If you’ve ever wondered where all those sexist gamers came from…

Sexism in gaming isn’t a new thing at all — good ol’ Dungeons & Dragons was full of it. Here’s Gary Gygax, one of the creators of the game, opining on women in gaming sometime in the early 2000s:

There were never many female gamers in our group. My daughter Elise was one of two original play-testers for the first draft of Wi, Usa ‘what became the D&D game, and both of her younger sisters played…and lost interest in a few months as she did.
In our campaign group that cycled through in a couple of years (74-75) something in the neighborhood of 100 or so different players, there were perhaps three females.
As a biological determinist, | am positive that most females do not play RPGs because of a difference in brain function. They can play as well as males, but they do not achieve the same sense of satisfaction from playing.
In short there is no special game that will attract females–other that LARPing, which is more csocialization and theatrics and gaming–and it is a waste of time and effort to attempt such a thing.
This calls to mind when Lionel made pastel colored trains and train cars to appeal to females. The effort bombed, the sets were recalled and re-dine as standard models, and those pastel ones that survived are rare collectors items.
So much for this topic.

One thing that jumped out at me was his flat statement that he was a “biological determinist”. Gygax had no training in biology, no college degree at all — he was an insurance agent before he became famous as a gamer. You can dismiss anything he says about “brain function” as a product of ignorance.

He mentions that few women were interested in his game in 1974-75, when they “tested” the idea. Women were not interested, according to him, because their brains were different. I have an alternative explanation: here’s Gygax writing about the subject in 1975.

I have been accused of being a nasty, old, sexist-male Chauvinist-pig, for the wording in D&D isn’t what it should be. There should be more emphasis on the female role, more non-gender names, and so forth. I thought perhaps these folks were right and considered adding women in the ‘Raping and Pillaging_ section, in the ‘Whorses and Tavern Wenches’ chapter, the special magical part of dealith with ‘Hags and Crones’, and thought of perhaps adding and appendix of ‘Midieval Harems, Slave Girls and Going Viking’. Damn right I am a sexist. It doesn’t matter to me if women get paid as much as men, get jobs traditionally male, and shower in the men’s locker room. They can jolly well stay away from war-gaming in droves for all I care. I’ve seen many a good wargame and wargamer spoiled thanks to the fair sex. I’ll detail that if anyone wishes.

Wow. Just wow. What an asshole.

Were you shocked by gamergate in the 2010s? I was. I shouldn’t have been, if I’d been paying attention in the 1970s. I don’t think Gygax was a cause, but a symptom of an attitude common at the time.

Let’s not forget the weird racism in old school D&D, either. I suspect he was a “race realist” in addition to being a “sex realist”, and now it’s coloring my impressions of the game.

I wasn’t eligible to enlist for the Battle of the Somme, being -41 years old at the time

Sometimes I miss Twitter. It’s the place where you can find the dumbest arguments and most stupid people on the internet, and the idiocy has gotten even more concentrated as the smart people bail out. Look what I missed!

Jessica M: Women deal with periods, pregnancy, and menopause. What do men have to deal with?
Lee Anderson: Try the Battle of the Somme.

For dog’s sake, man, that is hyperbole so extreme it makes you look even more ridiculous than your bluster would lead me to expect. You’re a 57 year old man who has never done any military service who was born long after the Somme, and a realistic answer would have been “Swollen prostate, erectile dysfunction, and a bloated sense of entitlement.”

Although I’ve long abandoned Twitter, I haven’t yet deleted my account, and I still get occasional notifications by text. Lately it’s mostly been Graham Linehan raging, so it’s amusing, but isn’t at all tempting me to re-engage.

Using “biology” as a cheaply made, poorly understood label by bigots

Nancy Mace poses with a crappy paper label added to a restroom sign as if it’s something she’s selling on the home shopping network, and I cringe. I’ve said this before: this makes no sense. There is no such thing as a non-biological woman, making the phrase redundant. Mace is just appropriating a complex term to assign it to some narrower, more ideological interpretation that she leaves unstated — it’s reducing biology to a meaningless term which bigots can abuse, expecting you to read more into it than is appropriate.

Be honest, Nancy. Spell it out. You really just want to exclude Sarah McBride from using the restroom. Don’t cloak your meaning in bad biology.

Alternatively, I’m going to have to protest this baseless anti-synthetic humanoid bigotry.

Reminder for all us guys

Today is International Men’s Day. Finally! I’m so tired of being ignored all the other days of the year.

I do wish to complain, though. Most of the logos I can find on Google are all about facial hair, ties, and sometimes bowler hats. Is that all we are? We can do better.

The theme this year is “Positive Male Role Models.” I don’t want to hear about your positive role models, though — tell me how you’re trying to be a good role model.

Transphobia rots your brain

CSICon is currently taking place in Las Vegas, with a great speaker lineup: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Michael Mann, Massimo Pigliucci, Steve Novella, etc. For some reason, they also included Jerry Coyne, who has become a right-wing crank over the years, and who is quite annoyed that Novella discussed the myth of the gender binary — and chose to talk about Sex and Race: Handling the Ideological Hot Potatoes. His abstract for the talk says he was arguing that race is a valid category because you can distinguish “race” genetically, which tells me that he doesn’t understand the argument. Individuals are unique and carry the record of their ancestry, but that ignores the fact that people use race as a catch-all for lumping people into stereotypes, which are not valid.

But I haven’t heard his talk, nor am I interested in hearing it. He did give a kind of “rebuttal” to Novella’s talk, though, summarized in one simple list. The list is a collection of his misconceptions and says far more about him than any argument us “woke” people would actually make. Further, it is embarrassingly stupid — irrelevant, confused, and not even wrong. It reminds me of the kinds of arguments creationists make that just reveal that they understand nothing about evolution.

Here’s Coyne’s list In Defense of the Binary Nature of Sex, which does nothing of the kind.

IN DEFENSE OF THE BINARY NATURE OF SEX
Argument is completely limited to humans; is the binary of reproductive systems also “delusional” in other animals (e.g., foxes, ducks) or in plants?
No evidence of any “brain modules” for gender identity.
Do people who are temporally binary, with gender fluctuating over time, change sex each time they change gender?
Fluctuations in referrals for gender dysphoria over time (20-fold in last ten years in UK)
Are “pure” members of one sex (with the corresponding genitals, chromosomes, gametes and chromosomes), but who feel they’re not of their natal sex, actually of the other sex?
People have incorrect feelings about their nature all the time (yes, in their brains), but this doesn’t mean that their self-image should be taken as biological reality.
And what do we do with people who sincerely feel that they’re other animals? Are they Indeed animals likes horses and cats?

Let’s take them on one at a time, shall we?

Argument is completely limited to humans; is the binary of reproductive systems also “delusional” in other animals (e.g., foxes, ducks) or in plants?

Who says the argument is completely limited to humans? It’s not. It’s just that we are far better at distinguishing subtle variations in our own species. Sexual development and differentiation in animals uses the same complex cascade of molecular interactions as it does in humans. There are differences in sexual morphology and behavior in individual animals that will leap out at you if you actually scrutinize them carefully. Even in spiders, which are only distantly related to humans. They exhibit different degrees of social behavior, aggression, cooperation, and yes, sexual activity. I’ve had spiders who exhibit no interest in sex at all; I raise them to adulthood, and can’t persuade them to reproduce even as their siblings readily mate at every opportunity. Every coupling is different. This is in a species that cannot communicate to us and every interpretation of their activity is subjective. What kind of biologist would look at the range of sexual interactions in any species and decide that they must be shoehorned into just two types?

As for plants — they don’t exhibit much in the way of behavior, expression, or culture, but they do have a complex range of sexes. How do you tell if a carrot is uncomfortable with its expected biological role?

No evidence of any “brain modules” for gender identity.

Jerry Coyne knows nothing about neuroscience. We know there are differences in the brain that are correlates of differences in behavior and thinking; I’m pretty sure Coyne wouldn’t be claiming that brains are like featureless potatoes with patterns of activity that arise without differences in morphology or connectivity of pharmacology. Modules are abstractions that are used to model the functionality of different parts of the brain.

Many complex networks are composed of “modules” that form an interconnected network. We sought to elucidate the nature of the brain’s modular function by testing the autonomy of the brain’s modules and the potential mechanisms underlying their interactions. By studying the brain as a large-scale complex network and measuring activity across the network during 77 cognitive tasks, we demonstrate that, despite connectivity between modules, each module appears to execute a discrete cognitive function relatively autonomously from the other modules. Moreover, brain regions with diverse connectivity across the modules appear to play a role in enabling modules to interact while remaining mostly autonomous. This generates the counterintuitive idea that regions with diverse connectivity across modules are necessary for modular biological networks.

The brain is a network with spatial and functional segregation of elements that we can call “modules”; trans people will have modules that differ from cis people, and people who prefer coffee to tea have their own kinds of modules. All Coyne is doing here is denying the existence of differences between brains, which I would hope most people would recognize is ignorant and absurd.

(Note that there are differences in interpretation in the neuroscience community; we can argue about modules vs. modes, but good grief, denying that there are neurological differences is like trying to claim that population structure doesn’t exist.)

Do people who are temporally binary, with gender fluctuating over time, change sex each time they change gender?

Sure, why not? Why can’t both sex and gender be fluid? Coyne just wants to force-fit everything into only one of two possible categories, but biology is more complex than that. His narrow-mindedness is not evidence of much of anything.

Fluctuations in referrals for gender dysphoria over time (20-fold in last ten years in UK)

Jesus christ, really? Culture and evironment affect everything, that varying rates of referrals is a product of the way that societies fluctuate in their tolerance of sex and gender differences. That he doesn’t recognize this is just a sign that he has a painfully simple-minded notion of how sex functions as more than just a mechanism for reproduction.

Are “pure” members of one sex (with the corresponding genitals, chromosomes, gametes and chromosomes), but who feel they’re not of their natal sex, actually of the other sex?

I’m glad I didn’t hear his talk, because I wonder if he also talked about “pure” members of one race. There’s no such thing as being “purely” a member of one complex multidimensional and weakly defined category. We are all part of a continuum along many dimensions. This point makes no sense unless you’re thoroughly soaking in the preconception that there can be only two sexes and everyone must fit into one or another in all particulars.

People have incorrect feelings about their nature all the time (yes, in their brains), but this doesn’t mean that their self-image should be taken as biological reality.

I am grossly materialistic. Self-image is part of one’s biology. If it’s in our brains, how can it not be a reflection of biological reality? I’m sorry if plasticity isn’t in Jerry Coyne’s vocabulary. I’m pretty confident that dualism isn’t part of his worldview.

And what do we do with people who sincerely feel that they’re other animals? Are they Indeed animals likes horses and cats?

I kew that was coming. And what about the people who sincerely feel that they are attack helicopters?

No, people can’t change species. They’re still people. Being a person, though, encompasses a wide range of possibilities. Trans people fully understand their biological realities and don’t imagine that genitalia are magical products of desire.

As for what we do with people who have ideas that are less rigid than Coyne’s dumb-ass cis-normativity…do we have to do anything, or can we just let them live in peace?

The naturalistic fallacy is only to be deployed when favorable to your cause

Ken Ham is relieved that a gay penguin has died. Sphen and Magic, two male penguins in an Australian zoo, have had their unholy pairing broken up by the death of Sphen. Did you know that they’ve been used by secularists to claim that gay sex is natural and moral? (I don’t think so — it’s more that it’s clear same-sex behavior is not unnatural, since it occurs in, you know, Nature). According to Ham, though, it doesn’t count! Because they’re animals.

Yes, these penguins have been used to teach children that same-sex attraction is “natural” and therefore it must be moral. But animals are not moral creatures! And to impose human characteristics on animals is a fallacy called anthropomorphism.

I kind of agree. The relationship between Sphen and Magic does not say that this is how humans should behave; it only says that the rules various cultures have imposed on people are not universal and immutable…but then, that’s exactly what fundamentalists object to, that their rules are not absolute.

But ol’ Ken goes on to say his Bible does insist that monogamy between a man and a woman is the only allowable relationship.

Now, unlike penguins and other animals, humans are moral beings as we are made in the image of God. And God has written his laws on our hearts (Romans 2), which is why we have a conscience that knows the difference between right and wrong. Furthermore, God created marriage, so God defines marriage, and true marriage is one man for one woman as we learn in Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24.

One man and one woman? His patriarch, Abraham, had one official formal wife, Sarah, and two concubines, Hagar and Keturah. King David was married to Michal, Abigail, Ahinoam, Maakah, Haggith, Abital, Eglah, and Bathsheba, and others that we don’t have names for. That last one is an appalling story of sexism, misogyny, and murder that, we’re told, is a shining example of God’s forgiveness.

David first caught a glimpse of Bathsheba one evening while she was bathing on her rooftop. Lust overtook him, and even though Bathsheba was already married to a soldier named Uriah, David slept with her. When David found out she was pregnant, he tried to cover up his sin by calling Uriah home from the battlefield so that he could sleep with his wife. When Uriah refused to have relations with Bathsheba, out of duty and respect for the men still in battle, David sent him back into the war and had him killed so that Bathsheba would be free to marry him.

God sent the prophet Nathan to confront David about his grievous sin. David wholeheartedly repented and God mercifully forgave him, but the consequences of David’s sin plagued him for the rest of his days. Bathsheba’s first son died as a result of David’s transgression, but God gave them Solomon soon thereafter—who would one day take the throne and be listed in the lineage of our Savior.

Everything is OK if you make a show of repentance. That’s the lesson I learned from the Bible.

JD Vance has so many skeletons in his closets

They just keep tumbling out. It doesn’t do any good to tell him to shut up because, for a young politician, he has spoken volumes of bullshit in his past, and it’s all coming to light. In particular, he does not like women.

In 2021, he was interviewed by The Federalist (big red flag right there).

“To be a little stark about this, I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country,” said Vance, who is currently the Republican senator from Ohio.

Though he generally didn’t specify the gender of the childless people he was criticizing, the context of his remarks made it seem he was primarily speaking to women.

Citing a conversation that had recently unfolded on Twitter, Vance described a “ridiculous effort by millennial feminist writers” to talk about why there are good reasons not to have children and how some of them were glad they didn’t have kids and even to encourage “people who had had children to talk about why they regretted having children.”

He ripped these unnamed “mediocre millennial journalists” and suggested that if they’re advocating for women to focus on advancing their careers over making babies, they are “pathetic.”

“Not enough people have accepted that if they put their entire life’s meaning into their credential, into where they went to school, into what kind of job they have ― if you put all of your life’s meaning into that, you’re going to be the sort of person who asks women to talk about how they regret having children,” Vance said.

He added, “You’re going to be a sad, lonely, pathetic person and you’re going to know it internally.”

I don’t need to say anything in response. I’ll just quote the early 20th century Japanese feminist and political radical, Kanno Sugako.

“Among the many annoying things in the world, I think men are the most annoying. When I hear them carrying on interminably about female chastity, I burst out laughing…. I greet with utmost cynicism and unbridled hatred the debauched male of today who rattles on about good wives and wise mothers. Where do all of these depraved men get the right to emphasize chastity? Before they begin stressing women’s chastity, they ought to perfect their own male chastity, and concentrate on becoming wise fathers and good husbands!”

Kanno Sugako was later hanged for threatening the Emperor. Vance probably thinks that was righteous.

OK, Megan, which is it?

Here’s an example of standard transvestigator methodology, consistency, and accuracy:

Megan McArdle: People are shockingly good at visually distinguishing males from females, even when you choose relatively androgynous models, and even when you strip visual cues like hair.
…
Megan McArdle, a little later: My experience is that the people who misgender me are generally not really looking at me. They are store clerks, security guards, etc who have glanced my way, registered “tall”, converted that into “man”, and then called me “sir”.

Shockingly good.

She’s a regular columnist for the Washington Post, which, using her typical logical analysis, simultaneously looks like a liberal newspaper and is easily mistaken for a conservative rag.

Hey! She wrote a book titled “The Up Side of Down: Why Failing Well Is the Key to Success.”. She clearly specializes in contradiction disguised as a deepity.

That’s a whopper of a retraction

The Boston Globe seems to have noticed that they made a libelous claim.

Editor’s note A significant error was made in a headline on a story in Friday’s print sports section about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif incorrectly describing her as transgender. She is not. Additionally, our initial correction of this error neglected to note that she was born female. We recognize the magnitude of this mistake and have corrected it in the epaper, the electronic version of the printed Globe. This editing lapse is regretful and unacceptable and we apologize to Khelif, to Associated Press writer Greg Beacham, and to you, our readers.
The Boston Globe

I wonder if they’ll learn their lesson — that TERFs and transvestigators are not trustworthy sources — and if other nasty accusers will follow suit? JK Rowling & Jerry Coyne come to mind as two people who leapt on a lot of false premises and faulty conclusions in this non-story.