This whole issue has become really fraught in the US and not just at the fringes, and especially with a small number of extremists in the trans community and the broader “non-binary” community. We know, though, how whole movements can be started and grow, with just a small percent of really committed rebels; think the Bolsheviks and how they created the Soviet Union, though only some 5% of the population. So this move to de-sex homo sapiens must be resisted. So far, it’s not looking good, all the gains in recent years having been made on the activists’ side.
Wars, ideological wars, are being fought in the US over this, not just in social media and the academy, but also in schools, in businesses, in government departments. Even in the Supreme Court: remember when the most recent Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson could not (or would not) answer the question during confirmation hearings: “Can you define a woman?”. She replied: “no, I can’t; I am not a biologist”. Since when did defining the word “woman” become a trick question? A thing only a biologist could answer? I guess, since the reality-based community allowed itself to be flummoxed by the ideology-based community.
Perhaps the reality-based is starting to get its act together.
Example: Professor Geary brings some order to the chaos, in “The ideological refusal to acknowledge evolved sex differences”.
Shorter Geary: Remember and Repeat (especially you, Justice Jackson):
"I have one large immotile gamete, therefore I am female” || “I have many small motile gametes, therefore I am male"
That holds for all mammals and has done for 200 million years.
You may feel you are of the other sex (aka “sexual dysphoria”). A tolerant and well-ordered society will say: we respect your feelings on that -- we respect all your human rights and privileges. But it doesn’t make you the other sex. A trans woman is still a man.
I’ll quote below the first and the last paragraphs of professor Geary’s essay. What’s in between is long-ish but very instructive. The first:
Much remains to be learned about the nature and origins of various sex differences, but more is known than most people realize. Much of the current confusion is generated by activists who suppress, attack, and distort information on sex differences in order to reinforce their preferred ideological narratives. These ideology-driven distortions are helpfully illustrated by a recent New York Times essay by Chelsea Conaboy, which announces that the maternal instinct is a “myth”—a social construct generated and upheld by the patriarchy to impel women to raise children and keep them out of the workforce.
And, the last:
The bottom line
The claims made in a virtual world of internet algorithms populated by ideological social media pundits, journalists, and gender studies professors contradicts common sense and rational analysis of real-world phenomena. This is a world of words and ideas fraught with wishes and desires that are not always tethered to reality, including many far-fetched beliefs about the number of sexes and the origins and malleability of any associated sex or gender differences. Much remains to be learned about these differences which leaves plenty of room for legitimate debate. But there is no scientific room for the nonsensical idea that boys and girls and men and women are infinitely malleable and merely socially constructed products of the patriarchy or some other social system. [Read the whole essay here]
