It’s a portent of the end times. Ken Ham has found common cause with Richard Dawkins.
The article states, "Dawkins might be an atheist, but he's getting a good look at what happens when you remove the Creator from His creation." Yes, that's true. And Romans 1 tells us God has made it evident to all (including Richard Dawkins that… https://t.co/ChehxM9uIn
— Ken Ham (@aigkenham) March 23, 2021
Of course their common cause is built entirely on Dawkins’ regressive, fallacious views on sex and gender. They can be wrong together, how sweet.
What happened is that a) Dawkins is old, white, and British, and there’s currently an epidemic of TERFishness sweeping through that population, and b) he read a book by hack named Debra Soh and thinks it’s definitive, and c) has been regularly endorsing bad takes in genetics, which is a bit embarrassing. So now he’s jumped on the “chromosomes are destiny” bandwagon.
If you’ve never heard of Debra Soh, it’s because she’s a darling of the right, and you don’t get out enough (good for you). I first heard of her through the posturing clowns of Mythicist Milwaukee, and then…well, read her own bio.
Her writing has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Globe and Mail, Scientific American, New York Magazine, Men’s Health, CBC News, Real Clear Politics, and many other publications. Prior to writing The End of Gender, she was a weekly columnist and resident sex scientist for Playboy.com.
As a journalist, Dr. Soh writes about the science of human sexuality, politics, and censorship in academia. She was profiled in the New York Times as one of “The Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” and in Penthouse Magazine as the December 2018 cover story and “Penthouse Crush.” In 2021, Dr. Soh delivered an invited address and Q&A about The End of Gender at the Oxford Union.
She recently appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, the Joe Rogan Experience twice, Dose of Dr. Drew, The Femsplainers, The Ben Shapiro Show, Fox News Primetime with Mark Steyn and Katie Pavlich, The Greg Gutfeld Show, and Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast.
You’d know all about her if you were tuned in to Fox News, Joe Rogan, and Ben Shapiro, as I would assume, Dawkins must be. As for her book, I haven’t read it, nor do I intend to, so I sought out the most favorable review of it I could find. It’s by Barbara Kay. You Canadians might know of her; she’s a fanatical conservative anti-communist xenophobe and anti-semite. So you can trust her summary of the book, right?
According to Soh, then…
Fact: There are only two biological sexes, and they are not “assigned” at birth. Male and female gametes (eggs, sperm) determine our sex, and sex is binary, “not a spectrum.” Fact: Gender, too, “both with regard to identity and expression,” is biology-based and therefore binary. “It is not a social construct, nor is it divided from anatomy or sexual orientation.”
Classic feminists gave us the concept of “social construction.” Feminists believe gendered differences in interests, presentation and behaviours are due to patriarchy and learned behaviour. Science tells us otherwise, Soh says. Male and female brains are demonstrably different. Now, Soh says, feminist chickens are coming home to roost, because—this is a trenchant insight—“If gender is thought to be learned, masculinity will remain the gold standard and femininity will be reduced to aberrations of it.”
None of that is true. That trenchant insight
doesn’t even make any sense. This is what impressed Richard Dawkins? It’s the same thing that impressed Ken Ham!
If you read that and think, like I did, that “Gosh, that claim that the Bible endorses a chromosomally-based determination of sex sure sounds stupid,” then you ought to feel the same way when you read that Richard Dawkins thinks that sex is a binary determined by XX/XY chromosomes.
I am going to be so entertained when the two of them go on tour together.
Too many evil Canadians are mentioned in this post.
Also, everyone knows that Dan Savage is awful on trans issues, right?
Fortunately, here in what passes for the real world, I had to teach a class on the basics of gender, identity and sexuality for the Year 9 (13-14 year old) girls at the school where I work. I expected maybe a little pushback when I introduced ideas of gender being socially constructed, biology being more complicated than xx/xy and the binarism in our culture making it difficult to see beyond these oversimplifications. But I got none. Literally none. They were all entirely fine with it. And this is a Catholic girls’ school in wealthy Surrey.
I hope I don’t turn into a reactionary arsehole when I get old…
Students here don’t have any difficulty grasping that sex is more complicated than a binary switch, either. They’re working on a take-home exam right now, where one of the questions is about exactly that: I’ve got them researching Caster Semenya on PubMed and OMIM, and no one bats an eye at the discovery that there are all kinds of potential variations from the binary.
We’ll see if anyone is freaked out when I grade them next week, but I think the fact that I emphasized that they have to get their information from legitimate scientific sources, not the National Post or the Daily Mail, will help.
What? No. Feminists have used theoretical insights of social construction and have applied them to gender and sex, but they/we did not “give us” social construction as a concept.
Complete non-sequitur. Granting for the purpose of the argument that gender is learned, it does not follow that masculinity is better than femininity. Nor does it follow that “better” is the same for each and every person. One might fight a given person’s personality or occupational interest better. Nor does it even entail that what is considered feminine this week will still be considered feminine next year.
But, and here’s the killer, even if gender learning did logically entail all those things, women would not be at a disadvantage in a world where women were free learn masculinity without punishment. Who knows, given how heavily women have been punished for engaging in masculine behaviours, maybe we should divine that this is out of a primal, instinctive fear that women, on average, will actually be better at learning and performing masculinity than men are.
What a crock full of shit.
“I read the Bible. If even half of it is true, God exists.”
It’s just sad to think that he used to sell himself as a rationalist.
So she’s been canceled, clearly. Her voice has been silenced!
It bugs the crap out of me that these idiots completely erase from the conversation XO, XXY, XXX, XXYY, XYYY, etc. Yes, they are rarer than XX and XY, but if you add up all these people you’re talking about 20,000,000 people across the planet (some rough estimation: atypical sex chromosome combinations occur in about 1:400 people, there are approximately 8 billion people on the planet). That’s about the population of Florida that’s just being treated as if they don’t exist at all.
I know from a post you shared a few weeks ago that even when allies turn this conversation into one about the science it further serves to dehumanize trans people, and I’m trying to be mindful of that, but I do think it is worth reminding people that the transphobes are ALSO dehumanizing another entire subset of the population by trying to pretend science is as simple as they are. I don’t think those individuals’ existence deserves to be sidelined either in the transphobes crusade against trans people.
@ PZ, # 1: Are you sure you’re not confusing Dan Savage with Mike Savage? Dan Savage writes the “Savage Love” column, which is very LGBTQ and kink friendly. Mike Savage, on the other hand, is a loudmouthed narrow minded bigot-his real last name is Wiener.”
Dawkins: “If even half is true of what she says…we need to support the fight-back.”
Reading this formulation, you know you’re in the presence of stupid. Obviously, the former Oxford Professor for the Public Understanding of Science should be aware that it’s important to discern what’s true from what isn’t; and that if someone published a book that was half tendentious lies you should question whether they’re trustworthy or reliable or their work should provide the basis for action. (The placement of “is true” in the sentence is odd to me as well, but maybe it’s a British thing…)
@5 F.O.
I don’t see in the OP where this quote came from.
Regardless, it’s pretty brilliant. I assume that whoever wrote it is also convinced of the existence of Zeus by reading Homer, Vishnu from reading the Bhagavad Gita, etc. etc.
Oh – apologies, F.O. I didn’t see your #5 before I posted my less pithy #9.
No, I’m talking about The Dan Savage, who is really good on cis issues, but problematic on trans issues.
I’m gob smacked to see so many preconceived and patently false notions about gender crammed into one statement.
Of course gendered social roles and behaviors are learned. The fact that they change over time in human societies is compelling evidence that they are social constructs.
It is telling that the author assumes masculinity is the gold standard of human behavior. Feminism is all about smashing that particular pigeonhole labeled male superiority aka patriarchy. It does not follow that removing artificial binary gender pigeonholes = feminine behavior aberrant.
Gold being highly valuable is also a human social construct, as are monetary standards. We do fine without the gold standard, and feminists aren’t causing these gender bigots to screech the false binary gender bullshit.
“There are only two lights!!”
Yep, nothing about gender is learned, it’s all inherent, and genetic, and stuff. Women wear frilly clothing, and men don’t, because of their female nature. Not because at some point cultural movers and shakers decided men shouldn’t wear frilly clothing. Or short pants and tights. Or that women in culture Y should start wearing the clothing that women in culture X wear.
Almost every sentence is wildly wrong.
It is just glaringly, obviously wrong.
Other commenters have already covered it.
She isn’t just anti-trans. She is anti-Feminist.
“Feminists believe gendered differences in interests, presentation and behaviours are due to patriarchy and learned behaviour.” This is true.
Gendered differences in interests, presentation, and behaviors have changed by a huge amount in my own life time. These cultural differences change rapidly in real time.
“Science tells us otherwise, Soh says.” This is wrong. She is flat out lying here.
Science says the opposite of what she claims.
“this is a trenchant insight—“If gender is thought to be learned, masculinity will remain the gold standard and femininity will be reduced to aberrations of it.”This isn’t a trenchant insight. It’s lies and gibberish.
Gender behavior and expectations vary wildly in time and space and change rapidly in real time. Who says masculinity is the gold standard anyway. We can’t even define it since it is culture, place, and time specific.
Now I want to see the Usual Suspects who have fully gone TERF reconcile all the bullshit Soh and by extension Dawkins say with their own position. It must be embarrassing to have such allies.
Dan Savage has a history of snap judgements that he is very slow to unlearn. He has a similar bad history with bisexuality where initially he denied the existence of actually bisexual people because he generalized his own use of “I’m bisexual” as a stepping stone to accepting that he was gay to all people who say they are bisexual. After years of controversy he did learn. His job is to express opinions and answer questions on touchy subjects for which he receives a lot of flak but he needs to do his research on Singal.
Deborah Soh is walking proof that she is just wrong.
I just looked her bio up.
She has a Ph.D. and a career.
She is in her 30’s, not married, no children.
She has a Black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
When I was growing up in the 1950’s this wouldn’t have been considered either possible or desirable for a female. You were expected to graduate from high school. Then get married and get pregnant (often enough in reverse order).
She got the degree because she was genetically predisposed to earning a Ph.D.
preposterous! Everyone knows that you can’t have a PhD and a black belt!
It’s a one or the other binary, none of this supposed spectrum of interests is real.
Having other interests would completely devalue the PhD.
My DuckDuckGo search came back with “No results found for ‘I read the Bible. If even half of it is true, God exists.’.”
Where did y’all see that? Who (allegedly) said it?
Pierce, F.O. was paraphrasing what Dawkins said in his tweet about Soh’s book (it’s in the tweet in the OP) to show how ridiculous it was.
Dawkins (in a tweet in the OP):
F.O., #5 of this thread:
It’s an implicit criticism of Dawkins by imagining him saying something similar about the Bible to what he said about Soh’s book.
As a side note, I’m curious how much Dawkins would be on this particular bandwagon if he hadn’t experienced a stroke a few years ago. I’m not saying the brain damage he suffers from is causing him to be a hatemonger – we saw evidence of milder but comparable nonsense pre-stroke – but I wonder if he’s just far less capable now of inhibiting his worst impulses and his reputation has allowed his worst impulses to be taken seriously as coming from an Important Man of Science.
Why do you call Barbara Kay an anti-semite? I mean, she’s really not a nice person, and doesn’t seem to care much about factors evidence, but I see no evidence for that particular claim.
Grr… Sorry I know someone with Swyer syndrome and have also done a lot of reading, since it was indeed a surprise to me at the time that someone with an XY chromosome can be phenotypically female. This is not even an issue of transgender or wokeness. Anyone who says XY=male is just uninformed. In Dawkins’s case it is incomprehensible, because he surely understands the development process and role of SRY gene in early development. Is he senile or is he lying?
Literally every, every time I hear XX, XY chromosome blah blah blah I start fuming and just want to tell people how wrong they are. The Y chromosome is mostly just an analogous to switch, not a recipe for being male, and what it actually does is only statistically determined by the development process, not guaranteed.
SC… @ # 22 & Crip Dyke… @ # 23 – Thanks for the clarification!
Professor Myers, a question. What’s the percentage of people who are intersex where the phenotypic sex is not consistent with the genotype?
@naturalistguy:
Are you sure you don’t mean to ask what is the percentage where the phenotypic sex is not consistent with the karyotype?
And either way, what is the point of that question?
@shallit: She writes for a publication edited by Proud Boys mouthpiece Andy Ngo. So she is at least anti-semitism adjacent.
I went to Dawkins’ original tweet. In the response thread:
Nazi: “Same is true in racial science.”
Non-Nazi: “these are your fans richard are you proud”
That also makes her a terrorist or terrorism supporter.
The Pathetic Boys have been designated a terrorist group in Canada.
And more than a few are now in prison in the USA.
They were prominent in the US Capitol building attack.
The Pathetic Boys are also explicitly misogynistic.
They don’t want any Proud Girl terrorists anywhere near them.
Because girls are icky.
What nonsense. There are so many assumptions wrapped up in this that need to be changed (and not only the dubiousness of “gold standard” as a metaphor).
There’s a “glass ceiling” in part because men with traditionally male characteristics are perceived (again traditionally) to be better “leaders” (though mainly it’s because they know how to work the Old Boys network).
That perception needs to be questioned along with everything else. There is no evidence that men are on average any better than women at most roles of significance. I don’t think it’s controversial to say that men are more likely to be effective football linebackers than women, owing on average to physical strength and size. However, that is a pretty niche career. Most important jobs are not particularly better suited to men than women.
FWIW, I personally think women and men have subtly and intrinsically different outlooks on many things and a lot of this is innate, not learned. However, for most purposes the variation in aptitude for specific jobs is not sex-specific. Most of that really is socially determined. I’m a little divided on whether the motivation to study different fields has intrinsic components. Open up opportunities, and time will tell.
There are a lot of traditionally “female” traits that I wish I possessed, such as more attention to detail, organizational skills, a kind of pragmatism about social relationships, an ability to “read the room” and figure out the body language of those around you. That said, I’m comfortable in my own skin. The best team is not formed by optimizing one trait but by combining complementary traits.
I do try to be careful to distinguish “traditionally perceived as” from “actual.” But my point is that even assuming my intuitive belief about what makes men and women different has some objective validity, I see no reason to consider “masculine” traits superior.
@SC #9:
It’s not. At best, Dawkins has just mismangled his worms.
Like every other time this shit comes up, the question of implementation seems rather urgent.
How would you ascertain anyone’s chromosomes anyway? At a glance, I mean? Without the genetics actually becoming a practical concern?
You can’t. So unless these fucker are advocating for obligatory (eu)genetic testing of every human being all the fucking time, how can they ever be sure they’re actually confronted with (gasp: or are themselves) a true™ man or woman? (Hint: They can’t.)
…Must be terrifying for them. *Yawn*
Meanwhile, I’ll be listening to some Sophie. RIP.
Something to look up on the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism :
She birthed two children…
Report of Fertility in a Woman with a Predominantly 46,XY Karyotype in a Family with Multiple Disorders of Sexual Development.
I don’t know offhand. It’s low. Why? What number are you looking for? If it’s less than 100 people in the whole wide world, would that make it OK to deny them rights and respect?
Didn’t Dawkins used to argue that genetics weren’t destiny?
#37: Wow. Too bad it’s a short conference outline, would like to know more details.
Professor Myers, since you said earlier:
I thought you would know what the percentage of intersex people would be, given you’re tasking your students to do research that’s directly related to the question. Can you give me a number?
@naturalistguy:
Why? What is the point of the number? How will you act differently or how will your life be different depending upon the number?
(I could also mention that your question in #41 is different from your original question. In #41 you seem to be asking what percentage of the general population are intersex, but your original question was “out of the total number of intersex people, what percentage of intersex people display this particular kind of intersexuality.” I think you may be having trouble even asking a coherent question.)
PZ:
I saved the link to the paper. Never learned the control charcters to make it clickaable:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2190741/
naturalistguy
The paper I posted lists possible research that probably hadn’t even been thought about previously. If you don’t even think about possibilities because “sex is binary” …
naturalistguy
am I wrong in thinking that you do not think or beleave that if there are really are any that number would be very very small or even nonexistent .
Sorry I do not mean to offend but my suspicion comes from the hostility I find to these kinds of subjects generally generate
unclefrogy, I would genuinely like to know what Professor Myers thinks the number of intersex people are, and what his definition of intersex is that the number is based on. Your question doesn’t offend me, so no problem there.
You would “genuinely” like to know? Somehow I doubt that.
A rough estimate would be 1 in 1000. That’s really rough, though, because it depends on how you define intersex, and many of the variables in sexual development are not readily examined. I’ve seen estimates that range from a tenth of that to ten times the number.
Now what? Are you going to come to a point at some time?
I’ve noticed several times that you pop up on threads about transgender issues, always sealioning by addressing me as “professor”, and playing the “just asking questions” game where you dodge any attempt to explain what you’re getting at. I can ban you just as easily for being a weasely intellectual coward as I can for blurting out something offensively stupid, you know.
#43: That paper was astonishing. I’ll have to use it in my class next year (we’re past the whole sex chromosome thing right now, I’ve got too much else to cover).
@klatu That’s a thought I often have when people start babbling about chromosomes; that if that’s the standard we must use, I don’t actually know my own sex, or my siblings’ sexes, or my coworkers’ …
Seems like there’s an issue then with these various definitions that allow for such a wide range of estimates, and I’ll leave it at that.
christoph@8–
PZ definitely means Dan Savage the sex/relationships advice columnist — whom I used to read semi-regularly but abandoned after several woefully misinformed opinions on trans issues.
I’ll have to look at that paper. I got curious about the following question after doing some reading on Swyer syndrome and never really got an answer:
Normally Swyer syndrome presents with non-functioning ovaries, but completely normal female phenotype in other ways. I was wondering, could there be in some cases functioning ovaries with Y-chromosome oocytes that would might actually combine normally with X-chromosome sperm (but are inviable with Y-chromosome sperm). This would be virtually undetectable unless you had some other reason to karyotype and it would be extremely rare so it’s entirely possible you would never observe it even once. Typical Swyer syndrome is already very rare and may go undetected until puberty or even later.
But I also thought, if the above is possible, wouldn’t it have been observed in a model animal like a mouse by now?
Anyway, if PZ says the paper is astonishing, I will definitely look.
me@52 To answer my own question, no the specific case I wondered about did not happen here
However, it is certainly remarkable that this XY woman went through normal puberty and unassisted pregnancy.
As you note, the issue is a social one, not a biological one; as you acknowledge, they really do exist, and the issue is their proportion of the population for differing definitions.
cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentially_contested_concept
Oh yeah, and “leaving it at that” is a bit cowardly — it’s evident you have no good response to PZ @38 — but saves you from further revealing yourself.
(Which is amusing, because you are as plain as a pustule on a schnozzle)
There isn’t an issue because you still have not identified anything in your life – or anyone’s life – that would be different based upon this number.
If the number doesn’t have any effect on your life, then almost by definition the fact that different definitions lead to different numbers creates no “issues” at all.
naturalistguy@50-
“Seems like there’s an issue then with these various definitions that allow for such a wide range of estimates, and I’ll leave it at that.”
Well that’s the point, as robertbaden@44 already noted (quite prophetically, I might add). I get the feeling you’ve convinced yourself that the failures of mapping a binary model onto a spectrum are somehow the fault of the spectrum.
Naturalisttroll is just trolling. He could look it up on Google in a few seconds.
Like I just did.
The frequency of intersex humans is cited as .018% to 1.7%. The wide range depends on which of many definitions and criteria one uses.
Intersexes are a very varied group of people with a lot of different causes.
One cause is mosaics. The XY mother of two might well be a mosaic of XY and XX.
@50
No there is not a problem with definitions until there is some actual measurement of the entire human population or a significant sample of the human population an estimate is all you can expect. that is how science works it is not a philosophical nor a legal exercise. It is not determined by belief nor wishes.it is wholly bound by what reality can be objectively demonstrated
if you are really concerned I suggest that you do the measurement and testing that would determine the answer you seek (no small task)
uncle frogy
@John Morales:
Note also that they’ve had longer than that: I immediately asked largely the same question in #29 after naturalistguy’s initial question in #28.
Note also also that naturalist guy’s original question asked for the proportion of intersex people who meet certain criteria:
This appears to be asking the percentage of all intersex persons where the relevant intersexual condition arose from an environmental (or potentially epigenetic?) etiology. But given the context where people were speaking of sex chromosome types (X & Y) and the various possible combinations of those chromosome types, it’s also possible that they were trying to ask what percentage of people who are intersex have a phenotypic sex not expected for their karyotype.
But the follow up is this:
Here there’s no referent to the comparison group for intersex people, so it appears to be asking for the percentage of the total population that have an intersex condition of any etiology.
Why is this relevant? Because it appears that naturalistguy’s understanding of human intersexuality is so pathetic that they don’t even know how to ask for the information that they would like to know. All intersex people compared to all people? A subset of intersex people based on etiology? A subset of intersex people based on karyotype? Who the fuck knows!
It’s hard to take someone seriously when they won’t even put in the time to form a coherent question.
Of course, it also says something about naturalistguy’s googlefu, but I’ll leave that issue for another day.
While we are on the subject of “Look at this case”, here is something else that fell out of 3 seconds worth of Google.
This intersex XX/XY is both a parthenote (duplicated maternal chromosomes) and a chimera.
That particular mother is definitely a person with chromosomal mosaicism, if the paper reporting her existence is to be believed:
Also, one more thing: could you please not use “intersex” as a noun? It is most respectful to use it as an adjective. For example:
Intersex persons eat ice cream
Intersex nurses have a median pay close to the median pay for all nurses
Intersex public transit passengers support a modest fare hike
Intersex electrical engineers are just as likely to help you with your home stereo system as any other electrical engineer, meaning unless you’re good in bed or a good friend you probably have to pay them for their expertise.
but not
Intersexes annoy the heck out of me when they play the accordion.
Thanks!
Related, the first of Clarke’s three laws:
“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
—
CD @58, heh.
I was tempted to note how “its even worse than that!”, but didn’t indulge myself.
Oops, my #61 should have included a direct address indicating it was responding to Raven.
Sorry for any confusion!
Intersexes are complicated and variable.
From the paper.
There are many ways to produce intersex XX/XY humans. Mosaics of various sorts are one way.
Chimeraism is another way. There are at least 4 different kinds of chimeras.
So how did this happen? Fortunately the short paper has a simple diagram which explains it well.
The egg (23X) divides the nucleus once more to produce an egg with two nuclei (23X).
This egg is fertilized by two sperm, one male (23Y) and one female (23X).
So the zygote is the product of two sperm and one maternal set of chromosomes.
The two maternal nuclei are now 46XX and 46XY.
A cell membrane forms yielding a two cell zygote that is half XX and half XY.
From the paper, this intersex child appears to be healthy and developing well.
” His growth milestone at 1 year was normal. The patient’s toy preference was wheeled vehicles and superheroes. ” For whatever that is worth.
Perhaps he’s a vervet.
You can raise the interesting question whether trans people should be considered intersex because one major sexual organ, their brain, is of a different sex from other organs.
[SC, I hope you don’t mind]
re #65: http://saltycurrent.blogspot.com/2011/02/laughable-gender-research-vervet-toy.html is a good read.
(A good read, that)
So, Ken Ham claims there are only to possible combinations for sex chromosomes? Then I call on Ken Ham to post the full DNA sequence of his sex chromosomes. Otherwise, how can I be sure he’s really a biological male?
Moreover, Dawkins should also post the full sequence of his sex chromosomes. Since Dawkins and Ham claim to be the same sex, then I better see that all 200 million+ base pairs match between the two of them. If there is even one base pair that differs between Ham’s sex chromosomes and Dawkins’ sex chromosomes, I will be forced to conclude that the two “men” have different sex chromosomes, and therefore at least one of them is lying about being a biological man.
@ PZ, # 12: Thanks for providing a link to the article. Damn, those were some callous and insensitive comments.
I think the article you posted explains Dawkins pretty well:
“Everyone knows that the easiest (and laziest) way to make a resurgence in the public eye is to publicly side with transphobia. It’s a rote act at this point: Side with transphobia under the guise of “asking questions” or “opening discussions,” receive backlash, use the backlash to paint yourself as an endangered thinker, then notify your agent to expect calls for podcast guest spots.”