Lysenkoist Americanskiy: More Sex/Gender Pseudoscience

One hardly knows what to say about such ridiculousness:

While this is a small overview, the science is clear and conclusive: sex is not binary, transgender people are real. It is time that we acknowledge this. Defining a person’s sex identity using decontextualized “facts” is unscientific and dehumanizing. The trans experience provides essential insights into the science of sex and scientifically demonstrates that uncommon and atypical phenomena are vital for a successful living system. Even the scientific endeavor itself is quantifiably better when it is more inclusive and diverse. So, no matter what a pundit, politician or internet troll may say, trans people are an indispensable part of our living reality.

Humans are sexually dimorphic. Complexity and fuzzy boundaries don't change that. If not for repeated commission of the continuum fallacy, they'd have virtually nothing to say. As for complexity: in all probability, the fact that complex processes still trend toward dimorphic physiology strengthens the case for the reality and centrality of the relevant categories--in this case: male and female. This is one way of understanding the teleological--or seemingly teleological--nature of evolution. Of course if you start talking like that, the same kind of nominal scientists who have jumped on the progressive-Lysenkoist bandwagon will label you a creationist...because a whole lotta scientists are bad at philosophy...

   To repeat myself repeating myself: being untrained in philosophy, people tend not to sufficiently recognize nor explore even the obvious consequences of their beliefs. The arguments used to defend transgender mythology lead fairly directly to extremely radical consequences like nominalism/eliminitivism about species and other natural kinds--not to mention other varieties of radical nonrealism.

   The question of just how dimorphic human sex is is an interesting one. Articles like the one at the link can't, of course, be trusted because they're Lysenkoist. As we know, whatever the pomo-progressive left adopts as dogma will immediately be affirmed and rationalized by progressive (pseudo-)scientists. The only thing I think we can really trust about it now is that--like most of the rest of nature and science--human sex is more complicated than we were taught in junior high. Hardly an amazing revelation.

   Of course they like to piggyback the "trans" stuff on the sex stuff. But that's, again, some combination of Lysenkoism and honest confusion. The central question about "trans" ideology / mythology is: if a paradigmatic male (female) declares himself (herself) to be female (male), does he (she) thereby become female (male)?

   The answer, of course, is obvious: that's not the way reality works.

   The pomo-prog left has several ways of obscuring the issue. It obscures the sex/gender distinction--one of the actual conceptual/philosophical successes of earlier iterations of feminism. It does this, in part, by misusing--in an attempt to redefine--'gender.' Genders are behavioral categories; the genders are masculine and feminine (and you might count androgynous as a third kind, but it's probably better to see that as a borderline case of the other two). But pomo-prog political correctness is largely about linguistic legerdemain and chaos--"queering," as they like to say. So they just start using 'gender' in different ways: e.g. as a synonym for 'sex' (previously a cardinal sin), or to mean something like "gender identity"...which, of course, it can't mean unless "identity" does no work in the phrase. Needless to say, circularity threatens. It's a mess--but a mess that a competent and honest philosophy grad student should be able to sort out. There's no excuse for philosophers, in particular, to cower from doing so.

   I've complained about all this in more detail many times. I'll just end with: the PCs lost this argument as soon as they lost their shit about Rachel Dolezal. Sex and/or gender...whatever the hell they think they are...is not a cosmic outlier. There are no grounds for making "gender" dependent on fiat, but not race...and everything else. It's a red flag for sophistry when people refuse to generalize their position/conclusions to other cases--especially strongly similar cases. Heroifying Jenner while vilifying Dolezal is simply inconsistent. But such inconsistency is the symptom of a confusion, not the confusion itself. (Of course neither heroification nor vilification would enter into the picture at all were we treating the subjects scientifically or philosophically.)

   The core of the confusion is the relativistic / subjectivist / creationist idea that facts can be brought into existence by fiat--or by agreement. (Aside--possibly--for trick cases like promise-making.) Declaring that x is F by fiat is usually a way of covertly admitting that Fness isn't real--that there is nothing more to it than what one says about it. That's the definition of a fiction. The central confusion there, in my view, is the confusion of:

(a) There's no such thing as Fness; there are assertions about Fness, but no actual Fness.

and

(b) Assertions about Fness ground/create actual facts about Fness.

   Those two things couldn't be more different--but they're more often confused than distinguished. 

   The uniquely angrifying thing about this unScientific UnAmerican BS is the combination of pseudo-science / Lysenkoism with the left's tendency to declare such bullshit to be THE SCIENCEtm. The political destruction of science combined with mindless appeals to its authority. I can't do better here than quote the classic source re: this lefty M.O.:

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.#lefties

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) November 10, 2015