From FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression):
The alleged termination of a St. Philip’s College biology professor for saying X and Y chromosomes determine biological sex raises serious concerns about the state of academic freedom at the public college in Texas. Today, FIRE asked the college to reverse course and meet its First Amendment obligations.
I agree with Amy Alkon's position on "transphobia":
Transphobia" is usually a bullshit accusation, used to demonize people like me who believe ALL people deserve to be treated with kindness, respect, and dignity - but who refuse to go with the unscientific fiction that there are more than two sexes, & believe biological males do not belong in women's sports or women's prisons. And that 6-year-old girls shouldn't have to look at swinging dicks in women's locker room.Stonewall definition of transphobia is "fear or dislike of someone based on the fact they are trans." I have zero fear or dislike of trans people, and a lot of empathy for them.
What I won't stand for is vicious trans activists violently attacking women, mobbing women who refuse to parrot the language they demand or have beliefs like mine: there are 2 biolog sexes, & women's sports/prisons are no place for biological males.
I would add that shelters for abused women are not proper places for biological males.
In order to deal with any controversy, including biology, it's important to get the facts right first. Only after we understand the basic facts can we discuss the ramifications of those facts, including the politics and morality. At the Paradox Institute, Zach Elliot has created memes and videos setting forth the fundamental principles of the biology of sex, a topic that was completely uncontroversial until three years ago, when ideologists reverse-engineered the "facts" based on political preferences.
Zach Elliot of the Paradox Institute has created this easy to understand chart:
For the full collection of short information videos regarding the biology of sex, visit Paradox Institute. For instance, see this video on "The Biology of Sex."
Andrew Sullivan points out that consequential decisions were made with regard to gay rights without his advice or consent.
When you examine the other issues at stake — public schools teaching the concepts of queer and gender theory to kindergartners on up, sex changes for children before puberty, the housing of biological males with women in prisons and rape shelters, and biological males competing with women in sports — you realize we are far beyond what the gay rights movement once stood for. It’s these initiatives from the far left that are new; and the backlash is quite obviously a reaction to the capture of the gay rights movement by queer social justice activists.
These activists, marinated in critical gender and queer theory, have picked several unnecessary fights and, especially since the convulsions of 2020, have pushed and pushed a woke revolution until a dangerous backlash was inevitable.
The core belief of critical queer theorists is that homosexuality is not a part of human nature because there is no such thing as human nature; and that everything is socially constructed, even the body. Because heterosexuality is the overwhelming norm, and homosexuality the exception, and because society is nothing but a complex of oppression, homosexuals are defined by their rejection of heteronormativity. To be queer is inherently to exist on the margins; to be odd, peculiar, weird, queer, hated, oppressed, and in revolt and rebellion. To be queer is to be dedicated to subversion, to mock conventions, to deconstruct language, to dismantle the human body, to defy “nature” and, above all, to liberate humankind from the prison of gender.
To be homosexual, in contrast, is merely to be attracted to the same sex, and gays and lesbians run the gamut of tastes, politics, backgrounds and religions. Some are conservative, some radical, some indifferent. Some gays are queers. But most aren’t. And queers now run what was once the gay rights movement. (For a longer, piercing reflection on the takeover, read historian Jamie Kirchick’s new essay in Liberties. For a discussion of the homophobia of the new queer activism, see Ben Appel’s excellent essay in Spiked.)
No one held a news conference and announced that from 2015 on, after Obergefell, the gay rights movement had changed its entire rationale. But they sure gave hints. The Human Rights Campaign, once a relatively moderate group, replaced “gay” and “lesbian” with the acronym “LGBTQ+” and expanded the word “queer” to describe anyone gay, lesbian, transgender, or even straight who defied heteronormativity. They changed the flag from a simple rainbow, to one that included some races (only black and brown — no Asians or whites) and transgender ideology. Their building in DC is festooned with a massive banner declaring their mission: “Black Lives Matter, Black Trans Lives Matter.” Their new head is a woman who calls herself “queer,” not lesbian.
Then they quietly changed the meaning of the word “gay” so that it no longer referred to same-sex attraction, but to same-gender attraction; and changed the word “men” to include people with vaginas and uteruses, and the word “women” to include people with dicks and balls. Checkmate for the gays! We are all now just bigots with “genital preferences,” just like the Christianist right used to claim. Just to add to the confusion, hundreds of new “genders” were adopted — because some teens on Tumblr once invented them and queer theorists loved them.
The first question we must ask regarding EVERY controversy is whether one side is disproportionately well-funded, institutionally-fortified and ill-motivated (by $, power or ideology) and thus able to manufacture a false consensus. If so, meaningful discussion is impossible.
Excellent analysis of the problem with most transgender discussions by Geoffrey Miller here:
Good thread, in principle. But in practice, the woke left has captured most of the biomedical scientific institutions. If we want studies challenging their narrative, who gives the research grants? Which academics would have the guts to run the studies, knowing it would nuke their careers? Who else is willing to collaborate on the studies? Which journals would even consider them? Who would review them objectively? How would journals withstand woke pressure to retract 'transphobic' studies? Which media would cover the results, rather than ignoring them? These problems seem very severe... and probably explain why we haven't already seen countervailing studies.