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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Resigning Psychologist: Anti-Racism Replaces Science at the Academic Excellence National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC)

Russell Warne has resigned from NAGC. He explains:

[A] recent turn of events has made me unable to continue to be part of NAGC. On July 14, 2020, the organization’s board announced its “Expanded Vision for NAGC.” This document is the board’s plan “to confront systemic racism and advance equity for Black students in gifted education.” While I support diversifying gifted programs and providing educational opportunities to children from all demographic groups, this document sacrifices open scholarly inquiry on the altar of social justice activism.

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“Individuals with a Cervix”?

A recent Tweet by evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller, reminiscent of J.K. Rowling's famous "people who menstruate" Tweet:

I posted this on FB. It drew the following response from Emily Lemonds:

There are men who have cervices and there are women who don’t. There are people who do not identify as men or women who have them. They do not deserve to have their existence erased for purposes of linguistic laziness.

My Response:

That is such a melodramatic and groundless accusation, that anyone is causing anyone else to "have their existence erased" by using a perfectly useful word so deeply rooted in biology and history! Your accusation, as I see it, is a completely unhinged metaphor suggesting physical injury where there is absolutely none (though there might be frustration). No one would be physically or emotionally injured if the CNN announcement used the word "women." I also disagree with you about who is being linguistically lazy. If you take a random survey of 1,000 people who have cervices whether they consider themselves to be "women," you'll prove my case. I believe in continuing to allow each of those people who has a cervix to feel free to use the word "women" A) to refer to themselves and B) to capture the narratives of their lives, guilt-free. The 99+% of women who have cervices did not start this linguistic territorial war.

A person named Robert Pedroli then commented:

Cervical cancer screenings are recommended to start .... This is how to say it. Eric then you don’t need to get riled up about this.

My response:

I stand up to protect people who are being bullied. That's the way I'm wired. Do you really think it's rude to use the word "woman" to refer to people with cervices? I should make clear that I have no problem with anyone (with any permutation of sexual organs) referring to themselves as a "woman." If a person with a penis wants me to call them a "woman" I will happily do so.

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You Still Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover

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How Cancel Culture Works: The Lived Experience of Biologist Colin Wright

Many on the political left are increasingly proclaiming that cancel culture is not really a thing. Their most common tactic is to show that their best efforts are not successfully destroying the careers of prominent personalities such as J.K. Rowling and Steven Pinker. They ignore that many less-prominent people are successfully being chilled and cowed. These far more numerous lesser-known scientists and intellectuals are not sufficiently established in their careers to withstand repeated false broadside accusations that their (factually true) scientific observations are allegedly bigoted.  Thus, a deep intellectual chill has settled over the United States this summer.

At Quillette, biologist Colin Wright offers a detailed schematic of how cancel culture played out in his life. Like many others who have found that their jobs and reputations are under attack, Wright put the target on his own back by asserting scientifically true statements. In Wright's case, he asserted both that that there are only two sexes and that some people cannot be neatly categorized as male or female. These undeniably true statements appeared in an article titled "The Dangerous Denial of Sex," co-written by Wright and Emma N. Hilton, appearing in the Wall Street Journal on Feb 13, 2020. Here are the words of Wright and Hilton:

In humans, as in most animals or plants, an organism’s biological sex corresponds to one of two distinct types of reproductive anatomy that develop for the production of small or large sex cells—sperm and eggs, respectively—and associated biological functions in sexual reproduction. In humans, reproductive anatomy is unambiguously male or female at birth more than 99.98% of the time. The evolutionary function of these two anatomies is to aid in reproduction via the fusion of sperm and ova. No third type of sex cell exists in humans, and therefore there is no sex “spectrum” or additional sexes beyond male and female. Sex is binary.

There is a difference, however, between the statements that there are only two sexes (true) and that everyone can be neatly categorized as either male or female (false). The existence of only two sexes does not mean sex is never ambiguous. But intersex individuals are extremely rare, and they are neither a third sex nor proof that sex is a “spectrum” or a “social construct.” Not everyone needs to be discretely assignable to one or the other sex in order for biological sex to be functionally binary. To assume otherwise—to confuse secondary sexual traits with biological sex itself—is a category error. 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.

Here, from Wright's article at Quillette, is the kind of thing that happens when people speak up, compelled by a sense of integrity and a burning desire to keep members of the public from being misled or harmed:

I was contacted by a biology-department chair at a private liberal arts college in the Midwest. He commended me for my writings, and told me that he’d even used my New Evolution Deniers essay as a basis for discussion in his own classes. But while he and his fellow biology-department faculty would likely support my hiring, he said, the school’s own human-resources department would almost certainly block me as “too risky.” These experiences remind me that when Blow extols “the masses” who are canceling people like me, the people he’s praising are actually just a small coalition of professional trolls such as Bird, working in effective concert with the risk-averse, upper-middle corporate bureaucrats who now have taken over decision-making on many college and university campuses.

I too have been seeing an increasing denial of cancel culture on social media, along with a denial of science, a hostility to the use of statistics to analyze complex social phenomena and even a disparagement of the intellectual tools we have inherited from The Enlightenment. See here, here and here. This is distressing for many of us to see this bullying of individuals and institutions and the consequent chilling of the many intellectuals who remain silent because they don't have the stomachs for unfair fights like these.

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