Colin Wright Offers a Front Row Seat to a Seminar Featuring Gender Ideology

Colin Wright is a biologist who has followed transgender issues for years and who is not afraid to ask obvious questions. He recently attended an online workshop directed to parents, facilitated by two purported experts in transgender issues. The name of May 26, 2022 workshop was “Supporting Your Trans/Non-Binary Youth: A Starter Guide for Parents and Caregivers." Wright's article sets forth the content of the the seminar along with his criticisms and concerns. You can read Wright's entire article here: "EXPOSED: Gender Workshop for Parents Supporting Trans/Non-Binary Youth Gender “experts” say that children are the real experts." These were experts who could not even tell Colin the difference between a man and a woman or a boy and a girl.

Here is Wright's summary:

This workshop represents the standard introduction into transgender issues. It is not an outlier in terms of content and ideology. The only thing that makes this workshop somewhat unique is the fact that I was there asking the questions that your standard believer never does in order to force the presenters to grapple with fundamental issues with gender ideology.

Are gender identities based on stereotypes? How are “man” and “woman” defined? How can we expect children to understand concepts that people with masters degrees claim is beyond their capacity to understand? These questions should not be viewed as aggressive or out of bounds. These are fundamental questions that any gender “expert” should be able to easily answer, but they can’t. Yet they somehow remain so sure of the truth of what they believe that they’re willing to shuttle children down the path to irreversible hormone and surgical treatments to conform to identities they readily admit are “arbitrary words to describe experiences.”

Children are not the paragons of wisdom and self-knowing that gender “experts” claim they are. Children lack the life experience and perspective to make radical permanent decisions about extreme body modification. It is the duty of parents to apply their real life experience and perspective in order to ensure their children make it through childhood with healthy bodies and minds.

Gender ideology indoctrination does the exact opposite.

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The Hurdles Faced by Science Teachers

Biologist Luana Maroja, is deeply concerned about hurdles science teachers are facing. Here article is "An Existential Threat to Doing Good Science: What scientists are able to teach and what research we can pursue are under attack. I know because I’m living it.". Here is an excerpt:

We each have our own woke tipping point—the moment you realize that social justice is no longer what we thought it was, but has instead morphed into an ugly authoritarianism. . . .

One of the most fundamental rules of biology from plants to humans is that the sexes are defined by the size of their gametes—that is, their reproductive cells. Large gametes occur in females; small gametes in males. In humans, an egg is 10 million times bigger than a sperm. There is zero overlap. It is a full binary.

But in some biology 101 classes, teachers are telling students that sexes—not gender, sex—are on a continuum. At least one college I know teaches with the “gender unicorn” and informs students that it is bigoted to think that humans come in two distinct and discrete sexes.

Even medical schools and the Society for the Study of Evolution have issued statements suggesting that sexes are on a “continuum.” If this were true, the entire field of sexual selection would be baseless, as its bedrock insight lies in the much larger female investment in reproduction, explaining the demonstrated choosiness in females (who have more to lose) and competitiveness in males (the “abundant” sex in most species, one male can fertilize multiple females). Published papers (see here, for example) ask us to be “inclusive” by limiting the sex discussion to the few species of algae and protists (such as amoebas) that have equal size gametes—even when that has no relevance to any animal or vascular plant.

In psychology and public health, many teachers no longer say male and female, but instead use the convoluted “person with a uterus.” I had a colleague who, during a conference, was criticized for studying female sexual selection in insects because he was a male. Another was discouraged from teaching the important concept of “sexual conflict”—the idea that male and female interests differ and mates will often act selfishly; think of a female praying mantis decapitating the head of the male after mating—because it might “traumatize students.” I was criticized for teaching “kin selection”—the the idea that animals tend to help their relatives.

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Colin Wright Warns of the Danger Posed by Innocuous-Seeming Requests for “Pronouns”

I have no business telling any adult what to do with his or her body. That is their own business. It's a different story with children. We need to make sure that our children (and their parents) are not being given false information that leads to irreversible physical damage to their bodies (cross-sex hormones and surgeries), in many cases leading to sterility. There are real cases of gender dysphoria but, historically speaking, they have been rare (1/10,000) and they have overwhelmingly been boys. Today, almost 2% of teenagers are claiming to be transgender and they are overwhelmingly girls who tend to fall into social clusters, which would not be expected if dysphoria were truly a medical condition.

What is going on and why should be be concerned? Much of the left-leaning news media cheerleads for those who promote gender ideology and totally ignore the numerous and growing cases of those teenagers who detransitioned--who permanently altered their bodies, often through double mastectomies then, years later, declared that they were, indeed, the sex aligning with their chromosomes, their gametes and their sex organs readily apparent at birth. It's not rocket science to figure out the sex of most people (intersex cases are extremely rare). These stories by numerous detransitioners are extremely difficult to read. They are stories of deep regret, stories of how these teenagers got caught up in a fad encouraged by their peers, and enabled by well-meaning activist school teachers and counselors, as well as almost instant access to cross-sex hormones, often at Planned Parenthood. The parents are often concerned that they must allow their children to transition based on commonly touted but false statistics and unsubstantiated claims that suicide is the only other option.

Biologist Colin Wright recently wrote "How to Make a Trans Kid." It is well-written and accurate upon my own extensive readings. I recommend reading Wright's entire article. Here is an excerpt:

Most people understand the terms “man” and “boy” refer to adult and adolescent human males, respectively, and that “woman” and “girl” refer to adult and adolescent human females, respectively. These are not “identities,” but terms that describe objective facts about one’s age and biological sex.

Gender ideology, conversely, is a belief system asserting that what makes someone a woman or a girl, or a man or a boy, has nothing whatsoever to do with their sex, but is based entirely on the social roles and stereotypes with which they “identify.” Therefore, a person who identifies with feminine roles and stereotypes is a girl or woman, and a person who identifies with masculine roles and stereotypes is a boy or man—regardless of their biological sex. According to gender ideology, people who do not identify with the social roles and stereotypes typically associated with their sex are considered “transgender.”

That’s Gender Ideology 101. If it comes across as completely insane, that’s because it is.

Gender ideology has therefore proven to be a hard sell for many adults who rightfully view such ideas as regressive and sexist. After all, this worldview entails that a woman who does not fully embrace femininity is not actually a woman, and a man who does not embrace masculinity is not actually a man. If this sounds similar to the regressive and oppressive system that women’s and other human rights groups fought for decades to overcome, that’s because it is. But it’s actually much worse, since it also promotes the idea that a “mismatch” between one’s sex and “gender identity” can be medically “corrected” with hormones and surgeries.

[More . . . ]

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Kafkaesque Example of a College Title IX Prosecution Under the Obama Rules

I did not vote for Trump and I find him generally deplorable. However, the new Title IX college sexual harassment rules implemented by Trump and Betsy DeVos are well supported by the case law and are an enormous improvement over the version of the rules implemented by Obama.

What could possibly go wrong under the Obama version of the rules? Listen to this horrific miscarriage of justice described by attorney Lara Bazelon, speaking with Glenn Loury.

The proposed new Title IX rules by Joe Biden will be a catastrophically bad miscarriage of justice. FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) points out the many problems with Biden's proposed rules:

Rejecting the definition of student-on-student harassment set by the Supreme Court in Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education.

Requiring institutions to police speech and sexuality worldwide, not just in programs and activities on and around campus.

Requiring institutions to issue gag orders on the parties and their advocates that prevent them from disclosing “information and evidence obtained solely through the sex-based harassment grievance procedures,” meaning institutions of higher education are now required to enforce prior restraint and content-based restrictions on students’ speech or the speech of those advocating on their behalf.

Revoking the current requirement that accused students must be offered an opportunity to have a live hearing to contest the allegations against them.

Eliminating the right to a live hearing to contest claims, and thus also eliminating the right to cross-examination.

Allowing a single investigator to both investigate and adjudicate complaints, dramatically increasing the odds that one person’s bias, subconscious or otherwise, permeates the process. Such a system increases the likelihood of error, thus increasing the likelihood that accused students will be unfairly deprived of their access to educational opportunities or benefits.

If finalized, these and many other proposed provisions will mark a new, and unfortunately familiar, era of Title IX hearings in which institutions of higher education fail to protect the First Amendment and due process rights of students and faculty, likely resulting in costly litigation for institutions to ensure these basic protections are met.

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