Thread by @Katja_Thieme

Hm, it sounds like that in Dec 2019 Emma Hilton thought it so important that other biologists disagreed with her on her definition of biological sex that she gave an academic freedom talk about it.

And in Feb 2020 she told me that there's no such disagreement.

What changed?

https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1229521018751942661

I don’t know what Emma’s own story would be for why she’s made such different statements about disagreement in her field on definitions of biological sex.

I can tell you what seems like a plausible story to me, however.

In a talk that’s focused on the importance of academic freedom and its role in protecting the emergence of disagreements among researchers, it suits her to emphasize disagreement among biologists.

It suits the topic and #genre of the talk. It meets #audience expectations.

In a tweet at another researcher (me) who is not a biologist and with whom Emma disagrees, however, it suits her to emphasize agreement among biologists to highlight her disagreement with me.

It’s a different #genre with a different #audience design.

She’s positioning herself, other biologists, and her ideas about biological sex in a way that’s dependent on the genre, the audience, and what she’d like to accomplish with her comments.

Or, in neither case is it hard biological objectivity that’s flowing from her keyboard.

Emma Hilton, along with Colin Wright, would like to make you believe that they speak in the voice of objective science.

The study of discourse in a humanities or social science department will easily teach you otherwise.

medium.com/@KatjaT/a-pinc…

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