Should We Look to Biology or Ideology When Trying to Answer Biological Questions about Transwomen?

This fascinating exchange starts with a Tweet by Gloria Steinem, to which biologist Heather Heying responds with a science lesson. Some legislatures are bringing this issue to a head and it remains unclear whether we will (as a society) resolve this debate with biology or ideology. Perhaps the battleground will be the dictionary. As Heying says,

Transwomen are transwomen.
Women are women.

Somehow, writing these two sentences is being construed by the Woke as bigotry, with no end in sight as to how or whether this dispute can be resolved.

And as I review this thread, I keep shaking my head, given that a Tweet by Gloria Steinem started this discussion. For many of us, one of the most important parts of feminism is the tenet that the things that you like to do (whether climbing trees or cooking or fixing cars) don’t determine whether you are a fully man or woman. These things are irrelevant to your sex. You can be fully a woman even though you like to engage in activities typically associated with men. Yet I keep seeing writings by TRA’s that a girl who likes “boy” things is dysphoric, potentially meaning that she should take testosterone and cut off her breasts. Jesus! This is from the same types of people who, 15 and 20 years ago railed at cultures who practiced clitorectomies because it because it is so grotesque to massacre a healthy female body. The TRA’s argue that even young teenagers (who are too young to vote or drive) should be granted total deference when social pressures are appearing to be the main thing convincing them to make permanent changes to their bodies that will likely result in sterility. That that is where we are . . .

And the fringe left has pushed its ideology so hard that we are now supposed to think that there is no difference between a woman and a transwoman. There is a clear factual difference, as Heying explains.

None of what I am writing suggests that transwomen aren’t entitled to legally and socially present themselves as women in most situations (though I would make exceptions for women’s shelters, prisons and sports participation). Transwomen are entitled to our respect. They are human beings every bit as much as the rest of us. Because they are fully human, we owe them the respect of disagreeing with them when their claims violate basic principles of biology.

Here’s the beginning of the Twitter Thread:

Heather

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 4 Comments

  1. Avatar of Bill Heath
    Bill Heath

    The exchange was within normal limits, as we used to say in medicine, until it reached maxrenke’s tweet. That was when the temptation to go ideological on science could no longer be resisted by the authoritarian left. Today it is virtually impossible to have reasoned discourse because the authoritarian left will in every case try to control the narrative by defining others’ terms for them, and pretending to have psychic abilities to know what others mean by what they say, better than the speaker.

  2. Avatar of Ruth Henriquez
    Ruth Henriquez

    I don’t understand how seeing transwomen as different than women constitutes a phobia. I know and care about a trans person, and I accept that person and am not phobic about their situation. That person, however, is still bigger and stronger than any other woman I know, and will not be able to bear children (and there is no shame in that). To claim that they are the same as “cradle women” (a phrase that riffs on Catholicism’s phrase “cradle Catholic”) is illogical, and it is also illogical to say that I am phobic for pointing out that illogic.

    1. Avatar of Erich Vieth
      Erich Vieth

      Ruth: I feel the same way. I know several trans people and they are nice folks. I would never want them to be socially disparaged because they are trans. But they are trans and that is a fact, not an epithet. I am single and interested in dating. I am a man interested in dating a woman with a vagina and not a woman with a penis. Some would call me a bigot for that. I don’t know whether you’ve the vitriol out there on that issue. My understanding is that it is not coming from the great majority of people who are transgender (and who are live-and-let-live people), but from an very small but extremely loud minority who are well connected to our country’s sense-making institutions.

      I quickly found this illustration of the new definition of “transphobic” from a trans rights activist (“TRA”):

      Similarly, imagine a date that’s going well. There’s mutual physical attraction and definite chemistry. Then you find out they’re transgender via conversation (yes, everyone still has their clothes on), and end the date right then and there. But for the fact that the other person was transgender, this would have been a really good date, and you probably would have seen them again. This is discrimination against the transgender person for being transgender. Obviously, this isn’t illegal, nor should it be. But, from a logical standpoint, yes, this is discriminatory and transphobic.

      Here’s an excerpt from another article describing the frustrations of gays and lesbians who are encountering the attitudes of TRAs this new hyper-expanded definition of transphobia:

      The word ‘transphobic’ is thrown around with such abandon now, it covers all bases and the phrase has become almost meaningless. If everything is ‘transphobic’, then nothing is. Which is extremely concerning, as it renders genuine and horrifyingly real transphobia all the more difficult to prevent and counter. Seeing and dealing with true hate, which we all receive daily, it is of little wonder that women are concerned about surrendering their spaces to certain factions of this ideology, which, quite clearly, seems to utterly despise them.

      Finishing on a personal note, I would never have thought I’d see the day when I feared entering a gay environment, or mixing with a group in a bar, for holding legitimate opinions that differ from others. I will not be told who I should find attractive, nor be shamed into having a preference. I will not say things that I do not believe, nor accept, to simply ‘fit in’. I will not blindly follow the crowd, when it is painfully obvious that many others are being thrown under a bus. I hate no one. I know this, as do many others, if they know me at all. I also know that I’m not alone, as I speak to hundreds, every day, who express similar sentiments.

      I don’t know how this could possibly be resolved, given how entrenched the TRAs are. They will settle for nothing short of declarations that “transwomen are exactly the same as women,” a declaration that contravenes basic principles of biology.

  3. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth

    From “Lesbians Aren’t Attracted to a Female ‘Gender Identity.’ We’re Attracted to Women”:
    Agreed. How could you possibly know who is heterosexual, homosexual (or even bi-sexual) based upon gender. Basic biology is the place where everyone starts when categorizing sexuality, even if they don’t want to admit it. As J.K. Rowling wrote (I cannot find the passage) if people are transitioning, what are they transitioning from and transitioning to?

    Let’s pause and look at how many times the word “sex” occurred in the characterisations just given of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and remind ourselves, because it can get confusing with so much sex around, that this is “sex” as in male or female and not the copulatory sense. In order to know the sexual orientation—hetero-, homo-, or bi—of person A, you need to know both A’s sex and the sex of the kind of person to whom A is stably attracted. In explaining why someone has the sexual orientation they have, the concept of biological sex is bound to come into the explanation.

    Perhaps predictably, then—though still surprisingly, given that they started out fighting for gay rights—this conception of sexual orientation has been rejected by trans activist organisations such as Stonewall and GLAAD. In their view, it’s gender identity, not sex, that makes you a woman or man. This is assumed to have consequences for sexual-orientation concepts such as gay, straight, lesbian, and so on. A “lesbian” is now understood as anyone with a female gender identity attracted to others with female gender identities. This can include biological males as lesbians, as long as they have a female gender identity. Equally, a gay man is understood as anyone with a male gender identity attracted to others with male gender identities. Being straight, meanwhile, is defined as a person with a given gender identity being attracted to someone with an opposite gender identity (albeit that talk of “opposite” doesn’t make much sense in a context in which gender identities are supposed to be multiple and non-binary). The upshot is that sex is irrelevant to sexual orientation.

    There seems to me at least one glaring problem with all this: if heterosexual attraction were directed primarily towards gender identity not sex, it would be pretty inefficient in terms of the continuation of the species. If we had to work out someone’s inner gender identity before we knew whom to fancy, we would die out fairly quickly.

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