Probably the most quaint bit of this old essay is the part where you still believe that "trans" is the most marginalized group on the planet. Lots of us were still figuring out that straight, upper middle class white guys are not actually marginalized by wearing lipstick.
Excellent piece. So wrong that this commonsense discussion led to the end of the career of Colin.
More and more, I believe that young people are attracted to the trans delusion due to a unwillingness of these children to accept biological reality. We are animals. We eat food or we will die. We breath or we will die. When the food is processed, the undigested parts emerge as sh it or pi ss. When a male and female have sex, the male inserts his p enis into the va gina of the female, and engages in actions which lead to an orgasm producing a fluid.
Young people are often repulsed by simple biology. I remember myself being completely disgusted by the notion of my father doing this to my mother. The "Peter Pan" complex is found in young men who do not want to grow up. They want to be little boys, and be "pure" which means innocent. The reality of biology, which involves the messing about with those of the opposite sex, is disgusting to them.
If you have a "wet dream", which many boys have, your bedclothes are fouled with icky sticky stuff.
Young women are also disgusted by the onset of the period. I can definitely understand why this is upsetting. All of a sudden, your body begins to discharge blood, and does this one time a month. Although you can for a lot of girls/women use products which address this issue, the blood is still there. It's icky. It's disgusting. And it goes on, month after month, for years.
Anime characters are beautiful. They don't have leaky fluids. They have big tits, they are really cute. They have big tits and small tiny faces - both like adult females and like advanced children.
So, what is it about the transition from child to adult that we have not explained properly? How do children prepare for these body changes in a manner which will not disgust them?
Science is a social function first and foremost. It tends to be self-correcting in relation to reality than religion or politics, slower than consciousness, but not always. Here’s a sad example.
“Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.”
We're at a strikingly fragile moment in the pursuit of truth through the sciences. It seems to be a threat extending beyond the study of biology, sadly. We're fortunate that some scientists and academics continue to fight back against the superstition and barbarism of woke activists, the dumb "relativistic postmodern nonsense." Thanks for the moving reminder of the costs of this fight and for reminding us that unseen scientists, deserving of our gratitude, are pushing back.
i quit research in the early 2000s, when i saw the requirements of drug funding bury research, and my belief in science being a true 'conversation with nature' to uncover truths was crushed.
the dark ages and the repression of reality in favour of commercial/political needs has come again
I noticed the motte and bailey game being played online with "gender" and "sex" starting about ten years ago. As soon as it became widely accepted that ones gender identity could differ from ones sex, that wasn't good enough anymore. And I knew the activists would never be satisfied until they forced everyone to participate fully in their farce.
Pretty simple, there are two sexes, not 3 or 7 or 14. Just 2.
In those two categories, there's a wide spectrum of, how shall we put this? ah yes, jollies.
There's a wide spectrum of getting your jollies. You might like to attend the opera in formal wear, and then return home with a feeling of fin-de-siecle and hump. You might like a threesome. You might like to dress up in any number of ways, or have your partner dress up in any number of ways (the old standard was the French maid, that was a great one. "Oui, Monsieur, what is it that I can get for you this late?"
Some people like redheads, some don't. That's not two new sexes, that's just a couple of preferences.
Preferences related to jollies.
Some folks have no interest--seriously--in jollies whatsoever, while others can scarcely think of anything else (maybe like Philip Roth) their entire lives.
Some people like to watch romantic movies, or sexy movies, or sex movies. That's not 3 more genders, that just 3 more preferences. 3 different jollies.
"Human sperm are approximately 6000th of a centimeter long, a small fraction of a man's total body length. By contrast, fruit fly (Drosophila spp.) sperm can reach nearly 6 cm, roughly twenty times the total length of their bodies."
As I said for paternal mtDNA, "go for it!" - good job.
The key feature of eggs is that they carry the metabolic machinery including maternal mtDNA, not sperm. I can state it a few more times, but it's becoming funny to debate. Why don't they simply say the gamete with a flagellum is a sperm?
We don't say that in humans, the male is the big one, and the female is the small one. Almost universally true, but somehow... irrelevant? I find continuing the argument around bigness amusing. It's become bigly! Focus on size is quaint.
Well-respected journals are there for criticism.
Bipedal vs sex binary and hoary examples, and 'not all humans have two feet'. Are we speaking of humans, or species when we speak of binary sex? I'm confused, I have friends in a wheelchair, does that mean humans are not bipedal? Are you confusing... species and individuals? Ulp!
And sexless bees, sexless chicken embryos. Goodness!
As John McWhorter pointed out in "Woke Racism" the "woke" left has many of the characteristics of a religious cult- a fundamentalist one. Kudos to Colin Wright and others who have the guts to stand up to it without regard to personal risk.
Thanks! You will find this short says it all: "sexologist" claims in sworn affidavit that wife is at fault--her refusal to "schedule" her then husband's cross-dressing "forced" him to "decide to live full-time as a female" (Dr. Christine Wheeler, diagnosis, stated in same affidavit, in first appt.)
You write, "When I reflect on my initial reasons over a decade ago for choosing a career as an academic scientist, it was largely due to the inspiration I felt from outspoken public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen Fry, and the late Christopher Hitchens, who led by example and followed reason wherever it took them."
I'm sorry, but adamant atheism is not an act of reason. Adamant atheism assumes as a matter of faith that something as incredibly small as human reason is capable of generating meaningful statements on the very largest of questions. Adamant atheism seems to always be aimed outwards, at somebody else's beliefs. In 27 years online I've rarely seen atheists apply a critical reasoning challenge to their own beliefs. That's not reason, but ideology. So many atheists seem so confused about the difference.
Richard Dawkins is widely regarded a clown on the topic of religion. Christopher Hitchens was a highly skilled intellectual entertainer, a skill which I admire, but that's not intellectual inquiry. Intellectual inquiry by Hitchens would have involved him apply the same critical scrutiny to his own position as he applied to others, instead of simply demonizing somebody to raise his career profile.
I'm sorry, but, you've chosen poor role models. These are ideologists, not people of reason.
About evolutionary psychology and controversy: It's true that evolution in Darwin's time provoked a negative reaction among religious fundamentalists. But that was by no means the only reaction, and is no longer the most important one. Another reaction, after all, was social Darwinism. And that led (among other things) directly to the Nazis. The Nazis are gone, but the scourge of social Darwinism (by other names) lingers. Worse, biological essentialism and determinism have revived with a vengeance in some forms of feminist ideology. For half a century, feminist ideologues have preached and institutionalized not only biological essentialism (the innate moral superiority of women and "women's ways of knowing") but also biological determinism (the innate evil of men and "linear reason"). Never mind that good and evil mean nothing at all without freedom of choice. Still worse, though, wokism has now absorbed all that from feminist ideology, adding racial to sexual resentment.
For many years, I stayed away from evolutionary psychology and its ideological byproducts. But I see now, due to the irrational rise of transgenderism, that I must revise my position. In other words, I'll go wherever reason (including science) and evidence take me. Even so, I worry about popular versions of evolutionary psychology. It's true that we've evolved from the chimps and bonobos. But we're no longer chimps or bonobos. It's true that we've evolved to be scavengers and hunters. But we're no longer scavengers or hunters. My point is that we've evolved specifically as cultural beings. We're biologically programmed, perhaps paradoxically, to produce culture. It's not enough, therefore, to point out passively that our behavior has roots in the remote past. We're morally obliged to make cultural and moral choices in view of our current environments.
Probably the most quaint bit of this old essay is the part where you still believe that "trans" is the most marginalized group on the planet. Lots of us were still figuring out that straight, upper middle class white guys are not actually marginalized by wearing lipstick.
Excellent piece. So wrong that this commonsense discussion led to the end of the career of Colin.
More and more, I believe that young people are attracted to the trans delusion due to a unwillingness of these children to accept biological reality. We are animals. We eat food or we will die. We breath or we will die. When the food is processed, the undigested parts emerge as sh it or pi ss. When a male and female have sex, the male inserts his p enis into the va gina of the female, and engages in actions which lead to an orgasm producing a fluid.
Young people are often repulsed by simple biology. I remember myself being completely disgusted by the notion of my father doing this to my mother. The "Peter Pan" complex is found in young men who do not want to grow up. They want to be little boys, and be "pure" which means innocent. The reality of biology, which involves the messing about with those of the opposite sex, is disgusting to them.
If you have a "wet dream", which many boys have, your bedclothes are fouled with icky sticky stuff.
Young women are also disgusted by the onset of the period. I can definitely understand why this is upsetting. All of a sudden, your body begins to discharge blood, and does this one time a month. Although you can for a lot of girls/women use products which address this issue, the blood is still there. It's icky. It's disgusting. And it goes on, month after month, for years.
Anime characters are beautiful. They don't have leaky fluids. They have big tits, they are really cute. They have big tits and small tiny faces - both like adult females and like advanced children.
So, what is it about the transition from child to adult that we have not explained properly? How do children prepare for these body changes in a manner which will not disgust them?
Science is a social function first and foremost. It tends to be self-correcting in relation to reality than religion or politics, slower than consciousness, but not always. Here’s a sad example.
“Scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have found that when just 10 percent of the population holds an unshakable belief, their belief will always be adopted by the majority of the society. The scientists, who are members of the Social Cognitive Networks Academic Research Center (SCNARC) at Rensselaer, used computational and analytical methods to discover the tipping point where a minority belief becomes the majority opinion. The finding has implications for the study and influence of societal interactions ranging from the spread of innovations to the movement of political ideals.”
https://www.datascienceassn.org/content/social-consensus-through-influence-committed-minorities
We're at a strikingly fragile moment in the pursuit of truth through the sciences. It seems to be a threat extending beyond the study of biology, sadly. We're fortunate that some scientists and academics continue to fight back against the superstition and barbarism of woke activists, the dumb "relativistic postmodern nonsense." Thanks for the moving reminder of the costs of this fight and for reminding us that unseen scientists, deserving of our gratitude, are pushing back.
i quit research in the early 2000s, when i saw the requirements of drug funding bury research, and my belief in science being a true 'conversation with nature' to uncover truths was crushed.
the dark ages and the repression of reality in favour of commercial/political needs has come again
I noticed the motte and bailey game being played online with "gender" and "sex" starting about ten years ago. As soon as it became widely accepted that ones gender identity could differ from ones sex, that wasn't good enough anymore. And I knew the activists would never be satisfied until they forced everyone to participate fully in their farce.
FIRST!
i was the first DM...
Pretty simple, there are two sexes, not 3 or 7 or 14. Just 2.
In those two categories, there's a wide spectrum of, how shall we put this? ah yes, jollies.
There's a wide spectrum of getting your jollies. You might like to attend the opera in formal wear, and then return home with a feeling of fin-de-siecle and hump. You might like a threesome. You might like to dress up in any number of ways, or have your partner dress up in any number of ways (the old standard was the French maid, that was a great one. "Oui, Monsieur, what is it that I can get for you this late?"
Some people like redheads, some don't. That's not two new sexes, that's just a couple of preferences.
Preferences related to jollies.
Some folks have no interest--seriously--in jollies whatsoever, while others can scarcely think of anything else (maybe like Philip Roth) their entire lives.
Some people like to watch romantic movies, or sexy movies, or sex movies. That's not 3 more genders, that just 3 more preferences. 3 different jollies.
I just don't get the sex-less part. No one has not sex, if mammalian.
Google can find Drosophila sperm size in a second via NIH.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5109885/
"Human sperm are approximately 6000th of a centimeter long, a small fraction of a man's total body length. By contrast, fruit fly (Drosophila spp.) sperm can reach nearly 6 cm, roughly twenty times the total length of their bodies."
As I said for paternal mtDNA, "go for it!" - good job.
The key feature of eggs is that they carry the metabolic machinery including maternal mtDNA, not sperm. I can state it a few more times, but it's becoming funny to debate. Why don't they simply say the gamete with a flagellum is a sperm?
We don't say that in humans, the male is the big one, and the female is the small one. Almost universally true, but somehow... irrelevant? I find continuing the argument around bigness amusing. It's become bigly! Focus on size is quaint.
Well-respected journals are there for criticism.
Bipedal vs sex binary and hoary examples, and 'not all humans have two feet'. Are we speaking of humans, or species when we speak of binary sex? I'm confused, I have friends in a wheelchair, does that mean humans are not bipedal? Are you confusing... species and individuals? Ulp!
And sexless bees, sexless chicken embryos. Goodness!
As John McWhorter pointed out in "Woke Racism" the "woke" left has many of the characteristics of a religious cult- a fundamentalist one. Kudos to Colin Wright and others who have the guts to stand up to it without regard to personal risk.
Thanks! You will find this short says it all: "sexologist" claims in sworn affidavit that wife is at fault--her refusal to "schedule" her then husband's cross-dressing "forced" him to "decide to live full-time as a female" (Dr. Christine Wheeler, diagnosis, stated in same affidavit, in first appt.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbVA1TCIXb8
You write, "When I reflect on my initial reasons over a decade ago for choosing a career as an academic scientist, it was largely due to the inspiration I felt from outspoken public intellectuals like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Stephen Fry, and the late Christopher Hitchens, who led by example and followed reason wherever it took them."
I'm sorry, but adamant atheism is not an act of reason. Adamant atheism assumes as a matter of faith that something as incredibly small as human reason is capable of generating meaningful statements on the very largest of questions. Adamant atheism seems to always be aimed outwards, at somebody else's beliefs. In 27 years online I've rarely seen atheists apply a critical reasoning challenge to their own beliefs. That's not reason, but ideology. So many atheists seem so confused about the difference.
Richard Dawkins is widely regarded a clown on the topic of religion. Christopher Hitchens was a highly skilled intellectual entertainer, a skill which I admire, but that's not intellectual inquiry. Intellectual inquiry by Hitchens would have involved him apply the same critical scrutiny to his own position as he applied to others, instead of simply demonizing somebody to raise his career profile.
I'm sorry, but, you've chosen poor role models. These are ideologists, not people of reason.
PS: I'm not religious.
Hi Colin, by any chance, have you ever looked into how many countries now accept a "third sex", or "X", or "diverse" on official documents ? Best,
Sylvie
About evolutionary psychology and controversy: It's true that evolution in Darwin's time provoked a negative reaction among religious fundamentalists. But that was by no means the only reaction, and is no longer the most important one. Another reaction, after all, was social Darwinism. And that led (among other things) directly to the Nazis. The Nazis are gone, but the scourge of social Darwinism (by other names) lingers. Worse, biological essentialism and determinism have revived with a vengeance in some forms of feminist ideology. For half a century, feminist ideologues have preached and institutionalized not only biological essentialism (the innate moral superiority of women and "women's ways of knowing") but also biological determinism (the innate evil of men and "linear reason"). Never mind that good and evil mean nothing at all without freedom of choice. Still worse, though, wokism has now absorbed all that from feminist ideology, adding racial to sexual resentment.
For many years, I stayed away from evolutionary psychology and its ideological byproducts. But I see now, due to the irrational rise of transgenderism, that I must revise my position. In other words, I'll go wherever reason (including science) and evidence take me. Even so, I worry about popular versions of evolutionary psychology. It's true that we've evolved from the chimps and bonobos. But we're no longer chimps or bonobos. It's true that we've evolved to be scavengers and hunters. But we're no longer scavengers or hunters. My point is that we've evolved specifically as cultural beings. We're biologically programmed, perhaps paradoxically, to produce culture. It's not enough, therefore, to point out passively that our behavior has roots in the remote past. We're morally obliged to make cultural and moral choices in view of our current environments.
Great work