Flicka

Lefty Ⓥ dismayed by dogma and woo. Dems need rational dialogue re: “gender identity.” Please start listening to ex-trans-identified folk & aware AGPs.

[Flicka @Flickabet]

To my fellow libs/progressives/Democrats who are starting to have questions regarding “trans” claims…
I recommend this 2023 memo as an excellent explainer— https://t.co/pc1E8ysdGs Its author has personal experience w/issues of cross-sex identity.

Also helpful: see next link ⬇️

[Flicka @Flickabet]

This is important to read. As I've become more informed, I've found there are good reasons to question claims central to "youth gender medicine." Note: I'm a registered Democrat, longtime progressive, and I care about evidence.

[Flicka @Flickabet]

The psychological experiment she refers to, about pressure to conform, was first conducted by Solomon Asch in the 1950s. https://t.co/5KmJ8ETRFw

[Lisa Selin Davis @LisaSelinDavis]

@BrianLehrer on @WNYC just (mis)informed listeners that detransitioners don't require any special medical care. They can "just stop."
This is disinformation. There are no guidelines, no billing codes, and no protocol for detransitioners. Democrats have blocked detrans care bills.

[Sammy @NeuroSGS]

“Gender identity” is often presented as a deep, innate psychological essence that exists independently of biological sex. However, the evidence for such a claim is far less clear than is commonly assumed.

At its most basic level, what is called “gender identity” can be understood as an individual’s perception, understanding, or subjective relationship to their biological sex. Neurologically, researchers do not directly observe a “gender identity” module in the brain. Rather, they identify statistical correlations between certain brain regions, networks, or patterns of activity and individuals’ self-reported feelings, beliefs, and experiences. This is no different in principle from studying political identity, religious identity, national identity, athletic identity, or any other self-concept. The fact that a mental state correlates with brain activity does not establish that it is an innate, biologically distinct entity.

The statement that “gender identity is in the brain” therefore risks overstating what neuroscience can actually demonstrate. Every thought, belief, preference, and self-conception is represented in the brain in some form. Saying that gender identity has neural correlates tells us little more than the fact that people think about themselves in sex-related ways.

At most, biological, developmental, psychological, and social factors may influence whether an individual feels comfortable with, identifies with, or rejects aspects of their sexed body. These influences are worthy of study. However, it does not follow that “gender identity” should be treated as a separate category that supersedes biological sex in law, medicine, or public policy.

Biological sex has direct physical, reproductive, and physiological consequences that are relevant in areas such as healthcare, sport, privacy, data collection, and scientific research. Any policy framework that elevates subjective identity above these objective realities bears the burden of demonstrating why such a departure is justified. Simply asserting that gender identity is real or that it has neural correlates does not, by itself, establish that it should take precedence over biological sex in legal or institutional decision-making.

[Cervixen of the Clitorians @cervixen]

The Gender-Critical or "TERF" Position is a materialist analysis of sex, gender, and women’s rights. It is not a theory of hatred toward trans-identified people. It is a claim about the importance of sex as a real, human, and materially significant category in law, language, medicine, safeguarding, sport, and feminism.

Trans activists often misrepresent the views of GC feminists, sex realists and TERFs becaue honesty would cause them to lose the argument.

The following is an attempt to represent my position as a gender critical, sex realist and radical feminist precisely so it is easier to see when that view is being intentionally misrepresented and/or understood by bad faith representatives of trans activism.

I know my own position better than anyone. Bad faith is presuming to tell me what my own position is in order to discredit me. That's worse than a strawman, and the main tactic of gender essentialist activism.

Here is my actual position: the only position I need to defend:

1. Sex is real and materially significant

Sex in human beings is not an identity, a feeling, a role, or a personality type. It is a reproductive and developmental category: male and female are the two human sex classes that are the means of human reproduction. Male is the sex class organized around the development of small, mobile gametes and female is the sex class organized around the development of large, immobile gametes.

This does not mean every person is fertile, typical, or currently capable of reproduction. Infertility, menopause, hysterectomy, castration, DSDs, injury, age, or illness do not erase sex. Sex is not a human performance and there is no standard for sex beyond teproductive role. Sex is a human condition and an innate, immutable attribute of the human body.

Gender-critical feminists reject the idea that sex is “assigned at birth” in the sense of being invented, guessed, or arbitrarily imposed by authority. In ordinary cases, sex is observed and recorded. Even in rare, extraordinary cases with ambiguous secondary sex characteristics, with modern instrumentation, the primary atrribute of sex is observable at the definitive level beyond the crude level of external genitalia at the cellular level.

2. Women are female human beings

In this framework, “woman” means an adult human female. “Girl” means a juvenile human female.

This definition does not depend on femininity, beauty, clothing, sexual behaviour, reproductive capacity, compliance, heterosexuality, or conformity to stereotypes. A woman can be masculine, feminine, lesbian, bisexual, heterosexual, celibate, infertile, disabled, old, young, gender-nonconforming, or medically atypical. She remains a woman because she is female.

The position is therefore not that women must look, act, dress, think, or feel a certain way. It is the opposite: women should be free from the sex-based stereotypes traditionally imposed on female people.

3. Gender is not sex

Radical feminism distinguishes sex from gender.
Sex refers to the embodied, biological male/female distinction.
Gender refers to the social roles, stereotypes, expectations, behaviours, and hierarchies imposed on people because of sex.
Gender-critical feminism does not seek to preserve gender roles. It seeks to abolish their coercive power.

A feminine male does not become female. A masculine female does not become male. No one should have to change sex category, medically alter their body, or adopt a new identity to be allowed to reject sexist expectations.

Continued...

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

Another week, another attempt by woke academics to push sex pseudoscience.

In my video, I explain why a new paper in Neurotoxicology claiming that "sex is a spectrum," a "mosaic of factors," and a "conglomeration of variables" isn't just wrong, but totally self-refuting.

It tries to argue that the term "sex differences" is an "underdefined generalization that creates a distinct binary" when sex is actually a "spectrum."

So instead of saying "sex differences," the authors propose a new term: "Sex-Associated Variables," or SAVs. These SAVs, according to the authors, include morphological, genetic, and endocrine factors.

The authors state that "The use of SAVs allows for a more nuanced analysis of potential sex differences by using several different sex related characteristics as a defined variable that can be correlated with outcomes, rather than a reductive category."

But ask yourself this: How do the authors know which variables are "associated" with being male or female without knowing what males and females are independently of these SAVs?

The entire point of the paper is to deny a gamete-based view of sex on grounds that it is overly "reductive" and fails to capture the complexity of sex differences. But the authors are totally oblivious (or at least willfully ignorant) to the fact that their ability to assign SAVs to a particular sex, not just in humans but in non-human animals as well, necessarily presupposes the validity of the gamete-based view of sex.

Watch the video for a more detailed breakdown.

I've covered this argument, and many others, in great detail in my scholarly paper "Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes."

If you want a solid framework that exposes the central flaws in woke pseudoscience surrounding biological sex, I strongly recommend reading it. It's open access and relatively short.

Why There Are Exactly Two Sexes:https://t.co/k6VEmRcgqM

[Professor Alice Sullivan @ProfAliceS]

Health Secretary James Murray says he would no longer say 'Trans Women are Women', that single-sex spaces should be protected on the basis on sex, and that sex and gender are different things.

This is a big turnaround. In 2022 he defended a male swimmer competing in the female category (Lia Thomas) on the basis that 'Trans Women are Women'.

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@wrbucla Thank you! I just preordered.

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@AzPittsburgh @SwipeWright @buttonslives Are there any animals in your life whom you care about? You probably think of them as the individuals they are. You probably would recoil at the idea of harming them for no good reason (i.e., just because you like the taste of their thigh).
What makes it okay to do that to pigs?

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@AzPittsburgh @SwipeWright @buttonslives Here’s an immersive documentary about a farmer who grapples with the ethics of what he’s doing. The business of killing doesn’t sit well with him.

“The Last Pig” is “a story of resilience, tough choices, and the evolving dynamics within animal husbandry.”
https://t.co/kkFHBxBxdE

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@AzPittsburgh @SwipeWright @buttonslives People breed, raise, and kill pigs for food, that’s true—but you and I can live and thrive without eating pigs.

[Flicka @Flickabet]

Wesley makes a good point here.

[Wesley Yang @wesyang]

There is a kind of trauma-bonding that accompanies being bullied and gaslit by the political establishment of the state of California that will lay a foundation for future action among some of the most agentic, competitive, physically fit girls in America, whom the Democratic party has seen fit to subject to a relentless humiliation ritual while declaring itself to be at the vanguard of morality and decency.

[Janet Murray @jan_murray]

Former BBC News director Fran Unsworth claims she was driven out of her role by trans activism.

She describes an atmosphere of internal bullying, pressure and fear around trans coverage - with editors reportedly reluctant to go near certain stories.

This matters - a lot.

Because journalism is, at its heart, about telling the truth. Even when the truth is uncomfortable.

So when basic facts are blurred, or language is used in a way that obscures rather than clarifies, the
consequences go far beyond one article, one newsroom or one broadcast.

And when journalists become afraid to state basic facts, challenge the language they are being asked to use or even cover certain stories - our of fear of what their colleagues might think - journalism stops informing the public.

It starts influencing them.
And that is activism, not journalism.

Link to read below (gift link) 👇

[MJ Murphy @hothingsgirlsay]

Uhhh… that’s the problem!!!

No adult stepped in and said:
“You are a girl and you cannot become a boy… but that does NOT limit who you can be.”

Instead, adults increasingly interpret normal childhood identity exploration literally.

A little girl saying:
“I’m a boy”
could mean:
“I relate more to boys.”
“I like boy clothes.”
“I don’t fit feminine stereotypes.”
“I like rough play.”
“I admire male characters.”
“I feel different.”

Children say imaginative and identity-based things constantly.

The healthier response used to be:
“You’re still a girl, but girls can do almost anything.”

Wear boy clothes.
Get short haircuts.
Play sports.
Climb trees.
Reject stereotypes.
Be masculine.
Be different.

None of that requires telling a child they were “born in the wrong body.”

That’s the shift people are debating.

Not whether kids should be safe.
Not whether kids should be loved.

Whether adults should reinforce a child’s belief that they literally are the opposite sex instead of helping them understand that personality and biology are not the same thing.

[LGB Alliance @AllianceLGB]

Superb, must-watch speech by @MaeveHalligan on the betrayal by the "LGBTQ" movement of those whose interests it was once created to serve.
https://t.co/eeFvqqWGzJ

[Flicka @Flickabet]

Thank you, @prof_curiosity1, for the clarity your writing provides.
A sample from this important piece:

[Read some Piaget please! @prof_curiosity1]

https://t.co/uuq3Xa7xUK

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@prof_curiosity1 Brilliant—thank you for finding the words to express, with perfect clarity, the irony (which exists also over here in the U.S. and is so stunning to me it has left me sputtering ineffectively…thank you again)

[Flicka @Flickabet]

@docgotham @wesyang Dave, I appreciate your post for its thoughtfulness and also because it brings up for me a serious question I’ve asked myself (and others) in the past, and I am still unsure of the answer: Is one’s sex a public fact?

[DavidAnderson_JD_NYC @DavidandersonJd]

@_CryMiaRiver YES! Make this an article! Sunk cost fallacy plus my side bias plus group dynamics and bad data? You too can have a "1% regret rate."
Crazy. D.A. NYC🗽
Oh, btw - me this week. ❤️