Amy Eileen’s Hamm’s Quest to Affirm the Reality of Biological Sex

It is so disheartening to see stories like this accumulate. Amy Eileen Hamm's career has been threatened because she will not budge from the believe that biological sex is real. Here's an excerpt from her story at Quillette, titled "I’m Being Investigated by the British Columbia College of Nurses Because I Believe Biological Sex Is Real":

In November 2020, the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) informed me that I was under investigation for my “off-duty conduct.” My disciplinary hearing is scheduled to take place from May 30th through June 3rd, and my career as a nurse hangs in the balance. I have been working throughout, apart from a stress leave and various sick days that I have taken to protect my mental health.

The BCCNM is a regulatory body whose stated purpose is to protect the public from harm, and to ensure that nurses and midwives meet defined standards of care and professional responsibilities. It issues a license to practice; and without it, you can’t work as a nurse in British Columbia. I’d never thought too much about the BCCNM before this investigation was announced. I did my job, and believe I did it well. I paid my license fees each year—that was it.

My troubles started when the BCCNM informed me that two members of the public had complained to the organization, to the effect that I am transphobic and so might be incapable of “provid[ing] safe, non-judgemental care to transgender and gender diverse patients.” One of the complainants is a social worker named Alex Turriff, who self-describes as “a passionate social justice advocate … interested in structural violence and oppression [and] influenced politically by Marxism.” The other has been awarded the privilege of remaining anonymous, even as he or she has attempted to ruin my career: The BCCNM apparently agreed with the anonymous person’s belief that I might “retaliate” if I knew who they were.

In my decade-long nursing career, I have never had a patient complaint, or otherwise received any type of workplace discipline. To the contrary, I loved my job and worked my way into leadership roles. I have worked with countless transgender patients. I am not transphobic by any reasonable or defensible definition of that word. Yet I now could lose my job because activists claim that I am a bigot.

Continue ReadingAmy Eileen’s Hamm’s Quest to Affirm the Reality of Biological Sex

How to be a Human Animal, Chapter 28: Morality and What to Do Next?

This is Chapter 28 of my advice to a hypothetical baby. I'm using this website to act out my time-travel fantasy of going back give myself pointers on how to avoid some of Life’s potholes. If I only knew what I now know . . . All of these chapters (soon to be 100) can be found here.

Why do people do the things they do? How can we make sense of all of this talk about what is "moral," and what is "right" and "wrong." These are an extremely difficult topics. As we already discussed, however, we need to beware systematizers who scold you to based on their mono-rules of morality. That was the main take-away from the previous chapter.

In this chapter, I’ll briefly discuss three approaches to morality that don’t rely on such simplistic rules. The first of these thinkers is Aristotle, who still has so very much to offer to us almost 2,500 years after he lived. His view of what it means to be virtuous is a holistic set of skills that requires lifelong practice. What a change of pace from the mono-rules of other philosophers. I’ll quote from Nancy Sherman’s book, Fabric of Character pp. 2 - 6:

As a whole, the Aristotelian virtues comprise just and decent ways of living as a social being. Included will be the generosity of benefactor, the bravery of citizen, the goodwill and attentiveness of friends, the temperance of a non-lascivious life. But human perfection, on this view, ranges further, to excellences whose objects are less clearly the weal and woe of others, such as a healthy sense of humor and a wit that bites without malice or anger. In the common vernacular nowadays, the excellences of character cover a gamut that is more than merely moral. Good character--literally, what pertains to ethics—is thus more robust than a notion of goodwill or benevolence, common to many moral theories. The full constellation will also include the excellence of a divine-like contemplative activity, and the best sort of happiness will find a place for the pursuit of pure leisure, whose aim and purpose has little to do with social improvement or welfare. Human perfection thus pushes outwards at both limits to include both the more earthly and the more divine.

But even when we restrict ourselves to the so-called ‘moral’ virtues (e.g. temperance, generosity, and courage), their ultimate basis is considerably broader than that of many alternative conceptions of moral virtue. Emotions as well as reason ground the moral response, and these emotions include the wide sentiments of altruism as much as particular attachments to specific others. . .  Pursuing the ends of virtue does not begin with making choices, but with recognizing the circumstances relevant to specific ends. In this sense, character is expressed in what one sees as much as what one does. Knowing how to discern the particulars, Aristotle stresses, is a mark of virtue.

It is not possible to be fully good without having practical wisdom , nor practically wise without having excellence of character  . . . Virtuous agents conceive of their well-being as including the well-being of others. It is not simply that they benefit each other, though to do so is both morally appropriate and especially fine. It is that, in addition, they design together a common good. This expands outwards to the polis and to its civic friendships and contracts inwards to the more intimate friendships of one or two. In both cases, the ends of the life become shared, and similarly the resources for promoting it. Horizons are expanded by the point of view of others, arid in the case of intimate relationships, motives are probed, assessed, and redefined.

Aristotle is talking to those of us who live in the real world, recognizing the complexity of the real world and helping us to navigate as best we can. Again, what a change from the mono-rules!  This real-world applicability and appreciation of nuance is something Aristotle has in common with the Stoics, which we discussed in Chapter 21. 

Here’s another approach, this one from modern times. For a long time, I've been almost obsessed that what we think of as moral is, in a real sense, beautiful and what we think of as immoral is ugly. Based on our reactions to situations that are "moral" and "immoral," there is no possible way that these things are not connected. Such an approach also recognizes that morality is not dictated by any static set of commandments or imperatives. Rather, both morality and art are, at least to some extent, in the eye of the beholder.

Continue ReadingHow to be a Human Animal, Chapter 28: Morality and What to Do Next?

What Harvard did to Economist Roland Fryer

Glenn Loury introduces a narrative that tells a story about what happens when a person diligently follows the evidence where it leads, but where it leads conflicts with a prevailing cultural-media narrative. In this case, Fryer's research showed police have not been killing unarmed "black" men at a rate greater than they kill unarmed "white" men. Wikipedia's version: "In 2016, Fryer published a working paper concluding that although minorities (African Americans and Hispanics) are more likely to experience police use of force than whites, they were not more likely to be shot by police than whites."

This is the story of the Harvard community reacted to those inconvenient numbers.

Glenn Loury introduces the video:

Roland Fryer is the most gifted economist of his generation. Not the most gifted black economist of his generation, the most gifted economist of his generation. Period.

He was tenured at Harvard at the age of 30, he was awarded the American Economics Association’s John Bates Clark Medal, he received a MacArthur “Genius” grant, his publications appeared in some of the most distinguished journals in the field, and his scholarship was regularly covered in the mainstream media. His research upends many commonly held assumptions about race, discrimination, education, and police violence. It is tremendously creative, rigorous, and consequential scholarship, and it cannot be simply written off because it happens to challenge the status quo.

To do the kind of work Roland does, you have to be more than brilliant. You have to be fearless. And I cannot help suspect that now Roland is paying the price for pursuing the truth wherever it leads. Several years ago, he was accused of sexual harassment by a disgruntled ex-assistant. In my opinion and that of many others, those accusations are baseless. But Harvard has used them as a pretext to shut down Roland’s lab, to curtail his teaching, and to marginalize him within the institution.

I’ll not mince words. Those at Harvard responsible for this state of affairs should be utterly ashamed of themselves. They have unnecessarily, heedlessly tarnished the career of an historically great economist. Again, I can't help but suspect that they have effectively buried vital research not because it was flawed but because they found the results to be politically inconvenient. “Veritas” indeed.

I’m not the only one infuriated by what is happening to Roland Fryer. The filmmaker Rob Montz has made a short documentary about this subject. I’m interviewed in it alongside others who see this fiasco for what it is, some of who have much to lose by publicly coming to Roland’s defense. People need to see this film. They need to know the truth about Roland Fryer. So I ask you to watch and to judge for yourself, and if you feel so moved, to share it as widely as possible.

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How to be a Human Animal, Chapter 24: You are a Big Intuitive Elephant Attached to a Tiny Squawky PR Department

Hello again, Hypothetical Baby! I'm back to offer you yet another chapter with a simple lesson. As you grow up, people will question you about some of the decisions you make on “moral.” Issues. By the way, “Moral” is an ambiguous word. We tend to pull it out most often when we are talking about sex, death and distribution of food and the other things you need to stay alive. That reminds me. Someday we will have some good discussions about sex that will consist mostly of letting you watch selected David Attenborough Nature Videos featuring animal sex. You'll find that most human talk about sex is confusing and unhelpful except to let you know that most other people are as awkward discussing it as you will be. I'll give you a one sentence preview. Bank on this: human animal sex is a lot like the sex of other mammals, even though it does not much resemble the exotic sex of snails.

Before we go further on moral decision making, here's a short reminder that I’m trying to teach you things that I did not know while I was growing up. I learned these lessons the hard way. You can find links to all of these (soon to be 100) lessons here.

Now, back to your moral decision-making. After people challenge why you made a particular “moral” decision, you will try to give reasons and words will actually come out of your mouth, but much of the time (to quote "My Cousin Vinny," it will be a bunch of bullshit.

Jonathan Haidt has shown that, for the most part, we don’t make moral decisions using our ability to reason methodically. Moral decision-making is not like math; there is no metric for making moral decisions. Nor does our ability to decide moral issues make use of emotions (which are intricately tied up with our sense of reason, as we discussed in Chapter 11). Most of our moral decision-making is intuitive. Based on sophisticated and entertaining experiments, Haidt has shown that our moral judgements are instantaneous and based on intuitions (akin to what Daniel Kahneman describes as thinking fast). After you’ve made your quick and dirty moral decision, you will employ your slow difficult thinking to concoct excuses that you will publicly present as “reasons” for your decisions.

[More . . . ]

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