We have a lazy tendency to judge complex phenomena by superficial external features. It's a mental shortcut.
The word "tyranny" evokes images of mid 20th century fascist soldiers marching through streets, in shiny black leather boots. Tyranny is seen as instigated by the known set of motivations that were in play at that specific time and place: hate, racist bigotry, intolerance, a sense of superiority.
We then fail to identify tyranny, even when it's the same phenomenon at its core, because superficially it looks different. It looks the opposite: where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism, this apparently new and different phenomena is motivated by an extremely strong reaction to racism.
We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it.
We ended up in a very similar position of hatred, intolerance, and sense of superiority. We just fail to realize it, because the flag-bearers of this new form of tyranny are entirely convinced they are "the good guys", and are only correcting the faults of the "bad guys": the fascists and bigots of yore.
Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism
When has that happened, though? It's more often the opposite. Hitler magnified racism as a tool to gather power. Racism against African-descended people grew out of the institution of slavery, not the other way around.
Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
One of the most tragic facets of human psychology is that being abused a particular way makes you more likely to abuse others in that same way, not less likely.
If I may quote Orwell, who opined at length on the tendency of his countrymen towards authoritarianism in support of 'good' causes, "But how much of the present slide towards Fascist ways of thought is traceable to the ‘anti-Fascism’ of the past ten years and the unscrupulousness it has entailed?"
And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."
Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
> The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from:
The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.
Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication.
> To be able to destroy with good conscience
Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects.
> to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation'
A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.
Cancel culture, while containing some truth, is very obviously a cudgel being used by the radical right to try and suppress any ideas they don't agree with. Sound familiar?
What do you mean by this exactly?
I genuinely don’t understand and am asking in good faith.
Are you saying that the radical right is cancelling people?
Or do you mean the idea of cancel culture is being used to suppress ideas?
I don’t understand how either could be true. I am nowhere near being a radical right person, at least I wouldn’t consider myself to be, but I am very concerned about the behavior described in the article as I have experienced the behavior first-hand. We are talking about the suppression of people and ideas.
Generalization is a intellectual shortcut but, the bubble that the stereotypical typical Williams collage student was raised in supports this problem.
I don’t know exactly what a “cancel” is, but in my mind, the behavior isn’t a left / right thing- it’s an extremest thing. There are plenty of examples from the right extremes, including banning of books and the unashamed desire to repeal the legality of gay marriage.
Extreme political positions require a clean message of good and evil, and in my view, the “cancel” of anything (eg nuance) disrupting those messages is a broad issue in the future of our society and culture.
Razor sharp analysis; the left and the right are both involved in similar policies around "cancellation". As an example, the right wing has expressed disdain and called for a reduction of powers of the FBI[1] in the same way the left has expressed theirs for the police[2].
Great example- there are more. The far left and the far right are so close they don't even know it. If they stopped seeking "good" and "evil", and hating on principle they'd see the absurdity.
But defunding the police was never cancel culture, that's a separate thing. Cancel culture refers to the practice of trying to get individuals fired for things they said, or sometimes to try and get customers of a company to abandon that company for the same reasons.
I think you are being disingenuous if you are denying that cancel culture is a thing. There is a long list of people who’ve been cancelled or have attempted to be cancelled and finding that list is a quick Google away. Examples include: JK Rowling, Dave Chapelle, Matt Damon, etc. the list is a mile long. Some cancellation attempts are more successful than others depending on how famous they are. But the key is that a large mob of people banded together and tried to get them deplatformed, usually using common language like “do better”, and calling them things like “fascist”, “bigot”, “racist”.
Additionally, those are just examples of people in the public sphere, there are tons of videos and other examples of online of students shouting down professors or guest speakers, calling them "fascists", demanding they be fired, literally cancelling speakers with opposing views. I mean there's just a lot of evidence online, very easy to Google. I can link it here if that's helpful, but I worry that the people who don't already know about this problem will probably just ignore the links since they were already willfully ignorant up to this point.
Of course there are examples of right extremes, nobody here is denying that, we’re talking about the extremes of the left and how they are having a chilling effect on scientific research.
For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
I don't think I denied that "cancel culture" is a thing. The quote are because I have very limited exposure to social media (this site and some limited reddit) and don't follow any popular news (cnn/fox/abc/nbc etc), and don't talk politics socially- so I'm not comfortable that my definition of 'cancel' is the common definition. My intended point was this behavior is on both left and right BUT but more importantly, it is the extremes of each that are the problem and 'canceling' drives greater extremes. that is not good. I intended to make the point that the folks at Williams are likely extreme due to the bubble that they live in- and I don't support that at all. Fwiw: I'm neither Republican or Democrat either. I have deep distrust in anyone with power, which is dark soul of both of those organizations.
>The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.
Yes, and let's go further in. Is it really "all who oppose them" they're after? Or is it just envy, "all who have something I want?"
They would rather destroy society than admit what they are doing doesn't work for them.
Can you folks hear yourselves? "Radical left" here, "radical right" there, is there anything else in this world? Like moderate left, center, moderate right, and anything in between or perpendicular to that? I understand you have a war to fight but the first victim seems to be reality here.
There is but we live in a liberal society, and by definition if they reject it that makes them radicals (though more a "top = totalitarian" kind for both, rather than right or left)
This whole conversation reminds me of when I was sitting in a movie theater, watching Inglorious Basterds-- celebrating the death of an on-screen villain who is in a movie theater, watching a movie celebrating the death of an on-screen villain. Most people never step back and notice the irony of that scene and what it is supposed to say about ME, the viewer. Many people don't realize that they are a continuation of a cycle of villains, both the oppressed for one moment and the oppressor the next, demonizing groups as evil for some sort of tribal emotional reward deep in our ancient brain structures. And to that, I say, it's a very human instinct and though possibly the instinct is the root of most evil in the world, it's not something to hate someone for indulging.
The whole point of the OP article is that a radical leftist view is taking over major social, cultural, and academic institutions.
The author provides plenty of examples for this in the article, some of which are well-known, and none of which are factually disputed.
It seems the ones who ignore reality are those assuming and/or pretending "the center" is still firmly in control on these issues. That simply is not the case, which is really a key point in the article.
> C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a
tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the
most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than
under omnipotent moral busybodies.
Which reminds me of this gem by Alexis De Tocqueville from "Democracy
in America";
"" That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident, and
mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like
that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood;
but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual
childhood: it is well content that the people should
rejoice, provided they think of nothing but rejoicing. For
their happiness such a government willingly labors, but it
chooses to be the sole agent and the only arbiter of that
happiness; it provides for their security, foresees and
supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures,
manages their principal concerns, directs their industry,
regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their
inheritances: what remains, but to spare them all the care
of thinking and all the trouble of living?""
To me, this is the very essence of "convenience" and shrugging moral
relativism that allows technology to act as am enabler of tyranny.
> We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it.
I think it's interesting that you speak in such abstract terms about this. What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?
> the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
I've personally never heard of a political movement--left, right, or center--that considered itself the antagonist in its own narrative
> What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?
This line of reasoning would just fall into the same error of justifying oppressive actions by the American left "because they are aimed at a group that is even worse".
I consider the examples cited in the article to be very alarming, for example:
> Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.”
This scene chillingly echoes the birth of previous oppressive tyrannies, in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia and China. Its overt oppression and silencing of opposing views, its deliberate disruption and eradication of civil open debate, its ideological principled and fervent objection to civil liberties such as free speech, the identity politics (and motifs of divisive class/race warfare), the implied violence, the struggle-session public pressure on the sinful individuals to confess their sins...
The fact that the radical American left aligns itself with two of these past tyrannical regimes serves to increase this alarm.
But the worst of all concerns is that these aren't some shrill fringe radicals who are being ignored as such; no, this faction has become dominant to the point of controlling the policies of our academic, social, and cultural institutions.
The article describes leading academic institutions, publications, and even government institutions like the National Science Foundation and the NIH which are bowing to the radical leftist mob and its demand. All these key institutions are increasingly captured and controlled by this radical ideology, putting these oppressive, tyrannical radicals effectively in control of an increasing number of our important societal, cultural, and academic institutions.
(In a way that the small number of right-wing radicals who tried to storm the capitol are very much not; in fact, their magnification as an excuse to further promote oppression, tyranny, and institutional radicalism also evokes alarming echoes of the past.)
The "radical left" in the US almost entirely does not "align itself" with China and Russia. That's a red herring. Being highly critical of the abuses of capitalism does not automatically mean an endorsement of those also clearly abusive regimes.
Clearly the radical left doesn't allow itself with Russia and China as they are today; however they do express sympathy for the ideologies that underlie the Soviet Union and Maoist China.
Maybe I've seen much of it simply because I lived in SF for years, but you are bound to run into folks there who self-describe not only as "Marxists", but also as "Communists" and sometimes specifically "Maoists".
The push to override civil liberties, notably free speech as described in the article, in service of "more important goals", is certainly reminiscent of communist and Maoist agendas.
It's a huge leap from Marxist to "supports China and Russia." It's blatantly not the same thing. There's plenty of room to debate about the actual political differences at hand without introducing a ~~red herring~~.
Edit: this is actually a "straw man", not a "red herring".
Are you really not aware that members of the American radical left, in particular those who identify as Marxist, are sympathetic to other Marxist nations, such as Soviet Russia, Cuba, and Maoist China?
> Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of more than ten books on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.
> After her acquittal, Davis went on an international speaking tour in 1972 and the tour included Cuba, where she had previously been received by Fidel Castro in 1969 as a member of a Communist Party delegation.[46] Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael had also visited Cuba, and Assata Shakur later moved there after escaping from a US prison. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak.[47] Davis perceived Cuba as a racism-free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the United States, her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles.[48] In 1974, she attended the Second Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women.[46]
> In 1971, the CIA estimated that five percent of Soviet propaganda efforts were directed towards the Angela Davis campaign.[49] In August 1972, Davis visited the USSR at the invitation of the Central Committee, and received an honorary doctorate from Moscow State University.[50]
> On May 1, 1979, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.[51] She visited Moscow later that month to accept the prize, where she praised "the glorious name" of Lenin and the "great October Revolution".
> What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?
The civil unrest of the summer of 2020 - 19 deaths, billions in damages. Accompanied by a heaping spoonful of apologetics from the media, academics and certain corporations.
I believe the overturning of Roe and the insurrection were terrible, for the record.
> Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression?
As a serious answer, Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) wrote in 1982 about the problems of using "guys", which has a "default assumption" of maleness. This isn't a new issue, but something people have been discussing for 40 years.
That's a call for everyone to interpret "guys" as gender neutral.
> In any case, to the great bulk of the population, guys already is gender-neutral and thus inclusive, thanks in part to women who embraced it. Maybe it’s time to set it free.
I disagree with that first assertion.
While "guys" is somewhat gender neutral, as in "you guys want anything?", it's not gender neutral with something like "two guys came here earlier" (not used to include "two women came here earlier") or "guys only want one thing" (not used to mean "all people only want one thing").
Eh, it is not really different from other plurals in this regard. For example one might say a catering event has 100 waiters. Depending on convention you could also write waiters/waitresses or waitrx or service personal or... Used generically it is gender neutral, while non-generically it is not.
I think thoughtful people say wait staff not waiters in that example.
I am not on the side of turning technical terms like master/slave male/female blacklist/whitelist into ridiculous manufactured crimes, but that particular example doesn't actually work I think.
Anyways, I thought "service personnel" already covered that example, but yes "staff" might be more common. Anyways, the point was that these are common conventions and all are intended as gender neutral -- so insulting people for using a specific one seems very misguided.
It was quite literal and not an insult or intended as one. When I hear people who consider their words, that is the kind of phrase I hear in foodservice circles. If you were insulted, perhaps it only implies you think you are not thoughtful? When I insult someone, it isn't ambiguous.
The Hofstadter essay kens linked to, from 1985, goes into this exact point, though he uses "waitron" instead of "waitrx".
> it is not really different from other plurals in this regard
Some yes, some no. Few now say "authoress" or "manageress", as a counter-example. And I don't think anyone ever used "bank telleress" instead of "bank teller."
That said, it seems you agree with me that "guys" is not a wholly gender-neutral term, yes?
The WaPo article author's argument seems to be that since "you guys" is used as a gender-neutral second person plural [1], "guys" is no longer a gendered word.
> One of my pet peeves is the currently popular usage of the word "guys". You often hear a group of people described as "guys", even when that group includes women. In fact, it is quite common to hear women addressing a group of other women as "you guys". This strikes me as very strange. However, when I have asked some people about it, they have adamantly maintained that, when in the plural, the word "guy" has completely lost all traces of masculinity. I was arguing with one woman about this, and she kept on saying, "It may have retained some male flavor for you, but it has none in most people's usage." I wasn't convinced, but nothing I could think of to say would budge her from her position. However, fortune proved to be on my side, because, in a last-ditch attempt to convince me, she said, "Why, I've even heard guys use it to refer to a bunch of women!" Only after saying it did she realize that she had just unwittingly undermined her own claim.
[1] the article is dreadfully lacking in examples, but I think 'Hey guys' as an attention grabber fits into the same category as second person plural.
For me it falls under local dialect and if people tell me that it is gender neutral, I believe them. Same as people using "literally" or "ironically" incorrectly; if enough people use words in a certain way, the words change their meaning. That is just how English works. So the essay kinda reads to me as "old man yelling at clouds".
> Authoress
English is a bit weird in that it only does this for certain occupations, e.g. actor or waiter but not for example writers (at least to my knowledge). So if I read "a large group of writers" I would presume that is meant as gender neutral and would be completely fine with it. Again the point being that writxs or similar might be another convention, but that does not make people using "writers" "unthoughtful" or whatever other insult the above poster wants to use.
Again, no. The claim was that for large groups it is used as gender neutral, for small groups it is not necessarily neutral. No contradiction and very common for other words as in the examples above.
> If enough people think that
No, wrong side. The people saying words give them meaning, not the people misunderstanding them.
> The claim was that for large groups it is used as gender neutral, for small groups it is not necessarily neutral.
To be fully correct, the author says "second person plural", which includes small groups.
> The claim was that for large groups it is used as gender neutral
As the Hofstadter essay points out, the claim was also that "man" for large groups was gender neutral. Except of course it often wasn't - and Hofstadter gives counter-examples.
But the overall point is the "microagression" concerning "guy" has been around for decades. It's not a new thing. It's certainly not part of an existential threat to doing good science.
> The people saying words give them meaning, not the people misunderstanding them.
That's ... okay, so you're saying the people who hear the implied/default maleness in "guy" never actually say the word "guy" in their own conversations? Even to refer only to males?
Because that's the only way I can make sense of what you wrote.
I find it hard to believe that the only speakers of the word "guy" for groups do so only in gender-neutral terms.
The article’s point is that “One of the problems with dismissing the word guys as inherently masculine is that it assumes that the gendering of language is fixed — that the meaning we make of things now is the meaning they’ve always had and always will.” and she doesn’t see a problem in using guys with a gender-neutral meaning.
What someone wrote forty years ago is not gospel. Neither is that article, of course. But at least is current.
Yes. That's why I characterized it as 'a call for everyone to interpret "guys" as gender neutral.'.
An aspirational future is not the same thing as the present, and we see "guys", in the plurals sense, definitely being used as male-only.
Another example: "GirlsAskGuys is your social community where girls and guys share their opinions & life experiences, to help better understand each other on topics ranging from dating to fashion." - https://www.girlsaskguys.com/content/about-us.html
The context was 'Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression?', the linked-to essay refers to people making that claim now, so I assume there are people who don't like being referred to as "guy".
> What someone wrote forty years ago is not gospel
Sure. What it does do is date the "Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression" as starting at least 40 years ago.
> An aspirational future is not the same thing as the present, and we see "guys", in the plurals sense, definitely being used as male-only.
We see guys being used as male-only. We also see guys being used for mixed-gender or female-only groups.
We see them being applied to groups and we also see them being applied to individuals.
We see a lot of things in the present - and 40 years ago, for that matter.
> What it does do is date the "Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression" as starting at least 40 years ago.
Ageeed, it illustrates that it was used 40 years ago and that there were proponents and detractors of that use. The use may be more extended today - I don’t know. (What definitely has changed is the ubiquity of “microagressions”.)
Another random testimony from the intertubes:
“When I was a teen back in the 1960's (yeah, I'm old!) the "Hey, Guys!" or "Hi, folks!" was a common way to greet a group regardless of gender. For most of us, at least. It was how females greeted their female friends. Almost invariably, if the group was mixed, someone, almost always male, would try to "correct" our gender-neutral greeting. It was irritating.”
(Isn’t it funny that using “guys” in a gender-neutral way is a microagression and telling people not to use “guys” in a gender-neutral way is also a micro-agression?)
> What definitely has changed is the ubiquity of “microagressions”.)
Sure. The term is "microaggression" is relatively newly popular. I'm probably also wrong in grouping Hofstadter's "pet peeve" as an example of "microaggression", rather than using a more encompassing term.
But bear in mind that it's being used in this linked-to essay to provoke a knee-jerk response to the term "microaggression", enhanced by using one of the mildest examples - "guy" - as the representative case.
It's so mild it's very hard for me to find any examples of people arguing that “guys” is a microaggression, in order see what those DEI instructors teach. One of the few (after looking at scores of Google and DDG hits) is https://www.clearpnt.com/3-key-trends-in-dei-training/ which says:
> When using scenarios, give examples that avoid words with negative connotations for specific groups, like “blind tests,” “powwow,” “and “guys.”
Thing is, "guys" when used poorly can have negative connotations. "Let the guys select what to do next" is likely read as gendered.
I'm accepting the author is correct in saying DEI instructors are making that argument.
But that acceptance also requires me to accept that the DEI trainers know what they are doing, until presented with evidence to the contrary.
For example, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-022-05203-0 gives these examples of microaggression: "highlighting gender by singling women out in a group of men (i.e., “Hey guys, and one gal”) or treating the women differently because of their gender (i.e., having an open office door policy for the women but not for the men)".
Those would surely be better examples in a DEI training course, yes?
> (Isn’t it funny that using “guys” in a gender-neutral way is a microagression and telling people not to use “guys” in a gender-neutral way is also a micro-agression?)
As an aside, this exchange has taught me that "aggression" has two g:s. And I still make that typo.
I don't think your description of 'is also a micro-aggression' fits the definition of 'microaggression.'
I just read the first 20 or so pages of Sue's "Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation" (2010) book at https://archive.org/details/microaggressions0000sued/page/24... and it characterizes microaggressions as "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership".
Using “guys” in a gender-neutral way doesn't define a group membership.
I’m sure that many people would consider the example I quoted (“Almost invariably, if the group was mixed, someone, almost always male, would try to "correct" our gender-neutral greeting.”) a “mansplaining” micro-aggression.
Consider your own example “highlighting gender by singling women out in a group of men (i.e., “Hey guys, and one gal”)”
Don’t you think that some people would see there a “invisibilization” micro-aggression if “Hey guys” had been used instead?
Could you list some examples of legitimate concerns of theirs that does not involve misunderstanding or misrepresenting their opponents' position? As an outsider who's not from the west, these "oversensitive snowflakes" do seem to have goals in common with the left, but are fundamentally extreme in their motivations and reasoning (and transitively their causes).
I’m not so sure those with extreme views merely “have goals in common with the left”, I think they are the mainstream left now. The Biden admin appointed a transgender health secretary(my problem is not that they are transgender, but that they were appointed specifically because they were), has tried to force states to allow or even provide medical/surgical transition to minors, in some cases without parental consent, etc. I’m sympathetic to the concerns of transgender persons, but permanent life altering procedures for children is something that should demand a massive level of evidence and public debate. From what I can tell the evidence for who and when and how to treat is still unclear and ideologues are trying quite hard to suppress any debate.
Also, Harvard and Tulane educated, residency at Mount Sinai, faculty at Penn State, Pennsylvania's physician general, then Secretary of Health for Pennsylvania (unanimously confirmed by the Senate) before Biden's nomination.
Why do you think that background wasn't an important part of her nomination, and only her trans status?
> has tried to force states to allow or even provide medical/surgical transition to minors, in some cases without parental consent, etc
I ... do not believe the assistant secretary for health has the power to force states to do something.
By "medical transition" you mean hormone therapy, right? Hormone therapy is associated with a lower rate of depression and suicidality in minors, and transgender youth have a high rate of suicide than non-LGBT youth. https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00568-1/full...
Which is, as I understand, why hormone therapy is part of the standard for gender-affirming care for minors, as set by (for example) WPATH and the Endocrine Society, and supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and from the American Psychological Association. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/29/1095227...
Gender affirming care also includes Social Affirmation and Puberty Blockers.
> From what I can tell the evidence for who and when and how to treat is still unclear and ideologues are trying quite hard to suppress any debate
From what I can tell, those standards of care come from evidence-based research and been around for a while - long before the current political decision to make a brouhaha of the topic.
Here's the WPATH Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People - https://wpath.org/publications/soc
It's the "7th version of the Standards of Care since the original 1979 document." It's about 10 years old. The NPR link says a SOC should be coming out this year.
Giving typical males with low testosterone supplemental same-sex hormones is not even settled medicine, so it seems quite unlikely that giving cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers would be at all settled as that has not been done at scale for nearly the same length of time. For years studies have been going back and forth about whether the benefits of exogenous testosterone outweigh the risks for biological men with low T. Exogenous T also very commonly permanently destroys a man’s natural T and sperm production. Many endocrinologists will straight up refuse to give it to get a man to get them within normal levels and they have to resort to those shady “men’s health” clinics. I’m less familiar with the issues, but giving postmenopausal women estrogen has many issues as well, one of them I have unfortunately seen in action is the potential to accelerate nascent breast cancer. Even if puberty blockers don’t have the effects they’re said to(bone and other physical development issues, possible destruction of sexual function and the ability to orgasm in the future) they haven’t been studied long enough for my taste. Even if huge benefits can be shown for certain transgender individuals, there’s still the issue of how to determine which individuals will continue wanting to live as a trans person long term. As these interventions are made widely accessible you can bet that there will be significant numbers of people that regret their decision, but in many cases the effects of medical intervention will be partially or fully irreversible. Imagine how many people may have such regrets if this is done at scale without long and careful study.
> Why do you think that background wasn't an important part of her nomination, and only her trans status?
Because Biden has unabashedly doubled down on intersectional identity politics. For example for the supreme court justice and his VP pick he explicitly said he would pick black females.
> Giving typical males with low testosterone supplemental same-sex hormones is not even settled medicine
Which is relevant to this discussion because .. why? Just because there isn't an accepted evidence-based standard of care for X doesn't mean there can't be an accepted evidence-based standard of care for Y.
(I don't know what "settled medicine" means here, given that standards of care can and do change.)
> giving postmenopausal women estrogen has many issues as well
Yes, that standard of care has changed based on evidence.
> puberty blockers
Which are reversible. As my linked-to fact sheet points out.
> they haven’t been studied long enough for my taste
I think I'm warranted in trusting the opinion of the 7 or so medical organizations I listed far over your opinion.
How long will be enough to make you happy? There's been, what, 100 years of studies on the topic? And I pointed out the relevant WPATH Standards of Care started in 1977.
How long is enough?
> there will be significant numbers of people that regret their decision
How many is "significant"?
Do significant numbers of people regret their tattoos? Their plastic surgery? Their chemotherapy? Their lottery pick? Does that justify stopping all of those activities?
And, as I pointed out, by NOT getting the standard of care, the amount of depression and suicide ideation increases. How many regret NOT being able to get the medically recognized appropriate standard of care because politicians prevented it due to transphobia?
> Because Biden has unabashedly doubled down on intersectional identity politics
Every single one of those people had a background which, had they been white straight men, would have been generally acceptable for their position.
That's a far cry from a claim that they must be incompetent and were picked only for theig "intersectional identity politics".
This surprise lots of people, but rates of regret for patients getting chemotherapy or other cancer treatment are quite high. They're much higher than rates of regret among people getting gender affirming care.
> As these interventions are made widely accessible you can bet that there will be significant numbers of people that regret their decision, but in many cases the effects of medical intervention will be partially or fully irreversible. Imagine how many people may have such regrets if this is done at scale without long and careful study.
There's quite a lot to unpick here.
1) Rates of regret for transition are lower than most other medical treatment. You're applying a lot of scrutiny to regret, which is fine, but you're only applying that scrutiny to trans care. You're not applying the same scrutiny to eg cancer treatment.
2) Why is regret such a horrific prospect to you? You see someone going through gender affirming care, and then regretting it, and then being forced to live with the result, and this is horrific to you. I don't understand why you don't apply the same standard to the people who are denied access to gender affirming care - the people who are forced to live with the results of not getting the care they need. Why is one situation so terrible and the other is good?
3) In general we allow capacitous people to make choices about healthcare. We tell them what's involved, we tell them about the risks, and then we let them make the decision. We allow people to make unwise decisions, even if those decisions will cause their death. If a person has a necrotic gangrenous leg their doctors will say "we need to amputate this or you will die" but that person is allowed to say "I'd rather die than have you amputate my leg". Why are people okay with bodily autonomy unless it's a trans person getting trans healthcare?
There's also quite a few points you've made that are based on out of date, or misinterpreted, information. Stuff like bone density has been debunked - trans people have reduced bone density before they start gender affirming medical treatment. At the moment people think that the bone density problems are caused by lack of access to sport and exercise.
I genuinely don’t know. One doesn’t encounter this stuff out at the grocery store, it’s confined mostly to professional settings like working at a company or at University.
It seems obvious to me that these ideas incubate in professional settings precisely because those are settings where they can’t easily be criticized for fear of losing a job or getting cancelled, etc.
If you work in big(or medium) tech you’ve probably been given a list of “say this not that”. Say folks rather than guys. Say blocklist instead of blacklist. Main branch, not master branch. Supposedly it’s to be more inclusive, but I’ve yet to meet an actual minority that feels excluded or offended by such trivialities. They can be rather exasperating too, I’ve been told to say “the candidate” rather than “he” or “she” in post interview round tables to avoid someone accidentally using pronouns the candidate doesn’t prefer.
Why is it so hard for some people to change their usage of some words? For me it seems pretty simple and technically speaking the alternative/new words are still understandable. It's not like in this industry it's uncommon to have to learn and adjust or dismiss prior solutions when new better ones arise. Big deal over mostly nothing imo.
Indeed, inclusivity is one of the main pitches capitalism has left - sure, you're getting stomped by the bootheels of capitalist running dogs, but half of those dogs are from visible minority breeds.
Nope, corporations are not in alignmetn with communism (an economic concept). But parent is talking about marxism (sociology), and this is essentially correct. This is rebranded class struggle, with easily recognizable details like division between opressed and rulers, up to and including self-criticism. Only vocabulary changed.
That does seem to be the case already right? The united states has massive numbers of east asian people working in tech. What does it have to do with the article?
I value academic freedom and the integrity to pursue knowledge regardless of its outcomes. It’s the fruit of a just and wealthy society, it’s value endures across millennia.
Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed.
He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity.
I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all.
As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable.
The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself.
Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming.
This piece is not instructive.
It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire.
I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24/7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment.
The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.
You can't teach to a mob that are charging you with pitch forks. You need to realize the difference between the situation of a mob vs a single student. The single student can be handled. The mob not at all.
Institutional power? What? The authors are badly paid researchers. The mob are students that can get them fired, make the grants totally go away, and in some cases literally storm their classrooms and threaten violence, even assault them. This isn't a theoretical thing. This happens already.
Random cherry picked person... ok? Yes. SOME people are wealthy enough to not care about cancel-mobs. But even some really rich people are scared anyway! And again, the vast majority of researchers are NOT rich.
The vast majority of researchers are NOT professors even!
The statement "The authors are badly paid researchers" is completely incorrect. I chose one out of the 7 people mentioned in the article at random. Check the other 6 and I'm certain you'll find at least 3 are wealthy.
I don't know what to tell you. I am a researcher (previously at Yale, now at MIT), and I very rarely hear other researchers complain about cancel culture. Largely, I hear horror stories of abuses of power with no repercussions or accountability. It's only, again, a small cadre of professors complaining about this.
It's only a small number of people who are rich AND have courage that are speaking out yes. The rest are frightened and yield to the mob. This is the insidious problem with the whole situation.
Have you read the article? These aren't just "kids".
OP is describing how major institutions, including research universities and other research organizations, publications, and even government institutions such as the National Science Foundation and NIH are now supporting this ideology.
I certainly did, but I'm having a hard time pinning down what 'this ideology' is. I don't see a monolithic ideology that is constraining academic freedom. There has ALWAYS been limits on what research is considered ethical, and those limits came to exist because of grave abuse. The savagery of early science is well-documented and results in material limits on what is funded and published. After 40 years of denying syphilis treatment to African-American males in Alabama "For Science" are were more limits on human research methods. We stopped letting researchers inject hepatitis into institutionalized children. NIH and NSF have been systematically denying funding for phrenology and eugenics. Is that a causing a crisis in academic freedom - or - is a reasonable policy to prevent bad science being used to further racial supremacy narratives?
Let's be clear here: OP's material complaint is that NIH gated access to some genetics datasets. That's the 'crisis', yet he manages to bundle in all of these groups he dislikes into a narrative.
>federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, now offer a surplus of grants with the purpose of “broadening the participation of members of groups that are . . . currently underrepresented”—instead of funding research to answer scientific questions.
Allow me to translate: "Give money to minorities" OR "Do Real Science". So minorities can't so real science???
(implicitly, "minorities aren't doing real science" - "real science came from people like me, so keep giving data access and money to my team, then you'll see I deserve the ability to say and do anything I want because I'm quantifiably superior and they are a waste of resources.")
> As an example: The NIH now puts barriers to access to the important database of “Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP).” The database is an amazing tool that combines genomes (the unique genetic makeup of each individual) and phenotypes (the observable characteristics of each individual) of millions of people. These phenotypes include education, occupation, health and income and, because the dataset connects genetics with phenotype at an individual level, it is essential for scientists who want to understand genes and genetic pathways that are behind those phenotypes. The NIH now denies scientists access to this data and other related datasets. Researchers report getting permits denied on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” According to one researcher, this happens even if the research has nothing to do with race or sex, but focuses on genetics and education.
I cannot explain this one better than Harvard can:
>By the early to mid-20th century, polygenism and biology-based racism were widely disproven, and racism in social science had gained popularity. Studies showing high rates of imprisonment among Black Americans were used as proof of innate criminality, while pseudoscientific intelligence testing claimed the mental superiority of white people. These flawed, biased studies failed to account for political and social factors such as poor housing, poverty, lack of healthcare, and virulent racial oppression. But they provided the so-called evidence needed to fuel systemic forms of anti-Black racism, like segregation. And, for many Americans looking for objective reasons to justify racist beliefs and behaviors, studies like these were more than enough.
source: https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/sc...
>The censors and gatekeepers simply assume—without evidence—that human population research is malign and must be shut down. The costs of this kind of censorship, both self-imposed and ideologically based, are profound. Student learning is impaired and important research is never done.
What I would like to see more of, is a good faith response that directly addresses the concerns of the article.
Unfortunately, as it stands, your response is simply arguing that articles bringing attention to a particular issue are not worthy because they don't bring up a solution, and dismisses the concerns as "petulant", which does convey your frustration but not what the article misses out on in its quality of arguments.
It’s annoyingly the same cadre of people giving these vacuous speeches over and over —- Bari Weiss handing the microphone to Dorian Abbott or whoever. Your post really nails it.
The only thing I can add is that when you try and dig a bit at how they see this group of people, it’s always a “mob” and not an aggrieved group of future scholars who might have legitimate complains. They’re always, always infantilized.
Rather than addressing the content of the article, you are just dismissing the entire thing because it is associated with people you don't like. Republicans do this same thing with information that comes from Democrat sources. If we as a country continue to have this mindset, we are completely screwed.
For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
The anecdotes in this story sound perfectly plausible to me. I've been hearing this kind of stories for years now, and no, not from "republican" sources.
My favourite conspiracy theory is that this push for 'woke' activism on the political left was done as a means to undermine it, and distract away from more pressing labour and economic activism that would actually be a threat to the wealthy and powerful, if implemented.
While the purportedly left-wing activists sit there arguing if math is racist, and so on, exploitation of working people continues as it always has, largely ignored.
I don't want to correct a biologist on a subject that they're clearly an expert on, but the discussion on sex seems like it's missing a lot of context. I wonder if they are making the mistake of thinking everyone is referring to the word "sex" in the same way?
The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point.
But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex. Individuals in a gonochoric species have a sex that in most cases corresponds to the gametes that they can produce, but this is not absolute. In humans, we know that intersex and possibly even hermaphroditic individuals can exist: these people certainly do not conform to a perfectly binary sex distinction. So clearly there is a definition of sex - and a widely used one at that - where the author is incorrect, and human sexes are more complicated than a perfect binary split.
This obviously doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does suggest that some of the issue may lie in communication rather than oppression. For example, the author links to the "gender unicorn" model, but this fairly plainly discusses sex as a medical phenomenon (where it is typically assigned at birth, corresponds to reproductive organs, and where some people will not clearly fall in one category or another). This is presumably not being used by the same people studying evolutionary biology, where sex is an expression of gamete-based reproduction and - at least at a population level - binary. (Or at least, if it is, I imagine it will be within a specific context.)
Looking through some of the evidence linked by the article, this seems to be the case. For example, the article links statements from scientific groups claiming that sex is a continuum, but the statements are very clearly in response to decisions that would affect medical care for humans (where it would be incorrect to assume a strict distinction - if anything, medicine is the study of exceptions to the norm), and do not in principle disagree with that continuum being bimodal in respects to gamete-based reproduction.
Similarly, the author cites another article that they believe restricts discussion on reproduction to species that don't have binary sex. But my reading of the same article is (a) that it is exclusively focused on educating students (rather than wider scientific discussion), and (b) arguing for more examples rather than fewer to help students understand that reproduction can be much more complex than the traditional "sexual/asexual" model that they are often taught before university.
I am not in academia, so ultimately I can't tell the author that what they're experiencing isn't true. But as someone reading their article, I came away with the impression that the author would do well to read through some of the sources they cite with a more open mind, and attempt to understand why some people are concerned about biological gender in humans being restricted to a binary state.
Communication and honest debate about facts and details, such as the ones you bring up yourself, is impossible when the people you are attempting to communicate with don't care about the truth -- they only care about how the words you are using make them feel.
Which is the whole point of the article: when feelings take precedence over truth and knowledge, science is at threat.
That's a cop out though, a "dog ate my homework" type argument. "I don't need to make a solid argument because they'll just ignore it if I do."
The problem with this logic is that it can't be disagreed with. If I accept the premise, then you're off the hook for evidencing your claim - like you say, honest debate is now impossible. If I don't accept the premise, then I'm clearly wrong, and therefore part of the group who put feelings over truth and knowledge, and therefore reasoned discussion with me is pointless.
But in neither scenario can I get a reasoned debate. Ironically, you've built a situation where your feelings trump logical argument. You only need to say "I believe science to be at threat" (or perhaps just "science is at threat", because "I believe" is always implicit in these sorts of statements without argumentation), and any response I give to you, positive or negative, will only confirm your position.
To me, the central claim here is that it is now unacceptable to teach that sex is purely binary. But as far as I can tell, medically speaking, sex isn't binary (although heavily bimodal), and biologically speaking sex as a binary is a useful model as long as you recognise the caveats. So I don't think the author's central claim holds true. Which to me breaks apart most of the argument. The rest of the article seems to be examples of students doing things that other people disagree with, which is surely the greatest prerogative a student has, and has been happening for millennia. If science is at threat because students are uppity then I think we have different definitions of the word "threat" (as well as, potentially, the word "sex").
"No sane people" sounds like a "no true scotsman" argument. The fact that you felt the need to slip "sane" in there suggests that you suspect that some people's feelings are actually hurt. And if someone's feelings are hurt, you just dismissed them by calling them insane. This merely seems like a nastier way to express your disagreement, rather than a justification of it. There's a pretty big distinction between "people aren't offended" and "people ought not to be offended".
You mistake the author's central claim. The central claim is that certain things cannot be taught or even researched if they appear to hurt the feelings of students.
Sex being binary (and the author carefully distinguishes between sex and gender) based on the size of gametes was simply one example. Other examples are discussed in the article:
- the inability to use the terms male and female
- fear of mentioning historical figures that are white and male to students
- teaching the concepts of sexual conflict, kin selection, heritability
- research about sexual selection and cultural differences
- NIH is denying scientists access to data if their research appears to be "stigmatizing"
Your focus on one example as the central claim that invalidates the author's thesis seems like a giant evasion of the real issue.
> The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point.
> But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex.
It's the only definition that matters when it comes to the field of biology.
The people who insist that sex is a continuum of some sort are getting confused with sex and sex-linked traits. As an example of the latter, consider testosterone levels. If you sample a random population of humans and plot this, it shows a bimodal distribution.
Some will argue that this demonstrates sex is a continuum, but what it really shows is two discrete populations that have an average difference between them: males and females.
As an example: a man with lower testosterone than most other men is not less male, or more female. He's just a male with below-average testosterone levels. The value of this hormonal trait doesn't define or alter his sex.
But sex by that definition is a question of gametes, which cannot really apply to individuals within a species. Some people produce male or female gametes, but others develop the organs for both or for neither - they are truly intersex. That seems to be the point of, for example, the "gender unicorn" model that the author disagrees with: that, at the level of an organism, sex already is more complex than a simple binary state.
These various developmental anomalies of don't map to some sort of sex continuum though - they are all discrete conditions caused by specific disorders, and from a biomedical point of view are still analysed within the framework of male and female sex development.
There's certainly ongoing debate amongst medical professionals on how best to categorise intersex conditions. I don't think models like the 'gender unicorn' really help with this though, it's not sufficiently technical, and seems more geared towards people who don't wish to conform to cultural stereotypes of gender, but would like some way of describing it.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 199 ms ] threadThe word "tyranny" evokes images of mid 20th century fascist soldiers marching through streets, in shiny black leather boots. Tyranny is seen as instigated by the known set of motivations that were in play at that specific time and place: hate, racist bigotry, intolerance, a sense of superiority.
We then fail to identify tyranny, even when it's the same phenomenon at its core, because superficially it looks different. It looks the opposite: where the fascist tyranny was instigated by racism, this apparently new and different phenomena is motivated by an extremely strong reaction to racism.
We fail to acknowledge that sometimes the reaction can be just as bad, and lead to the same pathology, as the problem that initially provoked it.
We ended up in a very similar position of hatred, intolerance, and sense of superiority. We just fail to realize it, because the flag-bearers of this new form of tyranny are entirely convinced they are "the good guys", and are only correcting the faults of the "bad guys": the fascists and bigots of yore.
Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
When has that happened, though? It's more often the opposite. Hitler magnified racism as a tool to gather power. Racism against African-descended people grew out of the institution of slavery, not the other way around.
Come to think of it: the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
One of the most tragic facets of human psychology is that being abused a particular way makes you more likely to abuse others in that same way, not less likely.
And in the words of Aldous Huxley, "The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats."
Of course, C.S. Lewis also had a good line on the matter; "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
This is exactly where this current tyranny is coming from:
The radical leftists who promote it are thereby granted the license to abuse all who oppose them, since those "reactionaries" must be bigots, racist, sexist, transphobes, homophobes - in short: evil people who deserve the abuse of good people like themselves.
Dissidents who reject this new tyranny aren't respected fellow citizens who hold differing opinions: they are evil people who must be silenced. If this trend is allowed to proceed to its logical conclusion, the dissidents will be silenced permanently, by eradication.
> To be able to destroy with good conscience
Like those ignorant young students, barging into complex discussions they often fail to understand, to shut them down. To shut down thought, invention, investigation, and discussion. And to do all that primarily in the very academic institutions dedicated to promoting these projects.
> to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation'
A succinct description of cancel culture, the radical left's mob justice that has become normalized.
Are you saying that the radical right is cancelling people?
Or do you mean the idea of cancel culture is being used to suppress ideas?
I don’t understand how either could be true. I am nowhere near being a radical right person, at least I wouldn’t consider myself to be, but I am very concerned about the behavior described in the article as I have experienced the behavior first-hand. We are talking about the suppression of people and ideas.
[1] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-republicans-will-com...
[2] https://time.com/5849495/black-lives-matter-defund-police-de...
Additionally, those are just examples of people in the public sphere, there are tons of videos and other examples of online of students shouting down professors or guest speakers, calling them "fascists", demanding they be fired, literally cancelling speakers with opposing views. I mean there's just a lot of evidence online, very easy to Google. I can link it here if that's helpful, but I worry that the people who don't already know about this problem will probably just ignore the links since they were already willfully ignorant up to this point.
Of course there are examples of right extremes, nobody here is denying that, we’re talking about the extremes of the left and how they are having a chilling effect on scientific research.
For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
A few people complaining about you on Twitter now apparently constitutes being "cancelled", even if it comes with no actual consequences.
Yes, and let's go further in. Is it really "all who oppose them" they're after? Or is it just envy, "all who have something I want?"
They would rather destroy society than admit what they are doing doesn't work for them.
The author provides plenty of examples for this in the article, some of which are well-known, and none of which are factually disputed.
It seems the ones who ignore reality are those assuming and/or pretending "the center" is still firmly in control on these issues. That simply is not the case, which is really a key point in the article.
Which reminds me of this gem by Alexis De Tocqueville from "Democracy in America";
To me, this is the very essence of "convenience" and shrugging moral relativism that allows technology to act as am enabler of tyranny.I think it's interesting that you speak in such abstract terms about this. What has the American far left or center-left actually done that's as bad as, for example, the recent attempted insurrection or the stripping of rights from women and LGBT people perpetrated by the right?
> the fascists ideologues were probably certain of being "the good guys", themselves.
I've personally never heard of a political movement--left, right, or center--that considered itself the antagonist in its own narrative
This line of reasoning would just fall into the same error of justifying oppressive actions by the American left "because they are aimed at a group that is even worse".
I consider the examples cited in the article to be very alarming, for example:
> Soon after that, a few colleagues and I attempted to pass the Chicago Statement—what I viewed as a very basic set of principles about the necessity of free speech on campus. My shock continued as students broke into a faculty meeting about the Chicago Statement screaming “free speech harms” and demanding that white male professors “sit down” and “confess to their privilege.”
This scene chillingly echoes the birth of previous oppressive tyrannies, in Nazi Germany, and Communist Russia and China. Its overt oppression and silencing of opposing views, its deliberate disruption and eradication of civil open debate, its ideological principled and fervent objection to civil liberties such as free speech, the identity politics (and motifs of divisive class/race warfare), the implied violence, the struggle-session public pressure on the sinful individuals to confess their sins...
The fact that the radical American left aligns itself with two of these past tyrannical regimes serves to increase this alarm.
But the worst of all concerns is that these aren't some shrill fringe radicals who are being ignored as such; no, this faction has become dominant to the point of controlling the policies of our academic, social, and cultural institutions.
The article describes leading academic institutions, publications, and even government institutions like the National Science Foundation and the NIH which are bowing to the radical leftist mob and its demand. All these key institutions are increasingly captured and controlled by this radical ideology, putting these oppressive, tyrannical radicals effectively in control of an increasing number of our important societal, cultural, and academic institutions.
(In a way that the small number of right-wing radicals who tried to storm the capitol are very much not; in fact, their magnification as an excuse to further promote oppression, tyranny, and institutional radicalism also evokes alarming echoes of the past.)
Clearly the radical left doesn't allow itself with Russia and China as they are today; however they do express sympathy for the ideologies that underlie the Soviet Union and Maoist China.
Maybe I've seen much of it simply because I lived in SF for years, but you are bound to run into folks there who self-describe not only as "Marxists", but also as "Communists" and sometimes specifically "Maoists".
The push to override civil liberties, notably free speech as described in the article, in service of "more important goals", is certainly reminiscent of communist and Maoist agendas.
Edit: this is actually a "straw man", not a "red herring".
> Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and is a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She is the author of more than ten books on class, gender, race, and the U.S. prison system.
> After her acquittal, Davis went on an international speaking tour in 1972 and the tour included Cuba, where she had previously been received by Fidel Castro in 1969 as a member of a Communist Party delegation.[46] Robert F. Williams, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael had also visited Cuba, and Assata Shakur later moved there after escaping from a US prison. Her reception by Afro-Cubans at a mass rally was so enthusiastic that she was reportedly barely able to speak.[47] Davis perceived Cuba as a racism-free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the United States, her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of race struggles.[48] In 1974, she attended the Second Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women.[46]
> In 1971, the CIA estimated that five percent of Soviet propaganda efforts were directed towards the Angela Davis campaign.[49] In August 1972, Davis visited the USSR at the invitation of the Central Committee, and received an honorary doctorate from Moscow State University.[50]
> On May 1, 1979, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union.[51] She visited Moscow later that month to accept the prize, where she praised "the glorious name" of Lenin and the "great October Revolution".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis
The civil unrest of the summer of 2020 - 19 deaths, billions in damages. Accompanied by a heaping spoonful of apologetics from the media, academics and certain corporations.
I believe the overturning of Roe and the insurrection were terrible, for the record.
Why is it so rare for someone to stand up against this type of behavior?
As a serious answer, Douglas Hofstadter (of Gödel, Escher, Bach fame) wrote in 1982 about the problems of using "guys", which has a "default assumption" of maleness. This isn't a new issue, but something people have been discussing for 40 years.
See "Changes in Default Words and Images, Engendered by Rising Consciousness" in the book Metamagical Themas: https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n143/mode...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/07/guys-defen...
> In any case, to the great bulk of the population, guys already is gender-neutral and thus inclusive, thanks in part to women who embraced it. Maybe it’s time to set it free.
I disagree with that first assertion.
While "guys" is somewhat gender neutral, as in "you guys want anything?", it's not gender neutral with something like "two guys came here earlier" (not used to include "two women came here earlier") or "guys only want one thing" (not used to mean "all people only want one thing").
I am not on the side of turning technical terms like master/slave male/female blacklist/whitelist into ridiculous manufactured crimes, but that particular example doesn't actually work I think.
That is a pretty backhanded euphemism....
Anyways, I thought "service personnel" already covered that example, but yes "staff" might be more common. Anyways, the point was that these are common conventions and all are intended as gender neutral -- so insulting people for using a specific one seems very misguided.
The Hofstadter essay kens linked to, from 1985, goes into this exact point, though he uses "waitron" instead of "waitrx".
> it is not really different from other plurals in this regard
Some yes, some no. Few now say "authoress" or "manageress", as a counter-example. And I don't think anyone ever used "bank telleress" instead of "bank teller."
That said, it seems you agree with me that "guys" is not a wholly gender-neutral term, yes?
The WaPo article author's argument seems to be that since "you guys" is used as a gender-neutral second person plural [1], "guys" is no longer a gendered word.
While I disagree. And gave counter-examples.
The Hofstadter essay kens linked to, more specifically at https://archive.org/details/MetamagicalThemas/page/n153/mode... , makes exactly the same point, again this is from 1985:
> One of my pet peeves is the currently popular usage of the word "guys". You often hear a group of people described as "guys", even when that group includes women. In fact, it is quite common to hear women addressing a group of other women as "you guys". This strikes me as very strange. However, when I have asked some people about it, they have adamantly maintained that, when in the plural, the word "guy" has completely lost all traces of masculinity. I was arguing with one woman about this, and she kept on saying, "It may have retained some male flavor for you, but it has none in most people's usage." I wasn't convinced, but nothing I could think of to say would budge her from her position. However, fortune proved to be on my side, because, in a last-ditch attempt to convince me, she said, "Why, I've even heard guys use it to refer to a bunch of women!" Only after saying it did she realize that she had just unwittingly undermined her own claim.
[1] the article is dreadfully lacking in examples, but I think 'Hey guys' as an attention grabber fits into the same category as second person plural.
> Authoress
English is a bit weird in that it only does this for certain occupations, e.g. actor or waiter but not for example writers (at least to my knowledge). So if I read "a large group of writers" I would presume that is meant as gender neutral and would be completely fine with it. Again the point being that writxs or similar might be another convention, but that does not make people using "writers" "unthoughtful" or whatever other insult the above poster wants to use.
However, kgwgk's comment appears to be that "guys" now is gender neutral.
And it demonstrably has widespread non-gender-neutral uses.
Since you want to use the descriptive approach, if enough people think that "guys" is a microaggression, then doesn't that make it so?
No, not quite.
> it demonstrably has
Again, no. The claim was that for large groups it is used as gender neutral, for small groups it is not necessarily neutral. No contradiction and very common for other words as in the examples above.
> If enough people think that
No, wrong side. The people saying words give them meaning, not the people misunderstanding them.
To be fully correct, the author says "second person plural", which includes small groups.
> The claim was that for large groups it is used as gender neutral
As the Hofstadter essay points out, the claim was also that "man" for large groups was gender neutral. Except of course it often wasn't - and Hofstadter gives counter-examples.
But the overall point is the "microagression" concerning "guy" has been around for decades. It's not a new thing. It's certainly not part of an existential threat to doing good science.
> The people saying words give them meaning, not the people misunderstanding them.
That's ... okay, so you're saying the people who hear the implied/default maleness in "guy" never actually say the word "guy" in their own conversations? Even to refer only to males?
Because that's the only way I can make sense of what you wrote.
I find it hard to believe that the only speakers of the word "guy" for groups do so only in gender-neutral terms.
No that is not what I am saying and by now I do not believe anymore that you are trying to argue in good faith.
What someone wrote forty years ago is not gospel. Neither is that article, of course. But at least is current.
An aspirational future is not the same thing as the present, and we see "guys", in the plurals sense, definitely being used as male-only.
Another example: "GirlsAskGuys is your social community where girls and guys share their opinions & life experiences, to help better understand each other on topics ranging from dating to fashion." - https://www.girlsaskguys.com/content/about-us.html
The context was 'Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression?', the linked-to essay refers to people making that claim now, so I assume there are people who don't like being referred to as "guy".
> What someone wrote forty years ago is not gospel
Sure. What it does do is date the "Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression" as starting at least 40 years ago.
We see guys being used as male-only. We also see guys being used for mixed-gender or female-only groups.
We see them being applied to groups and we also see them being applied to individuals.
We see a lot of things in the present - and 40 years ago, for that matter.
> What it does do is date the "Since when is the use of the word “guys” a micro aggression" as starting at least 40 years ago.
Ageeed, it illustrates that it was used 40 years ago and that there were proponents and detractors of that use. The use may be more extended today - I don’t know. (What definitely has changed is the ubiquity of “microagressions”.)
Another random testimony from the intertubes:
“When I was a teen back in the 1960's (yeah, I'm old!) the "Hey, Guys!" or "Hi, folks!" was a common way to greet a group regardless of gender. For most of us, at least. It was how females greeted their female friends. Almost invariably, if the group was mixed, someone, almost always male, would try to "correct" our gender-neutral greeting. It was irritating.”
(Isn’t it funny that using “guys” in a gender-neutral way is a microagression and telling people not to use “guys” in a gender-neutral way is also a micro-agression?)
Sure. The term is "microaggression" is relatively newly popular. I'm probably also wrong in grouping Hofstadter's "pet peeve" as an example of "microaggression", rather than using a more encompassing term.
But bear in mind that it's being used in this linked-to essay to provoke a knee-jerk response to the term "microaggression", enhanced by using one of the mildest examples - "guy" - as the representative case.
It's so mild it's very hard for me to find any examples of people arguing that “guys” is a microaggression, in order see what those DEI instructors teach. One of the few (after looking at scores of Google and DDG hits) is https://www.clearpnt.com/3-key-trends-in-dei-training/ which says:
> When using scenarios, give examples that avoid words with negative connotations for specific groups, like “blind tests,” “powwow,” “and “guys.”
Thing is, "guys" when used poorly can have negative connotations. "Let the guys select what to do next" is likely read as gendered.
I'm accepting the author is correct in saying DEI instructors are making that argument.
But that acceptance also requires me to accept that the DEI trainers know what they are doing, until presented with evidence to the contrary.
For example, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-022-05203-0 gives these examples of microaggression: "highlighting gender by singling women out in a group of men (i.e., “Hey guys, and one gal”) or treating the women differently because of their gender (i.e., having an open office door policy for the women but not for the men)".
Those would surely be better examples in a DEI training course, yes?
> (Isn’t it funny that using “guys” in a gender-neutral way is a microagression and telling people not to use “guys” in a gender-neutral way is also a micro-agression?)
As an aside, this exchange has taught me that "aggression" has two g:s. And I still make that typo.
I don't think your description of 'is also a micro-aggression' fits the definition of 'microaggression.'
I just read the first 20 or so pages of Sue's "Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation" (2010) book at https://archive.org/details/microaggressions0000sued/page/24... and it characterizes microaggressions as "brief, everyday exchanges that send denigrating messages to certain individuals because of their group membership".
Using “guys” in a gender-neutral way doesn't define a group membership.
Consider your own example “highlighting gender by singling women out in a group of men (i.e., “Hey guys, and one gal”)”
Don’t you think that some people would see there a “invisibilization” micro-aggression if “Hey guys” had been used instead?
Also, Harvard and Tulane educated, residency at Mount Sinai, faculty at Penn State, Pennsylvania's physician general, then Secretary of Health for Pennsylvania (unanimously confirmed by the Senate) before Biden's nomination.
Why do you think that background wasn't an important part of her nomination, and only her trans status?
> has tried to force states to allow or even provide medical/surgical transition to minors, in some cases without parental consent, etc
I ... do not believe the assistant secretary for health has the power to force states to do something.
By "medical transition" you mean hormone therapy, right? Hormone therapy is associated with a lower rate of depression and suicidality in minors, and transgender youth have a high rate of suicide than non-LGBT youth. https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(21)00568-1/full...
Which is, as I understand, why hormone therapy is part of the standard for gender-affirming care for minors, as set by (for example) WPATH and the Endocrine Society, and supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and from the American Psychological Association. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/04/29/1095227...
This shouldn't be so easily coupled with a "/" to surgical transition, which as her department's fact sheet points out at https://opa.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/2022-03/gender-affir... is "Typically used in adulthood or case-by-case in adolescence".
Gender affirming care also includes Social Affirmation and Puberty Blockers.
> From what I can tell the evidence for who and when and how to treat is still unclear and ideologues are trying quite hard to suppress any debate
From what I can tell, those standards of care come from evidence-based research and been around for a while - long before the current political decision to make a brouhaha of the topic.
Here's the WPATH Standards of Care for the Health of Transsexual, Transgender, and Gender Nonconforming People - https://wpath.org/publications/soc
It's the "7th version of the Standards of Care since the original 1979 document." It's about 10 years old. The NPR link says a SOC should be coming out this year.
> Why do you think that background wasn't an important part of her nomination, and only her trans status?
Because Biden has unabashedly doubled down on intersectional identity politics. For example for the supreme court justice and his VP pick he explicitly said he would pick black females.
Which is relevant to this discussion because .. why? Just because there isn't an accepted evidence-based standard of care for X doesn't mean there can't be an accepted evidence-based standard of care for Y.
(I don't know what "settled medicine" means here, given that standards of care can and do change.)
> giving postmenopausal women estrogen has many issues as well
Yes, that standard of care has changed based on evidence.
> puberty blockers
Which are reversible. As my linked-to fact sheet points out.
> they haven’t been studied long enough for my taste
I think I'm warranted in trusting the opinion of the 7 or so medical organizations I listed far over your opinion.
How long will be enough to make you happy? There's been, what, 100 years of studies on the topic? And I pointed out the relevant WPATH Standards of Care started in 1977.
How long is enough?
> there will be significant numbers of people that regret their decision
How many is "significant"?
Do significant numbers of people regret their tattoos? Their plastic surgery? Their chemotherapy? Their lottery pick? Does that justify stopping all of those activities?
And, as I pointed out, by NOT getting the standard of care, the amount of depression and suicide ideation increases. How many regret NOT being able to get the medically recognized appropriate standard of care because politicians prevented it due to transphobia?
> Because Biden has unabashedly doubled down on intersectional identity politics
Every single one of those people had a background which, had they been white straight men, would have been generally acceptable for their position.
That's a far cry from a claim that they must be incompetent and were picked only for theig "intersectional identity politics".
This surprise lots of people, but rates of regret for patients getting chemotherapy or other cancer treatment are quite high. They're much higher than rates of regret among people getting gender affirming care.
There's quite a lot to unpick here.
1) Rates of regret for transition are lower than most other medical treatment. You're applying a lot of scrutiny to regret, which is fine, but you're only applying that scrutiny to trans care. You're not applying the same scrutiny to eg cancer treatment.
2) Why is regret such a horrific prospect to you? You see someone going through gender affirming care, and then regretting it, and then being forced to live with the result, and this is horrific to you. I don't understand why you don't apply the same standard to the people who are denied access to gender affirming care - the people who are forced to live with the results of not getting the care they need. Why is one situation so terrible and the other is good?
3) In general we allow capacitous people to make choices about healthcare. We tell them what's involved, we tell them about the risks, and then we let them make the decision. We allow people to make unwise decisions, even if those decisions will cause their death. If a person has a necrotic gangrenous leg their doctors will say "we need to amputate this or you will die" but that person is allowed to say "I'd rather die than have you amputate my leg". Why are people okay with bodily autonomy unless it's a trans person getting trans healthcare?
There's also quite a few points you've made that are based on out of date, or misinterpreted, information. Stuff like bone density has been debunked - trans people have reduced bone density before they start gender affirming medical treatment. At the moment people think that the bone density problems are caused by lack of access to sport and exercise.
I am curious how you are defining woke here.
It seems obvious to me that these ideas incubate in professional settings precisely because those are settings where they can’t easily be criticized for fear of losing a job or getting cancelled, etc.
> A coworker and I were de-duping records in a database. One of us said while pairing on the script "well, every slave needs a master."
> An african american woman in the office turned to us and said "maybe it's the master who needs the slave?"
> She wasn't really offend or anything and she said it with a sincere smile. She was just calling out our idiotic computer lingo for what it was.
So, neither excluded nor offended. But it was still in bad taste.
Stop treating these people with kid gloves and tell the DEI apparatchiks to piss off.
Why then is OP scared of some kids. It’s as if he’s perceiving this generation of his students as an invasive species, upsetting an ecosystem of which he is the apex. He gives no voice to his interloper’s concerns or goals; simply that it is too much. This is classic form of a well-trodden, meaningless screed.
He feels somehow powerless in the face of ignorance of his students. Find a new career, or teach them. Learn from them. Offer some dignity to their humanity even when they don’t reciprocate. Model maturity.
I think that there are vast vestiges of academia which still don’t understand how completely their relationship with knowledge has changed in the past 30 years. Universities historically have “owned” knowledge and its artifacts. Now knowledge is universally accessible and rapidly growing. We need to train people to Integrate, Validate, and Develop knowledge. That takes personal, challenging work from all.
As a biologist it’s easy to fixated on the mechanics and metrics of reproduction. We’re seeing a decline in population growth and interest in reproduction in humans despite an overabundance of food. Young adults are facing economic turmoil, religious trauma, a doomed planet, and a bunch of regressive twats violently clinging to power. They perceive it as so futile that fertility is not viable. The way an organism perceives its environs dictates its behavior, not only the environment itself.
Baby Boomers dictated the environment of the generation you proclaim to fear. You are complicit in what formed their grievances, passively or actively. You can participate in their resolution, and help these powerful young people to mature into the tolerant, curious individuals they are capable of becoming.
This piece is not instructive. It’s as petulant as a toddler that has to share. It’s the same tenor as a small business owner trying to invoke pity and obtain material support from a governing body. It’s frankly pathetic. A bunch of teens aren’t going to destroy biology. Acknowledge your own ignorance of the lives of your patrons, their novel circumstances, and do what can be done to remedy it. Or retire.
I could be writing YAML right now, but I’m writing this with the hope that someone voluntarily does what the author of this piece missed to understand that you are the solution, not the victim. Every adult needs to learn this, every mentor needs to teach it. We face challenges of unprecedented scale which test the limits of our evolutionary progress, especially around our ability to collaborate in increasingly vast numbers. We face the practical limits of human empathy, where global 24/7 news brings a deluge of tragedies to mourn and mend. We are seemingly incapable of stopping ourselves from destroying our own environment.
The weight of it all has given rise to extremes. If those extremes threaten the things you hold dear, please do what you can to reduce the standard deviation. That means welcoming unpleasant extremists into your spaces and lives, and engaging with their beliefs. It involves seeing them as whole people, valuable and vulnerable. I feel so very strongly that it is the responsibility of our leaders and literati to model and advance the cause of cooperation. If for nothing else than our own survival.
The vast majority of researchers are NOT professors even!
I don't know what to tell you. I am a researcher (previously at Yale, now at MIT), and I very rarely hear other researchers complain about cancel culture. Largely, I hear horror stories of abuses of power with no repercussions or accountability. It's only, again, a small cadre of professors complaining about this.
OP is describing how major institutions, including research universities and other research organizations, publications, and even government institutions such as the National Science Foundation and NIH are now supporting this ideology.
Let's be clear here: OP's material complaint is that NIH gated access to some genetics datasets. That's the 'crisis', yet he manages to bundle in all of these groups he dislikes into a narrative.
>federal agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, now offer a surplus of grants with the purpose of “broadening the participation of members of groups that are . . . currently underrepresented”—instead of funding research to answer scientific questions.
Allow me to translate: "Give money to minorities" OR "Do Real Science". So minorities can't so real science???
(implicitly, "minorities aren't doing real science" - "real science came from people like me, so keep giving data access and money to my team, then you'll see I deserve the ability to say and do anything I want because I'm quantifiably superior and they are a waste of resources.")
> As an example: The NIH now puts barriers to access to the important database of “Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP).” The database is an amazing tool that combines genomes (the unique genetic makeup of each individual) and phenotypes (the observable characteristics of each individual) of millions of people. These phenotypes include education, occupation, health and income and, because the dataset connects genetics with phenotype at an individual level, it is essential for scientists who want to understand genes and genetic pathways that are behind those phenotypes. The NIH now denies scientists access to this data and other related datasets. Researchers report getting permits denied on the grounds that studying their genetic basis is “stigmatizing.” According to one researcher, this happens even if the research has nothing to do with race or sex, but focuses on genetics and education.
I cannot explain this one better than Harvard can:
>By the early to mid-20th century, polygenism and biology-based racism were widely disproven, and racism in social science had gained popularity. Studies showing high rates of imprisonment among Black Americans were used as proof of innate criminality, while pseudoscientific intelligence testing claimed the mental superiority of white people. These flawed, biased studies failed to account for political and social factors such as poor housing, poverty, lack of healthcare, and virulent racial oppression. But they provided the so-called evidence needed to fuel systemic forms of anti-Black racism, like segregation. And, for many Americans looking for objective reasons to justify racist beliefs and behaviors, studies like these were more than enough. source: https://library.harvard.edu/confronting-anti-black-racism/sc...
>The censors and gatekeepers simply assume—without evidence—that human population research is malign and must be shut down. The costs of this kind of censorship, both self-imposed and ideologically based, are profound. Student learning is impaired and important research is never done.
"Important R...
Unfortunately, as it stands, your response is simply arguing that articles bringing attention to a particular issue are not worthy because they don't bring up a solution, and dismisses the concerns as "petulant", which does convey your frustration but not what the article misses out on in its quality of arguments.
The only thing I can add is that when you try and dig a bit at how they see this group of people, it’s always a “mob” and not an aggrieved group of future scholars who might have legitimate complains. They’re always, always infantilized.
From reviewing their other articles this site is clearly a republican news source. It's likely this story is significantly altered from the truth.
For the record, I am not a Republican and I am not a Democrat.
By the way, there's no shortage of anti-woke leftists. Just one example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqV3ARvuymY
While the purportedly left-wing activists sit there arguing if math is racist, and so on, exploitation of working people continues as it always has, largely ignored.
The author seems to be talking about sex in terms of gametes - i.e. sperm and eggs. They make the claim that there is an absolute sex difference between male and female sexes in terms of this gamete structure. I am happy to take them on their word on this point.
But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex. Individuals in a gonochoric species have a sex that in most cases corresponds to the gametes that they can produce, but this is not absolute. In humans, we know that intersex and possibly even hermaphroditic individuals can exist: these people certainly do not conform to a perfectly binary sex distinction. So clearly there is a definition of sex - and a widely used one at that - where the author is incorrect, and human sexes are more complicated than a perfect binary split.
This obviously doesn't invalidate the rest of the article, but it does suggest that some of the issue may lie in communication rather than oppression. For example, the author links to the "gender unicorn" model, but this fairly plainly discusses sex as a medical phenomenon (where it is typically assigned at birth, corresponds to reproductive organs, and where some people will not clearly fall in one category or another). This is presumably not being used by the same people studying evolutionary biology, where sex is an expression of gamete-based reproduction and - at least at a population level - binary. (Or at least, if it is, I imagine it will be within a specific context.)
Looking through some of the evidence linked by the article, this seems to be the case. For example, the article links statements from scientific groups claiming that sex is a continuum, but the statements are very clearly in response to decisions that would affect medical care for humans (where it would be incorrect to assume a strict distinction - if anything, medicine is the study of exceptions to the norm), and do not in principle disagree with that continuum being bimodal in respects to gamete-based reproduction.
Similarly, the author cites another article that they believe restricts discussion on reproduction to species that don't have binary sex. But my reading of the same article is (a) that it is exclusively focused on educating students (rather than wider scientific discussion), and (b) arguing for more examples rather than fewer to help students understand that reproduction can be much more complex than the traditional "sexual/asexual" model that they are often taught before university.
I am not in academia, so ultimately I can't tell the author that what they're experiencing isn't true. But as someone reading their article, I came away with the impression that the author would do well to read through some of the sources they cite with a more open mind, and attempt to understand why some people are concerned about biological gender in humans being restricted to a binary state.
Which is the whole point of the article: when feelings take precedence over truth and knowledge, science is at threat.
The problem with this logic is that it can't be disagreed with. If I accept the premise, then you're off the hook for evidencing your claim - like you say, honest debate is now impossible. If I don't accept the premise, then I'm clearly wrong, and therefore part of the group who put feelings over truth and knowledge, and therefore reasoned discussion with me is pointless.
But in neither scenario can I get a reasoned debate. Ironically, you've built a situation where your feelings trump logical argument. You only need to say "I believe science to be at threat" (or perhaps just "science is at threat", because "I believe" is always implicit in these sorts of statements without argumentation), and any response I give to you, positive or negative, will only confirm your position.
To me, the central claim here is that it is now unacceptable to teach that sex is purely binary. But as far as I can tell, medically speaking, sex isn't binary (although heavily bimodal), and biologically speaking sex as a binary is a useful model as long as you recognise the caveats. So I don't think the author's central claim holds true. Which to me breaks apart most of the argument. The rest of the article seems to be examples of students doing things that other people disagree with, which is surely the greatest prerogative a student has, and has been happening for millennia. If science is at threat because students are uppity then I think we have different definitions of the word "threat" (as well as, potentially, the word "sex").
Seems like a threat.
Sex being binary (and the author carefully distinguishes between sex and gender) based on the size of gametes was simply one example. Other examples are discussed in the article:
Your focus on one example as the central claim that invalidates the author's thesis seems like a giant evasion of the real issue.> But this is obviously not the only definition we have for sex.
It's the only definition that matters when it comes to the field of biology.
The people who insist that sex is a continuum of some sort are getting confused with sex and sex-linked traits. As an example of the latter, consider testosterone levels. If you sample a random population of humans and plot this, it shows a bimodal distribution.
Some will argue that this demonstrates sex is a continuum, but what it really shows is two discrete populations that have an average difference between them: males and females.
As an example: a man with lower testosterone than most other men is not less male, or more female. He's just a male with below-average testosterone levels. The value of this hormonal trait doesn't define or alter his sex.
There's certainly ongoing debate amongst medical professionals on how best to categorise intersex conditions. I don't think models like the 'gender unicorn' really help with this though, it's not sufficiently technical, and seems more geared towards people who don't wish to conform to cultural stereotypes of gender, but would like some way of describing it.