindsay say that the concern about women being exposed to trans women with penises (and the fear of assault) should be taken seriously, but they then say it’s way overblown, as there’s no evidence this is a real issue, and we can always arrange bathrooms so it becomes a total non-problem. We have some mixed-sex bathrooms in my building, and nobody finds them problematic.
  • The claim by some trans people that straight men who won’t have sex with trans women are being “transphobic”. As the authors say, if you’re a man and don’t want to sleep with someone who looks female but also has a penis, that’s your choice and you shouldn’t be demonized for it. The same goes for women who don’t want to have sex with a trans man. As they say, such attitudes constitute “. . . dangerous, illiberal nonsense reminiscent of the most intrusive forms of conversion therapy. People do not have to justify not being attracted to any set of genitalia or not being attracted to trans people. No-one has to justify their attractions at all.”
  • Excessive language policing by trans people about the proper use of pronouns, particularly those people who claim there are up to 114 genders, and the “genderfluid” people whose identities—and pronouns—change over hours or days. They have no objection to calling someone what they want to be called, but do object to a form of gender activism that “appears to many like an unappealing combination of ideologizing and attention seeking.”
  • The issue of sports, especially when it comes to trans women competing against biologically-born women. Trans women may have a natural advantage based on developement before any medical intervention, and defining people by hormone titer may not solve that. The solution, say Pluckrose and Lindsay, may rest in having to develop “trans” categories in addition to men’s and women’s sports.

I’m emphasizing here where Lindsay and Pluckrose are at odds with the most radical forms of the transgender movement, but their attitude is generally one of empathy and sympathy. They end like this:

The solution to this is relatively simple from a liberal perspective: Let adults do what they want (also deal with practical issues as well as possible as they arise and let emerging science inform decisions we make as we come to know more).

For trans activists, this requires accepting that they cannot dictate the language that other people use, the beliefs they have about gender, or who they have sex with. These attitudes can be painful for trans people, but other marginalized identities slowly gained acceptance, and the world seems ready to do that with trans people, though less fast and to a lesser degree than trans activists would want. It is true, whether trans is innate or otherwise (and more so if it’s innate), that trans people face a harder-than-average lot with things. They are statistically rare, and they challenge largely bedrock notions of sex and gender for most people. Their dating options will be more limited than average. Some people will remain uncomfortable with them, almost certainly, merely because of who they are. It sucks, and we can care and help—and we can encourage people to grow up around them and offer counselling to manage remaining pettiness—but ultimately, being trans is harder than not being trans, and it is not going to be made easier by “progressive” attempts to bully people.

For anti-trans people, this requires accepting that trans identity is none of their business. If the problem is authoritarianism or pretentious ideologizing rather than gender identity, authoritarianism and pretentious ideologizing are the grounds for avoiding or criticizing an individual rather than their gender identity. The problem with authoritarians and gender ideologues expands way beyond the gender identity issue and is rife within both the SocJus left and far right generally. Reasonable people manage to be critical of intersectional feminism, however, without being hostile to women and of critical race theory without antagonism towards non-white people. It may seem as though the Venn diagram which would show trans people and trans activists is almost a single circle but this is largely wrong because most trans people aren’t activists. They simply want to identify as their gender and not draw attention to the fact that it is also trans.

A liberal attitude on the part of trans people requires accepting that other people may or may not support your gender identity. If you are discriminated against or intimidated, you should be able to expect protection from a liberal society. Of course, reasonable activism to ensure this protection can be engaged in and supported by liberals generally. A liberal attitude towards trans people is the same as a liberal attitude towards everyone else: treat them as individuals. If they turn out to be pretentious, authoritarian ideologues, they can be responded to as such perfectly reasonably and ethically. If they turn out not to be any of that, there is no justification for negative generalizations and collective blame.

I’d call that remarkably thoughtful—and liberal. This article is a Professor Ceiling Cat Must-Read Selection™.

h/t: Grania

A new critique of Cordelia Fine’s “Testosterone Rex”

September 28, 2017 • 9:45 am

The more I think about it, the more appalled I am that Cordelia Fine’s polemic, Testosterone Rex, won the Royal Society Book Prize for popular science writing. Just two of the five judges (Fortey and Gilbert) are practicing scientists, one is a novelist, and one is a broadcaster. Claudia Hammond, also a broadcaster, has also written popular psychology books and also lectures on health and psychology in London (Wikipedia gives her bona fides as “She was educated at Sussex University in applied psychology, and Surrey University, where she gained a MSc in health psychology, carrying out research into doctor–patient communication in a breast cancer unit”). Gilbert’s defense of the award in light of a negative review of Fine’s book is lame. (Further, several readers pointed out that he and Fine both got PhDs in psychology at University College London within a year of each other, so he may well have known her: a cause for recusal).

My own preference would be to have science books judged by working scientists who are also popular writers. Yes, Fortey is one of those, but my ideal panel would include no broadcasters or popularizers who didn’t actually practice science or at least did so recently. I’d include people like Steve Jones, Brian Cox, Olivia Judson, Nick Lane, and Alice Roberts. While a few journalists can judge both the science and the writing in science writing (Carl Zimmer is a good example), broadcasters and many popularizers aren’t good people for giving out science book awards. After all, the minimal criterion for such awards is that the science in a book be sound.

That’s not the case with Testosterone Rex.  As I’ve said several times, while the book has good bits, especially its calling out shoddy research, Fine can’t bring herself to call out shoddy research that supports her book’s hypothesis: that there are no innate biological differences between the male and female brains or bodies caused by hormones. (She’s made her living on the thesis that there are no evolved genetic differences between men and women.) Further, many of the “critiques” that Fine leveled against previous research on sex—including her claim that in humans male variance in reproductive success is equal to that of females (WRONG), as well as her denying of the importance of sexual selection in humans and other species (WRONG)—bespeak a deep confirmation bias derived from The Sexual Blank Slate.

Now I haven’t read the other books in contention, but I have read Fine’s, and it’s hard to believe that this deserves a prize, simply on the grounds of its scientific weaknesses. Why did it win? It’s hard to conclude anything other than that it appealed to the ideological current in biology that deems finding innate differences in behavior, morphology, or preferences between men and women (or ethnic groups) not only a flawed endeavor, but one that promotes sexism (or racism). Most biologists are leftists, of course, and the “both sexes are inherently the same” trope, flawed as it is, appeals to many progressives. But as I’ve said before, any such differences should have no bearing on the moral and social equality of men and women. It’s dangerous to base your arguments for equality on biological facts, because those facts might turn on you. The moral arguments, in contrast, won’t.

A new post on a website called Yeyo’s Corner, “Why sexual selection matters and why Cordelia fine is wrong“, lists many of the familiar errors in her book, and also concludes that the prize was awarded not for science, but for an ideology congenial to the judges. I’m a bit hesitant to highlight this essay, but only because the author is anonymous and the writing is rather dire, with many run-on sentences and bits that seem like a stream of consciousness. (I suspect that English isn’t the writer’s native language.) But the scientific critique is sound, and Yeyo, whoever he/she is, isn’t afraid to call out the Royal Society for awarding the book prize on grounds of politics instead of science. Here are a few excerpts:

In her quest to deny that biology is responsible for sex differences in behavior Cordelia Fine has a huge advantage, she benefits from that fact (which the award has made clear) that there are certain areas of research where science doesn’t work as usual. With academia being overwhelmingly liberal and leftist there is a clear tendency to favor certain hypotheses over others regarding what causes human behavior. Nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to race or sex differences. That there are genetic differences between the sexes or different human populations that could explain the different outcomes that we see on a societal level is simply indigestible to many academics.

To some degree this is understandable, there’s no dearth of misogynist and racist alt-right trolls who, instead of acknowledging that huge individual variation should mean that nobody deserves to be discriminated against based on gender or race, propagate for ending women’s suffrage and to reinstate Jim Crow. One just has to spend 5 minutes reading certain PUA and alt-right blogs to understand where the reluctance to touch these topics comes from. But it would also be a mistake to give the alt-right monopoly on these questions and better to acknowledge them and emphasize that variation within groups means no individual deserves to be discriminated against on basis of group averages.  The shock of Trump winning the presidency appears to have reinforced this already existing taboo even further. Therefore, in large parts of academia, any biological explanation will always be disregarded, at least as long as there is an alternative way to explain the data.

. . . Gender blank slatism is an exception to this rule however, no matter how many wild assumptions, unsupported claims or ad hoc hypotheses are needed to explain away new incriminating data and why the annoying sex differences are so stubbornly persistent (even in countries who desperately try to engineer them away), the social constructionist theory still reigns supreme in the humanities and most of the social sciences. As Geoffrey Miller pointed out, no gender feminist he’s ever met has been able to coherently answer the question “What empirical findings would convince you that psychological sex differences evolved?” (the answer is of course that there are none), because no matter the finding there is always a rationalization, however unlikely, that will ensure that gender blank slatism remains unscathed. And there is nobody more trusted than Cordelia Fine to provide them with the mental gymnastics needed to keep their faith intact.

Pretty much all of Cordelia Fine’s writings are exercises in creating these so called ad hoc hypotheses. Testosterone Rex has already been critically reviewed by Jerry Coyne, Gregory Cochran, Stuart Ritchie and Robert King. [JAC: King’s review is the most incisive.] But in light of the recent award by The Royal Society I felt that a thorough review of sexual selection and its biological underpinnings might be in place, just to highlight what kind of book the world’s oldest existing science academy nowadays considers worthy of a scientific award.

You can read the science bit yourself; I’ll just jump to Yeyo’s conclusion:

If Sam Gilbert and his fellow jury members keep insisting that Testosterone Rex is a deserved winner for accurately pointing out that sex differences aren’t categorical and that ecological conditions matter as well, which seems to be the motivation, it is strange that they decided to award a book that does such an abysmal job at communicating that message. She describes the foundations of sexual selection theory and Bateman’s principle as being in a state of turmoil when the truth is that the evidence is stronger than ever before. Reviews in the press make it clear that lay people reading this book are left with the impression that testosterone doesn’t really matter and that sexual selection is a myth. Why award Cordelia Fine with a prize that is intended to reward the best science writing for a non-specialist audience if the non-specialist audience misunderstood what Fine was trying to communicate? Not to mention that her use of ad hoc hypotheses, based on unproven assumptions, to explain away well established science are analogous to the favorite tactics of the proponents of intelligent design. If the Royal Society recognizes that sexual selection and testosterone is relevant for human behavior their choice couldn’t have been more mistaken. The most likely explanation is that the choice is based on the erroneous idea that fighting sex discrimination requires pretending that average sex differences do not exist. The only remaining alternative, that the world’s oldest science academy has abandoned Charles Darwin for pseudoscientific gender theory by virtue of sincere belief, is just too depressing to even consider.

If someone wrote a book called “Savannah Rex: Why Evolutionary Psychology is Complete Bunk,” it would probably be a shoo-in for next year’s prize.

Readers’ wildlife photos

September 28, 2017 • 8:32 am

Today is Potpourri Day, assembling the photos from readers who sent only one or two. The first is by reader Tim Anderson from Oz (all readers’ notes indented):

This is a picture of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (the nebula is identified as NGC2070). The picture comprises sixty images each of red, green and blue filtered light, that were then “stacked” to intensify the photons and combined to create a colour picture. For anyone interested in the technicalities, I used a 126mm triplet refractor telescope, and an ASI1600 monochrome camera.
From Florian Maderspacher, we have several mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus; apparently all bucks) that invaded his back yard:

Not sure if this qualifies as a reader’s wild-life photo (only in so much as I am a reader and this is wild-life), but I only had my iphone with me when I went to the garden the other day to check on my tomatoes. They had been vandalized by these three rambunctious teenagers. Sadly, bow and arrow were not at hand… [JAC: That’s an invidious comment!]

Greetings from Utah, where safe spaces are being threatened and student bodies triggered by Ben Shapiro this afternoon…

From reader Snowy Owl, we have “spider web season”:
From Susan Heller, whose email was called “Not a prayer”:
I was on a trip to the San Juan Islands (Washington State) and for ?? reason praying mantises were everywhere.  This one landed on my shirt and took up this defensive pose.  I finally got him on a stick for a formal portrait. I haven’t seen one of these in years…
From reader Carl Sufit:
I can’t provide the photo quality of most of your contributors, and if you don’t need these, I won’t be hurt if you don’t show them.   However, if you’re truly desperate, here are samples of the two most common dragonfly species which are constantly in our pool yard (San Joaquin Valley) every summer.   I’m no naturalist, but based on googling, they are the Flame Skimmer, Libellula saturata, and the Blue Dasher, Rhionaeschna multicolor. 
And from Roger Latour, who sent a photographic plate from his upcoming book:
I thought I’d share this botanical plate I just finished. I shared it on my Facebook page and on Twitter and it raised quite a lot of interest.  Of course such images don’t go viral (catnip WITH a cat would be better for that!) but it is good to see the response.
It shows pretty much all maple species growing in Montreal. Natives and exotics, a few of which are now naturalised. Done in the span of ten years… This is one plate of many for the maple chapter in an ebook i’m finishing. Anyway, if you think it is of interest to your readers… please share!
When I asked him about how this was done, he replied: “They are all scaled digital macro photos done in the studio, with exact same flash lighting for consistency, followed by cut out in Photoshop.”

Hugh Hefner died

September 28, 2017 • 8:15 am

I suppose he thought he was immortal, and tried to keep the important parts going with Viagra, but no man lives forever; and yesterday Hugh Hefner died of natural causes in Los Angeles. He was 91.

Playboy was founded in 1953, and has been going for 64 years. I’ve heard it’s now abjured most nudity, though of course I haven’t seen it (when I read it, it was only for the stories [LOL], though I did have a letter to the editor —solicited by the magazine published in the August, 2006 issue). They sent me a free copy, which now sits on my shelf next to issues of Science and Nature where I published articles or book reviews.

Say what you will about Hefner, his objectification of women, and his glamorizing of the materialistic lifestyle, but he was still an advocate of many good liberal causes, and the magazine had some great interviews and fiction. The New York Times ends his obituary with this:

Mr. Hefner will be buried in Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, where he bought the mausoleum drawer next to Marilyn Monroe.

And, as a bit of self-aggrandizement, here’s the one time I appeared in Playboy, going after Michael Ruse. I will fight accommodationism in the universities, in the public squares, in the journals, and in the salacious magazines:

UPDATE: I jut got an email from Michael Ruse, whose article I was criticizing in my letter. The contents:

   “Yes but I got the last laugh”


Indeed: all I got was a lousy copy of the magazine containing my letter.

Thursday: Hili dialogue

September 28, 2017 • 6:47 am

October approaches inexorably: it’s now Thursday, September 28, 2017, and National Strawberry Cream Pie Day. I’ll eschew the pie—and everything else save a latte—as it’s one of my biweekly fast days. It’s also International Right to Know Day (it’s about the dangers of government secrecy, but should include the right to know about evolution). The weather in Chicago is is turning fall-like at last, with a high of 73° F (23° C), although by Tuesday it will get a bit higher. It’s good weather for ducks to consider migrating. . .

On September 28, 1066, William the Conqueror arrived on England’s shores, beginning the Norman Conquest.  On this day in 1928, Alexander Fleming noticed that a mold growing in an unused Petri dish had killed bacteria around its perimeter; this was the beginning of penicillin and other antibiotics.  On this day in 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany agreed to divy up Poland after they conquered it (the invasion began Sept 1), and on that same day Warsaw surrendered to the Nazis. Finally, on this day in 1970, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser died of a heart attack. Anwar Sadat was named his temporary successor, and then became his permanent one (until, that is, Sadat was assassinated in 1981).

Notables born on September 28 include Thomas Crapper (1836; invented the ballcock, or float valve for loos), William S. Paley and Ed Sullivan (both 1901), Tuli Kupferberg (1923), Brigitte Bardot (1934), Christina Hoff Sommers (1950), Sylvia Kristel (1952) and Mira Sorvino (1967; 50 today).  Those who died on this day include Herman Melville (1891), Louis Pasteur (1895), Harpo Marx (1964), John Dos Passos (1970), Gamal Nasser (also 1970; see above), Ferdinand Marcos (1989), Miles Davis (1991), Pierre Trudeau (2000), Althea Gibson (2002) and Elia Kazan (2003).

Kazan, of course, directed “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951), a great film. Here’s the scene where Stanley meets Blanche, who is much taken with his torso:

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Hili has looked over Hiroko’s new book on cat embroidery, and read the last chapter on embroidering Hili. The chapter’s title reflects the difficulty of embroidering tabbies: Hili’s embroidery (shown on the cover) required 18 different colors of thread. Hili, however, is paranoid:

Hili: Did you notice that the title of the chapter about me is “Difficult cat”?
A: Of course.
Hili: I wonder what Hiroko meant.
In Polish:
Hili: Czy zauważyłeś, że tytuł rozdziału o mnie nosi tytuł “Trudny kot”?
Ja : Oczywiście.
Hili: Co Hiroko miała na myśli?
Here’s the book cover again, sporting an embroidery of a flower-surrounded Hili:

 

Matthew found this tw**t, which he retweeted saying, “Ceiling cat is REAL!”. But this is Ceiling Teacher:

This is scary: Roy Moore, former ultrareligious Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is now the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama, running to fill Jeff Sessions’s vacated seat. Here’s a bit of a speech by Moore, and midway through he pulls out his revolver to tout his love of guns and his misinterpretation of the Second Amendment (h/t: Heather Hastie)

To get the bad taste out of your mouth, I’ve also purloined from Heather a tw**t of a fruit bat nomming watermelon. By the way, Heather has a new daily feature, the “Daily Homily,” which is a combination of her take on the latest news combined with a bunch of nice stuff she culls from Twitter. It’s worth checking every morning on her site.

https://twitter.com/CUTEST_ANlMALS/status/913186038616592384

I’d call them sky kitties!

Cat o’ the day

September 27, 2017 • 2:00 pm

Reader Ken Elliott sent a cat photo and the tail behind it:

If you are ever in need of a photo of a reader’s moggie and would like to share a sad/humorous capture, I have attached one here. This is Sterling, my son and daughter-in-law’s newest addition, after having been neutered. He’s trying his best to reach around his cone to scratch that persistent itch. I’ve never felt such empathy and humor at once in my life.

Big fight inside Berkeley’s “empathy tent”; 4 arrested

September 27, 2017 • 1:00 pm

Okay, now it’s time to just laugh about it all. Here’s a tweet from Dave Rubin, whom many here don’t like; but you have to share his mirth at the quote (see below) and four arrests taking place inside an “empathy tent”. The fights were a clash between Left and Right demonstrating over the cancellation of Berkeley’s “Free Speech Week”, which never really happened because the organizers were disorganized.

The quote that tickled Rubin’s funny bone is from a Fox News report:

David Marquis, who identified himself as a senior at the school, said he was tired of the protests on campus. Marquis was outside the protest area and described the scene.

“If you look at them, it’s ridiculous,” Marquis told the Los Angeles Times. “You’ve got a guy with purple hair with a f—ing lightsaber talking about Hitler. It’s hard for me to take any of this seriously.”

That made me laugh out loud. If you want the facts, SFGate has these, and more:

Berkeley police arrested three people after several fist fights broke out between liberals and conservatives when dozens of people gathered for a short time at Sproul Plaza Tuesday afternoon.

Members of a conservative group called Patriot Prayer arrived near Sproul Plaza around 2 p.m. and were met by protesters, including representatives of the leftist activist group By Any Means Necessary. Neither of the groups are student groups, and students and faculty — busy with midterms — did not appear to get involved in the rally or protest.

After the two groups scuffled inside an “empathy tent,” set up on campus to offer a calm space in what has been an area of violent clashes, they marched to People’s Park in Berkeley.

In this case both sides clearly were involved in the violence, this time with a 3:1 Right/Left ratio:

Police said Yvette Felarca, 47, of Oakland, was arrested for battery and resisting arrest; Ricky Joseph Monzon, 20, of Las Vegas, was arrested for carrying a banned weapon; and Eddy Robinson, 47, of Oakland, was arrested on charges of participating in a riot and resisting arrest.

At People’s Park, Patriot Prayer speakers, including Kyle “Stickman” Chapman, decried what he called a war on whites and said the ongoing demonstrations are a “battle for Berkeley.”

Chapman was arrested during a March protest and was charged in August with possession of a lead-filled stick. He faces eight years in prison, because of a previous violent felony conviction in Texas. He initially emerged as a hero for white supremacists, but later said he wasn’t a racist because he has an Asian wife. [JAC: Well that’s certainly proof!]

Felarca, the woman in Rubin’s tweet, is an Antifa-ite who had previously been arrested for punching a nonviolent alt-Rightie in Sacramento (see video here). She’s a teacher in a Berkeley middle school, and with two arrests and probably at least one conviction in the offing, she’ll likely lose her job.

I’m disgusted by anybody fighting and carrying weapons, and by both sides thinking they can hash out their views by literally punching each other—or worse. It solves nothing except to vent rage. But to think there was a big fracas in an “Empathy Tent” puts a veneer of humor over the whole thing, for at least nobody got hurt.