9 ms·

Ideological Bias in the Psychology of Sex and Gender [pdf]

66 points by mckern 4y ago

intrestingstuff 4y ago
[flagged]
andrelaszlo 4y ago
This paper doesn't sit right with me. To establish rigid, biological definitions of some of the most debated terms is fine of course, as long as it makes your own research and writing clearer. What's weird is expecting others to have used the same definition in their writing. To use the word "bias" to describe that discrepancy is not really doing justice to other viewpoints and it seems like the author has failed to live up to his own ideals: > The dialectic can remain healthy as long as multiple viewpoints are allowed and ideas are evaluated on their own merits. The main point of the paper is to discuss what the author describes as a feminist bias in academic psychology, which he says systematically distorts certain domains of research. The paper then attacks this "bias" from multiple angles, which makes the paper quite hard to follow. The first angle is that feminism fundamentally misunderstands the nature of sex: > The flaws of the sex-gender distinction have led some feminist > scholars to adopt the hybrid term “sex/gender” (sometimes > “gender/sex”) as a way to recognize that biological and social > factors are inseparable [...] Unfortunately, this terminological > fusion may end up deepening the conceptual confusion. [...] On this > view, the “sex binary” is a socially constructed fiction; the old > idea that there are two sexes is simplistic and inaccurate, and does > not stand up to sophisticated analysis [...] This argument can be > seductive but has one problem—it fundamentally misunderstands the > nature of sex. He goes on to explain why "the biological definition of sex is not just one option among many equally valid alternatives", but in fact the only valid definition. "The sex binary, then, is not a fiction but a basic biological fact". Here's the definition from the paper: "From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes." Stating this definition as a fact is very strange. Clearly we used these terms long before this definition existed, for example. The section that reviews introductory textbooks is simply confusing. It states that this "quick survey illustrates many of the trends I discussed earlier" and complains that some of them are completely silent on the issue of sex differences, but also acknowledges that there "there is quite a bit of variation in coverage, and a few outliers that deviate from the general". To summarize: out of 14 textbooks that the author looked at, some didn't mention the issue at all, some did but not enough, but some did. I don't find this to be a clear illustration of the author's points. The review of journal papers is equally confusing. 19 papers were selected based on publication year, journal, title and abstract. In the authors words, the selected papers "reveals a fair amount of theoretical diversity, but also a pervasive tendency to emphasize socialization over biology and downplay robust empirical findings as “stereotypes”. The methodology is extremely unclear. If I got it right, 19 papers where chosen by the author - some where emphasizing socializing over biology, and some took an "explicitly evolutionary approach". Again, not a very convincing way to demonstrate bias - except perhaps in your own selection. It goes on. I'd like to write more but I think these issues speak for themselves.
ckdarby 4y ago
I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone? It reminded me of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM The instructor in the video covers why academics struggle getting published because they're used to writing for individuals who are paid(E.g TAs & Profs) to read what they wrote.
- etiam 4y ago
  I don't think the initial three pages are to be viewed as article summary in this case, but rather as background to the issue at hand. The post appears to be something akin to a (very?) late draft, and of a book chapter rather than a journal article. I expect there will be an "abstract" published somewhere, but this isn't where.
- jll29 4y ago
  Abstracts should be less than a page in any discipline (at least the ones I've encountered - computer science, maths, geography, linguistics, Eng. lit...). Good "unstructured" (section-less) abstracts are about three paragraphs long and follow the structucture "what is the problem?" - "What is the state of the art regarding solution proposals?" - "Shortcomings of these that motivated this paper" - "What is proposed here as an alternative?" - [What are the key results?]. People are divided as to whether results should go into the abstract: some say the abstract should be a teaser that entices people to read the paper, others say the abstract should be a self-contained distillation of the paper itself. Structured abstracts are often nearly a page (common in the life sciences): they have explicit section headings like "Method", "Data", "Findings" etc., which is a great idea and should be embraced in all empirical disciplines at least, IMHO.
- jraph 4y ago
  This video is fantastic. I recommend it. However, that's not my take at all. My take for this video at the time I watched it was that as students we are used to write for teachers who are paid to grade us, and may take bad habits we can get away with as a consequence, but that will not be enough the day we write for people who are not forced to read what we write. But again, teachers won't expect a journal article written with suspense and stuff when they read your dissertation. Academic writing is simply not at all the same exercise as journalism. Expectations are different, sometimes opposite. There's no reason a scientist who write good papers will write good articles, and vice versa. Writing well will help a lot in both cases but that's not sufficient. Many researchers don't write that well, but if your paper is not comprehensible, it will be rejected. As a researcher, you also want your research to be worthwhile usually, that's a motivation to write better. Also, the point of a paper is to report some discovery. People reading your papers are your reviewers (who are not paid for this, it's just extra work for them usually!), and people who need to understand your work. They probably won't read your paper linearly, they will mine it for information. Because of this, your paper should have a boring structure. To allow fast information seeking. In any case, they are not there to entertain themselves, though a well written paper can be entertaining and that's way better in my opinion, but it's not the point. Your mainstream journal article should, however, be as enjoyable and entertaining as possible to read otherwise it won't be read by many people (especially if they are only vaguely interested in the topic of your article), or worse, the journal will not be bought at all if all the articles are dull. At least, that's what the lecturer in this video is saying.
qwerty456127 4y ago
I find this philosophical phenomenon itself interesting: it seems impossible to speak about sexuality-related topics without ideological bias. You can't just study human sexuality like you would study baboons and write what is purely logical given the actual observations, you always have to think about what are people going to feel about what you write. It would be interesting to define why is this particular subject so special.
- rowanG077 4y ago
  I don't think it's possible With baboons or anything for that matter. Human sexuality is just put under the microscope for such things. Obvious examples are the ape sign language studies.
- jl6 4y ago
  Is it so special, or is it a universal problem in social science? The example of sex from the article is instructive: from a purely hard-science biological perspective, sex is studied without controversy.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Puts me in mind of Nacirema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema Perhaps for the entire species we would need something else, such as Homo Ipsum Lorem?
- carschno 4y ago
  You can call it ideological bias, but I think it comes down to everything that is related to humans and society, not only sex. Human sexuality implies psychology, which is linked to mass psychology and hence society. A study that excludes these factors must be very narrowly restricted to e.g. purly medical issues. This can make sense in such clearly defined domains, but as soon as you broaden things to sexuality in general, you have to take context into account.
- tomxor 4y ago
  > it seems impossible to speak about sexuality-related topics without ideological bias Yup, I find in many otherwise rational people all reasoning faculties seem to evaporate when trying to have an unbiased conversation about this area today, kind of like a religion almost. The following paragraph from the paper pretty much sums up my experience. I just don't bother discussing any of it with anyone in person any more, it's tainted. > one should note that, from an egalitarian perspective, differences are better tolerated if they reflect positively on a group that is perceived as underprivileged or oppressed (e.g., findings of higher verbal ability in females tend to be less controversial than findings of higher spatial and mathematical ability in males). It's a shame because I think we would move forward faster as a society if it was easier to talk about these things openly without worrying about offending people... how can we overcome unfair biases in society if we do not investigate and understand them properly.
bmacho 4y ago
TIL evolutionary psychology is a thing :/ Well, I don't believe that evolution has anything to do with psychology, except being a huge random factor. While evolution had impact on human psychology, it is not something that can be explored with science, there are no reasons (or: too many), no concepts (or: all of them too blurry to be useful), no laws, and no way to verify anything.
- ogogmad 4y ago
  The following is a Twitter account which only posts snark about the "field" of evolutionary psychology: https://nitter.cz/evopsychgoogle https://nitter.cz/evopsychgoogle It's a bunch of postdictions and unfalsifiable just-so stories. It also seems to hate women.
- chaos_emergent 4y ago
  I'm out of the loop, can you tell me why evolutionary psychology isn't a consistent concept?
  - ogogmad 4y ago
    How would you test it? There's lots of factors influencing someone's psychology; how would you pick them apart to prove causes? The field's dumb.
    - jevgeni 4y ago
      There are a lot of fields of study that we accept despite these flaws. Economics and social sciences are prime examples. But for some reason it’s evolutionary psychology that revs people up so much. The idea is even not that controversial: “The need to survive might have affected human psychology - especially the learned part”.
      - ogogmad 4y ago
        > There are a lot of fields of study that we accept despite these flaws. Economics and social sciences are prime examples. Who's we? I'm sick and tired of people saying this. It sounds like this: "This is a map of Middle Earth, not Stalingrad." "But at least we have a map! What's your alternative, you complainer?" "But it's not a map of a real place!" "We'll use this map - flawed as it is - to plan our invasion of Stalingrad." I want my science rigorous. Or else it isn't science.
defrost 4y ago
The physical nature of sexuality isn't an issue that affects many > the frequency of intersex is almost certainly less than 0.02% is the quote in the paper. ( More broadly, the 'restricted' definition falls just under that percentage: > "conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female", the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018% ) However on a societal scale it is sufficient number of people to present issues that need addressing. 1 in 2,000 is 10 in 20,000 is 100 in 200,000 is 1,000 in 2 million (the ~ pop. of my state capital city) is 10,000 at least in Australia (now well past 20 million). This is more than enough to justify the changes to the Australian passport system made decades ago, expanding what was previously a forced binary choice to better represent actual reality. And yet, our author of the linked paper still moves to claim: > This has not stopped the misconception that “sex is not binary” from spreading, ... mere paragraphs after agreeing on the frequency of the clearly non binary people.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  Binary with a 0.02% error rate
  - defrost 4y ago
    Better discription (roughly) of the purely physical case. ie. Not binary - and can't be accurately represented as such on medical forms and other places with things matter. You might also say these cases are much more frequent than gold in the crust.
  - Retr0id 4y ago
    You are writing a client for an API, to be deployed at scale. The API returns objects of type A or B, but occasionally returns something else - not as an error, it's just what happens to be in the server's database. You'd still write code and test-cases to deal with the not-A-or-B instances, right?
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      >You'd still write code and test-cases to deal with the not-A-or-B instances, right? I've seen this one before. It was called the something something solution and was very popular in Germany a while back.
bregma 4y ago
The paper itself is written from a very ideologically biased point of view.
- padolsey 4y ago
  OOC what are the most pronounced ideologies you observe in it?
  - ddeeo 4y ago
    Misogyny, Transphobia, Intersex Erasure and Evolutionary Psychology to name a few.
    - nephanth 4y ago
      Can you demonstrate that claim ?
      - ddeeo 4y ago
        Of course, already pointed out a number of issues here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32519607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32519607
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
curiousgal 4y ago
ddeeo 4y ago
[flagged]
- OrangeMonkey 4y ago
  No, I think the author made his real point deep in the paper and you are supporting it. Read his conclusion. Hostility, contempt, and derision is used to attack those that have "the wrong" research or even attempts to broach the topic. We are in the middle of a movement where even teaching about sex differences is becoming difficult or impossible. > This absolute moron > they're often projecting > Gee, I wonder how gametes can make a career choice? Maybe they can calculate pi too? > This paper is kinda funny QED
  - ddeeo 4y ago
    No, I think the author made no point whatsoever that he didn't himself debunk with contradictory statements not even a few paragraphs later, peddled anecdotal pseudoscience and attempted to decry any criticisms as attempts at silencing or censorship, starting with the title of the paper itself. The hostility and derision is used to attack not those who are simply wrong and seeking to start a discussion so they can learn more, but those who attempt to frame their wrongness as if it's right, especially when motivated by ideology, like this clearly is. Just like those peddling horse-dewormer as a COVID cure, honestly, what do you expect? Such is the freedom of speech, when you say something really really dumb, like that evolutionary psychology is real, people telling you that you might be really really dumb isn't some conspiracy out to get you or your viewpoint, it's just a natural reaction when confronted with stupidity. I could equally make the claim that I'm met with hostility and derision because I have the "wrong research" on how the Earth is actually flat, and the science community is clearly part of a conspiracy to censor me. > We are in the middle of a movement where even teaching about sex differences is becoming difficult or impossible [Citation Needed] But of course there will never be a real citation here because you're just demonstrating more of the same persecution complex that the author also has. Kids are still taught about chromosomes and all that. But talking about how it's difficult to teach kids about binary sex definitions and bizarre pseudoscience about how evolution selected women to be in the kitchen is the equivalent of saying how it's difficult to teach kids how Pluto is a planet. Curriculums evolve as our understanding of things evolves, so as a society it's our duty to make sure to add the nuance necessary to give people a more complete understanding of the world, which can only ever be a good thing. The funny aspect of what I said is of course referring to the repeated self-owns within the paper, I mean, sheesh, if you're gonna peddle your unremarkable anti-science ideology at least be consistent. How can you argue for an end-all, be-all definition and then proceed to debunk it in the next paragraph? I guess reading what you wrote wasn't an evolutionary advantageous skill
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ogurechny 4y ago
There is a small step from stating that line between “social” and “biological” is blurry to getting that that line is as arbitrary as everything else, but instead of taking that step people stick to construction of all kinds of “evil enemies” messing with their nice and clear pictures. Philosophy is still the mother of all sciences, and this is an example of an education that lacks it. Then there are observations of specific theories being used as obedience building exercises by various bureaucrats (and wannabe bureaucrats), which seems to be widespread, and is bad, but doesn't actually say anything about the theories themselves. Sacred oaths can be anything, they don't even need to have any meaning.

66 points by mckern 4y ago

[flagged]

This paper doesn't sit right with me. To establish rigid, biological definitions of some of the most debated terms is fine of course, as long as it makes your own research and writing clearer. What's weird is expecting others to have used the same definition in their writing. To use the word "bias" to describe that discrepancy is not really doing justice to other viewpoints and it seems like the author has failed to live up to his own ideals: > The dialectic can remain healthy as long as multiple viewpoints are allowed and ideas are evaluated on their own merits. The main point of the paper is to discuss what the author describes as a feminist bias in academic psychology, which he says systematically distorts certain domains of research. The paper then attacks this "bias" from multiple angles, which makes the paper quite hard to follow. The first angle is that feminism fundamentally misunderstands the nature of sex: > The flaws of the sex-gender distinction have led some feminist > scholars to adopt the hybrid term “sex/gender” (sometimes > “gender/sex”) as a way to recognize that biological and social > factors are inseparable [...] Unfortunately, this terminological > fusion may end up deepening the conceptual confusion. [...] On this > view, the “sex binary” is a socially constructed fiction; the old > idea that there are two sexes is simplistic and inaccurate, and does > not stand up to sophisticated analysis [...] This argument can be > seductive but has one problem—it fundamentally misunderstands the > nature of sex. He goes on to explain why "the biological definition of sex is not just one option among many equally valid alternatives", but in fact the only valid definition. "The sex binary, then, is not a fiction but a basic biological fact". Here's the definition from the paper: "From a biological standpoint, what distinguishes the males and females of a species is the size of their gametes: males produce small gametes (e.g., sperm), females produce large gametes." Stating this definition as a fact is very strange. Clearly we used these terms long before this definition existed, for example. The section that reviews introductory textbooks is simply confusing. It states that this "quick survey illustrates many of the trends I discussed earlier" and complains that some of them are completely silent on the issue of sex differences, but also acknowledges that there "there is quite a bit of variation in coverage, and a few outliers that deviate from the general". To summarize: out of 14 textbooks that the author looked at, some didn't mention the issue at all, some did but not enough, but some did. I don't find this to be a clear illustration of the author's points. The review of journal papers is equally confusing. 19 papers were selected based on publication year, journal, title and abstract. In the authors words, the selected papers "reveals a fair amount of theoretical diversity, but also a pervasive tendency to emphasize socialization over biology and downplay robust empirical findings as “stereotypes”. The methodology is extremely unclear. If I got it right, 19 papers where chosen by the author - some where emphasizing socializing over biology, and some took an "explicitly evolutionary approach". Again, not a very convincing way to demonstrate bias - except perhaps in your own selection. It goes on. I'd like to write more but I think these issues speak for themselves.

ckdarby 4y ago

I don't read many academic papers, but are the summaries normally 3 pages alone? It reminded me of this YouTube video: https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM https://youtu.be/vtIzMaLkCaM The instructor in the video covers why academics struggle getting published because they're used to writing for individuals who are paid(E.g TAs & Profs) to read what they wrote.

etiam 4y ago
I don't think the initial three pages are to be viewed as article summary in this case, but rather as background to the issue at hand. The post appears to be something akin to a (very?) late draft, and of a book chapter rather than a journal article. I expect there will be an "abstract" published somewhere, but this isn't where.
jll29 4y ago
Abstracts should be less than a page in any discipline (at least the ones I've encountered - computer science, maths, geography, linguistics, Eng. lit...). Good "unstructured" (section-less) abstracts are about three paragraphs long and follow the structucture "what is the problem?" - "What is the state of the art regarding solution proposals?" - "Shortcomings of these that motivated this paper" - "What is proposed here as an alternative?" - [What are the key results?]. People are divided as to whether results should go into the abstract: some say the abstract should be a teaser that entices people to read the paper, others say the abstract should be a self-contained distillation of the paper itself. Structured abstracts are often nearly a page (common in the life sciences): they have explicit section headings like "Method", "Data", "Findings" etc., which is a great idea and should be embraced in all empirical disciplines at least, IMHO.
jraph 4y ago
This video is fantastic. I recommend it. However, that's not my take at all. My take for this video at the time I watched it was that as students we are used to write for teachers who are paid to grade us, and may take bad habits we can get away with as a consequence, but that will not be enough the day we write for people who are not forced to read what we write. But again, teachers won't expect a journal article written with suspense and stuff when they read your dissertation. Academic writing is simply not at all the same exercise as journalism. Expectations are different, sometimes opposite. There's no reason a scientist who write good papers will write good articles, and vice versa. Writing well will help a lot in both cases but that's not sufficient. Many researchers don't write that well, but if your paper is not comprehensible, it will be rejected. As a researcher, you also want your research to be worthwhile usually, that's a motivation to write better. Also, the point of a paper is to report some discovery. People reading your papers are your reviewers (who are not paid for this, it's just extra work for them usually!), and people who need to understand your work. They probably won't read your paper linearly, they will mine it for information. Because of this, your paper should have a boring structure. To allow fast information seeking. In any case, they are not there to entertain themselves, though a well written paper can be entertaining and that's way better in my opinion, but it's not the point. Your mainstream journal article should, however, be as enjoyable and entertaining as possible to read otherwise it won't be read by many people (especially if they are only vaguely interested in the topic of your article), or worse, the journal will not be bought at all if all the articles are dull. At least, that's what the lecturer in this video is saying.

qwerty456127 4y ago

I find this philosophical phenomenon itself interesting: it seems impossible to speak about sexuality-related topics without ideological bias. You can't just study human sexuality like you would study baboons and write what is purely logical given the actual observations, you always have to think about what are people going to feel about what you write. It would be interesting to define why is this particular subject so special.

rowanG077 4y ago
I don't think it's possible With baboons or anything for that matter. Human sexuality is just put under the microscope for such things. Obvious examples are the ape sign language studies.
jl6 4y ago
Is it so special, or is it a universal problem in social science? The example of sex from the article is instructive: from a purely hard-science biological perspective, sex is studied without controversy.
ben_w 4y ago
Puts me in mind of Nacirema: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nacirema Perhaps for the entire species we would need something else, such as Homo Ipsum Lorem?
carschno 4y ago
You can call it ideological bias, but I think it comes down to everything that is related to humans and society, not only sex. Human sexuality implies psychology, which is linked to mass psychology and hence society. A study that excludes these factors must be very narrowly restricted to e.g. purly medical issues. This can make sense in such clearly defined domains, but as soon as you broaden things to sexuality in general, you have to take context into account.
tomxor 4y ago
> it seems impossible to speak about sexuality-related topics without ideological bias Yup, I find in many otherwise rational people all reasoning faculties seem to evaporate when trying to have an unbiased conversation about this area today, kind of like a religion almost. The following paragraph from the paper pretty much sums up my experience. I just don't bother discussing any of it with anyone in person any more, it's tainted. > one should note that, from an egalitarian perspective, differences are better tolerated if they reflect positively on a group that is perceived as underprivileged or oppressed (e.g., findings of higher verbal ability in females tend to be less controversial than findings of higher spatial and mathematical ability in males). It's a shame because I think we would move forward faster as a society if it was easier to talk about these things openly without worrying about offending people... how can we overcome unfair biases in society if we do not investigate and understand them properly.

bmacho 4y ago

TIL evolutionary psychology is a thing :/ Well, I don't believe that evolution has anything to do with psychology, except being a huge random factor. While evolution had impact on human psychology, it is not something that can be explored with science, there are no reasons (or: too many), no concepts (or: all of them too blurry to be useful), no laws, and no way to verify anything.

ogogmad 4y ago
The following is a Twitter account which only posts snark about the "field" of evolutionary psychology: https://nitter.cz/evopsychgoogle https://nitter.cz/evopsychgoogle It's a bunch of postdictions and unfalsifiable just-so stories. It also seems to hate women.
chaos_emergent 4y ago
I'm out of the loop, can you tell me why evolutionary psychology isn't a consistent concept?
- ogogmad 4y ago
  How would you test it? There's lots of factors influencing someone's psychology; how would you pick them apart to prove causes? The field's dumb.
  - jevgeni 4y ago
    There are a lot of fields of study that we accept despite these flaws. Economics and social sciences are prime examples. But for some reason it’s evolutionary psychology that revs people up so much. The idea is even not that controversial: “The need to survive might have affected human psychology - especially the learned part”.
    - ogogmad 4y ago
      > There are a lot of fields of study that we accept despite these flaws. Economics and social sciences are prime examples. Who's we? I'm sick and tired of people saying this. It sounds like this: "This is a map of Middle Earth, not Stalingrad." "But at least we have a map! What's your alternative, you complainer?" "But it's not a map of a real place!" "We'll use this map - flawed as it is - to plan our invasion of Stalingrad." I want my science rigorous. Or else it isn't science.

defrost 4y ago

The physical nature of sexuality isn't an issue that affects many > the frequency of intersex is almost certainly less than 0.02% is the quote in the paper. ( More broadly, the 'restricted' definition falls just under that percentage: > "conditions in which chromosomal sex is inconsistent with phenotypic sex, or in which the phenotype is not classifiable as either male or female", the prevalence of intersex is about 0.018% ) However on a societal scale it is sufficient number of people to present issues that need addressing. 1 in 2,000 is 10 in 20,000 is 100 in 200,000 is 1,000 in 2 million (the ~ pop. of my state capital city) is 10,000 at least in Australia (now well past 20 million). This is more than enough to justify the changes to the Australian passport system made decades ago, expanding what was previously a forced binary choice to better represent actual reality. And yet, our author of the linked paper still moves to claim: > This has not stopped the misconception that “sex is not binary” from spreading, ... mere paragraphs after agreeing on the frequency of the clearly non binary people.

fallingknife 4y ago
Binary with a 0.02% error rate
- defrost 4y ago
  Better discription (roughly) of the purely physical case. ie. Not binary - and can't be accurately represented as such on medical forms and other places with things matter. You might also say these cases are much more frequent than gold in the crust.
- Retr0id 4y ago
  You are writing a client for an API, to be deployed at scale. The API returns objects of type A or B, but occasionally returns something else - not as an error, it's just what happens to be in the server's database. You'd still write code and test-cases to deal with the not-A-or-B instances, right?
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    >You'd still write code and test-cases to deal with the not-A-or-B instances, right? I've seen this one before. It was called the something something solution and was very popular in Germany a while back.

bregma 4y ago

The paper itself is written from a very ideologically biased point of view.

padolsey 4y ago
OOC what are the most pronounced ideologies you observe in it?
- ddeeo 4y ago
  Misogyny, Transphobia, Intersex Erasure and Evolutionary Psychology to name a few.
  - nephanth 4y ago
    Can you demonstrate that claim ?
    - ddeeo 4y ago
      Of course, already pointed out a number of issues here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32519607 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32519607

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

curiousgal 4y ago

ddeeo 4y ago

[flagged]

OrangeMonkey 4y ago
No, I think the author made his real point deep in the paper and you are supporting it. Read his conclusion. Hostility, contempt, and derision is used to attack those that have "the wrong" research or even attempts to broach the topic. We are in the middle of a movement where even teaching about sex differences is becoming difficult or impossible. > This absolute moron > they're often projecting > Gee, I wonder how gametes can make a career choice? Maybe they can calculate pi too? > This paper is kinda funny QED
- ddeeo 4y ago
  No, I think the author made no point whatsoever that he didn't himself debunk with contradictory statements not even a few paragraphs later, peddled anecdotal pseudoscience and attempted to decry any criticisms as attempts at silencing or censorship, starting with the title of the paper itself. The hostility and derision is used to attack not those who are simply wrong and seeking to start a discussion so they can learn more, but those who attempt to frame their wrongness as if it's right, especially when motivated by ideology, like this clearly is. Just like those peddling horse-dewormer as a COVID cure, honestly, what do you expect? Such is the freedom of speech, when you say something really really dumb, like that evolutionary psychology is real, people telling you that you might be really really dumb isn't some conspiracy out to get you or your viewpoint, it's just a natural reaction when confronted with stupidity. I could equally make the claim that I'm met with hostility and derision because I have the "wrong research" on how the Earth is actually flat, and the science community is clearly part of a conspiracy to censor me. > We are in the middle of a movement where even teaching about sex differences is becoming difficult or impossible [Citation Needed] But of course there will never be a real citation here because you're just demonstrating more of the same persecution complex that the author also has. Kids are still taught about chromosomes and all that. But talking about how it's difficult to teach kids about binary sex definitions and bizarre pseudoscience about how evolution selected women to be in the kitchen is the equivalent of saying how it's difficult to teach kids how Pluto is a planet. Curriculums evolve as our understanding of things evolves, so as a society it's our duty to make sure to add the nuance necessary to give people a more complete understanding of the world, which can only ever be a good thing. The funny aspect of what I said is of course referring to the repeated self-owns within the paper, I mean, sheesh, if you're gonna peddle your unremarkable anti-science ideology at least be consistent. How can you argue for an end-all, be-all definition and then proceed to debunk it in the next paragraph? I guess reading what you wrote wasn't an evolutionary advantageous skill

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ogurechny 4y ago

There is a small step from stating that line between “social” and “biological” is blurry to getting that that line is as arbitrary as everything else, but instead of taking that step people stick to construction of all kinds of “evil enemies” messing with their nice and clear pictures. Philosophy is still the mother of all sciences, and this is an example of an education that lacks it. Then there are observations of specific theories being used as obedience building exercises by various bureaucrats (and wannabe bureaucrats), which seems to be widespread, and is bad, but doesn't actually say anything about the theories themselves. Sacred oaths can be anything, they don't even need to have any meaning.