Links - 27th December 2019 (2) (Trans Mania)

University of Queensland academics sign open letter after law dean's trans comments - "Almost 40 law academics at the University of Queensland have signed an open letter pledging to support transgender students after the university’s law school dean presented a paper that compared transgender children to teens with eating disorders... “This paper has endeavoured to show just how many of the ideas strongly promulgated by some in the transgender movement are based upon unscientific beliefs, or otherwise beliefs and values that science can neither validate nor disprove. “Gender theory has emerged from the humanities, not the sciences.”... The UQ law society has also issued a statement, saying Parkinson’s comments “are not reflective of the inclusive culture fostered amongst law students”... “The [law society] rejects the sentiment expressed and recognises that these statements do not reflect the lived experiences of transgender people, as well as those transitioning or who identify as gender fluid or non-binary.”... “None of my colleagues have raised any concerns with me, and none have asked for a copy of the 14,000-word paper that I delivered last week. Had they done so, they would have found that it deals with issues that are being widely discussed in the medical and scientific literature.“My background is in child protection. To suggest that we don’t tackle difficult issues because it might be challenging is to avoid the responsibilities of intellectual leadership.”"
Precisely. Lived Experience comes from the humanities, not the sciences

How the Trans-Rights Movement Is Turning Philosophers Into Activists - "the three claimed to have been the victims of “non-consensual co-platforming”—which meant being put on the same internet page as us. Yet as philosopher Dan Kaufman pointed out in a recent blog post, “there is no such standard in our discipline, according to which when asked to contribute to something, one’s consent to appear alongside all the other contributors must be solicited.” Dembroff, Kukla and Stryker also claimed that our views constituted “acts of violence,” and suggested that entering into debate with us might be analogized to engaging with the question of “whether the Holocaust actually happened, or whether corrective rape should be used to cure lesbianism, or whether or not the white race is superior to all others.” The extravagance of this rhetorical gambit should be shocking to philosophers and laypeople alike—especially insofar as it grotesquely co-opts such apocalyptic horrors as the extermination of Europe’s Jews and the African slave trade as a means to discredit a philosophical and political position on the nature of sex and gender. It is hard to imagine that the authors’ use of “corrective rape” being “used to cure lesbianism” was anything other than a grotesque barb hurled at me, Stock, Bindel—all three of us being lesbians. The Institute’s staff were decent enough to let me respond. My main points were that debate over gender is a reasonable—as opposed to unreasonable—disagreement, no matter how badly the trans-activist side behaves, and that those on that side should “at least leave the rape talk out of it.”
In the past year, I’ve asked many of my colleagues across philosophy whether they can recall a time where things were so heated over a philosophical issue. Abortion? No. Euthanasia? No. Animal rights? Not really, no. Some can come up with specific anecdotes, like the 1946 confrontation between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper in which Wittgenstein apparently brandished a fireplace poker to make his points, and after the argument grew heated, threw down the poker and stormed out of the room (all documented in David Edmonds & John Eidinow’s popular book, Wittgenstein’s Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers). But if a single incident such as that can fill one book, there may well be many books to be written about philosophy’s gender wars by the time today’s embers cool to ash... 'transwomen are women and transmen are men'. Some think it’s perfectly fine to take this as a starting assumption. Some even treat delivering this result as a baseline condition of adequacy for theory in this area—which relegates philosophy to the mere service of explicitly political goals... The foundational commitment of philosophy, my field, is the pursuit of truth... One of the worst norm violations is letting feelings creep in. We teach our students that the ideal philosophical discussion is dispassionate. Others can’t be expected to share your feelings. You have to do the hard work of providing them reasons and arguments. Given these longstanding values, and the disciplinary norms built up to protect them, it is alarming to observe the emergence of a group of activists within the profession who are attempting to assert that there can be no debate when it comes to the question of gender identity...
How did things get to the point that some professional academic philosophers felt they had to de-platform themselves just to avoid appearing on the same web page as other professional academic philosophers? Since when did analytic philosophers, normally sticklers for precise language, describe views they don’t like as “violence”?... British philosopher John Broome thinks that almost all the greenhouse gas emissions associated with our actions do harm to the world. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong of Duke University disagrees. It’s a very serious subject. Yet you don’t see Broome calling Sinnott-Armstrong a “cunt” on social media (as Rebecca Kukla has done to me)...
The point of the discussion, as the establishment feminist philosophers see it, isn’t to determine the truth of the underlying claims, but to provide succour to a vulnerable community. They are doing politics and calling it philosophy."

Philosophers should not be sanctioned for their positions on sex and gender (opinion) - "The proposed measures, such as censuring philosophers who defend these controversial positions or preventing those positions from being advanced at professional conferences and in scholarly journals, violate the fundamental academic commitment to free inquiry. Moreover, the consequent narrowing of discussion would set a dangerous precedent, threatening the ability of philosophers to engage with the issues of the day. We acknowledge that philosophical arguments can lead to pain, anxiety and frustration when they challenge deeply held commitments -- whether pertaining to gender identity, religious conviction, political ideology or the rights and moral status of fetuses or nonhuman animals"
The trans squad keep obsessing about "trans phobia" in philosophy. Maybe because philosophers are especially resistant to gaslighting

Stop Using Phony Science to Justify Transphobia - Scientific American Blog Network - "Actual research shows that sex is anything but binary"
"Scientific" American strikes again

Nicholas Morano - "This [Scientific American] piece cites research showing overlap between men's and women's testosterone levels. Following the link, I am blocked by a paywall, which I must bypass by logging into my academic institution. The cited study was not an actual report on an experiment, but a series of claims made and citations listed (ex. given below.) Following the citation to the scientific study claimed to provide evidence for overlapping levels of testosterone found between men and women, I found serious misrepresentations of the conclusions reached in the study. The study is an investigation into various problems possibly confounding results of salivary testosterone measurements. Far from claiming that there is no significant difference between mens' and womens' testosterone levels, the study mentions several ways in which testosterone levels differ between men and women. For instance, salivary testosterone levels are far less stable (more within-subject variation) for boys than for girls. (exs. given below). No mention is made of significant overlap between levels of men and women. This detail was contrived, and can't be located in the actual report"

Feminist Julia Beck Testifies against Equality Act - "Julia Beck testified against the Equality Act (H.R. 5) before the House Judiciary Committee. Beck is a lesbian who was booted out of the Baltimore LGBT Commission for describing a male transgender rapist as a male and saying that men can’t be lesbians...
'male rapists will go to women’s prisons and likely assault female inmates as has already happened in the U.K.; female survivors of rape will be unable to contest male presence in women’s shelters; men will dominate women’s sports — girls who would have taken first place will be denied scholastic opportunity; women who use male pronouns to talk about men may be arrested, fined, and banned from social media platforms; girls will stay home from school when they have their periods to avoid harassment by boys in mixed-space toilets; girls and women will no longer have a right to ask for female medical staff or intimate care providers, including elderly or disabled women who are at serious risk of sexual abuse; female security officers will no longer have the right to refuse to perform pat-downs or intimate searches of males who say they’re female and women undergoing security checks will no longer have the right to refuse having those security checks being performed by men claiming a feminine identity.'
She pointed out that “everything I just listed is already happening, and it’s only going to get worse if gender identity is recognized in federal law.” And added, “I urge my fellow Democrats to wake up. Please acknowledge biological reality.”"

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts -
"However, even without that recent evidence, the biological principles for separation into men’s and women’s categories in sport are so strong that to overturn it requires exceptional evidence (2/)"
"Are you a biologist? Are you a scientist? Have you got a PhD? Published a paper in a peer reviewed journal? If not then STFU."
"Yes, yes, yes and yes."
"Athletic organizations and governments are still wrestling with the issue of how to incorporate transgender and intersectional athletes into their programs.After attending a conference, Dr. Ross Tucker tweeted that even lowering testosterone does not remove all the advantages for an athlete who grew up with male-levels of testosterone. This has an impact on policy as some sports organizations base participation on recent testosterone levels.As you can see below, an activist who objected to this opinion decided to counter Tucker with a ‘call to authority’ fallacy. It didn’t go well for her. She has since locked her Twitter account as the exchange has spread across the internet."

smartercoachingllc on Twitter "@Scienceofsport Not being cheeky, but how do we define "male" and "female"? If a person has a Y chromosome at all is that person a male? It would have been easier (less inclusive) if sports officials had started with XX and XY and not allowed anyone else to play. Easier, but maybe not fair."
"Simple question, complex answer. Biological sex is now recognised to be the result of 5, maybe 6 characteristics. DSDs (intersex cases) occur when not all 6 line up. Trans MTF are where all 6 DO line up, as male or female, and the person identifies as something different. So, in case of MTF trans athletes, you have 6 out of 6 biological factors are male - chromosomes (XY), gonads (testes), hormones (high T), primary sex organs/genitalia (penis, internal genitalia male), secondary sex characterises, virilization male. Not too complex in trans issue"
So much for biological sex being a myth

Study: Nearly four-fifths of ‘gender minority’ students have mental health issues - "A significant majority of transgender and gender-variant students experience mental health issues, a new report shows. That statistic is greatly higher than for the general population.
Of course the trans interpretation is that discrimination causes the mental health issues rather than mental health issues causing gender identification issues

Blaire White on Twitter - "Trans: I'm trans
Society: k
Trans:  Here are my pronouns
Society: k
Trans people: WAX MY BALLS & GIVE HORMONES TO KIDS OR YOUR'E A BIGOT
Society: Ok that's a little too fa-
Trans: FUCK YOU FASCIST
Society: Okay fuck it then I give up
Trans: Omg why does everyone hate me"

In 10 years, we'll ask how we allowed the trans lobby to hijack childhood - "the government is consulting on whether to allow people to change gender without medical diagnoses. And none of it is about love or support, but fear: a fear so potent it’s driving otherwise sane and educated adults to betray a generation of vulnerable children. Dr Kate Godfrey-Faussett, a psychologist who works with children in schools across London, goes so far as to call it “state-sanctioned child abuse”. When I ask whether it can really be true that children could be sent off to consult with gender clinics without the parents’ knowledge, she explains that, currently, “the confidentiality of a trans child actually trumps everything, including a parent’s right to know. And if a school believes a child is mature enough to understand the implications of what they’re doing, they don’t need parental consent.”Added to this, “if a child comes to school and tells the teachers ‘my parents are anti-trans’, the school can call in social services and treat it as a safeguarding concern under emotional abuse. Theoretically, the child could even be taken away.”"

Parents remove son from school in pupil gender row - "The parents of a six-year-old boy have removed him from his primary school in a row over whether another pupil should be allowed to wear a dress.Nigel and Sally Rowe said their son was confused as to why the child at the Church of England School on the Isle of Wight dressed as both a boy and a girl.The Diocese of Portsmouth, under which the school falls, said it was required to "respect diversity of all kinds"... The couple said under the school's bullying policy their son faced being disciplined for misidentifying the gender of the six-year-old pupil... the couple were being accused of "transphobic behaviour" because of their "refusal to acknowledge a transgender person's true gender".Mr Rowe said: "I am shocked by the suggestion, especially from a church school, that just because we question the notion that a six-year-old boy can really become a girl, we are transphobic""

Social justice is important but let's not lose our fucking minds - Posts - "it's transphobic for trans people to want surgery and/or hormones because their desires are based in cissexist ideas of bodies... if it's transphobic to consider body parts feminine than transitioning and altering ur body is transphobic"

Canadian Cancer Society Uses Transgender Woman On Cervical Cancer Page - "Sadly, this isn’t the first time cervical cancer and trans women have been linked together.Virtue signaling, being woke, or whatever you want to call it have taken a lengthy detour into the absurd.It goes without saying that those born male don’t have cervices, but, in the UK, there was chatter about offering male-to-female transgender patients smear tests–on the taxpayer’s dime. Despite not being anatomically equipped to qualify for the procedure, giving these individuals the procedure is to supposedly provide a confidence boost."