Thread by @HeatherEHeying

I’m accused of fearmongering, due to my concerns about the effects of trans-activism (not “true trans” people) on research, specifically that which seeks to reveal differences between the sexes. How could science & society be affected by such abject silliness? How indeed: (1/16)

Hundreds of scientists recently signed a letter to Nature—one of the two leading science journals in the world—which claims that science has neither a definition, nor a reliable test, for sex.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

Is it possible that rabid Trump hatred has confused people, and they could become unconfused once he’s out of office? Sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are doing real damage (& also that they should grow up already). The full letter:
not-binary.org/press/

This excellent piece by @SwipeWright describes, in part, “a chilling effect that causes scientists to self-censor,” due to this ideology. Reasonable people are ever more quiet on basic issues of fact:
quillette.com/2018/11/30/the…

Cited therein is this absurdity from Scientific American:
scientificamerican.com/article/sex-re…

Recognizing biological reality does not make a person transphobic.

Yes, intersex exists.
Yes, even human chimeras exist (!).
No, those facts do not put the lie to binary sexual reproduction. There are two types of gametes in animals (“anisogamy”): eggs and sperm.

Gender Studies and its ilk—Grievance Studies, the term that @peterboghossian, @HPluckrose, and @ConceptualJames coined—has lost the plot. Seriously, the narratives being peddled are absurd and laughable. Except not enough people are laughing.
areomagazine.com/2018/10/02/aca…

See especially the “dildos” paper. One of their outrageous suggestions: Men who fail to anally self-penetrate with sex toys are exhibiting transphobia. Yup.

Accepted and published in the journal Sexuality and Culture.
link.springer.com/article/10.100…

The more prevalent this kind of thinking is on college campuses, the more power the ideology has in hiring decisions on campus, on training of teachers for the K12 system, and on the larger world. What happens on campus does not stay on campus.

Remember the google memo? @JamesADamore wrote a long memo considering why there might not be a 1:1 sex ratio among software engineers at google. He invoked personality differences between men and women. Fragile employees needed time off, and he was fired.
assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914…

In this event, which I did with James Damore, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose, activists stormed out when I made the outlandish claim that men and women are, on average, physically different (19 min-ish):

However: the timing of the activists’ storming out was coincidental, as it turns out. Here is my framing of why I find this type of “activism” so dangerous. It is “read-only.” It does not respond to new information.
medium.com/@heyingh/on-th…

This ideology has oozed off campus, into high schools & grade schools, into cubicles & theater troupes & retail establishments. I’ve seen signs advising me not to address cashiers by gender. It’s a madness that celebrates fragility, and denies reality.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/961368869985136642

A U.S. congresswoman has petitioned for trans-women’s rights to compete against women in powerlifting. If natal males are allowed to compete against natal females, the natal males will win. In contact sports, they will also hurt women in the process.
outsports.com/2019/2/6/18213…

Testosterone organizes the body and brain from before birth. It also activates “secondary sex characteristics,” like hair and muscle growth and the lowering of one’s voice. But those organizational effects, including things like skeletal form and brain architecture, persist.

Testosterone doesn’t make a boy male—but it contributes to “masculinizing” him. Similarly, a Y chromosome doesn’t make a boy male—but it, and the SRY gene on it, initiates a cascade of “masculinizing” events. Pretending otherwise is dangerous, and regressive. /end