Job 5:3
"Evolutionary biologists are in a quandary. Their theory is entirely
amoral; whatever is, is right. Whatever culture does, it evolved to do.
Humans are no different than fruit flies or apes. Natural selection
shapes everything, including language, culture and politics.
But a couple of evolutionary biologists have been aghast at their
culture after suffering the wrath of today’s “Woke” mob—those anarchists
who promote violence in support of “social justice” (SJ). Q: How can they
say it is wrong? Their righteous indignation rings hollow when they
rehearse the wrong that has been done to them, and then give advice on
what should be done about it.
Colin Wright
A young evolutionary biologist (PhD, UC Santa Barbara) who did
postgraduate research at Penn State, Colin Wright specializes in
behavioral ecology of social insects. Like most biologists, he is
trained to identify and recognize biological sex in animals as a real
thing. He knows that there are some unusual cases of sex in biology,
such as hermaphrodites that can self-fertilize, male seahorses that
perform the role of carrying the young, and members of one sex that act
in ways characteristic of the opposite sex. There are also cases in
humans of ambiguous genitalia and people suffering from gender dysphoria
who deserve respect and understanding. These, however, do not imply
that sex is a continuum of choices where anyone can self-identify as any
spot on that spectrum. Sex is a biological reality, he argues.
Boy, was he in for a surprise. When he posted on Instagram a
peer-reviewed paper that highlighted the advantages that men have in
sports, his post was called “hate speech” and was promptly removed.
In a 52-minute interview called “Denying Biology” on “Tucker Carlson Today” (Fox Nation),
Wright tells the details of the incident and explained why he still
holds to the view that sex is a binary biological reality.
---He also
volunteered the fact that he got involved in debates against creation
and intelligent design in college. He received kudos from his academic
peers for his standing up for “science” against what they perceived as
pseudoscience.
A young PhD and a self-admitted leftist, he planned for a
life in academia where he believed his work would be judged by evidence
rather than ideology.
When he started seeing ideas floating around that sex is
a spectrum of only degrees of maleness or femaleness that can be
altered by personal choice, he considered that notion pseudoscience. He
even started writing about it. That’s when the Woke crowd in academia
went after him big time. He wasn’t just criticized for being “wrong”
about it. He was called a bigot, a transphobe and even a white
supremacist!
Wright testifies that his scientific colleagues were comfortable
writing about binary sexuality when it concerned flies or meadow voles,
but they shielded off human beings in such a way that they were not
allowed to speak of sex in the same realistic terms. When he tried to
point out this inconsistency, he received responses that were “couched
in social justice talk about these terms in vague ways” for fear of
offending somebody.
In 99.98% of cases, he says, the outcome of
development leading to maleness or femaleness is non-controversial: it
is binary, measurable by whether the body produces sperm or ova.
For a
time around 2010, he continues, he was willing to grant that
“gender
identity” might differ from biological sex, but he maintained that sex
itself remained a binary reality. In the last couple of years, he says,
scientists have been asked to make “another concession” – to say that
biological sex is the same thing as gender identity: that it is
fluid and can change, too. The Woke mob began insisting that one’s
identity choice determines what sex they are. “That’s when I got off
that train,” he says. It was blurring the line completely.
---As for the agenda, he sees the social
justice (SJ) movement responsible for the new irrationality and insanity
in cancel culture. “It’s kind of a bizarre place we’re currently in,”
he muses, where “you can’t make the most introductory Biology 101 claims
about sex differences without these things being considered hate
speech.” On Instagram, he had only posted a graph from a peer-reviewed
paper in Sports Medicine, a premiere health journal. Their
judgment of it as “hate speech” prompted him to ask for a review. After
two rounds of review, Instagram maintained its judgment that it was hate
speech.
As a result of this incident, a leftist campaign was mounted against
him — so public that he can probably never be hired in his PhD specialty
at any university.
---Students at Penn State, where he did postgraduate
work, complained of being triggered by seeing him on campus. Professors
joined in the campaign of calling him a transphobe bigot. Even
colleagues he had worked with and considered friends, whom he considered
able to discuss anything, turned on him because of this issue. He noted
that they didn’t read his writings, but made up their opinions based on
rumors they had heard.
Wright is alarmed that these ideas are rampant now in science. So
great is the pressure within academia, he says, that journals have to go
outside academia to find people able to write about the reality of sex
differences. To do so within most universities would be career suicide.
Q: Where did this pressure in universities come from?
A: Wright attributes
it to the focus on “diversity, equity and inclusion” statements that determine academic careers, promotions and
tenure. He describes these required statements as confessions of social
justice slogans. One is not allowed to disagree with the expected
responses." CEH
