screwtape wrote: ↑
Steersman wrote: ↑
Matt Cavanaugh wrote: ↑
The New Evolution Deniers
Despite there being zero evidence in favor of Blank Slate psychology, and a mountain of evidence to the contrary, this belief has entrenched itself within the walls of many university humanities departments where it is often taught as fact. Now, armed with what they perceive to be an indisputable truth questioned only by sexist bigots, they respond with well-practiced outrage to alternative views. ....
In support of this view, recent editorials from Scientific American—an ostensibly trustworthy, scientific, and apolitical online magazine—are often referenced.
The titles read, “Sex Redefined: The Idea of 2 Sexes Is Overly Simplistic,” and “Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum.”
Unfucking believeable, isn't it. All largely predicated on or underwritten by a steadfast and remarkably pigheaded refusal to actually define precisely what is meant by "sex" in the first place - i.e., the production of gametes. That
Aeon article that PZ had linked to as some sort of refutation of the Quillette article you linked to uses the word "sex" only once in the entire exercise, and that's only in the word "sexuality".
Equally demented and in the same vein as those SA articles is a recent one at Slate, shamefully published in their "Science" section, titled
We Finally Understand That Gender Isn’t Binary. Sex Isn’t, Either. I argued in
a comment there that the article "belongs in the pseudo-science one along with 'scholarly' essays on astrology and phrenology." And that the argument peddled was "as cretinous as to insist - since there are many teenagers (BY DEFINITION, those between 13 & 19 inclusive) who are tall, short, male, female, intersex, etc - that therefore 'teenager' is a spectrum". So many are so fucking clueless about the differences between essential and defining attributes, on the one hand, and those that merely differentially correlate with those, on the other.
And somewhat along the same line that you might also be interested in is a recent article at Areo,
Alice Dreger’s Middle Finger: Sex, Gender and Unhelpful Hair-Splitting, where both Shatterface and I have been weighing-in, hopefully to some effect. But particularly depressing though that Dreger seems to have hoisted the same odious and Lysenkoist flag that SA and others are rallying around.
In any case, welcome "back" - so to speak. Had been wondering recently if you'd survived your "ordeal by fire", but had figured that CFB or others here were likely keeping tabs on you.
I've thawed out now (power outage lasted 25 hours, but the water pipes didn't freeze, and nor did I thanks to Underarmour Base 4.0), ....
Glad to see you've survived the latest vicisitudes that Mother Nature - bitch that She is - decides to throw at us. :-) Here in BC we've more or less recently had a pipeline explosion which seems likely to reduce the natural gas supply for several months:
Enbridge pipeline explosion in B.C. may lead to natural gas shortage. I figure that buying up the supply of electrical heaters may pay dividends - "buy low, sell high". ;-)
But rather depressing if not scarey to realize how dependent we all are on the technology & services we've come to rely on.
screwtape wrote: ↑... and as my brain has begun to light up again I see the worms have eaten a little further into our collective consciousness. I'm going to need two anchors to make this case, and the first will be the well-known scene in '1984' where O'Brien makes Winston* finally agree that 2+2=5, with the explication that 'truth' is whatever the Party decrees. ....
Indeed. Been tweeting thither & yon for some time a nice encapsulation of that, and of much of your later arguments, which comes from a Quillette article:
screwtape wrote: ↑The second anchor will be less well-known in specifics, but perhaps familiar to many in other examples. Long ago I worked in a community hospital, where the community raised the funds to build it and run it, and then also provided a board of interested people to conduct the management. .... It was a demonstration of power, and all the better that it was about an issue that had no resonance whatsoever with the staff. It said 'We can come in and change things, even things you don't want changed, and you can do nothing about it.'
Reminds me of a quote of
Bertrand Russell I'd seen a long time ago, and finally managed to track down again: "The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell." Related thereto, something that knocked me back on my heels when I first ran across it several years ago:
The term "
abominable fancy" was first used by Frederic Farrar [1831-1903] for the long-standing Christian idea that the eternal punishment of the damned in Hell would entertain the saved.
Nice people, though clearly the religious - or even "moralists" - don't have a lock on that "sentiment". Apropos of which, there's the game
Bureaucracy which was apparently "scripted by comic science fiction author Douglas Adams." Should all be put onto the Arc B and sent off into space ahead of the rest of us - assuming we don't all die of a virus caused by a lack of "telephone sanitizers" ...
screwtape wrote: ↑Both of those situations are essentially similar - making a subject agree with the purported 'truth' of a proposition as a demonstration of control and power. When you are asked to remain silent when ideologues tell you that sex is a spectrum that is a social construct, you are seeing the thin end of the wedge. Very soon there will be
progress towards ends and goals requiring other agreements with objective untruths for the greater good. Watch out.
Amen to that. Large part of the reason - apart from having few other hobbies to take up my free time ... - why I've been so vociferous - not-to-say, flogging-a-deadish-horse - on the issue of transgenderism. It really is a remarkably stark and cogent illustration of that idea of the "Party" dictating "objective truths", and what should be stomped on all over - with hobnail boots - when and wherever it manifests itself. But nice to see that many others are utilizing that meme of "2+2=?", particularly in that context:
As "they" say, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Maybe moot how "free" we are if that is the cost of it, but sure seems less expensive than the alternatives.
screwtape wrote: ↑*Winston Smith must have been a deliberate selection as a name. 'Winston' in 1947/1948 could only have evoked Churchill, popular, wise and successful in war .... All to drive home the point that Winston Smith is YOU, and what happens to him can happen to you.
Ditto. "First they came for ...";
Orwell:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.
Bit of a thorny question though as to the necessity for surveilance of one sort or another - "Big Brother is Watching". Fact of the matter is that many people seem to follow the law only because they think they'll get caught if they transgress and that they're being watched, one way or another. Human nature, some aspects more problematic than others.