Trans Organization Pulls “Biological Condition” Article

The “Translucent” website, aka “Stephanie Richards blog” with great fanfare announced that it was going to publish an article from a “research scientist” claiming that being transgender was a “biological condition.” This website recently won an LGBT Community Organization Award at the 2022 UK National Diversity Awards. There was a big build-up in which the UK press got early notice and copies of the article.

But the website cancelled publication in a tweet.

Stephanie Richards

There evidently had received pressure from the left to cancel publication because it did not fit into their rejection of “essentialism”, meaning recognition that we are born with biological differences. Several arguments were raised about re-medicalization of being transgender and that if a cause was found then there could be a cure. They argued that if a cause were to be found a test could be developed getting in the way of the criterion of “lived experience” for being transgender. The arguments were used to screen the leftist ideas of structuralism, meaning that being transgender is totally under the influence of social learning and alliance with an identity group

I have been taking a course on how philosophy and psychology influence education and these issues suddenly brought to mind a group of related educational philosophies. The course started with Plato and Aristotle and ended up with Montessori and Postmodernism. The suppression of the article reminded me of the philosophy of Marx and Engels who rejected all forms of “essentialism.” According to this philosophy, we are all the same at birth and we are totally shaped by our social experiences. In fact, learning only occurs through social interactions. The latter is emphasized in the current Social Emotional Learning philosophy of Lev Vygotsky and Paulo Freire that has taken over our schools. The objective of this education philosophy is to overthrow the culture by educating children to be good Communists and socialists. Then political power will fall into the hands of a collectivist hierarchy.

In contrast to the left, objective Modern philosophies believe that there is an objective world to be explored by science. Nature to be commanded for our use, must first be understood. Frequent readers of my blog will know that we have begun to understand the biological basis for being transgender. There is evidence for a genetic basis including twin studies, identification of genes associated with being transgender, and biomarkers that are associated with being transgender including handedness. We have a genetic predisposition for particular behaviors that culture includes in the range of gender behavior categories (e.g. masculine/feminine). Culture determines these categories which are human-made and not biological. We try to fit our biological predispositions into these categories but transgender people do not fit into the category they were assigned at birth associated with their sex assigned at birth.

We are still far away from understanding the biological causal factor(s) that contribute to being transgender. Such understanding would be required to fashion a “cure”. The reason for this is that being transgender is not an illness and funding for research is predicated on illness. There is no ”big science” funding for important human phenomena such as being transgender and human love.

There is no cure for being transgender and surveys of transgender people have repeatedly indicated that they would not take a cure if there was one. Leftists are fearful that the supply of transgender people to populate a marginalized identity group might be reduced. According to Critical Theory, such groups are needed to demonstrate that the culture must be overthrown. A subdivision of Critical Theory, Critical Queer Theory, concentrates on sexual orientation and transgender identity groups.

The same goes for developing a test for being transgender. We are far away from developing a genetic test because of funding and because of the complexity of genetics. Most genetic traits require a network of genes. For example, we have yet to understand all the genes involved in forming sex organs but the number is 5000 (5% of DNA genes) and increasing with each study. Such networks share genes with other networks. There are genetic tests for predisposition to illness but many genes are never expressed. For example, the genes associated with the predisposition for some breast and ovarian cancers (BRCA) , may not be expressed due to other genes or due to epigenetics. About half to two-thirds actually do develop such cancers.

I am not going to leave out the radical right on this issue. Although they were not involved in this latest incident as far as I can tell, they also reject science. I also include the TERFs on the radical right side of transgender issues. They are so far to the left that they wrap around to the right. The right rejects science because it might undercut their contention that being transgender is a mental illness. Some believe it is a fetish and motivated solely by sexual arousal. As I have written here, On the knife edge, both the radical right and the left philosophies are dangerous and are to be avoided.

For my money, it is better to know than not to know. I can reason on scientific facts and evidence but not on tenets of political mythology.

But there are those who are fearful of science getting in the way of politics.

Dana on a beach with her partner wishing you a happy holiday.

Like to make a comment? Login here and use the comment area below.

Tags: featured, science, Transgender

Category: Transgender Science