This is a fabulous discussion that focuses squarely on the issue we most need to understand − What the hell is really going on with this radical-woke-BLM-Kendi movement that started in the ‘60s?
deBoer nails the most fundamental insight in his first sentence: “these things never end—they just mutate.” Later, he adds, “You end up being left with, … the creation of all these organizational structures within various elite American institutions.” That’s the main result of the evolution, but these structures undermine the institutions.
Let me add some history. Peak woke occurred in 1971, when the president of Columbia University stated, "The trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins is … a political trial that should not be taking place in America." Yale’s president added that he was “skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the US.” Hillary Rodham (later Clinton) monitored the trial for civil rights violations on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Bobby, in charge of panther security, had stopped by Ericka’s NJ Panther chapter just after Ericka had presided over torturing a (false) confession out of 19-year-old Panther Alex Rackley, but before they took him out and shot him. The pro-Panther mood of the left was only slightly dampened when the tape-recording of Ericka during the torture was played in court. Of course, she and Bobby were acquitted.
In June 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted. She’d bought the shotgun two days before it was taped to the judge's neck (during the kidnapping) and blew his brains out.
That ideology, as I’ll now show, mutated into what’s now woke (the CRT ideology), and has wormed its way into various “organizational structures [in] American institutions.” Black Power has become systemic wokeism.
The crucial connection that’s forgotten can be found in the Jun 19, 1966, CBS podcast called Face the Nation, in which Stokely Carmichael, who had launched Black Power three days earlier in the Mississippi Delta, revealed the two core ideas that Derrick Bell latter used to launch Critical Race Theory. Carmichael explained "Bell’s idea" that schools were being integrated too soon. That became the very first CRT paper in 1975. Then he announced Bell’s “Interest Convergence Principle” (without naming it) and continued to repeat it during his intense speaking tour, at least through his Oct 30 speech at UC Berkeley. That’s the idea Bell is famous for and CRT is built on.
When Ibram Kendi finally settles on his definition of antiracism in Chapter 16, he bases it squarely on Malcolm X (by any means necessary) and the Carmichael/Bell Interest Convergence Principle.
Underneath all this is one crucial point that’s being missed. The BP/CRT movement that’s been evolving and growing for 60+ years is a thirst for revolution − NOT progress. Progress is kryptonite for revolutionaries; it undermines the desire for revolution. Extreme pessimism about “the system’s” ability to make progress is essential.
So when deBoer says, “the fundamental weakness of identity politics is that in politics you want to have a set of goals and to form a coalition around those goals,” I think he has not grasped their goal − revolution. Identity politics is working perfectly for its intended purpose — cultural destruction. You can’t build a utopia until you destroy the capitalist culture. Period. There is plenty of evidence dating back to 1937 (Traditional and Critical Theory) for this, if you want to dig into it.
Let me disagree to some extent. Were there radicals in the 60s/70s? Of course, there were. However, most men and women didn't buy into the BS. Times have changed (and not for the better). Let me quote from "Spencer" over at West Hunter (a web site - look for Sex is a spectrum.
"Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised."
I agree, more people are sucked in today. Our peak woke was more extreme, but not quite a broad. But we did take over the Democrats and McGovern was right: "I opened the doors to the Dem party and 20 million people walked out." I checked his number and from '64 to '72 he hit it right on nose. Dems lost 40% of the vote they had in '64. (And note, that was not due to Civil Rights which was 100% factored into LBJ's '64 landslide. It was all due to radicalism.)
What I guess I did not make clear is that peaks come and go, but this has been a 60+ year process that has been growing stronger the whole time. The other big change is that it's gotten much better at camouflaging itself and taking over institutions. So, I'm guessing we are on the same page.
Another big difference is that radicalism in the 1960s was mostly economic. These days its mostly cultural. My favorite comment on all of this comes from a liberal/leftist who wrote (bitterly lamented)
“We are going to hear a lot more about ‘transgender rights’ in the years to come, than the minimum wage”
He was correct of course. The traditional left cared (a lot) about things like the minimum wage. The culture war left could care less. The Google Ngram viewer confirms these trends. References to the "minimum wage" peaked before 1940. References to "transgender" took off after 2000 and are now twice as high as references to the "minimum wage".
The other big shift is reality is no longer held as some sort of ultimate standard I attribute this to Post Modernism (Focault, Derrida, etc).
It appears that ‘woke’ took off after 2010. See the charts in the 8/4/2020 issue of Tablet magazine. Note that this shift predates Trump and even predates the events in Ferguson. Why is the obvious question. Why did ‘woke’ take off after 2010?
One theory (that I half agree with) is that this shift was a delayed response to the GFC. In other words, economic elites dreamed up ‘woke’ as a mean of deflecting hostility towards the financial system (which had so obviously failed in the GFC). The problem with this theory is that the ‘woke’ vehemently disagree. Try convincing Jones (NH) or Kendi (I) that they are tools of the economic elite. Good luck with that.
Another theory relates to the end of the Cold War. The rise of Cultural Marxism is too some degree, a consequence of the fall of conventional Marxism. Conventional Marxism was (slowly) dying by the 1950s. The Soviet invasion of Hungary and later Czechoslovakia alienated (or worse) a vast number of people who might have otherwise supported the Communist system. The economic failure of Eastern Europe combined with the great success of the “Little China’s” (Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) and South Korea was a great blow to the credibility of conventional Marxism. The Cambodian genocide must be mentioned in this context as well. Of course, the fall of the USSR and China’s switch to Capitalism (and subsequent success) were the final nails in the coffin.
My sense of it is that failure of the Soviet system (and Eastern Europe) was a bigger deal than China’s switch to capitalism. The numbers make the converse case. However, I still think the failure of Soviet system (and Eastern Europe) was/is more important. I don’t agree, but that doesn’t matter.
Of course, these were monumental blows to the traditional Left. However, the Left wasn’t about to fold its tent and disappear. For better or worse, a huge section of society will never embrace bourgeois values and will be (highly) motivated to reject them. Since conventional Marxism was “the god that failed”, the Left embraced Cultural Marxism as a substitute. Of course, Cultural Marxism is just as crazy as conventional Marxism (perhaps considerably crazier). However, we don’t have easy country comparisons to show how nuts it is (i.e. no North Korea vs. South Korea).
Blank Slate ideology is arguably nuttier than old-style Marxism. However, we don’t (yet) have a Stalin or Mao to attack as the leader of it (Cultural Marxism).
Yet another theory suggests that the failure of liberalism was/is a substantial factor in the rise of ‘woke’. In the 1960s (and earlier decades and later decades) it was widely believed that liberalism would work. In other words, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society would produce a (much) better American where poverty and race would not be intertwined and poverty itself would more or less disappear. That didn’t happen of course. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was roughly as successful as his war in Vietnam.
At this point it is obvious that liberalism has failed (in attaining the goals of the 1960s). Some folks have responded to this failure by basically giving up. However, the most motivated have moved to the left (far left). Note that we hear far more about “systematic racism” now (when it doesn’t exist) than we did when Jim Crow was a daily reality.
Were the 1960s really a failure? In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. For some time now, orchestras have used “blind auditions” to hire new musicians. This approach has led to a large increase in the number of Asian and female musicians being hired. The number of blacks and Hispanics hired, was quite low, and has remained quite low. The “blind auditions” mechanism was adopted precisely to eliminate discrimination in the hiring of musicians and it has worked as intended. However, it has not yielded equal outcomes by any means.
The New York Times’s chief critic has launched a campaign to end the merit-based ‘blind audition’ hiring process for orchestras.
I wrote (some time ago)
“Amid the current moment of moral panic in American racial politics, any proposal, no matter how regressive or discriminatory in nature, can become a non-negotiable demand if it is sold as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign. That is the only way to understand the potential impact of a recent piece by Anthony Tommasini, the New York Times’ chief classical-music critic, that advocates the end of the merit-based system for hiring at American orchestras.”
Yascha Mounk and Freddie deBoer are both right. Peak ‘woke’ has passed. ‘Woke’ has hardly gone away. This week we saw a male boxer (Imane Khlief) pretend to be a women, so that he could beat up (and beat) actual females. He did this with the full approval of the IOC. The IOC does not do any sex testing, because actual sex testing would not be ‘woke’.
> "Peak ‘woke’ has passed. ‘Woke’ has hardly gone away."
Indeed -- building for another wave, another peak. Some reason to argue that the "cancer" has metastasized and has infected many of those supposedly on the "right side of history" -- like Andrew Doyle and Freddie, Himself.
> "This week we saw a male boxer (Imane Khelif) pretend to be a [woman] ..."
A case in point of that metastasis -- in all probability Khelif has a male genotype -- i.e., XY chromosomes -- and a female phenotype -- i.e., something that looks like a vagina, or looked like one at birth. But he is probably neither male nor female because he probably has neither functional ovaries nor functional testicles.
The problem is the discrepancies between genitalia, chromosomes, and functional gonads. The IOC are using genitalia, the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And the IBA and their camp followers want to use chromosomes. But reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries use functional gonads to determine sex category membership.
Offhand, it seems the best criteria for women's sports should be the presence of ovaries, whether they're functional or not.
One can have one without the other -- a case in point being "XX males":
"Based on limited evidence, most XX males appear to have typical body and pubic hair, penis size, libido, and erectile function. In all reported cases, individuals have been sterile, with azoospermia (no sperm in the ejaculate)."
Though somewhat moot whether Khelif has 5-ARD, but some indications there that those with that DSD too are infertile, sterile -- i.e., sexless:
" The internal reproductive structures (vasa deferentia, seminal vesicles, epididymides and ejaculatory ducts) are normal but testes are usually undescended ..."
I slightly disagree. Some persons have no ovaries (to speak of) and no testis. However, they are (in my opinion) female. I am referring to folks with Swyer’s syndrome. They are 46-XY (not 46-XX). They have fallopian tubes and a uterus. However, they lack functional ovaries. With medical help (IVF) they can have children. Since I would consider them female, that rules out (for me) the use of ovaries as a distinguishing feature. Swyer’s syndrome is very rare. CAIS is an even bigger problem (it is also quite rare). Persons with CAIS have 46-XY (not 46-XX) chromosomes and look very female. However, they don’t have ovaries or fallopian tubes or a uterus. Are they male or female? The answer is unclear to me. Don’t worry. The situation gets worse. Some CAIS folks are actually PAIS (the ‘P’ stands for partial).
I would suggest using chromosomes to distinguish between males and females. This approach will work (yield the correct result) in 99.99+% of cases. In the rare cases where chromosomes are not enough, I would suggest using ultrasounds to look for female anatomy.
> " Since I would consider them female, that rules out (for me) the use of ovaries as a distinguishing feature."
That that "rules out ... ovaries" for you really doesn't cut much ice as far as mainstream biology goes. Reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries -- and no few reputable biologists and philosophers -- STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
That's generally the problem -- virtually everyone, with the exception of the above noted sources and much of mainstream biology, thinks they can peddle their own idiosyncratic and self-serving definitions for the sexes, and then expects everyone else to follow suit. A case in point being a particularly demented transwoman, Riley Dennis, who seems to "think" that being female is simply a matter of best 3 out of 5:
Rational(?)Wiki: "On biological sex: 'For example, if someone was assigned male at birth, but took puberty blockers and hormones and had a vaginoplasty, they would have 'female' hormones, secondary sex characters, and genitals. So, three of their five ways of determining sex would be 'female'... That means three-fifths of the sex criteria point to female, and only one-fifth points to male – and if you believe that sex is an unchanging biological fact, that couldn’t be possible. But it is.' ...."
If you're not going endorse those biological definitions then how are yours any better than Dennis'? Because you say so? It's not a free-for-all where anyone can play.
The fact of the matter is that there are a great many solid reasons for those biological definitions. . You may wish to take a gander at my post “Rerum cognoscere causas” [To understand the causes of things] on some of those solid philosophical justifications for that “interpretation” – mostly based on a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Mechanisms in Science [and biology]”:
Biologists do distinguish between the sexes (in humans and other species) based on gametes (in humans these are called sperm and eggs). However, I suggest a different standard be use in the Olympics and other sporting competitions. Swyer’s syndrome is quite rare and I know of no evidence that anyone involved with sports suffers from it. However, persons with Swyer’s syndrome have 46-XY (not 46-XX) chromosomes. They have fallopian tubes and a uterus. However, they lack functional ovaries (and testis). With medical help (IVF) they can have children. I consider them to be “female” even though they produce no gametes.
Using chromosomes (and in rare cases ultrasounds) for sex determination (in sports and elsewhere) has the huge advantage(s) of being cheap, easy, and non-invasive. Actually checking for gametes would require major surgery in some (rare) cases and would be highly invasive.
> "Biologists do distinguish between the sexes ... based on gametes ..."
Hallelujah! Progress! 😉🙂
> "However, I suggest a different standard be use in the Olympics and other sporting competitions. ... Using chromosomes (and in rare cases ultrasounds) for sex determination ..."
I'm really not against chromosomes and ultrasound for sports. And I've more or less said so, in my first comment above: "... it seems the best criteria for women's sports should be the presence of ovaries, whether they're functional or not".
But that is STILL not the defining criteria for "female" -- which is what you apparently want to make them into. It seems that you're still trying to repudiate and bastardize the standard biological definitions for the sexes that you more or less agreed to.
For example, you say that you "consider them [Swyer's syndrome people] to be 'female' even though they produce no gametes", but, by the standard biological definitions, they are simply sexless. The problem is that too many people seem think that the sexes are participation trophies, and that everyone has to have one from conception to death -- which is antiscientific claptrap. A rather egregious case of that from Zach Elliott who has guest-posted on Colin Wright's Substack:
Zach Elliott: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
He's not "worried" about "scientific accuracy"; he's worried that many of the intersex are going to be "deprived" of their membership cards in the categories "male" and "female". But since when do "morally problematic claims" get to trump brute facts? Galileo, Darwin, and his "bulldog" T.H. Huxley are rolling over in their graves. We might just as well start "teaching the controversy", teaching that the Earth is the center of the universe and at the center of the universe because the contraries "offend" some of the religious.
A rather too common outlook -- one which you seem to be exhibiting yourself.
But you may wish to take a gander at my recent comments on Dawkins' Substack -- which he's responded to at least once so far, even if somewhat dishonestly -- where I go into a bit more depth on those points:
Several biologists (Jerry Coyne, Carole Hooven, Colin Wright) have noted that gametes “define” sex. For practical reasons (and other reasons as well), sex tests should not include checking for gametes (in my opinion). For males, this would only be moderately hard. For females, it would require highly invasive surgery. Of course, ultrasounds could be used to look for ovaries or testes without highly invasive surgery. However, ultrasounds are still moderately difficult (I had one for reasons having nothing to do with sex tests). I suggest Buccal smears (cheek swabs). They are fast, cheap, and highly reliable, with ultrasounds as a rarely used backup. Of course, Swyer’s persons don’t have functional ovaries. However, they do have fallopian tubes and a uterus. With medical help (IVF), they can have babies. In my opinion, they are female. However, an ultrasound would find nothing for CAIS. Are CAIS persons male or female? Not clear to me. Mosaic persons are another strange case (to me at least). The good news is that Swyer’s syndrome and CAIS and mosaicism are quite rare.
The interview with G. Cazorla (Imane Khelif's trainer) use’s the words “despite of her karyotype and her testosterone levels”. What karyotype would that be? What Testosterone levels would those be? The answer are all of too clear. Male and male.
I'm not disputing the karyotype or the testosterone levels. Only with your assumption or insistence that they define "male":
Google/OxfordLanguages: "male: of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
You see ANYTHING at all there about karyotypes or testosterone levels?
As indicated there, the ONLY thing that does define the category is "produces small gametes". Which I rather doubt Khelif is capable of.
You and too many others seem to have some difficulty with the concepts of correlation, of "typical of":
"correlate: a phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon, is usually parallel to it, and is related in some way to it"
This is a fabulous discussion that focuses squarely on the issue we most need to understand − What the hell is really going on with this radical-woke-BLM-Kendi movement that started in the ‘60s?
deBoer nails the most fundamental insight in his first sentence: “these things never end—they just mutate.” Later, he adds, “You end up being left with, … the creation of all these organizational structures within various elite American institutions.” That’s the main result of the evolution, but these structures undermine the institutions.
Let me add some history. Peak woke occurred in 1971, when the president of Columbia University stated, "The trial of Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins is … a political trial that should not be taking place in America." Yale’s president added that he was “skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the US.” Hillary Rodham (later Clinton) monitored the trial for civil rights violations on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Bobby, in charge of panther security, had stopped by Ericka’s NJ Panther chapter just after Ericka had presided over torturing a (false) confession out of 19-year-old Panther Alex Rackley, but before they took him out and shot him. The pro-Panther mood of the left was only slightly dampened when the tape-recording of Ericka during the torture was played in court. Of course, she and Bobby were acquitted.
In June 1972, Angela Davis was acquitted. She’d bought the shotgun two days before it was taped to the judge's neck (during the kidnapping) and blew his brains out.
That ideology, as I’ll now show, mutated into what’s now woke (the CRT ideology), and has wormed its way into various “organizational structures [in] American institutions.” Black Power has become systemic wokeism.
The crucial connection that’s forgotten can be found in the Jun 19, 1966, CBS podcast called Face the Nation, in which Stokely Carmichael, who had launched Black Power three days earlier in the Mississippi Delta, revealed the two core ideas that Derrick Bell latter used to launch Critical Race Theory. Carmichael explained "Bell’s idea" that schools were being integrated too soon. That became the very first CRT paper in 1975. Then he announced Bell’s “Interest Convergence Principle” (without naming it) and continued to repeat it during his intense speaking tour, at least through his Oct 30 speech at UC Berkeley. That’s the idea Bell is famous for and CRT is built on.
When Ibram Kendi finally settles on his definition of antiracism in Chapter 16, he bases it squarely on Malcolm X (by any means necessary) and the Carmichael/Bell Interest Convergence Principle.
Underneath all this is one crucial point that’s being missed. The BP/CRT movement that’s been evolving and growing for 60+ years is a thirst for revolution − NOT progress. Progress is kryptonite for revolutionaries; it undermines the desire for revolution. Extreme pessimism about “the system’s” ability to make progress is essential.
So when deBoer says, “the fundamental weakness of identity politics is that in politics you want to have a set of goals and to form a coalition around those goals,” I think he has not grasped their goal − revolution. Identity politics is working perfectly for its intended purpose — cultural destruction. You can’t build a utopia until you destroy the capitalist culture. Period. There is plenty of evidence dating back to 1937 (Traditional and Critical Theory) for this, if you want to dig into it.
Let me disagree to some extent. Were there radicals in the 60s/70s? Of course, there were. However, most men and women didn't buy into the BS. Times have changed (and not for the better). Let me quote from "Spencer" over at West Hunter (a web site - look for Sex is a spectrum.
"Lol. I introduce students every semester to various non-overlapping or barley overlapping graphs by sex. Every year their jaws drop further. Twenty years ago barely an eyebrow was raised."
I agree, more people are sucked in today. Our peak woke was more extreme, but not quite a broad. But we did take over the Democrats and McGovern was right: "I opened the doors to the Dem party and 20 million people walked out." I checked his number and from '64 to '72 he hit it right on nose. Dems lost 40% of the vote they had in '64. (And note, that was not due to Civil Rights which was 100% factored into LBJ's '64 landslide. It was all due to radicalism.)
What I guess I did not make clear is that peaks come and go, but this has been a 60+ year process that has been growing stronger the whole time. The other big change is that it's gotten much better at camouflaging itself and taking over institutions. So, I'm guessing we are on the same page.
Another big difference is that radicalism in the 1960s was mostly economic. These days its mostly cultural. My favorite comment on all of this comes from a liberal/leftist who wrote (bitterly lamented)
“We are going to hear a lot more about ‘transgender rights’ in the years to come, than the minimum wage”
He was correct of course. The traditional left cared (a lot) about things like the minimum wage. The culture war left could care less. The Google Ngram viewer confirms these trends. References to the "minimum wage" peaked before 1940. References to "transgender" took off after 2000 and are now twice as high as references to the "minimum wage".
The other big shift is reality is no longer held as some sort of ultimate standard I attribute this to Post Modernism (Focault, Derrida, etc).
It appears that ‘woke’ took off after 2010. See the charts in the 8/4/2020 issue of Tablet magazine. Note that this shift predates Trump and even predates the events in Ferguson. Why is the obvious question. Why did ‘woke’ take off after 2010?
One theory (that I half agree with) is that this shift was a delayed response to the GFC. In other words, economic elites dreamed up ‘woke’ as a mean of deflecting hostility towards the financial system (which had so obviously failed in the GFC). The problem with this theory is that the ‘woke’ vehemently disagree. Try convincing Jones (NH) or Kendi (I) that they are tools of the economic elite. Good luck with that.
Another theory relates to the end of the Cold War. The rise of Cultural Marxism is too some degree, a consequence of the fall of conventional Marxism. Conventional Marxism was (slowly) dying by the 1950s. The Soviet invasion of Hungary and later Czechoslovakia alienated (or worse) a vast number of people who might have otherwise supported the Communist system. The economic failure of Eastern Europe combined with the great success of the “Little China’s” (Macau, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan) and South Korea was a great blow to the credibility of conventional Marxism. The Cambodian genocide must be mentioned in this context as well. Of course, the fall of the USSR and China’s switch to Capitalism (and subsequent success) were the final nails in the coffin.
My sense of it is that failure of the Soviet system (and Eastern Europe) was a bigger deal than China’s switch to capitalism. The numbers make the converse case. However, I still think the failure of Soviet system (and Eastern Europe) was/is more important. I don’t agree, but that doesn’t matter.
Of course, these were monumental blows to the traditional Left. However, the Left wasn’t about to fold its tent and disappear. For better or worse, a huge section of society will never embrace bourgeois values and will be (highly) motivated to reject them. Since conventional Marxism was “the god that failed”, the Left embraced Cultural Marxism as a substitute. Of course, Cultural Marxism is just as crazy as conventional Marxism (perhaps considerably crazier). However, we don’t have easy country comparisons to show how nuts it is (i.e. no North Korea vs. South Korea).
Blank Slate ideology is arguably nuttier than old-style Marxism. However, we don’t (yet) have a Stalin or Mao to attack as the leader of it (Cultural Marxism).
Yet another theory suggests that the failure of liberalism was/is a substantial factor in the rise of ‘woke’. In the 1960s (and earlier decades and later decades) it was widely believed that liberalism would work. In other words, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society would produce a (much) better American where poverty and race would not be intertwined and poverty itself would more or less disappear. That didn’t happen of course. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society was roughly as successful as his war in Vietnam.
At this point it is obvious that liberalism has failed (in attaining the goals of the 1960s). Some folks have responded to this failure by basically giving up. However, the most motivated have moved to the left (far left). Note that we hear far more about “systematic racism” now (when it doesn’t exist) than we did when Jim Crow was a daily reality.
Were the 1960s really a failure? In my opinion, the answer is yes and no. For some time now, orchestras have used “blind auditions” to hire new musicians. This approach has led to a large increase in the number of Asian and female musicians being hired. The number of blacks and Hispanics hired, was quite low, and has remained quite low. The “blind auditions” mechanism was adopted precisely to eliminate discrimination in the hiring of musicians and it has worked as intended. However, it has not yielded equal outcomes by any means.
The New York Times’s chief critic has launched a campaign to end the merit-based ‘blind audition’ hiring process for orchestras.
I wrote (some time ago)
“Amid the current moment of moral panic in American racial politics, any proposal, no matter how regressive or discriminatory in nature, can become a non-negotiable demand if it is sold as part of the Black Lives Matter campaign. That is the only way to understand the potential impact of a recent piece by Anthony Tommasini, the New York Times’ chief classical-music critic, that advocates the end of the merit-based system for hiring at American orchestras.”
Yascha Mounk and Freddie deBoer are both right. Peak ‘woke’ has passed. ‘Woke’ has hardly gone away. This week we saw a male boxer (Imane Khlief) pretend to be a women, so that he could beat up (and beat) actual females. He did this with the full approval of the IOC. The IOC does not do any sex testing, because actual sex testing would not be ‘woke’.
> "Peak ‘woke’ has passed. ‘Woke’ has hardly gone away."
Indeed -- building for another wave, another peak. Some reason to argue that the "cancer" has metastasized and has infected many of those supposedly on the "right side of history" -- like Andrew Doyle and Freddie, Himself.
> "This week we saw a male boxer (Imane Khelif) pretend to be a [woman] ..."
A case in point of that metastasis -- in all probability Khelif has a male genotype -- i.e., XY chromosomes -- and a female phenotype -- i.e., something that looks like a vagina, or looked like one at birth. But he is probably neither male nor female because he probably has neither functional ovaries nor functional testicles.
The problem is the discrepancies between genitalia, chromosomes, and functional gonads. The IOC are using genitalia, the Kindergarten Cop definitions: boys have penises and girls have vaginas. And the IBA and their camp followers want to use chromosomes. But reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries use functional gonads to determine sex category membership.
Offhand, it seems the best criteria for women's sports should be the presence of ovaries, whether they're functional or not.
Imane Khelif probably has fully functional (internal) testicles. The evidence for this is his male-normal Testosterone levels.
"fully functional" also includes producing sperm.
"The functions of the testicles are to produce both sperm and androgens, primarily testosterone."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testicle
One can have one without the other -- a case in point being "XX males":
"Based on limited evidence, most XX males appear to have typical body and pubic hair, penis size, libido, and erectile function. In all reported cases, individuals have been sterile, with azoospermia (no sperm in the ejaculate)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XX_male_syndrome
Moot what Khelif in particular has, but CAIS people tend to be sterile -- i.e., sexless.
And PAIS people seem to be typically "sterile" -- i.e., sexless:
"Previously, it was erroneously thought that individuals with PAIS were always infertile; ... "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial_androgen_insensitivity_syndrome
Though somewhat moot whether Khelif has 5-ARD, but some indications there that those with that DSD too are infertile, sterile -- i.e., sexless:
" The internal reproductive structures (vasa deferentia, seminal vesicles, epididymides and ejaculatory ducts) are normal but testes are usually undescended ..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5%CE%B1-Reductase_2_deficiency
I slightly disagree. Some persons have no ovaries (to speak of) and no testis. However, they are (in my opinion) female. I am referring to folks with Swyer’s syndrome. They are 46-XY (not 46-XX). They have fallopian tubes and a uterus. However, they lack functional ovaries. With medical help (IVF) they can have children. Since I would consider them female, that rules out (for me) the use of ovaries as a distinguishing feature. Swyer’s syndrome is very rare. CAIS is an even bigger problem (it is also quite rare). Persons with CAIS have 46-XY (not 46-XX) chromosomes and look very female. However, they don’t have ovaries or fallopian tubes or a uterus. Are they male or female? The answer is unclear to me. Don’t worry. The situation gets worse. Some CAIS folks are actually PAIS (the ‘P’ stands for partial).
I would suggest using chromosomes to distinguish between males and females. This approach will work (yield the correct result) in 99.99+% of cases. In the rare cases where chromosomes are not enough, I would suggest using ultrasounds to look for female anatomy.
> " Since I would consider them female, that rules out (for me) the use of ovaries as a distinguishing feature."
That that "rules out ... ovaries" for you really doesn't cut much ice as far as mainstream biology goes. Reputable biological journals, encyclopedias, and dictionaries -- and no few reputable biologists and philosophers -- STIPULATE that to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
https://academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1161/1062990 (see the Glossary)
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
https://twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009407037441 (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
From the first link above, the Journal of Molecular Human Reproduction:
"Female: Biologically, the female sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the larger gametes in anisogamous systems.
Male: Biologically, the male sex is defined as the adult phenotype that produces the smaller gametes in anisogamous systems."
And reputable mainstream and popular dictionaries -- like Oxford-Languages/Oxford-English-Dictionary -- say pretty much the same thing:
OED: "male, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."; https://web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/male
OED: "female, adjective: Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes"; https://web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/https:/en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/female
That's generally the problem -- virtually everyone, with the exception of the above noted sources and much of mainstream biology, thinks they can peddle their own idiosyncratic and self-serving definitions for the sexes, and then expects everyone else to follow suit. A case in point being a particularly demented transwoman, Riley Dennis, who seems to "think" that being female is simply a matter of best 3 out of 5:
Rational(?)Wiki: "On biological sex: 'For example, if someone was assigned male at birth, but took puberty blockers and hormones and had a vaginoplasty, they would have 'female' hormones, secondary sex characters, and genitals. So, three of their five ways of determining sex would be 'female'... That means three-fifths of the sex criteria point to female, and only one-fifth points to male – and if you believe that sex is an unchanging biological fact, that couldn’t be possible. But it is.' ...."
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Riley_Dennis
If you're not going endorse those biological definitions then how are yours any better than Dennis'? Because you say so? It's not a free-for-all where anyone can play.
The fact of the matter is that there are a great many solid reasons for those biological definitions. . You may wish to take a gander at my post “Rerum cognoscere causas” [To understand the causes of things] on some of those solid philosophical justifications for that “interpretation” – mostly based on a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on “Mechanisms in Science [and biology]”:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/rerum-cognoscere-causas
https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/win2021/entries/science-mechanisms/#toc
Biologists do distinguish between the sexes (in humans and other species) based on gametes (in humans these are called sperm and eggs). However, I suggest a different standard be use in the Olympics and other sporting competitions. Swyer’s syndrome is quite rare and I know of no evidence that anyone involved with sports suffers from it. However, persons with Swyer’s syndrome have 46-XY (not 46-XX) chromosomes. They have fallopian tubes and a uterus. However, they lack functional ovaries (and testis). With medical help (IVF) they can have children. I consider them to be “female” even though they produce no gametes.
Using chromosomes (and in rare cases ultrasounds) for sex determination (in sports and elsewhere) has the huge advantage(s) of being cheap, easy, and non-invasive. Actually checking for gametes would require major surgery in some (rare) cases and would be highly invasive.
> "Biologists do distinguish between the sexes ... based on gametes ..."
Hallelujah! Progress! 😉🙂
> "However, I suggest a different standard be use in the Olympics and other sporting competitions. ... Using chromosomes (and in rare cases ultrasounds) for sex determination ..."
I'm really not against chromosomes and ultrasound for sports. And I've more or less said so, in my first comment above: "... it seems the best criteria for women's sports should be the presence of ovaries, whether they're functional or not".
But that is STILL not the defining criteria for "female" -- which is what you apparently want to make them into. It seems that you're still trying to repudiate and bastardize the standard biological definitions for the sexes that you more or less agreed to.
For example, you say that you "consider them [Swyer's syndrome people] to be 'female' even though they produce no gametes", but, by the standard biological definitions, they are simply sexless. The problem is that too many people seem think that the sexes are participation trophies, and that everyone has to have one from conception to death -- which is antiscientific claptrap. A rather egregious case of that from Zach Elliott who has guest-posted on Colin Wright's Substack:
Zach Elliott: "Discrimination is not eliminated, and true acceptance is not shown, by embracing the scientifically incorrect and morally problematic claims that people who differ from the norm are both or neither sexes."
https://twitter.com/zaelefty/status/1592711689438662656
He's not "worried" about "scientific accuracy"; he's worried that many of the intersex are going to be "deprived" of their membership cards in the categories "male" and "female". But since when do "morally problematic claims" get to trump brute facts? Galileo, Darwin, and his "bulldog" T.H. Huxley are rolling over in their graves. We might just as well start "teaching the controversy", teaching that the Earth is the center of the universe and at the center of the universe because the contraries "offend" some of the religious.
A rather too common outlook -- one which you seem to be exhibiting yourself.
But you may wish to take a gander at my recent comments on Dawkins' Substack -- which he's responded to at least once so far, even if somewhat dishonestly -- where I go into a bit more depth on those points:
https://richarddawkins.substack.com/p/the-delegates-tale/comment/66131750
Several biologists (Jerry Coyne, Carole Hooven, Colin Wright) have noted that gametes “define” sex. For practical reasons (and other reasons as well), sex tests should not include checking for gametes (in my opinion). For males, this would only be moderately hard. For females, it would require highly invasive surgery. Of course, ultrasounds could be used to look for ovaries or testes without highly invasive surgery. However, ultrasounds are still moderately difficult (I had one for reasons having nothing to do with sex tests). I suggest Buccal smears (cheek swabs). They are fast, cheap, and highly reliable, with ultrasounds as a rarely used backup. Of course, Swyer’s persons don’t have functional ovaries. However, they do have fallopian tubes and a uterus. With medical help (IVF), they can have babies. In my opinion, they are female. However, an ultrasound would find nothing for CAIS. Are CAIS persons male or female? Not clear to me. Mosaic persons are another strange case (to me at least). The good news is that Swyer’s syndrome and CAIS and mosaicism are quite rare.
Khelif's male chromosomes have been confirmed by G. Cozorla (Khelif's trainer)
Somewhat moot. Apparently, all that has been said, at least publicly, is this:
"There is a problem with her hormones"
https://www.lepoint.fr/monde/2024-olympics-imane-khelif-was-devastated-to-discover-out-of-the-blue-that-she-might-not-be-a-girl-14-08-2024-2567924_24.php
Certainly plausible but a bit of a stretch from that to "male chromosomes" -- which are not at all definitive of "male".
You might consider citing some references for your claims.
The interview with G. Cazorla (Imane Khelif's trainer) use’s the words “despite of her karyotype and her testosterone levels”. What karyotype would that be? What Testosterone levels would those be? The answer are all of too clear. Male and male.
I'm not disputing the karyotype or the testosterone levels. Only with your assumption or insistence that they define "male":
Google/OxfordLanguages: "male: of or denoting the sex that produces small, typically motile gametes, especially spermatozoa, with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring."
You see ANYTHING at all there about karyotypes or testosterone levels?
As indicated there, the ONLY thing that does define the category is "produces small gametes". Which I rather doubt Khelif is capable of.
You and too many others seem to have some difficulty with the concepts of correlation, of "typical of":
"correlate: a phenomenon that accompanies another phenomenon, is usually parallel to it, and is related in some way to it"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/correlate
Google/OxfordLanguages: "typical: showing the characteristics expected of or popularly associated with a particular person, situation, or thing."