This is not just a feature of American universities. I mistakenly started a Gender Studies MA with Birkbeck in 2005, thinking I would be able to study "women's history". But was soon confronted with this ideology; told that gender was a spectrum, etc, and that there was no real difference between men and women, and any differences were a social construct etc etc. When I challenged my lecturer (a renowned, much published feminist!) about the effect hormones had on us etc, she said...and I quote "hormones are a cultural construct."
I remember one delightful lecture, for which a young man was giving a presentation: he put a pair of pink high healed shoes on the table and said that these shoes would make him a woman. He received much adulation.
On another occasion, a young woman who had taken the course because she was working with NGOs in third world countries, said she felt that working as a woman meant she was able to relate very quickly with women from different cultures, sharing interests in jewellery, cooking, etc and much more. She was met with icy silence. I'm pretty sure she was careful from then on to tow the line, since she needed her MA for her work.
When I handed in my rather rebellious essay, I got a very low mark, with the comment that it was, as my tutor expected, "intelligently written" but that I must understand it was "contentious".
When I transferred to History, she commented that she thought it would suit me better to be studying something based on empirical research. (An admission that "gender studies" is not based on fact, if ever I heard one!)
Interestingly, (as a last attempt to rescue my Gender Studies MA, since my transfer meant the loss of a term's work) I asked if my final dissertation might take as its subject: The history of the use of the word "gender". This was point blank refused, and not without some aggression from my tutors. Little did I now how incendiary such a dissertation might be.
It's not cowardice if you have serious reasons. Not many can afford to be JK Rowling! Can't you do it anonymously anyway tho? Maybe there's a series that needs writing by the Silenced Ones for just those 'serious reasons'.
Helen Pluckrose heads up Counterweight dot com - with a mission to help ppl who are silenced by unproven 'critical theory'. There are several anonymised case studies and resources to help. Also the Free Speech Union?
Please use a nice name with credentials, but write that dissertation, and if you find that you have been misjudged, ask for independent assessors (probably from Middle Africa) or from France (the Catholic Church keeps manning the barricades!)
Many thanks for sharing that. Studying at Oxford University in the early 80s I was in on the ground floor with this stuff. Not on my own course -- I am eternally grateful that I was able to study Philosophy of the Social Sciences with liberal philosopher Dr Alan Ryan. But an English PhD friend was writing a dissertation in the style of Derrida. Young men I admired were reading Foucault as an act of rebellion.
I instinctively understood that these dense thickets of verbiage could not act in the interests of women but it's taken me an adult lifetime of bewilderment until at last I understand exactly where the bodies are buried. Thank you, TRAs. You've got me off my backside and doing philosophy again.
Indeed...the whole premise that no truth is ultimately stable, and that our perception of reality is always controlled by those who wield power, is interesting, but taken to extremes is mad. I'm a translator by profession, and the amount of twaddle that had made it into Translation Theory is bonkers; and certainly does not help anyone translate a work of literature better.
I'd love to expound on this subject...but I racing to meet a deadline. All I will say is the focus is not the love of language, or the intricacies of how it works, or how a translator might reflect the differences in style...the emphasis is on post modern theory etc and political philosophy. How I may ask can you de-colonise translation? How important is it to understand concepts of appropriation? Or indeed to explore "gender" (not men women as translators) in relation to translation. Sensitivity to cultures and cultural differences, and above all, to language and rhetoric are at the heart of the work of a translator.
*And yes...this is called "Translation Theory" so we might think this is all well and good...but the fact is that students come out thinking they have are qualified to translate. And the question my experience left me with is, what does this discipline offer? Surely any of these issues could and should be discussed in a history or literature department?
"Young men I admired were reading Foucault as an act of rebellion."
Takes quite a bit of "seasoning" to know what type of "rebelling" is worthwhile and what isn't ... 😉
Somewhat apropos of which, a classic Mark Twain story:
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
The Grievance Studies was one of the most important recent happenings in terms of exposing how extreme and unhealthy ideas had been hidden in plain sight and incubated in Academic.
Some of us are old enought to remember the bewildered debates that happened in the late 1990's and early 2000's between Woman's Studies academics and the newly minted Gender Studies. That proximity to Woman's Studies made it extremely difficult to criticise it openly without being called a mysogonist. I hope we now see those who raised a voice in a new and more generous light.
Yes, I am one of those feminist academics who tried unsuccesfully to stop the waterfall of Gender Studies, it was already in action in 1985 in academia, and many feminists thought it was all OK! We were too stupid to think that 'Gender and Power' had something to do with Feminism!
I love Helen Pluckrose et al. All power to them exposing the hypocrisy and fake academic studies. Everyone should read Cynical Theories that she wrote with James Lindsay. They're the best brave people.
In Glasgow, we are lucky enough to have the first transgender Councillor who hasn't been off the tv/radio since the election. Everyone tells him he is so brave and courageous to have stood as a woman! It is both sad and nausea-inducing that this man has taken a woman's place and got away with it. But that us oor Nicola fur you!!
Yeah ,I 'm Scots as well ( Lanarkshire ) and I can't understand why WOMEN in this country vote SNP. I talk about this subject frequently but ,apart from family ,I don't have as many social contacts as I used to and unfortunately ,some people only vote for them because of indyref 2. Infuriates me !!
I have voted SNP in the past. Simply because every other party's manifesto was based on what was happening in the UK not Scotland. But no more. Anas Sarwar seems to gave his head screwed on and is willing to stand agin Sir Stammerer when needs be. I sometimes wish there was a no 64 bus with Nicola's name on it, then have to remind myself I am a pacifist!!
Good for her.♥️👏👍 The majority of women and many men in the UK will agree with her. More people need to speak up. Who could ever have dreamt that standing up for women's rights and the safeguarding of children would get threats and hatred thrown at you ?? It's totally evil and we need to stand up against it in any way we can .Hope she sticks to her guns 🙏🙏🙏
Yes she's of course right - this unproven gender cult ideology is trying to convert everyone and trample on rationality, medical ethics, hard earned rights and safeguarding procedures. Thx for sharing this. Labour party need to wake up to reality and facts - not base their ethics and policies on a deluded cult - postmod Marxist or otherwise. We need a proper opposition to the present government ffs!
Thanks for sharing this, I hadn’t heard of it before other than extremely tangentially. It goes to illustrate the web of lies most liberal, left wing academia is built upon. It’s the psueds columns of private eye writ large, with a whole cottage industry needing it to survive.
The fact this structure underpins much of trans thought is no surprise, the very concept of a man being a woman seems built on the same soft sand.
I can guarantee that the exact same stunt could be successfully played out today, they learn nothing.
I watched this awhile ago - good one Glinner! Like @Cary Bee - I would also recommend Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay's book Cynical Theories plus James Lindsay's New Discourses youtube vids. These explain gender and other post mod woke marxist nonsenses that seek to break down liberal rational society [for a utopia that they haven't quite worked out yet but don't worry the ends justify the means apparently].
Not dry at all That was fascinating. Scary, but fascinating. I can well imagine knitting forums being torn apart. The woke need to make everything all about them.
I had no idea there was a schism in christianity over this woo. It makes it a quandary because I like the idea of religions collapsing 😁
The Q&A answer about basing a study on guidelines for feminism on a chapter of Mein Kampf was shocking, yet you could believe it would appeal to the woke.
Glad I watched to the end. The claims of 'fatphobia' against cancer charities for stating that the risk of some cancers increases in obese people is ridiculous. People need to know the dangers. I'm overweight and the woke don’t speak for me.
Hadn't heard of Helen Pluckrose before so I googled and found "Pluckrose founded the "anti-woke" organization Counterweight as a reaction to the growth of implicit bias training and other forms of what Pluckrose calls "critical social justice ideology" in the workplace." Here it is....
I see nothing "far left" about this. Institutions of so-called higher learning have been carefully weeded for decades now to make sure genuine thinkers -- especially anyone questioning "American" values -- are not hired for permanent positions, not given tenure, etc. Those who rule us were made very nervous by teachers and students during the 1960s, and it was decided somewhere, somehow, that anyone not towing the line, should be left as adjuncts -- who don't even make minimum wage -- or not permitted to teach at all. An example is the economist Michael Hudson's statement that you cannot teach economics at any of the "elite" schools if you do not follow Wall Street ideology.
And if you think that the ruling class in America, the promulgators of this incipient fascism, are "far left," I am completely bewildered as to what world you live in.
James Lindsay explores the roots of woke ideas in Marxism. Yet they've been taken up by corporations. I agree it needs explaining. Maybe a 'parasite' model would work? Some universal systemic weakness allows elite institutions to become unwitting hosts?
Having read Volume I of Capital, I see absolutely no relation of Marxism to wokeness. Marx writes about economics, class oppression and exploitation, and I would bet anything that Lindsay quotes quackademics who call themselves Marxists, not Marx. The first thing the wokerati would have to do if they're Marxists is give up their unearned income -- hahahaha!
I hate to tell these academics this, but science told us for millennia that women were not human. They have also catalogued the physical and mental inferiority of non-European peoples, and I cannot begin to cover the utter lack of knowledge of the natural world, which technology masquerading as science has found exploitable and expendable. It is heartening to see genuine scientists now recognizing that the worldview of centuries is highly flawed, but I will not bow down to "science and reason" -- easily manipulated -- when it serves the power structure.
The problem is largely, as Sagan argued, that most of us are scientifically illiterate and therefore easy marks for scientific charlatans and grifters. Of which there are far too many these days.
But somewhat apropos of which, an article/tweet-thread summarized at GC News - worth a follow - by Harvard biologist Carole Hooven:
"Carole Hooven On Fuentes’ Claim That 'Science Rejects the Sex Binary' ..."
Article claiming "science rejects the sex binary" was written by a Princeton anthropologist who should get his head out of his arse as the "sex binary" definition is fundamental to pretty much all of biology: no sexual reproduction, no - or very little - evolution. And no evolutionary biologists.
But that "sex is a spectrum" claptrap is rather too ubiquitous as both the ACLU and Stonewall are getting in on that act, although the latter is probably not surprising as they disappeared up their own arses a long time ago:
"34 Proposed Intervenors deny the allegation that 'it is precisely a combination of anatomy, genitalia, and physical characteristics that differentiate men from women[.]' Proposed Intervenors also deny the allegation that 'human beings' are 'sexually dimorphic, divided into males and females each with reproductive systems, hormones, and chromosomes that result in significant differences between men[] and women[.]' ....":
"My jaw hit the floor during the Stonewall discrimination trial this week when the LGBT charity’s ‘head of trans inclusion’ Kirrin Medcalf took the stand and declared: ‘Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies.’ ..."
Bunch of unscientific and anti-scientific cretins. They don't have a fucking clue that the biological definitions for the sexes are stipulative ones; they assert that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types; those with neither are thereby sexless:
De nada; share the wealth, praise the lord and pass the ammunition ... 😉
But a couple of other ones about Hooven that you might also be interested in:
"Harvard lecturer Carole Hooven took heat from her own colleague after an appearance on Fox News this week in which she asserted that biological sex is real and defended the continued use of terms like ‘pregnant women’ and 'male and female.' ...."
And, since you seem to be interested in and knowledgeable about Marxism ... 🙂, you might also enjoy this rather brilliant takedown, at the Weekly Worker by Amanda MacLean, on sex and gender titled, rather aptly, "Decoupled from Reality":
"Genderist ideology is based on flawed science and worse logic, argues Amanda MacLean"
Amen to that lady, amen to that. But a particularly cogent observation of hers:
"Reductionist disciplines that look at different parts of organisms - such as genes, tissues, physiology or neurobiology - use the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ as shorthand for ‘of males/females’ or ‘typical of males/females’. ...."
There's no such thing as, for example, a "female brain". There are brains OF females or that are TYPICAL OF females - even if only marginally so in the case of some transwomen. But the latter case hardly justifies the bogus and quite risible if not totally demented claim that such transwomen are thereby actually adult human females, AKA "women".
🙂 'Tis enough to make a person cry. Or be at a loss as to whether one should laugh or cry.
But somewhat apropos of that, a recent Substack post, a reprint of a WSJ article, by "biologist" Colin Wright on a tweet of his that had been retweeted by Elon Musk:
Increasing polarization all over the place, mostly on ideological dogma of various types that is helping no one. As I've just mentioned in a recent comment here, you might also like this article on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender" - a great deal of it in feminism itself:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
But, in the interests of killing the proverbial two birds with one stone/comment, and relative to your earlier comment about that ideological bias among ostensibly totally-objective scientists ..., you might find some amusement in these articles 😉 :
"The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical MaleFemale Roles:
As an anthropologist, I am intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world."
The problem is that many scientists were not interested in fact and truth, but rather on reinforcing their preconceived notions and prejudices. As many social psychologists have pointed out, it is impossible to be totally objective -- though one can and should try -- because we carry such a load of societal shit around in our brains. And the more one is plugged into the system, the harder it is to transcend that system and seek objectivity. This is why so many "academics" fail in their supposed quest for truth.
Ok so what's your alternative? You read Cordelia Fine? - she shows by modern science and reason how evidence may be skewed. The natural world can be red in tooth and claw.
Cordelia Fine doesn't seem all that credible. An article at "Why Evolution is True":
"If I was the late Andy Rooney, I’d say 'You know what really bothers me? When science shows some facts about nature, and then someone rejects those facts because they’re inconvenient or uncomfortable for their ideology.' .....
But the opposition to research on group and sex differences continues. One of its big exponents is the author Cordelia Fine, who has written two books with the explicit aim of showing that there are no reliably accepted evolved and biological differences in behavior between men and women."
"Hooven makes a compelling case that testosterone is a powerful influence on our bodies and brains. As Testosterone argues, it's hard to make a start on [...] social improvements if we don't fully understand why things are the way they are. ...." The Times
My comment was responding to Jill's comment - was yours, @Steerman? Sry I'm confused. I thought Cordelia Fine was interesting in explaining how science often takes the averaged male ie not female body as standard eg when designing seatbelts.
The whole issue of what is given money for research/treatment and on what assumptions and to whose benefit - obviously this all skewers what we find and, not least, what is done with that imperfect knowledge and sometimes difficult ethical choices. But still, facts are facts. Hooven's book looks interesting.
Our hormones obvs have a powerful influence and are interrelated with other hormones and our situation/feelings/values/behaviour whether man or woman - so difficult to isolate in practice, eg of you're threatened; or injected with adrenaline for medical reasons; or go on a run - all these will result in the associated responses of adrenaline but will be interpreted and therefore responded to differently.
I'm sure there are now endocrinologists as well as gynaecologists and psychologists who use their knowledge/technologies to help detrans women from harmful affects of taking 'T'. Very sad that this needs to their focus but very welcome to those individuals.
No, I was responding to your comment. Which seems like it was a response to Susan Siens' top-level comment.
In any case, I should have emphasized – mea culpa, shoot me at dawn – that I more or less agree with your point that Fine has justifiably shown "by modern science and reason how evidence may be skewed". Something which Coyne also acknowledges:
"I read her first book, Delusions of Gender, and found it a mixed bag: some of her targets did indeed do bad science, and she properly called them out; but the book was also tendentious, and wasn’t objective about other studies."
But the bottom line, as I had quoted Coyne saying, is that ideological biases of various types are rife, not just in the so-called science that Fine justifiably criticizes – I assume since I have haven't read either of her books – but also in both feminism itself and on virtually anything to do with sex and gender.
You may wish to read a detailed but quite thorough essay on the latter by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico titled "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
But of particular note is his delineation of the fact that there are, basically, two sets of definitions for the sexes in play – one based on structure-absent-function, the other in which function is a necessary and sufficient condition for sex category membership – that are, essentially, quite inconsistent and contradictory. We simply can not reasonably have both in play, not least because that causes no end of grief and quite unnecessary animosity. But to wit:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
Partly why I'm not totally on-board with Hooven's position. She probably, apparently, makes a credible argument that, as you suggest or argue, "our [entirely different] hormones have a powerful influence" on our different behaviours – on average; on our personalities, on our genders. However, she also seems to be talking out of both sides of her mouth – ideological biases tend to have that effect – in more or less simultaneously endorsing BOTH the structure-absent-function definition AND the function-only definition; she might just as well argue black is white.
Consider several of her recent tweets:
"I'm not retired, but the answer is 'no.' Sex doesn't refer to sex organs (it's strongly associated with them). Nor is the definition exclusive to primates. It's about the gametes, and applies to all sexually-reproducing organisms, including rosebushes and rats.
Oh sorry, yes, sex is binary. Two reproductive categories, male and female, describing organisms with the 'design plan' to produce sperm or eggs. Other stuff that varies with sex--like genitals, chromosomes, sexual and other behavior--is not binary."
As I've noted in previous comment, in a YouTube interview Hooven (@ about 23:47) quite clearly claims that one doesn't actually have to have functional gonads of either of two types to qualify as male or female, only to have a "design plan" 🙄 typical of males and females. Talk about evasiveness and intellectual dishonesty, about dodging/begging the question of what is essential to qualify as males and females, and about peddling unscientific claptrap:
Though she is, rather sadly, hardly unique in that regard since so-called biologists Emma Hilton, Heather Heying, and Colin Wright peddle the same schlock:
"Individuals that have developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present or future functionality, are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
They might just as well "argue" that a "clock" is still a clock – regardless of past, present, or future functionality 🙄 – even if it's been pounded into rubble, melted down into a metal ingot, and turned into a can opener.
"Function" is very often an essential property of many categories, particularly those having anything to do with science – including biology. Quite a good essay at Psychology Today by Robert King on that perspective:
"No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an 'essence' is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes [functions], not essences.":
Thx for that long response - I need some time to read it properly to understand it - meantime I agree with you about 'gender essences' of course ... a sort of gender god of the gaps in our current knowledge which unproven gender cult seems to thrive on.
De nada; share the wealth, praise the lord and pass the ammunition ... 🙂
Something of a complex topic, though not a totally intractable one that I don't have a really good handle on myself. However, I do think that understanding the dichotomy between structure-absent-function definitions and functional definitions is crucial to resolving the transgender clusterfuck. Apropos of which, you might be interested in something of a conversation that I'm having with "Greensox" in another recent thread of Graham's:
But quite agree with your "gender god of the gaps" suggestion or allusion. The problem is that while gender itself may have some merit and may be amendable to being put on a scientific footing, gender identity is largely incoherent twaddle. Along the line of which, Sahar Sadjadi, of McGill University, had an interesting and quite cogent observation of more than passing relevance:
"Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. .... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
No doubt our experiences of our selves are quite if not entirely subjective. But membership in the sex categories - regardless of whether they're defined based on structure-only or on function - is contingent on the possession of quite objectively quantifiable traits.
Why I think, and argue, that the use of "male" and "female" by the transgendered to describe their "gender identities" is something of a fraud, a case of bait-and-switch: if there are no objective correlates or criteria to qualify individuals as members of particular categories then the terms are useless, if not worse than useless.
You might also be interested in an illuminating essay - The Tyranny of the Subjective - along that line at Quillette by a US/UK lawyer/philosopher, Elizabeth Finne:
"The primacy of subjectivity is by no means limited to politics. It now permeates the framework through which we have traditionally mediated our competing narratives. Journalism, academia, science, and law are all affected. In short, any institution that exists to accommodate competing perspectives is being undermined by a new paradigm that privileges the subjective ‘lived experience.’ And, in the process, the meta-values which have traditionally enabled us to transcend our differing subjective experiences suffer. Foundational principles such as audi alteram partem (listen to the other side), the presumption of innocence, proportionality, empiricism, and even the rule of law now must bow before the sovereignty of the subjective."
This is not just a feature of American universities. I mistakenly started a Gender Studies MA with Birkbeck in 2005, thinking I would be able to study "women's history". But was soon confronted with this ideology; told that gender was a spectrum, etc, and that there was no real difference between men and women, and any differences were a social construct etc etc. When I challenged my lecturer (a renowned, much published feminist!) about the effect hormones had on us etc, she said...and I quote "hormones are a cultural construct."
I remember one delightful lecture, for which a young man was giving a presentation: he put a pair of pink high healed shoes on the table and said that these shoes would make him a woman. He received much adulation.
On another occasion, a young woman who had taken the course because she was working with NGOs in third world countries, said she felt that working as a woman meant she was able to relate very quickly with women from different cultures, sharing interests in jewellery, cooking, etc and much more. She was met with icy silence. I'm pretty sure she was careful from then on to tow the line, since she needed her MA for her work.
When I handed in my rather rebellious essay, I got a very low mark, with the comment that it was, as my tutor expected, "intelligently written" but that I must understand it was "contentious".
When I transferred to History, she commented that she thought it would suit me better to be studying something based on empirical research. (An admission that "gender studies" is not based on fact, if ever I heard one!)
Interestingly, (as a last attempt to rescue my Gender Studies MA, since my transfer meant the loss of a term's work) I asked if my final dissertation might take as its subject: The history of the use of the word "gender". This was point blank refused, and not without some aggression from my tutors. Little did I now how incendiary such a dissertation might be.
Deborah would you be up for writing about this or have you already?
I'm one of those cowards...Perhaps I should look into changing my name!
I should add...I have serious reasons for my "cowardice"...
I can sympathize. Takes some courage to stand up against the mob.
It's not cowardice if you have serious reasons. Not many can afford to be JK Rowling! Can't you do it anonymously anyway tho? Maybe there's a series that needs writing by the Silenced Ones for just those 'serious reasons'.
Helen Pluckrose heads up Counterweight dot com - with a mission to help ppl who are silenced by unproven 'critical theory'. There are several anonymised case studies and resources to help. Also the Free Speech Union?
looked up - it is https://counterweightsupport.com or you will get things you may not be interested in!
Please use a nice name with credentials, but write that dissertation, and if you find that you have been misjudged, ask for independent assessors (probably from Middle Africa) or from France (the Catholic Church keeps manning the barricades!)
Many thanks for sharing that. Studying at Oxford University in the early 80s I was in on the ground floor with this stuff. Not on my own course -- I am eternally grateful that I was able to study Philosophy of the Social Sciences with liberal philosopher Dr Alan Ryan. But an English PhD friend was writing a dissertation in the style of Derrida. Young men I admired were reading Foucault as an act of rebellion.
I instinctively understood that these dense thickets of verbiage could not act in the interests of women but it's taken me an adult lifetime of bewilderment until at last I understand exactly where the bodies are buried. Thank you, TRAs. You've got me off my backside and doing philosophy again.
Indeed...the whole premise that no truth is ultimately stable, and that our perception of reality is always controlled by those who wield power, is interesting, but taken to extremes is mad. I'm a translator by profession, and the amount of twaddle that had made it into Translation Theory is bonkers; and certainly does not help anyone translate a work of literature better.
Translation theory is involved - would love to know more?
I'd love to expound on this subject...but I racing to meet a deadline. All I will say is the focus is not the love of language, or the intricacies of how it works, or how a translator might reflect the differences in style...the emphasis is on post modern theory etc and political philosophy. How I may ask can you de-colonise translation? How important is it to understand concepts of appropriation? Or indeed to explore "gender" (not men women as translators) in relation to translation. Sensitivity to cultures and cultural differences, and above all, to language and rhetoric are at the heart of the work of a translator.
*And yes...this is called "Translation Theory" so we might think this is all well and good...but the fact is that students come out thinking they have are qualified to translate. And the question my experience left me with is, what does this discipline offer? Surely any of these issues could and should be discussed in a history or literature department?
very interesting, thanks. It will make me think when reading a book recently translated!
"Young men I admired were reading Foucault as an act of rebellion."
Takes quite a bit of "seasoning" to know what type of "rebelling" is worthwhile and what isn't ... 😉
Somewhat apropos of which, a classic Mark Twain story:
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/78468-when-i-was-a-boy-of-14-my-father-was
The Grievance Studies was one of the most important recent happenings in terms of exposing how extreme and unhealthy ideas had been hidden in plain sight and incubated in Academic.
Some of us are old enought to remember the bewildered debates that happened in the late 1990's and early 2000's between Woman's Studies academics and the newly minted Gender Studies. That proximity to Woman's Studies made it extremely difficult to criticise it openly without being called a mysogonist. I hope we now see those who raised a voice in a new and more generous light.
Yes, I am one of those feminist academics who tried unsuccesfully to stop the waterfall of Gender Studies, it was already in action in 1985 in academia, and many feminists thought it was all OK! We were too stupid to think that 'Gender and Power' had something to do with Feminism!
I love Helen Pluckrose et al. All power to them exposing the hypocrisy and fake academic studies. Everyone should read Cynical Theories that she wrote with James Lindsay. They're the best brave people.
Not dry at all. Thanks for posting this.
"They need puppies". Where have we see that recently 🤦♀️😂
"Mum! Mum? MUM!!!?!!!"
Sorry for putting this here but there's a new Labour party heroine in Wales https://www.thenational.wales/news/20136728.lgbtq-labour-members-call-cardiff-councillors-suspension-transphobia/
In Glasgow, we are lucky enough to have the first transgender Councillor who hasn't been off the tv/radio since the election. Everyone tells him he is so brave and courageous to have stood as a woman! It is both sad and nausea-inducing that this man has taken a woman's place and got away with it. But that us oor Nicola fur you!!
Yeah ,I 'm Scots as well ( Lanarkshire ) and I can't understand why WOMEN in this country vote SNP. I talk about this subject frequently but ,apart from family ,I don't have as many social contacts as I used to and unfortunately ,some people only vote for them because of indyref 2. Infuriates me !!
I have voted SNP in the past. Simply because every other party's manifesto was based on what was happening in the UK not Scotland. But no more. Anas Sarwar seems to gave his head screwed on and is willing to stand agin Sir Stammerer when needs be. I sometimes wish there was a no 64 bus with Nicola's name on it, then have to remind myself I am a pacifist!!
I feel sorry for you, all the way from Sydney Australia, although we are in the same soup!
I live in Glasgow but come from the East Coast. Moved here for a man and am still here with the same man!
Yeah ,me too !Wish I could move but I'm too old now 😭
Good for her.♥️👏👍 The majority of women and many men in the UK will agree with her. More people need to speak up. Who could ever have dreamt that standing up for women's rights and the safeguarding of children would get threats and hatred thrown at you ?? It's totally evil and we need to stand up against it in any way we can .Hope she sticks to her guns 🙏🙏🙏
Yes she's of course right - this unproven gender cult ideology is trying to convert everyone and trample on rationality, medical ethics, hard earned rights and safeguarding procedures. Thx for sharing this. Labour party need to wake up to reality and facts - not base their ethics and policies on a deluded cult - postmod Marxist or otherwise. We need a proper opposition to the present government ffs!
Thanks for sharing this, I hadn’t heard of it before other than extremely tangentially. It goes to illustrate the web of lies most liberal, left wing academia is built upon. It’s the psueds columns of private eye writ large, with a whole cottage industry needing it to survive.
The fact this structure underpins much of trans thought is no surprise, the very concept of a man being a woman seems built on the same soft sand.
I can guarantee that the exact same stunt could be successfully played out today, they learn nothing.
I watched this awhile ago - good one Glinner! Like @Cary Bee - I would also recommend Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay's book Cynical Theories plus James Lindsay's New Discourses youtube vids. These explain gender and other post mod woke marxist nonsenses that seek to break down liberal rational society [for a utopia that they haven't quite worked out yet but don't worry the ends justify the means apparently].
Really interesting,thanks.
Good insight from that as to what has been going on.
Not dry at all That was fascinating. Scary, but fascinating. I can well imagine knitting forums being torn apart. The woke need to make everything all about them.
I had no idea there was a schism in christianity over this woo. It makes it a quandary because I like the idea of religions collapsing 😁
The Q&A answer about basing a study on guidelines for feminism on a chapter of Mein Kampf was shocking, yet you could believe it would appeal to the woke.
Glad I watched to the end. The claims of 'fatphobia' against cancer charities for stating that the risk of some cancers increases in obese people is ridiculous. People need to know the dangers. I'm overweight and the woke don’t speak for me.
Hadn't heard of Helen Pluckrose before so I googled and found "Pluckrose founded the "anti-woke" organization Counterweight as a reaction to the growth of implicit bias training and other forms of what Pluckrose calls "critical social justice ideology" in the workplace." Here it is....
https://counterweightsupport.com/#
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/may/16/uk-police-are-not-thought-police-says-new-police-chief
Bit belated realization, but will be interesting to see if there's any change in current operating procedures.
But US is going whole hog:
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/all-hail-americas-new-truth-czar?s=r
Can anyone think of any examples?
btw it's grievance not greivance ... just sayin.
I see nothing "far left" about this. Institutions of so-called higher learning have been carefully weeded for decades now to make sure genuine thinkers -- especially anyone questioning "American" values -- are not hired for permanent positions, not given tenure, etc. Those who rule us were made very nervous by teachers and students during the 1960s, and it was decided somewhere, somehow, that anyone not towing the line, should be left as adjuncts -- who don't even make minimum wage -- or not permitted to teach at all. An example is the economist Michael Hudson's statement that you cannot teach economics at any of the "elite" schools if you do not follow Wall Street ideology.
And if you think that the ruling class in America, the promulgators of this incipient fascism, are "far left," I am completely bewildered as to what world you live in.
James Lindsay explores the roots of woke ideas in Marxism. Yet they've been taken up by corporations. I agree it needs explaining. Maybe a 'parasite' model would work? Some universal systemic weakness allows elite institutions to become unwitting hosts?
Having read Volume I of Capital, I see absolutely no relation of Marxism to wokeness. Marx writes about economics, class oppression and exploitation, and I would bet anything that Lindsay quotes quackademics who call themselves Marxists, not Marx. The first thing the wokerati would have to do if they're Marxists is give up their unearned income -- hahahaha!
yes well they dont do class anymore it's equity within the hierarchy .apparently all laid on for em. Ideology as opium of the ppl.
I hate to tell these academics this, but science told us for millennia that women were not human. They have also catalogued the physical and mental inferiority of non-European peoples, and I cannot begin to cover the utter lack of knowledge of the natural world, which technology masquerading as science has found exploitable and expendable. It is heartening to see genuine scientists now recognizing that the worldview of centuries is highly flawed, but I will not bow down to "science and reason" -- easily manipulated -- when it serves the power structure.
Been a lot of egregious and quite odious claptrap peddled in the name of science over the centuries:
https://www.amazon.ca/Fads-Fallacies-Name-Science-Popular-ebook/dp/B00A73ITVW
Although, as Sagan put it, science really is something of a "candle in the dark", a prophylactic against the "demon-haunted world":
https://archive.org/details/B-001-001-709
The problem is largely, as Sagan argued, that most of us are scientifically illiterate and therefore easy marks for scientific charlatans and grifters. Of which there are far too many these days.
But somewhat apropos of which, an article/tweet-thread summarized at GC News - worth a follow - by Harvard biologist Carole Hooven:
"Carole Hooven On Fuentes’ Claim That 'Science Rejects the Sex Binary' ..."
https://gcnews.substack.com/p/saturday-may-14-2022?s=r
https://twitter.com/hoovlet/status/1525507935216050176
Article claiming "science rejects the sex binary" was written by a Princeton anthropologist who should get his head out of his arse as the "sex binary" definition is fundamental to pretty much all of biology: no sexual reproduction, no - or very little - evolution. And no evolutionary biologists.
But that "sex is a spectrum" claptrap is rather too ubiquitous as both the ACLU and Stonewall are getting in on that act, although the latter is probably not surprising as they disappeared up their own arses a long time ago:
"34 Proposed Intervenors deny the allegation that 'it is precisely a combination of anatomy, genitalia, and physical characteristics that differentiate men from women[.]' Proposed Intervenors also deny the allegation that 'human beings' are 'sexually dimorphic, divided into males and females each with reproductive systems, hormones, and chromosomes that result in significant differences between men[] and women[.]' ....":
https://reduxx.info/aclu-claims-males-females-do-not-exist-court-docs/
"My jaw hit the floor during the Stonewall discrimination trial this week when the LGBT charity’s ‘head of trans inclusion’ Kirrin Medcalf took the stand and declared: ‘Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies.’ ..."
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10811203/Trans-activists-wrecked-good-work-Stonewall.html
Bunch of unscientific and anti-scientific cretins. They don't have a fucking clue that the biological definitions for the sexes are stipulative ones; they assert that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types; those with neither are thereby sexless:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stipulative_definition
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/female
https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/male
I want to look at these links -- thank you.
De nada; share the wealth, praise the lord and pass the ammunition ... 😉
But a couple of other ones about Hooven that you might also be interested in:
"Harvard lecturer Carole Hooven took heat from her own colleague after an appearance on Fox News this week in which she asserted that biological sex is real and defended the continued use of terms like ‘pregnant women’ and 'male and female.' ...."
https://nypost.com/2021/07/31/harvard-lecturer-blasted-for-defending-existence-of-biological-sex/
Interview of Hooven here; fairly lengthy but index to pertinent sections. Bonus is a comment or two of mine thereat ... 😉
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYqz5OYMvRI&lc=UgzgCkQbPdIHWLT8eBN4AaABAg.9_rP-uSVsT_9a0eXS1Ge33
And, since you seem to be interested in and knowledgeable about Marxism ... 🙂, you might also enjoy this rather brilliant takedown, at the Weekly Worker by Amanda MacLean, on sex and gender titled, rather aptly, "Decoupled from Reality":
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1247/decoupled-from-reality/
"Genderist ideology is based on flawed science and worse logic, argues Amanda MacLean"
Amen to that lady, amen to that. But a particularly cogent observation of hers:
"Reductionist disciplines that look at different parts of organisms - such as genes, tissues, physiology or neurobiology - use the words ‘male’ and ‘female’ as shorthand for ‘of males/females’ or ‘typical of males/females’. ...."
There's no such thing as, for example, a "female brain". There are brains OF females or that are TYPICAL OF females - even if only marginally so in the case of some transwomen. But the latter case hardly justifies the bogus and quite risible if not totally demented claim that such transwomen are thereby actually adult human females, AKA "women".
Haven't gotten through all the links, but my favorite so far is that woman at Harvard describing herself as a "Blewish feminist mermaid"!
🙂 'Tis enough to make a person cry. Or be at a loss as to whether one should laugh or cry.
But somewhat apropos of that, a recent Substack post, a reprint of a WSJ article, by "biologist" Colin Wright on a tweet of his that had been retweeted by Elon Musk:
https://www.realityslaststand.com/p/my-political-journey?s=r
Increasing polarization all over the place, mostly on ideological dogma of various types that is helping no one. As I've just mentioned in a recent comment here, you might also like this article on the "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender" - a great deal of it in feminism itself:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
But, in the interests of killing the proverbial two birds with one stone/comment, and relative to your earlier comment about that ideological bias among ostensibly totally-objective scientists ..., you might find some amusement in these articles 😉 :
"The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical MaleFemale Roles:
As an anthropologist, I am intrigued by the possibility that culture shapes how biological scientists describe what they discover about the natural world."
https://web.stanford.edu/~eckert/PDF/Martin1991.pdf
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/choosy-eggs/546062/
Looking forward to reading both of the last two articles!
The problem is that many scientists were not interested in fact and truth, but rather on reinforcing their preconceived notions and prejudices. As many social psychologists have pointed out, it is impossible to be totally objective -- though one can and should try -- because we carry such a load of societal shit around in our brains. And the more one is plugged into the system, the harder it is to transcend that system and seek objectivity. This is why so many "academics" fail in their supposed quest for truth.
Ok so what's your alternative? You read Cordelia Fine? - she shows by modern science and reason how evidence may be skewed. The natural world can be red in tooth and claw.
Cordelia Fine doesn't seem all that credible. An article at "Why Evolution is True":
"If I was the late Andy Rooney, I’d say 'You know what really bothers me? When science shows some facts about nature, and then someone rejects those facts because they’re inconvenient or uncomfortable for their ideology.' .....
But the opposition to research on group and sex differences continues. One of its big exponents is the author Cordelia Fine, who has written two books with the explicit aim of showing that there are no reliably accepted evolved and biological differences in behavior between men and women."
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/03/09/when-ideology-trumps-biology/
You might be interested in a rather different take on that by Harvard biologist Carole Hooven who I've linked to here recently in a related context:
"T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us"
https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Testosterone-Hormone-Dominates-Divides/dp/1250236061/
"Hooven makes a compelling case that testosterone is a powerful influence on our bodies and brains. As Testosterone argues, it's hard to make a start on [...] social improvements if we don't fully understand why things are the way they are. ...." The Times
http://www.carolehooven.com/
My comment was responding to Jill's comment - was yours, @Steerman? Sry I'm confused. I thought Cordelia Fine was interesting in explaining how science often takes the averaged male ie not female body as standard eg when designing seatbelts.
The whole issue of what is given money for research/treatment and on what assumptions and to whose benefit - obviously this all skewers what we find and, not least, what is done with that imperfect knowledge and sometimes difficult ethical choices. But still, facts are facts. Hooven's book looks interesting.
Our hormones obvs have a powerful influence and are interrelated with other hormones and our situation/feelings/values/behaviour whether man or woman - so difficult to isolate in practice, eg of you're threatened; or injected with adrenaline for medical reasons; or go on a run - all these will result in the associated responses of adrenaline but will be interpreted and therefore responded to differently.
I'm sure there are now endocrinologists as well as gynaecologists and psychologists who use their knowledge/technologies to help detrans women from harmful affects of taking 'T'. Very sad that this needs to their focus but very welcome to those individuals.
No, I was responding to your comment. Which seems like it was a response to Susan Siens' top-level comment.
In any case, I should have emphasized – mea culpa, shoot me at dawn – that I more or less agree with your point that Fine has justifiably shown "by modern science and reason how evidence may be skewed". Something which Coyne also acknowledges:
"I read her first book, Delusions of Gender, and found it a mixed bag: some of her targets did indeed do bad science, and she properly called them out; but the book was also tendentious, and wasn’t objective about other studies."
But the bottom line, as I had quoted Coyne saying, is that ideological biases of various types are rife, not just in the so-called science that Fine justifiably criticizes – I assume since I have haven't read either of her books – but also in both feminism itself and on virtually anything to do with sex and gender.
You may wish to read a detailed but quite thorough essay on the latter by Marco Del Giudice of the University of New Mexico titled "Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender":
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
But of particular note is his delineation of the fact that there are, basically, two sets of definitions for the sexes in play – one based on structure-absent-function, the other in which function is a necessary and sufficient condition for sex category membership – that are, essentially, quite inconsistent and contradictory. We simply can not reasonably have both in play, not least because that causes no end of grief and quite unnecessary animosity. But to wit:
"On a deeper level, the ‘patchwork’ definition of sex used in the social sciences is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale. This contrasts sharply with how the sexes are defined in biology. From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes (e.g., eggs; Kodric-Brown & Brown, 1987)"
Partly why I'm not totally on-board with Hooven's position. She probably, apparently, makes a credible argument that, as you suggest or argue, "our [entirely different] hormones have a powerful influence" on our different behaviours – on average; on our personalities, on our genders. However, she also seems to be talking out of both sides of her mouth – ideological biases tend to have that effect – in more or less simultaneously endorsing BOTH the structure-absent-function definition AND the function-only definition; she might just as well argue black is white.
Consider several of her recent tweets:
"I'm not retired, but the answer is 'no.' Sex doesn't refer to sex organs (it's strongly associated with them). Nor is the definition exclusive to primates. It's about the gametes, and applies to all sexually-reproducing organisms, including rosebushes and rats.
Oh sorry, yes, sex is binary. Two reproductive categories, male and female, describing organisms with the 'design plan' to produce sperm or eggs. Other stuff that varies with sex--like genitals, chromosomes, sexual and other behavior--is not binary."
https://twitter.com/hoovlet/status/1525562995899781125
https://twitter.com/hoovlet/status/1525867666698866688
As I've noted in previous comment, in a YouTube interview Hooven (@ about 23:47) quite clearly claims that one doesn't actually have to have functional gonads of either of two types to qualify as male or female, only to have a "design plan" 🙄 typical of males and females. Talk about evasiveness and intellectual dishonesty, about dodging/begging the question of what is essential to qualify as males and females, and about peddling unscientific claptrap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYqz5OYMvRI&lc=UgzgCkQbPdIHWLT8eBN4AaABAg.9_rP-uSVsT_9a0eXS1Ge33
Though she is, rather sadly, hardly unique in that regard since so-called biologists Emma Hilton, Heather Heying, and Colin Wright peddle the same schlock:
"Individuals that have developed anatomies for producing either small or large gametes, regardless of their past, present or future functionality, are referred to as 'males' and 'females', respectively."
https://twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1207663359589527554
They might just as well "argue" that a "clock" is still a clock – regardless of past, present, or future functionality 🙄 – even if it's been pounded into rubble, melted down into a metal ingot, and turned into a can opener.
"Function" is very often an essential property of many categories, particularly those having anything to do with science – including biology. Quite a good essay at Psychology Today by Robert King on that perspective:
"No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an 'essence' is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes [functions], not essences.":
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hive-mind/202003/terf-wars-what-is-biological-sex
No function, no category membership card; no tickee, no washee. Q.E.D.
Thx for that long response - I need some time to read it properly to understand it - meantime I agree with you about 'gender essences' of course ... a sort of gender god of the gaps in our current knowledge which unproven gender cult seems to thrive on.
De nada; share the wealth, praise the lord and pass the ammunition ... 🙂
Something of a complex topic, though not a totally intractable one that I don't have a really good handle on myself. However, I do think that understanding the dichotomy between structure-absent-function definitions and functional definitions is crucial to resolving the transgender clusterfuck. Apropos of which, you might be interested in something of a conversation that I'm having with "Greensox" in another recent thread of Graham's:
https://grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/timeline-of-a-blunder/comment/6654127?s=r
But quite agree with your "gender god of the gaps" suggestion or allusion. The problem is that while gender itself may have some merit and may be amendable to being put on a scientific footing, gender identity is largely incoherent twaddle. Along the line of which, Sahar Sadjadi, of McGill University, had an interesting and quite cogent observation of more than passing relevance:
"Moreover, the magico-spiritual undertone of the conversations I witnessed was striking, perhaps lending testimony to how mysterious these children who transgressed one of the most entrenched rules of their culture appeared. .... As a physician and anthropologist of medicine, I had begun this project as a critical study of a cutting-edge clinical field; I was perplexed by this merging of science, magic, and religion in explaining children’s gender transition."
https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/3728/430
No doubt our experiences of our selves are quite if not entirely subjective. But membership in the sex categories - regardless of whether they're defined based on structure-only or on function - is contingent on the possession of quite objectively quantifiable traits.
Why I think, and argue, that the use of "male" and "female" by the transgendered to describe their "gender identities" is something of a fraud, a case of bait-and-switch: if there are no objective correlates or criteria to qualify individuals as members of particular categories then the terms are useless, if not worse than useless.
You might also be interested in an illuminating essay - The Tyranny of the Subjective - along that line at Quillette by a US/UK lawyer/philosopher, Elizabeth Finne:
"The primacy of subjectivity is by no means limited to politics. It now permeates the framework through which we have traditionally mediated our competing narratives. Journalism, academia, science, and law are all affected. In short, any institution that exists to accommodate competing perspectives is being undermined by a new paradigm that privileges the subjective ‘lived experience.’ And, in the process, the meta-values which have traditionally enabled us to transcend our differing subjective experiences suffer. Foundational principles such as audi alteram partem (listen to the other side), the presumption of innocence, proportionality, empiricism, and even the rule of law now must bow before the sovereignty of the subjective."
https://quillette.com/2018/03/19/the-tyranny-of-the-subjective/
Amen to that, lady, amen to that.
But hasn’t Helen Pluckrose gone in with gender woo woo? Or is that a different Helen? 🤔
A different Helen, I'm sure. Helen Pluckrose is no friend of Woo.
That’s what I thought, I wonder who I’m confusing her with? I know it’s not Helens Belcher or Staniland ….
That's like K-J having tea with Debbie Hayton - you sure!