I am a professor and have taught the evolutionary psychology of sex differences for about 25 years. What has happened in the last 5 years (even 10 years) has been stunning and befuddling. Now this is 3rd-rail. Fortunately, I have tenure and am near retirement, so I do not shy away from the empirical facts. Others are not so fortunate.
I look forward to learning more about your journey through the academic Alice in Wonderland / Twilight Zone postmodernist / identitarian pit that academia has sunk into.
I love it!!! Alice in Wonderland, Twilight Zone, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Tales from the Crypt and the Darkside, all of it! It's outrageous! And I do not have the luxury of tenure, but I refuse to be shackled by abject nonsense.
Humans only exist and reproduce through two sexes--female and male.
"Gender" is a linguistics term for words only. It has no application to humans.
That simple fact alone clears up a good deal of the idiotic nonsense regarding this issue. There is no such thing as "trans" or "transgender" or "gender dysphoria."
Stop using "gender." The usage of the word itself is a major source of confusion. If you mean clothing or hairstyles or personality or stereotypes or hobbies--say that. That covers most of what people mean with "gender." There's always an accurate word. "Gender" never can be accurate.
Even hermaphrodite animals are sexually dimorphic. They are *both* male and female but they aren't any other thing. I'm dimorphic, you're dimorphic, she's dimorphic, they're dimorphic, wouldn't you like to be dimorphic too! It's the cool thing to do and you don't have any choice anyway!
Agreed! But the trans cult deliberately uses sex and gender interchangeably. There is a reason for this: it makes it easier to further their goal : lying to the rest of us.
Thanks for the article. I've been distracted from the CRT debate by the gender madness as I have a son. so haven't been on here for a while. I see similar ideological madness in CRT and gender ideology.
I am lucky to be in England to some extent, where there is some serious pushback from feminists and the top of the medical profession, despite advanced infiltration of the gender cult across society, esp. in educational sector.
When an institution changes its EDI policies to effectively mandate the support of gender ideology, the whole payroll becomes instantly and heavily invested in staying silent and colluding with it, if they even noticed.
I have a relative here in England who works in HR for a US law firm who says they can't employ "gender critical" employees because the firm did a consultation with staff and decided it's not "who we are as a firm" - equating personal beliefs with personal identity and eliminating viewpoint diversity at a stroke.
She's late 40s so like me, grew up well before this madness took hold and has never shown any interest in gender issues until the last few years. Now she's a believer but not a very well informed one on the law or realities of gender ideology IMO. She told me to "get with the times".
How did we get here so quickly? Some well-educated, AGPs in the 80s persuaded themselves they were women, then their therapists, then the LGB community, which they piggybacked to add in the TQ to every goldarn EDI accreditation system in the western world, bypassing usual democratic processes. Good news for Big Pharma. Tragedy for modern youth, for whom freedom of opinion is something to read about in history books. Good luck.
Wow, Hamish! How did we get here? I saw a video about a British feminist, Mrs. Kelly Keen-Minshull, who pushed back on this agenda by posting the definition of woman on a billboard. It is good to see people standing against this. And "get with the times"? Times may change, but biology does not. Thank you for your response.
You refer to Kellie-Jay Keen, women's rights activist and founder of rallies called "Let Women Speak". She toured Australia last year and I attended 2 of her rallies, this resulted in me being expelled from an art festival I had been selected for, due to being slurred as a transphobe. Kellie-Jay was derided in the mainstream media as a hateful bigot and a nazi. She is currently in litigation with the leader of the Liberal Party in the state of Queensland suing him for accusing her of being an actual Nazi. It Is truly INSANE!
@Tiffanie Victoria’s Jones, please also be aware that another woman in Australia—Sall Grover—is preparing to take her rejection of the gender lunacy to the High Court. Sall is fighting back against a man—calling himself Roxanne Tickle—who insists he has the right to use Sal’s new and precious app she developed for women only. He nearly gave up his action to take Sall to court until he was given the funding at a late hour. The court case reveals gender lunacy—Tickle v Giggle—and, further lunacy—the AHRC (Australian Human Rights Commission) is supporting his case. This AHRC recently ruled that lesbians in Victoria, Australia, must not *discriminate* against ‘transwomen’ who have a right to be called lesbians and participate in a lesbian only event, despite most lesbians defining our sexuality as sex-based. And most Big media are maintaining their silent collusion (Bernard Lane—on Substack—is an exception, but he had to leave his job on Big Media to not be silenced.) For an Australian lesbian view, see the website of the Coalition of Activist Lesbians (coal.org.au) that is currently fighting back against the lunacy being incorporated into NSW law because it has strongly infiltrated the NSW Labor party (think Democrats). NSW legislation is late to join the cult’s take-over of Australian law because we had a conservative government that refused to changed its sex based reality. I and many others I’m working with who do not hold conservative values are finding it an uphill battle. We recently lost our campaign to stop a conversion practices bill, which dishonestly promotes ‘affirmation’ as the best practise for treating children and young people who are dissociated from their bodies into a medicalised trans pathway. We say that affirmation IS the conversion practice, one especially effective against homophobic lesbian and gay youth (and their parents).
It is utter lunacy( I love that word!) to be called all kinds of slanderous names because one tells the truth! Actually, I think most of the trans cultists know deep down that they are lying, so their only defense is name calling. … like children who are guilty of something.
Expelled? A Nazi? For sharing the definition of a woman - an adult female? This is truly, truly a shame. How can this not be called "lunacy" and its twin brother "insanity"? I hope that she is vindicated. And you, stay strong, Pearl!
IMO you make yourself vulnerable allying with KJK publicly because she's sometimes over the top. (Not that we will ever campaign in a way that pleases trans activists)
@Pearl Red Moon, Kellie-Jay Keen has effectively mobilised many women with her call to define women as adult human female. She is a gifted orator who is turning her skill to a political career. But she uses that gift to goad already hate-filled opponents and so is dangerous. And she has stated she is no feminist, another red flag for women to be mindful of.
You have interesting views. Especially as KJK could have been seriously assaulted or killed at a New Zealand rally last year, this gave many GC a heightened consciousness of who the people are who believe they are justified to act on their feelings of hate. I don't think her views are extremist, polarising certainly. Nor do I agree she intentionally "goads" any of her audience. That seems to imply you think she wants people to do extreme acts of violence? That you see it and I don't shows just how subjective that interpretation is.
Long before I heard of KJK I was already vacillating to describe myself a feminist & only use it in some contexts now. I am not a feminist when it comes to supporting legal prostitution or surrogacy.
She just needs to be accountable to some fellow travellers but she's not and that says something. On social media, you will slip up with her approach every now and then if you row your own boat
Who are the fellow travellers she needs to be accountable to ? She only ever speaks the truth. Anyone who thinks KJK is an extremist is either a trans activist or someone who truly doesn’t believe women deserve single sex spaces.
Thanks, Tiffanie. Good luck in your fight - I admire and respect you.
Kellie Jay Keen is brave and has put up with a lot. I agree with most of her points. But she's sometimes over the top, wishing ill on trans people and perhaps commenting outside her expertise. I would like to see her hold herself accountable to others in the GC world - that's really important in today's social media cauldron IMO.
I recommend highly "Sex Matters" which is a UK-based campaign group made up of some serious heavyweight feminists, including lawyers, with a very professional approach. I admire their work a lot. They are a true force to be reckoned with and have achieved a lot already.
"Outside her expertise"? !!! What expertise do you believe is required to have permission to comment on trans gender ideology? One of the most destructive things postmodernist/de-constructivist thinking has inflicted on midernity s the realisation that experts cannot always be trusted, that they are easily corrupted by either fear or power.
When you get into conv'ns with trans activists, you're dealing with ppl who know the ins and outs of transition drugs, surgery, different providers, different national regimes, medical studies, backgrounds of activists, govt policies, legal cases.... It's their obsession so it's easy for the rest of us to make some generalisations that they have more details on. KJK ploughs a lone furrow as far as I can see and I would like to see her network more with people with other expertise, and be accountable to them, like the excellent "Sex Matters" group. However, she may find that others are reluctant to work with her because they don't want to be associated with her mistakes.
Thank you, Hamish! I appreciate the kind words. I will definitely look into the "Sex Matters" campaign group. I appreciate a professional approach and lean more toward that styling; however, sometimes, you do have to say it straight out :). But I don't find it is ever appropriate to wish ill on others or to be crass. I have not found that with Keen, and I do admire her boldness.
I defended her more fully until I was sent some videos where she said some unacceptable things. So you could be embarrassed by trans activists if you align with her fully in public IMO. "Sex Matters" do say it straight but they're highbrow and so don't reach the parts that KJK reaches.
That's interesting to know, and I do understand where you are coming from. I will say this, though. It will be an extraordinary feat for me to be embarrassed by a "trans activist." Aside from the obvious, there is nothing that I say or stand for that I do not believe in or cannot support. The biggest reason is that I stand for truth. And if I support you behind closed doors, I support you outside. As far as Keen goes, she may take a route that I do not take or prefer, but I have found that I appreciate her bold stance on protecting "womanness". We don't have to agree with everything a person says or does in order to value some things from that person.
KJK has done a good job popularising gender critical positions but she has gone on record as rejecting feminism and making some racist and homophobic remarks, which turn me off. She’s formed a women’s political party and that’s more her style—a single cause rhetorician.
Tiffanie - just so you see an example of the concerns many GC folk have over KJK, here is a recent video https://x.com/i/status/1794026078249549930 I love the fact that a working class English girl is so brave and outspoken but she's going too far and is a loose cannon IMO
I imagine if you’re HR relative was raised in Weimar Germany she’d probably happily have stopped hiring Jews because “that’s not who they are as a company” and would probably have told you then to “get with the times”. Getting with the times doesn’t make you right, it makes you complicit when getting with the times means excluding or harming those who are different from you. It’s so easy for people to not think that they get angry at those who choose to think for themselves. This is ideological indoctrination. I work in a US company and they struggle to manage this nonsense. I have a colleague who’s been pulled up for having IT as a pronoun in his profile. He was told it was offensive and asked why. He played the woke card and questioned HR on their safe space policy and they backed down. Oh it’s ok we just had to check that you were a “real it” otherwise it would be offensive 🤦🏻♂️
Me at a woke restaurant. Waiter comes up and says “Hi. I am Darren (he/him) and I will be your waiter today.” So, I say “Hi Darren. I am William (he/her) and I guess I will be your customer today”. He begins to list the specials and then says he/her? I tell him I am a he when talking to me, but a her when referring to me. For example if I need an extra napkin and you send the busboy over you say ‘the woman in the green sweater needs a napkin’. He looks a bit put out. He says “are you pulling my leg?” I get offended “Excuse me. Am I restricted in my gender here?” “No. But how can you be he and her?” “I think the way women are treated is better than how men are treated. Are you saying I can’t be a woman if I so choose? Sometimes I get tired of being a man and feel like being a woman. Are you saying that is wrong?” He realizes he has messed up and apologizes to me and says he just needed clarification. I try to look Serious.
That's hilarious! Just goes to show that if you can navigate the woke language smartly enough, you can sometimes avoid its stupid consequences while also showing it up for the nonsense that it is.
Oh totally. I’m loving working for a woke company. If I don’t want to do work i just cry and make up some problem and demand a safe space. Now every time I do it I loose a little self respect for myself but it is what it is 😂
Thank you for sharing this. I have had my business ruined in the last year using the LinkedIn platform; which has also taken a hyper progressive and nonsensical approach to these topics. Forcing people to conform to the mental health issues of others is Satanic and a disservice to the mental health of others.
Are you at liberty to expand on how your business was impacted by LinkedIn's policy changes? I always thought LinkedIn was simply an online Rolodex primarily used to maintain and expand one's business profile and list of contacts. I'm curious as to how ideology feeds into this network.
LinkedIn restricted my account for changing my pronouns to common sense after they continued to ask for them. They also have content creators and hyper liberal people policing viewpoints that shouldn't even be on the platform to begin with. LinkedIn went from being a business site to a social justice warrior site full of beta people with causes that hurt society.
Thanks for the elaboration on LinkedIn's devolution. "Go woke, go broke" is still operative, so there's (a slim) hope for the service's recovery from insanity or eventual replacement by a more grounded operation.
In similar ways to Angie I have been censored or cancelled by various social media. They are all Woke and feel entitled to apply their social engineering agenda . Some examples - I was banned from Twitter and only reinstated after Elon bought it, after having been reported for saying " men cannot turn into women", my Instagram acct was banned after I publicly supported a GC politician seeking public office, due to "infringing community standards" & "hateful conduct". My Patreon was closed. Pinterest cancelled my "verified merchant" acct due to waffle allegations of not providing "positive customer service experience". They also deleted a board with 500 links to GC podcasts, books, essays and videos, claiming it infringed community standards. My experiences are commonplace for women who critique trans gender ideology.
Thanks Tiffanie. I am strong and will keep speaking out against cancel culture, to uphold womens rights and to stop young people from getting damaged by the trans gender cult.
You are a wonderfully engaging writer and I look forward to the next parts of your story.
Prof Randall Kennedy from Harvard on a YT video today:
This was an outstanding essay. I profess no expertise in marketing but I'm guessing subscriptions to Free Black Thought would skyrocket if this essay could get out to a wider audience.
I have taught finance and economics at the college level for the past 30+ years. I've witnessed the metastasizing of the cancer of political correctness. The custom made bumper sticker on my car states "Colleges Murder Viewpoint Diversity." "Diversity" on college campuses too often means people who look different but share the not-to-be-challenged leftist viewpoints.
I truly appreciate that! Thank you, Richard! I say it all the time that my experience at this specific university (and I would imagine other universities as well) reflects the following idea: "diversity" is about getting together a variety of brown-skinned people - from dark vanilla to cafe au lait to caramel to almond to pecan to mocha to mahogany to chocolate to midnight - who all agree.
At a recent faculty meeting, I asked the college President "as part of the DEI information included with the recently adopted nursing program, are faculty required to treat students differently based on the color of their skin?" He answered "no."
Two weeks before I sent an email with a similar question to the Dean of Students in her capacity as a member of the college's DEI Working Group but did not get a response. A week later I sent the same email and received a response "the answer to your question is 'no.'" Admittedly, the response was confusing since the very same person had sent out a campus-wide email describing "a great opportunity " to listen to Ibram X. Kendi speak at a local college.
As an economist, I have a serious problem with Kendi's assertion that to be an anti-racist you also have to be anti-capitalist. I have every intention of continuing to openly challenge such assertions.
Thank you again for your excellent essay and responses. I look forward to reading more of your work.
From Mark Twain (nee Samuel Clemens): "Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country. Hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.
It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or consequences.
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:
This Mark Twain quote is fantastic! I get into what actually occurred at the University in the next essay, but what I did not include is this: I was asked to apologize for "causing harm" by my response. (I won't give away my response here because that ruins it...just wait for it). I refused to do so; so, I wrote a letter to my students, and the Dean and Chair at the time made "a few" changes, including adding an apology. I truly did not believe that I was wrong, but I did not want the back-and-forth, so I sent their "refreshed" letter with the apology to my students. It was the first time since I was 22 years old that I allowed someone to speak words for me that were not mine and that I was strongly against. I felt truly ashamed. I made a vow that that would be the very last time I would allow someone to make me feel that way. I would stand up for myself and my beliefs come what may. And I have not let myself down since.
Don't give an inch. There is no compassion inherent in lying to people and just saying things to make them feel better. We can be warm and loving and accepting... we should be! But never lie.
I would very much like to talk with you. If you're interested my email is notmoving@gmail.com. And if you're not interested, it's still notmoving@gmail.com.
Looking forward to the series! "Queer Theory" needs to be exposed for the fraud that it truly is. I can't believe that intelligent adults buy into this....but then again, "Be Kind" seems to be the general motto for the Intersectionality crowd. I have a young adult kid caught up in this and I've been patiently waiting for this house of cards to get caught in the wind.
My goodness! I cannot remember, but I believe that I address queer theory in a later essay, but I certainly address the components of it in a "dictionary" that I have compiled for this agenda. I think you will really appreciate that essay; it is one of the latter ones.
There is so much that is helpful to me (and I'm sure others) in this article. I can't wait for the rest of what you will write. I have been overwhelmed at the new 'shark jumping' that comes at us with regularity in the changing discourse of this insanity. Thank you for clarifying not only in terms of reality but also in terms of the gaslighting that occurs on a regular basis. It feels like an entire generation of youth and others are entering into mass Stockholm Syndrome at the hands of their destroyers. I would also make the argument that this is happening across racial issues as well. Every day I see people in the real-world treating others with respect, forming friendships, teams, marriages and families across racial lines. They want us to 'see' just the opposite. Are there still those who sit in their racial division and hate? Yes. But much like those who are truly gender dysphoric, they are few and far between. If we fail to recognize the majority of goodness we will fall to the minority of badness.
The gaslighting! You hit the nail on the head!!! I would add to the Stockholm Syndrome, the Emperor's New Clothes. That children's story could not be more appropriate than it is now.
Oh, amen. I heard someone today in a Senate testimony to Rand Paul say there are well defined 'standards of practice' in gender surgery. Countries around the world from Sweden to the UK have all but prohibited it at least for children. Yet we continue. So scary. Thank you again for shedding your light on this.
“We have very clear ethical guidelines for cutting off boys penises, sterilizing young girls, and destroying any hope they have for a fulfilling love life.”
I'm with you, I applaud you, I stand by you, and I eagerly look forward to reading more from you. I'm from the same profession and faith as you. It is astounding how our profession and some of our churches have jettisoned truth and efficacy in pursuit of the bald-faced lie of "compassion." There is no compassion in rushing to a diagnosis that inevitably leaves many harmed for life. It is, instead, cruelty of the highest order.
Thank you, Mark, so much! Compassion is absolutely a beautiful thing and much needed. But to your point, what on earth is compassionate about amputating a child's (or adult's) healthy body parts? Forever! This could not be further from compassion. How can you be compassionate towards people while looking in their faces and lying to them? That term, along with "love" and "kindness" and others, are being abused to commit atrocities.
I agree there is basic science that is involved here and that the topic is complicated in that we don’t really know what other’s are thinking. Your transition can come from a very earnest place but the perspective of others may be equally earnest.
I have taught in academia/higher ed for 20 years now. It used to be useful.
In the past ten years in academia, only people of color get to speak or run committees, and only radical women, not centrist, liberal or conservative women, ever get to speak.
Everybody just sits there, listening and thinking -this is not true.; this is absurd. Well, I get a paycheck if I can endure this.
Most of the people are not that bright and most of them could not back up their claims if they were na undergrad taking an intro essay course.
None of the people I've worked with in academia have the skills to run a lemonade stand. They just rant based on CRT/DEI, then we all go home.
Wow! "I get a paycheck if I can endure this." In academia? Unreal. My case is a little different because my experience occurred at a PWI, so it seems that the nonsense has definitely crossed color lines. But I believe the sentiment of those of us who have to listen to the madness is the same. Until, you simply cannot listen anymore and you must say something, or write an essay series about it :).
Well I wasn't saying the paycheck paid any bills no. :-) Thats the irony. MIddling pay and wasted time leads to disenchantment and detachment. Most teachers I know now are dialing it in, not due to the students (who are lazier and expect more, but that can be partially understood), no, due to the peers, the bullies, the SCJ who are in essence Red Guards and Maoists. Its frightening.
I could be wrong, but I think that using "sex" and "gender" interchangeably is probably a mistake. One of the terms, "sex", comes from biology whereas the other one, "gender", comes from sociology. You don't have subscribe to the idea that men can give birth to recognize that there are both biological and sociological issues at play in this debate, and the inability to talk about them separately is exactly the problem that the gender ideologues then exploit for their own purposes. I accept that sex is biological, a fact established at birth that cannot be subsequently changed, and I also accept that gender is socially-constructed and can shift and change throughout a person's life. A lot of people on the right seem to think that by denying the social construction of gender they are reinforcing the biology of sex, but in actuality, I think they're doing the opposite. Those who deny either the biology of sex or the social construction of gender are in my opinion on the same reality-denying team.
In everyday language, it's OK or at least it was OK to use sex and gender interchangeably, in my experience. Your definition of gender is quite specialised. Trans activists are on a mission to educate the general population on their subtle semantic distinctions and neologisms and police us on it. So I'm with the author in saying - to heck with it.
It's the "trans activitists" who are trying to blurr the distinction between "sex" and "gender", they want us to use them interchangeably so that they can declare all of it to be socially-constructed and changeable. I'd invite you to attempt to make the distinction between sex and gender in any conversation you have with them, you'll quickly see that they won't accept it.
We're way past "everyday language". This is contested territory, where the relative precision of a definition literally means putting women at risk of having a convicted male sex offender placed in a prison cell with them or not. You free of course to say "to heck with it", but don't pretend to be acting in the interest of protecting women or addressing social issues in a productive way.
A quick teaser: the "trans activists" are the people who created and promoted the idea that sex and gender are distinct. This is the heart of queer theory. They are also the ones who promote the idea that now sex is a social construct, too. How? Why? Based on what standard?
Just look at your comment for a moment. If they created and promoted the idea that sex and gender are distinct, then how are they now promoting the idea that sex is a social construct? The whole message of sex and gender being "distinct" is that sex refers to biology, gender to sociology. It's only when you want to blur the lines that you would then argue that sex is a social construct. Why would you buy into that, and help them do it?
D. Malcolm, you seem so shocked that this group is drowning is flagrant contradiction. Why are you shocked? These are the same people who say that men give birth! Your appeal to logic is beautiful and absolutely refreshing...but logic went completely out the window when someone opened their mouth and said that "men give birth." And then when someone else said, "You know, yeah, they do." And then when someone else said, "Yeah, and if you, intelligent person, don't agree with that, you're fired!" This agenda has nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - to do with logic. I have written an essay on this; it should be up soon.
You're absolutely right that blurring the lines leads to saying that sex is also a social construct. That statement allows for other preposterous statements, such as "men give birth." Here is what I argue: those lines got blurred the moment a faulty study was conducted to "prove" that gender and sex are distinct. The term "gender" as it relates to "sex" originated as a synonym for "sex." They were not distinct originally, and for the better part of our history, they have been synonyms. Attempting to force a narrative that the two terms are distinct is where the lines became blurred and opened the door for what we see today. I think you will find the essays delineating the elements of this theory, which is queer theory, insightful.
I can rock with that argument to an extent. You're right that gender was originally synonymous. But if you want to revert to that, then what do you call the social constructs around sex/gender. I mean, we still have husband and wife right? Those aren't biological categories, but they're important. Biology is not nothing, but it's also not everything.
Interesting...thank you for sharing. Let me ask you. How do you know that gender is a social construct? Who told you this, and why do you believe them? What makes them credible in their assertion? I wrote an essay on this very topic, so you will see there why I do not distinguish the two. You will also see where the term "gender" came from and why it came to mean "sex"; you will also see why the two were eventually separated. This is certainly a situation of "consider the source." This essay is on the way. See you there :).
Looking forward it your essay, but gender as a word is defined literally at the level of the dictionary but also in common usage as "the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other." Did gender get this definition from gender theory? Of course. It's literally their word, they can define it however they want. You don't have to use it.
But even if you're not going to use it, then you would need to find a word to describe these socially-constructed characteristics. It seems too obvious to state that "men" and "women" as categories are exactly the same biologically across every culture and all of history, but sociologically, those categories can be dramatically different. If you don't accept that, then just refer to biological sex only and be done with it. Why do you need to refer to "gender", if you don't accept that there's a sociological aspect to it?
I insist on using the term "gender" because this group does not get to change language to suit their agenda and then demand that I use the language according to their standards. I will not accept that. I assert that the two terms are synonymous and with good reason; the distinction lies not in "sex" and "gender", but in "sex" and "gender expression." That is where cultural and sociological implications are relevant.
Making a distinction between sex/gender versus sex/gender expression now sounds like you're splitting hairs just to make a point. Why not "sex expression?" Language evolves, I don't think it was just gender theorists that we're looking for a way to distinguish between biology and sociology, I believe some word would've been invented for this purpose, because it's actually helpful be be able to analyze how biology and sociology both overlap but also diverge in any kind of discussion about humans. It'd be like trying to have a "nature versus nuture" debate, but you can only use the term "nature". We would suffer for that.
Interesting that you mention "nature versus nurture" because that was the study that was conducted to determine if gender and sex are distinct. I am not splitting hairs. "Sex/gender expression" are distinct from sex/gender. The former is how you express yourself (ie. clothing) regarding your sex/gender, whereas the latter is your actual biological makeup. These two ideas are indeed distinct. For example, a man does not cease to be a man because he puts on a skirt, or a woman does not cease to be a woman because she expresses herself by wearing a short haircut. Expression and biology are distinct. What is not distinct is sex and gender.
Maybe. I'm not saying you're splitting hairs re: the actual concepts. Yes, I 100% think it's extremely important for accuracy's sake to be able to talk about biology and sociology separately. They are very distinct conversations that gender ideology is attempting to blur together. We're agreed on that. It's the terminology "gender versus gender expression" that seems to be splitting hairs. If gender is defined as social construct then distinguishing between "gender" and "gender expression" is not necessary. You just have biological sex and socially-constructed gender, which would of course also include gender expression.
You still haven't answered why not just use "sex expression"? For that matter, why do we even need two words at all, if gender is synonymous with sex, then what's the point of even using the word?
"People do not resurrect from the dead no how, no way under any circumstances and people who think so don't really believe it either but have been propagandized and are propagandizing in turn". Feel how that clearly true observation strikes you and now you can imagine how confronting gender dysphorics with both the truth about biology and an account of how they came to believe what they believe feels. Note how my pointing out this obvious fact makes you feel personally attacked and your feelings and commitments dismissed. I agree obviously with your gender ideology critique, but can't see how religion isn't subject to the exact same critique. In both the case of gender ideology and religious empirical claims about substitutionary atonement, both make no real sense if you ask any hard questions and can each be easily seen as "symbolic beliefs" meant to bolster the moral claims that lie under them.
You've made a grand assumption that I feel personally attacked and that my feelings and commitments feel dismissed because you speak in error regarding Jesus' resurrection. I do not feel attacked at all. You are entitled to your beliefs without me feeling attacked. Not only that, I am also not seeking to destroy your livelihood or character because you do not share my religious beliefs. They are mine, and I have no right to demand that you affirm what I believe. That is one of the main points of this series. To your comparison, the heart of religion is belief. The heart of gender is DNA. This is not to say that religious beliefs cannot be proven, but it is to say that DNA is not contingent upon your beliefs and is solely based on facts. These two are not analogous. Beyond that, people are not currently being fired or jailed or fined in the U.S. for saying that the Lord, Jesus Christ rose from the dead - though, with the the direction that we are going, we may not be too far from that. Thank you, though, for your comment.
So what kind of evidence would convince you that the New Testament is entirely manmade, has no revelation in it, has pretty obvious source material from late Hellenistic Judaism and rewrites of Old Testament material such that the things Jesus does relies on the writer having read the Old Testament in Greek, and that Jesus sayings etc. couldn't have actually originated with an Aramaic speaker. If none, then you know exactly what a gender identity person feels like when they reject the evidence for biological sex differences, the strange and really nonsensical idea of a gender identity, etc. It isn't like they carefully weighed all the evidence to arrive where they are anymore than you did on Christianity. Like you surely don't think you believe in Jesus because you carefully looked at lots of information, found the best arguments against and just found that evidence wanting and that Christians in generally are just better at discerning good arguments from bad and Jews, apparently are really bad at it? So I would just argue that people who believe in gender identity theory probably came by their beliefs in the same way you did and hold them as a key part of their identity for the same reasons you hold your religion and probably won't seriously consider counter-evidence because it threatens more than just simple empirical claims any more than you would because the beliefs are too important. But since Christians, thankfully, mostly aren't killing non-believers anymore and their beliefs mostly can be held in a weird sort of compartmentalization with reality beliefs, we should probably look at what that process was and see how we can maybe tame gender identity beliefs in a similar way. Like there is nothing even hypothetically I could tell you about the Gospels to get you to say "huh, this is a better explanation for what I am reading than the stuff I hear in church" so that probably tells you your beliefs are something besides just empirical claims and I am pretty sure gender identity belief is like that too. They just can't hear facts about sex and dig deep about what a gender identity would actually have to mean because their moral commitments feel like they depend on those facts not being true. And they account for non-believers pretty much the same way Christians do - we are said to actively "hate" them or we have some moral deficit that prevents us from seeing the truth or we believe other things as an excuse to be bad people. I mean, not even gender identity believers think the creator of the universe will torture us forever just because we aren't compelled by weak evidence and just can't disregard loads of counter-evidence. And obviously, whether a person believes something or not isn't a matter of free will (nothing is) - we don't choose to believe things out of goodness or badness.
Brian, we will not agree that these two ideas are analogous. Belief has nothing to do with observing the physical body. Gender/sex is based on organs and DNA; organs are physical and observable. There is nothing to believe in this regard; this is solely based on acceptance. Religion - and I notice that you have decided to pick apart the Christian faiths but have not spoken about any other religions (I digress) - is based on belief. No one alive today walked the earth while Jesus did over 2,000 years ago. This is not observable and requires faith to believe. Beyond that, you are attempting to compare something that is perceived through the natural eyes (bodily organs) with something that is perceived through the spirit (things of God). For these reasons, your comparison of something observable, that being one's sex organs, with something not fully physically observable, that being a historic text written thousands of years ago about spiritual things represents a false equivalence. These are not analogous.
A significant difference is that disputing the notion of ressurection does not get one "cancelled."
Another is that even believers in the ressurection regard it as miraculous, not as a matter of science. It's fairly rare and well outside normal societal boundaries to promote killing oneself in order to be resurrected.
Not anymore. And if conservative activists captured institutions in the way many would like they will fall prey to the exact same spiral of virtue idiocy that progressives do. But plenty of people who believe in say Christianity that think those beliefs should get a special exemption from evidence when making policy, that their beliefs should be respected in a way other beliefs without evidence aren't. And they argue that ridiculing the beliefs or demanding evidence is a kind of bigotry. I wrote a piece I haven't published yet arguing that the obvious legal route to dealing with gender identity in law an workplace policy is just to treat it like a religion. And we have a pretty solid legal and cultural framework for protecting believers while not protecting the beliefs. It has a boatload of similarities. Christian belief relies largely on standpoint epistemology ("I have a personal relationship with Jesus" feels a lot to me like "I feel like a woman" in that introspecton is seen as a way of knowing). It has weird metaphysics (In Christianity, an omnipotent, omniscient God is constrained in how he can save people from the actions he built them to do by only being able to save them by creating a being from himself to kill in a sort of theatrical show - someone has to suffer because God created us sick and commands us to be well). Both Christianity and Gender Ideology have some hardcore literalism fundamentalists and others for whom the beliefs are just symbolic virtue signaling and exist in some weird "true, but not factual" space. I think the latter is far more common in woke circles that conservatives believe. I think for many soft woke people, like many religious people, they just haven't thought much about what these ideas would have to mean and just compartmentalize their "beliefs" to exist alongside contradictory "facts" and they easily live with both at once without cognitive dissonance. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M3rMRjJmUVJWRxMeHEpjQBqmTp73mVo3XE0uE4hUJxQ/edit?usp=sharing
I live in the South so I probably see a bit more of the religious crazy broadly here and the woke stuff isn't nearly as bad here as it is in other states. Ironically, I like living in the South precisely because ideological conformity annoys me, regardless of whose it is and oddly enough if you are in a decent size city in the South you probably get more ideological diversity than anywhere else. I grew up here and thought I was super liberal, then when I moved to really liberal places I was like "God are these people annoying". But I also want to distinguish woke ideologues from the far greater, and more reachable, number of enablers who are just kind of passively ignorant whose view seems to be, when you talk to them "Yeah, some of this gender stuff seems weird and I don't understand it, but the only people I hear making a fuss are the "God hates gays" crowd and I don't want to be one of them, so this stuff must all be what is required for civil rights". There are 3 of those people for every 1 woke fundamentalist reaching them is the key to ending this crap. Another similarity to religion is growing up in church I knew tons of serious believers but who had barely read the Bible and couldn't even give particularly correct answers about theological issues. Just assent to the symbolic doctrinal statements to be part of the club without asking any deep questions about what any of this would have to mean and how moral it actually is.
"woke enablers" - good label. I guess that applies to anyone in a job with an organisation that has a woke DEI policy. Their salary is at risk if they take a stand against it so their solution is to be all laissez faire about it - "bigger things to worry about" etc. It's just a feeble excuse for acquiescing in their own loss of freedom
I think it is even more subtle than that - I think people just comparmentalize their beliefs and don't really understand that what they consider to be symbolic beliefs, like "transwomen are women" are actually taken to be empirical beliefs by some and a vehicle for policy. They basically don't want to be on the "God hates Fags" team (understandably) and just endorse this stuff they way you accept the terms of free software - by scrolling down quickly checking the box without reading the agreement. I have had strangely baffling conversations with people about gender identity that make me feel the way I felt when I was young and in a church where my increasing atheism informed by actual bible scholarship could get no coherent answers to paradoxes or weird theological formulae from believers - they just believe multiple things at once that should contradict but seem to cause them no cognitive dissonance. I think I am a weirdo and that stance is probably the normal human one. When I press people on what it could possibly mean to have a gender identity or "feel like a woman" they can't really say what it could mean - they believe it without having interrogated it because it is tied to some larger, tamer value like "be nice to androgynes". It is very much like a religious belief in that respect - it is more a symbolic belief than an empirical belief. Same reason why almost no Christians are like killing abortion doctors or doing other crazy fundamentalist things despite what their beliefs should make them do. I think in the gender identity world, we need to just stop worrying about the gender identity fundamentalists and instead focus on the enablers who can be made to see that the nice tolerant liberal values they care about don't need this crazy ideology - that we can get all of the tolerance with none of the crazy without it.
You equate a belief system that seeks to elevate humans with an ideology that seeks to surgically alter the human body in ways that destroy healthy function?
I equate two belief systems that make strong empirical claims without evidence and conflate the utility of a belief with its truth. And both insist instrospection is a way of knowing that should be respected by others and by public policy. Sorry if I am not very excited about ideologies that use metaphysical woo woo to "elevate humanity". Adherence to ideologies claiming to "elevate humanity" has a pretty bad track record. And two belief systems that act like their belief has its etiology in examining evidence when obviously it is somewhere else - as your objection illustrates. And I would say wokeness also seeks to elevate humanity by ending oppressive systems. Chrisitanity has a pretty mixed track record of "elevating humanity" - I was just reading yesterday about the insane horrors of the Thirty Years War for example. Christians believe a wide variety of things and that doesn't mean some aren't "real" Christians. My point is simple - if people who believe Jesus rose from the dead to save our sins (not only empirically outrageous, but also theologically outrageous in terms of what it would mean for an apparently eternal God to have to resort to weird Pagan metaphors to undo problems of his own making) can't reflect on "hmm, why do I believe this?" and come up with any answers that make sense, it would seem they might be able to inhabit the minds of people who also have weird empirical beliefs that also seem to defy reason but clearly inform some deeper moral imperative. Do any religious people really think they believe things like substitutionary atonement and resurrections because they carefully examined the evidence for and against and came to this conclusion because the facts were just more compelling on the pro side and people who don't just aren't as good at discerning good information from bad? I would expect to see religious people generally better at evaluating evidence and that doesn't seem to be the case. So then maybe they believe it because it underwrites moral things they think are necessary and gives them a moral group identity. But then that is what they criticize the woke for. So we either do or we don't care about evidence when having beliefs that we form an identity around. I see no evidence that humans were more elevated when more people ostensibly believed in Jesus - the world seems much better now than in say 1200AD. I say all this not mostly to piss on Christianity but to point out that if you want to understand the process by which people come to believe objectively dumb things and to figure out how to reach them so the dumb things they believe stay harmless, its helpful to think about the times we might believe dumb things and how we came about that belief, why it seems so important to us, and what others might say to us to get us to hold the belief a bit less closely and make it ammenable to peaceful coexistence with the real world of facts.
You're correct that "elevate humanity" was a poor choice of words. And historically people claiming to speak for Christianity have behaved horrifically. You are also correct that many so-called Christians only repeat what they've been told, but that is true of any group (look at the "gays for Gaza" as a prime example.)
However, I stand by the conviction that faith can be reasonable and that belief in Jesus can be defended using rational logic. I won't take the time to fully explicate here, but Jesus as unique becomes evident in his self-concept of being the Son of God embraced by religious Jews in the first century, his miracles (accepted by most scholars), the reports of his trial and crucifixion in extra-biblical sources (Josephus, Tactius, Mara bar Serapion, and the Babylonian Talmud) and his resurrection (something modern Jewish theologians are beginning to support. There is sufficient historical evidence to demonstrate Jesus as something other than a random nomadic rabbi from an oppressed people group. C. S. Lewis scoffed at the perception of Jesus as simply a moral teacher, saying, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Mere Christianity, book 2, ch. 3, paragraphs 11-13.)
Belief in Jesus can be rational. Belief that a male can become a female by removing body parts or a female can become a male by constructing them is NOT rational, by any stretch of the imagination.
None of this was ever about helping trans persons, or any other minority. This has always been a straight white bourgeois (middle/upper-class) madness, a neurotic distortion of left-wing humanism, which is currently inorganically promoted throughout Western societies by entities and persons who may not actually believe a word of it (e.g. Katherine Maher). The ultimate goal seems to be to replace the natural grassroots ethical/political culture which might otherwise come to be, perhaps in order to prevent the growth of an anti-war movement.
Also looking forward to future installments. At the same time feeling desolate now that Brian has revealed Christianity to be the rational equivalent of extremist transgenderism Wow. Who knew?
Thank you, B! I am looking forward to sharing what I have learned. I disagree, though, that Christianity and "transgenderism" are analogous. One is a belief system and leads people to live a life that (if they follow the Bible) is filled with love, joy, kindness, goodness, patience, peace, self-control, faithfulness, and gentleness. The other is a state of profound confusion that leads to depression, drug addiction, hostility, body dismemberment, forced sterility, and suicide. To be equivalent, they must equal the same thing. They neither equal the same thing in nature nor outcomes. Therefore, I do not see an equivalence.
I am a professor and have taught the evolutionary psychology of sex differences for about 25 years. What has happened in the last 5 years (even 10 years) has been stunning and befuddling. Now this is 3rd-rail. Fortunately, I have tenure and am near retirement, so I do not shy away from the empirical facts. Others are not so fortunate.
I look forward to learning more about your journey through the academic Alice in Wonderland / Twilight Zone postmodernist / identitarian pit that academia has sunk into.
I love it!!! Alice in Wonderland, Twilight Zone, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, Tales from the Crypt and the Darkside, all of it! It's outrageous! And I do not have the luxury of tenure, but I refuse to be shackled by abject nonsense.
Good for you! Nonsense and lies are never the way to live! …..morally, that is.
Excellent that you said "sex differences."
Humans only exist and reproduce through two sexes--female and male.
"Gender" is a linguistics term for words only. It has no application to humans.
That simple fact alone clears up a good deal of the idiotic nonsense regarding this issue. There is no such thing as "trans" or "transgender" or "gender dysphoria."
Stop using "gender." The usage of the word itself is a major source of confusion. If you mean clothing or hairstyles or personality or stereotypes or hobbies--say that. That covers most of what people mean with "gender." There's always an accurate word. "Gender" never can be accurate.
Yes, the term "gender" should be jettisoned. All behavior is a complex
interaction between biological and social influences -- they cannot be
separated. To suggest otherwise leads to faulty thinking and devastating consequences.
Isn’t that the goal of the “ gender” cult? To confuse by obfuscating, to do away with all boundaries? To begin the journey to transhumanism?
Even hermaphrodite animals are sexually dimorphic. They are *both* male and female but they aren't any other thing. I'm dimorphic, you're dimorphic, she's dimorphic, they're dimorphic, wouldn't you like to be dimorphic too! It's the cool thing to do and you don't have any choice anyway!
Haha! Love that little ditty!
Agreed! But the trans cult deliberately uses sex and gender interchangeably. There is a reason for this: it makes it easier to further their goal : lying to the rest of us.
Thanks for the article. I've been distracted from the CRT debate by the gender madness as I have a son. so haven't been on here for a while. I see similar ideological madness in CRT and gender ideology.
I am lucky to be in England to some extent, where there is some serious pushback from feminists and the top of the medical profession, despite advanced infiltration of the gender cult across society, esp. in educational sector.
When an institution changes its EDI policies to effectively mandate the support of gender ideology, the whole payroll becomes instantly and heavily invested in staying silent and colluding with it, if they even noticed.
I have a relative here in England who works in HR for a US law firm who says they can't employ "gender critical" employees because the firm did a consultation with staff and decided it's not "who we are as a firm" - equating personal beliefs with personal identity and eliminating viewpoint diversity at a stroke.
She's late 40s so like me, grew up well before this madness took hold and has never shown any interest in gender issues until the last few years. Now she's a believer but not a very well informed one on the law or realities of gender ideology IMO. She told me to "get with the times".
How did we get here so quickly? Some well-educated, AGPs in the 80s persuaded themselves they were women, then their therapists, then the LGB community, which they piggybacked to add in the TQ to every goldarn EDI accreditation system in the western world, bypassing usual democratic processes. Good news for Big Pharma. Tragedy for modern youth, for whom freedom of opinion is something to read about in history books. Good luck.
It's called "institutional capture" and it's been afoot for decades: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1478210317721311
https://www.newsweek.com/scientific-institutions-are-going-woke-hemorrhaging-credibility-opinion-1693973
Thank you, Lightwing, for sharing this! I will definitely take a look at these links.
Wow, Hamish! How did we get here? I saw a video about a British feminist, Mrs. Kelly Keen-Minshull, who pushed back on this agenda by posting the definition of woman on a billboard. It is good to see people standing against this. And "get with the times"? Times may change, but biology does not. Thank you for your response.
You refer to Kellie-Jay Keen, women's rights activist and founder of rallies called "Let Women Speak". She toured Australia last year and I attended 2 of her rallies, this resulted in me being expelled from an art festival I had been selected for, due to being slurred as a transphobe. Kellie-Jay was derided in the mainstream media as a hateful bigot and a nazi. She is currently in litigation with the leader of the Liberal Party in the state of Queensland suing him for accusing her of being an actual Nazi. It Is truly INSANE!
@Tiffanie Victoria’s Jones, please also be aware that another woman in Australia—Sall Grover—is preparing to take her rejection of the gender lunacy to the High Court. Sall is fighting back against a man—calling himself Roxanne Tickle—who insists he has the right to use Sal’s new and precious app she developed for women only. He nearly gave up his action to take Sall to court until he was given the funding at a late hour. The court case reveals gender lunacy—Tickle v Giggle—and, further lunacy—the AHRC (Australian Human Rights Commission) is supporting his case. This AHRC recently ruled that lesbians in Victoria, Australia, must not *discriminate* against ‘transwomen’ who have a right to be called lesbians and participate in a lesbian only event, despite most lesbians defining our sexuality as sex-based. And most Big media are maintaining their silent collusion (Bernard Lane—on Substack—is an exception, but he had to leave his job on Big Media to not be silenced.) For an Australian lesbian view, see the website of the Coalition of Activist Lesbians (coal.org.au) that is currently fighting back against the lunacy being incorporated into NSW law because it has strongly infiltrated the NSW Labor party (think Democrats). NSW legislation is late to join the cult’s take-over of Australian law because we had a conservative government that refused to changed its sex based reality. I and many others I’m working with who do not hold conservative values are finding it an uphill battle. We recently lost our campaign to stop a conversion practices bill, which dishonestly promotes ‘affirmation’ as the best practise for treating children and young people who are dissociated from their bodies into a medicalised trans pathway. We say that affirmation IS the conversion practice, one especially effective against homophobic lesbian and gay youth (and their parents).
Thanks Viviane! I will look into Sall's case. Tickle vs. Giggle? That does not sound very serious :).
It is utter lunacy( I love that word!) to be called all kinds of slanderous names because one tells the truth! Actually, I think most of the trans cultists know deep down that they are lying, so their only defense is name calling. … like children who are guilty of something.
Expelled? A Nazi? For sharing the definition of a woman - an adult female? This is truly, truly a shame. How can this not be called "lunacy" and its twin brother "insanity"? I hope that she is vindicated. And you, stay strong, Pearl!
IMO you make yourself vulnerable allying with KJK publicly because she's sometimes over the top. (Not that we will ever campaign in a way that pleases trans activists)
@Pearl Red Moon, Kellie-Jay Keen has effectively mobilised many women with her call to define women as adult human female. She is a gifted orator who is turning her skill to a political career. But she uses that gift to goad already hate-filled opponents and so is dangerous. And she has stated she is no feminist, another red flag for women to be mindful of.
You have interesting views. Especially as KJK could have been seriously assaulted or killed at a New Zealand rally last year, this gave many GC a heightened consciousness of who the people are who believe they are justified to act on their feelings of hate. I don't think her views are extremist, polarising certainly. Nor do I agree she intentionally "goads" any of her audience. That seems to imply you think she wants people to do extreme acts of violence? That you see it and I don't shows just how subjective that interpretation is.
Long before I heard of KJK I was already vacillating to describe myself a feminist & only use it in some contexts now. I am not a feminist when it comes to supporting legal prostitution or surrogacy.
Viviane - just seen this, for people to get the point, hopefully https://x.com/i/status/1794026078249549930
She just needs to be accountable to some fellow travellers but she's not and that says something. On social media, you will slip up with her approach every now and then if you row your own boat
Who are the fellow travellers she needs to be accountable to ? She only ever speaks the truth. Anyone who thinks KJK is an extremist is either a trans activist or someone who truly doesn’t believe women deserve single sex spaces.
Thanks, Tiffanie. Good luck in your fight - I admire and respect you.
Kellie Jay Keen is brave and has put up with a lot. I agree with most of her points. But she's sometimes over the top, wishing ill on trans people and perhaps commenting outside her expertise. I would like to see her hold herself accountable to others in the GC world - that's really important in today's social media cauldron IMO.
I recommend highly "Sex Matters" which is a UK-based campaign group made up of some serious heavyweight feminists, including lawyers, with a very professional approach. I admire their work a lot. They are a true force to be reckoned with and have achieved a lot already.
"Outside her expertise"? !!! What expertise do you believe is required to have permission to comment on trans gender ideology? One of the most destructive things postmodernist/de-constructivist thinking has inflicted on midernity s the realisation that experts cannot always be trusted, that they are easily corrupted by either fear or power.
When you get into conv'ns with trans activists, you're dealing with ppl who know the ins and outs of transition drugs, surgery, different providers, different national regimes, medical studies, backgrounds of activists, govt policies, legal cases.... It's their obsession so it's easy for the rest of us to make some generalisations that they have more details on. KJK ploughs a lone furrow as far as I can see and I would like to see her network more with people with other expertise, and be accountable to them, like the excellent "Sex Matters" group. However, she may find that others are reluctant to work with her because they don't want to be associated with her mistakes.
Thank you, Hamish! I appreciate the kind words. I will definitely look into the "Sex Matters" campaign group. I appreciate a professional approach and lean more toward that styling; however, sometimes, you do have to say it straight out :). But I don't find it is ever appropriate to wish ill on others or to be crass. I have not found that with Keen, and I do admire her boldness.
I defended her more fully until I was sent some videos where she said some unacceptable things. So you could be embarrassed by trans activists if you align with her fully in public IMO. "Sex Matters" do say it straight but they're highbrow and so don't reach the parts that KJK reaches.
That's interesting to know, and I do understand where you are coming from. I will say this, though. It will be an extraordinary feat for me to be embarrassed by a "trans activist." Aside from the obvious, there is nothing that I say or stand for that I do not believe in or cannot support. The biggest reason is that I stand for truth. And if I support you behind closed doors, I support you outside. As far as Keen goes, she may take a route that I do not take or prefer, but I have found that I appreciate her bold stance on protecting "womanness". We don't have to agree with everything a person says or does in order to value some things from that person.
KJK has done a good job popularising gender critical positions but she has gone on record as rejecting feminism and making some racist and homophobic remarks, which turn me off. She’s formed a women’s political party and that’s more her style—a single cause rhetorician.
What were her homophobic comments ? The only time I hear her talking about homosexuality she is sticking up for them.
Tiffanie - just so you see an example of the concerns many GC folk have over KJK, here is a recent video https://x.com/i/status/1794026078249549930 I love the fact that a working class English girl is so brave and outspoken but she's going too far and is a loose cannon IMO
I imagine if you’re HR relative was raised in Weimar Germany she’d probably happily have stopped hiring Jews because “that’s not who they are as a company” and would probably have told you then to “get with the times”. Getting with the times doesn’t make you right, it makes you complicit when getting with the times means excluding or harming those who are different from you. It’s so easy for people to not think that they get angry at those who choose to think for themselves. This is ideological indoctrination. I work in a US company and they struggle to manage this nonsense. I have a colleague who’s been pulled up for having IT as a pronoun in his profile. He was told it was offensive and asked why. He played the woke card and questioned HR on their safe space policy and they backed down. Oh it’s ok we just had to check that you were a “real it” otherwise it would be offensive 🤦🏻♂️
Me at a woke restaurant. Waiter comes up and says “Hi. I am Darren (he/him) and I will be your waiter today.” So, I say “Hi Darren. I am William (he/her) and I guess I will be your customer today”. He begins to list the specials and then says he/her? I tell him I am a he when talking to me, but a her when referring to me. For example if I need an extra napkin and you send the busboy over you say ‘the woman in the green sweater needs a napkin’. He looks a bit put out. He says “are you pulling my leg?” I get offended “Excuse me. Am I restricted in my gender here?” “No. But how can you be he and her?” “I think the way women are treated is better than how men are treated. Are you saying I can’t be a woman if I so choose? Sometimes I get tired of being a man and feel like being a woman. Are you saying that is wrong?” He realizes he has messed up and apologizes to me and says he just needed clarification. I try to look Serious.
That's hilarious! Just goes to show that if you can navigate the woke language smartly enough, you can sometimes avoid its stupid consequences while also showing it up for the nonsense that it is.
Oh totally. I’m loving working for a woke company. If I don’t want to do work i just cry and make up some problem and demand a safe space. Now every time I do it I loose a little self respect for myself but it is what it is 😂
Well, can you sue them for loss of self-respect? Perfect the circle of woke lunacy. (Sorry if I made you cry.)
Hahaha don’t rock the woke boat otherwise you may end up having to do some actual work 😂
"And the people all said sit down...."
Thank you for sharing this. I have had my business ruined in the last year using the LinkedIn platform; which has also taken a hyper progressive and nonsensical approach to these topics. Forcing people to conform to the mental health issues of others is Satanic and a disservice to the mental health of others.
Are you at liberty to expand on how your business was impacted by LinkedIn's policy changes? I always thought LinkedIn was simply an online Rolodex primarily used to maintain and expand one's business profile and list of contacts. I'm curious as to how ideology feeds into this network.
LinkedIn restricted my account for changing my pronouns to common sense after they continued to ask for them. They also have content creators and hyper liberal people policing viewpoints that shouldn't even be on the platform to begin with. LinkedIn went from being a business site to a social justice warrior site full of beta people with causes that hurt society.
Thanks for the elaboration on LinkedIn's devolution. "Go woke, go broke" is still operative, so there's (a slim) hope for the service's recovery from insanity or eventual replacement by a more grounded operation.
In similar ways to Angie I have been censored or cancelled by various social media. They are all Woke and feel entitled to apply their social engineering agenda . Some examples - I was banned from Twitter and only reinstated after Elon bought it, after having been reported for saying " men cannot turn into women", my Instagram acct was banned after I publicly supported a GC politician seeking public office, due to "infringing community standards" & "hateful conduct". My Patreon was closed. Pinterest cancelled my "verified merchant" acct due to waffle allegations of not providing "positive customer service experience". They also deleted a board with 500 links to GC podcasts, books, essays and videos, claiming it infringed community standards. My experiences are commonplace for women who critique trans gender ideology.
Pearl, even though I know it's happening - I mean, it happened to me - it still is shocking to read these events. Like I said before, stay strong.
Thanks Tiffanie. I am strong and will keep speaking out against cancel culture, to uphold womens rights and to stop young people from getting damaged by the trans gender cult.
You are a wonderfully engaging writer and I look forward to the next parts of your story.
Prof Randall Kennedy from Harvard on a YT video today:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7EtKqIdbz8&t=1318s
Reddit is also a woke zone. They banned GC forums a while back
That is terrible to hear, Angie! It can be so discouraging and difficult. You stay encouraged even in the face of this, and remember Whose you are.
I keep my prayers up and learned to pivot from the site.
This was an outstanding essay. I profess no expertise in marketing but I'm guessing subscriptions to Free Black Thought would skyrocket if this essay could get out to a wider audience.
I have taught finance and economics at the college level for the past 30+ years. I've witnessed the metastasizing of the cancer of political correctness. The custom made bumper sticker on my car states "Colleges Murder Viewpoint Diversity." "Diversity" on college campuses too often means people who look different but share the not-to-be-challenged leftist viewpoints.
I truly appreciate that! Thank you, Richard! I say it all the time that my experience at this specific university (and I would imagine other universities as well) reflects the following idea: "diversity" is about getting together a variety of brown-skinned people - from dark vanilla to cafe au lait to caramel to almond to pecan to mocha to mahogany to chocolate to midnight - who all agree.
At a recent faculty meeting, I asked the college President "as part of the DEI information included with the recently adopted nursing program, are faculty required to treat students differently based on the color of their skin?" He answered "no."
Two weeks before I sent an email with a similar question to the Dean of Students in her capacity as a member of the college's DEI Working Group but did not get a response. A week later I sent the same email and received a response "the answer to your question is 'no.'" Admittedly, the response was confusing since the very same person had sent out a campus-wide email describing "a great opportunity " to listen to Ibram X. Kendi speak at a local college.
As an economist, I have a serious problem with Kendi's assertion that to be an anti-racist you also have to be anti-capitalist. I have every intention of continuing to openly challenge such assertions.
Thank you again for your excellent essay and responses. I look forward to reading more of your work.
Diversity in melanin, not ideas
From Mark Twain (nee Samuel Clemens): "Let men label you as they may, if you alone of all the nation decide one way, and that way be the right way by your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country. Hold up your head for you have nothing to be ashamed of.
It doesn’t matter what the press says. It doesn’t matter what the politicians or the mobs say. It doesn’t matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. Republics are founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe in, no matter the odds or consequences.
When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth and tell the whole world:
'No, you move.' "
This Mark Twain quote is fantastic! I get into what actually occurred at the University in the next essay, but what I did not include is this: I was asked to apologize for "causing harm" by my response. (I won't give away my response here because that ruins it...just wait for it). I refused to do so; so, I wrote a letter to my students, and the Dean and Chair at the time made "a few" changes, including adding an apology. I truly did not believe that I was wrong, but I did not want the back-and-forth, so I sent their "refreshed" letter with the apology to my students. It was the first time since I was 22 years old that I allowed someone to speak words for me that were not mine and that I was strongly against. I felt truly ashamed. I made a vow that that would be the very last time I would allow someone to make me feel that way. I would stand up for myself and my beliefs come what may. And I have not let myself down since.
Don't give an inch. There is no compassion inherent in lying to people and just saying things to make them feel better. We can be warm and loving and accepting... we should be! But never lie.
Hooray for you!
Absolutely, Mark!!! Give an inch, they take 8,000 miles and now "men give birth."
Yes, they will. They will keep nudging and pushing you until what is uniquely you is gone.
According to my wife I've given birth to about a thousand bad ideas. Ask your
Dean and Chair if that counts.
I am overjoyed with all the positive, enthusiastic responses you are receiving! There is hope for this society, yet!
I LOVE IT! I shall not be moved! I love it!!!
I would very much like to talk with you. If you're interested my email is notmoving@gmail.com. And if you're not interested, it's still notmoving@gmail.com.
:)
Looking forward to the series! "Queer Theory" needs to be exposed for the fraud that it truly is. I can't believe that intelligent adults buy into this....but then again, "Be Kind" seems to be the general motto for the Intersectionality crowd. I have a young adult kid caught up in this and I've been patiently waiting for this house of cards to get caught in the wind.
My goodness! I cannot remember, but I believe that I address queer theory in a later essay, but I certainly address the components of it in a "dictionary" that I have compiled for this agenda. I think you will really appreciate that essay; it is one of the latter ones.
There is so much that is helpful to me (and I'm sure others) in this article. I can't wait for the rest of what you will write. I have been overwhelmed at the new 'shark jumping' that comes at us with regularity in the changing discourse of this insanity. Thank you for clarifying not only in terms of reality but also in terms of the gaslighting that occurs on a regular basis. It feels like an entire generation of youth and others are entering into mass Stockholm Syndrome at the hands of their destroyers. I would also make the argument that this is happening across racial issues as well. Every day I see people in the real-world treating others with respect, forming friendships, teams, marriages and families across racial lines. They want us to 'see' just the opposite. Are there still those who sit in their racial division and hate? Yes. But much like those who are truly gender dysphoric, they are few and far between. If we fail to recognize the majority of goodness we will fall to the minority of badness.
The gaslighting! You hit the nail on the head!!! I would add to the Stockholm Syndrome, the Emperor's New Clothes. That children's story could not be more appropriate than it is now.
Oh, amen. I heard someone today in a Senate testimony to Rand Paul say there are well defined 'standards of practice' in gender surgery. Countries around the world from Sweden to the UK have all but prohibited it at least for children. Yet we continue. So scary. Thank you again for shedding your light on this.
“We have very clear ethical guidelines for cutting off boys penises, sterilizing young girls, and destroying any hope they have for a fulfilling love life.”
I'm with you, I applaud you, I stand by you, and I eagerly look forward to reading more from you. I'm from the same profession and faith as you. It is astounding how our profession and some of our churches have jettisoned truth and efficacy in pursuit of the bald-faced lie of "compassion." There is no compassion in rushing to a diagnosis that inevitably leaves many harmed for life. It is, instead, cruelty of the highest order.
Thank you, Mark, so much! Compassion is absolutely a beautiful thing and much needed. But to your point, what on earth is compassionate about amputating a child's (or adult's) healthy body parts? Forever! This could not be further from compassion. How can you be compassionate towards people while looking in their faces and lying to them? That term, along with "love" and "kindness" and others, are being abused to commit atrocities.
Thank you Dr. Jones......I look forward to the rest of theseries.
As do I.
Thank you, Brett!
Thank you, Thomas! I am looking forward to sharing.
Eloquently put.
I agree there is basic science that is involved here and that the topic is complicated in that we don’t really know what other’s are thinking. Your transition can come from a very earnest place but the perspective of others may be equally earnest.
67 Comments! Let us begin indeed....
I have taught in academia/higher ed for 20 years now. It used to be useful.
In the past ten years in academia, only people of color get to speak or run committees, and only radical women, not centrist, liberal or conservative women, ever get to speak.
Everybody just sits there, listening and thinking -this is not true.; this is absurd. Well, I get a paycheck if I can endure this.
Most of the people are not that bright and most of them could not back up their claims if they were na undergrad taking an intro essay course.
None of the people I've worked with in academia have the skills to run a lemonade stand. They just rant based on CRT/DEI, then we all go home.
Wow! "I get a paycheck if I can endure this." In academia? Unreal. My case is a little different because my experience occurred at a PWI, so it seems that the nonsense has definitely crossed color lines. But I believe the sentiment of those of us who have to listen to the madness is the same. Until, you simply cannot listen anymore and you must say something, or write an essay series about it :).
Well I wasn't saying the paycheck paid any bills no. :-) Thats the irony. MIddling pay and wasted time leads to disenchantment and detachment. Most teachers I know now are dialing it in, not due to the students (who are lazier and expect more, but that can be partially understood), no, due to the peers, the bullies, the SCJ who are in essence Red Guards and Maoists. Its frightening.
I could be wrong, but I think that using "sex" and "gender" interchangeably is probably a mistake. One of the terms, "sex", comes from biology whereas the other one, "gender", comes from sociology. You don't have subscribe to the idea that men can give birth to recognize that there are both biological and sociological issues at play in this debate, and the inability to talk about them separately is exactly the problem that the gender ideologues then exploit for their own purposes. I accept that sex is biological, a fact established at birth that cannot be subsequently changed, and I also accept that gender is socially-constructed and can shift and change throughout a person's life. A lot of people on the right seem to think that by denying the social construction of gender they are reinforcing the biology of sex, but in actuality, I think they're doing the opposite. Those who deny either the biology of sex or the social construction of gender are in my opinion on the same reality-denying team.
In everyday language, it's OK or at least it was OK to use sex and gender interchangeably, in my experience. Your definition of gender is quite specialised. Trans activists are on a mission to educate the general population on their subtle semantic distinctions and neologisms and police us on it. So I'm with the author in saying - to heck with it.
It's the "trans activitists" who are trying to blurr the distinction between "sex" and "gender", they want us to use them interchangeably so that they can declare all of it to be socially-constructed and changeable. I'd invite you to attempt to make the distinction between sex and gender in any conversation you have with them, you'll quickly see that they won't accept it.
We're way past "everyday language". This is contested territory, where the relative precision of a definition literally means putting women at risk of having a convicted male sex offender placed in a prison cell with them or not. You free of course to say "to heck with it", but don't pretend to be acting in the interest of protecting women or addressing social issues in a productive way.
Just wait for it...
A quick teaser: the "trans activists" are the people who created and promoted the idea that sex and gender are distinct. This is the heart of queer theory. They are also the ones who promote the idea that now sex is a social construct, too. How? Why? Based on what standard?
Just look at your comment for a moment. If they created and promoted the idea that sex and gender are distinct, then how are they now promoting the idea that sex is a social construct? The whole message of sex and gender being "distinct" is that sex refers to biology, gender to sociology. It's only when you want to blur the lines that you would then argue that sex is a social construct. Why would you buy into that, and help them do it?
D. Malcolm, you seem so shocked that this group is drowning is flagrant contradiction. Why are you shocked? These are the same people who say that men give birth! Your appeal to logic is beautiful and absolutely refreshing...but logic went completely out the window when someone opened their mouth and said that "men give birth." And then when someone else said, "You know, yeah, they do." And then when someone else said, "Yeah, and if you, intelligent person, don't agree with that, you're fired!" This agenda has nothing - and I mean absolutely nothing - to do with logic. I have written an essay on this; it should be up soon.
You're absolutely right that blurring the lines leads to saying that sex is also a social construct. That statement allows for other preposterous statements, such as "men give birth." Here is what I argue: those lines got blurred the moment a faulty study was conducted to "prove" that gender and sex are distinct. The term "gender" as it relates to "sex" originated as a synonym for "sex." They were not distinct originally, and for the better part of our history, they have been synonyms. Attempting to force a narrative that the two terms are distinct is where the lines became blurred and opened the door for what we see today. I think you will find the essays delineating the elements of this theory, which is queer theory, insightful.
I can rock with that argument to an extent. You're right that gender was originally synonymous. But if you want to revert to that, then what do you call the social constructs around sex/gender. I mean, we still have husband and wife right? Those aren't biological categories, but they're important. Biology is not nothing, but it's also not everything.
Interesting...thank you for sharing. Let me ask you. How do you know that gender is a social construct? Who told you this, and why do you believe them? What makes them credible in their assertion? I wrote an essay on this very topic, so you will see there why I do not distinguish the two. You will also see where the term "gender" came from and why it came to mean "sex"; you will also see why the two were eventually separated. This is certainly a situation of "consider the source." This essay is on the way. See you there :).
Looking forward it your essay, but gender as a word is defined literally at the level of the dictionary but also in common usage as "the characteristics of women, men, girls and boys that are socially constructed. This includes norms, behaviours and roles associated with being a woman, man, girl or boy, as well as relationships with each other." Did gender get this definition from gender theory? Of course. It's literally their word, they can define it however they want. You don't have to use it.
But even if you're not going to use it, then you would need to find a word to describe these socially-constructed characteristics. It seems too obvious to state that "men" and "women" as categories are exactly the same biologically across every culture and all of history, but sociologically, those categories can be dramatically different. If you don't accept that, then just refer to biological sex only and be done with it. Why do you need to refer to "gender", if you don't accept that there's a sociological aspect to it?
I insist on using the term "gender" because this group does not get to change language to suit their agenda and then demand that I use the language according to their standards. I will not accept that. I assert that the two terms are synonymous and with good reason; the distinction lies not in "sex" and "gender", but in "sex" and "gender expression." That is where cultural and sociological implications are relevant.
Making a distinction between sex/gender versus sex/gender expression now sounds like you're splitting hairs just to make a point. Why not "sex expression?" Language evolves, I don't think it was just gender theorists that we're looking for a way to distinguish between biology and sociology, I believe some word would've been invented for this purpose, because it's actually helpful be be able to analyze how biology and sociology both overlap but also diverge in any kind of discussion about humans. It'd be like trying to have a "nature versus nuture" debate, but you can only use the term "nature". We would suffer for that.
Interesting that you mention "nature versus nurture" because that was the study that was conducted to determine if gender and sex are distinct. I am not splitting hairs. "Sex/gender expression" are distinct from sex/gender. The former is how you express yourself (ie. clothing) regarding your sex/gender, whereas the latter is your actual biological makeup. These two ideas are indeed distinct. For example, a man does not cease to be a man because he puts on a skirt, or a woman does not cease to be a woman because she expresses herself by wearing a short haircut. Expression and biology are distinct. What is not distinct is sex and gender.
Maybe. I'm not saying you're splitting hairs re: the actual concepts. Yes, I 100% think it's extremely important for accuracy's sake to be able to talk about biology and sociology separately. They are very distinct conversations that gender ideology is attempting to blur together. We're agreed on that. It's the terminology "gender versus gender expression" that seems to be splitting hairs. If gender is defined as social construct then distinguishing between "gender" and "gender expression" is not necessary. You just have biological sex and socially-constructed gender, which would of course also include gender expression.
You still haven't answered why not just use "sex expression"? For that matter, why do we even need two words at all, if gender is synonymous with sex, then what's the point of even using the word?
"People do not resurrect from the dead no how, no way under any circumstances and people who think so don't really believe it either but have been propagandized and are propagandizing in turn". Feel how that clearly true observation strikes you and now you can imagine how confronting gender dysphorics with both the truth about biology and an account of how they came to believe what they believe feels. Note how my pointing out this obvious fact makes you feel personally attacked and your feelings and commitments dismissed. I agree obviously with your gender ideology critique, but can't see how religion isn't subject to the exact same critique. In both the case of gender ideology and religious empirical claims about substitutionary atonement, both make no real sense if you ask any hard questions and can each be easily seen as "symbolic beliefs" meant to bolster the moral claims that lie under them.
You've made a grand assumption that I feel personally attacked and that my feelings and commitments feel dismissed because you speak in error regarding Jesus' resurrection. I do not feel attacked at all. You are entitled to your beliefs without me feeling attacked. Not only that, I am also not seeking to destroy your livelihood or character because you do not share my religious beliefs. They are mine, and I have no right to demand that you affirm what I believe. That is one of the main points of this series. To your comparison, the heart of religion is belief. The heart of gender is DNA. This is not to say that religious beliefs cannot be proven, but it is to say that DNA is not contingent upon your beliefs and is solely based on facts. These two are not analogous. Beyond that, people are not currently being fired or jailed or fined in the U.S. for saying that the Lord, Jesus Christ rose from the dead - though, with the the direction that we are going, we may not be too far from that. Thank you, though, for your comment.
Preach, Sis
Perfect.
So what kind of evidence would convince you that the New Testament is entirely manmade, has no revelation in it, has pretty obvious source material from late Hellenistic Judaism and rewrites of Old Testament material such that the things Jesus does relies on the writer having read the Old Testament in Greek, and that Jesus sayings etc. couldn't have actually originated with an Aramaic speaker. If none, then you know exactly what a gender identity person feels like when they reject the evidence for biological sex differences, the strange and really nonsensical idea of a gender identity, etc. It isn't like they carefully weighed all the evidence to arrive where they are anymore than you did on Christianity. Like you surely don't think you believe in Jesus because you carefully looked at lots of information, found the best arguments against and just found that evidence wanting and that Christians in generally are just better at discerning good arguments from bad and Jews, apparently are really bad at it? So I would just argue that people who believe in gender identity theory probably came by their beliefs in the same way you did and hold them as a key part of their identity for the same reasons you hold your religion and probably won't seriously consider counter-evidence because it threatens more than just simple empirical claims any more than you would because the beliefs are too important. But since Christians, thankfully, mostly aren't killing non-believers anymore and their beliefs mostly can be held in a weird sort of compartmentalization with reality beliefs, we should probably look at what that process was and see how we can maybe tame gender identity beliefs in a similar way. Like there is nothing even hypothetically I could tell you about the Gospels to get you to say "huh, this is a better explanation for what I am reading than the stuff I hear in church" so that probably tells you your beliefs are something besides just empirical claims and I am pretty sure gender identity belief is like that too. They just can't hear facts about sex and dig deep about what a gender identity would actually have to mean because their moral commitments feel like they depend on those facts not being true. And they account for non-believers pretty much the same way Christians do - we are said to actively "hate" them or we have some moral deficit that prevents us from seeing the truth or we believe other things as an excuse to be bad people. I mean, not even gender identity believers think the creator of the universe will torture us forever just because we aren't compelled by weak evidence and just can't disregard loads of counter-evidence. And obviously, whether a person believes something or not isn't a matter of free will (nothing is) - we don't choose to believe things out of goodness or badness.
Brian, we will not agree that these two ideas are analogous. Belief has nothing to do with observing the physical body. Gender/sex is based on organs and DNA; organs are physical and observable. There is nothing to believe in this regard; this is solely based on acceptance. Religion - and I notice that you have decided to pick apart the Christian faiths but have not spoken about any other religions (I digress) - is based on belief. No one alive today walked the earth while Jesus did over 2,000 years ago. This is not observable and requires faith to believe. Beyond that, you are attempting to compare something that is perceived through the natural eyes (bodily organs) with something that is perceived through the spirit (things of God). For these reasons, your comparison of something observable, that being one's sex organs, with something not fully physically observable, that being a historic text written thousands of years ago about spiritual things represents a false equivalence. These are not analogous.
A significant difference is that disputing the notion of ressurection does not get one "cancelled."
Another is that even believers in the ressurection regard it as miraculous, not as a matter of science. It's fairly rare and well outside normal societal boundaries to promote killing oneself in order to be resurrected.
Not anymore. And if conservative activists captured institutions in the way many would like they will fall prey to the exact same spiral of virtue idiocy that progressives do. But plenty of people who believe in say Christianity that think those beliefs should get a special exemption from evidence when making policy, that their beliefs should be respected in a way other beliefs without evidence aren't. And they argue that ridiculing the beliefs or demanding evidence is a kind of bigotry. I wrote a piece I haven't published yet arguing that the obvious legal route to dealing with gender identity in law an workplace policy is just to treat it like a religion. And we have a pretty solid legal and cultural framework for protecting believers while not protecting the beliefs. It has a boatload of similarities. Christian belief relies largely on standpoint epistemology ("I have a personal relationship with Jesus" feels a lot to me like "I feel like a woman" in that introspecton is seen as a way of knowing). It has weird metaphysics (In Christianity, an omnipotent, omniscient God is constrained in how he can save people from the actions he built them to do by only being able to save them by creating a being from himself to kill in a sort of theatrical show - someone has to suffer because God created us sick and commands us to be well). Both Christianity and Gender Ideology have some hardcore literalism fundamentalists and others for whom the beliefs are just symbolic virtue signaling and exist in some weird "true, but not factual" space. I think the latter is far more common in woke circles that conservatives believe. I think for many soft woke people, like many religious people, they just haven't thought much about what these ideas would have to mean and just compartmentalize their "beliefs" to exist alongside contradictory "facts" and they easily live with both at once without cognitive dissonance. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M3rMRjJmUVJWRxMeHEpjQBqmTp73mVo3XE0uE4hUJxQ/edit?usp=sharing
I find US religious right lobby quite scary but transgender lobby probably scarier right now.
I live in the South so I probably see a bit more of the religious crazy broadly here and the woke stuff isn't nearly as bad here as it is in other states. Ironically, I like living in the South precisely because ideological conformity annoys me, regardless of whose it is and oddly enough if you are in a decent size city in the South you probably get more ideological diversity than anywhere else. I grew up here and thought I was super liberal, then when I moved to really liberal places I was like "God are these people annoying". But I also want to distinguish woke ideologues from the far greater, and more reachable, number of enablers who are just kind of passively ignorant whose view seems to be, when you talk to them "Yeah, some of this gender stuff seems weird and I don't understand it, but the only people I hear making a fuss are the "God hates gays" crowd and I don't want to be one of them, so this stuff must all be what is required for civil rights". There are 3 of those people for every 1 woke fundamentalist reaching them is the key to ending this crap. Another similarity to religion is growing up in church I knew tons of serious believers but who had barely read the Bible and couldn't even give particularly correct answers about theological issues. Just assent to the symbolic doctrinal statements to be part of the club without asking any deep questions about what any of this would have to mean and how moral it actually is.
"woke enablers" - good label. I guess that applies to anyone in a job with an organisation that has a woke DEI policy. Their salary is at risk if they take a stand against it so their solution is to be all laissez faire about it - "bigger things to worry about" etc. It's just a feeble excuse for acquiescing in their own loss of freedom
I think it is even more subtle than that - I think people just comparmentalize their beliefs and don't really understand that what they consider to be symbolic beliefs, like "transwomen are women" are actually taken to be empirical beliefs by some and a vehicle for policy. They basically don't want to be on the "God hates Fags" team (understandably) and just endorse this stuff they way you accept the terms of free software - by scrolling down quickly checking the box without reading the agreement. I have had strangely baffling conversations with people about gender identity that make me feel the way I felt when I was young and in a church where my increasing atheism informed by actual bible scholarship could get no coherent answers to paradoxes or weird theological formulae from believers - they just believe multiple things at once that should contradict but seem to cause them no cognitive dissonance. I think I am a weirdo and that stance is probably the normal human one. When I press people on what it could possibly mean to have a gender identity or "feel like a woman" they can't really say what it could mean - they believe it without having interrogated it because it is tied to some larger, tamer value like "be nice to androgynes". It is very much like a religious belief in that respect - it is more a symbolic belief than an empirical belief. Same reason why almost no Christians are like killing abortion doctors or doing other crazy fundamentalist things despite what their beliefs should make them do. I think in the gender identity world, we need to just stop worrying about the gender identity fundamentalists and instead focus on the enablers who can be made to see that the nice tolerant liberal values they care about don't need this crazy ideology - that we can get all of the tolerance with none of the crazy without it.
You equate a belief system that seeks to elevate humans with an ideology that seeks to surgically alter the human body in ways that destroy healthy function?
I equate two belief systems that make strong empirical claims without evidence and conflate the utility of a belief with its truth. And both insist instrospection is a way of knowing that should be respected by others and by public policy. Sorry if I am not very excited about ideologies that use metaphysical woo woo to "elevate humanity". Adherence to ideologies claiming to "elevate humanity" has a pretty bad track record. And two belief systems that act like their belief has its etiology in examining evidence when obviously it is somewhere else - as your objection illustrates. And I would say wokeness also seeks to elevate humanity by ending oppressive systems. Chrisitanity has a pretty mixed track record of "elevating humanity" - I was just reading yesterday about the insane horrors of the Thirty Years War for example. Christians believe a wide variety of things and that doesn't mean some aren't "real" Christians. My point is simple - if people who believe Jesus rose from the dead to save our sins (not only empirically outrageous, but also theologically outrageous in terms of what it would mean for an apparently eternal God to have to resort to weird Pagan metaphors to undo problems of his own making) can't reflect on "hmm, why do I believe this?" and come up with any answers that make sense, it would seem they might be able to inhabit the minds of people who also have weird empirical beliefs that also seem to defy reason but clearly inform some deeper moral imperative. Do any religious people really think they believe things like substitutionary atonement and resurrections because they carefully examined the evidence for and against and came to this conclusion because the facts were just more compelling on the pro side and people who don't just aren't as good at discerning good information from bad? I would expect to see religious people generally better at evaluating evidence and that doesn't seem to be the case. So then maybe they believe it because it underwrites moral things they think are necessary and gives them a moral group identity. But then that is what they criticize the woke for. So we either do or we don't care about evidence when having beliefs that we form an identity around. I see no evidence that humans were more elevated when more people ostensibly believed in Jesus - the world seems much better now than in say 1200AD. I say all this not mostly to piss on Christianity but to point out that if you want to understand the process by which people come to believe objectively dumb things and to figure out how to reach them so the dumb things they believe stay harmless, its helpful to think about the times we might believe dumb things and how we came about that belief, why it seems so important to us, and what others might say to us to get us to hold the belief a bit less closely and make it ammenable to peaceful coexistence with the real world of facts.
You're correct that "elevate humanity" was a poor choice of words. And historically people claiming to speak for Christianity have behaved horrifically. You are also correct that many so-called Christians only repeat what they've been told, but that is true of any group (look at the "gays for Gaza" as a prime example.)
However, I stand by the conviction that faith can be reasonable and that belief in Jesus can be defended using rational logic. I won't take the time to fully explicate here, but Jesus as unique becomes evident in his self-concept of being the Son of God embraced by religious Jews in the first century, his miracles (accepted by most scholars), the reports of his trial and crucifixion in extra-biblical sources (Josephus, Tactius, Mara bar Serapion, and the Babylonian Talmud) and his resurrection (something modern Jewish theologians are beginning to support. There is sufficient historical evidence to demonstrate Jesus as something other than a random nomadic rabbi from an oppressed people group. C. S. Lewis scoffed at the perception of Jesus as simply a moral teacher, saying, "A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up as a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to" (Mere Christianity, book 2, ch. 3, paragraphs 11-13.)
Belief in Jesus can be rational. Belief that a male can become a female by removing body parts or a female can become a male by constructing them is NOT rational, by any stretch of the imagination.
None of this was ever about helping trans persons, or any other minority. This has always been a straight white bourgeois (middle/upper-class) madness, a neurotic distortion of left-wing humanism, which is currently inorganically promoted throughout Western societies by entities and persons who may not actually believe a word of it (e.g. Katherine Maher). The ultimate goal seems to be to replace the natural grassroots ethical/political culture which might otherwise come to be, perhaps in order to prevent the growth of an anti-war movement.
Also looking forward to future installments. At the same time feeling desolate now that Brian has revealed Christianity to be the rational equivalent of extremist transgenderism Wow. Who knew?
Thank you, B! I am looking forward to sharing what I have learned. I disagree, though, that Christianity and "transgenderism" are analogous. One is a belief system and leads people to live a life that (if they follow the Bible) is filled with love, joy, kindness, goodness, patience, peace, self-control, faithfulness, and gentleness. The other is a state of profound confusion that leads to depression, drug addiction, hostility, body dismemberment, forced sterility, and suicide. To be equivalent, they must equal the same thing. They neither equal the same thing in nature nor outcomes. Therefore, I do not see an equivalence.