freedom and reason

One of the arguments that those defending mass immigration are fond of making is that immigrants commit less crime than the native-born. I have written about this before (see Crime, Immigration, and the Economy; Obscuring the Crime-Immigration Connection). The argument has returned and offered as proof is a 2020 article published in PNAS, “Comparing crime rates between undocumented immigrants, legal immigrants, and native-born US citizens in Texas,” by Michael Light and associated (edited by Douglas Massey of American Apartheid fame).

The authors admit that “[t]he limited information we do have about undocumented criminality is not only conspicuously scant but also highly inconsistent.” The authors cite two studies: “A 2018 report from the Cato Institute found that arrest and conviction rates for undocumented immigrants are lower than those of native-born individuals. Research by the Crime Prevention Research Center in that same year, however, reached the exact opposite conclusion.” They comment: “Neither of these studies was peer-reviewed, and thus, their data and methodologies have not been subject to scientific scrutiny.” Why the need for peer review is unclear. Peer review is a historically recent device for establishing pseudo-legitimacy. Perhaps it is to obscure the fact that the second study, “Undocumented Immigrants, U.S. Citizens, and Convicted Criminals in Arizona,” was conducted by John Lott, a very serious scholar whose work I recently summarized in Corporate Media and Democrats Distorting Crime in America. Peer review does nothing to enhance the validity and soundness of Lott’s work.

I will argue in this essay that the point of Light and associate’s exercise is irrelevant to the question that prompts it, namely public concern about illegal immigration and crime. I will argue further that a conclusion they reach is rather obviously wrong. The conclusion: “Our findings help us understand why the most aggressive immigrant removal programs have not delivered on their crime reduction promises and are unlikely to do so in the future.” To deal with this claim forthwith, if, say, ten million illegal aliens were removed from the United States, this would result in a significant reduction of crime. How could it not? As for the point of the study, I will address this by asking the reader to engage with me in a thought experiment: the introduction of a thousand immigrants into a small community with a population of a thousand people. Some might find this example unrealistic, but by way of real-world experience, only last year 400 immigrants were relocated in the small village of Upahl, Germany. Upahl’s native-born population is only 500.

For this demonstration, let’s use arrest rates, since this is what Light and associated use. This is useful for Light’s purposes because, with arrest, the authorities can determine immigration status. If crimes reported to the police were used, then immigration status will remain unknown for a significant proportion of crimes reported. An immigrant in the country illegally has already committed a crime, but let’s put that aside and agree that the crime in question is an Index crime—aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, murder, rape, and robbery. Light and associates include felony drug crimes. Doing so, Light and associates find that, for the period 2012-2018, “[t]he gaps between native-born citizens and undocumented immigrants are substantial: US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes.” 

So let’s consider our small community of a thousand citizens. Fifty of them have each committed a crime in which there is an arrest. That’s fifty arrests. The arrest rate among citizens is 5 percent, which is rather substantial. Citizens in this community are already heavily burdened by crime and other social ills. Now suppose a thousand immigrants move into the community and twenty-five of them each have committed a crime leading to an arrest. The arrest rate is 2.5 percent. In other words, the rate of arrests among immigrants for crime commission relative to citizens is half as much, albeit still significant. With the introduction of the immigrants, the incidence of crime in the community as measured by arrests has increased by 50 percent—whatever the relative rates for the different groups. That is a substantial rise in the number of arrests for serious crime.

We might reasonably expect that citizens will be among the victims of immigrant crimes, so whatever the relative rates for the two groups, the presence of immigrants has increased the risk of victimization for citizens. (You might wish for me to note that immigrants may be the victims of native-born perpetrators. If the immigrants weren’t there, then they wouldn’t face this possibility.) In addition to greater susceptibility to criminal victimization, citizens also experience greater competition for jobs and resources (housing, for example). The taxpayers of the community also shoulder a greater burden, as the immigrants use public infrastructure, public services, etc. As noted, the community is already burdened by a range of social problems. The presence of the immigrants compounds these problems.

The relevant question to ask about the quality of like for the citizens is a rather straightforward one: How is the lower arrest rate for immigrants relevant to the experiences of the native-born? How does it matter to imperiled citizen in the real world they have to navigate that immigrants are less likely to be arrested for crime? Why should the citizens of the community endure even more crime and additional and exacerbated burdens? Those defending immigrant crime aren’t suggesting the government kick citizens out of the country, are they? (I have actually heard this said.) Citizens have a right to be in their own country whatever the degree of criminality. However, the government can deport immigrants or keep them out of my country in the first place, thus effectively reducing the arrest rate. After all, immigrants aren’t supposed to be in the community—or even in the country.

Moreover, immigrants have children, and whatever one might say about the relative prevalence of offending between native born and first generation immigrants, by the second generation, the prevalence is the same as native born. The above graph depicts the age crime curve. Note when crime peaks. We know that the age crime curve is generated from criminal behavior by males, as males are drastically overrepresented in serious crime. This means that the more males in the population, the greater the prevalence of criminal offending. Who the illegal immigrants are is therefore important to consider. If most of them are young males, then this will have a greater impact on public safety than if they were families or young women. I believe readers have a pretty good understanding of who have been illegally crossing the southern border.

The relative arrest rates may be some interest if one is trying to understand crime causation. But to do this we first need to have accurate statistics, and arrest rates aren’t going to tell us how much crime there is but only how many people were arrested. Moreover, immigrants could be committing more crime than citizens even if more citizens are arrested for crime. I have good reason to suspect that immigrants are underrepresented in crime statistics. If true, our imagined community is in an even worst situation.

Those of us who study crime are frustrated by reporting bias. Not all victims report crime to the police. We know that the number of crimes reported to the police is less than half of the number crimes victims will report in scientific victimization surveys. Not only are not all crimes reported to the police, not all crimes lead to an arrest, not all reported crimes are recorded by police, and not all recorded crimes are reported to the federal government who publishes these data. Crimes committed by immigrants may be underreported because victims are also immigrants and fear interacting with authorities who may determine their immigration status and deport them. This will lead to fewer arrests of immigrants who commit crime. New arrivals are unknown to police and are not among the usual suspects. As a result, they are therefore harder to identify and find. And with the population increase, there are fewer cops per capita to deter crime. 

That there are persons unknown to police and that police are struggling to control crime in their community is of relevance to the citizens who must endure more crime in their community. The average citizen is not interested in conducting a study of crime causation. He is interested in safe streets, and he knows crime has increased with the increased presence of illegal immigrants in his community. In other words, the relative rates of offending between different citizens and immigrants is only relevant because the statistics confirm that increase in crime is due to the increase in immigrants. It was bad enough as it was. He doesn’t want to see it get worse. So he will rationally and rightly oppose the increase of immigrants in his community. And if his government does not reflect his interests, as it should, then his government has failed him.

There is an occupation one may take up determining the sex of chickens called “chick sexing.” The experts who perform the task are “chick sexers” or “poultry sexers.” They are very good at what they do, with accuracy rates typically ranging between 95-98 percent. This high level of accuracy comes from extensive training and experience. Crucially, chickens are not “assigned” a sex at hatching, but rather the chick sexer only identifies what nature has determined. Why it is necessary to sex chicks is because male chickens do not produce eggs but fertilize them, and since the egg industry seeks unfertilized eggs, all male chicks must be identified and disposed of.

Female and male chickens have gender roles, these roles determined by natural history. They also have a gender identity. Gender identity in all birds is determined by chromosomes, a system known as ZW, which is different from the XY system found in mammals. Female birds have two different sex chromosomes: ZW, with the W chromosome determining the female sex. Male birds have two identical sex chromosomes: ZZ. In this system, which is the opposite of mammals, the sex of the offspring is determined by the female, since she can pass on either a Z or a W chromosome, whereas the male can only pass on a Z chromosome. Since chickens do not have belief systems, the expectations and norms that establish the roles rooted in gender do not result from socialization and social pressure. Nor do chickens think they are the gender they are not.

As readers of Freedom and Reason know, I am always thinking about how we should understand and explain things. That’s my task as a social scientist employed by a comprehensive university. Crucially, enlightenment doesn’t ask us to disregard fiction. Rather it asks us to be able to distinguish fiction from fact, i.e., what is not real from what is real, and to teach our students how to do the same. For example, if one reads a story about talking chickens, one knows he is reading an allegory. Recall Animal Farm by George Orwell. When animals are used to personify human characteristics or societal roles, this technique is known as anthropomorphism. Children often think that animals can think and talk. Sometimes they think they are animals themselves (they are, but not the animals they pretend to be). In reality, the only animal who can have ideas are human beings. Only human beings can create religions and other systems based on fictional entities, relations, and situations. Only human beings can think they are something they are not. (See Judith Butler’s Gender Gibberish.)

The role of the scientist at the comprehensive university is three-fold: develop a curriculum and teach and evaluate students on the basis of it; make sure the university functions through committee work; and generate and evaluate ideas. As for generating and evaluating ideas, which involves analysis and synthesis, scientists write and rehearse lines to determine which are more compelling in light of fact and reason—not to advance or defend fictions. For administrators or colleagues to demand scientists toe certain lines obviates the autonomy and freedom required to make objective determinations concerning the validity and soundness of those and others lines. The scientist must enjoy autonomy to research and publish what interests him or else the task becomes corrupted. When administrators circumscribe the parameters of what the scientist can research and on what he may publish, they are asking not for enlightenment, but for the adherence to and dissemination of ideology. They do the same when they establish a committee to select textbooks, which is something that occurs all the time in k-12 education, but also occurs in some colleges and universities.

I recently had a back and forth on X with transactivists who insisted on sharing with me their college textbooks claiming that gender and sex are different things and that both are more complex than my describing of gender in chickens. I told them they were wasting their time since any college textbook that made these claims was corrupted by ideology. I have explained this several times on Freedom and Reason, but it might be helpful to summarize the problem of ideology in gender science here before critiquing ideology in science.

The standard version of the queer doctrine is that “sex” is biological, determined by physical attributes such as reproductive organs and chromosomes, while “gender” is cultural and cultural, involving identity and roles that may or may not align with an individual’s biological sex. More recently, sex itself has become a target of problematization, which is the postmodernist technique of undermining materialist science. As I have shown on Freedom and Reason, sex and gender are synonyms, both referring to sex chromosomes, gamete size, and reproductive anatomy. So a trick has been played here. The trick involves leaving out important words, namely “identity” and “role,” and then assuming them into the argument thereby avoiding defining them. It is not that there is no definition in operation. It is that the definition is not defensible when the assumption is made explicit.

Identity, according to ideology, is a deeply personal sense of one’s own gender that may or may not align with the person’s gender (or sex). It encompasses how individuals perceive themselves and what they call themselves—such as male, female, a blend of both, or neither. However, if we are working in the domain of facts, identity is not what a thing thinks of itself (almost nothing in the university possesses this capacity), but what the thing is. Only humans can be confused about this. A queen is not in possession of an ideology that will make her think she is a tom. She is not a tom because she is female and toms are male. Her gender identity is queen.

Roles refer to the expectations and norms that societies establish regarding the activities and attitudes deemed appropriate for individuals based on their gender. These roles are deeply ingrained in cultural, social, and historical contexts and can vary significantly across different societies and time periods. All this is true and general knowledge in anthropology, psychology, and sociology. However, these roles ultimately attach to the biological reality of gender, for example, in the fact that men cannot perform the role of carrying the fetus to term, or in the fact that men do not lactate. There are many facts like this that differentiate males from females. This is because our species, like every other mammalian species, is sexually dimorphic. (For more about this, see Gender and the English Language.)

What has happened here is that science has been corrupted by ideology. This is not a conspiracy theory, as the corruption of science has happened in many places and times and everybody accepts that this is a problem—just not when it is their favored doctrine on the operating table. In the Soviet Union, this phenomenon was most notably exemplified in the social sciences and biology, where Marxist-Leninist ideology imposed constraints on research and scientific development. Under the Soviet regime, scientific inquiry was expected to align with Marxist-Leninist ideology, which claimed that all social and natural phenomena could be understood through dialectical materialism. This framework, which emphasizes the dialectical process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis in historical and material conditions, was applied beyond the social sciences to the natural sciences, including biology and, to some extent, physics.

In biology, the most infamous example of this ideological corruption was Lysenkoism. Trofim Lysenko, an agronomist who rejected Mendelian genetics in favor of a theory that aligned more closely with Marxist principles, gained prominence under Stalin. Lysenko’s ideas, which included the inheritance of acquired characteristics and the rejection of genetic determinism, were embraced because they seemingly supported the Marxist belief in the malleability of human and natural conditions. The result was a devastating impact on Soviet agriculture and biological research, as Lysenko’s theories were implemented despite their scientific invalidity. Scientists who opposed Lysenko were persecuted, imprisoned, or even executed, illustrating how ideology can stifle dissent and lead to disastrous consequences for scientific progress. Physics, being more resistant to ideological distortion due to its empirical rigor, was less affected than the biological and social sciences. Nevertheless, the overarching ideological pressure sometimes led to constraints on scientific freedom, particularly in areas where research could potentially contradict state ideology.

The corruption of science by ideology is not unique to the Soviet Union; it has also occurred in corporate systems. In capitalist societies, the primary ideological force is often the market, where scientific research can be directed by corporate interests rather than pure inquiry. For example, pharmaceutical companies may suppress research that could harm their profits, or fund studies that promote their products, regardless of the potential harm to public health. The tobacco industry’s efforts to discredit research on the dangers of smoking is a notorious example of how capitalist interests can corrupt science. In fascist regimes, a more extreme form of corporatism, science was often subjugated to ideologies.

Nazi Germany is the most extreme example, where scientific research was distorted to support the ideology of racial purity and Aryan superiority. Eugenics, which sought to apply principles of selective breeding to human populations, was used to justify horrific practices, including forced sterilizations. The Nazi regime’s corruption of science illustrates how ideological goals can lead to the gross manipulation and misuse of scientific knowledge to justify inhumane policies. However, one must remember that eugenics was practiced in the United States long before the Nazis were in power (and don’t forget about lobotomies and other medical atrocities). There it was an expression of progressivism and technocratic desire, all signs of the corporate state. Today we see the corporate corruption of in gender affirming industry, which uses the pseudoscience of sexology beamed through the prism of queer theory to justify practices that generate billions of dollars annually.

It stands to reason, and this should be obvious (but its not because of the problem of ideological hegemony), if textbooks are corrupted by ideology or centralized power, then they may not be the most reliable sources of knowledge, especially in the natural sciences. Big textbook companies, such as Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Cengage, have increasingly aligned themselves with ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) criteria and other scoring organizations like HRC (Human Rights Campaign). These companies are not only evaluated on financial performance but also on their commitment to sustainability, social responsibility, and governance practices.The social piece of ESG emphasizes diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their hiring practices, content creation, and educational initiatives.

Textbook content is being updated to reflect more inclusive perspectives, aligning with broader social goals such as gender and racial equity. HRC metrics pertain to cultural alignment, that is how well a company’s culture aligns with societal expectations, including support for LGBTQ+ rights. Textbook content may be scrutinized to ensure it aligns with these cultural values. If a textbook presents the science of gender in a valid and sound way, because this contradicts queer theory, the company may receive a poor rating by HRC, and they need a high rating to draw investment. Thus textbook companies are under pressure to produce content that aligns with ESG and HRC criteria. This can result in the inclusion of topics like climate change, social justice, and diversity in curricula, sometimes leading to controversies over perceived biases or ideological slants. (See The Politics and Purpose of Affirming the Person; The Function of Woke Sloganeering; The Struggle for Gay Liberation and Threats to Its Achievements;

The science of gender is corrupted in other ways, as well. Several professors have faced significant challenges for teaching the biology of sex and gender in ways that conflict with queer theory, which emphasizes the fluidity and social construction of gender over biological determinism. Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy who left her position at the University of Sussex after being accused of transphobia for her views on gender. Stock argued for the importance of biological sex in understanding gender, which led to significant protests and her eventual resignation in 2021. David Bernstein, a law professor at Georgetown, faced backlash for questioning the legal implications of redefining sex and gender, particularly in relation to Title IX. While he was not fired, he was subject to considerable public criticism and student protests. Colin Wright, whose work I have cited on Freedom and Reason, was an assistant professor go evolutionary biology at Penn State. He publicly criticized the push to redefine gender in ways that downplay or deny the biological basis of sex, which led to intense backlash. As a result, Wright experienced ostracism from colleagues, lost research opportunities, and eventually felt he could no longer continue his academic career due to the increasingly hostile environment. (Visit his platform Reality’s Last Stand.)

Wright and many others are concerned about the definition of these terms because they can harm women in a myriad of ways. Most recently, Wright (and Your’s Truly) criticized the inclusion of males in women’s sports at the Olympic Games. (For my writings on this see The IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak; Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion; The Ubiquity of Fallacious Reasoning on the Progressive Left; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Exclusive Inclusivity; Dignity and Sex-Based Rights; Supper in the Spectacular Café.) In the following post on X, Kellie-Jay Keen explains why the propagandistic language around sex and gender by queer activists is so dangerous. She takes up the case of rape.

Let Women Speak are like a magnet to extreme misogynists. 🧲
Trans activists can't resist any opportunity to pull their masks on to go and shout obscenities at women.🤬 https://t.co/uaRzADRGuw pic.twitter.com/GzqVSIbKTM

— Biology Rules Ok (@OkayBiology) August 19, 2024

These aren’t abstract exercises. Those of us who are critical of gender ideology are concerned about the real effects on society when our language is corrupted by corporate and other elites with the power to disseminate manipulated definitions (see Manipulating Reality by Manipulating Words). When ideology, whether socialist or corporatist dictates what is included or excluded in scientific education, the integrity of the information presented is compromised. In the Soviet Union, biology textbooks were distorted by Lysenkoism, promoting scientifically invalid ideas that aligned with state ideology, while dissenting voices were silenced. Similarly, in corporatist societies, textbooks distort, downplay, and omit information that conflicts with moneyed interests. Therefore, telling someone to read such a textbook to “get their head on straight” is like asking them to read the Bible or Dianetics to find objective truth; if the source is known to be ideologically corrupted or is an ideological project, it cannot be considered authoritative—or really even useful except to demonstrate how corruption works. In this light, critical examination of arguments and texts is essential to avoid the pitfalls of indoctrination and to approach a more accurate understanding of scientific truths.

Earlier this month I revisited the problem of crime Ferguson, Missouri (see Ferguson Ten Years Later). As a criminologist who began his career by examining the role of social structure and class inequality in fostering criminogenic conditions and public responses, I’ve come to recognize that the culture that pervades high-crime areas significantly contributes to the persistence of crime, disorder, and violence. While I continue to work from the materialist conception of history, and view culture as emergent from underlying structural conditions, I recognize that once a particular culture takes root, it not only persists but also dialectically reinforces the very structures that produced it. In this way, culture functions akin to an ideology, reproducing a system of social norms and relations that perpetuates the existing conditions. Therefore cultural critique cannot be eschewed by scholars working from the historical materialist standpoint. (See Mapping the Junctures of Social Class and Racial Caste; Marxist Theories of Criminal Justice and Criminogenesis)

The dissolution of the nuclear family can be seen as both a consequence and a catalyst within this dialectical relationship between structure and culture. Economic inequalities and structural dislocations, exacerbated by progressive state policies, have eroded traditional family structures, particularly in high-crime areas, leading to fragmented family units that struggle to provide stability and socialization for children. As these weakened family structures become more prevalent, they contribute to the perpetuation of a culture that normalizes and even necessitates alternative social arrangements, often reinforcing patterns of crime, disorder, and violence. This cultural shift further entrenches the structural conditions that undermine the nuclear family, creating a feedback loop that perpetuates social instability. In this way, the disintegration of the nuclear family both reflects and reinforces the broader systemic issues that drive inequality and social dysfunction.

In this essay, I explore the problem of culture and the family in high-crime areas, focusing on how the dissolution of the nuclear family both reflects and reinforces the broader systemic issues that perpetuate crime and social dysfunction. I argue that a scaling up of the defense mechanism of reaction formation, alongside the problem of learned helplessness, plays a critical role in this dynamic. As traditional family structures erode, the resulting cultural shifts contribute to a cycle of disempowerment and maladaptive behaviors, which in turn sustain the conditions that undermine social stability. To lay the groundwork for this analysis, I begin with a brief history of the nuclear family and the culture of dependency associated with slavery.

Western civilization is the most advanced and dynamic sociocultural system to appear in world history. At its core is the integrity and stability of the nuclear family. The history of the nuclear family in the West is deeply intertwined with broader cultural, economic, and social transformations over centuries. Typically defined as a household consisting of two parents and their children, the nuclear family has its roots in pre-industrial Europe, It became widespread with the advent of industrialization and the rise of modern capitalism. By the nineteenth century, the nuclear family ideal prevailed everywhere in the West, reinforced by the rising new middle class, which promoted values of individualism and the sanctity of the home. The nuclear family was a haven from the harsh realities of the industrial world, with the home being a place of emotional and moral support. Thus is served a protection function against the chaos generated by the dynamic of the capitalist mode of production. In the twentieth century, the nuclear family became even more entrenched, particularly in the post-World War II era. The economic boom of the 1950s in the United States and Western Europe saw a renewed emphasis on the nuclear family as the cornerstone of a stable and affluent society. The suburbanization of Western societies also played a role in perpetuating the nuclear family model, as planners designed suburban communities to accommodate this type of family structure.

We need to back up a bit in time and pick up a thread that weaves its way through the tapestry: the problem of slavery. Modern Western society emerged in a world where slavery had been a common practice for thousands of years. Slavery is inherently destructive to the family, as it imposes an external power that dictates the terms of people’s lives, fostering dependency and undermining family structures. In the West, some nations integrated slavery into their economic systems. For example, before the establishment of the United States, slavery had become widespread in the Southern colonies of the British Empire, giving rise to a slavocracy that persisted even after the American Revolution, where it became closely aligned with the Democratic Party. In this system, enslaved labor primarily consisted of people of African descent. Over time, Western civilization would abolish slavery throughout its territories, with the United States fighting a catastrophic civil war to end the practice. However, the legacy of centuries of slavery and its devastating impact on black families took decades to overcome.

After slavery was abolished in the United States, the Reconstruction era began, offering a brief period of hope and progress for newly freed black Americans. During this time, significant strides were made in establishing relatively autonomous black communities. Even after the end of Reconstruction, the nuclear family became increasingly common in black communities, providing stability and fostering a strong sense of determination and individualism. In the twentieth century, the Great Migration saw millions of black Americans move from the rural South to urban centers in the Northeast and Midwest. Black families continued to thrive amid ghettoization, developing a vibrant culture, marked by economic growth, educational advancement, and strong family bonds. However, this progress began to unravel in the 1960s, when a combination of factors, including urban decay, economic disenfranchisement, and the rise of welfare policies, led to the breakdown of the black nuclear family and the ghettoization of black communities.

This unraveling was overseen by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Divorce and never married rates rose drastically and the single-parent family emerged. Today, the dependent female-headed has become the norm in Blue Cities, that is those urban areas run by the Democratic Party. Today, around 80 percent of black children are born out of wedlock. This situation is perpetuated by a lack of education and dependency on public assistance for food, housing, and medicine. These conditions are further exacerbated by mass immigration, with foreign labor displacing the black worker. It is a vicious circle that blacks feel they cannot escape; demoralization and fatalism are hallmarks of the ghettoized population. The absence of the nuclear family is the single greatest predictor of crime and disorganized communities, and it is progressive social policy that has disintegrated the black nuclear family. (See America’s Crime Problem and Why Progressives are to Blame; The Crime Wave and its Causes; In Need of Cultural Reformation.)

How do progressives rationalize what they did to black people? How are they able to keep black Americans under the thumb of the Democratic Party? Progressives argue that the nuclear family is the oppressive expression of the white supremacy, which they not only attribute to conservatives in America’s heartland but the character of the Republic itself (see Disrupting the Western-Prescribed Nuclear Family Requirement). Conservatives don’t run the Blue Cities; they have no influence there. Ideological hegemony in America’s sense-making institutions allow progressives to manufacture and deploy a massive misdirection play; Democrats redirect the anger and resentment of black Americans justifiably feel towards their plight away from the progressive policies that secure the status quo and towards the foundational elements of American civilization—individualism, industriousness, initiative, limited government, respect for property—portrayed as the destructive expressions of whiteness. As a result, many people living in the ghetto resist doing the things that will improve their lives because they perceive these to be the very things that keep them down. Moreover, they generally lack the education and skills to achieve these things. To put this in psychoanalytic terms, Democrats have produced reaction formation on a mass level. Combined with learned helpless and demoralization, reaction formation perpetuates a destructive culture of dependency.

Reaction formation is a psychological defense mechanism in which a person unconsciously transforms an unacceptable or stress-inducing feeling, impulse, or thought into its opposite. For example, someone who harbors feelings of hostility towards a person who is oppressing or undermining them might behave in an overly friendly or affectionate manner toward that person. This mechanism helps to protect the individual from experiencing discomfort or guilt associated with his true feelings, which typically reside at the unconscious level, pushed deep down into the mind because of the individual’s inability to control the situation and the pain associated with the inability. In the societal-level version of reaction formation, collaborators in the ghetto—black activists, educators, intellectuals, politicians, social workers—are tapped and function to redirect the feelings of anger and resentment among the population towards the political party that did not cause their circumstances (the Republican Party) while portraying those responsible for the situation of blacks as allies (the Democratic Party). Mass reaction formation is pushed deep down into the collective unconsciousness of ghetto dwellers.

(I have suggested reaction formation as an analytical device in several previous essays. Here are some of them: “This Goes On”: Did Arbery Die to Perpetuate a False Narrative About Contemporary American Society?; The Problematic Premise of Black Lives Matter; The Myth of Racist Criminal Justice Persists; Progressives, Poverty, and Police: The Left Blames the Wrong Actors; “If They Cared.” Confronting the Denial of Crime and Violence in American Cities; Working Class Concern About Low-Income Housing is Not Intrinsically Racist; The Line from Slave Patrols to Modern Policing and Other Myths. For more on the problem of BLM, see What’s Really Going On with #BlackLivesMatter. See also Corporations Own the Left. Black Lives Matter Proves it.)

Reaction formation accompanies learned helplessness, which is a situation where individuals repeatedly face situations where they feel powerless to change their circumstances, leading them to believe that they have no control over their environment. This is expressed as fatalism. As a result, individuals suffering from this condition become passive and avoid taking action, even when opportunities for improvement arise. When this condition is coupled with dependency, it can lead to a preference for idleness over work, distraction over focus. The individual comes to rely on others or external support systems, believing that their own efforts are futile or unnecessary. Thus a cycle of dependency is perpetuated where the person becomes increasingly disengaged from education, work and other productive activities, reinforcing their sense of helplessness and therefore perpetuating dependency. The imposed reaction formation entrenches the vicious circle by turning the victims against those who might break the cycle and endearing them to those who perpetuate it.

In The Conditions of the Working Class in England, published in the mid-nineteenth century Friedrich Engels developed an early theory of demoralization, where the harsh realities of impoverished living conditions lead people to become disillusioned with society and its laws. According to Engels, the conditions faced by the underclass foster alienation, hopelessness, and resentment that, in turn, erode respect for legal and moral norms. As people struggle to survive in these conditions, they may turn to crime and violence as a means of coping with or resisting their circumstances. This breakdown of social order, rooted in systemic inequality, contributes to higher rates of crime and further perpetuates the cycle of poverty and social decay. Engels’ theory asks us to focus on the link between economic deprivation and the degradation of social and moral values, illustrating how structural conditions can lead to widespread disorder and lawlessness that finds it justification is a culture of nihilism. (See Demoralization and the Ferguson Effect.)

The complex interplay between structural conditions, cultural dynamics, and psychological mechanisms has deeply influenced the trajectory of black communities in the United States, particularly since the 1960s. The breakdown of the nuclear family, driven by a combination of economic disenfranchisement, urban decay, and welfare policies, has created a cycle of dependency, helplessness, and demoralization that continues to perpetuate social disorder. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party, through ideological manipulation and the promotion of reaction formation on a mass scale, has effectively redirected the legitimate grievances of black Americans away from the policies that have contributed to their plight and towards a destructive critique of the foundational values of American society. This misdirection play not only entrenches a culture of dependency but also inhibits efforts to break the cycle and foster genuine empowerment and self-reliance. Systemic inequality, coupled with the erosion of moral and social norms, demoralizes people, and this leads to the perpetuation of crime and violence.

Addressing these issues requires not just policy changes, but a fundamental shift in the cultural and mass psychological landscape of affected communities, where the nuclear family and individual agency are once again seen as cornerstones of social stability and cultural integrity. It moreover requires a change in the thinking of those who care about the plight of black people and are in a position to influence others. Over the course of my studies, I’ve come to a deeper understanding of the role that culture plays in sustaining high-crime areas. My analysis remains rooted in the materialist conception of history, and in this way of seeing society it is understood that once a culture is established it reinforces the structures that gave rise to it. This dynamic means that culture functions like an ideology, perpetuating the social norms and relations that maintain the status quo. Consequently, scholars who adhere to a historical materialist perspective cannot afford to overlook the importance of cultural critique in addressing the complex interplay between structure and culture in the perpetuation of social conditions. Doing so is not grafting conservative thought on historical materialism, but more fully understanding the analytical scope of Marxian method.

Does it trouble you at all that any group would think you have an obligation to believe in the constituents of its mythology? Yet here we are. I don’t use the term slavocracy lightly. But when one is expected to internalize the ideological hegemony of the corporate state everywhere in his life, the paternalism characteristic of slavocracy is manifest. At the very least, it is imminent—if we don’t resist it.

I don’t believe in subjective things for which there is no evidence beyond the individuals telling me that this is what he believes, even if what he believes is shared by others. Even if there is a book.

This is my rational default. You tell me you were abducted by aliens; I want evidence. You tell me your home is haunted by ghosts, I will need to see for myself—and even then, if I see something, I will suspect it is a trick, or you have put something in my drink.

I don’t believe in Scientology’s construct of the thetan, and I don’t have to. To be sure, if Scientology were the state religion, and those who wished I believed in thetans had the power to compel me to under threat of punishment (in which case they would compel bad faith only), then I will find people, and I may be among them, believing in thetans for the sake of others—for the sake of survival. But compelling belief in subjective things or in things for which there is no evidence is morally wrong and totalitarian. If you want this, you’re an authoritarian.

How did we get to a point where an organization or institution can compel a citizen or an employee to undergo a struggle session the end of which is a new congregant for the church in power?

Can you imagine if Scientology were the corporate state religion and you and I would have to undergo training in Dianetics and be compelled to undergo auditing to clear the tangle of trauma to reveal the thetan—to conjure from us our authentic selves?

You don’t have to imagine something like this. That is the world of DEI. You live in that world. Nobody asked you if this was the world you wanted to live in.

It’s as if we don’t live in a democratic republic with a bill of rights that guarantees us freedom of conscience, speech, press, and association, after all. It’s as if we have no privacy, no presumption of innocence, or the right to remain silent and aloof. It’s as if the constitutional republic we thought we knew as the United States of America was always only a hallucination, a simulation, where the phantoms of freedom were only situational and superficial—convenient to power to perpetuate our unfreedom.

You are not a child in need of being told how to regard others or how to think about the world. You don’t need offices and programs to reform your character and wash your brains when they suspect you’re guilty of wrong-think. Infantilization of the subjects under control is a technique of the slavocracy, or life on a hi-tech estate.

Wear your mask. Come inside. Take your medicine. Don’t call names. Watch your tone. It’s unsafe over there. I don’t like your friends. I am concerned about you. Are you okay? Can I help? I think you need help. Why are you being so difficult? What are you going through? What happened to you?

Update (2:42 pm). Thinking about Coleman’s truth bomb recounted in today’s essay Ledecky’s chances in the 800-meter freestyle and against the elite 17-year-old athlete….

If one believes scientific material is the best way to understand the actual world, which I do, and if one knows anything about natural history and physical anthropology, which I do, then one knows that Homo sapiens, and every other mammalian species, are sexual dimorphic, meaning that the female and the male of the species are different across a myriad of attributes, and not just in overlapping distributions. Gender is not a social construct. It is a scientific concept abstracted from empirical generalizations that exist in the real world. When we say that gender is a social construct in the way that, for example, the constituents of mythology are, and therefore is undetermined by the natural world, we are admitting that the concept of gender so understood is also a constituent of mythology.

Gender ideology thus admits it is a neoreligion. And if athletics competition is based on physical bodies moving in physical space-time, then religious systems are the inappropriate frame from which to fashion the rules of competition. Athletic competition is not a religious ritual, however much it might be framed in pomp and circumstance. Athletic competition is an experience of physical mechanics.

It is therefore action to undermine athletic competition by subjecting it to the demands of mythology. If athletics is no longer to adhere to the truth of the natural world, a truth ascertained by the demonstrated epistemological standards of scientific materialism, then athletics is no longer a legitimate activity for those whose lives are reality-based. It becomes—and by this example, I mean no offense to friends and family—professional wrestling or roller derby, which, however physical, has a predetermined outcome that only accident and happenstance may obviate.

* * *

“I will never understand athletes who blame a transgender competitor on their own athletic failures.” —Hailey Davidson, trans identifying male attempting to compete against females in the LPGA Tour.

In the Washington Post yesterday, Doriane Lambelet Coleman (Duke Law School) published an op-ed “Why elite women’s sports need to be based on sex, not gender.” In it, Coleman notes that Katie Ledecky holds the women’s world record in the 800-meter freestyle. Then she drops the truth bomb: twenty-six US boys under 17 years of age have beaten Ledecky’s record. Coleman has made an error, though; sex and gender are synonyms (see Gender and the English Language). What’s the source of the error? Assumptions planted by queer theory and the medical-industrial complex—a religious-like faith and associated ritual that defy common sense and scientific materialism (see Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion; Sacrificing Equity Upon the Altar of Exclusive Inclusivity; Dignity and Sex-Based Rights; Separating Sex and Gender in Language Works Against Reason and Science).

According to the standard interpretation of scripture, sex and gender are not the same things. A person may be biologically male but identify as a woman, an alchemy that transmute him into a “she”—in Imane Khelif’s case yields gold. We have been told frequently and loudly that the Algerian boxer Khelif is not a “trans woman,” i.e., a man who identifies as a woman, but a “cis woman,” i.e., a woman who identifies as a woman. Why? Because Khelif was born a female and has always been a female. The birth certificate says so. The passport says so. Khelif says so. And he and his attorney will prosecute you if you suggest otherwise (Khelif’s Trainer Told a French Magazine Khelif is Male). All this is a mess and none of it can be sorted out without rejecting, in toto, gender ideology.

The Khelif case is a bit odd in light of long-standing queer scripture, which holds that one is assigned a gender at birth and this assignment is arbitrary—the result of the imposition of gender categories—and mutable—one can throw off the straitjacket these categories represent. However, the scripture has been reinterpreted for Khelif to manage his circumstance. The assumption is not that a cis woman is born female (we know that Khelif is not female), but that a male assigned female at birth may identify as a woman and claim the truth of this identity on the basis of a birth certificate and a passport.

One might argue that gender identification on a birth certificate is cut-and-dry. It’s not. Queer advocates demand the ability to change gender on official documents according to the doctrine of gender self-identification. In the United Kingdom, for example, once a gender recognition certificate is granted, the individual’s gender is recognized for all legal purposes, including changes on official documents such as birth certificates and passports. In Khelif’s case, his gender was misidentified at birth, which might reasonably warrant a document change, and certainly justifies differential regard. In the case of a delusional male, documents may be changed to instantiate a fiction, while for somebody like Khelif documents become sacred writs to sustain one. In either case, because of the assignment, a magical thing happens: the male becomes female—and the IOC is fine with both. (See The IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak.)

So which is the social construct? Which is mutable? Sex or gender? For some members of the congregation, sex is a biological reality, whereas gender is a social construct, and the individual is not required to match sex and gender (which admits they’re really synonyms). For others, female is a social construct and anyone can identify as female and therefore be a female. According to doctrine, a mammal can change its sex—and some presumably would if other species had a queer theory. For many churchgoers, adhering to Bob Stoller’s “gender identity” construct (which finds its roots in the madness of Magnus Hirschfeld), gender is innate, and so a woman can be born in a male body. Thus, according to the queer doctrine, which like all religious doctrine internally is contradictory and paradoxical, Khelif may be trans. Confused? Lots of people are. Queer theory is not a rational standpoint. However, the confusion is instrumental and the paradoxes strategic.

It's obvious what's going on. They're running a feminizing PR campaign for Khelif. This works on the woke because they equate womanhood with feminine stereotypes.

But remember, all of this ⬇️ is a lot more work than making the DNA test results public.pic.twitter.com/joFBuJFFVX

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) August 15, 2024

Since Khelif is a male identifying as a woman, Khelif a trans identifying person. It works also if we say that Khelif is a woman born in a man’s body. Or we can say that a female can have a Y chromosome, internal testes, achieve male puberty, and produce testosterone in the male range. —All of which are ontologically meaningless, however politically useful, since the categories are arbitrary, thus denying that it matters whether categories are empirical generalization abstracted from concrete facts. For queer activists, that Khelif’s gender was misidentified at birth is entirely beside the point, since such determinations are only arbitrary assignments of socially constructed categories produced and shaped by power.

The paradox at work here: since it is an article of faith that trans women are in fact women, the doctrine negates the existence of trans identifying individuals. That’s one way of looking at it (and one will be accused of “trans genocide” if he looks at it this way). Another is that Khelif is both a cis and a trans woman simultaneously. This is ideal. In his terminal liminality, the boxer becomes the perfect fetish of a neoreligion. And because Khelif is Muslim, he represents an extraordinary perfect fetish about which to organize ritual madness (“Queers for Palestine” and all that). This is why you know very little if anything about the other man who was allowed to punch women in the fact at the Paris games. Remember Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan? (Lin is resorting the lawfare, as well: “Taiwan to sue IBA over Lin Yu-ting gender claims.”)

How is the madness going in the United States? There are some encouraging signs of sanity, actually. The New York Times reported yesterday that the “Supreme Court, for Now, Blocks Expanded Protections for Transgender Students in Some States.” The Supreme Court’s ruling concerned the Education Department’s rule change intended to protect transgender students from discrimination based on their gender identity in Republican states that had mounted challenges. (Neil Gorsuch’s take on this issue is notoriously bad, especially in light of the federalism and liberalism expressed by his opinions; see, e.g., Our Liberal Supreme Court; The Supreme Court Strikes a Blow Against Institutional Racism; The Supreme Court Affirms the Tyranny of Majorities.) This is an important development because allowing the rule change to take effect validates a manufactured minority group, manufactured because gender identity as defined in the doctrine of queer theory is a thing akin to the thetan (of Scientology lore), that is to say, it’s not actually a thing at all. The attempt to write Reverend Stoller’s crackpot construct into civil rights law and policy is, at least for the moment, frustrated.

Critics of the decision are arguing that the order erases “crucial safeguards for young people.” Cathryn Oakley, senior director of legal policy for the Human Rights Campaign said, “It is disappointing that the Supreme Court has allowed far-right forces to stop the implementation of critical civil rights protections for youth.” By “critical civil rights protections for youth,” Oakley means trans identifying youth. But it is the rule change, if allowed to go into effect, that erases crucial safeguards for young people. Validating gender identity in law and policy is one of the greatest threats to the safety and wellbeing of children and women in the history of the West. Those who care about women’s rights look forward to next summer SCOTUS rulings where the fiction of gender identity may meet its demise in law.

* * *

I want to close with a counterfactual and speculative scenario. Let’s see if this rings true to readers. Russia was effectively banned from the games this year because the West is at war with Russia. But imagine Russia weren’t banned and Imane Khelif had been on the Russian women’s boxing team. What would have been the propaganda frame? Here’s my guess: Putin would be accused of sending to the Games a male with a false passport to compete in the women’s division of boxing to bring home the gold. Not only would Putin and his regime be accused of faking Khelif’s passport, but all of the doctors’ and other expert reports insisting that Khelif was really a woman would be rejected. The West would demand that Khelif undergo a gender test. Putin and his defenders would deny any fraud because Russia is anti-gay. Why would they put forward a trans person? Russia is one of the most LGBTQ unfriendly places in the world. Khelif would refuse the test and the IOC would refuse Khelif’s entry into the Games. The queer community, waving Ukrainian flags, would back the IOC all the way.

Citizen journalism from actual domain experts and people actually on the ground is much faster, more accurate and has less bias than the legacy media! https://t.co/pbIzhjdbsq

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 13, 2024

Elon Musk noted on X a little while ago that citizen journalism from actual domain experts and people actually on the ground is much faster, more accurate, and has less bias than the legacy media. This is also true with public scholarship with respect to academic publishing, as well, a system of contrived authority for what has become something of a cloistered monastery. Yes, I am likening the university to a secluded religious community, where scholars, like clerics, are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, engaging with tacitly approved ideas in a controlled, introspective environment, often detached from the practical concerns of the outside world.

Just as monks focus on spiritual contemplation and esoteric ritual away from society, the institutional expectation in higher ed is that academics engage in specialized, abstract research, sometimes without direct engagement with broader societal issues. Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy noted this in their 1966 Monopoly Capitalism, critiquing how knowledge, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, has become increasingly compartmentalized and specialized. This process of specialization, they argue, has fragmented knowledge; scholars have become experts in narrow fields which has caused them to lose sight of the broader cultural, economic, and social that matter to the world.

In Baran and Sweezy’s view, this cloistering of knowledge into specialized disciplines serves the interests of monopoly capitalism by preventing a comprehensive understanding of how the system operates as a whole. By isolating intellectual inquiry into discrete areas, the critical, systemic analysis necessary to challenge the status quo is undermined. This compartmentalization mirrors the broader division of labor under capitalism, where different aspects of production are separated, making it harder for workers (or, in this case, professionals and scholars) to see the larger picture of how their work fits into the totality of the capitalist system. They argue that this fragmentation not only limits the potential for interdisciplinary understanding and collaboration, but also reinforces the power structures within capitalism by constraining critical thought within safe, manageable boundaries.

This was the purpose of my 2015 white paper “Notes on Problem-Focused Interdisciplinary Education,” , which was published on the UW-Green Bay chancellor’s News and Notes blog, wherein I cited Baran and Sweezy’s work. Arguing that knowledge had become fragmented in late capitalism, I urged the university community to stay true to the university’s select mission: “The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay provides an interdisciplinary, problem-focused educational experience that prepares students to think critically and address complex issues in a multicultural and evolving world.”

I concluded with this: “Therefore, as we prepare to celebrate our golden anniversary, let us remember that UW-Green Bay was founded upon a unique institutional arrangement that compels faculty and students to sustain a commitment to problem-focused research, teaching, and service. By fostering cross-fertilization of ideas, encouraging and facilitating collaboration, shaping research agendas and curriculum, and linking scholarly production to human needs, problem-focused practice integrates the work of faculty and students with the larger community. The intricate problems of the day demand a mission that dedicates the academy to problem-focused interdisciplinary endeavors. We should not doubt the value of what we do at UW-Green Bay. Instead, we should be bold and inspire other institutions with our example.”

(In the end, my intervention was for naught. Powerful forces saw to it that the unique institutional arrangement I described was disorganized. And in the intervening years, faculty witnessed a return to the siloing that the founding of the institution was meant to overcome.)

C. Wright Mills made a similar argument in The Sociological Imagination, published in 1959. Mills criticized the trend of increasing specialization within the social sciences, arguing that it led to what he called “abstracted empiricism.” Like Baran and Sweezy, Mills was concerned that the increasing specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge served to reinforce existing power structures by limiting the scope of critical inquiry. He saw this trend as detrimental to the potential for social science to contribute to meaningful social change. He believed that this narrow focus on specialized research methods and isolated topics diverted attention from the broader, more important questions about society and its structure.

Mills emphasized the need for a “sociological imagination,” which he defined as the ability to connect individual experiences with larger social and historical forces. He argued that scholars should move beyond specialized research to consider how their work fits into a broader understanding of society. This, Mills believed, would enable a more critical and comprehensive analysis of social issues, rather than the piecemeal and fragmented approach that was becoming more common in academic circles. More than any other scholar, it is Mills who inspired the establishment of Freedom and Reason. (See Public Sociology at Freedom and Reason).

So I mean the comparison of modern academia and the monastery to be taken very seriously; it has only gotten much worse since the days of Mills and Baran and Sweezy. Map over the top of this the force of postmodernist thought and you can see the problem (see What is Delegitimizing Science?). Thus there is in higher education a very real devotion to quasi religious purity, where the pursuit of a manufactured knowledge is held above more worldly concerns, divorced from concrete reality, estranged from scientific materialism. While the academic monastery is supposed to provides a space for deep reflection and scholarly advancement, it has in the context of administrative force and corporate power created a disconnect between academic work and the everyday experiences of society, making academia remote and, frankly, irrelevant to those living outside its walls—the very people and their interests to which this work should be devoted in a free and democratic society.

As Musk observes with the problems of traditional media, one cannot get fast and unbiased information from a review process where ideologically and corporate-captured editors and referees act as gatekeepers who, if they choose to send manuscripts out for review, don’t turn them around for revisions for months, and if the papers survive review, don’t get published for many more months. After that, if published, the result lies behind paywalls that, even if the average citizen is prepared to cough up the money necessary to get past (the price is exorbitant and public libraries choose which databases licenses to purchase), uses jargon inaccessible to the public. What is more, the audience of academic scholarship in this publishing model is small and exclusive, which is why most journal articles and university press books are read by very few people, if at all, even when scholars cite them in literature review sections (often reading only abstracts).

Then there is the labor compensation piece. I have published many articles and review essays in professional academic journals over the years and haven’t seen a dime from that work. Academic journals are controlled by large publishing houses that not only have significant influence over the dissemination of scholarly research but generate mega profits from tapping superexploited labor. These companies manage a vast number of journals across various disciplines, making them central players in academic publishing globally, the ownership structures that sharply limits accessibility and affordability of academic knowledge. Because of their effective monopoly over academic publishing, with their vast resources and control over networks, they dominate the market and shape the landscape of academic research and publication to match the needs of elites and filter out those voices who challenge established power. The corporate state and its social logic have thus monopolized knowledge production and use this monopoly to control the public mind see Refining the Art and Science of Propaganda in an Era of Popular Doubt and Questioning).

This is why there’s a growing and democratic movement towards open access, where research is freely available to the public. This is what I am doing here. Visit my platform Freedom and Reason for free social studies content (read my welcome message here). The influence of corporations extends far beyond mere publication; their power and influence affects visibility of research, as well as the academic careers of scholars who institutions fetishize the model of peer-review and all the other fig leaves of neutrality demand that they publish in the high-impact journals owned by these companies (see The Science™ and its Devotees).

A short while ago, I critiqued a New York Times op-ed by child psychiatrist Jack Turban explaining how he talks parents into transitioning their children (The Story the Industry Tells: Jack Turban’s Three Element Pitch). I noted that the argument fails right out of the gate. Today I share another example of an argument failing right out of the gate, Dhamala et al’s “Functional brain networks are associated with both sex and gender in children,” published this month in Science.

“Over the last two decades, the interactions between sex, neurobiology, and behavior have been extensively researched. However, these studies often report contradictory findings and fail to replicate. The growing literature on sex differences and the lack of reproducibility of many of those reported differences suggest a potential bias and/or misunderstanding in how we study, interpret, and report findings related to sex.”

That’s the first three sentences of the opening paragraph. So far, so good. But not for long. “More recently, researchers have begun to question whether these observed differences between males and females are driven by biology (e.g., sex) or whether they are a manifestation of social constructs (e.g., gender).” You see where this is going. “Here, we use the term ‘sex’ to indicate features of an individual’s physical anatomy, physiology, genetics, and/or hormones at birth, and we use the term ‘gender’ to indicate features of an individual’s attitude, feelings, and behaviors.”

The authors included in that long paragraph this observation: “The reality is more complicated in that sex and gender are both influenced by biological and social factors. Critically, associations between biological and social factors are intertwined and reciprocal in nature. As an example, personal experiences across the life span are shaped by an individual’s sex and gender as well as the sociocultural environment they are embedded within; complex relationships converge to influence brain organization and function.” To be sure, an obvious observation. Then the authors slip into queer theory mode and pursue a course of relentless nonsense.

Once you’ve begun attending to the corrupting force of queer theory, organized by postmodernist thought, the fundamental problem of scholarship on the question of gender raises a bigger question about the state of scientific inquiry. The premise of the article relies on the false distinction between gender and sex. The authors want to be slick, writing that “sex and gender are irreducible to one another not only in society but also in biology.” But sex and gender are the same thing, synonyms referring to gamete size, reproductive anatomy, and sex chromosome determinants. For example, plants have both phenotypic and genotypic gender. That’s right, gender is the word used in scientific studies of plant biology for centuries to present-day scholarship. The definitions provided by the authors, designed to manufacture the perception that gender and sex are different, reflect the ideological-political goals of queer theory. They have no basis in materialist science. This ensures that what follows is pretentious nonsense. (See Gender and the English Language).

Take this line from the abstract: “Here, we demonstrate that, in children, sex and gender are uniquely reflected in the intrinsic functional connectivity of the brain. Somatomotor, visual, control, and limbic networks are preferentially associated with sex, while network correlates of gender are more distributed throughout the cortex.” We can make this make sense by simply adding the word “role” to either the terms “sex” and “gender” and then differentiating between them. Let’s take gender as the preferred term and rework the sentence: “Somatomotor, visual, control, and limbic networks are preferentially associated with gender, while network correlates of the gender role are more distributed throughout the cortex.” You can do the same thing with the terms “sex” and “sex role.”

The piece becomes an exercise in irony because its stated goal is to sort through the muddle of contradictory findings and replication failure. Muddle and failure are actually the result of the pseudoscientific matrix generated by sexology. The trick to keeping the pseudoscience flowing is to remove from either sex or gender the necessary words “role” and “status.” Role refers to behaviors, duties, expectations associated with one’s gender. Status refers to the social position or rank that an individual holds in a group or society. You can use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably when discussing roles and statues. I recently published an essay on this and the matter of (see Gender and the Gender Role). This is an exercise in ideological obscurantism.

John P. A. Ioannidis’ 2005 article “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” is a must read to understand why scientists fail so frequently. Of his six corollaries, these three ring true: (1) the greater the flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes in a scientific field, (2) the greater the financial and other interests and prejudices in a scientific field, and (3) the hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true. Academic science fails also because most research is replication of bias given paradigm dressed in the clothing of neutrality (see The Science™ and its Devotees). It’s akin to the practice of hermeneutics in the monastery. This is why I don’t bother with peer-review academic publishing, either refereed journals or university press books. Editors and reviewers are gatekeepers whose function is to keep out challenges to the prevailing hegemony of thought. I refuse to allow my work to be held up by religious clerics.

Colleges and universities have become corrupted by woke progressive ideology. Not only is there the ongoing replicability crisis and daily multiple retractions of published studies, but what is accepted and remains in print is crackpot. This is especially true across the humanities but also in the social sciences, including anthropology, psychology, and sociology.

Recall the hoax papers scandal, often referred to as the “Grievance Studies Affair,” was a significant academic controversy that unfolded in 2017 and 2018. It involved three academics, Peter Boghossian, James Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose, who submitted intentionally absurd and fabricated research papers to academic journals in fields they collectively termed “grievance studies,” which includes areas like critical race theory, gender studies, and sociology. The goal of the exercise was to expose what they saw as a lack of academic rigor and ideological bias in the humanities and social sciences. Of the twenty hoax papers, seven were accepted for publication, with some even winning recognition for their contributions to the field. The papers included bizarre and deliberately ridiculous content, such as a paper that reimagined parts of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf using feminist language and another that suggested that dog parks were sites of rampant “rape culture” among canines. Despite the contribution the three made to popular understanding of the ideological capture of these fields, Boghossian faced an investigation by his employer, Portland State University for alleged research misconduct. Boghossian is no longer working there.

The “Grievance Studies Affair” was not the first of its kind. In 1996 there as the “Sokal Affair,” orchestrated by physicist Alan Sokal who submitted a deliberately nonsensical paper titled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” to the cultural studies journal Social Text. The paper was a pastiche of bizarre theoretical claims wrapped in postmodern jargon, entirely devoid of meaningful scientific content. Sokal’s paper was accepted and published in a special issue of Social Text. After the paper’s publication, Sokal revealed the hoax in another journal, Lingua Franca, explaining that his aim was to expose what he viewed as the lack of rigor and the susceptibility to fashionable intellectual trends in certain areas of the humanities. So the “Grievance Studies” hoax was confirmation of the Sokal’s intervention.

What is damaging the legitimacy of science today is not the critics of science but an industry that claims to be objective, rational, and scientific. Neutrality and peer-review are fig leaves for ideology. They are rhetorical props to false legitimize scientism and other ideologies. That queer theory is even a thing testifies to the woo-woo professional science has become. Postmodernism is a resilient political-ideological project taken up by corporate power. It isn’t going to be destroyed by Sokal or Boghossian, Lindsay, and Pluckrose. It will take all of the academy to vanquish the crackpot beast and as long as the educational system embraces progressivism, the beast will continue to wreak havoc on knowledge. If scientists want to save the profession, then they need to drive from the various disciplines the nonsense produced by woke ideologues—and this will be hard because the nonsense is ubiquitous. Meanwhile, I will be doing what scholars should be doing over here on Freedom and Reason.

Update (8-16-2024):

Brendon O’Neill’s “It isn’t ‘cyberbullying’ to speak the truth.” O’Neill writes, “Imane Khelif’s criminal complaint against JK Rowling is an absurdist assault on reason.” He continues: “Imane Khelif has some balls. Not content with fighting in the women’s category at the Paris Olympics, despite previously failing a gender-eligibility test, now the Algerian boxer is going after women who raised concerns about that sporting abomination. Well, one woman in particular. The worst woman. The woman feared as a witch by gender ideologues and their squeaking woke-bro allies. Yes, it’s JK Rowling. Khelif has named Rowling in a criminal complaint filed in France, accusing her of ‘acts of aggravated cyber harassment.’ First Khelif takes down female boxers, now it seems it’s the turn of female critics of the sexist Olympics.”

Later in the essay he writes, “It isn’t ‘cyberbullying’ to slam the inclusion of people with XY chromosomes in women’s sports. It isn’t ‘cyber-harassment’ to lament the ‘distress’ of a woman who’d just been ‘punched in the head’ by a suspected biological male, as Rowling did following the shameful Khelif-Carini fight. No, this is legitimate, heartfelt, truthful commentary, from women concerned for women’s rights. Khelif might not be ‘trans,’ but this ill-advised criminal complaint borrows from the trans lobby’s tyrannical playbook. Just as feminism has pretty much been reimagined as ‘transphobia,’ and women’s rights activists are breezily defamed as ‘TERFs,’ now it seems criticism of men boxing women will be damned as ‘bullying.’”

“There’s hubris here, O’Neill writes, “As someone who also went through male puberty, my advice to Khelif would be to avoid accusing other people of ‘bullying’ when you’ve just been publicly fighting women and winning their medals.” He concludes: “Khelif needs to back off. It is not right for you to box women, and it is not right for you to file a complaint against people who only said what they believe to be true. This case speaks to one of the most troubling trends of our time: the Orwellian rebranding of criticism as a crime. That it is even possible people will be punished for using their voices to defend women’s rights is a testament to how far down the rabbit hole of gender lunacy we have tumbled..”

* * *

This Essentially Sports article claims the debate over Imane Khelif’s inclusion in the Olympic Games is over. Perhaps, but not in the way the author, Jaideep Unnithan, thinks. You’ve got to love the spin here; Unnithan turns what is obvious inside out. What in fact happened is that Imane Khelif’s trainer, George Cazorla, told French magazine Le Point that the boxer is male (you can read the August 8 French article here). Essentially Sports frames it like this: “the latest revelation by her trainer will come as massive vindication for those who stood by her.” So XX chromosomes, then? Of course not. I already reported Cazorla’s account here: THE IOC’s Portrayal Guidelines—a Real-World Instantiation of Newspeak. See also “Khelif’s Trainer Confirms ‘Problem With Chromosomes,’,” published in Reduxx. The Reduxx piece has a lot of detail (if you aren’t following Reduxx you really should).

From Essentially Sports: “Khelif’s trainer, George Cazorla, told French magazine Le Point, that after her 2023 World Championships disqualification, he contacted Kremlin-Bicêtre, a renowned endocrinologist from the Parisian University Hospital. ‘He confirmed that Imane is indeed a woman, despite her karyotype and her testosterone level.’ He said: “There is a problem with her hormones, with her chromosomes, but she is a woman,”’ Cazorla mentioned before sharing the recent findings.”

“There is a problem with her hormones, with her chromosomes.” That’s the key. So Cazorla confirms that the IBA found a problem with Khelif’s chromosomes. This boxer is a XY (male) with a disorder of sexual development (SDS), i.e., dysfunction of the SRY gene; Khelif has abnormal testosterone levels for a woman, likely a condition known as 5-ARD. Why would Cazorla go to an endocrinologist if the tests had not uncovered anomalies? (Endocrinology, for the record, is one of the major players in the gender affirming care industry. The field claims that a man can be changed into a woman, using pseudoscientific rubbish to move product and manufacture patients.)

Cazorla continued, “We then worked with a doctor based in Algeria to monitor and regulate Imane’s testosterone level, which is currently within the female norm. Tests clearly show that all her muscular and other qualities have been diminishing since then.” In other words, a doctor suppressed Khelif’s abnormally high testosterone. Moreover, Cazorla admits there is a “female norm,” this recognizing the valid distinction between females and males. However, as I have shown (see Misogyny Resurgent: Atavistic Expressions of a Neoreligion), testosterone is far from the sole determining factor in male supremacy in athletics.

First, we have to state a simple truth: this is women’s sports. Khelif is male, so straight away he doesn’t belong in the female category—even if he has no individual advantage. Khelif belongs to a class that enjoys advantages over another class. Second, and why we have categories, male puberty is what really matters, for all the reasons I explain in Misogyny Resurgent. Khelif has all the advantages of a male, because he is one, whether or not his testosterone levels have been suppressed. Indeed, if the levels were suppressed to avoid abnormal levels of androgens in the blood stream, this means that the team was concerned about being found out (they didn’t care about potential harm to the other boxers or they would not have allowed Khelif to compete against them). This only deepens the fraud. Are journalists asking Cazorla why Khelif’s team was working with a doctor in Algeria to monitor and regulate their boxers testosterone? No, the mainstream media are propagandists, not journalists.

In another Reduxx article “Khelif Is A Man,” Bulgaria’s Joana Nwamerue, who did not make the Olympic Games, comes forward to reveal that Imane Khelif had “male power” and used “male techniques,” which she recognized during sparring matches in Sofia, Bulgaria. “I think we played 3-4 sparring sessions. I have a record of everything. I can confirm that this is a man to me. Male power. Men’s techniques, everything,” Nwamerue explains. “I’m a tomboy, I take a lot of hits and I know how to hold on. But the other girls are not so strong.” And so Khelif swept the Olympic Games winning every round of every match on every judge’s card, forcing Italy’s Angela Carini to quit 46 seconds into he first round (who was then shamed into apologizing).

When questions were raised by Nwamerue and her coach about Khelif’s gender, “[Khelif’s] teammates came to me and told me ‘Imane is not a man. She is a woman and just lives high in the mountains with her relatives and parents and so there may be a change in her testosterone or chromosomes and the like.’ So myself and my coach watched [Khelif] and I said ‘that can’t be possible.’ Everywhere has people living in the mountains. It’s absurd.” This claim prompted evolutionary biologist Colin Wright, who runs Substack’s Reality’s Last Stand, to conceptually map Khelif’s team’s claim:

OK, I think I've successfully mapped the sex determining mechanism for Imane Khelif based on reports from the Algerian boxing team that Khelif's biology had been altered by "living in the mountains."

I'll be submitting this to @Nature, and am happy to receive my Nobel by mail. https://t.co/1aL9HeXbBf pic.twitter.com/SUkXWBZDm6

— Colin Wright (@SwipeWright) August 13, 2024

“Obviously there’s some competition between federations and they’re shitting on one another, but it’s extremely unfair. It’s like pitting a motorcycle against a bicycle,” Nwamerue explains. “For people who don’t understand combat sports. Motor vs bicycle. Will the bicycle be faster and win, or the motorbike?” This is a common analogy. Here is what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins posted on X on August 8. (There is a lot of controversy swirling around about Dawkins of late concerning his presence on Facebook. The question is whether Facebook deplatformed him or he deleted himself. But Dawkins is still on Twitter and has left this tweet up. If he takes it down, I have a screenshot ready to replace the tweet.)

pic.twitter.com/cy38mJxB5u

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) August 8, 2024

Nwamerue’s coach noted that other world and European boxing federations had banned Khelif from boxing. Only the Olympics was allowing Khelif to compete. Nwamerue’s stablemate, Svetlana Staneva, boxed Khelif in the Olympic Games. It was Staneva who, in a clear nod to the chromosome controversy, launched an international movement following her featherweight match with Lin by making an “XX” symbol at the crowd using her fingers (a photo of the gesture is the initial image in this essay).

🚨TODAY🚨

Taiwan's Lin Yu-Ting, who was previously found to have XY chromosomes, has defeated Bulgaria’s Svetlana Staneva 5-0. Lin is now guaranteed a women's Olympic medal.

Following the match, Staneva appears to have made an "XX" gesture at the crowd using her fingers. https://t.co/b1BcdCqMtf pic.twitter.com/Az3qwGQ9Xs

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) August 4, 2024

Meanwhile, according to Variety, J.K. Rowling and Elon Musk have both been named in a criminal complaint filed with French authorities over alleged “acts of aggravated cyber harassment” against Algerian boxer and newly crowned Olympic champion Imane Khelif. Nabil Boudi, the Paris-based attorney for Khelif told the magazine that both figures were mentioned in the body of the complaint, which was submitted to the anti-online hatred center of the Paris public prosecutor’s office on Friday (yes, such a thing exists). The lawsuit was filed against X, which under French law means it was filed against “unknown persons.” This “ensure[s] that the prosecution has all the latitude to be able to investigate against all people,” including those who may have written hateful messages under pseudonyms, said Boudi “What we’re asking is that the prosecution investigates not only these people but whoever it feels necessary. If the case goes to court, they will stand trial.”

Boudi also claimed that while the lawsuit was filed in France, “it could target personalities overseas,” pointing out that “the prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech has the possibility to make requests for mutual legal assistance with other countries.” He added that there were agreements with the US equivalent of the French office for combating online hate speech. According to Boudi, cyber harassment cases are now being taken much more seriously by judicial authorities and that, in some cases, “there are prison sentences.” Oh no, does that mean I should delete all my tweets and beg forgiveness? Boudi says apologies won’t matter. Okay then, the tweets stay up.

While Nabil Boudi’s complaint may mention figures like Rowling and Musk, pursuing legal action against American citizens for their speech poses significant challenges thanks to the strong protections afforded by the First Amendment in the United States. The First Amendment provides robust safeguards for free speech, including the expression of opinions and criticism, even if such speech is deemed offensive or harmful in other jurisdictions. Additionally, the principle of jurisdictional sovereignty limits the ability of foreign courts to enforce their laws on individuals residing outside their borders. For Boudi to successfully pursue legal action against Americans, he would need to overcome substantial legal hurdles, including navigating complex international treaties and mutual legal assistance agreements, which often do not extend to matters involving free speech. Furthermore, US courts are generally reluctant to enforce foreign judgments that conflict with constitutional rights, making it highly unlikely that any legal action initiated in France could be effectively pursued against American citizens.

Americans, don’t let Boudi’s lawsuit stop you from seeing what you see and telling the truth about it. Or, to put this another way, Nabil Boudi can fuck off.

On Fox News a couple of Sundays ago, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg stated that the Republican National Committee (RNC) falsely claims that illegal immigration is causing an increase in crime. Buttigieg argued that crime rates decreased under President Biden and increased under President Trump, questioning why America would want to return to higher crime rates under Trump.

To get this out of the way at the outset, on the question is immigration and crime, and the oft-heard claim that immigrants are less likely than native-born Americans to commit crime, the fact is that native-born status for immigrants is wrongly assigned in the data. Determination of a detainee’s citizenship or immigration status by police is not universally standardized and depends on a variety of local laws, policies, and practices.

If police officers make a determination of immigrant status it typically occurs during the booking process after an arrest. However, the frequency with which police make this determination, whether during the investigation or during booking, varies widely. Officer discretion plays a role, as officers may decide whether to inquire about immigration status based on the situation and their judgment. Departmental guidelines and jurisdictional policies play a role; some localities, often referred to as “sanctuary cities,” limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities and may not routinely ask about immigration status. The nature of the crime affects determination, as well; for more serious crimes or when there is suspicion of immigration violations, police may be more likely to determine a detainee’s immigration status.

As a result, in statistics showing immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans, many of those who are identified as native-born are actually immigrants whose immigration status was not determined and recorded at the point where it would show up in the statistics.

As for whether crime has decreased or increased, there are several factors to consider. But we should make sure to note that the perception of Americans is that it has increased. A Gallup survey from November of last year showed that 92 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of Democrats believed crime was rising. Rasmussen Reports surveys from March last year to April this year consistently found that around sixty percent of Americans think violent crime is getting worse, with many more people believing crime is increasing rather than improving. This perception is not driven by corporate media reports of rising crime. Some of it is driven by engagement with social media where videos of crimes in progress are numerous. Some of it is driven by personal experience.

Corporate media personnel have an understanding of what readers are about to learn from Freedom and Reason, which is the crime is a real problem in America today, but they tell their audiences that popular perception is wrong. Their function here is not informing the populace but gaslighting them, telling them that they do not see what they see. Public perceptions are not mistaken. There’s something wrong with the statistics.

When police budgets are cut, arrest rates drop, and people stop reporting crimes, John Lott explains in the “The Truth about the Crime Explosion,” in National Review, crime statistics may appear better even as disorder increases. Many Americans can see for themselves that stores like CVS and Walgreens now keep products behind locked glass, which is inconvenient and costly for the stores—so it must be necessary. This was not the case a few years ago. But violent crime has also increased. In what follows I will be relying on Lott’s NR article, as it is very thorough and well argued (as his arguments are). Because NR is behind a paywall, I will summarize Lott’s reporting and analysis here. See his article if you can. This will be a close paraphrase. I will follow up in the coming weeks with my own analysis, but the time to focus on this issue is now, and Lott has made a vital contribution to our understanding. I don’t want to miss any of it.

Those claiming crime is falling rely on the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which only counts reported crimes, not total crime. Additionally, the FBI’s crime measurement has significant flaws. For readers unfamiliar with crime statistics, there are two major crime measures: the FBI’s NIBRS counts reported crimes, while the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) asks about 240,000 people each year if they have been victims of crime. Since 2020, these measures have been negatively correlated. The FBI reports fewer crimes while more people report being victims. In fact, the FBI reports fewer than half of the same Index crimes reported to the NCVS—and the gap appears to be growing.

This discrepancy arises because law enforcement has weakened, Lott argues. When people believe criminals won’t be caught, they are less likely to report crimes. This is a function of depolicing. Comparing the five years before COVID-19 with 2022, the percentage of reported urban violent crimes resulting in an arrest dropped from 44 percent to 35 percent. In cities with over a million people, arrest rates fell from 44 percent to 20 percent, an unprecedented decline in FBI data. In 2022, in large cities, only eight percent of all violent crimes (reported and unreported) and one percent of all property crimes resulted in an arrest (not all arrests lead to charges, prosecutions, or convictions). Between 2015 and 2019, the arrest rate for murders in large cities fell by 38 percent, for rapes by 50 percent, for aggravated assault by 55 percent, and for robberies by 58 percent.

Since 2020, FBI reported crime and NCVS total crime have diverged. In 2022, the FBI reported a two percent drop in violent crime, whereas the NCVS showed a 42 percent increase, the largest one-year rise in violent crime ever recorded by the NCVS. The increase over 2020 was even greater. From 2008 to 2019, the FBI and NCVS measures of reported violent crimes generally moved together, but from 2020 to 2022, they were almost perfectly negatively correlated. As one measure rose, the other fell. In 2021 and 2022, the FBI reported a two percent decrease in reported violent crimes, while the NCVS showed increases of 14 percent and 29 percent. This inconsistency raises doubts about the FBI data.

The decline in reported crimes by police departments after a new reporting system was introduced in 2021 partly explains the discrepancies. In 2022, 31 percent of police departments, including those in Los Angeles and New York, didn’t report crime data to the FBI, and another 24 percent only partially reported. This is an improvement over 2021 but still much worse than the 97 percent of agencies reporting in 2020. The FBI also undercounts crimes in cities like Baltimore and Nashville. There are no 2023 numbers reported in Crime Data Explorer (CDE), the FBI’s dash-boarding system, at all.

Downgrading crimes by police departments also contributes to the drop in FBI numbers. Classifying aggravated assaults as simple assaults, which are excluded from FBI violent crime data, is one example. Progressive district attorneys nationwide are downgrading felonies to misdemeanors (while the upgrades misdemeanors to felonies in the hush money case prosecuted against Donald Trump). For instance, Manhattan’s DA downgraded felonies to lesser charges 60 percent of the time, with 89 percent of those downgraded to misdemeanors. Chicago has also misclassified murders as noncriminal “death investigations.” Moreover, police numbers declined due to budget cuts and retirements, departments stopped responding to nonemergency 911 calls. Instead, people had to go to the police station to report crimes. A crime officially counts only when police make out a report.

Concerning the most serious of crimes, murder, murder rates, which dropped by 13 percent in 2023, are still 7 percent above 2019 levels. The NCVS doesn’t survey about murder, but the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has a measure that differs from FBI data: while the FBI shows murders peaking in 2020 and dropping in 2021 and 2022, the CDC shows murders peaking in 2021 and being higher in 2022 than in 2020.

Freedom and Reason was originally launched on Blogger (a Google product) in 2006. Due to frustration with that platform functionality and sporadic activity due to my duties as chair of my department, which at the time involved a bottom up revision of the program, program review, and rebuilding the faculty, Freedom and Reason languished. I was spurred to regularly blog again after witnessing firsthand the results of the migrant crisis in Sweden in the summer of 2018 while on a research expedition to study the criminal justice systems of Norway and Sweden. Upon returning from Scandinavia, I moved Freedom and Reason to WordPress, a much superior application. The site now enjoys thousands of visitors annually.

I started Freedom and Reason in 2006 because I came to believe that it was important to make my ideas available to audiences beyond academic outlets and the classrooms. This is known in my field as public sociology. Public sociology seeks to engage with a broader audience beyond academia. It involves the application of sociological insights to address public issues, influence policy, and foster public debate. Public sociologists aim to make their work accessible and relevant to the general public, by participating in public discourse and advocating for social change. This approach contrasts with more traditional forms of sociology, which may prioritize theoretical development or empirical research within academic circles. In 2018, I recommitted myself to this idea.

Public sociology is rooted in the idea that sociologists have a responsibility to contribute to society by making their findings useful and actionable. This can involve addressing inequality, social justice issues, and other pressing social problems. The practice often requires sociologists to communicate in a way that is understandable and meaningful to non-specialists, bridging the gap between academic knowledge and everyday social concerns. Public sociology can also be seen as a way of democratizing knowledge, as it seeks to involve a wider range of voices in sociological debates and to bring academic insights into public conversations.

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