Dr. Wright, I am increasingly impressed by your patience and stamina in debating asinine beliefs like those held by Zizek. I also love it that you spent years studying insects. I am a lifelong admirer of ants.
In 1991, I published an article in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled, "Can Females Rule the Hive? The Controversy over Honey Bee Gender Roles in British Beekeeping Texts of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries." (I'm sure most of you have read it... that was a joke). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1slmFCgxtIhDcUMGo52sYMV4UzL2-iSjx/view?usp=sharing ...The point is that the honey bee sex controversy was settled about 300 years ago. Prior to that, the 'woke social warriors' of the day were arguing that the ruler of the hive had to be male, and the workers did, too. They figured that God would never create a "perfect" society and put a female in charge, and he would never arm the workers with "swords" (stingers) unless they were males. So, my question is, "How far have we progressed intellectually in the last three centuries... and why didn't Slavoj read my article?" Oh, well.
For heaven's sake, why does anyone think the reproductive and sex determination mechanisms of other species have any relevance at all for human social policy?!
Here's four seconds of a bee disappearing into an American wildflower called Beard Tongue. Don't let them mess with bees and please do grow flowers, even in a windowbox!
If "trans" and "nonbinary" are gender identities, and "gender identity" is human social construct (which it is) isn't it a given that nonhuman life forms don't have gender identities?
The other day some podcaster argued that the Left advances their various causes by getting intelligent people like Colin bogged down in these debates so that these issues become normalized. It was an interesting idea.
If bee hives approximate anything like communism, it would be barracks communism; but I doubt that’s anything like what Zizek has in mind by communism.
Dr. Wright writes: “As someone who studied social insects as a scientist for nearly seven years and published over a dozen peer-reviewed papers on them, including the most comprehensive review of collective personalities in eusocial insects and arachnids to date, I can say with confidence that he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Perhaps it is the very familiar structure of this sentence, reminiscent of my own preferred style, that made me grin upon reading. Or, most likely, it is merely because it is a glorious prelude to your fierce rebuttal that followed in the essay. Either way, to be sure, everyone has to love it! Thanks for cleaning up the author's "scientific" mess.
Thank you! This not only dispels a bad argument, but gives me a great idea for a Dungeons and Dragons monster that is female but needs no males to birth her wicked young. She just needs time to breed a haploid army!
Interesting, but methinks much of it is based on definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk biology.
Y'all might have some interest, "unhinged" or not, in some observations thereon by Paul Griffiths and Tomas Bogardus:
Griffiths: "So worker bees are ‘female’ in the extended sense that they would develop into fertile females if they weren’t actively prevented from doing so. …. Workers and soldiers are both ‘female’ in an extended sense, but not in the full-blown sense that queen ants are female. There is a human imperative to give everything a sex, as mentioned above, but biology doesn’t share it."
About the most one can get out of “extended sense” is no better than “nominally speaking”, or for reference purposes only.
Those "female" bees really aren't; they just look like them -- the way Jenner "looks" like an adult human female (if one was blind drunk). But they are -- as you've agreed -- missing the "functional gonads" that are, by the "universal" definitions stipulated in the MHR, the sine qua non for sex category membership. They're sexLESS, neither male nor female -- arguably, "non-binary".
Dr. Wright, I am increasingly impressed by your patience and stamina in debating asinine beliefs like those held by Zizek. I also love it that you spent years studying insects. I am a lifelong admirer of ants.
Thus is just so good and so rich. Thank you for exposing insanity, lying and destruction
In 1991, I published an article in the Journal of the History of Biology entitled, "Can Females Rule the Hive? The Controversy over Honey Bee Gender Roles in British Beekeeping Texts of the Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries." (I'm sure most of you have read it... that was a joke). https://drive.google.com/file/d/1slmFCgxtIhDcUMGo52sYMV4UzL2-iSjx/view?usp=sharing ...The point is that the honey bee sex controversy was settled about 300 years ago. Prior to that, the 'woke social warriors' of the day were arguing that the ruler of the hive had to be male, and the workers did, too. They figured that God would never create a "perfect" society and put a female in charge, and he would never arm the workers with "swords" (stingers) unless they were males. So, my question is, "How far have we progressed intellectually in the last three centuries... and why didn't Slavoj read my article?" Oh, well.
For heaven's sake, why does anyone think the reproductive and sex determination mechanisms of other species have any relevance at all for human social policy?!
Here's four seconds of a bee disappearing into an American wildflower called Beard Tongue. Don't let them mess with bees and please do grow flowers, even in a windowbox!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wYL9No5fA18
If "trans" and "nonbinary" are gender identities, and "gender identity" is human social construct (which it is) isn't it a given that nonhuman life forms don't have gender identities?
The other day some podcaster argued that the Left advances their various causes by getting intelligent people like Colin bogged down in these debates so that these issues become normalized. It was an interesting idea.
If bee hives approximate anything like communism, it would be barracks communism; but I doubt that’s anything like what Zizek has in mind by communism.
How long before the wokesters take a torch to all things reality?
Dr. Wright writes: “As someone who studied social insects as a scientist for nearly seven years and published over a dozen peer-reviewed papers on them, including the most comprehensive review of collective personalities in eusocial insects and arachnids to date, I can say with confidence that he has no idea what he’s talking about.”
Perhaps it is the very familiar structure of this sentence, reminiscent of my own preferred style, that made me grin upon reading. Or, most likely, it is merely because it is a glorious prelude to your fierce rebuttal that followed in the essay. Either way, to be sure, everyone has to love it! Thanks for cleaning up the author's "scientific" mess.
I clicked on the link to the article. Slavoj has added an addendum in response to Wright's rebuttal.
Thank you! This not only dispels a bad argument, but gives me a great idea for a Dungeons and Dragons monster that is female but needs no males to birth her wicked young. She just needs time to breed a haploid army!
I get SO TIRED of all these people who bend over backwards to uphold the trans ideology, I just can’t read it all anymore. The propaganda is so
pervasive and so perverse!
I’m sure there are teams of Stalinist propaganda papers that prove Lysenko was right in saying that genetics is bunk.
It’s just literally sickening! Just stop all the crap that makes trans the best thing since white bread! 🤢🤢
Interesting, but methinks much of it is based on definitions for the sexes that are no better than folk biology.
Y'all might have some interest, "unhinged" or not, in some observations thereon by Paul Griffiths and Tomas Bogardus:
Griffiths: "So worker bees are ‘female’ in the extended sense that they would develop into fertile females if they weren’t actively prevented from doing so. …. Workers and soldiers are both ‘female’ in an extended sense, but not in the full-blown sense that queen ants are female. There is a human imperative to give everything a sex, as mentioned above, but biology doesn’t share it."
About the most one can get out of “extended sense” is no better than “nominally speaking”, or for reference purposes only.
Those "female" bees really aren't; they just look like them -- the way Jenner "looks" like an adult human female (if one was blind drunk). But they are -- as you've agreed -- missing the "functional gonads" that are, by the "universal" definitions stipulated in the MHR, the sine qua non for sex category membership. They're sexLESS, neither male nor female -- arguably, "non-binary".
https://substack.com/@humanuseofhumanbeings/note/c-17377478