Hymn to be recited for the next thousand mornings
A few years ago, scientists feared they’d lose their jobs if they said anything against diversity programs.
I was against that.
Now scientists fear they’ll lose their jobs if they say anything for diversity programs.
I’m against that too.
A few years ago, if you didn’t list your pronouns, you were on the wrong side of history.
I was on the wrong side of history.
Now, if you want equal rights for your trans friends, you’re an enemy of the people.
I’m an enemy of the people.
Then, they said the woke triumph over universities, the media, and Silicon Valley had bent the moral arc of the universe and overrode individual conscience.
I chose conscience anyway.
Now they say the MAGA triumph over the White House, Congress, the Supreme Court, and (again) Silicon Valley has bent the moral arc back.
I choose conscience again.
Then and now the ideologues say: don’t you realize you need to pick a side?
What they don’t understand is that I have picked a side.
Follow
Comment #1 February 2nd, 2025 at 3:47 pm
What if we all just try to be mensch.
Comment #2 February 2nd, 2025 at 5:51 pm
on a lighter note, what’s up in the Techno-Cult world lately, one wonders?
https://gizmodo.com/more-murders-possibly-tied-to-bizarre-techno-cult-members-2000557826?utm_source=gizmodo_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2025-02-02-pm
Comment #3 February 2nd, 2025 at 6:06 pm
I am old enough to be almost done with watching the moral arc of history bend. It seems to me it was bad for the sort of people who might be called diverse in my youth, bent toward justice a bit during my prime, and is now bending back.
The USA military was mostly white men in living memory. Then it got more diverse and seemed to work as well or better. As an engineer I’ve had fellow workers who were female, black, and oriental (not all at the same time), and they were pretty effective, as a group. The only (few) worthless engineers I encountered were white males–probably because that category had a much bigger sample size. I believe there are good people and bad people of all “races” and genders.
I will say any personnel program or other program devised by the Jack Welch school of management is apt to be bad. (Take “stack-ranking”–please!) There has been a plague of that sort of manager in industry, and probably in academia (if that is what it is called) too. The sociopaths tend to rise to the top, since that is where they badly want to be.
Diversity and wokeness (being aware of long-standing oppression of some categories of people) seem like well-meant policies to me, but even good things can be misused by jerks to be jerky to other people. That’s probably a law of nature.
Comment #4 February 2nd, 2025 at 7:53 pm
I agree with everything you said, but one remark. Please, don’t call “diversity programs” these ultra-fascist and ultra-totalitarian, anti-liberty and anti-libertarian, woke bullshit that filled up the universities in an effortless cultural-revolution style.
Other than this, I’m all in support to those who prefer to be calling themselves she/he/they/zing or whatever else rocks their boat.
Comment #5 February 2nd, 2025 at 8:00 pm
If you or anyone else are looking for a cause to support in these turbulent times: the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has consistently agreed with you on every single one of these issues.
They currently have on their main web site one press release praising one of Trump’s actions, and another press release criticizing another one of his actions. They’re one of the few organizations out there that really do consistently stick to their principles and praise or criticize both parties when they deserve it.
Comment #6 February 2nd, 2025 at 8:30 pm
Periklis #4: Diversity programs are themselves incredibly … diverse. Their messages have ranged from “here’s how to make everyone feel welcome here,” all the way to “we must terrorize the Zionist capitalist pigs who rule the world until they leave this campus.” So, while they should certainly be open to criticism, blanket punishing of everyone who’s ever been involved with one would destroy a large fraction of all of academia including the innocent.
Comment #7 February 2nd, 2025 at 11:23 pm
BTW, the hijinks pointed to in #2 is apparently connected to “Rationality” and the “Less Wrong” forum.
Comment #8 February 2nd, 2025 at 11:32 pm
Scott,
Can you point to any diversity program that is actually evil. I understand that “we must terrorize the Zionist capitalist pigs who rule the world until they leave this campus.” was a hyperbole. But I am not aware of any diversity program that is anything close to terrorizing people.
When I read the text of these programs, it is mostly boring compliance stuff. DEI is about making sure that people are not discriminated based on their race, ethnicity or gender.
Comment #9 February 3rd, 2025 at 3:33 am
I support free speech for the woke, the commies, the nazis.
But this doesn’t mean that people should pay taxes such that they can indoctrinate students, censor and falsify science, open physics positions to which Einstein could not apply because he was male, white/jew, heterosexual.
While the woke complain, my publication on gender and STEM (https://direct.mit.edu/qss/article/2/1/225/99129/Gender-issues-in-fundamental-physics-A) is still blocked by arXiv. Its data are still cancelled by CERN. My lessons about Dark Matter at a CERN school were cancelled because I said the obvious truth about male transgender in female sports. I could not attend a workshop on Modular Invariance, because its organisers had to add a female diversity coordinator, who happened to be a US DEI dean.
If science and academia still is about seeking truth, it should keep out people who behave as political activists.
Comment #10 February 3rd, 2025 at 4:02 am
I understand that this is very much not the point of the post, but I just wondered why you chose the ‘listing pronouns’ example? It doesn’t feel like too much of a big deal to me compared to everything else, is there some reason you particularly dislike it?
Comment #11 February 3rd, 2025 at 6:24 am
At #8: at Rutgers, where I’m currently a faculty, last year’s the pro-terrorist demonstrations ended only after the university president committed to create of anti-zionist academic units and department, with specific rhetoric, specific quotas of Palestinians etc. This is exactly the type of diversity Scott mentioned. I’m sure there are several others of this kind I’m not aware of.
In addition, I as an individual of grown age being forced *every year* to take the *same* nonsensical indoctrination-to-nothingness exams — which if I do not it “may result in termination” — I view it as an act of humiliation, excessive demonstration of power. I would say, it is worse than the classes in Marxism that my students in Tsinghua had to take before graduation. Because Marxism (scientific socialism) is an actual scientific domain, whereas wokeness resembles a religion.
Comment #12 February 3rd, 2025 at 8:19 am
In this brave new world we’ve seen appearing for over a decade, I find that being able to honestly speak this creed, to live by it and stand by it, is already an impressive credential.
Comment #13 February 3rd, 2025 at 10:31 am
Periklis,
I think you were replying to me. But the agreement at Rutgers with the Palestinian protesters is not a DEI policy.
I strongly disagree with the Palestinian protesters, but I still believe in their right to protest. They do not have the right to harass Jewish student. It seems that Rutgers did an abysmal job in balancing the Palestinian right to protest while protecting Jewish students.
I read the agreement between Rutgers and the protesters and it seems fairly reasonable to me. Your characterization of this agreement is totally misleading. There is also nothing in this agreement that relates to Scott’s criticism.
If this is the best example you can give of how evil DEI policies are, you are just convincing me that there is really nothing wrong with the DEI policies.
Comment #14 February 3rd, 2025 at 11:41 am
I’ve graduated too long ago when wokism and diversity weren’t in the culture, but I can take Hollywood as a cultural example most can relate to.
You hear that Hollywood is getting destroyed by DEI, but the issue isn’t as much with DEI in movies, but bad DEI … and noone ever claims that bad DEI means that the diverse actors who are hired are poor actors, the problem is with bad scripts. But bad scripts is a general larger issue and trend in Hollywood, not specific to DEI.
Hollywood has always been pushing its values (shifting with the times, like everything else), but it used to be just way more skillful at doing it (and it’s again another more general trend):
The 1980 movie FAME about the NYC performing arts school has a wide diverse cast playing the kids and teachers, and it would make zero sense to replace them all with a white cast… nothing to do with “merit”, just a reflection that the USA itself is diverse.
Then take those three 80/90s blockbusters: The Hunt for Red October, Die Hard, Terminator 2… all three have a Black character who’s a talented techie expert… not exactly super realistic for the tim period, but not that entirely unrealistic either… Hollywood has often tried to be colorblind even when society wasn’t (eg Star Trek in the 60s), and that sort of choice probably inspired lots of Black kids to try and get into STEM.
Comment #15 February 3rd, 2025 at 12:24 pm
Does “conscience” justify neutrality? Balance between extremes is often an illusion.
Comment #16 February 3rd, 2025 at 12:53 pm
Dear Udi,
Please see below for the corresponding document. Also, pay attention to the phrasing regarding Diversity, Inclusion etc.
https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/2024-05/AGREEMENT_05072024.pdf
Comment #17 February 3rd, 2025 at 2:03 pm
Periklis,
The only mention of diversity and inclusion in your linked document is:
“Rutgers–New Brunswick will work to develop training sessions on anti-Palestinian, anti-
Arab, and anti-Muslim racism for all RU administrators & staff. We also commit to the
hiring of a senior administrator who has cultural competency in and with Arab, Muslim,
and Palestinian communities in the Division of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community.”
It looks reasonable to me. It doesn’t even say that the new administrator has to be a Muslim.
This is the sentence you referred to as being “ultra-fascist and ultra-totalitarian”? You seem to be having an issue with the objective analysis of this text. Maybe you need to attend a few more diversity and inclusion workshops to learn how to deal with your anger towards Muslims.
Comment #18 February 3rd, 2025 at 2:10 pm
So. we, who are neither hebrew or muslim, are still being told that caring for the fate of Palestinians is “pro-terrorism” and that criticizing the bibi government actions against Gaza is “anti-zionism” and “antisemitism”… that may have worked a year ago, but billions across the world have now witnessed with their own eyes, for months and months, what is actually really happening, regardless of Propaganda, from either side. So, please, cut the crap – not only it’s incredibly insulting to everyone’s humanity and intelligence, but also doing massive long term damage to legitimate jewish aspirations.
Comment #19 February 3rd, 2025 at 3:07 pm
If we “only” had to worry about DEI, pronouns, trans rights….
When the richest oligarch in the world, who was throwing Sieg Heils around just a week ago (“pleaaase, Elon, apologize or clarify!!! Pretty pleeease! We’ll still love you if you do!”), is now having free access to all federal government agencies, shutting down programs and fundings on a whim, with zero check or pushback, even though this is obviously totally unconstitutional and bypassing congress, i.e. the end of US democracy… because at what point do you think this ignorant lunatic is gonna say “ok, we’re done now, you guys take it all back from here!”… it’s only been two weeks and it’s already game over.
Comment #20 February 3rd, 2025 at 4:06 pm
I have homosexual friends, trans friends, and religious friends. That does not mean I have to agree with their views on how society should be organized or with their dogmas/political taboos (for example, in the case of homosexual friends even Douglas Murray (a gay man) or Kathleen Stock (a lesbian woman) disagrees with the dogma of sexual orientation being a solely “hardware issue”).
Trans is likely a combination of many issues: sexual paraphilias (autogynephilia), sexual orientation (homosexuality), youth subculture (rapid onset gender dysphoria, non-binary), culture-bound psychosomatic disorder (see the book by Suzanne O’Sullivan), and more.
The cultural stream that underlies “trans” is gender ideology. Some view gender ideology as a new religion (I have first heard this description from Helen Joyce). One of its central tenets is belief in “gender identity” (gender soul) that should take precedence over biological sex. I am fine with my friends believing in gender ideology (or homeopathy, chiropractic medicine, god, etc). What I am not fine with is when gender ideology is taught to children as a fact (you can check your kids health education books; for example “Comprehensive Health Skills for Middle School, 3rd Edition” does teach gender ideology as a fact). What I am not fine with is when doctors use gender ideology justifications for treatment (ultimately they hide behind low quality suicidal ideation studies to justify radical treatments ignoring the central principle of medicine: irreversible radical treatments require high quality studies; see Cass report in the UK). What I am not fine with is reorganizing the society around the dogma “gender identity is hardware, womanhood is software” (when the truth is “gender identity is software, womanhood is hardware”).
The political ramifications of the madness we descended into are outlined in Kara Dansky’s The Reckoning. I despair at how we are ever going to recover as a society: each institution captured by gender ideology lost a significant amount of public trust. These include, for example, universities, public K-12 schools, media, ACLU, AAP. I think that organizing society around facts (biological sex) as opposed to beliefs (gender identity) is the first step to recovery. This can be done while respecting “trans” rights to their personal beliefs.
What does “equal rights” for trans friends mean?
Comment #21 February 3rd, 2025 at 5:44 pm
Dear Udi,
Rutgers didn’t have any problem with islamophobia. It did and does have a problem with antisemitism. That’s why Rutgers president was questioned in congress last year. When the outcome of a protest against Israel and in fact anything-jewish is the creation of “training sessions” (among other niceties) this is the type of indoctrination to an ultra-fascist agenda I was referring to. That’s just an example. Anyone who is not in support of the murder of jews doesn’t mean he hates muslims. I understand that we need training sessions, repetition, indoctrination, and demand to conform to establish the opposite. Approaching an issue in a fragmented fashion attributing islamophobia to anyone who doesn’t conform is exactly the type of mental vomit wokism and DEI-policies gave birth to.
Comment #22 February 3rd, 2025 at 6:14 pm
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but it could very well be the case that the youth’s focus on Trans rights and gender fluid theories may be a response to actual underlying biological changes in the newer generations due to endocrine disruptions by pollution.
Some of those effects are spectacular, like rising numbers of micro-penises at birth, but others may be way more subtle at the level of brain development, leading to a loss of interest in actual sex (so gender becomes something more like a choice of fashion, something you wear), etc.
https://karger.com/sxd/article-abstract/15/1-3/213/820678/Endocrine-Disrupting-Chemicals-and-Disorders-of?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Just today, the news were mentioning astounding results on the ubiquity of microplastics in the environment:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/microplastics-brain-pollution-health
Combine this with other terrible health trends: autism, obesity, cancer in young people rising by 75% in the last 40 years… and it’s hard to ignore.
So, yea, trans right obsession may be triggering, but it could just be the tip of a massive health crisis iceberg that’s in our path.
Comment #23 February 3rd, 2025 at 6:57 pm
Dave,
You claim that you have no problem with your homosexual and trans friends, but then you use the “Gender Ideology” term to describe trans. “Gender Ideology” is not a term used by trans. Trans people just want to make their own choices of how they live their lives. Growing long hair or putting on make up is not an “ideology”.
Using the term “Gender Ideology” suggest that trans people are trying to force their choices on you, but they really aren’t. Your are free to choose what gender identity to conform to. You may also choose to pick and choose from a variety of identities. The only thing trans people want is that you would also respect their freedom to choose how they live their lives.
You also write:
“I despair at how we are ever going to recover as a society: each institution captured by gender ideology lost a significant amount of public trust.”
Well, there is no need to despair. My kids are in public school and despite what you have been told, schools have not been captured by gender ideology. They study English, Math and History. Looking over their homework, I cannot recall a single mention of gender ideology. We are safe!
Comment #24 February 3rd, 2025 at 9:59 pm
Udi:
I know that “gender ideology” is not used by trans, and I know they do not like the term. I know that “male genital mutilation” is not used by people who practice circumcision (various religions) and I know they do not like the term. Unfortunately sometimes terms that people do not like are the most accurate (e.g., Chrisopher Hitchens’ critique of male genital mutilation in the context of criticizing religions).
I agree, growing hair or putting on makeup is not ideology (it could be any of the issues I listed (and not listed): autogynephilia, homosexuality, subculture, taste, and more). Ideology is the “system of ideas that explains the phenomenon in a political/policy/quasireligion context”: some of the central concepts are: gender identity/true self, pronoun rituals, transphobia (the analog of heresy in religion), sex assigned at birth, etc.
I agree that trans people should be free to make their choices on how they live their lives—I respect their choices. Same with religious people. Religious people cannot force their choices on my children by inserting religion (or creationism) in public schools (1st amendment). Trans religion got inserted into public schools (see below).
I have not been told that schools were captured—I did my own exploration, for example, the book I mentioned: defines gender as stereotypes associated with particular sex (page 611) and then defines sexual orientation based on gender (page 614). It explicitly describes non-binary gender identity (page 613). That’s not neutral—that’s pushing gender ideology on kids.
Fred:
It could be chemicals, it could be “culture-bound psychosomatic disorder”—I recommend the book by Suzanne O’Sullivan (Sleeping Beauties) to see the power of networks on us (I think that’s the more likely explanation).
N: Re: ‘listing pronouns’ example.
For me, it would be signalling adherence to gender ideology—that’s the meaning of displaying pronouns to me.
Comment #25 February 3rd, 2025 at 10:08 pm
A comment for those of us in the US trying to steer a middle path between right wing nuts and left wing nuts:
For the most part, mainstream WOKE is primarily annoying — e.g., Periklis #11 — as opposed to dangerous. Actual dangerous left wing nuts are pretty rare other than a few places on the coasts.
In contrast, dangerous right wing nuts are very common and well armed. It is clear who you should of be doing most of your worrying about.
Comment #26 February 3rd, 2025 at 11:07 pm
One of the prime dogmas of gender ideology seems to be the insistence that there’s no such thing as gender ideology.
Comment #27 February 3rd, 2025 at 11:29 pm
Periklis wrote:
“Rutgers didn’t have any problem with islamophobia.”
This statement is as believable as some saying that there is no antisemitism at Rutgers. Or maybe you are saying that Rutgers is full of Islamophobes, but it was not a problem until Muslims decided to protest?
The language you use is clear evidence that you have no tolerance to Muslims or any people that you disagree with.
Dave wrote:
“Trans religion got inserted into public schools (see below).”
“It explicitly describes non-binary gender identity (page 613). That’s not neutral—that’s pushing gender ideology on kids.”
There are people with non-binary gender identity. That is not an ideology, it is just a fact. I have no problem with public schools teaching about the existence of different religions. So I am not sure why you have a problem with schools teaching that transgender people exist.
I mean, read Fred’s comment above. He gives the impression that trans people did not exist before we had microplastics in our water. That is exactly why it is important to teach kids that trans people exist.
Comment #28 February 4th, 2025 at 12:18 am
@Dave:
“I have not been told that schools were captured—I did my own exploration, for example, the book I mentioned: defines gender as stereotypes associated with particular sex (page 611) and then defines sexual orientation based on gender (page 614). It explicitly describes non-binary gender identity (page 613). That’s not neutral—that’s pushing gender ideology on kids.”
These examples seem pretty neutral to me. Except that they are using “gender” to mean “sexual” or “psycho-sexual”, even though in their definition “gender” refers only to stereotypes.
Comment #29 February 4th, 2025 at 10:08 am
With apologies to Scott (whose post I want to incidentally praise), I do want to post one reply here to argue against @Dave’s dichotomy. As Dave’s earlier posts were allowed through, I hope this one will not be regarded as too grievously off-topic either.
The point I want to make, Dave, is this: it is possible to be pro-trans, and indeed trans oneself, without any antiscientific, pseudo-religious belief in a “gender soul”.
I, or one, support trans rights — actively, not just in a live-and-let-live way — not because I believe in some mystical unchanging essence of gender written on every human’s immortal soul, but simply because I think it is a positive thing for someone to exercise their human freedom in order to reinvent themself however they please. It is valid to change your name, your hair, get plastic surgery, and, yes, even change your pronouns; it doesn’t necessarily imply support for “gender ideology” in the sense you mean.
You seem to grant a weaker version of this point above, but you still imply that anyone who chooses to transition must therefore believe in the “ideology”, and that you only tolerate them in the same sense you tolerate religion. But that’s just not right. Many of the trans people I know personally are skeptical of the “born this way” doctrine, just as many of my gay friends are skeptical of their equivalent of the same thing; at best, they regard it as a simplification or white-lie for the benefit of normies. In my view, tolerance for trans people ought to be thought of not as a freedom-of-religion sort of thing, but rather as being of a kind with tolerance for people getting tattoos, piercing, plastic surgery, etc. (not to mention freedom to pick your own clothing style, or ask people to call you by a nickname and avoid your legal name). Beliefs and ideology needn’t have anything to do with it, and oftentimes don’t.
Hence, as far as I’m concerned, there is nothing epistemologically wrong with a textbook explaining what being nonbinary is, as a lifestyle choice/identity, unless the textbook says more than science supports with regards to the “and it’s hard-coded into your brain” thing. If there were people saying dyeing your hair blue was an innate, instinctual desire, they’d be pretty silly, but it would be equally wrongheaded to say that anyone who dyes their hair blue, supports the open sale of hairdye, or tells children that dyeing their hair is an option someday if they fancy it, *must* be a crank who believes in blue-hair-essentialism.
I hope the above is helpful; it really is meant as an earnest attempt at clarification on what is (on both sides) a very, very muddled issue. In that respect, at least, I hope it extends out of the spirit of Scott’s original post.
Comment #30 February 4th, 2025 at 12:19 pm
A lot of people are feeling squeezed between the sides these days. Two alternatives, neither of which is palatable.
For example, the presidential election gave us the choice between Trump and a candidate who was endorsed by Dick Cheney. Wait a minute, who is the bad guy again?
And again in the recent senate confirmation hearings. On one side is Trump’s nominee for intelligence director, and on the other side is some Democratic senator foaming at the mouth denouncing Edward Snowden as a traitor. Uhh, which side should I be rooting for?
Comment #31 February 4th, 2025 at 12:50 pm
On second thought, I suppose one might see “non-binary gender identity” as a problem, since it’s not clear that this is an “identity” so much as the lack of an identity. That might conflict with the concept of gender identity as defined, if it means anything other than a convenient way to describe being trans.
Comment #32 February 4th, 2025 at 2:04 pm
I agree that there are trans people that do not support gender ideology (and especially not teaching it to children); my public favorites: Debbie Hayton, Blaire White, Buck Angel (and some private people that want to live their life and be left alone).
I do not mean to imply that every trans person believes in gender ideology; similarly not every religious person believes in god in the same sense (for example, for some it is just an abstract/axiomatic moral framework). In both cases they made a cognitive decision that I would not be willing to make (e.g., pick belief in god, accept a moral framework with the concept of god, believe that one can/should present as the opposite sex). In both cases I am totally fine with them having that belief/choice, fine with changing hair, name.
For plastic surgery: Would I be fine with an anorectic getting a liposuction? I would sympathize with the person; from a medical viewpoint that would be malpractice. Would I be fine with a person getting breast augmentation surgery? I understand the mating market advantage of that and I understand that it is widely accepted (though not something I would encourage to my family/friends and would not allow for minors). Trans surgeries are somewhere in between these two (certainly no for minors).
For pronouns: Would I be fine with a religious person insisting I greet him/her bless you or address him/her “son/daughter of Jesus”? Maybe yes, maybe no. Same with pronouns. Why should I participate in somebody’s personal belief?
Thanks for posting—I am in the process of trying to understand the issue. I did the same for religion going from agnostic to a rabid atheist (Dawkins, Hitchens brought clarity); it seems I am well on my path from “gender ideology agnostic” to “rabid gender critical” (Dansky, Joyce are bringing clarity).
From the “agnostic” viewpoint there is nothing epistemologically wrong with schools describing what non-binary is or what an angel is (tongue in cheek: especially if it includes a screening of Dogma). What pushes me to the “atheist” point of view is the concrete damage of both religion and gender ideology to children and the culture, for example, Douglas Murray’s book does a pretty good job describing how medical profession is captured (with the concrete example of Olson-Kennedy) and how this leads to concrete damage in children. With all elites (media, universities, schools, Hollywood) pushing gender ideology, with all dissent/exploration being severely punished (see what happened to Ken Zucker, Lisa Littman, Michael Bailey) are we surprised that we have a large cohort of confused children? Check out some stories at pittparents.com—would you look those parents in the eye and say we did good as a society?
Comment #33 February 4th, 2025 at 4:12 pm
Fascinating navel gazing above. Meanwhile, NSF is targeted directly: https://www.eenews.net/articles/science-funding-agency-threatened-with-mass-layoffs
Comment #34 February 4th, 2025 at 9:17 pm
@Dave #32:
Thank you for the measured reply!
I think you’re still a little off relative to the point I was trying to get across viz crediting beliefs vs. respecting choices and preferences.
If we must stick with religious analogy, I guess you could say that I think “explaining what non-binary is” is more like explaining what a monk is, than explaining what an angel is. We aren’t talking about beliefs about things which may or may not exist; we’re talking about lifestyle choices which may or may not be advisable. The existence of non-binary people (that is, their existence in the sense of people who, in practice, live as non-binary, not their existence in the sense of people with “X” objectively written on their soul-passport) isn’t a question of belief; it’s simply a fact about our society.
This is also the difference between the religious person who asks you to call her “daughter of Jesus”, and the trans woman who asks you to call her “Jane”. Prima facie, Jane isn’t asking you to pretend to acknowledge objective beliefs about the world that go against your conscience. She certainly isn’t asking you to pretend that she has XX chromosomes, and she quite probably isn’t asking you to pretend she has “F” written on her soul, either. She is simply asking you to use the name she prefers over the name whose reminder causes her grief.
By way of analogy, you might very well not believe in Pope Francis’s status as God’s holy representative on Earth, and if you don’t, etiquette cannot force you to pretend that you do; but if you had to enter a conversation with him for some reason, it would be inordinately obnoxious of you to insist on calling him Jorge. For exactly the same reason that it would be obnoxious to insist on calling a guy James if he keeps telling you he hates the sound of that, and prefers to go by ‘Jack’. Jane’s preference for being called “Jane” might be stronger than Jack’s for being called “Jack”, and even than Pope Francis’s for being called “Francis”, but I don’t think they’re qualitatively different, and I think a well-meaning person should try to respect all of them. Beliefs don’t enter into it.
As regards the liposuction question… This is all a very different prong of The Issue, getting away from the question of *belief* I wanted to clear up with you; so this is a digression within a digression. (Scott, I really am sorry…) But like I said, I have a basic moral belief in the importance of bodily autonomy, and along the lines of the Other Scott’s post about the Hairdryer Incident, I’ll go as far as supporting a provably rational anorexic’s right to get liposuction if they’ve weighed the pros and cons with open eyes, and genuinely want to bet that it’s their best shot at happiness.
The funny thing is that personally, I’m actually very skittish about any changes to my body, and would never so much as get a tattoo on my forearm. But I nevertheless respect others’ rights to do as they please with their own bodies, even for frivolous reasons. Even with a degree of risk involved; if people are allowed to take up cave-diving, they should be allowed to sign up for elective surgeries that might cause complications or which they have some small chance of regretting for the rest of their lives. Although in the long term I fondly hope (mark I said hope; this is not a prediction) that technological advances will mean even greater bodily freedom, and make the difficult edge cases, all the talk of “irreversible damage”, moot. (The day we can reliably regrow limbs is the day I fully bite the bullet that an adult who really wants to cut off their own arm should be allowed, albeit not advised, to do so.)
Comment #35 February 4th, 2025 at 9:47 pm
#30: That Edward Snowden did engage in traitorous activities appears to be a bipartisan consensus of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, including, in particular, its current Republican Chairman:
https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-statement-on-bipartisan-hpsci-report-on-edward-snowden
Comment #36 February 4th, 2025 at 11:33 pm
Dave wrote:
“For plastic surgery: Would I be fine with an anorectic getting a liposuction?”
If there was really such a case, I would find it very weird. On the other I wouldn’t want the POTUS to come out with an executive order banning liposuction for anorectic people. How ridiculous would that be? At the end of the day the decision on the procedure is between the patient and the doctor. I do not think that you, I or the government should get involved.
The same goes for transgender procedures. The FDA should decide which procedures should be approved. Then the decision should be between the doctor and the patient (and their parents, if the patient is a minor). It should be illegal for the government to be involved in this decision.
What I still don’t understand is why you have such an issue with trans people. What harm have they done to you? There are trans kids being bullied every day, both by kids and by school staff. When someone reads your comments about trans, it only encourages them to persist with their bullying.
Wouldn’t it be better to send a message to kids that they should feel comfortable to explore their identity?
Comment #37 February 5th, 2025 at 5:48 am
The pronoun ritual always bothered me because it was such an empty gesture. I understand it came from a desire to seem compassionate. But real compassion is about listening to people and understanding them and accepting differences, developing empathy through reflection. That’s difficult, yes, but if you can’t do that then you aren’t compassionate (that’s ok, people have various virtues, there’s no need to pretend to be something we are not). I’ve analyzed the overall situation, I see that the professional class suffered a panic attack after 2016, and in that panic they abandoned independent thinking in favor of letting social and legacy media instruct them on what they should think. So they gravitated towards performative rituals that were marked by the media as socially acceptable signifiers of virtue, such as pronouns and face masks.
Rituals appeal to people in a panicked state because they are pre-accepted actions that can be performed without thought. There are other reasons that some people love rituals, reasons that feel noble to them (and in some cases are noble for them), and others like me are repelled by participating in rituals, because we see nobility for ourselves as tied to independent thought. We used to have a nice balance of accepting these differences between people in the USA, broadly known as “freedom”, but in their panic about losing control the ritualists felt the need to simulate strength by banding together and imposing their manner onto everyone. They felt safe and entitled to crush the independent thinkers out of the universities. Sadly that undermined the traits that the public expects universities to foster (consciously or unconsciously, they know that universities were supposed to foster courage and critical thinking). Universities can’t survive economically as simple training centers for obedient specialized workers – especially because the training hasn’t been updated to be relevant for the economy in a long time. The choice by universities to terminate independent thinkers like me sealed their fate, ironically ensuring that the economy is going to terminate them, those institutions will all come to an end. They will have to be rebuilt by people like me, for whom the torch of academic authenticity will never burn out.
I hope that one day you all can return from the panic and restore your critical independent thinking, we’d love to have you and your real skills with us in the future. Actually, I’ve known all along that in aggregate some of you will return to thinking, I’ve known that is necessary for species survival and continuing civilization. We need thinkers and ritualists working together, neither can ultimately dominate the other, that balance is fundamental to America’s strength and it will live on somewhere. I hope to play a role in helping the above-average-IQ professional class heal their ability to think, I am already playing that role on a micro-scale with each person who can hear me. The pendulum swings back and forth too violently, I don’t support the actions of this administration, but I knew for the past 4 years that universities would receive a terrible reckoning for what they did, and there is no way that their bad behavior can be reconciled without them facing confession and punishment. The sooner one stops panicking about the situation and starts accepting it, the more they can help to create what comes next.
Comment #38 February 5th, 2025 at 7:19 am
Udi:
Why do you say I have an issue with “trans people”? I only have an issue with “gender ideology” being in public schools and in medicine. People are allowed to have any beliefs, society should be organized around shared facts/reality (in the case of “gender ideology” the shared reality is sex, the individual belief is gender identity). The message should be (and that’s what I am trying to convey): we can have differences in beliefs, we can respect each other, we can be friends, we just need to find a common shared ground. (I blame the media for this distortion in our thinking: with titles like “Trans athletes excluded from sports”, when it should be “Sports organized around sex; everybody welcome, no matter how they look and how they want to be perceived”.)
For transgender procedures: sometimes the medical profession goes astray even on the highest levels (Egas Moniz received Nobel prize in Medicine, in part, for lobotomies; about 50,000 were performed in total in the USA). The dynamics of decisions in medical societies (e.g., stacked committees, politics) and the way dissent was treated for this issue and the current changes in the European medicine (e.g., Cass report, see Swedish Trans Train documentary) makes me suspect that we might be in a situation similar to the lobotomy scandal (I really encourage you to read about Ken Zucker (Toronto), Michael Bailey (Northwestern), Lisa Littman (Brown)—how this played out.).
Edmund:
For the names I am fine with using whatever, for pronouns the analogy is a bit closer (in gender critical worldview pronouns are based on sex; insisting on using wrong-sex pronouns makes me a participant in somebody’s belief).
For the “bodily autonomy question” our disagreement is on the tradeoff between “bodily autonomy” and “society protecting people from their impulses/temporary states” (I think there is more need for the latter, especially for minors/young people).
Comment #39 February 5th, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Dave wrote:
“Why do you say I have an issue with “trans people”? I only have an issue with “gender ideology” being in public schools and in medicine.”
You ask me a question, and the answer is in your next sentence. Referring to “trans people” as “gender ideology” is demeaning. You are ignoring the fact that transgender people exist. Trans people always existed, they are not some modern phenomena that resulted from Democrat’s policy or from microplastics in water. Some of these transgender people are kids that go to school. Are you suggesting that we ban them from schools? Or are you suggesting that they should be forced to conform to specific gender behavior? Maybe every time a kids wants to wear a dress or put on makeup, we will tell them that their gender behavior needs to be approved by Dave?
You write:
“I blame the media for this distortion in our thinking: with titles like “Trans athletes excluded from sports”, when it should be “Sports organized around sex; everybody welcome, no matter how they look and how they want to be perceived”.”
I am sure that you are very happy with the new “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” Executive Order. You did it. You solved America’s most pressing issue. Or did you? What about intersex people? There is a reason that every sports organization has been debating this issue for decades. There is no simple solution, and for every sport a different policy works better. But now the Federal Government gets to decide these issues. (I assume, I couldn’t find the text of the EO.) I thought that Republicans support a small government. I thought that Republicans are against a nanny state that tries to control all aspects of life. And all this for what? Just to stick it to the Liberals by removing a handful of transgenders from sports?
I am baffled by this hate. Why can’t we have an education system that embraces trans kids instead of belittling them? Why can’t kids (with approval from their parents) get the healthcare treatment that they want and need for their Gender Dysphoria? How do these actions hurt you personally?
Comment #40 February 5th, 2025 at 8:22 pm
By “gender ideology” I mean the worldview that there is a “gendered soul” that should take precedence over sex, for example, in medicine (“gender affirming surgery” = aligning sex characteristics with gender identity) or in organizing society (“woman’s sports” = anybody who thinks he/she is a woman). If you have a better term—I would be happy to hear/use it.
By “gender critical” I mean the worldview that there is only material reality of sex, gender identity is a personal belief.
What do you mean by “transgender people exist”? Of course I acknowledge that there are people who, for example, 1) believe they are the opposite sex, 2) want to present as the opposite sex, 3) don’t want to be perceived as sexual beings, etc (and I repeat again: I respect their beliefs/choices, I am happy to be friends with them, agree with some of them on some policies and disagree with some of them on some policies). You seem to mean that I deny the existence of people with gendered souls different from their sex. Of course I do deny that—in the same way I deny the existence of angels.
How does my disagreeing with the gendered soul concept imply I want to ban people from school? How does my disagreeing with the gendered soul concept imply I want to enforce gender stereotypes?
Re: “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” EO. I believe that society should be organized around shared facts and not personal beliefs (no religion in schools, no “in god we trust” on money, sports separated by sex (fact), not gender identity (personal belief)). Kara Dansky is a former ACLU lawyer, a liberal, a feminist and she wrote two excellent books on the subject: “Abolition of Sex” and “The Reckoning” (for the sports history giving details of the Richard Raskind/Rene Richards case—who competed on the highest WTA level (an outcome Martina Navratilova labeled as ridiculous (despite RR being her coach)). Kara Dansky also wants society organized around shared facts and not personal beliefs.
We have a disagreement on worldview (and that implies difference in policies we prefer)—your’s is “gender ideology” (or whatever name you want to use), mine is “gender critical”. Why do you say that my worldview is “hate”? Religious people used to do that. Are we back in the dark ages?
Comment #41 February 5th, 2025 at 8:54 pm
Artur Wróbel #15:
Does “conscience” justify neutrality? Balance between extremes is often an illusion.
The goal is emphatically not “neutrality” or “balance.” The goal is just to follow the dictates of conscience, liberality, and human decency—always, even when doing so wears out your welcome with every ideological tribe.
Comment #42 February 6th, 2025 at 7:30 pm
Dave wrote:
“(“woman’s sports” = anybody who thinks he/she is a woman)”
This is bluntly false. There is no professional woman’s sports where people can just declare that they are women and be accepted. If a trans person wants to be accepted, they need to pass a medical exam and have Testosterone levels below a certain level for a certain period of time. What you are doing is creating an imaginary boogieman based on false facts, and then you are panicking because you start seeing this imaginary boogieman everywhere.
What I don’t understand is why are you doing this. I understand why Trump is doing it. By feeding these boogiemen stories he can rile up his supporters, get more voters and get more power. But you claim to be an intelligent person. How come you are falling for this cheap manipulation?
Dave wrote:
“By “gender critical” I mean the worldview that there is only material reality of sex, gender identity is a personal belief.”
“I believe that society should be organized around shared facts and not personal beliefs”
The definition of biological sex is relevant for reproduction. But most of the time, human society is not organized around reproduction. Most of the time it is also not organized around gender. But there are certain cases where gender is useful.
For example, in prisons. Prisons are not separated by sex. Prisons are separated by gender because it makes it easier to manage the prisons. Therefore, it does not make sense to separate prisons by chromosome types. If a person looks like a man, has a thick beard and a muscular male body they would probably fit better in a men prison even if they have XX chromosomes. On the other hand, a person that looks like a woman, and was born with female genitalia would probably fit better in a women prison even if they happen to have XY chromosomes.
Dave wrote:
“no religion in schools, no “in god we trust” on money”
As a person who wants to remove religion influence from the government, what do you think of Trump’s Executive Order that defines male and females at the moment of conception? The reliance of this definition on the moment of conception has nothing to do with science or reality. It is deeply rooted in Christian mythology. Also, what do you think of Trump appointing Russell Vought, considering Vought intend to promote Christian doctrines in government policies?
Comment #43 February 6th, 2025 at 10:24 pm
The statement about women’s sports (= anybody who thinks he/she is a woman) is a description of “gender ideology” (and as with religion there can be many different shades), not a description of the current regulations (where “gender ideology” had to face a bit of realpolitik). One particular shade would be in the “bible” of “gender ideology”: Yogokarta Principles (YP+10): “… subject only to reasonable, proportionate and non-arbitrary requirements to participate in line with their self-declared gender” (going further than the “Richards v. United States Tennis Ass’n (1977)” case). My position on wanting society based on facts (e.g., sex), not beliefs (e.g., gender identity) is not influenced by a particular shade of gender ideology or particular shades of religions (no boogieman). The position automatically implies that I want the separation by sex in sports and also in prisons. The fact that prisons should also be separated by sex is one of the central themes in “The Reckoning” book. Nicola’s Sturgeon (Scottish First Minister) lost her position exactly because of supporting the “gender ideology” view for the prison separation question (Isla Bryson case). Male/female is decided at the moment of conception for >99.9% population—that’s science/reality (exceptions: XXY, X0, not ambiguous genitalia). Democrats enthusiastically supporting gender ideology (especially males in women’s sports/spaces and HHS influencing WPATH age limits) is one of their serious mistakes that led to Trump being elected.
Scott—many thanks for allowing the discussion (I hope there was some useful information in it.). Udi thanks for bringing your viewpoint(s).
Let me end with a list of books related to the topic for whoever finds this discussion in the future:
Helen Joyce: Trans
Abigail Shrier: Irreversible Damage
Kathleen Stock: Material Girls
Lisa Selin Davis: Tomboy
Michael Bailey: The Man Who Would Be Queen
Shannon Thrace: 18 Months
Hannah Barnes: Time to Think
Debra Soh: The End of Gender
Kara Dansky: The Abolition of Sex
Kara Dansky: The Reckoning
Alice Dreger: Galileo’s Middle Finger
Douglas Murray: The Madness of Crowds
Ben Barnes, Nancy Hopkins: The Autobiography of a Transgender Scientist
Hillary Whittington: Raising Ryland
Comment #44 February 8th, 2025 at 12:47 am
Dave wrote:
“The statement about women’s sports (= anybody who thinks he/she is a woman) is a description of “gender ideology” (and as with religion there can be many different shades), not a description of the current regulations (where “gender ideology” had to face a bit of realpolitik).”
You are desperately trying to weasel yourself out of the hole you buried yourself in. You give a definition of “gender ideology” that you admit does not represent current regulation. But you are still all riled up about current regulation because it represents this “gender ideology” definition that you came up with. Your logic is inconsistent.
Dave wrote:
“Democrats enthusiastically supporting gender ideology (especially males in women’s sports/spaces and HHS influencing WPATH age limits) is one of their serious mistakes that led to Trump being elected.”
Your claim that Democrats support “gender ideology”. This is a boogeyman, as you just agreed that current regulations do not follow “gender ideology”. The idea that Democrats are interested in “gender ideology” is a figment of your imagination.
The Democrats “ideology” is simply that we should do our best to avoid having kids bullied in school. Many of these kids are being bullied for being trans. They are not bullied because they “believe” they are trans. It can be enough if you are a boy with some feminine traits. Your downplaying of transgenders and consistent attacks on this imaginary “gender ideology” policy is just encouraging these bullies. Not to mention, that some of this bullying is done by school administrators which seem to have ideologies similar to you.
But I have to go back and ask why? Would it really hurt you so much if a person with XY chromosomes that went through hormone therapy would go the a women’s prison? Would some harmony in the universe be broken if prisons are not perfectly separated by XX/XY chromosomes?
Comment #45 February 13th, 2025 at 1:05 pm
When you say “equal rights for your trans friends” I literally don’t know what you’re talking about.
None of the main controversies around trans can be fairly characterized as one side saying “trans people should have equal rights” and the other side saying “no they shouldn’t”.
It’s always a fight about where the lines are drawn between contestable concepts.
Most explosively, the debate about kids has one side saying “this is healthcare” and the other side saying “this is sexualized mutilation of children”. I’m pretty sure we all agree children should get healthcare, and we all agree that they should not be sexually mutilated. But apparently we cannot agree on what those terms mean.
For adults, the argument isn’t whether cross sex hormones and sex change operations should be allowed, but who should have to pay for them. Again, this boils down to how things are conceptualized. Is it “health care”, like a knee surgery? Or is it more like liposuction?
The sports debate is about what constitutes fair competition in athletics, not about anyone’s rights.
The pronoun debate is about what constitutes civility and acceptable etiquette, and “harassment” (as that term is understood under anti-discrimination law) versus what constitutes compelled speech. More concepts, still no rights.
Comment #46 February 13th, 2025 at 4:44 pm
Lawrence D’Anna #45
“trans people should have equal rights” at minimum means that they should not be expelled from the military and they should not be bullied, harmed or expelled from workplaces and schools.
While there could be legitimate issues about how to treat safe spaces, sports and medical interventions on minors, the bottom line is that trans should be treated with dignity and respect as any other individual. No more, no less. What’s so difficult with this concept?