Weekly Reality Report

February 4, 2024

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The Weekly Reality Report is published every Sunday morning for paying subscribers and includes a roundup of the previous week’s articles on Reality’s Last Stand, a reading list of summarized interesting opinion pieces from around the web, relevant news headlines to keep you informed, and a special Moment of Zen.

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Richard Dawkins Endorses My ‘Sex Binary’ Lecture

Last Tuesday, renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offered high praise for my lecture on the sex binary, which I delivered at Genspect’s “The Bigger Picture” conference last year in Denver, CO. He described my lecture as “superbly clear and totally correct,” and reiterated several of my talk’s main points: “There are only 2 sexes & they’re defined by gamete size. Convoluted attempts to deny binary sex are like Ptolemaic epicycles.”

For those who may not know, Dawkins has been an intellectual hero of mine for quite some time. He inspired me to become an evolutionary biologist and instilled in me the value of speaking and pursuing the truth no matter what. In my first ever public essay on the topic of sex denying pseudoscience, “The New Evolution Deniers,” which was published in Quillette in 2018, I wrote:

I did not train to be a scientist for over a decade just to sit quietly while science in general, and my field in particular, comes under attack from activists who subvert truth to ideology and narrative. 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.

This endorsement from Dawkins means the world to me, and I am hopeful that it will help spread awareness about this long-neglected, yet extremely important, issue.

If you haven’t seen it already, you can watch my full lecture below.

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