Duke Neuroscientist Punished for Arguing that There are Only Two Sexes.

From a May 14, 2021 article in The College Fix:

John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA.

. . .

The topic that appears to have gotten him removed was the suggestion that there are only two sexes. According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

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The Things Going on Inside Our Bodies

It repeatedly occurs to me that I have no idea what is going on inside my own body. Each of us consists of many trillions of cells all of them, more or less, doing what they need to do to keep us alive and cognizant. It's been a good run for me, for which I'm grateful to my trillions of cells. At any given moment, though, there could be numerous microscopic battles underway that are potentially matters of life and death. At any given moment, my immune system could be successfully (or not) beating back a viral incursion. Who knows how many times per day my body's cells divide successfully without allowing cancer to take root. How many close calls are there?  How many times per day do my cells identify a pathogen and wipe it out? Every week there might be countless life and death battles going on inside of me, yet I'm utterly oblivious. I don't deserve such high-level service and loyalty from my minions.

Again, these are the kinds of thoughts that sometimes occur to me, and this is also my introduction to a short excerpt from Episode 247 of the "Waking Up" podcast, where Sam Harris interviews neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett (who is among the top 1% most-cited scientists for her revolutionary research in psychology and neuroscience). Here's the excerpt:

Lisa Feldman Barrett: First of all, you need to understand that decision-making is always about action first. It's not like you decide something and then you act. The decision that your brain is making is the decision to DO this or that based on probabilities, So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that, we're not just unaware of what's been going on in our own brains, right? We're also unaware of what's going on inside our own bodies, for the most part, thank God, because there's a whole drama going on inside you right now.

Sam Harris: Yeah, exactly. It's a horror show.

Lisa Feldman Barrett: All I can say is, if anybody is really is currently aware of all of the drama going on, inside your own body, I have my deep, deep sympathy, because we're not really wired to be intimately aware of all the details . . . That would be what philosophers call tragic embodiment.

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Transgender Logic: A Kidney is the Same Thing as a Liver

From Zach Elliott's tweet:

Elliot's "argument" is satirical, aimed at claims commonly being made by transgender activists. Elliot cites to some of these claims in his tweet thread. Another person making this claim that biology is merely socially constructed is Chase Strangio, one of the lead attorneys for the ACLU, which, once-upon-a-time used to be a principled organization, but has now become unapologetically partisan on many issues.

The problem for Strangio, et al is that biological sex came into existence two billion years before the existence of hominids.  That said, basic biological facts don't seem to matter to trans activists like Strangio.

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How Gender Ideology is Degrading Medical School Teaching at an American university

From an anonymous Medical Student at American University (an excerpt from a longer article):

IDD64 @IDD64 asks: “What happened to “nobody’s saying sex isn’t real”?”

This is actually what compelled me to speak out about this practice in the first place. Well-intentioned non-medical people often assume that medical schools are teaching something like, “Gender identity can be fluid and varied, but biological sex is real, binary, and relevant in medical contexts.” This idea is around five years out of date in the most progressive of institutions. I have been told multiple times in several classes that biological sex is a social construct – not just gender. Granted, I can speak only for my institution, but this change has been frustrating and disturbing to witness.

Robert Woolley @RandomlyBob asks: “Do any of the required textbooks also avoid using those words? If not, might you ask those professors if they think the books are either inaccurate or offensive?”

Our curriculum is constantly subject to revision. Around two-thirds of our written materials have been updated with this new language. For the one-third that has remained out-of-date, our class has received multiple apologetic, itemized emails from course instructors in which they provide corrections, beg for forgiveness and patience, and avow to “do better”. In class, we have been given multiple histories in which the patient’s sex has been deleted, even for cases involving disorders which can manifest differently between the sexes. The words “female” and “male” are being erased and replaced.

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