Biologists propose radical concept that there are only two genders/sexes
Article by Jazz Shaw in "HotAir":
I know a couple of people who are going to be in trouble with the Woke Science Community. Colin M. Wright, an evolutionary biologist at Penn State, and Emma N. Hilton, a developmental biologist at the University of Manchester, have collaborated on an article published in the Wall Street Journal this week. They put forth the revolutionary and highly controversial theory that human beings are born as one of two distinct sexes, male and female. And no amount of philosophical meandering is going to change the incontrovertible medical fact that sex is binary and does not exist on some sort of “spectrum.”
The argument is that because some people are intersex—they have developmental conditions resulting in ambiguous sex characteristics—the categories male and female exist on a “spectrum,” and are therefore no more than “social constructs.” If male and female are merely arbitrary groupings, it follows that everyone, regardless of genetics or anatomy should be free to choose to identify as male or female, or to reject sex entirely in favor of a new bespoke “gender identity.”
To characterize this line of reasoning as having no basis in reality would be an egregious understatement. It is false at every conceivable scale of resolution.
After patiently explaining that human beings produce two primary types of sex cells (sperm and eggs), the authors move on to the more vague, ambiguous arguments which seek to claim that “gender identity” is somehow unlinked from biological reality.
Denying the reality of biological sex and supplanting it with subjective “gender identity” is not merely an eccentric academic theory. It raises serious human-rights concerns for vulnerable groups including women, homosexuals and children.
Women have fought hard for sex-based legal protections. Female-only spaces are necessary due to the pervasive threat of male violence and sexual assault. Separate sporting categories are also necessary to ensure that women and girls don’t have to face competitors who have acquired the irreversible performance-enhancing effects conferred by male puberty. The different reproductive roles of males and females require laws to safeguard women from discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere. The falsehood that sex is rooted in subjective identity instead of objective biology renders all these sex-based rights impossible to enforce.
The authors describe in brutal detail how the current claptrap about “gender identity” that’s been making the rounds actually serves to undermine the rights and safety of women, children, gays, and lesbians. Much of this is material we’ve covered here at length in the past, but it’s simply refreshing to see some much-needed pushback coming from the science community. Far too many doctors and medical professional associations have begun caving to woke social pressure and stopped treating gender dysphoria as a mental illness, which it is. These same groups have also largely ignored the rapid rise of so-called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria” for what it is: the result of social and media pressure that’s producing harmful distortions in the perceptions and behavior of far too many children.
This article should be printed out and tucked in the pockets of several families in Connecticut who have now gone to court in an effort to prevent “transgender girls” from competing in girls’ high school sports in that state. This is a real-world example of one of the negative effects of all of this transgender fetishism described by the professors in this article.
Will this produce any positive results in the broader debate? I’m not getting my hopes up. The vast majority of the media will continue parroting whatever the woke brigades want them to say, all while remaining deeply in denial of both science and reality. But this ship can’t be allowed to go down without a fight.
https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/02/14/biologists-propose-radical-concept-two-genders-sexes/
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