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catboybiologist · 3 months

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“As a biologist, the terms biological woman and man don’t make any sense to me” okay then you’re an idiot and a terrible biologist. I swear to god, morons like you only become biologists just so you can hold it over others, when in reality, if biology deniers like you can become biologists, then being one really doesn’t mean much anyway. But this probably just gave an autogynophile like you a boner to read, anyway.

Oh fun! Haven't gotten one of these in a while. Disregarding the fact that you somehow think the qualification for being a biologist entirely hinges on defining womanhood, I do need to ask some clarification. I know I'm feeding the trolls here, but here we go: does your definition of "biological woman" mean:

Sociological woman? Eh, context dependent, I'm not fully out of the closet, but oftentimes, I am and present femme. So let's call that one 50/50.

Psychological woman? Because I am one.

Neurological woman? Because I am one [1].

Physical woman? My soft tissue redistribution is handling that well.

Hormonal woman? My blood tests are within cis female ranges.

Transcriptional woman? As a signalling molecule, the downstream effects of estrogen have broad transcriptional effects, completely changing the profile of gene expression and functional genomics of my cells. [2]

Genetic woman? I mean, see my above point- as far as my genes that are actually active, I have all of the same transcripts being produced, controlling which genes are expressed.

Karyotypic woman? I actually have a few signs pre-HRT that might point to a non-XY chromosome pair, but I haven't had a karyotype. We'll put that down as unknown. And hell, even if its XY, there's plenty of cis women who are karyotypically XY, with suppressed sry or complete androgen insensitivity. Interestingly enough, a completely androgen insesitive woman can go her whole life without knowing- and functionally, is very similar to a trans woman, actually. Fancy that. [3]

Reproductive woman? I can't produce an egg cell, but neither can significant fractions of cis women. Also, this is all gonna change soon, which is fun. [4]

There's also a lot of understudied aspects to the biology of HRT and even pre-HRT that are emerging, largely demonstrating widespread cellular and genetic remodeling of trans individuals undergoing hormone therapy. The field is a bit behind due to constant political pressure to revoke funding, but a lot of the results are extremely exciting in both testosterone and estrogen hormone therapies. I'm sure that, as a self professed biology As someone who presumably has a lot of expertise in biology, I'm assuming that you're aware of all of this cutting edge research, and are keeping up with modern papers, including but not limited to these cool findings:

Trans men on HRT exhibit significant genetic and transcriptional changes that make them biochemically male. [5][6]. It's a good hypothesis that the same happens with estrogen treatment, but those studies don't exist yet- I'm sure you're reserving judgment until more publications exist, of course.

Trans men on HRT develop male cell types and tissues. [7]

Trans women experience muscular and blood cell changes that align with cis women moreso than cis men [8]

And many, many more! This is an exciting, underserved, and groundbreaking field of research, and I'm sure you're keeping up with the latest in scientific journals about it.

I'm sure, of course, that you understand that it becomes impossible to draw a distinct line anywhere in here, and that words like "woman" are shorthand for the myriad of traits that invisibly synthesize in our mind and in society to represent a concept? I'm sure you understand that science is fundamentally descriptive, not prescriptive? I'm sure that you understand that these findings, while really cool and interesting, actually don't mean jack shit about what the word "woman" means or not?

As someone who is the ultimate decider in what a biologist is, I'm sure you know that bioessentiallism is a childish mindset that completely ignores and disregards the constantly changing, dynamic nature of biological systems, something that extends well beyond biological sex and its relation to gender.

I'm sure that also, that you understand that beyond just this, that the role of science in society is to advise how to achieve our moral principles, not create moral principles in themselves. And I'm sure that understanding means you know that trans affirming healthcare and supportive societal treatment leads to reduced mortality and increased happiness for everyone, right?

So great to talk to someone who is surely a scientist on this. You are a biologist, if you're talking like this, I assume? I assume you're not going to spit complete misreadings of scientific language from the background sections of these papers that only reveal you've never read a scientific paper in your life if you're thinking this way? I assume you have experience interpreting data like this?

Also, imagining my genitalia while writing this? Ew. Please stop projecting your fetishes into my inbox.

Works cited:

Kurth F, Gaser C, Sánchez FJ, Luders E. Brain Sex in Transgender Women Is Shifted towards Gender Identity. J Clin Med. 2022 Mar 13;11(6):1582. doi: 10.3390/jcm11061582. PMID: 35329908; PMCID: PMC8955456.

Fuentes N, Silveyra P. Estrogen receptor signaling mechanisms. Adv Protein Chem Struct Biol. 2019;116:135-170. doi: 10.1016/bs.apcsb.2019.01.001. Epub 2019 Feb 4. PMID: 31036290; PMCID: PMC6533072.

Gottlieb B, Trifiro MA. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome. 1999 Mar 24 [Updated 2017 May 11]. In: Adam MP, Feldman J, Mirzaa GM, et al., editors. GeneReviews® [Internet]. Seattle (WA): University of Washington, Seattle; 1993-2024. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK1429/

Murakami, K., Hamazaki, N., Hamada, N. et al. Generation of functional oocytes from male mice in vitro. Nature 615, 900–906 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05834-x

Pallotti F, Senofonte G, Konstantinidou F, Di Chiano S, Faja F, Rizzo F, Cargnelutti F, Krausz C, Paoli D, Lenzi A, Stuppia L, Gatta V, Lombardo F. Epigenetic Effects of Gender-Affirming Hormone Treatment: A Pilot Study of the ESR2 Promoter's Methylation in AFAB People. Biomedicines. 2022 Feb 16;10(2):459. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines10020459. PMID: 35203670; PMCID: PMC8962414.

Florian Raths, Mehran Karimzadeh, Nathan Ing, Andrew Martinez, Yoona Yang, Ying Qu, Tian-Yu Lee, Brianna Mulligan, Suzanne Devkota, Wayne T. Tilley, Theresa E. Hickey, Bo Wang, Armando E. Giuliano, Shikha Bose, Hani Goodarzi, Edward C. Ray, Xiaojiang Cui, Simon R.V. Knott, The molecular consequences of androgen activity in the human breast, Cell Genomics, Volume 3, Issue 3, 2023, 100272, ISSN 2666-979X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100272. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666979X23000320)

Xu R, Diamond DA, Borer JG, Estrada C, Yu R, Anderson WJ, Vargas SO. Prostatic metaplasia of the vagina in transmasculine individuals. World J Urol. 2022 Mar;40(3):849-855. doi: 10.1007/s00345-021-03907-y. Epub 2022 Jan 16. PMID: 35034167.

Harper J, O'Donnell E, Sorouri Khorashad B, McDermott H, Witcomb GL. How does hormone transition in transgender women change body composition, muscle strength and haemoglobin? Systematic review with a focus on the implications for sport participation. Br J Sports Med. 2021 Aug;55(15):865-872. doi: 10.1136/bjsports-2020-103106. Epub 2021 Mar 1. PMID: 33648944; PMCID: PMC8311086.

#cw transphobia #biology #basic biology

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bioethicists · 5 months

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my wife brought up a brilliant point this morning: a huge problem with the way we view psychology (a problem which is frequently exploited + used to justify a lot of just. shitty work) is that it lives in a no-man's land between "social sciences" + "natural sciences" in the collective imagination.

consider: one of the first works which spurned my interest in psychiatric abolition was durkheim's work on suicide. as a sociologist ("social scientist"), he uses pretty rigorous quantitative methods to show that suicide is much less correlated with levels of depression than it is with cultural factors (like religion, country of origin, marriage rates). however, people do not respond to the medicalization of suicide by saying "well, durkheim proved that suicide isn't a mental illness symptom, so this is unscientific"- this is obviously a drastic oversimplification of his work + it's commonly understood that sociology does not "prove" immutable social truths.

similarly, i would not comment on a study which identifies changes in t-cells over time among hiv+ patients by arguing that it didn't deeply explore the social environments or past traumas they had experienced, (even though those could have an impact on t-cell count), because i understand that is not the purpose of the research + ultimately they had to choose to control for these factors without centering them in order to obtain important medical information. "this information is meaningless because it doesn't include each patient's trauma history" would be an absurd critique.

among the general population + many self-assured researchers, psychology gets both the privilege of being a "social science" (so we can't expect it to be TOO exact; it's complicated; it's not really saying that's ALWAYS true; if it proves inaccurate that's because culture/social factors must have muddied it up; we can't really expect PROOF for most of it) as well as a "natural science" (you can't question its basic presumptions or you're a science denier; the dsm describes real things which existed even before it was written; it obviously is rooted in biology even if we haven't discovered how yet; reducing its measures to quantitative evaluation is fine + unproblematic).

my point here isn't to argue that psychology is a "social" or "natural" science, but rather that we need to rethink what work those categories actually do + whether the distinction between them is as strict or meaningful as we believe it to be. our strict dichotomies between "objectively proven truths" + "social observations which are ultimately just informed opinions" are exposed when we look at a field which seems to be uncomfortably situated within both. what kind of work might become possible if we abandoned this dichotomy, rather than bickering over whose work belongs in which club?

#tagging this b4 i start: prayers for me that this can be concise cuz i have a bunch of dead french guys to read for class #psych abolition #ok it wasnt too bad

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o-craven-canto · 8 months

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Somewhat bothered by the responses in this reddit page. (For context: link is to a page in /r/biology, where OP posted a diagram of human evolution going from a prokaryote to Homo sapiens in many discrete steps.) To be sure, there are significant inaccuracies in that diagram. The flatworm definitely does not belong there (though I suppose you could use it as a rough approximation for the primordial Bilaterian), nor does Dickinsonia, and worst of all is the Cyanobacterium (which you can't even defend as a representative of our prokaryote ancestor, since there is another one helpfully labeled "prokaryote").

Most of the responses are not about that, though. Most of them are mentioning the inaccuracy of depicting evolution as a linear process ending with Homo sapiens, instead of one constantly branching and spawning new variations over time. Which would be a fair criticism if the image claimed to be a representation of evolution as a whole, but... it's literally titled "Human Evolution". Of course it follows a single line from the origin of life to Homo sapiens! It makes no sense to complain that it does not show parallel branches leading to other modern species; you might as well complain that a map of France is inaccurate because it neglects to include Japan. Drawing my own family tree is not a claim that the whole of human history culminates in my own birth.

(Maybe I'm oversensitive here because I've made a diagram of the same type myself, and I'm quite satisfied of it.)

Particularly curious is that comment that calls OP's image "dangerous", because it could lead to the misunderstandings above described is one were to completely fail to understand its point. I wonder if the same person would claim that 2d world maps are dangerous misinformation because someone might conclude from them that Earth is flat and rectangular.

I can't help but have a very uncharitable thought. Few people mention the actual factual inaccuracies in the chart because that requires specific knowledge that most people, even most users of /r/biology, do not have. But plenty of people jump at the opportunity of saying "evolution is not linear", "humankind is not the endpoint of evolution", "we don't descend from monkeys we share a common ancestor with them" not because they have understood these statements and know their relevance to the case, but because they have memorized these tidbits as the sort of things you are supposed to say about evolution to show that you are not one of those contemptible Science Deniers, while not requiring you to learn any more actual biology than the average creationist.

I dearly hope that I'm wrong.

#biology #evolution #discourse #might be wrong #hopefully

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cirruscollective · 9 months

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Hi! We are the Cirrus Collective

We're a complex/polyfragmented DID system with an unknown total number of alters (20+ that actually front, many many more who don't)

Collectively, we go by Cirrus online and use they/them pronouns

Some stuff about us:

Physically disabled (EDS + chronic hypotension)

Autistic + ADHD

White

Collectively, we identify as nonbinary and bi

Professional artist/graphic designer

Interests include: witchcraft, music, sewing/making clothes, the Magnus Archives, biology, plants (toxic plants in particular), videogames (D:BH, Resident Evil, Infamous, Overwatch, The Walking Dead, Outlast, so many more were not listing too)

DNI / Boundaries/Views

Basic DNI criteria: no racists, homophobes, transphobes, bigots, MAPS (or whatever you call yourselves, idc i don't want u here), TERFS, SWERFS, etc

Pro-Endo

NSFW agere

ED or SH blogs

Under 16

RAMCOA deniers

We don't have the energy for syscourse

Anyone who is syscourse neutral can interact

Although none of us use neopronouns or identify with xenogenders, we fully support them

DMs and asks are open, we're happy to make friends!

Mutual can ask for our discord

16+ can follow, but please don't dm if you're under 18 because I'm an adult

Questions about our system/alters are okay!

We won't let our littles online publicly, but they can talk to close friends

If we think we may know you irl, we will block you, don't take it personally. It's for safety reasons

Frequent Fronters

Ada - she/her - 29

Winter - she/they - 33

Juno - she/they - 32

Reagan - they/them - 30

Aubrey - he/they - 31

Delta/Δ - she/her - 15-26

Aether - she/they - 35

Ryan - he/him - 29

#did system #system intro #polyfrag system

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les-bi-sch-sein-2023 · 4 months

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One of the older lesbians I know died yesterday. She fought for our rights in the second wave and now she's gone..

Even 'til the end she fought for lesbian and women's rights.

This is a translation of one of her speeches:

The female bodies, because of which women have worse career opportunities. They – and only they! – could finally drop out because of a pregnancy.

The expropriation of female sexuality through genital mutilation, through rape, through pornography and prostitution, through abortion bans. Female sexuality as a mere consumer article for men. Female pleasure is redefined as pain and humiliation, not only in porn.

The dispossession of lesbian sexuality by heterosexual men who callthemselves lesbians. They rape our spaces, our self-definition and our dignity.

They rape in the narrowest sense especially young lesbians.

Every third day in Germany a woman is murdered because she says no to a man.

In many countries femicides are even more frequent when women disobey men. In many countries, the female body of a fetus determines abortion. In many countries, girls are sold for child marriages. In many countries, girls’ clitorises and lips of Venus are cut off with broken glass without anesthesia.

When I talk about structural and habitual male violence, it is now devalued as sexism against men.

If I, as a lesbian, exclude men as relationship partners, it is now labeled transphobic or even fascist.

Men determine that women are no longer allowed to talk about their bodies and men’s violence.

If young girls have problems with their female bodies because of all this, there is no feminist movement today that questions the conditions of life. Today, girls are offered mastectomy and genital mutilation as a solution. Their bodies, their sexuality are destroyed for the rest of their lives. This is the ultimate dispossession.

Women and girls are no longer allowed to talk to each other. The dick-wielding biology and sociology deniers in women’s spaces are the perpetrators of modern male violence.

In my lifetime there has never been such open and vile hatred of women as there is today. It is now to be enshrined in law.

As a lesbian and a survivor of sexualized male violence, I sometimes feel desperate and see no way out. But I remain angry. I remain passionate. And I am glad, as many of us are here, that more and more women are saying:

Enough!

We say no!

The women are us!

Source

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ihhfhonao3 · 9 months

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Some hate I’ve gathered over the past two (2) days because I think they’d make funny copypastas. Tw for rabid ableism and transphobia because that’s just what people do on here I guess lmao

Having gender dysphoria is being delusional; you are deluded about your own body to the point where you seek to change it to conform to misogynistic stereotypes. Calling someone delusional who is, in fact, delusional, is not, in fact, ableism. Being delusional is undesirable. Being mentally ill is undesirable. Saying otherwise is ableist. Everything you listed is indicative of being delusional, besides the disabled bit. None of what you listed has anything to do with being disabled. Using the term "neurodiverse" to identify yourself is as fucking stupid as using "biodiverse" to identify a plant. The human population is neurodiverse, our planet is biodiverse. "Neurodiverse" is a term neither coined, nor used, nor sanctioned by neuroscientists. "Queer" is a slur against LGB (HOMOSEXUAL) people. It is not an identity. Being a delusional misogynistic, science-denier like all trans and "non-binary" people are, has nothing to do with being LGB. Additionally, there is no oppression that trans people face for being trans. Being a furry is disgusting, as well as delusional, and, again, has nothing to do with being LGB. No furry is oppressed; people find them disgusting bc they simply, by definition, are. I don't even really know what the fuck "otherkin" means and I don't want to. No one cares about this niche bullshit, and no one is oppressed due to their attempt to be it. Other people thinking you're stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting isn't, in and of itself, a form of oppression. Sometimes, others think you're stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting bc that's precisely what you are. I'm here to tell you that anyone who uses the "identities" you listed (besides being disabled), and/or believes in the ideologies connected to them; that person is stupid, misogynistic, homophobic, insane, obnoxious, and revolting. Grow the fuck up. Stop talking about LGB people, and stop including us in your larping puppyplay creepy bs. Your ahistoric delusional porn-sick behavior has nothing to do with us, and it never has.

@ihhfhonao3 tried to "call me out" by reposting my page to their blog, calling me a bigot etc. yet when I responded to their post with logic and explained that as a gay man I do not accept an ideology created by pe do John Money, they deleted my comments and responded with infantile and massochistic messages. This is so typical of the left, their hypocrisy, and their love of censorship.

I do not intend to harm any individual, however I will not hesitate to call bullshit on an ideology that is absolutely harming people. Its harming children and young people, its harming women, its harming LGB people. I have been "radicalized" by my first hand experience of narcissistic trans individuals, and my observation of the interesting correlation between governments, and corporations promotion of the "progressive" pride flag and all things trans. I absolutely believe there is a nefarious agenda.

Have there been "gender non confirming" people forever!? Absolutely. But they havent used drugs and surgery to ruin their bodies. It was only ever a very small number of people that were so non conforming as to be "cross dressing." Someone told me the other day in all seriousness that they didnt think men should wear shorts. Peoples ideas about conformity and gender are all over the map. You can wear whatever the f you want to now... just dont tell children that they need to become sterile to "be their true selves."

Yes gender separate from sex is a construct. Its a normative set of traits. However these things are not at all concrete. To conflate ones biology with the clothes one likes to wear is NORMATIVE CAPITULATION! So why are the supposed rebels perpetuating NORMATIVE STEREOTYPES!?

Its ludicrous and is evidence that these people are actually weak minded victims of a massive psychological operation fomented many decades ago. These same people will say thats just a "conspiracy theory" and yet believe that "THE PATRIARCHY MUST BE SMASHED," yet want to give children's bodies and minds over to Pharma Corp and Rockefeller medicine!?

It is a psy op.

There are autogynaphilics, and there are gay men with internalized homophobia. These are mental states of confusion. They are not lifestyles to be celebrated or something to take pride in.

These people are not part of the LGB. They are hostile to everything that LGB is. Drag queens and transvestites are not transexual. You are not born in the wrong body. You are not too "butch" to be a woman, or to "femme" to be a man. Gender separate from sex is just a concept, a lens, a made up thing like unicorns. We can talk about them, but it doesnt make them real.

This is a nuanced conversation that must occur before its all out war and were literally murdering each other in the street. Thats what the puppet masters want. They want chaos. They want us hating each other. I dont hate people, but I do hate lies. And I will stand up to lies and liars till my very last breath.

Not all people who identify as “queer” are mentally ill, but you definitely are, OP. Seek help, please, as wanting to be dehumanized and suffering from violent mood swings are very serious signs of deep disturbance. Also I don’t believe you have the “spoons” to make a phone call, let alone rip out someone’s entrails.

#transphobes #homophobia #ableism #online harassment #cyberbullying #i hate it here #randos getting mad at me #copypasta

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kettlechip-krispy-kreme · 4 months

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hi i'm moth, im queer, transmasc nonbinary and my pronouns are they/he. im a 22yro auadhd entomology student procrastinating on tumblr instead of studying

things you can expect on my silly little blog: dimension 20 and other dropout things, insects and arachnids, good mythical morning, watcher, biology, doctor who, book stuff, legend of zelda, ACNH, minecraft, little nightmares, mcr, ptv, idkhow, paramore, metalcore/deathcore, lego, ATLA, baking and pastry, invasive species ecology, disability stuff, covid info, trans and queer rights, and maybe a couple other fun things

i am really bad at remembering to add spoiler tags

DNI if you are under 16, a map/pedo/anything like that, terfs, homophobes and transphobes, aro/ace exlusionists, against blm or any other anti-racist movements, anti-abortion, anti-semetic, trump supporters/republicans, ablests, covid deniers, fatphobes, zionists, extreme christians (lol religious trauma), pro-anorexia, anyone who gives tips on how to self harm

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satanfemme · 2 years

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really don't like how increasingly-normal transphobia seems to be getting. specifically re: the purposeful ignorance of cis people who would not otherwise be openly transphobic, but who have learned that using covert language like "on average X gender has more Y traits. that's just a fact btw, no hate, honestly I don't understand why young people are insulted by these facts all of a sudden 🤷‍♂️" gives them enough plausible deniability towards the morality of other cis people, whilst making trans people out as largely "factophobic", if not the outright "aggressors", when some of us do inevitably respond negatively to these statements and their implications -- regardless of how respectful our negative responses may be.

to silently back out of a conversation which, at the very least, resembles the abuse we actively face, is no less hostile to the cisgender person than it is when we actively fight back. both actions "cause a scene" in their eyes; an inherently subversive and anti-social behavior, and therefor both actions are used by the cis to rationalize our demonization and accusations of idiocy. there is no way to "win" against covert transphobia, other than to betray yourself and your community by pleasantly agreeing with it.

that's why respectability politics don't work. if I'm gonna be a stubborn, childish, and emotional biology-denier throwing a tantrum either way; if I'm gonna be a disrespectful, narcissistic, and antagonistic out-of-touch radical either way, then I might as well do so loudly. and I might as well do so with an obvious and purposeful rejection of cisgender gender values. you know what I mean? giving up your freedoms does not then secure those same freedoms, either in the present or the future. it just gives them up.

#not-sorry for all the long words. the neurodiversity is hitting and I'm not toning that down rn either thx

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elistodragonwings · 11 months

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Please don't let focus on the fossil fuel industry overshadow the other major player in US climate denial, far-right Evangelical Christianity.

They'd been fighting against science and science education for decades because advances in our scientific understanding evolution, geology, archeology, and human biology contradicts their religious beliefs about the origin of the world. They had also long been anti-environmentalist, believing that it was anti-human to claim the natural world had inherent value outside of it's use to us. Climate change, whether natural or human-caused, was another ideological threat to their belief that God was in control of everything.

By the time climate science came to the public's attention in the late 90s-early 2000s, creationist had already made frightening success in gutting science education in large parts of the country, either through not teaching certain topics or intimidating teachers who tried. They didn't even necessarily have to invoke their religious beliefs, just create doubt around the scientific process and science's certainty. It was not hard for them to expand this strategy to now cover climate change as well.

Combine that with the fact that unlike the other areas of science they challenged, this one called for action, and right around 9/11 too, when Americans had already developed a paranoia that everywhere were people trying to undermine and destroy our way of life, and you now have outright political hostility at the idea that this was real and required us to do something.

The fossil fuel industry worked from the top down, influencing policy-makers, but Evangelicals worked from the bottom up, convincing many Americans to view science as politically motivated, vote for climate deniers, fight against local policies, and disbelieve the predictions scientist were making that are now coming true.

Even as fewer and fewer people can deny it's happening, this legacy still has an impact today. When people in the US argue that climate change is natural and thus not human-caused, that is a relatively new argument and the natural evolution of the doubt and lack of understanding of science that Evangelicals built. When people misunderstand environmental studies of both climate and solution impacts, this is because of that anti-science legacy. When people recognize it's all true, but don't have a full awareness of how all these ecological and geological systems are interconnected and what that means for the world as a whole, this is Evangelical's fault. (If you are one of those increasingly-rare left-leaning Evangelicals, please don't tell me "not all Christians." I know. This isn't about you, and unfortunately, you're not the majority, regardless of who may be more or less correct in their Biblical interpretations.)

#climate change #science #evangelicals #christianity #America #education #elisto

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 4 months

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By: Colin Wright

Published: Feb 18, 2024

There was a time when biologist PZ Myers was relevant. This period spanned the late 2000s and early 2010s, coinciding with the rise of “New Atheism” (as some called it). In 2006, Myers’ blog Pharyngula was celebrated in Nature as the world’s most popular science blog and was deemed the top atheist blog by Hemant Mehta in 2009. In 2008, Myers was part of a memorable incident where he and Richard Dawkins were planning to attend a screening of Ben Stein’s pro-Intelligent Design propaganda film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. Despite Myers being interviewed and featured in the film, he was barred from entering by a security guard on orders from the producer, Mark Mathis—but Dawkins was allowed in!

In 2010, I invited Myers to give a talk about Intelligent Design at Sierra Community College in Rocklin, CA, where I was studying before transferring to UC Davis for my bachelor’s degree. I picked up Myers from the Sacramento train station, and we enjoyed a stimulating conversation about evolution en route. Before his talk, I gave him a tour of the school’s esteemed natural history museum. After his talk, we all went out with Myers for food and drinks and had a great time. I share this to show that my starting attitude toward Myers was nothing short of admiration.

However, as gender ideology gained a foothold within the atheist movement, the brains of many prominent and once-rational figures began to melt. Philosopher Peter Boghossian has poignantly characterized this shift among Left-wing intellectuals from being quick to point out the limits of their knowledge to a tendency to pretend to not know what is undeniably known.

This trend is exemplified by Myers, as I will illustrate.

Recently, Richard Dawkins shared on 𝕏 the lecture I delivered at the Genspect conference in Denver, CO, last year, titled “The Sex Binary: What It Is and Why It Matters.” Dawkins praised my talk as “superbly clear & totally correct,” and reaffirmed the reality of the binary nature of sex. Following this, gender activists bombarded Dawkins with absurd articles challenging the binary concept of sex, including a particularly misleading piece in Scientific American titled “Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia,” which asserts that “Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary.”

In response to this onslaught of dubious science, Dawkins countered the article directly: “This ridiculous article…ignorantly misunderstands the nature of the sex binary.” He went on to underscore the important distinction between how sex is “determined” versus how it’s “defined” in biology that I outlined in my talk.

In turn, Myers, seemingly desperate to regain some of his previous prominence, criticized Dawkins in a blog post. Myers’ misunderstanding of the biology of sex, especially given his background in developmental biology, is on embarrassing display in his post.

Myers begins his criticism by suggested that Dawkins’ expertise in ethology (the study of animal behavior) means he lacks the sufficient expertise that would give him better insight into the biology of sex.

Did you know that Richard Dawkins began his career as an ethologist? He got his Ph.D. studying animal behavior under Niko Tinbergen. If you’re an ethologist, you might study things like courtship behavior and parental investment and feeding strategies etc., etc., etc. Dawkins studied how animals make choices.

This argument is a common strategy used by gender activists to undermine those who present biological facts that contradict gender ideology’s central dogma. I receive this criticism incessantly because I am also an ethologist. I studied the collective behavior of spiders and social insects, and this often gets me dismissed as some “bug guy” out of his depth commenting on issues well outside my academic wheelhouse. This portrayal, however, is couldn’t be further from the truth, and it is often medical doctors and biologists who study a narrow group of taxa who are most likely to form misguided views about the biology of sex.

In reality, ethologists (now usually referred to as behavioral ecologists) are uniquely well-situated to address questions pertaining to the fundamental and universal meaning of male and female. That’s because the most profound behavioral differences to be found in nature within a species are those of males and females. It turns out that the evolved reproductive strategies of producing either fewer large gametes (ova) or many small gametes (sperm) results in divergent selection on many behavioral traits between males and females. Moreover, understanding that the universal defining feature of males and females is rooted in gametes allows us to account for instances where behavioral sex roles are reversed, as is seen in some birds and other animals. In fact, such role reversals would be indiscernible without identifying the males and females based on the gametes they produce, underscoring the relevance of ethology in discussions about biological sex.

For instance, how do we know that male seahorses are the ones that gestate young and give birth? Or that in northern jacanas (J. spinosa), it is the females who are larger, more ornate, territorial, and exhibit less parental care than males? This knowledge stems from understanding that male and female are categories that exist independent of mere morphology and behavior.

Myers makes an uninformed argument:

Somehow, an awful lot of biologists study sexual behavior — like lekking, or sexual displays, or fidelity, and on and on — that don’t necessarily involve sperm collection or measuring ovulation or that kind of thing. It is absurd to insist that only gametes define sex. I recognize spider sexes by the morphology of their palps, and by their differences in behavior, not gametes. I see the birds flying outside my window, and I discriminate sexes by color, primarily.

Myers could not be any more confused here. How does he recognize that it is typically males who form leks, or that males often display more elaborate mating behaviors and exhibit less sexual fidelity? This knowledge comes from studying these species and correlating these behaviors with the type of gametes an individual produces. Once we discover that males of the Vogelkop superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina niedda) possess highly decorative plumage and engage in elaborate sexual displays, we no longer need to continuously verify this. We know it’s the males because we learned that only those with decorative plumage and elaborate sexual displays in this species produce sperm.

However, Myers insists that defining an individual’s sex based solely on gametes represents an “extreme reductionist” approach, and suggests we should consider “all the other valid signals they openly display.”

Dawkins is just being an extreme reductionist to the point he’s making himself and his position look silly. Go ahead, all you reactionary biologists, rant about how there can be only two true sexes because people have some cells that are almost never seen in public, in defiance of all the other valid signals they openly display. Better biologists will go on recognizing all the factors that define sex without your self-imposed, narrow-minded blinders.

The core and critical flaw in Myers’ argument for using other traits to determine the sex of an individual is that these traits are only reliable indicators of sex in species where we already know which individuals are males and females, based on their gametes. In humans, we associate breasts with females and facial hair with males because adult human females typically develop breasts and adult human males tend to grow facial hair. But how would Myers propose to identify males and females in a newly discovered species without any prior knowledge of their secondary sexual characteristics?

Consider a hypothetical new mammal species with some individuals small and blue and others large and brown. Since we know mammals are anisogamous (i.e., reproduce via fusion of a sperm and an egg), we can be as certain as possible that this species also exhibits males and females. But how do we determine which is which? Should we assume the blue ones are males and the brown ones females, as is the case with blue groper fish? But in blue gropers the males are large and the females are small. Should we therefore consider the blue individuals of our new mammal species female because they are small? But in spiders the males are smaller than the females, suggesting perhaps the small individuals should be considered males?

Do you see the absurdity of the approach? We know human males tend to be hairier, male blue gropers are blue, and male spiders are usually smaller, because being male is a trait independent of hair, color, or size. What unites these males is the type of gamete they have the function to produce. That is what makes them male.

Thus, the only way we can know which individuals of our new species are the males and which are the females is to find out which individuals produce sperm and which produce eggs. The. End.

Myers has to understand this, but he is too afraid to tell the truth.

The people who say, "but, but clownfish!" conveniently leave out the part where they explain how we know a clownfish has changed sex. Does it like mimosas and shopping, or is there some other indicator compared to before?

What is it about a clownfish changing sex that tells us it has changed sex?

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#Colin Wright #gender ideology #queer theory #gender identity ideology #biology #human biology #reproduction #human reproduction #gametes #biological sex #PZ Myers #evolution denial #evolution deniers #religion is a mental illness

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