I've followed the Prof's case all the way from Australia - a lot of minutiae to work through in this article, but the really obvious anvil to drop regarding controversially upholding mammalian sexual dimorphism would have been to refer the biology and medicine schools' syllabus. Surely if the UofA is teaching this heresy as fact over there, they can hardly argue it would be contentious in another faculty! Unless humanities are some kind of parallel universe.
Prof Lawrey is however quite fortunate that the union actually did its job since so many have been ideologically captured and are delivering their own members to the witchfinders.
You are quite right about my faculty union -- they had to be dragged and coaxed a bit, but they did do their job. This is to their very great credit compared to many other faculty unions in similar circumstances.
Sorry to see the grief you're experiencing as a result of that "newfangled sociobiology of gender ideology" that you talk about in your About. 🙂
Can't say that I've read it all yet -- takes a Philadelphia lawyer to disentangle all the "he said, she said". Though I was amused by your comparisons with Shakespeare and aliens. But sadly, a sign of the times, though they are a' changin' -- as Bob Dylan once put it. Hope you take some encouragement from various cases in the UK, in particular those of Maya Forstater and Rachel Meade:
Rather depressing that gender ideology has corrupted so many of our educational, scientific, and governmental institutions -- no shortage of cases in point. ICYMI:
"Deluded Departments: Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay on the contemporary sophistry that's poisoning academic philosophy."
And I hope you saw that the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" My open letter to them -- cc'ed to Jerry Coyne and Colin Wright:
But I was particularly "intrigued" by this comment of yours in your About -- generally agree with it though not sure about your shot at E.O. Wilson:
"[gender ideology] projects social categories on to nature, and imagines it has found them there. Anthropologists used to be great at spotting this when people like E.O. Wilson, whom they quite rightly did not like, did it."
Kinda think that many don't realize that biologists, even those more or less worth their salt, have ALSO projected their categories on to nature. Though many others -- like Fuentes and his ilk -- don't realize that there are sound logical, philosophical, and epistemological justifications for making functional gonads as the sine qua non for sex category membership as part and parcel of those standard biological definitions:
Springer Link: "Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males (Parker et al. 1972) ..."
Thanks for these great links. You are right that it's almost impossible for humans not to project their own categories on to nature; the best scientists at least keep this in mind and try to watch out for it.
👍 Share the wealth, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. 😉🙂
But quite agree with your "almost impossible". This article and opening paragraph, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), gets into the nitty-gritties of it, though can't say I have more than a rudimentary grasp of the concept:
"Scientific disciplines frequently divide the particulars they study into kinds and theorize about those kinds. To say that a kind is natural is to say that it corresponds to a grouping that reflects the structure of the natural world rather than the interests and actions of human beings."
More than a few have argued, quite reasonably, that the sexes qualify as a pair of those "natural kinds". Hard to imagine more fundamental ones, at least within the scope of biology. Sadly, too many -- including too-many so-called biologists and philosophers -- are busily engaged in corrupting those "natural kinds" with their own parochial and self serving "interests and actions".
Yikes. Made me sad to read that. Alberta hey. The first Canadian legal precedent for "transition" without chemical surgical mutilation was Alberta.
The Trouble With Canada:
Beyond the libs are always the problem... Canada's Conservative elected officials are literally pro-trans. Danielle Smith is literally going to increase men in female spaces with her new "gender" clinic and she sees no problem with men in women's prisons, and just barely has an issue with men in women's sport, barely.
In Canadian politics there is NO OPPOSITION beyond up tax down tax. It's truly depressing.
Hamm's case in BC is dragging out forever.
In other countries Official Opposition and the Courts have integrity.
Not Canada.
The pushback in Canada is soooooooo weak. And that temporary alliance with Muslim parents has truly died since Oct.7.
I don't see any light at the end of the Canadian tunnel.
Kinda thought Danielle Smith is on the right side of history, at least as far as gender is concerned, and particularly relative to "teaching" it in schools:
But it seems Hamm's case is done -- just the final judgement. Given similar cases, particularly in the UK -- and Kathleen's of course, one hopes the judges are starting to read the writing on the wall.
Re: Smith, you're missing the point. Smith will be INCREASING the number of men pretending to be women, in women's spaces. She virtue-signalled some parental stuff, and people got all excited about that, but it's not going to change anything. The school programs are only a part of the influence. When more and more fake women are in society, that's bad for everyone, and leads to ever more pressure on youth to "transition" to achieve the passing look.
We need governments to end fake sex id, all of it, Canada's Conservatives are the least effective conservatives of the entire planet.
On this, and most other things.
Taxation is basically the only difference.
The party conference was fun, but ultimately irrelevant. The Conservative Party is ruled by the Conservative elites, the establishment, such as Griffiths, Stein, Frum, who suggested unvxd Canadians be required 3x weekly anal probes to be allowed to earn a living.
With friends like that, who needs enemies.
The peasants do not hold sway in the Conservative Party establishment.
As for Hamm... let's not live with false hopes. I will wait for the decision. But ultimately, the process is the punishment. She, like Kathleen, have lost years of life.
Back to Smith, don't bother with the influencers, listen to her own words in interviews.
Canada needs to become a Republic, and we need a Republican party. Canada's conservatives are too loyal to authority. They can change nothing.
Tracy -- thanks for these further thoughts (and the original ones). Like you I was really crushed when Danielle Smith came out with that statement about the only thing mattering about men being in women's spaces was "modesty". WHUT? Like as long as he keeps a hand towel over his penis it's all groovy for him to be in there with women and girls? It was especially crushing as she had the support of the public for her pushback on gender ideology. Why did she cave?????
I think the process is the punishment in Amy's case for sure. In my case, I don't think the University expected the union to fight or my dismissal to get any attention in the first place. It has cost me years of energy, but I don't think that was "the plan" on the other side. In fact I think most people most fervidly involved were just having the time of their lives and not thinking even a month ahead: I was just the centrepiece of their pinata party.
Finally, it's very very eerie at this point how quiet Canada is on this stuff. It's not like you have to read in a second language to follow what's happening in the UK, how much they have repudiated the gender frenzy. I don't know what explains it.
Would like to see the evidence for that "Smith will be INCREASING the number of men pretending to be women, in women's spaces."
But quite agree with your "We need governments to end fake sex id, all of it".
I've already complained about Stats Canada policies on gender, and have subsequently written to several Conservative Shadow Ministers, and to Poilievre, about it. Though not terribly impressed with their lack of adequate responses. See my:
Just watch any/all of her interviews when she was virtue-signalling about "parental rights". She has stated a half dozen times that she's increasing Alberta's transition services. Alberta will be Canada's third gender clinic. She has a youth member in her family whose transition she is supporting. In her last est interview she stated she has zero problem with men in women's spaces. "Not a problem we encounter in Alberta, so no interest"
Thanks for writing to them. Sadly, like experimental medical mandates, Canadians are typically 80% onboard. I've been fighting this bs since early 2000s, but was against it since the 90s. There are just too few of us in Canada.
Good for you on that "fighting this bs since 2000s"; live not by lies. I've only been "on the barricades" for some 6 years since this Medium post of mine:
But quite agree with you on that "typically 80% onboard". Though a big part of the problem is that most people haven't a flaming clue about the "grim meat-hook realities" that are the consequences of "gender ideology" -- notably in castrating dysphoric and autistic children, and turning them into sexless eunuchs.
Part and parcel of which is that most people seem not to have progressed much beyond the Kindergarten Cop definitions: "boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas". "Of course people can change sex!" "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" 🙄
Bloody criminal and in more ways than one. Rather "disconcerting" that rather too many ostensibly on "our side" are party to those "misperceptions", Christopher Rufo in particular:
Tranada strikes again. I’m sorry, Kathleen. This era will make the Scopes trial look like a dignified, rational process by comparison.
I've followed the Prof's case all the way from Australia - a lot of minutiae to work through in this article, but the really obvious anvil to drop regarding controversially upholding mammalian sexual dimorphism would have been to refer the biology and medicine schools' syllabus. Surely if the UofA is teaching this heresy as fact over there, they can hardly argue it would be contentious in another faculty! Unless humanities are some kind of parallel universe.
Prof Lawrey is however quite fortunate that the union actually did its job since so many have been ideologically captured and are delivering their own members to the witchfinders.
You are quite right about my faculty union -- they had to be dragged and coaxed a bit, but they did do their job. This is to their very great credit compared to many other faculty unions in similar circumstances.
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/interview-with-george-galloway-the?utm_source=substack&utm_content=feed%3Arecommended%3Acopy_link
Have not watched this but I do agree with the title! The walls really are closing in on dissent.
Sorry to see the grief you're experiencing as a result of that "newfangled sociobiology of gender ideology" that you talk about in your About. 🙂
Can't say that I've read it all yet -- takes a Philadelphia lawyer to disentangle all the "he said, she said". Though I was amused by your comparisons with Shakespeare and aliens. But sadly, a sign of the times, though they are a' changin' -- as Bob Dylan once put it. Hope you take some encouragement from various cases in the UK, in particular those of Maya Forstater and Rachel Meade:
https://archive.is/2024.04.28-211833/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/social-worker-suspended-gender-critical-views-awarded-58000-2b7c337n7#selection-2737.0-2737.12
Rather depressing that gender ideology has corrupted so many of our educational, scientific, and governmental institutions -- no shortage of cases in point. ICYMI:
"Deluded Departments: Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay on the contemporary sophistry that's poisoning academic philosophy."
https://www.philosophersmag.com/opinion/207-deluded-departments
And I hope you saw that the erstwhile reputable biological journal Cell had asked, apparently in all seriousness, "Is 'sex' a useful category?" My open letter to them -- cc'ed to Jerry Coyne and Colin Wright:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/is-sex-a-useful-category
But I was particularly "intrigued" by this comment of yours in your About -- generally agree with it though not sure about your shot at E.O. Wilson:
"[gender ideology] projects social categories on to nature, and imagines it has found them there. Anthropologists used to be great at spotting this when people like E.O. Wilson, whom they quite rightly did not like, did it."
Kinda think that many don't realize that biologists, even those more or less worth their salt, have ALSO projected their categories on to nature. Though many others -- like Fuentes and his ilk -- don't realize that there are sound logical, philosophical, and epistemological justifications for making functional gonads as the sine qua non for sex category membership as part and parcel of those standard biological definitions:
Springer Link: "Female gametes are larger than male gametes. This is not an empirical observation, but a definition: in a system with two markedly different gamete sizes, we define females to be the sex that produces the larger gametes and vice-versa for males (Parker et al. 1972) ..."
https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3063-1
Thanks for these great links. You are right that it's almost impossible for humans not to project their own categories on to nature; the best scientists at least keep this in mind and try to watch out for it.
👍 Share the wealth, praise the Lord and pass the ammunition. 😉🙂
But quite agree with your "almost impossible". This article and opening paragraph, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), gets into the nitty-gritties of it, though can't say I have more than a rudimentary grasp of the concept:
"Scientific disciplines frequently divide the particulars they study into kinds and theorize about those kinds. To say that a kind is natural is to say that it corresponds to a grouping that reflects the structure of the natural world rather than the interests and actions of human beings."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-kinds/#Oth
More than a few have argued, quite reasonably, that the sexes qualify as a pair of those "natural kinds". Hard to imagine more fundamental ones, at least within the scope of biology. Sadly, too many -- including too-many so-called biologists and philosophers -- are busily engaged in corrupting those "natural kinds" with their own parochial and self serving "interests and actions".
Yikes. Made me sad to read that. Alberta hey. The first Canadian legal precedent for "transition" without chemical surgical mutilation was Alberta.
The Trouble With Canada:
Beyond the libs are always the problem... Canada's Conservative elected officials are literally pro-trans. Danielle Smith is literally going to increase men in female spaces with her new "gender" clinic and she sees no problem with men in women's prisons, and just barely has an issue with men in women's sport, barely.
In Canadian politics there is NO OPPOSITION beyond up tax down tax. It's truly depressing.
Hamm's case in BC is dragging out forever.
In other countries Official Opposition and the Courts have integrity.
Not Canada.
The pushback in Canada is soooooooo weak. And that temporary alliance with Muslim parents has truly died since Oct.7.
I don't see any light at the end of the Canadian tunnel.
Kinda thought Danielle Smith is on the right side of history, at least as far as gender is concerned, and particularly relative to "teaching" it in schools:
https://dredles.substack.com/p/on-gender-danielle-smith-gets-it
https://www.evakurilova.com/p/i-met-alberta-premier-danielle-smith
And the Conservatives in general likewise -- you see their Party conference where they more or less rejected the whole concept?
https://tnc.news/2023/09/09/cpc-gender-ideology/
But it seems Hamm's case is done -- just the final judgement. Given similar cases, particularly in the UK -- and Kathleen's of course, one hopes the judges are starting to read the writing on the wall.
https://preta6.substack.com/p/october-23-back-to-the-disciplinary
"Social worker suspended over gender critical views awarded £58,000"
https://archive.is/2024.04.28-211833/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/social-worker-suspended-gender-critical-views-awarded-58000-2b7c337n7
Re: Smith, you're missing the point. Smith will be INCREASING the number of men pretending to be women, in women's spaces. She virtue-signalled some parental stuff, and people got all excited about that, but it's not going to change anything. The school programs are only a part of the influence. When more and more fake women are in society, that's bad for everyone, and leads to ever more pressure on youth to "transition" to achieve the passing look.
We need governments to end fake sex id, all of it, Canada's Conservatives are the least effective conservatives of the entire planet.
On this, and most other things.
Taxation is basically the only difference.
The party conference was fun, but ultimately irrelevant. The Conservative Party is ruled by the Conservative elites, the establishment, such as Griffiths, Stein, Frum, who suggested unvxd Canadians be required 3x weekly anal probes to be allowed to earn a living.
With friends like that, who needs enemies.
The peasants do not hold sway in the Conservative Party establishment.
As for Hamm... let's not live with false hopes. I will wait for the decision. But ultimately, the process is the punishment. She, like Kathleen, have lost years of life.
Back to Smith, don't bother with the influencers, listen to her own words in interviews.
Canada needs to become a Republic, and we need a Republican party. Canada's conservatives are too loyal to authority. They can change nothing.
Tracy -- thanks for these further thoughts (and the original ones). Like you I was really crushed when Danielle Smith came out with that statement about the only thing mattering about men being in women's spaces was "modesty". WHUT? Like as long as he keeps a hand towel over his penis it's all groovy for him to be in there with women and girls? It was especially crushing as she had the support of the public for her pushback on gender ideology. Why did she cave?????
I think the process is the punishment in Amy's case for sure. In my case, I don't think the University expected the union to fight or my dismissal to get any attention in the first place. It has cost me years of energy, but I don't think that was "the plan" on the other side. In fact I think most people most fervidly involved were just having the time of their lives and not thinking even a month ahead: I was just the centrepiece of their pinata party.
Finally, it's very very eerie at this point how quiet Canada is on this stuff. It's not like you have to read in a second language to follow what's happening in the UK, how much they have repudiated the gender frenzy. I don't know what explains it.
Would like to see the evidence for that "Smith will be INCREASING the number of men pretending to be women, in women's spaces."
But quite agree with your "We need governments to end fake sex id, all of it".
I've already complained about Stats Canada policies on gender, and have subsequently written to several Conservative Shadow Ministers, and to Poilievre, about it. Though not terribly impressed with their lack of adequate responses. See my:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/statistics-departments-corrupted
Just watch any/all of her interviews when she was virtue-signalling about "parental rights". She has stated a half dozen times that she's increasing Alberta's transition services. Alberta will be Canada's third gender clinic. She has a youth member in her family whose transition she is supporting. In her last est interview she stated she has zero problem with men in women's spaces. "Not a problem we encounter in Alberta, so no interest"
Thanks for writing to them. Sadly, like experimental medical mandates, Canadians are typically 80% onboard. I've been fighting this bs since early 2000s, but was against it since the 90s. There are just too few of us in Canada.
Good for you on that "fighting this bs since 2000s"; live not by lies. I've only been "on the barricades" for some 6 years since this Medium post of mine:
https://medium.com/@steersmann/the-imperative-of-categories-874154213e42
But quite agree with you on that "typically 80% onboard". Though a big part of the problem is that most people haven't a flaming clue about the "grim meat-hook realities" that are the consequences of "gender ideology" -- notably in castrating dysphoric and autistic children, and turning them into sexless eunuchs.
Part and parcel of which is that most people seem not to have progressed much beyond the Kindergarten Cop definitions: "boys (males) have penises and girls (females) have vaginas". "Of course people can change sex!" "Change your genitalia, change your sex! Act now! Offer ends soon!" 🙄
Bloody criminal and in more ways than one. Rather "disconcerting" that rather too many ostensibly on "our side" are party to those "misperceptions", Christopher Rufo in particular:
https://substack.com/profile/21792752-steersman/note/c-16193243