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Epiphanies 2019: TERFs, gender, sex, etc.

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  • Alan Cresswell Alan Cresswell Admin, 8th Day Host
    A reminder of the reluctant decision of the Admins reported earlier on this thread.
    This does mean that a couple of recent posts commenting on the views of She Who Must Not Be Named have been deleted.
    Simon wrote: »
    Dear all, the Ship has very limited (i.e. no) legal funds so please take care when discussing the views of people with unlimited legal funds and a willingness to use them. Posts which the Admins think might might cause legal problems for the Ship will be deleted on sight. Thanks.
    Discuss the issues, but without reference to a person with unlimited legal funds.

    Alan
    Ship of Fools Admin
  • This is a long read. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/number-50-fall-2016

    It reads skeptically about the state of science re sexuality. Review and commentary. Looking at the impression of the journal as described in general, it's described as socially conservative. Which isn't a reason to accept nor to reject.
    It is a fallacy to automatically disregard what is said because one questions the sourse, it is not wrong to be wary of the information because of the source.
    Haven't read it yet, might comment further after having done so.

  • To me, the article reads like some anthropocentric climate change deniers. Acknowledging the effects whilst denying the cause.
  • I didn't get that from it. I got that they didn't see the basis in science. That's it.
    I extend this in my thinking re human rights, i.e., that people may live their lives as they will with fear of being persecuted for how they do.
  • The article makes claims like "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the "gay bit" that we can point at and say "look - that thing makes this person gay".

    In itself, that's a reasonable, true statement.

    However, almost all users of such statements would like you to think "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the gay bit, and so therefore the people are wrong", and that last step is complete nonsense. It's true that nobody has found "the gay bit" - however, people who are gay tend to report similar sorts of experiences, along the lines of having always been gay. Whether or not it's strictly accurate that the were "born gay" is irrelevant - they are gay, and if it matters (I don't think it should matter, but some people like to use this argument) then they have no choice about being gay.
  • I didn't get that from it.
    What LC said. The bare outline of what they said is deceptive, presentation counts. And their presentation is one of casting doubt.
    Not questioning, casting doubt.

  • MarsupialMarsupial Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    I don't have the time to respond to this in detail, but McHugh has been around for a long time. He was one of the Vatican's go-to person on LGBT issues in BXVI's days, and wrote an amicus brief for the SCOTUS against extending the Civil Rights Act protections to transgender people (Google McHugh and Supreme Court). I gather from the Washington Post that he has also contributed an amicus brief against allowing trans people to use washrooms appropriate for the gender with which they identify (article should be Googleable but may be behind a paywall). Undoubtedly some version of the New Atlantis article will be before the SCOTUS in very short order.

    In short: unless you have the expertise to perform an independent assessment of his conclusions, approach with extreme caution.

  • The article makes claims like "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the "gay bit" that we can point at and say "look - that thing makes this person gay".

    In itself, that's a reasonable, true statement.

    However, almost all users of such statements would like you to think "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the gay bit, and so therefore the people are wrong", and that last step is complete nonsense. It's true that nobody has found "the gay bit" - however, people who are gay tend to report similar sorts of experiences, along the lines of having always been gay. Whether or not it's strictly accurate that the were "born gay" is irrelevant - they are gay, and if it matters (I don't think it should matter, but some people like to use this argument) then they have no choice about being gay.

    That's the human rights argument I derive from this. Isn't it persuasive and sufficient by itself that people are who they are because they find themselves to be so? That's enough isn't it? I'm thinking the "gay bit" (or trans bit) just doesn't matter. Live as you will, and no discrimination.
  • That's the human rights argument I derive from this. Isn't it persuasive and sufficient by itself that people are who they are because they find themselves to be so? That's enough isn't it? I'm thinking the "gay bit" (or trans bit) just doesn't matter. Live as you will, and no discrimination.

    That's my current opinion - but it wasn't always my opinion. I was brought up with the idea that to be gay was at best undesirable, but held the position that if being gay wasn't a choice, then it wasn't reasonable to be biased against it. So I suppose you could think of "it's not a choice" as my gateway in to supporting gay rights.

    My opinions have moved on since then, but I wonder what would have happened if in my youth I had thought that being gay was a choice.
  • The article makes claims like "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the "gay bit" that we can point at and say "look - that thing makes this person gay".

    In itself, that's a reasonable, true statement.

    However, almost all users of such statements would like you to think "people say they are born gay, but science hasn't found the gay bit, and so therefore the people are wrong", and that last step is complete nonsense. It's true that nobody has found "the gay bit" - however, people who are gay tend to report similar sorts of experiences, along the lines of having always been gay. Whether or not it's strictly accurate that the were "born gay" is irrelevant - they are gay, and if it matters (I don't think it should matter, but some people like to use this argument) then they have no choice about being gay.

    And to be honest, it's not found the straight bit either - nor the bit that says why I find that woman over there attractive but my cousin standing next to me does not. Science does not have the answer to every question which arises in life, and these "appeals" to science don't get the matter any distance. Some people are gay, some know deep down that they are transgender, others that they are straight; we accept all these as a part of life.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    That's not a peer reviewed piece by McHugh and Mayer. It was widely denounced by the current faculty members at Johns Hopkins as mischaracterising the science and being both dated and discredited at the time in 2016. McHugh is an anti-trans activist who does not accept the findings of expert professional groups.

    https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/04/27/profile-on-the-right-paul-mchugh

  • colour me shocked, shocked i tell you
  • edited September 2020
    Louise wrote: »
    That's not a peer reviewed piece by McHugh and Mayer. It was widely denounced by the current faculty members at Johns Hopkins as mischaracterising the science and being both dated and discredited at the time in 2016. McHugh is an anti-trans activist who does not accept the findings of expert professional groups.

    https://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/04/27/profile-on-the-right-paul-mchugh
    tl:dr except to understand by a quick inet search that there's political positioning of one link (the one I posted) on the right and one on the left (the one you posted), by the standards of American political positioning.

    "peer review" - who claimed it was? They didn't do any studies, they reviewed things others wrote. It's a review article, and sure, an opinion piece. Which is what so much of social 'science' is. I'm frankly reminded of when the local university here thankfully renamed "political science" to "political studies". There's no science involved in these things.

    >who does not accept the findings of expert professional groups

    "findings" would point to science, but it isn't that

    "expert professional groups" points to what is called an appeal to authority, as is "denounced by current faculty members"

    I've had a chance to read quite a bit of the medical info on trans. It's almost all about how to care for people. There's no answers about what is true or false there. Again telling me that this is about what people need and want for their lives. It is not science. It's human rights and fundamental justice, respect and kindness.

    We need to stop trying to use science where human rights are the point. We stopped pretending science has anything to do with race sometime in the 20th century. Mostly. The same needs to happen for sexuality, sexual identity, orientation, and all the rest.

  • "expert professional groups" points to what is called an appeal to authority, as is "denounced by current faculty members"
    Appeal to authority is
    Insisting that a claim is true simply because a valid authority or expert on the issue said it was true, without any other supporting evidence offered
    The authorities they denounce do have supporting evidence.
    I've had a chance to read quite a bit of the medical info on trans. It's almost all about how to care for people. There's no answers about what is true or false there.
    The history of your posts suggests an affinity for sources that are biased against transpeople.
    Again telling me that this is about what people need and want for their lives. It is not science. It's human rights and fundamental justice, respect and kindness.
    If humans rights, justice and kindess were the point, articles like the one you linked would not exist. Since they serve as a counterpoint to sources that support trans rights, their only purpose is to dispute or minimise these rights.
    We need to stop trying to use science where human rights are the point. We stopped pretending science has anything to do with race sometime in the 20th century. Mostly. The same needs to happen for sexuality, sexual identity, orientation, and all the rest.
    Science has everything to do with race, as in disproving its existence. Science is still called to disprove it and people still reject the science. People still equivocate on race like the article does with trans.


  • I've had a chance to read quite a bit of the medical info on trans. It's almost all about how to care for people. There's no answers about what is true or false there. Again telling me that this is about what people need and want for their lives. It is not science. It's human rights and fundamental justice, respect and kindness.

    What works to care for trans people highlights what is true. The success of transitioning, vs the failure of trying to treat being trans as a mental problem; the rarity of de-transitioning, all point to the reported feelings of trans folk about their gender having a tangible and permanent reality.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    edited September 2020
    Science HAS found 'the gay bit'. As was reported last year. So for starters, anything from 2016 is just not up-to-date.

    Of course, exactly how the results of the largest scientific study on the question were reported depended (to an almost amusing extent) on which position people were shoring up. Because there is no 'gay gene'. Which is entirely different from saying there's no genetic aspect to homosexuality. There's ample evidence of its genetic aspect.

    Funnily enough, just today there was reporting on 41 genetic variants that predispose you to left-handedness. Which is not a 'left-handed gene'. Of course, these days no-one goes about arguing whether left-handedness is innate (or maybe they do in some countries), and I don't think too many people are busy trying to cure left-handed kids of their evil ways.

    EDIT: And of course, there's also some evidence of a correlation between left-handedness and homosexuality. Some of us are just weird.
  • I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔
  • There's actually evidence for a positive correlation of virtually any human characteristic with any other human characteristic. Which merely means, like pub and church numbers in cities being positively correlated, that they're part of the same overall entity. Whether a human or a community.

    Epigenetics - that certain genes are activated by experiences is another rabbit hole. This one allows people to try to explain that some experiences create identifiable human traits and behaviours if the person has the genetics which will respond. Which is 'not even wrong'. But it is over-simplified..

    As for being weird, when they do psychological testing, most tests are designed to get a mean (average) score, and then they calculate the standard deviation (meaning basically the average difference of scores from the average score) and decide that 1½ SD on either side of the mean shall be declared as the "normal range".
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm a lefty and I'm not :-)
  • orfeo wrote: »
    EDIT: And of course, there's also some evidence of a correlation between left-handedness and homosexuality. Some of us are just weird.

    That's downright sinister.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    That’s a terrible pun.
  • That’s a terrible pun.

    It really came out of left field.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    Not better !
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    edited September 2020
    It's very easy to check most of the claims in the short piece I posted - there are plenty links to sources.

    McHugh has been a determined anti-trans worker for decades and he's not in good standing in his field where this is concerned. If he'd published in a peer reviewed journal, then there might be a case for saying people who aren't dead set on being anti-trans might want to check out what he's said, as it must have somehow passed a peer review not made up of his fellow travellers. If publishing non-peer reviewed in a 'socially conservative' journal is the best you can offer from him then that's basically telling us he wasn't capable of doing this.

    Those of us who've been around since Dead Horses first cantered into the zombie paddock will remember the way Charles Socarides and Joseph Nicolosi of NARTH (National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality) were used against gay people.

    Something similar is going on in my own broad field at the moment where a retired professor is saying stuff that delights racists. He isn't doing archival research in the sub field he is opining in and is going to non peer reviewed places to claim to contradict the people who are publishing and doing the necessary archival research. He's a big name who published a lot on various subjects in the past so he's taken in a lot of people who don't realise it's the current researchers who are publishing in the journals and doing the work they should be paying attention to.

    If you want to avoid the mistake of the people who have used the out-of-date, axe-grinding professor to shore up racist views then I would suggest looking at what the people who do research and publish currently in the field have to say.
  • amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm a lefty and I'm not :-)
    Aha! Proves my point.

  • orfeo wrote: »
    Science HAS found 'the gay bit'. As was reported last year. So for starters, anything from 2016 is just not up-to-date.

    Thanks for that - I'd missed it. In a way, it's unfortunate - gives the anti-gays the chance to say that all we have to do now is work out a way to fix the gay bit, and we can start to cure them.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm sure the majority of them are.
  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    There's actually evidence for a positive correlation of virtually any human characteristic with any other human characteristic.
    '

    Um, no. This is nonsense unless you provide something to back it up.

  • orfeoorfeo Suspended
    Gee D wrote: »
    orfeo wrote: »
    Science HAS found 'the gay bit'. As was reported last year. So for starters, anything from 2016 is just not up-to-date.

    Thanks for that - I'd missed it. In a way, it's unfortunate - gives the anti-gays the chance to say that all we have to do now is work out a way to fix the gay bit, and we can start to cure them.

    Well, of course first of all that only makes sense if you consider the genetic variation to be 'wrong' rather than just 'different', but more importantly I think gene therapy, such as it is at this point, works on things where a gene change has caused an absence, rather than a difference.

    And it doesn't really work for something that isn't purely genetic and where the important gene expression has already happened. It would be a bit like thinking that tweaking genes associated with height will make an adult grow taller.

    Could you 'cure' embryos one day? Maybe. Bit of an awful thought... I haven't watched Gattaca for a while...
  • The Fred Niles and Scott Morrisons of this world would say that it is wrong rather than different.
  • Leorning CnihtLeorning Cniht Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    Could you 'cure' embryos one day? Maybe. Bit of an awful thought... I haven't watched Gattaca for a while...

    If we follow the example of Down Syndrome, testing and aborting seems more likely than "curing". Or perhaps more likely, IVF and pre-implantation screening / selection of embryos.
  • amyboamybo Shipmate
    edited September 2020
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm a lefty and I'm not :-)
    Aha! Proves my point.

    I'm not straight. Nor good at coming out ;-)
  • amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm a lefty and I'm not :-)
    Aha! Proves my point.

    I'm not straight. Nor good at coming out ;-)
    I was making a joke, but if one needs to explain the joke, one should not have told it in the first place, so my bad
  • lilbuddha wrote: »
    amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    amybo wrote: »
    lilbuddha wrote: »
    I was going to say that almost all the left-handed people I know are straight. But are they really...🤔

    I'm a lefty and I'm not :-)
    Aha! Proves my point.

    I'm not straight. Nor good at coming out ;-)
    I was making a joke, but if one needs to explain the joke, one should not have told it in the first place, so my bad

    Derp. Thanks!
  • edited September 2020
    orfeo wrote: »
    There's actually evidence for a positive correlation of virtually any human characteristic with any other human characteristic.
    '

    Um, no. This is nonsense unless you provide something to back it up.

    Uh yes. And you don't get to call things nonsense just because you don't know about it. You can do your own courses in psychology, morphology, genetics, general science education too. You may start with wikipedia if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation , gene environment interaction, behavioural genetics. Randomly, this is about human characteristics and online behaviour: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404817302523

  • Sorry. I'm thick. Foot size is positively correlated with eye colour?
  • Garasu wrote: »
    Sorry. I'm thick. Foot size is positively correlated with eye colour?
    Those two might not correlate, but foot shape and toe lengths might. We know that hair colour and eye colour do, and there are correlations shown for eye colour and personality traits. The point is actually that correlations mean very little in many situations even if things are shown to be correlated.
  • GwaiGwai Epiphanies Host
    orfeo wrote: »
    There's actually evidence for a positive correlation of virtually any human characteristic with any other human characteristic.
    '

    Um, no. This is nonsense unless you provide something to back it up.

    Uh yes. And you don't get to call things nonsense just because you don't know about it. You can do your own courses in psychology, morphology, genetics, general science education too. You may start with wikipedia if you want: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_correlation , gene environment interaction, behavioural genetics. Randomly, this is about human characteristics and online behaviour: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167404817302523

    Hi @NOprophet_NØprofit let's try to not depend on wikipedia as a source. In Epiphanies we try to use more authoritative sources.

    Thanks,
    Gwai,
    Epiphanies Host
  • Well, the govt have definitely kicked Self-ID into touch, and various anti-trans groups are now sounding militant. There are various proposals, e.g., to stop Guides including trans girls, and the perennial question of women's spaces. However, I can't see the govt actually banning trans people from facilities such as toilets, for one thing, it would be impossible to police. There are also various moves to stop treatment of children, again, this would be a very hostile measure, particularly in the light of Gillick. But I don't know if the Tories see transgender as a useful weapon in the culture wars.
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    It's still live in Scotland but the legislation is currently not coming forward as delayed due to the pandemic - but much will depend on whether the First Minister has the guts to face down the pro-Alex Salmond, anti-trans faction led by Joanna Cherry at Westminster and her allies at Holyrood. Cherry's guns were just spiked - at least temporarily - by a party policy change which made it harder for her to leave Westminster and stand for Holyrood where she would likely try to take over as FM.

    In other news, one of the idiots who started a breakaway pro-independence trans-hating party, just left them and outed herself as an Alt-Right Trump-supporter and anti-masker. When people get into the ecosystem of trans-hating YouTube channels, it can take them to a lot of bad places.

    Culture wars are definitely afoot, but how far they will go on this issue I don't know.


  • I see the anti-trans movement as a right wing shift, not just in terms of governments, e.g., Trump, but shifts in parties like Labour, and presumably in feminism.

    But I've been thinking about attitudes to sex and gender. Why not have a kind of pluralism, if some people identify with anatomy, and some don't, both can be accommodated. But the problem is, the terfs want to ban trans people from facilities and spaces, so there is no accommodation here. Anatomy is destiny, (Freud!).
  • LouiseLouise Epiphanies Host
    They are right-wing, at least in culture war terms. What kind of feminist backs Alex Salmond and his slimy advocate 'All I need to do is put a smell on her' against Rape Crisis Scotland? The amount of men of a certain age who hate Nicola Sturgeon who have jumped on this bandwagon to bash trans women, using it to call themselves 'feminists' while attacking progressive female politicians and young people, especially LGBT young people, is startling.
  • Louise wrote: »
    It's still live in Scotland but the legislation is currently not coming forward as delayed due to the pandemic - but much will depend on whether the First Minister has the guts to face down the pro-Alex Salmond, anti-trans faction led by Joanna Cherry at Westminster and her allies at Holyrood. Cherry's guns were just spiked - at least temporarily - by a party policy change which made it harder for her to leave Westminster and stand for Holyrood where she would likely try to take over as FM.

    In other news, one of the idiots who started a breakaway pro-independence trans-hating party, just left them and outed herself as an Alt-Right Trump-supporter and anti-masker. When people get into the ecosystem of trans-hating YouTube channels, it can take them to a lot of bad places.
    On this tangent, I've always been amazed at how many people go all in on the nutter ideology.
    Louise wrote: »
    Culture wars are definitely afoot, but how far they will go on this issue I don't know.
    People feel they are losing power/their place. It will go on at least until the old guard is dead, because the young do not vote. Unfortunately, they are recruiting some younger people and that is not good.

  • BullfrogBullfrog Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    On showers...

    (because I'm wandering around the ship and stumbled onot this and have a particular anecdote)

    When I in undergrad, I lived in a co-op, and because of the legacy of history, the co-op I lived in junior year had an open shower room. It was basically six or so shower-heads poking out of the walls of a common room, positioned so that you had to round a corner to enter it.

    This was a co-ed co-op, with one shower on each floor. We were college students. Before my time, IIRC, this was an all-female dorm, but the college had been coed for a long time when I attended.

    Because we were allowed to set our own policies as a co-op, we had to make a choice, and the convention (which we followed) was to have a sign posted outside the door that could be rotated for M (Men) W (women) E (Everyone) or 3 (Me, Myself, and I.)

    Usually (not always) it was set to "E." People seemed to quickly get used to it and I only remember hearing one person complain, and that was a woman complaining about a particular man who seemed unable to keep his eyes to himself. In my experience, one quickly got used to it, the novelty wore off pretty quickly.

    I sometimes forget how remarkable that set up was, and that it generally worked for people. The co-op system where we lived put a huge premium on consensus as a process, and I think people kept a very robust culture about respecting each other's wishes.
  • On bathrooms in general, I don't think I've ever spent time in a bathroom that didn't have stalls and privacy walls in my adult life. You'd have to do some intentional work to see anyone's anything, even in men's bathrooms. The idea that bathrooms must be single sex to protect women is strange to me.
  • Lamb ChoppedLamb Chopped Shipmate
    edited October 2020
    [sigh] I take it you're outside the U.S., then? Here we have stalls with (at least) half-inch gaps between the door and the frame, and sometimes between bits of the frame as well. And a space at the bottom large enough for an adult to crawl through--sometimes in my experience embarrassingly higher. And banks of mirrors set directly opposite. And there are public restrooms with no stall doors at all.

    Really, if you DON'T want an eyeful, you have to keep your eyes pretty strictly to yourself. And this is pretty much country-wide in my experience, except for rare outliers (McDonald's has the huge advantage of having stalls you can't easily see into, which almost makes up for the food).

    People have reasons for their fears. Maybe not good reasons, but reasons.
  • [sigh] I take it you're outside the U.S., then? Here we have stalls with (at least) half-inch gaps between the door and the frame, and sometimes between bits of the frame as well. And a space at the bottom large enough for an adult to crawl through--sometimes in my experience embarrassingly higher. And banks of mirrors set directly opposite. And there are public restrooms with no stall doors at all.

    Really, if you DON'T want an eyeful, you have to keep your eyes pretty strictly to yourself. And this is pretty much country-wide in my experience, except for rare outliers (McDonald's has the huge advantage of having stalls you can't easily see into, which almost makes up for the food).

    People have reasons for their fears. Maybe not good reasons, but reasons.

    I live in the US, though maybe it's because I live in a major city and don't travel much?

    I've never seen a bathroom without stall doors in my life.
  • Lucky you.

    There's one at the city park where our church has its outdoor worship/picnic every year. Guess who totally holds it and goes home early.

    These aren't that unusual.

    As for major cities, this is St Louis.
  • HuiaHuia Shipmate
    I couldn't deal with the either Lamb Chopped.
  • DoublethinkDoublethink Admin, 8th Day Host
    edited October 2020
    Perhaps people who feel passionately about lowering the risk of sexual assault in toilets could invest their time and resources into improving facilities across the US. I hear [redacted] has a lot of money, perhaps [that person] could follow in the footsteps of Bill Gates.

    [Hostly note- please remember not to mention the person not to be named - see Simon's post earlier in the thread for details - thanks L]
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