SIO284: Debunking "The End of Gender" Part 1

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:29 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. I'm Thomas, and I am once again joined by Dr. Lindsey Osterman. Lindsey, how are you doing?

0:00:40 Lindsey: How am I?

0:00:42 Thomas: Loaded question.

0:00:43 Lindsey: I, yeah, I am deeply troubled by the spread of harmful scientific misinformation, Thomas. How are you?

0:00:50 Thomas: Yeah, yeah, that's a good answer. That's a science-y answer. All right, folks, here's the deal. Lindsey was kind enough. I am going to go ahead and say you're like Jesus except better. That is my words. You don't have to endorse that message. I almost called you Jinzy. Lindsey was kind enough to read a book by a horrible person full of transphobia for us. But importantly, this is by Dr. Deborah So, who has a degree in a relevant field. So it's like dangerous scientific nonsense, and the book is called The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths About Sex and Identity in Our Society, and who I read an excerpt of it and it is so poorly written that

0:00:52 Lindsey: Thank you.

0:01:06 Lindsey: I've often said that, yeah.

0:01:39 Lindsey: Mm-hmm.

0:01:40 Thomas: I cannot believe you read a whole book of this, and I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart. Yeah.

0:01:45 Lindsey: You know, I appreciate that, because I'm really sorry that I read this entire book, too. I mean, I'm glad to be doing this right now, because I think we should mention that the reason this was on our radar in the first place is that Richard Dawkins signal-boosted this book on Twitter. Her,

0:01:58 Thomas: Yep, but Lindsey, if even half of it is true, if even half of it is true, that was the, do you have, have the tweet pulled up? Should I pull it up?

0:02:07 Lindsey: I do have the tweet pulled up. He says, "Just finished The End of Gender by Dr. Deborah So. Strongly recommended. If even half is true of what she said about the intimidation of scientists in her field of sexology, we need to support the fight back."

0:02:20 Thomas: If even half of it is true. Yeah. Yeah, And I just did a satirical, like, oh, I just finished something called the Protocols the Elders of Zion or whatever, and if even half of it is true, then that means, I mean, it's just such a, okay. So, anyway, um, but, but based on this excerpt, like, even if the, like even if it wasn't a transphobic, you know, thingy full of bats representations of science, just the writing alone already sucks so bad that like I wouldn't Even read this if it was written by someone who was like on my side of the argument, you know, it's like, all right, let's let's find a better writer here. This is

0:02:22 Lindsey: It's very bad let's find

0:02:54 Thomas: Not a, yeah, yeah I think what blows my mind about this is this is it says here in the bottom of this excerpt I'm reading from Quillette that it's imprint published by you an imprint of Simon and Schuster, blah, blah. And it's just like, how easy is it to get a book deal if you are not a good writer? And but but like you misrepresent science into being transphobic and representing kind of the status quo.

0:02:54 Lindsey: Somebody better, yeah.

0:03:19 Thomas: It it should be harder than this is all I'm saying to get get a major book deal and be, um, if you do a, uh, image search on Deborah, so you can just see all the different usual suspects that she's posing with. You know, there's like Tim pool. Uh, there's Bill Maher. God, she must've been on that show. I quit that, several years ago. Cause it just is not worth it anymore. He's terrible. Joe Rogan, Michael Shermer. There's all these people that she's pictured with in the images. Sorry, I shouldn't look shame, but one of the Weinsteins who doesn't look as healthy as the other one. I think that's Eric, is what I'll say. Looks like he could be in failing health. Anyway, so this person is embraced by Deborah bei all the usual suspects and she's actually a quote-unquote member of the actual dark web

0:03:19 Lindsey: Easy yes oh,

0:04:06 Thomas: According to Bari Weiss, of people who kind of want to pretend that they're liberal, but they're finding a way to defend status quo conservative ideas about stuff.

0:04:12 Lindsey: Yeah, oh, yeah, she, she credentials all the way through the book, uh, by saying that she's a liberal Democrat, all the way through, yeah. Apparently

0:04:19 Thomas: Yeah. Which, why aren't we doing more of that the other way? Like, maybe it just is a good method. I mean, it's annoying. I would be mad about it. But, like, maybe we should. I'm a conservative. And I think that means we ought to, you know, protect children from the Border Patrol abusing them. You know, like, just do all that. Maybe it is a good idea. Maybe it's a good way to argue. Just, I guess.

0:04:40 Thomas: I'm classical conservative. I think that the government ought to stay out of things like policing our sex lives and all that stuff. So, maybe we should be doing more of that. Anyway, all this is to say, you read the book.

0:04:40 Lindsey: It's persuasive yeah

0:04:53 Thomas: You're going to take us through it. But CIS policing CIS and, you know, atheist policing atheist is kind of the goal here. So here we go.

0:04:53 Lindsey: Here we go, um, yeah, and I, I do, I want to preface one thing that I found interesting. Interesting. So on OA, on the Tuesday episode of OA, Andrew had a segment where he was rebutting this podcast with this guy was talking about originalism. And this book that I read is essentially making an argument that strongly parallels the one that Andrew was reacting to, but in the context of scientific discourse. So she's doing like an incredible amount of strawmanning of the current consensus regarding gender and sex.

She's stating that, you know, she's stating like a very small number of very uncontroversial facts about this literature and then claiming that they've become controversial somehow when they have not, and she's saying that she is one of a very small group of researchers who are still willing to stand up for truth in science, know, because of intimidation and bullying from left-wing activists, and in actuality the core claims that she says have become controversial are not, especially among people who have education in this area.

What is genuinely controversial are the conclusions that she draws from the science and the way that she applies those claims to issues of gender diversity and transgender rights in particular, including access to medical care.

0:05:16 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:16 Lindsey: So I'm just going to do, I'm going do a brief overview of some of the central claims so that people can get a sense of what the arc of this book is. And then we're going to dive into to the the details of um of some of these chapters

0:06:26 Thomas: And like if we haven't content noted enough, like content note, lots of transphobia, this kind of stuff, just be forewarned.

0:06:27 Lindsey: Oh my god yes I'm glad you said that

0:06:35 Thomas: I kind of did a long form content warning, but I just want to make officially get the short form content morning in there, too.

0:06:36 Lindsey: It's it's bad folks yes yeah, no, this is, this is very bad. All right, so here's, here's an overview of some essential claims. So, one, both sex and gender are binary, and there is no scientific basis for conceiving of gender as a spectrum, which she says has some implications for how we should think about gender diverse individuals, which I'm using that word, gender diverse, it's broad term, including people who are non-binary and gender fluid and transgender and so on. Second claim, the vast majority of people who claim to be transgender are not, but rather are either A, actually gay and confused about it, B, have a paraphilia that causes them to experience sexual arousal at the thought of being the other gender, which they confuse with having a gender that doesn't match their sex assigned at birth, or C, have a mental illness, which is the root cause of their gender dysphoria.

0:07:32 Lindsey: And she makes that claim so that she can then make some terrible claims about how actually, you know, gender affirmative therapy shouldn't be used. Claim three, she says that telling kids that sex and gender are non-binary will confuse them and cause them to think that they are gender diverse when they are not. And relatedly, she, she claims that it has become stigmatized to have a gender identity that is consistent with one's sex assigned at birth. So, I, yes, it is, right?

0:08:00 Thomas: Sorry, I was trying to just want to let you finish these claims. But that one's hard to get through. God, stigmatized to be the 99% of everybody in society right now, or that's probably the incorrect percent, but something in the 90s, we'll say. Stigmatized, huh? Who's stigmatizing us? Us? Wow. It's just a bunch of cis people with the meme of the boot on their head and then their hand is the boot, I think, I guess. Stigmatize.

0:08:09 Lindsey: Yes, exactly. Uh, yeah, yeah. Uh. Left-wing activists, right. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:08:27 Thomas: To be cis, she's saying, essentially. Being cis is stigmatize now. I missed that.

0:08:28 Lindsey: No, no, no. Yeah, yeah yeah.

0:08:33 Thomas: Wow. Did you know about this?

0:08:34 Lindsey: I know. I didn't know about

0:08:36 Thomas: I didn't. Nobody sent me the email about the I should be stigmatized. Wow.

0:08:36 Lindsey: This. Didn't know. No. She, She, she explicitly claims this is, this is part of, this part of her making this case. She explicitly claims that because gender diversity is trendy, in her words, parents are being rejecting of children with gender identities that are concordant with their sex assigned at birth. Yeah. She Okay, I, I'm going, yeah, I just want to interject this here now. She, she is not only a terrible writer, uh, she's a terrible, terrible scientific writer in the sense that she doesn't cite hardly any of the claims that she rightfully needs to cite. There were so many studies that she talked about here that I had to spend all this time tracking down what study she was talking about. She doesn't provide citations. She relies on unsourced anecdotes constantly that we can't verify. And then the things that that she does cite, she misrepresents most of the time. It's a lot, it's a lot, reading this book.

0:08:40 Thomas: Okay.

0:08:57 Thomas: What's the evidence for this?

0:09:12 Thomas: Yeah. Jeez. Jeez. Want, this. Here's an example of from the excerpt that I read that has to do with people being non-binary. And she just makes all that she rattles off these claims. And this is again, it's such bad writing, no support for them. And it's sort of like, you know, earlier when you said, oh, she's a persecuted minority within science for just saying these non-controversial things. Things. I guess she's just relying on a lot of these people that we've covered, uh, you know, and that I've covered going back a long way. They just make these claims because nobody's going to check.

Like nobody, if you are just average person who finds Jordan Peterson interesting or whatever, like that, that audience, you, you don't, most of the time, unless you are an academic, which I'm sure there's a few in there, but like most of time, if You're just a dude, you're, you're just thinking like, Oh, wow, that sounds really compelling. How am I going to check whether or not Debra So, short of having Dr. Lindsay Osterman on to, to help illustrate the point, how would I know as a, just a guy, like I just, Oh, I don't know.

0:09:48 Lindsey: Yeah.

0:10:34 Thomas: How would I know whether or not someone's a persecuted minority within a scientific field and they're, you know, at the university there. I don't know. Like I, okay. It's, it's a claim that I can't check. And so I think a lot of people just buy it.

0:10:47 Lindsey: I think so, and the thing is, is that like, you know, she'll, this, this is true with a lot of people who make claims about cancel culture, the thing is that they'll, they'll claim that an idea is being rejected only on ideological bases. This is and she does this all throughout out the book, she says, you know, there's this research that really supports the idea that most trans people are gay and confused about it. And it's a, you know, it's evidence-based, but all of these left-wing activists are rejecting it just because of ideology. They're just pretending that the evidence doesn't exist. When in actuality, it's being rejected because there is no evidence for it.

0:10:54 Thomas: Yeah. Hmm. Yeah,

0:11:26 Lindsey: And it is like, yeah, outside of academia, how are you going to tell the difference?

0:11:29 Thomas: Yeah. I know you. I'm told you have a lot to yarn. You have a lot of notes. Maybe you can release least your notes as a book, then maybe I'll just get picked up by Simon and Schuster, apparently, because it's so easy to get. Oh, wait, no, because you're not defending the conservative status quo.

0:11:38 Lindsey: Hey, Maybe, well, if I could just, if I just put at the beginning, I'm a conservative, maybe, that I don't know how that works, yeah, yeah.

0:11:46 Thomas: So here's the paragraph. I'll just read this and we can come back to it or whatever. But this was in an full of a lot of bad paragraphs. This one stood out. Then we have celebrities who are capitalizing on gender's moment in the sun. If someone has a large public following, and they announce they are non-binary, it is hard to believe that doing so is anything but a publicity stunt to get people talking about them.

0:12:14 Lindsey: That's a good sentence.

0:12:14 Thomas: Identifying as non-binary provides social and literal currency. Literal currency. And public figures who come out as non-binary obtain adulation and a newfound relevance as every media publication in the world, every media publication in the world was the quote, in the world, hails them for their courage and strength as a trailblazer, where citation needed for any of that, like,

0:12:15 Lindsey: Yes.

0:12:41 Lindsey: I need, I need to do a find and replace, or like a find thing in my 32 pages of notes on this book, to see how many times I had to say citation needed, all the way through, I'm sorry, go ahead.

0:12:55 Thomas: Literal currency There must be a non-binary bank that comes out, hey, we heard your announcement, we're going to cut you a check. Literal currency. Look hour.

0:13:02 Lindsey: You know what generates generates literal currency is when Richard Dawkins retweets your terribly written book

0:13:11 Thomas: Yeah, no kidding. But I thought every media publication in the world hails them for their courage and strength as a trailblazer. Look, I'm an exaggerator. I do the same thing, but I am not a scientist called Dr. Deborah So writing a book published by Simon and Schuster imprint. Like I would, you know, even I would be like, all right, I am to edit that. Like this is how I would talk. I'd be like, oh, every media in the world. I'd like, OK, but someone's going to edit my book. Right. Like somebody should maybe say like, Oh, lots of very large, you know, powerful media publications will hail them for the. But OK, stop. Look, I get it. People. This is cultural conservatives who also sometimes pose as liberals are really worried about losing their edge, you know, in society. And that's a lot of what we can't get into it now, but that's a lot of what's going on here.

And I get that it may feel to them when someone announces they're non-binary, for example, it may feel to them like this is a massive boon for that person or something, but there's also a ton of pushback. Like it doesn't just, wow, amazing fame and fortune guaranteed because you said that. Also, I love the idea that if someone has a large public following is the logic of her sentence,

0:13:11 Lindsey: Yeah. Yeah.

0:13:39 Lindsey: Yeah, you

0:14:28 Thomas: Then they are only doing this as a publicity stunt. But wouldn't you think it'd be the opposite? Like if you don't have a large following, you would need, yeah, but you do have a larger public following, but also need to constantly do publicity stunts. I don't know. Like I just need some proof for any of this. Like show me, you know, even again, I would disagree with her still, but does no one care about like actually proving any of these claims? Give me an example. Give me any example and say, Look at this person. They announced they were non-binary. And look at their, here was their Instagram before. And now here's their Instagram after. Here was the number of movies they did before. Here's the number movies. That would be like at least supporting the bullshit you're saying, but they don't,

0:14:35 Lindsey: Know, why do you need to? Yeah, exactly.

0:15:08 Thomas: She doesn't even do that.

0:15:10 Lindsey: She doesn't feel the need to doesn't need to.

0:15:11 Thomas: Nope. Doesn't need to. All right. Sorry. I'll stop. Go back to your schedule. Regularly scheduled Lindsay.

0:15:13 Lindsey: No. Please, please interrupt, because this, yeah, this stuff deserves to be yelled about forever. Um, all right, I think I just did claim three in the overview. Oh,

0:15:27 Thomas: And I, and I have a lot to say about claim one, but we'll get back to it. Okay.

0:15:30 Lindsey: Yeah, so do I. Oh, man.

0:15:32 Thomas: What?

0:15:32 Lindsey: Man, yeah, uh, claim four, uh, current medical professionals who specialize in care for transgender youth are pushing transitioning as the only option if someone is gender diverse and are encouraging transitioning at younger and younger ages. She says that the current standard of care is the result of pressure from activists and not based on the best available scientific evidence. She's not a fan of gender affirmative care. And then five, she says that it is reasonable. This is really where the book's going, right?

Fifth claim is that it is reasonable to oppose gender-neutral restrooms, to oppose allowing transgender, yep, yep, to oppose allowing transgender women to be housed in women's prisons, and to oppose allowing transgender women and some people with intersex conditions to compete in women sports. That is where she's going with this. Just, I wanted to give people a roadmap, map. I wanted to give people the arc of the book, right. And so now I'm just, I'm gonna dig into, like, she organizes this book around nine things that she says are myths, and I'm going to, I'm going to try to attack six of them in some depth, um, so this will be fun.

All right, so let's start with, because this is relevant to claim one, which you said you had some things to say about, so maybe we'll have a fun chat about this. So, yeah, so myth one is that biological sex is a spectrum. Right now, let's, let's start with what, so, is, is claiming about biological sex and how it compares with the actual scientific consensus, as well as her claim about what scientists are essentially being bullied into saying. Right, so she narrowly defines sex early in her book as a classification of gametes, right, which is sex cells, so eggs and sperm for us, and

0:16:19 Thomas: I'm Here, Okay, chromosomes,

0:17:03 Lindsey: Uses this as the foundation of her claim that sex is binary. So she specifically says that the idea that sex is defined according to chromosomes, primary sex characteristics, or hormonal profiles, is a common misconception. Okay, now, in yeah, okay, she's not, she's being entirely untruthful with this, right, so, when, so biologists who are studying reproduction across the animal kingdom do categorize sex of the organisms they're studying according to their gametes, so males are those that have smaller gametes, and females are those with larger gametes, right, and so she summarizes this fact and then says, "Sex is therefore binary. It is not a spectrum," end quote.

0:17:18 Thomas: I would have thought that, okay, sure, huh, Does the science support that, Lindsey?

0:17:46 Lindsey: Okay, but well, it does. It's just not relevant. It's not relevant to the conversation that we're having, right? So if scientists were being forced to claim that there are more than two gametes involved in human reproduction, or that there is a spectrum of gametes, she would be justified in using this definition as the basis of her argument that sex is binary, right, and she's about to make make a bunch of extrapolations based on that claim, right? But this definition is essentially irrelevant to the claim that's being made in this larger discourse about human gender, right, no one is claiming that there are a wide spectrum of gametes, what they're claiming is that there is variability in the observed phenotypes that are associated with sex, right. That's what they're saying. So in other words, like, the real claim that's being made in this conversation about about inclusiveness with regards to sex and gender diversity, is that while most individuals with XX chromosomes, for example, develop female typical traits, some don't. There's variability.

0:17:50 Thomas: Right. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Yeah.

0:18:40 Lindsey: That's the claim.

0:18:41 Thomas: It's just, is it as simple as sex and gender are two different things? Is it as simply as that, basically? I mean.

0:18:46 Lindsey: That's part of it, but it's honestly not all of it. But we're going to get into that.

0:18:49 Thomas: Okay. Mm-mm.

0:18:51 Lindsey: Yeah, we'll get into all of that, right?

0:18:52 Thomas: But even, but I was actually curious whether or not the sex, biological sex, and I assume she's just talking about humans in this case, so we look, because if you open up to nature, I'm sure there's whole bunch of different things going on there. There. But just in humans, she's claiming that biological sex or whatever is binary. Is that even right? Cause aren't there like, you know, like X, X, Y, like different things that can happen that are not entirely. Yeah.

0:19:04 Lindsey: Yeah. Well, yes. Yeah. And actually, yeah, I can talk. I'm going to talk about some of that almost immediately. But that's why it's so sneaky the way that she's started this off by saying sex is related to gametes. If you define it that way, then you're on really solid ground to say sex is binary, right? But if you talk about the genetic underpinnings of sex, if you talk about the physical and psychological characteristics that are associated with sex, that's right, the place where you get a lot of variability, right.

0:19:18 Thomas: Okay. Hmm. Okay, Sorry. I should have asked listener Thomas S what's a gamete exactly?

0:19:45 Lindsey: Uh, Yeah, so gamete refers to sex cells, right? So, So, Eggs and sperm are gametes, there's

0:19:52 Thomas: Sex cells. I see. So, so she's essentially zooming you're into like the something like the lowest level to say, ah, there's a binary thing. You're either this or that. And then you're saying that like I was going to the far surface and saying, well, gender is separate from sex. But you're seeing even intermediate to that. There's like a phenotypic Whatever displays of something or other that I'm not saying science words that I don't understand that Even even that is like kind of in the middle of that. And that varies more than just the binary thingy.

0:20:13 Lindsey: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

0:20:26 Thomas: Okay. I think I get it.

0:20:27 Lindsey: Right. Um, And and that's true of of like most biological variables, right? You, you know, there's, so there's... there's what's typical for for being XX and XY, but then there's variability around that typical, right? And that's true for most biological traits, that's true for most psychological traits, it's, okay, um, yeah, yeah, so let's let's talk about some of this stuff because it is super interesting. So, would, so I would say, right, that the the definition that's relevant here, and this is a valid definition, uh, relating to to sex categorizations, a person's sex, in in the relevant usage here, refers to biological classification based on genetics, like your your sex chromosomes, and bodily characteristics, like genitals, right? So primary, primary sex characteristics. And then, yeah, I think it's worth distinguishing gender here at the outset, too. So a person's gender is distinguished from sex.

0:21:14 Lindsey: It refers to a social construct that is related to facts about biology, which we're about to talk about. It's really interesting. But it's also influenced by cultural norms. And we'll come back to that in more detail shortly. So gender refers to your identity as a man or woman or non-binary or whatever.

0:21:29 Lindsey: And I have to say this, right, because she talks about this a lot. It is true that one's gender is related to facts about biological makeup, right? Like, just like sexual orientation is, that that's not a new or controversial thing to say. And she claims consistently that you will get canceled if you say that publicly, right. And it's, it's absurd. It's absurd thing to say.

0:21:37 Thomas: Yeah.

0:21:51 Thomas: Yeah. Well, I want to take a second, because the way you had framed this to me, I think it might be important to say this explicitly, that will help maybe people listening along, that there seems to be a kernel of truth in all of this stuff. Because she is actually a scientist. Scientist. She's not just, this isn't like Dave Rubin making up whatever, not knowing it. Like she seems to put the kernel of truth, which is even more dangerous as you've, you've as we've talked about. Um, so be on the lookout, I suppose, listener. It's not as though every single thing she is saying is literally wrong, but there's the kernel truth. And then there's the totally inappropriate extrapolation from that. It seems like, right.

0:21:52 Lindsey: Right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. Right? I mean, she does like a lot, lot of equivocation, right? Like to to like the the move from saying sex is binary defining sex in one way and then moving to these other claims right that's that's just pure equivocation. All right, so consensus position of researchers in this area of science is that sex and gender are related but distinguishable constructs and that there's variability in expressed sex related characteristics including gender and this variability is in part due to the biological processes that underlie sexual differentiation, especially during prenatal development. And she actually summarizes quite a bit of the science regarding sex differentiation very competently, right? So this is what makes her convincing, I think, to Dawkins, is that she summarizes a lot of that very well, right. The main thing that she misrepresents in this section is whether the science has become controversial, right, and then, you know, some other things down the line.

0:23:21 Lindsey: All right, so yeah, so let's talk about some of the basics about sex sex differentiation and why there's variability in these traits, because I think this stuff is actually very cool. So most people are familiar with the 23rd chromosome in humans that is involved in sex differentiation. Most humans have either XX or XY karyotypes. Karyotype is the term referring to the appearance of the chromosomes. But you mentioned a second ago, there are exceptions to that too. So some people have an extra X chromosome, and so they have an XXY karyotype, right, um, so XX and XY karyotypes typically result in distinct embryonic development patterns, and so XX usually results in female typical traits and XY typically results in male typical traits, right, but the path from chromosomal sex to the expression of male or female typical phenotypes involves a lot of intermediary steps. So all humans start out undifferentiated with with regards to sex, and the default developmental trajectory is female, meaning that if certain processes aren't engaged during development, the resulting phenotype will be female-typical, regardless of whether the person is XX or XY, which is kind of interesting, right?

0:24:31 Lindsey: Yeah, so the presence of a Y chromosome triggers two distinct processes called defeminization and masculinization. Defeminization mechanisms prevent the expression of female-typical sex characteristics, and so if the development of those traits is not inhibited, the fetus will develop female typical sex characteristics. And then the mechanisms underlying masculinization trigger the expression of male typical sex characteristics. So if masculinization processes are not initiated, the fetus will not develop those male typical

0:24:30 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting.

0:25:01 Lindsey: Characteristics.

0:25:01 Thomas: It's like a two-step process, kind of.

0:25:03 Lindsey: Yeah, right. And it's not just limited to those either. There are other factors as well that are involved in sex differentiation, right? But yeah, so like, like, because there are these distinct mechanisms, these right? Are 2 distinct processes. And so, while defeminization and masculinization usually happen or don't happen together as the result of chromosomal sex, that's not always the case. Sometimes one of these processes takes place without the other, And they are also not all or none processes, and they also, and as I said a second ago, they also aren't the the sole factors involved in sex differentiation. So there's the SRY gene, which is usually carried on the Y chromosome, right? It also plays an important role in the development of testes and other male typical characteristics. So the point is, sex differentiation is not a single unitary process, but involves a lot of different mechanisms. And because of this, variation in any any part of these processes can result in phenotypes that are not typical of a particular chromosomal sex.

0:25:29 Thomas: Right, right.

0:26:00 Thomas: Yeah, it sounds like just listening to that sounds like, wow, sure. It sounds like a whole lot of opportunities for people to be different.

0:26:06 Lindsey: Yes. Yeah, exactly, right? And so one example that I think is really interesting is individuals with androgen insensitivity syndrome. And so if you have androgen sensitivity, your tissues are insensitive to androgens, right, which are male sex hormones. And those mediate the defeminization and masculinization processes, right. And so either XX or XY individuals can be androgen insensitive, but it's more likely to be detected among those who are XY, right? Because being androgen insensitive doesn't disrupt female development, right. So anyway, so folks who have female chromosomes, uh, but are androgen insensitive develop female typical features, and they typically, but not always, are women.

0:26:49 Lindsey: And to, I I know, right? And to make matters more interesting, there are degrees of androgen insensitivity. So some people are completely androgen insensitive and they have female typical phenotypes. You wouldn't be able to tell from looking at an XY person who is completely androgen insensitive that they are XY, right? It's usually only detected at puberty because they don't have a menstrual cycle, right, um, Yeah, right, and on the other end of the spectrum, right, some folks are only mildly androgen insensitive. They, they usually develop male typical primary sex characteristics and and are men, uh, but may not develop all male typical secondary sex characteristics. So, like, the hair growth associated with male puberty might be reduced, and, and sometimes there's also, like, low sperm production, things like that. Okay, and also, this is, yeah, just one quick, uh, other example. There have been documented cases in which individuals have an XX karyotype, but they have male typical phenotypes, including being men, often. And this is caused when the SRY gene, which, again, would normally be carried on the Y chromosome, instead attaches to the X. And this results in

0:26:49 Thomas: Oh, that is interesting. Oh, wow. Wow,

0:27:50 Lindsey: Male typical traits that don't usually develop for XX individuals.

0:27:54 Thomas: That that is mind-blowing. And this is all, this is all beyond merely like, oh, I'm just identifying as a gender that maybe Debra So doesn't like. This is like, no, these are people who even in 1950, everyone be like, well, that's a dude and that's his woman. And like, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you are XX or XY. Like it just isn't the case. I didn't even know this. So it isn't even the case that like XX means one thing, XY means another thing. It's like there are so many ways that people can be different, that you may be X, Y and be a woman or X, X and be a man, even putting aside like, identifying like just merely you would have been perceived to be male or female back in the in the make America great again, 1950s.

0:28:12 Lindsey: Yeah, exactly. Absolutely.

0:28:42 Thomas: That is that's so mind blowing. I didn't even know that.

0:28:42 Lindsey: That's exactly right. I know. I know. It's, it's, yeah. It is super interesting stuff. I mean, I remember encountering this

0:28:48 Thomas: The science is so much more interesting than these a-holes presented. I didn't I had no idea. Like that's that's so cool.

0:28:49 Lindsey: Yeah Yeah, it is cool, and right. And so, like, again, and like, she actually said she doesn't go into all of this stuff, but she actually summarizes some of this stuff fairly competently, right? And then somehow she still gets to these weird-ass claims. So, yeah, so to summarize so far, right, our current scientific understanding of sexual differentiation during fetal development demonstrates two things pretty clearly. So, one, there are, of course, biological processes that underlie sexual differentiation, and this is something she's about to attack, right? Um, you know, our bodies, including our brains, are sexually differentiated during prenatal development, and this has consequences for gender, right? Nobody's claiming anything to the contrary.

0:29:04 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Sure.

0:29:33 Lindsey: Um, and two, and more to the point here, the evidence indicates that there is variability in sex-related traits that are expressed in individuals, right? And when activists say that sex isn't binary, they aren't denying that there are two gametes. They're trying to raise consciousness about these kinds of things that I just talked about. The fact that the underlying genetic information and the expression of these traits is not a straightforward relationship. It's complicated.

0:29:41 Thomas: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

0:30:00 Lindsey: Okay. So that brings us to myth number two, which is that gender is a social construct. Her, her main argument here is that gender isn't arbitrary or chosen or unrelated to biology, the gender has a biological basis. This is an uncontroversial claim, nobody is getting canceled for saying that right, sexual differentiation affects the brain along with the rest of the body, and thus there are sexually differentiated psychological traits, and it would be pretty surprising if gender identity wasn't one of them, right? Nobody is claiming this, right, here. Oh,

0:30:17 Thomas: Yeah, but in order to get my SJW membership card, I had to declare that men equals women and everything. Oh, wait. No, I didn't have to do that. That's, sorry.

0:30:41 Lindsey: No, she, she literally says that she, so, oh God, okay, right, so the main problem here is that she is misunderstanding what social construct means, right? Social construct does not mean arbitrary, it does not mean chosen, it does not mean unrelated to biology, it doesn't mean any of that, right? To call gender a social construct is to say that there is a shared cultural representation of what it means to be, for example, a man, right? It's not saying that it's made up. It's not saying that it has nothing to do with biological makeup. It is just recognizing that this aspect of our identity is also influenced by social and cultural context. And right? Of course, it does. Of course, culture plays an important role in terms of how we articulate our identity, right? Or what it means to us, or, you know, what we associate with gender, right? Like, you now, pink versus blue.

0:30:49 Thomas: Hmm. Yeah.

0:31:26 Lindsey: Those are associated right now with girls, and boys, right, for reasons relating to neoliberal capitalism. Um, did you know about that, by the way? In 1950s, let's say it's like a marketing thing, yeah,

0:31:35 Thomas: Oh, really? Yeah. I think that's one of those things I've heard and was like, oh my God. And then I kind of forgot about it, but I believe it. Yeah,

0:31:43 Lindsey: Yeah, so it's, it's a completely arbitrary cultural norm, right? Um, but the way that interacts with biology, right, is that once that norm is there, then somebody who, like, strongly identifies with a feminine gender identity might gravitate toward pink more often because of its cultural association with gender, gender, right? Or as another example, it's like, you know, some aspects of gender identity are reinforced through social inheritance of stereotype beliefs, right? If the culture propagates the idea that women are unlikely to excel in mathematics, your gender identity, which again is influenced by biology, is going to influence to what degree that stereotype affects you, right?

0:31:57 Thomas: Right.

0:32:21 Thomas: I mean, I've seen all those studies. I shouldn't, I'm exaggerating. I've seeing many studies that are, that are about like, oh, the way that people do perform on tests if you kind of, um, reinforce certain negative stereotypes about them, or the, and it really does have an effect, or my understanding was it has a large effect, is that, am I recollecting that correctly? Yeah.

0:32:21 Lindsey: Yeah yeah yeah, that's called a stereotype threat, yeah, yeah.

0:32:44 Thomas: And so it's like a feedback loop kind of, it like reinforces itself topic

0:32:49 Lindsey: Right, yeah, no, the stereotype threat literature is pretty fascinating. It's actually, it's, there's some controversy around it recently, but so I'm not sure what to make about that. But it's a pretty large literature indicating that that's the case. Anyway, yeah, I just wanted to signpost that, right? Topic for another show. Anyway. Right. So that's what we mean by social construct. Debra So goes so far as to claim that researchers are being forced to espouse a blank slate view of gender, meaning nobody, nobody, right? But that's what she says. She claims this explicitly, that they're being forced too, to, espous a blank slate. And so for anybody who doesn't know what this means, blank slate means that you're saying that all observed gender differences are entirely the product of social conditioning, and learning has nothing to do with biology, right? And also, somehow, she claims that this blank slate position is being used by left-wing activists to justify the position that we should support gender diversity, which doesn't track with me at all.

0:33:03 Thomas: For another show, yeah, oh, for, like, nobody has a blank, thanks, Slate P.

0:33:50 Thomas: Yeah.

0:33:51 Lindsey: So anyway, it's completely untrue that people are now endorsing the blank slate view. That was rejected decades ago, along with strict behaviorism. The mainstream view is that virtually everything about psychology is the complex product of complex interactions between genetics and environment. There there is no nature nurture debate

0:34:06 Thomas: Yeah, well, say, OK, so what does that mean for a lay person? Like there's no nature nurture debate in that there's not like one side says it's only nature and one side is like, no, it's all only nurture. It's more like, well everything is some combination of that. Is that what you're saying?

0:34:16 Lindsey: That's exactly right. Yeah, it's a false dichotomy, and I mean, psych students hear that in literally every class they take, this is not whatever, it's, yeah. Learning I

0:34:22 Thomas: OK. Yeah yeah. Wait, you mean you aren't reporting from prison right now for being persecuted for having told me this?

0:34:35 Lindsey: Am reporting from prison, but that's unrelated reasons, yeah. Yeah.

0:34:39 Thomas: I've had to edit out the, this is a call from an inmate at the SJW prison. It's every 30 seconds.

0:34:40 Lindsey: I appreciate that.

0:34:46 Thomas: It's been a pain in the editing. Just how much I love you people.

0:34:48 Lindsey: Yeah, Right. So, and the thing is, is that she fails to produce any actual examples of anyone either inside academia or outside of it that are actually making this blank slate claim.

0:34:48 Thomas: No. Okay.

0:35:00 Lindsey: She says, I, yeah,

0:34:57 Thomas: Wow. I am so shocked having just read a whole excerpt of her book in which she provided zero actual examples. I'm shocked that she doesn't provide examples in her book.

0:35:09 Lindsey: I mean, she says that she has some examples of this, some of which are unverifiable anecdotes that she does not source at all, and others that she does kind of source and they were very easy to disconfirm. So, for example, she writes a lot about a controversy in 2018 revolving the legal definition of sex in the context of anti-discrimination law, right, and this is a topic that you guys have talked about on Opening Arguments a lot. So I'm going to try to not pretend to be a lawyer. This is how she represents it. In 2018, the New York Times reported on a draft memo from the Department of Health and Human Services. And this memo described a proposal regarding the definition of the term sex in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which, quote, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability under any health program or activity that receives federal financial assistance. So the proposal was that, and again, you guys have to cover this a lot, right?

0:36:07 Thomas: Mm hmm.

0:36:08 Lindsey: But the proposal was the term sex should be narrowly defined as the categorization based on the appearance of genitals at birth, or that in cases of genital ambiguity to use genetic testing. So in other words, it seems to me that the core of the issue is that they were trying to exclude gender identity in this definition of the word sex in the context of discrimination on the basis of sex, right?

0:36:30 Thomas: Right. And there's the other element of that that we covered on OA was like, does, know, discriminating against gay people include discrimination on the basis of sex? And there'S really complicated, interesting arguments that was one of what was the flower ripple concurrence? That was one of Andrew's favorite thing. I think that's what it was called, but it made the great case for like, well, if you don't know someone's gender, you can't actually discriminate against them for being gay. That's kind of a critical component. So therefore, sex discrimination ought to include, you know, gay rights and that kind of thing, like protections ought to conclude protections for gay

0:36:30 Lindsey: Yes. Yeah. That's Interesting, yeah.

0:37:06 Thomas: People. Yeah. So it's a really interesting topic. And my recollection is this was like a ham fisted attempt by the Trump administration to just like define that out via, you know, executive fiat. And I don't know how successful that was. I'm not sure. Maybe it did work. I can't remember. But anyway, glad we're not we don't have that administration anymore. I mean,

0:37:28 Lindsey: Exactly, right. Um, yeah, and additionally, so this, this proposal invoked the scientific different, the scientific definitions of sex and gender as distinguishable constructs. They cited evidence that sex is defined in scientific context as strictly biological, and they use this to justify some things in the proposal about excluding gender identity, right? And so it seems to me that what is at issue here, correct me if I'm wrong, you, you are clearly more of a lawyer than I am, um, but it seems to me that what is an issue here is, is, you know, with the legal definition of sex, and the controversy isn't really about whether there's a distinction between how scientists talk about sex and gender, right? It's about legal protections.

0:38:06 Thomas: This was about conservatives trying to make sure people who didn't identify the way they want them to identify weren't protected.

0:38:12 Lindsey: Yes. Yeah, okay, so this proposal generated uh responses from the scientific community who published editorials and open letters that strongly oppose the narrow definition described in the memo, and they talked about the way that the science was being misapplied. Right. But so and others uh claimed that the scientific organizations were either denying the scientific distinctions between sex and gender, or claiming that there is no relationship between sex and gender, which is absolutely not the case, right?

0:38:31 Thomas: I Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:38:46 Lindsey: And so, like, I, I found this uh one of these editorials that was published in Nature, which is a really prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal, um, and they lay out in very clear terms, right, uh, I think I should read part of this.

0:39:01 Thomas: Please.

0:39:01 Lindsey: It's not super long. Okay, so this is from, from their editorial in response to this memo, right? So they say, biology is not as straightforward as the proposal suggests. By some estimates, as many as one in a hundred people have differences or disorders of sexual development, such as hormone conditions, genetic changes, or anatomical, anatomical ambiguities, some of which mean that their genitalia cannot clearly be classified as male or female. Even more scientifically complex is a mismatch between gender and the sex on a person's birth certificate. Some evidence suggests that transgender identity has genetic or hormonal roots, but its exact biological correlates are unclear. Whatever the cause, organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics advise physicians to treat people according to their preferred gender, regardless of appearance or of genetics. The research and medical community now sees sex as more complex than male and female, and gender as a spectrum that includes transgender people and those who identify as neither male nor female.

0:39:02 Thomas: It's

0:39:57 Lindsey: The U.S. administration's proposal would ignore that scientific consensus. So tell me, does that sound like they're advocating for a blank slate view of gender?

0:40:06 Thomas: So fucking frustrating. All right. Sorry. What has blown my mind about these conversations as, as we've had them, and as we covered, this is that every fucking time it's Ben Shapiro or whoever saying, well, you know, you have your SJW views, but the science actually shows this, this. And then scientists go, actually, no, it's not, that the science completely backs up what the SJW's are saying, you asshole. And then then Ben or Deborah So or whoever has to, like, well, I guess there's just a cabal of SJWs working at that Nature uh magazine or something, and that, so that's what they have do every single time. It has to go from, the science backs me up, and then a bunch of scientists are like, actually, no, the fuck it doesn't. And then they're like, well, well, I guess, God damn it. Well, there's a conspiracy. The real science would back me up if it could get out. You know, how do I know this? Because I really feel it in my bones that the science would back me up on this two genders thing.

0:40:36 Lindsey: Weird how that works. Yes! Yes! Exactly. Yeah,

0:41:07 Thomas: It's every fucking time.

0:41:07 Lindsey: They can't present any evidence that that's the case.

0:41:09 Thomas: God, it's so frustrating. It's exactly the opposite of what you think. The typical, and I think this pervades, you know, not just bad faith people on the right, but who knows, even, you know a lot of just, just I don't know normies who just like who just think like, oh yeah, I'm pretty sure you know lefties like, they they want to use their feelings more, and then like the right ones, it's like no, that's not what's happening, actually the science backs it up, and the people on the right are substituting their like traditional views, feeling like it must be science because, because they feel like it, like it just must be because they know it in their heart, and then they then they use that to claim that people on the left are using their feelings rather than science, when it's the exact opposite of

0:41:16 Lindsey: It is the exact

0:41:54 Thomas: True.

0:41:55 Lindsey: Opposite. I think it bears repeating that claim. It is the opposite. It's it is Very frustrating. Yeah. Yeah, and and so the other, the other piece of evidence that she cites here is not science, it's not from the scientific community, it's it's like to to show that, you know, people who are actually advocating for for the rights of gender diverse people. She she cites a video released by Teen Vogue. And the video is intended to educate people about gender diversity. And it actually does a really nice job of summarizing some of that biological complexity that we just talked about. It's a good video, and she right? Claims that they espouse the idea that gender is a social construct in the sense that she has defined it, right, as arbitrary and unrelated to biology. It doesn't. And ironically, the video very, very heavily focuses on our current understanding of the biology that underlies gender. It is just a lie. The way she she represents it is just a lie.

0:42:02 Thomas: It's so frustrating. It is so frustrating

0:42:50 Lindsey: So, so at any rate, she doesn't provide much evidence. These two pieces of evidence, this is the best that she can do in terms of marshalling evidence for these claims that left-wing activists are espousing this blank slate view or saying that gender is made up. I don't know what to tell you. I know, I don't see any evidence here, right?

0:43:08 Thomas: All right, well, I feel like that's a good place to pause here and do a part one, part two situation, Lindsay. Lindsay, because I know you have a lot more notes to get through.

0:43:16 Lindsey: Agreed so many more notes thank

0:43:19 Thomas: Oh boy. I'm going to go calm down a little bit. We're going to pause here and get to more of the frustration that is this misrepresentation of science and transphobic bigotry that is Debra So's book. So I will try to get out the part two as soon as I can to everybody, but thanks so much for listening to part one here. Lindsay, thanks so much for putting yourself through this and actually checking. You had to do more than just read this piece of crap. You'd actually like, you know, do the research and that Debra

0:43:23 Lindsey: You yeah fact

0:43:55 Thomas: So didn't do, uh, in order to like, oh, great work. Uh, thanks again. And we'll see everybody for part two very soon.

0:43:56 Lindsey: Check everything everything

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