The irony of a creationist moaning about others denying science…

The Republican legislature in Kentucky assembled a set of those inhumane, ignorant anti-trans laws, and handed it to the Democratic governor…who vetoed it. Good work, Governor Andy Beshear!

Kentucky’s Democratic governor issued an election-year veto Friday of a sweeping Republican bill aimed at regulating the lives of transgender youths that includes banning access to gender-affirming health care and restricting the bathrooms they can use.

The bill also bans discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and allows teachers to refuse to refer to transgender students by the pronouns they use. It easily passed the GOP-dominated legislature with veto-proof margins, and lawmakers will reconvene next week for the final two days of this year’s session, when they could vote to override the veto.

Gov. Andy Beshear said in a written veto message that the bill allows “too much government interference in personal healthcare issues and rips away the freedom of parents to make medical decisions for their children.”

In his one-page message, he warned that the bill’s repercussions would include an increase in youth suicides. The governor said, “My faith teaches me that all children are children of God and Senate Bill 150 will endanger the children of Kentucky.”

Wait a minute…Kentucky? Who do I know who lives in Kentucky?

Right. You can guess how he responded.

Another politician showing blatant disregard for young people, for science, for parents and for God’s Word by Vetoing legislation he claims would harm children, but the opposite is true.

Children and young people do not have the maturity to make life altering decisions (that are destructive regardless) advocated by the LGBTQ movement. So sad many will destroy their lives because politicians deny the obvious, there’s only two genders of humans, male and female. Science confirms it as males have a pair of XY chromosomes and females a pair of XX. And of course, God’s word makes it clear:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Does anyone else feel stirrings of rage when a know-nothing, superstitious dogmatist like Ken Ham decides to declare what science has determined, and gets it all wrong, while relying on his authority as a preacher to persuade people to accept his views? No? Just me?

I’m not as irritated when he tries to explain what his version of the Bible says, since I don’t give a good goddamn about the book or his interpretation of it. Although I am confused by his Bible quote.

So God created male and female in his image…how does that work, exactly? Do both men and women look like god? If we’re going to get all literal on this, as Ham prefers to do, does that imply that god is a bipedal primate with ambiguous genitalia, or is he some kind of shape-shifter? Does his god have XX chromosomes, or XY, or some other combination? I don’t really care what the answer is, since I think it’s all bullshit, but you know, Ham claims that God’s word makes it clear, and it’s anything but.

Ham goes on to complain about bathrooms, of course.

What a travesty that this Governor would allow males to use women’s restrooms (and vice versa). By allowing young people to use the bathrooms of their choice is certainly a denial of the sin nature of man and what can happen because of that. Governor Beshear refers to his “faith,”—he needs to refer to the clear teaching of the Word of God on gender! The Governor does not own children, they belong to parents and ultimately to God. And they certainly don’t belong to teachers.

It’s been a long time since I read the Bible, but I have to ask: is there a commandment about men’s and women’s restrooms in there? Personally, I think people should be allowed to use the restroom of their choice, because what they’re going to do in there is to privately relieve themselves, and that’s about it. OK, maybe wash their hands, touch up their makeup, that sort of thing. They are not dens of sin.

Also, the idea that parents “own” kids is offensive. Parents have a responsibility for their children, which is not the same as possession, and society can step in when they fail in, or violate those responsibilities.

Actually, contrary to what Gov Beshear claims, what the Kentucky legislature passed have passed are the strongest bills in the nation protecting kids, parents and teachers! Notice how the media always like to portray such legislation as “anti-trans” instead of “pro-children, pro-family, pro-parents” etc. Media like to use words they think will cause people to believe those passing such legislation are full of hate–which is not the truth at all. Yet, I often see hate from people directed at Christians/conservatives because they won’t comply with the LGBT worldview.

Trans kids exist and should have rights. The primary consequence of those bills is to deny trans kids their autonomy (I know, Ham doesn’t believe children should have that) and cause active harm. They also deny parents their right to fulfill their responsibilities and provide appropriate care to their children.

I will concede that the people behind that legislation might not be full of hate. They’re full of stupidity and selfishness, instead.

Degenerates!

Men these days have decayed from the power and virility of their forebears. Think of those mountain men who’d go off into the wilderness alone and hunt and fish and trap and live off the land, to return after months or years with a sledge loaded with valuable animal pelts. They were awesomely self-sufficient. We have degraded over time, to the point where some men are little more than weak parasites on society who depend on others to tend to their frail, fragile selves and pathetic needs.

I speak, of course, of American conservatives.

These smug, self-satisfied little ‘men’ chortle and laugh as they’re asked if they would rather do dishes or laundry…and admit with an air of pride that they don’t do either. Not only are they ineffectual and incapable, they are vain about their deficiencies. It makes them a special elite, I guess.

Listen. It makes them spineless atavisms.

Here’s what a real man should be able to do:

  • Cook a healthy meal.
  • Clean up after themselves.
  • Maintain their clothing and their home.
  • Sew a button.
  • Humanely remove a spider from a room without squealing.
  • Change a diaper.
  • Have a relationship with a partner, not a servant.
  • Call their mother.
  • Cry when appropriate.

(This is what a real woman should be able to do, too, so maybe it’s a list of what real humans do.)

These guys have gone from whining about “stand up straight” and “clean your room” to bragging about their incompetence at elementary chores. I do all those things, including washing dishes and doing laundry, and I’m a wokefied candy-ass liberal who uses pronouns.

On the bright side, American conservatives are on the road to extinction.

Never trust a pope

Not even the ones who seem nice and kindly. They’ve all got a dogma driving them. Pope Francis has said some stupid things, as the Daily Wire gleefully reports.

“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Francis said. “Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women. All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”

What is “gender ideology”? Because, near as I can tell, it’s simply that all people are of equal worth, no matter what their sex or gender or sexual preferences. Gender is not an ideology. It’s just who people are.

He thinks it’s dangerous because it blurs the differences and value of men and women. I think men and women are of equal value, so “blurring” doesn’t matter. What differences in value is he concerned about? Also, I’m not seeing any blurring of differences, I’m seeing a celebration of differences, where people with non-mainstream ideas are being allowed to flourish.

What are these “tensions” he’s talking about, and how does the “question of gender” (what question?) dilute them? Diminishing differences, requiring everyone to fit into one of precisely two molds, is what would make the world dull and all alike. Would it make the world less dull if we told all the florists you’re only allowed red roses and white lilies? It would certainly increase some tensions.

Also, a Catholic pope does not get to complain about ideological colonization. Catholicism is definitely an ideology, unlike gender, and has been on a campaign of forced ideological conversion for over a thousand years. It’s ironic to complain about “ideological conversion”, but I guess that only applies to imaginary ideologies he doesn’t like.

Come to Minnesota, one of the few sane states in the country

Minnesota is doing the right thing.

Minnesota’s Democratic Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order Wednesday directing state agencies to take action to protect and support access to gender-affirming health care across the state.

“All state agencies must, to the fullest extent of their lawful authority, pursue opportunities and coordinate with each other to protect people or entities providing, assisting, seeking or obtaining gender affirming health care services in Minnesota,” the order says.

Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one the person was designated at birth – to their affirmed gender – the gender by which one wants to be known.

Walz’s order comes as Republican-led states around the country push restrictions on such care, with at least four states this year having passed measures to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors. As part of the order, the governor is prohibiting the state from cooperating with investigations by states that aim to penalize such care, saying their actions “pose a grave threat to the health” of members of the LGBTQ community.

Yeah. Basically, Republican-led states have turned evil and want to actively harm their own citizens, but Minnesota will stand strong as a refuge. Join us!

Glinner evokes the mob!

Oh no! Graham Linehan mentions me again!

He gets everything wrong again. I’m not practicing “mob-friendly pseudoscience” — the kind of stuff I do doesn’t find favor with pseudoscientists or mobs. Rather, Glinner leads a hate-mob himself, and if anyone is going to get mobbed today, it’s me, descended upon by the anti-trans loons endemic to the UK. So far, it hasn’t happened — maybe Linehan is losing his social potency? Or maybe the fact that the article is not great, and is published in a magazine for conservative twits?

He’s highlighting an exercise in pedantry published in some magazine called “The Critic”. I never heard of it before, so I looked it up on Wikipedia.

The Critic is a monthly British political and cultural magazine. Contributors include David Starkey, Joshua Rozenberg, Peter Hitchens and Toby Young.

The magazine was founded in November 2019, with Michael Mosbacher, former editor of Standpoint, and Christopher Montgomery, a strategist with the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs, as co-editors. It was funded by Jeremy Hosking, a Conservative party donor who had previously donated to Standpoint.

I’m not familiar with many UK political figures, but I’ve heard of Peter Hitchens (vapid gasbag) and Toby Young (eugenics cheerleader and generally awful human being), so I’ve already got a sense of the flavor of the magazine. I think I don’t need to read further.

I did check out the recommended “great piece” though. It’s familiar stuff; it’s the same Twitter nonsense I criticized before. He has two points that he babbles about. One is that I’m breeding spiders, therefore I know deep-down that sex is real.

Recently, Myers has started breeding spiders, a project which he is documenting in great detail on twitter. What I found intriguing is that in his spider updates, any uncertainty about the reality of sex or how many sexes there are, seems to be forgotten. When he charted the growth of his arachnoid pets, he used two colours: yellow for spider-girls and blue for spider-boys with no need for intermediate hues. His blog is full of references to his female spiders producing eggs — never the males, whose function is to provide the sperm ideally without getting eaten by their mates. Quite how his spiders know about sex, given that it is (according to Myers) a social construct, is never explained.

This is gender-critical bullshit. Recognizing that sex and gender are concepts that are interpreted and shaped by culture does not mean that I deny the reality of gametes, and reproduction, and egg-laying, and different roles by individuals in sex. You’d think they’d figure out that all my posts about breeding spiders must mean that I don’t deny that sex exists, but no, they think it’s some kind of big gotcha. Tell me that you don’t understand the role of culture in sexual behavior without telling me in so many words that you don’t understand the role of culture in sexual behavior.

Also, curious fact about my yellow and blue chart lines: those are assigned after the fact. We’re charting growth from the day of eclosion, when sex is indetectable, and we get our first hint about a month later when the later-identified females have a surge in growth (but it’s not a rigid distinction — there’s a lot of overlap), and about two weeks later they go through a molt and we see a distinct difference in palp size. Then I go into the spreadsheet and add the label for sex.

His second criticism, and the one he dedicates most of his article to, is the complaint that sex can’t be bimodal because we can’t quantify maleness and femaleness, that we can’t define the degree to which someone is male or female.

EXACTLY. That’s what I say.

To him, though, that means sex has to be a strict binary, unaffected by any cultural construction of the phenomenon, which is totally bonkers.

Sex isn’t bimodal, because it’s a category, not a value. Specific measurements can have all sorts of distributions (including bimodal) — and if those traits are bimodal, they likely have that shape precisely because we have two, and only two, sexes.

Oh. Sex is a category, and we have defined two, and only two categories, and therefore because we have constructed these categories, sex is binary and not at all constructed. Categories are absolute and magical, defined entirely outside the influence of human interpretation, and delineated by strict boundaries, defined by our cultural traditions in addition to variable biological properties.

OK, so if I add the categories “trans woman” and “trans man,” I have immanentized a new sexual reality, and can declare that sex is quaternary. Go ahead, add your own category, we can expand this indefinitely. All you have to do is come up with a definition that bounds your category. The boxes you find yourself in are entirely real.

By the way, I’ve operationally defined sex in spiders as trinary without even trying. I have these stacks of containers for spiders, and there are three distinct sets: males, females that produce fertilized eggs (they have specific labels), and morphological females that have been exposed to a male but refuse to mate and therefore don’t lay eggs (and lack labels). Those are the categories set up in my lab, therefore they must be real. It can’t possibly be that the non-reproductive females have criteria for mating that go deeper than whether the male has palps or not.

The Genocide Party had their yearly get-together

One pleasant bit of non-news is that CPAC is dying. For a couple of decades now, the Conservative Political Action Conference has been a yearly spectacle of far right conservative speechifying, when the radical Republicans could let their hair down and let their freak flag fly, and the media would dutifully report on their gibbering mania, and we’d point and laugh, and then some of the kooks would get elected to high office. Remember when David Silverman tried to get American Atheists represented at CPAC? That was an omen.

This year, I hadn’t even realized it was going on until several days into the conference, it was that much of a yawner. Attendance is way down, and the ratfuckers are giving speeches to nearly empty seats. Prospective presidential candidates are skipping the whole show. It’s a “who cares?” event now.

However, as it’s relevance declines, the participants are reaching for the big bottle of crazy evil to spark excitement, and as we all know, the Republican party has become unhealthily obsessed with what’s in other people’s pants. They’re trying to pass laws to restrict people’s civil rights, they’ve developed a weird hatred of Mrs Doubtfire, they want to burn books that even mention the existence of non-traditional non-heterosexuals. What’s next? How can they top the insanity they’re perpetrating right now?

How about genocide?

The Right’s war on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles openly called for the public eradication of transgender individuals. During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.
…
In his speech, Knowles used a convoluted line of thinking and false logic while trying to prove his horrifying point that trans people should not exist. There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It can be all or nothing, he said. If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can’t become women — as they cannot — then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society — and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion — then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.

We’ve seen where this line of thinking goes, we don’t need a roadmap to recall our history. First we have to silence the Badthought with bookburnings and firelit marches and shrieking news articles. Then we pass laws criminalizing drag shows (Tennessee just made appearing in drag a felony with a 6 year prison sentence). Next we have to isolate the bad people in concentration camps, and then we have to move on to a Final Solution.

You would think that Ben Shapiro, Knowles’ big boss at the Daily Wire, would be aware of the comparison. Knowles himself is being made aware that he said the evil parts out loud, and is lashing out at the media that is reporting on his words and demanding retractions.

You said it, big boy. Be thankful that the only pain you might suffer is a little public humiliation, rather than a prison sentence or a beating or a gas chamber, like your victims have to deal with all the time.

I think I could agree with this guy fairly well

This is a good summary of my position on all the sex and gender chatter going on, except that I really don’t care at all what sex an imaginary god might have.

I’m a bit more flexible than he is on the question of biological sex, though. It’s more than just a small number of people on the saddle of a bimodal distribution, I think there are multiple parameters that define our sex that allow people to possess aspects of both male and female sex.

Spider sex is more complex than the binary paradigm

It looks like it’s time for me to go on a blocking rampage on Twitter, because the TERFs/GCs are flooding my account with stupidity. There’s only so much of that that I can take. The problem is that Graham Linehan noticed me, and the flock of dim & bigoted fanatics who follow him are piling on. One of them noticed that I breed spiders and thinks that is an excellent gotcha.

One thing I find gratifying is that sex-denialists like @pzmyers wibble on about sex being socially constructed and bimodal. But when they actually want something done (in this case breed spiders) – they suddenly know there are exactly 2 sexes and it’s the females that make eggs!

I make movies of spiders mating, as he notices, but somehow he thinks I’m a “sex-denialist” and that somehow this contradicts my position on trans rights. Surprise! I actually know how sex works. I understand that making an embryo requires a fusion of two gametes. I would think all of the trans folk he despises would be more conscious of these distinction than he is.

I also know the logical difference between the fact that many females make eggs, and the idea that all females must make eggs. I also know that even in spiders there’s more to sex than tab A goes into slot B.

I also have information on that. I’m mainly interested in spider sex as a means to an end — I need lots of embryos — but to get there I’ve been making observations of spider behavior. Every morning I move a male spider into a container with a female spider, slide it under a dissecting scope, and watch what happens. Sometimes courtship and mating are swift and dramatic, and I click a button and record the whole process, and that’s what you see. Sometimes they take their time, and I have to watch them dawdle and fumble around for a half hour before anything happens. Sometimes I give up and put the pair in an incubator overnight and hope something happens. Rarely, the female just murders and cannibalizes the male. Of the clutch of spiders that emerged in January, I’ve got 11 females who successfully mated and produced an egg sac; I’ve got 16 that spurned the male I provided and are effectively childless. Those I don’t record, because two wallflower spiders avoiding each other isn’t particularly interesting.

What’s going on? I don’t know. My focus isn’t on the behavior, but on the development of embryos. But who knows — maybe there are gay and lesbian spiders. Maybe some are asexual. Maybe there are timid spiders and bold spiders. Maybe some spiders are unattractive and no one wants to have sex with them. Maybe the Adult Spider Female is focused on her bug-munching career, and doesn’t want to make babies. Maybe some pairs of spiders have cellular incompatibilities that prevent fertilization. Maybe for some spiders the behavior works, but the plumbing is atypical. These are all interesting possibilities, and if a student were to come along and ask to make a quantitative analysis of mating behavior and reproductive success, I think there are a lot of good questions to ask and some useful studies to make, because sex, even in a small arthropod as driven by instinct as a spider, isn’t binary, isn’t a question of did they or didn’t they, and exhibits a range of complex variation that I haven’t tried to plumb.

Other people are looking into that! A paper by Angelekakis, Turutzek, and Tuni (2022) looked into mating rates in Parasteatoda, and as I’d expect, it’s complex. Spiders can be choosy — the majority of females didn’t mate at all (as I’m seeing in Steatoda), and many would mate only once and then be done with the whole messy business (they store sperm, so one successful mating is sufficient for a lifetime of egg production.)

As usual, the TERFs/GCs try to ignore all that and shoehorn everything into a simple binary. It doesn’t work for spiders, and it especially doesn’t work for humans, who have layered on so many variations and subtleties and tangled them all up with non-reproductive cultural behaviors. This @nathankw nitwit tried to argue that sex can’t be bimodal because I can’t provide a single numerical parameter that shows a range of values for sex. The problem isn’t that I can’t, it’s that I can provide so many. Receptivity, courtship initiation, web twanging frequency, successful insemination frequency, dancing intensity, abdomen size, interval since last courtship, metabolism levels…I can think of so many measures that don’t exhibit the kind of fixed values that he wants for males and females. It’s overlapping ranges all over the place! In spiders! But he wants to pretend that human sex is simple, nothing but sperm and ova.

Graham Linehan really didn’t have anything to contribute, other than to claim my biology is a religion, and to add this silly little bon mot:

A biologist who pretends to believe that humans can change sex. What a time to be alive.

But if humans can’t change sex, why is this crowd so opposed to gender affirming care, hormonal treatments, and surgery? If sex is an unstoppable freight train that can’t be diverted, then let them continue with their ineffectual efforts to change sex. Except that they keep seeing the inescapable evidence that sex can and does change.

Angelakakis A, Turetzek N, Tuni C (2022) Female mating rates and their fitness consequences in the common house spider Parasteatoda tepidariorum. Ecology and Evolution, doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9678.