Notes
Interesting overview and history of SPLC’s rather “checkered past”.
However, while there’s a great deal of evidence – from SPLC & others – of the “Zombie Left’s future”, there are more than a few reasons -- important ones that aren’t easily, wisely, or accurately dismissed with peevish and petulant accusations of “spamming” and “gender Scientologist" – to argue that many on the other side of the fence are just as “guilty” of those "crimes" – pots and kettles:
artymorty.substack.com/p/the-war-to-ann…
But one of the more unedifying examples of the latter is afforded by the recent spectacle of “AGP-Gate”. The problem is that too many, on virtually all sides, have turned the sexes and genders into “immutable identities” based, in both cases, on some “mythic essences”. As UK feminist “philosopher” Jane Clare Jones once pithily put it.
More generally, the problem is that virtually every last man, woman, and otherkin have their own idiosyncratic, self-serving, and quite unscientific definitions for both. Of particular note is that Genspect draws a more or less tenable distinction between sex and gender while many there at Genspect’s recent conference, or in the peanut galleries, seem to have their heads stuck in the sand in dogmatically insisting the terms are synonymous.
Though the problems have been addressed in the past, probably many times, but one of the better sources I’ve run across is a 1995 essay by Joshua Gamson titled: “Must Identity Movement Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma”. Of particular note:
JG: “Drawing on debates in lesbian and gay periodicals and writings from and about post-structuralist ''queer theory'' and politics. this paper clarifies the meanings and distinctive politics of ''queerness,'' in order to trace its implications for social movement theory and research. The challenge of queer theory and politics, I argue, is primarily in its disruption of sex and gender identity boundaries and deconstruction of identity categories. ....
That tendency, while especially visible in lesbian and gay movements, is also visible in other social movements. It calls attention to a general dilemma of identity politics: Fixed identity categories are both the basis for oppression and the basis for political power. The insights of both sides of the dilemma highlighted here raise important new questions for social movement theory and research.”
researchgate.net/publication/242372156_…
For a start on rectifying those problems, y’all might try wrapping your heads around the standard biological definitions – which are, in fact, foundational to all of biology, and not any sort of “tedious, dishonest, time-wasting academic onanisms” – by which to have a sex is to have functional gonads of either of two types, those with neither being, ipso facto, sexless:
academic.oup.com/molehr/article/20/12/1… (see the Glossary)
link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10…
web.archive.org/web/20181020204521/http…
web.archive.org/web/20190608135422/http…
twitter.com/pwkilleen/status/1039879009… (Oxford Dictionary of Biology)
And:
"What are biological sexes?":
Wiley Online Library [WOL]:
"Biological sex is binary, even though there is a rainbow of sex roles"
