The Science (and Pseudoscience) of Gender | Peter Boghossian & Colin Wright
Livestream today at 1:30pm PDT
Today, I’ll be going live on YouTube with Colin Wright. Paid subscribers can ask a question directed at Colin in the comments below.
Evolutionary biologist Colin Wright is the founding editor of Reality's Last Stand, a publication dedicated to free speech, science, and reality. His articles on sex and gender have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.
Colin is a Manhattan Institute Fellow, an Academic Advisor at the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), and a member of Genspect’s Killarney Group.
Colin received a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from UC Santa Barbara in 2018. He left academia in 2020 when the fervor of gender ideology became an obstacle to scientific inquiry and free speech.
Find Colin on Twitter.
I am curious as to Colin’s thoughts regarding :
1. the Missouri Court Judge Ohmer’s finding published in his recent ruling that “the Plantiff’s (ACLU’)argument was , “unpersuasive and not likely to succeed,” and adding, “The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear. Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers. As a result, it has not clearly been shown with sufficient possibility of success on the merits to justify the grant of a preliminary injunction.”
2. Followed up by the St Louis Children’s hospital issuing a statement :
“Missouri’s newly enacted law regarding transgender care [banning it]has created a new legal claim for patients who received these medications as minors,” the university said in a statement. “This legal claim creates unsustainable liability for health-care professionals and makes it untenable for us to continue to provide comprehensive transgender care for minor patients without subjecting the university and our providers to an unacceptable level of liability.” [cited from an article by ANNELISE HANSHAW in the Missouri Independnet].
Does this represent actual movement away from the rhetoric, to some acknowledgment (by the court/insurance companies) that there is actually no evidence to support the current, affirm and medicalize protocol?
I have a whole bunch of questions, but if I'm only allowed one then I would ask Colin how he can justify his rather idiosyncratic and quite unscientific definitions for the sexes -- those that he had had published in the UK Times letter section -- when faced with ones published in more reputable journals like the Oxford Dictionary of Biology, the Oxford Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction [MHR], and the more popular Oxford Dictionaries:
The former courtesy of a tweet by biologist Emma Hilton, his partner in crime:
UK Times: "Individuals that have developed anatomies [gonads?] for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present or future functionality, are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
The latter:
https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
From that MHR Glossary, though the others say pretty much the same thing:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense] the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces [present tense] the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
Diddly-squat there about any gonads of "past, present, or future functionality". They're ALL about being able to produce gametes RIGHT NOW, not last year or 10 years down the road. No gametes, no sex.
But you might also ask him about his generally credible and commendable testimony in a Texas court case:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/defending-reality-my-expert-testimony
And likewise about a forthcoming conference on sex and gender that he had posted information on in his recent Weekly Update:
https://santafeboys.org/participants-in-the-big-conversation/