Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying Discuss the Intersection of Transgendering and Biology

I've been struggling to understand the contours of the recent dispute involving J.K.Rowling's tweets regarding transgendered persons. This issue caught my interest in that I know several people who transitioned and one who is transitioning as a 30 year old adult after being in a marriage. In the process of trying to understand the issues, I've read about a dozen articles from varying perspectives plus hundreds of tweets, many of them claiming to be authored by transgendered persons.

Interestingly, those postings claiming to be authored by transgendered persons seem to be much more sympathetic to J.K. Rowling. Many of the postings on social media are intense reads, leading me to wonder whether there is any way to satisfy all of the sides to the dispute. I doubt it and I think I now better understand why after watching the attached video featuring two evolutionary biologists, Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. I found their comments on gender ideology and biology quite helpful to understanding these issues. I especially appreciate that their comments are well founded on biology, but also sensitive to the need to treat transgendered persons with kindness. I also appreciate that they both deal head-on with the political aspects of this issue, including the need to recognize over-stepping by the authoritarian left.

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About the Sex Organs of Eels.

I never know what I'm about to learn when my weekly email digest arrive from The New Yorker.  Today's lesson is about the non-existent sex organs of eels, in this article, "Where Do Eels Come From," by Brooke Jarvis.  The bottom line is that the sex organs do exist, if you are patient enough to wait for them through four metamorphoses:

Careful observers discovered that what had long been taken for several different kinds of animals were in fact just one. The eel was a creature of metamorphosis, transforming itself over the course of its life into four distinct beings: a tiny gossamer larva with huge eyes, floating toward Europe in the open sea; a shimmering glass eel, known as an elver, a few inches in length with visible insides, making its way along coasts and up rivers; a yellow-brown eel, the kind you might catch in ponds, which can move across dry land, hibernate in mud until you’ve forgotten it was ever there, and live quietly for half a century in a single place; and, finally, the silver eel, a long, powerful muscle that ripples its way back to sea. When this last metamorphosis happens, the eel’s stomach dissolves—it will travel thousands of miles on its fat reserves alone—and its reproductive organs develop for the first time. In the eels of Europe, no one could find those organs because they did not yet exist.

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You Are a Pulsating Universe

Human animals are amazing on many levels. Have you recently contemplated the beauty of your hand? Have you marveled at the fact that you can open it, grab something tightly, sense temperature, gently touch your lover's hair? And if you burn it or bruise it, it will usually heal all by itself. All of those things are so natural that it's easy to forget how miraculous hands are. You would never be able to create a device that replicates all of these extraordinary functions.

But let's dig a bit deeper by reading Neil Shubin's new book,Some Assembly Required: Decoding Four Billion Years of Life, from Ancient Fossils to DNA (2020).  The hand is made of cells, and there are parts to each of those cells, and the genetic code for you can be found in each of those cells.  But how does that information contained in your DNA become you?  How is it possible for your genetic blueprint to build and maintain your body?  Shubin's book describes this process beautifully.  I offer the following excerpt.  If this kind of writing inspires you like it does me, I urge you to obtain a copy of Some Assembly Required and find a quiet place to allow your DNA powered body to read your biography. This book is about inspiring science and scientists, but it is, at bottom, about who you are.

New microscopes that allow us to see DNA molecules themselves also let us see what happens as genes turn on and off. For a gene to become active, a molecular game of Twister needs to happen. Inactive regions of the genome are tightly coiled upon themselves, bundled around other small molecules to fit inside the nucleus. These regions are closed off and so are relatively inert. Before a region of the genome can become active, it needs to uncoil and open itself up to make a protein. These are only the first steps in a finely choreographed dance that turns genes on and off. For a gene to activate, its switch needs to contact other molecules and attach to an area adjacent to the gene itself. . . .

So here are the full steps of the dance that goes on when genes turn on: the genome opens, revealing the gene and its control region, parts attach, and a protein is made. This happens in every cell, with every protein. A six-foot-long string of DNA is coiled until it is smaller than the size of the head of a pin. Conjure the image of it opening and closing in microseconds, writhing and turning to activate thousands of genes every second. From the moment of conception and throughout our adult lives, our genes are continually being switched on and off. We begin as a single cell. Over time, cells multiply, while batteries of genes are activated to control their behavior to form the tissues and organs of our bodies.

As I write this book, and as you read it, genes are switching on in all four trillion of our cells. DNA contains many supercomputers’ worth of computing power. With these instructions, a relatively small parts list of twenty thousand genes can build and maintain the complex bodies of worms, flies, and people using control regions spread across the genome. Changes to this incredibly complex and dynamic machine underlie the evolution of every creature on Earth. Always coiling, uncoiling, and folding, our DNA is like an acrobatic maestro, a conductor of development and evolution.

Shubin, Neil. Some Assembly Required (p. 73).

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Goosebumps: Another Vestigial Feature from our Former Furry Pre-Human Selves

Why do humans have goosebumps? The question was answered by an article titled, "Why Do People Get Goosebumps" at Discovery Magazine. Short answer: Our goosebumps are a vestigial feature. Some humans have vestigial tails and some have vestigial gills. All humans are filled with evidence from our fish ancestors as well as our reptilian ancestors.  Neil Shubin explored many of these features in his book, Your Inner Fish (also made into a documentary).

The goosebumps pop up to lift the fur that no longer covers us. Why would our furry ancestors survive better with fur that lifted up? "Hair-raising goosebumps are also a response to threats, which would have made our ancestors appear larger and scarier. Just imagine a cat or dog when the fur is about to fly. Their puffed up hair is an indication that they’re ticked off and are in fight-or-flight mode."

That’s why you might get chills from pretty innocuous stuff, like going to a concert. A screaming crowd alone is enough trigger our goosebump reaction.

“Your emotional brain … is like a tiny, scared rabbit in the forest. It expects death around every corner. So a crowd screaming will sound just like that — something that we should be scared of,” Colver said.

And often, it’s the music itself that gives us the chills. According to Colver, certain instruments, tempos and pitches are known to cause these skin orgasms. An unexpected or particularly resonant sound can initiate our fight-or-flight response.

“Loud noises, or piercing noises (like a sustained high note played on a violin) get interpreted as really threatening,” he said.

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Axiomatic Civic Responsibility

I’m looking at the “protesters” in Michigan and ruminating on the nature of civil disobedience versus civic aphasia. By that latter term I mean a condition wherein a blank space exists within the psyché where one would expect an appropriate recognition of responsible behavior ought to live.  A condition which seems to allow certain people to feel empowered to simply ignore—or fail to recognize—the point at which a reflexive rejection of authority should yield to a recognition of community responsibility.  That moment when the impulse to challenge, dismiss, or simply ignore what one is being told enlarges to the point of defiance and what ordinarily would be a responsible acceptance of correct behavior in the face of a public duty. It could be about anything from recycling to voting regularly to paying taxes to obeying directives meant to protect entire populations.

Fairly basic exercises in logic should suffice to define the difference between legitimate civil disobedience and civic aphasia. Questions like: “Who does this serve?” And if the answer is anything other than the community at large, discussion should occur to determine the next step.  The protesters in Michigan probably asked, if they asked at all, a related question that falls short of useful answer:  “How does this serve me?”  Depending on how much information they have in the first place, the answer to that question will be of limited utility, especially in cases of public health.

Another way to look at the difference is this:  is the action taken to defend privilege or to extend it? And to whom?

One factor involved in the current expression of misplaced disobedience has to do with weighing consequences. The governor of the state issues a lockdown in order to stem the rate of infection, person to person. It will last a limited time. When the emergency is over (and it will be over), what rights have been lost except a presumed right to be free of any restraint on personal whim?

There is no right to be free of inconvenience.  At best, we have a right to try to avoid it, diminish it, work around it.  Certainly be angry at it.  But there is no law, no agency, no institution that can enforce a freedom from inconvenience.  For one, it could never be made universal.  For another, “inconvenience” is a rather vague definition which is dependent on context.

And then there is the fact that some inconveniences simply have to be accepted and managed.

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