Richard Dawkins: Race is on a Spectrum, Sex is “Pretty Damn Binary.”

Richard Dawkins answers the "dangerous" question he asked in April 2021, the question that caused him to be disowned by the American Humanist Association. The title to his article at Areo: "Race Is a Spectrum. Sex Is Pretty Damn Binary."

Were race not a spectrum, Rachel Dolezal’s critics should have spotted that she wasn’t “really” black, simply by taking one look at her. It’s precisely because black Americans are a spectrum that it wasn’t obvious. With negligible exceptions, on the other hand, you can unwaveringly identify a person’s sex at a glance, especially if they remove their clothes. Sex is pretty damn binary.

If I chose to identify as a hippopotamus, you would rightly say I was being ridiculous. The claim is too facetiously at variance with reality. It’s marginally more ridiculous than the Church’s Aristotelian casuistry in identifying the “substance” of blood with wine and body with bread, while the “accidentals” safely remain an alcoholic beverage and a wafer. Not at all ridiculous, however, was James Morris’s choice to identify as a woman and his gruelling and costly transition to Jan Morris. Her explanation, in Conundrum, of how she always felt like a woman trapped in a man’s body is eloquent and moving. It rings agonizingly true and earns our deep sympathy. We rightly address her with feminine pronouns, and treat her as a woman in social interactions. We should do the same with others in her situation, honest and decent people who have wrestled all their lives with the distressing condition known as gender dysphoria.

Sex transition is an arduous revolution—physiological, anatomical, social, personal and familial—not to be undertaken lightly. I doubt that Jan Morris would have had much time for a man who simply flings on a frock and announces, “I am now a woman.” For Dr Morris, it was a ten-year odyssey. Prolonged hormone treatment, drastic surgery, readjustment of social conventions and personal relationships—those who take this plunge earn our deep respect for that very reason. And why is it so onerous and drastic, courageously worthy of such respect? Precisely because sex is so damn binary! Changing sex is a big deal. Changing the race by which you identify is a doddle in comparison, precisely because race is already a continuous spectrum, rendered so by widespread intermarriage over many generations.

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Speaking Truth to Hate

Abigail Schrier recently deliver an impassioned speech to various organizations at Princeton. Her speech included this quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down."

I invite you to read her entire presentation. I responded in the comments:

You've got me thinking, what will I do next time I'm asked to provide my "pronoun"? Perhaps I'll say something like: "To do that would suggest that hundreds of years of biological science got it wrong in fundamental ways. Instead, you are free to assume which one of the two sexes I am." Thank you for your heartfelt essay/speech. Your money quote: "You don’t have to be a troll to find yourself in the center of controversy. You need only be two things: effective, and unwilling to back down." I'm trying to do what you do on a much smaller scale--you take 1,000 times more abuse than me and you seem to be thriving. This seems to prove your statement that speaking the truth to those who hate you is freeing. You, along with a couple dozen other highly visible people who have given themselves permission to speak what they believe, have given me more courage to say "no" whenever the the SJW tribe demands that I confirm that up is down. Thank you for your hard work leading up to your book and ever since. BTW, I am a classical liberal without a political home, yet you speak for me and many others like me. Please don't overlook that. Yours is not a "conservative" position. It is a thoughtful position anchored in reality.

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WP Finally Allows Transgender Experts to Raise Concerns about Shoddy Transgender Diagnoses and Treatments

It looks like it is now safe to publicly say these critically important things at the WP, 18 months after Abigail Shrier sounded the alarm but was completely and intentionally ignored by WP/NYT/NPR. Here is an excerpt from a brand new article by Laura Edwards-Leeper and Erica Anderson: "The mental health establishment is failing trans kids Gender-exploratory therapy is a key step. Why aren’t therapists providing it?":

"The number of adolescents requesting medical care is skyrocketing: Now 1.8 percent of people under 18 identify as transgender, double the figure from five years earlier, according to the Trevor Project. A flood of referrals to mental health providers and gender medical clinics, combined with a political climate that sees the treatment of each individual patient as a litmus test of social tolerance, is spurring many providers into sloppy, dangerous care. Often from a place of genuine concern, they are hastily dispensing medicine or recommending medical doctors prescribe it — without following the strict guidelines that govern this treatment. . . .

When working in gender clinics, we’ve also both received letters from therapists who had “assessed” patients they were referring to us. An astonishing number of these were nothing but a paragraph that stated the youth identified as trans, had dysphoria and wanted hormones, so that course was recommended. There are nearly 200,000 members of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association. Add to that the clinical social workers, marriage counselors and family therapists. The overwhelming majority of those well-intentioned professionals receive limited or no training in the assessment of gender-diverse youth. (We receive requests frequently from people eager for more comprehensive, nuanced trainings, which we both deliver.) In simple terms, the demand for competent care has outstripped the supply of competent providers."

How many teenagers have been permanently damaged as a result of getting ideology instead of meaningful counseling? How many have been permanently disfigured or made sterile as a result of surgery and hormone treatment in those 18 months since Abigail Shrier tried to warn us but was shut down in a concerted effort by left-leaning media, social media platforms and even a prominent attorney for the ACLU?

Continue ReadingWP Finally Allows Transgender Experts to Raise Concerns about Shoddy Transgender Diagnoses and Treatments