A transsexual male weighs in from the influencer world

Thomas McBee, a transsexual (my blog, my language, McBee) male weighs in from the NYT opinion pages.

He has a number of words for the gender critical radical feminists, self-identifying as a former "queer feminist."

He also rejects the "born in the wrong body" phrase as dehumanizing. From what I've talked about the fraughtness of human reproductive fetal biology development, and how sexual identity fraughtness (male/female) parallels that of sexual relationship identity fraughtness (gay/straight), I'd say it's probably less than fully accurate as well as dehumanizing. I think that's part of his take, too.

That portion of his column I thought was pretty good. His own take, that it's "wrong," at least if people understand that in a moral sense, or, that's my understanding of his angle, is certainly correct. At the same time, when "we," or certainly when I, want some descriptive language, what do we use besides "fraughtness"? Because, it's not "normal." No, I'm not going to put that in scare quotes. It's not normal. But, at the same time, I'm not going to use a word that's the opposite of normal that could be seen as pejorative.

In terms of evolutionary biology, fetal development of an individual fetus that eliminates its reproductive ability as an adult is not normal. That's true above all for a physical limitation, but along the lines of my repeated discussion in the past about psychological constraints on "free will," which I do put in scare quotes because, in traditional terms, neither it nor "determinism" exist, it's also true for psychological constraints on reproduction as an adult.

He rejects claims that there's a "trans activist movement" to recruit people, though. That said, he ignores more and more states letting kids as young as 13 get on puberty blockers. He ignores more and more doctors ignoring the Mayo Clinic and not requiring counseling at the same time as these blockers are administered. And, he ignores activists pushing for other states to have similar rules and other activism.

I did Tweet him, and while I wasn't rude, and while I didn't use the word "transsexual," I DID use "sex-dysphoric" rather than "gender-dysphoric." Period. My Twitter, my language.

Yet another Pop Ev Psych ‘truism’ crumbles

Turns out girls maybe are just as good as boys at math.

I’ll be waiting for a couple of the usual suspects to post comments here.

Female sex desire NOT so different from male

Turns out that on this, as on other sexuality issues, whether to come off as “good girls” or whatever, women may be, either consciously or unconsciously, be lying a lot more than they would like to admit.

Per a female-adapted version of the plethysmograph, women, like men, show plenty of visually-aroused sexual desire. It’s all part of a long story on “what do women want,” how more women and not just men are getting engaged in the scientific study of female sexuality, findings like the above and more.

As a sidebar note, if a story like this doesn’t put “paid” to some of the gender-based stupid — and sexist — claims of Pop Evolutionary Psychology, then I’m a female bonobo’s uncle. (Read the story for the joke.)

Dear women – sometimes we men don’t need a road map

After all, we led you out of Africa 60,000 years ago.

Myths of women voters debunked

PUMAs, bloc voting shot down

Among the six debunked myths, the biggest is that women voters vote en bloc.

That was part of what enticed and deceived Steve Schmidt with the Sarah Palin pick, although he might have rolled the dice even without that myth.

Among the other myths is that women vote preferentially for women, and that the gender gap is a creation of women. (It’s men continuing to move to the right.)

Ev Psych, metaphysical style, takes another hit

But it’s not totally good news

Regular readers of my science posts here will note that I regularly and carefully distinguish between Evolutionary Psychology, a quasi-metaphysical, and quasi-scientific, belief system that human psychological and sociological differences are almost entirely reducible to genetic evolution and that within that, the biggest driver is male-female difference, and the legitimate study of the genetic evolution component of changes in human psychology, called evolutionary psychology without capital letters.

Well, capital-letter Ev Psych takes yet another hit as a legitimate line of scientific hypothesis-generation, and this one right in its metaphorical breadbasket.

Male-female personality differences vary widely among different societies around the globe.

Flip side? Here in the USofA, male-female personality differences have been widening in recent years.

The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women. Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less assertive and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

The authors of the study at hand suggest some reasons for this, with which I don’t totally agree, or at least don’t find comprehensive enough.

I think the cyberworld has contributed more to the widening difference than they apparently even thought to consider.

Blogosphere has people as bad as MSM on New Hampshire

Andrew Sullivan claims a “blacklash” from secret ballots, compared to Iowa’s open caucuses, sunk Obama. Arovasis at AmericaBlog entertains that as a possibility.

Neither that nor “crocodile tears” may be the answer.

Maybe, even if the choking up was somewhat calculated, she still revealed enough emotional realism to appeal to voters? Maybe Gloria Steinem was right. (Even though I think she engaged in a fair share of hyperbole, and that, not being a black woman, she can’t speak to both gender and race from personal experience.)

Maybe, as some bloggers are speculating, a lot of Democrats wanted to stick it to bloviators like Chris Matthews. Maybe more independents than expected voted Republican.

Maybe it was some combination of the four factors I listed.

That said, nothing Sully says surprises me. I’m not at all a Clinton fan, but he does have a grade-A case of Clinton Derangement Syndrome.

Aravosis? He should know better. If he doesn’t, he just went down a mark in my book.