TERF Alert

The American Anthropological Association and Canadian Anthropology Society recently canceled a session from their joint annual meeting.  The title of the session was “Let’s Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”.  It was canceled as being anti-trans and contrary to current research without being supported by countervailing research.  Of course the panel members immediately started screaming, "Help, help, we're being oppressed," and Reich Wing media jumped all over it.

Let's take a look at the panel and their topics.  Silvia Carrasco was going to talk about how violence against women can't be properly addressed without focusing on biological sex.   Kathleen Richardson was going to talk about how including trans women is erasing gender disparity in IT (Apparently arguing the number of trans women in IT is statistically significant.  Right.).  Michèle Sirois was going to talk about how the Canadian surrogacy industry exploits poor women (OK, trans women can't be included in this group, but a large number of cis women can't be included as well, whether biologically because they are not reproductive, or economically because they are not poor.  Frankly, the problem she is studying is far less biologically based than economically based.  Surrogacy is another of a broad range of mechanisms for exploiting disadvantaged groups.).  Also on the panel was Elizabeth Weiss of the Heterodox Academy, an "advocacy" group founded to combat the sham issue of conservatives being excluded from academe (It was cofounded by Jonathan Haidt and Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz.  Haidt co-authored The Coddling of the American Mind, a by-the-numbers rant decrying the "suppression" of free speech on college campuses and trotting out the usual Reich Wing straw men of "trigger words" and "safe spaces" while conveniently ignoring the real message of "You no longer get to shovel hate just because you're a cishet, white, Christian male, and if you try, you're going to get blowback."  Rosenkranz testified to Congress against the nominations of Loretta Lynch as AG and Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS and is regularly cited by Alito and Thomas.).  Carole Hooven of the American Enterprise Institute was supposed to speak but withdrew prior to the cancelation.

Organizing this panel was Kathleen Lowrey, whose recent publications include "Trans Ideology and the New Ptolemaism in the Academy", an extended whinge about her sacking as undergraduate programs chair in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta for her anti-trans views (or as she puts it, her "gender critical feminist views") masquerading as intellectual commentary, and "Gender Identity Ideology Conquers the World: Why Are Anthropologists Cheering?", an extended whinge about cancel culture.  She is routinely platformed on the anti-trans Canadian site Gender Dissent, and she was principal organizer of the anti-trans hate group Women's Declaration International (fka Women's Human Rights Campaign).

It is quite apparent, then, the panel was canceled because it was platforming political rants and not scholarly research.  This is a problem in the social "sciences" that is only getting worse (For nearly a half-century I've been of the firm opinion that "social science" is an oxymoron.  There is no meaningful way to apply the crux of the scientific method, control and variable experimentation, to any significant issue in any of the social studies.  Being degreed in two such fields [history and political science] and regularly called on to work in another [economics/finance], I have some idea.  One of the purposes of scientific research is to predict how things will behave.  Put X load on this material, it will break.  Combine these chemicals, and you will get a reaction producing Y.  While data in the social studies can be used successfully to create occurrence models ["This is what happened."], they are far less successful at creating causation models ["This is why this happened."] and abysmal at creating predictive models ["This is what is going to happen."].  For example an economist will say, "If price goes up, demand will go down.  Unless there are other, not terribly measurable factors at work such as elasticity, utility, oligopoly and collusion, logistic disruption, etc., etc., etc.").  "Scientists" in the social studies sound increasingly like "creation scientists" (speaking of oxymorons), decrying their research being "canceled" while conveniently omitting mention of their research ignoring or misrepresenting all current work while clinging to anachronistic theories, methods, and data (and nondata).  People like those on this panel push their political agendas while ignoring actual research by actual scientists.

Meanwhile, if you want a thorough takedown of Women's Declaration International, I suggest you check Susan Duffy's blog.  And if you want to see what real scientists are discovering in gender research, you might want to start here.