A narcissist named Elise Verona, who goes by DaylightElise on X, peddling his trans identity for gifts and money, took issue with a meme shared by Troonphobia Central that debunked the slogan “trans women are women” by simply noting the fact that an archeologist would look at a 1000-year-old skeleton and identify it as belonging to a man whatever gender identity the skeleton had asserted when there were flesh on his bones. DaylightElise writes, “Unknown fact but I have two degrees, one in archaeology and it actually doesn’t work like this at all.”
I didn’t bother tracking down this person to the depth that I could verifying his degrees. Whatever they were, where they were obtained would be the most telling. However, as somebody who has advanced degrees in sociology with a specialization in criminology (a subfield of sociology, not psychology, although one can still find some useful ideas there), and as someone with extensive knowledge of anthropology, I responded: “I’m a professional criminologist. If [sic] actually does work like that. That’s why forensic anthropology is so important to our profession.” This comment, which I made only yesterday, had 3.3 thousand likes last time I checked.
I slayed in the thread that followed, clarifying for users that anthropology is a four-field approach—archeology, cultural anthropology, linguistics, and physical anthropology—with archeology and physical anthropology often associated with criminology programs. As some of you will know, the disciplines of sociology and anthropology are often housed within one department. My master’s degree is associated with such a department (Middle Tennessee State University), and I am on the faculty of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay. The faculty at UWGB are currently rebuilding the program, but, at one time, the anthropology major enjoyed faculty from every field in the discipline. Moreover, UWGB just established a criminal justice major, and the emerging program will likely look like other programs across the nation.
I had to clarify matters on X because many users didn’t know that archaeology was relevant to criminology. Others thought they were clever by noting that cultural anthropology accepts the fallacious distinction between gender and sex, synonyms referring to reproductive anatomy in both animal and plant biology. To be sure, cultural anthropology has, as has sociology, accepted the woke nonsense that trans identifying men are women, but physical anthropology hasn’t been completely captured by the neo-religion of woke progressivism. Neither has archeology. Not yet, anyway. Hopefully, this won’t happen, since both are useful to criminology, as well as criminalistics, which is why they are routinely included in criminology programs. Once woke, disciplines become pretty much useless.
Many stupid comments were made in the ensuing debate. But there is one I want to curate here because it shows how trans ideology leans into gender stereotypes, reifying and treating the blue and the pink as real at the expense of, well, everything. User Cailey | Semi said, “as someone who studied forensic anthropology and osteology in college, OP [another user] is right in that context is important. if you find a missing person dressed in womens [sic] clothes and identify the person as male based on their skeleton alone, you’re doing the deceased + family a disservice.”
See how this works? Men who wear women’s clothes should not be identified as male because this might upset those who wish to believe the deceased man is a woman—as if wearing a dress changes a man’s gender (why the dead man cares escapes this atheist). I asked the user whether jeans and a t-shirt, short hair and no makeup, etc., makes a woman a man. Is gender really about apparel and cosmetics? I asked this question because this is the superficiality that pressures tom boys to take testosterone and undergo phalloplasty (presently, girls and young women are drastically overrepresented those seeking gender affirming care). And we know the medical-industrial complex is eager to help make that happen—for a price.
Well, this type of probing and the popularity of my comment was too much for Elise Verona. He changed his DaylightElise account to only allow comments from those he follows or mentions.
Alas, I can no longer respond to those who disagree with me on the DaylightElise intervention. But I made my point. It’s a simple one: as a matter of science, men are not women and cannot be and this is a scientific fact. Gender is binary and immutable. It is, of course, tragic that so many people refuse to accept this. But it is also tragic for the rest of us, as well; for the sake of the feelings and delusions of others, and for those who invest in the medical corporations that exploit the disordered and vulnerable, we’re supposed to deny scientific reality. At the very least, we are expected to act in bad faith. This is why students at my university organized a petition to get me fired: they don’t like it that I won’t go along with all this nonsense. Worse than that, I debunk it. Having a scientific materialist uncorrupted by woke progressivism debunk gender ideology is the nightmare par excellence.
Peter Berger tells us why in his 1967 tour de force in the sociology of religion, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion:
“The socially established nomos may thus be understood, perhaps in its most important aspect, as a shield against terror. Put differently, the most important function of society is nomization. The anthropological presupposition for this is a human craving for meaning that appears to have the force of instinct. Men are congenitally compelled to impose a meaningful order upon reality. This order, however, presupposes the social enterprise of ordering world-construction. To be separated from society exposes the individual to a multiplicity of dangers with which he is unable to cope by himself, in the extreme case to the danger of imminent extinction. Separation from society also inflicts unbearable psychological tensions upon the individual, tensions that are grounded in the root anthropological fact of sociality. The ultimate danger of such separation, however, is the danger of meaninglessness. This danger is the nightmare par excellence, in which the individual is submerged in a world of disorder, senselessness and madness. Reality and identity are malignantly transformed into meaningless figures of horror. To be in society is to be ‘sane’ precisely in the sense of being shielded from the ultimate ‘insanity’ of such anomic terror. Anomy is unbearable to the point where the individual may seek death in preference to it. Conversely, existence within a nomic world may be sought at the cost of all sorts of sacrifice and suffering—and even at the cost of life itself, if the individual believes that this ultimate sacrifice has nomic significance.”
For those unfamiliar with phenomenology, the nomos is the socially constructed order or framework within which individuals and societies interpret and make sense of reality. Those who are confused about their gender, a rapidly growing segment of the population, are the result of a society that has walked away from truth and selected among the many choices a mythology that feels right to them. Society has not taken this walk on purpose. Rather, for economic and political purposes, the elites who organize society have compelled those under their command to take this walk for them by disrupting the nomos and making them stand and move on shaky legs.
Thanks to the post-truth spectacle of corporate culture, bereft of a meaning system that supports natural development across the life-course, those thrown into anomic circumstances are alienated from everything—including their own bodies. Not left there to suffer, they are given an elite established nomos that diagnoses their alienation as “gender dysphoria.” At the same time, elites provide the solution: not one that would turn society back towards the road to healthy childhood development, but rather a solution that puts individuals on the path to metamorphosis, a transformation the rest of society must affirm and promote for legitimation’s sake—and to avoid the mob. But doubt is lurking, and reality almost always intrudes, and so the death sought in preference to unbearable anomie on one side of the transition finds death as preferable on its other side. It is a dark universe the elite have created for our children.
Berger also said this: “Society is a dialectic phenomenon in that it is a human product, and nothing but a human product, that yet continuously acts back upon its producer. Society is a product of man. It has no other being except that which is bestowed upon it by human activity and consciousness. There can be no social reality apart from man. Yet it may also be stated that man is a product of society. Every individual biography is an episode within the history of society, which both precedes and survives it. Society was there before the individual was born and it will be there after he has died. What is more, it is within society, and as a result of social processes, that the individual becomes a person, that he attains and holds onto an identity, and that he carries out the various projects that constitute his life. Man cannot exist apart from society. The two statements, that society is the product of man and that man is the product of society, are not contradictory. They rather reflect the inherently dialectic character of the societal phenomenon. Only if this character is recognized will society be understood in terms that are adequate to its empirical reality.” I am going to ask readers to hold this in their mind as they read the next few paragraphs.
The chant of gender cultists—“trans women are women”—works the way prayer works, which is to say that it doesn’t work at all. Not in any objective sense. To be sure, we exist in a social reality. But we also exist in a natural world. We are natural beings. We live in a social world that denies that, or we live in one that embraces it. There are, of course, degrees between; but, if we are to fully realize the potential within a natural being, we must strive for the latter. Prayer does nothing but make a man feel like he is control. People who pray believe it does something because they want it to so badly, and they want this so badly because, without a realistic grasp of the world, they cannot actually control their life situation. Those who cannot accept their gender do not have a realistic grasp on the world. And so they resort to magical thinking. Magical thinking has always existed in man, and species of magical thinking are all alike in this regard.
Chants like “trans women are women” do a couple of things. The first is that is that they are incantations uttered, or are comprised of a set of ritual steps, to induce transubstantiation. That means they desire to call into existence something that doesn’t actually exist, or to transform something into something else (for example alchemy). The second is that they work as Orwellian paradoxes, like “war is peace” in Nineteen Eighty-Four. In the case of the present slogan, a little extra bit is added in there so that it becomes something like “trans peace is peace,” where “trans peace” means war. There is a third piece to this in our specific case that involves the resurrection of the word “validation” rendered now as “affirmation.” (Everybody caught on to the hokum of validation and the trick needed a synonym to work again. Yet another example of progressive Newspeak.)
Affirmation is especially successful this time around because, first, it is necessary, since a man is not really a woman and he knows it so he depends on everybody around him to keep agreeing with him that he is whatever he says he is. Keeping alive the illusion requires constant and ubiquitous chanting. It’s like how the slogan “God is great” calls forth the response: “All the time.” This is the “Amen” effect. Corporations and governments help here by punishing those who refuse to say “Amen.” Second, on a faux-moral level, those who don’t affirm the man’s delusion are bad people. This is the role performed by support slogans, such as “love is love” and “be kind,” appearing on yard signs, placards in classrooms, and billboards. Failing to rehearse the slogans often and robustly reminds the man who says he is a woman that he is not really one by not affirming his delusion (or deception), by refusing to use the wrong pronouns, that is by correctly gendering him, which, through another Orwellian maneuver, is turned into its opposite. An authentic morality would tell him the truth.
* * *
Yahoo Sports is reporting that the Court of Arbitration for Sport panel of three judges has dismissed Thomas’ request for arbitration with the World Aquatics governing body, in a ruling released today. I’m pressed for time, so I will crib the language of the article, “Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas fails in challenge to rules that bar her from elite women’s races.”
In 2022, World Aquatics banned transgender women who have been through male puberty from competing in women’s races (why puberty matters is rather irrational, given the many other fundamental differences between the genders).
“Blanket bans preventing trans women from competing are discriminatory and deprive us of valuable athletic opportunities that are central to our identities.” Thomas said the decision should be viewed as a call to action for trans women to “fight for our dignity and human rights.” Thomas’ argument is so bogus on every level that is could be taken as parody. It is not discriminatory to permit men to compared against women in women’s sports. Indeed, it is the opposite.
As I showed on Monday (see Decoding Progressive Newspeak: Equity and the Doctrine of Inclusion) women’s sports were created in order to make it possible for women to have an equal opportunity to participate in sports given the vast advantages men have over women. On average, males have greater muscle mass, larger bone structure, and higher levels of testosterone, contributing to their advantage in strength and power-based activities. Differences in muscle fiber composition, with males typically having a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, can lead to enhanced explosive strength and speed. Physiological factors such as lung capacity and cardiovascular endurance also exhibit variations between sexes, with males often having larger lung volumes and higher aerobic capacity. These differences can influence performance in endurance-based activities, where oxygen delivery and utilization play crucial roles.
Thomas is a man. He enjoys all these advantages. Of course, he does not have the advantages against the elite in men’s swimming. Competing as a man he wouldn’t make it to the elite stage—as it should be because he isn’t good enough. The unfair advantage he seeks is grossly unfair to women, and if he going to claim he is one, then he should at least have the decency to recognize this fact and not use his unfair advantages to harm women’s sports. He even cites the “valuable athletic opportunities that are central to our identities.” Presumably he means by identity the category woman. So why on earth would intrude upon the valuable athletic opportunities finally afforded to the category with which he identifies knowing that he is not actually a woman?
The usual voices are speaking in his favor. Athlete Ally founder and executive director Hudson Taylor called it a “sad day for sports and for anyone who believes that trans athletes should have the opportunity for their experiences of discrimination to be heard and adjudicated like everyone else.” Okay. So there are people who believe that trans athletes (what a weird concept) should have the opportunity for their experiences of discrimination to be heard and adjudicated like everyone else. But the panel determined he did not have standing. Why is that? I haven’t read the decision, but if I were a judge on the panel, it would be enough to state the obvious: because this is women’s sports and you’re a man.
Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) president Sarah Kate Ellis said that Thomas deserves a chance to participate in his sport like all human beings who work hard and follow their dream. “World Aquatics continues to spread disinformation about transgender people as a distorted way to ‘protect women,’” Ellis said. “Transgender women are women and all athletes who want to play and follow the rules should have a chance to do so.” But transgender women are self-evidently men, and if you want to spend time falsifying the claim, that’s easy enough to do (I’ve done it several times on Freedom and Reason).
There is no reason why Thomas can’t participate in his sport except that he is not competitive and he doesn’t like that. This isn’t about whether he can compete in men’s sports. It’s about whether a man should be allowed to compete against women in women’s sports. No. Of course not. It’s madness. And why is an organization that defends the rights of lesbians, who are necessarily women, defending a man who wants to trespass upon women’s spaces? What happened to these organizations? Why are they undermining the very groups they claim to support? Are they scared? Or is it that, since gays and lesbians have achieved equality, they need another struggle to keep the donations pouring in? Is it the case that organizations struggling for civil rights are incapable of packing it in once they have won those rights? If so, that is a kind of madness in itself.
freedom and reason 