Harvard Biology Lecturer Derided As a Bigot, Career Destroyed for Teaching... Biology
Biology is a funny kind of science.
Full disclosure: I was educated in biology back in the '80s, not long after "adjusting humours" was still accepted in medical practice. My undergrad degree is in biology, and I specialized in animal behavior and field zoology, although I studied all aspects of biology in the process - including genetics, genotypes, phenotypes, and related science - including sex. While biology is frequently fuzzy - even accepted concepts like "species" don't have many sharp dividing lines - one pretty binary thing is sex in mammals. Mammals are, with rare exceptions, male or female.
Humans (if you'll allow me to belabor the obvious for a moment) are mammals. In humans, as in other mammals, sex is determined by the presence of either the XX (female) or XY (male) genotype, which normally presents as the female (XX) or male (XY) phenotype. There are exceptions, but they are rare. That, folks, is biology. Forget social trends, forget the assertions of the "gender theory" types. This is biology. It's real and it's there every day.
This is why it's baffling why a Harvard lecturer who teaches biology is in the process of being canceled, frozen out, derided as a bigot, and having her career ruined for teaching biology.
A former Harvard University lecturer who defended biological sex claimed her career was destroyed and school administrators failed to support her amid the controversy.
"I gave everything to that place,' Carole Hooven told The Dishcast with Andrew Sullivan earlier this month. "I had expected that they would (support me)."
Hooven, who previously taught the "Hormones and Behavior" human evolutionary biology course at the university, became an online figure in 2021 after she was asked about pressures on medical school professors to avoid using terms like "male," "female" and "pregnant women."
"The ideology seems to be that biology really isn't as important as how somebody feels about themselves or feels their sex to be," Hooven told Fox News at the time. "The facts are that there are, in fact, two sexes — there are male and female — and those sexes are designated by the kind of gametes we produce."
Remember when the Ivy League schools like Harvard were enviable places to go for education? Not so much, not anymore.
Harvard's "DEI officer" ("Officer" carries a connotation of "enforcement," does it not?) Laura Simone Lewis had this to say about Ms. Hooven's teaching:
"Let's be clear: if you respect diverse gender identities & aim to use correct pronouns, then you would know that people with diverse genders/sexes can be pregnant incl Trans men, intersex people & gender nonconforming people,' she wrote.
Sure, whatever. But here's the thing: If you're teaching biology, none of that matters a damn. From the standpoint of biology, there are only two sexes (with, as mentioned, very rare exceptions usually involving trisomy in the sex chromosomes), those sexes are determined at conception by genetics, and (again, with rare exceptions) expressed as phenotypes as male or female.
These are facts.
Only a human that expresses the female (XX) phenotype can be pregnant. Humans that express the male (XY) phenotype cannot be pregnant.
These are facts.
No matter what social nonsense you espouse - humans are mammals with a diploid genetic map, meaning we have two sets of chromosomes in our genome. Humans reproduce with the typical mammalian pair of allosomes (sex chromosomes,) one from each parent. One of those parents is always a female (XX) phenotype, and the other, a male (XY) phenotype.
These are facts.
Harvard is, obviously, no longer in the business of teaching facts. They are instead purveyors of the purest moonshine, nitwittery of the worst sort, and their reputation can and should suffer for it - but not before that school ruins some careers along the way. It's a sad pass the Ivy League has come to since they let "DEI Officers" have sway.
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