It looks like it’s Jerry Coyne. Those two need to be separated — every time they get together they start hooting and jumping on the furniture and throwing unmentionables out the window.

In case you’re curious to know what outrageous insanity the science advisor, Juliet Gerrard, said, it’s this: “Sex and gender are different but related things. Neither is binary. For an accessible introduction to why sex isn’t binary, Wikipedia is not a bad place to start.”

Are you reeling in shock? No? Neither am I. That’s actually an eminently sensible statement, since sex and gender are different but related, and neither is binary. This is the kind of thing biology professors all around the world, at least those who aren’t poisoned by an ideological freak-out, are saying all the time. That’s a mundane, normal, healthy expression of our current understanding of the science of sex. Calm down, guys.

I have a couple of other objections to Dawkins’ statement.

1. Pretending to not know what gender is is childish and stupid, well beneath him. Yeah, Richard, you can look up “gender”. It’s what we’d expect of a serious scholar.

2. Biologists do not define sex by gamete size. Gamete size is one of the many consequences of sexual development, and not the only one.

3. Come on, complaining about “Generation TikTok”? Do you also shake your cane at those kids on your lawn? Face it, we’re older than most people, the young’uns will be taking over the world soon enough. Get used to it.

You know, those two olds are making the rest of us look foolish. If you can’t keep up, Grandpa, go back to gumming your pablum while watching Wheel of Fortune. Some of us still have brains that are relatively uncalcified and can enjoy watching the world progress around us.

Did you know that Richard Dawkins began his career as an ethologist? He got his Ph.D. studying animal behavior under Niko Tinbergen. If you’re an ethologist, you might study things like courtship behavior and parental investment and feeding strategies etc., etc., etc. Dawkins studied how animals make choices.

That was in 1966. Apparently he’s forgotten all that ever since.

Somehow, an awful lot of biologists study sexual behavior — like lekking, or sexual displays, or fidelity, and on and on — that don’t necessarily involve sperm collection or measuring ovulation or that kind of thing. It is absurd to insist that only gametes define sex. I recognize spider sexes by the morphology of their palps, and by their differences in behavior, not gametes. I see the birds flying outside my window, and I discriminate sexes by color, primarily. To say that biologists have better things to do than study gender is ridiculous. Every biologist who looks at the plumage of birds or watches the courtship of spiders is studying a phenomenon far removed from basic gamete formation yet is an indispensable, unavoidable, intrinsic consequence of sex in that species…and the animal isn’t getting a semen count before engaging in it.

This is true of human biology, too. People don’t have to check their gonads before engaging in all kinds of sexual behaviors; they would rather not have to worry about the sex police telling them what they can and can’t do, and generally they disregard the prudes in private anyway. You can be a feminine man or a masculine woman, or any shade in between or beyond, and gametes don’t come into play at all, except in reproduction. Reproduction is not the sole function of sex.

Dawkins is just being an extreme reductionist to the point he’s making himself and his position look silly. Go ahead, all you reactionary biologists, rant about how there can be only two true sexes because people have some cells that are almost never seen in public, in defiance of all the other valid signals they openly display. Better biologists will go on recognizing all the factors that define sex without your self-imposed, narrow-minded blinders.

P.S. Dawkins is not an embryologist. No, sex isn’t solely determined by chromosomes embryologically, but by a battery of influences that shape the embryo, including a few genes on some chromosomes. He is an evolutionary biologist, and he doesn’t recognize that the fluidity of sex determination mechanisms suggests that maybe biology isn’t as rigid as he thinks?

A GOP Super Pac asked their members what their gender was. The choices are mildly surprising.

We men have to complain, though, that they left out our genders: alpha, beta, sigma, and cuck.

From Jerry Coyne fans!

I am appalled at the ad hominem attacks which you – as a scientist – seem willing to deliver against people like Prof Jerry Coyne et al.

No, no, no. An ad hominem attack would be something like “Coyne’s cowboy boot fetish is stupid, therefore his ideas about trans people are wrong.” Just pointing out that his ideas about transgender biology are stupid is not an ad hominem.

This is just an annoyance. A lot of my hatemail flings around the “ad hominem” accusation without understanding it.

Having read pretty much all of Coyne’s comments on this issue it is quite apparent that he is not a transphobe as you falsely claim.

As the definition of a phobia is ‘an irrational fear’ this means that I too am not transphobic.

OK, this is another common trope: literal dictionary translation of a term to weasel out from under it. That’s not how it works. A transphobe is someone who opposes allowing trans people rights and opportunities, who has an irrational contempt to justify their biases.

If you’re not afraid, then why oppose them at all? I mean, I would concede that I am “Republicanphobic,” because I am afraid of what they’re doing to our country, but not transphobic, because even if I thought they were wrong (I don’t), I’m not at all concerned about letting them participate in sports or write books or talk to people about their experiences. Leave them alone!

So perfect I had to use it:

Why on earth would you then presuppose that JK Rowling, Helen Joyce, Kathleen Stock, Richard Dawkins et al are ‘transphobic’ – particularly as all of them have expressed supportive views towards the trans community.

Oh, wow. Rattle off the names of some of the most notorious transphobes in the public sphere, and then think it excuses you and Coyne because you’re just like them. OK, you win, you’re no more transphobic than Rowling & Joyce & Stock & Dawkins. Great defense.

Utter nonsense on your part.

However, what Coyne and I share in common is in the defence of biological women, and in their right to retain women-only spaces and sports etc, and which should not be invaded by individuals who possess male genitalia and male musculature, but who wish to be regarded as women.

Perhaps you need to take a step back and consider the rights of (biological) women who have fought against male oppression for centuries?

Great. Now we get the “biological women” canard. We’re all biological, you know, we’re all people. All these traits people use to put people into two categories exhibit a wide range of overlapping variation. The one reason Coyne fans have retreated to basing their arguments on gametes is because there, at least, they can find one criterion that is binary…never mind that all the other features are not, and can contradict the evidence from gametes. Get used to it — humans are complicated and don’t fit into just two bins.

I do wonder if your personal attacks represent the weakness of your position on this issue?
They certainly represent a failure on your part to adhere to Science.

Back in the day men who wished to dress as women regarded themselves as being cross-dressers, or transvestites. What they never claimed to be was a ‘woman.’

I consider extreme reductionism — such as claiming that human identity can be reduced to two simple categories — to be a failure of science. Simplistic explanations make me skeptical.

Has it occurred to you that unsubstantiated, unscientific views like yours are actually doing harm to the cause of trans people, a group of our fellow humans who no doubt you would want to claim you support?

You haven’t demonstrated that my views are unsubstantiated or unscientific. The basis for your disagreement is that you don’t like my position because it contradicts your superficial biases.

Also, I kind of suspect that denying their existence does more harm to the cause of trans people.

As a result, the extreme right and extreme left will no doubt welcome you into their nasty little cliques with open arms…..

Both sides! The correct answer is in the middle!

This is just like slapping down creationists.

Orac called out Jerry Coyne on Threads!

Coyne was mad because SBM didn’t endorse his favorite flavors of transphobia — they rejected the hateful nonsense of people like Katherine Stock and Abigail Schreier. How dare they! SBM quoted an article that criticized Helen Joyce’s bad biology, which, unfortunately, Coyne is committed to supporting. This is embarrassing.*

The prohibition of trans women in female sports is to assure fair competition for women, not “mental and physical health”.

Joyce is no scientist. Joyce’s Twitter bio includes the line “show me the 3rd gamete & we can talk.” Joyce considers the term “TERF” a slur. It is evident throughout the painstaking reading of her online footprint and book that she labors under confusion, ignorance, and lack of scientific knowledge. And, of course, Joyce believes that trans activists are suppressing research.

I like the third gamete quote because it is indeed the presence of only two types of gametes that is the definition of sex: men have small mobile ones and women large immobile ones. And yes, “TERF” (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) is indeed a slur by gender activists against “gender-critical feminists” like Joyce. Here’s the very first result I got when I googled TERF. DEROGATORY!

Oh, he likes “the third gamete quote”. He thinks he can shut down all those people arguing for trans rights by shouting Show me the third gamete! which is so incredibly stupid. No one is arguing that there is a “third gamete”. This claim is directly comparable to a creationist saying Show me a dog giving birth to a cat!, something no evolutionary biologist thinks is possible, that isn’t a conclusion from evolutionary theory, that reveals such a deep misunderstanding of the concept they’re trying to criticize that they ought to be just cast into the depths and ignored forever more.

There isn’t a third gamete, but no one is talking about gametes, except for the likes of Jerry Coyne and other TERFs. We are talking about the rights of full grown adult human beings, who are far more than a puddle of ejaculated goo or a sloughed off membrane. People are far more complex than a single-celled component of their bodies, and I would hope Coyne would realize that there are many more than two kinds of humans, and understand that what he’s trying to do is reify a category.

It really comes down to his narrow definition of sex: men have small mobile ones and women large immobile ones. Nope. No one defines their sex by the kind of gametes they produce — sex is complex and diverse and idiosyncratic for everyone, and we all use varied criteria for identifying the sex of others and ourselves. Coyne has arbitrarily decided to be extremely reductive and key everything on one cell, because that supports his claim that there should be only two sexes, contrary to everything we can see.

As for his whine that the word TERF is DEROGATORY, yes it is. It’s a terrible thing to be, no matter what words you use: gender critical or regressive dickhead or anti-trans, I don’t care. The derogatory nature of the term comes from the inherent substance of the person, not the dictionary. You could call them “sweet baboos” and they’d still stink, and the name would still be derogatory, because it is attached to an unpleasant and hateful person.

* Sorry, not linking. You can look it up if you must — the bit I’ve included is a direct copy & paste, you’re not going to find that I’ve misquoted him. He really said that.

See the nice couple? They have a busy career making videos and writing books. They seem to be enjoying their life.

Geri and Jay Hart are the pen names of a married woman and man who serve in executive positions at two well-known organizations in the U.S. They frequently participate in civic and charitable events and appear in their local media. Although their careers keep Geri and Jay well occupied individually, their top priority is being together. During shared times they enjoy exercising, traveling, eating healthy food, and—of course—exploring and savoring their sexuality. See select videos and follow them on OnlyFans, X (formerly Twitter), and PornHub @SexyHappyCouple.

“Geri and Jay Hart” are pseudonyms — they do a lot of sex stuff, and want their privacy. Somebody leaked their actual names, and…uh-oh, Jay Hart’s real name is Joe Gow, and he was the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. You can imagine how that went down.

Former University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow said Thursday that the school’s governing board fired him because members were uncomfortable with him and his wife producing and appearing in pornographic videos.

The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents, which oversees UW-Madison, UW-La Crosse and 11 other regional campuses, voted unanimously during a hastily convened closed meeting Wednesday evening to fire Gow.

After the vote, Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman and regents President Karen Walsh issued statements saying the regents had learned of specific conduct by Gow that subjected the university to “significant reputational harm.” Rothman called Gow’s actions “abhorrent” and Walsh said she was “disgusted.” But neither of them offered any details of the allegations.

No details. I glanced through their stuff (blushing all the way), and it’s all very explicit, but the focus is on consent and mutual pleasure. I didn’t see anything abhorrent or disgusting…well, maybe a tightly-puckered sphincter of a prude would dislike them. They fired him because he had a happy, cheerful sex life, something none of the regents would ever have.

They’re also planning to have his tenure revoked.

Unless there is evidence of non-consensual behavior, none of this should happen. Unless we’re going to fire everyone for the ‘crime’ of being sexual, there are no grounds for dismissal here.

There’s an interesting counterpoint in the case of Bridget Ziegler, the far-right co-founder of Moms for Liberty, who was discovered to have an interesting sex life — she was involved in a three-way sexual relationship. Again, as long as it’s consensual, no big deal; her husband, on the other hand, was accused of raping their partner, which is a big deal. Ziegler was not fired for her sexual activities, and I have no problem with that, although she should have been fired for extraordinary hypocrisy, since she rode into her position by condemning others for their sex acts. At least some people realize that. This student zeroed in on the real problem.

Calls for Ziegler to resign her position on the Sarasota School Board continue to this day, and a public hearing was recently held, with parents and students demanding she step down. One Sarasota parent, Sally Sells, explained the issue wasn’t what the Zieglers do in the bedroom. “Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” Sells said. Former Sarasota student Zander Moricz drove home that point. “Bridget, you deserve to be fired from your job because you are terrible at your job, not because you had sex with a woman,” Moricz said.

The kids are all right.

I didn’t even know about this court case in Minnesota, but it leads in the news here in the Seattle area. The Supreme Court made a good play.

The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Washington state law prohibiting licensed health care professionals from practicing “conversion therapy” – a scientifically discredited practice intended to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity – as it applies to minors.

Critics say the practice – which attempts to convert people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning – into straight or cisgender people, causes serious emotional harm and can have deadly results.

Of course, it’s more of a “I’m not touching that with a 10 foot pole” decision than something that actively slaps down conversion therapy, but it’s a good start. At least until the court decides to revisit it again.

The usual suspects wanted to hear this case in court.

The vote was 6-3, with Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly saying they would have taken up the case.
Thomas wrote in a five-page dissent that he would have taken up the case to consider a First Amendment challenge to the law.

I know it’s not fair legal practice, but I personally consider any law favored by those three corrupt thugs to be a bad law.

Every once in a while, some conservative dweeb gets upset at the fact that liberal women do not like conservative men and definitely don’t want to have sex with them. It’s a tiresome trope that the promoters of “solutions” never think through. The latest victim of this nonsense is the editorial board of the Washington Post, who noticed that people with clashing political views don’t want to have anything to do with each other. OH NOES. Society will collapse.

This ideology gap is particularly pronounced among Gen Z White people. According to a major new American Enterprise Institute survey, 46 percent of White Gen Z women are liberal, compared to only 28 percent of White Gen Z men, more of whom (36 percent) now identify as conservative. Norms around sexuality and gender are diverging, too. Whereas 61 percent of Gen Z women see themselves as feminist, only 43 percent of Gen Z men do. It is little surprise that the “manfluencers” — particularly those such as British American kickboxer Andrew Tate who promote outright misogyny — have their biggest following among boys and young men.

The authors are oblivious to what they are saying. Feminism is not comparable to Andrew Tate — one is advocating for autonomy and equality, the other is a criminal sex trafficker who treats women as chattel. These poles in the dichotomy are not at all equivalent in any way. The Editorial Board ought to be deploring the brutalization of young men by Andrew Tate, rather than treating it as just an attitude like feminism, not calling it something as anodyne as a “dilemma” requiring a compromise. No, it does not. Just tell the Tate wannabes to fuck off. Only they don’t.

This mismatch means that someone will need to compromise. As the researchers Lyman Stone and Brad Wilcox have noted, about 1 in 5 young singles will have little choice but to marry someone outside their ideological tribe. The other option is that they decline to get married at all — not an ideal outcome considering the data showing that marriage is good for the health of societies and individuals alike. (This, of course, is on average; marriage isn’t for everyone. Nor is staying in a physically or emotionally abusive marriage ever the right choice. But, on the whole, while politically mixed couples report somewhat lower levels of satisfaction than same-party couples, they are still likely to be happier than those who remain single.)

The marriage dilemma reflects a broader societal one: whether people can find ways to adapt to a new normal of ideological and political polarization, instead of hoping — against all evidence — that it will dissipate. Unfortunately, Americans have not equipped themselves to discuss, debate and reason across these divides. Americans have increasingly sorted themselves according to ideological orientation. They are working, living and socializing with people who think the same things they do. Particularly on college campuses, a culture of seeking sameness has set up young Americans for disappointment. They expect people to share their own convictions and commitments. But people’s insight and understanding about the world often come from considering alternative perspectives that may at first seem odd or offensive.

Oh those crazy college campuses, where young people get the insane idea that they can think for themselves and don’t have to submit to the demands of the olds. You know, if you’re going to marry someone for life, it’s not at all unreasonable to marry someone who shares your own “convictions and commitments.” Why are you dating and spending time with them otherwise?

One might wonder how the Editorial Board would resolve their “dilemma,” and who is expected to “compromise”. Easy. Teach people to ignore these differences.

A cultural shift might be necessary — one that views politics as a part of people’s identity but far from the most important part. Americans’ ability to live together, quite literally, might depend on it.

Gosh. That man who wants to date you, who believes women are inferior and must be put in their place with a good beat-down? Just pay no attention to that minor character flaw. After all, he’s willing to overlook your belief in cooperation and partnership and mutual respect. For the good of the nation, you must have sex with him and bear his children!

I had to wonder what kind of cretins populate an “editorial board” and what they think they’re doing. Here it is:

Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through discussion among members of the Editorial Board: Opinion Editor David Shipley, Deputy Opinion Editor Charles Lane and Deputy Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg, as well as writers Mary Duenwald, Christine Emba, Shadi Hamid, David E. Hoffman, James Hohmann, Heather Long, Mili Mitra, Eduardo Porter, Keith B. Richburg and Molly Roberts.

The board highlights issues it thinks are important and responds to news events, mindful of stands it has taken in previous editorials and principles that have animated Post Editorial Boards over time. Articles in the news pages sometimes prompt ideas for editorials, but every editorial is based on original reporting. News reporters and editors never contribute to Editorial Board discussions, and Editorial Board members don’t have any role in news coverage.

I don’t know who any of those people are, but I do know that I don’t give a flying fuck about the “Washington Post as an institution.” Buncha entitled assholes is what they are.

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For a more amusing take, read Wives In Stepford Increasingly Don’t Want To Be Replaced By Robots.

Bill Ackman is a hedge-fund billionaire who was very concerned that an MIT professor allowed a student to promote a pro-Palestine rally. He’s more worried about denying Palestinian civil rights than he is about known sexual harassers in the classroom, though.

Ackman is a major supporter of David Sabatini to the tune of millions of dollars per year. Sabatini, you may recall, was fired twice from major institutions and his attempt to be hired by NYU was aborted by huge demonstrations by the faculty and students there. He is not a good guy. He ran a party lab for dudebros.

In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute fired Sabatini, and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research forced him out after an investigation by an outside law firm found he violated the institute’s sexual harassment and relationship policies. That investigation found that Sabatini conducted a clandestine sexual relationship with a woman scientist and asked her to meet him for sex on institute grounds. At the time, he was mentoring her in a program he directed while she launched a lab at the Whitehead. The investigation also found, among other behavior, that he created a lab culture that rewarded sexualized banter; implicitly threatened a faculty member who refused to make a place in his lab for a visiting woman scientist whom Sabatini later married; and created a “pervasive” fear of retaliation, for example implying there would be career consequences for lab members who reported unfavorably on him to the outside investigators or who discussed rumors that he was sexually pursuing a woman undergraduate from another institution.

I figured that with three strikes he was finally out, no matter how much money a rich boob threw his way. I even made a prediction: “He’ll go get a job in construction or pharmaceutical sales and we won’t have to worry about his unpleasant influence on academia anymore.”

I was wrong, so wrong. He’s starting up a new lab in Prague.

David Sabatini, the high-flying biologist who lost positions at three prominent U.S. institutions after breaching sexual misconduct policies, last month began a new job as a senior scientist at the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry Prague (IOCB), a powerful arm of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS). The hire has divided Czech scientists and is likely to ignite debate about whether and when institutions should give second chances to those who commit sexual misconduct.

He’s like an antibiotic-resistant venereal disease. He keeps flaring up when you least expect it, and when you think you’ve finally beaten it back.

IOCB Director Jan Konvalinka said in a statement: “We believe that [Sabatini] has been punished enough for his previous actions and that the research community will be served best if this brilliant scientist returns to research.” He added that IOCB “will require that Dr. Sabatini follows the same high standards of conduct and respectful behavior that is expected from every other principal investigator.”

Yeah, that’s what the Whitehead, MIT, and NYU all said, too. When will people learn that “high standards of conduct and respectful behavior” aren’t in his repertoire?

Probably about the time that rich Republican jerks stop bankrolling him, I bet.