Patrick Grzanka is a professor in the Department of Psychology and chair of the Interdisciplinary Program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville (here is his profile). I obtained my PhD in sociology (criminology and political economy) from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2000. After seeing Matt Walsh utterly obliterate Grzanka in What is a Woman?, which is streaming right now at Twitter (see below), given my association with this institution, I feel moved to respond.
Of course, I am not responsible for the quality of professors at this or any other institution. In my experience, shallow thinkers obtain PhD and today’s university is a shallow grave—maybe more like a rut at the moment. Grzanka’s degree is in American Studies, which is surprising given that he is tenured in the alleged scientific discipline of psychology.
While American Studies does borrow language from various scientific disciplines, such as history (when using comparative methods) and sociology, the program focuses on the cultural, social, and historical aspects of US society while generally eschewing scientific methods. American Studies thus falls within the broader purview of the humanities, which is today corrupted by critical theory and postmodernism. This is especially true of American Studies, which is a creature of those regressive ideas and, like women, gender, and sexuality studies, a relatively new addition to the list of academic programs at colleges and universities.
Before I continue with all this, I want to report (and maybe you have heard about this already) that Twitter backed out of an agreement to amplify the video. This means that Twitter users will have to know about the livestream and actively seek it out. Twitter also moved to de-boost the video, which makes it even harder to find. You can tell this is happening because “What is a woman?” does not appear in the what is trending feed.
After watching the video, I understand why Twitter reneged on the deal. It is devastating to gender ideology, which the corporate state is keen on promoting. Indeed, this crackpot ideology is blown up in the first few minutes of the video thanks to the interview with Gert Comfrey, a “gender affirming therapist” in Nashville, Tennessee. I wrote on Titter owner Elon Musk’s retweet of the Daily Wire account that is streaming the video: “I checked. Gert Comfrey is an actual person. This is not a skit. The argument Comfrey presents in Walsh’s What is a Woman? is not a straw man. This is gender ideology. Watch the whole thing. But really it’s over at this point. And you are only a few minutes in.”
Okay, so why I am responding to this event? For one thing, I want visitors to Freedom and Reason to know that my professors in the Department of Sociology when I attended that institution could define things without circularity, which is how Grzanka responds to the question “What is a woman?” Grzanka doesn’t even have an argument ready when Walsh calls him on the fallacy, which suggests that this is a problem academics never confront going about their cloistered lives. “A woman,” Grzanka answers Walsh’s probing, “is somebody who identifies as a woman.” In my blog Men Do Not Have Periods, I note that this is like saying that a rectangle is “a geometric shape we called a rectangle,” in addition to or in place of the definition that a rectangle is a geometric shape with four right angles or any of the other objective definitions one might find in a dictionary.
I don’t know if it is still true that professors in the UT Department of Sociology can still do non-tautological definitions. Maybe not in light of the fact that the program now brags: “Ours is a research and teaching environment that emphasizes theories of social justice” (follow the link to learn more). But it was true when I attended in the late 1990s. Whether they can or not, I am taking the opportunity Grzanka presents us with to emphasize the importance of accurate and precise definitions for the purposes of concept formation and operationalization.
Let me be very blunt about this. No actual scientist works from circular or tautological definitions. There is no way to arrive at operational definitions, which are required in hypothesis testing, if the conceptual definition one is attempting to operationalize (i.e., discriminate and measure some thing) has no content independent of the letters than form the term. At the moment somebody who works in a scientific field can supply only a tautological definition, you know that person is not actually a scientist whatever his transcript says or wherever his publications appear.
Frankly, I wonder whether a PhD candidate who cannot define something without circularity should even be awarded the prestigious degree he is seeking. Moreover, why is a man with an American Studies degree, a field notorious for circular definitions, even tenured in a psychology program? Psychologists proclaim their discipline to be scientific. Are psychology faculty at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville not embarrassed by the fact that their colleague can’t tell Matt Walsh what a woman is? Are they embarrassed by how idiotic he appears in the interview? Do they even know how idiotic he appears? Or did they congratulate him on doing a great job in the interview? Could they even bring themselves to watch What is a Woman? or would it burn their eyes?
I am a scientist, so I will answer Matt Walsh’s question. A woman is an adult human female. I can elaborate briefly, briefly since there is little more to say about this. A female is one of two sexes in the human species. The sex binary is also true for all mammals. And for all birds. And for all reptiles. And for most amphibians and fish—and even here, the few species of amphibians and fish that can change sexes can only be one sex at a time. Gender ideology denies these scientific facts. That’s why it is ideology.
One last thing. This exchange from Walsh’s interview with Dr. Michelle Forcier of Brown University, a pediatricians who uses puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and performs surgeries on children, is deeply disturbing given that the medical-industrial complex claims its practices are based on science:
Forcier: Telling that family based on that little penis that your child is absolutely 100 male-identified, not matter what occurs in their life – that’s not correct. …
Walsh: Have you ever met a four-year old who believes in Santa Claus?….Would you say that this is someone who maybe has a tenous grasp of realty
Forcier: They have an appropriate four-year old hand on the reality that’s very real for them
Walsh: Agreed. Santa Claus is real for them, but Santa Claus is not actually real.
Forcier: But Santa Claus does deliver their Christmas presents.
Walsh: Well yeah, but he’s not real though.
Forcier: To that child they are.
Walsh: But I see a child who believes in Santa Claus…but say this is a boy and he says I’m a girl . This is someone who can’t distingue between fantasy and realty so how could you take that as a reality?
Forcier: I would say that as a pediatrician and as a parent I would say how wonderful my four-year old and their imagination is.
See the rest of her interview. Her responses are rationalizations that allow her to justify making money by exploiting confused and distraught families. Watch all of What is a Woman? before the streaming period is over. I provided the link above. Let friends and family know about it.
freedom and reason 
I found it extremely difficult to watch people who have been awarded advanced degrees be so lacking on the basics of critical thinking and foundational scientific knowledge. This is disastrous on so many levels. We need advanced education, and society in general needs to be able to trust that people who have been awarded degrees have been properly educated. The longer this goes on the worse things will get.