Evolutionary biologist. Seeker & communicator of truths (DarkHorse podcast, Natural Selections on Substack). Spends time in the Amazon. Rhymes w flying.
Modern activism is often performative, rehearsed, and utterly out of touch with reality. Here, I make the bold claim that men and women are, on average, different heights. That appears to have been a bridge too far.
So when those of us on the left talked about the lab leak hypothesis for over a year, and were called “right wing” as a result, how do you categorize that? Who’s engaging in fake news now? How did the left come to be the demographic that doesn’t understand what science is?
The research is the latest in a series of studies that show people on the political right tend to not only be targeted by fake news, but to believe it's correct.
If you truly believe that math is created by humans, you have no business in math.
The ways that we *describe* math are, no doubt, a social construct, but math itself is the discovery of underlying reality.
"It is time for all members of our profession to acknowledge that mathematics is created by humans and therefore inherently carries human biases. Until this occurs, our community and our students cannot reach full potential." -CMPM
#MathValues
This is not a victory for women or girls. It is a victory for social maneuvering over biological reality, and a demonstration of the power of manipulation over analysis. We need a strong and courageous
@ACLU
, not a pandering pod of ideologues.
BREAKING: A federal court has blocked the Idaho law banning transgender student athletes.
This is a victory for all women and girls in Idaho.
Trans people belong in sports.
No qualifications.
Explicitly chosen for her immutable characteristics.
If that’s the best woman you can imagine for the job, you have told us what you think of women.
A professor claims that a show about eating hot wings “creates…inequitable gender hierarchies.” She is part of a vocal minority who sees oppression everywhere. There is no fact-checking—journalistic, scientific, anything. If this approach keeps gaining ground, we all lose.
A YouTube show that challenges contestants to eat increasingly spicy chicken wings has raised the ire of a Tulsa media-studies professor. via
@KatTimpf
Notre Dame burns. Devastating.
Shapiro refers, accurately, to its “Judeo-Christian heritage.” A journalist claims that he is thus evoking far-right hatred, religious war.
But it is her words, not his, that stoke the fires of rage. We should all be asking: Who does this serve?
This, from
@chick_in_kiev
, in The Washington Post, is the sheerest form of disgusting bulls***. I blamed no one for the Notre Dame fire, since it was an accident by all available evidence, and imputing malicious intent to me is simply gross.
Breaking news! Vitamin D protective against Covid!
Some of us have been saying this for a long time, but media & public health orgs have been silent. It's like they prioritize our fear and compliance over our ability to take control of our own health.
DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” is rapidly becoming a modern version of Mao’s Little Red Book. Proudly carried by true believers, forced on skeptics and the unsuspecting alike, it contains within it all that is needed to denounce those who get in the path of “progress.”
The “rights” being claimed by trans activists often displace the rights of other humans.
Women are humans too. As are homosexuals. And children. Trans activists don’t get to claim a bunch of rights that obliterate other people’s rights. That’s not how this works.
Fact: Many people misunderstand alpha males, who are neither brutes nor tyrants, but peacemakers.
Also facts: a woman doesn’t need a man to walk with confidence. Running from fictional bogeymen reveals confusion and weakness.
Buried deep in a laudatory piece from the
@nyt
, “On the day Mr. Blake was shot, the woman who reported the [sexual] assault called 911, saying that Mr. Blake was at her home.”
#metoo
: relevant only when it’s convenient for the narrative.
Sex is binary.
Binary means having two states.
Hermaphroditic species reveal the sex binary: male into female, or vice versa, or both at once. Male, female: two states.
Humans are no exceptions to the rules of biology, just because you don’t know what binary means…
Sex (like all traits) is not binary. Gender (which is a social construct ) is not binary.
All traits are on a spectrum. Many species of fish change their sex regularly.
Sex is no exception to the rules of biology, just because you are a bigot...
A social media offensive is underway to silence dissenting voices from across the political spectrum just days before the election.
Fixed it for you,
@CNN
. You’re welcome.
Totalitarianism always flies in on the wings of beautiful ideals.
It lands gently, flatters you and charms you, makes you feel smart for recognizing how beautiful it is.
Do not be fooled. It is dangerous. Those ideals? They are not what they seem. (1/23)
Humans are in a lineage that has been sexual—that is, sexually reproducing—for 500 million years. Uninterrupted. Once our ancestors discovered sex, not once in our lineage did we go asexual. 1/8
1. Compelled speech is anti-democratic.
2. Following the herd isn’t my bag.
3. Pronouns in the bio are not about the next civil rights frontier. A very few people are truly trans. In contrast, Trans Rights Activists are strategic, reality-denying & misogynistic. Yes, really.
Roald Dahl's publisher changing his words after his death.
Apparently we have perfect insight into what is good and right, having attained purity. It is only past people who made errors, had secrets, believed things that weren’t true.
We are a confused and arrogant people.
BREAKING: Arkansas has become the first state to ban “gender transition procedures” in people under 18, and the ACLU has become the first organization to wildly misrepresent what has happened.
The new director of the CDC reveals that Covid policies were built in social space, like mean girls wielding power in high school. There’s no science here.
#FollowTheGossip
! Errr, I mean
#FollowTheScience
!
New CDC Director Mandy Cohen recalls how she and her colleagues came up with COVID mandates during her time as NC Health Director.
“She was like, are you gonna let them have professional football? And I was like, no. And she’s like, OK neither are we.”
The claim that
@SamHarrisOrg
and
@JordanBPeterson
are gateway drugs to “white nationalists” is disingenuous at best. They have and encourage conversations that are deep, real, and honest; last for hours; and welcome all who show up with open minds. This is the opposite of hatred.
They are gateway drugs to the harder stuff. A feeder mechanism, if you will. At best, they are knowingly being highly irresponsible and intellectually lazy. At worst, they are invisible whitnats by design.
A Washington state school district moves the goalposts on equity—Asian students are no longer “students of color.”
Take heed. The goalposts can shift endlessly, such that the grievances will never end, creating demand for ever more “diversity trainers” and administrators.
Validation of your child’s every pronouncement is not evidence of love. Nor is becoming outraged when asked to consider the effects of medical intervention. Your job is to grow your child into a wise and anti-fragile adult. This will not always be easy; that’s the way with love.
Beginning with a simple untruth (“transwomen are women”), this letter then takes aim at women’s and girl’s rights, while mocking and fear-mongering about those of us who see and say: the gender ideology emperor has no clothes.
Transwomen are transwomen.
Women are women.
I am proud to sign this letter because we all must fight against the unnecessary barriers placed on trans women and girls by lawmakers and those who co-opt the feminist label in the name of division and hatred.
#TDOV
@glaad
Respectfully, Secretary Reich, you have drunk the Kool-Aid.
Not that it should matter, but I’m a liberal. And, for 15 years, I was a college professor, an educator. I saw first-hand the damage that Critical Race Theory wrought.
The so-called "party of free speech" is now trying to ban educators from teaching about the anguished role racism has played in the shaping of America. We can’t stand for it.
No
@IanCopeland5
, sex is not a genotype. What genotype differentiates male and female turtles? None. The mechanism by which sex is determined (genetic vs environmental) is not the same thing as what sex is.
PS: Please stop degrading PhDs by waving yours with every new error.
No
@zaelefty
, sex is a genotype classification (it is also a phenotype). Aneuploidy exist.
I'm sorry, the truth hurts.
These genotypes exist.
SEX IS NOT BINARY...
PS: Please state your highest level of education...
@zaelefty
Ignorance, arrogance, and the wielding of credentials to shut down discourse: a triple threat.
When these three characteristics show up in one place, I feel a responsibility to at least slow the spread of misinformation. Here we go. [thread 1/26]
For any chance of being relevant again, Democrats need to:
1. Stop pandering to the authoritarian Left.
2. Stop conflating “Right” w “extreme-Right”.
3. Reconfigure core values around environment, education, labor. Embrace science, indvdl ability, compassion for those in need.
Stop it.
How is this not obvious? You are literally reporting on the science of sex differences, and in the same sentence you pretend that sex differences are entirely discretionary, as if claiming you're a man who is pregnant is enough to make you a man. It doesn't. Stop it.
Male placentas produce more proinflammatory molecules than female placentas, while pregnant people carrying male fetuses produce fewer antibodies in response to infection.
@maxrenke
@SadLittleKobold
Newsflash: it is precisely your biology—at least 500 million uninterrupted years of it—that makes a man a man or a woman a woman.
If you think it’s clothes or beliefs or affectations that make you a man or a woman, you are a sexist, and seriously out of touch with reality.
Actual science *would* like a word. And
@sciam
doesn’t come close.
Females: individuals who do or did or will or would, but for developmental or genetic anomalies, produce eggs.
Males: same, but with small mobile gametes (sperm, pollen).
Sex is binary.
@StephenKing
Too many deaths, for sure, but this isn't true. From the article: ""The latest COVID-19 data from the CDC on Thursday shows an increase of 1,296 deaths from the total reported a day earlier. Those deaths did not all happen over the past day and span back weeks."
"This movement is so powerful....There hasn’t been a city, town, or hamlet they’ve passed without crowds of people coming out to cheer them on and ply them with food and goods and offers of a place to stay or a hot shower."
When a MSM outlet posits a lab-leak origin for SARS-CoV2, does that make them far-right conspiracists, or do those of us who were trying to have a scientific discussion about this from the beginning get readmitted to the Tribe of Acceptable People?
Daniel Radcliffe said “transgender women are women” in a lengthy response to J.K. Rowling’s transphobic tweets: “Any statement to the contrary erases the identity and dignity of transgender people”
"Others have sketched a...case in which a transgender woman who undergoes a uterus transplant carries a pregnancy conceived with her own previously frozen sperm."
"her own sperm"
Not a thing.
How in the bloody hell did we get here.
@ewarren
This is an anti-woman position. So disappointing.
Natal men competing against natal women is not the same as being "safe and welcomed at school." Why does sex segregation exist in sport at all? And ask yourself where the trans-men are who demand representation in men's sport.
Since it bears repeating: Transwomen can not be mothers, because they are men. They can be fathers.
This is not between "them and their children." It's between them and reality.
Abandon gender roles, but do not abandon biological reality, & 500 million years of evolution.
Since it bears repeating: Trans women can be mothers, just like mothers who adopt, those who use IVF, or for some reason can’t give birth and have children via alternative means. That’s between them and their children, and isn’t subject to anyone else’s opinion.
Regressive, dangerous, misogynistic (and also misandrist) garbage, masquerading as the hot new civil rights battle.
No. Everybody with decency and common sense needs to stand up and say it: No. Not in my name.
- Acting “girly” means you are a girl.
- All white people are racist.
- The only possible origin of SARS-CoV2 is straight from nature.
Anyone else tired of being assured of things that are patently not true? The bullies may be powerful, but they are not right. Reject and resist.
“Calling good men toxic does everyone a deep disservice. Everyone except those who seek empowerment through victim narratives.” My latest at
@QuilletteM
An adult offers a child something special in exchange for pizza, and tells the child not to inform his parents.
Would more people see this for what it is if the shots were being given in unmarked vans?
How is anyone okay with this?
This is how it’s done.
Proclaim something to be true that is patently not. Do not mock those who disagree. Not yet. Instead, ask them, with sadness in your eyes, why you cannot just be generous and kind.
If they resist, shame them. (1/12)
This.
For those who think that the United States needs to be dismantled, or is inherently fascist—go other places. Really be there. Spend some time. Talk to people, eat the food, dance, engage. Then consider your critique. Has it changed? I think it will.
Good fathers teach the value of confidence without arrogance; skepticism without cynicism; love without qualification.
I am lucky to have known two of the best fathers imaginable—my own, and the father of my two children,
@BretWeinstein
. Happy father’s day to all the good Dads.
your bio saying “he/him” and your choice to completely misrepresent my position makes me wonder if you’re dogwhistling for the “authoritarian left.” i doubt I’m the only one
@IanCopeland5
@cliftonaduncan
In our lineage, we have been reproducing sexually, with two and only two sexes, for at least 500 million years. It may be closer to 2 billion.
Sex chromosomes evolved far more recently than that, in several lineages. These lineages include but are not limited to mammals and,
Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria—in which girls, mostly, are overwhelmed with the desire to transition—spreads through social contagion. Society doesn’t encourage anorexia, cutting; Why are we facilitating permanent medical intervention in the case of ROGD?
Oh I see your error; it’s an easy one to make.
The “fact-checkers” are censors, you see. They’re the ones making things up and obscuring the truth. They’ve got the self-appointed title that makes it seem like they’re the ones telling the truth. But that’s them lying. Again.
Trump abruptly canceled a 60 Minutes interview because of fact-checking; fact-checking also gave Vance a meltdown in the debate. That's Republican kryptonite: being asked to tell the truth
#DarkHorseLive84
*will* happen on Saturday, June 19, at 12:30 Pacific. It will not be on YouTube, the usual spot, because YouTube has anointed censors as arbiters of truth and scientific discourse. Stay tuned for where we will be streaming from.
The DarkHorse Podcast has been hit with a strike by
@YouTube
. It prevents us from livestreaming in the usual spot, Sat. at 12:30pm Pacific. They'll be surprised to discover that their censoring us has activated an army. We won't be intimidated or deterred.
#FollowTheSilence
Attacks on trans youth in sports are showing up in dozens of state legislatures nationwide.
These bans are discriminatory, harmful, and unscientific. Here's why ⬇️
White nationalists advocate for bigotry and separatism.
“Social justice” folks—carefully named so as to sound not just harmless but positive—often advocate for the same.
Both of these extremes are despicable. And both have a remarkable misunderstanding of evolution.
Being in favor of medicalized transition for young people will be one of the defining issues of our times. You will be forever defined by your callous inability to accept people for who they are, instead insisting on barbaric hormonal and surgical interventions.
Being against trans rights will and should be the defining issue of our times. Whether you think you’re the greatest author or tennis player of all time, it doesn’t matter. You will forever be defined by your callous inability to accept people for who they are.
Pretending that humans live in an ahistorical landscape is a luxury, not a right. It is the luxury of using pseudo-logic to believe that you have destroyed truths which, in fact, care not a bit what you think. It is the luxury of postmodernism. /end
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
There's no wrong way to be a woman.
Even if a particular man will not behave in a predatory way to women, the public display of fetish opens doors to predators who would. We had a social contract that did a good job of keeping women safe. The contract is being dismantled.
“Men menstruate. Some have even given birth.” If you disagree, you are “attacking trans lives,” and likely one of those deplorables who support Trump.
I’m no Trump supporter, just a biologist who knows that this “new trans reality” is a dangerous fiction.
Dear WokeCollege,
You behaved abominably, indoctrinating rather than educating students. Having actually received a comeuppance, now hiding behind standard playbook “but the students!” is further evidence that you don’t give a damn about education, or students.
Try adulting.
Women are female.
Transwomen are male.
Both are *not* women. Human sex is immutable; people born male can't become women.
It really isn't that hard to understand.
No.
It’s not like blueberries: Blueberries are berries! True.
More like pineapples: Pineapples are apples! Not true.
Transwomen is a new category. The new category does not negate the 500 million year old categories of male and female. We can be kind without being delusional.
Trans women are women. An intersectional feminist agenda includes trans women. Read more about how you can be a better ally in this great piece by
@HRC
.
#PrideMonth
Once upon a time, I was proud to call myself a feminist.
Then the 3rd wave showed up, and “feminism” became science-denying, reality-denying, greedy, and more than a bit nuts.
Let’s reclaim feminism. Let’s start here: feminism is the (radical?!) belief that women are real.
I've lost count of the number of organisations in the past couple of weeks that explicitly refuse to use the word 'Woman'.
You are all a disgrace.
Women exist, we are not shutting up and we are not going away.
In Portland, antifa threw milkshakes containing quick-drying cement, well known to be caustic, at and on to
@MrAndyNgo
. He is receiving treatment in the ER.
@ConceptualJames
@MrAndyNgo
There is a long, grotesque history of people using chemicals to burn others. Isn’t a “milkshake” containing strongly alkaline compounds a kind of chemical weapon?
Dude, please. “GOP supporters believe that rampaging mobs burned and looted major cities”?
I’ve never voted GOP (not that it should matter), and I know—not believe, *know*—that a tiny but rampaging mob continues to do damage in Portland on the regular. [thread 1/11]
In reality, given that GOP supporters believe that rampaging mobs burned and looted major cities — somehow without the people actually living in those cities noticing — getting them to see facts about something as abstract as the deficit is a hopeless cause 3/
Vaccination alone won't stop the rise of variants and in fact could push the evolution of strains that evade their protection, researchers warned.
They said people need to wear masks and take other preventative steps until almost everyone is vaccinated.
My June 1st discussion with Dr. Pierre Kory of
@Covid19Critical
on the DarkHorse Podcast has been removed by
@YouTube
for allegedly violating their Community Guideline against "Spam, deceptive practices and scams". The channel was given a warning, the first step toward removal.
“I’d like to be a little less white, which means a little less oppressive, oblivious, defensive, ignorant and arrogant.”
This woman is a piece of work. And yet, a whole lot of people are drinking her kool-aid. (HT
@RealYeyoZa
)
Killing for sport is reprehensible. (Hunting for food is not.)
Killing for sport, having made yourself immune from danger, makes the word “sport” generous and unjustified.
Killing elephants for sport—who love, grieve, teach their young—is beyond the pale.
HT
@NAChristakis
"We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science and technology. This combustible mixture of science and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces." - Carl Sagan, 1996
In the last interview of his life (1996), astronomer Carl Sagan gave an eerily prescient warning of the dangers that come when you cannot ask skeptical scientific questions of those in authority. Watch and ask yourself: was he right?
Imagine a child who is free to have whims and passions, crushes and fears and aspirations, and not have them define her future.
Imagine how much else she could be experiencing and learning and feeling right now, but for being trapped in a cult.
Imagine her having a childhood.
This is a lie. It’s not just the headline that is a lie, though. The lie is far deeper, more sinister, more powerful. This headline was never published. This headline is a forgery, meant to sow hatred and distrust. Meant to further alienate us from one another. 1/11
That’s
@nytimes
. Shame on you, by the way. How dare you pretend to give a damn about women and sexual assault and then cover this story this way. You are hypocrites, verificationists, and liars. Not a good look. And this is not journalism.
As absurd a performance as that is by activists, the truth is worse than the fact that they are denying reality. They are not responding to what was said. They are immune to new information. They are engaged in theatre, in what I call read-only activism.
“The final result of sex development in humans is unambiguously male or female over 99.98% of the time”
“Evolution denialism is back, but this time it’s coming from left-wing activists who do hold power in academia.”
Clear, bold truth from
@SwipeWright
:
@GodflyThe
@JenelopeJohnson
@maxrenke
@SadLittleKobold
I don’t tend to do remedial evolution on Twitter. But since you say you are an evolutionary geneticist, I’ll make an exception. I’ll go slow, since you seem to have missed a lot already. Consider it a public service. [thread 1/14]
Hatred and lies: an intoxicating brew.
So many words have been abused into meaninglessness: feminist, racist, fascist...& now many authoritarians are representing the “left." I want my word back. Better yet, a political apparatus that neither caves nor panders to such rhetoric.
@HeatherEHeying
Don't worry Heather, we are coming for racist white women like you to. You and the other Aunt Lydias of this country will lose power as the brutal white men you defend are taken down and punished. It will be gender neutral, don't worry. ALL the trash will be taken out.
@Timcast
Yep: ever more doses and masks, restrictions and fear-mongering. Fewer questions, asked or answered. That seems to be the direction we’re going.
“It says something when you’re at a BLM protest, & you have more minorities on the police side than...in a violent crowd, & you have white people screaming at black officers, ‘you have the biggest nose I’ve ever seen’.”
A hateful movement with clever branding is still hateful.
On International Women's Day, here's your reminder that the ACLU doesn't give a flying f*ck about women. They're too busy scoring fashionable, patently absurd, political points to care about reality, or remember their own roots.
Reaching across the aisle is admirable. A virtue, even.
When I was a professor, one of our explicit goals was to encourage "learning across significant differences."
The cartoonification of others into two-dimensional enemies worthy of derision and scorn helps no one.
Salt is everywhere.
It’s added to packaged foods.
It’s used in home cooking.
It’s added heavily to dishes ordered from restaurants and vendors.
We can save millions of lives by reducing sodium intake
#LessSalt
#SaltAwarenessWeek
"Why do we chastise teenage girls when they cut themselves, but celebrate them when they find a doctor to do it for them?"
A 2020 conversation between
@AbigailShrier
and me:
“There is no shortage of conservatives willing to push back against this pernicious nonsense, but where have the honest liberals gone?”
We exist. We are told that our very criticism of the ascendant ideology is itself evidence that we aren’t liberals. But we do exist.
Announcing the University of Austin: an institution for discovery and exploration, where people and ideas will meet, and we will always remember our shared humanity in the pursuit of the timeless mottos of truth, and light, and the wind of freedom.
I think all girls should be given the strong counter-narrative as early as possible that they do not have to accept traditional female norms, but that desire for children or a partner is not regressive, and that no, their lives are not just for them. We are all in this together.
I think all girls should be given the strong counter-narrative from as early age as possible that they do not have to ever have children, or get married, and that their lives can just be for them.
This is totally missing at present. Might build some stuff around it.
On
#InternationalWomensDay
, I say no to backwards “grab ‘em by the pussy” misogyny, and to upside-down “men are women if they say so” misogyny.
I choose equal opportunity without expectation of equal outcomes, celebration of differences, and working together for a better future.
A mother refers to her six year old male child as a daughter, and provides specialty underwear that obscures said child’s penis. The child “has no dysphoria,” and “couldn’t care less.”
This is child abuse.
4. Not dysphoric at age 6, no problem with penis. Mom got the tucking underwear. This is not an uncommon thing that some parents report. Why are such children considered the opposite sex by their parents? Who has encouraged them to think this way?
Using a scientific credential to bully those who don’t have one, and to promote ignorant and wrong things, is anti-scientific, foolish and wrong. Y’all wonder why distrust of science and scientists is high now? Look no farther. You’re creating the problem. /end
“Huckster”
“merchant of doubt”
“anti-vax charlatan and spoiler presidential candidate”
@RobertKennedyJr
is apparently too skilled with his “firehose of nonsense” for any *real* scientist to have a chance against him.
Name-calling ain’t science.
About f#*%ing time, too.
Next: the rest of the world that hasn’t yet woken up from its spell follows suit.
Then: backpedaling from all the loons & goons who created & maintained & cheered on this madness. Watch as people contort their former positions to look honorable.
Alternative hypothesis: A lot of people, regardless of their immutable characteristics, are concerned about the ascendancy of the 1619 project due to its poor scholarship.
"No Way Back: The Reality of Gender Affirming Care," is an award-winning documentary that was going to be shown in theaters...until the mob showed up. Read testimonials and research, and find out how you can see the film here.
Don't let the activists win.