CSICon is currently taking place in Las Vegas, with a great speaker lineup: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, Michael Mann, Massimo Pigliucci, Steve Novella, etc. For some reason, they also included Jerry Coyne, who has become a right-wing crank over the years, and who is quite annoyed that Novella discussed the myth of the gender binary — and chose to talk about Sex and Race: Handling the Ideological Hot Potatoes
. His abstract for the talk says he was arguing that race is a valid category because you can distinguish “race” genetically, which tells me that he doesn’t understand the argument. Individuals are unique and carry the record of their ancestry, but that ignores the fact that people use race as a catch-all for lumping people into stereotypes, which are not valid.
But I haven’t heard his talk, nor am I interested in hearing it. He did give a kind of “rebuttal” to Novella’s talk, though, summarized in one simple list. The list is a collection of his misconceptions and says far more about him than any argument us “woke” people would actually make. Further, it is embarrassingly stupid — irrelevant, confused, and not even wrong. It reminds me of the kinds of arguments creationists make that just reveal that they understand nothing about evolution.
Here’s Coyne’s list In Defense of the Binary Nature of Sex
, which does nothing of the kind.
IN DEFENSE OF THE BINARY NATURE OF SEX
Argument is completely limited to humans; is the binary of reproductive systems also “delusional” in other animals (e.g., foxes, ducks) or in plants?
No evidence of any “brain modules” for gender identity.
Do people who are temporally binary, with gender fluctuating over time, change sex each time they change gender?
Fluctuations in referrals for gender dysphoria over time (20-fold in last ten years in UK)
Are “pure” members of one sex (with the corresponding genitals, chromosomes, gametes and chromosomes), but who feel they’re not of their natal sex, actually of the other sex?
People have incorrect feelings about their nature all the time (yes, in their brains), but this doesn’t mean that their self-image should be taken as biological reality.
And what do we do with people who sincerely feel that they’re other animals? Are they Indeed animals likes horses and cats?
Let’s take them on one at a time, shall we?
Argument is completely limited to humans; is the binary of reproductive systems also “delusional” in other animals (e.g., foxes, ducks) or in plants?
Who says the argument is completely limited to humans? It’s not. It’s just that we are far better at distinguishing subtle variations in our own species. Sexual development and differentiation in animals uses the same complex cascade of molecular interactions as it does in humans. There are differences in sexual morphology and behavior in individual animals that will leap out at you if you actually scrutinize them carefully. Even in spiders, which are only distantly related to humans. They exhibit different degrees of social behavior, aggression, cooperation, and yes, sexual activity. I’ve had spiders who exhibit no interest in sex at all; I raise them to adulthood, and can’t persuade them to reproduce even as their siblings readily mate at every opportunity. Every coupling is different. This is in a species that cannot communicate to us and every interpretation of their activity is subjective. What kind of biologist would look at the range of sexual interactions in any species and decide that they must be shoehorned into just two types?
As for plants — they don’t exhibit much in the way of behavior, expression, or culture, but they do have a complex range of sexes. How do you tell if a carrot is uncomfortable with its expected biological role?
No evidence of any “brain modules” for gender identity.
Jerry Coyne knows nothing about neuroscience. We know there are differences in the brain that are correlates of differences in behavior and thinking; I’m pretty sure Coyne wouldn’t be claiming that brains are like featureless potatoes with patterns of activity that arise without differences in morphology or connectivity of pharmacology. Modules are abstractions that are used to model the functionality of different parts of the brain.
Many complex networks are composed of “modules” that form an interconnected network. We sought to elucidate the nature of the brain’s modular function by testing the autonomy of the brain’s modules and the potential mechanisms underlying their interactions. By studying the brain as a large-scale complex network and measuring activity across the network during 77 cognitive tasks, we demonstrate that, despite connectivity between modules, each module appears to execute a discrete cognitive function relatively autonomously from the other modules. Moreover, brain regions with diverse connectivity across the modules appear to play a role in enabling modules to interact while remaining mostly autonomous. This generates the counterintuitive idea that regions with diverse connectivity across modules are necessary for modular biological networks.
The brain is a network with spatial and functional segregation of elements that we can call “modules”; trans people will have modules that differ from cis people, and people who prefer coffee to tea have their own kinds of modules. All Coyne is doing here is denying the existence of differences between brains, which I would hope most people would recognize is ignorant and absurd.
(Note that there are differences in interpretation in the neuroscience community; we can argue about modules vs. modes, but good grief, denying that there are neurological differences is like trying to claim that population structure doesn’t exist.)
Do people who are temporally binary, with gender fluctuating over time, change sex each time they change gender?
Sure, why not? Why can’t both sex and gender be fluid? Coyne just wants to force-fit everything into only one of two possible categories, but biology is more complex than that. His narrow-mindedness is not evidence of much of anything.
Fluctuations in referrals for gender dysphoria over time (20-fold in last ten years in UK)
Jesus christ, really? Culture and evironment affect everything, that varying rates of referrals is a product of the way that societies fluctuate in their tolerance of sex and gender differences. That he doesn’t recognize this is just a sign that he has a painfully simple-minded notion of how sex functions as more than just a mechanism for reproduction.
Are “pure” members of one sex (with the corresponding genitals, chromosomes, gametes and chromosomes), but who feel they’re not of their natal sex, actually of the other sex?
I’m glad I didn’t hear his talk, because I wonder if he also talked about “pure” members of one race. There’s no such thing as being “purely” a member of one complex multidimensional and weakly defined category. We are all part of a continuum along many dimensions. This point makes no sense unless you’re thoroughly soaking in the preconception that there can be only two sexes and everyone must fit into one or another in all particulars.
People have incorrect feelings about their nature all the time (yes, in their brains), but this doesn’t mean that their self-image should be taken as biological reality.
I am grossly materialistic. Self-image is part of one’s biology. If it’s in our brains, how can it not be a reflection of biological reality? I’m sorry if plasticity isn’t in Jerry Coyne’s vocabulary. I’m pretty confident that dualism isn’t part of his worldview.
And what do we do with people who sincerely feel that they’re other animals? Are they Indeed animals likes horses and cats?
I kew that was coming. And what about the people who sincerely feel that they are attack helicopters?
No, people can’t change species. They’re still people. Being a person, though, encompasses a wide range of possibilities. Trans people fully understand their biological realities and don’t imagine that genitalia are magical products of desire.
As for what we do with people who have ideas that are less rigid than Coyne’s dumb-ass cis-normativity…do we have to do anything, or can we just let them live in peace?
Ooof, that speakers’ list. A smattering of people I used to respect, people I no longer remember if there was some major reason I stopped following them, and Drs. Novella and Mann.
It would be interesting (for certain values of the word) to stack Coyne’s claims here up against things he’s said in the past, because I strongly suspect that one would find something other than strong consistency. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen Coyne defend EvoPsych from its “Woke” critics, so claiming that there’s no neurological basis for gender identity would be pretty contradictory to the majority of pop-EvoPsych nonsense. A quick Google search suggests I might have underestimated Coyne in this regard, so apologies if that’s the case. Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender has led me to question a lot of the claimed differences between “male” and “female” cognitive abilities and brain differences, so I’m not entirely certain what modules we’d expect to find (though I also know that there’s research going back at least a decade showing certain correlations between sizes of brain-structures thought to be linked to sex and trans people’s gender identity, for example Zhou, Hofman, Gooren, & Swaab, 1995).
The bit about birds and plants is especially laughable. I am not a biologist, but I feel like I’d be hard-pressed to come up with familiar organisms that illustrate the “sex binary” worse than plants. And one of the pieces of writing that helped raise my consciousness with regard to sex, gender, and the myth of the binary was Natalie Reed’s “Bilaterally Gynandromorphic Chickens, and Why I’m Not ‘Scientifically’ Male.” Another quick bout of Googling hasn’t turned up any bilaterally gynandromorphic ducks, but there do seem to be some that exhibit other forms of gynandromorphism, and since ducks have the same ZW chromosome system as chickens, it doesn’t seem like it would be impossible.
Also, it seems worth noting that a “sex binary” feels awfully hard to defend when there’s not even a binary of processes of sex determination, but again, I am not a biologist.
I think it would be interesting to do studies of people who experience gender fluidity, to see if fluctuations in their identity do correlate to some biological substrate. Are there hormonal shifts that correspond to feeling one way or another? Learning that wouldn’t affect the validity of such identities, but might give insights into how gender identity interconnects with biology (whatever the causal relationship might be).
And the rest is pretty typical transphobe nonsense. The “graph of left-handed people” gambit, the “it’s just like anorexics” gambit, the “what about Rachel Dolezal” gambit. I appreciate that since they’ve decided “cis” is a slur, “Pure” is their totally neutral alternative, really just skipping to the point with that one.
When will these cranks find a new hobby?
Yes, the sex is binary claim is delusional any way you look at it. It was wrong from the very start.
Coyne is an ignorant idiot.
When did he forget how to use the search engine Google or Wikipedia?
.1. Sex is a binary.
So what happens if you are a real hermaphrodite?
30% of all non-insect species are hermaphrodites.
.2. Some organisms have more than two sexes.
Tetrahymena has 7.
“The hairy, fan-shape fungus Schizophyllum commune boasts more than 23,000 mating types”
Clam shrimp have 3.
.3. The Transphobes go on and on about how human gametes vary in size. This isn’t the least bit universal though.
Most single celled eukaryotes are isogamous, meaning their gametes look the same and are the same size.
“Isogamy is a form of sexual reproduction that involves gametes of the same morphology (indistinguishable in shape and size), and is found in most unicellular eukaryotes.[1] Because both gametes look alike, they generally cannot be classified as male or female.[2]”
Stawperson.
Comparing people who believe they are nonhuman animals with Trans people is a false comparison.
What we do is leave them alone as long as they aren’t causing any harm to themselves or other people.
It’s a free country after all, and kooks like Jerry Coyne have no right to interfere in any one else’s lives.
What do we do with right wingnut crackpots like Jerry Coyne who sincerely and mistakenly believe they have anything worthwhile to say any more?.
Nothing. He is free to be an irrelevant idiot and mindless hater.
We can hope he doesn’t spend any time around us. I wouldn’t let anyone like Jerry Coyne get near me ever. Probably not dangerous but certainly someone I wouldn’t take any chances with.
Cthulhu, Coyne is just getting dumb in his old age.
This makes no sense.
.1 Everyone has their own self image.
Everyone has their own right to their own self image.
This is so basic it isn’t even a human right. It’s considered part of anyone’s personality.
.2. There is no self image police.
It isn’t going to be Jerry Coyne or any of the hordes of fascists in our society.
If Jerry Coyne doesn’t like someone’s self image, too bad and so what?
Who cares? He is just a right wingnut crackpot on a one way trip down a rabbit hole to complete irrelevancy.
I don’t like Jerry Coyne or his self image either. He probably has no idea what he looks like to people outside his tiny echo chamber of a blog that he insists isn’t a blog.
And nothing I can or will do about that except hope he never gets any where near me and otherwise ignore him as a waste of time. I haven’t clicked on his not-blog in probably a decade.
I only hear about him when he says something dumb and someone else quotes it.
.
Has transphobia also turned people like Coyne into pro-genocide?
Because not only he’s going after trans people, he’s also going after pro-Palestinian protestors, especially the college kids who are against this genocide.
The sheer amount of lies this Coynehole puts out against those kids; along regurgitating bullshit from dubious sources; on his blog, is just staggering.
The one question he neglected to answer in his “defense” is “Why does it matter?”
Aside from all the exceptions people have already listed to this “binary,” and the fact that you can’t talk to a duck about its gender identity, Coyne himself has discussed reproductive morphs in the past: territorial males, satellite males, sneaker males, female mimics and so forth. He should be perfectly aware that gamete size alone often does not well predict an animal’s anatomy or behavior, even within a single species.
There are a number of studies showing statistical differences in brain structure between cis and trans members of the same biological sex.
That said, if Coyne doesn’t consider those to represent “modules,” whatever those are, then fine. Let’s toss out gender as biologically meaningless and everyone can use the same bathroom! He’s cool with that, right?
We know what genitals and gametes we have, dude. (Though rarely do we know our own karyotypes.). Trans people are quite knowledgeable about the ways in which we do or do not match our desired presentation. That’s why we transition medically.
Well I dunno, maybe ask them? Otherkin are people with feelings and preferences, who communicate with words like the rest of us. They have the right to weigh in on “what we should do” with them, unless you’re going full Nazi.
Talking to them might also give you a more nuanced understanding of the various reasons why they choose to identify with something nonhuman. Hint: it’s usually not because they believe they possess literal hooves or a tail, or want to shit in a litterbox.
When you attack one marginalized group with a reductio ad absurdum referencing another marginalized group, you just look like twice as much of an asshole.
What if traditional gender roles was just bullshit peddled by grifters to make people (mainly men) feel inadequate and desperate enough to buy whatever bullshit said grifters are peddling.
the problem looks to me some people are trying to impose order on nature and the world without asking if what they think is true is in fact true at all.
Clearly if sex in humans was like they claim it is supposed to be there would not be this problem of “wrong sexuality” unfortunately it clearly exists and has existed all along it is not some new thing from some subversive something. People have never nor will they ever fit into these rigid categories with their strict rules of behavior and appearance. Given the space and time all of those vary widely you can rail about it all you like nature has its own order and will not bend to suit anyone’s beliefs
The pointless pain and difficulties such intolerance creates is impossible to justify
If sexuality exists on a spectrum, then there is exactly, definitively ONE person who is the gayest.