The Driving Force Behind the Trans Movement

Posted on June 11, 2024 by Michael

This entry was posted in trans ideology and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to The Driving Force Behind the Trans Movement

  1. Ilíon says:
    June 11, 2024 at 10:41 pm

    While I fully agree that “men have no business in women’s spaces“, I don’t doubt for a moment that both of these women (especially the guest) would shriek to High Heaven — and demand that other men “put me in my place” — were they to hear me stating the corollary: women have no business in men’s spaces (and that very much includes the military, and the civilian police and fire departments).

    So, forgive me ladies, is I refuse to get all that worked up about these sorts of perverts “invading women’s spaces” … because, after all, this is the world that women demanded.

  2. The Deuce says:
    June 16, 2024 at 1:23 pm

    Something that has really hit home for me lately is the degree to which the trans movement (and wokeness in general) is enabled and driven by materialist reductionist atheism. I don’t just mean that in the sense that materialist atheism undermines sexual morality (though of course that is the case). I mean that logically, materialism supports the woke claim that the gender binary is social construct and undermines the idea of objective truth.

    To illustrate the problem, let me link to a post by Colin Wright, an evolutionary biologist who strongly opposes the trans movement’s war on reality, but nevertheless remains a staunch atheist. Here’s the relevant part of the text:

    The type of gamete an individual has the function to produce is what universally defines an individual’s sex, with males having the function to produce sperm, and females, ova.

    Chromosomes do not define a person’s sex. Rather, the genes on our sex chromosomes determine the sex an embryo will develop into. Males and females are outcomes of development, not a karyotype. Many species with males and females don’t use chromosomes to determine sex. Sex chromosomes are upstream causes of sex, not sex itself.

    Genitalia also do not define an individual’s sex. Many species with sexes don’t have genitals. In humans, the type of genitals an individual develops is a downstream consequence of their sex, not sex itself.

    Now it’s easy to see what Colin is trying to do here. Many people have tried to reductively define male and female in terms of chromosomes or of genitalia. Colin is giving reasons for why sex cannot be reduced to either of those things, and then explaining the factor that he thinks it can be reduced to, namely gametes.

    But does this actually work? One rather odd implication of it is that human beings could not define sex and had no justification for believing in the sex binary until gametes were first discovered around 350 years ago. That seems pretty wildly implausible on its face.

    Also, some of the objections that Colin gives to other reductive definitions of sex apply to gametes as well on further inspection. For instance, he points out that not all sexually reproducing species have genitalia, such as flowering plants, which have stamen and pistils instead of penises and vaginas, but have male and female gametes. But the distinction here is nominal. We don’t use the word “genitals” to refer the reproductive organs of flowers, but they are analogous. Meanwhile, flower gametes are radically different from human gametes in structure, appearance, and behavior, so someone could level the same sort of objection Colin does to defining sex by them.

    However, Colin does allude to and partially capture the correct definition in the first sentence, here with the relevant part highlighted: “The type of gamete an individual has the function to produce is what universally defines an individual’s sex, with males having the function to produce sperm, and females, ova.”

    That is to say, at the end of the day, sex can only be intelligibly defined in terms of biological function. The male sex is that which has the function of fertilizing the female sex. The female sex is that which has the function of being fertilized by the male sex. The physical details can differ radically. A human penis has basically no physical similarity to a flower’s stamen, and a human sperm has almost no physical similarity to a flower’s sperm gamete. However, these things are conceptually similar because they have similar functions.

    The function of sexual reproduction is instantiated or expressed in radically different ways across different species, and in no species can it be defined solely in terms of a single physical organ or structure. Rather, in each species there exists entire reproductive systems, and each part participates in, rather than defines, the function. In humans, the male and female sexes are expressed through penises and vaginas, testicles and ovaries, sperm and eggs, testosterone and estrogen, XY and XX chromosomes, uteruses, etc, etc. But the sexes cannot be defined by or reduced to any single one of those things, nor even to a mere aggregate of all of them, but only in terms of the functional combination of all these things working together as a single whole to express the function of sexual reproduction.

    Now, Colin is getting at something true when he identifies gametes as being the defining factor of male and female sex as opposed to genitalia or chromosomes, but that is because gametes are the most immediate medium of reproduction. That is, a new organism is formed when a male gamete fertilizes a female gamete. But gametes themselves are only definable in terms of biological function. Again, the male and female gametes of flowering plants, for example, are radically different from those of humans, but we recognize them as being the same types of things because of the conceptually similar functions they have. Namely, a male gamete is a cell that has the function of fertilizing a female gamete, and a female gamete is a cell that has the function of being fertilized by a male gamete.

    And neither of these cells has any function in isolation from the whole reproductive systems of the organisms in which they function. Male and female gametes require the whole reproductive systems of their species both to come together and for the resulting organism to survive.

    But here’s the rub: Because biological sex can only be coherently defined in terms of biological function, biological sex can only be objectively real if biological function is objectively real. And biological function is an irreducibly teleological concept: It refers to that which a thing is for, what it is designed to do, what its purpose is. Hence it can only be objectively real if teleology is objectively real and irreducible to non-teleological categories.

    But that puts it directly at odds with materialist reductionism and Darwinism, which hold that biological function is only apparent, an illusion, a subjective mental construct that we create and project onto the world to categorize things in our minds. There is, on this view, no actual functional whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, but only bits of matter moving mechanistically in the void according to blind physical laws.

    The idea that there are wholes with real objective function in the world – such as male and female sexes with male and female reproductive systems – is thus on this view a subjective impression that we share with each other and build our societies around. In other words, the implication is that the sex binary is in fact a social construct, just as gender activists claim that it is.

    And it doesn’t stop at sex either. Given materialist reductionism, all function or purpose in the biological realm must succumb to the same deconstructionism on a final analysis, up to and including the rational human mind.

    Hence, given materialism, there can be no conscious, rational self, as that would imply an irreducible functional whole. Rather, the self is a subjective illusion that we’re projecting onto the world (ab obviously incoherent claim, as you need a conscious self to have an illusion or project anything in the first place). Furthermore, our rational faculties have no function. Our rational faculties are not for finding truth via universal laws of logic. There is no objectively right way to use our rational faculties in line with their function to arrive at truth, nor any objectively wrong way to use them that results in falsehood and error.

    Thus the very categories of rational and irrational, of true and false, are and can be (like the sex binary) only mere mental and social constructs in the final analysis, given the premises of materialist reductionism. And this is, again, exactly what the woke post-modernist lunatics claim.

    So to return to my original point, it’s not just that materialist reductionism and atheism gives succor to trans activists and other woke radicals by undermining traditional morality and Christianity. Rather, materialist reductionism directly entails the key premises of woke radicalism.

    The insanity that we see all around us today, that people like Colin Wright are reacting against, is the culmination of materialist reductionists like Colin “finding out” after more than a century of f***ing around. It took a long time to dig ourselves into this hole, and it’s going to take a long time to dig back out of it.

    And to even start digging out of it is going to require a radical about-face in the materialist reductionist cancer that lies at the root of it, which started to grow at least as early as Descartes, but has really accelerated to the point of metastasis since Darwin.

    You are starting to see some signs of life taking root in mainstream biology as those on the cutting edge grapple with a flood of data that is simply impossible to square with reductionism, such as in Denis Noble’s increasingly emphatic rejection of Dawkins’ “selfish gene” reductionism in favor of a wholistic functional view of organisms. But a consistent application of that view is going to require a rejection of Darwin and of materialist reductionism, and ultimately entails an affirmation of theism, and these self-same biologists are still quite loathe to make that shift, and are largely afraid of even being seen as considering it. So expect things to get quite a bit worse before they begin to get better.

  3. TFBW says:
    June 16, 2024 at 7:34 pm

    If, as Colin says, the gametes are the defining factor of sex, then we have to go backwards through his argument and un-accept an earlier point that brought us to that conclusion. The gametes, after all, are a downstream consequence of the genitalia, directly so in males: male genitalia produce male gametes. But he rejected genitalia as a mere downstream consequence of sex. Unless I’m misunderstanding which way he thinks the stream is flowing, we’ve gone further downstream to find the thing which is supposed to be upstream.

  4. The Deuce says:
    June 17, 2024 at 9:33 am

    TFBW:

    Good point. There are a lot of things you could point out about why Colin’s proposal doesn’t work on closer inspection, but they all come down to the following trilemma:

    1. The sex binary is obviously real. Male and female are obviously real and to deny them is pure insanity that defies common sense.
    2. Sex can only be coherently described in terms of function. Function entails both intent and the idea of a functional whole that cannot be reduced to any of its parts nor the mere sum of them.
    3. Materialism entails reductionism and the nonexistence of intent. It entails that everything reduces to bits of blind matter at the smallest scale, and that contrary to common sense, any functional wholes we think we see are ultimately our own subjective projection.

    “Anti-woke” materialists like Colin (and Dawkins, etc) are thus stuck in a state of cognitive dissonance. They can clearly and intuitively see the insanity of trans activists, but they have already given away the store to them by accepting materialism.

    Definitions like the above represent an attempt by anti-woke materialists to “have their cake and eat it too.” By reducing sex down to the single functional factor of gametes, the materialist hopes to give a definition that is “reductionist enough” to be compatible with materialism, but not so reductionist that it is incompatible with the objective reality of biological sex. Similarly, the definition appeals to the concept of function, but tries to do so “just a little bit” so as not to have to grant the objective reality of function, and with it irreducible teleology and intent.

    But that dog won’t hunt. This is an all-or-nothing proposition, and “anti-woke” materialists will not be able to give a robust rebuttal to the insanity that materialism has spawned until they abandon their materialism.

  5. Dhay says:
    June 18, 2024 at 4:07 am

    The Deuce > “Anti-woke” materialists like Colin (and Dawkins, etc) are thus stuck in a state of cognitive dissonance. They can clearly and intuitively see the insanity of trans activists, but they have already given away the store to them by accepting materialism.

    Another anti-woke materialist is Jerry Coyne, one of whose 12 June 2024 blog posts is entitled, “We need an Constitutional amendment keeping religion out of science”, and which starts:

    There should be some kind of Constitutional amendment that puts up a wall between science and religion, just like the First Amendment that puts up a wall between government and religion.

    https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/06/12/build-up-that-wall/

    Now there’s materialist ideological extremism for you: Coyne would dearly love to ban religion from science, dearly love to ban religious people from science, dearly love to ban function, teleology and intent from the range of conceptual tools permitted to scientists, dearly love to confine science and scientists strictly to conceptual tools conforming to materialist-reductionist dogma.

    And Coyne would dearly love to enforce the ban with laws and with civil or penal penalties: not a some-do, some-don’t patchwork of State laws, not a uniformly applying Federal law that could be as quickly rescinded or declared unconstitutional, but a ban — “wall” — made as near as dammit unchangeable by incorporation in the US constitution.

    *

    It’s ironic that Coyne is an ardent defender of free speech and of academic freedom including he opposes limits — topics forbidden on ideological grounds or because they are unpopular with some — on what academics and students can discuss. In this blog post his hatred of religion and its patterns of thought shows through and shows him two-faced.

  6. The Deuce says:
    June 18, 2024 at 9:03 am

    Dhay:

    Wow, that post by Coyne is really something. I knew the “anti-woke atheists” hadn’t learned anything, but that post is on another level of not learning anything.

    He whines about wokeness and how it’s hollowing out the academy, but rather than grappling with how his own materialist reductionism has unleashed it and feeds it and provided its intellectual foundation, he literally wants to CRIMINALIZE the only alternative to it that could defeat it.

    Anyhow, this is why I recommend that Christians and other non-materialists resist any urge to make an alliance of convenience with the Coynes and Wrights and Dawkinses and Boghossians who are watching their world burn down around them and expressing horror at the woke arsons who they handed the blow torches to. The enemy of our enemy is NOT our friend in this case.

    They’ve learned nothing, they’re completely unwilling to examine how their own materialism fatally undermines the existence of reason and objective truth, and they have zero intention of allowing any non-materialist who aids them a seat at the table should they somehow prevail. They want to go back to their heyday of smug atheists dominating the academy, of being able to take the Christian and theistic grounding of truth and reason for granted while crapping all over it and purging its source from the leading institutions of society.

    This is their mess and their problem, and it’s not anyone else’s job to fix it for them. And in fact, we should see wokeness taking over the intellectual institutions as the problem fixing itself. It’s painful to watch now, but in the long-run, the woke discrediting these institutions and burning them to the ground – and with them their gatekeepers – is possibly one of the best things that could happen.

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