Yanking open the closet door

If you needed another reason to be outraged at the direction the United States is going, a bill currently moving through the state congress of Florida -- and 100% supported by Governor DeSantis -- would not only prohibit teachers from mentioning anything about sexual orientation (their own or anyone else's), but would require them to out LGBTQ students to their parents.

Further support of journalist Adam Serwer's statement that with the GOP, the cruelty is the point.

Nicknamed the "Don't Say Gay" bill, Florida's House Bill 1557 initially was intended to prevent any discussion of queerness in the classroom -- up to and including teachers revealing, even in passing, that they are queer themselves.  So this would, in effect, prevent a gay teacher (for example) from mentioning his partner's name, or even having a photograph of the two of them on his desk.  So what happens when he's seen holding hands with his partner in public, and a student asks him point-blank, "Are you gay?"  Is he supposed to say, "I can't answer that?"  Or "None of your business?"

Joe Harding, a Republican (surprise!) in the state House of Representatives, proposed an amendment on Friday to the bill that made it even worse.  If the bill passes -- and it looks like it will -- teachers who find out a student is LGBTQ are required to tell the parents.  Schools would be compelled to "develop a plan, using all available governmental resources" to out children to their parents "through an open dialogue in a safe, supportive, and judgment-free environment that respects the parent-child relationship and protects the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of the student."

Originally there was a clause providing an exemption "if a reasonably prudent person would believe" that outing the student might cause "abuse, abandonment, or neglect," but Harding took that bit out.

The cruelty is the point.

I'm going to say this as plainly as I know how.  I doubt any Florida Republicans are listening, and even if they are, I doubt even more that they'd care,  but despite that:

No one ever, ever, ever has the right to out a person to anyone, except the person him/herself.  Ever.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

While I often have wished that I'd had the courage to come out as bisexual much earlier in my life, I can't even imagine what my life would have been like if one of my high school teachers had outed me to my parents without my consent.  I wouldn't have been physically abused; neither of my parents ever laid a hand on me.  However, I was already enduring so much emotional abuse that now, almost fifty years later, I'm still dealing with the damage.  I shudder to think of what my life would have been like if my conservative, traditional Roman Catholic parents had found out I was bi when I figured it out myself at age fifteen.

Even without this, I was already told enough times what a crashing disappointment I was.  Add this on...  Well, to put things in perspective, as it was I attempted suicide twice, ages seventeen and twenty.  That I didn't succeed was honestly just dumb luck.

Had someone told my parents I was bi?  I have little doubt that I wouldn't be here today.

Oh, and the clause that outs the kid in a "safe, supportive, and judgment-free environment that respects the parent-child relationship and protects the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of the student" is unadulterated bullshit.  I can vouch for this from my own experience.  No one -- no one -- knew about my suicide attempts.  Not family members, not friends, not teachers.  From the outside, my parents looked like they were straight out of The Brady Bunch.  My mom, especially, was very good at being a chameleon, and the way she treated me in public was 180 degrees from the way she treated me at home.  There is no way that anyone would have known that I wasn't in an environment that supported my mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Once again, let me put this plainly: teachers don't know what students' home life is like.  Not even if they've met the parents, not even if they've talked to the student.  And I can say with complete assurance that if I were a teacher in Florida, they would have to fire me, because no way in hell would I comply with the proposed law.  Putting teachers -- even well-meaning ones -- in charge of revealing a student's sexual orientation isn't just irresponsible, it's actively dangerous.  Queer teenagers already have a four times higher risk of self-harm or suicide than straight teens do; this bill, if it passes, will make it much, much worse.

But I suspect that won't make a difference.

The cruelty is the point.

The only thing that might stop this is if people in Florida contact their representatives and senators and say, "No.  This is unacceptable."  It's all well and good to say, "The blood of every queer teen in Florida who comes to harm after this is on your hands," but by that time, it's too fucking late.  This bill needs to be stopped, and it needs to be stopped now.  Somehow, the most unfeeling, unkind, bigoted people have become the ones who are making the laws, and while there's no easy way to get them out of office until the next election, they sure as hell can get buried by angry letters and emails.

Please.  Do it now.

Lives are at stake, here.

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Virtue signaling

Well, I once again broke the Cardinal Rule of the Internet, namely: don't argue online with strangers.

This time, the source of the argument was the one and only television show I really obsess over, which is Doctor Who.  On Saturday, we watched the eagerly-awaited New Year's special, "Eve of the Daleks," and (IMHO) it was fantastic, easily one of the best in the last three seasons.

It was not only a nifty story with some really funny moments (especially from the character of Sarah, played with deft wit by the Irish comedienne Aisling Bea as the weary, snarky owner of the self-storage facility where the entire episode takes place), but it featured a revelation that got the fan base buzzing.  About 2/3 of the way through, we find out that the Doctor's companion Yaz (played by Mandip Gill) has fallen in love with the Doctor (currently in a female incarnation, played by Jodie Whittaker).  The scene is sweet and subtle, and Mandip Gill does a beautiful job expressing the painful difficulty many LGBTQ people have in admitting who they are (as Yaz says, even to herself).

While it was a wonderful scene, to many Who fans it was hardly a surprise; there have been clues throughout the last two seasons that Yaz was falling for the Doctor.  Having it confirmed, however, was nice, and for queer fans of Who (myself very much included) it was a welcome sign of acceptance and representation of LGBTQ identity.

But then the backlash started.

I'm sure you can imagine it, so I'll only give you a handful of examples:

• Of course Chibs [showrunner Chris Chibnall] had to take the opportunity to ram his woke agenda down our throats.  I don't know why we can't just have a good story for a change.
• Oh, god, here we go with the fucking virtue signaling.  The characters have to tell us what we should think, feel, and approve of.
• If Yaz and the Doctor kiss, I'm done.

My responses were pretty much what you'd expect, and their responses to my responses also pretty much what you'd expect.  Nothing much accomplished, but I've been stewing about it ever since, so I thought I'd write about it here.

What gets me is it's gotten to be that any time some bigot sees something in a movie, television show, or book that pushes the cultural envelope, it's labeled as "virtue signaling" or "wokeness," and forthwith dismissed as a manipulative attempt by the writer to force an agenda.  They seem to see no difference between LGBTQ people and minorities appearing in a work of fiction, and a deliberate attempt to push an opinion -- as if merely being visible is an affront to their sensibilities.

I've run into this repeatedly myself, as an author.  I have been asked more than once why the characters of Dr. Will Daigle (in Whistling in the Dark and Fear No Colors) and Judy Kahn (in Signal to Noise) were written as LGBTQ.  I used to answer this question by going into how I create characters, but I finally ran out of patience -- now my tendency is to snap back, "Because queer people exist," and then watch the person squirm (which, at least, most of them have enough self-awareness to do).  Not once have I ever been asked why (for example) I made the character of Seth Augustine (in The Snowe Agency Mysteries) 100% straight.

Straight, apparently, is the default, and anything else is due to the author trying to make a point about how virtuous and woke (s)he is.

This is reminiscent of the furor that surrounded the choice of actress Jodie Turner-Smith (who is Black) to play the lead role in Channel 5's miniseries Anne Boleyn.  It wasn't historically accurate, people said; the real Boleyn was (of course) a White Englishwoman.  Conservative commentator Candace Owens, who never can resist an opportunity to throw gasoline on a fire, said that she had no problem with a Black Anne Boleyn "so long as the radical left promises to keep their mouth shut if in the future Henry Caville [sic] is selected to play Barack Obama and Rachel McAdams can play Michelle."

Which isn't just tone-deaf, it's a false equivalence ignoring the fact that for decades -- in fact, since the beginnings of cinematic history -- filmmakers have been doing exactly that.  Take, for example, the evil Chinese mastermind Fu Manchu, who has been played in movies and television by a long list of actors -- Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Warner Oland, Harry Agar Lyons, Henry Brandon, and John Carradine, to name a few.  Notice anything about this list?

Not one of them is Chinese.  In fact, Fu Manchu has never been played by a Chinese actor.

John Wayne played Genghis Khan in The Conqueror.  Yul Brynner played King Mongkut of Thailand in The King and I.  Laurence Olivier played Othello in the 1965 movie adaptation of the play.  It's not a thing of the distant past, however.  In 2007 Angelina Jolie played (real-life) Afro-Cuban journalist Mariane Pearl in A Mighty Heart.  Johnny Depp played Tonto in the 2013 movie The Lone Ranger -- although the character of Tonto isn't exactly a realistic portrayal of Native Americans anyhow, so maybe that one shouldn't count.  Worse, in 2016 White actor Joseph Fiennes played Michael Jackson in the movie Elizabeth, Michael, and Marlon.  Going back to Doctor Who, there's the 1977 episode "The Talons of Weng Chiang," which is not a bad story at its core but is rendered unwatchably cringe-y by White actor John Bennett's attempt to portray the Chinese bad guy Li H'sen Chang, and a script that bought into every one of the ugly "sinister Asian devils" stereotypes in existence.

What about the recent turning of the tables?  Could it be that some of the inclusion and representation, and some of the casting choices, were made as a deliberate attempt to prove a point?  I guess, but then you'd have to demonstrate to me how you knew what the intentions of the writers are.  If you don't know the writers made those decisions based upon a desire to appear "woke," then it's hard to see how you'd distinguish that from simply representing the diversity of people out there.  Or, in the case of Turner-Smith's portrayal of Anne Boleyn, that she was the best actress for the role.

But back to Yaz, the Thirteenth Doctor, and "Eve of the Daleks."  I've yet to hear anyone come up with a cogent reason why Yaz shouldn't be a lesbian.  And as far as Chris Chibnall's alleged attempt to force a "woke agenda" on us, allow me to point out that Doctor Who has been at the forefront of representation pretty much since the beginning of the modern era in 2005, with people of color playing major roles (to name only two of many examples, Freema Agyeman as companion Dr. Martha Jones, and Pearl Mackie as companion Bill Potts -- who was also queer).  The character of Captain Jack Harkness (played by John Barrowman) gave new meaning to "pansexual" by flirting with anyone and everyone, ultimately falling hard -- and tragically -- for a Welshman named Ianto Jones.  My favorite example, though, is the relationship -- not only queer but inter-species -- between the inimitable Silurian Vastra (Neve McIntosh) and her badass partner Jenny Flint (Catrin Stewart).

So if you don't like representation, stop watching the fucking show.  Because it's here to stay -- as it should be.

And I, for one, will cheer loudly if Yaz kisses the Doctor.  High time that happened.

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One of my favorite writers is the inimitable Mary Roach, who has blended her insatiable curiosity, her knowledge of science, and her wonderfully irreverent sense of humor into books like Stiff (about death), Bonk (about sex), Spook (about beliefs in the afterlife), and Packing for Mars (about what we'd need to prepare for if we made a long space journey and/or tried to colonize another planet).  Her most recent book, Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law, is another brilliant look at a feature of humanity's place in the natural world -- this time, what happens when humans and other species come into conflict.

Roach looks at how we deal with garbage-raiding bears, moose wandering the roads, voracious gulls and rats, and the potentially dangerous troops of monkeys that regularly run into humans in many places in the tropics -- and how, even with our superior brains, we often find ourselves on the losing end of the battle.

Mary Roach's style makes for wonderfully fun reading, and this is no exception.  If you're interested in our role in the natural world, love to find out more about animals, or just want a good laugh -- put Fuzz on your to-read list.  You won't be disappointed.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Identity politics

Did you hear the quote from Senator Brad Zaun, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for the Iowa State Senate, a few days ago?

There are those homosexuals who take the view: what I do is my business, a purely private matter.  However, all things which take place in the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the life and death of the nation... in each case, these people [should] naturally be publicly degraded, expelled, and handed over to the courts.

Oh, wait, my bad.  That wasn't Zaun, that was Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS under Adolf Hitler.  Here's what Zaun actually said, which is much in the same spirit:

I can tell you, if this material [about LGBTQ issues] was in my school, I’d be going to law enforcement.  I would be asking for a criminal investigation. I would be asking for every single teacher who disseminated that information to be held criminally responsible.  If we need to, as the state of Iowa, provide deeper clarity when it comes to that and enhance those penalties, I will do that...  My warning to all the teachers and the administrators is you’re going to be in jail.  Because this is distributing pornography.  And I will work my tail end off and it will become law.

Zaun, with the support of the President of the Iowa Senate Jake Chapman, wants to make it a felony for teachers to use LGBTQ-positive materials in their classrooms.  Even presenting same-sex relationships in a positive light, according to Zaun and Chapman, is "obscene" and should be punishable by being fired from the school, prosecuted, and jailed.

They're not alone.  A month and a half ago North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson came under fire for saying, "There’s no reason anybody anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, any of that filth."  Deborah Martell, a prominent member of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, told a gay congressional candidate that she was "sickened" that he and his husband had adopted children together; Jim Lyons, the chair of the committee, was called upon to demand her resignation or at least an apology, but responded with a shoulder shrug, saying "not everybody views the world through the same lens."  South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said that he would go as far as invoking the filibuster to defeat the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to LGBTQ people -- despite the fact that polls show it's supported by 70% of Americans.  Texas gubernatorial candidate Don Huffines, who is challenging incumbent Greg Abbott for the Republican nomination in 2022, said, "They’re talking about helping empower and celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, ally, non-heterosexual behavior.  I mean really?  This is Texas.  These are not Texas values.  These are not Republican Party values, but these are obviously Greg Abbott’s values."

It's horrifying how much weight these attitudes still have in the United States.  In the last-mentioned case, instead of repudiating Huffines's repellant views, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services responded by removing a webpage with resources for LGBTQ youth from their website.  Patrick Crimmins, spokesperson for the DFPS, said it was for "content review," and wouldn't elaborate, but reporters uncovered an exchange between Crimmins and Maria Gonzales, the DFPS's media relations director, that started thirteen minutes after Huffines's remarks became public.  Gonzales's email had the subject line, "Don Huffines video accusing Gov/DFPS of liberal transgender agenda," along with the message, "FYI -- this is blowing up on Twitter."  Crimmins responded by contacting Darrell Azar, the DFPS's web and creative services director, recommending removing the page.

Under an hour later, it was gone.

And so forth and so on.

Okay, let's just clarify a couple of things.

First, you're not going to change a straight kid's sexual orientation by telling him/her about LGBTQ relationships.  To hear those people talk, all you have to do is say to a 100% straight teenage boy, "Did you know there are men who are attracted to other men?" and the boy will say, "My goodness, I never realized that!  I think I'll go out and have sex with a guy right now!"  This, of course, goes back to the thoroughly-debunked claim that sexual orientation is a choice.  Which brings up the awkward question of when the straight people sat down, weighed the options, and decided to be attracted to the opposite sex.

Secondly, no one is recommending putting age-inappropriate materials into public school classrooms, and that's not just for reasons of sexual content.  If you think a specific book is age-inappropriate for the grade in which it's being used, we can discuss that.  But that's not what these people are saying.  They're targeting LGBTQ material in particular; the message is that books presenting LGBTQ relationships in a positive light are never age-appropriate, and that all mention of LGBTQ issues should be expunged from public schools.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

If I sound bitter about this, it's because I am.  I grew up in a time and place where the only mention of queerness was (1) by other students, and (2) as an epithet.  Although several came out after graduation -- some of them, like myself, long after graduation -- there was not a single LGBTQ kid in my graduating class who was out at the time.  The atmosphere was one of shame and fear -- desperation that no one could find out, denial of one's own identity, self-loathing, hopelessness of ever being able to admit who we were or having an authentic relationship.  By eliminating LGBTQ materials from school curricula, you're not making everyone straight; you're taking the queer kids and making them feel like an aberration.

Which, of course, is how these people view us, even if few of them say it as explicitly as Don Huffines did. 

It may seem like a cheap shot that I started this post with a quote from Himmler, but when you have elected officials calling LGBTQ people "filth" and recommending making the teaching of LGBTQ issues a felony, how is it so different?  My recommendation to people like Zaun and Chapman is, if you don't want to be compared to a Nazi, then stop acting like one.

These views thrive in darkness; they grow when the people who know about them stay silent.  We have to stand up against the bigots and homophobes -- not just once, but every damn time.  Let's show that we aren't going to live up to the quote, incorrectly attributed to Werner Herzog (in fact, its origins are unknown): "America, you are waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of your people would cheerfully kill another one-third, while the remaining one-third stands and watches and does nothing."

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As I've mentioned before, I love a good mystery, which is why I'm drawn to periods of history where the records are skimpy and our certainty about what actually happened is tentative at best.  Of course, the most obvious example of this is our prehistory; prior to the spread of written language, something like five thousand years ago, most of what we have to go by is fossils and the remnants of human settlements.

Still, we can make some fascinating inferences about our distant ancestors.  In Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age, by Richard Rudgely, we find out about some of the more controversial ones -- that there are still traces in modern languages of the original language spoken by the earliest humans (Rudgely calls it "proto-Nostratic"), that the advent of farming and domestication of livestock actually had the effect of shortening our average healthy life span, and that the Stone Age civilizations were far more advanced than our image of "Cave Men" suggests, and had a sophisticated ability to make art, understand science, and treat illness.

None of this relies on any wild imaginings of the sort that are the specialty of Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin, and Giorgio Tsoukalos; and Rudgely is up front with what is speculative at this point, and what is still flat-out unknown.  His writing is based in archaeological hard evidence, and his conclusions about Paleolithic society are downright fascinating.

If you're curious about what it was like in our distant past, check out Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age!

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Non-binary reality check

One of the claims I hear that infuriates me the most is that LGBTQ+ identification is becoming more common because our society is increasingly amoral, and this is somehow fostering a sense that "being gay will get me noticed."  This is really just the "LGBTQ+ is a choice" foolishness in slightly prettier packaging, along with the sense that queer people are doing it for attention, and my lord isn't that such an inconvenience for everyone else.  I just saw a meme a couple of days ago that encapsulated the idea; it went something like, "We no longer have to explain just the birds and the bees to kids, we have to explain the birds and the birds and the bees and the bees and the birds who think they're bees and the bees who think they're birds..."  And so on and so forth.  You get the idea.

The most insidious thing about this claim is that it delegitimizes queer identification, making it sound no more worthy of serious consideration than a teenager desperate to buy into the latest fashion trend.  It also ignores the actual explanation -- that there were just as many LGBTQ+ people around decades and centuries ago, but if there's a significant chance you will be harmed, jailed, discriminated against, ridiculed, or killed if you admit to who you are publicly, you have a pretty powerful incentive not to tell anyone.  I can vouch for that in my own case; I not only had the threat of what could happen in the locker room hanging over my head if I'd have admitted I was bisexual when I realized it (age fifteen or so), but the added filigree that my religious instructors had told us in no uncertain terms that any kind of sex outside of the traditional male + female marriage was a mortal sin that would result in eternal hellfire.

And that included masturbation.  Meaning that just about all of us received our tickets to hell when we were teenagers and validated them thereafter with great regularity.

The reason this comes up is because of two studies I ran into in the last couple of days.  The first, in The Sociological Review, is called "ROGD is a Scientific-sounding Veneer for Unsubstantiated Anti-trans View: A Peer-reviewed Analysis," by Florence Ashley of the University of Toronto.  ROGD is "rapid-onset gender dysphoria," and is the same thing I described above, not only in pretty packaging but with a nice psychobabble bow on top; the claim boils down to the choice of a trans person to come out being driven by "social contagion," and therefore being a variety of mental illness.  The whole thing hinges on the "suddenness" aspect of it, as if a person saying, "By the way, I'm trans" one day means that they'd just figured it out that that day.  You'd think anyone with even a modicum of logical faculties would realize that one doesn't imply the other.  I came out publicly as queer three years ago, but believe me, it was not a new realization for me personally.  I'd known for decades.  Society being what it is, it just took me that long to have to courage to say so.

Ashley's paper addresses this in no uncertain terms:

"Rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (ROGD) first appeared in 2016 on anti-trans websites as part of recruitment material for a study on an alleged epidemic of youth coming out as trans "out of the blue" due to social contagion and mental illness.  Since then, the concept of ROGD has spread like wildfire and become a mainstay of anti-trans arguments for restricting access to transition-related care...  [It is] evident that ROGD is not grounded in evidence but assumptions.  Reports by parents of their youth’s declining mental health and degrading familial relationships after coming out are best explained by the fact that the study recruited from highly transantagonistic websites.  Quite naturally, trans youth fare worse when their gender identity isn’t supported by their parents.  Other claims associated with ROGD can similarly be explained using what we already know about trans youth and offer no evidence for the claim that people are ‘becoming trans’ because of social contagion or mental illness.

The second, quite unrelated, paper was in The European Journal of Archaeology and describes a thousand-year-old burial in southern Finland that strongly suggests the individual buried there was androgynous.  Genetic analysis of the bones showed that they'd belonged to someone with Klinefelter Syndrome, a disorder involving a chromosomally-male person having an extra X chromosome (i.e., XXY instead of XY).  This results in someone who is basically male but has some female physical features -- most often, the development of breasts.  

Nondisjunction disorders like Klinefelter Syndrome are not uncommon, and finding a bone from someone with an odd number of chromosome is hardly surprising.  But what made this paper stand out to me -- and what it has to do with the previous one -- is that the individual in the grave in Finland was buried with honors, and with accoutrements both of males and females.  There was jewelry and clothing traditionally associated with women, but two sword-hilts that are typically found in (male) warrior-burials.

Artist's depiction of the burial at Suontaka [Image from Moilanen et al., July 2021]

So apparently, not only was the person in the grave buried with honors, (s)he/they were openly androgynous -- and that androgyny was accepted by the community to the extent that (s)he/they were buried with grave goods representing both gender roles.

"This burial [at Suontaka] has an unusual and strong mixture of feminine and masculine symbolism, and this might indicate that the individual was not strictly associated with either gender but instead with something else," said study leader Ulla Moilanen of  the University of Turku.  "Based on these analyses, we suggest... [that] the Suontaka grave possibly belonged to an individual with sex-chromosomal aneuploidy XXY.  The overall context of the grave indicates that it was a respected person whose gender identity may well have been non-binary."

If Moilanen and her group are correct in their conclusions, it gives us the sobering message that people in tenth-century C.E. Finland were doing better than we are at accepting that sexual identification and orientation aren't simple and binary.

What it comes back to for me is the astonishing gall it takes to tell someone, "No, you don't know your own sexuality; here, let me explain it to you."  Why it's apparently such a stressor for some people when a friend says, "I'm now identifying as ____, this is my new name," I have no idea, especially given that nobody seems to have the least trouble switching from "Miss" to "Mrs." and calling a newly-married woman by her husband's last name when the couple makes that choice.  The harm done to people from telling them, "Who you are is wrong/a phase/a plea for attention/sinful" is incalculable; it's no wonder that the suicide rate amongst LGBTQ+ is three times higher than it is for cis/het people.

All of which, you'd think, would be a tremendous impetus for outlawing the horrors of "conversion therapy" and "ex-gay ministries" worldwide.  But no.

More exasperating still, now there's apparently evidence that people in Finland a thousand years ago had figured this whole thing out better than we have, making it even more crystal-clear why so many of us sound exhausted when we ask, "why are we still having to fight these battles?" 

Of course, as tired as we are of saying the same thing over and over, we certainly can't stop now.  We have made some headway; my guess is that if I were a teenager now, I'd have few compunctions about admitting I'm queer, and that's even considering how ridiculously shy I am.  Contrast that to when I actually was a teenager back in the 1970s, and there was not a single out LGBTQ+ in my entire graduating class (although several of us came out later; in my case, much later). 

And allow me to state, if I hadn't already made the point stridently enough: none of us was "turned queer" between graduation and coming out.  We just finally made our way into a context where we were less likely to be ridiculed, discriminated against, or beaten up for admitting who we are.

I'll end with something else I found online, that sums up the whole issue nicely -- although it does highlight how far we still have to go, despite the reality checks we're seeing increasingly often in scientific research.  Even with all that, I firmly believe it:

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I was an undergraduate when the original Cosmos, with Carl Sagan, was launched, and being a physics major and an astronomy buff, I was absolutely transfixed.  Me and my co-nerd buddies looked forward to the new episode each week and eagerly discussed it the following day between classes.  And one of the most famous lines from the show -- ask any Sagan devotee -- is, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, first you must invent the universe."

Sagan used this quip as a launching point into discussing the makeup of the universe on the atomic level, and where those atoms had come from -- some primordial, all the way to the Big Bang (hydrogen and helium), and the rest formed in the interiors of stars.  (Giving rise to two of his other famous quotes: "We are made of star-stuff," and "We are a way for the universe to know itself.")

Since Sagan's tragic death in 1996 at the age of 62 from a rare blood cancer, astrophysics has continued to extend what we know about where everything comes from.  And now, experimental physicist Harry Cliff has put together that knowledge in a package accessible to the non-scientist, and titled it How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch: In Search of the Recipe for our Universe, From the Origin of Atoms to the Big Bang.  It's a brilliant exposition of our latest understanding of the stuff that makes up apple pies, you, me, the planet, and the stars.  If you want to know where the atoms that form the universe originated, or just want to have your mind blown, this is the book for you.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Complexity vs. bigotry

By now, most of you have probably heard that Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican representative from Georgia who narrowly edged out both Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert as the biggest asshole in Congress, thought it'd be a fun stunt to taunt Representative Marie Newman (D-Ill.) about having a transgender daughter by putting up the following sign:

This sign illustrates a general rule of thumb, to wit: do not append "Trust the Science" to your ignorant, bigoted opinion and expect it to go unchallenged when there's someone in the room who actually understands science.

The whole "anything that's not cis-het-binary sexuality is unnatural" claim starts to fall apart as soon as you look at it carefully.  Beginning with the fact that to date, homosexual behavior has been observed and documented in 450 animal species besides humans.  That's a few too many to explain away, as one Kenyan official did regarding a video of coupling between two male lions, that the animals were "influenced by gays who have gone to the national parks and behaved badly."

Although I have to say that any couple, gay or otherwise, who is brave enough to fuck outdoors while lions are watching has my utmost admiration.

Since "unnatural" means "not found in nature," we're off to a bad start.  Things only get worse when you look not at who's mating with whom, but what the sexes of individuals themselves are.  Over five hundred species of fish have been identified that change sex -- often when a dominant individual of one sex dies, and the strongest remaining individual switches sex to take his/her place.  Some species, such as many types of gobies, can actually change back and forth, actually altering their anatomy to become reproductively mature females or males as needed dependent on the makeup of the rest of the population.

The complications don't end there, because there's the difficulty of specifying what exactly we mean when we say "male" and "female."  There are at least five different ways that you could define "sex:" what genitals you have, which gender(s) you're attracted to, what sex chromosomes you have, the hormones present in your bloodstream, and your brain wiring (i.e., what gender you see yourself as).  And despite what Marjorie Taylor Greene and others of her ilk would have you believe, all too commonly these don't line up.

We dealt with attraction and genitalia; what about chromosomes?  In mammals, maleness is conferred by a gene complex called SRY that's present on the Y chromosome, so generally if an individual has a matched set of sex chromosomes (XX), she's female, while someone with an unmatched set (XY) is male.  It's wryly amusing that the euphemism for explaining sex is "the birds and the bees," because birds and bees both do this a different way; in birds, it's the males that have the matched set (ZZ) while the females have the unmatched set (ZW), which is why sex-linked trait inheritance has the opposite pattern in birds than it does in mammals.  Bees are haplo-diploid, meaning that males have half the number of chromosomes that females do -- fertilized eggs give rise to females, and unfertilized ones to males.  (If you're thinking, "so that means male bees have a mother but no father?", you're exactly right.)

Okay, so let's limit it to humans.  Makes it simple, right?  If that's your guess, you've kind of lost the plot.  Humans follow the XX/XY pattern -- most of the time.  In embryonic development, female anatomy is sort of the default condition; if an embryo lacks a working SRY, it develops into a female.  One of the drivers of the development of male anatomy is a gene in the SRY complex called 5-alpha-reductase, of which males generally have two copies.  One activates embryonically, which is why a prenatal ultrasound can often tell a woman if she's going to have a boy or not; the other activates around age twelve or thirteen and generates the changes in a boy's body that happen at puberty.

But there's a mutation called 5-alpha-reductase deficiency, which knocks out the first copy but not the second.  So the baby is born looking like an ordinary female infant.  Then at age twelve, the second gene switches on, and in a few months, the child turns into a male -- the gonads descend, the penis develops, and so on.

Then there are the kids who have X-SRY -- the SRY complex moved during a process called crossing over onto the X chromosome, so the child karyotypes as a female but is anatomically male.  Then there's XY androgen insensitivity, which is sort of the opposite; an alteration in a hormone receptor causes the male hormones to be unable to lock onto the appropriate cells, so even though they have an XY karyotype and the amount of testosterone in the bloodstream usually seen in a normal male, they're anatomically female.

And then there's the most complex thing of all, which is the neural wiring that gives rise to the sense of self.  Most adults have a sense of their gender that goes beyond what their plumbing looks like.  Sometimes that doesn't line up with the genitalia, the chromosome makeup, or both.  A 2019 paper in Nature exhibits beyond any doubt that transgender people are not, as Marjorie Taylor Greene would claim, either "unnatural" or "making it up," they actually have differences in their neurology and hormone/receptor interactions from those that cisgender people do.  We still don't fully understand what causes the transgender condition, but one thing it definitely isn't is some kind of invented pseudo-condition.

Nor is any of this a choice.  I'm reminded of what a trans student of mine said a couple of years ago: "A choice?  Why would I choose this?  To face prejudice on a daily basis?  To have to fight continuously for people simply to acknowledge that I am who I say I am?  Give me a break."  Then there was the gay student who shut up the "it's a choice" bigots by saying that if homosexual attraction is a choice, straight people should be able to choose, at least temporarily, to be attracted to the same sex.  "Try it!" he'd tell them cheerfully.  "Look at the body of someone the same sex as you, and choose to be attracted!"

After the bigot is stunned into silence, he usually adds, "Until you can do that, shut the fuck up."

Unfortunately, a lot of non-cis-hetero-binary people aren't in the position where they can be that determined not to give an inch; they still face ostracism from family and friends, ridicule and violence, and in some countries, imprisonment, torture, or execution.  Just for being who they are, just for loving who they love, just for wanting to have society acknowledge that sexuality and gender are complex -- and therefore as long as it's between consenting adults, every person has the right to be open about expressing those things in whatever way they experience them.

But with so many people being bound and determined to fit the whole world into a neat, tidy, binary box, is it any wonder why LGBTQ+ people want to find a descriptor for every possible combination and gradation?  I sometimes hear snickering over "adding another letter to the acronym;" but society has been so dismissive for so long that it's no wonder people want to find a label to hold up and say "This is who I am."  (If you're wondering, I'm male and bisexual, but "queer" is also fine with me.)  Sexuality, both in humans and in other species, is so complex and multifaceted that there may not be letters in the alphabet to slice it finely enough to find a unique descriptor for each person's experience of it.  But with clods like Marjorie Taylor Greene posting signs on office doors saying that they have the God-given black-and-white truth and all the scientists agree, you can hardly fault them for trying.

So to wrap this up: not only is Greene's sign simple bigotry, it's outright false.  The universe is a complicated place, and either you should take the time to learn what science actually has uncovered about it, or else keep your damn mouth shut.

And if you're too lazy, ignorant, and opinionated to do that, you have no place in our government crafting policy for people smarter than you.

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The advancement of technology has opened up ethical questions we've never had to face before, and one of the most difficult is how to handle our sudden ability to edit the genome.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a system for doing what amounts to cut-and-paste editing of DNA, and since its discovery by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna, the technique has been refined and given pinpoint precision.  (Charpentier and Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year for their role in developing CRISPR.)

Of course, it generates a host of questions that can be summed up by Ian Malcolm's quote in Jurassic Park, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."  If it became possible, should CRISPR be used to treat devastating diseases like cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia?  Most people, I think, would say yes.  But what about disorders that are mere inconveniences -- like nearsightedness?  What about cosmetic traits like hair and eye color?

What about intelligence, behavior, personality?

None of that has been accomplished yet, but it bears keeping in mind that ten years ago, the whole CRISPR gene-editing protocol would have seemed like fringe-y science fiction.  We need to figure this stuff out now -- before it becomes reality.

This is the subject of bioethicist Henry Greely's new book, CRISPR People: The Science and Ethics of Editing Humans.  It considers the thorny questions surrounding not just what we can do, or what we might one day be able to do, but what we should do.

And given how fast science fiction has become reality, it's a book everyone should read... soon.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

How to prove you exist

Let me say right up front that I don't mean any of what I'm saying here as criticism of the researchers themselves.

But there are times that it is damn frustrating that the research has to be done in the first place.

This comes up because of a paper that was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a couple of weeks ago, by a team led by Jeremy Jabbour of the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.  In "Robust Evidence for Bisexual Orientation Among Men," we read:

The question whether some men have a bisexual orientation—that is, whether they are substantially sexually aroused and attracted to both sexes—has remained controversial among both scientists and laypersons.  Skeptics believe that male sexual orientation can only be homosexual or heterosexual, and that bisexual identification reflects nonsexual concerns, such as a desire to deemphasize homosexuality.  Although most bisexual-identified men report that they are attracted to both men and women, self-report data cannot refute these claims.  Patterns of physiological (genital) arousal to male and female erotic stimuli can provide compelling evidence for male sexual orientation.  (In contrast, most women provide similar physiological responses to male and female stimuli.)  We investigated whether men who self-report bisexual feelings tend to produce bisexual arousal patterns.  Prior studies of this issue have been small, used potentially invalid statistical tests, and produced inconsistent findings.  We combined nearly all previously published data (from eight previous studies in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), yielding a sample of 474 to 588 men (depending on analysis).  All participants were cisgender males.  Highly robust results showed that bisexual-identified men’s genital and subjective arousal patterns were more bisexual than were those who identified as exclusively heterosexual or homosexual.  These findings support the view that male sexual orientation contains a range, from heterosexuality, to bisexuality, to homosexuality.

So basically what they did was to show naked pics of both men and women to self-identified bisexual guys, and check to see if they got hard-ons from both.

Like I said in the first sentence, I'm glad this research was done, because there is doubt out there.  I've heard that doubt go two ways -- that bisexuals are straight people looking for attention or for a kinky thrill, or that bisexuals are gay people who are afraid to admit it.  I remember clearly being told by a student -- long before I was out of the closet -- that she could understand there being homosexuals and heterosexuals, but she couldn't see how there could be bisexuals.  "How can they be attracted to both at the same time?" she asked me.  "Why don't they just make up their minds?"

I fell back on the research -- that bisexuality and the spectrum-nature of sexual orientation was well-established -- but even after seeing the data, she wasn't convinced.  "I just don't believe it," she said.

Not only was I appalled by this because, in essence, she was talking about me -- telling me that my own identity was an impossibility -- but because even presented with evidence, she went with her "feelings" on the topic rather than (1) the conclusions of the scientists, and worse, (2) people's assessment of their own orientation.

Because that's the thing, isn't it?  How does anyone have the fucking temerity to say, "No, that's not who you are.  I know better.  Here's who you actually are."?  People in the trans community know this all too well; how often are they told that someone else knows their gender better than they do?

And here, we're told we have to prove we even exist.

How about just believing us?

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Peter Salanki from San Francisco, USA, The bisexual pride flag (3673713584), CC BY 2.0]

I've known I was bisexual since I was fifteen years old.  There was never any doubt about my attraction to both men and women.  Hell, I knew it before I'd ever even heard the word "bisexuality."  The fact that now, over forty years later, there has to be a study published in a major scientific journal to convince people that I actually know who I am -- that I'm not delusional or lying -- is nothing short of infuriating.

So thanks to Jabbour et al. for establishing peer-reviewed research that I hope and pray will put this question to rest once and for all.  I know it won't convince everyone -- my long-ago evidence-proof student as a case in point -- but maybe we'll move toward accepting that gender and sexual orientation are complex and completely non-binary, and better still, toward valuing people's understanding of who they are over society's pronouncements of who they should be.

And as I've said before: I wish I'd been strong enough and fearless enough to claim my own identity when I first realized it as a teenager.  I have often wondered what trajectory my life would have taken if I'd spent all those years free of the humiliation and fear I was raised with, and proud of who I was instead of ashamed of it.  You can't change past mistakes, more's the pity, but at least I can state who I am now and hope that my voice will add more volume to the call that each of us should be free to celebrate who we are without having to prove anything to anyone.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation of the week is a brilliant retrospective of how we've come to our understanding of one of the fastest-moving scientific fields: genetics.

In Siddhartha Mukherjee's wonderful book The Gene: An Intimate History, we're taken from the first bit of research that suggested how inheritance took place: Gregor Mendel's famous study of pea plants that established a "unit of heredity" (he called them "factors" rather than "genes" or "alleles," but he got the basic idea spot on).  From there, he looks at how our understanding of heredity was refined -- how DNA was identified as the chemical that housed genetic information, to how that information is encoded and translated, to cutting-edge research in gene modification techniques like CRISPR-Cas9.  Along each step, he paints a very human picture of researchers striving to understand, many of them with inadequate tools and resources, finally leading up to today's fine-grained picture of how heredity works.

It's wonderful reading for anyone interested in genetics and the history of science.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The closet's a fine and private place

Yesterday I got a DM on Twitter that left me scratching my head a little.

Here's the body of it, verbatim:

I don't mean to be offensive, but why do you make such a big deal of being bisexual?  What your preferences are and who you like to go to bed with are nobody's business.  But because you and other people like you want to push it in everybody's faces, you make it our business whether we want it to be or not. 

Then you complain when people are rude or discriminate, which they wouldn't have done if you didn't put it all on the front page in all caps. 

Think about keeping your private matters private out of courtesy to everyone else who would rather not hear about it.

So there's a lot to unpack here in only three paragraphs.

First, in my experience, when someone starts with "I don't mean to be offensive, but..." they're about to say something offensive.  (Analogous rules apply with phrases like "I don't mean to sound racist, but..." or "I don't mean to sound homophobic, but...".)  But leaving that much aside, there are still a few things that jump out at me.

First, I really didn't think I was "making a big deal out of being bisexual."  It's in my profile, okay. (Nota bene: it's not in all caps.)  I retweet LGBTQ awareness stuff when I see it -- maybe once or twice a day, if that.  Last week I got in a quick, lighthearted exchange with a friend about actor Tom Ellis's role in the series Lucifer, and I said that if the real Lucifer is as gorgeous as Tom Ellis, it really doesn't give me much incentive not to sin.

And that's kind of it.

Mostly what I get involved in on Twitter are discussions with other fiction writers, and (unfortunately) posts about politics.  So it's not like I'm waving a rainbow flag in front of people's faces.

Which brings up the question of why it would be a problem even if I was.  The subtler bit of subtext here is that the writer thinks it's fine for me to be queer as long as no one else knows.  The message is that she's only comfortable when she can pretend that people like me don't exist.  Because the assumption in our culture is you're straight unless you say otherwise, it's not that she thinks all identification by sexual orientation should be a closely-guarded secret; she's perfectly fine assuming that everyone is 100% straight, and therefore engages in the behavior associated with sexually-active 100% straight people.

But my even mentioning that there are folks who don't fall into that category is apparently a problem.  Or, more specifically, it's a problem that I'm one of them and I'm not ashamed of it.  Well, let me say this as explicitly as I can, and as politely as I can manage: that's how I lived for forty-some-odd years, after I realized I was bi when I was fifteen years old and suddenly found myself goggle-eyed over a handsome friend who took his shirt off on a hot day.  That's forty years of shame, coupled with a desperation that nobody must find out about that part of me, that the only way to live was to pretend to be someone I wasn't.

Now?  I have the 100% support of my wonderful wife, friends, and family.  My public coming-out last year spurred at least two people I know of to proudly claim their own identity (something that makes me choke up a little every time I think about it).

So re-enter that closet?  Not just no, but fuck no.

Because you know what?  Now that I'm out, I like being bi.  It gives me twice as many opportunities to openly appreciate the beauty of the human body.  It hasn't damaged my relationship with my wife; if anything, it's strengthened it.  So if you expect me to sink back down into shame and self-loathing because you're uncomfortable with the fact that I'm not uncomfortable...

... it's your problem.  Deal with it.

So anyway.  That was how my day started yesterday, and I decided instead of getting angry, to respond publicly.  Maybe it'll open a few eyes, and if not that, at least it might shut a few mouths.

Because I'll be damned if I'm expected to pretend Tom Ellis isn't drop-dead beautiful.  Yowza.

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This week's Skeptophilia book-of-the-week is brand new -- science journalist Lydia Denworth's brilliant and insightful book Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond.

Denworth looks at the evolutionary basis of our ability to form bonds of friendship -- comparing our capacity to that of other social primates, such as a group of monkeys in a sanctuary in Puerto Rico and a tribe of baboons in Kenya.  Our need for social bonds other than those of mating and pair-bonding is deep in our brains and in our genes, and the evidence is compelling that the strongest correlate to depression is social isolation.

Friendship examines social bonding not only from the standpoint of observational psychology, but from the perspective of neuroscience.  We have neurochemical systems in place -- mediated predominantly by oxytocin, dopamine, and endorphin -- that are specifically devoted to strengthening those bonds.

Denworth's book is both scientifically fascinating and also reassuringly optimistic -- stressing to the reader that we're built to be cooperative.  Something that we could all do with a reminder of during these fractious times.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Sex, choice, and genes

Sometimes a piece of research makes me simultaneously think, "Okay, that's pretty interesting," and "Oh, no, this is not going to end well."

That was my reaction to the latest study of the genetics of sexuality and sexual orientation, which appeared in Science this week.  The paper, entitled "Large-Scale GWAS Reveals Insights Into the Genetic Architecture of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior," was the work of a huge team headed by Andrea Ganna of the Center for Genomic Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, and looked at genetic correlations amongst almost 500,000 individuals with their self-reported same-sex sexual behavior.

Before we launch off into how this is being spun, let's look at what Ganna et al. actually wrote:

In the discovery samples (UK Biobank and 23andMe), five autosomal loci were significantly associated with same-sex sexual behavior.  Follow-up of these loci suggested links to biological pathways that involve sex hormone regulation and olfaction.  Three of the loci were significant in a meta-analysis of smaller, independent replication samples.  Although only a few loci passed the stringent statistical corrections for genome-wide multiple testing and were replicated in other samples, our analyses show that many loci underlie same-sex sexual behavior in both sexes.  In aggregate, all tested genetic variants accounted for 8 to 25% of variation in male and female same-sex sexual behavior, and the genetic influences were positively but imperfectly correlated between the sexes [genetic correlation coefficient (rg)= 0.63; 95% confidence intervals, 0.48 to 0.78]...  Additional analyses suggested that sexual behavior, attraction, identity, and fantasies are influenced by a similar set of genetic variants (rg > 0.83); however, the genetic effects that differentiate heterosexual from same-sex sexual behavior are not the same as those that differ among nonheterosexuals with lower versus higher proportions of same-sex partners, which suggests that there is no single continuum from opposite-sex to same-sex preference.

To put it succinctly, and without all the scientific verbiage: sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender are complex, and the differences we see amongst humans are not attributable to a single cause.

Which you'd expect, I'd think.  The old binary divisions of male vs. female and heterosexual vs. homosexual are so clearly wrong it's a wonder anyone still thinks they're correct.  Transsexual and anatomically intersex individuals are hardly rare; and I know for a fact bisexuality exists, because I've been equally attracted to women and men since I was aware of sexual attraction at all.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

But this doesn't square with how some people want the world to work, so immediately this paper was published, it began to be twisted out of all recognition.

First, there was the "we wish the world was simple" approach, as exemplified by Science News, which for the record I'm about fed up with because for fuck's sake, they should know better.   Their headline regarding the study was "There's No Evidence That a 'Gay Gene' Exists," which is one of those technically-true-but-still-misleading taglines the media seems to be increasingly fond of.

No, there is no single "gay gene."  But reread the passage from the original paper I quoted above; the gist is that there is a host of factors, genetic and otherwise, that correlate with sexual orientation.  Here's a more accurate phrasing of the paper's conclusion, from Melinda Mills, writing about the study in the "Perspectives" column of Science: "The genetic correlation identified in the GWAS of whether a person had ever engaged in sex with someone of the same sex and the more complex measure of proportion of same-sex partners was 0.73 for men but only 0.52 for women.  This means that genetic variation has a higher influence on same-sex sexual behavior in men than in women and also demonstrates the complexity of women's sexuality."

Even the lower 0.52 correlation for women is pretty damn significant, considering that correlation runs on a scale of 0 to 1 where 0 means "no correlation at all" and 1 means "perfectly correlated."

But that didn't stop the next level of misinterpretation from happening, predictably from the anti-LGBTQ evangelicals and other crazy right-wingers, who would prefer it if people like me didn't exist.  All they did is read the headline from Science News (or one of the large number of media outlets that characterized the research the same way) and start writing op-ed pieces crowing, "See?  No gay gene!  We told you homosexuality was a choice.  Now science proves we were right all along."  Add to that the alarmists who went entirely the other direction and suggested that the Ganna et al. research could be used to identify non-heterosexuals for the purposes of persecution, or even eugenics, and you've got a morass of hyperemotional responses that miss the main conclusions of the study entirely.

So can I recommend that all of you read the fucking research?  For the Right-Wing NutJobs, let me just say that if you have to lie about what a study actually says to support your viewpoint, your position must be pretty tenuous from the get-go.  And while I sympathize with the alarmists' fears, it's hard to see how the Ganna et al. research could be used for any sort of nefarious purposes, when the best genetic correlates to homosexuality numbered around a half-dozen, not all of them showed up in every LGBTQ person studied, and even aggregated only predicted correctly around half the time.

So the whole thing got me kind of stirred up, as measurable by the number of times I felt obliged to use the f-bomb to express my frustration.  Which you'd have predicted, given my (1) bisexuality, (2) background in genetics, and (3) hatred of popular media mischaracterizing science.

In any case, the take-home message here is threefold:

1. The universe is a complex place.  Deal with it.
2. Wherever human sexuality comes from, it isn't a choice.  If that offends your sensibilities or conflicts with your worldview, you might want to re-examine your sensibilities and worldview, because as far as I can tell reality doesn't give a rat's ass about what you'd like to believe.
3. Don't trust headlines.  Always go back to the original research before forming an opinion.  Yes, reading scientific papers is challenging for non-scientists, but that's the only way you'll know your understanding is on solid ground.

So that's the latest highly equivocal piece of the nature-nurture puzzle, the outcome of which you'd probably have expected from knowing the history of the question.  As much as I'd like it if these matters were simple, I'm much happier knowing the truth.  I'll end with a quote from the inimitable Carl Sagan: "For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is about a subject near and dear to my heart; the possibility of intelligent extraterrestrial life.  In The Three-Body Problem, Chinese science fiction writer Cixin Liu takes an interesting angle on this question; if intelligent life were discovered in the universe -- maybe if it even gave us a visit -- how would humans react?

Liu examines the impact of finding we're not alone in the cosmos from political, social, and religious perspectives, and doesn't engage in any pollyanna-ish assumptions that we'll all be hunky-dory and ascend to the next plane of existence.  What he does think might happen, though, makes for fascinating reading, and leaves you pondering our place in the universe for days after you turn over the last page.

[Note: if you purchase this book from the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

Defining identity

In case you had run short of things to be outraged about, today we have a story that the Trump administration is trying to push a legal definition of sex as "a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth."

To a biologist, this is a little like the government passing a law defining pi is being "exactly equal to three."  You might not like the fact that pi is an irrational number, it might be annoying to have to use a decimal approximation to calculate the circumference of a circle, but all of that falls clearly into the "tough shit" department.  The universe is not arranged so as to make you feel comfortable, and if you can't handle that, well, that's too freakin' bad.

Of course, it's no big mystery why they're doing this.  The evangelical Christians, who have had a stranglehold over the Republican Party for years, have a remarkable capacity to look past all sorts of biblical injunctions such as the prohibition against infidelity, divorce, and usury (lending money at interest), not to mention more perplexing ones like the rules against eating shellfish and wearing clothes made of two different kinds of cloth sewn together.  On the other hand, anything remotely approaching sexual relations between two consenting adults other than a traditional, in-marriage male/female relationship, makes these people go into a complete meltdown.  (Other than the aforementioned infidelity, which apparently is okay, especially if it was Donald Trump engaging in it.)

I swear, these people are more concerned about what I do with my dick than I am.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Ben Tavener from Curitiba, Brazil, São Paulo LGBT Pride Parade 2014 (14108541924), CC BY 2.0]

Here's the problem.  Even beyond the obvious issue of equal rights for LGBTQ people at the heart of the debate, this viewpoint is completely contrary to what biological science says.  "Gender" is a construct of a lot of different features -- anatomy, brain wiring (the "which gender do you feel like?" part comes from this), chromosomal makeup (XX or XY or, in some cases, other combinations), hormone levels, and sexual orientation.  What the people pressing for this redefinition would like is if those always lined up in exactly the same way.

They don't.

Gender is not simple, and it's clearly non-binary.  Let's just look at two situations that should illustrate that beyond doubt.

First, consider the condition XY androgen insensitivity.  In this condition, the embryo has the ordinary male configuration chromosomally (XY), but has a genetic mutation that prevents the formation of receptors for testosterone.  During development, all embryos looks female until midway during the second trimester.  If the baby has an XY chromosome configuration, at that point -- assuming everything is working the usual way -- testosterone takes effect, the testicles descend into the scrotum and the penis gets larger.  In other words, all of the things parents look for during an ultrasound when they want to find out the sex of their baby.

In XY androgen insensitivity, none of this happens.  The baby looks anatomically female.  A pelvic exam -- seldom done on young children -- would reveal that the child has no uterus, only the lower two-thirds of the vagina, and gonads that are still small and undeveloped, and are still in the abdominal cavity.  These children usually are identified when the age of puberty hits and they don't start to menstruate, but up to then, they are perfectly ordinary girls who have female external anatomy, and more important, feel that they're female.

Santhi Soundarajan, an Indian track star, is one of these.  Because many female elite athletes have very low body fat content, a good many of them don't ovulate, which is why her condition wasn't identified.  But she competed in the Olympics, won a silver medal in the 800 -- and only afterwards did she learn that her chromosomes were XY, not XX.  The Olympic committee stripped her of her medal and banned her from competition.

What would you do if you were told the one thing you loved, were passionate about, excelled at, was no longer an option?  Santhi Soundaraian attempted suicide.

Then there's 5α-reductase deficiency.  The issue with this condition is the hormone dihydroxytestosterone, which is what directly acts to produce the male anatomy.  Males have two copies of the DHT gene, one of which activates prenatally (causing the changes in a male fetus mentioned above), and the other at puberty.  People with a mutation in the first DHT gene are born looking female for the same reason they are in XY androgen insensitivity.  The thing is, the second copy of the gene -- the one that activates at puberty -- works just fine.

When that gene switches on, at age 13 or so, the child goes from being an anatomical female to being an anatomical male, in the space of about nine months.

Add that to recent studies of gender identification in which it was conclusively established that trans individuals' brains are wired like the gender they identify with, not the gender associated with their anatomy.  So all the people who have liked to har-de-har-har about "boys who think they're girls" and how ridiculous that is and how next thing you know, you'll have people identifying as rocks (yes, I actually heard someone say that) -- please do shut up.  All you're doing is establishing how ignorant you are of the biological facts.

The biology of gender is complex, and not fully understood.  We still don't know if sexual orientation is genetic -- it appears to have a genetic component at least.  It, too, is non-binary.  About four percent of people identify as bisexual, for example.  And if you think sexual orientation is a choice, ask yourself when you sat down and gave thoughtful consideration to each gender, and decided which you chose to be attracted to.

Basing gender designation on anatomy alone is not just simpleminded; it's flat-out wrong.  So basing policy on an arbitrary, government-mandated definition of gender is two steps removed from the truth.

Look, I'm sympathetic if there are some parts of reality that make you feel squinky.  There are parts of it I'm not especially fond of myself.  But that doesn't mean the bits you don't like aren't true.  And if you're using your own squinky feelings to make decisions about who other people are, what rights they should have, and what they should be able to do with their own bodies, you are light years away from anything that could be called moral behavior.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a brilliant look at two opposing worldviews; Charles Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet.  Mann sees today's ecologists, environmental scientists, and even your average concerned citizens as falling into two broad classes -- wizards (who think that whatever ecological problems we face, human ingenuity will prevail over them) and prophets (who think that our present course is unsustainable, and if we don't change our ways we're doomed).

Mann looks at a representative member from each of the camps.  He selected Norman Borlaug, Nobel laureate and driving force behind the Green Revolution, to be the front man for the Wizards, and William Vogt, who was a strong voice for population control and conversation, as his prototypical Prophet.  He takes a close and personal look at each of their lives, and along the way outlines the thorny problems that gave rise to this disagreement -- problems we're going to have to solve regardless which worldview is correct.

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