Post-Race Rapper Preaches Tolerance

I first encountered Zuby on Twitter, where I was intrigued by his upbeat mini-prose. Zuby says that his race is the most uninteresting thing about himself. If I told you that Zuby currently lives on the southern coast of England, you probably wouldn’t guess that he spent much of his life in Saudi Arabia. If I told you that Zuby was an up and coming rap artist, you probably wouldn’t guess that also graduated from Oxford, with a degree in computer science or that he spent several years of his life as a business consultant. In addition to creating music, Zuby is now an author, podcaster, public speaker, fitness expert and life coach. Zuby refuses to allow his do not fall into any predictable silo. To make a political point that trans women should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports, he posted a video in which he claimed to have broken the British Women's deadlift record of 238kg (528 pounds). Zuby claimed that he "identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight."

On July 24, 2020, Zuby joined Brett Weinstein on the DarkHorse podcast. I took the Youtube transcript, edited it for clarity and present it here as an introduction to Zuby.

Zuby - Min 74:53

There are certain games you win by just not playing. Just don't play that game. Don't get dragged into this thing. It's something I experience. I always feel like I've often got people, especially nowadays, trying to drag me into things that I don't want to get involved with. I don't think it's a good idea. I don't think it helps.

My worldview is really simple when it comes to stuff like this. It is the Martin Luther King, Jr. vision. The way I was raised from when I was a child growing up in Saudi Arabia . . . from the beginning I've been surrounded by all types of different people, different religions different colors, different ethnicities, different nationalities, whatever. That's just been the norm for me forever, so the whole idea of viewing people through this very narrow lens, from being a child I've always thought, it's silly and it's asinine. It makes me somewhat upset when I see that now day in and day out. It's white this and black that. Can we can we stop?

So much of this is just unnecessary and it's antagonizing and it forces people to keep viewing the world that way. That's the least interesting thing. It's such an uninteresting thing about someone. That's the thing. The fact that I'm a black male is one of the least interesting things about me. It certainly doesn't say anything about my personality or my character or my beliefs or my abilities or anything. Yeah, it's observable and, cool, okay. But if someone is talking to me, I don't want that to be the thing that's in their head and that they're obsessing over. I'd like them just to talk to me. I'm Zuby. Just talk to me and we'll be cool. We can be friends. All that stuff is details.

There is a growing tent of people who are politically sort of in the center left and center right who are sort of uniting and recognizing that they're tired of the extremism and they don't like cancel culture and they don't like this super identity politics thing on any side, and they don't want to destroy the whole system and they don't think the country is terrible. I think there's that there's that growing group of people Who I think are slowly gaining a bit more and more courage. I think that they're sort of seeing podcasts like this. What I'm doing with my podcast and you know whether it's Joe Rogan or Dave Rubin, etc. like all these guys, they're sort of saying okay, cool.

People are talking about this and there's a range of people here who are sensible and don't want to scream at each other and call each other racist every three seconds. There's that growing group, so I do hope that that swells and gains enough courage and momentum for people to eventually just be like, okay, look, like we're going to stop entertaining the crazies and we're going to stop letting them sort of determine everything and set all the rules and control everybody and cancel everybody. I think once enough once there's enough critical mass there, then you can get back to a sort of stage of normalcy where people are being reasonable again. And we can actually solve some of the problems because we can talk.

Zuby - Min 29:20

In the in the USA, you guys say Black American, African-American, Latino, American, white American etc. Here (in Great Britain) we just say “British.” Right! There you go. So it's not common to hear that this person is white British or this person is a Black Brit.

Zuby - Min 12:12

Last week I spent two days just getting attacked for the fact that I said that it's bad to be racist to white people. I was getting emails, DMs like, all kinds of horrible stuff, for me saying no, this is bad. This isn't good. I don't think we should judge people based on the color of their skin or call people inferior or do any of this and then I start getting attacked. What kind of what is this world that we're living in that that is considered? It's a strange thing.
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Defining Cancel Culture

What is "cancel culture"? Jonathan Rauch sets out six characteristics in his well-considered article. Here is his intro:

So what, exactly, does a cancellation consist of? And how does it differ from the exercise of free speech and robust critical debate? At a conceptual level, the difference is clear. Criticism marshals evidence and arguments in a rational effort to persuade. Canceling, by contrast, seeks to organize and manipulate the social or media environment in order to isolate, deplatform or intimidate ideological opponents. It is about shaping the information battlefield, not seeking truth; and its intent—or at least its predictable outcome—is to coerce conformity and reduce the scope for forms of criticism that are not sanctioned by the prevailing consensus of some local majority.

Here are the six characteristics. He elaborates on each of these in his article:

    • Punitiveness
    • Deplatforming
    • Organization
    • Secondary Boycotts
    • Moral Grandstanding
    • Truthiness

Rauch mentions others who have explored this issue:

Obviously, mine is not the only approach. Other people, such as Emily Yoffe and Greg Lukianoff, have made their own attempts at characterizing the current climate of fear or defining cancel culture. Hopefully, many more suggestions and refinements will follow.

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The Stifled Discussion of Whether Peer Contagion is Triggering the Sharp Rise in Gender Transitions

Increasingly, when I express my concerns about the sudden dramatic increase in teenaged girls who are declaring themselves to be men trapped in women’s bodies, I receive a rash of ad hominem attacks. For example, I have been accused of being a “conservative,” though I have never affiliated myself with the Republican Party. I have been accused of being anti-trans, which is utterly false. In my view, every adult has the right to do whatever they want to do with their body. I will happily address every adult with whatever pronoun they choose. It is my opinion that all members of the transgender community should all be vigorously protected pursuant to civil rights laws and every other law that applies to every other person.

My concern in writing this article is not about adults. It is about teenagers, especially teenaged girls. Although there appear to be some teenaged girls who are legitimate candidates for transitioning, the recent numbers of girls clamoring for this treatment is extraordinarily and suspiciously high. I also have a personal stake in this controversy. I have friends whose daughters who in various stages of undergoing what might be needless and dangerous medical treatment.

Here are some of the facts that are cause for my concern. These are excerpts from a 2020 article by Abigail Schrier in Quillette titled, “Discovering the Link Between Gender Identity and Peer Contagion”:

In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017, the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the United States quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries. In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments. In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls. . .

In 2016, Lisa Littman, ob-gyn turned public health researcher, and mother of two, was scrolling through social media when she noticed a statistical peculiarity: Several adolescents, most of them girls, from her small town in Rhode Island had come out as transgender—all from within the same friend group. . . . Dr. Littman began preparing a study of her own, gathering data from parents of trans-identifying adolescents who’d had no childhood history of gender dysphoria. . . . She assembled 256 detailed parent reports and analyzed the data. Her results astonished her.  Two patterns stood out: First, the clear majority (65 percent) of the adolescent girls who had discovered transgender identity in adolescence—“out of the blue”—had done so after a period of prolonged social-media immersion. Second, the prevalence of transgender identification within some of the girls’ friend groups was, on average, more than 70 times the expected rate.

Many of the adolescent girls suddenly identifying as transgender seemed to be caught in a “craze”—a cultural enthusiasm that spreads like a virus. “Craze” is a technical term in sociology, not a pejorative, and that is how I use it here. (Dr. Littman never does.) It applies to Hula-Hoops and Pokémon and all sorts of cultural fads. If this sudden spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls is a peer contagion, as Dr. Littman hypothesized, then the girls rushing toward “transition” are not getting the treatment they most need. Instead of immediately accommodating every adolescent’s demands for hormones and surgeries, doctors ought to be working to understand what else might be wrong. At best, doctors’ treatments are ineffective; at worst, doctors are administering needless hormonal treatments and irreversible surgeries on patients likely to regret them. Dr. Littman’s theory was more than enough to touch a nerve.

Dr. Littman has been treated unfairly, even grotesquely, by the academic community and by the news media, as reported in this same article. This side issue is well worth considering, as a red flag indicating that many news outlets are being driven by ideology rather than science on this issue.

These same issues are in the process of being discussed in an ongoing series of letters between journalist Abigail Shrier and evolutionary psychologist Heather Heying. [Heying also discussed this issue at the DarkHorse Podcast with Brett Weinstein]. Here is an excerpt from the letters-in-progress:

There are many reasons to believe we are in the midst of a transgender “craze”— a mass enthusiasm that captivates a population so that matters more essential to its welfare fall neglected, to borrow Lionel Penrose’s use of the term. There are the alarming statistics, indicative of an epidemic: For a century, gender dysphoria has been understood to begin in early childhood (ages 2 to 4) and afflict males almost exclusively. In the last decade, apparently out of nowhere, gender dysphoria’s predominant demographic has shifted from young boys to teen girls. (The rise in girls presenting at gender clinics in the UK has been estimated at 4,400%).

All across the West, adolescent girls are suddenly identifying as “trans” with friends, clamoring for hormones and surgeries. Teen girls who are struggling with anxiety and depression but who had no childhood history of gender dysphoria at all. Under the guidance of numberless trans social media influencers, with the encouragement of peers, clusters of girls are transforming themselves from desperately unpopular to the toast of the virtual town.

In my book, I offer several explanations of how this particular social contagion came to befall teen girls. And one of the many flags I plant is this, garnered from academic psychologist Jean Twenge: Teen girls today spend a whole lot less time with each other in person (an hour less per day) than those of prior generations. That’s less time hanging out in each other’s rooms, combing the details of their lives for hidden grandeur; less time savoring gossip and telling secrets; less time caught in the current of breathless laughter, half-shrieking the lyrics of a song.

I wonder whether, as an evolutionary biologist, you agree with the significance of this loss?

[As indicated, the above series of letters is ongoing].

In light of these disturbing statistics, you would think that this topic of gender transitions would be a hot issue that is being vigorously discussed by news media from across the political spectrum. You would be wrong.

Continue ReadingThe Stifled Discussion of Whether Peer Contagion is Triggering the Sharp Rise in Gender Transitions

William Shatner: Not a Cisgendered Man or a Cis Man

In the past Facebook exchange, I was called a "cis" man.  I objected and indicated that I should be referred to as simply as a "man." Several people in that group refused, continuing to refer to me as a "cisgendered man." I found this insulting, not only because there is a perfectly good word already existing to describe me, but also because of the way "cis" and "cisgendered" are most often used. In my experience, "cis" and "cisgendered" are used as terms of disparagement.  I have found it odd that someone would claim that they need to relabel me in order to define themselves.

With that background, I noticed a recent series of Tweets by William Shatner (or Star Trek fame).  Shatner has drawn a line in the sand on this same issue. He does not want to be referred to as a "cis" or "cisgendered" man. Why? Because calling someone "cis" or cisgendered is a "slur." Shatner argues that it is debasing and often used as a term of hate.  This is my experience too.  Shatner spelled out his concerns in a long series of Tweets.  Here are some excerpts (in reverse chronological order):

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More About the Woke Version of 2 + 2

More on 2 + 2.   Whether you want to make it add up to 4 is, indeed, "a choice," as we are hearing from Woke-land. That choice, however, has the vast power Dan Dennett ascribed to his concept of "universal acid." That power can be either constructive or destructive. To the extent that we choose to teach (in classrooms and elsewhere) that 2 +2 ≠ 4, this creative choice would permeate everything. not only math. This fanciful and proudly rebellious choice would keep spreading to encompass everything else we believe too, because the explosive power of knowledge depends upon compounding. Our big impressive truths are exapted from our simplest of truths, even truths so simple that we verify them by counting fingers. This ability to compound our know-how from little grounded truths to much bigger truths allows us to discover vaccines and to design aircraft.

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Yes, it's a choice, but it's a choice with ramifications. We can fuck around, acting like we can individually conjure up entirely new inert mental axioms willy-nilly each day, intentionally oblivious to verifiability, and oblivious to what anyone else is doing. Or we can collaborate in a mentally disciplined way using principles hard-gained from Enlightenment thinkers and others, such that there are correct and incorrect answers to many things based on A) whether those things actually function in predictable and meaningful ways and B) whether they further human flourishing.

I tend to see morality in terms of a personal aesthetic deeply tied to my vision for human flourishing. What does your personal sense of aesthetics (or morality) demand? A world where 2 + 2 equals 4? Or a world unhinged from any ability to collaborate with other sentient beings, a world where we pass the time organizing under rival warlords and throwing rocks at each other?

Continue ReadingMore About the Woke Version of 2 + 2