Read on Twitter
1./ A thread. It's wonderful to see the eminent scientist @RichardDawkins speak out against bullying wokeness at the workplace. But sadly Science is also being undermined by the same muddled nonsense as biological reality is denied and those who defend it are accused of bigotry. https://twitter.com/RichardDawkins/status/1325231273464324096
2./ When I made a TV show with Richard a few years ago (called 'Big Questions in Science') it would have been unthinkable that science communicators would conspire in such an obvious erosion of the truth. Yet that's now what's happening. Take this 
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions/
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/11/prehistoric-female-hunter-discovery-upends-gender-role-assumptions/
3./ Last week @NatGeo magazine reported the discovery in the Andes of 9000 year old bones from an accomplished hunter, who turned out to be (wait for it) a biological female. Great, you might think! One in the eye for timeless gender stereotypes. But then came the kicker.
4./ Apparently we cannot know the 'gender identity' of our bold huntress. Hey, maybe she identified using a term from a glossary Nat Geographic provided in this article from 2017? Maybe she was gender queer? Or maybe an a-gender hunter (-ess)? Maybe not. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/01/explore-gender-glossary-terminology/
5./ In an article that bemoans how scientists have long imposed modern assumptions on ancient societies the writer has done just that: imposing a woke perspective that dates only from the middle of the last decade when trans activists began breathing down science writers' necks.
6./ The simple explanation (good old Occam's razor) is that in these tough times some Andean women were accomplished hunters. The complicated solution, for which there is NO evidence, is these women may not have 'identified' as women. The scenario gets more confused.
7./ In the same sentence there's another piece of hokey wokey claiming biological sex isn't always binary. Well if that's the case, how can we say that she IS a biological female at all? Here's how : the archaeologists worked out her sex by analyzing proteins on her teeth.
there's another piece of hokey wokey claiming biological sex isn't always binary. Well if that's the case, how can we say that she IS a biological female at all? Here's how : the archaeologists worked out her sex by analyzing proteins on her teeth.
8./ They used a technique developed at UC Davis in 2018. Genes that produce amelogenin proteins are located on the X and Y chromosomes. So "females will have amelogenin-X in their teeth; males should have both the X and Y versions of the protein". Da nah. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181112095931.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181112095931.htm
9./ That sounds pretty bloody binary to me. To justify undermining the centrality of binary sex the article links to another site. But even that suggests only a few people per thousand, around 0.5-0.6% of births, don't fit the strict binary definition. https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
https://www.who.int/genomics/gender/en/index1.html
10./ But here's the thing. The majority of these people with 'Differences of Sexual Development' (DSDs) as many prefer to label themselves actually consider themselves to be (and are) male or female. That's right: they actually exists 'on a binary' of two sexes.
11./ As this powerful essay by @ClareCAIS makes clear many people with DSDs believe their physical or genetic differences should be celebrated or just treated better not weaponised as a reason to abandon the basic binary reality of two biological sexes. https://differently-normal.com/2020/06/10/example-post-3/
https://differently-normal.com/2020/06/10/example-post-3/
12./ So why did @NatGeo feel it had to insert a suggestion there's some rainbow spectrum of sex? This notion reached public consciousness with a famous article, 'Five Sexes', by the developmental biologist @Fausto_Sterling in @nytimes in 1993. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1993/03/12/issue.html
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1993/03/12/issue.html
13./ The essay suggested there weren't 2 sexes but 5. When earlier this year Alice Roberts one of the BBC's (deservedly) most popular science presenters claimed there was a spectrum of sexes it was Fausto-Sterling's work she cited, much of which builds on that original essay.
14./ Underlying the idea of a spectrum was Sterling's 1993 claim 4% of births are 'intersex'. The only problem is in July this year in 'Five Sexes Revisited' she claimed her original essay had been written "with tongue firmly in cheek". Er, really? Thanks for letting us know.
15./ This despite the 4% being endlessly quoted over the last two decades. There's more. In her 'Revisit' Sterling also rubbishes the work of John Money, the discredited psychologist and pioneer of intersex surgery. This is ironic because Money was crucial to her first essay.
16./ What Sterling doesn't highlight in her Revisit is her figure of 4% was derived from research by THE VERY SAME John Money. All she can bring herself to say disingeniously is it was an estimate "by a psychologist expert in the treatment of intersexuals". Yeah, John Money!!!
17./ The hilarious thing is Sterling actually managed to get Money's work totally wrong. Here's his letter to the NY Times in 1993 complaining he'd never suggested 4% and she was being "epidemiologically reckless". She apologised. Yet her exaggerration was endlessly cited.
18./ Why does this matter? 'Five Sexes' was the first science rocketfuel sprayed on the made-up notion of a 'sex spectrum', yet now it turns out to be a mish mash of irony, tendentious activism, dodgy stats and a distinct lack of transparency. Judge a revolution by its origins?
19./ Many articles have followed since. Most suffer from the same flaws and ignore the fact the VAST majority of people with DSDs are happy to be (and are) male or female. Here's a brilliant rebuttal of their approach by @SwipeWright and @FondOfBeetles https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089?mod=flipboard
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-dangerous-denial-of-sex-11581638089?mod=flipboard
20./ But a new and more fundamental spanner has been thrust into the logic of the 'sex spectrum'. It's the one @TrevorPTweets and @RichardDawkins identified: the demand that people accept obediently that transwomen actually ARE women. Why is this a problem?
21./ We used to be told transwomen were women in some inner sense. Biology could still distinguish between male and female. Now the demand is to remove that biological boundary. Here's transwomen talking about how they have periods & menstrual cycles.
https://theestablishment.co/yes-trans-women-can-get-period-symptoms-e43a43979e8c/index.html
https://theestablishment.co/yes-trans-women-can-get-period-symptoms-e43a43979e8c/index.html
22./ Ahem. Even to use the world 'biologically' or 'genetically' can be a thought crime. Here's the Canadian Province of Alberta in official health advice suggesting we should avoid terms like biologically male or female, or even "born a woman".
23./ Here's a trans group in New Zealand arguing the notion of gender identity is becoming old hat. Instead, "One does not simply identify as a gender, but IS that gender". But what does this newly minted dogma mean for what we can say about our ancient huntress?
24./ Once it's accepted there's no fixed foundation (including teeth proteins) for saying someone is biologically female you can no longer say when a skeleton is found that the person was a woman as most of us understand the term now. Maybe she was what most of us now call male?
25./ For centuries archaeology erased women. In 2020 we're doing it all over again. A fierce huntress can't be allowed to be an actual woman. She must share her glory with men to satisfy the feelings of a bunch of snowflakes who wouldn't survive a night on a mountaintop.
