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People who should know better deny that sex is binary in humans. People with degrees in biology. At first I couldn't understand why they'd deny this obvious scientific concept.
Now I'm less naive and my belief is that they really want it to be true. I imagine many know deep down that this isn't the case. But for the sake of keeping the wolf from the door, being kind or staying on side of friends/colleagues they go along with this odd idea
Following the Dover trial 15 years ago (how time flies) I was struck by similar thoughts. The Dover trial in the US centred around the teaching of intelligent design (dolled up creationism) in schools https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District?wprov=sfla1
The mandated teaching of intelligent design in classrooms ended up in the courts. There people like Michael Behe, who has a PhD in biochemistry, stood up and tried to defend the teaching of this camouflaged creationism.
Intelligent design basically involves the idea that certain structures in nature are too sophisticated or improbable to have evolved - the classic example was the flagellum. But other egs like the immune system were offered up
The claim was that complex structures like the immune system could not have been built upon and evolved from the ground up. That an intelligent designer was needed. A new kind of god of the gaps approach.
Just like now I couldn't understand how people who should know better and knew so much of evolution went along with this (I'm clearly a slow learner!). Intelligent design was trounced in court in front of a conservative-leaning judge
It should have been a lesson to me that ideology - religion or something else - can cloud people's judgement when it comes to simple concepts they should understand well.
Back then people called it lying for Jesus. Now it's lying for gender.
